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Last month, one of Google’s data centres was struck by lightning; not once, but four times. The result was that some of its data and, worse, other people’s data, was lost forever. This should be a wakeup call for businesses everywhere that they need to back up data in the cloud, because when it comes down to data loss, all data – be it on premises or in the cloud – is created equal.

Most businesses already know that backup is essential, and backing up physical storage is part and parcel of ensuring data remains safe. But what about when it comes to virtual data? The speed at which business applications are migrating to the cloud is staggering. In 2012, businesses had only 12% of their applications and IT systems running in the cloud; by 2014, that had exploded to 69% and this trend shows no signs of slowing. As more and more data migrates to the cloud, should business begin to worry about the fate of data held there?

The simple answer to this is, yes. While software as a service (SaaS) applications will have safeguards in place to protect your data, the responsibility for the protection information stored by providers like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce lies firmly on the shoulders of the business. Of course these organisations have a responsibility when it comes to hardware and software failure, but there are dozens of ways that data can become corrupted of lost that fall well outside of this remit. Anything from hacking to human error, disgruntled ex-employees to malware applications can result in the loss of data, and as far as the service provider is concerned, it is out of their hands.

Of course the big names in SaaS will offer backup and disaster recovery but this often has limitations, and a hefty price tag attached. Salesforce charges a flat rate fee of £6,500 for data recovery and protected data is not easily accessible; it can take weeks to recover data which presents a major problem to those for whom the service forms an integral part of their business.

If the stakes are so high when it comes to cloud data, why isn’t every business already backed up this information as they do their physical storage? Part of the problem has been the ‘how’; storage has traditionally centred around physical backup and backing up information in applications held in the cloud has proven tricky. However, that’s changing and cloud to cloud backup solutions are answering the call to protect cloud application data.

The concept is very straight forward: data held in one cloud is backed up by another cloud. SaaS providers hold all their data in public clouds so a cloud to cloud backup solution takes the information held in the public cloud and backs it up in a secure private cloud, helping businesses to protect and retain control of their data.

Cloud to cloud protected data isn’t simply useful in the event of ‘worse case scenarios’. Case in point being, when employees leave an organisation, cloud to cloud services allow all their data to be retained, including data already deleted by the departing employee. As long as the data is backed up regularly, and the account is configured correctly, it can come in extremely useful in legal discoveries.

As with any IT service, it is never just a case of pick a provider and job done and there are numerous factors that should be considered when considering back up cloud applications. Recovery time objective (RTO), permanence of the provider, service levels, certification, ease of use, data centre security, pricing structure, the amount of data and number of user – these are just some of the elements that vary wildly between providers and it is the task of a business to determine which service ticks these boxes for them.

Applications like Office 365, Google Apps and Salesforce – as well platforms like Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services – are now at the heart of so many businesses. But relying on SaaS providers to protect mission critical data in the cloud can’t be the de facto stance for businesses any more. Businesses must take the initiative to back up this data or lighting strikes may be the least of their troubles.

Last week, I decided to do a little experiment. This experiment was by no means scientific, but I figured it could still provide some insights into the minds of entrepreneurs when it comes to the art of selling.

I decided to visit various social media groups and ask a simple question:

“What are the biggest fears you have when you think about having to persuade people to buy your product, service, or idea?”

I was curious about the responses I would get. Naturally, I had my own preconceived notions of what people’s main fears would be, but I wanted to see what other entrepreneurs would say on the subject.

I got almost 50 responses, and people are still responding.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who considers selling to be an important factor in an entrepreneur’s life! The responses showed that this is an issue that is one the mind of many entrepreneurs.

And it should be.

The ability to sell effectively is a necessary skill for all entrepreneurs to have. It’s not just important for earning new clients. The ability to move others is a critical component of almost every aspect of an entrepreneur’s life.

The Issue

Is persuasion a skill that doesn’t come naturally to you? Have you ever found yourself losing sales because you didn’t know how to get your prospect to say “yes?”

Maybe you don’t have a strong background in sales. Perhaps you feel you’re too introverted or shy. Maybe you don’t want to come off as pushy, overly salesy, and/or obnoxious.

It’s totally understandable, and you’re in good company. It happens to all of us at one point or another.

However, this can pose a huge problem. Sales ability is a non-negotiable factor when it comes to building a successful business. I would argue that many entrepreneurs fail simply because they never learn how to influence others the right way.

Most of what you do as a business owner involves influencing others. And to influence others, you need to know how to sell.

The way I see it, there’s two main reasons why entrepreneurs find it hard to persuade. Either they haven’t learned the necessary skills, or they have fears that hamper their sales efforts.

Or both.

Out of these two reasons, fear is most damaging. Why? Because a person can learn the sales skills they need as long as they’re willing to put in the work. It’s not as big an obstacle as fear.

Fear is something different altogether. Fear paralyzes you. It keeps you from doing what you truly desire to do. It’s like an invisible straitjacket that prevents you from taking action. There’s a reason why Franklin Roosevelt said:

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Fear can be a powerful obstacle, but it’s not insurmountable. You can learn how to sell despite your fears.

The Solution

The key is to find ways to meet your fears head on. There are sales techniques that you can use to keep these fears from holding you back.

Sometimes, the fears we experience are irrational and unfounded. However, sometimes the things we fear are completely valid. Either way, we need to confront them.

The responses reflected several different fears that business owners have when it comes to sales. While this is not a comprehensive study, I think it gives a very small snapshot of what entrepreneurs are afraid of when it comes to selling.

Here are the three most common fears that I found:

• Being too pushy.
• Not being able to get their prospects to see the value of their product/service.
• Getting rejected because of price.
• Having difficulty starting the conversation.

In this post, I’ll discuss these three fears and explore some actionable ways people can move past them.

Feeling Pushy

This is one of the most common fears for salespeople; getting rejected because they were too aggressive.  We all know how much we hate it when we have to deal with pushy salespeople, so we try not to be that type of person.

It’s a valid fear. Being too pushy can easily annihilate your chances of winning the sale. It’s a mistake many entrepreneurs make without even knowing it.

If you’re worried about being too pushy, this might be a phrase that you’re afraid of hearing:

“Um, yeah I’d love to talk about this, it sounds awesome…but I just remembered have some type of food dish burning in the oven and I need to leave. Like, right now.”

Fortunately, it’s not too hard to fix.

The easiest way to keep yourself from coming on too strong is to make sure you’re not rushing to sell. It’s always tempting to make your sales pitch too early, but it’s better to take the time to build a relationship with your prospect first.

Take some of the pressure off of yourself.

Don’t pitch right away and allow yourself to ease into the sale. Build some rapport. Find out more about your prospect. Let them get to know you. If you show genuine interest in who your prospect is beyond their wallet, they’ll be more likely to open up to you when you are ready to pitch.

Effectively Communicating Their Product’s Value

Many entrepreneurs are afraid of getting rejected because their prospect doesn’t see the value in their product. As an entrepreneur, you know your product or service inside and out. You also know your industry. Which means you knowexactly why your client needs it.

The problem? You’re not 100% confident that you can communicate the value in a way that the prospect can understand.

This is the phrase you’re most afraid of hearing:

“Gee golly! That certainly sounds great, but I don’t think I need it.”

Let’s face it. It’s not easy to persuasively communicate your product to each and every prospect. You have to tailor your approach to each person.

The way to deal with this is to find out a little more about your prospect. What are the problems they are having? Where do they want to be? What’s keeping them from getting there?

When you begin discussing your product or service, start with the end in mind. What is the ultimate outcome the prospect is looking for? This is what you want to address.

Remember, your prospect doesn’t give a rip about your product or service. They don’t want to know how cool it is. They want to know how it will get them from point A to point B. They need to hear about how this makes their lives easier.

Start with the outcome first, then talk about how your product or service will get them to the outcome. It’s not your product or service that your prospect needs to understand. They need to understand the impact it will have on their lives.

Getting Rejected On Price

Price is one of the biggest objections salespeople get. It’s very easy to get rejected because your prospect believes it’s too expensive. This is especially true of entrepreneurs who sell high-end products or services.

If you are concerned that your price is too high, it will make it harder to sell your product with confidence. Sure, you know how great your product is, but will the prospect want to pay for it?

You might be afraid of hearing a prospect say this:

“Wow, it’s a great product, but I don’t know if I can afford that. Is there any way you can lower the price?”

There are a couple ways to deal with this.

The first thing you should do is qualify each prospect as much as possible before you start the sales process. You want to make sure you’re selling to someone who can actually afford what you’re selling.

This isn’t always easy because you’re not always able to find out if your product is in their budget. However, there are probably other ways to figure this out depending on the nature of your business. If possible, ask questions that can enable you to figure out if they are able to pay for your product.

If you’re not able to find out how much your prospect is able to spend by asking, it may be a good idea to discuss price first. I don’t always like to do this, but at times it can help you discern whether or not you should continue with the conversation.

You don’t have to tell them the exact pricing, but you can give them a range. The prospect’s reaction will give you an idea as to whether or not you should proceed.

Another point to keep in mind is the fact that prospect’s typically use pricing to mask the real objection. If someone says they can’t afford what you’re selling, it might be a good idea to probe a little more. Find out if that’s really the issue. If there is a deeper objection, you should find out what it is so you can address it.

Starting The Conversation

I had quite a few responses saying that they had difficulty getting the initial conversation started. They didn’t know how to begin.

Some said that once they got over the initial hump, it became easier. This is a really important factor in the sales process because the way you begin a conversation has great influence over the way the rest of the interaction goes.

There’s a few ways to remedy this problem: Have a short introduction that you use for your prospects. Create an elevator pitch. You don’t have to word your introduction the same way for each prospect, but you should know the message you wish to convey beforehand. This will make it much easier to begin the interaction.

It All Boils Down To A Fear Of Rejection

The fears I’ve discussed here are only a few of the fears entrepreneurs experience when it’s time to sell their products or services. There are probably many more. However, there is an underlying theme to each of these fears.

It’s the fear of rejection.

We don’t want to get rejected. It makes sense, right? Who actually WANTS someone to say “no” to them?

Unfortunately, rejection is inevitable. It’s an eventuality that we will all have to deal with over and over again. Mastering sales techniques will help us get rejected less, but there’s no fool proof sales formula that makes every single prospect say “yes.”

When it comes to dealing with the various fears we face, the most important thing we can do as entrepreneurs is learning how to handle rejection. We can do this by viewing rejection differently. Rejection doesn’t have to be a negative thing. It’s only negative when we fail to learn from it.

When we are facing rejection, we need to do three things:

• Listen: Understand why you were rejected. Listen to what your prospect is saying. There may be an opportunity to turn the rejection into a “yes” later on!
• Learn: Figure out what you could have done differently. Should you have asked more questions? Did you rush into the pitch? Should you have even attempted to sell to this person in the first place? Remember as much data about the interaction as possible and analyze it objectively.
• Leverage: Take what you have learned and figure out how you can fix any mistakes that may have been made. Resolve to implement your solution the next time around.

Conclusion

We all have fears. Starting and building a business can be pretty scary. What I learned from my little “experiment” is that sales is a subject that is concerning to many entrepreneurs.

And rightly so.

The reality is that you can’t build a thriving enterprise if you can’t get people to do what you want. Focus on overcoming your sales fears. When you do this, you will remove a huge barrier to your success.

I’d like your input.

What is your sales fear and what are you doing to overcome it?

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

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EXCLUSIVE:

If you listen to marketers and advertisers, the key to success these days is targeting. “The right ad to the right person at the right time” is the common mantra.

Nope, says a new survey from brand expert network Experticity, the 2015 Marketing Mix Survey. The key driver in making a sale is the trust possessed by a source of product information.

Conducted by ReRez Research, the survey finds that 83 percent of marketers think advertising — online, broadcast, and print — is effective in influencing buyer decisions. But less than half of consumers — 47 percent — trust or believe advertising.

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From VentureBeat

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You might say, sure, traditional ads are so yesterday, and it’s all about social. Eighty-two percent of marketers think social is effective. But only 49 percent of consumers reported that they trust social media campaigns.

So, what sources of information do they trust? In short, close contacts and experts.

Seventy-two percent cited family and friends as trusted sources, the same percentage pointed to online reviews, and 61 percent said they trust third-party experts.

The survey doesn’t address a possible disconnect: that consumers are propelled by ads and social media even if they don’t trust them. The survey’s implicit assumption is that trusted sources are more credible, and that credibility is valuable in pushing purchase decisions.

Of course, if you had to trust an ad in order for it to have an effect on your decisions, political advertising would have died out long ago.

Usually, I take a pass on stories like this, where the answer to the problem raised in a report or a survey is the product/service offered by the sponsoring company. Experticity provides specialized info, support, and wholesale-priced products to experts and serious fans.

The company might provide, for instance, the inside scoop on Nike’s latest sneaker to a salesperson in a running shoe store, or details on a killer new camera from Canon for a member of a photography club. The company says it supports about 700 brands and feeds a community of nearly two million experts.

This survey is self-serving in some ways, but it also points to some interesting trends, along with a few conundrums.

For instance, the survey touts the finding that “the vast majority of marketers are out of touch with what sources consumers turn to and trust when it comes to deciding what to buy.”

Yet, the survey’s own results show that 84 percent of marketers report they do well with advertising. It’s plausible that marketers may be out of touch with what consumers trust, but one doubts they’re out of touch with their own sales results.

The survey does reinforce the idea that consumers are choosy about which sources they trust — whether or not these are the most important drivers of purchase decisions. Over time, recommendations from trusted sources can build a brand loyalty that is worth way more than any campaign.

But the findings also show that marketers recognize the effectiveness of person-to-person marketing on buying decisions. Seventy-four percent said influencer marketing is effective on buying decisions, 77 percent cited retail sales training, and 78 percent pointed to brand advocacy efforts.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the pending death of web-based ads, particularly display ads. And the reported death of linear TV ads has been going on for so many years, it probably could qualify as its own long-running TV series.

If ads are radically changing, the question is: toward which direction will they evolve? That direction could be trust.

Experticity CEO Tom Stockham — the ex-CEO of Ancestry.com and the ex-president of Ticketmaster — told me that his company never pays its experts. It only provides them with specialized info or, sometimes, wholesale pricing of products, which salespeople often get anyway.

While he declined to say that influencers who are paid to hawk a new face cream to their thousands of followers in a YouTube video are inevitably less trustworthy as people-to-person marketers, he acknowledged that “getting paid paints their enthusiasm.”

Influencer marketing firms, of course, note that influencers can choose what to endorse. It’s like when you see a celebrity on TV. You know he’s getting paid, but you assume he wouldn’t endorse the product and risk his reputation unless he genuinely liked it.

Keep an eye on the evolution of recommendation engines. Not only are they likely to become even more common and more sophisticated, they may well separate into those that are independent and trustworthy, and those that are obviously shills for product makers.

Advertising is evolving, and consumers’ choices are helping to drive that evolution. The emerging marketplace offers a variety of approaches to product info and promotion, which consumers may increasingly sort on the basis of trust.

High-profile brands are competing with each other on who can maintain Millennials’ interest the most and benefit from their consumer influence. Millennials, a.k.a. Generation Y, are the largest generation that have reached adulthood in the 2000’s. They were born between the 1980’s and 2000’s, so they are approximately between the ages 15 to 35. They are about 80mil Millennials in America, making them 25% of the population. This group is the most influential consumer generation because not only will they have $1.7 trillion spending power by 2020, they also influence the buying behavior of their parents who see them as culture trendsetters.

Acknowledge Millennials’ Diversity
Millennials are the most diverse generation ever, so they desire content that appeals to their cultural interests. Brands should not create one-size-fits-all marketing strategies to attract Millennials because there are intergenerational differences between them. For example, a clothing company should market their products differently to a 20 year old partygoer in college from a 33 year old full-time working father. An independent advertising agency, Barkley, divided Millennials into six segments with representative quotes:

● Hip-ennials (29%) “I can make the world a better place.”
● Millennial Moms (22%) “I love to work out, travel, and pamper my baby.”
● Anti-Millennials (16%) “I’m too busy taking care of my business and my family to worry about much else.”
● Gadget Gurus (13%) “It’s a great day to be me.”
● Clean and Green Millennials (10%) “I take care of myself and the world around me.”
● Old School Millennials (10%) “Connecting on Facebook is too impersonal, let’s meet up for coffee instead!”

I believe if business owners and marketers want to appeal to Millennials they should embrace their diversity. Brands must understand their target market’s demographic and interests to create products and content that will appeal to their race, age, gender, and location. They engage more with brands that acknowledge their individualism.

Have a Presence on Social Media
Millennials are very active on social media. It’s one of most popular places where they interact with brands. Newscred, reported the channels that Millennials use the most to find content:

• 71% Google
• 65% Facebook
• 24% Pinterest
• 23% Instagram
• 23% Twitter
• 12% LinkedIn

And the social media channels where they share content the most:

• 75.5% Facebook
• 12.5% Instagram
• 5% Pinterest
• 3.5% LinkedIn
• 3.5% Google+

Social media is where brands get to have human conversations with their target audience. Being relevant and proving interesting content will win them over. Newscred identified the top three traits that inspire Millennials to share content on social media:

• Supporting a cause that they believe in
• Thought-provoking
• Funny

Create a Winning Content Strategy
Millennials are exposed to thousands of ads and content every day. The majority of them are not satisfied with what they are seeing. They have the ability to block or filter out the messages and information that doesn’t interest them. They are so turned off by brands’ self-promotional selling that they are now prioritizing brands that can provide them useful information. Here are tips to creating interesting content that Millennials will love:

Stop Focusing on Yourself
Since Millennials are exposed to self-promotional content every day, they are no longer interested in brands that talk only about themselves. They desire content that is targeted to their interest and bring value to their lives.

Don’t be Boring
Brands can’t afford to be boring, because Millennials can be loyal somewhere else. Generate content that will educate or entertain them.

Provide Great Value
To gain consumer loyalty, brands must generate useful information that will make their audience’s lives better. This is very important because your brand can be seen as a thought leader or authority that has built a relationship based on trust.

Be Emotional
Content that moves hearts and inspires people to be better will have a lot more shares and conversations than the ones that don’t.

Support A Social Cause
Millennials are up to date on the latest social issues and approve of cause marketing. This generation wants to make the world a better place and will be loyal to brands that will support their causes (racial equality, marriage equality, transgender rights, and gender equality).

To attract Millennials, brands must create content that acknowledges their diverse cultural identity, is shareable on social media, and brings values to their lives. Unlike the generation before them, Millennials are exposed to thousands of content from many channels every day. This means that brands have so much competition and so little time to retain their attention, requiring brands to cherish every moment they can to create the best and captivating content possible.

Muhammad Ali : more than a boxer – a warrior poet that has changed the world with his words.

Does your story change your customers’ belief and behaviour?

Muhammad Ali, self-proclaimed “The Greatest” and believed to be just that by fans the world over, has done much more than “float like a butterfly” in his remarkable life.

Although primarily acknowledged for his 56 wins-5 losses boxing career and his victorious fight against the government as a conscientious objector during Vietnam, Ali is also one of the best-known humanitarians in the world, a leader and an actor in several films.

One of the primary reasons that Muhammad Ali is so well known to the world is his fantastic ability of storytelling. Lauded for his gregarious self-promotion and clever one-liners, Ali would quickly come to the forefront of late-60s culture. Later in life, his wise and penetrating views on friendship and the treatment of one’s fellow man would inspire the world and make him one of the most-recognized faces on Earth. At the 1996 Olympics, his lighting of the torch brought tears to millions.

What was his secret?

Beyond an overpowering charisma and a handsome face he often shamelessly brought attention to, Ali had an arresting ability to shape words in unexpected ways and deliver them in a rapid-fire manner, much like his famed jab. The effect was to leave a listener stunned, amused and charmed.

This was not an angry man, nor a malicious one. He was enthusiastic about himself, his life and the world around him. These qualities are such as to naturally draw one in, and his powerful and pointed quips would keep you pinned at his side.

Charisma is not necessarily something one can learn, but if anything is to be gleaned from the intrinsic lessons of this entertaining and intense champion of life, it is that, much like a magician, you must earn the trust of your audience. The trick is to do it honestly – to make people love you for what you are without trying to “sell” them. It takes confidence and a benevolent energy. Be happy about what you are doing, and be self-assured – there is something fantastic you know that perhaps someone listening does not, and you are more than happy to share this “energy” with them.

Muhammad Ali was a force that would commandeer any camera or microphone in a room.

He started as a young, charming fighter – “If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize!” – and became a leader and respected voice of reason.

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

Your product is not anymore the hero in B2B Storytelling.

What customers need the most is believe. In B2B facts do not persuade (anymore) , feelings do! Once prospects are constantly and consistently getting affirmation of the value a product or organisation provides, via any kind of sales channel as well as analyst reports, customer success-stores, social media and buzz in the market; they will believe. Once customers make Your Story, Their Story, sales has tapped into the powerful force of faith and belief. If you can make your customers enthusiastic about your company, your solutions and the unique value your technology provides, and they understand the reasons why your technology is different compared to any alternative, you have come to the point where things begin to happen. Before customers buy your product, they want to believe. Believe reduces uncertainty. Believe motivates – motivation to buy your product.

Any person as confident, earnest and good-willed as Muhammad Ali will naturally become a quality storyteller. Being genuine is a force like gravity – certain and strong in a real and comforting sense.

With 2016 quickly approaching, content marketing is in full motion. Demand Metric’s study shows that 90% of organizations market with content and 78% of CMOs see custom content as the future of marketing.

Content isn’t a trend; it’s the future.

But let’s be real:

Not all content is created equal.

What differentiates an article that gets shared endlessly from a seemingly ‘greater’ post that’s never to be found?

The answer is in your head (literally). There are 3 powerful psychological triggers that cause us unpredictable humans to become a little more predictable.

And I’m going to show you how you can apply these triggers to make your next piece of content a hit.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Social Currency: Today’s Mint

Who doesn’t like to look good?

Whether you’re the tech informant or foodie of the group, you share things that further amplify your title or elicit some kind of positive response.

People like the attention they get when telling a funny story or feel proud when they hear the ‘oohs and ahhs’ when sharing about their latest success.

The fact is people would rather share things that make them look good over pieces that could taint their reputation.

Takeaway:

By narrowing down your target audience, it’s easy to identify the kind of content that makes them look good. For example, if your target audience is mothers who are against sleep training, embed hard research that will help amplify their beliefs.

Social currency affects buyer intent. Take a look at what Americans think about their coffee.

2. Incomparable Value is Key to Social Sharing

It’s no secret that the DIY education market has had exponential growth over the last 5 years. In 2011, there was an estimated $35.6 billion spent on online education. The e-learning industry blew up to a $56.2 billion industry in 2014 with expectations to double in 2015.

We live in a DIY era and providing practical value via content marketing is key to getting more social activity.

But it’s not just about providing a learning resource.

It’s about providing incomparable value through your evergreen guides that catalyze hyper-actionable results.

Here are a few examples of what content marketers are doing:

The Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics

• 22 images
• 1,693 words
• 1836 social shares (since January 2014)

SEO Checklist: 74 Step Process for Mammoth Rankings

• 90 images
• 4,461 words
• 503 social shares (since September 2015)

20 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails

• 54 images
• 5,000 words
• 7,647 social shares (since September 2014)

Takeaway:

All of these articles have lots of images, a dense word count and a good chunk of social stats. You can quickly assume that longer articles with images induce sharing, but that’s not it.

They all provide step-by-step guides where readers can walk away with something ridiculously practical that can be applied in their marketing strategies.

Create your next piece to be epic compared to the competition out there and promote it until the sun goes down.

3. Social Proof: The Power of Influence

How many times have you walked out of a movie and thought: that was the most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen!

The first movie that comes to mind is Inception.

Spoiler: a dream within a dream. Boom!

Literally every single conversation I had started with, “have you seen Inception?”

If they hadn’t watched it 3 weeks after launch, something was seriously wrong with them. And it wasn’t just me.

Everyone who had had a conversation about movies thought the same thing about these outsiders.

So what did they do?

They texted everyone on their contact list in search for another alien who hadn’t seen the greatest movie of 2010.

Social proof is one of the most powerful influences in today’s society.

When searching for a restaurant, we look to Yelp. Before purchasing a product, we look through Amazon reviews. We are a society that relies on the input of others.

Takeaway:

The key to creating social proof is to have your brand integrated deeply into the root of your products or services.

Here’s how Apple does it.

It’s not hard to change your signature on your iPhone. But people don’t do it because it’s a symbol of status or proof that they are ‘with the times.’

Integrate your brand into your products and services. Don’t do it the other way.

Don’t Get Too Caught Up in Psychology. Focus on Your Audience

There are way too many resources preaching different tactics to grow your business. The last thing I want is this write-up to be another hyped up dream sell.

As content marketers, we create valuable content with the intent of turning visitors into customers. I’m not Harry Houdini and I doubt you’re David Copperfield.

These triggers aren’t magic, but they do help amplify social sharing which expands your reach.

While social currency, incomparable value and social proof act as powerful psychological triggers; there is something much more important than these.

Create your content to align with your business goals and most importantly, to resonate with your target audience. With this in mind, apply social triggers to grow your brand, expand your reach and dominate your niche.

If you think you have a winning idea that has a great business potential and which offers a product or a service that customers would value and hence are likely to pay for it, then one of the faster way to roll your business is by developing and launching a mobile app. Customers the world over are increasingly using their mobiles to make purchases now and that is one medium that companies, especially start-ups can ill-afford to miss.

However, actually making money from mobile apps is not as simple as developing and launching the app. The pricing model for your app requires strategic thinking and understanding the customer psyche around purchasing from mobile apps.

Free App vs. Paid App
Technically speaking there are four types of app monetization models, with one of them being an absolutely free app that is built without any intention or inclination of making money from it. Such apps could be the informative apps from local government with an aim of providing emergency numbers and related information to the citizens at no cost. However, since such apps are not the focus of this blog, we will not delve deeper into such apps for now. Next we look at the three prevalent options for app monetization.

In-app Advertising
These are the apps that are downloaded and installed for free. But when the user starts using these apps, he finds simplistic banner advertisement at the top and / or the bottom of the app screen. When the user clicks on the advertisement, the app maker accrues a certain amount.

In-app advertising is perhaps one of the most popular and fastest growing monetization strategies for the free to download apps. While the advent of app monetization technology is helping develop more visually pleasing and easy on the eye advertisements, the app developer needs to wisely balance the number of advertisements. A high number of advertisements can serve to irritate the users and pull them away from the app, especially if it prevents them from having an ideal experience. On the flip side, fewer advertisements will hardly make any money for the app developer.

In-app advertising is best suited for the following types of apps:

Freemium
These are also the apps that are downloaded and installed for free. But these apps work in three different ways.

• One is where they have restricted access for the free user, which does not allow the user to access certain advanced or premium functionalities, thus making the user pay for them.
• Second is where these apps are available as free for a few days with full functionality, thus giving the user a complete feel of its utility. Then when the user has experienced the utility, they ask them to pay for using the app further.
• Third category of freemium apps have all its features available for free along with built in advertisements. These apps charge a small amount to upgrade to an advertisement free app which the users highly appreciate.

Freemium apps allow the user to experience the app before taking a decision on purchasing it. However, if it is a type one freemium app that restricts certain features, then the app developer needs to strike a good balance between what functionality to include and exclude in the free version. Too few free features may hinder the user from getting an adequate feel of the app while too many free features may again dissuade the users from paying for additional features.

In-app Purchases
In-app purchases are most popular with businesses that sell virtual or real goods to the app users. Real goods sellers could be retailers or restaurants that home deliver. Virtual goods are popularly sold by gaming apps that provide the user with in-app credit, currency or some fancy accessories to add on to their avatars.

This pricing model is highly popular. 76% of Apple app store revenue came from in-app purchases, says a research by Distimo. While its popularity has research backing, there are certain considerations that developers must think about before app launch, especially for a gaming app: these include the fact that users will expect to see all the features of your app for free to begin with so they could see the value. Then you need to ensure that what you offer to them through in-app purchase is really something that would enhance their experience and excitement about the app.

So which pricing model to choose?
As you can see, the pricing model of choice depends on many considerations along with strategic planning. However, you can also mix and match some of these options and launch them in combination rather than isolation.

The monetization strategy will determine whether your app will start a new trend or die a fad. If it becomes a trend, then you will have created a wonderful source of income for yourself.

When it comes to talking about what I do, one of my biggest problems is having the tendency to “data dump,” or give way too much information about my company and its services. What’s more, I do it way too soon… often, before the people to whom I’m speaking are even qualified as prospects.

I’m getting much better at not data dumping, but I still have to actively put the mental brakes on my brain (and mouth).

Besides annoying others from an over-abundant love for what I do, my eager-beaver attitude can have a very unintended side-effect: It stymies conversation. This hurts me because I don’t have as much of an opportunity to find out about the other person’s wants or needs.

Here’s the thing: This kind of thing happens every day, in electronic form, on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. I see people who want to be great at Social Selling, but instead are spinning their wheels, wasting precious time and burning through prospects. Even worse, they don’t know why their efforts aren’t working!

Why?

Most likely, their Social Selling isn’t working because they haven’t given their prospects any reason to care about them.

Here are the three major mistakes many sales professionals make when Social Selling:

1. A boring (or even repelling) Headline. Besides your name, one of the most prominent items of your profile a prospect sees is your Headline. If your Headline doesn’t speak to their needs, they probably won’t bother reading anything else in your Profile, and you’ve lost a “suspect” (potential prospect).

An oft-quoted statistic is that you have three seconds to “sell” someone in reading through your Profile. If your Headline promotes only you and not what you can do for clients, you’ve lost the battle in less than three seconds.

For those of us who sell for a living, a prospect can actually be repelled from reading further than a Headline. Let’s face it; most people hate to be sold to. Yet if you say you’re an Account Manager or Business Development Professional in your Headline, for example, that prospect will be afraid that you’ll only sell to them.

Instead of promoting yourself or re-hashing your corporate title, treat your Headline as a great opportunity to let your prospects know the value you will bring them. Make them want to contact you because you’ll be a great help to them with your product/service.

2. A self-focused Summary. Let’s say your Headline has convinced your Profile reader to scroll down to your Summary section. In it, you start with your passions. Mistake. That’s essentially the same as what I do when I data dump on people but in electronic form. Or worse yet, you begin with how many years you’ve spent your industry. These and other self-focused elements in a Headline are bad moves.

You might answer with, “but this kind of information will help a prospect decide if they want to do business with me.” You’d be right, too; the problem is you’re not presenting this information in the right sequence.

Instead, think of your Summary section as a marketing piece that has only one goal: To get the reader to reach out to you—via phone, email, LinkedIn message, etc.—at the exact time they’re reading it.

The Summary section has to present information that will help your readers with whatever problem they’re having, which is probably why they stumbled across your Profile in the first place. You need to proactively offer some insights or education, get your reader to think about their current situation and recognize that you have solutions that might help them.

Once you have brought them value, ask for the phone call or message in your Summary section. They will be excited to get in touch with you. You can then talk about your passions and how long you’ve been in the industry in subsequent conversations (if you even need to!).

3. A splash of “cold calling” water. If you’ve ever been unexpectedly pushed into a cold pool, you know it’s not a good feeling. And you probably had a decidedly negative feeling towards the person/people doing the cold deed.

In Social Selling prospecting, sending cold messages telling, for example, about how you help people like them, is a bit like that cold water feeling. It’s unexpected, can be unpleasant, and doesn’t exactly promote warm feelings towards the sender. It’s definitely not the way to start or build relationships.

Here is a better way to engage: Find out what matters to your prospect(s). Look at content they or others in their industry share. Look at the Influencers they follow and posts they like. Then, find an article related to what they care about and send that to them with a little note:

As an entrepreneur in the [YOUR] industry, I thought this article [LINK HERE] would be of interest. I would love to hear your feedback and if you found it helpful.

If they reply, you can start a relationship on a much warmer note.

A Commonality

There’s a common thread that runs through all of these points: You need to look at your prospects’ problems through their eyes, not yours. They don’t care about your passions or how long you’ve been in your business. They only want to solve their problem(s).

Present yourself as their problem solver, or their “go-to” gal/guy in their area, and you’ve got a great shot at securing their business.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn, and was featured in LinkedIn’s Sales Strategies channel.

This is Episode 51 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

In this episode Adele Revella provides shares valuable insights into understanding what your buyers are thinking throughout the buyers journey.

Adele is CEO of the Buyer Persona Institute and author of Buyer Personas: How to Gain Insight into Your Customer’s Expectations, Align your Marketing Strategies, and Win More Business (Wiley, 2015). She offers a compelling strategy for marketers seeking the confidence to say: “This is what really matters to our buyers. So here’s the plan.”

Listen in as we discuss how buyer personas can help your business understand your buyers’ decision criteria, so that you can better design your marketing to enhance that experience.

What Do Your Buyers Really Want to Know?

Adele Revella contends that marketers and companies, in general, are too isolated from what their buyers really think about as they are going through the buying experience.

She suggests interviewing them one-on-one to gain insights from their story. Using The Five Rings of Buying Insight, she lays out a predictable structure for creating experience driven marketing that helps buyers that often feel lost. Adele says, “Many buyers give up because nobody is really helping them. This is the big opportunity.”

5 Rings of Buying Insight

Insight 1 – Priority Initiative

Determine the most compelling reasons that your buyer decided to invest in your solution, and develop strategies that trigger these actions.

Insight 2 – Success Factors

The results your buyer persona expects to achieve from a solution like yours, and the risks involved with achieving it, must be clearly understood.

Insight 3 – Perceived Barriers

Every industry has its perceived barriers. Using your content marketing to remove them often involves pulling back the curtain and sharing true and relevant stories that resonate with buyers.

Insight 4 – Buyer’s Journey

Buyers seldom make decisions in isolation. Family, friends and others influence their decisions. Understanding these influences enables a business to allocate resources to address these needs.

Insight 5 – Decision Criteria

What motivates buyers can be a complex process, or a decision based almost entirely on emotion. Decision criteria often surprise companies that are in love with their products and services. More important is to fall in love with the buyer personas that become customers.

Key Take-Aways

• Learn more about Adele’s work with buyer personas at Buyer Persona Institute
• Connect with Adele on Twitter at @buyerpersona
• The buyer persona is not the ideal customer. Listen in to learn more, and also the distinction between the buyer’s journey and the customer experience.

Thought Leader Life is a web series spearheaded by Mitchell Levy, CEO and Thought Leader Architect at THiNKaha and Chief Aha Instigator at the Aha Amplifier, to spotlight today’s thought leaders. Recently Act-On Software’s Director of Digital Marketing, Linda West, and Rachel Rosin, Act-On’s Marketing Programs Manager, were guests on the program, talking about best practices in modern email marketing. Paula Chiocchi, founder and the B2B email marketing diva at Outward Media, guest-hosted with Mitchell. This is part 1 of an edited transcript of the conversation; you can catch the entire discussion here:

MITCHELL: Hi, this is Mitchell Levy, and welcome to episode 86 of Thought Leader Life. I’m really excited for the month. We’ve got Paula Chiocchi, who is the founder and the B2B email marketing diva at Outward Media. We’re talking about nothing less than the successful moving forward of email. Paula, great to have you as co-host for the month.

PAULA: Thank you, Mitchell. Happy to be here.

MITCHELL: It’s an interesting time between thought leadership and email marketing and what you do there. I want to introduce our guests. We have Linda West, who’s the digital marketing director at Act-On. Linda, great to have you.

LINDA: Good to be here.

MITCHELL: And we also have Rachel Rosin, who’s the marketing programs manager at Act-On. Rachel, great to have the two of you with us.

RACHEL: Pleasure to be here.

Is Email Marketing Dead?

MITCHELL: The softball question I want to start with is, I often hear people say, hey social media is in, email marketing is dead. Obviously we know this is not true. But what’s your take on that statement?

LINDA: I would say that it is true to a certain extent. Email marketing as we knew it is dead. But email marketing generally is absolutely not dead. It has evolved, it is new, it is different, but it’s not dead.

RACHEL: I’d agree with that. It’s not dead. It’s just the tactics have changed now. And the measurements for success have also changed as well. So it’s not so much about email itself being dead, but just shifting our focus and focusing on different things for email.

PAULA: How have you seen the measurements for success change?

RACHEL: We’ve moved away from when it was very, very common to focus on your open rates. And now I think that the most important measurement of success is your clickthrough rate. How is your audience engaging with the different emails that you’re sending out? What are they clicking on? Are they taking that extra step? Because now it’s not so much about just getting your message out. It’s about getting people to engage with it.

LINDA: Even further to that, instead of focusing on vanity metrics like open rates, it’s now how many leads are you generating from your email programs? And how many deals are you closing on the back of that? And how is email influencing the complex sale? And how is email influencing that buyer’s journey that’s probably longer than one email? So email is being used in a really unique way. Again it’s moving beyond those vanity metrics and looking at deeper things like tying email to one deal, and tying email to lead generation, and clickthrough rates and engagement.

Engaging Email Across Channels

PAULA: Do you see your clients trying to use email also with the social media channels now? I guess everybody thinks that’s the new big thing, social media.

LINDA: I would say so. When you move beyond just trying to get people to engage in that channel, and you move into this mindset that there’s this larger world for you to play in. I’ve seen campaigns that encourage as their call to action not buy now, but – hey tweet this, let’s get you engaged with this conversation.

PAULA: That’s cool. I haven’t seen that.

LINDA: There are a lot of cool tools out there that you can use. Click to Tweet is a great one, we’ve used that quite a bit in our own programs. There are really interesting ways that you can just use email to help people engage with your brand across channels. It doesn’t have to just be, “Hey here’s an email, interact with this email.”

RACHEL: I think it’s very common now, especially if you’re promoting a white paper or a blog post or anything. It’s very easy to do a click to tweet function. And you have a message ready to go with a link to that asset. And your viewers can go ahead and share it automatically. So that’s definitely a great way to help set engagement.

LINDA: Now you’re able as a marketer – with all this technology available to you, like marketing automation, and analytics and tracking information, –you are not just tied to what did this person do in the email. You can track every single behavior that that person takes in every channel that you’re promoting in, so you’re not tied to the metrics within that channel.

How do you build engagement?

PAULA: It’s hard to do the attribution because it goes across all the channels. But we see email as a driver to get to that attribution. When we first started in the email business in 2004, our open rates averaged from six percent to all the way up to 30 percent sometimes. Now they’ve kind of settled back although not as low as what typical industrial direct mail is. But what do you do to help your clients get open rates up?

LINDA: It’s all about engagement. It’s all about understanding your audience. It’s all about sending the right message at the right time to the person that you’re trying to reach. So it’s beyond just technically what’s in your email or technically how is it delivered. It’s really about who are you talking to and what are they interested in hearing at that point in time. Are they a late stage buyer who’s about to make a purchase from you? Or have they never heard of your brand before? Those two different types of people want different things, inherently. So it’s really more about understanding your audience than anything else.

RACHEL: The different types of messages also have different open rates. I was looking at some stats prior to this conversation, and I saw on eMarketer that triggered emails have higher open rates than your normal standalone emails. Different types of messages have different results.

PAULA: That’s a really good point.

MITCHELL: So in the buyer’s journey, if the buyer is actually doing something that will encourage them to get an email response, a couple things have to happen. First, you need to be able to give the email response immediately, right? Not within a couple hours or within a day. Second, if they actually respond to that, you want to respond again, right? What I’m hearing you say is that you keep focusing and referencing “know your audience” and “understand the buyer’s journey,” right? And so what that means is, it’s not about yourself, it’s not about your company, it’s not about what you say. It’s all about how you say it in such a way that your prospective buyer – now I call him a future advocate, but your future advocate and current advocates are excited about who you are and dealing with you.

LINDA: Absolutely. That’s a really good way to put it. It’s like a relationship. You can’t go on a date and ask somebody to go on vacation with you and marry you on the first date. This is definitely not the best approach. But if you develop a long term relationship and understand the person and communicate things at the right time, it’s all going to work out. And eventually that person’s going to love you and maybe marry you and say yes. But it’s a long process. You have to be conscientious of that other person and your own value and all of those good things.

PAULA: I agree with that because the B2B close cycle has gone from three to six months to now six to eight months, even a year. So it’s about nurturing them along the journey.

LINDA: Absolutely. And even beyond that first purchase, it’s like you said, there’s future promoters. How are you engaging your current customer base with email to adopt more features within your product, or to use your product, to love your product more, to promote it, to share it with their colleagues or their friends?

PAULA: Click to tweet.

LINDA: Yes. Click to tweet.

[LAUGHTER]

Responsive Design Considerations

MITCHELL: I see a lot of the fundamentals of success today, many people are talking about that long term mailing list they have. Even if you look at Jeff Walker and Launch, what he’s really talking about is building a good mailing list so that you can then continue to launch new products over time. And you may actually end up with something that’ll be super successful. Paula and I were talking before. One of the things we were thinking about is responsiveness. And how do you create the type of email messages and an approach that will increase the responsiveness of those that you’re reaching. Obviously you need to know who they are. But what are some of the tricks and techniques you guys use?

LINDA: Well one, ironically, is responsive design. [LAUGHTER] Responsive design is technically an

HTML email that’s delivered that will actually change its format based on the device that the viewer is using. Over 50 percent of all emails are opened on mobile devices now. If the person that’s receiving the email can’t read it and interact with it efficiently because they’re on a mobile phone, then you’ve already lost the battle. Responsive design is one new way that’s emerging that some marketers are starting to adopt to make sure they’re hitting people in all the places where they’re going to be interacting with email.

The emergence of mobile is huge. And it’s impacted the email channel probably the quickest. There’s more traffic from mobile devices into the email channel than most other channels at this point.

PAULA: And it’s probably just going to get bigger because the millennial generation, that’s where they’re living, on the mobile device.

LINDA: People spend more time on their mobile phone now than they do watching TV, than they do at their desktop computer. It is the dominant location for media consumption.

Thoughts on video and animation in emails

PAULA: I think I saw recently the mobile figure for the millennial buyers for B2B is approaching somewhere between 40 and 50 percent. It was just 20 percent about a year ago. That is where they’re living, on their phone. What do you think about the future? I’ve been reading about the emergence of video in email.. What do you think about video in email? Are you already testing that with your clients?

RACHEL: Yes. Video’s a great way to stand out from the crowd because you have this constant barrage of emails that are hitting everybody’s inbox daily. Hundreds of emails. So it’s really a good way to stand out. There are just some technical considerations for that now though, as not every email service provider will support video within the email. So you have to be careful in the way that you’re positioning those, who you’re sending them to, and make sure that the image itself as a standalone will work as well without that video in case it doesn’t play. [ For instance, Outlook does not support video, so if you are sending animations or video to outlook clients, then you need to make sure that the email still looks good and conveys your message if that animation or video isn’t able to play.]

LINDA: Some common ways around that too, like animated GIFs are another way to create action in your emails. We do that a lot in our emails and it’s really effective for drawing attention to your messages.

RACHEL: We did a head-to-head test – an A/B test; one email with a static banner, one email with an animated banner. There were more click-throughs and more engagement on the animated banner.

MITCHELL: How big – for the animated GIF and the banner, how many images were behind it? How easy was that to create? And what did it show versus the static one?

RACHEL: It was really easy to create. There are some free resources online and I learned how to do it in an afternoon using Photoshop. There are tutorials out there that are very easy to figure it out, and it doesn’t have to be something that’s incredibly complicated. It’s just adding some element of movement that draws your eye and really captures the attention of whoever’s viewing the message.

LINDA: It adds the cool factor to your message.

RACHEL: Yes.

[LAUGHTER]

PAULA: It adds a cool factor without going to an agency to create it for you.

LINDA: Exactly, yes.

What’s on the horizon for email marketing?

PAULA: What else do you think that we should know that’s up and coming for email? What are you guys sensing?

LINDA: There are a lot of interesting programmatic components of email. Lead nurturing is becoming more and more important, and more and more integral to a lot of businesses, especially those that have longer sale cycles. So that’s huge. And understanding your buyer’s journey and being able to set up trigger messages and lead nurturers that really mirror that journey and help people along. It’s about really educating and engaging buyers versus the hard sell. And that is true across all of marketing now, but especially in email.

PAULA: Do you see any integration between online display and email marketing? Do you have any clients doing that?

LINDA: Absolutely. There’s a lot of cool functionality out there where you can mirror emails on ad networks, where you can bcc an outbound email from a sales rep and it’ll go across all different ad networks. So there’s really interesting stuff that’s coming out. It’s amazing what’s happening now. It really points to this larger picture of the marketing technology ecosystem, which is growing. It’s incredible the types of technology that are available to marketers now, that connect with email and all kinds of other channels.

It can get really complicated for marketers. But I think what’s really important is to have tools that play well with others. Because there’s so much great technology out there, you want to adopt pieces of technology that are going to integrate really well with your other pieces of technology. Because again, email is one channel out of many. And they all have to play nice and interact with each other so that you have good reporting.

Stay tuned for “Modern Email: Still Winning Friends and Influencing People: Part 2”, coming soon!

In the meantime … learn five tips for more successful – and more profitable – email campaigns with your free copy of Act-On’s Amazingly Effective Email Guide.

Beware of ideas that suggest that buyers no longer need salespeople, that salespeople can’t create value, or that information on the Internet will replace the insight of human beings. Being irrelevant is a choice.

Beware of any advice that suggests that prospecting is limited to one single method, that old methods don’t work, or that someone else should do your prospecting for you. Lots of methods work, even the ones you don’t like.

Beware of anyone who sells you the idea that some tool or technology is the answer to all of your sales challenges or that leveraging some technology can radically improve your ability to sell. Technology is helpful in the right hands. But it isn’t the difference that makes a difference. No buyer buys from you because of the technology you use.

Beware of people who sell you the idea that selling isn’t selling, that it is simply connecting, or simply being helpful, or that you should wait for your buyer to ask you if they can buy. Connecting is important. Being helpful is important. But these things alone or together are not selling.

Beware of people who sell you the idea that you don’t have to do the things that you don’t like to do, that you don’t want to do, or that you are afraid to do to succeed. Beware of people who will sell you the idea that selling is easy if you only follow “their way.” Selling isn’t easy, and the only people for whom selling is easy is people who prey on your weaknesses and your fears.

Sellers beware. If the words you hear or read are like music to your ears, you are being seduced. If the words make you uncomfortable, if they are unpleasant to your ears, and if they challenge what you believe, give them your full attention and careful consideration.

The post Sellers Beware appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Ashton Kutcher built a fan base as a goofball character in sitcoms and movies, but he has been seriously focused on his investments over the past several years.

It's why his friend Mark Cuban, one of the regular investors on the show "Shark Tank," invited Kutcher to try out for a guest-investor role in the show's seventh season, which began Friday. After getting accustomed to the format, Kutcher dived right in, making a deal, offering entrepreneurs valuable insight, and even sparring with the brashest of the show's investors, Kevin O'Leary.

Rather than begin investing on a whim, Kutcher reached out to prominent Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway, who became his mentor in the late aughts.

Since 2010, Kutcher has been an investor through his venture-capital firm A-Grade Investments, which he founded with the entrepreneurs and investors Guy Oseary and Ronald Burke. He was an angel investor before that. He also connected with Marc Andreessen, one of the Valley's premier investors, and Andreessen wisely persuaded him to invest in Skype in 2009.

He has invested in seed and Series-A rounds for companies including Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and Casper.

In an interview for his website A-Plus, Kutcher said he had three rules of investing, which are focused on what he sees in entrepreneurs:

1. They must intimately understand both their product and their industry.

Great ideas on their own are not sufficient.

2. They must have a personality that will allow them to withstand failure and setbacks.

"You can have the best idea in the world and absolute domain expertise and know how to do everything right, but if you want to do something great in the world, there are going to be obstacles; and you have to be a person who has ingenuity and sheer willpower to get through those times," he said.

3. They must get along well with him.

He's not willing to make a commitment of millions of dollars and years of being an adviser to someone he doesn't want to hang out with.

Kutcher told The Telegraph in 2013 that he was drawn to consumer technologies. "The companies that will ultimately do well are the companies that chase happiness," he said. "If you find a way to help people find love, or health, or friendship, the dollar will chase that."

SEE ALSO: Ashton Kutcher nailed his 'Shark Tank' debut

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Robert Herjavec on Ashton Kutcher's ‘Shark Tank' debut

Vancouver, BC, September 28, 2015--At a ceremony held in the Company's global headquarters, Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLD) signed a new long-term license and supply agreement with an existing partner in China, Guangdong Synergy Hydrogen Power Technology Co., Ltd., to provide fuel cell Power Products and Technology Solutions in support of the planned deployment of approximately 300 fuel cell-powered buses in the cities of Foshan and Yunfu, China.

You can’t expect to be perfectly understood by everyone all the time. Despite knowing this, many of us still try. If most people get what you’re trying to say, you’re only wasting your own effort by tailoring your message to the people who won’t.

Read more...

Before she became the owner of Peekaboo Beans, a Canadian kidswear business, Traci Costa worked as an investment banker for 10 years, toiling long hours, making deals every day. It all changed when she had her first child in the early 2000s and left her banking career to look after her daughter. She created Peekaboo Beans in 2006 after noticing the clothes she bought for her vivacious child were hindering her from moving around freely. The buttons and snaps dug into her little waist and limbs, and prevented her from unadulterated play. It gave Costa the idea to construct better clothing for children.

Costa designed her colourful line of kids­wear to be versatile. The pants and sleeves have zippers so they can easily come off, and if there’s an accidental spill, parents can just reverse the clothing. Costa even had the fabrics custom developed, and Peekaboo Beans conducts third-party testing to ensure products like her Jump’n Jeggings and I Heart Play Hoodies are free of harmful chemicals. Costa initially sold the kidswear to specialty children’s boutiques in Vancouver, where Peekaboo Beans is based, but switched her business model to direct sales after witnessing heaps of retail stores going out of business during the financial crisis. “It was the best decision I’ve ever made,” Costa says.

Direct selling isn’t new. You might have grown up slathering on sunscreen your mother ordered from her local Avon lady or fishing pickles from a Tupperware container she bought at a party. Direct sales replace the retail sales chain with an army of consultants that market and sell products to people using their networks, through coffee dates and parties and order forms. And the businesses are rebounding in popularity, with sales agents out selling everything from cosmetics (Arbonne) to beverages (Steeped Tea) to home fragrances (Scentsy). According to the Direct Sellers Association of Canada, the number of direct sellers is up 17.8% over the past few years, while global direct sales have increased 20.8%. For many business owners, direct selling is the perfect way to grow a brand, far from the cluttered shelves of the retail marketplace. If you’re lucky, you might even develop a cult following.

When Costa officially switched to direct selling in 2011, she set a goal of finding 10 consultants by the end of the year. Her first sales agent, a self-proclaimed “Bean­aholic” from Calgary, noticed Costa was no longer selling Peekaboo Bean products in her local retail stores and wanted to find another way to support the brand because she valued it so much. Other consultants joined Peekaboo Beans through word of mouth. By June of that year, Costa had over 100 consultants and more people lining up to sell her products. The crowd became so hectic she had to introduce an application process to hire new sales agents.

Today, Peekaboo Beans has more than 700 sales agents across Canada and is growing at an estimated rate of 30 new consultants every month. Its revenue has also increased an average of 70% every year since she made the switch, and the company has paid out more than $1.7 million in commissions to consultants so far. The agents take home a 15% to 35% commission, depending on how much they sell. Costa’s top consultants have each sold more than $200,000 total in Peekaboo Beans gear.

“If consultants are in love with the product, it’s easy for them to sell,” says Ken Mulhall, president of the Direct Sellers Association of Canada. “They want to quench their thirst for being an entrepreneur and control their own time while meeting the needs of their family.”

To become a Peekaboo Beans consultant, you have to purchase a $199 sample bundle that comes with eight of Peekaboo Beans’ best sellers. The agents will use the kit when hosting parties for local moms—creating a more intimate experience for customers. One type of Peekaboo Beans soirée has the seller gathering together about 15 moms at her home for an evening of chit-chat about kids and kid-friendly products, while the babies play in another room. They might also meet at a local coffee shop, where the consultant can hand out catalogues and give a short presentation on the company and what it offers. Moms can place their orders directly through the consultant.

“It’s a personal shopping experience where we look at the needs of the child, like whether they have certain colours they love,” says Costa, who reveals that an average Peekaboo Beans event will generate $750 in sales, much higher than the direct sales industry standard of $450. Costa believes her success comes from creating products people appreciate, but ask anyone who’s attended a direct sales party hosted by a friend or co-worker, and they’ll also tell you it’s difficult to go home without buying something.

Costa also notes it’s easier to scale a business under the direct sales model in comparison to the retail model, since growing your network of consultants requires little overhead, unlike constantly opening new stores. Additionally, it’s a great way for Costa to share her message about the importance of unstructured play for kids. “The retail model was very transactional,” she says. “There were no key messages, product knowledge or discussions of social impact.” With Peekaboo Beans, she’s able to build into her business “a unified message on the power of play, and empower women to run their own business at a low cost, selling a product they love.”

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Breakfast is often called the most important meal of the day. And for good reason. It powers your brain and your muscles, making it the right choice for athletes, students and anyone with a day job.

“Paying for value” is one of the most overused tropes in health care today. It is also the least well understood, because its meaning is manipulated by each stakeholder. To those who pay the bills — employers, health plans, and even the government — value often means paying as little as possible for services. To patients, many of whom do not pay the full price of the care that they receive, value often means better outcomes regardless of cost.

The right way to think about value in health care delivery is a stream of benefits accrued over a lifetime that is attractive relative to the price paid to acquire them. It is equivalent to the financial sector’s definition of a “value stock”: one with solid fundamentals, priced below its peers, and hence a good investment. But while this notion is uncontroversial in finance, it is disruptive in health care (and education) where we tend to exaggerate the importance of immediate costs and take a myopic view of benefits.

Take for example the case of schizophrenia, a rare but serious mental disorder (as anyone who has read Sylvia Nasar’s touching biography of economist John Nash can attest). Unfortunately, not everyone afflicted with schizophrenia is a future Nobel laureate. Many are poor and disenfranchised, and often on public insurance programs. The social costs are high: Mentally-ill people are more likely to be arrested when stopped by the police, and more likely to be convicted and incarcerated.

Insight Center

Historically, schizophrenia was treated with severe methods, including electroconvulsive therapy — which, while effective in the short run, showed little long-term benefit. In the 1990s, a new class of atypical antipsychotic drugs were introduced into therapy. They quickly became a preferred mode of treatment but at high cost: atypicals now account for almost 15% of Medicaid spending.

This has made atypicals a ripe target for budget cuts by U.S. states. Many Medicaid programs have implemented limits on use — for example, by requiring prior authorization, limiting the quantity dispensed, or by requiring step therapy so patients must start on one particular brand. These approaches unambiguously reduce short-run spending.

The problem is that schizophrenia is an idiosyncratic disease, and without access to atypical antipsychotics, patients are at greater risk of uncontrolled symptoms. Research shows that states with more restrictive policies towards atypicals end up discouraging treatment (and encouraging spending on other health care services) and have higher rates of mental illness in their prisons. The bottom line is that myopic policies designed to reduce spending on schizophrenia lower costs in the short run but increase costs in the long run.

The fragmented nature of U.S. health care means that most payers responsible for pharmacy care aren’t thinking about the protective benefits of atypicals on the prison system. But a focus on value — with appropriate measurement of the long-term return — would result in better coverage policies for atypicals and better outcomes for society.

This issue has salience in other areas, including hepatitis C virus. Much has been made of the costs of these drugs. However, these drugs eliminate the virus with up to 99% effectiveness in some genotypes and few, if any, side effects. Very few drugs have this level of cure. Since patients cured of Hep C are unable to transmit the disease, this means that for each patient cured through these drugs, several more will be saved from ever contracting the disease in the first place. We can realistically talk about eliminating hepatitis C in the United States. The value of doing so will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, suggesting there must be some way to appropriately reward the innovators while ensuring access for everyone.

A value-driven health care system would deploy immense energy to solving this problem, including allowing states to borrow money from the Federal government (since the virus easily crosses states boundaries) to pay for these treatments. It would recognize the value of the treatment, instead of focusing on the price of drug and pursuing strategies that reduce access because the disease is prevalent and the treatment is expensive.

Short-termism is not restricted to drugs; it pervades all of health care. Consider the case of robot-assisted surgery. For hospitals, the acquisition and maintenance of a robot requires a significant investment, but hospitals that deliver better patient outcomes are not paid more. This is the opposite of value-driven healthcare.

Kidney cancer provides a useful case study. These cancers are typically best treated through partial or full removal of a kidney, with evidence favoring the former. It turns out that robot-assisted surgery increases access to partial nephrectomy and that partial nephrectomy reduced mortality and renal failure. The benefits, appropriately quantified, outweigh the gains by a ratio of five to one, with no increase in inappropriate surgical choices. Yet hospitals are not paid more for these long-term outcomes, and hence there is no incentive to use these technologies.

A value-driven payment strategy would not pay hospitals more for using robotic surgery but would certainly pay hospitals than produced better outcomes more. Often this strategy would involve not paying for expensive treatments that increase survival by a day or two, or incrementally, but have no long-term benefit. This would encourage adoption of technologies that work and penalize those that don’t work but whose generous reimbursement makes them highly profitable.

The lessons of value-driven health care are not limited to payers. Even patients — who perhaps have the most to gain by taking a long-term view — are notoriously responsive to short-term incentives and often ignore the future benefits of therapies. Getting people to take drugs that work, even patients who have just survived a heart attack, poses a challenge for behavioral economists and physicians.

We know, for example, that raising the copayment for high-blood-pressure medication by only $10 per month will reduce adherence of people with hypertension by as much as 25%. One study found that when insurers responsible for drug benefits in Medicare (which insures the disabled and Americans over age 65) increased cost sharing by $5 to $10, patients with chronic diseases cut back on their drugs, and some ended up in the hospital. Unfortunately, when Medicare patients are in the hospital, the government ends up paying the cost rather than the private insurer in charge of the patient’s drug benefits.

A value-based design would avoid a blunt approach to drug coverage. Instead of fixed copayments for all drugs, it would allow copayments to vary with clinical need. Drugs with little demonstrated efficacy would cost more. But, unlike antihistamines, it’s hard to overuse diabetes drugs or beta-blockers. These medications keep patients out of the hospital, and society has an interest in charging nothing for them. In some cases, it may even make sense to have negative copayments — that is, pay patients to take their drugs.

Similar incentive problems are likely to arise when different insurers are responsible for an individual’s medical costs at different ages. Insurers responsible for our care when we are in our in 40s and 50s are unlikely to make investments in prevention that accrue to Medicare. This may be why the treatment of those afflicted with hepatitis C, which sometimes takes a decade to develop symptoms, poses such a vexing challenge.

It is also why single-payer plans, which internalize the long-term benefits for a single insurer are better than our fragmented system at measuring total costs and total benefits — such as offsetting rates of criminal recidivism as a result of using antipsychotics, or benefits over the life cycle of a patient’s illness as opposed to until age 65. Therefore the challenge is to figure out how to create develop policies — and markets — to reward long-term benefits appropriately.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, one of the top areas that B2B marketers are eager to learn more about are the key metrics they need to measure, and how they should be tracked to show the ROI of their efforts. Let’s start by looking at these two astounding facts from the same study:

70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago, even those who say they are least effective (58%) and those without any type of strategy (56%)

Measurement is a key area where B2B marketers are struggling: Only 21% say they are successful at tracking ROI

There is clearly a huge disconnect in the number of companies that adopt content marketing as a part of their larger inbound strategy and those that are able to provide clear attribution of these efforts to their company’s pipeline.

In today’s post, we’re going to examine five attribution models that can be used to prove the ROI on your inbound marketing initiatives, and even take a look at how marketing leaders such as Joe Chernov and Sujan Patel show blog attribution at HubSpot and When I Work.

Calculating Inbound Marketing ROI with Attribution Modeling

First-Touch Attribution Model:

Since blogging is so effective at driving traffic from organic search, social media and referrals, a first-touch attribution model is perhaps the simplest way to apply credit to a given marketing tactic. This method is one of the simplest methods to implement as the first step in understanding the success of your inbound efforts. However, a first-touch model doesn’t show the entire picture or value of an asset as a prospect continues to engage with your content over time. Nonetheless, it is an important place to start when illustrating blog attribution.

To leverage this model, website visitors must be cookie’d when they are still anonymous on their first visit using a platform such as HubSpot. In using this model, you can report on overall monthly blog-generated leads. If you are using this model alone, 100 percent of the revenue is then attributed to the asset that generated this first view or click. This looks like:

First-Touch Attribution Model

And we can see that this is one of the models that Sujan Patel uses at When I Work:

However, as Sujan hinted at in his response to my question on the AMA, the clear drawback of this model is that visitors are engaging with much more of your content, especially in a complex buying journey. This means that many of your assets would not get credit for a final sale, so that it results in your content being undervalued. In turn, this overvalues the first-touch channel that is responsible for building awareness. Enter: last-touch attribution modeling to help fill in this gap.

Last-Touch Attribution Model:

A last-touch attribution model gives credit to the last post viewed before a contact converted on a landing page and became an engaged lead. A last-touch model is beneficial for looking at your most influential posts for driving leads at the top of the funnel.

In a last-touch model, 100 percent of the revenue is attributed to the last-touched post, and looks like this:

Last-Touch Attribution Model

Again, this is now only showing your posts that are helping you convert visitors to leads, but it’s not necessarily showing you the posts that are bringing visitors to your site, as Joe Chernov pointed out in his inbound.org AMA:

Thus, by looking at both first-touch and last-touch attribution we are able to get a better idea of the blog posts that are helping us drive leads. A combination attribution model looks like this:

First- & Last-Touch Attribution Model

This model is a great place to start for companies to better understand how their blog is contributing to your pipeline. But again, it does fall short in undervaluing the role the rest of your content plays over the entire sales cycle.

Multi-Touch Attribution Models:

With the inherent drawbacks of each of these three simpler models, sophisticated marketing teams have turned to more complex multi-touch and omni-channel attribution models to track their marketing efforts.

Linear Attribution Model:

If you have a complex buyer’s journey, a linear attribution model allows you to attribute each touch with equal importance. This model aligns well with the way that buyers are making decisions today as prospects are consuming more content than ever before making a purchasing decision. This will also address any concerns about unfair attribution given to the first or last touch.

Linear Attribution Model

Time-Decay Attribution Model:

A time decay attribution model gives the most weight to the last touch, and then slightly less revenue credit moving back to the first touch, and looks like this:

Time-Decay Attribution Model

This is not a great model for content marketing, especially blogging, as it is undervaluing the first touches at the top of the funnel where your blog is serving as an attraction engine, and rightfully deserves credit for doing so. However, this model can be great to help identify key sales-enablement content if reps are using blogs and content offers throughout the sales process.

Bonus! Take your B2B reporting to the next level with account-based attribution:

In a complex buying process, there are often different stakeholders, including champions, gatekeepers and decision-makers. To take your attribution reporting to the next level, you can use account-based attribution to see the pages that all the different stakeholders in a business visited before the final buying decision was made.

Ultimately, you need to make a decision on which attribution model to use based on which questions you’re trying to answer about your content and the role it plays at each stage of the funnel.

What other struggles do you experience in proving the ROI of inbound marketing? Leave us a comment below.

Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, seldom met the managers of the companies he invested in because he felt they would tell him only what they wished him to hear and because he didn’t want to be influenced by impressions of personality. His talented student, the legendary Warren Buffet, thought the same: “when management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”

Value investors like Graham and Buffett believe that the sources of sustainable returns on capital are not a company’s human assets but their so-called “economic moats,” structural, durable competitive advantages around revenues or costs.   Revenue moats are usually linked to intangible assets (including brands and patents), high switching costs, and network economies. Cost moats are linked to the ownership of cheaper or faster processes, favorable locations, unique assets, or firm size. In some cases, companies’ moats have enabled them to survive multiple technology disruptions and industry shifts over time, making their founders some of richest people in the world: think Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Amancio Ortega, and Larry Ellison.

There’s an interesting fact about companies with these kinds of moats or competitive advantages that often gets overlooked: the turnover rate of CEOs among the S&P as a whole is between ten and twenty times higher than in the big entrepreneurial successes of the past few decades. A case in point is Inditex, founded in 1963 and now the biggest fashion group in the world, which has only had two CEOs succeed founder Amancio Ortega. By contrast, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, which has suffered from years of poor performance, has had three CEOs in the last five years, none of whom has done much to improve performance despite their glittering CVs in the sector.

This raises a basic question: can a CEO with the best track record imaginable turn around a poorly performing company? According to MIT economist Antoinette Schoar the answer is yes roughly 60% of the time, which is not that much better than the odds of getting heads on a coin toss.

Chicago’s Steve Kaplan’s findings on the difference that managers can make are even more sobering. He studied the relative importance of management teams in 106 venture capital-financed firms from early business plan to IPO. He found that although 50% of venture capital investors described the management team as the most important factor at the business plan stage, this emphasis had dropped markedly by the IPO stage. He concluded that non-human assets — i.e., their moats — were ultimately more important to firms than human assets, with their relative importance increasing over time. The implications are clear: first choose the right industry and company, then pick the right management. If the managers don’t perform, they can be swapped out much more easily than the basic business idea or industry.

Of course, in a highly competitive world, even a slim advantage is better than a coin-toss. So is there something different about the managers who do succeed? Let’s go back to Steve Kaplan, who has also studied how and why CEOs matter, relating their features to hiring and firm performance.

His detailed assessments of over 300 CEO candidates in private equity-funded companies suggest that CEOs with execution strengths (“efficiency”, organization and planning”, “attention to detail”, “persistence”, “proactive”, “sets high standards”, etc.) perform better than CEOs whose softer skills such as team building or listening dominate. This finding is a ringing modern confirmation of what Peter Drucker was telling us in 1967 about what makes executives effective.

If all this is true, then the high CEO turnover you see at many public companies is not a symptom of poor management. It suggests a deeper problem, which is that the companies in question simply don’t have a competitive advantage and are simply engaged in a lottery, hoping to find a CEO who can find one. The odds aren’t favorable.

We recently released our list of the 50 most powerful companies in America. Here's how we made that ranking.

We first compiled a list of companies to evaluate by looking at the top companies on the Fortune 500 list and Business Insider's list of the 50 best companies to work for in America. 

We then used four main measures of a company's size and influence:

• Revenue: Looking at fiscal year 2014 financial reports, we gathered info on each company's top line.
• Number of employees: The total number of people employed by the companies also came from their 2014 annual reports.
• Google News mentions: On September 2, we measured the number of times companies were mentioned on Google News for the year between September 1, 2014, and September 1, 2015.
• Klout score: For most of the companies, we received their rankings from Klout, which measures the social-media influence of individuals and brands across all platforms.

Because revenue, number of employees, and Google News mentions spanned an enormous range including several orders of magnitude, we took the logarithm of each of these measures. Very roughly speaking, this rescales values based on how many digits they have.

To make each of our four measures comparable to each other, we then took normalized z-scores for each of the values. This puts each of the four measures onto a common scale with an average value of 0 and a "standard deviation" — or measure of how spread out the data are — of 1. This common scale allows us to more easily compare and combine measures.

To get our final composite power ranking score, we then simply added up the z-scores for each company, giving full weight to revenue, employees, and news mentions, and half weight to Klout score.

SEE THE MAIN LIST: The 50 most powerful companies in America

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Today D-Wave Systems announced a new agreement covering the installation of a succession of D-Wave systems located at NASA's Ames Research Center. "The new agreement is the largest order in D-Wave's history, and indicative of the importance of quantum computing in its evolution toward solving problems that are difficult for even the largest supercomputers," said D-Wave CEO Vern Brownell. "We highly value the commitment that our partners have made to D-Wave and our technology, and are excited about the potential use of our systems for machine learning and complex optimization problems."

The post D-Wave to Collaborate with Google, NASA, and USRA on Quantum Computing appeared first on insideHPC.

Half the funding in the Collaborative Economy goes to transportation.
By our count, the Collaborative Economy has been funded $25 billion, one of the highest funded tech industries, ever. For comparison, global social networks have been funded a mere $6 billion, which is just a quarter of the Collaborative Economy. Within the $25 billion funded, $13 billion has been invested in the transportation space, which is 52% of all funding dollars.

What’s shared transportation? Chances are, you’re already using it.
First, let’s define the category of shared transportation. It includes: 1) rides as a service, and 2) vehicle sharing. If you’ve taken a ride as a service like Lyft, Uber, Ola, or Didi, you’ve participated in shared transportation. If you’ve experienced ridesharing or carpooling with startups like BlaBlaCar in Europe, you’ve also participated. If you’ve borrowed a car from a peer using startups like RelayRides, Getaround, or a boat from Boatbound, Sailsquare, or Boatsetter, you’ve participated in sharing vehicles.

Five startups in Europe, India, China, and the USA are receiving the funds.
How is this $13 billion of funding distributed? First of all, it’s hard to fully calculate, as some of the debt financing to Uber makes it difficult to truly tabulate. Here’s a breakout of the top startups: Uber more than $6B; China’s Didi more than $4B; Europe’s BlaBlaCar more than $2B; America’s Lyft more than $1B (who partnered with Didi); and India’s Ola Car more than $600K. These startups lead the overall top-funded tech companies, even across multiple sectors. See full stats on this multi-tab Google sheet.

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Above Graphic: The Collaborative Economy has been funded over $25B, but $13B (53%) has gone to the transportation sector, see full multi-tab Google sheet for more details.

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Ten Reasons Why Investors Love Shared Transportation

So why have VCs invested so much capital into the transportation space? There’s at least ten reasons why this category is so attractive:

1. Everyone needs it. We’re all dependent on mobility and transportation; even shut-ins need services and goods brought to their homes. The physical movement of goods and services is the lifeblood of an economy, and now it’s digitized for all to harness using these technologies.
2. Most people will live in big cities. Multiple urbanization studies indicate that most of Earth’s population will reside in large dense cities, many inside of “Megacities” which have more than 10 million inhabitants. The rise of the population, and the density that comes with it, means that shared vehicles and shared rides are inevitable.
3. Rapid global adoption. While various carpooling efforts have existing for years, the mobile-based apps phenomenon triggered massive growth. Adoption numbers cited from startups show a rapid increase in adoption globally. The ability to access a ride is as easy as downloading an app and connecting it to your credit card.
4. Vehicles are mostly idle. Vehicles, whether they be autos, boats, or trucks, are some of the least used assets that we own. We’re often in our homes a third of the day, but vehicles are only used 5% of the time or less. These idle assets that clog up parking, streets, and neighborhoods can now be activated in car sharing, reducing the number of cars on the road.
5. They’re expensive assets. Many view vehicles as depreciating assets, or in some cases, liabilities that require payment plans, insurance, gas, maintenance, parking, and more. For those in an urban environment, the costs can increase even further with storage costs, parking tickets, and more.
6. An easily shareable asset. Unlike personalized clothes, perishable food, or seasonable sporting goods, autos and mobility services are easily shared from person to person. In most cases, humans can interchange seats or vehicles as easily as they change their daily outfits.
7. Positive sustainability impacts. Investors like Structure Capital, Collaborative Fund, and Sherpa Ventures have shared their investment thesis in the world demonstrating their commitment to reducing waste, making the world more efficient, or helping communities.
8. Extends value to other industries. The transportation space isn’t limited to just the value of cars or taxis, but extends its impact to many other industries, including: 1) Logistics, shipping, and storage; 2) Personal services like retail delivery, home cleaning, and other on-demand services; and 3) Impact traditional car loans, insurance, and more.
9. VCs are likely to fund competitors. Venture capitalists are pressured to have an appropriately rounded investment portfolio to match their thesis. When one VC firm funds Lyft, the other investors need to round out their portfolio, meaning they’ll fund Lyft’s competitor to ensure they don’t miss a trend.
10. Immediate revenue generation. If there’s one thing that makes this category so attractive to investors, it’s that each transaction generates 10-15% cash flow to the tech startup. Unlike struggling social media startups who are still searching for their revenue models, this market generates direct revenues for every transaction –- with low costs.

This is just the start of the shared transportation space.
Other players like Google are expected to enter this space; telecom companies like Verizon have launched auto sharing applications; and BMW (client), Daimler, Ford and others have launched car sharing programs, which all spur the movement forward. Furthermore, self-driving cars are being produced by Uber, with their recent acquisition of over 50 CMU professors to build said self-driving cars. With Apple, Google, Tesla, and other Silicon Valley heavy hitters building autonomous vehicles, they will no doubt make them available as shared services, where you can have a vehicle fetch you –- instead of you having to own one.

Read more on the next phase, how self-driving cars will disrupt the crowd, here. The funding in this market is just setting the stage for much larger disruptions on the horizon.

 

(Creative commons image from Franganillo)

When I first started LinkedIn prospecting, I thought I had it all figured out. The idea of easily connecting with potential clients and growing my network felt like a no-brainer. But, as I dove deeper, I realized that relying only on LinkedIn’s basic search functions wasn’t getting me the results I hoped for. I needed to experiment with different methods to maximize my efforts.

In this post, I’ll share some of the lesser-known ways to find new prospects on LinkedIn that have helped me refresh my approach. Whether you're a seasoned LinkedIn user or just starting, these tips can help uncover new opportunities when the usual methods fall short.

Table of Contents

• LinkedIn Prospecting Tips
• How to Use LinkedIn for Sales Prospecting
• What I’ve Learned About LinkedIn Prospecting

How to Use LinkedIn for Sales Prospecting

1. Look at the “More Profiles to Browse” sidebar.

Don‘t you wish you could clone your best customers? With LinkedIn’s “More Profiles to Browse” sidebar, you can come pretty close.

How it works:

1. I start by visiting the profile of one of my best customers or prospects.
2. Then, I look to the right at the “More Profiles to Browse” section, which shows other users similar to my contact.
3. This feature turns one prospect into several, giving me more opportunities to expand my network.

Pro tip: Whenever I see these profile suggestions, I always try to spot patterns. Are they from the same industry? Same geographic area? I use that info to customize my messages and make the outreach feel more relevant.

Source

2. Reach out to prospects in new roles.

Changing jobs is one of the most effective trigger events in sales. When someone takes on a new role, they’re often more open to changing the tools or services they use.

How to find them:

1. I click the “My Network” tab and head to the “Catch up” section.
2. From there, I select “Job changes” to see who has recently landed a new position in my network.
3. These updates become the perfect catalyst for reaching out — timing is everything.

Pro tip: I've set a weekly reminder to check for job changes to ensure I never miss out. The sooner I can reach out to someone in their new role, the better my chances of starting a meaningful conversation.

3. Leverage shared connections to find new prospects.

One of the best ways I've found new leads is by tapping into my shared connections. It feels like networking with a little head start. If I have a 1st-degree connection at a company I’m targeting, I explore their network to identify potential prospects.

How to do it:

1. I visit the profile of a 1st-degree connection who's connected to people in my target industry or a target company.
2. From there, I scroll to their “Connections” section.
3. I then note any potential prospects who might benefit from my product or service.

Pro tip: If my shared connection is a competitor, I focus on researching the prospects I find and gathering information that can help me craft a personalized outreach message without directly involving my competitor.

Leveraging your shared connections can open up opportunities to find new prospects, but having a solid social selling strategy is key to making these connections count. For even more tips on how to approach LinkedIn with a sales mindset, be sure to download HubSpot’s free guide to social selling on LinkedIn.

4. Scroll through skill endorsements.

​​People tend to attract others like themselves. And sometimes, those others dish out praise. By browsing the skill endorsements on a prospect’s profile, I can discover others who might be worth reaching out to.

How to do it:

1. I visit the LinkedIn profile of one of my top prospects or customers and scroll down to the “Skills & Endorsements” section.
2. Then, I pay attention to the professionals who have endorsed them for specific skills, as they could be good candidates for outreach.

Pro tip: I always look for professionals with niche skills that align with my product or service. Finding someone with a relevant skill set is a natural way to start a conversation about how I can help them.

Source

5. Use LinkedIn’s school pages to find alumni.

Finding alumni from your school can be a powerful way to expand your prospecting network. Shared experiences often foster a sense of trust and rapport, which can make the initial outreach a lot smoother.

By reaching out to people with similar educational backgrounds, you can position yourself as someone who understands their journey and challenges.

How to do it:

1. I head to LinkedIn‘s page for my alma mater or any school I’m connected with.
2. Then, I click on the “Alumni” tab to see a list of alumni.
3. I filter the results by location, industry, or company to find potential prospects.
4. I look for prospects who might be open to a connection.

Whether you attended the same university, completed a certification, or participated in the same programs, leveraging these commonalities can open doors to valuable connections.

Pro tip: I personalize my outreach by mentioning specific shared experiences — whether it‘s a professor, a program, or a recent school event. It’s a simple way to build rapport.

6. See who’s commented on your prospects’ posts.

This tip is one of my favorites because it‘s easy and effective. People who are engaging with your prospects are already interested in the topics you’re discussing, so they‘re worth looking into. People who comment on my prospects’ posts are likely in the same field or facing similar challenges, making them ideal candidates for outreach.

How to do it:

1. I head to one of my prospect’s recent posts.
2. Then, I scroll through the comments to see who’s contributing to the conversation.
3. I take note of people who are adding to the conversation and check their profiles for potential outreach.

Pro tip: I’ve found referencing a prospect’s comments to be the perfect jumping-off point for an InMail that will get results. I like to praise their insight and offer a related perspective, share a relevant article, or ask if they’ve considered a specific fact or data point.

7. Browse users who have interacted with your posts.

Have you ever wondered who’s paying attention to your posts? Luckily, LinkedIn makes it super easy to find out. The people who like, comment, or share your posts are already engaging with your content, and they might be the perfect prospects waiting for you to reach out.

How to do it:

1. I head over to my LinkedIn profile and click on “Posts & Activity” to see a feed of only the articles and posts I’ve shared and everyone who's interacted with each one.
2. I look at their profiles to see if they’re a good match for my product/service.
3. I also check the “Followers” section to spot any new followers who might be potential leads.

Pro tip: I keep my outreach light and friendly. I might say, “I noticed you liked my recent post on [topic], and I'd love to hear more about your perspective.” It's an easy, warm way to start a conversation

8. Create a job search alert.

Sometimes, finding the right prospect is about timing. That‘s why I use LinkedIn’s job alert feature to get notified when companies are hiring for roles I'm interested in targeting.

Let’s say my ideal customer is a senior engineering manager based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I have been trying to get my foot in the door at HubSpot. Here’s how I’d set up a job alert to get notified when HubSpot hires someone who fits my target.

How to do it:

1. First, I visit the Jobs page on LinkedIn and enter the name of the company I’m interested in.
2. I use “All Filters” to narrow down the results by job title, experience level, and location.
3. Once I've set my filters, I toggle the “Set alert” button to get notifications.
4. To ensure I’m not missing any updates, I click “Manage alerts” in the lower left-hand corner to choose my alert frequency and type.
5. Once I find a job post that matches my ideal prospect, I save it and review saved jobs under the “Jobs” tab.
6. After the posting is taken down, I use LinkedIn sleuthing skills to find the new hire by searching the company page for the job title. Note that titles may change during the hiring process.

Pro tip: When I spot a new hire, I build rapport by engaging with their posts on LinkedIn or other platforms before reaching out directly. This makes the conversation more natural.

9. Use boolean Google Search.

Sometimes, LinkedIn’s search just doesn’t cut it, but Google can help find LinkedIn profiles I might have missed. Boolean search operators let me get more specific in my search.

How to do it:

1. I head to Google and type site:linkedin.com/in followed by my search terms. For example, site:linkedin.com/in marketing manager AND San Francisco.
2. I use Boolean operators like:

• Quotation marks (“ ”) to search for an exact phrase.
• AND to include multiple terms.
• OR to search for either term A or term B.
• NOT to exclude specific terms.

Don’t Forget Your LinkedIn Profile

Before diving into any of these strategies, it’s important to make sure your LinkedIn profile is in top shape. People are naturally cautious when receiving messages from someone they don’t know, and your profile will be the first thing they check when you comment on a post or send a connection request.

Take the time to polish your profile before reaching out. This LinkedIn profile perfection cheat sheet can guide you through crafting a standout profile that will help build trust and make a great first impression.

What I’ve Learned About LinkedIn Prospecting

What surprised me most as I explored LinkedIn for sales prospecting was how many hidden features and opportunities I had overlooked. At first, I thought I knew all the tricks, but tools like the “More profiles to browse” sidebar and checking who’s commented on my prospects’ posts revealed an entirely new layer of possibilities.

I’ve learned that LinkedIn prospecting isn’t just about using the search bar — it’s about digging deeper into the platform’s features and being strategic with every move. I’ve found that setting up job alerts and using Boolean searches outside of LinkedIn have been game-changers for expanding my network.

These tools allow me to approach prospects with a more personalized touch, which has made all the difference in my outreach success. By applying these tips, I’ve gotten more out of LinkedIn than I thought possible. If you want to build stronger relationships and uncover new leads, try these strategies.

 

“Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers.” — Glengarry Glen Ross

Start quoting this movie scene to anyone who has worked in sales and they are likely to finish it with a smile. Aside from its quotability and foul language, the scene is notable for another reason: There are no women in it. Not a single woman is part of that sales force.

Granted, the play and movie were written decades ago. Times have certainly changed.

Haven’t they?

In many ways, the answer is yes. Women now have a significant presence in sales forces in many industries. However, the current data shows that most industries could do a better job at bringing more women into sales and helping them to succeed—whether that means meeting and exceeding sales goals or moving up into a management role.

There is a strong business rationale for ensuring an adequate female presence in the sales force. Women bring different skills and perspectives to sales. They tend to be good listeners and excel at nurturing relationships. And, most important, organizations with strong gender diversity outperform less diverse companies on several financial measures.

In this article, we will look at:

• The state of women in sales.
• Why increasing the number of women in sales matters from a business and financial perspective.
• The steps companies can take to attract and retain women in sales then help them succeed.

The State of Women in Sales

Although women hold roughly half of all sales positions according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the breakdown by industry tells a different story.

It starts at the top. Women in top sales executive positions are rare. Consider the technology industry. A 2014 study conducted by law firm Fenwick & West LLP found that women held only 11.7 percent of the senior sales executive roles among 150 largest companies in Silicon Valley (as measured by revenue) that have such a position (77 of the 150 companies). Moreover, only one woman has held the top sales executive role in any of the top 15 companies in the group over the 19-year period the study has existed.

While these numbers represent a single industry, the situation is common. Women hold fewer management and even fewer executive sales roles than men. The BLS data shows that women make up just 26 percent of sales supervisors in all non-retail industries.

This lack of women in leadership is not likely to help increase the number of women among the rank-and-file sales roles. With few role models in management, women miss out on opportunities for mentoring by and networking with colleagues who are more likely to have had similar career experiences and faced similar challenges.

Further down the sales ladder, the ratio of men to women in sales is considerably skewed in some industries. Data from BLS shows the very low percentages of women holding sales positions in:

Parts	15.3%
Wholesale and manufacturing	29.3%
Services	29.5%
Securities, commodities and financial services	32.5%

Further, research from the LinkedIn user network indicates that growth in the percentage of women in sales lags behind the percentage of women in the workforce as a whole. The percentage of women in the workforce, as measured by the LinkedIn user base, increased from 37% to 41% between 2004 and 2014. However, the percentage of women in sales grew slightly less, going from 36% to 39% during that same time period.

Why Does It Matter?

Bringing more women into sales roles at every level quite simply makes business sense. In a hyper competitive environment, companies must consider every viable candidate for sales positions. If a company, business unit or sales manager consciously or unconsciously passes over female candidates in favor of equally or less qualified male candidates, that organization is likely to be missing the opportunity to hire very talented people. And the effects will add up over time.

Bringing more women into sales roles at every level quite simply makes business sense. Eliot Burdett, CEO of Peak Sales Recruiting

A more diverse sales force also is more likely to reflect the make-up of customer organizations and have representatives that can connect and nurture strong relationships with a diverse customer base. If everyone in the sales organization looks the same and has similar experiences and viewpoints, they may not always be able to find common ground with customers and prospects.

The Financial Side

Equally important is the financial aspect of the matter. Research shows that companies with greater gender diversity outperform less diverse companies on several important metrics, including sales revenue, number of customers, market share, profitability and overall earnings.

A 2009 study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that each incremental increase in gender diversity could result in nearly 200 more customers and a three percent increase in sales revenue. In addition, the table below shows the differences in company performance on four key financial metrics based on levels of gender diversity. The bottom line is that companies with greater gender diversity perform better than those with lower levels of gender diversity.

Table 1: Impact of Gender Diversity on Company Performance

	Level of Gender Diversity
Characteristics	Low	Medium 20–44%	High 45%+	Overall
Percent in gender diversity category	28	28	44	100
Mean sales revenue (in millions)	45.2	299.4	644.3	456.3
Mean number of customers (in thousands)	20.5	27.1	36.1	31.9
Percent with higher than average market share	45	58	62	56
Percent with higher than average profitability	45	58	62	56

Another study conducted by strategy consultants McKinsey & Company (registration required) finds a similar gender diversity dividend. In this case, the study found that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to generate financial performance above their national industry median than their peers in the bottom quartile for gender diversity. The study includes data from 366 public companies in a range of industries and operating in Canada, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“More diverse companies, we believe, are better able to win top talent and improve their customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and decision making, and all that leads to a virtuous cycle of increasing returns,” according to the McKinsey study report. For example, companies in the United Kingdom experienced a 3.5 percent increase in EBIT (earning before interest and taxes) for every 10 percent increase in gender diversity.

If you need more convincing, a Gallup study of the different business units of two companies in the retail and hospitality industries shows significant differences in revenue and net profit based on the level of gender diversity in each business unit. Those business units with higher gender diversity have:

• Higher revenue (5.24 percent vs. 4.58 percent, a difference of 14 percent).
• Higher quarterly net profit ($16,296 vs. $13,702, a difference of 19 percent).
• Revenue that is 46% (retail) and 58% (hospitality) higher when they combine greater gender diversity with higher levels of employee engagement.

Gender Diversity in Hiring and Onboarding

In general, improving gender diversity requires a concerted effort to increase the number of women in sales roles and to support talented women to move up into roles with greater responsibility.

While the data exists to make the business case for improving gender diversity, changing the situation requires additional and careful thought and action. The first step is for companies to determine whether they do, in fact, have a gender diversity problem in sales. Only with that information can companies identify whether anything needs to change. Then if they do have a problem or just concerns about maintaining gender diversity, they need to identify the best way to address the situation.

A good first step is to break down gender diversity data in subgroups that reflect how the sales force is organized. For example, company-wide or business unit data can provide important high-level insight into the state of gender diversity overall. Breaking down data by product line, division, geographic location and so on can help pinpoint where gender diversity is weakest and, potentially, what is causing the problem.

With that targeted information, companies can focus their efforts and identify the underlying reasons for this lack of diversity to develop an appropriate response. It is important to emphasize that any such efforts are not “quotas.” Few things will prevent new salespeople from thriving than any sense that they are there just to fulfill some vague diversity metric.

The key is to develop hiring processes that focus on merit but do not put women at a disadvantage simply because they are women. For example, sales managers might have a bias, unconscious or not, against hiring women who have or are likely to have children, perhaps thinking this will get in the way of necessary travel or curtail their time on the job. A targeted intervention can help the manager recognize that tendency and take steps to impose more objective criteria for evaluating candidates. Holding those managers accountable for maintaining an appropriate level of gender diversity is also important.

“Organizations culturally look for sales leaders with a certain type of persona, and female sales leaders, while still achieving extraordinarily high results, might not be perceived in that same vein.” Jennifer Sullivan, a Senior Executive at Allego

Effective onboarding is also critical. Like any new salesperson, women in sales want to succeed. And to succeed they need fairness. To that end, sales and human resource executives must ensure the playing field is even from the very beginning. Otherwise, female sales representatives may not be able to maximize their performance.

Consider what happens when onboarding does not support female sales representatives. A study of brokerage sales in two financial services firms conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found something the researchers called “performance-support” bias, which inhibited the earnings and success of new female sales representatives. The study considered situations where female sales reps received inferior sales support and inferior sales assignments compared to their male peers. Not surprisingly, this situation impacted those reps’ performance. In this case, the study found that women under-perform when they assigned inferior accounts but “produce sales equivalent to men when given accounts with equivalent prior sales histories.”

“There has to be a culture and a good performance management system in place that does the best it can to remove gender biases, or really biases of every kind and looks at performance.” Bridget Gleason, Senior Vice President of Corporate Sales at SumoLogic

It’s Also About the Whole Sales Force

Changing hiring and on-boarding processes can certainly help increase the number of women in sales organizations. However, going through the steps to identify and address gender diversity can also help companies to improve sales support structures and processes for the entire sales organization. In other words, if the existing sales organization is not fully supporting the women working there, chances are good that it is not supporting some of the men too.

This is why companies need to consider how their own internal processes and culture, particularly the sales culture, impact the performance of the sales force. Initial changes may allow companies to hire and on-board more women into sales roles. However, how long will those women stay with the organization if its overall culture and sales culture do not support or value them?

The answers to these questions do not just impact women in the sales organization. Any changes could yield a better environment in which everyone can thrive. That means thinking through the type of salespeople the company is actively trying to recruit and whether those individuals will become the type of sales force the company wants and needs to succeed.

“(T)he first step for anyone selling, managing, or hiring a salesforce is to understand these dynamics between personality, self-perception, and role,” writes Philip Delves Broughton, author of “The Art of the Sale,” in Harvard Business Review. “Identify the conflicts so that selling feels as normal and natural as it should.”

Broughton cited the approach taken by Ashok Vemuri, the head of Americas at business process outsourcing company Infosys. “(Vemuri) looks for…intelligence, curiosity and an agile mind. The chest-beating Alpha male of sales myth has no place in this universe. Rather, it is the low-ego character who regards client service as the highest goal who thrives. He is looking for people who can make others comfortable, who are articulate, and who are able to deal with the unexpected.”

Seeking out gender diversity is crucial. “Sales execs want to hire sales reps with ‘killer’ instincts and sales ‘animals’ who perhaps were high school or college athletes,” says Lori Richardson of Score More Sales. “Those descriptions don’t always include smart, collaborative, innovative women. We like people like us, and what is not sought after is not found.”

“I was repeatedly told that I needed to “play with the big boys” and to “get in bed” with my customers. I learned that it was a “war” out there; that my competitors were the enemy and my job was to destroy them. [So] instead of focusing on products, services and slimy sales techniques, I focused on my customer. That’s the only thing that mattered to me. I wanted to understand their status quo, their challenges and their objectives.” Jill Konrath, Keynote Speaker and Best Selling Sales Author

The description of the right salesperson for any organization needs to be gender neutral. Only specific people will have the necessary attributes to excel in any specific selling environment and there is no reason to think that either men or women have a monopoly on those attributes. Therefore, there is nothing keeping an organization from hiring and nurturing a gender diverse workforce if only they look for it.

The post The State of Women in Sales appeared first on Peak Sales Recruiting.

This summer, Starfleet Media published The 2015 Benchmark Report on B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation. The Starfleet report is based on a survey of high- and mid-level marketing and sales professionals that was conducted in the second quarter of this year.

The survey produced 324 qualified responses, and respondents represented B2B companies of all sizes, from very large (more than $1 billion in revenues) to very small (less than $1 million). Most of the respondents (69%) were affiliated with companies located in North America, while 22% were affiliated with European companies.

In many ways, the findings of the Starfleet survey echo the results of research from several other firms. For example:

• Almost nine out of ten respondents (89%) said their primary high-level objective for investing in content marketing is to acquire new customers.
• The top three specific objectives for content marketing identified in the survey were generate more leads (92% of respondents), raise brand visibility (90%), and generate better leads (87%).
• The top four types of content assets used in the past twelve months were case studies (67% of respondents), company-branded white papers (62%), company-branded webinars (58%), and company-branded e-books (52%).
• Almost nine out of ten respondents (86%) identified  creating compelling content as their biggest content marketing challenge.
• Companies across all industries produced or licensed an average of 5.5 new content assets over the past twelve months.

Illustration courtesy of Flickr CC and TopRank Online Marketing

When beginning a new teleprospecting campaign, we are tempted to judge it’s effectiveness solely by the number of qualified leads that are generated. Focusing only on the end results can cause us to lose sight of the valuable information that is obtained as a result of our prospecting efforts.

When teleprospecting with the objective to uncover qualified leads, your sales development reps will have many conversations that don’t result in immediate opportunities but still contain crucial marketing intelligence. If you aren’t getting the number of expected leads from a calling campaign, have no fear. There are 7 other pieces of common information that you can glean from quality conversations your sales development reps are having.

You can find hidden value in sales development conversations in these 7 areas:

1) Responsiveness to your scripting

A common trend we see with scripts supplied by our clients is that they tend to be too long. Your SDR ends up talking for 3 minutes before the prospect has an opportunity to respond. Since sales development teams are dialing all day and talking to your prospective customers they are your best resource to provide perspective on the right questions to ask and what prospects REALLY want to hear.

2) ROI on marketing events

As marketers, you may feel the leads you’re getting from tradeshows and webinars are gold, but are unable to convince your sales team to put the required amount of time and energy in to determine their true value. A sales development team will put the necessary activity into those warm accounts in order to get in touch with the right people and fully qualify them to determine their legitimacy and fit with your offering.

3) The right vertical to target

With nearly every campaign we work on we prefer to test the waters with accounts from a minimum of 3 separate verticals. This helps us to better understand who the best prospects are to target, determine where our client’s offering is most well-received, and uncover new potential use cases. By testing multiple verticals at once, the notes from quality conversations that your sales development team captures can help you to compare and contrast these important factors and better structure your messaging and targeting strategy.

4) Best titles to contact

We’ve discovered with many of our clients over the years that decision making titles can vary wildly from organization to organization. That’s why we recommend reaching out to 3 different titles at a time during your initial dials. By pigeonholing yourself to just one title at a time, you could find that you are wasting time talking to the wrong people. Even worse, you could be misinterpreting confusion, insistence of no interest, or lack of challenges as a response to your offering rather than as a response to speaking with the wrong person at an organization.

5) Whether your collateral resonates with prospects

Similar to your scripting, collateral could be too light on content or too heavy. SDRs can let you know what content is received the best and seems to be getting prospects interested in moving forward with a more in-depth conversation with a sales rep.

6) Most common reasons for “no interest”

It is easy to focus solely on the accounts who are fully qualified and ready to be pushed down the sales funnel. However, it is just as crucial to gain visibility into the accounts that express no interest and why. Diving into the details of a quality conversation that results in a “Not Interested” disposition can help to give you some visibility into an up and coming competitor, lack of budget (and when they WILL have the $$), and what companies are doing that could make your offering obsolete or useless to them. This kind of information can help you to better hone in on your target customers and understand additional challenges in the marketplace.

7) Activity required to uncover legitimate opportunity

No matter how good you think a marketing qualified lead is, rarely if ever can you get them live on the phone with just one dial. I recommend tracking your team’s outbound activity to give you a sense of the average amount of dials required in order to convert a lead over to your sales team. This has helped us to develop a timeframe on when it’s time to fish or cut bait with a prospect…along with a campaign altogether.

Even though SDRs are truly on the front-line of the sales process, we often find that the data they are collecting can be undervalued by both sales and marketing teams alike. If this kind of information is being collected and combined into a report for you….DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! It’s time to develop a way to capture this crucial information efficiently and accurately while also finding a way to put the details into action as an organization.

Do you place enough emphasis on the marketing intelligence your sales development team is gathering for you?

B2B field marketers are in a unique position to fuel and streamline the sales pipeline. As a fairly mobile workforce, they get a big picture view of the marketing landscape while also working actively “in the trenches”. This dynamic experience provides field marketers with insight into strategies currently at play within the B2B landscape and how to realistically leverage them.

Yet, internal teams aren’t always clear on how to harness the experiences of B2B field marketers, and use these insights to develop more targeted marketing initiatives.

There are simple ways organizations can maximize the role of the B2B field marketer more effectively to create a better, stronger buyer’s journey. It’s time to put them into play.

The B2B Marketer’s Secret Weapon

Truth: B2B field marketers foster relationships with customers and prospects on local and regional levels to drive strategies that close new business as well as retain key customers. They understand the value of personalization and collaboration, face time with customers and prospects, and create integrated marketing campaigns to help support sales in key markets and regions.

These efforts are a core part of a sales pipeline, so smart B2B marketing teams will “work it”—as the saying goes.

3 Ways B2B Field Marketers Can Drive Sales

1. Align Communication Between Sales and Marketing—Now

A common pain point for field marketers is not getting enough time to “talk shop” with sales and marketing to communicate what’s working, what needs to change or share ideas to improve the effectiveness of campaigns in motion. In addition, B2B field marketers aren’t always sure what marketing materials are best at converting customers at key points in the buyer’s journey or how to find essential content pieces while on the road.

As the a “bridge” between corporate marketing and regional sales teams, field marketers absolutely need clear communication channels with both teams to build an effective information feedback loop and focuses on big picture sales goals.

”Content fuels not only the top of funnel, but also accelerates pipeline throughout our sales cycle.”—Doug Sechrist, Vice President of Demand Marketing, Five9

Creating a central content repository that’s easy to access and includes all relevant marketing materials, clearly tagged and labeled, is the best and easiest way to get B2B field marketers the content they need on demand. The gallery in the repository should include keyword tags relevant to how you do business and be paired with specific steps in the buyer’s journey. For example, content in the central repository can be filtered by persona, product, region, etc.

2. Work Cross-Functionally to Develop “Home-Run” Regional Campaigns

Events serve as amazing opportunity to build real customer connections, so it’s important to maximize their punch from every angle. B2B field marketers need to connect with demand generation and product teams prior to event planning to ensure regional or event-specific campaigns are unique and highlight local customer needs, but also inline with company messaging, current marketing campaigns and sales priorities.

In addition to planning a specific event, field marketers need a fast, clear, easy way to find and deliver relevant information to the prospects they connect with during and after the event. Collecting a bunch of business cards or hosting a sign-up sheet for prospects simply won’t cut it.

Focus on big picture things including: How B2B field marketers can quickly leverage key pieces of marketing content based on a customer’s interest level, buyer persona or product needs in real-time from a central location, or if field marketers they have access to information about a current company-wide product push to engage customers in the moment.

3. Use Specific Insights to Consistently Measure the Impact of Events

Events are great for providing face time and connecting with customers new and old, but you need to have a metric for measuring their impact on sales. Set up goals prior to the event and then establish specific metrics that are measureable towards that goal. Also get clear on the simplest, most effective approach to follow up after the event.

For example, is an event successful based on the number of leads created, by how many people download a specific content pillar, or revenue generated? Maybe all three? Connecting with customers or potential customers during events also gives you a good sense of how certain content is getting used, and which assets deliver the most value to you and customers.

Remember to document and track success stories from an event in a central location or content repository. When event notes and client tips are easily accessible, it offers extra insight on lessons learned for future events for all internal teams.

B2B field marketers are key for driving sales and providing the in-person customer support that no one else on your team can. How are you utilizing their special skills and customer relationships to fill your sales pipeline?