Rnordman

---

GUEST:

Y Combinator president Sam Altman recently published a post arguing that much of what is plaguing startups these days, and causing some to raise eyebrows at valuations, is poor unit economics due to low margins.

What’s a low-margin business? Historically, you could argue that most tech-enabled businesses fall into this category — e-commerce, food delivery, vertical services, etc. To simplify, we can go as far as saying that a low-margin business is any business for which you’re banking on high frequency of use or purchases to pay back your customer acquisition cost and eventually create profitable unit economics.

The tone of Altman’s post carried an inherent prejudice against low-margin businesses. Being a software wunderkind himself, that isn’t surprising. Most investors in the Valley love pure software businesses for the attractiveness of their fundamentals: virtually zero variable costs, model leverage, pricing leverage, etc.

---

From VentureBeat

---

But all that glitters is not gold.

The truth is, such attractive fundamentals tend to attract brutal competition. For every Slack or Salesforce, there are countless others fighting for a piece of their pie.

If you’re qualified to build the next SaaS darling, all the more power to you. For everyone else who has an entrepreneurial streak, don’t be so quick to disqualify a low-margin business as one not worth pursuing. If you’re not technical, before you convince yourself you need to learn programming, design, or the host of other skills required to stand out from the software pack, consider these low-margin businesses that have managed to capture valuations ranging from several hundred million to over 2 billion dollars.

One Kings Lane / Zulily — flash sales sites focusing on the home and family categories, respectively. Both businesses have succeeded in creating a new direct-to-consumer channel for fragmented supplier bases. OKL’s most recent valuation was +$900 million. Zulily was acquired by QVC earlier this year for a whopping $2.4 billion.

Birch Box — a subscription e-commerce service focused on consumables. It has succeeded thus far in relieving cognitive overhead for consumers to discover and try new products. Its most recent valuation was $500 million.

Dollar Shave Club — a fresh approach to the holy grail of captive pricing: razors and razor blades. Dollar Shave Club is a vertically integrated, direct-to-consumer channel for shaving products, most recently valued at $615 million.

TrunkClub — a new channel for men’s clothing, part personal shopper and part Amazon. The problem it has solved is helping guys dress for everything in between suits and sweats. Nordstrom acquired it for $350 million.

Blue Apron — has succeeded thus far in relieving the cognitive overhead of cooking and eating healthy. Its most recent valuation was +$2 billion.

There are dozens of others worth mentioning — if you would like to see the full list, send me a message!

It’s imperative to remember that unit economics are a moving goal post. Advances in technology including but not limited to big data, machine learning, and social channels allow tech-enabled companies to experiment with the following levers to expand unit economics:

Personalization — Personalizing touch points such as email, push notifications, websites, mobile apps, etc. Personalization has the ability to increase frequency of purchases and average transaction size.

Community engagement — Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube afford companies the ability to continuously engage their communities and create sticky content with high referral value, driving down customer acquisition cost.

Supply chain enhancement — Data science, fueled by machine learning, creates opportunities to optimize your supply chain, expanding gross profit.

Certainly, there are numerous pure software darlings that have leapfrogged to unicorn status, but that shouldn’t detract from all of the impressive “low-margin” businesses passionate founders have built, with valuation step-ups outpacing other asset classes. What each of these teams has done is extraordinary.

Every category has its unique challenges, and progress is ultimately determined by the passion of the founding team and its ability to fight through the inevitable chasms and build a business with longevity. This is what is referred to as problem/founder fit.

What do each of the companies mentioned above have in common? Talented and passionate business cofounders!

If history has taught us anything, it is to never discount a “business founder” or a “low margin” business.

Salmaun Ahmad is a startup consultant and commentator. He previously founded Black Box, a subscription e-commerce service that was acquired by Menscience Androceuticals. Prior to Black Box, he was a member of the corporate development and strategy team at The Walt Disney Co. He writes at salmaun.me and can be followed on Twitter at @Salmaun.

The price of a one-day ticket to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Orlando was hiked up to $105 back in February.

But 3-figure price tag hasn't stopped people from going there.

Quite the opposite, actually.

Disney's Magic Kingdom actually saw an increase in attendance in all of the last five years except 2010 despite the fact that the price of admission also went up, according to a chart shared by Bank of America analysts led by Savita Subramanian. 

And this shows how much pricing power Disney actually has.

For those unfamiliar, "pricing power" refers to the effect that a change in a firm's product price has on the quantity demand of that product. So, for a company with little pricing power, if it increases its prices, demand for its goods will probably drop. (For example: if Gap suddenly started charging you $1,000 for socks, you'd probably never shop there again.)

So the fact that more and more people continue to attend the Magic Kingdom every year — even as prices continue to increase in a world where inflation and wage growth remains low — shows that Disney has some serious pricing power.

It's worth noting that consumers are increasingly more interested in spending money on "experiences" rather than on things, which could partially explain why people are paying handsomely for tourist spots like Magic Kingdom right now.

It's also important to emphasize that not every company is like Disney. In some industries, newer, cheaper, disruptive competitors — such as robo-advisors, Airbnb, or fast fashion companies like Zara — have put deflationary pressure on the old-school stalwarts.

"Pricing power may be most at risk for select industries with traditional business models like retailers and hotels, another reason we remain cautious on these areas within the Consumer discretionary sector," noted the BAML analysts. 

In any case, in a world where some companies keep slashing prices to keep up with the rising stars, Disney has successfully continued hiking the cost of tickets to Magic Kingdom.

SEE ALSO: The famous last words of 18 famous people

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Scientists have figured out the best place to hide in a zombie apocalypse

Here’s a word we don’t use in business too often: love. But maybe this is more important than our industry obsession with “traffic.” Read on.

New research on America’s favorite brands from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) includes Apple, Amazon and Wal-Mart at the top of the list, while Netflix, Costco, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Target, Jet Blue and Chick-Fil-A round out the Top 10.

No surprise, right? But what is it that keeps these brands close to the consumer’s hearts, minds … and wallets? The study suggest that the uniting force behind their greatness is an ability to forge an emotional connection based on trust with consumers. “Companies may use technical and functional attributes to drive the original choice but win by owning the heart and the mind,” says Michael J. Silverstein, of BCG.

Silversten calls these customers “apostle customers,” a concept similar (perhaps identical) to what I wrote about in a chapter called “The Alpha Audience” in my new book The Content Code.

Focus on the Alpha Audience

“Apostle customers are only two percent of the customer base—but they drive the vast majority of sales and profits, because they love the brand, make it part of their lives, and recommend it fervently to family, friends and total strangers,” Silverstein said in a recent article.

According to his research, one ultra-loyal customer from your Alpha Audience can generate eight times his or her own consumption through word-of-mouth advocacy. And two percent of consumers directly contribute 20 percent of sales. They drive 80 percent of total volume via their recommendations. They deliver over 150 percent of profitability, buying products without a discount and without regard for seasonality.

That, my friends, is why we need to change the marketing conversation.

Are you obsessed with “traffic,” or focused on the audience who believes in you at the deepest level. The audience who will be with you to the end. How does an incredibly deep connection like that develop?

Value from your content: Trust … or traffic?

In my book, I feature a wonderful PR professional, Shonali Burke. Shonali is certainly a member of my Alpha Audience. We met over Twitter and then over the years that weak relational link grew into a real collaborative friendship.

Shonali helps ignite my business in a small way every day when she shares my content. In fact, she shares every piece of content I write! Why would she do that?

In her own words:

One service I use offers the ability to automatically share people’s content. Now, I did not choose to do this for a long time, because not everyone’s content is consistent. That’s fine; we all have our bad days. But when you are between a rock and a hard place, trying to ensure you curate at least a minimum level of reliable content, you need it to be consistent! That means you have to absolutely trust the quality of content coming from those people.

That’s where your content comes in. You are one of the few people whose content I always share, because I trust you. I’ve read your blog for so long now, yet I’m regularly amazed at the smart content you publish—not just from yourself, but from other bloggers. So often I have those, “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments after I read your blog. To date, there has not been a single post that made me scratch my head and say, “Meh.” I don’t always comment because by the time I get to it, you have 76 other comments (!), but I do read. And given that I currently don’t have a lot of time to actively source more content, I have to go with content from those I trust: and that group includes you.

You’ve talked often about how hard you’ve worked to grow your audience, which is one of the things I like most about your blog {grow} (and you): You share your lessons learned openly and honestly, without minimizing all the hard work you’ve done. And one of the wonderful consequences of this hard work is that your audience—of which I am one—trusts you.

So, simply put, it comes down to trust, which is one of the keys for businesses grappling with a socialized world. The lesson I learned from you is that building an audience means 1) creating great content that people can trust; 2) curating good content regularly so that people can trust you’re not just out to put the spotlight on yourself; 3) participating actively in the social web by giving way more than you get (commenting on other blogs, talking to people and not just at them, and so on).

It makes me consider … what are we all willing to do to build so much trust that your audience would be willing to share your content blindly?

What are YOU willing to do to build trust?

Trust. That is a word I heard over and over again as I interviewed people for my book.

Trust is the launch code for the Alpha Audience rocket.

Trust cements you to the only people who truly matter in your digital world.

The question at the soul of this bond with your Alpha Audience is not “How can you trick, seduce, or coupon your customers into loving you?” It is “How loyal are you to your customers? Do you truly care about them?”

The people on the other end of your content aren’t just avatars, users, or a target audience. They’re human beings who might be suffering, experiencing joy, or simply feel exhausted from caring for their children. And maybe in the moment of connection, they need you in some way. What every organization needs before conquering a digital strategy is a human strategy.

As I first wrote in The Tao of Twitter many years ago, the most successful marketing organizations don’t think of themselves as B2B or B2C—they’re P2P, striving every day to use these miraculous technologies to connect people to people.

Anybody can figure out ways to generate short-term web traffic. But that’s simply a battle for attention you can never win. Let your competitors knock each other out over that. Place your focus in just one place — nurturing a truly loyal audience by running your business in a way that demonstrates mutual respect, gratitude, enduring trust, and … dare I say it? Love. Love is not a word usually embraced by businesses, but how can you create unyielding loyalty without it? Maybe love is the ultimate killer app.

How would your business be transformed if your focus was demonstrating respect, gratitude, and love instead of “traffic?”

This is the digital crossroad, a genuine point of business differentiation today. You can pay people to create great content and then pay people to promote it. Huge companies will escalate and automate their content arms race with breath-taking, epic videos. Eventually computers will be creating excellent content for you with a push of a button.

But traffic alone will never, ever create an Alpha Audience.

Are you focusing on traffic … or trust?

Plans for your new company are underway, but a great name for your venture still hasn’t sprung to mind.

That’s troubling since it can be daunting to find a catchy, meaningful, attention-grabbing moniker that will stand the test of time and cast your company in an all-positive light.

The criteria for the perfect company name are mind-boggling. It must fit your company personality and bring to mind the right connotations without being too trendy, too complicated or too boring. It must be memorable, easy to pronounce and have initials with a non-controversial acronym. And your new name can’t be spoken for, or you’ll find yourself in legal trouble.

“You really want a name that will get you, your staff and your customers excited and talking about the business,” notes South Carolina-based based startup consultant Peter Gasca in Entrepreneur. “(It’s) a creative platform for telling a long-term story to the world, so it is worth spending some time and effort on finding the best fit. If you are of the mindset your name can be changed down the road, consider how much easier it will be and how much brand equity you can retain if you start with the right name.”

That said, the world history of bad name choices is well documented (and mocked) on the Internet.

FLICKR/JOE MUD

“A bad name will hurt you, and there’s no reason to inflict this damage upon yourself when you can avoid it with only a couple days’ worth of work,” advises Julian Shapiro, founder of domain portfolio NameLayer, on Thenextweb.com. “Never forget your name is the first thing to come out of your mouth every time you pitch your company. You should never underestimate how many choices consumers have. Stand out. It can all start with your name, which people will be typing, clicking on or tapping on every day.”

Check out how these 17 famous companies got their quirky names, courtesy of Steven Brenna and Skye Gould of Business Insider.

Steven Brenna and Skye Gould | Business Insider

Making the right choice could intimidate even the most seasoned entrepreneur. Fortunately, the enormity of the task has attracted a number of experts. Here are some of their ideas for finding the perfect name.

• Consider hiring a professional firm to do the job. It may charge as much as $80,000 and require anywhere from six weeks to six months, says an article in Entrepreneur, but fees usually include other identity and graphic design work.
• Online guides can walk you through the DIY process from inspiration to trademarking. Shapiro advises setting aside a few thousand dollars in case you need it for domain privileges.
• Seek inspiration by perusing online business and startup sites, and listing company names and keywords that strike a chord. Check a thesaurus for keyword synonyms. “Think about your company’s market, what makes your company unique and what your value proposition is,” says Shapiro. “Spend a few minutes converting each of these concepts into keywords.”
• Run your keywords through these helpful websites provided by Shapiro, including LeanDomainSearch.com (for word combinations available for registration; Domai.nr (for general clever abbreviations) and Wordoid.com (for fictitious word derivations.) “The purpose is to study the generated results in order to build an understanding of how your keywords can be branded into company names,” he explains. He also points to domain portfolios like NameLayer.com and Namecore.com for ideas not based on obvious keywords. Finally, avoid irrelevant keyword connotations, mismatched suffixes, unintuitive spelling choices, overused keywords, borderline stealing and names intimidating to your customer base, he says.
• Finish your DIY search by perusing top aftermarkets for your keywords on sites like BuyDomains.com and Sedo.com, Shapiro says. Then filter results for names available in your price range.
• Your name may not automatically require trademarking if state regulations allow it and you aren’t infringing on another trade name, notes Gasca. But you still may want to hire a trademark attorney or trademark search firm to be sure.
• Opinions conflict regarding whether made-up words are more memorable than real words, according to the Entrepreneur article. Regardless, avoid names that are long, confusing, geographically limiting or made from obscure puns. The article recommends a “comforting or familiar name that conjures up pleasant memories, so customers respond to your business on an emotional level. Choose a name that appeals not only to you but also to the kind of customers you are trying to attract. And the more your name communicates to consumers about your business, the less effort you must exert to explain it.”
• B2C and B2B names should be crafted differently, Shapiro advises. “Many B2C businesses are supercharged by a company name that can be easily communicated, remembered and liked. Conversely, many B2B businesses are grown exclusively via existing partners and connections who couldn’t care less about the company’s brand, but instead focus on the company’s team, pricing and ability to execute on their services.”
• Many successful companies like Apple, Nike, Facebook, Twitter, Dreamworks, Pixar and eBay have two syllables in their names, observes Dave Smith in Inc.com. He points to research showing brevity leads to memorability.
• Shapiro says the best company names are highly brandable; unique; logical; evoke wonder by triggering emotions; marked by clear and professional word combinations; and unmistakable once heard.
• Consider whether your long-term goals and/or future advances in technology might make your name obsolete, advises Nikolas Contis, director of naming at global branding firm Siegel Gale, in the Entrepreneur article. Slang words or phrases may eventually do the same.
• Instead of flat-out describing your business, Contis says, consider a name that prompts the customer to seek more information. “Great names engage but do not declare, and they evoke rather than explain,” he explains.
• Before making a decision, spend time doodling your proposed name, reading it aloud and imagining how it may sound in advertising campaigns, advises Entrepreneur.
• Shapiro recommends gathering feedback on your final choice(s) from honest family members, friends, colleagues and employees, asking what the name connotes in their hearts and minds. But others, including Will Mitchell of startupbros.com, believe it’s more helpful to directly approach your target audience by vetting your ideas on easy-to-use sites like LeadPages or Unbounce. Entrepreneur also points to the focus groups or other consumer research.
• Allow at least a week between the brainstorming and the selection to mull options, Smith advises. “Good company names have a certain ‘stickiness’ to them. The best names are remembered without needing to refer to the list.”

Once you make your decision, advises Entrepreneur, go forth with enthusiasm and get started generating some buzz. Your employees will be looking to you to establish comfort with your new name and making it seem like it’s been around forever.

“Your name is your first step toward building a strong company identity — one that should last as long as you’re in business,” it says.

This holiday shopping season, Apple, Microsoft and others are all selling a similar idea: A tablet that can replace your laptop.  

It's an attractive sales pitch.

The simple, lightweight and touch-friendly experience we've come to love on our smartphones and tablets seems like it could do wonders for the old-fashioned computers that we use everyday to get work done with. 

But the advent of this new class of hybrid PC-tablet devices means that buying a computer can be pretty tricky these days.

The obvious question that arises: What's the difference between a tablet with a keyboard and a laptop with a detachable tablet?

The answer is that the line between the two is blurring, and getting smaller every day. But there still are some important distinctions to keep in mind.

To make the right choice, don't ask if a tablet can "kill" your laptop, but rather, "Does this thing do what I need it to do?" 

The hardware

Over the last month or two, I've used a variety of computers to get work done, including an Apple MacBook Air, Dell XPS 13, Lenovo Yoga Pro 2, the Apple iPad Pro, and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4. 

(Despite getting two defective units in a row, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 remains my favorite. I'm on the third now, and hoping it's the charm.)

Despite all of them being sold as laptops, or at least, laptop-grade tablets, they are very different devices.

On one end of the spectrum, representing the old school, you have the Apple MacBook Air.

It's kind of funny, given Apple's whole "Think Different" shtick, but the MacBook line are actually some of the most traditional computers you can buy today, with a general concept of what a laptop should be that hasn't changed much in nine years. 

On the other end is the Apple iPad Pro — a gigantic tablet that Tim Cook says can replace your laptop, but that's held back by the fact that it can only run iOS apps. It's a sign that Apple is at least thinking about how our use of computers is changing.

In between the two extremes, you have the Dell XPS 13, a lightweight laptop with a touchscreen. And the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2, which is a laptop that folds backwards into a tablet. And the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, which is a big-screen tablet that runs a full version of Windows 10.

Meanwhile, Microsoft recently introduced its first laptop, the high-end Microsoft Surface Book, which actually sports a detachable screen that's a tablet on its own.

 

The software

Right now, the app development world is in a painful, in-between state. 

Apple and Google are both trying to encourage mobile developers to make their iOS and Android apps better suited for users on big-screen, keyboard-toting devices. 

At the same time, Microsoft is trying (and, so far, mostly failing) to get its Windows Store app market off the ground. The promise is that the Windows Store would provide apps that work the exact same way across Windows 10 desktop PCs, tablets, and Windows 10 Mobile smartphones. 

The end result, at least the one that these tech titans are shooting for, is software that works the same way, to the same level of functionality, no matter what type of device you're using.

And just as the lines between tablet and desktop computers are blurring, so too are the divisions between mobile apps and desktop software. This shift is happening slowly, not least because app developers are still in search of sustainable revenue models in this new world. But it's happening. 

What to buy

We're hearing anecdotally that some Apple Store employees are steering would-be MacBook buyers towards the iPad Pro tablet instead. 

And why not? For lots of people, especially casual computer users, the $799 iPad Pro is more than enough computer. Add in the optional Smart Keyboard, which costs $169, and it's probably all the laptop they'll ever need. If you can do everything you need to do in an app, an iPad Pro is a fine choice.

But some people still need the full Microsoft Office suite, a desktop version of the Google Chrome (or similar) browser, and the ability to play PC games. For these buyers, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 or one of its many imitators is just dandy. 

Just keep in mind that these tablet/laptop hybrids have their own drawbacks. Hardcore PC gamers or super-serious video editors are still better off with the greater performance offered by a high-end Windows PC or MacBook, respectively.

People with lots of peripherals might find the Surface Pro 4's single built-in USB port (plus an extra one on the charger) is a real drag. Others might find that the iPad Pro's two-screen multitasking is insufficient, compared to what they can do with a MacBook or a Surface Pro 4. 

Then again, many people will most value the fact that the iPad Pro or the Surface Pro 4's tablet form factor and lighter weight makes it easier to lug around. The nice thing is that these are all perfectly valid, useful choices, that go well beyond "desktop" vs. "laptop" vs. "tablet."

The main question to ask when buying your next device is no longer "is this a laptop" or "is this a tablet?" The important thing is simply, "Can I use this for what I need to do?" 

Other than that, don't stress, and don't worry about the marketing hype.

SEE ALSO: The 11 most important differences between Macs and PCs

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The iPad Pro isn't a laptop killer — here's why

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca 

I have written several times about the importance of time in sales, how time really is the currency of sales; while everything else in sales may be variable, success will be determined by a number of unique and individual factors. Time is the only standard element we all share, what we do with it is the differentiator.

Download our “Sales Happen In Time” e-book

Time is also the only non-renewable resource that sales people deal with, everything else can be replayed, retried or redone, not time, once spent, it’s gone. And while this is a fact that sales people have to deal with every day, we often forget that our buyers have to deal with the exact same limitation every 24 hour day.

In prior posts I have presented our Actionable Definition of value:

Those services and/or products that remove barriers, obstacles, or help bridge GAPS between where the buyer is now – and – their OBJECTIVES!

In breaking down the elements or underpinnings of Objectives, we learn that shifting time, extending the life of an asset, shortening the time to revenue, etc., are common objectives for buyers. Therefore one of the best value adds you can deliver is bending time in favour of your buyers.

Recent Research released by CEB, show that buying cycles are often twice as long as the buyers themselves anticipated. This insight can help sellers a couple of ways. First, just understanding that things will not happen as fast as you “forecasted”, will help you in better managing your pipeline and delivering quota. I have seen many sales people give up because the buy did not take place in a timeframe that suited the seller.

Given that sales people are usually over optimistic about how long a sale should take, they often give up on a sale way too early. This requires them to prospect more and harder, and completely throws off the pipeline and success. Seems to me that whatever the answer is when you ask a buyer about their timeline, it is good to validate and add time to those expectations.

This reinforces the need to implement a sales process that is aligned to the buyer’s buying process. But again, this is one step, given that many buyers aren’t truly sure how long their buying cycle is.

The other opportunity is to understand why buyers are so bad at estimating their timelines around a buy. The more you understand this, the more you can help buyers go through the full buying journey, but introduce some short cuts along the way, reducing the cycle time in the process.

The hard part for many sales people, is that much of this will have little or anything to do with their product or them, and almost entirely with the buyer. This leads to another piece of advice we have given before, and that is “leave your product in the car”, and make it about the buyer. Not how the buyer uses your product, but how the buyer buys.

By thoroughly reviews your successful cycles, and looking at it from the buyer’s view. Not what it took for you to get the sales, but what the buyer had to do to make the buy. These will vary from product to product, but with a disciplined approach to reviewing all opportunities, won – lost – no decision, will allow you to see where buyers linger, or get detoured, and where they make clear strides towards a decision.

Sharing these findings, not the features of your product or ROI, will give them the gift of time, and you more and better customers.

Tibor Shanto

Like what you read, have it delivered directly to your inbox!

 

When we’re emailing busy executives, or highly-successful people, how can we get a response from them? Better yet, how can we get a "Yes" from them?

From my experience, there are two factors:

1. Using follow-up email templates that are proven to get a response.
2. Using “no as an opportunity to build long-term relationships.

When most people hear “no, they think, “Alright, well that sucks … and then they move on and never follow-up again. In reality, that is the worst thing you can do.

Because, from my experience, by consistently following up with people who’ve said no, I’ve been able to turn an initial “no into an eventual “yes … many times.

But it requires you to have the correct follow-up email templates and understand the philosophy that focuses on building long-term relationships.

If you get this down pat, I promise you’ll be much more likely to get the 70% response rate I’ve been able to achieve -- and sell more by doing less.

Here are the follow-up email templates that help me turn “no into a “yes:

Step 0: Review of the system

To quickly put this into context, I was reaching out to these executives to speak at an event called Traction Conference in San Francisco.

*Editors update: Traction Conference is held this year from August 8-9, 2018 in Vancouver, BC.

Here are a few of the people I’ve gotten to speak, as a result of these follow-up emails:

The very first email I’ll send people is this:

But if they don’t respond, I send this follow-up email sequence that leads to a 70% response rate.

Step 1: Send the first follow-up email

Here is the first follow-up email I send:

Here are the three options (and actions I take) after sending this email:

• If they say yes, I’ll quickly respond to their email (usually within five minutes) and offer them three suggested times I’m available.
• If they say no, I’ll ask who else from their team or network they’d suggest getting in contact with.
• If they don’t respond, I’ll send a second follow-up email.

Step 2: Send the second follow-up email

For the second follow-up email, I add more social proof. I’ll update them on new speakers that have been added, and encourage a response:

This is very similar to the first follow-up email, keeping this casual and friendly tone … continuously adding more credibility.

Here are the three options (and actions I take) after sending this email:

• If they say yes, I’ll quickly respond to their email (usually within five minutes) and offer them three suggested times I’m available.
• If they say no, I’ll ask who else from their team or network they’d suggest getting in contact with.
• If they don’t respond, I’ll send a final follow-up email.

Step 3: Send the third (and final) follow-up email

If I don’t hear back by the second email, I’ll send one final email (and set myself free of my own personal follow-up email misery):

If they say yes, I’d suggest being very prompt with your follow-ups. I have a reputation for responding to emails in seconds, and as a result, I've gotten great feedback:

"Lloyed is a machine. He responds to your emails in split-seconds … He gives without expecting anything in return. Genuinely a positive force (and literally he is a force). - Hisham Al-Shurafa, co-founder at SnapDx and Pixineers,

Similarly, once we confirm speakers, we are very diligent and detailed in the follow up information we send. Likewise, people love the attention to detail:

“Thanks Lloyed, this is all super helpful. I wish every conference was as organized as yours! - Sharon Kempner, Lynda.com

But of course … this still doesn’t answer the inevitable question: "What if they say no?"

This brings me to my final point -- even if you're using sales automation to speed up your sales cycle, focus on the relationship not the close.

To be successful with this system, focus on building long-term relationships.

By automating my process for finding prospect’s email addresses and sending 250+ emails in just one click using mail merge, my core focus is on:

• Those who said yes: Getting them whatever information they need at lightning speed. Essentially being available at their convenience.
• Those who said no: Keeping them in my pipeline to send them follow-up emails every couple months (only to add value).
• Optimizing my outreach system (A/B testing the entire process), so I can be more productive.

Prioritizing these core areas allows me to spend 80% of my time focused on building relationships. Because the goal of each email is to simply get the first conversation started.

Even if they say “No, focus on building a relationship for the long haul.

I’ve booked plenty of speakers who said “no the first two times, but with more social proof and bigger speakers, they finally end up saying “yes. Or if they say “no for this conference, I’ll reach out a few months later for a different conference.

Statuses change, motivations change, schedules change. If you’re top of mind, your chances of converting a “no to “yes are a lot higher.

I’m confident this system will automate your ability to get new business.

However, every industry will have its own nuances. So, start by trying to understand your target market and build your strategy from there.

For more follow-up sales email templates, check out this massive collection of them.

You’ve had this conversation before. Every marketer has at some point.

Someone from sales makes a blanket statement about the leads that you generated from a webinar or trade show. All of the work that you put in — coordination with speakers, building the deck, ordering the t-shirts or giveaways, preparing the collateral — is quickly dismissed with the phrase “these leads suck.”

What is a marketer to do?

I’m proposing a more definite and precise way to diffuse this argument. Sales and marketing need a framework for having these conversations.

The Sales & Marketing Handoff

Marketing should have some answers to these three questions for every lead or batch of leads that we pass to sales.

Is this good information?

Is the email, phone, and address information valid? A verified mobile number is much better than a verified company 800 number, so how would you rate the quality of the validated phone numbers returned? If you are a B2B marketer, a person’s business email address (jfusaro@ringlead.com) might be more valuable to you vs. the disposable email address that I use to download whitepapers (Splad1952@armyspy.com is a valid email, but is provided by one of my go-to disposable email generators, FakeMailGenerator.com).

Is this information duplicated anywhere else in the system? Is this information up-to-date and relevant? Is the information complete — will a salesperson have all or most of the information that they need going into the first call?

There are a lot of factors to evaluate in determining whether or not this information is good; some metrics are black and white (is the phone valid) and some are fuzzy –

This is the foundation. Without a strong foundation, the next two questions become irrelevant.

Is this a good lead?

Is this a good person at a good company? We’re not asking if she has a heart of gold, we’re wondering if she is a decision maker at a company that is growing. Is the company in a growing market? Is the company profitable or in hyper-growth mode backed by venture funding? In other words, does she have budget? Does the company have funds to back up their purchase order?

Quality information for someone within the organization that has little or no sway is only slightly more useful than having bad information.

Is this a relevant lead?

Is this the right person at the right company?

This is different from the previous question. There are plenty of high-level decision makers at high profile companies that would be irrelevant for your company. If you sell software to the medical industry, then the VP of Marketing at a hyper-growth tech startup is not the right lead for you. If you sell enterprise software, then the compliance manager at an oil & gas company is the wrong lead for you.

In other words, is this the best type of company relevant to my product or service?

Is this the right person for my sales team to be speaking with — will she understand the pain and be able to sign off on a purchase order?

Last but certainly not least, this measure seeks to ensure that marketing is employing targeted marketing techniques instead of shotgun techniques that show arbitrary lead growth with irrelevant leads.

Ok, great advice. What’s next?

Much of this framework can be assembled with some analysis of your CRM or marketing data.

Using a tool like Field Trip for Salesforce or some advanced CRM reporting, you can get a sense for what portion of your data is complete. Dupe Dive, another free app for Salesforce, will analyze your records for duplicates. The next level would be a more comprehensive data analysis which takes into account the validity of your information.

This will either give you more confidence in your database, or highlight the problem areas — more likely the latter. Once the problems are adequately resolved, you can move on to customer profiling and analyzing what portion of your leads fit that profile.

Last — and most important — you need to ensure that you have refinement processes in place so that when information gets into your system, your appending, deduping, validating and applying all of these data operations that ensure that it has good information. Once you have refined and made sure that you have good information you can decide whether or not it is a good lead. And finally, your sales reps (or possible you predictive analytics technology) can decide whether this is a relevant lead.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Thanksgiving/Black Friday Online Sales Hit $4.5B, 34% Of Purchases Made On Mobile  —  The first two days of the holiday sales period have netted $4.45 billion in U.S. online purchases, with mobile devices — led by smartphones — accounting for a record $1.5 billion of that amount …

Protecting Metro Vancouver’s trade-related industrial land is critical to the region’s livability, Port Metro Vancouver’s president and CEO said Friday. In a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade, Robin Silvester said that without a collective approach to managing growth, the economy, environment and quality of life will suffer, along with Canada’s ability to handle more trade.

Whether you’re just starting out with your marketing efforts, or you’re working with a multi-tiered marketing team, one of the most important goals you can strive for is being agile.

What exactly does it mean to “be agile” in your marketing? The idea is that you’re able to move fast and respond to changes quickly. Traditional marketing is all about choosing your message and then blasting it out at scale. But if you choose a message that doesn’t resonate with your audience, you’re kind of — ehem — screwed.

In today’s digital marketing world, you need to be smarter about your approach. Doing agile marketing means coming up with the marketing equivalent of a minimum viable product (let’s say, minimum viable content, or a minimum viable ad campaign), testing it with a real audience, measuring success, and iterating quickly through this cycle.

By adopting the following agile marketing techniques, you’ll not only reduce wasted time, but you’ll actually enable your team to achieve and scale results much faster.

Adopt These 5 Agile Marketing Techniques Today

1. Cut Unnecessary Meetings

First, let’s reflect on the amount of time that you and your team are wasting every week, or even every day. The goal of being agile is to reduce time spent on unnecessary tasks and discussions in order to put that time to better use with work that produces real results.

Take a look at the meetings you have on your calendar for the week. How many of them are recurring meetings that you’ve been having for so long, the only reason you still have them is seemingly because you’ve just kept them on the calendar? How many 60-minute meetings could be 30 minutes? How many 30-minute meetings could be done in 10?

Don’t force yourself to speed through topics that are actually important, but rather, do an audit of the content and purpose of your meetings. Which ones would really be more productive not to have? Good – cancel them.

2. Good > Perfect

One of the best ways to waste time is by striving for perfection. Sounds like something you probably shouldn’t say in a job interview, right? It’s almost counterintuitive.

But really, how often are you going to get that latest blog post or your new Facebook ad creative absolutely 100% perfect? Better yet, how much extra time are you going to have to invest to get it from 80% to 100%? The answer is usually too much.

The 80/20 Rule (also known as the Pareto principle) states that 80 percent of your outcomes come from 20 percent of your inputs. Take a step back and look at your daily and weekly tasks. Try applying this concept. Which items on your to-do list are the biggest driver of results? Conversely, which items won’t actually yield much? Cross those out and dedicate more of your time to the things that matter.

One of my favorite questions to ask job candidates in interviews is: “Let’s say you’re creating a piece of content, like an ebook or a blog post. Would you rather put in the extra time to get it as perfect as possible, or would you publish it once you feel it’s good enough?” This helps identify candidates who are very agile-minded and understand the importance of testing and iterating quickly. You may find that extreme perfectionists will have a tough time working in an agile environment.

3. Use Templates

When it comes to content creation – whether written or visual – a good time-saving trick is to build templates that you can use repeatedly. For example, if you’re designing display ads, have a few photoshop files with the correct dimensions, and your fonts, brand colors, and logo already included. Once you’ve designed one, you’ll be able to simply swap in a new image or different copy, save it, and be ready to upload.

The same goes for other content formats, like ebooks and Slideshare decks. If you’re starting from scratch each time, you’ll be investing a lot of time in unnecessary repetitive tasks. Clear up that time for more useful things!

4. Reduce Red Tape

What does your current process look like to get something live? Chances are, the review cycle will look different and vary in length based on the scale of the project you’re launching (surely a brand new website will warrant a few more approvals than a blog post or display ad).

But how much of that approval process is really necessary? The more folks whose approval you seek, the more time you spend waiting before you can launch — the opposite of agile marketing.

Next time you finish an ebook, ask for one of your colleagues to edit it, not five. Better to collect an extra day’s worth of leads from publishing it sooner than to catch that one little typo you missed.

If you’re thinking, “well, I have to get everything approved because my boss requires it,” try suggesting to your boss that she review a template that you will work from, or offer to send her a 1 paragraph description for her to approve before you write a new blog post. (Or, send her this article to show her the importance of agile marketing!)

By finding ways to cut down unnecessarily long approval cycles, you’ll be able to move a lot faster.

5. Test, Test, Test And Use Data To Make Decisions

The smart way to make decisions in your marketing is by collecting data. You can guess what topics or content formats or value propositions will resonate best with your audience, but you can’t confirm your hypotheses without data.

The best agile marketers collect data quickly, by creating faster, publishing faster, and measuring faster. Once you’ve collected enough data to give you the insights you need, implement them quickly, and keep iterating. For every test you run, you give yourself the opportunity to improve your results by learning what works and what doesn’t. (So yes, the tests that yield worse results are also valuable!) The faster and more frequently you test, the more quickly you’ll scale.

Get the gist of it? That’s all you need! Go implement your new agile marketing techniques and start saving time and growing faster.

Do you use any agile marketing techniques at your organization? Which have you found to be the most effective?

Genetically engineered AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon grow to twice the size of an normal Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) over the same time. The FDA approved the AquAdvantage as the first genetically engineered animal to be approved for human consumption in the United States.

AquaBounty’s driving force is the belief that modern genetics, married with land-based recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), can spur a radically more responsible and sustainable way of growing Atlantic salmon.


The innovative faster growing AquAdvantage Salmon, which would shorten production cycles by half and drastically reduce feed costs, could finally make land-based fish farming economically viable.

Courtesy of Kruger Kaldnes RAS and Veolia Water Technologies

The Greenest Fish Farming Method —Land-Based Aquaculture

The second innovation driving AquaBounty’s vision is the development of land-based recirculating aquaculture systems, or RAS for short. While farming salmon in sea cages is less expensive and less technologically complex than a land-based farm, land-based salmon farming eliminates many of the environmental problems with net-pen farms. Sea cages are susceptible to a number of hazards such as violent storms, predators, harmful algal blooms, jellyfish attacks, and the transmission of pathogens and parasites from wild fish populations passing close to the sea cages. All of these hazards can cause significant fish losses over the course of the 32-36-month production cycle.

Some fish farmers, research scientists and engineers looked at the technology used in public aquarium facilities and human waste-water treatment facilities with the idea that the technology could be applied to large-scale commercial seafood production on land. Over the last 30 years, the technology to farm fish on land has come a long way. So much so that some fish farmers are developing large RAS facilities to grow a variety of species, from salmon, trout and sturgeon to perch, shrimp and even lobster.

20 years to approve fish where similar fish ended being bred anyway. Do we really care about feeding the world's hungry or making nutritious food cheaper for the poor ?

The landmark decision by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) releases the ‘AquAdvantage’ salmon from two decades of regulatory limbo — but it could also revitalize an industry that has waited a long time for any sign that its products might make it to market.

“It opens up the possibility of harnessing this technology,” says Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California, Davis. “The regulatory roadblock had really been disincentivizing the world from using it.”

AquAdvantage fish produce extra growth hormone, allowing them to grow to market size in 18 months, rather than the usual 3 years. In the time since AquaBounty first filed for approval, fisheries have bred conventional salmon that grow just as fast, says Scott Fahrenkrug, chief executive of Recombinetics, an animal-biotechnology firm in St Paul, Minnesota.

A growth hormone-regulating gene from a Pacific Chinook salmon and a promoter from an ocean pout were added to the Atlantic's 40,000 genes. These genes enable it to grow year-round instead of only during spring and summer. The purpose of the modifications is to increase the speed at which the fish grows, without affecting its ultimate size or other qualities.

Commercial aquaculture is the most rapidly growing segment of the agricultural industry, accounting for more than 60 million tons in 2012, versus 90 million tons of wild-caught fish. That year, aquaculture output exceeded beef output for the first time. While land-based agriculture is increasing between 2% and 3% per year, aquaculture has been growing at an average rate around 9% per year since 1970. As of 2011, salmon aquaculture produced 1.9 million tons of fish



Read more »

“Is it possible that what we’re selling is just priced too high?” Many businesses struggle with their pricing models. Is it too high? Is it too low? Is our product line even worth what we’re asking consumers to pay? Questions …
Read More »

A key step in your SaaS sales funnel is getting visitors to sign up for your free trial. But when the trial period ends and it’s time for your users to take out their credit cards and pony up for your software, how many of your leads are converting?

Totango found that on average, 15 percent of SaaS users converted after their free trials when a credit card was not required to begin the trial. (Companies who require a credit card received fewer free-trial signups but converted by 50 percent after the trial.)

But no matter where your conversion rate is compared to these averages, you can always improve your conversions with better email marketing. This article will help you convert more users by avoiding common SaaS email marketing mistakes.

Mistake #1: You’re not sending action-based emails

Source: SixteenVentures

Hate to break it to you, but autoresponders are dead.  According to Lincoln Murphy at SixteenVentures “If you’re still sending emails based on a timed sequence instead of triggered by actual user behavior, you’re 100 percent doing it wrong.” The number-one problem with time-based drip emails (autoresponders) is that the same message gets delivered to every user. That includes your most active users and people who have completely forgot they signed up for your free-trial. The truth is that each user moves through your funnel at his or her own pace. So why send users emails based on a random number of days that have passed since they signed up for your trial?

It takes more effort to set up an action-based email campaign, but it pays off. GrooveHQ improved its end-of-trial conversion rates by 10 percent when it switched to an action-based email campaign.

Mistake #2: Your emails don’t add enough value to your users

If your behavior-triggered emails aren’t adding enough value for your subscribers, you’re missing out on conversions. Let’s look at an example of an email that doesn’t add value to the user:

GrooveHQ was sending this email but, later realized that it was full of, “useless product tidbits that had little to do with what the user actually wanted.” (The GrooveHQ staff has since replaced this email with a more helpful one.)

Customer.io calls these product-focused messages “nagging emails.” And nobody wants nagging emails. Instead, here’s what you should do:

This email first makes it obvious how Nimble can improve its users’ sales and productivity, and then it explains how to add a new user.

Mistake #3: You’re not sending emails when your leads get “stuck”

Patrick McKenzie found that 40–60 percent of free-trial users (for almost every SaaS company) will log in once and never come back. Obviously, not everyone who signs up for your free trial will fully engage with your app. But that’s why it’s so important for your behavior-triggered email campaign to re-engage your users.

The above diagram from Customer.io gives us a clear example of an email flow for users who “get stuck.” To re-engage your free-trial users with email marketing:

1. Map out your ideal customer flow
2. Use analytics to find exactly where your users are dropping off
3. Craft and deliver follow-up emails for users at those “drop-off points”

Bottom line: When you see users getting stuck, send them emails that inspire them to take the next step. For example, Buffer used its analytics to discover that users were more likely to churn when they had no future posts scheduled. So Buffer started emailing customers at this point.

Don’t be afraid to follow-up with these users if they don’t respond to your first triggered email. A study by Experian found that follow-up emails resulted in an average 54-percent increase in conversions. You can use tools such as Customer.io, Vero, or Hubspot Enterprise to set up your action-based email campaigns.

Mistake #4: Forgetting about the users that didn’t convert during the trial

Just because a user didn’t convert during the free trial, doesn’t mean he or she never will. Users might need more time to decide or they might simply be too busy to sign up when their trials ended. Don’t forget about your free-trail leads that didn’t convert. You’re leaving money on the table every time you do. Instead, continue sending awesome emails (as long as you have their permission, of course).

Here’s a simple follow-up email from GrooveHQ:

The company sent this email 90 days after the free trial. It converts at around 2 percent. And while 2 percent is no landslide victory, that’s still winning back 2 percent more customers that would have been lost.

There are three kinds of emails I’d recommend sending to your post-free-trail users:

1. Emails that ask for feedback
2. Emails that add value (educate, entertain or both)
3. Emails that extend free-trial periods

Just don’t offer discounts.

Have you experienced any other SaaS email marketing mistakes you’d like to add this list? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts!

Mobile is the preferred channel of an increasingly large percentage of consumers–there are over 2 billion smartphones in use and 71% of people sleep with or next to their phones. The opportunity mobile presents is vast and well known, but the rapid changes in mobile tech leave many brands scratching their heads, wondering how to stay ahead of the curve, to leverage each new change and its potentially profound impact on customer behavior. Despite constant industry change one thing remains consistent: brands who can build long-term relationships with their customers will be uniquely positioned to dominate, no matter what comes next.

In the recent weeks alone Facebook has launched Notify, while Google announced it will surface app content, and streaming of that content, directly in mobile search results. In previous months Apple’s search API and Google Now were the newest thing. Brands with mobile apps are asking themselves how these developments will impact their ability to connect directly with their customers, as more and more services impact app content discovery and become part of the fabric of mobile operating systems themselves.

The answer is that it’s more important than ever for brands to start, or better yet continue, to build meaningful relationships with their customers. Every touchpoint matters, so purposeful, quality content and great experiences are required. When it comes time to choose which brand’s link to click on in search results, or which sources of notifications to sign up for in Notify, brands that have earned the trust and attention of their customers–largely through experiences built within their apps or pushed from those apps–will continue to win clicks, sign-ups, and engagement across these new experiences, in addition to more established channels.

So, how can brands build these incredibly important, and durable, relationships? By getting to know their customers, providing relevant content and a great user experience, and becoming a habit in customer’s lives.

Get to Know Your Customers

Brands need to get to the business of learning about their customers from the first time they install an app. Build a profile for each user (whether known, or anonymous) that includes app usage data with all other useful data you may have about that customer, from any source, and in any channel. The more you know about your customers and their preferences, the more likely it is that you can deliver a valuable user experience each and every time you interact with them.

Emphasize opportunities for data capture in onboarding experiences, making it clear how sharing this information will benefit the user. For instance, when a user shares a favorite brand, time of day or medium preference for messages delivered, or home zip code, all of these can drive meaningful personalization down the line. Make it easy to share this information, and the value in sharing it clear, for ongoing success in building user profiles.

Provide Relevant and Contextual Content

Once you build a profile and get to know your customers, the next step is putting those insights to work in the form of relevant and contextual experiences. The expectations of today’s customer are sky high. People expect a lot more from the brands they choose to do business with. They expect brands to know who they are, to know what they like, and to cater to their needs. Each interaction must be purposeful, or else marketers risk losing customers to another brand that does a better job of providing relevant content and experiences. This is especially challenging in mobile, where audiences can be vast and diverse, and also unforgiving. Without warning, a brand can have millions of new customers across the globe, overnight. Localization is vital. In order to be successful at building relationships, brands to get these basics right, and to make customers feel understood. Relationships are a two-way street.

Brands can provide unique personalization components to their marketing by using public and private APIs with local weather, customer product preferences, loyalty information or even just a first name. We’ve found that this type of personalization can be the difference in a 27% increase in conversions associated with push or email.

Become a Ritual

Appboy research shows that consistent engagement is strongly correlated with retention–retention is of course required to build a long-term relationship. Only 55% of individuals who use an app in the first week after download will be retained, but 90% of those who engage weekly for the first month after download are retained, compared to only 23% of people who don’t engage in the second, third and fourth week.

What this means is that it’s imperative to do whatever possible to drive consistent engagement–especially in the early days and weeks after download–to establish a habit and build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Onboarding campaigns that take advantage of multiple channels are a great way to do this. Appboy research also showed that a single push notification during onboarding correlated with a 71% lift in 2-month retention, but that 71% jumps to 130% when two channels are used in onboarding. Combining the right message with the right channel is a necessity. Not all messages warrant a push, and not all compelling or urgent messages will be received if communicated via in-app messaging.

Building long-term relationships is not a one and done affair. It’s getting in it for the long-game, and brands that take the above three steps seriously will be successful for a long time to come.

Today, more and more students, parents, and taxpayers are demanding a greater return for the cost of college education. The Economist has called it a “revolution” and a “cost crisis” in university education. People are justifiably asking whether there is a reasonable return on their tuition investment and business schools are arguably under the microscope most of all.

This is a pendulum swing from the 1950s when research by the Ford and Carnegie foundations found too much of a focus on vocational training, and business education was criticized for being overly technical and applied. Business schools responded. Now, years later, educators have been criticized for going too far. One notable critic, Warren Bennis, a renowned leadership scholar from the University of Southern California, states that business schools have “an overemphasis on the rigor and an underemphasis on relevance.”

Some business schools have responded by hiring professors of practice, or industry executives without PhDs. The question remains as to whether there is a role for classically trained professors in business schools of the future. Or is it time for business professors to go back to work?

One of us, Holly Brower, decided to put this question to the test. Brower designed a faculty “externship” where she left her university office and for two months become part of global pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly’s daily operations. Rather than act as an outside consultant, she would work as an insider. Brower, along with other colleagues, had from time to time worked as a consultant for companies. These experiences, while helpful to understand contemporary business problems, quickly placed her in the role of teacher/adviser and the company as client. Brower was looking for a different type of experience with a more level playing field. Though short, the immersion within Eli Lilly offered her a litmus test for the material she teaches and researches.

With a company sponsor who was clearly open minded and inquisitive, and her expertise as a leadership scholar, together they mapped out a problem that Eli Lilly was working to resolve — their leadership programs across the globe needed a streamlined framework. She provided both expertise and an apolitical lens to build the new model.

In a separate externship, as part of KPMG’s Professor in Residence Program, a tax professor worked closely with a global team of accountants on implications of tax codes across South America. The project gave the professor a fresh look at the challenges his students would face as tax professionals and gave the accountants a chance to offer input into the professor’s research. As academic articles become sources for textbooks, this early feedback into academic research is critical, and the relevant work experience enhances class examples and coaching of students.

Though faculty externships are rare and there is not a “typical” model, we conducted a series of interviews with interested executives and professors with their own faculty externship experiences to construct a beta-tested protocol for a successful externship. These include identifying an internal sponsor for the faculty extern; an extern who fits with the company culture; and a clear project that is both related to the extern’s expertise and offers value to the company. This project should have specific start and end dates, and clear deliverables. The extern and the company should also come to a clear agreement about confidentiality rules. Once the externship begins, the internal sponsor should communicate the nature of the project and the background of the faculty extern, and help plan interactions such as lunch and learns between the faculty extern and employees. Finally, every externship should end with a debriefing.

One marketing executive who hosted an extern at IBM said of the weekly lunch and learn presentation: “The professor’s lunchtime talk was highly attended and received great feedback. Since many of us do not have a legal background, it was helpful to hear her points of view on how the law is impacting advertising. It was also great having her in smaller group meetings, getting to hear her points of view.”

While externships offer value, both faculty and executives resist the practice for a number of reasons. For companies, including a professor in daily operations can come with angst about whether or not that professor will fit in a positive way that doesn’t require too much “handholding.” The selection of the right extern is critical to find an ideal match. For professors, aside from a few limited exceptions, university norms and incentives currently do not support externships. While the academy values primary research on questions with managerial implications, there are strong trade-offs between working within a company, even for a limited time, and crafting a journal article.

There is also the question of whether professors are in fact more effective having some distance from business. Can more enduring perspectives be better taught through an outside view? Is the real problem not what is being taught in business schools, but instead what is being practiced by businesses? Like most interesting questions, perhaps the answer is “both.”

When it comes to creativity, organizations are a lot like people. They have no problem generating ideas, including some that are potentially useful and novel. Furthermore, they are also generally able to access creative ideas generated by others. Where they fail, however, is at turning those ideas into actual innovations. Indeed, few creative ideas ever become innovative products or services.

And yet too many managers see a lack of innovation in their companies and lament their teams’ “lack of creativity.” In fact, a lack of creativity is not the problem. A lack of execution is. Before you diagnose your problem as a lack of new ideas, first see if you need to fix any of the following, more common challenges:

Fear of change: Few things are more harmful to creativity than fear of change, not least because of its ubiquity in the realm of human emotions. Although we glamorize innovation, the truth is that we are prewired to make our environments as stable and familiar as possible. To adapt is to make the world more predictable. Uncertainty is traumatic, and our quest for meaning leads to the creation of tautological and closed systems that we then fight to preserve. Religion, philosophy, and science – as do cults and political movements – exist to reduce ambiguity and construct an illusion of truth that provides a sense of predictability and mental stability in our lives. These deep-seated beliefs about the world are designed to be unquestionable, and they are hard to unlearn.

Since innovation always involves a degree of creative destruction, it threatens the status quo and demands adaptation to the unknown. As Peter Drucker noted, “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” This happens not just at the individual, but also the team and organizational level. Thus even when some individuals are courageous or crazy enough to push for change, they will be resisted by the majority. If they are not, then they were not really pushing for change.

Further Reading

Being too client-centric: In any industry, customers tend to resist innovation. Henry Ford famously noted that if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said “faster horses.” The point of course is that clients don’t always know what they want – but it’s your task to work out what they need. Or even better, to create that need. As Marshall McLuhan said, “invention is the mother of necessity.” Thus a customer-centric approach to innovation may lead to progressive and incremental improvements to your products and services – the sort of Kaizen-style innovation pioneered by Toyota and perfected by Amazon – but if you want ground-breaking inventions or radical innovation you are better off ignoring your customers.

Failure to build teams: It is often said that there are no statues to committees. Yet the romantic Western view that innovation emerges from the heroic individual efforts of creative superstars – the lone rangers of disruption – is both naïve and counterproductive. All innovation happens as the result of coordinated team effort, and the most innovative teams are not full of creatives. Instead, they complement one or two creative minds with diligent executors, savvy networkers, organized project managers, and, above all, hardworking implementers. Even conformist individuals can enhance the innovation output of teams, presumably by making innovation more palatable to the masses.

As much as we like to put a face to innovation it would be fairer to acknowledge the contribution of those who work silently in the background to make innovation happen.

Complacency: All organizations are victims of their own success, because success is the chief enemy of innovation. Indeed, a fundamental law underlying the life cycle of any successful venture is that innovation leads to growth, but growth inhibits innovation. In other words, when you are young and small you are hungry and aggressive, which leads to success. However, success contains the seeds of self-destruction because when you grow rich you become fat and lazy and too interested in preserving and maintaining what you achieved to focus on accomplishing more.

The problem is that complacency nurtures entropy – a gradual deterioration and degeneration into chaos and extinction. From Kodak to Nokia, from Blockbuster to Borders, the cemetery of defunct companies and products is the result of complacency trumping drive and ambition. The ability to remain dissatisfied with one’s achievements is what helps both individuals and companies grow.

Ineffective leadership: Innovation is ultimately about leadership. It takes leadership to see or create the future before others do. It takes leadership to foster entrepreneurship, the process by which creativity becomes innovation. And it takes leadership to provide a compelling vision to others. That is, a meaningful mission that provides a sense of purpose and direction for the business, and aligns its members in the pursuit of a common task.

Leaders are also responsible for creating the culture that rewards and sanctions the relevant behaviors that make innovation happen. In line, a comprehensive meta-analysis of the organizational drivers of innovation reported that support for innovation, vision, and external communication were the strongest predictors of creativity and innovation. Thus without a good strategy or the ability to turn that strategy into action, innovations will be futile. Most leaders say they value, and even prioritize, innovation, yet how many put their money where their mouth is or have the capacity to unleash an organization’s creative potential?

In short, it may be wise to spend less time coming up with new ideas and more time setting up the conditions that enable a few ideas to become innovative products, services, and businesses.

Every salesperson knows what they want in a client. Reps spend hours searching LinkedIn using specific keywords, titles, and more to identify perfect fit prospects. Then, their outreach campaign begins.

But what most reps forget about is what the prospect values. Sales is about relationships, so both sides need to be equally engaged.

Before a rep can begin reaching out, they need to understand what today’s buyer values. Here are five things modern buyers value above all else.

1) Content

The information gap that once gave salespeople an edge over the buyer no longer exists. Prospects now have access to product information, pricing details, research, and more all at the click of a button. In fact, today’s buyer goes through nearly 60% of the sales process before they even talk to a rep, according to CEB.

But just because buyers can get content without the help of a salesperson doesn’t mean reps can’t facilitate the research process. Because buyers put a significant emphasis on content, consider sending a helpful piece of collateral to prospects, or even creating a blog post or case study.

A study conducted by Eccolo Media found that the two most important pieces of content to B2B buyers were white papers and case studies. Of the survey, 48% of respondents said case studies were “very” or “extremely” influential in their purchasing decision.

2) Reviews

Sales used to be built on what the rep told the buyer about the product. Now, prospects conduct their own research, and use customer reviews -- what others say about the product -- in their buying decision.

Reviews play a major role in the sales funnel. In fact, according to a BrightLocal survey, 88% of respondents said they consulted a review prior to making a purchasing decision.

The reviews, however, go beyond the product. What a prospect or customer thinks of the rep herself also has bearing on buying decisions. A study from Nielsen found that customers are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. And those referred customers have a lifetime value that’s 16% higher than non-referred clients. That’s a lot of money for the rep and the business.

3) Passion

Passion might be the most underrated tool on a salesperson’s belt , especially in B2B sales. A passionate sales rep is one who’s going to stand by their customer and work twice as hard to ensure that customer succeeds.

Prospects love passionate reps because their passion is contagious, according to Erin Murphy of the University of Pennsylvania. Passion wears off on the person they are talking to, and in turn, makes them more passionate about what they are pursuing. It’s a tremendous effect.

But what does passion look like? As Mark Hunter writes, “Passion in sales is evident when the salesperson takes the time to listen to their customer and attempts to really understand what it is they are looking for. It is displayed not only in the questions that are asked, but also in the tone of voice and body language the salesperson uses and the follow-up demonstrated after the sales call.”

To demonstrate passion, go beyond the sale and check in frequently. The best sales reps know their customer’s ongoing success is just as important as their own. By touching base frequently and ensuring that everything is going smoothly, they can showcase how invested they are in their customer.

4) Ability to listen

In order to truly understand a customer’s pain, reps must listen. Buyers value salespeople who listen to them, ask the right questions, and strive to solve for their specific needs. According to Dave Warawa, listening is the most important form of influence during the sales process.

The best way to showcase you’re listening is to ask the right follow up questions. These can include:

• That situation sounds difficult; how did you get through that?
• Just so I can understand better, do you mind repeating that?
• What did you do next?

5) Honesty

Would you rather buy from a sleazy smooth-talker, or someone who’s up front about who they are and what they do? It’s a no-brainer.

The honest sales rep doesn’t try to persuade a buyer one way or the other. They simply offer information to prospects throughout the sales process, and facilitate the buyer’s decision. Your best bet is to throw away the script, and simply solve for the customer.

The modern buyer values new things, and the modern rep needs to adjust accordingly. The relationship between these two continues to evolve. For now, a rep needs to have excellent content, strong reviews, and a few key traits to be successful.

There’s been plenty of complaining, consternation and hand-wringing lately about the massive changes made to LinkedIn’s Professional Groups.

Rather than pile on with complaining about them, I want to focus in this post on how YOU can utilize the new LinkedIn Groups layout and interface to generate more business for yourself.

Sound good?

The Big Mistake People Make With LinkedIn Groups

The single biggest mistake we tend to make with LinkedIn Groups is joining ones where our contemporaries or peers are hanging out.

It’s natural, after all, if you’re a Business Coach, for example, to want to join all the Business Coach Professional Groups on LinkedIn.

There’s just one problem with that approach – your ideal clients and prospects are NOT hanging out in those Groups!

Instead, you need to go where your prospects are!

First, identify who your ideal client or customer is:

• What type of industry does he or she work in?
• What type of job title does he or she have?
• Where does he or she live? (If location matters to your business.)

Once you identify some simple, key indicators like the ones I just mentioned, you can go and join LinkedIn Groups where your ideal prospects are hanging out.

For example, if your ideal client is a Plumber, then go and join LinkedIn Professional Groups where Plumbers are gathered.

(Yes, Plumbers are on LinkedIn. And they even have their own Professional Groups!)

How to Search for LinkedIn Groups to Join

Use the LinkedIn Search bar to search by Job Title, Industry Type, Location or other criteria, and then filter the Search results by “Groups”:

Once you do that, you can then join up to 50 of those Groups where your ideal clients or customers are already congregating and talking with each other!

How to Search LinkedIn Groups for Top Prospects

Once you’ve been accepted into a LinkedIn Group, click on “Members”:

That takes you to the “Members” page. Once you get there, scroll down to make sure it loads as many members as possible into the window:

Next you can hit “Command + F” on your keyboard to pull up the feature on your Internet browser that allows you to search the current page for certain keywords or text items.

Type in the keyword (such as a job title) you’re looking for, and your browser will highlight the members in that list who have that keyword in their job title:

Open each person’s profile in a new window (just mouse over his or her name/photo area and right-click to open a new window or new tab) and then send him or her a personalized invitation to connect.

Make sure you PERSONALIZE the invitation with a script like this:

Hi [NAME] – Came across your profile in the [GROUP NAME] here on LinkedIn and would love to get connected! Cheers! – [YOUR NAME]

NOTE: That is a very basic/generic invite, but at least it’s personalized. A better approach would be to do a few seconds of research scanning his or her profile and then include something about where he or she lives, or went to school, or hobbies/interests in your invite. (See an example here.)

Send 1-on-1 Messages to LinkedIn Group Members

Also, if you are NOT already connected to a person on the list on LinkedIn, you can still send him or her a direct, 1-on-1 message for free! Just use small mailing envelope icon that will appear when you mouse over a member’s name on the list:

(Note: LinkedIn limits you to 15 or so of these 1-on-1 messages a month, so use them sparingly. I always suggest you open the person’s profile in a new window and connect with him or her first, because once you and the person are connected, you can send unlimited 1-on-1 messages for free.)

LinkedIn Groups – More to Come!

There are even more ways to generate leads using LinkedIn Groups, and I’ll share that in a future post.

For now, make sure you follow the advice in this post to:

1. Join Groups where your ideal prospects are hanging out
2. Filter the Member page to locate individual prospects you want to connect with
3. Send those prospects a personalized invitation to connect or a 1-on-1 message

Sound good? Then go get after it!

Want More Sales Strategies Tips Like This?

Download my free eBook “8 Secrets to Selling More on LinkedIn” and register for my Free Webinar on using LinkedIn to generate more sales leads, clients and revenue:

Follow-Up is vital.

Strong relationships in business and life are formed over time across multiple interactions. Yet so many people invest tons of time and energy into going out to events, meeting new people, then doing practically no follow-up at all to build the relationship from there.

Madness!

If you stopped going to half the events you go to and instead invested a fraction of the time you save into properly following up with the people you’ve already met, you’ll at least double your results. I promise.

Follow-up is crazy effective.

But to make it work you have to be systematic about it.

Here’s my guide on how to follow up effectively once you’ve met someone (for example at an event).

Preparation for Follow-Up

For your follow-up system to be effective you need to work out a few things in advance.

The first thing is to get your mindset right for follow-up.

When most people think of follow-up they think of chasing opportunities or trying to catch up with potential clients after a meeting to see if they’re ready to progress.

But we’re going to be following up in a very different way.

The key to effective follow-up is to make each interaction value-added.

---

The key to effective follow-up is to make each interaction value-added
Click To Tweet

---

If the only time you follow-up with clients and prospects is to chase them, nag them or otherwise try to get something from them, then pretty soon they’ll come to dread your calls and emails. They’ll screen you out and try to avoid you.

So rather than only ever following up to ask if a potential client is ready to look at an opportunity, progress with a proposal or any other form of nagging that runs the risk of annoying them, we’re going to follow up in ways that they find useful. That way they actually look forward to hearing from you. They open your emails and take your calls.

That means that with the vast majority of your follow-up communications you are going to be sending useful, valuable information to them. Or connecting them with people they’ll find helpful, or inviting them to events they’ll find useful, or sharing industry news.

The second thing you need to prepare in advance is your prospect categorisation.

By this I mean you need to be clear on who you want to follow up with and in what way.

Typically that will be your highest potential clients. But it may also include potential business partners or referrers. Basically anyone you believe it’s worth investing time in to build a relationship.

Rather than just deciding on whether and how you should follow up as you meet people, it’s best to define some objective criteria in advance. That way you don’t end up being too biased by subjective factors such as liking them, and you don’t end up procrastinating. You just check whether they meet your criteria and get quickly to action.

Your criteria will be unique to you, but might include the size of the business (or wealth of an individual), their fit with your niche, geographic criteria, , the level of seniority of the contact, whether they regularly hire outside help, etc.

My recommendation is to group the people you meet into different categories or levels of follow-up. There will be some really high potential clients you’ll want to follow up with frequently to make sure you’re top of mind, and other less likely prospects that you might only want to keep in touch with infrequently just to keep the relationship alive on the off chance something might come of it.

The simple system I use is to categorise prospects as A, B and C.

“A” category prospects would be your very highest potential clients or partners who meet all your key criteria and who you can envision doing a lot of business with. You might decide you want to follow up with them every 30 days, ideally. Depending on how much time you have available for marketing, and whether you typically work with a small number of high value clients or a larger number of lower value clients, you might typically have 8-12 prospects in this category at any given time.

“B” category prospects would be a good fit, but not perfect. Or perhaps you believe they have significant potential but are a long way out from being ready to buy. You might decide to follow up with them every 90 days. And you might have 20-30 prospects in this category.

“C” category prospects are those where you think there is some potential and you’d like to keep in touch, but they’re unlikely to turn into your very best potential clients or refer a lot of business to you. However, since you never know with absolute certainty how things are going to work out, it’s worth keeping in touch to some degree. With C category prospects you might follow up once a year. You can typically have very many prospects in this category, especially if you automate the follow up to some degree.

Your mode of follow-up may also vary based on the category of prospect. With A category prospects your potential returns are very high, so you essentially do what it takes to build a strong relationship. You’ll email, of course. But you might send them a book through the post, or invite them to meet for a chat over coffee. High investment, high return.

With B category prospects you’ll be emailing. Maybe using the post or phone. But your basic interactions won’t be too high cost unless you spot a specific opportunity.

With C category prospects you’re basically keeping in touch, but without a lot of individual tailoring. So you might send them your regular email newsletter (with permission). Or the occasional piece via personal email. But until you see them engaging more or you note that they may be a better fit than you originally thought (and so move them into a higher category), you tend not to invest a lot in the relationship.

Over time prospects may move between categories. After spending time nurturing a relationship with an A category prospect you may realise they’re not as good a fit as you originally thought. Or a B category prospect that looked like they wouldn’t be interested in working with you for a long time may accelerate their timeframe.

The final preparation step is to decide on the tools you’re going to use to run your system.

This is dependent to a large degree on the nature of your business. If you tend to work only with a small number of very high potential clients then your whole system may only contain a few dozen A and B category prospects, and you can usually manage by recording their details in a spreadsheet, a very simple contact management system, or even just using good old fashioned pen and paper.

If your business involved working with larger numbers of clients, you’ll need more prospects in your system and you’ll probably need some sort of Client Relationship Management (CRM) system to keep track of their details (for example, tracking the different people inside a potential client’s organisation, noting their interests and issues, recording your communications with them, and planning next steps).

My advice is to use as system that’s as simple as possible, and does as much of the work for you as possible (such as pulling the details of your contacts from your email system or Linkedin). More complex systems with lots of features might look attractive and as if those extra features could help, but usually more complexity means more difficult to use and you end up not using the system at all and so get no benefit from the advanced features.

Personally, the tool I use right now is Contactually.

Contactually is a simple CRM system that integrates with your email system and can upload data from your Linkedin Contacts. It’s main feature is that it allows you to “bucket” contacts into follow-up groups like my categorisation above, and then tracks your communications with contacts and sends you reminders if you’ve not made contact as often as you’d planned.

It’s simple, but works very effectively to make sure you really are following up as you planned.

(By the way, the link above is my affiliate link. If you sign up for the free 30 day trial of contactually using that link two things will happen. The first is I’ll get a commission on any purchases you make :). The second is that you’ll get access to my personal library of follow up emails for Contactually, including the 21 Word Email, my other Re-Ignite emails, and additional follow-up emails).

What To Do When You Meet New Prospects

Follow-up really starts when you meet new people at events, conferences, networking groups or just casually or through introductions.

If you’re going to follow up effectively you need to know what kind of things your new prospects actually care about.

Because, of course, those are the topics that if you follow-up on, they’ll pay attention to.

For example, if you’re a business coach, you might find out that your prospect is interested in selling their business. Or that they’re struggling to delegate and so don’t have enough time to work on the strategy of their business. Or maybe they have customer service problems, etc.

Knowing what their big goals, aspirations, problems and challenges are helps you know what would be a useful follow-up communication for them.

You can also add in non-work related topics to the mix. Perhaps they’re a huge fan of their local sports team. Or of opera, or a certain genre of fiction. All these give you more topics you can keep in contact with them about (provided you share that interest, of course).

The business topics they care about are the core of your follow-up. But the non-work topics can built your relationship too.

How do you find out what they care about?

By asking questions.

Effective networking isn’t about you doing all the talking and telling people about you. It’s about asking questions to find out more about your prospects so that you can follow-up effectively.

---

Networking isn’t about you doing all the talking. It’s about asking questions so you can follow-up
Click To Tweet

---

The exact questions you ask will depend on the circumstances and what you know already about your prospect. But questions that have always worked well for me in the past have included:

“What are the big challenges you see in your industry right now?” (substitute the name of their industry or sector)

“Are you working on anything interesting right now?”

“Do you have any big goals or ambitions for your business over the next year or so?”

Note: you don’t want to make your questions too threatening. In a first meeting, most people will feel they don’t know you well enough to tell you their deepest, darkest fears and problems in their business.

So notice in the first question I ask them about the challenges they see in their industry generally, rather than in their specific business. That doesn’t come across as threatening. But nine times out of ten, they’ll answer by telling you about their own specific challenges – because those are the ones they know most about.

In the other questions I ask them about their ambitions, or the interesting things they’re working on. It’s much less threatening to talk about an ambition or a goal than a problem. But if you do have a problem that’s top of mind, often you’ll mention your ambition or goal to solve it. So this kind of “phrasing on the upside” of questions can elicit responses about their problems if they want to reveal them, without it feeling like you’re being too intrusive early on.

And obviously, you don’t launch straight into detailed questioning as the first thing you say to them. You generally talk about pleasantries first, about how they got to the event, anything they’re hoping to get from it, their opinion of the speaker at the event, etc.

If the discussion goes well, you can ask them for their business card, or offer to connect on Linkedin. This sets you up for the follow-up stage.

You may also make a more specific offer depending on the conversation.

So, for example, if you end up discussing a challenge or goal or problem they have that you have specific experience with, you might offer to chat to them about your experience over a coffee. Or if it sounds like your regular email newsletter might be valuable you can offer to set them up to get it.

The key is to offer them something useful that matches with what they’re looking for, and not to try to sell them anything. It’s far too early in your relationship to offer to meet to talk about working together or to get to know them or their business.

Asking for their business card or offering to connect on Linkedin is low commitment and low risk for new contacts, but gives you the opportunity to follow-up.

Initial Follow Up

The first follow-up you do after meeting someone is critical. It’s a chance to make a great first impression and differentiate yourself from everyone else they’ve met.

Most people won’t follow up at all, so any form of follow-up puts you at an advantage. But we want to do better than that.

You first step is to decide which category (A/B/C or whatever system you decide to use) your new contact should be in and to record their details in your system. Remember to capture any useful information which will enable you to follow-up in a value added way in the future.

Then decide how you want to follow-up and with what content.

In terms of content, at minimum for an A or B category prospects you’ll want to contact them at least to say you enjoyed meeting them. A Linkedin connection request or an email can work well for that.

If you gleaned from your conversation with them some topic that you have useful information on (for example an article you’ve written) then take the chance to attach it.

You should also consider alternative ways of communicating. If you got on well, a phone call might be appropriate.

You could also send them a “nice to meet you” card through the post. While this sounds a little corny, it will make you stand out and the truth is that the recipient of the card will be a little flattered as it takes a lot more effort to hand write and post something than it does to rattle off an email. A printed PDF version of an article with an attached hand-written “thought you might find this interesting” note works well too. All you really need to do is make sure your article is nicely formatted.

If you send an article on a topic you can add a gentle call to action along the lines of:

“Thought you might find this recent article I wrote helpful. If you’d like to review some of the main points and dig into a bit more detail just drop me an email and I’d be happy to discuss over a coffee.”

Keep your description of the offer low-key and casual. Don’t make it sound like a big deal but more an informal meeting between two new friends (which is basically what it is). If you try to “sell” the offer and tell them about all the wonderful things they’ll learn in the meeting it will feel too much like you have an agenda to sell something to them and they’ll feel uncomfortable with the idea.

Ongoing Follow-Up

Your initial follow-up will get your relationship off to a good start. But, of course, building the credibility and trust needed before someone will be ready to hire you takes time and multiple contacts. That’s where your ongoing follow-up comes in.

They key is to make your follow-up activities a habit. Not just something you do when you feel like it or inspiration takes you, but something you do week in, week out.

So schedule time in your calendar every week for follow-up. It needn’t take long each week, but you must do it consistently.

My recommendation is to pick a fixed time every week where you plan and do your follow-up. Personally I do it on a Monday morning alongside my weekly planning.

Process-wise I recommend you get out your notes on each of your contacts and read through them, then spend a few moments quickly brainstorming what you can do to follow up with them in a way that adds value. Your knowledge of their big goals, aspirations, problems and challenges will tell you what they would find valuable.

Or in the absence of specifics for an individual client you can use your knowledge of what your typical clients find valuable.

I recommend that for your A category prospects and clients you do this every week. You won’t be able to think of appropriate follow-up every week, so typically you’ll end up following up monthly with each contact.

Similarly with your B category contacts, if you review their details every month you’ll end up following up roughly quarterly.

In terms of the content you follow up with, anything that you think would add value to them works. Think broadly. You could use anything from:

• Send an article (ideally, ones you’ve written) – either via email or printed
• Send a copy of a book you recommend
• Introduce them to a useful business contact
• Invite them to an event you think they’d find useful
• Recommend a tool, service, piece of software, etc.
• Share some industry news and gossip
• Just call for a more casual chat

The key to effective follow-up content is your understanding of what would be useful to your contacts. And that’s based on your initial meeting and further interactions. So whenever you send them something or have further contact with them don’t be afraid to ask more questions to find out more about what they care about and what you could use for follow up.

Wherever you can, use follow-up content that not only addresses the goals, aspirations, problems and challenges of your potential clients but that also hits some of the “know and feel” factors you identified that they need to see before being ready to work with you.

So rather than just sending a generic article on a topic of interest, use a case study of a client you worked with. Make sure the case study still gets across valuable information, but the very fact it’s based on your work with clients rather than being based on theory means it will get across the impression that you get great results for your clients.

When appropriate, link your follow-up message with an offer to take the relationship one step further, if they’re ready. So if you send an article about a topic you think they might need help with then offer to meet to discuss it with them over coffee. Or ask for their feedback and if they show a lot of interest, offer to share some case studies via GotoMeeting or a hangout. That way you mover closer and closer to discussing working with them.

Whenever you think of a new follow-up for a contact, note it down because you could re-use the exact same thing (article, invite to an event, etc.) with other similar contacts in future. Over time you can build up a database of effective follow-up items to use time and time again. You can even reach the stage where for a typical new prospect you cycle through largely the same sequence of follow-ups for each of them.

You can also “stalk” your contacts and get alerted whenever something interesting happens to them. This can prompt a whole series of value-added follow-up.

For example:

• Set up Google Alerts to inform you whenever your contact, their business, their competitors or topics they’re interested in get mentioned in the media.
• Use Newsle.com (now part of Linkedin) to update you whenever your Linkedin contacts get mentioned in the press.
• If your contacts are regular Twitter users (surprisingly many people in business are) add them to a private Twitter list so you can focus in and review only the updates from your key contacts and respond accordingly. Sometimes a simple retweet or comment is enough to keep you on their radar.
• Use Grapevine6 to suggest useful content to share based on your core topic areas.

When you do use email to contact them, use the tracking built in to Contactually or an add-on tool like Mixmax so you know whether your emails have been opened and/or clicked. The tracking isn’t 100% accurate, but it can be very helpful to know whether someone has read your previous emails when you’re figuring out how to follow-up.

Turning Follow-Up Into Clients

The next and final step in follow-up is to convert the strong relationships you’re building into paying clients.

This can happen in a number of ways.

If you’re building solid relationships with the right people, then at some point when they have an issue they need to address that they know you can help with they’ll reach out to you for an initial discussion.

But you can also prompt this process by taking opportunities to them. You need to do this in an appropriate way. If you come across as too aggressive or looking like you simply want to push sales at them then pretty soon you won’t have much of a relationship.

Sometimes a specific problem might come up in discussion with them (especially if you’ve been sharing useful content in related areas) and it will feel appropriate to ask them if they’d like to discuss that particular issue. Or you might spot a problem they’re having either by observing their organisation or it might come from other sources. Again, if your relationship is good it should be appropriate for you to raise the issue by saying something along the lines of “I was talking to John the other day and he mentioned that you have a concern over quality levels. That’s an area we do quite a bit of work in: would it be helpful for you to have a chat over some of the issues we often see?”

As ever, frame the question in terms of the value they’ll get from the discussion with you. And give them the option to say yes or no.

I find that generally, the best way to raise opportunities in a format that strengthens rather than diminishes your relationship is to offer a “High Value Briefing” on a topic. So if you spot a specific area that you think an A category prospect or client may need help with it can be worth preparing a specific value-added briefing for them on that topic. For example if you work in manufacturing and you notice they seem to be having a lot of problems with returns and complaints you might prepare a short presentation for them on best practices in quality control. For A category prospects with very high potential value you can afford to invest in a tailored briefing just for them and to offer it to them (I suggest you ask them if they’d be interested before you invest time in developing it).

For B category prospects you’ll probably develop one or more briefings you can use with multiple contacts. So they could be based round common themes you see in multiple contacts, or emerging trends in the sectors you serve, or simply some very interesting work you’ve done recently or perhaps a research project where you’ve invested in creating new content around a specific topic.

Make the offer to your potential client to deliver the briefing you think would be the most useful to them. If you’re in touch with their needs and challenges you should be able to identify an area they’re genuinely interested in. But even if it turns out it’s not a hot topic for them, you’ve not damaged your relationship in any way – you’ve simply offered them something of value for free that they don’t happen to be interested in right now. They may come back to your offer later or they may take you up on a different offer you make in a few weeks or months’ time if you spot something else of interest to them.

The key with the High Value Briefing is to make it an interactive discussion where your potential clients share their challenges so you can talk about specifics, rather than it being a generic one-way presentation from you.

For potential clients where it’s not practical to meet face to face regularly you can offer a 1-1 webinar; or a group webinar for multiple prospects.

There are two potential outcomes of a high value briefing: both good. In the best case, the topic you talk about is one they’d like to progress with and it leads directly to an opportunity together.

In the worst case, you’ll have provided helpful information to them and enhanced your relationship even if they decide not to progress with this specific opportunity right now.

Updating Your System

Your A/B/C categorisation won’t remain static. As you find out more about potential clients and contacts you may realise they’re a better prospect than you originally thought and a B category contact may become an A. Or you might find out the reverse and relegate them to a lower category.

Make sure you also update your “system” (whether you’re doing your follow up manually or via a CRM system) with new information you discover about an individual client’s goals, aspiration, problems and challenges, or anything that can help you make a connection and be helpful and interesting to them (e.g. birthdays, favourite sports teams, conversation topics). And make sure you’re also expanding your relationships into other individuals within larger organisations.

Your follow-up system should be dynamic: adjusting to changes in both your priorities and new information you find out from clients.

But What Happens When You Really Do Need To Chase Someone?

OK, so in the real world you do occasionally need to chase someone for something. Perhaps you met them and they agreed they’d call you for a further discussion, but didn’t. Or you submitted a proposal they were supposed to have given you feedback on.

Well, in those cases you have every right to just drop them a note to check up on progress. Frame it as a question rather than “hey, you haven’t got back to me” of course. I normally ask if things are “still on track”.

And I’m assuming you set up something firm during the previous interaction. Don’t make the mistake of having a meeting but not agreeing the next steps and putting firm dates in the diary: it’s so much harder to loop back and get something agreed later.

And normally for things like reviewing proposals you’d try to agree a face-to-face or on-the-phone session with them where you go through it and co-create together, rather than just sending something to them for feedback.

When you follow up to check on progress, use the medium that works best for them based on prior communications. But if you can, pick up the phone. Especially if you’ve previously met face to face or spoken on the phone. It’s too easy to ignore an email when you’re busy.

Go back to our principle of adding value with each communication too. While you’ve every right to ask someone if they’ve been through the document you gave them when you met, how much better is it if instead of just nagging, you also sent them some more useful information?

“Hi John, just emailing to check whether you had any feedback for me yet on those initial ideas for reconfiguring the project management system?

By the way, I did a presentation last week on emerging best practices for fast-tracking projects – I’ve enclosed the slides as I thought you might find them useful”.

Adding value in your chasing message completely changes the psychology. If you just nag, you can build resentment. And people simmering with resentment tend not to be in the mood to send you a status update.

But if you add value you build gratitude and they feel guilty for not responding. They’ll often send you a short update note with an apology.

If you still don’t hear back from them within a couple of days I tend to send one final chasing communication.

A lot of people keep chasing again and again, but that just conditions the other person to expect you to keep chasing and they abrogate their responsibility to get back to you, knowing you’ll keep calling.

Instead, I send a message that basically says “looks like priorities have changed and this might no longer be something urgent for you, so I’m not going to keep nagging you about it and annoy you. If I’m wrong, do get back to me and we can discuss, but otherwise I’ll ‘close the file’ on this one”.

Telling someone you’re not going to be chasing them and the ball is firmly in their court often causes them to reach out to apologise. They now know they need to do something if they want this to happen, rather than relying on you to keep on contacting them (and so letting it slip further and further down their active priority list).

Worst case: the opportunity is dead anyway and you’re not annoying them by pursuing it so they breathe a sigh of relief :)

And remember, it’s not like you’re never going to communicate with them again. If you’ve adopted the habits of good follow-up detailed in this article you should be in regular contact with anyone who’s got potential. So even if this particular opportunity has dropped for now, you’ll still be in their mind because of your ongoing value-added follow-up.

That means that should the opportunity become live again, they’ll immediately think of you, without you needing to keep chasing them about it. You’ll have strengthened your relationship through your follow-up rather than have weakened it.

Where Next?

Of course, your follow-up system is only as good as it’s implementation. It’s up to you to take the elements I’ve laid out for you and make them a reality in your business. Turn all these great ideas about following up into a habit. Something you do week-in, week-out without fail.

---

For follow-up to work, it’s got to become a habit. Something you do EVERY time.
Click To Tweet

---

So what’s your next step? How are you going to implement YOUR follow up system?

The post The (Almost) Ultimate Guide To Follow Up appeared first on How To Get Clients: Proven Strategies to Win More Clients.

Quietly, over the last three months, Sotheby's auction house has seen its stock lose one-quarter of its value.

This is, in large part, due to its high-end clients. Something is about to happen to them.

The polite way to say it is that — as Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith put it earlier this month — they are about to get more "discerning."

The frank way to say it is that they're about to get walloped by this year's choppy markets. 

Sotheby's stock price is warning of this. Yes, we're seeing record-breaking sales for some items, like a Modigliani painting sold by rival Christie's for $170 million earlier this month, but if you look below that tier the picture isn't so great. 

"The Modigliani sold last week for $170 million, but we're seeing second-tier artists and second-tier works by the best artists starting to slide down in price," billionaire hedge fund manager and art collector Ken Griffin said in a CNBC interview this week.

Cycles

For years, some have said that we are in the midst of an asset bubble spurred on by the Federal Reserve's low-interest-rate policy.

"When you keep the price of money at zero, all sorts of silly things start to happen," said Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets and global macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management at a Bloomberg conference in October.

As that policy changes, that bubble will pop. And a recession is due anyway. 

 "We've experienced a global recession once every seven to eight years over the last 50 years," Sharma said. "The last time we had that was '07-'08, but that was an extreme outcome. This global expansion is in its seventh year, so we have to be careful."

Kindly see yourselves out 

Sotheby's, which reported a $17.9 million net loss for the third quarter, is preparing for a slump in some ways.

Last week the company said it will offer its employees "voluntary separation incentive programs" in certain regions. In other words, it will pay its employees to leave. 

But, in other ways, it's actually taking on more risk even as odds for a downturn rise. 

The buyout offer above was not extended to employees in Sotheby's financing unit. This is a part of the business that has exploded since hedge fund activist investors like Third Point's Dan Loeb and Marcato Capital's Mick McGuire got involved with Sotheby's, and Smith took over as the company's CEO.

It's not nearly as big as the auction segment of the business, but the margins are better.

According to Moody's, Sotheby's has more than doubled its borrowing capacity in order to support the finance segment. This, the ratings agency says, has the potential to double Sotheby's loan portfolio to $1.3 billion.

"There is a risk that to drive this stronger growth for its lending portfolio, Sotheby’s could choose to increase the loan-to-value it tolerates or extend credit to individuals with a more risky credit profile," Moody's said. "In fact, Sotheby’s revolving credit facility now allows it to have a loan to value (LTV) of up to 60%, compared to 50% previously. This could potentially result in an erosion in the collateral value cushion during the next cyclical downturn or prompt an increase in the level of its loan losses."

Sotheby's said in government documents that "in rare circumstances, loans are also made at an initial LTV ratio higher than 60%."

Moody's also points out that since Sotheby's is very much in the relationship-building business, it's very likely that it will continue to extend credit to people through a downturn.

That this downturn is coming is still only a possibility, not a certainty, of course. But Sotheby's own shares are a warning sign.

Short seller Jim Chanos shared this chart proving that point with Business Insider last year.

If you buy this, you may also buy that Sotheby's has taken on more risk just as we're about to head into a downturn that will rough up even some of the wealthiest people on the planet.

Rough, of course, being a relative term.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 'The Art Of War' holds the keys to success on Wall Street

The 5 Top Customer Metrics You Need To Track written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Metrics are the lifeblood of almost every successful business. Understanding who your customers are, what they need and how you can serve them is the key not just to growing a business, but keeping the clients you have happy.

Fortunately, the Internet makes collecting metrics remarkably simple. From web analytics to financial tools, it’s possible to analyze your current and potential clients at every step. However, this deluge of data can be overwhelming. While tools can and will collect just about every available detail, not all of the information is useful.

Here are 5 customer metrics that your business should definitely track if you want to grow your business and improve your customers’ experience. I believe these 5 metrics are the most important ones for successful learning:

1. The Funnel

With customer acquisition, every business has a new customer “funnel”, a process that customers go through to sign up. With most funnels, a large number of customers start at the first step (such as visit a site) and fewer complete each subsequent step.  It’s important to track how many potential customers pass through each part of the funnel to see where the major choke points are. Are many customers asking for a free trial but not continuing? Are many landing on a web page but not completing the needed form?

Finding the choke points in your funnel can help convert more customers and lead to a much smoother acquisition process. You can measure funnels with Mixpannel, clicktale, appsee, Google analytics, Heap and many more.

2. Cost Per Acquisition

Marketing is one of the largest expenses for many small businesses. However, not all marketing is created equal and a lot of it can simply take your money without any appreciable benefit.

The easiest way to determine what works and what doesn’t is to perform a cost per acquisition analysis. Simply add up how much you spend on marketing in a month and divide it by the number of new customers you acquire. If that number is greater than the amount you expect to receive from a customer, you are losing money on your marketing.

Once you’ve done that, it’s important to drill down further and see what the cost per acquisition of each campaign is so you can hone your efforts and lower your marketing costs. There are also online calculators that allow you to measure the CPA of your ads.

3. Lifetime Value

The lifetime value of a customer is simply how much you expect to earn from the customer over the course of their time with you. Here is a nice infographic that explains it.

For a subscription-based service, this is simply the average monthly revenue multiplied by the average subscription length. For a sales-oriented business, it would be the average sale multiplied by the average number of sales.

Not only is this useful for comparing to your cost per acquisition, but it is a useful metric by itself as it showcases ways to grow this value. Whether it’s finding ways to keep customers longer or simply getting more revenue from them while they are with you.

4. Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction can be difficult to track, but it is a crucial step as satisfaction not only determines how long customers are with you and how much they spend, but how likely they are to recommend you.

Surveys and polls are the easiest way to collect satisfaction metrics through focus group. One-on-one interviews can help drill down to discover specific issues that you can improve. There are a few more ways, but you should also try to be creative with the way you track the customer satisfaction.

5. Churn

Churn is simply the number percentage of customers who leave during a certain period of time. It’s calculated by looking at the customers you have at the start of a period and seeing what percentage are not there at the end of it.

Obviously you want a low churn number, but you definitely want one that’s lower than the number of incoming customers. There are a few ways to improve your churn (feedback, testing and more).

Churn can also signal other problems. For example, if you have a high churn but low satisfaction, it could be a sign a competitor is luring customers away.

Conclusions

When it comes to metrics, it’s easy to be overwhelmed but by focusing on the ones that matter most, you can quickly parse what’s important and provide your customers, both potential and current, the best experience possible, so you can increase your revenues.

Simply put, that’s what metrics are about, finding ways to improve your business.

 

This post was written by Lior Levin who works for ily and also serves as a marketing consultant for rss api company called Superfeedr.

 

TORONTO – The federal Competition Bureau wants to let taxi companies be more like Uber.

In a report released Thursday, competition commissioner John Pecman said local and provincial governments should remove restrictions on the number of taxi licences they grant to drivers, allow people anywhere to hail rides from the curb and offer surge pricing, which Uber now uses to charge more at times when there is greater demand.

Canadians spent almost $1.2 billion on taxis last year. A report prepared by Ottawa’s local authorities in October found Uber prices average around 36 per cent less than a comparable cab fare.

The bureau says that has created an uneven playing field, and that cities and provinces should balance the scales by easing rules on taxis rather than looking to increase regulations.

Kristine Hubbard, operations manager of Toronto-based Beck Taxi, said governments shouldn’t throw out all of the existing regulations because of one company.

“If regulation is what we’re talking about in the future, whether relaxed or not, if the city isn’t capable of enforcing its own regulations then we have bigger problems than what is outlined in this report,” she said.

Hubbard said Beck is open to new ideas, such as demand-based payment models. She said that no matter what the new rules were, Beck Taxi and Uber should be treated the same.

“The level playing field is something that’s a requirement,” she said.

Last month, Toronto Mayor John Tory said that while Uber is operating outside legislation, it would be impractical to devote the police and bylaw attention necessary to shut it down entirely.

Still, Toronto has joined other cities including Ottawa in issuing fines against Uber drivers. Montreal has done the same and in some cases gone further, seizing vehicles.

In Calgary, Uber has suspended its service after a judge approved a temporary injunction against it last week.

Cities control taxi licensing and the number of taxi permits, and in some areas the value of a so-called taxi plate has reached six digits.

The Competition Bureau report found that the cost of a single taxi plate in Toronto in 2012 was as high as $360,000.

The bureau also recommended that, among other changes, regulators let additional qualified drivers work for hire and provide incentives for drivers to operate accessible vehicles in areas where consumers are underserved.

The report’s recommendations aren’t binding.

City of Toronto spokesman Mark Sraga said in an email that the city will include the Competition Bureau’s report in its ongoing review of its taxi and transportation policies, which is expected to produce an initial report in the spring.

The post Competition Bureau calls for relaxing of taxi rules in face of Uber competition appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

Most organizations want to hire employees to perform a set of tasks. So they advertise the available job, offer a competitive compensation package, and a queue forms. The queue is made up of people who need money to pay for their living expenses, such as food and rent. In a model like this, the job is just a means to an end.

When a new employee is hired under this typical scenario and shows up the first day, the company tells her what work needs to be done and shows her how to act. This approach to employment allows leaders to predict and control what will come out of the job, at least in the short term. But this approach doesn’t produce the most productive, innovative work environment.

Over the last decade, we have been conducting field research on how dozens of companies in a range of industries (including entertainment, software, financial services, manufacturing, retail, consulting, and business process outsourcing) orient new employees. We have found that most organizations’ entry, or “onboarding,” processes share a common goal: to inculcate the organizational culture and teach new employees the job requirements. But we also identified a very different approach that encourages employees to be authentic and express themselves on the job. It isn’t more expensive than traditional approaches, but it does require leaders to adopt a new mindset.

One of the chief features of being human is our longing for opportunities to be valued as our authentic selves. Being valued for who we truly are makes us feel alive. We’ve found that when people gain insight into their unique perspectives and strengths and can use them at work, their work engagement increases — their work is no longer just a means to the end. Most organizations do not tap this power source and, as a result, do not get the best out of their employees.

Insight Center

Our recent research has focused on new hires and how firms can use the onboarding process to encourage authentic self-expression. Entering an organization offers people a rare chance to make a fresh start in a new social setting. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to negotiate one’s identity with new colleagues. And our research shows that it can be powerful, motivating, and even addictive to become known by others as the person you are when you are at your authentic best.

Consider one of the organizations we studied, Wipro BPO, an India-based global leader in the business-process-outsourcing industry. Wipro provides telephone and chat support for its global clients’ customers, who typically are inquiring about services or products (e.g., buying an airline ticket or configuring a printer).

In this industry, organizations routinely experience annual turnover rates ranging from 50% to 70%. Wipro found that too many employees were burning out and quitting only a few months into the job. The job can be stressful not only because it involves helping frustrated customers with their problems but also because Indian call-center employees are often expected to “de-Indianize” many elements of their behavior, such as adopting a Western accent and attitude.

As in many other companies, Wipro’s traditional entry process was tightly centered on teaching the company culture and necessary job behaviors to new employees. In 2011, with 605 new Wipro employees across three different operations centers as our participants, we conducted a field experiment testing whether an authentic approach would lead to greater performance and retention than the traditional entry approach. We randomly assigned incoming groups of employees to one of three conditions, which offered newcomers a different first-day interaction. The onboarding process was identical after the first day.

Our individual-identity condition focused on newcomers’ unique perspectives and strengths and how they could bring them to the job.

In the one-hour session:

1. A senior leader spent 15 minutes discussing how working at Wipro would give newcomers the opportunity to express themselves and create individual opportunities.
2. Newcomers performed a 15-minute individual problem-solving exercise.
3. Newcomers spent 15 minutes reflecting on the decisions they made in the problem-solving exercise and on how to apply their strengths to the job.
4. Newcomers spent 15 minutes introducing themselves and their decisions to the group.
5. Newcomers were given a badge and fleece sweatshirt with their own names on both of them.

In the organizational-identity condition, groups started with the assumption that newcomers would perform best when they developed pride in their organizational affiliation and accepted the organization’s norms and values.

In a one-hour session:

1. A senior leader spent 15 minutes discussing Wipro’s values and why Wipro is an outstanding organization.
2. A star performer spent 15 minutes doing the same.
3. Newcomers spent 15 minutes reflecting on what they heard (e.g., What did you hear about Wipro that makes you proud to be part of the organization?).
4. Newcomers spent 15 minutes discussing their answers within their group.
5. Newcomers were given a badge and fleece sweatshirt with the company’s name on both of them.

Those in the control group went through Wipro’s traditional onboarding process, which focused primarily on skills training and general firm awareness.

Our results showed that socialization focused on individuals’ authentic identity led to greater customer satisfaction and over 33% greater retention during the first six months on the job, as compared to both organizational socialization and Wipro’s traditional approach.

We replicated these effects in other settings, including controlled lab experiments, and found that shaping entry processes around individual, rather than organizational, identity has beneficial effects on employees’ attitudes at work, such as their engagement and job satisfaction, and also reduces turnover and enhances performance.

Authentic self-expression isn’t just important because it makes us feel better: When new hires introduce their authentic selves to their organization, both they and their employer perform better. Our research shows that when employees enter into relationships with others who recognize and verify their authentic self-views, they are more likely to share information and collaborate with colleagues, resulting in greater productivity. And when employees feel they can bring both their heads and their hearts to work, innovation and creativity thrive, and customers notice that employees authentically care about them.

Our authenticity perspective encourages newcomers to not only maintain their unique values, perspectives, and strengths but also to use their strengths to solve organizational problems. By making authenticity a core value from the start of employment, organizations may not only inspire greater commitment and effort but also strategically allow for the type of “positive deviance” that keeps them fresh and agile.

5 Tips for Naming a New Business

Fido really captures that personality of your loving pet, in fact, Fido is the perfect name because it has a direct meaning to you and your family–and that’s all that matters. However, a business name has a much wider audience to impress, and many more obstacles to avoid.

The 50,000 other dogs named Fido won’t sue the next newborn beagle for being named Fido. But, a business that chooses a name without screening for trademark issues, or without vetting possible domain names, will certainly run into problems.

A business name is the starting point of a brand, and choosing a lousy name could reap infinite consequences. Developing a name for your business is a difficult but important task and it can be done right. This article points out five ways you can improve your chances of developing a successful business name.

Observe trends

Consider how other new companies are naming; take notice of the type and construction of names they are using. Don’t take these observations as a sure way to name your own company, but rather, consider reasons that these trends are occurring.

For example, 41 percent of recent startups have invented names; while some of these names standout and break industry barriers, others are confusing or seem like a form of copycatting. So, instead of automatically thinking that you need to invent a name, consider the practical reasons behind inventing a company name.

Invented names are easier to trademark, make for easier acquisition of exact match dot-com domain names, and provide a blank slate for unique branding. On the other hand, invented names are meaningless initially and might not portray the right brand positioning for your business.

Another trend is that names are getting shorter; companies are combining words, blending words, or using one to two word names. A shorter name can sound better linguistically and roll off the tongue easier, it can also serve better for memory purposes–an important component for online search. Observing this trend helps to understand that a company with a five-word name is not practical for today’s digital culture.

It’s important to realize why new businesses are a part of certain trends and if some trends are for sensible reasons or if some are clear copycat trends that should be avoided.

Think about the future

If your company sells refurbished chairs and thus, your name is Secondhand Chairs, what happens when you want to expand into selling new chairs? Or what happens when you want to expand into selling beds, clothes, or bikes? If there is any potential for growth, it is vital that you don’t name your company based on a narrowly defined product that you sell. Instead, think about the larger picture and the future goals of the company.

A real example of a flexible but recognizable name is Chairish, a company that provides a platform for users to sell their secondhand or vintage furniture to other buyers. The name hints that chairs and other pieces of furniture are a part of their inventory but it also doesn’t define them as a secondhand hand furniture seller. The name is reminiscent of cherishing and holding something near to your heart; it gives off a positive feeling of remembrance while also allowing for expansion beyond selling furniture.

A name should allow for loftier ideas in the future instead of cornering a company based on their first product or service. Think about the potential of your company and find a name that can accommodate future growth.

Define what makes your company different

You might think your business is different because you are innovative, customer service oriented, and bring new ideas into an industry. But, if you have a subpar name that is like every other ‘new’ and ‘unique’ company name in your industry, you will only sound like a broken record of every other newly established company.

You created your new business for a feasible reason and your company name should reflect that. How can a name broadcast what makes your company different from the competition?

For instance, take the new dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, instead of naming the platform based on some cheesy synonym of match or harmony, they chose a name that relays a different experience. The name doesn’t insinuate that every date will be the perfect match but rather relays a more casual environment for meeting new people. The name hints at the experience of finding two things that go really well together while also being more approachable than other dating app brands.

A good name goes beyond the obvious description of a company and reveals the elements that make a company unique. Determine what makes your company different and find how you can portray that experience through your name.

Don’t use a name generator

Name generators are common for finding an available domain name. These generators are built to smash and combine words into a name that passes a domain check. But, these generators are machines and have no way of actually naming for human interactions. They are solely naming for a query with no sense of how the name will actually sound, how the name will actually look in a logo, or how an audience will feel about the name.

Moreover, these generators are by no means checking for cultural meanings of a name, nor are they screening for possible trademark issues. This can have unbelievable ramifications in the future, possibly resulting in the need for a rename.

Be creative and persistent

Don’t scramble together a list of ten names and ask your three closest friends which one sounds the best. Beyond being a flawed, biased strategy; odds are that at least nine, if not all ten names, will have some sort of trademark or domain issue. Instead, dig deeper and come up with every possible name that could cover the skillset and ideals behind your company–think beyond the normal and overused. Diligence combined with ingenuity should produce a few strong, unique name possibilities.

Creativity is hard for many and creativity in suitable numbers is even harder. If you’re not able to come up with a sufficient amount of creative ideas, there are experts that can always help. Professional naming and branding companies are paid to be creative and persistent. Not only can they help you find numerous, viable names, they can also help with assuring a name clears trademark and domain obstacles.

 

There is so much that goes into developing a successful name. If you’re tempted to spend minimal time and choose the third name that comes to mind, it would be worthwhile to find a naming agency to help. However, if you’re committed to the process and to the challenge of developing a great name, it can be done. Just remember, naming a business takes more time and evaluation than it took to name your dog.

Is ReMarketing the Secret Weapon of the Online Retailer?

Summary: Remarketing is an ideal way to entice consumers back to a brand to ensure a sale. I explore the best bits to help you make an informed decision about if it’s right for your marketing campaign.

Ecommerce marketing is a term that confuses many, originally launched by Google, some people believe that it still relates only to services Google offer. In fact it has now become more widespread and everyone is talking about remarketing, the biggest brands are giving it a go and it’s bringing in incredible ROI results.

How it Works

Remarketing is an invaluable strategy for bringing customers back to an abandoned cart, increasing consumer loyalty, gaining referrals and recommendations and making your eCommerce site the only one they’ll use for a certain product or service. Working across a whole range of mediums it speaks to your demographic in a way that seems completely bespoke, adding a personalised touch.

Consider this:

Statistics were revealed earlier this year that claimed over 70% of shoppers abandon their baskets before whipping out their card. This isn’t the interesting part, as a retailer you already understand this, it’s a big problem and one many have tried to solve even before remarketing.

The interesting part is the reason behind the abandonment.

The survey * interviewed thousands of shoppers and discovered that people adore the convenience of shopping online but when they get to the checkout they miss the human interaction. It’s simple psychology.

Basically a shopper adores your products, fills their basket and then has a little time to think. They aren’t greeted with a smile as they hand over the card, they don’t leave carrying a bag full of their new purchases and they don’t receive any thanks for spending their hard earned cash. It’s all quite generic, it’s all very impersonal and it really is a bit boring.

Shoppers no longer window shop, they skip up and down your virtual aisles filling their baskets with virtual items, virtually checking out but not completely!

We are after all a nation of “want it, have it, need it, give it to me,” and the hypocrisy around online shopping shows this. We want convenience, we want items delivered direct, we want to order from our living room but we do reminisce about the corner shop where we were greeted with a smile as the bell on the door tinkled even if we only had ten pence to spend.

 It’s Not Impossible to Conquer Abandonment

It seems like a problem that’s insurmountable, yet remarketing makes sure you can conquer it. Remarketing brings your customers back from the brink with a range of techniques that build on the information you have. This delivers offers, promotions, greetings and recommendations that seem bespoke to your customer. Bingo, you’ve made them feel special, you’ve shown that you’ve noticed their presence and now you’re letting them know that you value the money and time they spend in your online store. You’ve basically given a hug across the internet and welcomed them in with a smile that shows you care. And it works!

ReMarketing vs. ReTargeting What’s the Difference?

This is where it becomes complicated so let’s make it simple.

ReMarketing uses information from customers that you have connected with via your website. For instance those that have an account, have signed up to a newsletter or have left their details at one time. By doing this they can use techniques that speak directly to the consumer as if personally such as emails and offers that will be effective based on their buyer behaviour.

ReTargeting focuses on the consumer you’ve not yet connected with, the first timer who’s been tempted to your site but not stayed long enough to complete a purchase. This is done mainly through banner advertisements on third party sites so as the customer clicks around the web, they see a banner (usually displaying items that caught their eye in the first place) wherever they go.

Both take a lot of planning, a little bit of genius and a lot of code!

The Big Benefits of ReMarketing

 As ReMarketing targets customers that have already spent money with you, the success rate is higher. Shoppers usually have an account already so only a few clicks are needed to complete a purchase.

Remarketing not only increases sales, it increases engagement which leads to increased customer loyalty. You will be well aware that loyalty is the buzz word of the ecommerce big brands right now.

In fact giants such as Waitrose place so much emphasis on loyalty that much of their campaign is targeted towards this as they understand the value of a returning customer, while keeping the consumer happy so a reputation is maintained.

I recently asked the CEO of BrandStreet, Kevin Robinson, if he thought consumer loyalty was important for the future, he told me, “We focus on the user journey throughout the APP as the first thing we do is gain the permission of the user. This immediately puts us on the right footing as when our brands connect in real time with the user, it is expected and so there’s a warm welcome. Loyalty is important, customers have choice now and they don’t take kindly to their busy lives being interrupted by messages they have no interest in. If a customer receives a message that benefits them at the right time, from a brand they trust, they will shop again.”

 This is exactly what remarketing does.

Key ReMarketing Strategies

 Remarketing allows you to use one or a variety of techniques to bring your buyers back. It’s more personalised and more focused ensuring it brings better results.

Here are some of the main strategies adopted by major retailers to ensure that customer returns, you will have noticed some yourself.

Follow Up Emails from Abandoned Carts

 There are many reasons a shopper abandons a cart and a personal email can be just the job to tempt them back to shop.

If they abandoned the cart as they felt the service was too impersonal, you can ensure the email includes their name and items they love so they feel as if you’re speaking directly to them.

If a cart was abandoned due to an interruption or through forgetfulness, the email will cheerily tempt them back so they can finish what they started.

There are tools to use to make sure the emails target the right people with the message that brings them back, such as a plug in for a Magento framework  or a custom built solution that sends automatic reminder emails that are tailored to the individual.

ReMarketing Adverts

 Remarketing adverts can be viewed with suspicion. They can scare the paranoid as they do seem to be like Big Brother watching over the internet usage of a shopper. In fact it’s a complex code made simple to use by Google Adwords remarketing. Use this tool and you’ll see that the shopper who left before saying goodbye suddenly find that the products they were tempted to buy are floating around the screen everywhere they go.

It’s clever, it’s effective, it certainly increases brand recognition and it does work. The aim is to put those adverts in front of the shopper’s eyes when they are in the frame of mind to buy. Quite simply, if you show someone a message long enough, they’ll eventually respond if only to make you go away!

It doesn’t have the personal feel of an email but it still shows you care.

Vouchers

Vouchers are the currency of the internet right now and the reason voucher sites are flourishing. In these tough economic times everyone loves a bargain and offering a personal one can ensure you get that sale.

Basically the more personal you can make your offer the better. For instance there’s little point offering 2 for 1 on nose hair trimmers if your shopper was a Miss World wannabe. Similarly, a voucher that offers money off lingerie could be quite insulting to a pensioner. This is why it is crucial to understand the customer, their age, location, and even their lifestyle. When it’s done correctly it’s an incredible tool that’s highly powerful. You will gain a loyal customer, they will tell their friends about the bargain they were offered on your site and your reputation will be enhanced.

Exclusives

 This follows the same principles as vouchers, offer items that customers think they are receiving as a reward for shopping with you, items that others don’t have access to, or can’t buy at the price you’re offering. This makes the shopper feel special and part of a secret club where they are thanked personally for their presence in your online store. To generate the best exclusive offers you need solid analytics in order to fully understand your demographic.

Recommendations

 It is proven that recommendations are the most powerful way to sell a product online, as eCommerce is notoriously impersonal, shoppers will research recommendations of others before deciding to buy. Consumers place high importance in the opinions of those that have tried the product before and so a good recommendation can make the different between a sale and a fail.

You can target your shoppers by placing the recommendations for products they’ve showed interest in in front of their faces, via email or adverts, if they see that others champion the product you’ll remove any doubts they had that stopped them from buying.

A Clever Combination

 The bonus of remarketing is that it encompasses so many different strategies that you don’t have to settle for one. Clever combinations can double your selling power and bring you a better return. For example, if you combine the follow up email from abandoned carts with a voucher that offers 15% off if only they’ll checkout today, you have a powerful message that’s difficult to resist.

Calls to Action

 As with any marketing campaign you must never forget the reason behind it. It’s amazing how many will follow up with an email or voucher yet leave crucial information out.

Ensure your remarketing has clear calls to action, links that take the consumer directly to where they want to be and information that persuades them to check out this time.

There’s no denying the effectiveness of reMarketing, especially when campaigns are custom built. It’s an incredible way to boost sales, increase exposure, raise reputations and potentially make your brand a household name. We help many eCommerce websites make the most of their remarketing ensuring they get an incredible return for their investment boosting profits in the short and long term.

Are you trying to make sales online? Are you wondering if you should go with the “hard sell” or the “soft sell?” You know the difference. Hard sell is “in your face, buy now.” Soft sell is “Let me understand your problem and see if what I sell solves it.”

Often, a hard sell comes across as a sleazy “get rich quick” scheme, and people resist it because it’s “in your face.” A soft sell, on the other hand, seems more like someone taking you by the hand and gently guiding you in the direction of a good purchase. Something that would benefit you. So, which approach should you take in your sales writing? Should you go with a hard sell or a soft sell?

The fact is, whether you go with the hard sell or the soft sell is very subjective. And how well it succeeds will depend largely on what you’re selling and how skilled you are as a writer. One person, for instance, might be able to do a hard sell very effectively, if he or she has the right personality. Another might blow it completely.

When the hard sell works

Frankly, there are some products that lend themselves to the “hard sell.” I hate to say this about my fellow human beings, but if you’re selling an item that relates to a person’s ego, you’ll probably discover that a lot of product moves via the hard sell. If you have a magic pill that’s going to empower people to lose five pounds a week, your best prospects will respond to hard sales writing.

Are you down-to-earth, easy to get along with and charismatic? Do you want to start your prospects down a path that will lead to additional sales, such as upgrades? If this describes you, a different approach will deliver your most effective sales writing. You don’t have to take the “hard sales” approach; you have to believe in your product and be comfortable with promoting it. Yet if you’re not all that comfortable asking people to buy, chances are you won’t make much money.

You still have to close sales.

You can try following other people who have done well selling online, but if your style of marketing doesn’t match theirs, then you’re going to be disappointed. Just copying what the other guy does isn’t necessarily going to lead you in the direction of success. You have to find your own voice.

Trust and soft(er) sales

Of course, it’s natural to try to emulate what successful salespeople do, but it might not always work. You might have seen people who have made phenomenal amounts of sales by doing nothing more than blogging, which is, of course, what you’re probably trying to do. These people don’t even have to sell at all – they just write, talk about products, and generate sales. The more they talk about their products, the more sales they generate.

So how are they doing that? It’s a pretty simple principle. They’ve built trust, and now all they have to do is sit back and wait for the sales to come in. Here’s the thing – you can sell a lot and build trust, or you can build trust and sell a lot. If you’re new to the game, you have to build trust first; then you sell more. Then you build more trust. Eventually, you create your niche. The more you sell, the more trust you build, and the more trust you build, the more you sell.

By the way, although I’m using the word “trust” here, a major component of that trust is authority. Let’s say that trust is recognizing authority in a person you want to have a relationship with. In this case, that relationship revolves around sales.

And here’s a tip if you’re just starting out: Work on building an online community. Determine the area where you want your sales to come from eventually, and start building up a following. Create a forum. Establish a blog. Publish an ebook. Build an email list. Gather social media followers.

Once you have a community that trusts you, then you can begin to turn the corner and start selling items that appeal to your community. When you do this, keep your community in the loop. Get their thoughts on your products and use them to fine tune what you sell.

You’ll also discover that when you get to this point, you have established a “voice” that leads to effective sales writing in your niche.