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27 Jul 16:21

Edward R. Murrow's Best Life Lessons

by Thorin Klosowski

Edward R. Murrow was a giant in broadcasting and helped push the move to television as a broadcast medium for the news. He was unrelenting in his pursuit of the truth and managed to handle himself in the face of adversity. Let’s look at how he did it.

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27 Jul 16:20

The Five Fitness Mindsets: How to Stay Rational When You're Discouraged

by Dick Talens on Vitals, shared by Andy Orin to Lifehacker

We like to think we’re rational, but we’re not. Your ability to make decisions is affected by a slew of factors, including your emotional state. Here’s how to use the best of those feelings to make better decisions and achieve your fitness goals.

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27 Jul 16:18

See the first cargo ships passing through Egypt’s $8 billion New Suez Canal

by Reuters

ISMAILIA, Egypt — The first cargo ships passed through Egypt’s New Suez Canal on Saturday in a test-run before it opens next month, state media reported, 11 months after the army began constructing the US$8 billion canal alongside the existing 145-year-old Suez Canal.

The new waterway, which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hopes will help expand trade along the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia and give a boost to Egypt’s economy, will be formally inaugurated on Aug. 6.

Sisi wants the canal to become a symbol of national pride and to help combat Egypt’s double-digit unemployment. The old Suez Canal is already a vital source of hard currency for Egypt, which has seen tourism and foreign investment drain away in the years of turmoil since a 2011 uprising.

AFP Photo / STR- / AFP Getty Images
AFP Photo / STR- / AFP Getty ImagesEmployees work on a boat in front of a container ship, as they are both crossing the new waterway of the Suez canal on July 25, 2015, in the Egyptian port city of Ismailia, east of Cairo.

Three container ships crossed the new waterway, state news agency MENA reported. One was an American ship heading to Egypt’s Port Said from Saudi Arabia, another was a Danish ship sailing to the United States from Singapore, and a Bahraini ship going to Italy from Saudi Arabia.

The exercise took place amid tight security. An insurgency based in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders on the Suez Canal, has killed hundreds of soldiers and police since 2013. State television said there were helicopters circling above and showed naval vessels escorting the ships.

Mohab Mameesh, the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority who led the project, told state television from aboard the first ship that the test-run had been a success.

AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File
AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File In this Feb. 4, 2015 file photo, dredgers work on a new section of the Suez canal during a media tour in Ismailia, Egypt.

“This is the first trial crossing but it will be followed by more trials,” he said. “We are 99.2 percent done with everything. We should be completely done in two or three days.”

The existing canal earns Egypt around US$5 billion per year. The new canal, which will allow two-way traffic of larger ships, is supposed to increase revenues by 2023 to US$15 billion.

It should also reduce navigation time for ships to 11 hours from about 22 hours, Mameesh said last month, making it the fastest such waterway in the world.

The government also plans to build an international industrial and logistics hub nearby that it hopes will eventually make up about a third of the Egyptian economy.

AP Photo / Hassan Ammar, File
AP Photo / Hassan Ammar, FileIn this Feb. 4, 2015 file photo, a dredger works on a new section.
27 Jul 16:17

China’s stock market: After quick 8.5% crash, confusion reigns

by Kyoungwha Kim and Kana Nishizawa, Bloomberg News

It’s days like Monday that reassure Tony Hann he was right to avoid stocks in mainland China.

The severity of an 8.5 per cent drop in the Shanghai Composite Index is bad enough, but what irks him the most is not knowing why it tumbled so much. In a market where unprecedented intervention has made government money one of the biggest drivers of share prices, authorities aren’t transparent enough for investors to make informed decisions, said Hann, the head of emerging markets at Blackfriars Asset Management Ltd.

Monday’s plunge was all the more surprising because it followed a government rescue package that had helped drive a 16 per cent rally since July 8. That support appeared to vanish without warning, leaving analysts guessing whether authorities shifted their policy stance or just got overwhelmed by a flood of sell orders. Whatever the answer, foreign investors didn’t stick around to find out: they sold holdings of Shanghai shares for the 13th time in the past 16 days.

Investors “are concerned and lost,” said Alex Wong, a Hong Kong-based asset-management director at Ample Capital Ltd., which oversees about US$155 million. “China’s market is distorted, so you can’t sell short very confidently and you can’t buy up very confidently either.”

Signs of government purchases that were prevalent in recent weeks went missing in Monday’s rout. PetroChina Co., long considered a favourite holding of state-linked rescue funds, sank 9.6 per cent. The government-run oil producer had been one of the biggest sources of support for the Shanghai Composite on big down days in late June and early July.

Foreign Selling

The China 50 ETF, another target of government funds, dropped 9.1 per cent. The Shanghai Composite’s one-day selloff was the broadest since at least 1997, with 959 more shares in the index falling than those that gained.

If state-run funds withdrew support to test whether shares could stabilize at current levels on their own, the resulting retreat may prompt the government to step back in immediately to prop up prices, said Hann, who oversees about US$350 million. On the other hand, if policy makers are starting to unwind support measures to let the market play a bigger role, shares may have further to fall, he said.

“It is impossible to say at this stage,” said Hann, who has exposure to China through businesses listed on Hong Kong’s exchange instead of mainland bourses. Foreign investors have unloaded about US$7.6 billion of Shanghai shares through the city’s Hong Kong exchange link since July 6.

Past Surprises

So far, China’s government hasn’t made any official statements on Monday’s retreat, nor have there been any commentaries in the official Xinhua News Agency. China Securities Finance Corp., a state-backed agency that provides support for the market, didn’t immediately return two calls and a fax after business hours on Monday seeking comment.

Chinese policy makers have surprised investors before. In 2014, they jolted currency traders who regarded the yuan as a one-way bet by selling the currency and widening its trading band, spurring a record quarterly decline. The year before that, authorities tackled speculative lending by restricting the supply of funds to the banking system. The result was the country’s worst modern-day cash squeeze.

The International Monetary Fund has urged China to eventually unwind its support measures, saying share prices should be allowed to settle through market forces, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Government Operations

“The markets in China now are not really markets,” Donald Straszheim, head of China research at New York-based Evercore ISI, said on Bloomberg Television last week. “They are government operations.”

Policy makers still have firepower to support equities and state-linked firms will probably start buying when the Shanghai Composite falls below 3,800, said Yang Delong, chief strategist at China Southern Fund Management. The gauge closed at 3,725.56 on Monday.

The markets in China now are not really markets. They are government operations

Officials have already banned major shareholders from selling stakes, encouraged government-owned companies to boost holdings in listed units and armed China Securities Finance with more than US$480 billion to support equities.

“China won’t tolerate a worsening stock market, so those state-backed financial institutions may start buying,” Yang said.

For Ken Chen, a Shanghai-based analyst at KGI Securities, the more likely explanation for Monday’s tumble is that the government is struggling to prop up overvalued shares. At 66, the median trailing price-to-earnings ratio on mainland bourses is higher than in any of the world’s 10 largest markets. It was 68 at the peak of China’s equity bubble in 2007.

“It’s hard to start a new up move after a bubble bursts,” said Chen. “I don’t think they are able to prevent it falling.”

Bloomberg News

27 Jul 16:16

Six Ways to Spy on Your Competition

by ameeditor

6 Ways to Spy on Your Competition AME Blog Post

No matter what your genre, knowing your competitive landscape is essential. Being aware of what others in your market are producing, blogging, and promoting can also be critical to your own success. Of course I would never encourage copying, but being in sync with your market helps you stay ahead of the curve and enables you to recognize trends even before they reach the consumer level. So what I’m saying is: yes, you should spy on your competition!

Does this seem obvious? Well—unfortunately—it’s not. I frequently meet authors, even those who are savvy business professionals, who are completely unaware of similar books in their market. This is a huge mistake. Before I entered this business, I immersed myself in the market, the books, and other people in the industry. It helped me differentiate myself in products, services, and pricing. And to this day, I am constantly researching (i.e. spying). Once more, I’m not advocating copying, but rather cultivating a keen awareness of your market. Spying offers another huge benefit: keeping your competitors on your radar will expand your marketing ideas, which is great for enhancing your social media content.

Successful authors know their competitors. Don’t know where to start? Below are six strategies to help keep your ear to the ground, understand your market, and (yes) spy on your competition.

1. Google search. Start with the basics: do an online search of your market (fiction or nonfiction) and make a list. Who else is writing on your topic? As you scroll through the search results, you’ll find something interesting – the results will not just turn up names and book titles, but also show you the best ways to interact with your consumer. This is an opportunity! As you begin writing your list, ignore the big brands because it’s likely they will be successful no matter what they do. For example, if you’re a thriller writer, don’t expect that the marketing practices of Stephen King and Dean Koontz will apply to you. The yare big, powerful brands. You’re looking for the smaller names, people you may not immediately recognize. Why? Because they have to try harder. And that’s where you will likely find inspiration. 

As you compile your list of competitors, be sure to register for their emails, newsletters, and to follow them on social media. Beyond the information you will glean, this is a great way to support other authors in your market and give them some love. Share their Facebook updates, retweet their great Twitter posts, etc. This research will reveal which social media sites you should be on. If you’ve had a hard time figuring out where your market resides, this exercise will clear that up. Why? Because if you’re finding names on the first page of a Google search, you know one they are doing something right. It’s no longer possible to “trick” Google to get onto page one. To get there, you have to be doing everything right with your content and online outreach. So when you find those authors on page one, watch what they’re doing! Look at their updates. What are they sharing and why? How often do they blog? Are they on LinkedIn instead of Facebook? What’s going on for them on Pinterest? Be sure to spend some quality time doing this analysis. It will help you get a better pulse on your market and it will cut your learning curve by half, if not more.

2. Bookstore Research: While I love Amazon, I love brick and mortar bookstores even more. They generate a great deal of book awareness and provide a good indicator of what’s selling in your market. Bookstores—especially in this market— don’t stock something that won’t sell. So what should you do? Check out the shelves in your genre, paying close attention to the names you don’t immediately recognize. Why? Because similar to the big brands, it’s easy for a big name to get shelf space. It’s a lot harder for an unknown to do this unless they have some serious marketing muscle or a good sales record. So take note of these titles and then buy a few. Why? This is part of your research (and it’s nice to support your fellow authors). Reading these shelf titles will tell what direction the authors took with their particular topic and why? It will also suggest how can you improve upon the conversation, or take it in a new direction. This could prove helpful when you’re writing and marketing your book.

3. News alerts: This is another must. Sign up for news alerts on sites like Talkwalker.com and Mention.net. These sites can find any news update, even Twitter retweets. Dive as deep into the research as you like, but definitely pay attention to where your competition shows up. This will also provide a great list of the blogs and news outlets that cover your genre – take note of these and target them when pitching your book!

4. Reviews: Log onto Amazon, search for books in your market, but don’t pay attention to the books. Instead, focus on the reviews. What are readers saying? What do they like? What don’t they like? What did they want more of? Reviews are subjective, but if you’re reading them across your genre, you’ll start to see a trend. It’s possible this trend is an opportunity for you as an author. Is there a need that has yet to be filled? And could you fill that need with your next book?

5. Speaking: If the author(s) you’ve found through your research are speaking or signing books at an event nearby, go! This is a great way to network , engage with your industry, and support your fellow authors. Wouldn’t you be flattered if an industry partner dropped by one of your events? If the author takes questions, pay close attention to what people ask . Audience questions are often the best way to generate ideas for new blog topics, books, or emerging trends.

6. Industry events: I used the feel like I didn’t have time to go to events if I wasn’t speaking at them. I was already traveling so much, and didn’t think it was worth it to squeeze in another event. But you know what? I was wrong. Now I go to as many industry events as possible. No matter the event, if I can leave with one new piece of wisdom, then it was worth my time. Industry events are great places to meet some of the folks you’ve been following, do some networking and also: learn. A constant state of learning can fuel success.

These six recommendations for spying on your competition are really just suggestions for how to do your research and stay tuned in. No matter if you call it spying or research it’s an essential part of success and a solid way to build connections.


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27 Jul 16:16

Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

by Toby Dean

One of the biggest problems with large and small organizations nowadays is the fact that they are rich in data, but extremely poor on insight. Sure, they may be collecting information from all channels and customers, business processes and technological layers, but they don’t really know how to transform that valuable information into actionable strategies. If the words “extract, transform & load” sound like alien talk to you, you’re not the only one.

In the following guide we will be talking about the main concepts that define business intelligence and business analytics, specific software, and how you can take advantage of their capabilities to improve your strategies. We won’t lie to you, business intelligence and analytics aren’t easy concepts to grasp, even for tech aficionados. However, before you dive headfirst into your next business venture, it is of the utmost importance to understand how these components work. Let’s get started.

Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

Image Source: depositphotos.com

Business Analytics & Business Intelligence: What’s the Difference?

The two terms are a bit confusing, and even practitioners who have been working in the field for decades are having a difficult time agreeing on a concrete definition for each. As you may have noticed, when talking about information, and how it can be utilized for strategical purposes, a lot of confusing terms get tossed around. B.A. and B.I. are arguably the most popular ones, and there are many theories behind them.

There are some who believe that the two are interchangeable, or that they refer to the same thing. There are others who believe that they are completely opposite concepts which cannot be combined. We believe that business intelligence and business analytics are complementary, meaning that one cannot be effective without the other, at least not in this day and age.

To put it simply, business intelligence refers to the process of extracting information and transforming it into data that will support your future decisions. It can be achieved through data examination and cataloguing of past actions and decisions that represent the fundament for benchmarks and statistics. On the other hand, Business Analytics focuses on data that comes from new insights. In other words, B.A. deals with present information and makes it easier for you to forecast imminent results.

Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

Image Source: Ivy Pro School

The interesting thing is that business analytics stems from the failure of business intelligence. You see, in the past, B.I. referred to applications, people and processes that were used to extrapolate meaningful data (which was later used to support targeted decisions).

The inherent problem of B.I. was the fact that it severely limited an individual’s ability to foresee the future, by always turning to historical data. Business analytics appeared, and thrived, after its failure, and this is why some consider it the evolved form of business intelligence. Instead of always looking back, business analytics is capable of interacting and collecting information at the speed of your business.

In an ever-changing digital landscape, freshness and currency are vital. In the face of these changes, companies have started to implement hybrid & advanced strategies that would bridge the gap between the needs of the present, and the value of B.I. insights.

Right now, business intelligence is gaining a larger foothold in the business sector because it is fast and effective. It is easier for businesses to create eye-catching visuals and data mashups than to spend countless nights on interminable statistics and boring Excel sheets.

Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

Image Source: VedamSoft

Latest Trends in Business Intelligence & Analytics Software

While it may be true that each organisation has its unique approach to the implementation of analytical processes, it is worth noting that business intelligence and analytics have broad applications. Right now, BI and BA are expanding in order to englobe more intuitive and interactive data.

“By 2015, ‘smart data discovery,’ which includes natural-language query and search, automated, prescriptive advanced analytics and interactive data discovery capabilities, will be the most in-demand BI platform user experience paradigm, enabling mainstream business consumers to get insights (such as clusters, segments, predictions, outliers and anomalies) from data.” – Garner.

Here are a few trends that you should keep in mind:

  • The Continuous Expansion of Analytics: in the digital age, analytics seem to have taken over every sector. More and more tools and applications have been developed that can quickly prescribe strategies and actions, which enterprises and businesses should take.
  • Business Intelligence Simplification: although BI vendors continue to improve and develop tools, it feels like they are also trying to reduce their complexity and latency.
  • Flexibility of Data Scientists: we will not be talking about data science (which includes unstructured data, mathematics, investigation and big data), but it is worth noting that field experts are now trying to acquire new skills that will make it easier for them to convert scientific data into information that can be used by non-technical audiences.

Let’s take a look at the best B.I. and B.A. software and tools that smart companies use.

Types of B.I. Software

The primary goal of B.A. software and business intelligence solutions is to extract quantifiable data from raw one, in order to obtain meaningful insights that will lead to educated decisions. The best software usually integrates data from the entire company, and delivers it to users through reports and analysis. There are several features including visuals, data mining, statistics, predictive analysis and data warehousing that were designed to identify certain patterns. When it comes to B.I., there are three main components you need to cover:

  1. ETL (extract, transform and load)
  2. Data Warehouses
  3. OLAP (online analytical processing)

1. Extract Transform & Load

ETL concept - Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

Image Source: dbbest

As you probably expected, ETL also has a few functions worth noting:

  • Loading data onto a warehouse for future reference
  • Extracting data from multiple sources like CRM or ERP applications
  • Transforming meaningful data in formats that are compatible with other data

Seemingly simple in nature, ETL comes with its unique set of challenges. First of all, because data comes from multiple sources (examples: SAP, Microsoft, Oracle etc.), it also has different formats and  forms of data manipulation (merging, splitting etc.) that must be transformed into a common format, which will then be uploaded on the warehouse.

Once the transformation is complete, data is uploaded row-by-row or in batches. Most ETL software is sold as bolt-on tools or in bundles. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, for example, offer certain Extract, Transform & Load capabilities. You should also know that, nowadays, ETL can be used in conjunction with CRM, ERP, and other databases.

2. OLAP

OLAP Cube concept - Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

Online analytical processing is equally important to ETL. Whereas Extract, Transform & Load refers to “back end” processes, OLAP refers to the ‘front end’ aspects of reporting, querying and analysing data. Simply put, OLAP is what gives us the beautiful data visualizations, tables, and charts. But there’s more to OLAP than pretty graphics. It also offers some in-depth functions such as schemas or cubes, which are representations of data. Cubes are, arguably, the most important components of OLAP systems.

They offer unlimited combinations and quick responses for complex queries. For example, if you want to find out how many units of Product 1 you will be selling in Store 4, four years from now, you can pull out this information in a matter of seconds with the OLAP cube.

3. Data Warehouses

Data Warehouses Gain the Competitive Edge with Business Intelligence Software & Analytics

Image Source: Oracle.com

As previously mentioned, data warehouses compile and store information from multiple sources. But it’s more complicated that it seems, because the warehouse has to pull-out data from your supply chain management, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) operating systems in order to complete complex processes. Data warehouses are designed so that they facilitate complex analysis and data extraction from multiple sources.

They are different from operating systems, which support daily activities, because they handle huge volumes of functions and transactions. For example, the POS system does not have all the data it needs to perform operations in its system, so if you are trying to draw insights from it you should know that it has limited capabilities. Data warehouses were designed for huge volumes of data processing, and are usually built on RDBMS (relational database management systems) or specific platforms.

Best B.I. and B.A. Tools

With these notions in mind, let’s take a closer look at the best B.I. and B.A. tools that will definitely help you expand your business and gain important information.

1. SAP BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

SAP Business Intelligence Software

If you’re looking for a full-featured tool that can handle every aspect of your business and offer you a better perspective on things, then you should consider using SAP NetWeaver. This is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive tools that can satisfy the needs of software engineers, IT specialists and managers alike. Some of its features include, but are not limited to, the ability to pull reports from various sources, visualization tools to make graphics and statistics easier to understand, performance indicators and all collaborators insights.

Price: You can try SAP out for free, and contact the company for personalized pricing.

Official site: SAP Business Intelligence

2. SISENSE

Sisense  Business Intelligence Software

What we like most about SiSense is the fact that it was designed for users who don’t have any IT training. This business intelligence solution has a friendly interface that will make data preparation, collection, storing and reporting feel like a walk in the park. The learning curve for the software is lean, so in next to no time you will be able to share your company insights through Sisense’s robust dashboard. Besides the user-friendly reporting tools, Sisense also promises 100% data accuracy, even while drawing from multiple resources, and a fully customizable dashboard.

Price: 30-day free trial, must contact the company for a price

Official Site: Sisense

3. SAS BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

SAP  Business Intelligence Software

Another excellent B.I. and B.A. software is SAS. According to the company’s profile, the software adds up to better knowledge and better insight. SAS is basically a self-service tool that can be used by IT specialists and tech enthusiasts alike. We mentioned that it is a tool for intelligence and reporting, because it has in-depth features that characterize B.I. software, but also reporting tools that will provide with real-time insights for the entire organization.

Among its many features we will mention auto-charting that eliminates the need for coding, IT solutions for businesses and enterprises that make it possible to centralize metadata and scale it, and data visualization tools for comprehensive reports.

Price: as is the case with most B.I. software, SAS has a free trial and once it expires you have to contact the company for a price estimate

Official site: SAP

4. MICROSOFT SHAREPOINT

microsoft sharepoint  Business Intelligence Software

If you’re not new to the B.I. and B.A. software market, you have probably already heard about Microsoft Sharepoint, one of the most popular management and analytics tool available. Most enterprises turn to the services of Microsoft Sharepoint mainly because it incorporates all the necessary features for reporting and because it also has a good integration with data stored on SQL servers.

Another thing that we like about Microsoft Sharepoint is the fact that it makes collaboration between teams easy through its suite of addons and apps. Moreover, Microsoft Sharepoint integrates well with tools like Yammer, and can be accessed anywhere because it also has a cloud solution.

Price: You have to contact the team for a price estimate

Official Site: Microsoft SharePoint

5. ORACLE HYPERION & OBIEE

Oracle Hyperion  Business Intelligence Software

No list would be complete without Oracle’s suite of tools. The Oracle Hyperion and OBIEE have separate functions, but I will be talking about both. The Hyperion planning system supports spectacular business intelligence features that will allow you to complete enterprise-level planning, forecast future projects and set budgets. It is arguably one of the most accurate financial forecasting tools which will save you a lot of money. The Hyperion system can be deployed independently through the cloud or remotely, but it is recommended to synchronize it with other Oracle Tools like the OBIEE.

Oracle OBIEEE  Business Intelligence Software

The Oracle Business Enterprise Edition software (OBIEE) was designed specifically for enterprises with significant B.I. needs. The OBIEE is probably one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, tool of its kind. Some of its main features include the BI Delivers, BI Answers, BI Publisher, BI Dashboards, BI Server, SQR reporting, financial forecasting, analysis and plugins. To put it simply, it can do almost anything for your business. What’s even better is the fact that it was designed as a collaborative tool, to make it easier for companies to streamline their efforts.

Price: contact for pricing, be warned that it might be quite hefty

Official Site: Oracle Hyperion, Oracle OBIEE

6. HUBSPOT

HubSpot  Business Intelligence Software

Hubspot is the prime example of business analytics done right. Instead of focusing on data such as financials, or clients’ behaviour, it takes a closer look at your inbound marketing strategy and performance. I consider that Hubspot is the best tool for determining rate-of-investment (ROI) for specific tactics (examples: optimizing landing pages, blogging, social media etc.).

Considering that more and more businesses are trying to promote themselves online, tools which report data pertaining from this channel are vital. Another thing that Hubspot does brilliantly is that it integrates with countless social monitoring and SEO (search engine optimization) tools to give you a broader perspective on things. Keep in mind that Hubspot will only help you with your online campaign.

Key Features:

  • Besides the tools available in your Hubspot suite, you will also gain access to the countless webinars, eBooks, videos, guides and articles about internet marketing. So, even if you are a beginner, you will be able to grasp the basic concepts of I.M. in no time.
  • Ability to optimize landing pages, email outreach campaigns, and branded pages or forms.

Price: $185/month – basic package, $740/month – pro package, $2,200/month – Enterprise package

Official Site: Hubspot

7. DATRIC AGILE DATA SUITE (ADS)

Datric Agil Suite  Business Intelligence Software

Image Source: saimgs

Are you looking for an easy-to use and versatile tool for data management and integration? DATRIC Agile might be the perfect solution. This is an enterprise-level software that is capable of standardizing data traceability, data modelling, company-wide mapping and more elements that will help you implement business strategies more efficiently.

DATRIC’s key features include the capacity to create a complete data warehouse in less than six months, inter-linking between business elements and technical aspects and speedier implementation of data (roughly 25-50% more efficient than other software).

Price: You have to contact DATRIC for more details on prices.

Official site: DATRIC Agile Data Suite

8. INSIGHTSQUARED

InsightSquared  Business Intelligence Software

Image Source: Ytimg

InsightSquared made our list because it is one of the few full-featured business analytics tools for medium and small businesses. If you’re looking for a reliable and reasonably priced software to empower your business efforts through data-driven strategies, then InsightSquared is the perfect tool for you. What makes this tool truly shine is the fact that it can compress big data into beautiful and accessible visuals that will give you a better idea about your financial, marketing or sales status.

Key Features:

  • Up-to-date reports that will help your company evolve organically (doesn’t rely too much on historical data)
  • Possibility to analyse trends and other metrics that will lead to accurate forecasts for future strategies
  • Historical financial information with specific timelines

Price: $45/month for each user – basic plans, also has a free trial period.

Official Site: InsightSquared

9. COGNOS

Cognos  Business Intelligence Software

Image Source: Cloudfront

IBM made its own contribution to Business Intelligence software market with its Cognos tool. Interestingly enough, this is a web-based solution that will provide you with in-depth company analytics. While some software are designed for specific industries, Cognos can work with any type of vertical. It is fully equipped with extensive dashboards, analysis and collaborative tools, which will help you demystify raw data through user-friendly reports and statistics.

You should consider purchasing Cognos if you need to analyse data from multiple angles, determine the scalability of a future venture, monitor and manage your metrics, automate tasks or collaborate with team-members in order to reach decisions.

Price: You have to request a quote.

Official Site: Cognos

10. ACTIMIZE PLATFORM

Nice Actimize  Business Intelligence Software

Our last pick for business intelligence and analytics software is Actimize, a simple all-in-one solution for scalability, risk management, protection against money laundering, fraud prevention and more. Unlike other tools, its focus rests on pre-emptive measures that might spell disaster for your enterprise.

Actimize functions according to a clear risk-management cycle: model, execute, investigate, monitor. One of the best things about Actimize is the fact that it is highly customizable, meaning that you can create your own analytical models. In addition to this, it is capable of detecting anomalies and issues as they happen. Lastly, Actimize integrates well with other processes and data sources.

Official Site: Actimize Platform

Honorable Mention: WIRES

There is one more tool we think you will need to be able to complete all the tasks related to your business strategy. WIRES is a COREP / FSA / BoE regulatory reporting solution that provides users with comprehensive audits, operational dashboards that integrate across different OSs and workflow control. It fits into the business analytics category because it provides regulatory control on short notice, making it possible for your business to overcome situations of dynamic nature. Arguably the most important features of WIRES are that of analysis and performance, which can be done on all levels and from different sources. As far as performance goes, WIRES was built on a SQP server which means that it benefits from the latest Microsoft technology.

There are many tools worth mentioning for business intelligence and analytics, but the vast majority contain the features found in the ones above. You should take a look at more options on the market and decide on a software that is best suited for you. Not using one or more business intelligence tools will severely cripple your business efforts. If you want to gain the competitive edge in an overcrowded market you should utilize as many resources as possible.

What are your thoughts on the matter? We would love to hear your opinion!

27 Jul 16:16

How to Use Visual Maps for a Balanced Content Marketing Strategy

by Mark Walker

visual-maps-content-marketing-strategy-cover

Many people prefer to read visually. Yet when it comes to how we display information in our companies, we tend to be stuck on text and spreadsheets.

Most strategy documents end up being created in long-form text – paragraph after paragraph explaining how we’re going to rock a particular initiative such as a content marketing program. If we’re lucky, there might be some graphs and bullet points to break up the reading experience.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Surely it would be easier to have quick visual reference guides to help us see gaps in our plans or particularly over-resourced tactics or distribution channels.

A visualized guide would help avoid situations where grand plans are constructed and external consultants deliver a tome of great advice only for it to be ignored by the team because it’s not easily digestible or referenced on a day-to-day basis, effectively becoming an expensive paperweight.

Visually map your content portfolio

One area that will benefit the most from visualization is your content portfolio. Make sure you’re balanced in your approach to content marketing because even a single persona will have many different preferences for content consumption. Some will prefer entertaining content, others want just the facts; some might love videos, others a checklist. To cater to all these preferences, it is a good idea to have a blend of content types and tactics.

As you track what works and what doesn’t, you may begin to favor some forms of content over others, but if you’re just starting out and documenting your strategy for the first time, it’s good to have a range of content on the radar.

So, what’s the best way to ensure you’re covering the right balance of content? A big, long list on a spreadsheet or a mind map of your content ideas against your different customer needs?

You also need to ensure your content covers the buyer journey, from awareness to the decision (and purchase) to avoid having a gap in the marketing funnel.

To map this visually and ensure I’m not missing anything or focusing too much or too little on specific tactics, I like to use this handy content marketing matrix template provided by Smart Insights.

smart-insights-content-marketing-template-image 1

Along the horizontal axis, plot content according to its relevance in the buyer journey. For example, if prospects are generally unaware of your brand or whether they have a problem your service can solve, it’s not helpful to provide content like case studies, pricing tables, or anything product-related such as user and how-to guides.

Instead, you need to focus on general awareness content, which might be delivered in the form of fun videos, blog posts with relevant pop culture references, or research-backed findings into the audience’s general topic of interest.

Along the vertical axis, plot according to your content’s appeal, from emotional to rational.

Here’s a tip: Don’t be fooled into thinking all your B2B content should be geared toward rational – you should absolutely appeal to emotions, too.

Similarly, don’t leave out rational content – consumers sometimes buy on impulse and emotional ties, but on other occasions they carefully weigh the features, benefits, and economic value of your products or service.

If you want to go more in depth on the buyer journey to ensure you’re covering content for your potential customers at each stage, from “bored at work” to “negotiation” and “purchase,” Eloqua provides a nice visual infographic that you could replicate or modify for your own template.

eloqua-the-content-grid-infographic-image 2

Map a balanced distribution plan

We all know that if content is king, distribution is queen. Therefore, you should pay as much attention to mapping the promotional strategy as you do to the editorial calendar.

Generally, this exercise is ongoing as you continue refining your promotional channels to find the optimal mix. To begin, however, make some educated guesses as to which channels are likely to drive a lot of traffic to your content, and which will garner less volume but more targeted leads that have a higher conversion rate. Here’s an example of a content distribution matrix from Smart Insights.

smart-insights-content-distribution-matrix-image 3

If you are starting from scratch, plot the different channels at your disposal. Those in the “low-volume, low-ROI” quarter will be the bottom priorities or tested with small budgets; those in the “high-volume, high-ROI” quarter will be high priorities with bigger budgets.

As you track your hypotheses, your map will change – making for an interesting visual journey of how some worked and others didn’t.

Summary

Well-documented content marketing strategies are incredibly important – as the B2B Content Marketing 2015 Report found – with 60% of companies that have a recorded strategy considering themselves successful at content marketing.

However, if content marketing strategies are difficult to digest and access, there’s a danger that the good work put into them will be left to gather dust because it takes too long for everyone to pull out the relevant details.

To help combat this, it’s a good idea to pair easy-to-understand, at-a-glance visualizations of your content marketing strategy to keep it alive and used on a daily basis.

Don’t have your content marketing strategy documented – visually or otherwise? Start with CMI’s 16-page guide with the 36 questions every content marketing strategy should answer.

Cover image by Chriss Klinger, Morgue File, via pixabay.com

The post How to Use Visual Maps for a Balanced Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

27 Jul 16:15

[slides] The Secure Path to Value in the Cloud By @Windstream | @CloudExpo #IoT #API #Containers #Microservices

Even as cloud and managed services grow increasingly central to business strategy and performance, challenges remain. The biggest sticking point for companies seeking to capitalize on the cloud is data security. Keeping data safe is an issue in any computing environment, and it has been a focus since the earliest days of the cloud revolution. Understandably so: a lot can go wrong when you allow valuable information to live outside the firewall. Recent revelations about government snooping, along with a steady stream of well-publicized data breaches, only add to the uncertainty

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27 Jul 16:14

Habits for Agile Testing

by Gerald M. Weinberg
In addition to her many other talents, my wife, Dani, trains dogs. Her speciality is "problem dogs"—which  really means "problem owners."


Rather than retrain the dogs, Dani retrains the owners, who then retrain the dogs. In that sense, her dog work is very much like my program testing work. When people come to me with "problem programs," I work on the people, not the programs. After all, it was the people who made the programs into problems.

Of all the questions dog owners ask Dani, the most frequent is, "When do we start training the puppy?" Unfortunately, few people ask me the corresponding question, "When is the right time to start testing a program?"


What is the right time to start training a puppy? As Dani explains, the question is meaningless because "you start training a puppy the moment you set eyes on it, whether you intend to or not. And the puppy starts training you at the same time."

The same is true of testing programs. You start testing a program the moment you start to think of the possibility of writing a program. Actually, it starts even earlier.

How can program testing start even before you start thinking of writing the program? Think about the dog owners. Their troubles arise from bad habits they've acquired over a lifetime, before they ever set eyes upon their new puppy.


Your good and bad habits will have more influence than any other factor in the success or failure of your program testing efforts. It is no accident that certain programmers and testers perform consistently better than others in the production of well-tested programs. Those who believe it is an accident will learn nothing about program testing until they convince themselves it is possible to learn how to do a better testing job.

What Does Genius Require?

I'm not denying that a measure or basic intelligence is required to be a successful program tester. Even some forms of "genius" might help. But those who subscribe to the "native genius" school of programming should study the lives of geniuses.

For example, Einstein once remarked that he really didn't do anything but take the work of others and put it together in some way that had not been done before. If we are to emulate Einstein and put together the work of others—instead of starting from scratch with each new program—perhaps we can approach the genius level in our testing.

Scientists know that there is honor, not shame, in taking the work of others—probably smarter than ourselves—as the starting point for our work. For the most part, this previous work is available to us in libraries of one form or another.

Libraries may store millions of useful programming ideas, but their very size can make it difficult to know what they contain. In order to make effective use of libraries in program testing, we have to know what kinds of libraries are available, and we have to know what those libraries contain.

On library that every programmer uses is the one contained in the programming language. Even if your program is in binary machine code, you're using a library—the one the machine designers thought useful for programming. It is theoretically possible to design a general purpose computer with but a single instruction—a kind of "conditional branch and subtract." Therefore, any instruction set bigger than that must be considered a library—a way of giving the programmer a set of pre-tested building blocks.

By "higher-level" language, we essentially mean a language with a library that allows programs to be built with fewer building blocks. Fewer building blocks means fewer connections between building blocks—which in turn means fewer places to search for errors. Unfortunately, many programmers are not well acquainted with the contents of their language library.

Here's just one example. A programmer came to me with a program that was mysteriously losing parts of strings. I helped him narrow down the problem to a statement that was trying to replace two characters with asterisks, but when the original string was longer than 10 characters, the excess portion was truncated. When I asked him why he had used the "magic number" 10, he explained that at the time he wrote the statement he didn't think he would have strings longer than that.

He didn't know his language library contained contained the ability to do substring assignment. Had he known this, he could have written a much simpler and more reliable statement. That approach—because it was a more direct expression of what he wanted to do rather than how he wants it done—would have prevented the bug and other bugs from ever occuring in the first place.


Another genius, Newton, said he could see so far because "I am a midget standing on the shoulders of giants." Dick Hamming once told me the programmers are more like midgets standing on the toes of other midgets. It may be true that our language designers lack the mental stature of a Newton, but that's no reason to stand on their toes by ignoring the hidden libraries they have created for us. You can still see farther standing on shoulders than on toes.

Genius Libraries

But how can you come to know the contents of your hidden library? The obvious answer is to read the manual. Ugh! We complain that manuals are badly written, and many are. But a more serious problem is that manuals are written for reference, not to be read like novels. If you know there is such a thing as substring assignment, and you know its name, you can look it up and learn how it works. But if you don't suspect such a function exists, how can you find it in the manual?

Another problem with manual reading is their emphasis on how things work, rather than why you might want to use them in the first place. They are solution-oriented, rather than problem-oriented, leaving their readers to bridge the gap between what they're trying to accomplish and how the language could make it easier and more accurate.

Still, there are ways of using manuals to overcome some of this shortcomings. Two or more programmers can play a game. One takes the manual and reads the name of some feature to the others, who must then describe how that feature works. "What happens when we execute this?" Everyone writes down an answer, after which the example is executed and the competitive members of the team can award points for correct answers.

This game increases everyone's familiarity with parts of the hidden library—or any application, but still leaves the "why" largely unanswered. The game can be extended to "why?" by asking each player to come up with a problem for which his feature is the best solution. For substring assignment, a problem might be "to insert asterisks in the third and fourth positions of a string," or "to replace a blank at position N with a comma."

The technical review is even more effective at vocabulary building. Technical reviews have the further advantage that managers who might be troubled to see programmers and testers "playing games" have little trouble accepting a technical review for its obvious function of finding errors. In my experience, however, the long-range error-prevention benefits of technical reviews far outweigh their short-range debugging efforts.

When several people sit down to review code, each person can quietly witness all the good techniques used in that code. They can also witness poor techniques, and if anyone in the group happens to know a better technique, all can learn it. Moreover they can learn these things without having to confess that they didn't know them before the review.

Another problem with manuals is that though they may be comprehensive, they tend to put the emphasis on what is most difficult to explain, rather than what is most useful to know. Because technical reviews are focussed on current work, the learning from reviews tend to be more relevant than what you can learn from playing games.

There are, of course, other types of program library besides the hidden library of the programming language. There are procedure libraries, subroutine libraries, libraries containing tables of common data, utility libraries, libraries of of parameters to direct those utilities in common tasks, macro libraries containing common code sequences, data dictionaries, and the inventory of existing applications—often a huge library of useful code for reuse.

The amount of useful, pre-tested material in such libraries is so overwhelming that programmers and testers sometimes forget about that other sort of library—the kind containing good old-fashioned books. A caution, though. Even if we could somehow guarantee perfect copies of the author's examples, we must remember that examples presented in a book are ordinarily designed—or should be—for maximum teaching effect, not for maximum generality or performance. Books are terrific ways to obtain new ideas of what be in other types of library, which is where you should look for reliable pieces of code and design.

The subject of early testing would be incomplete without the mention of one more type of library—the library of work habits you carry around in your head, or wherever it is that work habits are carried. For instance, have you ever noticed how pig-pen workers invariably spend more time debugging than those with tidier habits? I say this not as Mr. Clean, but as an old pig-pen programmer myself. It took me thirty years of effort to clean up my act reasonably well, but I've never completely eliminated slovenly habits of my youth. Still, little by little, I've eliminated slovenly, lazy practices that had previously wasted thousands of hours of precious time.

Seven Simple Habits

The Chinese say, "a journey of 10,000 miles starts with a single step," and even one bug prevented is a step in the right direction of more reliable software. So, here are a few of the pre-programmed habits I've noticed in effective program testers:

Keeping a Journal
Like all professional engineers, professional programmers and testers should keep a bound journal in which to record all those tiny but significant events that occur every day. (I prefer a bound journal to a digital record because it prevents me from revising history to make myself look better than I really was.)

Ideas, observations, events, successes, failures, puzzles—all are grist for the journal. You don't have to realize the importance of something at the time you write it down. Indeed, the puzzling things are the most important to record. Often, bugs are found only when they have managed to repeat themselves in a dozen ways, and only with a journal will you have all the necessary data in one place. Memory isn't sufficiently reliable. Scraps of paper don't stay in one place. Your digital device my be in the next county when you have an idea, so carry a journal.

Record Dates and Times
Someone once said, "Time is God's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once." Effective testers use God's great invention to ensure they always know the order of past events. Put the date and time on everything you write down, everything you put in the computer, and everything the computer puts out. Record both the time of writing and the time of the event itself. It's an investment like insurance—it may seem a bit troublesome at the time, but when the accident occurs, you'll be glad you bought it. And even if there's never an accident, you've bought some peace of mind.

Standardizing Formats
When I write down the same thing in different ways, I always seem to have trouble later. Europeans write dates as day/month; Americans use month/day. Obviously, either method is workable, but used together they make a mess. After living in Europe, I came to realize that the European method was clearly more logical (for sorting order, at least), but that didn't mean I could adopt it when I returned to the US. It confuses Americans. Instead, I evolved a standard (for me) dating method—11 October 2017) which is far less likely to confuse either Europeans or Americans than 10/11, or is it 11/10?

My standard method also forces me to write the year. You'd be surprised how many bugs I've had that survived more than a year—or maybe you wouldn't be surprised at all.

Over long periods of time, my ideas about certain standards have changed, which some people use as an argument against any kind of standard. But one advantage of standard formats is that they allow easier transformation to a new standard, should that be necessary. And, if I've dated everything and recorded the change in standards in my journal, I can always figure out which standard applied to a particular item.

Filing
One of the areas in which I still could use some improvement is my filing. My journal often helps as an index to filed items, and dating every filed item was a great leap forward. But I still find myself too frequently in the situation where I know I've put away the solution to a problem but can't find it in my files.

Clearly, I'm in no position to tell other people how to file their myriad documents—test results, bug reports, articles, correction letters, and so forth—that might be needed when testing a system. But at least I speak with the experience of a common person rather than a filing genius (like a former secretary who filed the cans of food in her kitchen alphabetically).

Probably the most important principle I've learned is to think, when putting something away, about the question I'll be asking when I want to retrieve it. That question is my best guide as to where to file it. Recently, when I've been unable to reduce an important item to a single question, I've taken to filing a reference to the item in extra places. Or, if it's filed digitally, I add at least one keyword for each possible question.

Throwing Things Away
Filing multiple references tends to compound another problem of mine, based on the universal law: "Files Fill." I've noticed that good testers have a sense of when to rid themselves of things. I don't have this sense, and it has always cost me much wasted effort when searching for something.

When I used to work for IBM (which stood for "I've Been Moved"), every time I packed my files I would purge about 1/3 of my filed material. Now that I don't move as frequently, I tend to drown in my files. Once in a while, though, I become seized with a cleaning fit and go through a drawer or two, or tidy up a few folders. Still, I'm still trying to learn something good about filing—or, rather, unfiling.

Learn Something New Before Sleeping
My father was an extraordinarily smart man. Somewhere in my early years, he told me that he would never go to bed at night unless he had learned something new that day. Somehow that made sense to me, perhaps because I wanted to be smart like my father. For whatever reason, I have followed this habit for my entire life. I was never one of those people who felt he could learn only in a classroom, so every night, before hitting the pillows, I review my day for learnings. My journal helps. If I cannot think of anything worth writing down, I go to my library and grab a book. Or, nowadays, I'll go online and browse until I find something of value.

Sometimes, it's something new. Others, it's a reminder of something I used to know, but have forgotten. Once in a great while, I try to retire without this learning, but I've discovered that this habit is so ingrained that I cannot fall asleep. So, I get up from bed and start the learning process over again. 

Learning From Others
Which brings me to the final habit on my list, undoubtedly the one that has done more than all the others to make me a better tester.

I don't know how I acquired this habit—I certainly didn't have it when I was in school. Somewhere along the line, I developed the habit of listening to other people. And watching them.


Of course, I try to learn from my own mistakes, my ego makes it hard to learn from them. Besides there are so many other people making mistakes that I can learn even more from their blunders. I think that's how Dani learned how to train dogs—and dog owners.
27 Jul 16:14

The Impact of Wearable Tech and Customer Intelligence

by Dave O'Flanagan

Research Shows Millennials Are Prime Candidates for Location-Based Offers

As the Apple Watch continues to roll out and specs for the next iteration begin to leak, retailers are looking to take advantage of rising wearable tech adoption during the second half of 2015. Shipments of smart wearables, as a whole, are predicted to grow to 135 million in 2018, according to recent research from CCS Insights, with the Apple Watch alone accounting for 40% of smartwatch shipments this year.

The proliferation of smart, wearable consumer technology is creating a boom not only for wearable tech manufacturers, but also in the availability of new data and intelligence for any brand that wishes to harness it, and act on the insights provided.

As retailers dive into and analyze this influx of data, location-based insights and communications are garnering significant attention. The reason: Location-based push offers have the potential to become extremely valuable sales and marketing tools for retailers – but only when targeted at the right population. A recent Boxever survey found that more than 50% of consumers between the ages of 18-29 said they would find location-based push offers valuable or extremely valuable, as long as they were timely, targeted, and within reason – which is true for only 32% of consumers who are 45 and older.

When leveraged effectively, the combination of location-based intelligence with contextual wearable and mobile communications benefits both consumers and brands. Consumers benefit from the convenience and potential savings of having targeted offers sent to them while they’re in the process of shopping or walking throughout a mall or city. Retailers have the opportunity to increase basket size by giving shoppers extra information that may sway their purchasing decisions, deals to get consumers into their stores and special discounts on items that customers might have been on the fence about buying as they walk by.

One of the most important factors impacting conversions is whether an offer adds value to something the consumer is already doing. With more than 60% of millennials reporting that their purchasing habits change based on where they are and what they are doing, the onus is on retailers to collect contextual intelligence and create 1:1 marketing engagements that add personalized value to each and every individual.

With Great Data Comes Great Responsibility

While today’s consumers crave a personalized, value-added shopping experience, they’re unlikely to continue sharing personal data because they aren’t seeing enough value from the data that retailers already collect. Many times, shoppers are hesitant to even give their email addresses when asked, due to the amount of spam and irrelevant content they suspect might come next. In an age of cluttered inboxes, what good is a newsletter that a customer didn’t opt-in to, or a coupon for something that the recipient has never purchased and likely won’t in the future? Communications like this, which lack value and relevance, are much more likely to drive a shopper away from a store than into it. And when brands continue to inundate a customer or prospect with untargeted offers, they may lose the opportunity to ever market to that person again. In fact, when consumers receive numerous irrelevant offers, we found that 59% will unsubscribe from that company’s content, 50% are less likely to open the next offer and 31% would delete that company’s mobile app.

The two biggest mistakes retailers make are failing to personalize offers based on where a customer is and what he or she is doing, and failing to align communications with a customer’s unique needs and interests. Shoppers crave added value and want their shopping experience enhanced, not interrupted by out of place distractions. Simply put: for retailers looking to capitalize on mobile and wearable communications, context matters. If a brand can’t identify and act on the context of a situation, the retailer is likely missing a substantial opportunity to acquire more customers, improve conversion rates and create a better customer experience and brand.

27 Jul 16:13

Here's when the next recession might start

by Ed Yardeni

recoveries and expansions

I have previously shown that based on the past five business cycles, the next recession might not start until March 2019. I examined the Index of Coincident Economic Indicators (CEI) for some historical guidance on the longevity of economic expansions. Let’s update our analysis.

It has taken 68 months--from January 2008 through October 2013--for the CEI to fully recover from its severe decline during 2008 and early 2009. The previous five recovery periods averaged 26 months within a range of 19-33 months. The good news is that the average increase in the CEI following each of those recovery periods through the next peak was 18.6%, over an average period of 65 months within a range of 30-104 months. If we apply this average to the current cycle, then the CEI would peak in 45 more months, during March 2019, with a substantial gain from here.

For now, let’s just enjoy the fact that the CEI is at a record high, and 4.7% above its previous cyclical high during January 2008. All four components of the CEI (payroll employment, real personal income less transfer payments, industrial production, and real manufacturing and trade sales) are at or near their recent record highs. The Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose 0.6% during June, very close to its record high in March 2006.

My extrapolation of the business cycle based on the recent and limited history of the CEI is meant simply as a benchmark for thinking about potential events that could cause a recession sooner, or later, than March 2019. In the past, economic expansions tended to crescendo into booms with rising inflation. The Fed would respond by raising interest rates. Tighter monetary conditions often caused a credit crunch, which then would cause a recession.

This time may not be different, but it has been different so far. Inflation has remained remarkably subdued, not just in the US but globally. Central banks have been flooding financial markets with liquidity in an attempt to boost inflation closer to their 2% targets. So far it hasn’t worked, and instead of a global boom we have global secular stagnation, with China slowing, the Eurozone barely recovering, and Japan stumbling. The CPI headline and core inflation rates among the major industrial G7 economies were only 0.2% y/y and 1.4% during May. The volume of world exports rose just 1.0% y/y during May, while the value of those exports is down over 10% through April.

I doubt that the business cycle is dead, though I suspect that inflation may be dead. As inflation remains subdued and central banks continue to provide ultra-easy monetary policies, the next recession may very well be a long ways off. If inflation makes a sudden comeback, a possibility I can’t dismiss, then all bets are off. A meltdown in China’s financial markets and economy might also trigger a global recession, which is why I am concerned about the renewed weakness in commodity prices, as I discussed last week.

leading and coincident indicators

Today's Morning Briefing: The Great Diversification. (1) Deep in the heart of Texas. (2) Lone Star State has lots of stars. (3) Healthy industrial mix around the country. (4) A long time till the next recession? (5) What might cause the next bust? (6) After the Great Moderation and the Great Recession. (7) Business has learned self-control. (8) Similar to the 1990s with more diversification? (9) Can the US decouple from a global recession? (10) Another round of “shock and awe?” (11) Curbing exuberance. (More for subscribers.)

Join the conversation about this story »

27 Jul 16:12

What To Do With Your Social Properties

by Joe Auer

A lot of people ask me whether they really need to set up social properties and make posts on them. They might be in a niche that doesn’t really call for social activity, so they just don’t think it’s that valuable. Some people think that just setting up an account on Facebook and Twitter is all they need to do. What is the right answer?

There’s no real right answer, in my opinion. I try to think of what Google wants to see for the long-term, and I try to match everything I do with what I know Google wants to see. What does Google want to see? It wants to see a website that gets updated regularly with fresh, good content. It then wants to see a website that engages with its readership as much as possible. That usually happens through its social properties and through sites like Reddit. Google wants to see that the site is adding value to people not just on the site itself but also across the Internet.

What does that mean for SEO? For us, we definitely recommend setting Facebook, Twitter, and other social accounts. That alone could give you a small bump in rankings. However, we theorize that you don’t get much of an SEO benefit until you actively post and engage on your social accounts. Why would Google give a bump in rankings to a site that set up social accounts but never uses them? That doesn’t benefit readers very much. When we work with websites, we recommend that they blog consistently and be active on their social accounts. After a few months, they will start to see across the board jumps in rankings. It could be a coincidence or for other reasons, but we think the evidence is strong that being active on social media does eventually provide a great benefit for SEO.

It may seem like a lot of work to be active on social media. There are ways to make things easier and more automated. You can use a service like Hootsuite or IFTTT to post your blog content automatically to your social media properties. You can outsource your social media management pretty easily to an agency for not that much money. We recommend doing whatever it takes to prove to Google you are serious about interacting with your readers. Google is getting ever-more insight into this data, and we think it’s only going to be more beneficial going into the future.

You may not see any immediate boost in your rankings, but over time being active on social media will definitely boost your SEO.

27 Jul 16:12

The Fundamental Principles Of Value-Based Selling

by Bob Apollo

It’s a sad fact that today’s average B2B sales person is still far more comfortable talking about their products than they are discussing business issues. However, the average B2B buyer regards a sales person’s relevant business knowledge as being far more valuable than their ability to regurgitate product features, functions and benefits.

87_PercentThis terrible mismatch has profound consequences. It should be no surprise that on average 87% of the revenues in complex B2B sales environments are being generated by just 13% of the sales population. Needless to say, the gap between the best and the rest is far narrower in best-in-class sales organizations. What sets these top performing organizations apart?

There’s abundant evidence to suggest that one of the most significant differences lies in their ability to systematically create unique value to their customers through the disciplined application of value-based selling techniques across their entire sales and marketing organization. And the results can be seen in top line revenue growth that far exceeds market averages.

So what does value-based selling entail? It’s not – as some early definitions suggested – just about maximizing the value of your solution to the customer. In fact focusing on your value too early in the development of a sales opportunity can actually compromise your chances of success. Because if there is no problem, there can be no solution.

Before the value of your solution is in any way relevant to your potential customer, they must first – hopefully with your help – recognize the value of solving the problem the first place, and acknowledge the cost of inaction and the urgent need for change. Otherwise, the most likely outcome is that they will simply decide to stick with the status quo.

In fact, that’s exactly what happens in over 60% of apparently well-qualified sales opportunities today: after months – sometimes years – of consideration and the application of large amounts of sales energy and resource, the prospect simply decides to “do nothing” – at least for the moment.

Principle #1: Focus on the value of solving their problem

That’s why the first principle of value-based selling is to focus on the value to the prospect of dealing with the issue they have identified. If the prospect cannot articulate the costs and consequences of the problem and the value of solving it, their chances of getting their organization to agree to invest in any solution is remote – as are your chances of winning.

It’s dangerous to assume that your prospect is fully aware of all of these costs and consequences. In fact, a key role of the sales person in these early stages must be to help the prospect recognise the full horror of sticking with the status quo. Almost always, this will involve drawing their attention to aspects of the problem they may not have recognised or – even better – introducing high-impact issues that they may not have previously been aware of.

But if, despite all your efforts, the value of solving the problem remains unclear or weak, it’s usually best to qualify out the “opportunity” and defer it for future nurturing – even if you appear to have a good solution fit.

Principle #2: Be specific about the value you offer

Marketers sometimes make a great deal of fuss about articulating your company’s “unique value proposition”. But no matter how agonizingly carefully they are crafted, these can only ever be generic statements designed to appeal to your target market as a whole. Value-based selling requires that you get very specific about the value you offer each prospect – in effect you need a personally tailored unique value position.

Rather than a broad description of all that you can offer, you’ll get much more traction by selectively identifying and highlighting the small subset of your total capabilities that are most relevant to successfully addressing the issue you have identified. And you need to clearly explain how you deliver unique and relevant value to every member of the decision-making team.

Principle #3: Contribute relevant value in every interaction

If your contacts are serious decision-makers with substantial workloads, they will not appreciate being involved in conversations and meetings that leave them wondering why they just wasted their valuable time. So the third core principle of value-based selling is to seek to contribute relevant value in every customer interaction.

This value might be expressed by responding their questions simply, directly and completely rather than leading them around the houses with an ambiguous or deliberately obfuscated response. Or it might be expressed by sharing an insight that causes them to think differently or by revealing a relevant fact they were previously unaware of.

Principle #4: Facilitate their buying process, not your sales process

Conventional sales processes are all-too-often designed around the needs of the seller, not the buyer. So it’s hardly surprising that things the sales person sees as important are often regarded by the prospect as irrelevant or (even worse) profoundly irritating, while at the same time their interests and concerns are being poorly served by the sales person.

That’s why your sales approach – and the key stages in your sales pipeline and CRM system – must be designed around the key stages and milestones in your prospect’s buying decision process. Your sales activities, sales enablement tools and shareable content must be designed to advance a well-qualified opportunity through their buying decision process.

Principle #5: If you can’t contribute distinctive value, qualify out

The final principle is simple: if your solution doesn’t offer a distinctively different and higher-value approach solving to the prospect’s identified problem than any of the other options they are considering, you need to either do something about it or qualify out.

So there you have it: five key principles of value-based selling. I’ll be expanding on each of these ideas in future articles. In the meantime, I’d welcome your comments: am I on the right track?

10-Point Online Healthcheck

27 Jul 16:11

4 Secrets the Best Salespeople Need to Know

Buyers behave differently today than they did years ago, and selling tactics have to evolve with those differences. Star sales performers understand that and have adjusted their approach accordingly. Here's a look at four things they do that less-successful salespeople don't do.

27 Jul 16:11

How to Avoid Wasting Time on a "No Decision" Deal

by jperez@customercentric.com (John Holland)

active_selling_time.jpg

Time is a precious commodity for everyone. It’s especially critical for sellers to make good use of their time. They’re under pressure to achieve revenue targets each year.

As sellers become more competent they understand the difference between activity and progress. They start more stringently qualifying “opportunities.”

At a high level, one of the primary responsibilities of first level sales managers is ensuring that sellers work on opportunities with a strong probability of closing. Statistics show about half of sales cycles end with prospects making no decision. This outcome means the buyer organization and all vendors that competed wasted valuable time.

While enticing, I question whether the torrent of inbound activity from non-Key Player researchers is helping salespeople achieve their numbers. Specifically, my concern is the volume of inbound research that is being done today:

  • By low-level buyer contacts without the knowledge of Key Players
  • Without budget/funding approved for offerings

A few simple steps can save researchers and sellers from spinning their wheels.

1) Establish value.

If and when sellers contact or are contacted by people knowledgeable about offerings, it is important to have the buyer contact share their list of necessary requirements and determine if a seller’s offering is a fit.

A common mistake is failing to establish value early in the process. Absent strong payback, it’s unlikely a sale will happen further down the road.

2) Inquire about budget.

A seller may want to ask if budget has been approved. If the offering is fairly complex, understand that if buyers say they have budget, it’s likely there is a Column A vendor driving the evaluation. Gaining access to Key Players will be important in qualifying these opportunities.

3) Be honest.

If budget has not been allocated, honesty may be the best alternative. The seller can thank the prospect for their interest and acknowledge that both parties’ time is important. He or she can then express concern that many product evaluations come to grinding halts when funding is requested because potential value was never established. It would be a shame to waste time in moving forward with the evaluation until potential payback had been defined.

4) Give and get.

At this point, the salesperson might ask what business outcomes can be improved through the use of the offering and whether benefits have been quantified. In my mind the seller should put forward a quid pro quo (give and get):

  • I’m willing to commit my time and effort in making a recommendation (the give) if:
  • You’re willing to give me access to the people who would need to provide input so that a preliminary cost vs. benefit could be completed (the get).

5) Collaborate on a business case.

The understanding in moving forward is that there has to be adequate value to justify a purchase. If not, there would be no point in spending additional time and resources on this project. It would be a pink (if not red) flag if a prospect was unwilling to work with the seller on building a business case.

In today’s environment, sellers with extensive product knowledge don’t bring much to the table for researchers that have poured over multiple vendor websites and are intimately familiar with offerings from several vendors. Introducing the concept of business issues and cost justification is a way to differentiate from other salespeople.

Oddly enough, this approach often turns out to be a win-win because there’s little sense for buyers and sellers to spend time and resources only to end up with a very common end to buying cycles: No decision. 

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27 Jul 16:11

25 Email Opening Lines and Greetings That Put "Hi, My Name Is" to Shame

by esnider@hubspot.com (Emma Snider)

Email Opening Sentences

  1. "Is X a priority for you right now?"
  2. "Did you know [interesting statistic]?"
  3. "What do you think about [industry event]?"
  4. "What would it mean to you if your business was able to achieve [benefit]?"
  5. "Yesterday, you did X. Why?"
  6. "How can I make your life easier?"
  7. "I noticed your company recently ... "
  8. "Congratulations on [career move] ... "
  9. "I have a few suggestions for capitalizing on [opportunity]."
  10. "I saw your competitor, [Company name], in the news for [big announcement]."
  11. "I loved your post/tweet/blog on X."
  12. "Great insights at the Y Summit ... "
  13. "I've long been a fan of ... "
  14. "Hoping to get your advice on X."
  15. "I know you're an expert in [Topic]. I thought of you when I saw X and wanted to share it with you."
  16. "How do you know [shared connection]? We worked together on ... "
  17. "[Mutual connection] recommended we talk."
  18. "Like you, I [love X activity, am interested in Y cause, participate in Z organization]."
  19. "I saw your comment in [X organization, LinkedIn group, Facebook group, etc.] and thought it was interesting."
  20. "I have an idea to address [pain point]."
  21. "I recently came across this content piece and thought you'd find it valuable ... "
  22. "I've been following Y, and I'm curious to learn a bit more about X."
  23. "I don't know how you feel about X, but to me it's ... "
  24. "I help companies like yours solve [pain point] by ... "
  25. "I recently helped a company like yours [increase revenue by X percent, save Y hours every month, produce Z percent more product per quarter]."

You know what tips buyers off that the email they're reading is a sales pitch?

"Hi, my name is Jane Doe, and I'm a sales rep at Company."

Yup. That'll do it.

You should never actively hide the fact that you're a salesperson from buyers, but positioning yourself as a consultant, business expert, or interested party in the opening line will do you justice and keep the prospect reading.

If you're struggling to think of alternatives to the standard opening line, take one of these for a spin and see how they perform for you.

Email Greetings

Before you get started with effective email opening sentences, make sure your email greeting is compelling and memorable, too. Below are a couple of alternatives to "Dear Ms./Mr." that won't make recipients think they're receiving an automated email template:

1. "Hi [First Name]"

This is my go-to email greeting to convey friendliness and personability. It's acceptable to reach out for the first time with someone's first name -- but make sure you spell their first name correctly by double-checking their social profiles.

2. "Hi there"

If you're sending out a mass email, or if you've already corresponded with the contact before, this friendly greeting can be a nice way to open up the lines of communication.

3. "Good [Morning/Afternoon] [First Name]"

This greeting is a little more formal, but is still a pleasant, casual option to start an email. Double-check the time zone the contact is in -- it may not be the same time of day where they live.

4. "Happy [Day], [First Name]"

Sometimes it's fun to acknowledge the day of the week in an email greeting. Make sure you tie in specifics in the follow-up line to make it seem authentic. For example, if you start your email with "Happy Friday, Emma," follow up with, "I hope you've had a great week," or "Any fun weekend plans?"

Email Opening Sentences That Help Generate Sales

  1. Email Opening Lines that Use Questions
  2. Email Opening Lines that Reference Trigger Events
  3. Email Opening Lines that Boost Their Ego
  4. Email Opening Lines that Leverage Commonalities
  5. Email Opening Lines that Add Value

Email Opening Lines that Use Questions

1. "Is X a priority for you right now?"

There's nothing quite like a question to get the prospect talking. HubSpot sales director Michael Pici recommends using questions in sales emails to spark the prospect's interest and get them thinking about the current state of affairs.

This one in particular can help the salesperson get a sense of the prospect's priorities and pain points. If you've struck on a tricky area, you're in.

2. "Did you know [interesting statistic]?"

Maybe you've learned the prospect is tackling a business problem that your offering can solve. Leading with a thought-provoking statistic that relates to their issue and paves the way to your solution will work well with data-driven types.

3. "What do you think about [industry event]?"

Keeping in mind that the goal of an initial sales email is to start a conversation -- not to close a deal -- kicking off your message with a question can be extremely compelling.

4. "What would it mean to you if your business was able to achieve [benefit]?"

This one comes to you courtesy of InsideSales.com. A core sales skill is the ability to create a compelling future state, and painting a picture of how things could be from the very first interaction gets the prospect thinking about alternatives to the status quo. For maximum impact, use a concrete benefit from a customer case study, such as "increase revenue by 50%" or "reduce costs by 70%."

5. "Yesterday, you did X. Why?"

Did your prospect visit your LinkedIn profile, favorite one of your tweets, or interact with you in some other way on social media? Reach out and ask what prompted their action. If you're worried this opening line might come across a bit creepy, try, "I noticed you viewed my LinkedIn profile. What brought you by? Did I do something?" Sometimes the simplest emails are the most effective.

6. "How can I make your life easier?"

The fastest way to get someone's attention? Ask them how you can make their life better -- no strings attached. You'll get them thinking about what they need, and then you can share the benefits your company can offer. 

Email Opening Lines That Reference Trigger Events

7. "I noticed your company recently ... "

Trigger events are incredibly effective sales openings if used correctly. Using Google alerts, track the company and keep an eye out for any major moves. If you catch wind of a major announcement, pounce on the opportunity to send an email connecting the event to your product or service.

8. "Congratulations on [career move] ... "

Did the prospect recently get promoted or switch companies? This is a perfect time to reach out and offer your help. They'll be excited about their new adventure, so starting off with a hearty "congratulations" will start your relationship off on a positive note.

9. "I have a few suggestions for capitalizing on [opportunity]."

Help the buyer take advantage of their company's latest move. Not only will you earn instant credibility, you'll learn valuable details about their situation and objections in the process of guiding them.

10. "I saw your competitor, [Company name], in the news for [big announcement]."

Acknowledge their competitor briefly, and then ask how their company plans to respond. To show you've already been considering how to keep them on top, share a few top ideas of your own -- including how your solution can help.

Email Opening Lines that Boost Their Ego

11. "I loved your post/tweet/blog on X."

Everybody loves to receive a (genuine) compliment. This opening line not only starts a conversation about a topic the buyer is interested in, it shows you've done your research. As a result, the prospect will take your ask more seriously.

12. "Great insights at the Y Summit ... "

Did you see this person speak at a conference, panel, or webinar? Strike up a conversation about their presentation, and probe into any pain points they revealed.

13. "I've long been a fan of ... "

Maybe your prospect maintains an excellent blog, or manages a consistently over-performing division. Again, a genuine compliment never hurts. By making it about them instead of you, you engage them and invite their trust.

14. "Hoping to get your advice on X."

This might seem like bad form in a sales email; after all, asking for something before you've provided any value is generally a no-no. But in the case of advice, it's a bit different. As HubSpot VP of Sales Pete Caputa points out, "Most people like to give advice. Asking for advice appeals to their ego, [and] is a hard request for most of us to resist." Just make sure your request is genuine, or risk angering your prospect.

15. "I know you're an expert in [Topic]. I thought of you when I saw X and wanted to share it with you."

A little flattery will get you everywhere -- and hopefully get you another call. Recall their area of expertise and share a relevant piece of content, announcement, or industry event and ask for their thoughts on the matter.

Email Opening Lines that Leverage Commonalities

16. "How do you know [shared connection]? We worked together on ... "

Use this one if you and your prospect share a connection, but the person hasn't explicitly referred you. This line helps you benefit from their social proof without misconstruing your relationship to the buyer.

17. "[Mutual connection] recommended we talk."

What's the first thing you do before you try out a new restaurant? If you're like the rest of us, you probably check out the Yelp reviews. Social proof is a powerful force, and you should take advantage of if you can. The closer your prospect is with your mutual connection the better, since some of the trust they have in that person will inevitably transfer to you.

18. "Like you, I [love X activity, am interested in Y cause, participate in Z organization]."

Build rapport by mentioning something you and the buyer have in common. We're psychologically conditioned to trust people who seem like us, so this line makes them more likely to keep reading.

19. "I saw your comment in [X organization, LinkedIn group, Facebook group, etc.] and thought it was interesting."

Go beyond, "I see you went to [X college]. That's so interesting!" The creator of the Your SalesMBA™ training program, Jeff Hoffman, recommends salespeople ask prospects about something they've said instead of making an arbitrary statement about what they've done. It's a more genuine approach to getting to know your prospect and leads to a more interesting conversation.

Email Opening Lines that Add Value

20. "I have an idea to address [pain point]."

If the buyer has been grappling with a problem, they'll welcome any and all advice on how to solve it. This opening line captures their attention right off the bat.

21. "I recently came across this content piece and thought you'd find it valuable ... "

If you can add value from the very first touch, the buyer knows you won't waste their time. Find an interesting blog post, ebook, or report to share with your prospect and get their thoughts on a specific area that pertains to your offering.

22. "I've been following Y, and I'm curious to learn a bit more about X."

As Jeff Hoffman puts it, "Prospects respond more positively to curiosity than credibility. Every sales rep strives to portray themselves as an expert, but not many take on the role of a curious student."

Buyers love to talk about themselves and what they're doing. If you ask an insightful question about a project they're working on or the division they oversee, odds are, they'll be happy to answer. And this opens the door to more discovery questions, which could eventually lead to your product or service as the answer.

23. "I don't know how you feel about X, but to me it's ... "

Here's an example of what this opening line looks like in practice from Mike McCormick:

"I don’t know how you feel about walking on a chilly dawn beside a stream with scrappy trout you can see, but to me, that’s a pretty good definition of perfect."

According to copywriter Ryan McGrath, this approach has two main merits: It's empathetic yet doesn't presume what the prospect is feeling. This way, you won't come off as overly pushy or dismissive. The prospect can easily say, "Truthfully, I don't really care about that" without feeling guilty, and the salesperson can disqualify and move to the next opportunity.

24. "I help companies like yours solve [pain point] by ... "

Buyers don't have a lot of time, and some might appreciate a direct approach. However, instead of stating your name and company, pull out your value proposition instead. This makes your email relevant to your prospect from the start.

25. "I recently helped a company like yours [increase revenue by X percent, save Y hours every month, produce Z percent more product per quarter]."

By leading with an impressive statistic, you'll immediately grab the prospect's attention. Want to go the extra mile? Pull this stat from a recent case study and link to it in the email.

To learn more about sales email best practices, check out our list of "thank you in advance" alternatives next.

HubSpot CRM

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27 Jul 16:11

Can Collaboration Work?

by info@sharondrewmorgen.com (Sharon Drew Morgen)

Can Collaboration Work?We enter into collaborations assuming we’ll succeed as teamwork partners. Yet we rarely achieve true partnership:

  • Because we listen uniquely and through biased filters we sometimes mistakenly presume intent or misconstrue what’s been said and agreed upon. Problem: Flawed assumptions, wasted time and relationship capital, and restricted scope.
  • There is often not enough diversity to enable maximum creativity and unrestricted solution options. Problem: Similar ideas and options constrain possibility and maintain the status quo.
  • Agendas and goals are often established with less than the full set of essential participants. Problem: Hidden agendas and inadequate preparation.
  • Not all vital collaboration partners are present. Problem: Incomplete input and limited output.
  • Collaborators often enter with specific (albeit unconscious) goals and limited tolerance for risk. Problem: Restricted possibility and inspiration.

As a result, we end up with little real change, spend time waiting for takeaways that don’t occur, expend considerable relationship capital, or overlook the full range of possibilities.

  1. Biased communication. After spending 3 years researching and writing a book on the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I now appreciate it’s nearly impossible for collaboration partners to all walk away with the same understanding. Therefore, 1. Tape each session. 2. Get group agreement on what’s been said and action items before moving on to the next topic.
  2. Gender, age, and ethnic diversity are necessary. Consider your goal. Think about who you might invite to offer different perspectives. Invite Troublemakers.
  3. Make sure everyone has access to the agenda well before the meeting. There can be no hidden agendas; too much is lost that ends up being problematic later on.
  4. Everyone must attend meetings. If anyone can’t come to the meeting, cancel it or there will be a voice, an idea, an annoyance missing that would counteract the reasons underlying the collaboration. Anyone who will touch the final solution must be present to move forward or there will be fallout, sabotage, and resistance: there is no way to compensate (as per creativity or consensus) once a meeting is held with folks missing.
  5. No restrictions. Collaborators must enter with no assumptions. Collaboration means you either meld disparate ideas, or cultivate something new among you that’s never existed.

We all bring our natural biases and assumptions to the collaboration table, thereby restricting possibilities. Yet until we confront, challenge, and defy the status quo with new thinking, there can’t be change. And that’s the problem: Our results are in direct proportion to our ability to override our biases and assumptions.

BIAS RESTRICTS COLLABORATION

Since researching and writing my new book  What? Did you really say what I think I heard? I have realized it’s pretty impossible to accurately comprehend what others mean to convey. Here’s a summary of what I learned:

Not only do our eyes merely take in light that our brains then translate (through our filters uniquely developed since birth) into what we think we see, our ears merely take in sound that our brains then translate (through our filters) into what we think others mean – hence we each experience the world uniquely, through our personal translations. To make it truly pernicious, our brains only offer us the translation itself: we never know how far from the Truth we are, potentially causing misplaced resistance and misinterpretation.

For effective collaborations, we must move beyond our filters to hear others without bias during meetings:

  1. Notice resistance, feelings, annoyances, or immediate negativity the moment it happens and ask yourself: How can I hear what’s just been said in a different way?
  2. Since you don’t actually know if what you think you’ve heard is accurate, tell your collaboration partners what you think you heard and ask them if they heard the same thing.
  3. Make sure there are no strong feelings left unsaid after each discussion topic.
  4. At the start of a session, everyone must agree to goals/outcomes for each topic; as each topic is completed, everyone must agree on action items that will match the original goals. Everyone.
  5. At the end of the session, agree to all action items and take-aways. Do a review of what’s been accomplished according to original goals. Ask if anyone else needs to be included for the next session.

By minimizing biases, by including a full range of thought-partners, and by checking in with the other collaborators as to what’s been said and heard, it’s possible to form effective collaborations. Otherwise, we’re merely doing more of the same.

_____________________

 

Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com.
She can be reached at  sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com // 512.457.0246 www.didihearyou.com ; www.sharondrewmorgen.com

Can Collaboration Work? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

27 Jul 16:11

Sales Ops: Bridging the Sales-Marketing Content Gap

by Colin Fong

Sales and marketing are the unruly siblings of the business world. They fight over budget, point fingers at each other whenever there’s trouble, and sometimes even refuse to talk to each other altogether. That can be problematic, because marketers have a lot of choice words for their sales teams, and salespeople have a lot to say to marketing in return.

While there are some things in life that will inevitably lead to conflict (deal attribution and deciding who gets to pick the channel on TV are two that come readily to mind), an amicable relationship between sales and marketing is essential to smooth revenue growth. That’s why alignment between the two “siblings” has to be a main area of focus for Sales Operations.

One tactic to achieve that goal is effective content management. Content creation is the perfect bridge to promote sales-marketing alignment because the result is win-win enablement for both sides.

Marketing receives guidance from the sales team about the pains their target audience experiences and the questions they are asking about the company’s product, which allows for more targeted content that generates more leads. In return, sales receives content that is specific to their needs and specialized to move prospects at each stage of the sales funnel.

The challenge is ensuring that once the content is produced, there is a system in place for distributing and amplifying that content. The two pillars of that system are:

Clear Communication:

Effective content hinges on communication between the two teams, and on their ability to deliver a consistent message through each stage of their prospects’ buying process.

The basis for this communication is accurate customer profiles. By compiling data about what type of companies stand to benefit the most from your product, you ensure that both sales and marketing tailor their go-to-market approach to the prospects that are most compatible with your company’s offering.

If your go-to-market strategy is founded on well-developed customer profiles, it’s easy to identify the missing pieces of your content offering. Sales Ops can then gather anecdotal evidence from sales based around gaps in the existing marketing collateral, and help the marketing team to target their messaging around those gaps.

Simple Distribution:

Once the process of creating new content is complete and the marketing team releases new collateral, the next challenge is to distribute it. A big component of sales enablement is to simply encourage the sales team to leverage the resources that are provided for them.

The sales team needs a system that alerts reps to new content and helps them to find the right collateral for each of their engagements. The reality is reps don’t exert effort to find the right collateral — they use what’s at their fingertips, and do without content if there’s nothing there.

To make distribution simple, it’s important to invest in a content management solution (like Docurated, Box, or Google Drive), organize content around the sales process your team follows, and send out regular notifications whenever a new piece is produced.

By tying content around consistent customer profiles, providing sales feedback to the marketing team, and making content accessible to the sales team, Sales Operations both streamlines the movement of opportunities through the sales funnel, and amplifies content as it is produced.

Sales reps can (and should) be big-time promoters of your company’s marketing content. Involving them in its creation and matching it to their needs ensures that they will be.

27 Jul 16:10

People are clearly worried that Apple's 'golden goose' is in trouble (AAPL)

by Lisa Eadicicco

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple delivered a strong and generally positive earnings report earlier this week.

It beat expectations for revenue. iPhone sales are up 35% from last year. Apple says more people are switching to the iPhone from Android now than ever before. The company has a record $203 billion in cash reserves. 

But still, Apple's stock tanked globally.

Despite the company's glowing numbers, there was one key metric that fell below Wall Street's expectations: the number of iPhone units sold.

Analysts and industry watchers had expected Apple to sell 48.8 million iPhones. The whisper number was even more ambitious at 50 million units.

Instead, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones during the three month period ending in June. Apple says this is because it tried to avoid having excess inventory in the channel so it shipped 600,000 fewer iPhones than usual. 

But shareholders' reaction to the news indicates just how vital the iPhone is to Apple's business. To them, it seems, Apple is the iPhone. 

Apple even added a new sentence to the risk disclosure section regarding quarterly revenue and operating results fluctuations in its 10-Q filing following earnings. The addition, which Morgan Stanley first spotted, seems to refer to the iPhone:

“Further, the Company generates a majority of its net sales from a single product and a decline in demand for that product could significantly impact quarterly net sales.”

A quick look at Apple's numbers shows exactly why analysts and investors are paying such close attention to the iPhone. It's Apple's biggest source of revenue. In fact, it accounts for more than half of Apple's total revenue, as the infographic below shows.

Apple Revenue Q3 2015The iPhone has been the most important product driving Apple's growth over the past several years. The iPhone's revenue as a percentage of Apple's total sales has grown exponentially since 2007. 

20150721_iPhone_BI_02

The lower-than-expected number comes after analysts have been expressing a specific concern around the iPhone for months: Has it peaked? Can Apple continue to innovate the way it has with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus? Apple's newest iPhones have both been massively successful and have lead the company to break previous iPhone sales records.

But analysts have worried that this will make it harder for Apple to show that the iPhone is actually growing in the future. This is what Wall Street usually refers to as the "comps" problem. 

"[The] iPhone obviously drives the profits at Apple, and so I think the fear of that golden goose coming under pressure is always there," Cantor Fitzgerald's Brian White said to Business Insider. 

White, however, also believes the Street's estimates were too high.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus"I think the Street got ahead of Apple," he said. "I don't think you could really justify the numbers that they had. And so they got everybody excited, and I think that was part of it."

One reason industry watchers chose that number is because of Apple's strong presence in China. Sales in China were up 87% this past quarter.

"I think a lot of us that were doing work throughout the quarter kind of thought that the strength they were seeing in China would have been enough to have them beat that number a bit," Raymond James & Associates' Tavis McCourt told Business Insider. 

There's another theory about the iPhone that some analysts are contemplating — the iPhone 6 isn't done yet, and it won't be for a while. Once Apple releases its next iPhone, people will continue to buy the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. This will be especially true if Apple decides to lower their prices following a new phone launch. 

The larger screen on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are a huge departure from Apple's previous phones. Since they're larger in size, that also means they're more fit to compete with high-end Android phones around the same size. This leads analysts to believes that Apple's current iPhones will have a longer demand cycle than Apple's previous phones, especially since only 27% of the current installed base has upgraded so far.

"It's a multi-year cycle, and once you come to grips with that I think you're going to feel better about Apple and what's happening with the bigger phones here," White said. 

In fact, one analyst believes Apple is going through a change. Timothy Arcuri of Cowen and Company says this upgrade cycle may be different in that the current generation iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will remain the primary drivers behind iPhone sales rather than the new model.

"It's just not the same narrative as it's been in the past," he said. "In the past it's always been that the new version sells more. And you're entering a phase where the company is in a transition."

SEE ALSO: Apple has a clever idea that could make Apple TV a lot better

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 2 texting tricks you didn't know you could do on your iPhone

27 Jul 16:10

Is Your LinkedIn Tank Filled with the Right Gas?

by Wayne Breitbarth

Connections are the gas in your LinkedIn tank, and every time you connect with someone on LinkedIn, it affects the quality of your network–just like the quality of the gas you purchase affects how your car runs. In other words, not all connections are created equal.Gas Prices

Most people add connections haphazardly, but to be highly successful on LinkedIn it’s important to develop a strategy for growing a dynamic network that will help you reach your most ambitious goals.

Everyone’s situation is unique, but here are some general suggestions that will help you understand what types of people you should connect with to strengthen your network and help you enhance your brand, find a job, assist your favorite nonprofit, or grow your business.
.

Who can help you enhance your personal brand?
.

  • People who have had similar career paths to yours
  • Leaders in your industry associations
  • Individuals who have large networks (LinkedIn or otherwise) concentrated in your region or industry
  • People who work for some of the well-respected companies in your region and industry
    .

Who can help you find a new job or advance your career?
.

  • People who work in your industry and region
  • People who work for companies you are interested in
  • Recruiters who specialize in your industry
  • Consultants and experts in your industry
  • Human resources professionals who work at your target companies
    .

Who can help your favorite nonprofit thrive?
.

  • People who volunteer for or sit on boards of similar nonprofits
  • Individuals who work at large corporations, foundations, etc. and tend to support nonprofits like yours
  • People who are involved in groups that have large volunteer pools (e.g., religious organizations, schools, clubs, etc.)
  • People who work for media outlets
    .

Who can help you generate sales leads, market your company’s products and services, and grow your business?
.

  • Individuals who are the direct decision-makers for the purchase of your products and services
  • People who are indirectly involved in the decision to purchase your products and services (strategic influencers or people from the company who weigh in on the decision)
  • High-ranking officers at the companies that purchase your products and services, even if they are not the direct decision-makers
  • Individuals who hang around with the people listed in the first two bullets (probably deliver similar services to the same purchasers)
  • People who are recognized industry experts
  • Leaders of your industry associations and/or people who manage industry events
  • Individuals who are well networked in your region or industry
  • Experts who provide educational content for the industry

Connecting with the above-referenced people will definitely improve the quality of your network.

For insights on the quantity part of your LinkedIn connection strategy, check out the article below, which is part of my LinkedIn online course “Explode Your Revenues Using LinkedIn.” And for a limited time, the complete course can be yours for only $147 (list price $297). Click here for details.

Download (PDF, 344KB)


.

The post Is Your LinkedIn Tank Filled with the Right Gas? appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.

27 Jul 16:09

Perfect Your Cold Calling Skills In 7 Steps

by Tracy Vides

Perfect Your Cold Calling Skills in 7 Steps

We hear talk about inbound marketing and how we need to draw the customer to our business, instead of chasing them down. But think about it, how many businesses have ditched outbound marketing entirely in favor of inbound marketing? However, much it looks like outbound marketing is becoming obsolete, cold calls remain a reality of most B2B as well as many B2C sales profiles.

While cold calls are not going anywhere, the standard of your calls needs to get better, quick. With technologies like reverse phone lookup, customers can now use your phone number to track down details your business and send in legal complaints about being harassed with unsolicited sales calls. Not a happy place to be in, for sure.

The answer? Get better at making those calls. Don’t be a nuisance, be a solution for your customer.

1. Refine Your List

Too many sales reps make the mistake of landing a list of prospects and attacking that list without consideration to whether it’s a list of qualified leads or just a random list bought off of some vendor. Most organizations have clear criteria about what makes a lead a hot one, something worth pursuing. Figure out what those key factors are for your company and check if the people on your list make the cut. It could be anything from the industry in which the prospect operates to their geographical location to their annual purchase budgets.

Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads says data from the Annuitas Group. Make sure you’re not wasting your time barking up the wrong trees.

2. Do Your Research Before You Pick Up The Phone

In this day and age, it’s unforgivable to call up a prospect without knowing anything about them. The average sales rep has a ton of sources to begin their search. Check out your prospect’s LinkedIn profile, join groups that they are members of, initiate contact over social media as a means of getting a foot in the door.

According to a study conducted by the Aberdeen Group, 72.6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their peers and exceeded quota 23% more often. Steve Richard from Vorsight found that you are 70 percent more likely to get an appointment with someone on an “unexpected sales call” if you are in a common LinkedIn group than if you aren’t.

Social media is not the only option. Research their company website, read up about their competition, check if they’ve been in the news lately, see if there have been any movements in their industry lately, or even if they have ever purchased anything from your company before. Any bit of information can be mined to build a relationship that offers rich dividends in the long run.

3. Pick The Right Time To Call

Timing is everything for most critical things that you’ll do in life. Cold calling is no different. Inside Sales and the Kellogg School of Business found that the best time to cold call a prospect is between 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. Calling before your prospect plunges headlong in to their work day also works well. 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. come runners up in the “best time to cold call” stakes. The one chunk of time you absolutely must avoid is late morning to afternoon – 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Thursday and Wednesday are the two best converting days of the week, while Mondays and Tuesdays are a bad idea for obvious reasons.

4. DO NOT Sell On Your First Call

The biggest mistake many sales reps do when they get a prospect on the line is that they dive right into selling their product to the prospect. Understand that whoever you are calling probably receives 20 calls a day like yours and probably could not care less about your product.

Remember that research you did before the call? Put that to good use by striking up a conversation about things that are relevant to the user. Talk about some awesome work you did with the prospect’s competitor. That will definitely get them interested. Alternately, talk about how your product can help in the new product launch that their company is planning. Or mention a recent problem their company faced and how you can help them fix it. You get the drift. Once you make a real connection with the prospect, they will want you to sell to them. Just don’t go at it right at the beginning and put them off.

5. Rinse And Repeat

No sales person has ever met their quota by making a cold call whenever they feel like it. Research shows that in 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts. In short, perseverance is the name of the game, when it comes to successful cold calling.

Dedicate a definite amount of time each day to making cold calls. You know that only about 3 to 4% of calls result in a conversion. With that in mind, set a target number of calls you need to make every day. The more you call, the better you’ll get at it, and the more you’ll convert.

6. Follow Up

So you managed to get through to your prospect. They connected with what you talked about in your first call and set up a face to face meeting. Now comes the tough part. Don’t walk in expecting to knock ’em dead with your charm in just one meeting. As Robert Clay writes in the Marketing Donut, 80% of sales require 5 follow up calls after the first meeting. Trouble is, 44% of salespeople don’t go beyond 1 follow up.

A follow up becomes even more important when your first call did not succeed. If you could not get the prospect on the line the first time, leave a message. And then, try again later. If your prospect was busy and requested a call back at a more convenient hour, call back then. Don’t let inertia get the best of you. A request for a call back is a sign of interest. Not following up is like wasting a would-be sale. No good salesperson ever does that.

7. Learn How To Handle Rejection

The fact that not even ten people in a hundred are going to respond positively to what you’re trying to sell day in and day out, can get very tough. However you must remember, that it’s not personal. It’s not because you are a bad salesperson that you keep getting hung up on. Every single salesperson faces rejection on an everyday basis.

What sets the star salespersons from the also-rans is their thick skin and their die-hard perseverance. It’s a prospect’s right to say No. Don’t let that bother you. Just figure out whether it is a “Not right now” or a “Never” and proceed from there.

Parting Thoughts

Discover Org found that 75% of over 1,000 senior executives they spoke to had attended an event or appointment that was set up via a cold call or email. That’s proof that not only does cold calling work, it can work exceedingly well if done right. You have the tools now. Go get ‘em, tiger!

27 Jul 16:09

What Team Centered Goal-Setting Really Looks Like

by Mike Goldman

As a leader, how much time are you spending setting the vision and tone for your company versus wading into the details or putting out fires? Your focus should be to create a great team and give them the tools to produce the results you want. However, the biggest challenges leaders face are trusting their teams enough to set the right goals and holding teams accountable once the goals are set. Many leaders think their employees should be given direction to get the job done and find it difficult to trust even their A players with defining goals and making key decisions.

By micromanaging and being involved with every goal or decision, you are creating a bottleneck and demotivating your best people. Therefore, you need to come to terms with any trust issues. Leaders need be learn to be more collaborative in goal setting by giving their team’s ownership for setting goals rather than setting goals for them.

So how can you implement team centered goal setting? Following are five steps you can take toward trusting your team to set the right goals and measures to hold them accountable for the goals.

1.  Define and Communicate Core Ideology – Leaders need to define a core ideology or framework to guide teams and employees so the right goals are set—core purpose, core values, and BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals). Core ideologies are the “almost never changing” foundation of your organization and are made up of your core purpose and core values.

  • Core Purpose: This is the “why” of the organization, and it is not just about making a profit. Your core purpose answers the question, “What difference are we making in the world?”

  • Core Values: This is the “how” of the organization. Core values are a non-negotiable handful of rules your organization lives by every day.

The right core purpose and core values act as a set of guiding principles for the organization. This allows leaders to stop micromanaging and give more freedom to their team members.

Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, defines BHAGs as ambitious long-term goals that galvanize successful companies. He writes, “The power of the BHAG is that it gets you out of thinking too small. A great BHAG changes the time frame and simultaneously creates a sense of urgency … A BHAG helps you build a great company; because if you don’t have a great company you can’t achieve the BHAG.”

Collins further states that the BHAG is not a modern management idea. It has been utilized throughout history and cites many examples, one of which is IBM. “In 1925 there was a tiny little company called the Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company. Tom Watson changed the name to The International Business Machines Corporation. Tom Watson Jr. writes about looking at his father and thinking, you mean that little company? But Watson was setting a BHAG that it would become THE International Business Machines Corporation.”

2. Create Corporate Targets and Goals – The leadership team should work together, annually and quarterly, to define financial targets, key performance indicators and, most important, the top two to four priorities for the organization—what does the organization need to accomplish or improve upon over the next ninety days? Good leaders and managers set goals for their teams and create an accountability structure to manage and measure results. Exceptional leaders take that idea one step further by allowing their teams to set their own goals, which allows them to take more ownership and accountability toward their accomplishment.

A team centered goal setting process can work as follows:

  • Conduct a team planning meeting where you focus on two objectives:

    – Ensure the team understands the organizational vision and strategic goals or initiatives.

    – Ask your team to work together over the next week to identify four to eight key metrics that will drive the team toward the accomplishment of the organizational goals. (i.e., number of sales meetings, number of new clients, number of referrals, customer retention rate, etc.).  For each metric, they should also work together to set team and/or individual goals.

  • Conduct a follow-up team planning meeting to review the metrics and goals your team has developed. Push back if you are uncomfortable with either the metrics or the specific goals. Make sure your team is aggressive, but not unrealistic. Just because your team is setting its own goals does not mean you should not provide strong guidance when necessary.

3. Create Departmental Targets and Goals – With these corporate targets and priorities in mind, department leaders should work collaboratively with their teams quarterly to set targets and priorities within their own departments. As much as possible, these goals should align with the corporate goals.

4. Create Individual Targets and Goals – Department leaders should then ask each member of the team to create their own goals in alignment with department and corporate goals. In other words, how will you help the company succeed?

5. Implement an Accountability Process – Most important, a scorecard and meeting rhythm needs to be put in place to hold individuals accountable for these goals and to adjust the goals as necessary weekly and monthly.

Most company dysfunctions sprout from a lack of communication and alignment. The problems spiral downward as leaders feel they have less time for meetings because they’re putting out fires. Leaders need to understand that implementing the right meetings, with the right agendas facilitated in the right way, will actually save them time and increase productivity throughout the organization.

 Meeting rhythms should include the following:

  • Annual Planning: This is typically a two-day retreat where the old plan is assessed, the current realities are tested, and the new plan is formulated.

  • Quarterly Planning: Emphasis is on reviewing and resetting priorities and goals for the next thirteen weeks.

  • Monthly Management Meeting: This serves to promote directed review and education opportunities.

  • Weekly Meeting: This serves as a status and update session for the entire team at either executive or departmental level. More time is spent dealing with deeper detail and examination/education on an operational/tactical level.

  • Daily Huddle: This stand-up meeting facilitates daily synchronization for the entire team at executive and departmental levels. Information is shared either up or down the reporting chain. This session is designed to expose issues that need resolution, not necessarily to resolve them on the spot.

 Goals Equal Growth

When you set the vision and tone for your firm—instead of putting out fires—and rely on your team to set goals and get the job done, your team takes ownership and leaves you more time to focus on what’s  important to grow your business. Your shift in focus empowers your teams to have greater impact while increasing morale, which leads to stronger bottom line results.

27 Jul 16:09

4 Reasons Why SMBs Need A Marketing Automation System

by Tahir Akbar

Marketing automation is expected to penetrate more than 45% of B2B businesses in this year. With some industries (Like Tech and ICT) already showing over 80% penetration, the chances of its further popularity are very bright.

By definition, marketing automation refers to using technology software to market products/services on multiple channels and automate repetitive tasks. From email marketing, CRM, communication, to blog posting and social media management; there are a range of areas where tasks can be communicated. The following statistics indicate how the industry has evolved in the past decade.

  • Searches for “marketing automation” keyword, the searches has increased by 25% in the past one year. You can check this using any keyword tracking tool or Google’s free keyword planner.
  • Forbes magazine estimates that 63% companies outclassed their competitors using one or more automation tool.
  • As of December 2013, 25% B2B Fortune 500 companies were using some marketing automation tool like Makesbridge or Marketo. The percentage is expected to reach 45-50 percent by this year end.
  • Surveys indicate that companies increase sales by 77%, and conversion rate by 53%, if they automate their marketing.
  • Lead nurturing is the most popular feature in marketing automation that has been cited as the most effective tool to boost sales.

Why Marketing Automation in 2015?

SiriusDecision estimates that marketing automation platforms have a penetration rate of 25% and by the end of 2015; the adoption will grow to 50%. However, this does not apply on every industry as there are some industries with higher rate of penetration. 74% best performing B2B companies are already using technology enabled marketing campaigns and achieving their marketing goals. (Check more stats here)

In the following, I’m going to give you a brief version of the reasons making marketing automation an absolute necessity for your business.

1. Cross-Channel Integration:

Marketing automation integrates your marketing and sales channels in a delicate way. Companies with thigh alignment between marketing and sales tend to generate 46% more sales. By having a marketing automation solution, a marketer can integrate her digital, social and email marketing campaigns. This cross-integration between different channels and aspects helps in achievement of goals fast. You can automate selling process, set auto-responders, schedule emails drips, automate social posting, and manage content marketing exercise. It’s more like a 24/7 workforce that is performing your duties even if you are not on the desk.

2. Deep Analytics and Intelligence:

One of the key features that every platform offers is marketing intelligence. When you subscribe to marketing or email marketing platform, it includes a tool to track standard set of statistics, like; open rates, website traffic, sources, click through rates, offer subscriptions, and bounce rate. Subscribing to a multi-tasking platform enables you to track your email marketing, social posts, content marketing, and SEO campaigns. Finally, if you integrate marketing automation with CRM, it can be a great source to track prospects, score leads, and close better deals.

3. Landing Pages:

The concept of newsletter is not new; it’s one of the most popular forms of marketing. The same concept drives the growth of landing pages; a trendy tool in online marketing. Marketing automation vendors allow you to create custom newsletter and landing pages to close the deal on the spot. With a reliable marketing automation platform, you can improve landing pages exercise, set up A/B tests, and maximize outreach of the marketing or sales campaign.

4. Improved Efficiency:

It’s an open secret that SMEs have limited marketing and sales budgets and they’re also short on time. Studies indicate that single biggest concern of small businesses is time leakage in the business processes. Marketing automation can get small businesses out of this by automating their processes and rectifying time leakages.

Finally, if you are a marketer or a young entrepreneur, it is strongly recommended to use technology to your advantage and apply the latest marketing trends. Marketing automation integrates technology to your business and enhances business’ efficiency and return on investment.

25 Jul 19:02

25 hacks that will get you through the airport faster than ever

by Business Insider
25 Jul 19:01

How To Use HootSuite For Social Media Management

by Marc Guberti

HootSuite Social Media Tool

When most people think of HootSuite, they think of a revolutionary platform that allowed people to schedule their tweets before most of the other social media post scheduling services were available. HootSuite set the example for others to follow, and now thousands of social media post scheduling tools are on the web. Most people use HootSuite for just that: scheduling tweets and social media posts for other accounts too.

Within the basic, popular capability of scheduling tweets is an entire dashboard that allows you to find the exact content you are looking for and use social media in an effective manner. It wasn’t until I became a HootSuite Ambassador when I finally considered using this dashboard, but if you are not using the dashboard, then you are not getting the full value out of HootSuite. HootSuite is a valuable tool for your social media strategy, but it is also a valuable tool for your productivity.

The well-known advantage of HootSuite is the ability to send and schedule multiple tweets on the same platform. You can schedule a tweet for your Twitter account and send a Facebook post with the same platform. This HootSuite feature encouraged me to create another Twitter account which I am actively growing. The ability to send one tweet from my main account and some tweets for other Twitter accounts that I am building from the ground up on the same platform is game changing. Without HootSuite, I would have to log into each account, send some tweets while logged into Twitter, log out of each account, and repeat the process until I successfully sent some tweets from all of my accounts.

The time I save by scheduling tweets from one platform is nice, but that’s how most people see HootSuite: a time-saving app for scheduling content. Now, I will discuss the dashboard, how you can use it to find the content you want, and how you can save more time on it.

Tabs

The tabs on HootSuite work like tabs on an internet browser. Chances are you may have some tabs on your browser as you are reading this blog post. Let’s say that one of those tabs is Twitter. Once you are done reading this blog post and want to move onto something else on the web (my feelings aren’t hurt), you may simply click on the tab you already had opened that leads you to Twitter.

HootSuite’s tabs work just like that. You can have Twitter searches and lists for a specific area show up on one tab. You can have your scheduled tweets, sent tweets, and mentions on another tab. One of your tabs can contain stuff relevant to your social media strategy while another tab can contain a bunch of random facts tweets. My recommendation is to only use tabs related to your niche. I have tabs that show me tweets of articles about blogging, Twitter, and social media in general. Each time I click on one of these tabs, I get to see specific information that I was looking for.

Streams

When you add something to a tab—your scheduled tweets, your mentions, a Twitter search for a keyword, your Instagram account, or anything else—those are called streams. Streams fill up your tabs with valuable information that can help inspire your next blog post idea, increase your knowledge in a certain area, or fill you with motivation.

Using The Social Networks Without Actually Being On Them

The huge difference between using HootSuite and using a social network on the actual platform is that there are fewer distractions. On Twitter and Facebook, it is easy to get caught up in the trending topics and your friends’ posts. On HootSuite, those two options don’t exist. HootSuite does not show the trending topics, and the only way to see your friends’ posts on HootSuite is if you include a special tab for all of your friends’ posts (not recommended because that can eat up a big chunk of your time).

You can rest assured that all of these streams will get updated with the newest content. HootSuite gives you the option of a manual refresh (not recommended. You must click the refresh button for the refresh to occur) and the option of automatically refreshing all of your streams every 2-30 minutes. The automatic refresh option allows your tabs and streams update in real-time just like social networks do.

HootSuite Pro Bulk Scheduler

HootSuite Pro opens you up to new features provided on the platform, and one of the top features is the bulk scheduler. The bulk scheduler allows you to upload a CSV file of prewritten tweets (Numbers for Apple users and Microsoft Excel for other computers) under their easy-to-follow format. The bulk scheduler allows me to save an easy 10 hours per week. Manually scheduling 100 tweets would take me two hours, even with copying and pasting from a document of prewritten tweets (I did this when I manually scheduled tweets). Sending the same number of tweets with the Bulk Scheduler only takes six clicks.

The bulk scheduler is great for people who send tweets in a cycle. I am totally okay with admitting that I tweet the same thing more than once. In fact, I have probably tweeted about some of the same tweets over 100 times. How do I have so many followers then? The answer is that I space my tweets by several days, and all of the tweets provide the right value for my targeted audience. It is entirely okay to tweet the same things over and over again and still gain hundreds of daily followers. I’m not the only one who sends out repeat tweets. Some of the top experts follow this same approach.

More Than Five Social Media Accounts

When you get HootSuite Pro, you can now add more than five social media accounts to your HootSuite account. This makes it easier for you to manage all of your social media accounts, and if you plan on creating numerous Twitter accounts, then this feature will be very beneficial for your strategy. All of your social media platforms in one place. That’s the best way to operate your social media strategy on the busy, noisy web.

In Conclusion

HootSuite was voted as the #1 Social Media Tool in 2014 for a reason. Not only does HootSuite make scheduling tweets a breeze, but HootSuite also makes it possible for people to use their social networks in a more productive manner. I love using the tool, and I use it every day for scheduling tweets and staying up to date in my niche.

I may be a HootSuite Ambassador, but I did not come armed with an affiliate link, and this article was not written for any compensation. I viewed HootSuite as a wonderful tool well before I became one of their Ambassadors.

What are your thoughts about HootSuite’s capabilities? Do you have any tips for using HootSuite? Do you use HootSuite teams feature? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

25 Jul 19:01

3 Things All Leaders Should Know About Data and Predictive Analytics

by Alison Murdock

b2c

If you’re like most small-to-medium business owners, you’re probably trying to accomplish a lot with a small team. You might have just a few people who split sales and marketing duties, or you might be trying to build a sales team or marketing team from the ground up. At the same time, you’re probably trying to juggle growing revenue, raising funding, and expanding your user or client base.

One thing that can get lost in the shuffle is your data. Although you can operate on a daily basis with little to no awareness of your data (and most companies do), you should know that it’s a critical building block of sustained success – and its influence is growing by leaps and bounds.

So, what exactly can data do for you? Here are three basic things you need to know about data and its potential to transform your business.

#1: Everyone has data

Some executives assume their data is insignificant because their companies aren’t at the enterprise level. That’s a myth. Even at small companies, the challenge is that you are actually swimming in data.

Think about it: any activity that can be logged online (whether it’s a click, a phone-call record, or the download of a white paper or report) generates a “digital footprint.” In 2010, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt declared that we now create five exabytes of data every two days. To put that in perspective, it took between the dawn of civilization and the year 2003 to create that much data. In 2014, IDC announced that the, by 2020, the digital universe will approximately double every two years.

#2: Most data is backward-looking

The companies that pay attention to their data generally use it to look at what happened in the past. For example, the marketing team sees that a certain number of visitors came to their website in a given month, and that a certain percentage of those visitors clicked through three pages before exiting. Or a sales manager sees through their CRM app that a certain number of deals were closed in the past quarter, and that the average deal size was a certain amount.

This kind of diagnostic information is useful. It might help you repeat successes (e.g., that subject line got a lot of opens) and prevent future missteps (e.g., that landing page generated little engagement). But you’re only getting a view of past performance. The data doesn’t tell you what’s going to happen in the future.

#3: The future of data is predictive

The most advanced organizations are not only aware of their data, they’re layering in predictive technologies that are putting them leaps and bounds ahead of their competition. That’s because such tools are helping them optimize their future actions and decisions.

For example, take operations. Predictive tools can help you determine:

  • Which accounts your team should pursue first.
  • Which contacts for a certain account are optimal to target.
  • How likely prospects are to buy from you, and when.

Predictive tools can help your salespeople and marketers make better, more informed, and more efficient decisions so that their actions and activities align with the best outcome for your company. That’s because predictive intelligence ties together billions of rows of varied data – from historical data, to engagement data, to third-party data. Predictive models are built and designed to look for deviations in past buying patterns and shine a light on the insights that matter. For example, you can find out:

  • Which accounts salespeople should call on first.
  • Which value proposition to highlight with a specific account.
  • What kind of content asset (white paper or video, for example) and form of communication (email or phone call, for example) will get the best engagement.
25 Jul 19:00

How the Experts Protect Themselves Online (Compared to Everyone Else)

by Whitson Gordon

If you ask the average person what the best ways to protect themselves online are, they’ll give some true answers—but they’ll likely be different than the answers you’d get from a security researcher. Here’s the difference.

Read more...

25 Jul 18:54

Millennials Can Be More Loyal Than Other Age Cohorts — But Only If Brands Deliver On Emotional Values & Expectations

by Robert Passikoff

As more marketers have focused on the Millennial Generation with efforts focused on capturing this cohort’s attentions, major budgets are being planned in the mistaken belief that Millennials are less brand loyal than other age cohorts, and require additional attention to create brand preference.

A recent assessment of 12,300 Millennial consumers in 63 categories conducted by Brand Keys, Inc., the New York City-based brand loyalty and emotional engagement research consultancy, proves that emotional values and higher expectations not only play a greater part in the Millennial decision-process but that a brand’s ability to deliver on required emotional values trumps rational ones every time. It turns out that the loyalty bonds created by doing so for Millennials are stronger than those of other age groups.

Today Emotions Are More Important to Millennials

In 1985, when the first of what was christened the “Millennial Generation” were about 5 years old the purchase-decision process was more rational than it was emotional, calculated to be a ratio of 70:30. That meant rational values having to do pricing, product quality, numbers of distribution points, and advertising tonnage, were more important, more leveragable, and more differentiating to consumers than emotional values.

In 2000 the ratio shifted to 65:35,emotional to rational.

Five years later the ratio reversed the 1985 numbers, this time 70:30, but with the preponderance of the decision process turning emotional.

This year, 2015 – as the first Millennials turn 35 – the decision process is decidedly more emotional, at a category-generalized ratio of 80:20. Emotional values like customization, meeting personal emotive needs, the ability to meaningfully “talk” to the brand that actually “listened,” and a sense of authenticity, became more important in the brand bonding decision-process as consumers had more and more access to the Internet and lived hot-wired mobile devices and, consequently, more and more empowered empowered. Millennials are demanding real reasons to be loyal.

Ratios of Emotional vs. Rational Values in Millennial Brand Decision-Making

Millennials Have Higher Expectations

Complicating marketing efforts, overall, cross-category expectations (examined by generational cohort and indexed versus a benchmark of 100 to provide comparability) showed Millennials to hold significantly higher expectations regarding categories and brands than any other age group as well.

Overall Customer Expectation levels By Generational Cohort

High Numbers of Millennial Loyalty Leaders

One thing that crosses all generational cohorts as regards brand loyalty and engagement is that brands best able to meet the consumers’ expectations for the values – particularly emotional values – that drive the category are always the brands that show up on the top of consumers’ shopping lists. A review of the Millennial loyalty leaders in the 63 categories included in this analysis revealed that 91% of them were the category’s leaders. These included brands like Apple, Nike, Chipotle, and Old Navy.

Ultimately brands that are able to stand for the right emotional values, maintain relevance, and better meet Millennial’s expectations have shown higher levels of positive consumer behavior in the marketplace and higher loyalty levels than any other generational cohort. The secret, of course, is identifying and measuring what expectations Millennials hold for which emotional values and then planning how to communicate them to consumers in an engaging manner.

And unfortunately, that’s a more complex process than just adding more social networking or more storytelling to the marketing budget.

25 Jul 18:46

Warning: These Copywriting Tips Will Skyrocket Your Sales Online

by Jimmy Rodela

Copywriting Tips

According to Statista.com’s projections, the number of online shoppers in the United States will shoot up to a whopping 206.2 million in 2016.

#mindblowing!

In case you haven’t thought about it, you’ll be set for life if you’ll manage to get even just a 1% slice out of that 206.2 million figure.

This is a good reminder of why it’s crucial for businesses to create a website, and to develop a high converting sales funnel. The more optimized their materials are for sales, the bigger the slice they’ll get out of the “pie” : the online shoppers pie. And, this is where professional copywriters come in.

Through a carefully crafted copy, you can easily triple or quadruple your sales. On the contrary, however, if your sales pages are poorly written, chances are you’ll get very little, to no sales at all.

So, just to make sure that you don’t end-up experiencing the latter, allow me to share with you these copywriting tips.

Let’s jump right in.

Tell stories.

For the most part, people tend to get annoyed when they are told to do something. That is why a lot of the marketing copies published nowadays are crafted in such a way that the companies are telling compelling stories; rather than blatantly telling people what to do and what not.

Following this rule is especially important when creating sales copies. Because as you tell a story, your audience will tend to envision themselves as the main character of your story making your copy even more interesting, and relatable to your audience.

Once you start talking about the problems your character is facing – which of course, should also be similar to the problems that your target audience are facing – then your copy can easily elicit emotions from your readers.

That right there is the sweet spot!

Making your readers emotional can drastically increase your chances of closing the sale since people buy based on emotions; and not necessarily on logic – at least in most cases.

And if that isn’t enough, storytelling-type copies aren’t just effective in influencing your prospects to buy your product, but they can also help make your content go viral.

That being said, this technique will help you increase your sales, AND help you market your actual sales page.

Increase the value of your product.

Do you want to increase the value of your product in your readers’ minds; all without having to spend more to improve your product?

Think it’s impossible? It actually isn’t.

One of the surefire ways of increasing your product’s value without having to improve your actual product is to talk about your audience’s’ problems.

More than just reminding them, you need to rub it on their faces so they’ll remember the frustration, the hassle, and the pain of having faced that specific situation.

The more you are successful at doing this, the more your audience will want to solve their problems as soon as they can.

Of course, you’ll position your product as the solution. This will make your product’s value skyrocket in your reader’s mind.

To illustrate this clearly, I need you to imagine this…

Day 1

As Joe was heading to his office, he stopped by at a pizza parlor and devoured an entire box’ worth of pizza; and so he’s stuffed.

When he arrived in his office, the first thing that his officemates tell him is that they’re headed out for some chinese food.

At this point, Joe will decides to forgo his officemates’ invitation, since he’s already full.

Day 2

Joe hasn’t had his breakfast; so he’s starving.

After an hour’s worth of travel from his home to his office, he arrived in his office hungry as a bear.

The good news is, the first thing that his officemates tell him when he arrived in the office is that they’re still headed out for the same Chinese restaurant that they went to yesterday.

At this point, Joe accepted his officemates’ invitation and went out with them.

Question.

Why do you think did Joe go out with his officemates on the second day, when his officemates went to the same exact Chinese restaurant that he declined on the first day?

What caused “the value” of the Chinese restaurant to suddenly increase in Joe’s mind?

You guessed it right. Joe’s hunger.

Notice how the Chinese restaurant didn’t spend or do anything to improve their product, yet Joe’s perception of its value suddenly increased?

Important point: When you remind your readers of their problems, and how your product is the solution to their problem; your product’s value will suddenly increase in your reader’s mind.

Add your call-to-action multiple times in your copy.

This anyoption review is a good example of how you should add your CTAs. Notice how the writer added the sign-up buttons on different places?

The thing is, there are opposing views among copywriters as far as where (or when) they should add their “Sign-up” buttons.

A good number of them insists that it should always be at the end of the copy, while others say it should be on several places.

I am of the same opinion as the latter.

After having split tested several of the sales copies that I have written for my clients; we have found that the difference in conversion between a sales page with only one “Sign-up” button, versus those that have several is quite massive.

For the most part, we haven’t seen a sales page with only one “Sign-up” button outperform those that have multiple.

Focus on how much value your customers can get from buying, and not how amazing your products are.

The fact is, the more value your product can provide to your audience, the bigger the chances are that they’ll buy from you. After all, at the end of the day, selling isn’t about how amazing your product is, it is all about how much value your customers can get from obtaining your product.

I mean, think about it.

You can tell your audience how amazing the features of your wooden shoes are, and how they are the best in the world (and they’ll probably even believe you).

However, if what they’re looking for are ice skates, they could care less about how amazing your wooden shoes are. You can talk to them all day about how your wooden shoes have thousands of features, yet at the end of the day, the chances are they still won’t buy. The reason for this is quite obvious, isn’t it? Your wooden shoes provide no value to them at this point.

In short, remember that it’s all about your product’s benefits – not features.

What’s next?

If there are additional tips that you’d like to share about copywriting (as I’m pretty sure that you have your own techniques), please do so in the comments section below.

© ChiccoDodiFC / Dollar Photo Club

25 Jul 18:46

Are You Ready to Sell? 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Now

by John Ovrom

The envisioned and sought after business exit is looming around the next corner. Whether out loud or in private, you have been waiting in anticipation (mixed with some anxiety) for this day for quite some time. Visions of mojitos on the beach or adventures with the grandkids have been playing in your mind for years.

But, have you taken time to dig into the details?

A business exit is rarely simple. To successfully exit, business owners should have a strategic exit plan several years prior to planning to sell.

To help get the ball rolling, here are the top 5 questions you should ask yourself now:

1) Is the Business Ready?

Remember you’re in a marriage with your business. Your business has its own social security number (FEIN) and is in all rights considered separate from you. And, the longer you’ve been in it, the more convinced you are that it has a mind of its own.

This relationship is a two-way street through and through.

So, when you get ready for the next transition, make sure the business is ready too. The biggest mistake I see is when a business owner believes the exit is all about them. “I want,” is not an exit strategy.

So when you “want” to sell in 3-5 years, back your desires up with strategy and logic. This means considering market trends, timing, business profitability and more. The market is constantly changing. The right time to sell could be this year, in 3 years, 5 years or longer. It is also possible that you already missed the right time to sell.

That’s why it is essential to consider the business when planning out your transition.

2) Am I ready to sell?

What’s next? The day after you leave the business, what are you going to do?

Entrepreneurs are adrenaline junkies who love to compete. You are an extreme athlete in the business world. More often than not, your life is comingled between business, family, friends and social. The sandbox we call life has boundaries that are often crossed.

Just like elite athletes, business owners get to a point where they no longer have the competitive edge to fight and win. Be honest with yourself. Spend time planning what you are going to do once work isn’t your driving force. The key is to find something that will stimulate you. Otherwise, boredom will become a lonely and unfulfilling solitude.

3) Do you have enough money to leave?

Be honest. How many personal expenses creep into your business accounts? Cars, cell phone plans and vacations all tend show up on the books.

Those will all have to be paid for with after-tax dollars moving forward.

In fact, there are about to be several drastic financial adjustments. Long-term medical care will be the scariest part of leaving. Corporate medical coverage won’t be an option anymore.

The first step is creating a personal budget outlining what you need to live on. I always suggest meeting with a CFP to determine if your investments, SS, 401k, business sale income, etc. is enough. If not, maybe you have to get a job, move to lower your expenses, make life style changes, etc.

Ensuring your personal financials are set is essential to moving forward regret free.

4) What is the right exit?

Not all business will sell.

In reality, less than 20% of small businesses actually sell. It’s important to understand the value of your business. Differentiate between a business and a job. A business has value beyond your working capital. In short, if you have to hire someone to do your job, would the business still make money? If the answer is no, then you will be selling a job.

If there is little beyond working capital, liquidating is the easiest exit.

Liquidating your business is like landing a plane softly on the runway. Everyone walks away without injury. Unlike liquidating, bankruptcy is the crash landing version. Best case scenario, you are only facing excessive injuries.

Selling is not the best option for every business. If it is, you will need a well-planned and executed exit strategy to come out successful.

5) How does the sale process work?

Learn everything you can about the sale process. This will help you determine the best exit strategy, as well as formulate a successful exit plan.

There is a lot of prep work, liability, time and effort needed to sell a business. In addition, it’s not cheap. Your professional support system will require fees. Attorneys, CPA, brokers and Uncle Sam all get their cut before you do.

Bottom line, knowledge is power.

Read everything you can about the process. Meet with other business owners and listen to their stories. Interview professionals and try to understand clearly how your business transaction will work. It’s a commitment to sell your business and understanding that commitment is crucial to its success.

Conclusion

The more you are open and honest about your business, the more successful your exit will be. Many business owners don’t spend time digging into these five elements. Not doing so sets you up for an exit at the wrong time, unprepared and without the means to continue with your current lifestyle.

If you are gearing up for a sell in the future, make sure to avoid the nine biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make when exiting their business.