Rnordman

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” Clearly, Heraclitus was a channel chief.

While the average tenure for CEOs and CFOs has reached 9.7 years and 5.9 years, respectively, it seems like the average tenure for channel chiefs can be measured with a stopwatch. In fact, the channel chief revolving door has never been more active; in just the past few months, IBM, Cisco, Lenovo, NetApp, Palo Alto Networks, and Juniper Networks have all replaced their channel chiefs.

What’s causing the turmoil? After all, manufacturers are increasingly dependent on their indirect channels to cost effectively reach new markets and serve fragmenting demand.

Our own primary research and conversations with channel executives across many manufacturing segments have identified four key challenges that channel chiefs are struggling to overcome:

1. Increasing partner engagement. It’s true that partners choose vendors based on the quality and competitiveness of their offerings. However, the second most common factor is the ease of doing business with them. This involves everything from onboarding, to certifications, deal registration, program utilization, claims submittal and payment, and more. Most manufacturers have dramatically increased the breadth and complexity of their offerings while utilizing the same processes and tools from decades ago. As a result, partners often spend more time dealing with paperwork and administrative issues and less time marketing and selling.

2. Reducing the total cost of sale. Every manufacturer wants indirect channels that scale. The ideal partner mix is one in which the majority of partners are serviced in a cost-effective, scalable model, and only a handful of partners require focus. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Channel chiefs often deal with partner issues surrounding confusion over programs, eligibility, endless special pricing requests, escalations regarding rebate claims, and payment delays. As a result, their dream of a scalable, high-performance channel turns into a high-touch sales model, making channel funding and resources vulnerable to cost-cutting or reorganization initiatives.

3. Insight into channel performance. Had Samuel Taylor Coleridge been a channel chief, he would have written, “data, data everywhere and not an insight to share” instead of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Exploding product portfolios, multiple incentive programs, tiered partner programs, and terabytes of distributor and POS data create an information-overload problem for even the most advanced manufacturers. Channel chiefs struggle to translate these volumes of data into insight and answer key questions, including:

• Which incentive programs are delivering the best results?
• What are the high-performing partners doing that lesser-performing partners are not?
• How does program utilization vary across regions, partners, and programs?
• How can I transform my “B” partners into “A” partners?

Without the right analytics – powered by accurate, timely data – key decisions regarding channel budgets and program expenditures are left to subjective discussions which often end poorly for the Channel Chief.

4. Driving revenue growth. Accenture’s 2014 report, “Improving the ROI of Indirect Channel Incentives,” concludes that the money manufacturers spend on partner incentives is not delivering an appropriate return. Clearly, the days of a one-size-fits-all incentive or program model are long gone. Instead, manufacturers need to rapidly create new, targeted incentives to encourage the pursuit of new market opportunities. Additionally, they need to mix and match incentive levers, such as rebates, discounts, bundles, MDFs, and SPIFs, to create compelling, differentiated campaigns that drive greater revenue and create sustained product and brand preference.

Individually, these challenges represent major obstacles to channel success. Combined, they can stall the career of even the most driven, gifted channel chief. What’s a channel executive to do?

The answer lies in holistically managing the channel and all its partner, program, and product lifecycles. To make this a reality, channel chiefs need to partner with the CFOs and business unit executives to invest in an integrated channel management platform that provides a consolidated view of partner, product, and program performance and ensures the accuracy of all channel-related transactions. This platform provides the missing link between CRM and ERP systems and delivers to channel chiefs the insight necessary to overcome their four daunting challenges.

Channel chiefs don’t have to follow the path of the West African Black Rhinoceros into extinction. Instead they can use a comprehensive, integrated channel management platform to harness the power of changing product portfolios, channel programs, market opportunities, and incentives models to drive profitable revenue growth and maintain a long, prosperous career.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn.

Once our homes are kitted out with all manner of smart devices and sensors, where does the growing mass of collected data go to? Enter Kinesis Firehose, one of several services announced by Amazon at its AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week.

The Firehose lets device makers stream data straight to the cloud—the Amazon Web Services cloud, to be exact. It builds on the existing Kinesis framework but makes life even easier for developers and engineers: All of the monitoring, scaling and data management is taken care of by Amazon.

See also: Kinesis Firehose, however, offers a much more straightforward process.

That means anyone with a home security camera or temperature sensor has a ready-made service for getting data off the device and up to a storage bucket on the web. Of course, Amazon is happy to sell as much storage as people want to use. It gives coders more time to work on the front-end of their apps and less responsibility for the back-end.

Bringing Out The Firehose

For simplicity's sake, Firehose doesn't mess with the raw data. According to Amazon's Jeff Barr, it doesn't interpret nor process it in any way. 

"You simply create a delivery stream and write data records to it," he wrote on his company's blog. "After any requested compression (client-side) and encryption (server-side), the records are written to an S3 bucket that you designate."

Amazon Web Services SVP Andy Jassy said that, while Kinesis was useful for helping companies store streaming data and build custom applications on top of it, many organizations don't have the time and resources to make it happen. Kinesis Firehose, however, makes for a much more straightforward process. 

Once the raw data is up there, all kinds of supported services—AWS Lambda, Amazon EMR, Amazon Redshift—can step in to shape it, and more are on the way. Amazon promises that it's easy to use, direct, and requires zero maintenance. Pricing is based on volume of data, and it's available now. 

The company had plenty of other announcements at Re:Invent too—such as QuickSight for building visualizations and analyzing data in AWS, and AWS Snowball, a 50TB server case the size of a beverage cooler that gets your data to Amazon via Fedex at $200 a time. 

There's also a brand new migration service, for getting data out of Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL databases and into AWS, as well as support for the MariaDB engine.

Altogether, it looks like Amazon pulled out some powerful new tricks for a cloud computing platform that's already on top of its game. If its enterprise technology vendor rivals aren't already very worried, they should be. 

Images courtesy of Amazon

While Facebook Ads contribute to the overall sales conversion process, they, like all other advertising tactics, are not designed to “make a sale.”

Many business owners, still struggling to understand the value of Social Media to their overall success, are even more confused about the role of Social “Advertising.”

Social Media Marketing is used to raise awareness of a business and to foster interaction. The goal is to get people interested enough to join the conversation.  Good posts can generate comments and shares, giving a business a larger and more interested audience.

Success is measured both by how many people “like” the page and how much activity (comments, likes and shares) is generated.

Social Media Advertising takes the process a step further by targeting people, who may or may not be friends of a Page.  Ad are designed to attract attention  and to convince the viewer to “click” through to the website or landing page, where they can buy the product, get a coupon, take advantage of a special deal or just learn more about a company.

Once the “click” has happened, the Facebook Ad has done its job.

Here are a few of the problems we have seen when business owners try their hand at Social Advertising:

“Few People are Seeing my Ads”

Are you spending enough on the ad campaign?  The adage “money talks” is true when it comes to competing for ad space on a competitive platform. (And Facebook Ads are getting more popular by the day.)  Since your ads are competing for visibility, deciding on the right ad type and carefully targeting it will go a long way towards having the right people see your ads.

“My Facebook Ads are not generating clicks”

Have you designed an effective ad?  Using the right images and messages is extremely important. Images must be eye-catching, interesting and appropriate. The ad copy must be well written and brief, provocative enough to convince the audience to click to learn more.

Are the right people seeing your ads?  Facebook has several types of ads to choose from and can help you define your target market based on many parameters.

 “People are clicking through to my Website, but I’m not making sales.”

Is your website doing its job?  Do you have an effective “call to action?” Does the website take too long to open?  Are you sending viewers to the right page and providing the information that your ad promised?   Your Website is where the conversions happen. If people can buy products from your website, make sure to make it as easy for them as possible. Keep your contact information front and center.

Your Facebook Page, your ad campaign and your website should work together.  Facebook raises awareness of your business and gets people interested enough to visit the website.  Your Website should convince them that you are the company they should be doing business with.

By combining a strong marketing plan, an aggressive advertising campaign and a good website, your business can achieve the sales results you desire.

It’s time get real on the value of your content. Is your content really providing value to your ideal customer, audience and community?

Many business and marketing leaders are spending loads of time and money on content strategies, framework, media, posts and distribution. However, when you ask them the value of their content and how it is resonating with their audience they often return a shoulder shrug and head shake meaning “I have no clue!”

• Can you answer these questions?
• Do you know if your content is truly resonating with your audience?
• Is it providing them real value?
• Is it helping them solve their problems?
• Is it helping them grow their business?
• Is it helping them become part of something bigger together than they can be by themselves as one?
• Is your audience truly engaging with your content in a human way?
• Is your content helping you nurture real and human relationships?
• Is your content helping or hurting your brand?

If you would like answers to these questions then you are in luck today. Take a listen to the 173rd episode of the Social Zoom Factor podcast to learn 7 easy ways you can measure and determine if your content is providing value to your audience in the inspiration age.

In this 25 minute podcast you will learn:

• How to know if you are truly inspiring, educating, delighting and entertaining your audience
• Why generating revenue is important but not the only metric
• Tips to create a conversion funnel based on value
• Understanding engagement as a metric to understanding the value of your content marketing
• The importance of building a community that is thriving
• Importance of community members connecting in human way
• Understanding your website analytics and statistics
• Don’t ignore the social network metrics
• Utilizing email marketing and email opt-ins as a metric to measure value of content marketing

Sales motivation is an endless source of frustration for many a sales manager. Ambition is here to guide you through a 360° look at the forces that impact sales motivation the most.

Sales motivation is a code great sales forces live by.

They relentlessly hustle and remain determined in the face of adversity. They go the extra mile in prospect outreach, take an extra minute to proofread emails and stay an extra hour or two (or more) past 5 p.m.

And yet, they are also an enigma to many embittered sales managers who can’t seem to instill such sensibilities in their own reps. This post is here to put an end to the mystery behind epic sales motivation.

The Psychology That Creates Sales Motivation

Everything about your sales organization, from its process to its people to its onboarding, has an impact on sales motivation.

The mistake many sales managers make with sales motivation is an initial one – they see it as its own initiative, rather than one that should be factored into every codified aspect of their organization.

So to start things off on the right foot, it’s important to remember that sales motivation always comes down to science and psychology.

The goal is to set up external stimuli that become integrated into your team’s daily grind, and eventually rewire brain chemistry so that reps become their own generators of sustained, internal motivation.

As we’re about to show you, the challenge for managers is instilling proper stimuli across each and every aspect of their sales organization.

In this article alone, we’ll be covering 13 critical topics that influence sales motivation the most. So strap yourself in.

1) How Incentives Affect Sales Motivation

Let’s start by discussing the topic with the greatest correlation to sales motivation, sales incentives.

1,000 years ago, sales was motivated by money. 1,000 years from now, sales will be motivated by money (or perhaps Bitcoin).

Set up a commission structure that’s for your market. Then, augment with reward and recognition.

Of all the decisions you make that effect sales motivation, your decisions with respect to sales compensation and incentives will have foremost influence.

2) How Culture Affects Sales Motivation

In sales, talent shapes culture and culture shapes talent. Sure enough, sales culture is a topic we’ve covered extensively on the Ambition Blog and elsewhere.

In terms of sales motivation, culture has a very simple objective – put reps in the position where they feel motivated as effectively and as often as possible.

In a post I contributed to the CloserIQ Blog, I outlined how this works in startups building an enterprise sales team.

The Wolf of Wall Street may be an extreme example, but managers should heed its overarching lessons about how the tone and tenor of your sales floor will reinforce positive (or negative) sales motivation.

3) How Leadership Styles Affect Sales Motivation

This is a big one that requires some personal introspection on the part of sales managers. For example, I’ll ask the NBA fans out there, is your leadership style more of a Jordan or a Bird?

However you lead, it has a massive impact on sales motivation. Never forget that employees, especially Millennials, are no longer loyal to companies, but managers.

It’s important to reiterate here that a sales force leader’s ultimate goal is not powerful, external sales motivation, but powerful, sustained sales motivation from within.

4) How Quota-Setting Affects Sales Motivation

I’ve seen this one work multiple ways. In all cases, organizations often will structure multi-tiered commission levels that align with how difficult their quota is.

Some people set quotas that will be impossible to obtain for all but the top 15% of reps.

Knowing that such a high bar will disillusion the less hungry and mentally tough reps on their sales force, these organizations are willing to sacrifice the lambs in their sales force to get maximum value from their most capable talent.

Other people set quotas that are more attainable. The trade-off is that their commission levels tend to be significantly lower than those with very high quota.

The real power of quota is in setting expectations. Which is why many organizations shoot for a sweet spot in how high they raise the bar for reps — elevated to the point where the breadth of disillusionment reaches a self-defeating level.

5) How Training/Coaching Affects Sales Motivation

Feelings of competence are universal prerequisites for lasting sales motivation, so your training and coaching regimen will have guaranteed impacts on sales motivation one way or the other.

The causation is self-evident to anyone in sales whose watched a poorly trained rep’s motivation go down in flames.

The more resilient ones will persevere until they reach success, but the majority will be looking for a new job either on the company’s accord or their own accord way sooner than that happens.

One-on-one coaching (shouts out to Rivalry) can help instill sustainable sales motivation over time, as long as the sales coach mixes in bits of encouragement.

A more confrontational approach may work in some instances, but will also unnecessarily turn others off.

6) How Team Dynamics Affect Sales Motivation

The Harvard Business Review piece we invoked earlier puts on a clinic for this topic. The impact of team dynamics on sales motivation is somewhat of a wild card and trickier for managers to control.

A couple key takeaways revolve around subtle social engineering. One sales force conceptualized junior and senior-level sales personnel as “bench players” and “starters.”

Another ran sales contests that awarded multiple prizes, which mid-level performers would occasionally win over top performers.

The results provided sales motivation to the middle tier (recognition) and top tier (wounded pride).

This is really just the tip of the iceberg for this topic, but you get the drift, so start thinking about how to social engineer team dynamics to inspire better sales motivation.

7) How Competition Affects Sales Motivation

Dovetailing off the last topic, healthy competition can act as a force multiplier for sales motivation.

Sales is an inherently competitive profession. Competitions offer myriad ways to dial up sales team motivation — especially if you get multiple offices or departments involved.

The Ambition platform itself grants users four separate levels of competition-based sales motivation.

• User vs. Daily Sales Benchmarks.
• User vs. Past Sales Performance.
• User vs. Peers.
• User’s Team vs. Team of Peers.

As with any competition, the inherent fairness, ability for participants to see progress towards success and rewards for victory in each competition will influence the amount of sales motivation teams derive.

8) How Feedback Affects Sales Motivation

Feedback can come from a variety of sources — managers, peers, prospects, and so forth.

And it’s always happening. Getting hung up on by a prospect is feedback.

The tone, timing, and subtleties of feedback will be what impacts sales motivation – typically more than the messaging itself.

An important thing to remember with feedback. People tend to remember not what you tell them, but how you make them feel.

If you’re a manager offering negative feedback, make sure it’s given in a helpful way.

Proper subtext will differentiate feedback that’s detrimental to sales motivation from feedback that has a positive impact.

9) How Recognition Affects Sales Motivation

As Sales Influencer Series interviewee Matt Hottle rhetorically asked me, “What’s the first thing every sales rep does after closing a huge deal? …Call and tell someone about it!”

Cut to every sales professional nodding.

Your reps love timely, authentic recognition, the younger and greener among them especially. Take the time to publicly recognize them in person, it means a lot more than an email.

10) How Performance Reviews Affect Sales Motivation

To be perfectly honest, it’s typically not in a good way.

From an initial standpoint, the Harvard Business Review has documented emerging scientific proof of cognitive bias in these reviews.

And unless they’re inaccuracies all skew towards the positive, they don’t bode well for sales motivation.

The bottom line here is to tread lightly with the parts of performance reviews that tread beyond objective data and into subjective analysis. A great way to do so is by structuring these discussions as a dialogue, with feedback given both ways.

Another small hack – it’s been proven that the person who says more in a conversation tends to leave it with a more positive impression of how it went.

In most cases, the more time you spend actively listening in a performance review, the better the impact on that rep’s sales motivation.

11) How Hiring Affects Sales Motivation

Everyone wants to be part of an elite team, and the better your hiring, the stronger the push you’ll get in all-around team sales motivation.

By contrast, poor hiring over sustained periods of time can be a major risk to sales motivation, as increased turnover and a weakened team deflates morale.

12) How Onboarding Affects Sales Motivation

First impressions matter. Onboarding determines which foot your new hires start off with not only in performance, but sales motivation.

Onboarding can actually be a secret weapon for sales motivation, as a class that accelerates up to full productivity quickly and confidently gets a jumpstart on poorly onboarded counterparts.

The better the tone you set during onboarding, the greater likelihood of getting positive sales motivation from the rest of the topics covered here.

13) How Technology Affects Sales Motivation

It’s much easier to be motivated when your reps aren’t having to input CRM data.

It’s much, much easier to be motivated when you’re getting automatic recognition for micro and macro-success.

The more technology streamlines your sales process, as opposed to disrupting it, the better its impact on sales motivation.

This very point is the reason behind Save The Millennials, a campaign we’ve launched with 20 other companies to call upon enterprise technology as the best potential savior of Millennials in sales, marketing, and customer success.

Maybe you’re pretty confident in your writing ability; maybe you’re in the “fake it ‘til you make it” camp. Either way, having a concrete writing process can help you become a better writer.

In fact, every writer goes through this process — from you and me to Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. And we go through it for almost everything we write, from blog posts to books.

Depending on what you are writing, you may spend more or less time on any given step, but the steps remain the same. If you train yourself to work through the steps systematically, you’ll see your writing improve, and soon, the process will become second nature.

I’ve created a simple, printable PDF version of this list. Click here to download this list for free.

The Writing Process

No matter what you’re writing, you will move through the same steps of the creative process:

1. Plan
2. Research
3. Organize
4. Write
   ––Cool off––
5. Edit

1. Plan

Every piece of writing you tackle should have a plan. If you’re writing off the cuff, or just when “inspiration hits,” you’re actually making things harder for yourself than they need to be.

If you have a list of topics you’ve brainstormed, go through and pick the one you want to write next, then use the following prompts to create a plan.

• Topic:
• Type/Format: (Is it a list post? An interview? An infographic?)
• AIDA?
• Sales Cycle?
• Business goal:
• Proposed publish date:
• List what you need to do to create this post:
  • Research?
  • Contact experts?
  • Have graphics made?
  • Write it?
  • Etc.

Every time you sit down to write, you should have some form of this laid out that you can look at. It may be more or less detailed depending on how epic the post is going to be.

You may also have some notes about this article. I use the “HOW” column in my editorial calendar to make notes about what I want to say, save links to websites I want to reference, etc.

2. Research

You’re going to want facts, quotes, and expert opinions to back up your ideas and assertions in your posts. You might look for:

• Quotes
• Statistics
• Case studies
• Stories
• Ideas from respected authorities

Start by just Googling your topic. Take a look at the top search results. Be sure to check the source: you only want facts and ideas from reputable sources.

Read or skim the articles and look for relevant information. Copy or make note of things you want to remember in a document, Evernote note, or other file. You’ll want to be able to easily gather all your notes and materials when you sit down to write.

NOTE: I know none of you would do this, but remember DON’T PLAGIARIZE! If you want to use a quote, go ahead and use it, but give proper attribution. Always make note of where you found your research so you can give attribution.

Add your own thoughts to your notes. Remember, you don’t want to be just regurgitating what others have done, but adding new ideas and value to the topic.

The research stage is also when you would conduct interviews, contact experts for quotes, or gather any other resources you might need to create your post.

3. Organize

At its most basic, all content follows the same structure:

Introduction

Where you get people’s attention and make a promise about what they’ll get if they keep reading.

Point 1 – Subhead

Usually some background information about WHY the reader should care.

Point 2 – Subhead

Usually the HOW portion of the article.

Conclusion

Including a call to action.

A book chapter would have more and longer sections, a blog post would have fewer and shorter sections, but the idea is the same.

I have put together a few templates in my free Eyes Only Member Library that you can use as outlines for your blog posts. These templates can be used as outlines to get you organized for writing. Using an outline, you can begin to fill in the details and ideas you collected in the research stage.

I like to start with the subheads; each subhead should make a promise about the information that follows. Once I have my subheads chosen, I know exactly how the post will flow.

It’s also a good idea to look at what else you need for this blog post during the organization stage. If you need to hire a graphic designer, record a video, design an infographic, etc. it’s important to get that all figured out now. Hire your freelancers at this point as necessary.

4. Write

Easier said than done, right?

My favorite thing to do is to block out a chunk of time with nothing else to do but write. I tend to write my own blog posts and copy on Saturday mornings. I don’t have to worry about doing work for clients or anything else: it’s all about the writing.

• Write as though you’re addressing one person. Picture your ideal reader in your mind and write directly to her.
• Start in the middle. I find it’s often easier to develop my thoughts if I start with one of the sub topics. This is why having an outline is helpful.
• Develop your introduction. It’s usually easier to come up with a compelling introduction when you already know what the rest of the article says.
• Write a strong conclusion. Tie up all your points together and give the reader a takeaway.
• Include ONE call to action. Be very specific and tell them exactly what you want them to do.
• Spend a good deal of time on your headline. I like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, which can help rank your ideas.

––Cool Off––

It may sound silly, but it’s important to schedule a break between when you finish writing and when you edit or publish.

Why?

Because when you’re in the thick of creating, you’re too close to the information to be a good judge of it.

Professional writers almost always plan to step away from a piece before they edit or publish. That’s why it’s important to PLAN to create your content in advance — so you’re not rushed up against a deadline, and you have time to take a break.

5. Edit

Ah editing. Ernest Hemingway famously said, “Write drunk; edit sober.” Apart from his alcoholism, I think the thing to take from this is that editing is almost more important than the writing. (Almost!)

• Read through the whole article from the perspective of your ideal reader. Does it make sense? Is it logical? Does it serve a need? Is it unique?
  • Is it useful?
  • Is it in-depth?
  • Is it unique?
  • Is it emotional?
  • Is it better than what’s already out there?
  • Does it improve your readers’ lives?
  • Will it have a measurable impact for your business?
• Fix organizational problems first. Rearrange sections or sentences as necessary to create a more logical flow.
• Look at your introduction next. Make the first sentence and paragraph as intriguing as possible. Stick to your main point.
• Finally, finesse your language.
  • Make your verbs active. Replace “is, are, was, were, be, being, been” with active words wherever possible.
  • Wherever possible, replace adjectives with more specific nouns.
  • Cut unnecessary words and phrases.
  • Simplify complicated sentences and paragraphs. (Aim for an 8th grade reading level.)
  • Check spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

You may choose to do more than one round of edits on an epic post (the bigger the post, the more attention you need to give it), or bring in a friend or editor to help.

And then, you’re done!

The final steps might be to format the post nicely in your blogging software, create and add images, add “click to tweet” tweetables, etc. But your post is now written, and you can schedule it to be published.

Don’t forget, you can download a free, printable version of this list to keep on your desk and work through each week. The more you practice this writing process, the better your writing will become!

How often do you and your salespeople use email throughout your sales process? Learn how to avoid hiring salespeople with the writing acumen of a five-year-old.

The day starts like any other day. You open your inbox to check your emails. Maybe it’s from your boss or from the CEO of the company. Maybe it’s from a peer, direct report, customer or a vender. It could also be an email from customer service or a friend. Or, maybe it’s from someone you respect, even admire.

After reading the email, you think to yourself, “A five-year-old can write a more articulate email than this. Look at all of these punctuation errors and misspellings, let alone the grammatical mistakes. And for the last twenty years, this person has been the VP of Sales for a multi-billion-dollar company!”

How does this happen? Why do some of the smartest, most successful people find it so difficult to put an intelligent, well-crafted email together? As a wordsmith myself, I’m sensitive to this question and realize there’s a bucket full of reasons as to why people struggle with any form of writing, whether it is writing creatively, drafting or responding to an email, writing a proposal, crafting presentations or marketing materials, or any type of writing that is part of their typical work day.

This aside, one constant still remains. When you work for a company and rely heavily on email or any form of written communication as a way to communicate, connect, collaborate and engage with people, then what you write is a reflection of you and your entire organization.

Studies show that employees, especially salespeople, can spend 50% or more of their time reading, writing and responding to email.

A Hidden Opportunity

However, most of the time, companies step over the opportunity to evaluate this critical communication skill, make an offer to the candidate they have been interviewing, and don’t realize that the person they just hired is virtually illiterate.

When looking at your hiring and interviewing process, most of the managers who are part of the process would admit that assessing people’s written skills is a missed opportunity and something they need to do more consistently. Unfortunately, most managers don’t have a process to successfully assess someone’s writing aptitude. To compound this challenge, what if the person who is doing the hiring also struggles with written communication? Who in your company is able to objectively and effectively evaluate a candidate’s writing acumen?

Here’s a make or break exercise you can add as another step in your interviewing process to ensure you are hiring someone who is an all-around engaging, collaborative and effective communicator.

First, take a look at your email archives or sent emails folder. You are looking for three unique scenarios. Find a few emails that contain the entire written conversation thread to provide background and context that you feel would be most relevant for the position you’re looking to fill. Make sure they are three distinct situations from three different people.

Remove the names of the people from the original email and conversation thread or any other sensitive information you need to omit in order to protect privacy, intellectual property or if you have any HR/internal compliance guidelines to follow.

Once done, schedule a meeting with the candidate (phone or in-person) and forward these three emails to them. Each candidate will then be asked to craft a response to each email, which they will then send to you to be evaluated. Make sure you explain the intention and objective of this simulation. Here’s one simple way to do so.

“Let’s imagine for a moment that you have been hired for this position and are now the acting Director of Business Development. You have just received these three emails from three different people. You can gather the details of each scenario in the email thread. As the acting Director of Business Development, how would you respond to each email?”

Keep it Real

Provide them with enough time to craft an intelligent response. Within the next hour or so, you will receive three email responses written by these candidates, making this simulation as real, relevant and as timely as possible. Most important, you have just assessed whether or not you would feel comfortable with how this person communicates in writing and how they represent your company.

Keep in mind, the emails don’t all have to be from customers. Depending upon the role you’re hiring for, the email could be from a prospect, a peer, boss, customer support, your help desk, or if you’re looking to hire a manager, it could be from their hypothetical direct report. Any relevant scenario could work. Here are some examples.

·      Service issue

·      Creating a value proposition

·      Upselling issue

·      Irate customer

·      Competitive situation

·      Renewal

·      Getting to the decision maker

·      A sale may be lost to a competitor

·      Several pricing objections from the prospect

·      Discount issue

·      Internal employee issue

·      Help desk issue

·      Sales needs to communicate with support

·      Relationship issue

·      Working on a project with a cross functional team

·      Performance issue

Can they cheat? Sure. That’s why I suggest scheduling this exercise with them on the telephone or in person, and have them complete it during that allocated time.

And what about your current employees? It’s never too late! You can do this as a team or individual coaching exercise to uncover opportunities to strengthen their written communication skills and ultimately, their personal brand.

A Real World Success Story

Here’s how one manager leveraged this exercise to make the right hiring decision. Brian, a client of mine, was the VP of Sales for a pharmaceutical company who was looking to hire a new Regional Sales Manager. He narrowed it down to two candidates. He felt both were a perfect fit and that he couldn’t really make a bad decision. But Brian couldn’t decide. I suggested this exercise, which he did. After reviewing the emails each candidate had written, Brian reported back that it was this exercise that secured his decision.

Throughout the interviewing process, Brian said that both candidates were very articulate, polished and experienced. On the telephone and face to face, each person presented and communicated very well. They also had successful track records and stellar references.

However, when comparing their writing acumen; their expertise, style, professionalism, clarity and brevity of message, spelling, grammar, etiquette, closing statement and vocabulary, one candidate clearly rose above the other.

When you effectively evaluate all of the competencies every person needs in order to be successful in their role, you’ll shift your focus from hiring fast to hiring right.

What strategies have served you best in hiring sales champions?

With the unveiling of Salesforce Lightning, we’ve unveiled a whole new Salesforce and a whole new way to sell. Learn more by downloading the free e-book.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both," wrote Robert Frost.

Major business decisions can leave many of us feeling "sorry" we can't have it both ways, as well as panicked and overwhelmed by the possible consequences — especially if our choice affects other people.

A new online tool promises to help. This week, Cloverpop launched a free preview of a product to assist managers in making business-focused decisions, like whether to hire more people or open another store.

To design the tool, Cloverpop reviewed scientific research on how people make decisions (they relied especially heavily on behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman's work) and spent time testing out several iterations of the product on different business teams.

The tool takes into careful consideration factors such as how much uncertainty there is about the decision and how much team members are in conflict over the issue. It also accounts for the expected impacts of different choices a year down the line.

The manager and her team members input potential consequences of and alternatives to a decision; then an algorithm parses all that data to figure out what the best course of action might be.

With this new product, Cloverpop hopes to reach a wider user base. For the past year, the company has offered an online tool to help individual users make personal decisions — whether to attend grad school or switch jobs, for example. The product has only about 11,000 users, and in January, the company decided to change directions.

I recently tested out the new tool by inputting two hypothetical decisions: "Should I go out for lunch today?" and "Should we have [now-weekly] strategy meetings twice a week?" (Larson cautioned that the tool doesn't really work if you use a "fake" choice, but I did anyway.) 

My experience suggests that the product could be useful, but only as a launching point for in-person discussions about the issue. In fact, that's exactly how some of the tool's beta testers have been using it.

When I spoke with Cloverpop's CEO Erik Larson, a Harvard Business School graduate and former product executive at Adobe, he told me that every major decision requires a manager to spend at least 35 hours deliberating and at least eight team meetings. The new tool is designed to not only speed up the decision-making process, but also to eliminate sources of human bias that inevitably creep in. 

The manager starts by entering information about the decision — such as how much conflict and uncertainty there is, what all the available options are, and what the impact of going forward with each option could be.

Then each team member weighs in on each of the options, how they think each option will affect the organization's goals, and adds any other ideas that come to mind. Larson recommends that no more than six people give their feedback, but managers can invite as many people as they want.

Finally, the manager is presented with colorful charts that display each team members' thoughts on the different alternatives, and a recommendation for the final decision.

Each team member re-ranks his or her top choices and a decision is officially made. The whole process takes about 10 minutes per person.

In the months leading up to the preview launch, Cloverpop allowed different organizations to test the tool. Larson cited one example of a manager at a restaurant chain who wanted to decide whether to get rid of the lounge act that performed on Fridays. The act took up four tables that could otherwise be used to seat additional customers.

The manager and a few of his team members used Cloverpop and discovered that everyone agreed that they should eliminate the lounge act. 

"They'd never come together like that before," Larson told me. "Everyone was reluctant to say explicitly" that they wanted to oust the performers. 

Larson has also been working closely with David Daniels, a doctoral student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. When I told Daniels that I had reservations about making decisions using a digital tool that lacks empathy, he said the product is meant to augment — not replace — the process of talking out a big decision with coworkers, family, and friends. 

In terms of reducing biases, Daniels said research suggests that people tend to focus on the near-term effects of their decision, and largely forget about the long-term effects. Cloverpop's tool prompts people to consider the potential effects of different decisions, say, a year down the line. 

Instead of simply making a pros/cons list or walking you through a cost/benefit analysis, Daniels said, Cloverpop "broadens your horizons of what should be considered." 

Larson emphasized that one of the most important aspects of the tool is that, about halfway through the decision-making process, it asks you to generate a fourth alternative, besides the three you initially came up with.

I can imagine that, should the user be making a serious decision that potentially affects the company's bottom line, Cloverpop might come in handy. For one, it prompts you to realize that there are almost always alternatives you didn't think of at first (for my decisions, those were "have a snack later" and "have a strategy meeting over Slack chat"). 

Another enlightening piece of the process is the one in which it asks you whether you're missing any important information (one of my colleagues pointed out that he was missing information about how willing I was to pay for lunch).

At the same time, I would not advocate using the product as a stand-in for in-person meetings, especially if the decision is a sensitive one.

It's also worth noting that parts of the process are slightly confusing. For example, when I was asked to list all the options for "Should I go out for lunch today?" I didn't realize that I had to list "going out for lunch" as one of the options — I assumed these were alternatives to going out for lunch.

In general, I think the most useful part of the tool isn't the final decision that the algorithm spits out, but actually taking the time to label your thoughts and feelings about the issue. In a real-life business situation, every team member could be required to complete the Cloverpop process before coming to the meeting, so that they can clarify their own feelings about the topic instead of showing up with conflicting thoughts.

As of Thursday morning, 500 managers had signed up to be invited to the preview release. Larson expects the preview period to last six months, but the basic product will remain free to use. Cloverpop will also offer a monthly premium subscription that includes advanced features such as enhanced analytics and executive dashboards. At this point, they haven't set pricing for the premium model.

SEE ALSO: 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Turns out 'Shark Tank' investor Robert Herjavec doesn't value advice at all

---

The on-demand economy, and how the heck the U.S. should regulate it, is shaping into a pretty hot issue ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. President Barack Obama addressed the topic this week during the White House’s “Summit on Worker Voice.”

The event, designed to promote the WAGE Act and critique the “new economy,” ultimately offered two bits of feedback for startups like Uber: Jobs and tech good, hiring contractors bad.

Here’s Obama’s quote on that specifically [emphasis ours]:

Our culture as a whole started somehow extolling greed is good, instead of, how do we work together to create a good society for everybody. Jobs, as a consequence, began paying less, offering fewer benefits. And in recent years, we’ve seen more companies cut costs by hiring contractors and “permatemps” — workers who are laboring side-by-side with full-time employees but don’t earn the same pay and benefits and job security. That’s a bad phrase — permatemps.

You can view the full transcript of Obama’s speech here, as transcribed by the White House. We’ve quoted a portion of his remarks below, indicating gaps with ellipses. It’s packed with commentary on the ballooning on-demand economy, and his statements may reflect how Democrats will handle the issue going forward.

And that’s true now more than ever, during this time of rapid economic change. In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion of American innovation in the workforce. And because of technology, people are empowered and employers are empowered to create value and services in new ways.

We’ve got folks who are getting a paycheck driving for Uber or Lyft; people who are cleaning other people’s houses through Handy, offering their skills on TaskRabbit. And so there’s flexibility and autonomy and opportunity for workers. And millennials love working their phones much quicker than I can. [Laughter] And all this is promising. But if the combination of globalization and automation undermines the capacity of the ordinary worker and the ordinary family to be able to support themselves, if employers are able to use these factors to weaken workers’ voices and give them a take-it-or-leave-it deal in which they don’t have a chance to ever save for the kind of retirement they’re looking for, if we don’t refashion the social compact so that workers are able to be rewarded properly for the labor that they put in — people like Terrence — then we’re going to have problems.

…So we’ve got to make sure that as we continue to move forward, both in this new “on-demand” economy and in the traditional economy as a whole, hard work guarantees some security. And that’s what this summit is about -– making sure that, as our economy continues to evolve, working Americans don’t get lost in the shuffle. They can come together and they can win.

…Now, the economy is changing again. Technology has made it easier for companies to do more with less. They have world markets and the capacity to shift operations along the global supply chain.

Our culture as a whole started somehow extolling greed is good, instead of, how do we work together to create a good society for everybody. Jobs, as a consequence, began paying less, offering fewer benefits. And in recent years, we’ve seen more companies cut costs by hiring contractors and “permatemps” — workers who are laboring side-by-side with full-time employees but don’t earn the same pay and benefits and job security. That’s a bad phrase — permatemps.

… And so, in today’s economy, we should be making it easier, not harder, for folks to join a union. We should be strengthening our labor laws, not rolling them back. (Applause.) And for contractors or workers who can’t join unions, we should be finding new avenues for them to join together and advocate for themselves as well.

… So we’ve got to look for new tools to bring people together, because in today’s economy, it’s not always going to be a situation where you just have one plants and one worker and one organizing drive; it’s going to be workers who are not always on a single site. And we’ve got to find ways to make sure that they can express their solidarity in new ways. And that’s where technology actually can help in the same ways that in the past sometimes it’s hindered.

… So we’re here today to think about where do we go next. We’ve got to ask ourselves: What does the next generation of American jobs look like? How do we make sure those jobs reward hard work? At a time of shrinking union membership, but a growing number of digital tools for organizing, how do we make sure everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead?

… So I’m sure there are going to be a lot of ideas coming out of these discussions, but these are the guideposts that we need to stay focused on: Good pay; benefits; workplace safety; work-family balance; skills training; the freedom to organize. That’s what unions secured for us. That’s what we have to secure for the next generation of workers.

In March, our leadership team spent 10 days at four offices in Asia, with the goal of learning firsthand how each employee felt about the company. After meeting one-on-one with 83 of the company’s 90+ employees in Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, we came away with notebooks of feedback, a greater strategy of what needed to be done to help strengthen the company in the region, and a feeling of mutual trust from each employee with whom we had met.

While this type of interaction with company directors is not a cultural norm, it definitely worked—and was obviously much appreciated. Nearly every employee opened up very quickly, creating a real sense of camaraderie and trust even in a short 10-15 minutes. They are now open and ready for additional training to help improve the company.

This is only one example of the value that people—and their relationships—bring to an organization, and the importance of investing in those people along the way. While I previously wrote about the importance of building long-standing relationships with clients, equally important are the relationships developed between employee peers, employees and managers or executives, and executives and members of the board. These relationships are fundamental for the success of any organization, and don’t often begin as easily—or quickly—as described in the scenario above.

How to Invest in Workplace Relationships

As Dale Carnegie once said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

While employees don’t usually start off as “friends,” per se, the same idea applies. Employee-oriented organizations get to know their employees and engage with them to help the entire organization move forward.

So how do you invest in your people, the leaders—or future leaders—of your organization? Here are some suggestions we’ve successfully applied:

• Meet (and Train) Each Employee: As an executive team, make every attempt to meet every employee, and be open to listening to their thoughts. While this might be more difficult for multinational enterprises, it isn’t impossible. As our visit to Asia demonstrates, the effort is invaluable in helping employees feel important and committed—and open to listening and learning. Above all, remember employee names! With our rapid growth over the past five years and ongoing global expansion, this has been more and more of a challenge. My assistant created a deck of Flashcards on each employee, including a photo and listing name, title, start date, etc.  Just memorizing more names and associating this with an image has helped our leadership team perform better at each interaction.

• Schedule Regular Team-Building Activities: Encourage regular corporate and team activities to help build rapport and trust. We give each team leader a budget each quarter for offsite activities. For example, in August, the Spanish translation team leader brought his team to his home for Colombian food, and in July, our IP project management team spent an hour at a new entertainment center near our headquarters, working together to solve puzzles and crack codes to flee a “live escape” room!

• Provide Professional Development: Invest in training and professional development as often as possible. Not long ago, we sent one employee—at his request—to Peru for a year and a half. Kengo Date came back fluent in Spanish, but he also developed critical professional, organizational and cultural skills that make him a greater asset to the organization. He was recently promoted to be a team leader.

• Encourage Life Balance: While in Asia, we spoke with several female employees who were so concerned about doing their job well and “right” that they often worked late hours and weekends to the detriment of their families. While meeting deadlines and fulfilling their job responsibilities is important, we do not want them to sacrifice their quality of life, but to simply find a balance and know it is acceptable to set boundaries.

• Keep It Going: Once a relationship is forged, don’t neglect it. It is critical to have regular, personal contact. When face-to-face communication isn’t possible, speak on the phone—or video conference—as often as possible for a more personal interaction.

An Outside Perspective on Investing in People

When MultiLing accepted growth equity capital two years ago, we added an outside perspective to our board and found a similar philosophy. According to Michael Ramich, a managing partner at Frontier Capital, the need for strong relationships as well as quality talent rings true for the technology-enabled professional services companies in which they invest both capital and strategic insights.

“Investing in the advancement of technology is important, but even more important is investing in people we believe in and trust,” Ramich said. “Like any relationship, building that trust takes time. In fact, almost every investment we have made has required months or years to build strong relationships with the management team. Once those relationships are forged, we generally spend another 6-12 months heavily involved in bringing additional talent to the table.

“We look for people we can trust, who are committed to building a strong team and who are able to contribute both as an individual and a team,” he added. Building strong interpersonal relationships with employees also helps build trust—their trust in you as you lead the company. This will help them accept change, which is necessary for growth.”

How Investing in People Pays Off

People are the key to any organization, and investing in each employee at every level pays off in myriad ways. Kengo Date, the team manager we sent to Peru, for example, feels, in his words, extremely grateful for the opportunity, and is committed to the overall vision of the company.

“This time in Peru not only helped me expand my Spanish language and leadership skills, but also gave me a new and more in-depth understanding of the global vision of the company and a new motivation for doing my best to help the company succeed,” Date said.

Other ways investing in your people benefits an organization include:

• Less turnover
• More innovation
• More engaged workers
• Overall growth in revenue

If you invest in your employees, they will invest in you and in delivering the best experience possible to your clients. As a result, your business will grow with loyal employees that turn into loyal managers, who will help invest in others along the way.

Even if you are well aware of how important a strong social media strategy is to your online marketing campaigns, it may not always feel like the quality of your results are matching your efforts.

This can make the hours you spend each week on social media marketing even more difficult to justify—especially to higher-ups in your company who may not be as confident in the value of a strong social media presence.

Luckily, there’s a way to improve your B2B social media strategy and get the type of measureable results you want. It’s just a matter of going to the data.

4 Ways to Use Data to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

1. Evaluate Your Current Strategy

Before you make any drastic changes, first take the time to evaluate your current strategy. Consider how many platforms you’re using—are you able to maintain active and updated profiles on each channel?

If not, it may make sense to pare down your presence to just the few platforms where you’re seeing the best results.

In order to determine which social media channels you should focus on, look first to your website’s Google Analytics data and see where you’re receiving the most referral traffic. This will tell you which of your social media channels are working to drive traffic to your website and create new leads.

On the other hand, if you’re new to social media marketing and don’t yet have a well-developed strategy, you may be wondering where to start. For professional services firms, we recommend starting small by building a strong presence on LinkedIn and Twitter.

2. Use Data That’s Already Available

Though it varies based on the platform, most social media channels have some sort of dashboard that records activity and other metrics that can be a great starting point for analyzing your progress.

By keeping track of this easily available data, you can see your growth by month and determine where you need to make changes to get more out of your profile.

As an example, try tracking which types of posts and content tend to get the biggest response from your followers. And analyze posting times and frequency to see what suits the needs of your audience the best.

3. Use Google Analytics

Though some many find it intimidating, Google Analytics (or similar analytics tools) can provide a wealth of information to improve your social media strategy.

Instead of simply tracking the number of likes, retweets, comments, or favorites that you’re getting, you can utilize Google Analytics to track the amount of referral traffic and conversions you’re getting from social media:

But that’s not all—you can also determine which social media channels are having the biggest influence on your overall marketing strategy. This type of information can help to inform your decision about which platforms are most worth your efforts and which you should consider eliminating altogether. Take these sample analytics, for example:

In the case of this sample firm, LinkedIn and Twitter are clearly the most beneficial, with LinkedIn as the standout.

4. Embrace Employee Advocacy

Many professional services firms are creating employee advocacy programs to encourage employees to promote firm content on their personal social media pages and help build the firm’s overall brand.

Employees also have the advantage of being the firms “ears on the ground”—they can listen to what’s being said about the firm and find opportunities to join in the conversation.

When your employees become brand advocates, it offers your firm a unique opportunity to expand your reach and visibility through your employees’ network. Not only does employee advocacy help share your firm’s voice, but it can also humanize your brand.

As your employees expand their own influence and visibility, they can also work toward becoming Visible Experts℠. Building a recognizable personal brand can have significant benefits for both the individual and the firm as a whole.

With these tools, your firm can begin quantitatively tracking your social media efforts. The data provided can then be used to make informed decisions about your marketing tactics so your firm can make the most of your social media channels.

Value, value, value. It’s the key to modern selling and one of the only thing buyers care about when making a purchasing decision.

But conveying value isn’t always easy. It can be confusing to separate what a product is from what it does and what that means for buyers.

The important thing is to think about form, function, and value separately. Here’s an example:

• What the product is: An umbrella
• What the product does: Shields its holder with a dome of waterproof fabric
• What the product offers: Prevents buyers from getting wet in the rain

The last sentence is by far the most compelling. I also most clearly explains why a prospect would want to purchase an umbrella.

An effective value proposition functions much the same way. According to an infographic by QuickSprout, a good value proposition acts as “the main reason a prospect should buy from you and not from your competitor.”

So how do you put one together? There are three steps to writing a great value proposition:

1. Identify customer benefits.
2. Link benefits to value offering.
3. Differentiate and position yourself.

And as you write, keep in mind that the best value propositions have four key characteristics. They are easy to understand, communicate specific results, explain how a product is different (and better), and can be read and understood in under five seconds.

Check out the full infographic below for more value proposition tips and tricks, and be sure to peruse QuickSprout’s curated selection of five companies with top-notch value propositions.

What can marketing and sales learn from a Super Bowl winning team?

Just like offense, defense and special teams all need to do their job to ensure victory on the football field, your Sales and Marketing teams can work together to ensure leads get qualified, converted and everyone goes home happy. Here are some tips from my decade of marketing experience collaborating effectively with sales. These tips are most relevant for a multi-step, complex sale environment.

For Marketers

1. Qualify, qualify, qualify. The worst thing you could do as a marketer is not give sales enough relevant information. Don’t be lazy – when they win, you win. When you qualify a good lead and pass them on to sales, provide as much information as possible to make their job easy.

2. Stay on Top of the Industry. Keep on the look out for new competitors, keep track of what your competition is doing well and do it better. Setting up Google Alerts for key search terms or a news from a key competitor is an easy and automated way of doing this.

3. Adapt to Feedback. Sales needs to communicate what’s working and what’s not. Just like a coach making half time adjustments to his strategy, marketing needs to use the new data to adapt their approach when necessary. Don’t get defensive or stubborn – take advice and it will benefit everyone.

For Sales Reps

1. Communicate Results. There’s nothing worst for a marketer than doing a good job qualifying someone, providing valuable background information to Sales, and then hearing nothing about the results. You care about results, so does your Marketing team. Don’t just share the wins.

2. Give Feedback. Share the good, bad and ugly. Has your best customer persona changed? Even if you don’t get to the next step or close the deal, specific feedback on who is buying (or not) matters. We want to know how we can do better in marketing land.

3. Use Content. Content marketing is hard work and requires a lot of time and effort to make sure it lands. We do this to help you close deals. Please use what we provide or offer feedback on what can be done differently.

Forgive me for one last football metaphor, but we all win and lose as a team. If sales people and marketers leveraged these simple tips, there would be more accountability, the lights will stay on and everyone’s life will be a little bit easier.

Sales reps are competing against the status quo.

– Brent Adamson, author of The Challenger Customer

Software-as-a-Service sales teams today are facing a unique problem.

Sales reps aren’t losing deals because of pricing, features or even competitors — they’re losing deals because of the prospects themselves.

What does that mean? Well, today’s SaaS sales reps are struggling against a perfect storm of highly-educated buyers, fear of change, and an increasingly complex buying process. Reps have to sell to multiple stakeholders, who have access to a lot of information and are often wary of making any new purchases.

Sales leaders should stop worrying about competition in the market and start focusing on the real challenge — the knowledge and preconceived notions of prospects themselves. Convincing these buyers and overcoming their reservations is the key to growing your SaaS business. Learn how you can prepare your sales team to turn tough B2B buyers into your biggest fans.

Nice to Have, not Need to Have

In SaaS, sales reps are often selling an innovative product that replaces a slow or inefficient manual process. For example, you buy CRM so you’re no longer managing sales leads in a spreadsheet; you buy marketing automation so you’re not manually tracking landing page conversions; and you buy finance software to streamline your billing processes. The problem is, some B2B buyers may consider your SaaS product innovative and interesting, but not a necessary purchase for their business right now.

In other words, your team is selling is a nice-to-have upgrade, instead of a need-to-have solution. This is where your sales reps have to create a sense of urgency and instill a little bit of fear in prospects. Reps must show the prospect that if they don’t buy the product, they’ll be losing X amount of money per day — and have the data to back up their claims. SaaS reps must be 100% prepared to prove the business value of the product, before prospects will ever consider buying.

More Stakeholders, Fewer Decisions

Not only do reps have to prove the product’s inherent value, they also have to convince multiple stakeholders across the organization. There are an average of 5.4 people involved in every B2B buying decision, according to research from CEB. Unfortunately, that means SaaS sales reps have to engage with and convince even more people within the organization, struggling to achieve the dreaded “consensus sale.” But as the number of people involved in the decision rises, the likelihood of a purchase actually diminishes.

It’s obvious to see why. Each person within the organization has their own goals, their own performance metrics, and their own priorities for a limited budget. Why would 4 of the 5 prospects choose to buy your product, when they can invest in another project that would benefit their team? Because it’s difficult to convince an entire team from the outside, reps have to instead focus on finding and empowering an internal champion who can advocate and push for change within the organization. Without a champion, the rep will see the deal stagnate and slow until it is officially lost. But with a champion, reps have a fighting chance to win over leadership and close the deal.

The Education Dilemma

Today’s SaaS buyers aren’t just difficult to convince, they’re also highly educated and self-motivated. If prospects do decide they’re interested in buying SaaS software for their team, they’re not waiting idly for a sales reps to call. They’ve already done a significant amount of research before ever engaging with a rep on your team. Most prospects have downloaded eBooks, read blog posts, talked with analysts, and checked out software review sites. In fact, 57% of the purchase decision is complete before a buyer speaks to a sales rep.

Many SaaS companies understand this challenge, and realize they have to invest in targeted content to draw in buyers as they begin to do research. If your marketing team has done their job well and led an inbound lead to your sales team, that doesn’t mean reps should stop educating the buyers. You must enable your sales team to easily access the marketing content they need to help educate and convince buyers, including competitive comparisons, in-depth eBooks, and more. With the right content, you can make life much easier for your sales team.

Fear of Failure

Even though SaaS software is less of a commitment than traditional on-prem solutions, that doesn’t eliminate the business risks. While prospects may have done the research, found your product, and like the value they see, that doesn’t mean you’ve eliminated their fear of failure. Every prospect’s worst nightmare is that they back a vendor and support buying a new product, only to have it fail horribly on implementation. If that happens, the prospect will personally be blamed for the failure.

The last step for sales reps on your team is to calm the prospect’s fears and assure them that the investment will be a success. Reps have to be able to guide prospects through a proof-of-concept, and should never over-promise and under-deliver on features. The real success of the implementation will be assured on your customer success team, but sales needs to help from the outset by setting the right expectations.The sales engagement is the first step in the process of creating a happy customer, and you should emphasize that aspect to your sales team, above and beyond the value of closing the deal.

The SaaS sales environment is changing quickly, and your sales team must keep up in order to stay competitive. Arm your sales reps with the knowledge they need to overcome these common objections, push through the fear of failure, and motivate urgency for change. Only then will your team succeed.

I’ve written about online marketing a good bit because that type of content seems to be popular and it is one of my focuses as an online entrepreneur.

But a few people have asked about making money and getting started in business, so I figured I’d write this post comparing some popular business and money making ideas. This list is by no means intended to include every single business idea out there, but it might be a good read if you don’t know where to start.

These include some of the ideas that I’ve looked into and even played around with over the years. Or I might have known people that ran these types of businesses.

Hoping to start your own business? Then check out this list of popular business ideas.

1. Freelancing / Consulting

Freelancing is one of the most popular business models and perhaps one of the quickest and easiest ways to get started with your own business. Most of my friends that weren’t working full time were freelancers.

One reason that businesses like hiring freelancers is that they are less of a commitment than full time employees and sometimes less expensive.

Consultants often charge high fees for their expertise. They sometimes only provide advice, but some consultants will also do some hands on work for their clients.

The growth path for freelancers is usually to either become a highly paid consultant or start their own agency.

Pros:

Freelancing is probably one of the easiest businesses to start. There is plenty of demand for freelancers and you can probably start making money right away.

Another nice aspect of freelancing is that you can start doing it part time, even if you are currently employed full time. This will allow you to build your portfolio, start growing your client base and get some experience.

Most methods that freelancers use to get clients are usually free or low cost. With a service based business, you also don’t have to worry about product creation or employees when you start.

How Freelancers Find Customers:

Networking locally with the community and public speaking seem to be the most popular ways to find freelance work.

Referral networking groups like BNI or some Meetup groups can also help. Public speaking is another option to allows you to present yourself as an authority on a subject and get more clients.

People around the world can tap into the global economy using sites like Upwork or Freelancer.com.

Cons:

The downside of freelancing is that there is a lot of competition and a lot of traps that you can fall into that will eventually cause you to fail.

Common mistakes include charging too little, not have a good sales or marketing process and poor productivity planning.

Scaling a freelance business into an agency can also be challenging since hiring, training and managing service professionals can be time consuming.

Challenges:

The biggest challenges that freelancers have is finding enough clients and also finding clients that are willing to pay a good rate.

To grow from freelancing to consulting or an agency, you need to be able to charge higher rates than most freelancers and justify the cost to your customer. Figuring out a way to differentiate yourself from the competition is helpful.

As far as finding enough clients is concerned, most freelancers aren’t spending enough time on marketing or networking.

2. Brick & Mortar Retail

Another common business model is starting a brick and mortar business. Although brick and mortar businesses are a lot of work, some people like the idea of starting their own store and selling something to people locally.

Pros:

One of the biggest pros of a brick and mortar store is the physical presence. People like to shop in person and you and since selling in person is more effective than through the phone or online, your staff will also be able to sell more effectively.

Word of mouth can also help your business grow and a good location can send you a good amount of foot traffic.

How Brick and Mortar Businesses Find Customers:

Most brick and mortar businesses find customer from people passing by, if they are in a good location. Word of mouth and referrals are also very important.

If your product or service are good, then you might be able to do well even if your marketing skills aren’t that great. Some businesses do well based on word of mouth and foot traffic alone.

Events and local media coverage can help as well, especially when a new business is first launched. Some businesses also use local advertising and direct mail.

Cons:

Perhaps the biggest con of a brick and mortar business is the large cost. You will need to rent or purchase a building or office and possibly hire some employees.

Since the costs of maintaining a brick and mortar business are higher than an online business, maintaining a good volume of sales is critical. Overall, it can be a bigger financial risk than starting an online business.

Brick and mortar business owners can also find themselves working long or odd hours. It’s a lot of work and a lot to manage.

Another con is that your business is restricted to the local area. Small niches that can do well online could fail in a brick and mortar setting if there isn’t enough demand in the local area.

Challenges:

A big challenge that local businesses face is keeping customers coming back and maintaining profitability. The quality of the products and services must stand out from competitors.

3. E-commerce Retail

Selling physical products through an online e-commerce store can be lucrative, although it is also competitive.

Pros:

E-commerce can potentially have a large financial upside. Even if you sell low priced products, if enough people order then you could end up making a 6 or 7 figure income.

Dropshipping can make it really easy to open up a store and sell thousands of products. Fulfillment houses can store and ship products for you, if your supplier will not drop ship.

Selling physical products is also intuitive. You don’t have to be as good as selling or copywriting and you don’t have to worry about creating a sales funnel or process if your products are inexpensive.

Your store can make money while you sleep and you can potentially sell to people worldwide.

How E-commerce Stores Find Customers:

Search engine optimization (SEO) for high traffic money keywords is important for an e-commerce business. Most e-commerce retail businesses rely heavily on SEO.

Growing an email list of customers and interested prospects is also helpful. Some business also use PR, PPC, social media and affiliate marketing to drive more sales.

Cons:

E-commerce is very SEO focused and the keywords are very competitive. A sudden change in search engine position (which can sometimes be caused by Google’s algorithm) can result in a lot of lost sales (in some cases millions of dollars a day).

E-commerce wholesalers may not need any SEO, so getting retailers to carry your products are a challenge as well as managing logistics.

Managing orders and customer service are some additional challenges and if your store grows, then you may need to hire help quickly.

Challenges:

A lot of e-commerce niches are dominated by big brands so the biggest challenge is being able to compete with established competitors with big budgets and brand recognition. While the money potential is good, beginner marketers might have difficulty starting off in e-commerce due to the heavy competition.

4. SAAS / Software

Software is a popular business because the automation can help businesses save money and take care of tedious or difficult tasks.

Pros:

Purchasing software often costs less than hiring people to perform a tasks and can eliminate costly mistakes that humans might make. Therefore, an effective piece of software can be an easy sell if you are able to reach the right prospects.

How SAAS Businesses Find Customers:

Software businesses find customers in a variety of ways, including inbound marketing, content marketing and sales outreach.

Cons:

You’ll either have to be a good coder or hire a good coder or team to build and maintain your software. If the demand for your software isn’t strong enough, then your software project could end up being a costly failure.

Cost can also be another factor as sophisticated software could end up costing millions of dollars to develop. Outside funding may be required.

Also, most software businesses require strong sales or marketing to get seen by prospects.

Challenges:

Finding customers and creating an effective sales and marketing plan are challenges that software businesses face. Some software businesses struggle with finding the right talent to continue to build and maintain their software.

5. Ebooks

Information marketing is a popular business model and Ebooks are one of the simplest ways to get started. Although Ebooks can be sold for Amazon Kindle, some people choose to sell them on their own websites.

Some people still make a great living selling only Ebooks.

Pros:

Ebooks are easier to create than online courses and the cost to set up a website to sell them is affordable. Ebooks are also 100% profit.

Unlike courses, you don’t have to worry about community interaction or coaching calls.

How Ebook authors Find Customers:

Some Ebook authors find customers on Amazon, but many spend a lot of time building their email lists.

Some Ebook writers also use affiliate marketing to get more buyers.

Cons:

Ebooks can take some time to create and can still fail. They also tend to sell for less than online courses.

To sell an Ebook, you will have to be able to convince your prospects of the value. In other words, you will have to learn to write good sales copy.

Challenges:

The biggest challenge for Ebook sellers is finding an audience. There are tons of competing Ebooks out there, so standing out is important.

To make as much money as an online course, you also need a lot more traffic and customers.

6. Online Courses / Product Launches (Micro-continuity)

Online courses are one of the most popular way that influential bloggers and online personalities make money.

Pros:

Online courses are easier to sell than membership sites because they are a one time payment. They are also more profitable than Ebooks in most cases.

People can set up their own online courses affordably using WordPress plugins like Wishlist member or Digital Access Pass. Another option is to upload the course to an online course network like Udemy.

How Course Creators Find Customers:

The most common way to find customers by building an email list through inbound marketing.

Course creators sometimes expand into paid advertising and affiliate marketing after they have a successful product launch.

A lot of people that upload their courses to sites like Udemy will get traffic from people that are already on Udemy. Udemy will also promote courses that sell well with their own resources, but one reason that people will sell on their own sites instead is less competition and higher selling prices.

Cons:

Sites like Udemy can be competitive, so standing out and knowing how to sell are important.

Also, building your own list can be a challenge, especially for beginners.

Challenges:

The biggest challenges for course creators is creating marketing content that convinces people to buy and also generating enough leads to sell their product.

7. Membership Site (Forced Continuity)

Membership sites can be nice because they generate ongoing income, instead of income from a one time sale. However, you also need to provide ongoing value to your members.

In a forced continuity business model, customers pay every month by default unless they tell you to stop. A micro-continuity model will stop payment after a certain time, like 3 payments or the person can just pay the entire amount upfront.

Pros:

The biggest advantage of a membership site is that it provides ongoing income. If you get more customers over time, your income can continue to increase.

A community set up can really allow you to build relationships with your customers and ultimately help them to succeed.

How Membership Sites Find Customers:

Membership sites find customers in pretty much the same ways as course creators and E-book sellers. Inbound marketing, paid advertising and affiliate programs are some of these methods.

Cons:

Since people are paying on an ongoing basis, the selling price is often lower and it takes more time to get the same amount you would have gotten from selling a micro-continuity product.

You will also have to commit to creating new content on an ongoing basis for your customers.

Challenges:

One of the biggest challenges of the membership setup is to create enough valuable content for your community to keep them interested.

Finding time to promote your membership site can be another challenge, since you’ll spend a good amount of your time with ongoing content creation.

8. Blogging

Blogging is a popular business idea, but also has a high failure rate. What inspires many people to get into blogging is seeing other people succeed with it and living a lifestyle that most people can only dream of.

Pros:

Building your audience and becoming a thought leader can allow you to create a sustainable business. Blogging also allows you to connect with other bloggers and thought leaders.

Succeeding in blogging can allow you to live an enviable lifestyle, set your own schedule and travel at will.

The business is also sustainable if you continue to create value for your audience.

How Bloggers Find Customers:

Many bloggers will sell products or services to their visitors, but some blogs will sell advertising.

Cons:

Blogging is one of the most challenging businesses to start. A lot of people will struggle with building a list of leads or generating traffic to their site.

Another problem that bloggers face is figuring out how to best monetize their audience.

Also, it usually takes time to grow a blog to profitability unless you are already very experienced and knowledgeable in online marketing.

Challenges:

There are many challenges with blogging and it requires developing multiple skill sets.

Bloggers have to learn and manage many things. Generating traffic and leads is where most bloggers get stuck. But even after that, product creation and learning how to create a sales funnel are other topics that bloggers have to learn.

Creating ongoing content is another challenge that bloggers face. Consistent content creation is important and the content also needs to be valuable enough to keep your readers’ attention.

For bloggers looking to succeed with an advertising model, being able to drive a very large amount of traffic is required.

9. Investing / Trading

Investing or short term trading is one business model that some people consider. Although trading stocks seems like a simple way to make money, it’s actually very difficult to do well.

In fact, even most professional fund managers can’t outperform index funds. Most people who trade stocks are gambling and don’t fully understand the mechanics of how the markets work or even the fundamental value of the assets that they are purchasing.

Pros:

Only a tiny percent of people will succeed with investing or trading securities enough to do it as a full time business. But the few people that figure out how to do this make a lot of money.

Most security traders spend money subscribing to newsletters and sometimes purchase software and market data.

How Traders Make Money:

Sometimes, securities can experience big price changes in a short amount of time.

People that invest long term can make enough money to make a living, but only if they have a significant amount of money invested in the market and are very good at what they do. Even some of the most well known professional investors have failed catastrophically on occasion.

Cons:

Since you put a good amount of your own money at risk, there are psychological factors that work against you. People make bad decisions with money when fear and greed come into play.

You are also competing against well funded professionals with years of experience. The odds of succeeding at this type of business are very low.

Challenges:

Short term trading one of the most difficult businesses to do well with and should be avoided by most people. People who do well with investing usually are good at managing risk, but it’s rarely enough for a full time income.

10. Real Estate

It’s been said that nothing has created more millionaires than real estate. While that may be true, it’s also important to note that most people who did well with real estate also happened to buy at a time when the market was beginning to pick up.

There are many ways to make money in real estate including fixing up and flipping houses, renting out properties or becoming a real estate agent or broker.

Pros:

Real estate can be very lucrative, but having a good knowledge of real estate is important.  Market conditions can also have an effect on your success.

For real estate agents, starting off can be low cost and selling houses can be fun.

How to Find Customers:

Good marketing and networking can be helpful when it comes to finding buyers and renters, but market conditions can affect your outlook.

For real estate agents, most rely on in person networking. More savvy agents will venture into advertising and even online marketing.

Cons:

It can take a lot of money to get started in real estate investing. You also have to know the area well and the market values of homes. Having a good agent and network of contacts can be helpful for real estate investors.

Real estate agents aren’t taught how to market themselves or to get customers, which is why many will fail. Having an entirely commission based salary is also something that many people wouldn’t be comfortable with.

Challenges:

One of the biggest challenges with real estate is accurately estimating all the costs involved and understanding the market.

This post was originally published on the Small Business Ideas Blog.

Content marketing is not typically aligned with lean production – a scientific method of eliminating waste within a manufacturing system – but thinking lean has strategic advantages for content marketers. Lean methodology, formalized in the book The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, applies to organizations of all sizes and all levels of sophistication. The only requirement is the will to innovate and improve.

How can brands apply this theory to their content marketing efforts in the context of their need for more interactive, responsive, and unique content? Read on! In this article, I talk you through why lean thinking is essential to today’s winning content strategies.

First, I discuss the lean approach and how it gets you ready to win. Then, I discuss how to set up your strategies with the following approach:

• Decide what to measure.
• Create a minimal test.
• Use your test data – especially failure data – to drive your results.

The lean approach: Getting ready to win

At the heart of a lean approach is the need to learn from everything you do. To learn from your content activity, you need three things: a hypothesis, performance data, and analytical skills.

• A hypothesis. You need an assumption that you think is correct. Example: I assume that my piece of sports content will drive massive engagement among 16- to 18-year-olds because they’re into sports.

• Performance data. To test your hypothesis, you need to be able to collect, collate, and understand the most important metrics related to what you’re doing: reach among 16- to 18-year-olds, their level of interaction with the content, their feelings about the content, how often they share it, etc.

• Analytical skills. To bring everything together, you need to be able to analyze the data from an impartial viewpoint to come to clear conclusions. Example: While our content reached a significant number of 16- to 18-year-olds, their engagement with it was five times less than the average engagement level on similar content pieces, and sentiment analysis shows that they were not impressed. Therefore our hypothesis has not held true.

By learning what works and what doesn’t, you can improve. The key is to learn what’s working as quickly as possible so that you can invest in the right areas and scale up your content based on what’s working. There’s no point in creating a batch of content and spending weeks polishing it if it’s not going to engage your audience, so you need to prove what is going to work before you make the leap.

Learning is the most important part of a lean process.

Next, we’ll go into how you can take action in your business.

---

THANKS TO ONE OF OUR INTELLIGENT CONTENT SPONSORS:

3 Reasons Why CMOs Can’t Survive Without a Content Marketing Hub
Social media and digital content have created a marketing landscape that requires a new set of tools to manage marketing teams, integrated strategies, and growing amounts of content. Find out how you can transform your content marketing with the one tool you can’t afford to live without in 2015: The Content Marketing Hub.

---

Decide what to measure

The key to being lean with your content is measurement. If you can’t track what’s happening and how your content is performing, then it’s not possible to learn what does and doesn’t work.

Think about what you want to find out, what to measure, and how to measure those things.

What you want to measure will depend on your overall goal for your content. For most marketers, overall goals include brand awareness, engagement, and, ultimately, conversions and sales later down the line.  Map out key metrics based on your goals. If you’re focused on engagement you may want to track metrics like social shares across multiple platforms, time spent using your content, and the sentiment of those who use the content.

Taking the above metrics as an example, you need to plan out how to capture this data in an efficient way. Here are some ideas based on the above metrics:

• For sentiment metrics, such as positive and negative comments and people’s views on the content, you can use social listening platforms like Radian6 or Crimson Hexagon – or, better, survey users who use your content with a clear set of questions to understand their impressions of it.

• For social shares, a useful tool is Like Explorer, which displays the number of “likes” a content piece has had. Also consider setting up columns in Hootsuite or TweetDeck to track mentions of your content.

• For time spent by user, simply use a web analytics platform like Google Analytics – as long as your content piece is on its own page. You’ll be able to get average time on the page, bounce rate, and so on. To be smart, set up event tags for each step of your content (particularly if it’s a quiz or multi-load piece of content) so that you can see how far users get and how they interact.

Avoid tracking too many metrics. The more you track, the more confusing your conclusion may be. Any more than five metrics is likely to be too many for this kind of test. By the end of your content test, you need to be in a position to determine whether you should proceed with your strategy or whether to start over.

To decide what to track, focus on what you want to find out. Come up with a statement that you want to prove or disprove. Example: We believe that our sports content will perform best amongst 18- to 24-year-olds.

After you have this hypothesis, you can decide which metrics will help you prove or disprove it as quickly as possible. The faster you determine the validity of your hypothesis, the faster you can focus your efforts on what works and stop wasting time on elements of content that aren’t working for your audience.

Create a minimal test

Consider using the minimum viable product (MVP) approach in your content efforts. In short, to get value from an MVP, you need to create your content in the most efficient way and get your piece out to a selected audience at the earliest possible moment – even if that means it’s not polished and may not function fully.

That may sound scary, but it’s the best way to learn.

With a blog, this could mean posting content quickly in short form, and then expanding on it when you know that your headline works. With our earlier example of sports content for 18- to 24-year-olds, it might be beneficial to create some initial content as quickly as possible for this demographic to see if the hypothesis holds true.

To stick with our example, you might post branded sports-related content on Facebook, and use Facebook ad targeting and news feed ads to reach your target demographic.

This screenshot shows a few of the options available – location, age, gender, language, etc. – for targeting ads on Facebook.

This kind of minimal test can teach you a lot quickly because the ads guarantee your reach among a relevant audience. How is the click-through rate compared to other campaigns or compared to the same content among other age groups? Is there a difference between males and females? And so on. This approach can help you prove the relevance of a content strand.

After you know what you are going to talk about, you also need to prove the best way to talk about it. Again, Facebook ads are a great way to do this. You can create many options with different creative angles, imagery, and headlines. Then measure click-through rate and engagement and get a feel for what works best for your audience before creating a larger piece, such as an interactive piece of content or video campaign. The role of the ads here is to enable you to test various angles, headlines, and creative options in a controlled environment. The ads enable you to see what will work best when creating larger pieces of content.

To give an example of something going through this process right now, take a look at names.datify.co.uk. Recently, the government in the U.K. released data on all the names people have given their newborns over the last few years. As a prototype of an interactive piece, we quickly put together a basic interactive tool as a minimum viable piece of content, as illustrated below.

Our team quickly put together this prototype of an interactive piece as an example of a minimum viable piece of content – an MVP in lean lingo.

This piece is not designed or polished yet, and it doesn’t have much in the way of data or functionality. There’s just enough to find out whether people are interested. What we would do next is advertise this piece to new parents (Facebook has a feature for targeting this demographic), and test to see how many users get from the first step to the last and then whether they share it. If we find that users use this piece as intended and share it, we will brand it for a client we have in mind, fully designed and properly distributed to achieve high levels of reach.

This took us only four hours to put together since we used pre-existing code from a piece we had built before; all responsiveness and question-based technology was already built in. All we needed to do was analyze and format the data, build in the data functions, and change the text questions.

By taking this approach – creating content as a test with minimal effort (in this case four hours) – we can find out whether this content concept will work in terms of user interaction with the piece. If the concept is not a hit, we avoid wasting the time we would have spent if we had jumped straight into creating the full piece, such as a series of interactive tools with supporting articles, which might have taken a week or so depending on how complicated we made it.

Use your test data – especially failure data – to drive your results

The most important part of working lean in content marketing is that you and your business need to accept failure as part of the process. The point of testing hypotheses and creating MVP pieces of content is that we want to find the failures. When we do, we need to decide whether to discard the idea completely or rework it.

The worst-case scenario is not failure, then, but becoming so tied to a content idea that you run it anyway despite data that tells you not to, or wasting time testing an idea over and over despite getting the same results. Not every idea is a good idea. Sometimes you need to let ideas go and start over.

Summary

Today’s content marketing projects can require a big investment of time and money. By applying lean methodology – testing your content ideas early, focusing on your test data, and rejecting ideas that don’t work as well as you hoped – the content in which you do invest will serve your organization better. You’ll learn and improve your content strategies in a way that reduces wasted effort so that you can put more of your resources into ideas that win.

Want more? Sign up for the Intelligent Content weekly email newsletter. When you do, every Saturday we’ll send you an email pointing to our latest posts on intelligent content and content strategy topics along with an exclusive letter from Robert Rose, chief strategy officer for the Content Marketing Institute.

Please note:  All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team.  No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Cover image by Jeff Sheldon via Unsplash

The post Think Lean to Win at Content Marketing appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

I had a great conversation with a CEO today where we were discussing the merits of refining their compensation plan. It seems the CEO was disgruntled over the fact that his salespeople were comfortable making six-figure incomes, but they weren’t pushing to really knock it out of the park. Maybe you have witnessed the same thing.

These salespeople tend to sell roughly the same amount each month to maintain a certain standard of living, but don’t put that extra effort in to make more. In some cases when this happens, you may know that they could make significantly more if they just focused a bit more. Unfortunately, they take their foot off the gas when they get in their comfort zone. Does this sound familiar?

The CEO is correct that we might be able to influence behaviors with a reconstructed compensation plan. But, then again, we might not. We just can’t know without knowing the salespeople’s underlying motivations. I know it seems obvious that people who work in heavily commissioned jobs would be extremely money motivated. Well, I am here to tell you that it is just not necessarily the case.

Sniff out comfort zones

Everyone has a certain pay ceiling. It seems most business owners don’t, but most everyone else seems to. What I mean is that there is a zone in which a salesperson is comfortable. Maybe they could never conceive that they could make more. Maybe they don’t believe that they deserve to be paid more for what they do (this is a subconscious thought, not conscious). Or, maybe they are uncertain that if they put forth additional effort that the payoff will be worth it — wondering whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze.

Whatever thoughts lurk beneath the surface, they may conspire to derail even the most well thought out commission plan. And, if you aren’t in touch with what REALLY motivates the individual, you may walk away confused and miffed if the well-constructed, newly minted compensation plan doesn’t change behavior. The problem is likely more complex than that, and likely requires a more comprehensive approach.

If the goal is to get salespeople to sell more —which one would naturally think the salespeople would want to do— here is how to tackle it. Take a more inclusive approach, considering these elements:

1. Find out first what really motivates the individual.

Make sure the sales manager gets intimate with the salespeople and understands what they are working for. What gets them out of bed in the morning? Why do they even work as hard as they do to close business? A simple way to do this is through conducting a goal setting program. More often than not, we find that salespeople lack clear, tangible goals. Those that do have goals may lack a specific plan of how they will reach them. If you can help the individual salespeople identify their goals, you can then help them create a plan to reach those goals. That plan will most certainly include appropriate activities to produce more opportunities to close more business.

2. Focus on accountability to the right activities.

Rather than just constructing a compensation plan that rewards more sales, focus more on holding the salespeople accountable to those behaviors that will produce more sales and thus more income (to help them reach their goals). Frequently we see company leaders rely solely on the plan to form behavior. Most salespeople need a bit more reminding than the paycheck to do what is necessary to excel. The sales manager is instrumental in holding individuals accountable to the activities and behaviors that will produce results. The commission earned is merely a lagging indicator rewarding results. Make sure that you are holding your managers responsible for holding their salespeople accountable to specific and measurable behaviors and activities.

3. Incent appropriately.

Finally, construct a compensation plan that will reward the outcome of doing the right activities. Be sure to construct it in such a way that the company goals are met. If it is important to generate brand new clients as opposed to just selling to the same old clients, then be sure to incent appropriately. Distinguish between the two. If you are frustrated that the salespeople only work the leads that the company’s marketing efforts produce and don’t generate their own, then incent more aggressively for those leads generated and closed by the individual’s own efforts.

Remember that salespeople frequently have their own hang-ups about what they can and cannot achieve. Rather than just assuming results will follow when you sweeten the pot with added incentives, be sure to have all three components in place: goal setting, accountability to activities, and appropriate incentives.

What do you think about beefing up commissions? Do you have other thoughts on breaking salespeople out of their comfort zones? Let us know in the comments.

How to Convert Leads at the Bottom of your Sales Funnel written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Studies show that email marketing still converts, but many businesses are failing to convert prospects in their email sales funnel. These leads have already expressed an interest in your brand, so it’s not difficult to reach them.

Here’s an action plan to help you dive deeper and rise to the surface of your prospect’s inbox.

Problem #1

Your email is not personalized for the prospect.

The fix? Analyze the Conversion Path

Identify what motivated the client to join your email list in the first place and capitalize on that data.

Just as marketing strategies are built around buyer personas, it’s possible to segment your email list using persona data as well. Google Analytics can track new email subscribers, and tell you which landing pages are associated with new email subscribers. Already using Google Analytics? Log into your account, scroll down to the Goals section, and find out which landing pages are associated with email newsletter sign ups. Visit Analytics Help for more information on set-up and troubleshooting.

Action Plan

Use those landing page topics as the topic for your emails. While you can’t go back and get this information if conversion tracking was not set up, it’s never too late to start. Set it up, and use the information as a guide for the veteran subscribers. Once you’ve identified the most common topic that draws new subscribers in, focus on that topic to re-engage your email audience.

The next step? Create subject lines that are engaging and irresistible, centered on that very topic. Use tools like Keyword.io to expand on the subject, and offer readers engaging, helpful information that will encourage them to click through and take the next step toward becoming your client or customer.

Problem # 2

You’re sending emails at the wrong date and time.

The fix? Use the Data, Often.

Optimize emails for open rates, click throughs, and conversions.

Action Plan

Commit to sending emails only within those time frames that yield the most opens, click-throughs, and conversions. Every time a new email is sent, opens, clicks, and conversions should be analyzed. For example, does the beginning of the school year affect your open rate? Perhaps your prospects are getting an earlier start on their day, and your email timing will need an adjustment. Regular, consistent analysis can give your team the key takeaways needed for ongoing success.

Here’s a sample of email marketing tools that can help you manage this task:

• MailChimp offers a “send time optimization” feature, so you can implement and test using your list as a source of information.
• Customer.io gives a very granular report on the best days to send emails, and drills down into data such as the best day to send an educational email vs. an actionable email.
• If you’re looking for some alternative suggestions to the status quo, Vertical Response offers some thoughtful suggestions.

Problem # 3

You’re not giving them the right CTA.

The fix? Use the data.

Look at the sales and customer service cycle of your best clients. Did they speak with a salesperson prior to making a purchase? Did they download a free white paper? Did they take advantage of a free trial, and interact with your sales team? Once you’ve outlined the path of your most valued clients, duplicate that path in the form of CTA’s for your email subscribers.

Action Plan

Give them the right step in the conversion path, something more than “visit our website”. Give them the ability to set up an appointment with your team right in the email. Check out Assistant.io or TimeTrade.

Unsure of the right CTA? Research your testimonials. Which part of your service or product is often the subject of your client’s delight? Work that item into a juicy “subscribers only” offer that involves something for free, at a discount, or give them access to an exclusive beta launch.

After reading through these three main problems and their corresponding action plans, do you see a common theme?

Data is your friend, and you don’t have to be a data thief or ninja to get it. There is a lot of talk about “big data” and “data analysis tools” in the content marketing space right now. Don’t get distracted by the hype, you probably have access to all of the data within your current toolset. Capture the attention of prospects that have drifted away from interacting with your brand by using the valuable data that is available, and experience true conversion optimization within your email campaign.

 

Markelle Harden serves as a content manager at Get A Copywriter and creates Resources for businesses that are chipping away at their content goals. Connect with her team on Twitter or LinkedIn.

 

In July, Health Canada announced it was modifying its rules for medical marijuana and would allow producers to sell oils and fresh leaves, as well as the dried plant that is currently available. The rule change, mandated by a Supreme Court decision in June, will allow patients prescribed marijuana to consume it orally rather than smoke it. Even as Health Canada loosens restrictions, it maintains that marijuana is not an approved medicine, nor does it endorse its use for any specific disease. Of course, that hasn’t done anything to slow down its increasing popularity.

Claims have been made in recent years that marijuana can be used for a wide range of conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, HIV, Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder, among others. Support has come from high-profile personalities such as Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who became an advocate for medical marijuana with his 2013 documentary, Weed. For their part, many patients and their physicians claim to have seen dramatic improvements with cannabis. Michael Dworkind, medical director of Santé Cannabis in Montreal, Quebec’s first medical marijuana clinic, has treated many patients with chronic pain or palliative cancer and has seen dramatic results. “As a physician, I see the vast majority of my patients benefiting, and it’s very heartening.”

Related: A Maclean’s in-depth primer on marijuana

But some doctors and researchers are raising concerns about how little we know about marijuana’s efficacy, how few reliable studies there are, and how expectations might not match the evidence. Skepticism about the health benefits of marijuana have been bolstered by a recent meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health. After reviewing 79 randomized trials, with 6,462 patients, researchers found evidence of moderate quality to suggest marijuana helps for chronic nerve pain, nausea due to chemotherapy, and spasticity due to MS—but that was it.

For many other diseases, including glaucoma, insomnia and anxiety, researchers found no evidence, or low-quality evidence, to support its use. Robert Wolff, the study’s co-author, points out that if marijuana were a new medication, the lack of evidence means it would not be approved by the FDA or Health Canada. “I think the same principle should be applied as for normal drugs,” says Wolff. “It should be treated as a [prospective] medication, with all the pros and cons.”

But the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, according to Mark Ware, associate professor in family medicine at McGill University. “I hope we don’t interpret the lack of evidence as evidence that it doesn’t work. The lack of evidence means we don’t have the studies of whether or not it does work,” he says. Ware heads up the Quebec Cannabis Registry, which tracks patients using medical marijuana. He hopes the data he collects will help narrow what he calls a severe knowledge gap associated with medical cannabis. But other researchers aren’t so optimistic.

“I think the evidence is rather flimsy,” says Dr. Ley Sander, professor of neurology at University College London’s Institute of Neurology in Britain. Sander’s focus is on seizure disorders, and he’s a principal investigator of a trial looking at cannabis as a treatment for epilepsy. He cautions that expectations may be outpacing reality. “I think a lot of people will be disappointed when things come out, because I don’t think we’ll find anything dramatic for epilepsy.” He explains that many people with seizures may not require long-term medication, and many others do well with the medications they already have. Twenty to 30 per cent of patients have symptoms that are not well controlled and, for some of them, cannabis may prove helpful, particularly if their seizures are caused by a genetic condition. “But I don’t think it’s going to be a magic bullet,” he adds.

Related: Is this the Apple Store of medical marijuana?

As it stands, many significant questions remain. Most of the research done to date has used oral cannabinoids, prescription pills that contain extracts from marijuana plants. In Wolff’s study, only two of the 79 clinical trials used smoked marijuana, with the rest using these oral cannabinoids. “I don’t think it’s right to extrapolate [these findings] to medical marijuana,” says Deepak D’Souza, professor of psychiatry at Yale University. He says we can’t take studies done with prescription medications and use them to justify smoked marijuana. “You have to test exactly the same product you want to sell.” He explains that while oral prescription cannabinoids contain fixed doses of specific molecules, the marijuana plant contains more than 400 molecules of uncertain and variable dosages.

Another major issue is safety. Wolff’s review found medical cannabis was associated with an increased risk of many side effects. While most were minor, such as dry mouth and dizziness, there was also a risk of major adverse psychiatric events, including hallucinations and confusion. In the 1980s, Pfizer developed an oral cannabinoid called levonantradol, which was very effective at reducing pain and nausea. But it had disturbing side effects and caused psychosis and paranoia in some patients, so the drug was never brought to market.

A number of studies have also linked heavy marijuana use in early adolescence to schizophrenia later in life. But Ware cautions we can’t use studies of recreational marijuana use and apply them to the medical setting. “They’re using the drug differently. They may be using smaller amounts [or] they may be using it less frequently,” he explains. He recently published an observational study in the Journal of Pain where patients prescribed medical cannabis for chronic pain had no major side effects. They did experience minor side effects like nausea and drowsiness. They also had small decreases in lung function.

Uncertainty still remains about both the benefits and risks of medical marijuana, with the medical issue often clouded by the legal debate. According to D’Souza, more research is needed before governments approve its use. But he also says governments should support that research. “We need more evidence, because we really jumped the gun and put the cart before the horse.”

The post Are we overstating the benefits of medical marijuana? appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Scheduling sales calls or meetings can be frustrating, unproductive, and costly. With the maxed-out schedules of contemporary workaholics (us included), it’s difficult to find a common opening that fits for all parties involved. To put it bluntly, coordinating time can be a real b*tch.

Now obviously we’re not the first to feel the pain of this procedure. Most people on the workforce have been there; and ongoing, universal problems typically demand resolution. Recently, some intelligent heads got fed up enough to do just that. Luckily for us (and you), modern solutions come in litters.

Here are 13 scheduling apps that will essentially poise as your personal, virtual secretary, to help reduce one of the biggest time-wasters in sales.

1 - Calendly

A fully automated scheduling tool that’s easy to use and saves time both for you and your prospects.

Simply set your own availability preferences, share the link, and your prospects can choose an open slot that fits for them too. Calendly syncs to your calendar of choice, and you can set different time durations (e.g., 15mins, 30mins, 1hr) so clients will have options.

You’ll cut down on phonetag, giving yourself more time to convert opps. And customers will be impressed by the smooth design and charming experience.

Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes (14 days)
Pricing : Starts at $10.00/month per person (teams of 5 or more get a group discount)

2 - Clara Labs

Taking automation to the next level, Clara Labs is a virtual employee that’s trained by real-life EAs and generated by machine intelligence. Other perks of using Clara? Feeling like a total boss, according to one journalist's review.

To make an appointment, cc clara@yourdomain.com, just as you would with a flesh-and-blood assistant. The natural language interface makes it virtually (ha) impossible to tell that the sender is computer generated, and with human supervision, mistakes are minimal.

Man and machine come together in a seamless platform of scheduling perfection.

Free basic version available? For now
Free trial available? For now
Pricing : Free for all while in beta

3 - x.ai

Another human imposter.

x.ai is a homosapien-masked, machine entity that goes by the name, Amy. She’s an AI persona that schedules meetings like any other personal assistant.

Again, simply cc Amy on an email and she takes the reigns, finding a best mutual time to meet based off your data. Both parties receive an invite, and boom: the meeting is set.

When annual meetings approach the thousands, Amy will save you a tremendous amount of time . . . and money.

(Best part is, no one will know they’re corresponding with a machine.)

Free basic version available? For now
Free trial available? For now
Pricing : Free for all while in beta

4 - Assistant.to

With zero forms to fill out and no sign-ups, Assistant.to is a free apendage for Chrome that resides in Gmail.

Users drop available dates and times from their Google Calendar into the body of an email, and upon receipt, your prospect chooses the most convenient slot.

You’ll book more meetings—faster—while eliminating the back-and-forth. And you won’t lose uncertain prospects to the frustration of involved communication.

Bonus - it also remembers your most common meeting places, so you can schedule in mere moments. Converting timezones? Don’t worry. Taken care of.

Pricing : Free for all Gmail users

5 - Uber Conference

Conference calls for dummies/everyone.

With no PINs or downloads, UberConference gives you dedicated, individual numbers and URLs for every call.

At a specified date and time, all parties dial in to the UberConference number provided in a calendar invitation, et voila: screen sharing, doc sharing, presentations . . . even see who’s talking and quickly view their social profiles.

Also, it can be used in conjunction with Assistant.to. When you enter an UberConference number into Assistant.to, recipients can choose available times to conference. The invite even includes the number to dial in so it converts time zones between you and your prospects!

Invites work with any calendar system, on any device.

Less stress. Smooth sailing.

Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? No
Pricing : Plans start at $10/month

6 - Mixmax

Allegedly the “future of email,” especially for salespeople.

Send Google Calendar event invites within Gmail using Mixmax, an email and calendar productivity suite.

You can propose meeting times without the risk of double booking, set reminders to follow up on important threads, and use a send later feature that allows you to set a future time and date to ship online correspondence. Even attach files from Dropbox and Box, seamlessly.

They also offer email tracking to see precisely when your prospect opened the message. Multiple recipients? All. Trackable. You’ll know who opened the email and when. No guessing. And one email, instead of ten.

Quickly draft templates for a fire-and-go approach that saves you time, and all the rest.

Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? No
Pricing : Plans start at $9/month

7 - Need To Meet

If you feel the pain of scheduling for groups of people, then NeedToMeet is where it’s at.

With a custom link or NeedToMeet invite, poll your group to help find mutually convenient meeting times by creating event pages with multiple dates and discussing details for whatever it is that you’re scheduling.

No more incessant emailing with several people. No more rechecking your agenda. Just a plain calendar with easy selections. And participants can even see which people chose which opening, so those with more availability can adapt to those with less.

It’s collaboration made easy.

Pricing : Free

8 - Schedule Once

This is a most comprehensive and complete solution for the entire customer lifecycle, with a two-way system that eliminates the to-and-fro of confirming a time to meet.

They boast a 3x increase in conversion rates, and a 2x acceleration in time-to-engagement.

First, create a booking page with availability preferences to schedule demos, consultations, or follow-ups and link it to your prospect. They can then book on your page—from any device—and the meeting is swiftly added to everyone’s calendar.

With ScheduleOnce, you’ll only have to schedule a meeting, well . . . once. And they have a laundry list of additional features (time-zone conversion, group sessions, reports and many more) that make this tool attractive.

Free basic version available? No
Free trial available? Yes (14 days)
Pricing : Plans start at $5/user/month (1 booking page per user per month and requires purchase of sms credits and a connector)

9 - Acuity

Automate prospect meetings, cancellations, reminders, even payments – with Acuity.

Clients can see real-time calendar availability and self select a time that works best for you both. On your end, set multiple calendars and time-blocks for different appointments, or blackout certain dates altogether.

It integrates well with Google, Outlook, iCal and Office365, and has an embed option for those of you with your own website. Get notified when a new appointment is booked; then, from your phone, tell Acuity to update your calendars.

It’s as simple as that.

Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes (14 days)
Pricing : Plans start at $10/month

10 - Genee

If one of your three wishes is to streamline appointment scheduling, then consider it granted.

Genee is a mobile and web scheduling app that works across Google, Outlook, and iCloud via email, text, and twitter.

All you need do is cc the Genee email (including event time and location - can be general or specific) and it messages all attendees with suggestions based on preference and availability.

A personal assistant . . . without having (or paying for) a personal assistant.

Pricing : Free

11 - Pick

This app is rightly titled, as it helps you select meeting times and dates that work best for all attendees by comparing availabilities, regardless of email domain.

Pick identifies the best mutual time, then schedules a meeting using email. And it also provides you with a special URL so you can share it with last-minute participants (a prospect’s spouse, business partner, whatever).

The best part is the mobile scheduling aspect, which makes it easy to set meetings on the go; so even if you’re on the treadmill you can create an opportunity, mid-stride, no sweat.

Pricing : free for Google and Office 365 users

12 - World Clock

Dealing with clients—and team members—across different countries and timezones can make scheduling rather difficult. Even simply converting times online can be cumbersome.

That’s where World Clock Meeting Planner comes in.

Quickly compare times across multiple cities to find a meeting that fits for everyone involved, without having to Google each city to determine the time zone.

You’ll spend less time scheduling the meetings, and more time having them.

Pricing : Free for all

13 - Doodle

Since this app cooperates with many calendars, it eliminates the need to switch between them to check availability.

You can propose dates directly from the Doodle calendar, polling participants for the best mutual time to connect. It also automatically syncs appointments to your preferred calendar to help reduce conflicting bookings.

Super convenient when you’re scheduling calls with multiple parties.

Free basic version available? Yes
Free trial available? Yes (30 days)
Pricing : Plans start at $39/year

Automation versus self-scheduling

So. After dropping this lengthy list, let’s discuss the merits of actually using these apps versus self-scheduling, which, apparently, some people still prefer.

Sure, clients may appreciate an email with the personal touch, tailored specifically to them with references to something said during your conversation. But is it worth the time?

For most cases in today’s business, it’s definitely not. From response rate to final conversions, automated scheduling tools provide a substantial advantage against the manual maneuver. And there’s plenty of data to prove it.

Professionalism, at little to no cost

Plus there’s the added veil of professionalism draped over these communications (think the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz). Receiving correspondence from a personal assistant projects a certain level of success; surely things are working out if you can afford to hire someone to coordinate your meetings, your time.

Virgin founder Richard Branson will be the first to back this up. When he was a still just a penniless teenager in high school trying to start a student magazine, he stumbled upon a way to have a PA, free of charge.

[A young Richard Branson at a later stage in his career where he could afford the expense of a dedicated phone line]

When using the school’s phone booth to obtain advertisers, he would call the operator and claim his call had been cut short. The operator would then connect him to his recipient, introducing him as Mr. Branson. The result? Instantly elevated credibility, even for a schoolboy - he landed interviews with even the biggest names in rock’n’roll, like Mick Jagger and John Lennon.

Essentially, this is what these AI apps do. So if you can’t afford to have your own personal assistant at this point in your career, you surely (and easily) can use any one of these programs to do the work in their stead.

It looks/acts/feels sophisticated, and since on average it takes humans around seven emails to set up a meeting, AI will save you time and make you more money.

Really, it’s a no-brainer

Find one that works for you. And use it.

Regular readers know I often comment in this blog on articles I read. Sometimes I find an article that is just really good, and I can’t add to it. Here is one by Al Ries on pricing strategy and brand position.

Mitch

Only 17 percent of salespeople get a second sales meeting

Here’s the bad news: only 17 percent of salespeople get a second meeting with an executive, according to Forrester Research.

The good news is that you can improve your chances of getting a second meeting through preparation and demonstrating your credibility in the first meeting. If you are lucky enough to get into the executive suite, you have to balance your strategy of question-led and insight-led dialogue to create “aha!” moments for the client, proving that you do indeed have a deep understanding of their business.

The first step is to determine, in advance of the meeting, what you’d like to happen at its conclusion. It’s not always going to be a sale; it might be to have another meeting. The way that you build that expectation up front for yourself and communicate it early in the meeting can be an important move.

Be aware that executives will often spend the first few minutes of a sales meeting trying to determine whether you have earned your right to be a part of the conversation regarding whatever initiative is on the table. So, if you begin by being too product-focused or talking only about yourself and your company, most executives will consider that a deal-breaker. You have to demonstrate from the start that you know enough about their business and their industry to be credible, insightful, and a valuable partner, who has new and useful ideas.

The key to getting that second meeting with executives is adding enough value so that they want to know more in which they’ll deem it as a good use of their time and their colleagues’ time to continue the dialogue. If you come to the meeting intending to wing it, what we call “showing up and throwing up,” no executive will invite you back. Why would they?

Showing up and throwing up is a trap too many salespeople fall into either because they don’t know enough to ask good questions or because they might not understand the answers or know what to say next if they did ask good questions. This is why preparation is so crucial, especially at the executive level.

To prove credibility, salespeople need to conduct a balanced conversation with questions and insights that comes across as comfortable and natural. Learning and sharing are part of the process, with the salesperson learning what’s most important to the executive.

Part of the preparation for this meeting should include an agenda — not an overly detailed one if you’re meeting with a senior executive, just something that you can refer to and keep the conversation on track. As you walk through the agenda, be sensitive to any cues from the executive to get a sense of their personal style. Some executives have offices filled with memorabilia that they use to build a quick rapport before getting down to business. Other executives reserve functional meeting rooms because they prefer to focus solely on the business at hand.

The worst thing that you can do is make an assumption, based on level, gender, or functional area, about an executive’s personal style in meetings. Reading the indicators around you, being perceptive, and being prepared to be flexible when entering a sales meeting in those first few seconds can set the stage for what is to unfold.

One other mistake that I’ve seen salespeople make too often is build rapport, make eye contact with, and engage in dialogue only with the person that they identify as the highest-ranking executive in the room. It’s important to engage everyone equally because those people are in that room for a reason. They’re usually the same people that the executive depends on for help in making buying decisions.

So, “know thy audience,” and treat each one as an important member of the team. Any one of them could become either your worst critic or your strongest supporter. You need to be able to handle the concerns and objections of everyone to prove your worth and be invited back as the buying process proceeds to the final deal.

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

The post Improve Your Chances of Getting a Second Sales Meeting appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

What’s on your About Us page? I’ll bet you don’t even know. When was the last time you looked at it? Did you get the summer student to write it eight years ago? Did you put that fun 5,000 word history of the company commissioned three CEOs ago? God help us, you didn’t put your mission, vision and values up there, did you?

We have discussed the perils of photos of your building, your parking lot, your shipping department, your Christmas party and all staff-owned animals off your site. This includes your About Us page.

So what should we put there? It’s not like anyone goes there, is it? If all you have on offer is photos of your warehouse and a drooling schnauzer, then it’s no wonder nobody goes, but I think the About Us page is actually pretty important.

First off, we can’t count on our visitors to land on useful pages anymore; every single page on your website is a landing page and so every single page needs to serve some kind of useful purpose.

But let’s consider why we have these dreadful pages in the first place. About Us pages are wasted if all we do with them is dump the stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere. I think they are about building trust for two key audiences: prospects and recruits.

Your prospects may not stop here first, but at some point, as they consider whether or not to do business with you, especially in B2B Land, they are going to pay a visit. It might be a compliance exercise by the P-Cube, or it may be the decision-maker doing some arse-covering, or it may be an entire buying committee trying to satisfy themselves you’re worth their opex.

Friends, your employee coffee mug contest is not going to cut it here. Your About Us page is not, actually, about you. It’s about your customer. Just as the rest of your messaging needs to help them understand a problem and then admit you’re the best solution, so, too does this page.

I’d start with a really tight paragraph about what you help people do and how many of them you have helped. This establishes credibility.

Then you want a very brief statement about how long you’ve been at it and, if you are owned by a family, a monastery or a group of adorable orphans, chuck that in too. That builds emotion and humanity.

Next, list a few key projects, clients or important discoveries you can lay claim to; that supports proficiency.

Now stop. No executive photos, no client logos, no United Way bake sale posters. Just stop. Nobody is going further than three paragraphs.

Let’s consider your recruits. People kind of want to know they’re getting into when they apply for work on your site. They, too, seek trust. That’s why we don’t want to scare them off with stupid things like that time in 1973 that your company got exclusive rights to sell drain cleaner to Windsor Castle. Tell them what you do. Tell them why you’re good at it. Tell them why you won’t skip town next week.

Next week, we’ll talk about your terrible Contact Us page. I’m fairly sure it sucks.

Our next step in planning a Sprint is to find the tool we want to use for displaying the tasks we create and their associated Content Item.  You can go with a digital tool like Trello, JIRA, or Microsoft TFS to capture the items or you could go with a paper-based process.  It doesn’t matter which one you choose at this point if your team is in one location but if you have remote staff, you should opt for digital.

So what does a Sprint tool offer?  Well, let’s look at the pieces involved.

We have a Content Backlog that has information on each Content Item that represents the work we are completing.  Our tool needs the ability to capture the content story, title, how to demonstrate value and the estimate for each item.  Then once you have the items defined, your tool will need the ability to sort those cards by priority.

Next our tool should have the ability to create tasks associated with each Content Item.  The tasks typically have estimates on them associated with hours so you will need to store that information somewhere.

And finally, your tool needs a board with three columns to place you cards in.  The three columns are Open Items, In Process and Complete.  They represent the stages a task can live in through the Sprint and are updated daily during the Standup Meeting.

So let’s take a look at two specific examples of the process: a traditional paper-based board and a Trello board.

Old Faithful – The Paper Board

I want to make one thing clear before we continue.  3M’s PostIt Notes® are THE best thing since sliced bread.  So next time you catch yourself going for the old phrase, consider using “_____ is the best thing since PostIt Notes®!”

Now that we are on the same page let’s talk about the paper-based board.  I am such a luddite when it comes to agile tools.  I love the feel of paper and the flexibility of the medium.  To capture the Content Backlog, I use a preprinted piece of card stock that has the fields I need.  To sort and prioritize, I place the cards on the table and then stack them back up with the most important content on the top.

For the Scrum board, I use a cork board or a magnetic wall that is divided into three columns using ribbon and push pins or magnets.  Then I print the titles of the columns out using a single sheet of paper and cut it into thirds.  Those go on the board with push pins and live in their ribbon divided columns.  In the bottom right corner of the board I keep a bunch of push pins or small magnets that are easily accessible.  They act like extra glue for the PostIt® if it loses the ability to stick on its own.

To capture the tasks, I use the wide yellow PostIt® Notes and a sharpie to write a basic description in the middle of the paper and an estimate in the bottom right corner.  Once we have all the tasks created for the Sprint, I place the Content Item and tasks on the board in the left column and keep them close.

This next suggestion is a hack and I started using it when our Sprints were longer in nature.  I am one of those readers who still prefers the bookmark to place underneath the current line I am reading because my mind wanders on the page.  So to keep my mind from wandering on the board, I use a strip of ribbon to separate the Content Item and tasks from the other Content Items and tasks.  By the end of Sprint Planning, my board looks more like a spreadsheet.  I can quickly see when a task is in the In Process column that it matches to the Content Item in the Open Items column.

The last piece of paper you will use is a small strip of construction paper with tape that will represent a Content Developer.  Everyone gets their own color and we keep tape around to make sure they stick.  On the wall next to the board, I create a legend that shows what color represents what person and to go one step further, I write their name on each piece.  I keep a stash of 5-10 pieces of paper, depending on our frequency of Standup Meetings or the size of our tasks, for each Content Developer near the board in the supplies pile.  Once a card goes into the In Process column I place the paper in the bottom left corner to represent the Content Developer.  This can also be placed on a Task in the Open Item column if our team requires a particular person to work on a task. You can double up and have multiple people on a card but once you are finished with the work, you can remove the paper and place it on another card or back in the pile.

In the supply pile, I keep a pair of scissors, tape dispenser, Content Item cards, wide PostIt® Notes for tasks, the Content Developer colors and a roll of ribbon.  You can keep other items like a pack of Planning Poker cards so you can do an impromptu estimating session.

The New Hotness – Trello Boards

Digital Scrum Boards are not a new piece of technology.  In fact, we have been using some form of a digital board since 2004 at AJi.  We have created custom boards that were designed to work with the Kinect from Microsoft.  We have invented boards that print labels from Dymo printers that represent the Items and Tasks.  They were later scanned by a mobile application to place the updates back into Team Foundation Server.

At AJi, we have landed on an agile tool called JIRA and have designed a 55-inch touchscreen setup where each team can load their board and touch their cards during the Standup Meetings and report their status.  Very similar setup to those CNN folks reporting election results.  I know, you are jealous.

Being that you are probably new to agile processes and are probably looking for something less techie, let’s take a look at another solution.  Also as a marketer, I know portability is a huge concern.  I do most of my writing at a coffee shop, so my solution needs to be accessible from many different locations and different devices.

If you are “the team” or in a small group, you probably are looking for a solution that is low in cost.  Proving the process works is a big part of the battle in Content Marketing. Combine that with Agile Marketing technique and you have a whole lot of change in the way you do things.  If we can keep our cost low, we probably have a better chance to continue to get the blessing we need to keep going.

So with all that in mind, I will present Trello as a solution to your need for a Scrum Board.  Trello is a free tool that also has pro level features you can pay for.  It is collaborative in nature so you can invite others into the boards and assign work.  The system is as barebones as it gets so we can design a sort-of-kind-of solution that does most of what I like to see in a Scrum Board.

Once you have registered an account, you have the ability to create a board.  A fresh board will have the capability to create lists and within lists you can create items.  The following are the lists I use for a typical Agile Marketing board (from left to right in Trello):

• Upcoming Sprint Backlog (or Content Backlog) – If this is your only tool for prioritizing content and developing new content items, you can use this column to represent your Content Backlog.  I still use an Excel document with several early stage ideas and lower priority items that I do not want to control in an all-in-one solution like Trello.  So with Trello, I only put upcoming Sprint items on the board that are high enough in priority to be on the radar for production.
• Open Items – This list holds the Content Items and associated tasks that are available for work.  Since Trello doesn’t have vertical grouping, it is important to label the items with a code or ID of the Content Item.  I use two letters to represent the content effort and a number.  An example would be AG01, which represents the first item in the Agile Marketing backlog.
• In Process – These are the tasks that are currently assigned to a Content Developer and are in production.  With Trello, you can use the Members button on the task to assign a team member and their picture will show up on the board.
• Completed Items (Sprint # or Name) – I like to have a list that is dedicated to the completed items for a particular Sprint rather than a generic column like Open Items and In Process.  The reason being Trello has the ability to Archive This List versus Archive All Cards in the List.  I want to see what we did at any point in the future, so being able to hydrate lists for review is necessary.  Using more specific Agile tools will handle this for reporting, so if you get to the point where you want more, consider a migration to JIRA or another platform.  At the end of each Sprint, I just archive the list and create a new one for the new Sprint.

What goes on my Trello Cards?

Since Trello cards are an empty bucket for your imagination, it is very easy to make variations from card to card and cause some confusion for the team.  This is ok during the pilot portion of your Agile Marketing practice, but you should standardize on the information you provide and have a Definition-of-Done for Content Items before you get started.

Just so you don’t have to flip back into the historical records of this piece, here are the fields I suggest for each Content Item:

• Title – The name of the piece of content you are creating.  This is the name your team uses to refer to the content, not the headline.
• ID – Some numeric or alphanumeric representation of the Content Backlog and the Content Item.  These are typically generated with Agile tools but Trello does not have a specific field for ID.
• Content Story – A set of sentences that describes the persona, the problem and the value statement you plan to offer with this piece of content.
• How to Demonstrate Value – A set of bullet points or action items your team will take to ensure you deliver on the Content Story.  In Trello, we use the Checklist feature to give our team the flexibility to check off items that are complete or show the remaining piece of value you need to create.
• Estimate – The amount of combined time required for the team to create the piece of content.

In Trello, we have to make some considerations for the tool to fit the process.  This happens with all Agile tools, so don’t be concerned.  Over time, these reflections may cause to you want another tool.  However, if you have not adopted the Agile Marketing approach in the past, focus on getting the process down at this point.

You can see in the figure above the list of Content Item fields used in the Trello tool.  Here is a description of the Trello fields and how each is mapped:

• Card Name – I use the estimate in square brackets at the beginning of the name followed by the ID for the Content Item.  Then I separate the Content Item’s name with a single dash with spaces on each side.  In this example, I am creating a series of posts so I add the identifier to the name of this Content Item’s part number.
• Description – This is where I hold the Content Story.  The field is free formed and you can go in and make modifications to the original and the action is logged to the item.
• Checklist – You can have more than one checklist in Trello, but I use one for my content, the How to Demonstrate Value field.  I list each bullet point I want to create to address the value statement, problem, and persona in the Content Story.
• Label – I have two main labels I use, Content Backlog Item (or Content Item) and Task.  For this type of card, I apply the label of Content Backlog Item.  You can use as many tags as you like. If you have a lot of content that needs to be regularly updated, you can use the label to also represent the optional State field of the Content Item.
• Activity – This is a log of what has happened to the Trello card and any comments added by users.  While I would not use this for active Content Item fields, you can use it to describe changes and hold conversations.

Another type of card you will create is the Task.  Tasks are the broken down components of a Content Item in preparation to run a Sprint.  These cards contain a much smaller set of requirements.

As I did with the Content Item, here are the fields in Trello that represent the Task shown in the figure above:

• Card Name – The Content Item’s ID, the description of the Task, and the hour-based estimate separated by a dash surrounded by spaces.  You can use the previous bracket approach for the estimate, but I take this approach to make it a little easier to distinguish between Content Items and Tasks.
• Description – Most tasks can be described with a simple statement in the Card Name, but if you require more detail, use this field to hold the information.
• Checklists – These are completely optional in Tasks but if you have a repetitive task, you can create copies based on previously developed ones to help speed up the process.  In this example above, I include the distribution of the content in Social Media.  Since my team is small, we include these activities in our Sprints.  If you produce content that is not shipped during the Sprint, you might create these tasks as a part of another team’s Content Backlog.  Whatever you do, make sure the process aligns with your written Social Media Strategy.
• Labels – I assign the Task label to this card but you can include other types of field descriptions that represent the skillset required to complete the task if your team is semi-autonomous.  For example, Blog Post, Video, or Editorial to signify the type of skills essential to accomplish the task.
• Members – Unlike Content Items, we assign Content Developers to Tasks when they enter the In Process column on the board.  In Trello, you can select from a list of users associated with the board and their profile image will appear on the card.  It’s a very nice way to visually show who is working on the Task.

No One Solution Is the Right Solution for Everybody

If you look at the way I describe how to build a paper-based board or a Trello board and don’t agree, that is perfectly ok.  It is at the core of Agile that the process is adaptable to the team.  Just like in any good methodology, there are reasons for each field but those should only be aligned to your needs if you feel it is necessary.

Sometimes it is best to take a very simple approach and review over time during the Retrospectives to see if you should incorporate the approach others are taking when using the tools or the process to meet your goals.

Email marketing is an effective communication tool to reach out and maintain relationship with your existing and potential customers. Studies indicate that $1 investment in email marketing can yield up to $44 return. Positive brand image, improved credibility, strong relationship, and sales growth are few advantages that can be obtained by optimized email campaigns. However, in many customer circles, email marketing is taken as just another way of spamming. Be that as it may, overzealous internet marketing can have the inverse impact if not executed rightfully. Therefore smart marketers always encourage professionalism and ethics in doing business.

This is the reason strategist endorse the importance of abiding by ethics during email marketing campaigns. Ethical email marketing is the process of sending emails to your prospective clients to help them to reach what they want and in doing so, help you reach yours. Every client needs to give you permission to mail to them. The following 5 tips will help you ensure ethics in your campaigns.

1. Consistent Branding:

Whenever it comes to branding, consistency is the key to success. In email marketing, your messages should be consistent with your brand in terms of layout and design. How often have you received an email marketing message that doesn’t have the same look, feel and consistency with the brand from which you got the message? It’s usually ignored as businesses will rush into email marketing without understanding that this is simply one more approach to deliver your brand message.

While your email messages don’t need to look precisely like your Website, they must anyhow include your logo, slogan and be styled properly for a solid match with your current online identity. If you aspire that people don’t reject your emails, this consistency is important as it’ll send a message of credibility and something of value. Your email format should be customized and a clearer representative of your brand.

2. Formation of Email Lists:

Email marketing can possibly help boost your business in a great way. Having understood the potential, people and also organizations are attracted to pump emails to large numbers without noticing the credibility of those mail addresses. One must never be lured of this shortcut way for success. Rather than taking advantage through email marketing, your email address may be blocked or noted as a spam mail ID or your domain might by blocked by search engines after finding spamming activities carried out with your mail ID.

Buying or selling email list is a controversial issue. The best approach is to invest time and effort to create email lists yourself. After consent from online visitors for the email subscription is critical. Your marketing intelligence system should track your website visitors, and newsletter subscribers and allow you to have a custom email list. Another advantage of own list is it being responsive and effective.

3: Following the Schedule- Allow Predictability

It doesn’t make a difference if you send a weekly, monthly or a quarterly email newsletter. Having a predictable schedule will assist readers to anticipate communication from you. People usually don’t unsubscribe from your lists when they expect communication from you on a specific day of the week or month. While your readers may not read every single of your newsletter, they know they can get the next one as it will come right on schedule. If your schedule is unusual, so too will be your results. Special announcements or promotions outside of your regular timetable schedule be utilized to get extra attention. However, it’s recommended not to bombard people with information and promotions as it’ll lead to opt-out or un-subscription.

4. Deliver Something that Adds Value:

Monthly newsletters are an excellent venue for telling existing and future clients about what’s going ahead within your company and informing them of upcoming occasions, promotions, and discounts. It’s a way to stay in touch. However, if you don’t deliver some value in the same and provide worth-reading stuff, people will start ignoring emails from your system. You can send out promos, latest industry publications, your blog posts, e-books or any other interesting piece of information. If you think about the client’s necessities and give them content of substance, your efforts won’t go unnoticed. Readers will stay subscribed and refer your newsletter to others.

5. Allow Opt-in and Opt-out:

Users should have free option to subscribe and unsubscribe from getting emails. This is one of the agreed upon best practices of email marketing. Opt-in can be checked at two levels. After registering their name and email address on your website or blog site, user should confirm the subscription through the email verification. Double checking user authenticity through email verification helps you know that you are sending emails to the right party. Similarly, you can comprehend that the email is not subscribed by third party without the knowledge of the actual owner of the email ID.

Users should have choice to unsubscribe from your emails at their expediency. You should honor the commitment by not sending a single email after user sends consent to not receive any more mails from you.

Marketing and sales alignment is mission-critical for B2B success. Research from SiriusDecisions states that B2B organizations with tightly aligned marketing and sales achieved 24 percent faster revenue growth and 27 percent faster profit growth over a three-year period, as discussed in this article on Forbes.

When it comes to aligning your marketing and sales, there are essential elements to make the relationship profitable such as:

• Shared lifecycle stage definitions
• Service-level agreements
• Full-funnel content assets
• Technology

We’ve written about the importance of communication between teams, as well as sales-enablement tools and content, but not about the technology needed to make this relationship function effortlessly. In order to collaborate, both teams must share a set of metrics to define the sales/marketing pipeline. Marketing automation and CRM systems can make this much easier, and if the teams can align with the technology, “the gains in demand generation and sales enablement can be remarkable,” as described by Oracle.

As marketing works to attract and convert site visitors into leads, sales must be ready and waiting at the other end to turn qualified leads into opportunities and customers. So how does marketing qualify leads? How do leads get handed off to sales? How does sales follow up with ever-precious marketing qualified leads? The answer: a HubSpot lead-handoff workflow.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to aligning your marketing and sales lead handoff with an effective MQL handoff.

How to use HubSpot workflows to automate MQL handoffs

Establish MQL criteria

Before you set up your handoff workflow and begin sending MQLs off to sales, you have to establish what an MQL is to both teams. As previously mentioned, establishing shared definitions is critical to marketing and sales alignment. Work together to define a lead, marketing-qualified lead and sales-qualified lead. What type of information must a lead share to become an MQL or SQL? What types of engagement and interaction must it display?

Understand how your workflow will function

Once established, you can begin creating your handoff workflow. This workflow will:

1. Enroll contacts that match a particular set of criteria (MQL criteria)
2. Set their lifecycle stage (and whatever other essential properties) to MQL
3. Send an internal notification email to your marketing team
4. Set a Salesforce task for the sales team to accept the MQL as an SQL or disqualify it
5. Based on sales action, set an appropriate (new) lifecycle property

Create the handoff workflow

1. Set up starting condition

From the starting condition type drop-down menu, you can select the starting condition you’d like to trigger contact enrollment. In this example, you’ll choose Join the list.

From the select smart list drop-down menu, choose your list you created for contacts with the appropriate MQL criteria, or lead score. Then elect to enroll the list’s existing contacts, if applicable. In this example, we’ll choose a lead score list.

Bonus tip: Add a goal list of Sales Qualified Leads so that you can easily see your MQL to SQL conversion rate.

2. Add a step

Click Add action or delay to add an action to the workflow. From the select an action drop-down, choose Set a contact property value.

From the select an option drop-down menu, choose the property of Lifecycle Stage. From the select value drop-down menu, choose Marketing Qualified Lead.

Be sure to click Save after each added step.

3. Continue adding necessary steps to workflow

Add action to the workflow. Choose Set a contact property value, choose the property of Status, and select the value Marketing Qualified. This will set the contact’s status in Salesforce as an MQL.

Add delay to the workflow. Set this to five minutes. This will allow for the software to modify the contacts’ properties before they are handed off.

4. Add notification and task steps

Add action to the workflow. Choose Send an internal email, choose the internal email you’d like to use or Create email. Add in the recipients of the email. In many cases, this will be your head of marketing or demand generation.

This email presents the recipient with the MQL ready for sales qualification and any important information about the contacts themselves, their engagement with your marketing team or any actions they have taken.

Add action to the workflow. Choose Set a Salesforce task. Choose the status of Not Started choose a priority of High, and finally choose the sales rep. You can even set a date in which the qualification is due. Lastly, add in your Subject Line and Message. Here’s what ours looks like:

This task should trigger your sales team to start their MQL follow-up process.

You’ll want to add in another Delay, this time for 30 days to keep MQLs in the workflow so you can easily see your trailing 30 MQL count, and also so that your SQL goal list criteria will work correctly.

5. Apply workflow settings

In the workflow’s settings, you’ll find a variety of options you can use to change how your workflow functions. Refer to the documentation on workflow settings to get more information about which to choose.

Once you’ve selected the settings you’d like to apply, save your workflow again by clicking Save changes at the bottom.

6. Activate the workflow

At the top left, toggle the active status switch to ON. Because we have selected to enroll the list’s existing contacts, you will see a prompt confirming that you’d like to enroll the contacts already on your smart list; select OK. Once activated, you should see the “activate” toggle turn green. Because we enrolled the list’s existing contacts, you’ll also see a success message in the bottom right letting you know that this was accomplished.

Now any leads that convert into MQLs will be enrolled in this workflow and sent over to sales for further qualification. It’s a clear way to align marketing software with sales software, an action that is key in opening communication between both teams and allowing for business growth and success.

If you have any questions on setting up workflows, integrating your platforms, or aligning marketing and sales, please leave us a comment below!

The shift from volume-based to value-based health care is inevitable. Although that trend is happening slowly in some communities, payers are increasingly basing reimbursements on the quality of care provided, not just the number and type of procedures. But because most providers’ business models still depend on fee-for-service revenues, reducing volume (and increasing value) cuts into short-term profits. How, then, are innovative providers redesigning care so that, despite financial pain in the short term, they achieve long-range success?

Let’s start with four examples from the front lines of care and then step back to see what deeper strategic advantages all of them have in common.

At Intermountain Medical Group clinics, mental health care is integrated with primary care as a default practice, first piloted 15 years ago. All primary care patients undergo mental and behavioral health screening, and they get appropriate follow-up with counselors, often at the same location. The clinicians collaborate in the same way for all patients, whether or not Intermountain’s health plan is the insurer. As a result, patients are receiving coordinated behavioral care, and their outcomes are improving. Costs per member are now $22 higher up front but are also $115 lower overall annually, because of reductions in ER visits and other care. In the current fee-for-service environment, Intermountain obtains those long-term savings for the minority of patients for whom it is the payer, but other payers reap the rewards for most patients.

At Mayo Clinic, surgeons who perform lumpectomies or partial mastectomies for breast cancer work during the operation with the Frozen Section Pathology Lab to determine whether all the cancer has been removed. Such microscopic analysis of frozen-tissue samples can take 24 hours or more at some hospitals, but Mayo achieves it in, say, 20 minutes while the surgery is in process. Yes, 20 minutes is valuable extra time in an operating room while the surgeon and staff wait for pathology findings. But Mayo doesn’t do it just to get results to a patient 23 hours sooner. The main benefit is the on-the-spot chance to extend the surgical excision, if needed, to remove all evidence of cancer. That approach eliminates the need for repeat lumpectomy in about 96% of patients. In a study of five years of lumpectomy data, the 30-day reoperation rate was 3.6% at Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota, compared with 13.2% nationally. The result: Mayo’s costs for surgery are higher in the short term, and it earns less revenue from follow-up operations. But it reduces overall medical costs, and the patient gets peace of mind more quickly.

Insight Center

The American College of Radiology (ACR), in 1993, developed clinical practice guidelines for radiologic services. Some of the task force leaders came from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which subsequently introduced its own internal radiology prior-authorization program — for all patients, regardless of payer. The hospital’s computerized order-entry system now compares imaging requests with the patient’s medical record, allowing physicians to check for prior imaging and to see whether the new request jibes with current ACR guidelines. The system improves patient safety and outcomes, but it slows down and irritates physicians who are trying to order a test. Revenue has also taken a hit as so-called “low-value” tests have declined (for instance, CT chest scans for pulmonary embolism fell by 20%). In addition, patients whose images were imported from other hospitals had a 17% lower rate of new diagnostic imaging, compared with patients whose prior images could not be obtained. The result: more-appropriate use of radiology tests for all patients, but crankier physicians and forgone revenue. Insurance companies were the major financial beneficiaries for almost all patients.

And Intermountain Healthcare initiated a care-process model for febrile infants in 2008, including guidelines for the use of physical exams, lab tests, antibiotics, and discharge criteria. As a consequence, more infants with urinary tract infections or viral illnesses were identified and appropriately treated, and fewer infants at low risk for serious bacterial infections received antibiotics unnecessarily. Infant outcomes improved, hospital stays shortened with no increase in readmissions, and overall costs declined. Intermountain made a major investment even though one of the results was lower patient revenue.

Acts of Strategy

In all four examples above, the organizations’ short-term financial hits were real and painful. Nevertheless, we don’t consider these efforts to be acts of charity but acts of strategy. What specific strategic elements do they share?

First, in each example, the provider organization used process improvements to boost quality of care for patients: better outcomes, an enhanced care experience, lower anxiety, less wasted time, and fewer health risks. When the results became clear, each effort also fostered pride and teamwork, thereby reducing employee turnover.

Second, the organizations decided that improving value was more important than short-term fee-for-service profit. They made investments — and often disrupted the habits of their staff — because they recognized that a business plan based on value was the right kind for their patients.

Third, they decided not to game the system by targeting only patients in contracts that would yield financial rewards. Instead, they understood that care redesign had to be of value for all patients, or it wouldn’t happen reliably for any. They traded losses in some contracts for potential defection of some patients to other providers, greater professional pride, and a forward-looking strategy.

In short, we see a compelling business case for acting now to achieve value-based care without worrying about when the market will make the shift. Provider organizations that are leading the way cite the following reasons for their strategies:

1. Sustainability. Innovative providers aim to compete for and attract more customers with lower prices and higher-quality care and services. As value-based payments gradually replace the fee-for-service model, providers that have not adapted will be left behind.

2. Experience in managing risk. Providers who pursue value-based care as a strategy gain expertise in managing the risk of caring for a population under a prepaid budget. This includes recognizing and managing the full continuum of care, focusing on both prevention and intervention, and using evidence-based care practices to ensure appropriate utilization. Organizations that start sooner will be better positioned for success.

3. Relationship building. Learning to collaborate with stakeholder groups takes time. Health systems are seeking closer alignment with physicians and other staff (whether or not they employ them) who can help to achieve higher value in an evolving marketplace. Relationships also must be cultivated with social service agencies, government, and other provider organizations to address the complex medical and social needs of underserved populations, which often incur the highest costs.

4. Lack of alternatives. A business that delivers health care that patients don’t need is pursuing a poor strategy. Providing relatively affordable, high-quality care is much less likely to fail as a strategy, not just with respect to the bottom line but also in terms of how an organization fulfills its mission. Persisting with an outdated model ultimately may lead to unacceptably high financial and public-relations costs, as payers shift their business to higher-value competitors whose approaches to care are perceived as more responsible and sustainable.

How to Emulate the Leaders

The organizations that have been shifting their strategies toward value-based care generally share certain advantages: financial stability, positive relationships with physicians, advanced information systems, and (often) affiliation with a health plan. Nevertheless, several providers that lack those advantages are making progress. The investment required is as much in leadership as in dollars.

For one, the push toward building relationships with stakeholder groups internally and in the broader community is largely one of will. The innovations of the pioneers are more replicable than you may think. For instance, to maintain high quality of care and reduce rehospitalizations for patients who are discharged to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), Intermountain now requires that the SNFs have a minimum Medicare Star Rating of 3 (out of 5) and participate in both Medicare and Medicaid. Intermountain seeks a direct dialogue with the preferred-quality SNFs about how to improve care for patients with special or complex needs, such as those who require ventilators or have behavioral health issues.

Organizations can also begin to pay more attention to the changing marketplace and, using those observations, take concrete preliminary steps to change the way they provide care. For instance, many health systems have instituted telehealth services whereby patients can have an e-visit consultation with a doctor or an advanced practice clinician, any time of day or night, via an easy-to-use Skype-like interface. Telehealth’s long-term effects on spending and quality have yet to be documented, but early results are promising. Health systems would do well to explore a variety of opportunities to deliver effective care in ways that acknowledge the changing consumer landscape.

The leading providers are taking an “all in” innovative approach as they do the hard work of developing new organizational competencies and nurturing cultural change from within. Their new high-value models will give them a clear advantage over institutions that fail to act strategically now.

For those interested in pursuing a career in B2B demand generation, congratulations! You’re in for an exciting, yet incredibly challenging future ahead of you.

So, future demand gen marketers, let’s take a look at a few fundamentals of demand generation marketing.

When it Comes to Digital Campaigns—Be Ready to Play the Long Game

Demand generation marketers are responsible for building campaigns that push prospective buyers deeper into the sales process, be it through events, email campaigns, blog posts, and other channels. It’s easy to center your campaigns around one major email blast or a few basic banner ads, but effective demand gen marketing requires you to dive a little deeper, build credibility over time with prospective customers, and look at the broader picture. In other words, you’ll have to play the long game.

Rather than scheduling one major announcement for your product, consider a gradual approach. Each week you can roll out more and more details of a campaign via social media announcements and email blasts. This method builds trust and credibility of your brand over time, rather than inundating their inboxes for a single event or update.

Be Both a Calculated Data Hound and a Creative Evel Knievel

In an age of heavy social media-oriented campaigns, it’s easy to leave email out of the marketing equation. But e-mail is still a practical way of reaching potential clients. A recent survey by Marketo found that 77% of consumers prefer e-mail marketing over other methods. Running an effective email campaign requires some heavy A/B testing though.

Much like your social updates, you can’t just post a generic catch-all message and hope that it reaches sector of users. To be a successful demand gen marketer, you’ll need to experiment with different tones, and even subject lines with your emails. Gather data from each approach and take note which styles generate more open rates and click throughs.

Be a People Person—Build Allies Across Departments

In any enterprise there’s a tendency for different teams and departments to become siloed over time. But for a successful B2B marketing campaign, getting the right eyes on your content and communicating the right message and value props takes a comprehensive strategy that includes multiple departments. The tendency for teams and departments to become siloed is natural, so it will be your job to build allies across departments to run successful campaigns.

Demand gen marketers are just as accountable for sales results as the salesperson building the business relationship with a potential client. That’s why ensuring all departments are on the same page is crucial. Gather feedback from external users of your content and share it your sales team to see what kind of feedback they’ve received from clients. It’ll help you narrow down where there are inconsistencies in your branding and messaging.

Don’t Be a Hermit—Get Out of the Office and Into the Market

Of course this might sound like a bit of a contradiction. We just finished talking about how important it is to be in touch with all scopes of your digital reach. But getting on the ground floor of the market at events and trade shows can be beneficial for demand gen marketers.

This is just a brief overview on what to expect as a demand gen marketer—good luck!

The relationship between sales and marketing is often contentious, and here’s why. Marketing and sales are accountable for different metrics, have different best practices, speak different languages and have very different day-to-day lives. This disconnect might manifest itself in measurably low standards like these:

• “61% of B2B marketers send all leads to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified” or
• “50% of marketing-generated leads are never followed up on by sales.”

This endless battle rages with sales maligning the quality and quantity of the leads it receives and with marketing criticizing the way sales follows up with them. How do you bridge a gap that is as wide as the Grand Canyon?

How Predictive Intelligence Aligns the Teams

Predictive intelligence operates on the premise that reliable data will help marketing and sales teams become more focused, efficient and effective by providing insights into the needs, motivations and constraints faced by their prospects and clients. Both through its processes and its insights, predictive intelligence brings into alignment three major areas of discord: communication, expectations and metrics.

1. Clear Communication Rooted in Data

Today, the reigning currency of B2B marketing is the marketing-qualified lead, or MQL. The definition of a MQL and the agreement between marketing and sales on this definition is paramount to a smooth hand-off process between the two teams.

Predictive intelligence will help you develop a data-driven definition of a MQL by tracking the buying signals exhibited by prospects over time — behaviors and actions indicating their interests and likelihood to become a customer. For many organizations this would be a huge improvement, as MQL scoring and logic are often based on the preferences and biases of the marketers developing them. When MQL definitions reflect data and real-world scenarios, sales executives can better understand and internalize the definition and value every lead they receive from the marketing team.

2. Expectations: Prioritization and Focus Driven by Intent Data

A common complaint from enterprise sales teams is that marketing-driven leads, while having a strong profile fit, are often not in buying mode. For example, marketing might send sales an executive from a target industry that perfectly fits marketing’s target persona but that lead turns out to not be interested in buying despite perfectly fitting the profile.

Predictive intelligence reduces these false positives by modeling off more than just demographic fit and limited engagement on a company’s website. Predictive intelligence uncovers the prospects showing buying intent by tying together the buying signals of prospects across the web and on your digital properties. The data will tell you who is likely to buy, what they’ll buy and when. This precise prioritization based on demonstrated interest (not guessing and hoping) will set the right expectation for results.

3. Metrics and Improvement

B2B marketing and sales is a game of “what have you done for me lately.” A batch of hot prospects and a seven-figure deal will only get you through a quarter, or more likely a month, and in some organizations, barely a week. The pressure to constantly and consistently improve prospect quality and volume from the marketing side and opportunity pipeline and closed business from sales is unrelenting.

Predictive intelligence is built on model refinement. Results improve as predictive models evolve and machine-learning algorithms learn from activities generated from ongoing campaigns. The more you use predictive, the more accurately the models will perform to find your next customer.

Predictive intelligence removes biases from every part of your lead-to- revenue process and aligns marketing and sales around the same set of verifiable data and results.