It's not every day that you get to stand next to the prodigious Saturn V rocket — the most powerful rocket ever built and NASA's ride to the moon.

To this day, the Saturn V — a ticket into the history books during the '60s and early '70s — remains the only rocket capable of transporting humans beyond low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station resides. And it's a monster.

We recently visited the never used, ready-for-flight Saturn V that was destined to transport NASA's Apollo 18 crew to the moon before the US government canceled the mission in 1970.

Words cannot describe the experience of standing next to one of humankind's most impressive engineering feats. But these photos should give you an idea:

LEARN MORE: Sending humans to Mars could uncover a disturbing truth to one of life's greatest mysteries

SEE ALSO: Here's how ridiculously fast we could visit everything in the solar system if we traveled at the speed of light

Instead of scrapping the Saturn V rocket after Apollo 18 was canceled, NASA preserved it at their Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, shown below. Check out the Saturn V rocket in the lower right.

The Saturn V was designed to fly three astronauts at a time. At launch, it weighed 6.54 million pounds and towered 363 feet tall — about 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Today, the Apollo 18 Saturn V is stored in a massive warehouse. A life-sized illustration of the rocket decorates the outside, and for $25, visitors can take a tour across the grounds and take a trip inside!

All the talk about millennials shunning car ownership in favor of the Ubers and Lyfts of the world may be misplaced.

At least that's the bet being made by Jon Alain Guzik, the founder of Prazo, a new car-leasing app that's launching next year.

It's based on the notion that twenty-somethings still want to drive, and they still want to have their own cars, Guzik said in a conversation with Business Insider.

Prazo aims to be the go-to place for all things transportation – with ambitious plans to lease cars through smartphones and also offer a host of other services all for the cost of a typical car lease.

"For example, if your car needs a service, we’ll pick it up, take it to the dealer, and return it to you when it's done," Guzik said. "We’re trying to be the Amazon Prime of cars.”

Guzik also started RideApart, which is part of BI's contributor network.

Prazo targets the car-leasing market exclusively, a segment where millennials accounted for some 30% of the $17 billion market this year.

And for that 20-to-30-something demographic, Prazo's 2-year commitment to a new-car lease mirrors the model of upgrading to a new smartphone.

From the start, every contact between the user and the company will be through the app. Guzik cites millennials' heavy reliance on mobile devices — more than 45% of whom use them exclusively — to explain that model.

Prazo's planning to open for business early next year with one vehicle: the 2016 Ford C-Max — a 5-door hybrid that will be customized by Prazo's dealer-partner, the Los Angeles-based Galpin Motors.

More vehicle choices will roll out later.

The C-Max will be painted ruby red and come with roof racks and tinted windows as standard equipment.

"We want it to look like it was created just for you," Guzik said.

The concierge service will go beyond helping service the car. For example, a user might be able to borrow a bike from Prazo — delivered to the car of course.

High price tag

All of that starts to sound like it might be expensive, but Guzik insists that shoppers will be able to get into the cars "with very little money down," and a monthly payment somewhere around $300.

That's ambitious, says Jack Nerad, an executive market analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

"I'm not sure people will see the value in something like that," Nerad said, "especially when you can lease any new car you want from among some 300 new models, most of which are incentivized."

Pointing to unemployment and underemployment among some millennials, Nerad suggests a $300 monthly payment for Prazo might be out of the question. 

"A lot of millennials are just driving used cars because that's what they can afford."

But, Prazo's role as a transportation concierge adds the kind of extras people won't otherwise get from buying a car the old-fashioned way, Guzik says.

Still, the on-demand space is crowded and competitive. And while the success of companies like Uber prove people are willing to spend money for convenience, Prazo is no $20 ride across town.

"It will be a tough sell only because we’re a new company," Guzik admitted, but he emphasized that it's important for Prazo to get that "Amazon Prime of cars" idea just right. He says that's also why it's important to reel in those millennials.

"We want to create an amazingly good value for the user and give them as much free stuff as we can ... if we can make your pennies count a lot more, that’s really our main goal."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here’s how to find out your Uber rating

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has all the qualifications you would expect of a Fortune 500 chief executive.

The Cincinnati-born son of a GE employee studied at Dartmouth and earned a Harvard MBA before working his way up at the industrial giant he now helms.

But Immelt says his most invaluable qualification is not the MBA — it's his undergraduate degree in math.

"I use my math major every day — I don't use the MBA quite as much," Immelt said, speaking at Business Insider's IGNITION 2015 conference on Wednesday.

"My intellectual curiosity goes more toward problem solving than spreadsheets."

Of course, Immelt said, he understands the mechanics of running a business — all the things you learn in business school,.

But running a company, to Immelt, is really about problem solving. And that's something he learned about in his undergraduate studies, due to "the inherent intellectual curiosity around math and physics."

That has stayed with Immelt throughout his career.

"I'm just curious about everything," he said. "I can view every situation as a problem to be solved, and I've never lost my passion for that as I've grown in my career."

Read more about the IGNITION 2015 conference here.

SEE ALSO: GE CEO JEFF IMMELT: Let's finally end the debate over whether we are in a tech bubble

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam explains why he bought AOL

If you can’t go long, you won’t go far.

Great ambition demands great stamina, deep courage, and unparalleled resolve.

You’re going to have to endure hardship getting from where you are right now to where you want to be.

Not the easy, fast, “will-be-over-in-a-minute” kind of hardship.  The dull, throbbing ache of unmet expectations and confused fatigue.

It hurts to change.

It hurts even more if you want to change enough to be the best at what you are trying to accomplish.

One thing is certain: If you don’t persist, your dream won’t exist.

It’s dead. Over. Gone. It’s that simple. When you stop moving forward, you’ve lost.

Life is an endurance sport — physically, mentally, and financially.

Being smart helps. Being witty helps.  Having charm, wealth or powerful relationships — they all help.

Nothing can replace unrelenting forward progress.

Nothing else is as powerful in getting you to where you want to be.

It’s lonely to endure.

It’s scary and disheartening to endure. It feels like waiting. Looks like stubbornness to everyone else around you.

“There has to be a better way”, they tell you. “You’re doing something wrong.”

It’s too much stress. Too much pain.

It doesn’t seem natural.

And most of the time, a daily battle to continue.

You give up because you stop enduring.

You slow down because you stop enduring. You make bad decisions and reap horrible consequences because you fail to find the courage to endure.

Big change in your life demands a series of unglamorous actions. Brutally difficult changes implemented with monotonously daily rigor.

If you can’t do that, you won’t win.

You won’t ever achieve the goals you start working on.

Change won’t happen. Your life will continue to be a series of disappointing stops and starts.

Develop your endurance. Remind yourself of the importance of doing the hard things.

Be unrelenting in your need to keep moving forward. Endure.

The post Endurance Is A Life Skill. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.

Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.

Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...

One of the key benefits of LinkedIn is that, after you’ve built up your network, (and as you continue to build it), you can publish content to the site. Anyone can publish to LinkedIn, and as you grow your  network, any content you publish will be pushed to all of those connections.

By continuing to demonstrate your expertise through this content, you’ll build up your thought leadership, which, as we’ve mentioned once or twice, is a critical piece of online marketing. People want to connect to a person, not just a brand, and thought leadership is the process of building out a personal brand for yourself online, even if you are representing a company. Publishing valuable articles from a human perspective is hugely valuable in helping you achieve that, and LinkedIn is the best platform to do it.

LinkedIn is one of the biggest publishing media sites in the world; they’ve truly built up the site as a strong source of relevant content for influencers and leaders in the field. To give you an idea of the scope, LinkedIn recently reported that 1 million unique professionals publish more than 130,000 posts a week on the site. The average post reaches professionals in 21 industries and 9 countries, and about 45% of readers are in the upper ranks of their industries. The numbers and evidence don’t lie: the hype around publishing on LinkedIn is very real.

There are two ways to share content on LinkedIn. The first is short Twitter-like updates on your profile page, company page or on a group’s feed. These should essentially be short blurbs summing up a blog post or relevant article you’ve published, and include a dynamic picture and a link to the article. These have the advantage not only of building up thought leadership, but also generating traffic to your website.

The second distribution method is publishing full length posts on your profile that are shared with your connections. These are long form, as opposed to the short format allowed in the group and company updates. You can copy the full text of an article or post you’ve written on your site, and just press paste and publish on LinkedIn. To increase engagement, include some sort of link or call to action back to your website.

Now, we’re working under the assumption that you’ve already followed the steps of inbound marketing until the distribution point, which means you’ve already worked really hard to create content on your blog and website that’s relevant and educational to your target audience. And since LinkedIn is handing you that very audience on a silver platter, it seems like all you need to do is click share, right?

Well, almost.

There are two key components to keep in mind when deciding what to share on LinkedIn The first is to ensure that your content is indeed relevant here. If you are targeting multiple personas, then chances are you have written content for each of them, which means that not all pieces are relevant to each member of every group you have joined.

But LinkedIn lets you put the right articles in front of the right people. Your content was written with intention; don’t let that focus get lost by sharing it with the wrong group. For example, we at The Brand Builders give a lot of marketing advice, but not always to the same people. So we might share an article about the importance of best content practices with groups of marketing professionals, whereas groups that include CEOs and business owners might instead prefer our piece about why inbound marketing leads cost less over time.

(We’ll discuss identifying the right groups a lot further in a separate blog post.)

The other thing to remember is that this is a forum for the audience to engage with your content–so make the content engaging. Don’t let your piece get lost in the ever-flowing content stream. Here are a few ways how:

1. Ask a question when you post or start a discussion in order to elicit a response.
2. Optimize your headline to catch people’s attention. What makes a good post headline will make a good LinkedIn headline. Some popular styles include headlines containing statistics, “how-to’s, or “top 10s.”
3. Study prior popular discussions to get an idea of what topics resonate most with group members. Similarly, observe the contributions of more active group members in order to understand their concerns, goals, and objectives.
4. Include an image, but avoid videos or other types of multimedia.
5. Post at the right time. Studies show that articles are read most between 7am-8am, 5pm-6pm, and on Tuesdays from 10am-11am. But that’s not a definitive time frame; experiment and find the right time for you and your followers.

But there’s always a caveat. When optimizing your copy, don’t come off as too promotional. LinkedIn has a careful moderation system in place, which combines the input of group managers with feedback from group members themselves. This closely monitors the type of posts by a given member, and has been known to block or hide posts from members who use language or context that is overly self-promotional, repetitive, non-relevant, or ‘spammy.’

They’ve also been known to block members who post too frequently on a given group. Don’t clog the group discussion board, or moderators might think that you’re posting without thought or consideration. Aim to post a couple of times per week so that you’ll stay visible without becoming annoying.

Your optimized LInkedIn profile won’t be worth very much if you’re not putting yourself out there by sharing relevant content. You already know the important role relevant content plays in your online marketing campaign. Now’s where you use that content to earn the attention and engagement of the relevant connections you’ve earned on LinkedIn.

You might think you’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to creating amazing experiences for your customers. You’ve put the right people in place, shaped the customer experience strategy, and dedicated the time and resources to ensuring the experience is unique and differentiating. I hate to but the breaks on, but it’s not that simple. Your customers are actually in the driver’s seat – and the best CX leaders recognize that customers are evaluating their experiences at every turn. They’re observing, sharing information, and influencing others … about your products, services, and your brand. They are, in fact, deciding with every interaction whether or not they want to be your loyal customer … your customer for life. So no matter how hard you’re working or how much you believe you’re making the right decisions that will result in exceptional experiences, your customer will ultimately determine your success.

Imagine you’re a leader at a grocery store chain. A customer has a disappointing experience with one of your deli clerks. But at checkout, they have an outstanding exchange with the cashier and bagger. How would they rate their experience? In one shopping trip, they had two very different customer experiences that they will eventually evaluate as one. Do you think they will forgive the initial negative experience and choose to come back, based on the exchange at checkout, and give your store another chance? Or will they tell all their friends about their experience with the deli clerk, post their outrage on Facebook and Twitter, and check out the competition to see who can do your job better? There is no way to predict what this particular customer will do. Scary, right?

Your job is to make sure your customers have a well-executed holistic experience with your company – and that means strategically engaging your employees to deliver that experience at every touch point. You need to make a decision to build a holistic customer experience and bring your employees along on the journey. Let’s dig in!

Decide to Build a Holistic Customer Experience

When your brand does things right, you’ve excited the shopper and loyalty has been secured. So what is the secret? It all boils down to experience. How you treat your customers and make them feel at each and every touch point is what drives them to choose you again and again. This is why you must think about the customer experience from a holistic perspective and what decisions you need to make to deliver on that holistic perspective.

First, you need to gain an understanding of your customers – knowing who they are, what matters to them and how they want to do business consistently and long-term. This is how you’re going to keep adding to your list of “uber loyals.” If you’re unsure if your organization is considering the customer experience from a holistic standpoint, try answering these questions (and be honest!).

1. Have you decided to embrace the customer experience and make it a cornerstone of your culture?
2. Does the owner of customer experience in your organization understand each touch point in the process?
3. Are your teams and business units working together to deliver a holistic customer experience? How?
4. Does each business unit consider the customer during each and every decision they make? How?

Maybe you’ve got all this covered, or maybe there’s room for improvement. Either way, the following six tips can help you make the right decisions so you can successfully deliver a holistic customer experience aimed at winning customers for life.

1. Align top leaders on the culture. Leaders have to agree on the culture they want their organization to embody. This requires a lot of decisions around what that culture should look like and how they should empower their organization to live it. And the CEO and the leadership team must be ready and willing to demonstrate that new culture. Leaders go first – that’s why they’re called leaders.
2. Create an ROI case to demonstrate how the culture impacts the customer experience. A good tactic is to find the positive things that are already occurring – the store that’s outperforming all the others in their region, or the hotel where customer satisfaction scores are highest. Learn what’s unique about how they’re delivering the customer experience and how they’re making the customer a part of the decision-making process, then prototype it and replicate it across the business.
3. Share the vision with the masses in clear, concise, and compelling ways. Once leaders understand the current culture and the desired culture, it’s time to engage all employees in executing that new culture by giving them a clear understanding of what the culture is today, painting the same clear picture of what the culture will look like tomorrow and offering a well-defined path that will bridge the gap.
4. Identify which behaviors should be tolerated and rewarded. Leaders should develop a compensation structure that supports the desired actions and behaviors that will, in turn, support the success of a customer-centric culture. Again, this requires a lot of decisions from the leadership team in terms of what the business can afford and what the impact is on the customer.
5. Plan sustainment initiatives. For any change to last for the duration, including creating a culture that focuses on the customer at all times, it has to be constantly talked about, articulated, and explained at every possible opportunity. Sustaining the culture also means funding the change with investments that may include advancing the skills and capabilities of your leadership team, your managers, and front-line employees. Leaders and the CX team need to decide the best methods to communicate this change and what types of information they need to communicate at what points, etc.
6. Send leaders to the front line because sometimes they forget what it’s like to be there. Suggest ways for them to live the culture and find opportunities for them to demonstrate the culture to employees at every level. Employees will follow the actions and behaviors of leaders before they will ever adopt a culture expressed in an email, through a PowerPoint presentation, or on a poster on a wall. And leaders will be able to deliver messages better to their people if they know what it’s like to be in their shoes. This will help leaders decide what guidelines and frameworks they need to provide to the front line that will allow them to deliver a delightful experience while being authentic and successfully representing the brand.

So, who determines if your brand secures customers for life? The customers, of course! They are ultimately in the driver’s seat and they’ll make a purchase, or not. While you’re not making that final decision, you have control over every touch point. From customer service, to sales, to the back office and the front line – the customer experience is everyone’s decision. When CX is a cultural cornerstone and your people have the tools, resources, and passion to do what needs to be done to put the customer first, everyone can take part in creating new ways to offer delights. The end result is something every brand wants (and needs) – a growing list of super-loyal customers.

Keeping Your Customer In Mind At All Times

Here’s a cheat sheet to ensure your customer remains present during all decisions.

1. Find out what your customer wants and needs … and this doesn’t mean sending them surveys or asking them to fill out questionnaires. You need to be a part of their experience. Observe your customers to see what delights, what disappoints, and what leaves them ambivalent – and then build your product or service around the experience they are looking for.
2. Create archetypes of your target customers. What do they do? What is their marital status? Ethnic background? Do they have children? What’s their income? Favorite hobbies? Learn as much as you can so your customer becomes a real and relatable person to you.
3. Give them a seat at the table. That’s right. Dedicate an actual seat at the meeting with a nameplate that says “Customer.” During the meeting and as each decision is made, think about what this customer would say and want. While it’s not practical to invite customers to most meetings, it’s definitely possible to give them a seat. Always.

The IPO market may be cooling down for a lot of tech companies, but that doesn't seem to be the case with Atlassian, the business-software maker best known for its JIRA and HipChat products.

Atlassian, slated to begin trading on the public markets Thursday, set its IPO price at $21/share, giving it a $4.4 billion valuation, Fortune reports.

That's a nice boost from the price range Atlassian had originally projected, which would have given it a valuation of $3.8 billion at the high end.

It's a strong indicator of investor interest. And it means Atlassian could turn out to be the most successful tech IPO of the year, drawing solid interest from public investors. If all goes well tomorrow, Atlassian's market cap will end up exceeding its private-market valuation. 

One of the reasons for Atlassian's popularity may have to do with its strong financials. Unlike a lot of the tech startups that are losing money, Atlassian has been profitable for the last 10 years, and is still growing at a solid pace. It's also achieving its growth without spending too much on sales and marketing, which is typically the biggest expense item for most software companies. 

Atlassian was founded in 2002, but it hasn't taken any outside investment. The last two funding rounds from Accel and T. Rowe Price were done to let employees sell some of their shares.

Some of the most anticipated tech IPOs this year saw lower-than-expected interest from the public market, significantly cutting their value on their way to going public.

Square, for example, lost nearly half of its value when it went public earlier this month compared to the $6 billion valuation it got in the private market last year — though shares popped on the first day of trading. Box also saw its IPO price bring its market cap below its previous VC valuation when it went public earlier this year.

SEE ALSO: The founders of $3 billion Atlassian won't be happy until 100 million people use it every month

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What It Was Like On The Trading Floor During Twitter's IPO

It may not be the hottest topic, but tire technology has come a long way to maximizing grip and durability in all types of driving conditions. Learn how modern tire engineering keeps you safe at low or high speeds, on dry tarmac or icy surfaces.

The post Get a grip: Understanding what’s new in tire technology appeared first on Digital Trends.

Apple's new Upper East Side store on Madison Avenue in New York City has been many things since it was a bank. Six months ago, the classically styled building, with its vaulted ceiling and pale marble columns, became an Apple Store and today its second floor, which is below ground and still houses the bank's vault, is a makeshift school and temporary way station for Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook's arrival on Wednesday is perfectly timed to coincide with an Hour of Code session with 18 students from the city's PS 57 James Weldon Johnson Leadership Academy, a Charter School in East Harlem. The hour-long session is part of Computer Science Education Week's Hour of Code program, which is sponsored by the non-profit organization Code.org. Apple actually kicks a global Hour of code program at all its retail stores on Thursday. Read more...

Once, Coca-Cola and sugar went together like peanut butter and jelly. But, as Americans are increasingly concerned with nutrition and blaming Coke in part for the rise of obesity, the relationship has gotten a lot more complicated.

Coca-Cola has essentially taken two approaches to its messy pseudo-breakup with sugar: adding lower-sugar beverages to its repertoire, and convincing guests that sugar isn’t all that bad — at times with sketchy research the company itself funded.

This strategy echoes the work of Big Tobacco in the 1980s, according to Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University and the author of the book "Soda Politics.

"First, they attack the science. Then, they fund community groups, promote exercise as a solution, and say they're self-regulated and don't need to be regulated by an outside source," Nestle told Business Insider.

As Coke’s approach to sugar evolves internally, it is influenced by new laws discouraging consumption of sugary beverages and public condemnation of Coca-Cola’s position as the world’s largest retailer of sugary beverages.

Here’s how Coke reached the uneasy and shifting relationship with sugar it has today.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We Compared SodaStream Cola To Coke — Here's What People Liked Better

Editor’s Note: At Sales Stack 2015 we had a chance to sit down with some of the most influential social selling minds in the gameTop 3 Most Influential Social Sellers On Delivering Value Through Social. Moderator Jamie Shanks of SalesforLife.com dives deep into the world of leveraging social networks to drive sales with Ken Krogue, founder of InsideSales.com; Koka Sexton, a member of LinkedIn’s newly formed team of experts heading their content marketing strategy; and Jill Rowley who, after six years in management consulting, now works as an evangelist and startup adviser in the social selling space.

In the still-emerging field of social selling, we find ourselves struggling even to agree on a single definition for what exactly it consists of or does not consist of. However you define it, though, it’s becoming clear that social selling is here to stay. In this lively discussion, you’ll be able to see the contours of a growing debate about what exactly is social selling, how companies big and small can best leverage it to their advantage, and why many traditionally successful sales organizations continue to struggle with it. Take a look at the video for yourself or check out our recap below with highlights from the conversation.

Why has social selling not become a top priority in many large organizations?

Koka Sexton: I think it’s the leadership. A sales leader who’s been doing this for 10-15 years has a really hard time wrapping their head around social first as a concept. Social is an afterthought, it’s something that somebody does 20% of their workday. The CEOs, heads of sales, senior managers, until they can adopt a social first mentality from a personal branding standpoint for them as a CEO to their company being social, it will never resonate down to their sales teams. So sales teams are doing it on their own, and the problem with that is there’s very little training because the senior leadership just doesn’t buy in yet.

Jill Rowley: I think it’s culture. And I think that there’s a whole generation of sales leaders who, in their days, collaboration was cheating and they’re not as used to transparency and authenticity and sharing information that they don’t control. If you think about the role that traditional PR companies have played in organizations it was all about controlling the message and the messenger to make sure that everything was on-brand. And when you star to allow your employees to leverage social networks to share their voices, their point-of-view, you lose control.

How do we get the CMO and the CSO completely aligned?

Our panel members seem to be in complete agreement on one aspect of social selling: Success will require sales and marketing teams to break down traditional barriers that has separated them in order to begin working hand in glove with one another.

Ken Krogue: It really comes down to pay structure and weekly correlation. When we realize that in this day and age, the old world of advertising is sort of dead and it’s all about demand generation. It’s really about the results that marketing brings in from top of funnel to drive the close ratios of the sales teams. I can’t believe sales leadership doesn’t just campout next to marketing and coordinate everything they do because that’s the single biggest hand that feeds them. We need more of that.

I can’t believe sales doesn’t just campout next to marketing and coordinate. @kenkrogue
Click To Tweet

Koka Sexton: My background was in sales and several years ago I had this great opportunity to move into marketing which at the time didn’t seem like a great opportunity because I hated marketers for a number of different reasons. I believe that salespeople have a specific DNA that’s different from any other person in an organization. Sales professionals are very Type A, they’re very competitive, they want to crush it. They want to make money. And that’s a different mentality than most marketing professionals.

When I moved into marketing I made it a point that when I worked with sales organizations, I sat with them. It bothered me when I heard that marketing was on a different side of a building or on a different floor or in a different city. At the end of the day, they operate together. If I don’t know what my salespeople need to do their job, I cannot create the right content.

If marketers don’t know what salespeople need, they cannot create the right content. @kokasexton
Click To Tweet

Jill Rowley: I think the alignment actually starts from the customer and being a customer-core organization. Sales needs to understand more about marketing. They need to know more about the ideal customer profile. They need to understand the buyer’s journey—the stages buyers go through to be able to buy. The various buyer personas involved in the purchase decision. They need to understand how to align content to the various stages of the buying cycle.

So sales needs to know more about marketing and marketing needs to know more about sales because the lines are blurring. If buyers are out there self-educating—67% of the buying process is being done digitally—more of that education is now in marketing. We all need to be more customer-centered, centric, and obsessed.

Sales needs to know more about marketing and vice versa because the lines are blurring.
Click To Tweet

At one point during our discussion, moderator Jamie Shanks asked audience members to raise their hands if their company CMO, CSO and all the salespeople know exactly what percentage of quota attainment marketing is responsible for delivering to the sales team. Very few hands went up, highlighting the pressing need for greater alignment in strategies and goals between sales and marketing.

Moderator Jamie Shanks: And that is the true part of alignment. The CMO should be able to answer, “I deliver X% to sales as part of their quota.”

The CMO should be able to answer, ‘I deliver X% to sales as part of their quota.’ @jamietshanks
Click To Tweet

Jill Rowley: I was at a company when we talked to marketing about lead-scoring and sending over more qualified, ready-to-buy leads, the marketing team said ‘Sh, let’s not talk about this lead scoring thing.’ And the reason was because marketing was measured by lead count. How we measure really matters, and if you measure on contribution to pipeline and revenue, marketing will generate those things. You get what you incent in marketing and in sales.

Give us a social selling success story

Koka Sexton: At one company, there was a sales rep named Jessica and she would get garbage call lists from marketing. What she would do was basically take marketing content that wasn’t being handed over to the sales team and start pushing it out through her social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter. Something interesting started happening—the people who viewed her profile started increasing exponentially because she was sharing more often. One day she said “I’m not going to call these leads coming through the CRM, I’m going to call these leads coming through my LinkedIn Profile.”

She had like a 90% hit rate to secure a meeting because she got them at the exact point that they were interested in that content. Because of that, social selling is taking root in that corporation. I think the datapoint of 1—if you’re struggling with it in your own organization—as an individual you can still own and it you should be empowered to do these things to rise above the noise and become successful.

Jill Rowley: We’re running a play that was built two decades ago: “Call, Email.” And the buyer is doing “Ignore, Delete.” Buyers don’t want to be cold-called. They don’t want to receive your generic, unsolicited email. It doesn’t work. Where is the modern buyer? The modern buyer is digitally driven. Google’s her best friend. She’s socially-connected. She’s mobile with multiple devices. She’s empowered with nearly unlimited access to information and to people in her social networks. And she’s also overwhelmed.

The modern buyer is leveraging social. 75% of B2B buyers are using social media to do research. Sales is about being where your buyers are offline at events like this, and online in social networks. So the buyer has changed more in the past ten years than in the past 100; sales needs to adapt.

The buyer has changed more in the past ten years than in the past 100; sales needs to adapt.
Click To Tweet

Define social selling

Moderator Jamie Shanks: Think of it like a venn diagram, it’s made up of three components. Inside space selling, trigger-based selling, and referral-based selling. The difference is that trigger and referral-based selling are being mechanized through tools like Linked In. Inside space selling is leveraging content to shape a buyer’s journey to push them off their status quo. 

Koka Sexton: We define social selling as leveraging your professional brand to fill your pipeline with the right people, insights, and relationships. It’s about the pipeline. It’s an amazing prospecting tool but it doesn’t end there. Once you have them in the pipeline, social is still a component of that and you are continuing to educate that buyer. It doesn’t end once they become a customer, you are continuing to educate them after the fact. I think that what you’re doing on social media should be continuing to build your professional brand in a way that makes you the single point of reference in your entire industry.

Jill Rowley: My definition of social selling is to use social networks, not social media. If marketing goes to salespeople and says, “We’re going to train you on social media”, sales doesn’t listen. Because social media is confusing it’s chaotic, it’s noisy, it’s unfiltered, it’s the wild wild west of the world wide web. But if you go to salespeople and say “I’m going to teach you how to use social networks”; salespeople know what networking is and we’ve been doing it all our lives.

So how do we do research on our buyers, the buying committee, and the people who influence our buyers so that we can be relevant to our buyers, so that we can build relationships with our buyers that ultimately drive revenue, customer lifetime value, and advocacy. It’s not about rushing it to signature it’s about coaching to success.

Social media is the wild wild west of the world wide web. @jill_rowley
Click To Tweet

What is the single biggest hack within your business to generate pipeline fast?

Ken Krogue: I’ll give three. 1. Job changes on Linked In. If a VP of sales starts at a new organization and they sign new contracts. We found out where the former VP of sales went. And you’ve got this domino effect of decision-making happening at multiple organizations, and you can swim in that pool forever. 2. Looking for companies that are hiring inside sales reps. Those are leads. If they’re hiring, they’re growing and buying. 3. Reverse customer referral. We look at a prospect and find out who they know in our network.

Koka Sexton: Moving from resume to reputation. Most sales professionals think of their LinkedIn profile as their online resume. We’re beyond that. Your LinkedIn profile is your online reputation. Find as many ways to drive as much traffic to that profile as possible. LinkedIn is the only social network where you can see who’s touched your profile. 

Jill Rowley: Mindset. Nobody wants to be sold to, but everyone wants to be helped. Shift the mindset from Always Be Closing, to Always Be Connecting. Never send the generic LinkedIn invite. That’s #SocialStupid.

Never send the generic LinkedIn invite. That’s #SocialStupid. @jill_rowley
Click To Tweet

The post Sales Stack ’15 Video Recap: Top 3 Most Influential Social Sellers On Delivering Value Through Social appeared first on Sales Hacker.

There is a hot theory gaining currency on Wall Street.

It is a big picture idea, but it explains much of what is going on in the economy and society.

It is called technological deflation.

Moelis & Co. Chief Executive Ken Moelis was on CNBC's Closing Bell on Thursday and brought it up.

According to Moelis, we're in a deflationary world. That would normally be reason to be concerned: Deflation is considered by central bankers as a destructive force. That is because a reduction in the price of goods is usually associated with a slowing economy and increased unemployment.

In this case, however, the deflation is a good thing. It is improving the standard of living, even in an environment where wage growth is stagnant. Here is Moelis:

I think in our world right now, you have so much technology driving price transparency, pricing power, efficiency. These are great things. I mean, what Amazon is doing — if you are a retailer, look, you better take your profit down and give the consumer an awfully good deal or Amazon is going to replace you.

An oft-cited example of this in action is the Apple iPhone. Before the advent of the smartphone, a consumer might have had a mobile phone, an MP3 player, and an internet connection at home. Now they have all three combined in one device, along with mapping and much else.

iPhones aren't cheap, but they are cheaper than buying all of those things separately. It has much broader applications too.

Everything from Uber to AirBnB to the advent of fracking technology has increased the supply of certain materials and services, increasing competition and putting pressure on prices.

Rick Rieder, BlackRock's chief investment officer of fundamental fixed income, highlighted the game-changing impact of technology earlier in the year. He said:

Put simply, technology is reshaping the entire economic, social, inflation, and investment landscape. And some of the benefits, especially to the US, are profound.

Others have caught on too. John Ameriks, Vanguard's head of quantitative equity, told Business Insider earlier this year that it was a technology that was driving markets.

"The ways in which we extract energy — there are completely new ways for us to do that that really change the cost structure in a particular industry," Ameriks said. "That's going to matter to particular firms.

"In the end, it's great news for everybody — but that will drive what happens in markets."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: For the first time ever doctors used a paralyzed man's thoughts and a computer to help him walk again

SPONSORED:

Marketers today are under more pressure than ever to deliver bottom-line results. This series sponsored by Autopilot explores how essential automation has become in that pursuit and the many ways it’s evolving to shape the customer journey from acquisition through to greater lifetime value. Check out the whole series here.

Converting trial users into long-term customers is a huge challenge for SaaS companies. Doing so repeatedly and scalably is even harder. In an age where consumers have millions of distractions at their fingertips, how can a startup capture the attention of both new and experienced users long enough to get them hooked on their product? Like the Star Trek captain whose signature command propelled the Enterprise into warp, it requires personalized action. That means catching customers with the right message, in the right channel, at the right moment.

Enter Hint Health, founded by CEO Zak Holdsworth, a New Zealander and self-proclaimed marketing automation geek. His SaaS company helps medical professionals move from a traditional fee-for-service model to direct-pay healthcare. The app manages billing, enrollments, and communication so providers can free up time for patient care.

The strategy: Urge users toward success milestones

At the outset, San Francisco-based Hint Health recognized that the best customers are those who take a few specific actions early on, such as inviting other users into the app.

Their onboarding goal had one laser-like focus:

• Get all users — sophisticated or not — up and running in their first week.

To move people swiftly along their trial journey towards this goal, Hint Health identified four key events all users need to achieve:

• Inviting third-party team members into the app
• Connecting their billing service
• Adding and updating their pricing model
• Configuring their email address

The company also identified two non-product milestones for customers to achieve:

• Attend a consultation session to plan user data migration into Hint Health
• Schedule new-user training with customer success

Deconstructing the Hint Health trial journey

Imagine each journey as a series engagement checkpoints. At each checkpoint, the company gauges whether the customer has taken one of the key actions above. Let’s go on a journey with a conceptual customer named Annie.

Because Annie hasn’t engaged, she goes down a path meant to encourage things such as connecting her billing service — starting with a Headsup message (Autopilot’s in-app messaging). If needed, this notification can nudge her back to a previous step.

She ignores it, so her next stop in the journey is receiving an email designed to bring her back into the app or to provide more context.

If she still hasn’t engaged at this point, Hint Health sends an internal Slack message to the Customer Success team, notifying them that Annie isn’t reaching key milestones. The CS agents can then take whatever steps they need to manually encourage her to do so.

As you may have noticed above, another of Holdsworth’s key onboarding strategies is using personal email and in-app messaging in tandem. Hint Health has found that relying on in-app messaging (messaging that pops up within a product as you’re using it) as the first customer touchpoint is a more surefire way of engaging users. Email is a fallback (or escalation) if people like Annie don’t respond.

In the words of Holdsworth, “In-app messages are a precision tool, and email is more of a sledgehammer.”

Personalization is key in the above strategy. All of Hint Health’s in-app messaging is accompanied by a photo of the founder, customer success manager, or product expert, and a very clear message relevant to the user’s stage in their onboarding journey, something like, ”It looks like you haven’t yet connected your team members. Here’s how you go about doing that.”

These messages are combined with emails to further personalize communication and build positive and loyal customer relationships with higher lifetime value (CLV).

Power play

On the flip side, suppose someone quickly figures out how to invite team members, connect their billing, add their pricing model, and configure their email. None of the escalation checkpoints will come into play, because the user blasted through from one stage to the next, all the way to scheduling a data-migration consultation and new-user training.

The next step is a reward. Once Annie is successfully onboarded, Hint Health congratulates her in fun ways such as sending humorous T-shirts. The company can do this because it has connected its automation journey in Autopilot to its CRM system, Salesforce IQ, which pulls in other customer data, such as a physical address.

Key takeaways

Hint Health has customers self-serving their way through an involved SaaS onboarding experience — a process previously done manually. It’s a great example of a marketing automation best practice, allowing the company to deliver a personal experience in scalable way.

Does the Hint Health engagement-based strategy work? The proof is in the pudding:

• Hint Health has created a quality, proactive outreach system that automatically evolves based on user behavior, provides real-time insights, and automates complex tasks
• 23 percent of all new customers are “slow starters” who might have struggled previously but now get proactive in-app and email-based help
• 26 percent of slow-starting customers are now successfully self-activating without needing to speak to customer success
• It’s working: within weeks, Hint has seen a 10 percent increase in pricing reviews and sales engagements, which goes straight to revenue

With these automated nudges, Hint Health is able to vastly reduce reliance on customer success managers — so the company can plow the tremendous cost savings back into building their business, and make customers happier in the process. It’s a win-win the rest of us shouldn’t ignore.

Sponsored posts are content that has been produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. The content of news stories produced by our editorial team is never influenced by advertisers or sponsors in any way. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

Does your CEO have a bold goal for 2016? Does the goal include the word ‘digital’ or ‘transformation’ in the description? Well, if so, they’re not alone in their quest for a superior IT-­enabled competitive advantage that positions their organization for the future.

Business technology investment related to digital transformation (DX) projects will constitute the majority of growth in IT­-related markets over the next five years, according to the latest IDC assessment.

“The disruptive impact of digital transformation is about to be felt in every industry as enterprises ‘flip the switch’ and massively scale up their DX initiatives to secure a leadership role in the DX economy,” said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. “In the next two years, two-thirds of Global 2000 CEOs will put DX at the center of their growth and profitability strategies. By the end of this decade, IDC predicts that the percentage of enterprises with advanced DX strategies and implementations will more than double.”

IDC recently shared their analyst predictions for 2016, highlighting key information and communication technology (ICT) issues that will impact the organizations that have set a goal to digitally transform themselves over the next one to three years.

As part of a related IDC customer webinar series, senior IT leaders and Line­-of-­Business (LoB) executives were provided guidance for managing their digital transformation investment priorities and implementation strategies.

The 10 Predictions for Digital Business Transformation are:

1. By the end of 2017, two ­thirds of the CEOs of the G2000 will have digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategy.
2. By 2017, 60 percent of companies with a DX strategy will deem it too critical for any one functional area and create an independent corporate executive position to oversee the implementation.
3. By 2018, 80 percent of B2C companies will have created immersive, authentic omni-experiences for customers, partners, and employees; 60 percent of B2B­-centric companies will have done the same.
4. The top new investment areas through 2017 will be contextual understanding and automated next best action capabilities.
5. In 2016, 65 percent of large enterprises will have committed to become information-­based companies, shifting the organizational focus to relationships, people, and intangible capital.
6. By 2018, 75 percent of the G2000 will have deployed full, information-­based, and economic models or “digital twins” of their products/services, supply network, sales channels, and operations.
7. By 2020, 60 percent of the G2000 will have doubled their productivity by digitally transforming many processes from human-­based to software-­based delivery.
8. In 2016, the level of connectivity related to products, assets, and processes will increase 50 percent for all industry value chains.
9. The sharing economy will give rise to the networked free agent and skill­-based marketplaces, resulting in more than 10 percent of work being sourced in this fashion within mature economies by 2019.
10. By 2018, at least 20 percent of all workers will use automated assistance technologies to make decisions and get work done.

“Digital transformation is not just a technology trend, it is at the center of business strategies across all industry segments and markets. Enabled by the 3rd Platform technologies of social, mobile, analytics, and cloud, digital transformation represents an opportunity for companies to redefine their customers’ experience and achieve new levels of enterprise productivity, said Bob Parker, research vice president at IDC.

If you think that IDC is merely profiling those smaller, nimble organizations that are out on the fringes of global commerce, then you would be mistaken. Consider the recent introduction of GE Digital​, a transformative move that brings together all of the digital capabilities from across the company into one organization. Now, this goal is bold.

“As GE transforms itself to become the world’s premier digital industrial company, this will provide GE’s customers with the best industrial solutions and the software needed to solve real world problems. It will make GE a digital show site and grow our software and analytics enterprise from $6 billion in 2015 to a top 10 software company by 2020,” said Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE.

In summary, the DX economy will take its toll on the IT industry itself. By 2020, IDC predicts that nearly a third of today’s IT suppliers will be acquired, merged, downsized, or significantly repositioned. In this environment, CIOs will have to constantly assess the solutions offered by their suppliers and be prepared to re-build their playbook in 2016 and beyond.

Online shopping has changed brick-and-mortar retail forever. Each year, more shoppers move to the web for their purchases, presenting new challenges to small businesses who have traditionally thrived on foot traffic. For almost 20 years, observers have been predicting the “death” of retail.

And yet, many brick-and-mortar shops are doing better than ever. What happened?

Well, entrepreneurs evolved with the times. Savvy business owners embraced new customer behaviors as new opportunities. Websites help bring new customers into stores, where those who browsed online are now wanting to buy in person. Other customers wander into stores, walk out empty handed, then purchase from that same business at home in their pajamas.

Software tools and services have also evolved with customer behavior. It’s now easier than ever for young businesses to launch professional, trustworthy websites that draw new customers in and keep them. Today’s ecommerce tools have been tested on millions of online shoppers. The best online tools are built with this in mind, building websites that are statistically more likely to drive customers through to a shopping cart and have them complete a purchase. And, these ecommerce tools are equipped to make sure those shoppers come back again and again.

The combination of ecommerce with your brick-and-mortar is a recipe for success. When done right, each one drives success for the other. With software and tools made for a modern retailer, you can grow a full-service omnichannel business that takes advantage of the strengths of both platforms.

But, the first step before you implement any new retail strategy is always the same: put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Here’s everything you need to know about today’s modern shopper.

Shoppers Use Devices Everywhere

Shoppers have devices with them all the time and they increasingly expect to be able to access your business from a computer, tablet or phone –– anywhere, anytime. This change has led to a variety of new, increasingly common behaviors.

Showrooming

Shoppers visit brick-and-mortar locations to see products in person, especially when trying on shoes and apparel. Then they purchase those product online, usually for a lower cost because the online shop doesn’t have to charge extra for rent, utilities and retail employees. Sometimes, customers even make that purchase on their phone right in your store!

If the store they are “showrooming” in has a high-quality website, many customers will buy there just to simplify the checkout process. Or they will think about the item at home and make the purchase on the shop’s website later that evening.

Online Research

Many shoppers still prefer to make their purchases in a store with live people to help them and answer their questions. But, that doesn’t mean these shoppers live without the internet. In fact, 70% of in-store shoppers said they prefer to research products and stores online before ever visiting the physical location.

A well-branded website will help these online-first shoppers find your business for the first time, using web presence to bring new customers into the brick-and-mortar shop.

Following (and Sharing!) Their Favorite Shops Online

More than just Facebook likes and shares, modern customers are keeping track of their favorite local shops through blogs and email newsletters. Regular communication helps customers remember that small business owners are hard working people that they can relate to.

Give your customers content that they can easily share. Your best local customer can start referring you to neighbors or to friends in another state (if you are shipping nationally). Email newsletters are a frequently underestimated tool. A lot of businesses are afraid to seem spammy, but there is a balance to strike. After all, 42% of emails sent by retailers are opened by consumers, and those consumers that end up buying from your store after reading an email spend 138% more than those who purchase without reading an email.

Shoppers Have New Customer Expectations

In recent surveys, customers identified several of their preferences and expectations when shopping in-store and online. Some of the most prevalent included:

• Prices and Detailed Product Descriptions Online: Online, customers can skim through a lot more of your products at once than they can in the store. Quick pricing access helps them find the right items for their budget. Detailed product descriptions help build trust by highlighting value.
• Mobile-Friendly Websites: A lot of online shopping happens right in the store. A bad mobile experience could ruin a positive interaction and send folks out of the store empty handed. Mobile friendly sites turn the internet into an in-store conversion tool, enhancing the shopping experience.
• Attentive, Personal Service in the Shop: Customer service isn’t dead. Quality in-person experience is something that most ecommerce businesses struggle to replicate.
• Easy Online Checkout Experience: Don’t make it hard for people to give you money! 67% of online shopping carts get abandoned without the purchase ever being completed. A simple and trustworthy checkout experience helps your web visitors become loyal customers.
• Consistent Experience Online and In-Store: People assume every business is online. In fact, web presence has become so important that shoppers will judge your business based on your online presence alone. A weak online presence is a missed opportunity to attract new visitors. Worse yet, it is probably turning people away without you ever knowing it.

This brings us to one of the most important points…

You’re Already Online!

Your business’s online presence is either working for you or against you.

Few online experiences are neutral. Visitors are either pulled in or turned away. If someone is nearby searching Google maps for a local place to shop, they may be drawn to a spot that links to a high quality website, skipping by or never even seeing the other shops in the area. Similarly, if you have an older website just for the sake of having one, it is probably sending a message that your business is sloppy, not useful and behind the times.

Old excuses don’t work anymore:

• “We’re not an online business.”
• “My shop speaks for itself.”
• “My customers love me. Ask any of them about their experience.”

New online shoppers will never hear those explanations. They will skip your shop and check out the store that showed up on their Google search.

How Customers Reward Good Websites

New omnichannel shoppers create some new challenges, but they offer much greater opportunities.

• New Revenue Channel: Selling the same products online and in-store give you access to a whole new revenue source without hiring new employees or paying more in rent and utilities. Even if web sales are less than 20% of your sales, the profit may come close to if you had opened a second location.
• New Customers: If your website is easy to find on digital map and Google search, it becomes much easier for new customers to find out you exist. You don’t have to spend extra on marketing or rely on loyal customers to spread the word.
• More Repeat Customers: Having a website allows your customers to access your store at home. Plus, you can collect email addresses and other valuable information to send them newsletters and announce your upcoming events or discounts. An online presence helps you stay present-of-mind with your customers. Turn one-and-done shoppers into advocates for your business.
• Bigger Purchases: Consistent communication builds trust. Shoppers spend more at businesses they like and trust. And, an ecommerce site helps you promote discounts and highlight related items so that every visitor gets the most value from their visit.
• Referrals: Maybe your best customer wants to tell everyone in their family about your products. You have been building loyalty with your personal in-store touch. Make it easy for customers to show you how much they appreciate your store.

The above copy is a chapter from a free Bigcommerce eBook. For more information and advice on how to bring your brick-and-mortar online, download the book: 5 Steps to Scaling Your Brick-and-Mortar.

LONDON – Shares in Anglo American have dropped further, a day after the London-based mining company announced a radical reorganization plan to adapt to weak commodities prices.

Shares were down nearly 4 per cent to 320.40 pence by midafternoon Wednesday as investors worried about the company’s future, despite a plan to streamline operations from 55 mines to around 20.

It was the second time in as many days the share price fell sharply. On Tuesday, the company said it was trimming 85,000 jobs under the restructuring and CEO Mark Cutifani told investors that the commodity prices slump requires “bolder action” from producers.

Mining companies around the world are facing tough times as economic growth slows in China. London-listed miners saw billions of pounds wiped off their value Tuesday.

The post Anglo American shares fall again after radical reorganization announcement appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

In your online lifetime, you’ve likely clicked on hundreds of CTAs, or calls to action. What made you pull the trigger on clicking the button? What made you decide that providing your personal information and adding one more newsletter or advertisement to your inbox was worth it? Without your even knowing it, a CTA likely influenced your decision.

Let’s check out how to create some of that CTA magic to boost your B2B lead generation.

5 Steps to Creating CTAs that Boost B2B Lead Generation

1. Imitate the Best

Take a look at CTAs that you are drawn to and have clicked on. What pulled your eye towards that design? Of course, you don’t want to create an exact copy of someone else’s CTA, but you can pull in visual elements that you like and incorporate them in your own design.

“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.” — Ann Handley

Look to big names in your industry for inspiration. Spend a little time getting to know their pages, and you’ll see common elements to their CTAs, such as colors, contrasted lettering, and shapes.

2. Pick a Color

There is much debate over which colors have the best click through rates. Some insist that colors such as red and orange convert, and that colors such as purple and green are big duds.

However, it’s hard to argue the success of such B2B giants as Salesforce, who used a basic navy blue for their CTA button.

Or, take a look at shipping giant, Maersk’s use of plain ol’ charcoal.

Perhaps what matters more than color is the contrast. The shape of the words need to be clearly defined.

Imagine a jarring orange lettering on either one of the above button examples. Kind of a turn off, right?

So, there’s no shame in sticking to basic colors, or even using your brand colors. Just make sure your words stand out on the button.

3. Choose Your Words

This is perhaps the trickiest of all steps in crafting a great CTA that will help your B2B lead generation. And you may not hit it right the first time, but that’s okay.

Personalizing your CTA is important. Instead of “download,” try “download my FREE guide.” Or better yet, show how clicking on your CTA will benefit someone, such as “fix my shipping problems now.”

As Joanna Wiebe of CopyHackers.com says,

“Don’t amplify the act of proceeding, amplify the value of it. Not ‘Start free trial’ but ‘End scheduling hassles.”

4. Use the Right Graphics

Over here at Marx Communications, we often utilize Canva to create our CTAs.  Using a graphics program is a great way to create eye-catching CTAs, such as this one, which claims one of our highest click rates:

Notice we even used the big no-no color: green. However, the contrast in colors is enough to draw the eye in, with the clicking finger following close behind.

5. Use A/B Testing

Once you have designed your CTA, test out a couple of different styles and wording on your audience. You may be surprised at which CTA is better for B2B lead generation.

How to Get More Leads

Calls to action are one of the primary tools everyone uses for B2B lead generation. However, it shouldn’t stop there. That’s why we are now offering the most bang for your buck with our 10 for 10 Content Marketing Program.

It's been a decade since Michael Eisner stepped down as CEO of the Walt Disney Company.

Today, with his privately held Tornante Company, he's fully immersed in new media, and has a lot to say about what makes quality content and why he wants to be the one to own it.

Henry Blodget: It’s been a while since Disney. What have you been up to?

Michael Eisner: Oh my god — everything. I decided that when I left Disney I would really leave. It’s a little bit like when you have a house and you say, “I can’t leave, and I could never sell it,” and then you sell it and you decide that’s that.

I’m happy with how well Disney’s done, and how well Bob Iger has done. I’m a big investor, so that all worked out well, and I’m connected with them and talk to them, but I really decided I would move on.

I decided the same thing when I left Paramount, I decided the same thing when I left ABC, I decided the same thing when I left New York.

With Tornante, we have a lot of investments in hopefully not bubble-related internet companies, but real internet companies. We have some television shows. We have one — "BoJack Horseman" — that’s doing incredibly well and is well-reviewed on Netflix.

Blodget: People have been predicting the death of television for 20 years now, and so far it’s been entirely wrong. But it does seem viewership habits are starting to change. Netflix has come out of nowhere, and is now this incredible business that nobody could have fathomed 10 years ago. Talk about that change, and where we’re headed.

Eisner: Well, there is no death in content. It’s one of the few immortal things around. There’s change. There’s always been change.

There were 80 million people who went to the movies in the 1930s, when the country was only 120 million people strong, and then when television came in, everybody thought that was the end of the movie business, which was not and is not.

When video came in, everybody thought that was another end, and then digital came in, and we had another end with Blu-ray or whatever. What happens is one and one adds up — in my opinion — to more than two.

Now, without content there is no platform. The content defines the platform, so whereas when I was working at ABC from '66 to '76, people said it was the “great wasteland.” It was the least-objectionable program that succeeded. It was, if you could get behind “All in the Family,” you were successful.

Michael Eisner tells Henry Blodget about being an NBC page and his favorite moments from his early career.

There were three networks at that point that could say you could never work in this town again, and mean it. Then distribution became prevalent for cable, and then those guys could say you could never work in this town again and mean it. Arrogance follows distribution strength.

Arrogance follows distribution strength.

Distributors always go away, always have problems. They come back, they become nice, they try to acquire content. They do acquire content sometimes, so it’s just changing.

Now it’s great. I decided — so I could own it — to make a pilot of “BoJack Horseman.” I do own 100% of it. It is on Netflix. We sent it around to everybody. Television is like the movie business. It’s not the least-objectionable program — it’s the best program that gets positioned. Same in the movie business. It’s not just everything automatically gets done by the "in" crowd.

Netflix has been fantastic, and the show would not have been on traditional network, probably. I mean, it may have gotten on Fox if Fox owned it and it came out of that group, but it was hard. So it’s great. This is the golden age of television. Television is not hurting. Television is in fantastic shape. It’s just a golden age for other people.

Blodget: So what is it like working with Netflix as opposed to a traditional network?

Eisner: It’s no different in that if you have a hit, they are very, very nice, and I have not had a failure, so I don’t know how un-nice they get. They’re very supportive, because we’ve delivered. They may have been very supportive anyway.

Reed Hastings got very lucky in that he had Ted Sarandos — who knew that he had one of those golden guts — that he saw “House of Cards” had potential and took a big bet on that. I’d like to say he saw that “BoJack” had potential and “Orange Is the New Black” and so forth. So a lot things are the confluence of the right platform, but Netflix without their creative acquirers would be an ancillary market for content.

Blodget: With “BoJack,” you made the pilot first and then showed it to Netflix.

Eisner: We made a 12-minute pilot. We wrote two scripts, and then we combined them to make a 12-minute pilot, and then we sent it out. We said, “Look, if you have to own it, don’t look at it, but if you’re willing to let us own it, we’d love to be in business.” We’re owning things. The only way for us to have any place at the table as a content player is to actually finance the content ourselves. Otherwise, most of the distributors recognize the value of content, and they want to own it.

Blodget: You talked about how content never dies, more is better, distribution is broken down. We’ve now got into a situation where lots of people are saying there are only 24 hours in a day, there are screens with us 18 hours a day — there is going to be a limit with the number of high-quality shows that can be produced because they are expensive to do. Are we reaching that limit?

Eisner: Do you think Sophocles and Aristotle had this conversation that too much good is a bad thing? I think that argument is insane. First of all, it’s very hard to be good. It is self-destructive thinking to think that there is too much good. There’s too much bad. The worst is mediocre. Bad is easy. There’s high quality, there’s pornography, and then there’s bad. Pornography works to a degree, high quality works, bad is obvious. Nobody goes for bad. The terrible middle ground is the mediocre. That was kind of the essence, in a way, of broadcast television when there were only three channels.

But mediocre is there today and doesn’t survive, which is fantastic — just maybe not for the people who have invested in it. So the good raises the cream to the top — I guess cream doesn’t rise to the top anymore, but when it did, cream raised to the top — so I don’t think there is too much good. There’s not enough good.

Blodget: You talked about making a 12-minute pilot. TV has always been regulated by half-hours and hours. In digital distribution, you have the ability to run any length of time. Will the shows stay in the format we are used to? The 22 minutes per half-hour, approximately hour-long documentaries? Or do you think a new length will evolve?

Eisner: I made a 12-minute pilot because I didn’t want to pay for a 22-minute pilot. I could show what it was in 12 minutes at half the cost. Otherwise I would have made a 22-minute pilot. There is a tradition of length that will survive.

Blodget: What do the economics look like when you own versus when Netflix owns or when Fox owns? Why is it important?

Eisner: I don’t know. Some people have made a fortune by being employed. Jerry Bruckheimer does not own his content. Warner Bros. owns his shows. They are on CBS, and he makes a fortune. That’s one way to go for an individual talent. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m of that view, having seen the enormous value of libraries that I’ve been involved with building at Paramount or at Disney.

When cable came in, I saw the value to our library at Paramount, because when that happened, it was unbelievable — selling packages to Germany and Italy and all over the world. When the DVD market or the Blu-ray market came in, the library yet again became valuable, because every distributor needs these libraries. To me, owning is better than not owning.

This sounds crazy, I know, but you can make a billion dollars — very few people do — but you can make a billion dollars on a product. It can be “Lion King,” it can be “Simpsons,” it can be “Family Guy,” who knows what it is. Or you can make zero. But you can’t make a billion dollars if you don’t own it.

But you can’t make a billion dollars if you don’t own it.

But you can’t own it unless you invest, and most individuals can’t invest, so I’m investing. I will never make a billion dollars on a show, unless “BoJack,” for instance, becomes a cultural phenomenon, and maybe it will. Maybe this very conversation will take it over the top.

Blodget: The other distribution piece of television is the network and as we look at how content is consumed now, ultimately it's show by show. It's not that folks are tuning into a particular network and just watching what's there all the time. Do networks come under pressure too?

Eisner: They do. They have an advantage of live sports, which is very important, and news — which, by the way, is less important, exemplified by what you're doing. People don't have to go to cable news or network news. Live sports is the one of many things that's kind of community television. There are a lot of people who still tune in to "Sunday Night Football" or "Thursday Night Football" the way they did before.

I think the water cooler is more important than ever. "Oh, did you hear that 'Inside Amy Schumer' is fabulous?" Where do you find it? It's on Netflix, it's on iTunes, it's on places nobody ever heard of five years ago. Pretty exciting.

You can actually survive, bubble up. In the era of networks only, I cannot tell you the number of shows that we don't know about that did not survive. They got canceled. But there are a few that survived by accident, because they didn't have anything else to do, and they stayed with it. "MASH" started off as a failure, Jerry Seinfeld started off as a failure, "Family Guy" started off as a failure, and they stayed with them long enough to succeed.

Now almost any show that has reviewers behind it, Rotten Tomatoes behind it, will find a way to survive, which is why this fall there was the longest lag in canceling shows in a long time. They're afraid that somebody in the over-the-top world is going to find it, put it on, and they're going to be embarrassed. So it's a totally new ball game.

Blodget asks Eisner: What's the key to excellent content? Are there just a few people who have the magic?

 
Blodget: Why are there no more Netflix-like companies? Once Netflix proved that the model works, how is it that there's one $60 billion global company? Hulu is now growing nicely, but still small.

Eisner: There are more. But nobody believed that Netflix, something that could send video through the mail, was actually going to succeed in something else. Nobody thought that this group that was buying libraries would actually have an original program. Everybody thought paying $100 million for "House of Cards" was insane. So Amazon is there.

I didn't like a lot of their first shows. They did pilots and put them up and had the audience vote. I never thought that was the way to pick a show. And then they came out with "Transparent." It's a very funny, good show, and I think they're going to make it. Hulu didn't know what they were doing, because they had too many partners and nobody agreed, and now they see the light and now they're progressing in a lot of countries. Netflix is not going to be the only distributor.

Blodget: And do you think that some of the traditional networks will make the transition?

Eisner: Have to. Have to. That doesn't mean they're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I think I read that all of them are talking about going into some sort of digital over-the-top. Easier for Netflix, which had nothing to lose. You know, they didn't have a business. They weren't protecting their video business. They weren't protecting their theme parks, they weren't protecting their movies. They just were what they are, which is usually the way it happens. Same thing with HBO. Jerry Levin figured out that you could distribute by satellite all over the country. Before that you had to distribute by truck. It changed the world.

Blodget: And will HBO successfully become just another over-the-top provider?

Eisner: I don't know. HBO Now seems to be working. What they have at HBO and at Showtime and at the networks is a sophisticated development arrangement. They do see the creative, so they have a leg up, and they read and listen to blogs like this, and they know what's happening and they see their cable numbers decreasing. They're not going away. This is not the end of the wired world as we know it.

Business Insider's Dan Bobkoff joined the conversation with a few questions.

Dan Bobkoff: There are cable channels that started — if you're cynical — basically to get cable-subscriber fees, and they have very small audiences. Do you think there's going to be a reckoning of all these channels, like MTV Hits and Palladia that get a few cents per subscriber, but they're not putting out good content. Are we going to see the end of the 500-channel world?

Eisner: I hope so. I'm a little conflicted here, because I like ESPN being in 100 million homes. And I don't think you're really talking about ESPN, but if I were a Comcast shareholder I would feel, "God, why am I paying all this money for these channels that nobody watches?" So I do think as they get there, competing it with all these new forms, they are going to have to come to grips with this. There's always somebody who loves every one of these channels so somebody's going to be carrying a placard saying "I need my MTV Hits." But I think there's a slow atrophy going on.

Bobkoff: How slow?

Eisner: I don't know, because some things go slow forever. Some things go slow, slow, slow, and then — wham! — they're over. So I just don't know. 

Some things go slow, slow, slow, and then — wham! — they're over.

Bobkoff: You're much more under the radar post-Disney. Do you prefer that?

Eisner: Oh God, yes. I was there 21 years. I think all but one year the stock went up, and the first 18 years we went up a ridiculous amount. So everybody was nice to me. But as soon as — I think it was after 9/11 or around then — when we were flat, a little bit down, it was as though I had murdered 700 people. You get much, much too much credit for things you have nothing to do with, and you have much too much blame for things you only have a little bit to do with. That's just the nature of what it is.

I was in a public company for 40 years of my life. Everything I have now is a private company. And even though a public company's a great thing, it's great for financing and all of the stuff you need to do. I'm not answering to anybody but my wife and my children and the people who work for me, and my partners. And the difference is, is I simply don't care. I shouldn't even say this, because my partners would not be happy: I don't care about quarter to quarter. I just don't care. I don't care if we put money in if I can see five years down the road it's going to work. That's refreshing.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: TRUMP NATION: We tried to answer the 3 questions everyone has about Donald Trump

VB WEBINAR:

Get critical tips on how mobile marketing automation is giving forward-thinking companies the competitive edge in mobile. Join the CMO of RetailMeNot Marissa Tarelton and VB analyst Stewart Rogers as they crack into the seven deadly sins of mobile marketing automation.

Access the webinar on demand right here.

Mobile is the most transformative shift in marketing ever — a spiritual sea change that has savvy marketers singing hallelujah in praise of its tremendous potential to drive revenue.

Our recent webinar, “Mobile marketing fails,” draws from new, data-rich reports from VentureBeat Insight, plus vital learnings from Marissa Tarleton, CMO of RetailMeNot, and VentureBeat director of technology Stewart Rogers. Together, they offer deep insight into how you can harness the power of mobile marketing automation, and be canonized as a saint by your users and investors.

So how do you go straight to marketing heaven? Avoid these seven deadly sins of mobile marketing automation.

1. Thou shalt not focus only on acquisition

A lot of brands rely on mobile to increase awareness, but that doesn’t translate into commerce.

“If we’re constantly chasing the advertising revenue,” Rogers says, “we’re probably missing out on a big chunk of [other] revenue that’s available.”

Companies need to stop focusing primarily on snagging brand-new customers, and start considering the revenue potential of customers who’ve already made the decision to do business in the first place. “The customers,” Rogers adds, “who are giving us all of that data about how they’re using apps and how they’re using websites.”

Mobile marketing automation gives you the power to leverage the data you already have access to in order to truly engage your customers and build a more robust relationship.

“It’s a more effective and efficient way to market,” says Tarleton, “and it also allows for more deep marketing tactics tied to personalization. From a RetailMeNot perspective, we’ve seen tremendous success using MMA, heavily oriented around engagement first and building relationships with customers over time.”

2. Thou shalt not forget your mobile-first mindset

It’s one of the biggest fails that marketers have, Tarleton says — they’re not approaching marketing with a mobile-first mindset. Prioritizing your spend in other categories ahead of mobile is a poor investment. More importantly, when mobile is not leading your strategy, you’re prone to fall back on less-effective traditional marketing methods throughout your entire marketing spend, hobbling your investment.

But remember that “mobile” doesn’t just mean “downloading an app.” Mobile offers so many channels with demonstrated ROI — email, push, geo alerts, in-app messaging — with email, Rogers points out, leading the pack.

And that’s where mobile marketing automation is your most powerful tool. MMA excels in sending in-app messages, push notifications, a/b split testing, building user profiles, real-time analysis, and more. You’re communicating in a deeply personal way with established users, which means you can give them what they want, when they want it, and where.

“Give them the right thing,” Rogers says, and “they’ll stick with us, give us their loyalty, and spend more money with us.”

3. Thou shalt not forget to scale

Lack of scale is one of the biggest failures tied to MMA. Geotargeting is a great way to enable a mobile strategy, but if there’s no scale and the batches are too small, you’re wasting its potential and your time and money.

To ensure you’re scaling to the market that’s actually out there, Tarleton urges marketers to make sure you’re leveraging different ways of testing in partnership with retail partners, in stores, and your commerce solutions.

4. Thou shalt not fail to capture relevant data

The power of MMA is being able to target and offer a relevant offer and message — something your users will actually enjoy getting and appreciate. That’s why behavioral data is essential to the success of MMA.

Tarleton listed the essential components to capture:

• channel, or how your customers reach and communicate with your business;
• behavior, or how their daily activities reveal essential demographic information both about them specifically and their cohort;
• and lifecycle, or where in their customer journey, from initial opt-in to long-term customer, your user resides.

5. Thou shalt not rely on single points of data

MMA is all about data, but single points of data, Rogers says, “can be dangerous.” With, for instance, geolocation, you know exactly one thing about your customer: that they’re near certain shops or services. Any message you send pertains only to that single point in time.

And sometimes it works. But more often, you’re annoying your users the way one traveling VentureBeat analyst recently experienced. When he was traveling in Germany, he found himself fending off geolocated ads in German (which he doesn’t speak) for dental services and medical plans (which he doesn’t need).

In other words, if you’re only relying on one point of data, you’re wasting everyone’s time, and you’re wasting your money.

Instead, broaden your reach by broadening the scope of your data. Geohistory tied in with geolocation and fencing paints detailed portraits that reveal valuable personas, affinities, and behaviors.

6. Thou shalt not blast your users

Not truly being personal is a deadly mistake in mobile marketing. Customers will very quickly opt out and disengage if it’s not done right.

“If it’s not in the right place at the right time,” Tarleton says, “it could just be perceived as a blast. Over 60 percent of our users opt in to our email and push communications because they find value in the personalized element of it.”

Lack of personalization can be tied most directly to inadequate data capture during the onboarding process. Onboarding is a marketer’s opportunity to really learn and listen to the customer in order to capture what they’re looking for and what they need.

“You can’t be effective if you don’t have good access to what the customer is looking at,” Tarleton says. “Marketing is only as effective as onboarding.” But remember, Tarleton says, that there’s a very fine line between privacy breach and true personalization.

Onboarding is also where marketers tend to deliver what Rogers calls the vanilla experience and miss a greater opportunity. “Here’s what we’re giving you. But here’s what we could give you, if you let us have a little more info — for instance a location.”

7. Thou shalt not be greedy

A critical piece of any good engagement strategy is pull. Engagement and personalization can’t just be brand to consumer; a brand needs to offer value to its customers in return.

Starbucks is a company that does it right. They push relevant, interesting offers based on location and your feedback. But they’re also pulling you in with free song and app downloads. RetailMeNot, Tarleton says, does that with the free offers and sweepstakes they host.

Despite the clear advantages, VentureBeat Insight reports show that penetration of MMA is low at this point. Even the largest players, like Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, Walgreens, Hotel Tonight, Macy’s, and the San Francisco Giants, have only gotten into the space recently. There is plenty of growth left, so you have one hell of a competitive advantage.

Get the whole webinar for even more valuable tips and insights.

Access it here on demand.

In this webinar, you’ll:

• Learn how to increase your effectiveness and your MMA ROI
• Better target those whales with strategic focused actions via mobile
• Avoid costly mistakes by buying a luxury solution that looks pretty on the shelf but doesn’t do a lot of good in the trenches.

Speakers:

Stewart Rogers, Director of Marketing Technology, VentureBeat

Marissa Tarleton, CMO, RetailMeNot

Moderator: 

Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat

Check out VB Insight to access the latest research on Marketing Technology.

This webinar is sponsored by Leanplum.

More information:

Powered by VBProfiles

You’ve heard people say, “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” It makes sense, right? Why start from scratch if there are existing resources that can make your life easier? You have enough on your plate already.

When it comes to designing email campaigns, templates are a lifesaver. They provide a reliable framework to build upon while creating elegant, customized email campaigns.

But it’s not just the framework that matters. In this post, we’ll look at how email templates make your email marketing better through their versatility, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency.

1. Email templates are versatile

Using pre-designed email templates that automatically scale to the optimal screen size for various devices means guaranteeing your emails look great and are easy to read for all subscribers–no matter where they access their inboxes.

This is especially important considering the volume of emails that are accessed on a mobile device. Our research indicates that more than 50% of emails are opened via mobile devices as of 2015. Thanks to responsive email templates, you can rest easy knowing that your message will display properly on both mobile devices and desktops.

Look at this template, for example:

With the side-by-side comparison of the desktop and smartphone preview, you can see how both display at the appropriate screen size for easy, hassle-free reading. Easier reading means a greater likelihood for conversion.

2. Email templates are customizable

Templates are a starting point for customization–and with all of the different email templates at your disposal, you can often find a customizable email template that will meet all of your needs without having to build one from the ground up.

Customization features within templates vary but are often quite flexible. Think of it like building with legos–you can rearrange features to your liking. Including your logo, using a custom image, and changing text color and treatment are just the beginning of the many tweaks you can make to an email template.

3. Email templates are cost-effective

Even if you don’t have a big marketing budget, you still want your email marketing to look professional and polished, and email templates enable you to do that.

Here’s an example of a clean, easy-to-read template that shows how you can accomplish your email objectives without investing in an expensive design:

Cost-effective email solutions are important for marketing teams who have to prove the value of their efforts. Email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing tactic at 3800% and a $38 return for every $1 spent. Starting with a free email template helps keep costs low and ROI high.

4. Email templates are efficient

Creating an email template from scratch can be a time-consuming task, and for some businesses, delaying email marketing messages until the template has been perfected isn’t an option. With a pre-designed template, anyone can create a stunning email in minutes with no coding knowledge necessary.

Templates take the legwork out of email design thanks to a solid foundation that can be fully customized. No need to create detailed tables or design layouts from scratch–just drag, drop and start deploying messages efficiently and confidently.

Wrap up

Different organizations have different resources and needs. If you’re a developer who wants to code your own HTML email–go for it! We love seeing beautiful emails that take full advantage of a designer’s skill set.

But if you want to go the template route, there are many options for you too. Email templates are reliable, fast, flexible, cost-effective, and versatile, so explore the email template options that are available and start creating, sending and measuring the impact of your email marketing campaigns.

Finding the perfect gift can be a daunting task. After all, gift-giving is the ultimate test of how well you know someone. The pursuit demands a delicate balance between personal touch and genuine value, but there's always room for that irreplaceable "WOW" factor, too. Luckily, technology has helped us check-off two out of those three boxes — all that's left is to find the right tech to fit your loved one's personality

Now, instead of making a mad dash toward the flashiest gizmo in the store (like everyone else surely will), consider the one thing we all have in common: Our homes. These days, there are so many sleek devices that can turn any house or apartment into a futuristic wonderland of convenience and general awesomeness. And you can bet that this small dose of original thinking will help your gift stand out from the pack Read more...

As a sales rep, venturing out to a new location, pitching your product, making the sale, and acquiring a new client is very satisfying. While new customer acquisitions obviously have their value, it is important to focus as much, if not more, on maintaining your base of existing customers. Often times, businesses prefer to focus on acquisitions, because it demonstrates a faster turn around. However, you want to keep in mind the long term benefits that can come from a lengthy relationship with one retailer, as opposed to one time purchases from multiple sources. As Help Scout points out, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-90%. In light of this, more businesses are devoting resources to retention than they historically have. Here are some guidelines to long term customer retention.

Today, much of customer retention and retention marketing has to do with personalization. Creating a personalized experience gives your client a positive perception of their sales experience with your brand, which will keep them coming back. Give back to your loyal customers with occasional special deals and promotions catered to what you know about them and their market.  Great customer service and support in conjunction with this personalization is a surefire way to keep a customer. Be available and prepared when communicating with your consistent clients to show that they are a priority. Offer quick, but quality responses to any issues they may be facing. Ross Beard at Client Heartbeat details the most common causes of a lost customer, noting that 68% leave due to dissatisfaction with the service they receive, 14% are unhappy with the product, and 9% choose to use a competitor. Longterm retention can be highly profitable, so be sure to leverage personalization and customer service to maintain your positive relationship.

Anticipating client needs is another solid strategy for customer retention. Interpret the data and history of past interactions with your client to know what they may be looking for in the future, or trying to achieve in the long term. To maximize organization and efficiency, keep a digital log of dealings with your client. Knowing how often they like you to visit, re-stock, etc. will ensure you stay a few steps ahead. A software solution that keeps track of these things may be helpful in order to keep up with competitors. For example, Jerry Jao highlights the importance of utilizing new technology and 3rd party vendors to ensure you are able to log and keep track of data effectively and maximize retention.

Be an expert on your product, its market, the competition, and where you stand relative to it. If you are viewed as an expert on what you do, customers will find you a reliable source of advice and industry information. Additionally, being aware of what your competition is doing can give you the advantage of adjusting to stay most relevant to your client. Customers will find it reassuring that you are aware of what is going on in the market, and that you can adjust accordingly. The more you know and are able to purvey to others, the more you will be perceived as a trustworthy authority. Many brands choose to focus on acquisition because they see a quick ROI. Though a new client acquisition is more immediately rewarding, it is also more costly than selling to an existing client. As Forbes notes, 80% of your future profits will come from 20% of your existing customers. So, while you can revel in the satisfaction of a new client aquisition, don’t lose sight of maintaining solid relationships with the people who already buy from you. Having a lasting, consistent relationship with your clients can bring numerous benefits not only for your bottom line, but also your reputation, and visibility in different networks   So, know what your customers need, follow these guidelines for customer retention and reap the benefits of a longterm relationship!

Marina Gorbis, executive director at Institute for the Future where I'm a researcher, is in Washington DC at a U.S. Department of Labor Symposium where they're talking about the on-demand economy and digital platforms for work. As Marina says, "the battles between Uber and taxi companies and the 1099 vs. W-2 debate are just the first signs of the upheaval." Whether it all goes to hell depends on the decisions we make today. In an essay on Medium, Marina talks about how we need to design "a new operating system for work:"

Wage labor is only about 300 years old, a blink of an eye in our human history. Before wage labor, we produced, traded, and invented things, but it was mostly localized and on a small scale. Then through the rise of connective technologies — from railroads, cars, telegraph, telephones, and, eventually, the Internet — we rapidly scaled up production. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase pointed out in his seminal 1937 paper “The Nature of the Firm,” large organizations came to dominate our production landscape because they’re highly efficient mechanisms for producing at scale while minimizing the transaction costs of planning and coordinating activities beyond local geographies and small markets.

So in that sense, large organizations are a kind of technology for scaling up economic activities. You could think of it as an operating system for work that’s been running for a century. And now we’re creating a new operating system, based on always-on Internet, mobile devices, and social media. But this new operating system for coordinating human activities and creating new kinds of value could also be riddled with catastrophic bugs, pushing large swaths of the population to labor at subsistence levels, with no benefits and little predictability over their earning streams. And we need to address those challenges before this operating system become so ingrained in our way of working that the mistakes we make become societal-scale problems.

"Designing a New Operating System for Work" (Medium)

Too Many Options?  Narrow It Down to Get the Sale Now

By Mike Brooks, www.MrInsideSales.com

If you sell a product or service with many add-on’s and options or choices, then it’s easy for your prospect to get overwhelmed and want to “think about it.”  Many sales reps actually make it for harder for buyers to decide because they keep pitching (instead of closing) and so complicate the sale even further. 

If you find that you’ve “talked past the close” as I like to say, then it might be time to un-complicate the sale and make it easy for your prospect or customer to buy something now, rather than putting the decision off. 

Here are some ways you can do that.  As usual, take some time to customize these to fit your product or service:

Option 1:

“Now _________ I may have made this harder on you than I should have.  Let’s look at the basic package again, the (restate the easiest offer), and let me ask you: will this do most of the things you’re looking at this to do for you?”

Option 2:

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the choices and combinations, so let me make this easy for you: most people in your position go for our X package because they find it does everything they need it to do.  And, of course, you can always upgrade later should you have the need. 

So let’s do this….”

Option 3:

“I’m getting the feeling we’ve gone over too many options, and it would probably be easier for you if we just took half of these away.  Which features don’t you feel you need?”

Option 4:

“I know it’s easy to go back and forth on some of these combinations, so let me ask you: is this a toss-up decision, or are you leaning towards one more than the other – and if so, which one is it?”

Option 5:

“__________, let’s step back here for a moment.  You don’t have to get the package that has all the bells and whistles – unless you really want to, of course…. – so tell me, which one of these are you leaning towards?”

Option 6:

“You know, going through all the possible options and combinations could take you hours and hours.  You don’t have to do that now.  Instead, let’s break this down to your absolute essentials: which features can’t you live without?”

Options 7:

“If you had to pick one package/combination over another, which would it be?”

Option 8: 

“With all of these options you’re going to get our (warranty, performance, delivery, etc.), so any package you pick is going to be fine for you.  Tell me, what are you leaning towards right now?”

Option 9: 

“__________, let’s make this simple and get you started with the basic package for now.  That way you can see how this works for you, we can get into a relationship, and later, down the road, if you want to expand your coverage, you can.  At least in the meantime you’re not missing out on these results….”

Option 10:

“Let do this: let’s take the premium package so you won’t have to worry later that you’re missing out on something you wish you had gotten in the beginning.  With this package, you’ll get everything you need….”

Having these closes handy when you feel your prospect slipping away or having a hard time making a decision could very well save the sale for you.

If you found this article helpful, then you'll love Mike's Completely Updated and Revised eBook, “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts.” Now over 130 pages of powerful and effective scripts to help you easily get past the gatekeeper, set appointments, overcome objections and close more money!

Visit: http://mrinsidesales.com/completescripts.htm and find out why Jeffrey Gitomer, Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins and many others recommend Mike’s ebook of Phone Scripts!

Do you have an underperforming inside sales team?  Talk to Mike to see how he can help you and your team reach your revenue goals.  To learn more about Mike, visit his website: http://www.MrInsideSales.com

In the past two years, American companies have spent nearly $4 trillion on takeovers, fueled in large part by the unprecedented opportunity to borrow at extremely low interest rates.

For investment banks, this has been a fee bonanza. They get paid handsomely for advising buyers and sellers, and helping arrange the financing.

That's all starting to change. Investors are starting to anticipate the Federal Reserve will lift interest rates from zero and worry about an economic slowdown and what that means for borrowers. 

The net effect: bond prices (especially for risky high-yield debt) are tumbling, and that's driving the cost of new borrowings higher fast.

It's been a "dramatic" move in a very short period of time, said Howard Marks, the co-founder of debt investor Oaktree Capital Partners. "The buyers are gone."

“We have bonds that have gone from 90 to 60 in the last couple months, not only in the energy sector," he said Tuesday December 8 at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services Conference in New York.

So what's all this mean for M&A?

To understand how this translates to the M&A market, consider Dell's $67 billion acquisition of EMC Corp. The Wall Street Journal's Matt Wirz and Liz Hoffman reported this month that Dell could have to pay as much as 12% on loans to fund the takeover – twice the recent going rate. That would add hundreds of millions of dollars to the interest bill affiliated with the deal, the Journal reported. 

It's happening because banks are trying to ensure they can find buyers for the debt. 

"The credit market is under a lot of pressure; banks are going to be a lot more cautious,"one senior M&A banker told Business Insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity.  "Prices are substantially higher than they were a year ago," 

Baker Mackenzie LLP, the law firm, predicts completed M&A volume in 2016 will rise to about $3 trillion, from an expected $2.7 trillion in 2015. 

But if debt investors overreact to the Fed then that total could fall by $800 billion – or about a one third drop that would be "primarily the result of increasing cost of capital making some transactions more difficult to execute."

Currently, the law firm is putting only a 10%  probability on that happening.

Not everyone's going to be bothered by rising rates. Some large acquirers - like big tech companies - are loaded and don't need to worry about borrowing costs, for example. 

"Having cash on hand makes doing a deal easier," Baker Mackenzie global head of M&A Mike DeFranco said. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: This is where digital media is headed next

Last week we were lucky enough to be joined by social selling expert, Zoe Sands who is the principal consultant at Zoe Sands & Co. Ltd. Zoe assists organisations in connecting sales with marketing to prove ROI. Here is a recap on exactly what was discussed.

The power of your employees
Don’t underestimate the power of your employees. They are your greatest advocates and should be leveraged to fully break into the social sphere. Not convinced? Think of it this way, if you have 10,000 employees, and you enable 20% of your employees to socially sell your business you effectively have 2,000 more opportunities to do so. This represents more windows, more shop fronts and a much increased social presence, far greater than if you only promoted your messages through your businesses social media account(s).

Buying behaviour has changed
With a rise in online influencers, and 67% of the buying cycle occurring online even before a sales rep is contacted, it’s more important than ever that you influence buyers at an earlier stage. If you interject earlier then you’re ahead of many of your competitors. That is of course if they themselves have not got on the employee advocacy bandwagon already, in which case it’s a must just to keep in line with competitors. And let’s face it, there is so much more competition with online technology now allowing brands to easily compete on a global scale. It’s time you stepped up your game.

Social media is where it’s at
You need to make sure your information is readily available, engage with influencers and get on board with an employee advocacy program, where your employees push out your content to their connections on social media. As Zoe Sands explained, ‘Fish where the fish are’. This is so true. With social media ever increasing in popularity, it’s important you take advantage of this channel.

Establish where your target audience is. Whether that be on; LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. Use these networks and leverage your employees to reach out to them. If you operate in the B2B arena it is likely you will favour Twitter and LinkedIn, but that’s up to you to decide. Your business may be different.

Enable social selling
You can’t possibly expect all of your employees to be equipped to socially sell your brand straight away. Various steps need to be taken first. These include:

• Social media collaboration platform – You need a program that will enable your brand to regularly share informative content for your target audience to see and be made readily aware of. There are also other essential aspects, such as ensuring you maintain control of your content, can filter it appropriately, report on its effectiveness, notify employees of new content, and lastly ensure it is quick and easy to use. This will allow employees in a few clicks to share your content to their desired social networks. A complicated platform would disengage employees. Reporting is also key, so you can track strategies and identify what is working and what’s not, making changes where necessary.
• CRM system to track leads – If your employees will be accountable for partaking in the buying cycle, this will be a huge motivator to share your content on social media. To track this you would need a CRM system where employees can record all communication occurring on social media with potential consumers. This way you can also really establish the effectiveness of social selling.
• Training – To expect employees to conduct social selling effectively, it is important you provide in-depth training, ensuring every employee is at the same stage and confident to start effectively socially selling your business.
• Success indicator – It’s important you consider which exact triggers can be considered accountable to the final sale being achieved. This can include ‘likes’, ‘retweets’, replies to comments, or sharing your content just to name a few. By using a social media amplification platform such as socialondemand, you will be able to easily measure your posts effectiveness.
• Pilot test – Before fully adopting a social selling program, you want to first of all test it. See what works, what doesn’t and make any changes required to improve its effectiveness. Also before fully deploying it, evaluate the ROI you expect to receive. Then you will be able to establish whether the investment required to roll this out to all employees will be worth it.

You’ve got to be realistic
Don’t be fooled into thinking social selling will speed up your buying cycle, it won’t. It will just mean that your brand will be seen by your target audience earlier in the buying cycle, at the research stage, making them aware of your offerings. And don’t think you will receive a return on investment overnight because you won’t. It will take time for this program to become established, for it to work and for you to create the perfect social selling recipe. You’ve got to be realistic about what you will achieve, so set your expectations fairly.

Want to watch the full webinar? Click here. Please feel free to comment and add your opinion or if you have any additional tips you would like to add, please do so.

OgilvyOne New York sat down with our local social media expert, Benjamin Snyers, for a quick chat about the future of social media.

OO: What was hot in 2015 and how is that forecasted to change in 2016?

Snyers: 2015 was a very intense year for social media. Most of the social platforms were pretty active in bringing new features to improve consumers’ experiences and new advertising solutions to advertisers. For me, the number one platform that comes to mind is Instagram. Instagram launched new features and started to include advertising, and you can see that the market quickly seized that new opportunity. It makes sense. Instagram has a pretty great advertising solution to propose to brands. Snapchat is also very dynamic and has been proposing innovative solutions. Even if Twitter is struggling with their earnings, they have launched ingenious products successfully, like Moments that allow advertisers to be part of the conversation in a whole new way. Facebook is still leading the way; they are always bringing new products simultaneously to both consumers and advertisers. It is always getting better. And it seems that this will not stop.

2016 will be interesting because all of these platforms will be trying to keep up with the trend of innovating. Some of them may disappear. New platforms will probably emerge. The platforms may cannibalize one another a little bit, but I think in 2016 they will overall capture a lot of revenue from other media. 2016 is the year that social media will become a very cost-efficient element of the media mix.

OO: In the past, social media has been considered an add-on to your marketing but not a key part of the marketing mix. Do you see that changing and social media becoming more of a focus?

Snyers: I like that question because there are brands that still think that the purpose of social media is solely to build communities and collect fans. Yes, it is interesting to have a community and collect a group of advocates for your brand, but social media today is much more than that. You can achieve all of your business objectives through social. I am very surprised to see that some savvy marketers don’t know that, or if they do know it, they don’t leverage it as they should. It is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers – and there are too few advertisers, marketers, and professionals in the industry that actually leverage social media in the right way and seize its full potential. So the perception is changing, but too slowly for me. At Ogilvy Social.Lab, we want to educate the market about the new opportunities of social media and help brands unlock their full potential.

OO: What do you need to achieve the perfect social mix and the desired outcomes, such as lead generation?

Snyers: Obviously, that question is pretty hard to answer. It depends on the objective, type of brand and type of audience. You need Facebook – it is at the center. Sixty percent of the US population is on Facebook. If you are a top 500 brand in the B2C sector and you are not on Facebook, you miss a huge opportunity.

Then you need tactical formats and strategies for social media that depend on your brand. If you are a brand trying to reach millennials and develop a meaningful connection with your audience, Instagram and Snapchat are recommended. If you are trying to conduct thought leadership on a more senior audience, Twitter and LinkedIn would be more likely to generate effect. So the mix will depend on your brand and objectives. One important rule is that you should not try to be on every platform. It doesn’t make sense. You have an important overlap between those platforms. And you divide your energy and effort when you’re on too many social platforms. You will ruin yourself if you try to be everywhere always.

OO: So people agree that targeting is effective, but they don’t necessarily agree that it leads to sales (that it is a profit center and not a cost).

Snyers: I don’t agree that it doesn’t lead to sales. Actually, here at Ogilvy Social Lab, we have a lot of social campaigns that we sell products through. It works well, but it is competitive. It seems people think that simply because they don’t use social media the right way, it is ineffective as a selling tool.

At the end of the day, social media is complex. You need technologists, strategists, and other people who are able to manipulate these tools well and efficiently. This aspect of technology is something new for the advertising world. Classic advertisers that view social media only as a place to put content will not generate sales, as content alone will not work. You need content, strategy, paid media, technology, technicians – a mix of all these aspects. When you get the mix and the approach right, you can generate sales, be quite successful, and measure significant outcomes.

OO: How are social business and social marketing going to make brands better in 2016?

Snyers: There is no platform that is more personal than the user’s news feed. That is why here at Social Lab we believe the perfect place to engage an audience and have a meaningful impact at every step of the consumer’s journey. From awareness, discovery, trial, buying, repurchasing, and becoming loyal, to becoming an advocate. With all of those steps in the consumer’s journey, you can have an impact with social. You have the ability to track where consumers are in the journey and reengage them, as well as change their mindset. On average, people consult their social media between 10 and 20 times a day. All those moments are opportunities to engage and connect with your audience. Social can make brands better by allowing them to be a part of this digital life that the consumer has and by providing value in new forms of media that are impactful to the consumer.

Benjamin Snyers is a Partner at Social.Lab and Manager of the NYC Social.Lab office.  Social.Lab is OgilvyOne’s wholly-owned social platforms expert.

Have you ever been to an all-you-can-eat buffet that had one of those flowing, towering chocolate fountains? Remember how it got your attention—how it kicked your sweet tooth into high gear and made you crave its creamy, chocolatey goodness?

If you’re like me you could barely make it through the main course because you were giddily anticipating how delicious that rich, sweet chocolate was going to taste on whatever you decided to pour it over.

How does this tasty image apply to your B2B content marketing and copywriting? There is a very important lesson to be learned from the metaphor of the chocolate fountain. Hang tight, though, and consider this first:

A lot of marketing content and copy rarely gets read. Much of it leaves a weak impression and is soon forgotten.

Is this happening to your B2B content? If so, what can you do about it? What steps can you take today to help ensure your content gets read more often and has a greater impact on your audience?

In today’s world, we are bombarded with marketing messages. Your prospects are overwhelmed with information. They’re not suffering from “too little to read.” Much of the content they encounter fails to grab and keep their attention because of this onslaught, and because so much of it is poorly written.

Following are some steps you can take to help your B2B content get noticed, read more often, be remembered and maybe even get shared.

When it Comes to Getting Noticed, Headlines are Everything

First things first: your content has to get noticed! You can have the world’s greatest case study, white paper or blog entry, but if it doesn’t grab your intended audience’s attention, it won’t get read. So what can you do to make it more likely to get noticed?

This step is simple, but critical: you must have a compelling, eye-catching title or headline. Your title is the first thing your potential reader notices. Does it bore him? Does it leave him indifferent? Does it turn him off? Or does it arouse his curiosity and make him keenly interested in learning more?

How do you create a title that gets the results you want? Here’s what I recommend: a title that has a strong combination of curiosity and powerful benefits for the reader. This will make him want to click and find out more. It also communicates that he stands to benefit if he reads the content.

Remember this: your reader doesn’t care about your product or service per se. He doesn’t care about your company or industry awards, either. He cares about himself—about his needs and wants, and how you can help him realize them. When he’s deciding whether or not to read your content, he’s asking himself, “What’s in it for me?” If your title hints at one or more strong benefits for him, it’s much more likely to get read.

Here are two sample titles:

• Using Content Marketing
• How Marketers Can Leverage The Power Of Content Marketing To Improve Engagement, Increase Sales and Boost ROI

Do you agree the first example is bland, boring and gives the potential reader little or no incentive to read further? Do you see how the second example leverages a strong combination of curiosity and very desirable benefits? Which one would make you more likely to keep reading?

The headline sets the stage for the reader’s expectations of what’s to come, but its main job is getting the first sentence read. The first sentence leads to the second sentence being read and so on, until your reader reaches the conclusion of your article and determines he is glad he took the time to read it.

You want readers to have an enjoyable, almost effortless reading experience leading to an almost automatic conversion—what we call in the copywriting world “the slippery slope.”

This is where our illustration of the chocolate fountain comes into play. You want your reader to view your content as tasty and sweet—something he enjoys consuming. You want his experience to be one of “effortless flow” like smooth, rich melted chocolate flowing down the side of that buffet table fountain.

More Tips for Making “Tasty” Content

As a B2B technology content marketing specialist and copywriter (and before that as an IT consultant and technology buyer) I’ve read a lot of marketing content. Honestly, the experience is usually about as pleasant as a root canal.

A lot of the content I see, especially in the B2B tech world, is painfully tedious to read and confusing. It’s often centered on the company and its brilliant, whiz-bang product—not the reader, his problem and the company’s solution (a major, but very common, mistake).

If your B2B content is a painful chore to read; if its primary focus is on you and your product; if it’s confusing and filled with vague, meaningless jargon the reader doesn’t relate to—what’s the likelihood it’s going to get read all the way through? Even more dismal, what’s the likelihood it’s going to get shared? More importantly, what’s the likelihood it’s going to persuade the reader to take that next step in the buying process?

Even if readers make it all the way to the end, do you think they will remember much of it? Do you think it will persuade them to take that next step in the buying process, whatever that might be? It’s critically important your content be easy to read. Short paragraphs and sentences will make your content much easier and more pleasant to read. It’ll be more persuasive too.

Also, use basic language. Avoid corporate/MBA-style catchphrase clichés. So much content language today costs companies billions of dollars in sales, I’m convinced.

Think about it. Does anyone really want to buy a “flexible, agile, scalable, best-of-breed, end-to-end solution”? I doubt it. But I see this kind of wording used in marketing content all the time. My advice: ditch it!

David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” said that “No one cares about your product except you.” He’s right, but many marketers violate this rule in their content. If you want your content to get read, if you want it to persuade your reader to take action, remember that quote.

Focus your message on the reader, his problem and your solution to that problem. To make your message even more persuasive, here’s another tip: learn to write conversationally. Write like you would talk if you were having a conversation with a friend at your neighborhood coffee shop. And write specifically to one person: your ideal client. Don’t write to a crowd.

Remember what we talked about earlier; there is a lot of content on the web. Much of it rarely, if ever, gets noticed. Some of it gets noticed, but is quickly forgotten. And a lot of it gets ignored. Don’t let this happen to you.

Follow the advice in this article and it’s much more likely your B2B copy and content will get noticed, read, enthusiastically shared and do the main thing you want it to do: help your company make more sales.