Condé Nast Traveler recently published its annual Readers' Choice Awards, which included the anticipated "30 best cities in the world" list. 

The results were based on millions of ratings and thousands of comments from over 128,000 travelers.

This year, Budapest, Hungary, ranked as the second-best city in the world, right below Florence, Italy.

We decided to take a deep dive into Hungary's capital city, which is known for its rich culture, world-class spas, bustling markets, and gorgeous architecture. 

Keep scrolling to for a glimpse of the best things to see, do, and eat in Budapest. 

 

SEE ALSO: 30 cities you have to visit at least once, according to travelers

FOLLOW US: BI Life is on Twitter

The Danube River splits Budapest in half: Buda is on the west and Pest on the east. Buda is more residential and Pest is more urban.

The iconic Széchenyi Chain Bridge connects Buda and Pest. You can walk or bike across the bridge, which offers incredible city views.

Buda's Castle Hill is a must-see. Dating back to the 13th century, the Unesco World Heritage Site's cobblestone streets are best explored by foot.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Many business managers today use a combination of intuition, experience and some level of analytics to make strategic and tactical business decisions. However, often times that balance between science and intuition is disproportionally skewed towards intuition. This is mostly because the business data is often fragmented across many systems and formats.

Integrating big data analytics into your sales process and performance management can enable you and your team to skew the balance heavily in favor of using science over intuition. You can base decisions on facts, patterns and relationships that exist in your customer behavior rather than half facts gut feelings. Here are four ways your business can gain a competitive advantage by integrating big data analytics into your CRM and sales process.

1. Insight into the Customer-Facing Operations.

Many CRM projects are launched to provide transparency, increase the effectiveness, and drive down the operational costs of sales, service and marketing. Advanced analytics will provide proof of the ROI and effectiveness of the sales, service and marketing operations. For example, understanding the sales and marketing costs involved in acquiring new clients or the service costs involved in retaining customers.

2. Predictive Sales Forecasting.

Accurate forecasting is both a science and an art. There are a lot of patterns, relationships and personal subjectivity that has to be taken into account to get an accurate forecast. Predictive algorithms convert the personal subjectivity of sales reps, account for any seasonality or other factors that have an impact and produce a completely objective, fact-based forecast.

3. Decision Support.

A comprehensive analysis on all deals can reveal tactics or unique combinations of activities that are proven to work. Pushing for a demo before trial or vice versa, sending customer success stories early on and involving an executive during negotiations can make a win/loss difference. This analysis can be automated and the advice for sales reps can be delivered in real time and contextualized in the CRM to provide effective decision support.

4. Better Customer Understanding.

Your clients and prospects are sharing a ton of valuable information about your products and services, pricing and licensing, competitors, etc. However, the information is often spread around across systems and different formats. Email and support communication, RFPs, survey responses, interviews and meeting notes and so on. There’s a lot of gold there but it’s really hard to extract at scale. Having the ability to gather and analyze this vital information can tell you all you need to know about what your company should do next to keep growing.

Most businesses have lots of data about their operations, what their clients think and say about products, services, pricing, and even their competitors. That wasn’t the case some 10-15 years ago when the struggle was to implement systems to capture this data. The next revolution will not be about growing systems of record but about making sense of all the data to support decisions, measure operational effectiveness and navigate the business in the right direction. The businesses that do not adapt to this changing environment will struggle and eventually fail.

Editor’s note: Martin and his team can be found at gtmhub.com.

The post 4 Ways Big Data Can Improve Analytics & Performance Management appeared first on Sales Hacker.

LinkedIn, the former dark horse of social media, has not only grown past Twitter, but is a serious publishing platform in its own right. Let’s see what LinkedIn reported for its Q3 earnings.

Growth

LinkedIn’s membership growth has remained strong despite passing the 350 million monthly active users mark earlier this year:

Above, we see sustained 4% quarter over quarter growth, indicating a still-healthy social network. Of interest, however, is this statistic about mobile users:

Contrary to other major social networks, a surprisingly small portion of LinkedIn’s user base are using the service from mobile devices, hitting 13.89% this quarter. This is an outlier; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have significant majorities of members using their respective services from mobile devices.

Why? Part of the reason may be LinkedIn’s legacy as a career-focused portal. Many talent solutions and applicant tracking systems are poorly designed for mobile devices; if you’ve ever tried to apply for a job from your smartphone, you know just how cumbersome the process can be. LinkedIn members still frequent the service for career purposes; year over year, they have quadrupled the number of jobs available. Thus, job seekers may likely be doing career searches from their desktop computers, affecting LinkedIn’s mobile usage.

Revenue

Overall, LinkedIn’s financial performance continues to improve, nearing the $2 revenue per user mark:

This is good news for LinkedIn; however, there was a surprise in there for those of us who use their marketing solutions:

Above, we see that Marketing Solutions – which includes their advertising systems, sales systems, and lead acceleration services – was flat. While Q3 has not historically been the strongest quarter for their marketing revenue, it’s been especially weak. This is aligned with CEO Jeff Weiner’s previous comments about significant revenue challenges from PPC advertising and the real-time buying ad market.

Looking Ahead: What It Means for Marketers and PR Pros

LinkedIn is making significant investments to close the gap in its mobile experience, beginning with a revamp of its mobile messaging experience. Expect to leverage these improvements for 1:1 outreach and communication with other members on LinkedIn. Further simplification is expected to roll out broadly in November 2015.

Mr. Weiner also remarked that Sponsored Updates have doubled their value, a 100% increase year over year in revenue. For marketers, that means the pricing of Sponsored Updates is significantly more competitive than it has been in the past. Expect to pay more or get lesser results with the same budget as competition for Sponsored Updates grows more fierce.

We also anticipate accelerated rollouts of LinkedIn Elevate (the employee advocacy service) and Social Selling Index. The former could provide stiff competition for companies such as GaggleAMP and Dynamic Signal, especially if a large portion of your employee base is active on LinkedIn. The latter, if made available via API, could provide a differentiated competitor to influence scores provided by companies like Klout, Kred, FollowerWonk, and PeerIndex. Stay tuned; if the Social Selling Index does become programmatically available, PR professionals will want to incorporate it into their influencer identification and scoring models.

What should marketers and communicators do now? Be active on LinkedIn, especially with regard to its publishing platform. Consider syndicating career and productivity blog posts to LinkedIn’s platform (as well as Medium and Facebook Notes) to determine whether your audience is more interested in reading your content there. While you wait for Elevate, consider using an existing employee advocacy program to leverage the personal social network reach of your employees as well.

While ads account for the bulk of revenue at most publishers, music streaming sites, and on apps, the subscription model is gaining traction.

The business model allows digital media companies to provide a premium experience that offers more than the basic, often ad-supported service level.

Subscriptions are enjoying a new prominence as a revenue model for digital content and apps. Internet companies are exploiting the opportunity to boost ARPU (average revenue per user), helped along by recurring payments from a subscriber base.

In this exclusive report from BI Intelligence we look at how prominent players in five separate categories have tried to build a subscription-based revenue stream alongside ad-based businesses: the categories are video, music, news publishing, social networks/messaging, and dating apps.

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Full-Access Trial »

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Most companies operate on a "freemium model." Subscriptions typically operate alongside an advertising business.
• Success in freemium boils down to offering a core audience exclusive value that can only be accessed beyond a paywall. The key is to target the most loyal audiences, and sell them on an expanded offering — bundles of features or content — that they find irresistible.
• Some publishers and apps have had mixed results with subscriptions, and vary in terms of how hard they have pushed them. Part of the problem is that ad-dependent companies are worried about limiting audience if they pack away too much value into a subscription tier. 
• The proportion of paying subscribers within the total user base varies considerably across digital media industries. Each category is obviously different, and won't face the same challenges and opportunities in dialing up the percentage of subscribers and subscription revenue. Here are some of the proportions of subscribers in apps' user bases: Spotify (25%), WhatsApp (21%), Pandora (5%), Match Group (5%), The New York Times (3%), and LinkedIn (2%). 

In full, the report: 

• Analyzes the most common subscription-based digital media revenue models
• Explores the drivers that allows some subscription or freemium business models to succeed  
• Explains the revenue mix and business opportunities in several key digital media industries
• Outlines companies that have succeeded with  subscription-based business models

To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a full-access 14-day trial here. Full-access members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Forget Kim Kardashian — the 'butt selfie' queen of Instagram is a 21-year-old from Long Island

(Photo: Michael Matti)

The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
– Lin Yutang

Discipline equals freedom.
– Jocko Willink

This post will attempt to teach you how to say “no” when it matters most.

At the very least, it will share my story of getting there. It’s a doozy.

Here’s the short version:

I’m taking a long break from investing in new startups. No more advising, either. Please don’t send me any pitches or introductions, as I sadly won’t be able to respond. Until further notice, I am done. I might do the same with interviews, conferences, and much more.

Now, the longer version for those interested:

This post will attempt to explain how I think about investing, overcoming “fear of missing out” (FOMO), and otherwise reducing anxiety.

It’s also about how to kill the golden goose, when the goose is no longer serving you.

I’ll dig into one specifically hard decision — to say “no” to startup investing, which is easily the most lucrative activity in my life. Even if you don’t view yourself as an “investor”—which you are, whether you realize it or not—the process I used to get to no should be useful…

[Warning: If you’re bored by investment stuff, skip the next two bulleted lists.]

Caveat for any investing pros reading this:

• I realize there are exceptions to every “rule” I use. Most of this post is as subjective as the fears I felt.
• My rules might be simplistic, but they’ve provided a good ROI and the ability to sleep. Every time I’ve tried to get “sophisticated,” the universe has kicked me in the nuts.
• Many startup investors use diametrically opposed approaches and do very well.
• There are later-stage investments I’ve made (2-4x return deals) that run counter to some of what’s below (e.g. aiming for 10x+), but those typically involve a discount to book value, due to distressed sellers or some atypical event.
• Many concepts are simplified to avoid confusing a lay audience.

Related announcements:

• I will continue working closely with my current portfolio of startups. I love them and believe in them.
• I will be returning all unallocated capital in my private Stealth Fund on AngelList. If you’re an investor in that fund, you’ll be getting your remaining money back. My public Syndicate will remain in place for later re-entry into the game.

So, why am I tapping out now and shifting gears?

Below are the key questions I asked to arrive at this cord-cutting conclusion.  I revisit these questions often, usually every month.

I hope they help you remove noise and internal conflict from your life.

The Road to No

ARE YOU DOING WHAT YOU’RE UNIQUELY CAPABLE OF, WHAT YOU FEEL PLACED HERE ON EARTH TO DO? CAN YOU BE REPLACED?

I remember a breakfast with Kamal Ravikant roughly one year ago.

Standing in a friend’s kitchen downing eggs, lox, and coffee, we spoke about our dreams, fears, obligations, and lives. Investing had become a big part of my net-worth and my identity. Listing out the options I saw for my next big moves, I asked him if I should raise a fund and become a full-time venture capitalist (VC), as I was already doing the work but trying to balance it with 5-10 other projects. He could sense my anxiety. It wasn’t a dream of mine; I simply felt I’d be stupid not to strike while the iron was hot.

He thought very carefully in silence and then said: “I’ve been at events where people come up to you crying because they’ve lost 100-plus pounds on the Slow-Carb Diet. You will never have that impact as a VC. If you don’t invest in a company, they’ll just find another VC. You’re totally replaceable.”

He paused again and ended with, “Please don’t stop writing.”

I’ve thought about that conversation every day since.

For some people, being a VC is their calling and they are the Michael Jordan-like MVPs of that world. They should cultivate that gift. But if I stop investing, no one will miss it. In 2015, that much is clear. There have never been more startup investors, and–right along with them–founders basing “fit” on highest valuation and previously unheard of terms. There are exceptions, of course, but it’s crowded. If I exit through the side door, the startup party will roll on uninterrupted.

Now, I’m certainly not the best writer in the world. I have no delusions otherwise. People like John McPhee and Michael Lewis make me want to cry into my pillow and brand “Poser” on my forehead.

BUT… if I stop writing, perhaps I’m squandering the biggest opportunity I have—created through much luck—to have a lasting impact on the greatest number of people. This feeling of urgency has been multiplied 100-fold in the last two months, as several close friends have died in accidents no one saw coming. Life is fucking short. Put another way: a long life is far from guaranteed. Nearly everyone dies before they’re ready.

I’m tired of being interchangeable, no matter how lucrative the game. Even if I’m wrong about the writing, I’d curse myself if I didn’t give it a shot.

Are you squandering your unique abilities? Or the chance to find them in the first place?

HOW OFTEN ARE YOU SAYING “HELL, YEAH!”? 

Philosopher-programmer Derek Sivers is one of my favorite people.

His incisive thinking has always impressed me, and his “hell, yeah!” or “no” essay has become one of my favorite rules of thumb. From his blog:

Those of you who often over-commit or feel too scattered may appreciate a new philosophy I’m trying: If I’m not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, then I say no.

Meaning: When deciding whether to commit to something, if I feel anything less than, “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” – then my answer is no. When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say “HELL YEAH!”

We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

To become “successful,” you have to say “yes” to a lot of experiments.  To learn what you’re best at, or what you’re most passionate about, you have to throw a lot against the wall.

Once your life shifts from pitching outbound to defending against inbound, however, you have to ruthlessly say “no” as your default. Instead of throwing spears, you’re holding the shield.

From 2007-2009 and again from 2012-2013, I said yes to way too many “cool” things. Would I like to go to a conference in South America? Write a time-consuming guest article for a well-known magazine? Invest in a start-up that five of my friends were in? “Sure, that sounds kinda cool,” I’d say, dropping it in the calendar. Later, I’d pay the price of massive distraction and overwhelm. My agenda became a list of everyone else’s agendas.

Saying yes to too much “cool” will bury you alive and render you a B-player, even if you have A-player skills. To develop your edge initially, you learn to set priorities; to maintain your edge, you need to defend against the priorities of others.

Once you reach a decent level of professional success, lack of opportunity won’t kill you. It’s drowning in 7-out-of-10 “cool” commitments that will sink the ship.

These days, I find myself saying “Hell, yes!” less and less with new startups. That’s my cue to exit stage left, especially when I can do work I love (e.g. writing) with 1/10th the energy expenditure.

I need to stop sowing the seeds of my own destruction.

HOW MUCH OF YOUR LIFE IS MAKING VERSUS MANAGING? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SPLIT?

One of my favorite time-management essays is “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” by Paul Graham of Y Combinator fame. Give it a read.

As Brad Feld and many others have observed, great creative work isn’t possible if you’re trying to piece together 30 minutes here and 45 minutes there. Large, uninterrupted block of time — 3-5 hours minimum — create the space needed to find and connect the dots. And one block per week isn’t enough.  There has to be enough slack in the system for multi-day CPU-intensive synthesis. For me, this means at least 3-4 mornings per week where I am in “maker” mode until at least 1pm.

If I’m in reactive mode, maker mode is all but impossible. Email and texts of “We’re overcommitted but might be able to squeeze you in for $25K. Closing tomorrow. Interested?” are creative kryptonite.

I miss writing, creating, and working on bigger projects. YES to that means NO to any games of whack-a-mole.

WHAT BLESSINGS IN EXCESS HAVE BECOME A CURSE? WHERE DO YOU HAVE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

In excess, most things take on the characteristics of their opposite. Thus:

Pacifists become militants.
Freedom fighters become tyrants.
Blessings become curses.
Help becomes hinderance.
More becomes less.

To explore this concept more, read up on Aristotle’s golden mean.

In my first 1-2 years of angel investing, 90%+ of my bets were in a tiny sub-set of startups. The criteria were simple:

• Consumer-facing products or services
• Products I could be a dedicated “power user” of, products that scratched a personal itch
• Initial target demographic of 25-40-year old tech-savvy males in big US cities like SF, NYC, Chicago, LA, etc. (allowed me to accelerate growth/scaling with my audience)
• <$10M pre-money valuation
• Demonstrated traction and consistent growth (not doctored with paid acquisition).
• No “party rounds”—crowded financing rounds with no clear lead investor. Party rounds often lead to poor due diligence and few people with enough skin in the game to really care.

Checking these boxes allowed me to add a lot of value quickly, even as relatively cheap labor (i.e. I took a tiny stake in the company). Shopify is a great example, which you can read about here (scroll down).

My ability to help spread via word of mouth, and I got what I wanted: great “deal flow.” Deals started flowing in en masse from other founders and investors.

Fast forward to 2015, and great deal flow is now paralyzing the rest of my life.  I’m drowning in inbound.

Instead of making great things possible in my life, it’s preventing great things from happening.

I’m excited to go back to basics, and this requires cauterizing blessings that have become burdens.

WHY ARE YOU INVESTING, ANYWAY?

For me, the goal of “investing” has always been simple: to allocate resources (e.g. money, time, energy) to improve quality of life. This is a personal definition, as yours likely will be.

Some words are so overused as to have become meaningless.  If you find yourself using nebulous terms like “success,” “happiness,” or “investing,” it pays to explicitly define them or stop using them. “What would it look like if I had (or won at) ___ ?” helps. Life favors the specific ask and punishes the vague wish.

So, here: to allocate resources (e.g. money, time, energy) to improve quality of life.

This applies to both the future and the present. I am willing to accept a mild and temporary 10% decrease in current quality of life (based on morale in journaling) for a high-probability 10x return, whether the ROI comes in the form of cash, time, energy, or otherwise. That could be a separate blog post, but conversely:

An investment that produces a massive financial ROI but makes me a complete nervous mess, or causes insomnia and temper tantrums for a long period of time, is NOT a good investment.

I don’t typically invest in public stocks for this reason, even when I know I’m leaving cash on the table. My stomach can’t take the ups and downs, but—like drivers rubbernecking to look at a wreck—I seem incapable of not looking. I will compulsively check Google News and Google Finance, despite knowing it’s self-sabotage. I become Benjamin Graham’s Mr. Market. As counter-examples, friends like Kevin Rose and Chris Sacca have different programming and are comfortable playing in that sandbox. They can be rational instead of reactive.

Suffice to say — For me, a large guaranteed decrease in present quality of life doesn’t justify a large speculative return.

One could argue that I should work on my reactivity instead of avoiding stocks. I’d agree on tempering reactivity, but I’d disagree on fixing weaknesses as a primary investment (or life) strategy.

All of my biggest wins have come from leveraging strengths instead of fixing weaknesses. Investing is hard enough without having to change your core behaviors. Don’t push a boulder up a hill just because you can.

Public market sharks will eat me alive in their world, but I’ll beat 99% of them in my little early-stage startup sandbox. I live in the middle of the informational switch box and know the operators.

From 2007 until recently, I paradoxically found start-up investing very low-stress. Ditto with some options trading. Though high-risk, I do well with binary decisions. In other words, I do a ton of homework and commit to an investment that I cannot reverse. That “what’s done is done” aspect allows me to sleep well at night, as there is no buy-sell choice for the foreseeable future. I’m protected from my lesser, flip-flopping self. That has produced more than a few 10-100x investments.

In the last two years, however, my quality of life has suffered.

As fair-weather investors and founders have flooded the “hot” tech scene, it’s become a deluge of noise. Where there were once a handful of micro VCs, for instance, there are now hundreds. Private equity firms and hedge funds are betting earlier and earlier. It’s become a crowded playing field. Here’s what that has meant for me personally:

• I get 50-100 pitches per week. This creates an inbox problem, but it gets worse, as…
• Many of these are unsolicited “cold intros,” where other investors will email me and CC 2-4 founders with “I’d love for you to meet A, B, and C” without asking if they can share my e-mail address
• Those founders then “loop in” other people, and it cascades horribly from there. Before I know it 20-50 people I don’t know are emailing me questions and requests.
• As a result, I’ve had to declare email bankruptcy twice in the last six months. It’s totally untenable.

Is there a tech bubble? That question is beyond my pay grade, and it’s also beside the point.

Even if I were guaranteed there would be no implosion for 3-5 years, I’d still exit now. Largely due to communication overload, I’ve lost my love for the game.  On top of that, the marginal minute now matters more to me than the marginal dollar.

But why not cut back 50%, or even 90%, and be more selective?  Good question. That’s next…

ARE YOU FOOLING YOURSELF WITH A PLAN FOR MODERATION?

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
– Richard P. Feynman

Where in your life are you good at moderation? Where are you an all-or-nothing type? Where do you lack a shut-off switch? It pays to know thyself.

The Slow-Carb Diet succeeds where other diets fail for many reasons, but the biggest is this: It accepts default human behaviors versus trying to fix them. Rather than say “don’t cheat” or “you can no longer eat X,” we plan weekly “cheat days” (usually Saturdays) in advance. People on diets will cheat regardless, so we mitigate the damage by pre-scheduling it and limiting it to 24 hours.

Outside of cheat days, slow carbers keep “domino foods” out of their homes. What are domino foods? Foods that could be acceptable if humans had strict portion control, but that are disallowed because practically none of us do. Common domino foods include:

• Chickpeas
• Peanut butter
• Salted cashews
• Alcohol

Domino triggers aren’t limited to food. For some people, if they play 15 minutes of World of Warcraft, they’ll play 15 hours. It’s zero or 15 hours.

For me, startups are a domino food.

In theory, “I’ll only do one deal a month” or “I’ll only do two deals a quarter” sound great, but I’ve literally NEVER seen it work for myself or any of my VC or angel friends. Sure, there are ways to winnow down the pitches. Yes, you can ask “Is this one of the top 1-2 entrepreneurs you know?” to any VC who intro’s a deal and reject any “no”s. But what if you commit to two deals a quarter and see two great ones the first week? What then? If you invest in those two, will you be able to ignore every incoming pitch for the next 10 weeks?

Not likely.

For me, it’s all or nothing. I can’t be half pregnant with startup investing.  Whether choosing 2 or 20 startups per year, you have to filter them from the total incoming pool.

If I let even one startup through, another 50 seem to magically fill up my time (or at least my inbox). I don’t want to hire staff for vetting, so I’ve concluded I must ignore all new startup pitches and intros.

Know where you can moderate and where you can’t.

YOU SAY “HEALTH IS #1″…BUT IS IT REALLY?

After contracting Lyme disease and operating at ~10% capacity for nine months, I made health #1. Prior to Lyme, I’d worked out and eaten well, but when push came to shove, “health #1” was negotiable. Now, it’s literally #1. What does this mean?

If I sleep poorly and have an early morning meeting, I’ll cancel the meeting last-minute if needed and catch up on sleep. If I’ve missed a workout and have a con-call coming up in 30 minutes? Same. Late-night birthday party with a close friend? Not unless I can sleep in the next morning. In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I MUST be fine paying, or I could lose weeks or months to sickness or fatigue.

Making health #1 50% of the time doesn’t work. It’s absolute — all or nothing. If it’s #1 50% of the time, you’ll compromise precisely when it’s most important.

The artificial urgency common to startups makes mental and physical health even more challenging. I’m tired of unwarranted last-minute “hurry up and sign” emergencies and related fire drills. It’s a culture of cortisol.

ARE YOU OVER-CORRELATED?

[NOTE: Two investors friends found this bullet slow, as they’re immersed in similar subjects. Feel free to skip if it drags on, but I think there are a few important novice concepts in here.]

“Correlated” means that investments tend to move up or down in value at the same time.

As legendary hedge fund manager Ray Dalio told Tony Robbins: “It’s almost certain that whatever you’re going to put your money in, there will come a day when you will lose 50 percent to 70 percent.” It pays to remember that if you lose 50%, you need a subsequent 100% return to get back to where you started. That math is tough.

So, how to de-risk your portfolio?

Many investors “rebalance” across asset classes to maintain certain ratios (e.g. X% in bonds, Y% in stocks, Z% in commodities, etc.). If one asset class jumps, they liquidate a part of it a buy more of lower performing classes. There are pros and cons to this, but it’s common practice.

From 2007-2009, during the “real-world MBA” that taught me to angel invest, <15% of my liquid assets were in startups. I was taking a barbell approach to investing. But most startups are illiquid. I commonly can’t sell shares until 7-12 years after I invest, at least for my big winners to date. What does that mean? In 2015, startups comprise more than 80% of my assets. Yikes!

Since I can’t sell, the simplest first step for lowering stress is to stop investing in illiquid assets.

I’ve sold large portions of liquid stocks—mostly early start-up investments in China–to help get me to “sleep at night” levels, even if they are lower than historical highs of the last 6-12 months. Beware of anchoring to former high prices (e.g. “I’ll sell when it gets back to X price per share…”). I only have 1-2 stock holdings remaining.

Some of you might suggest hedging with short positions, and I’d love to, but it’s not my forte. If you have ideas for doing so without huge exposure or getting into legal gray areas, please let me know in the comments.

In the meantime, the venture capital model is mostly a bull market business. Not much shorting opportunity. The best approximation I’ve seen is investing in businesses like Uber, which A) have a lot of international exposure (like US blue chips), and B) could be considered macro-economically counter-cyclical. For instance, it’s conceivable a stock market correction or crash could simultaneously lead fewer people to buy cars and/or more people to sign up as Uber drivers to supplement or replace their jobs. Ditto with Airbnb and others that have more variable than fixed costs compared to incumbents (e.g. Hilton).

WHAT’S THE RUSH? CAN YOU “RETIRE” AND COME BACK?

I’m in startups for the long game. In some capacity, I plan to be doing this 20+ years from now.

The reality: If you’re spending your own money, or otherwise not banking on management fees, you can wait for the perfect pitches, even if it takes years. It might not be the “best” approach, but it’s enough. To get rich beyond your wildest dreams in startup investing, it isn’t remotely necessary to bet on a Facebook or Airbnb every year. If you get a decent bet on ONE of those non-illusory, real-business unicorns every 10 years, or if you get 2-3 investments that turn $25K into $2.5M, you can retire and have a wonderful quality of life. Many would argue that you need to invest in 50-100 startups to find that one lottery ticket. Maybe. I think it’s possible to narrow the odds quite a bit more, and a lot of it is predicated on maintaining stringent criteria; ensuring you have an informational, analytical, or behavioral advantage; and TIMING.

Most of my best investments were made during the “Dot-com Depression” of 2008-2009 (e.g. Uber, Shopify, Twitter, etc.), when only the hardcore remained standing on a battlefield littered with startup bodies. In lean times, when startups no longer grace magazine covers, founders are those who cannot help but build a company. LinkedIn in 2002 is another example.

HOWEVER… This doesn’t mean there aren’t great deals out there.  There are. Great companies are still built during every “frothy” period.

The froth just makes my job and detective work 10x harder, and the margin of safety becomes much narrower.

[Tim: Skip this boxed text if the concept of “margin of safety” is old news to you.]

Think of the “margin of safety” as wiggle room.

Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of the 20th century and a self-described “value investor.” He aims to buy stocks at a discount (below intrinsic value) so that even with a worst-case scenario, he can do well. This discount is referred to as the “margin of safety,” and it’s the bedrock principle of some of the brightest minds in the investing world (e.g., Seth Klarman). It doesn’t guarantee a good investment, but it allows room for error.  Back in the startup world…

I want each of my investments, if successful, to have the ability to return my “entire fund,” which is how much capital I’ve earmarked for startups over two years, for instance. This usually means potential for a minimum 10X return. That 10X minimum is an important part of my recipe that allows margin for screw ups.

For the fund-justifying ROI to have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening, I must A) know basic algebra to ensure my investment amounts (check sizes) permit it, and B) avoid companies that seem overpriced, where the 10x price is something the world has never seen before (i.e. no even indirect comparables, or tenable extrapolations from even an expanded market size).

If you throw low-due-diligence Hail Mary’s everywhere and justify it with “they could be the next Uber!”, you will almost certainly be killed by 1,000 slow-bleeding $25K paper cuts. Despite current euphoria, applying something like Pascal’s Wager to startups is a great way to go broke.

Good startup investors who suggest being “promiscuous” are still methodical.

It’s popular in startup land to talk about “moonshots”—the impossibly ambitious startups that will either change the world or incinerate themselves into star dust.

I’m a fan of funding ballsy founders (which includes women), and I want many moonshots to be funded, but here’s the reality of my portfolio: as I’ve signed the investment docs for every big success I’ve had, I’ve always thought, “I will never lose money on this deal.”

The “this will be a home run or nothing” deals usually end up at nothing. I’m not saying such deals can’t work, but I try not to specialize in them.

These days, the real unicorns aren’t the media darlings with billion-dollar valuations. Those have become terrifyingly passé. The unicorns are the high-growth startups with a reasonable margin of safety.

Fortunately, I’m not in a rush, and I can wait for the tide to shift.

If you simply wait for blood in the streets, for when true believers are the only ones left, you can ensure come-hell-or-high-water founders are at least half of your meetings.

It might be morbid, but it’s practical.

My Last Deals For A While

It’s still a great time to invest in companies… but only if you’re able to A) filter the signal from the noise, B) say no to a lot of great companies whose investors are accepting insane terms, and C) follow your own rules. Doing all three of these requires a fuck-ton of effort, discipline, and systems. I prefer games with better odds.

There are a few deals you’ll see in the upcoming months, which I committed to long ago. These are not new deals.

They are current companies in which I’m filling my pro-rata, or companies postponing funding announcements until they’re most helpful (e.g. launching publicly). Separately, I work closely with the Expa startup lab and will continue to do so. They are largely able to insulate themselves from madness, while using and refining an excellent playbook.

Are You Having a Breakdown or a Breakthrough? A Short How-To Guide

“Make your peace with the fact that saying ‘no’ often requires trading popularity for respect.”
– Greg McKeown, Essentialism

If you’re suffering from a feeling of overwhelm, it might be useful to ask yourself two questions:

– In the midst of overwhelm, is life not showing me exactly what I should subtract?
– Am I having a breakdown or a breakthrough?

As Marcus Aurelius and Ryan Holiday would say, “The obstacle is the way.” This doesn’t mean seeing problems, accepting them, and leaving them to fester. Nor does it mean rationalizing problems into good things. To me, it means using pain to find clarity. Pain–if examined and not ignored–can show you what to excise from your life.

For me, step one is always the same: write down the 20% of activities and people causing 80% or more of your negative emotions.

My step two is doing a “fear-setting” exercise on paper, in which I ask and answer “What is really the worst that could happen if I did what I’m considering? And so what? How could I undo any damage?”

Below is a real-world example: the journal page that convinced me to write this post and kickstart an extended startup vacation.

The questions were “What is really the worst that could happen if I stopped angel investing for a minimum of 6-12 months? Do those worse-case scenarios really matter? How could I undo any potential damage? Could I do a two-week test?”

As you’ll notice, I made lists of the guaranteed upsides versus speculative downsides. If we define “risk” as I like to—the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome—we can see how stupid (and unnecessarily painful) all my fretting and procrastination was. All I needed to do was put it on paper.

Below is a scan of the actual page.  Click here for an enlarged version.

Further below is a transcribed version (slightly shorter and edited). For a full explanation of how and why I use journaling, see this post.  In the meantime, this will get the point across:

Transcription:

“The anxiety is mostly related to email and startups: new pitches, new intros, etc.

Do a 2-week test where “no” to ALL cold intros and pitches?

Why am I hesitant? For saying “no” to all:

PROS:
– 100% guaranteed anxiety reduction
– Feeling of freedom
– Less indecision, less deliberation, so far more bandwidth for CREATING, for READING, for PHYSICAL [TRAINING], for EXPERIMENTS.

CONS (i.e. why not?):
– Might find the next Uber (<10% chance) — Who cares? Wouldn’t materialize for 7-9 years. If Uber pops (IPO), it won’t matter.
– Not get more deals. But who cares?
* Dinner with 5 friends fixes it.
* One blog post fixes it. [Here’s an example from 2013 that helped me find Shyp and co-lead their first round]
* NONE of my best deals (Shyp, Shopify, Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Alibaba, etc.) came from cold intros from acquaintances.

If try 2 weeks, how to ensure successful:
– I don’t even see interview or [new] startup emails
– No con-calls. [Cite] “con call vacation” –> push to email or EOD [end-of-day review with assistant]
– Offer [additional] “office hours” on Fridays [for existing portfolio]?

I ultimately realized: If I set up policies to avoid new startups for two weeks, the systems will persist. I might as well make it semi-permanent and take a real “startup vacation.”

What do you need a vacation from?

My Challenge To You: Write Down The “What If”s

“I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
– Mark Twain

“He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.”
– Seneca

Tonight or tomorrow morning, take a decision you’ve been putting off, and challenge the fuzzy “what if”s holding you hostage.

If not now, when? If left at the status quo, what will your life and stress look like in six months? In one year? In three years? Who around you will also suffer?

I hope you find the strength to say no when it matters most. I’m striving for the same, and only time will tell if I pull it off.

What will I spend my time on next? More crazy experiments and creative projects, of course.  To hear about them first, sign up for my infrequent newsletter. Things are going to get nuts.

But more important — how could you use a new lease on life?

To surf, like this attorney who quit the rat race? To travel with your family around the world for 1,000+ days, like this?  To learn languages or work remotely in 20+ countries while building a massive business? It’s all possible. The options are limitless…

So start by writing them down. Sometimes, it takes just a piece of paper and a few questions to create a breakthrough.

I look forward to hearing about your adventures.

Going to a trade show can either be a fun and rewarding experience, or it can be a total disaster. What makes the event is the booth and how you attract visitors. If you’re new to this, or your last show didn’t exactly go as planned, here are a few tips to increase foot traffic.

Have Something To Say

Most brands today don’t do this. They talk a lot about their products, their services, their company culture, their charitable donations – but they don’t ever really say anything. At least, they don’t say anything valuable to the customer.

Customers don’t care about your brand. They don’t. They care about what you can do for them. But, they don’t want to be pitched a product or service.

Sounds confusing, right?

It’s not. What you have to do is focus on your unique value proposition and what you have to offer visitors. Your value proposition is that thing that sets you apart from everyone else. It’s why people do business with you and not the hundreds or thousands of other businesses out there selling something similar.

A lot of businesses skip this part and dive right into a flashy booth design. Big mistake. Huge. Without something to say, you’re all flash and no substance. People care more about substance than they do flash.

Have a Professionally-Designed Booth

Now, just because content (having something to say) is superior to design (how you say it), it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. People like design too. They’re inspired by design. That’s what brings them in. Once they’re “in,” you better have something interesting to say.

A professionally-designed booth helps you attract or “wow” your visitors.

All other things being equal, the more money you can spend on the booth, the better your chances are at attracting people.

Some things to include in the booth design:

● Who you are.

● What you do.

● How you can help them.

Obviously your brand name should stand out and be obvious. Next comes the “what you do” aspect of your booth. This should also be relatively easy. What do you do? Most businesses use their tagline or logo.

Now, how can you help them? If you’ve done a good job fleshing out your value proposition, this will be easy.

For example, let’s say you’re a company that makes buggy whips. You make the best buggy whips in the world. Your brand is “ABC Buggy Whips.” So, your booth says, “ABC Buggy Whips: We Make the Best Whips in the World.”

Bring Product Experts, Not Just Salesmen

A lot of companies flood their booths with salespeople. And, that’s fine. You need to have them there at the show. But, you should consider bringing more than just salespeople. Product designers and engineers should take center stage, really.

Visitors might not be in “buying mode.” They’re wandering around, looking at displays. They want to see who’s here and what they’re selling.

They want information that they can research later. That’s the reality of it. People aren’t limited to trade shows as a sole source of information anymore. So, your job isn’t necessarily to sell but to engage and educate people about your product or service.

Use Kiosks, Screens, and Support Devices

Large products can often sit on the floor and be their own display of sorts. But, you should also consider putting them next to kiosks so that visitors can read about the product features on their own.

Likewise, smaller products need to be amplified. You could have a small display and then augment it with a large screen, showing an “exploded view” of the product. These types of screens are available from special screen distributors – visit NomadicDisplay.com for more information about selection, types, and sizing.

Keep Things Simple and Interesting

People will not be bored at a trade show. You have to understand that, today, people’s attentions aren’t divided between just you and other vendors. You’re also competing with a world wide web of information. Yes, if people get too bored with the event, and with your booth, they can and will start doing things like surfing the net, checking Facebook, tweeting about how boring the event is, and so on.

So, keep things simple and engaging.

You can do this by having visually stunning displays that explain one or two key aspects of your product or service. Let visitors approach your staff for more information. Ideally, your message should be boiled down to a single headline or catch phrase.

If your product or service is really complex, you have a tough job. You need to highlight the main benefit of your company and your product or service.

This is where companies fall down. They get wrapped up in their own corporate image, the features of the product, and being clever.

For example: “We have the best service” is not a benefit statement. It’s a feature statement, at best. But, it’s not even a particularly great feature statement because everyone says they have the best service.

Stand out, be different, and think of something that’s an actual differentiator. If you’re not good with this, study what makes a good headline or catchphrase good.

Wondering what the differences are between product marketing and product management? Chances are that you’re not alone. For instance, if you look at job descriptions at tech companies, you’ll notice that roles and responsibilities often intersect. Not to mention, “required” skill sets often lack consistency—some product manager roles require technical backgrounds while others don’t. So what’s the deal?

Having gone through many years of reading job boards, consulting for product marketing teams at tech companies, working with product managers, and working on business education programs for these two roles, I put together a definitive guide with some clarity. Whether you’re looking for a job or seeking to hire a new team member, here’s what you need to know about these two roles:

Core Responsibilities

You can think of product marketing as a type of glue for the organization. Product marketing leaders are responsible for communication, product positioning, and growth. Once a product is built, this individual communicates its value to the market at large, coming up with new ways to reach and engage target audiences.

Product managers, on the other hand, are responsible for coordinating the teams that build the product. These individuals work cross-functionally too, actively sourcing feedback from customers and translating this information into engineer-friendly instructions. At some companies, product managers will need a strong technical background with hands-on engineering experience—it depends on your product, workflows, and customer base.

Both roles operate as connectors, both internally and externally. Both leaders will interview customers and relay feedback to internal teams. The key differentiators, however, are each person’s areas of focus. A product marketer’s end goal is to bring a product to market that generates new and/or recurring revenue to the business. The product manager ensures that the product going to markets gets built on schedule and responds to market demand.

Performance Benchmarks & Value Adds

To understand the difference between product marketing and product management, start with the success metrics for each role. For product managers, performance KPIs are centered around usage, outages, customer satisfaction, and speed to market with new releases. For product marketers, success depends on growth and retention.

For product managers, performance KPIs are centered around usage, outages, customer satisfaction, and speed to market with new releases. For product marketers, success depends on growth and retention.

As you’ll readily see, all of these success areas intersect and directly influence one another. It’s tough to achieve steady, sustainable growth for a lackluster product—and there’s no point bringing new features to market if there is no growth strategy in place. From day one of any project or initiative, it’s critical that these two roles work closely together as allies, on a level playing field.

Personalities

Product managers and marketers tend to be similar personality-wise—both roles require interpersonal prowess, superior organizational skills, and a great ability to empathize with both customers and colleagues. But there are some key differences to note.

As builders, product managers need strong engineering, managerial, and operational minds. As connectors, product marketers need to be growth-minded. Both roles need a healthy mix of creativity, patience, and influencing skills.

Product managers and marketers also operate in extreme ambiguity and need to be self-directed in defining their own roles and alleviating uncertainty. These individuals need to be acutely aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and must be comfortable with delegation.

Final Thoughts

Product managers and marketers are complementary pieces to a company’s customer success puzzle. In order for marketing to be successful, you need a great product. If you build a great product, you need a marketing plan and the right messaging to inspire growth. Product managers and marketers will have similar personalities—but it’s important to focus on each role’s unique strengths and value adds. Both perspectives count, and are critical to the success of any B2B company.

Let’s take a look at customer retention. When it comes to your existing customers, there are two related metrics to watch. But as always, you have to take the time to listen to the stories they tell you.

We’re a subscription-based business, similar in some ways to a mobile phone service or a magazine. When we get a customer, they sign up and pay us a certain amount of money each month in exchange for our services.

In any given month, there are three things that can happen with an existing customer.

• Nothing changes: They continue with their service as before. This is revenue-neutral.
• They upgrade, for example by subscribing to additional features, thereby bringing us more revenue.
• They leave, and thereby cut our revenue.

If we want to grow, we have to make sure the number of customers we bring in and retain is greater than the number of customers cancelling the service. No surprise there, but as you grow this simple math can unravel an otherwise solid company. From that perspective, keeping existing customers is as important as getting new ones.

Companies that really grow are those whose customers not only stay, but also expand or upgrade their service so the same number of customers is generating more revenue. And if you keep adding new customers as well, you’ve got a chance to really take off.

So that means there are two ways to look at customer ‘churn’ (the number of customers who cancel): You can look at the number of accounts on the one hand, and their dollar value on the other: Are you losing lots of small customers, individuals who were paying you only $20 a month? Or are you losing a few big accounts, the ones that represent a bigger chunk of your monthly income?

It’s worthwhile to look at both figures — both the individual number of accounts that are canceled each month as a percentage of the customer base (that’s the first calculation to make), and the total dollar value of the accounts canceled, as a percentage of monthly recurring revenue (that’s your second calculation).

When you collect the numbers over time, you start seeing trends.

We noticed, for example, that the accounts most likely to be canceled were the ones associated with a single user. In other words, there might be one person in a firm who found our product useful. And when that person moves on, the account gets canceled. In our case, these single-user accounts canceling pushed our account retention lower than we wanted, but from a dollar point of view, they were less significant than the numbers suggested.

From what I’ve read, if more than one per cent of your customers leave you each month, there’s something wrong.

Customers can leave for a variety of reasons:

• Maybe the product is not valuable to them anymore.
• Maybe it costs too much.
• Maybe it’s too difficult to learn or use.
• Maybe they’re getting poor service.
• Maybe they’re not the ‘right’ person in their organization, the person who would get the most out of the service.
• Maybe the primary – or only – user left the company.

When we started looking at our own numbers, we found our churn rate — the percentage of customers leaving each month — was above one per cent. That was an indication there was a problem.

So we have to ask ourselves: Can we improve our product? Can we make it easier to use? After all, nothing is ever perfect, and we believe we should strive for something exceptional. And while Klipfolio’s product works for a great number of people, we are working to make it even better, so that it will appeal to a greater number of people.

The lesson from all this is that a company can’t put all its energy for growth into sales. It’s got to continue to devote time and effort to the products and services it sells. Truly think about customer success, and your retention and expansion rates will climb.

Look at your numbers and do the calculations. Make sure you hear loud and clear the stories those numbers are telling you. And act quickly to fix anything that isn’t quite right.

The post Why Do Customers Leave? Listen to Your Numbers & Act Quickly appeared first on OpenView Labs.

Salespeople who don’t work for the low-cost provider in their arena often struggle with losing deals based on price. Prospects are only human, and no one likes to pay more when they could pay less. That's why pricing in sales is one of the biggest barriers to purchase and a roadblock for many reps.

This roadblock is particularly difficult to overcome in the world of high-ticket sales. 

What Are High-Ticket Sales?

A high-ticket sale is the sale of an expensive product or service. Because of price resistance, closing a sale of a high-value but high-cost item often results in a longer sales cycle and requires a great deal of sales skill.

While there are certainly steps you can take to win against a low-cost provider, you’ll never come out on top with a poor product. If your product is only marginally better than your competitor’s — but costs significantly more — you’re going to lose deals. It’s just that simple.

However, if your product’s price reflects significant points of differentiation, you can come out on top. Here are nine tips for convincing the customer to buy a more expensive product.

1. Understand your buyer persona.

Your product likely solves a specific pain or problem your ideal buyer is experiencing. It's not enough to talk nuts and bolts, features and pricing... especially in high-ticket sales. 

You'll need to identify your prospect's motivations, pains, and triggering events — perhaps before they even pick up the phone. To do that, create a buyer persona of your ideal customer and explore why they'd consider a premium solution for their situation. 

The information can give you an edge while building rapport, and you'll have a profile to compare against as you qualify prospects. 

2. Use a high-ticket sales script. 

Your conversation will take you in a number of directions, so it's okay to rely on your knowledge of the product/service and competitors during your sales calls. However, to sharpen your sales process, you should have a sales script for the primary stages of each deal: 

Intro:

The goal of the intro is to, of course, introduce yourself but also get their attention as quickly as possible.

"Hello [Prospect Name]. I'm [Your Name], and I help [Their Title] like you [What Your Product/Service Solves]."

Then, you'll lead into the conversation with an open-ended question. For example:

"Hello, [Prospect Name]. My name is [Your Name], and I help hiring managers like you reduce the time it takes to interview, hire, and onboard new talent in 50% less time than the industry average. How many new hires do you have planned for the year?"

If they do not want to continue the conversation, you can ask to schedule a meeting. If they say yes, continue on by providing more information and opening up a dialogue.

"We offer [Product/Service] because we've noticed that other [Their Title](s) have been experiencing issues with [Pains]. Are any of those areas you are concerned about?"

The Pitch:

Here is where you discuss your product/service, the pains that it solves, and how it does it differently than similar solutions.

For example: "We know that you have issues with [Pains], so we aim to solve that by [Solution Description]. This goes beyond other solutions on the market because [Value Proposition], resulting in [Concrete Case Study Details]."

The Close:

The close finishes the current conversation by asking them to take the next step. In order to have a great close, you must have the stages of the sales process mapped out. This is particularly important with high-ticket sales because many premium products and services have too long a sales cycle to finish the sale on the first call. You might wrap up with:

• "I don't want to take up more of your time today, but I want to continue learning more about your goals and strategies. How would you feel about a 30-minute conversation next Tuesday?"
• "I'd love to share more information about this product. Do you have time to hop on a call for a quick demo?"
• "You've asked some good questions, and I think the best way to give you answers is by giving you a quick preview of the platform. Would you be interested in a free trial?"

We've also included some sample sales tactics throughout the rest of this article, so read on for more ideas to include in your script.

3. Help them envision what success looks like. 

You know that the prospect has a problem they need to get solved. That manifests as a gap between where they are and where they need to be. From a practical standpoint, you should be explaining how your product/service fills that gap. 

But don't stop there. Paint the picture of what success looks like, what their life will be like if their problem no longer affects them. This will indicate to them that you know the stakes, and it will strengthen the emotional association with the conversation.

4. Ask about the competition early.

Reps typically wait too long before asking about the competition. Especially if you’re selling a premium offering, you want to ask buyers about what other vendors they’re considering early and often.

But questions such as “What do you like about Company X?” won’t garner you valuable information. Instead, probe into the following areas:

• “Which vendor is winning as we stand today?” Get the buyer used to thinking in terms of “winning” and “losing.” This will reveal which provider they ultimately prefer — regardless of price. Remember: Prospects will never buy from your company unless they like you more than the competition. If you’re not “winning,” price becomes a moot point. If you are winning, you can work on the price.
• “Where are you in the buying process with competitor X?” Make sure you’re keeping pace with the competitor’s sales process. Alternatively, this can alert you to situations where you’re being used as a last-minute entry to justify the decision.
• “Who is the internal champion for competitor X?” In order to neutralize objections to your product from stakeholders, you have to be aware of them in real time. Discover who’s rooting for your competition, and reach out to them directly.

5. Eliminate low-quality competitors

Let’s say you’re in an RFP process with two other vendors. Vendor A is a low-cost, low-quality product. You rarely lose deals to Vendor A. On the other hand, Vendor B is a competitor you bump up with quite frequently, and have lost deals to in the past.

In a three-way heat, you want to help your buyer eliminate one option as quickly as possible. Which would you ax?

Most reps would say Vendor B because they have a greater likelihood of winning against Vendor A. But this is actually the wrong answer — I would rather stand with Vendor B. Why? Because you then put yourself in what buyers consider the pool of quality.

If you can convince your customer to get rid of poor quality options early on, you’ll find you strengthen your sales argument later in the process — and you won’t be faced with struggling to match crazy low prices.

6. Get the number.

As the buying processes progresses, you might be asked to talk discounts. There are a number of proven tactics to justify a higher price — calculating ROI, emphasizing value, etc. But when push comes to shove, sales reps need to get buyers to say the number they’re looking for instead of blindly throwing out prices.

First things first: I never offer a discount unless I know for sure that my company is “winning” in the buyer’s mind. Once I have the prospect’s assurance that I’m in the lead, we can talk price.

Prospects often try to play vendors against each other on price, saying things like, “Well, we like you guys better but Competitor X costs 25% less. If you can match that price, the business is yours.” As soon as they hear a sentence like this, most sales reps go running for their manager’s approval.

But this isn’t the only way. Here’s what I would recommend instead:

Buyer: “Well, we like you guys better but Competitor X costs 25% less. If you can match that price, the business is yours.”

Sales rep: “How did you get that 25% number?”

Buyer: “That’s what Competitor X told us was their price.”

Sales rep: “Well, you know we’re not going to match that price, so what’s the real number you want to see from us?”

Think about it this way: Mercedes isn’t going to compete with Honda on price. Similarly, you shouldn’t compete on price with a clearly inferior product.

So before you start negotiating, you must prevent the buyer from using the competitor’s price as a baseline, and get them to commit to a realistic number. After all, there’s no comparison between the two products — and that holds for price as well. Make this crystal clear to the buyer, and negotiate from there.

And here's a helpful article if they have pricing questions for you first.

7. Surface stories of how low-cost products let the company down.

If a decision maker buys a product based on price alone, it’s safe to say that’s not a very good choice. There’s a reason why low-cost providers are cheap — they also tend to be inferior to other products.

Early on in the sales process, get your champion to tell you stories of when decisions made solely based on a low price tag negatively impacted the company.

Everyone’s bound to have a few. Then, when the sales process is wrapping up, you can remind the buyer — with their own words — that choices made to save money often end up costing money. They can’t argue with themselves.

8. Use examples of customers who regretted their choice.

Along similar lines, a story about a buyer who opted for another vendor and wished they hadn't is extremely powerful. Suddenly, it's not your word against your competitor's — it's the word of someone who's tried both products and found yours favorable.

For example, imagine you frequently lose deals to Thunder Tifflin, a paper supply company whose product is half the cost of yours... and one-third the quality.

At least once per quarter, a former Thunder Tifflin customer calls you and says, "Yeah, the paper weight is sturdy enough and our ink keeps bleeding through. I wish we'd gone with you guys in the first place; we're out [large amount], and we have a bunch of paper we can't use."

Next time your prospect is also considering Thunder Tifflin, tell them, "I understand Thunder is the budget-friendly choice, and I think it's wise you evaluate their company. However, I have to warn you that we frequently hear about their quality issues. The paper costs less but is ultimately more expensive because it goes to waste after falling apart."

This soundbite first praises the buyer's decision to consider Thunder Tifflin — an important step if you don't want them to get defensive — before raising a legitimate concern. Bring it home by offering to connect them with one of your customers who made the switch:

"If you're interested in hearing more, I can intro you to Cam Deesly, who decided to use us after picking Thunder just six months earlier."

The vast majority of prospects will be persuaded by this and won't even require the reference.

9. Use the trial close.

Prospects often want to talk discounts before they’re ready to sign a contract. But the rep who starts the discounting conversation too soon often opens a can of worms.

Whenever a prospect brings up discounting with me, I present a trial close. Here’s an example of what I mean:

Prospect: “I’d like to talk about discounts. What can you give me?”

Sales rep: “Well, Prospect, if you and I can come up with a price that works for both of us on this phone call, I’d be happy to send over a purchase order today.”

At this point, the buyer usually backs off:

Prospect: “Oh. Well … I don’t think that would work right now.”

Sales rep: “Understood. Well know that I am open to the conversation, and the moment you’re ready to buy, we’ll talk discounts.”

By saying this, the rep makes it clear they’re not going to negotiate unless the buyer is ready to close right then and there. This prevents you from discounting twice with different stakeholders and ensures you only discount when a buyer is 100% ready to buy.

10. Close for the technical win.

The technical win is something we always go for in sales. It allows us to discover who’s best in a competitive situation. But if you’re selling a high-priced product, you’re actually closing for the technology, not the features or add-ons you offer.

In high-priced sales scenarios, you’ve got to ask the prospect, “Are we the best product technology you’ve seen today?” If they say, “Well, it’s more than just products and features …” stop them and reply, “But are we the best technology?” You have to close for this or you have no right to ask your buyer for a higher price over a competitor.

11. Learn stakeholders’ buying histories.

Ask your champion about the buying history of everyone involved in final decision making. If someone is actively involved in this sale, you want to ensure they have experience buying highly priced solutions from other vendors. If you learn everyone has experience buying an expensive solution — that’s encouraging.

If you find several decision makers lack experience with expensive solutions, your likelihood of closing is lower. There’s no tactful way to inquire after this. Just come right out and ask your champion who has experience in this area. This is not a time to play games, as the answers you receive will have a major impact on your ability to close the deal.

12. Formally close for a champion.

If you’re the highest-priced offering in a competitive situation, the price objections from non-champions will be fierce. They’re going to be in your main buyer’s ear saying, “Why would you pay 50K for this when you could get it for 30K?” In these cases, it’s crucial to have a champion firmly advocating on your behalf.

If you strike out at each of these tactics — move on. Some companies will be impossible to close. It’s important not to waste too much time on them. Remember: buying history is more important than budget. Closing for the technical win is more important than getting your buyer to trial. And closing a champion is more important than closing for expanding your audience.

Using these tactics, you can help your buyer justify spending a little more for a lot more quality. With these tricks up your sleeve, you’ll never use “my product just costs too much” as a reason for a lost deal again.

Want more from Jeff? Check out his upcoming sales webinars.

Nothing matches the anticipation of, and satisfaction after, closing a sales deal. The hundreds of sales teams around the world that use gongs, bells, or rounds of applause to celebrate a new customer are a testament to that.

But while other salespeople’s closed deals may be news to you, your own deals should never be. You should be able to be able to spot an opportunity ready to close a mile away. Look for the following five indicators -- all signs that it’s time to ask your prospect if they’re ready to buy.

1) There is a plan in place for implementation.

An implementation plan takes a sale out of the realm of the hypothetical and into reality. A well-designed plan arms your prospect with strategies for getting a fast start with your product and is directly tied to achieving specific goals. Getting buy-in from your prospect on a plan also confirms that you fully understand their need and business.

Prospects who are uncertain about purchasing your product will be careful not to commit to anything. In fact, they’ll actively try to get off your radar, asking you to call them back “in a few months” or telling you “it’s just not a good time right now.” Even prospects who have a real need will do this, either due to inertia or because they have too much on their plates.

The magic duo of prospect traits is a sense of urgency combined with a willingness to make a change. A prospect who takes the time to walk you through existing projects and goals so you can identify how your product fits in possesses both of these characteristics, and is ready to buy.

2) Your prospect starts saying “when,” not “if.”

A semantics-based variation of the point above, a prospect who starts saying things like, “So when we implement X, we’ll have to do Y to make Z happen, right?” has already made the mental leap from prospect to customer. Though it’s a small detail, it represents an important psychological shift -- he’s now planning for what happens after the purchase, an indication that you should ask to move forward.

A psychological trick that can bring prospects to the finish line more quickly is to avoid speaking in hypothetical terms yourself. This primes prospects for a world in which they’ve already made the decision to buy your product, and makes your discussion as concrete as possible.

One caveat: This hack should only be used for good, not evil. You should never attempt to “trick” a prospect into buying something they don’t need -- only offerings that will actually benefit them.

3) A deadline for a major goal is approaching.

During qualification, there’s one very important thing you should have discussed: their pain. The prospect is having trouble reaching a goal or fixing a problem, which is why they’re talking to you in the first place.

But sometimes, prospects become distracted in the middle of the sales process and lose their urgency. It’s your job to get them back on track. When qualifying on need and timeline, establish what goals aren’t being met, what will happen if the company continues to fall short, and when the situation becomes untenable.

So keep a close watch on those deadlines. Use them to drive a sense of urgency throughout your sales process, and if the prospect starts to stall or lose steam, remind them that if this goal is still a priority, they need to get started as soon as possible.

Prospects often get sidetracked because it’s easy for them to imagine that the point of purchase is the end of the process for them, when in fact it’s just the beginning. Any product that will have a significant impact on a prospect’s business will take some time to implement and realize return. Remind your prospect of this and ask for a decision as the deadline inches closer.

4) You’ve met all the decision criteria.

During one of your initial discovery calls, you should have asked your prospect about their criteria for selecting a vendor. It’s wise to tailor your sales process to each company’s process, and if you’ve done so, you will reach a point where all of your deliverables and obligations have been fulfilled.

At this point, ask your prospect what they’re missing from you. It’s possible they need a deeper dive on a specific feature, want a comparison between you and a competitor, or are still unclear on how they will realize or measure the return on your product.

You should review the sales process on your end too. Did the process address the criteria your prospect defined, or were you spending inordinate time on the wrong things? If all your ducks are in a row, go for the close -- your prospect will either give you their decision or update the criteria, in which case you have another opportunity to prove your product is the right choice.

5) Your prospect starts calling you.

What did sales look like 25 years ago?

Salespeople called, and called, and called, until they got through to prospects who didn’t want to hear from them. However, buyers didn’t have many options for independent research, so they were forced to (begrudgingly) pick up the phone if they hoped to make a purchase.

Fast forward to 2015 and buyers have changed -- so salespeople have changed too. Instead of cold calling and cold emailing, salespeople should be providing value to their prospects long before they even meet.

Thanks to the resources and insight provided by inbound salespeople, a prospect may have made up their mind to buy your product before you even realize it. Now, reps empower their buyers to make the best decisions, which means you’ll be taking their calls. And there’s no better sign that a prospect wants to buy than one who makes the effort to call you.

It’s easy to tell when to ask for a close if you know what to look for. Learn to spot these five indicators that your prospect is ready to become a buyer, and you’ll never be caught by surprise again -- or worse, miss an opportunity to get the deal done.

The importance of a plan to address the ‘last-mile’ of a sales cycle cannot be overstated. It is critical, especially for large and complex deals, that the sales executive draft and review with their sales leader a detailed plan to earn the business in question. Doing so is how we ensure that things don’t get missed, that the account team is in alignment, that senior executives are clear as to what is required of them to support the deal and that everyone is focused on the most important tasks to reach the desired outcome: closed business that will bring clean revenue to the company and a valuable solution or product to the customer.

Close Plans Are Necessary

Most evolved sales organizations have a process for this. At certain stages in the sales cycle, for deals of certain dollar amounts or strategic importance, sales leadership will require that the sales executive convene a review in which the sales executive presents the plan. Sales leadership will help strategize on tactics and iterate the plan until a final list of action items is determined. Most of the time, this plan is referred to colloquially as a Close Plan.

Invariably, there will be components of this plan that require collaboration with the buyer to do things like:

• Align incentives “…and to confirm, we’ve agreed to this pricing structure with the understanding that you’ve agreed to take reference calls and sign the contract by the 25th of this month…”
• Validate steps “…and you’re sure that the procurement director approves and then sends to the CFO for signature…”
• Confirm dates “…and we are certain that the CFO isn’t taking a trip to Bora Bora the week that we are planned to have him sign…”

A plan created in a vacuum isn’t a plan — it’s a hope and a dream until we confer with our buyer.

Don’t Call Them Close Plans

So, being fortunate enough to have one of those top deals in the pipeline and recognizing that it’s necessary to consult with our buyer on the items in the plan, we call our buyer and we propose that we sit down together to review our plan.

When this happens, please — for the love of all that is holy — do not refer to it as a close plan.

To some this may be a statement of the obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard sales professionals and their managers actually state to their prospective customer that they would like to review their Close Plan with them.

But why wouldn’t they? For months or years everyone in their sales organization has talked simply about the Close Plan. After a period of time, muscle memory and habit kick in. If we consistently refer to something as a Close Plan when we’re inside the four walls of our organization, it’s a safe bet that we’ll refer to it as a Close Plan outside those four walls.

Words Matter

The words we choose matter. They convey the motive behind our actions and the intent that we bring to an engagement. When we talk about a Close Plan, we de-humanize our buyer and we diminish the importance of their needs and values in the process. We turn them into an object that is to be conquered, a deal to be won. We turn them into a thing.

Buyers sense this — consciously or unconsciously. They must. The result of choosing our words inelegantly is that we turn what may have been a very collaborative and mutually respectful process up to this point into a tug-of-war that trades on angles and leverage, a zero-sum game with a winner and a loser.

What the buyer hears us say when we use the words Close Plan is “this has been nice up until now, but I’ve got to get to work and close this deal. And that means I’ve got to close you.” It signals to the buyer that the situation has changed and that they must now be on guard against tactics designed to extract as much money from them as efficiently and smoothly as is possible. And we are the person with whom they must be on guard.

This is unfortunate. Most sales professionals genuinely enjoy their work and the opportunity to be of assistance and utility to the customers they serve. Most attempt to be as genuine and authentic as they can. Most work for organizations that legitimately believe in the importance of customer satisfaction and shared success. It is an error of sales culture and a result of bad habit that a few irresponsibly chosen words can undermine what are otherwise thoughtful and deliberate efforts to provide genuine value.

Sales Leaders: Lead

Sales leadership bears the bulk of the responsibility for shifting the tone of the sales organization and the words that our teams use, both in the field and in the office. Our people look to us to get direction — both spoken and implied — as to how they are to engage with the market, the competition, our prospects, our customers and our co-workers.

This is encouraging, because it means that in many ways all we have to do to start to engender a more value-driven culture is to choose our words more carefully. This is a discipline that is easily begun and, with practice, develops reliably. It does demand awareness, however. Many of us run around barely conscious of the words that spew out of our mouths, oblivious to the emotional wake that we leave and the downstream impact of the words we choose. So we must consciously decide to begin.

There Are Alternatives

There are any number of ways to convey the intent of a close plan – mutually agreed upon steps to reach a mutually beneficial outcome – without calling it a Close Plan. If you’re a sales professional, I’d encourage you to share this post with your leadership to initiate a conversation on the subject. If you’re a sales leader, discuss this with some of your managers and sales executives to collaborate on some new terminology that more accurately reflects the type of organization that you want to be.

For the past number of years I’ve favored the term “Engagement Plan” and have required my teams to use it in lieu of “Close Plan.” It maintains the word “plan,” and it’s important to call things what they are as simply as is possible. The term “engagement” conveys a sense of collaboration and forward momentum.

The post Sales Strategy: Stop Calling it a Close Plan appeared first on OpenView Labs.

My first job out of college was selling office equipment. The first thing I ever learned about selling (from my very Southern sales manger) was that “Telling ain’t selling.” In layman terms, stop telling customers why they need your product and start listening to their needs.

For years this simple phase remained in my memory. It guided me as a way to engage prospects in advisory-like sales dialogue, probing for a need to sell to. But, after attending CEB’s Sales & Marketing Summit last week, where new research highlighted the increased complexity in reaching a purchase decision, I’m now considering rethinking my whole approach.

Why? Because buyers have become overwhelmed by the potential choices, and the involvement of other decision makers in the process, according to Brent Adamson, co-author of The Challenger Customer. Too much information, too many options and too many people involved in the process are making it more difficult than ever to reach a consensus, let alone a purchase decision. Given the complexity, stalled deals are no longer a sales issue; they’re a buying problem.

The question is: Are marketers contributing to that problem? Is it possible our content marketing efforts, aimed at helping buyers make an informed choice, arebecoming part of the “too much” problem? According to Psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, too much choice often results in no choice at all.

Dr. Schwartz’s research has shown that limiting choice is often necessary to reach a decision, and/or to speed up the buying process. As he said, “When you make choice easier, or more simple, you will sell more.”

For business-to-business sales and marketers, the key is to become “prescriptive,” according to Adamson. Customers need a “trusted advisor” to help guide them through the complexity of the decision making process, in particular in driving a consistent point of view on the problem, and the best solution. Schwartz suggests focusing on the following three areas:

1. Be the “expert” or “simplifier.” Help reduce the complexity of the problem, process and/or solution. Smart content should help to explain and simplify solutions to complex problems.
2. Create an “anchor.” Help customers understand how to assess the value you offer. Buyers may have a hard time assessing the true value of a new purchase or a new vendor. Help them by giving them context. Find a relatable anchor comparison. Think: ”Platinum service at a standard price.”
3. Understand the impact of “no decision.” If no decision is the right decision, then find a way to make it the default answer. This approach is commonly seen in software or subscription-based services where membership/licensing automatically renews.

Do we now dictate to customers/prospects? Not according to Schwartz. Asking probing questions that lead customers to convince themselves that they need your product is the path to goal attainment. Help them understand how your product/service uniquely solves their problem by guiding their path to purchase.

The words of wisdom given to me years ago were right, but given today’s increased complexity it needs an updated “Telling ain’t selling…until it is.”

How would it change your business if you could get twice the leads, subscriptions, or sales from your website? Believe it or not, you can accomplish that goal in less time than you expect and without spending lots of money. [...]

You’ve put your strategic marketing plan into place. Personas identified–check. Content created–check. Site optimized to capture and then nurture leads–check and check.

But there is one more piece of the puzzle to address. Because putting the system and strategy in place is the first step, but after we do all of the above, we might be faced with challenge of no one knowing that it’s in place. No one knows Safety Inc. is there.

Which brings us to the sort of bonus step 5: going out and getting new eyeballs for the business.

Step 5: Outreach and Digital PR

Since we have a clear idea of who Fred is, what his needs are, and how we’re going to help solve them, our next point of action will take us to where Fred is hanging out online, what he’s doing when he’s online, and how Safety Inc. can meet him there.

We’ll get familiar with industry sites, forums, and online magazines—sites that are part of the facility management safety space—and look for ways to get in front of Fred when he’s on those sites. He knows those sites, but he doesn’t know Safety Inc. So we need to slide into where he already is online, and create a moment of discovery for him where he gets to find out about Safety Inc.

One way of doing that is guest posting, which is purely about serving the buyer persona where they are. We’re taking the same relevant content that’s on Safety Inc.’s website and blog, and putting that ability to serve through knowledge in a place where Fred is spending his time. We mentioned industry sites and blogs, but another great resource is industrial consultants. They’re always looking for content to share with audience, and value to add to their audience. Plus we’re meeting them as a potential tool through which they can refer more clients.

One thing that’s important to remember when talking about outreach is to make it a win-win. We don’t just send emails that say “Can I write a guest post, or post this on your blog?” There are issues of spam and SEO with guest posting, and such requests raise major red flags.

Instead, we’ll establish a relationship with these people. We’ll use LinkedIn to find relevant connections, and then reach out and build a relationship without asking for anything. Once there’s a relationship in place, we’ll create the win-win for them. For example, we’ll offer to interview them or feature them as a guest writer on Safety Inc.’s site.

We’re not only creating more valuable content for readers, but also crafting a piece that the consultant who we’re featuring would share with their own audience. Everyone loves to be featured, and then share with their circles that they’ve been featured, so this is a great approach.

After we’ve given, we can ask to take. We’ll ask if it would be possible to share a guest post with their site. Note that this is NOT an opportunity to pitch. We’re not filling that guest post with how great Safety Inc. is, its features, and the number to call for more information. In fact, we won’t mention Safety Inc. in the blog post at all until the About the Author section at the bottom.  We’re coming at this through a place of serving, of being valuable and helpful, of creating content that truly makes a difference in lives of facility management and safety managers.

So outreach is all about leveraging other, large sites in a way that’s helpful for all. We’re telling them you have the traffic, we have the content and expertise—let’s work together and create something valuable. And over time, as we get Safety Inc. out in front of their personas through other sites, and build brand awareness, it’ll start building up traffic to their own website.

Part of that circle comes from building up thought leadership. We always like to have one person in the company become the public face of the business’s thought leadership.

Maybe a marketing or sales person, or someone we can give the title “Facility Management Consultant.” This is the person who will be given as the author for all published content, and who will show up on guest posts.

Then this one person’s face, name, and experience are being seen around the web, and Fred is running into it multiple times, creating a relationship whereby Fred starts to see this person as expert in space. That means his ears are more open more to listening, he respects this person, trusts this person, and is eager to hear what this person has to say. It creates these invaluable sales signals in the relationship between Fred and Safety Inc. before Fred is even in sales funnel.

And that’s what it always comes back to. Inbound marketing is about creating this place where you don’t have to sell or market anymore. You just have to serve and be valuable to others in this specific strategy, and then everything kind of happens and flows the way it’s supposed to.

The plan that we’ve laid out over these several posts is a way for you to visualize how we go from inbound methodology to an actual play-by-play of what an inbound strategy would look like for a B2B company. These are steps that will be useful in your business, and that you can directly integrate into your strategy of serving your customers long-term.

So we encourage you to take the above plan, plug in your business name wherever it says Safety Inc. and see how effective it can be for you!

Marketing leaders at B2B organizations communicate directly with their sales counterparts to review quantity and quality of inbound leads; to apprise one another of upcoming promotions and sales enablement initiatives and objectives and strategically determine the most effective ways for their teams to work together to benefit the organization as a whole. But often these meetings don’t include a topic that is possibly the most important of all: existing customers.

Why?

Sales teams are hardwired to focus on getting new logos into the pipeline and they want marketing to partner with them to make that happen. Marketers want that too. However, it is important to not lose sight of your existing customers; it is these logos that got you this far! Here are 7 ways in which aligning sales and marketing goals around current customers can be the difference between meeting quarter goals and hoping next quarter will be better

1. Use Personas to segment your communication

Marketing invests in marketing automation or email marketing systems so that they can track their emails and ensure that they aren’t bombarding their database with too many emails. That’s all great, but inevitably there is a time when marketing unknowingly blasts an account that sales has an active opportunity with. And it gets noticed because it is a communication that doesn’t fit the customer. The customer is thinking, “Don’t they know me by now?”

Marketing and sales need to divide the customer base into personas and regularly discuss the buying behavior of each persona. From there, a plan to communicate with valued information to each persona can be developed that keeps customer engagement high. Additionally, the email communication plan should be very transparent with sales so that they can flag to have their active opportunities removed from communications during the sales cycle if that makes sense.

2. Ensure sales involvement with referrals

A great sales rep always asks a new customer if they know of anyone else who may be interested in your product. Most reps forget to ask or simply aren’t asking at the right time or in the right way. On the flip side, sometimes marketers will start a referral program, but forget to engage sales. Marketing and sales needs to be in tight alignment on this one. If they are, it can be the best producing channel for leads and customer acquisition.

One of the keys here is that the referral software be integrated into the sales CRM system. Sales needs to know if the lead came from a referral and who it came from so that they can call up that customer, thank them and get more info on the new lead. The referral software should also have a way for sales to input new advocates and referrals into the system so that it is fully tracked and referrals are rewarded without causing operational burden for sales.

3. Be strategic in approaching cross-sell and up-sell

Your existing customers already know how you have helped them be awesome. Why not suggest ways you can help them be even more awesome and increase their profits by cross-selling or up-selling?

If you are selling into a large company, crossing over into another department can bring all the revenue of a brand new customer. Usually this is left to sales to have a good enough relationship that their contact will refer them over to another department. But what if marketing could help? Back to point #2, a referral program can be structured so that existing customers are offered incentives to refer others in their company and to help influence the buying process.

Up-sell gets more complicated because product management is in the mix. They’ve created release notes for their next great product and it gets sent to all customers via an email blast. Sigh. Just a little discussion with sales and marketing could lead to a better understanding of the target customer. Better yet, the beta customers can be tapped to provide quotes and a use case.

4. Use the power of your social influence

Social media marketers are often an isolated group. They are the front-end communication vehicle for the company, yet typically have limited interaction with anyone outside of marketing. And social media channels are often used to push out company news.

But remember; your customers are on the other end of your social conversations too! Just like email, marketing and sales need to be in alignment with targeted messaging campaigns for social media – this can be at the campaign level, or it can even be at the account level where the social media team is giving “social love” to key contacts at customer accounts.

5. Get value from your user communities

Most user communities that exist today are a great resource for product tips and tricks. Product management and customer support teams have dedicated resources that push content into the communities and respond to product issues. Fantastic! But where is the effort to leverage that user community for cross sell, up-sell, referrals and advocacy? Maybe you have a banner ad or two, but is that enough? If you’re not sure, I’m guessing it’s probably not.

Sales and marketing needs to create goals for user communities so that specific effort can be placed on starting conversations that naturally encourage new product discussions (up-sell) or that get customers talking about what they like about a product (advocacy). Those kinds of conversations don’t organically occur (unless you’re lucky).

So, just like your social media channels, dedicate a marketer to work with sales, product management and customer support to ensure that you are leveraging your user community to its full potential.

6. Give ‘em some Love!

In my opinion, you can never give your customers the recognition they deserve, but it doesn’t hurt to try! You exist because of them. Their feedback makes you better! Why not give them love in as many ways that you can. In most companies, sales and field marketing is fairly well aligned on this. They help provide company swag and customer events. But my argument is that more can be done.

Once sales and marketing has discussed the types of customers that they want to attract, it makes sense to highlight the current customers that fit the mold. And I’m not talking about case studies and press releases, but genuinely making these customers feel good about your brand. This could be by giving them an award, giving them some love on social media or even inviting them to an exclusive event with executives. If sales and marketing work together on programs like this, it can be rewarding for all involved!

Don’t wait for a miraculous organizational shift to align your sales and marketing teams; it probably won’t happen. Instead, find the mutual benefits of working collaboratively and communicating regularly. Just throw a few of these items into a calendar invite and re-introduce yourself to your sales or marketing teams. Increasing revenue for your company is a team effort.

In the sales world, there’s heated debate about the Millennial Generation. Do they really switch jobs constantly, never staying with companies for long? The verdict’s still out. But let’s for the moment say it’s true: those born after 1980 are a restless bunch that likes change. As a sales leader, that gives you an average of 12 months during which newly-hired millennial SDRs can be profitable for your organization. How does that timeline change your approach to getting that employee trained and selling? Are you onboarding as quickly and as effectively as you can?

Clients constantly tell me it takes six months to a year for a new hire to become highly profitable. My response is always, “Why?” You can onboard and have that employee making sales in just one month. And, if a newly-hired millennial feels productive and valued from the get-go, they’ll be more likely to stick around.

Before we discuss how to maximize the profitability of millennials, let’s look at the obstacles that slow down the onboarding of new hires:

Lack of preparation: A new hire wants to feel welcomed to the team. They arrive, however, to find there’s no one to show them around, their computer’s not set up, and there’s no agenda for training. Instead of an employee, they feel like a stranger off the street. This is no way to start the onboarding process.

Unrealistic expectations: Though a new sales rep can be onboarded and selling in a month, they can’t be expected to start producing from day one — especially if there’s no agenda in place. If they’re told they should, it will create nothing but frustration for everyone and will increase the chances the new hire will bail.

Training that drags out: There’s a fine line between being prepared and going overboard. If you make a new hire sit through hours of theoretical situations in training sessions versus getting up to speed in a real-life environment, it can take much longer for them to start producing.

No transition plan: You hand over accounts or leads to a new hire without any formal introduction to the clients. Those clients, in turn, are confused and have no idea who’s contacting them. Awkwardness ensues and slows down sales.

Create faster productivity

Now that we’ve examined the obstacles that slow down the onboarding process for new hires, let’s look at how you can speed it up and have your millennials selling in no time:

Partner up: One of the fastest ways to onboard a new sales rep is to pair them with an existing one — or take three weeks and partner them with three different sellers. Arrange for the new hire to listen to sales reps’ calls with clients and have them go out in the field. It’s much better than the new hire trying to get acclimated on their own.

Plan ahead: Give a new rep a well-developed territory – instead of building from the ground up – and they’ll be producing more quickly. If you’re a bigger organization, you might consider having current employees develop territories and generate leads ahead of time. That way, when the new hire arrives they actually have people to call.

Shadow the pros: Arrange for the new hire to go out on calls with a manager or team leader. Allow the employee to take the lead and to receive feedback.

A manufacturing client of mine had great success with job shadowing. The sales manager was ready to pass on a bunch of leads. She and the millennial she’d just hired sat in her office and made sales calls together. The new rep listened to the manager and the manager introduced the employee to clients. Then she had the rep make appointments to go out on meetings and joined him. With this approach, the millennial was onboarded and highly productive in just one month.

By eliminating the obstacles and incorporating the strategies above, you can greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to onboard a millennial SDR. And, you’ll be encouraging them to be highly profitable for as long as they choose to stick around. Which, if you do the job right, could be for a good, long while!

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SPONSORED:

This sponsored post is produced by Winmo.

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Spending on marketing technology is expected to hit $32 billion by 2018.

Between mergers, acquisitions, and general spending on martech platforms, demand for tech solutions has led to unprecedented YoY growth in this market.

According to Walker Sands, there were close to 1,900 martech companies across 43 different product categories at the beginning of 2015. Based on YoY estimates, that means the market nearly doubled from 2014-2015.

Interestingly, despite rapid market growth and high demand, 51 percent of marketers don’t think their companies are investing enough in these solutions — an opinion that very well may change soon considering the large investments being made in mobile advertising and marketing technology heading into next year.

So, as we move into 2016, what buying trends do tech companies need to know in order to get in front of key decision makers and win more business?

Well, based on Walker Sands recent survey of marketers ranging from entry-level to CMOs, we’ve identified seven trends that should reshape tech companies’ sales and marketing strategies moving forward. (All stats below are from the Walker Sands survey.)

1. The role of search

According to research from Google, B2B researchers perform an average of 12 searches before engaging with a brand’s website. It’s also worth noting that 71 percent of these researchers start with a generic search query and nearly half are millennials.

2. The devices used

91 percent of marketers begin their search for marketing technology solutions using a laptop or desktop computer first. Very few people start the buying journey on mobile devices. Although, as marketers move through the buying journey, the use of mobile devices significantly increases.

3. The sources

The top three places marketers go to read about marketing news and martech solutions are Forbes, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal. Forbes is the most read publication for marketers at every level, except for CMOs. Although it’s a slim seven percent margin, 60 percent of CMOs prefer to read Wired.

4. The influencers

When making decisions on tech solutions, marketers are most influenced by peer recommendations, followed by online reviews and analyst reports.

5. The number of touch points

Martech prospects engage with 7-15 touch points before converting into qualified leads. Considering that only five percent of marketers report learning about new technology from sales reps, these touch points can serve as vital research tools for target audiences.

6. The kinds of content

The types of content that play the largest role in buying decisions are product demos, case studies, testimonials, online reviews, and company websites.

7. The factors affection purchase decisions

When deciding on a martech solution, 73 percent of CMOs consider price a top priority, while 77 percent of VP/Director level decision makers prioritize ease of use over price.

Key takeaways

What to make of this? Well, for starters, marketers are strangely quirky when it comes to making purchase decisions on marketing technology solutions — although, those were beans spilled a long time ago.

What we as as the biggest takeaways from all of this are:

1. Referrals are unbelievable sources for new business.
2. Earned media — especially reviews, testimonials and content syndication — plays a significant role in determining who wins marketers’ business.
3. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, martech companies will have to get creative with marketing and advertising in order to get in front of key decision makers and win more business in 2016.

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This much is true: Alex Anthopoulos had absolutely no business becoming the general manager of any major-league baseball team, Blue Jays or otherwise. He literally forced his way into the game—a front-office version of the un-drafted middle infielder who, defying every odd, makes it to the Show.

This is a guy, don’t forget, who begged for the opportunity to open fan mail for his hometown Montreal Expos (for no pay, on weekends). A guy who asked every scout in the stands at Olympic Stadium to teach him the trade, even though many responded with a cold shoulder. A guy who spent two thankless years volunteering at a Florida baseball academy—soaking up every bit of baseball intelligence he possibly could—before catching his first big break.

A guy whose ego never swelled, not in the slightest, even though it could have.

“This is going to sound arrogant, but I will never, ever, ever, ever get a big head or think I have it made, or think I was born for this job,” Anthopoulos told Maclean’s in March 2011, during his second spring training as Blue Jays GM. “This could be gone tomorrow, and that’s not eyewash or false humility because it sounds good on paper. You know it’s inevitable. There will be a day that, if you’re doing this long enough, someone else will be sitting in this chair.”

For Anthopoulos, that day has come. Fresh off his team’s first post-season appearance in 22 years—a dramatic, bat-flipping playoff run that united a nation until last week’s crushing loss to the Kansas City Royals—fans woke up Thursday morning to the seemingly unthinkable: Anthopoulos, the Canadian architect of that potent playoff roster, is out.

Why? Stay tuned. If the full story spans nine innings, we’ve reached about the seventh-inning stretch.

Related: Q&A: Alex Anthopoulos, the Canadian who rebuilt the Jays

Here’s what is certain: Rogers (which owns the team, and this magazine) offered Anthopoulos a five-year contract extension, which, after much deliberation, he declined. In various press releases, senior company officials said they were “saddened” and “disappointed” by his decision to leave because he “has done a terrific job” since taking the helm in 2010. “Like the fans, we too will miss Alex,” said Rick Brace, the president of Rogers’ media business unit. Added Edward Rogers, team chairman: “Alex has done a terrific job as GM of the Blue Jays over the past six seasons, and we would have loved it if he stayed with the club. Like the fans, we too are disappointed he has chosen not to accept our five-year contract offer, but we wish him the very best.”

Prepared statements aside, initial speculation points to an old-fashioned power struggle: Anthopoulos on one side, incoming Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro on the other.

The team announced in August that Shapiro, a long-time executive with the Cleveland Indians, would replace Paul Beeston, the cigar-smoking president who hand-picked Anthopoulos as GM (a “prodigy,” as Beeston described him). By then, the Jays were all the rage, tearing up the American League after two blockbuster trades, orchestrated by Anthopoulos, landed all-stars David Price and Troy Tulowitzki. But even then—with the stadium sold out, and millions more glued to their televisions—the whispers had begun.

Did Rogers approach Shapiro during the Jays’ early-season struggles, back when a post-season berth seemed a distant dream? Did ownership promise him final say on all roster-related decisions—thus stripping that power from Anthopoulos? Or did Rogers have every intention of allowing the GM’s contract to expire (it does so Saturday) until the team’s stunning late-season surge forced the company to reconsider?

Shapiro officially starts his new job on Monday, and he isn’t talking just yet. Anthopoulos did speak to reporters, but his 45-minute conference call Thursday afternoon only added to the mystery surrounding his sudden departure. “Obviously, everyone knows how I feel about the organization, the city, the country,” he said, his voice cracking at times. “It’s hard to leave this staff, but I just felt this was the right thing for me at this time.” (In a cruel twist, The Sporting News announced—smack in the middle of the conference call—that Anthopoulos had been named Major League Baseball’s executive of the year by a panel of his peers.)

Over and over, Anthopoulos heaped praise on both Rogers and Shapiro, insisting he was given every opportunity to keep his job and was always “treated with dignity, class and respect.” It wasn’t about money, he insisted—Rogers’ offer was “more than generous, beyond my wildest dreams,” he said—and he had no issues with the five-year length of the contract offer. But when pressed to explain exactly why he chose to leave, Anthopoulos wouldn’t bite. “I just feel that you need to make decisions in life and you need to be true to yourself, which is important,” the 38-year-old said. “By no means was this an easy decision. It’s just one I felt I needed to make.”

Is it accurate for fans to conclude that you and Shapiro butted heads over the control of baseball operations? “No,” he replied. “I would never get into specifics, but I never requested anything.”

Were you told that your job responsibilities were going to change? “I don’t want to get into specifics,” he said, yet again. “I know people are going to try to read into things, but I just evaluated things going forward and I just felt like it’s not the right fit for me at this time.”

Why is it not the right fit? Specifics, please. “I guess I just want to keep that private and to myself,” he said. “I’d never want to get into speculation and all that kind of stuff. I think some of those things need to be kept private, but again, if anything, all I have is praise.”

Related: ‘Love isn’t about expectation.’ An ode to the 2015 Blue Jays

He “can’t stress” enough how well he’s been treated.  Shapiro is “first-class,” he said, and he’s “extremely appreciative” of the way his contract situation was handled. Yet here he is, packing up his desk and saying his goodbyes. Clearly, somebody blinked.

“I own this decision,” Anthopoulos said. “This is on me, 100 per cent. Mark did everything he could for me to stay, ownership did everything they could for me to stay, and I’m extremely appreciative and grateful of that. I can’t speak highly enough of what they did, so I think the fans need to know that this was a decision I had to make. I don’t know that I’ve had to make a harder decision in my life.”

In hindsight, maybe all the signs were there. Maybe Anthopoulos knew, many months ago, that his Toronto tenure was about to end. As the playoffs rolled along, he talked cryptically about “soaking it all in,” about the importance of allowing himself a few moments to be just a fan, not the GM. When the Jays captured the American League East pennant, he repeatedly pointed out that no matter what happened from that point on, no one could take that banner away from him. He sounded like a man who knew he might not get another chance.

“I do feel that baseball is back on the map in Canada and Toronto, and I think this team is positioned exceptionally well and I think it’s just going to continue to get better,” he told reporters. “I’m always going to be a Blue Jays fan at heart, my kids are always going to be Blue Jays fans at heart, and I’m going to wish the team the best and be pulling for them.”

For now, Anthopoulos is going to spend some much-needed downtime with his wife and two young children before weighing the opportunities that will undoubtedly come his way. If he wants, he can also catch up on some fan mail. His own, this time.

The post What happened with Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos? appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Here are the top three mistakes that CEOs make – and how to fix them.

Mistake #1 – CEOs Read Speeches

Consider the last acceptance speech you heard.

The most memorable speakers of the evening are always those who share straight from the heart. What we don’t remember are the speeches that begin and end with a pre-written set of notes. These two types of speeches just feel different; one impacts us and the other doesn’t.

On the one hand, it makes sense to read a speech that someone else writes because we’re all tight on time. As leaders, we think, if it’s scripted, we can just plug and play. However, we don’t come across as effective or authentic if we don’t practice. Plus, it takes longer to prepare when you are dead-set on getting the wordsmithing right on the speech someone else wrote the speech for you.

The Fix: Whether reading from a teleprompter, notes sheet or memorizing the details, don’t get hung up on the specific words, sentence structure and punctuation. It may feel easier and feel safer, but it fails to connect, inspire or motivate. You need structure, not a script. We advocate using The Decker Grid System™.

Alternatively, adapt the outline your team meticulously crafted for you for the next big event. Change the words and flow to fit your style. Consider letting the slides lead you with two concepts per slide. Another alternative, include four words on your teleprompter to help you know where to go next. No matter what, be sure to put it into your own words to inspire.

Mistake #2 – CEOs Are Too Stiff

I used to work with a Fortune 100 company, and their building was 36-stories tall. The joke was, the higher up in the building you go, the more serious the executives are.

We think that to be taken seriously, we have to be serious. We get so stressed, focused on the numbers, busy, and then we wear it on our faces. We must work to buck this serious trend. In fact, this is the #1 area for CEOs to improve. Instead, we need more lightness in business. Think right now of the CEOs that come to mind who you like or would want to get to know. Chances are, there is a lightness about them.

Too many people lose all their natural and expressive energy when it counts most – when they are speaking to hundreds or thousands at once. They emphasize their content, thinking, “If I just say the right words, people will get it.” In reality, people pick up on the visual and verbal cues, as well.

The Fix: Find ways to pull out your natural self. For some, that means smiling and showing vulnerability rather than striving to show that over-polished cool with your board and with your teams. A great way to do this is by telling stories – and adding other SHARPs. That’s the person you are at a cocktail hour, a backyard barbecue or during a Q+A – and it’s usually a more authentic than the version that often appears on stage. Give yourself permission to loosen up and show energy! Raise the corners of your mouth. Add lightness whenever possible, whether it’s at a meeting, in the hallway or on stage.

Mistake #3 – CEOs Are Not Always Communicating Vision

The primary job of any leader is to continuously communicate vision, mission, goal, and purpose of the organization – whether you are leading a group of 10 or 10,000. This seems obvious, but as CEOs, we get insulated. We also get distracted. Much like the dog in the movie, Up, who jerks his head whenever he hears the word, “squirrel,” we get caught up with the minutia. It’s easy to forget that our role is to be a vision caster – not to deal with the details (that’s the role of your team).

Too many CEOs think the formal one page Vision Statement that every employee may have to memorize takes care of the whole vision thing. It doesn’t. The best CEOs live and breathe their vision. They ARE the vision.

I worked with a CEO of a rapidly growing energy company who used to regularly stroll through the halls of his company to be visible. I challenged him to raise the bar. Rather than just walking around, he could really communicate his vision of unity by shifting the experience. If he asked what they were doing, on what they were working – showing interest, showing engagement and showing that every team member’s task (whether big, small, high-level or low-level) had value to contribute to his vision, it would help them understand their part.

The Fix: At every level, you must consider their experience. Your job as the leader is to communicate how their role – whatever it is – fits into the bigger vision. All the time. Relentlessly. Transfer it to all levels of your organization. Inspire your team by connecting the dots about what impact they have, how they contribute to the vision. Challenge each of your direct reports to translate this vision for each of their teams.

 

The post Three Biggest Mistakes that CEOs Must Fix appeared first on Decker Communications.

In today’s post I’ve provided two wonderful resources to get you over the hump of social media marketing measurement … a subject that seems to preoccupy so much of the online conversation.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post explaining WHEN we measure our efforts is as important as WHAT we measure. This was one of my most popular posts ever and I was rewarded that it helped so many people!

With some magic from my dear friend and art director Sarah Mason, we’ve turned some of the concepts from this post into a slick and colorful slide presentation that you can use for free in your own companies! Here it is:

But wait … there’s more!!

One of the things I love to do most of all as a college educator is hanging out with students and talking about their business problems.  I thought it might be fun to open this opportunity to the world by holding open conversations on Blab.

The video embedded below is the first “Social Media Office Hours” program and it is a great one. On this edition I spend about 45 minutes hanging out with marketing measurement and analytics expert Rob Petersen and, together with some of our {grow} community, we tackle the hardest questions in the field around social media and ROI.

A few key ideas from this presentation:

• Awareness – engagement – ROI … what to expect.
• When you have an integrated marketing campaign, how do you tell the value of social media marketing?
• “Conversations – Amplification – Applause” and the importance to your business.
• Expanding social media value beyond ROI
• The importance of qualitative measures
• The most important metric that I use with all of my clients
• Learning from competitors
• How the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge leveraged sentiment analysis to build momentum
• Is there any way to work around new Facebook restrictions to measure success?
• It’s time to adapt and adopt to Twitter and Facebook restrictions and get creative in measurement
• Why “Big Data” is so dependent on social media interactions
• How to prove your “social media worth” with clients
• How to use metrics to teach and grow your customer.
• The importance of building in quick wins and milestones.

I hope you enjoy this discussion. You’re sure to get a few big ideas out of this video. Let me know what you think and what you would like to discuss with me in the future.

If you can’t view this video, you can see the conversation here: Social Media Measurement.

Illustration courtesy of Flickr CC and threesisters

The post A ton of useful information on social media marketing measurement! appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

So you finished building your app and you are ready to conquer the world and take the app stores by storm. Now, all you need is users — lots of good ones to keep your business rolling. That’s easier said than done…

The good news is that although most cookie-less mobile targeting is still playing catch up to the cookie-based desktop in terms of targeting capabilities, it is nonetheless coming of age. Today, more and more mobile players are showing advances in big data, measurement and analytics, offering marketers the ability to go granular with their target audiences — which is paramount to achieving success.

Phase 1: Define your audience in broad terms

You probably have some general understanding about your target audience. For example, if you’re an m-commerce app selling cosmetics and operating in the US, it is safe to assume that women aged 18-54 from North America is the general target market you should focus on.

However, if you’re a game like Candy Crush, you’re targeting a much broader audience, so finding quality users can be much harder as it may involve multiple parameters. In gaming, it is especially important to find your “whales,” considering studies have shown an extremely small percentage of players contribute the majority of a gaming app’s revenue.

Phase 2: Run low-budget test campaigns

Fierce competition among mobile apps has led to a jump in costs. The latest Fiksu index found that the cost per loyal user crossed the $4 line for the first time. So before wasting a lot of money, start with a soft launch as you seek to understand who YOUR valuable users are.

The soft launch should result in a relatively small group of acquired users (5K-10K daily active users is usually a good size) that can be analyzed.

A key outcome of a soft launch is finding the lifetime value (LTV) of your average user. Once you know your LTV, you can figure out how much you are willing to pay. Basically, you’re looking to meet the golden rule of app marketing: LTV > CPI. As long as this condition is being met, you’re on track!

What kind of targeting can you apply from the get-go?

1)  Demographic targeting: Reach audiences using demographic attributes such as age, gender, education, household income and language preference. Some platforms offer incredibly deep profiling: for example, married women with two kids, owns a credit card, and lives in New York.

2)  Behavioral targeting: Reach out to customer segments based on behavior patterns ranging from past actions (sites/apps/pages visited), demonstrated interests, and purchase intent.

3)  Content targeting: Engage users based on the type of content they consume, like lifestyle, health, entertainment, sports, and more.

4)  Competitor targeting: Your competitor’s consumers are very likely to be very relevant to your own business (for example, people who follow your competitor’s Twitter account).

5)  Targeting your existing consumers (aka retargeting, remarketing, Custom Audiences): As retention and engagement are becoming perhaps the most important goals for app developers, the ability to reconnect with your existing app users (or existing mobile web users you want to convert to app users) is an extremely important element in driving commercial success.

Basically this is done by gathering a list of user identifiers (IDFAs for iOS or Advertising IDs for Android) and retargeting them with a relevant ad based on actions they took. For example, users who added a product to their cart but did not buy, or gamers who completed level 10 but did not play in over 7 days.

The above options are not necessarily specific to mobile, although they obviously apply to mobile. The following, however, are unique to mobile:

6)     Device targeting: Engage audiences based on the user’s device characteristics, including manufacturer, model, operating system, carrier, connection type, etc. For example, if you’re selling luxury products, you can target users who own the latest high-end devices like the iPhone 6 Plus or Galaxy S5 and are considered more affluent.

The key takeaway here is that you should always be up-to-date with the newest devices coming out. OS version is also very important, as you don’t want to target users with an OS version that is not supported in your app. Last but not least, if your app is heavy, make sure to target users with a Wi-Fi connection.

7)  Location-driven targeting: Thanks to the Latitude/Longitude signals a device can send, you can target users in key locations by country, state/province, city and post code. You can even reach a narrower location like a store, airport or shopping mall. Needless to say, a location-triggered ad is highly relevant. A Google-Ipsos report also found that this service is in high demand as 4 out of 5 users want ads customized to their city, zip code or immediate surroundings.

Phase 3: Take a data deep-dive

The third phase of building your target audience is an ongoing process of gathering information about your users, learning from it, and fine-tuning accordingly. Ultimately, you’ll want to go from a couple of general segments to being able to actually define smaller sub-segments that deliver value to your app.

By analyzing your analytics and extracting actionable insights, you’ll be able to:

1.  Make smart marketing budget decisions by allocating more funds to the channels, sources, campaigns and/or creatives that have demonstrated their ability to deliver high-value users, hoping they will continue to deliver the goods (while dropping budgets of under-performing ones).

2.  Understand why a specific channel, source, campaign or creative performed so well. Let’s say the data tells you that campaign three in network B hit the jackpot. The next thing to do is to break it down as much as you can. By going deep you can understand which combination of publishers, geos, ad formats, copy, time of day, day of week, time of year, content, behavioral and/or demographics did the trick. Once you know, you can use this information to find lookalike audiences with the proven networks as well as with other networks (assuming of course they are able to deliver this level of granularity).

Last but not least, never ever rest on your laurels. Your target audience may change and you need to make sure you never drop the ball. So you have to measure, measure, and then measure again to make sure you’re on track.

To sum up, the most important thing for successful app marketing is accurate targeting, which is the byproduct of collecting tons and tons of data and analyzing it on an ongoing basis. Marketing decisions should all be data-driven, so if you plan to spend $20K on a campaign targeting men aged 20-25 in the U.S., you should know exactly why you are targeting this group and why these users will deliver the best ROI.

The dawn of the digital marketer is all about fnding and targeting your audience based on data. Learn more by downloading the free Salesforce e-book.

The disappearing middle class is challenging many major American brands.

The Hershey Company on Wednesday reported flat sales for the most recent quarter and cut its profit outlook for the year.

Company executives blamed the disappointing results in part on the changing income landscape in the US.

"We think that consumer bifurcation has been an important driver," Hershey CEO John Bilbrey said on an earnings call, referring to the growing gap between upper-income and lower-income consumers.

Upper-income consumers are buying more premium treats, while lower-income individuals are purchasing discounted chocolates, he said. Hershey's has been losing market share, as a result.

"While overall consumer confidence is trending up, lower income consumers continue to be fragile as income and wage growth has been minimal," he said. "Higher income and more confident consumers are driving premium growth, while cost-conscious consumers are driving the value segment."

Hershey's is hoping that its acquisition of the Canadian company Allan Candy will help it compete for lower-income consumers, Bilbrey said. The company is also ramping up its premium offerings.

Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison also recently identified "a shrinking middle class in developed markets" as one of four "seismic" shifts that are impacting her company.

"The pace of change is accelerating as consumers endlessly evolve their preferences and unceasing pressure is placed on the industry to operate differently," she wrote in Fortune.

Even Walmart, which is known for its cheap prices, is tailoring its business strategy to the expectation that growth will come from upper-income households in the years ahead.

"The nature of e-commerce, the nature of the Neighborhood Markets and other things we’re doing do create an opportunity for us to be even more relevant to customers that are at the higher end of the scale," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said at an investor meeting this month, according to Fortune.

The share of households in the middle tier of income earners has fallen to 43% from 55% since the 1970s, according to The New York Times.

And those households in the middle tier haven't gotten a raise since 1999.

After adjusting for inflation, US median household income, at $53,657 in 2014, is still 6.5% lower than pre-recession levels in 2007, and 7.2% lower than its peak in 1999, according to the US Census Bureau.

SEE ALSO: American culture is experiencing 4 seismic changes that are terrifying consumer companies

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The most surprising brands millennials love

Who doesn’t love to compare and contrast things, especially our own performance? Marketers care about performance perhaps a little more than other professionals because we need to know the success of our programs, amount of revenue driven, conversion metrics, lead scores so we can work hard to optimize everything. However, you can’t compare performance or revenue numbers, yours or those of an organization, if you don’t have metrics or a baseline to compare against.

This is especially difficult for most enterprise marketers as many surveys tend to skew to the midsize to small organizations. And, if you are a global organization with 250 million in revenue, a large dispersed sales force, selling multiple products, you might have different challenges and goals than a 20 million dollar B2B organization. The comparisons between enterprise organizations and smaller organizations may not be relevant, it all depends on the data.

So, to address this and start the benchmarking for organizations that fall into the enterprise category, ANNUITAS launched the first B2B Enterprise Demand Generation Study in 2014 and found that enterprise marketers are not unlike other B2B marketers. They attempt to measure the performance of their marketing, optimize technology platforms, deliver relevant content to their buyers and struggle to address the marketing skills gap like most organizations. However, they struggle on a bigger scale than most.

Today we made available the 2015 B2B Enterprise Demand Generation Study to enable a true benchmark with relevant data on the performance, goals and challenges of enterprise marketers. According to the data from the survey of over 200 enterprise marketers,there has been some progress in the past year, but not much:

• More than 24 percent of enterprise marketers still don’t define the purchase process of the buyer
• Less than 50 percent put lead scoring value on their content based on where it falls in the purchase process
• More than 65 percent of marketers don’t create content that speaks to every member of the buying committee
• Less than 50 percent put lead scoring value on their content based on where it falls in the purchase process

Take a look at this year’s study and register for The Big Reveal webinar on November 5, 2015 at 1 pm ET to hear an analysis of the study and insights into what has changed from 2014 to 2015. Now that enterprise marketers can benchmark ourselves, we need to hold ourselves accountable to making progress. Otherwise, why bother to measure or gather metrics if you aren’t going to take action?

Author: Erika Goldwater CIPP/US @erikawg Vice President, Marketing for ANNUITAS

How to Use Social Media as a Lead Generation Tool for Your Business.

I’m sure you’ve heard about Social Media. I’m also sure that if you have a business, you’ll also have some form of social media account for that business. What I would be surprised to hear, however, is that you’re successfully using your social media channels to generate new customers, clients or patients.

Whilst there are many businesses who generate much of their income from social media, and others who rely on social media for a large percentage of their leads, the vast majority of businesses do not manage to gain any discernible benefit from the time they spend Tweeting, liking and commenting on social media.

Winning new customers and generating leads via social media is not impossible, but if you’re not successful at it right now then you need to change the way you think about it, what you do with it and consider who you are targeting.

For your business to thrive, you need to provide your customers with the best product or service you have to offer. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to show your best self on every social platform, and it’s also unlikely that your ideal customer will use every platform in the same way. Therefore to bring in new customers, you need to determine which social platform you can effectively and consistently utilise to extend your business to new customers. If your ideal client is another business owner, try LinkedIn. If you target general consumers try Facebook, if you have a products that you sell maybe Instagram will suit you. Focus your efforts on just 1 or 2 platforms.

A great way to get new business on Social media is to have your existing customers engage with your pages. Most of your existing customers should be happy to like or connect with you – after all they have hired you to do something for them! Your priority initially should be to keep your social media pages updated with content that is engaging and relevant to your existing customer base, so that they will want to interact with you.

By doing so you will start building stronger relationships with them, putting you in a position to retain business and repeat customers. These loyal social media followers are the ones who will see your updates first. Get your message right, and your followers will be compelled to like your content, sign up for your offers, and spread the word to their own friends who are likely to be interested in similar things.

With frequent, attention-grabbing status updates and content that gets “shares” and “likes”, the more your page will be exposed to other people. As your page is seen by more people, your following will start to grow also.

If every update is about your business, then you may end up annoying even the most loyal of your customers. Remember, the goal here is to keep your current customers here for the long term, whilst growing your following at the same time. Growth is important, because if you don’t grow your following, or increase the audience you’re talking to then your sales will plateau. This is true however you market your business – if you don’t reach out to more people you won’t make more sales.

To grow your audience with relevant followers who may actually want to buy from you, you should make it as easy as possible for other people to share what you do. If you’re already sharing great content on social media then continue to do this! But you should also make sure that you have great content on your website that people want to share and that you have sharing buttons so that they can share it. Take a look at this web page – there are sharing buttons for all the main social sites – go ahead, share this to your followers!

“To get more people to share your content, provide more opportunities via social share buttons in numerous places throughout your site.”

Some B2B companies assume that their internal marketing and sales teams are the best equipped to represent the company, set appointments and close deals. But a closer look at sales activity that builds the pipeline can help prevent inefficiencies that damage your sales pipeline.

Here are three common mistakes to avoid with B2B appointment setting:

Mistake #1: Setting Appointments For Unqualified Leads

If your lead generation team fails to pre-qualify leads before setting appointments, your sales team loses valuable time on unproductive calls – and your company loses revenue.

Many companies have relied on the acronym BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline) as a standard for lead generation and qualification. But this approach is no longer the best method for selling to today’s B2B buyers.

Instead of BANT, your leads should be qualified based on the ODAC methodology, which stands for Open, Discovery, Agreement and Close. Let’s break down those terms:

• Open: Your sales team uses an open, customer-centric approach from the first call to the last.
• Discovery: Learn about your prospect’s current pains and problems.
• Agreement: Get your prospect to envision your product working for them.
• Close: Guide your prospect through the logistics of their decision to buy.

Mistake #2: Failing To Maximize Appointment-Setting ROI

Increasing your sales team’s overall efficiency may result in increased revenue, but to achieve the best return on investment, you should start by capitalizing on their greatest strengths within your sales funnel. Your team’s strengths most likely include closing prospects who are on the phone and who have shown interest, but they may be less successful at identifying and qualifying leads.

To maximize your ROI with appointment setting, it’s important to have your marketing department warm up and qualify leads for your sales funnel. You could achieve additional benefits by outsourcing your lead generation and nurturing process to a qualified metrics-based firm.

An outsourced lead generation or appointment setting firm increases the efficiency of your sales team by allowing them to focus on closing deals, instead of finding them. This ultimately translates into a higher ROI for your sales budget.

Mistake #3: Trying To Handle Lead Generation On Your Own

When you rely on internal marketing teams to represent the company and generate leads, it’s difficult to scale their efforts to meet changing demand. Instead, consider hiring a lead generation team to enhance the marketing team’s efforts in parallel as they uncover new opportunities.

A team of reliable lead generation specialists serves as an extension of your business, with appointment-setting experts trained to represent the brand image you want to project. Outsourcing your lead generation efforts to an experienced team also ensures your leads are highly qualified and never dead-end opportunities.

Outsourced sales teams offer an additional way to extend your reach. If you’re relying on in-house sales reps to follow up on all leads, many promising opportunities could fall through the cracks during busy periods. For example, what if you need appointments in the field for your account executives who are at a conference you may be sponsoring? This event may be less of a focus for your inside sales team. Outsourcing sales to a reliable team increases your capacity to follow up with new contacts in a timely manner.

An expert sales team also brings fresh expertise to your sales process, which may lead to additional opportunities. With your outsourced team going after these new opportunities, your in-house reps are free to focus on closing deals with your current customer base.

Need to reinforce weak links in your B2B sales revenue chain? Download this free guide from Invenio Solutions® and discover how to strengthen your sales process for a steady stream of customers and revenue.

In Part I of this series, I talked about the changing sales environment and how more buyers are buying than being sold. As a result, salespeople need to dig deep into buying motives to establish credibility and provide new ideas and insights to buyers.

One of the techniques that I used in my 30-year career in sales, including 15 years as a senior vice president of sales in the IT services industry, was to conduct a targeted dialogue with buyers. I would start by asking them to tell me about their top ten customers:

• What are the common themes among their largest customers?
• Why do their customers continue to buy from them? Is it because of long-standing relationships, customer service, speed to market, or any other specific advantage?
• On the negative side, what about the top ten customers that left to go with a competitor? Are there any common themes among those who are gone?

Even though most buyers could not give good answers about their customers, I was able to gain credibility and position myself as a business partner who could provide value.

For me, it’s all about research and sales preparation before meeting with buyers. First, you have to know where they’re coming from, what’s going on with their company, who their competitors are, what markets they’re actively going after, and what the common problems are associated with these markets. You have to learn so much about them that you’re almost sliding into their shoes.

Then, you have to demonstrate a level of industry expertise, showing that you understand the forces at work within their industry and the kind of impact their decisions have on their own customers. Next, establish credentials by touting your organization’s experience in dealing with companies similar to that of the buyer’s own company.

Finally, you need to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of their specific business; otherwise, you won’t be taken seriously. If you don’t come across as an expert in all of these areas, you risk losing all credibility. For salespeople to be successful at selling with insights, you have to be thoroughly prepared to show your understanding of the industry, the prospect, their business, and the prospect’s customers.

The digital technology that forever changed the selling environment offers salespeople the same wealth of knowledge that buyers have been tapping. Sources like LinkedIn and other social sites provide a peek into the buyer’s world on personal and professional levels, uncovering hooks that can become the basis of initial conversations.

If the buyer is new to the company, coming from a competitor or outside the industry, it can be easy to get the conversation rolling by asking about the change in career and what they hope to accomplish. If the buyer is a long-term employee, a different strategy is needed so that they don’t feel threatened about changing the status quo. In this case, it can be better to focus the conversation on the buyer’s customers and start building rapport there.

Resources, such as Glassdoor.com, can provide a look into the buyer’s company and competitors, drawn from a database of company reviews by employees, along with other relevant information. Often, I’ll just use my browser, conduct a search, and scroll through all of the results to get a broad perspective of the business environment.

As I said in Part I of this series, salespeople need to spend the time to learn about their prospects and the industry that they operate in. They have to understand the buying process and show that they can contribute and add value. This is more important than ever before because the reality is that more buyers are buying than are being sold.

Learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions.

The post Sales Preparation: Learn so much about your buyers that you’re almost sliding into their shoes appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

The battle between quality and quantity seems to occur over and over in our lives, especially for B2B marketers. Whether we are talking about content, customers, or leads, there it is.

It even happens when we plan out our workday, decide what to eat, and choose where to go on vacation. Do you want to get more done, but not the most important things? Do you want more food, but fewer exquisite experiences? And do you want to return from vacation so tired from seeing so many things, or having had a handful of truly transcendent moments?

Since we are marketers, let’s focus on leads. We will leave the philosophical wrangling of our lives for another time.

What B2B Marketers Value in a Lead Gen Strategy

B2B marketing is all about generating leads. Because many B2B sales cycles can be lengthy, leads are the best indicator of future sales success. Whether you call it a funnel, a journey, or a loop, prospects that become leads have raised their hands and expressed some interest in what your B2B company does, makes, or provides.

Leads are so important to B2B marketing that research firms study them all the time. And this battle between quality and quantity unwittingly shows up in these studies.

According to a recent study by Ascend2, 70% of B2B marketers cite improving the quality of leads as the most important objective of a lead generation strategy. (highlight to tweet)

That’s right. Seven out of 10 marketers in this survey have said the most important part of their lead generation strategy is to get better quality leads. I’ll say it one more time: Getting better leads is part of their strategy.

But if we look at the third most important objective of this study, cited by 54% of those marketers surveyed, it is increasing the quantity of leads generated. Wait—so more than half of them just want more leads?

How can the quality of leads be the most important and the quantity not be that far behind? The answer has to do with the culture of the organization and what metrics are important to executives.

Marketers who say quality of leads are the most important are those who have connected their lead generation efforts to their sales pipeline metrics. This kind of marketing and sales alignment has become more common with the shifts that digital marketing has caused in this relationship. It doesn’t take long to discover that as lead quality increases, so does its impact on the sales pipeline.

Quality Over Quantity

Those who are interested in more leads are the marketers who don’t have their metrics house in order. Executives demand more leads, but they are not connecting the dots with its impact on sales. Of course more leads are required to increase sales. But as they will find out once their metrics reach a certain level of maturity, that’s not true if they are not attracting the right prospects.

The takeaway for B2B marketers is that they need to follow the lead (pun intended) of these marketers surveyed and focus on attracting the right prospects for their company. It’s not just about the number of leads. Whether you determine who your quality prospects are with the types of content consumed, a lead scoring model, or a true end-to-end reporting structure from marketing to sales, this is now a requirement of modern marketing.

Stat of the Month is a series brought to you by Oracle Marketing Cloud. Once a month, they’ll pick one marketing stat and talk about what that means and why it is important to you. Follow more of their content here.

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