Rnordman

Guest author Scott Gerber is founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council.

Gaining new customers is always a priority. But that doesn't mean keeping your existing clients happy isn't also high on the to-do list. Keeping your startup's churn rate steady—and low—is critical.

So what's going wrong when those numbers take a turn for the worse? I polled 10 entrepreneurs from YEC about the surprising things that could negatively effect a company's churn rate, so you can learn how to up your game.

Slow Website Loads

How fast your website typically loads will negatively impact your churn rate if it's slow. People don't like to go to a slow site or app. If it takes longer than a second or two to load, I'm going to ditch your app for another one. It's not worth my time.

Pro tip: Speed up your Web server so that you have a lot more RAM and it can process the requests faster. Have solid state hard drives to make everything go faster. A CDN is required to handle loads in different countries, have fast connections, etc.

The goal is to have a fast website/app. This will help customers not get frustrated when using your service.

—John Rampton, JohnRampton.com

Expired Credit Cards

Most credit cards expire every few years, which will cause recurring transactions to fail. Using a service such as the "account updater" tool in your merchant account can go a long way towards fixing this problem. Additionally, proactively emailing customers prior to the expiration date can encourage them to manually update the card before the transaction fails.

—Sathvik Tantry, FormSwift

No Clear Guidelines For Major Features

Having easily accessible, clear guidelines and FAQs about how to use the main features will help customers understand how to properly use your product. Otherwise, customers will churn as they spend a long time trying to figure out how to use your site but are not able to experience the full value of the product.

—Randy Rayess, VenturePact

Customer Apathy

When a product is new, customers are excited. But they can become apathetic if there is no change or improvement. People remain interested in Apple’s iPhone because new versions come out each year. Give your customers something to look forward to by sharing your development roadmap. They will feel connected to your company and excited about the future.

—Eric Schaumburg, eventr.io

Too Many Clicks

Customers are lazy (you know you are, too). So spend energy simplifying everything throughout the customer funnel—not only how they buy your product, but also how they communicate with your team. No matter how strong your brand is, you will lose customers if interactions are painful or slow.

—Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

Lack of Focus

It is fairly common knowledge that a startup's best weapon is focus, but focus is also your best weapon against churn.

The most common answer to high churn is to keep adding new features. However, the real solution is to cut out features and make your product or service more focused. Do one thing incredibly well and you'll stand out from the pack. In addition, focusing on one thing makes it much easier for customers to "get it" it before they churn.

—James Simpson, GoldFire Studios

Neglecting Client Communication

Most people are so focused on trying to get new clients they forget to promote their brand with the clients they already have. If your clients are consistently getting messages from competitors, they could be lured away. Maintaining communication and promoting your brand to current clients can help ensure they aren't poached by the competition.

—Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

Lack Of Relatability

It's important that in your client relationship they occasionally hear your voice instead of only reading your emails. Changing providers/vendors is a pain, so give them one more reason not to: Because they don't want to break up with you!

—Adam Stillman, SparkReel

Poor Interface Design

To most customers, the user interface is the product. A poorly designed website, or structure that is not coherent and easy to understand, will create additional hassles for your users. Those hassles will turn into frustrations, and those frustrations into cancellations.

Communication is important, but most customers aren't going to submit a ticket about their ignorance over your product when a plethora of competitors also exist in the market. Every founder needs to take a course in UX Design to better understand the fundamentals of customer interaction with their products.

—Cody McLain, WireFuseMedia

Failing To Cultivate Loyalty

Your efforts to come across as personal and approachable—to let your customers know you care about them and that their business is important to you—will be one of the hidden factors that can impact your churn rate. If a customer feels zero loyalty to you and a competitor offers a similar service with a lower price, they'll have no motivation to continue giving you business.

You know that you work hard to continually improve your business, but unless you communicate this in a way that lets them know you care, they'll never know. Even just a simple email reaching out to them and giving them suggestions based on their account will let them know you've been working hard for them, and they'll have more reason to prefer you to an unknown competitor.

—Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

Lead photo by Neil Bird

Sales pages take many different forms, but share the same basic structure:

1. Headline
2. Sub Headline
3. Presentation of the problem
4. Introduction of your product as the solution
5. Social Proof
6. Bonuses
7. Offer
8. Guarantee
9. Call to Action
10. P.S.

Creating Killer Headlines

Your headline is the first opportunity gaining your customer’s interest by making an emotional appeal to whatever problem they are trying to solve.

Headlines should be clear and easy to understand, should include your keywords, and need to attract the reader to keep reading further.

Presentation of the Problem

Right after the headline and sub headline, you want to present the problem that the customer is having, focusing especially on the customer’s pain.

For example, if your niche is dating and relationships, you could present the problem like this:

“Are you tired of striking out when it comes to the opposite sex? Do you get a tight feeling in your stomach whenever you see a happy couple because it makes you wonder if you will ever find the right mate?”

Introduction of Your Product as the Solution

On your sales page, your product should always be the best – or better yet, the only – solution to whatever problem you have just stated.

It’s critical that you portray your product as not just one of many possible solutions, but as the only solution that will give your customers the exact type of relief from whatever pain they are experiencing.

Social Proof

Social proof, also known as the “bandwagon approach,” is when you show your prospects how other people have benefited from your product.

Social proof often takes the form of product reviews or testimonials. You also can include stories about people who have experienced profound improvements to their lives as a result of your product. This is an excellent way to build trust and marketing proof to your new or existing customers, and social proof’s, by video, should be in your sales funnel to drive up the conversion ratio.

Bonuses

Bonuses are not always essential, but they can often help “sweeten the pot” and help customers make the decision to buy decision if they are on the fence. Usually, they are one or two additional products that are related to your primary product’s niche you throw in for free.

You can include anywhere from one to three bonuses. More than three can make it too confusing for the customer.

Make sure you assign a value to the bonus: “The WordPress dictionary ordinarily sells for $19 and the keyword software is worth $29, but they are yours for free if you purchase the main product now!” This lets you increase the perceived value of your offer. The key here is offering ‘Value” and giving “Value” away.

Guarantee

You almost always want to offer a guarantee. For one, it’s just good business. If you aren’t backing up your products with a money-back guarantee, some people might wonder if there is something wrong with your products. Second, guarantees are so common that it will seem strange if you don’t offer one.

You want to limit your guarantee to 30- or 60-days from the day of sale so you don’t have customers coming back months or even years later looking for a refund. It’ a good idea to always provide refunds quickly if a customer requests it.

With digital products, you generally want to let them keep the product rather than send it back because it builds goodwill and makes them more likely to purchase more products from you in the future.

Offering a guarantee also removes risk for the customer: If they don’t like it, they can have their money back. Some people will buy your products and ask for refunds just so they can get the product for free, but not many, so it’s worth it to provide a guarantee every time.

Call to Action

Your Call to Action (CTA) is the most important part of your landing page. Your CTA is where you tell your customers exactly what it is you want them to do: Buy this product, subscribe to this website, and so on.

It is critical that your CTA is clear and to the point. There can be no ambiguity about what it is you want your customer to do. Even if you are a little forceful, that’s okay. Don’t suggest, tell.

By the time readers have made it all the way through your sales letter to the CTA, they probably are ready to buy anyway. Your job with the CTA is to push them into taking action.

P.S.

The P.S. can be an effective last-minute way to close the sale. The P.S. stands for “post-script” and it can be used either to restate the central points of the sales letter or introduce something new, like adding scarcity or another bonus.

More than one P.S. is okay if you want, but they probably should be capped at three otherwise there’s a higher chance your customer will stop reading. In your P.S., remind the reader of the deal or special offer and add urgency.

I hope you enjoy what you learned and hope you apply to your marketing to get results!

Branding 101 – make your business what your customers want it or need it to be. In my opinion, it doesn’t get much simpler than that, and in my experience, research consistently shows that businesses listening – and aligning their activities – to the needs of their customers, measurably outperform those that don’t have such customer-centric capabilities. If it were a formula, A would equal an organization’s offerings, B would equal a market’s needs, and C would equal a successful brand, so that when A=B, A+B=C. Somehow, though, some organizations get it in their heads that A can equal C – that their offerings will make them a successful brand – without factoring in customer needs or preferences at all. It just doesn’t add up. As it really shouldn’t be an option for businesses to consider the voice of the customer, here’s an overview of the three primary approaches firms take when implementing VoC programs.

A. Reactive: Act After Customers Raise an Issue

This is pretty much the most deliberate way to cater to the voice of the customer. Companies use numerous technology tools ranging from online surveys to IVR surveys and direct interviews to capture customer feedback data. This data is then integrated within relevant technology systems such as CRM and marketing automation to help employees and executives with insights into customer needs. Savvy organizations go beyond simply reacting to issues raised by customer feedback. They also use analytics to identify trends and correlations to identify recurring issues among different buyer groups. This helps them take necessary actions to alleviate problems. Companies that excel in reactive VoC programs also provide employees with real-time reporting and alerting tools in order to notify relevant stakeholders of customer issues in a timely manner. By doing so, they reduce response time to customer issues – a key metric used to gauge the performance of VoC activities.

B. Proactive: Act Before Customers Raise an Issue

Brands not only listen to what customers are saying at present, but also benchmark these trends over time in order to identify or even create developing or new needs within the market. Until Apple created the iPad, for example, no one really knew they needed a tablet; however, it’s pretty safe to say that launching a tablet wasn’t just a shot in the dark. Effective brands also aim to use the voice of the customer to cater to customer needs before customers even know they have a need. Similar to Apple analyzing customer behavioral and preferential data to determine the market opportunity for tablets, companies that excel in proactive VoC initiatives analyze historical and real-time data and proactively notify their customers. A common example used to describe proactive VoC programs is utility service providers alerting consumers of a service outage in their area. While a utility firm that uses reactive VoC activities would wait until consumers contact the business to acknowledge a service outage and provide updates on its resolution, a proactive one would rather alert consumers via different methods (e.g. text message or email) that it is aware of a service issue and working on resolving it. This helps reduce customer effort in contacting the business to seek insight into issues, but also establishes a firm as a trusted advisor of its client-base. Companies that successfully implement proactive VoC activities enjoy greater customer satisfaction and retention rates, compared to those that fail to recognize the value of these activities or execute it well.

C. Consultative: Balance Reactive and Proactive

Tuning in to the needs of empowered customers is very much like a “crawl, walk, run” process. Reactive compliance would be crawling, getting proactive would be walking, but once brands start balancing the two, then they’re really running. And unlike what babies experience, companies can implement all components of this process at the same time. Companies that establish and nurture consultative VoC activities enjoy the best of both worlds of reactive and proactive programs. They reduce response time to customer needs, but also achieve superior levels of customer satisfaction. The secret helping these firms establish a consultative approach is using reporting, alerting, analytics as well as process management activities coherently so they can alert relevant stakeholders when clients have an issue, but also proactively reach out to buyers to let them know of issues they might face, even before the customers might know they have an issue.

Our upcoming research on Voice of the Customer, scheduled for publishing early April, will identify how companies move beyond capturing feedback and sentiment data and rather operationalize these insights to enable a consultative VoC framework. As we’re working on bringing this research to you, we highly recommend you to read our latest related report on the topic.

Editor’s Note: Guest post by Juliana Crispo, Director of Enterprise Sales at Ghostery. She recently started an online Startup Sales Bootcamp and will be running a workshop at the upcoming Sales Hacker Conference in NYC on April 30th.

Selling an enterprise product into a major brand is a different game than SMB. Sometimes all the emails, cold calls, tweets, and inMails in the world still won’t get the attention of key contacts at that Fortune 500 account.

If you need to quickly drum up interest in a large account and have some type of free offer or trial of your product, one tactic you need to try is LinkedIn Ads.

Let me explain.

At Ghostery, our tiny enterprise sales team has closed almost half of the top 25 Ecommerce retailers. To start gaining interest in the other half, last quarter, our CRO decided to run a smart experiment. He gave each person on the sales team a $5,000 budget to act like a marketer.

We could put the budget to use however we wanted to get traction in our key accounts. (Yes, the thought of inviting all my prospects to an extravagant dinner and drinks event crossed my mind.)

My approach was different than the rest of the team. After spending only $600 and a few hours, I found myself quickly unable to keep up with all the quality inbound leads and conversations I was having with my target accounts.

LinkedIn ads not only have generated quality inbound leads that led me to pause the campaigns and put in more process, but with this first test, I even got enough interest to close our first major account from a LinkedIn Sidebar Ad.

What’s surprising is that the outbound team had been hitting up some of these targets for more than a year and they appeared completely silent, but within 2 days I was able to immediately start having conversations.

While it’s still in its early days, this approach has a ton of potential for founders, marketers, sales executives, and SDRs.

It works in 3 basic steps: create an ad targeting a key account, point that ad to a landing page, and when a lead comes in, immediately follow up.

While I developed the ad copy, the creative, the website, and nurtured the leads myself, you can either start small, or bring someone on your team to help if it isn’t your expertise.

Let’s walk you through exactly how I did it:

STEP 1: Create Ads by Account (time to complete: ~1 hr)

First, log into your LinkedIn ads account and you’ll get walked through the process of creating your first ad.

In the targeting process, LinkedIn will let you hone in by company, job title, geography, industry, LinkedIn groups, and keywords in your target profile.

The hardest part is knowing exactly what type of customer to target. Make sure you focus on only your strongest customer hypothesis, or the educated guess about your next best customer, which in my case was Ecommerce CXO, Director, and VP-level executives:

For each campaign, I was able to create tailored ads to a fairly targeted audience, which for Fidelity amounted to only 20,111.

Here is how my results looked at the end of my first set of campaigns:

You might notice my click-through rate (your CTR measures the % of clicks from people in my market who have seen an ad and clicked it) for VP’s of Ecommerce wasn’t too exciting.

I messed up on that one, and quickly learned my targeting and copy was too general – there wasn’t enough of an incentive to click. I was able to get my ad on the second day to be much more effective:

Notice that I’m calling out Fidelity specifically? Targeting by company is key. Also, if your logo isn’t recognizable, use a photo that catches attention. To know you’re doing well, LinkedIn considers a good CTR to be higher than .025%, and the targeted ads I created here received CTRs over 6X that.

If you’re really wanting to optimize your ads, I’d recommend you start with Cost-per-Click (CPC), and later pay on a CPM (or cost per thousand impression) to optimize it because you now have an approximate conversion rate.

With the Fidelity campaign, I was bidding at $3.43 per click, but as I figured out the CTR with my first campaign settled at .245% and had a CPM bid of $1.20 – I realized I could change the way I bid to CPM to get 7X the clicks for the same price.

You’ll only come to these realizations after you test your ads, and when you see if your previous ads actually led to qualified leads, which brings me to:

STEP 2: Collect Emails (time to complete: ~40 minutes)

You’ll notice in the above Fidelity ads, I sent people to the domain freedomainscan.com.

I actually purchased this domain just for the experiment, and I set up this quick website using Instapage:

Not too bad, right? Instapage is the most intuitive website builder I’ve found, and this process took me about 30 minutes to think up and get running, and 30 minutes to perfect the look and copy.

Use a free incentive like a signup, trial, or demo as a place to direct people who’ve clicked on your ad, or create your own incentive like I did here. In this example, I’m giving away a free domain scan, which gives me a great excuse to collect their email and company so I know where to send the report.

Note that although Instapage allows you to optimize your page for mobile, I spent no time doing this because I knew my leads would come from the web.

As soon as your ads get approved (LinkedIn takes about a day to do this), you can then spend 30 minutes a day closely monitoring your budget and CTR and make sure you’re getting clicks. You already know you have the right people signing up. Simple tweaks to the copy like better calls to action and better images will go a very long way, and you can get alerts and monitor your sign-up rate from Instapage.

Make sure your sign-up rate is at least 10%, although you can aim to reach as high as 25% of new visitors signing up.

STEP 3: Nurture to close (time to complete: varies)

This step is where the magic happens.

If you’ve promised something for free, send it to your prospect. In my case, this was a 3rd party tracker report I created myself, but it could also be trial access or another customized insight.

Be sure to offer a 10-minute call to get them properly set up, or to offer additional insight. Give your prospect what you promised to get them to jump on the phone, then use your awesome sales skills to close the deal.

It’s a best practice to respond to these incoming leads ASAP, so consider setting up an auto-responder like MailChimp that messages someone immediately when they sign up.

Bottom line: Targeting key accounts with LinkedIn Ads is a big opportunity to get into even the most gated organizations. If your product is enterprise-ready and you’ve already got a trial option or something free to give away, try this out.

I’d love to hear about your results. Check my bio to get a link to my Twitter and let me know how it goes, or take my new free course on sales for startups that’s already received rave reviews. Happy hunting.

Sales Hacker Conference New York

Join Juliana at the next Sales Hacker Conference where she will running one of our workshops on Qualifying and Buy-In Psychology

Learn More

The post How to Sell Into Any Fortune 500 with This LinkedIn Hack appeared first on Sales Hacker.

Chris Young/CP

The 2014-15 fiscal year ends on March 31, and we still haven’t heard the government’s budget plan for 2015-16. Having a late budget is rare, but not unprecedented. Still, many Canadians might be getting curious about how the budget outlook has changed since the fall fiscal update from November showed budgetary surpluses for 2015-16 and into the future.

 On Tuesday, TD Economics released its quarterly economic forecast containing projections for the economy over the next two years. If we take TD’s new economic forecasts and apply them to the data from the fall fiscal update, we can figure out how the federal budget position has changed over the last four months since Finance Minister Joe Oliver last provided some estimates.

We can do these calculations because the fall fiscal update provides a handy set of tables that tell us the sensitivity of the federal-budget bottom line to changes in the economic situation. If real inflation-adjusted economic growth comes in lower than forecast, Employment Insurance spending goes up, and tax revenue goes down. If inflation comes in lower than expected, revenues go down because the tax system’s thresholds and amounts have already been fixed for the year and lower inflation means less income in the higher tax brackets. For changes in interest rates, the impact takes longer to hit the budget, because it takes years for outstanding debt to be rolled over and start reflecting the new interest rates.

I’ve put together an analysis of the budget situation in light of TD’s forecasts, with links and notes about the assumptions I made. Four main lessons come out of the analysis.

Federal budget balance 2015-16 and 2016-17

First, if TD is right about the magnitude of the growth slowdown we’re experiencing, the net impact on the federal budget for 2015-16 is not huge—around $5 billion. While that’s manageable with some small adjustments for a federal government that collects and spends about $300 billion per year, it does push the balance slightly into deficit territory, unless Oliver takes action in his budget when he presents it.

Second, it’s the inflation numbers that are driving the bottom-line changes to the budget. TD is projecting GDP inflation to come in for 2015 at -0.6 per cent. This changes the budget balance, because the tax threshold and credit levels have already been set for 2015, and lower inflation means that fewer dollars “creep” over these fixed thresholds. The inflation change accounts for about 80 per cent of the $5-billion overall change in budget balance.

Third, the lower interest rates don’t matter much. It is true that the government will save money on its outstanding debt if lower interest rates stick around, but only about 18 per cent of federal debt turns over in a given year, so lower interest rates will take time to be felt. Moreover, the government actually holds a significant amount of interest-bearing assets and lower interest rates end up decreasing the revenue from those assets.

Fourth, if TD is right in its forecasts, the impact on the budget should be confined mostly to 2015. TD projects a rebound in real GDP growth and inflation in 2016, which would return the federal budget close to its originally forecast path.

Of course, if the economic outlook changes (either to the upside or downside), then these fiscal projections will change, as well. Next week, we begin spending money for the 2015-16 fiscal year. As those dollars are spent, it will become more challenging for Minister Oliver to adjust course for 2015-16, if there should be further shocks to the economic forecast.

(My disclosure statement is here.)

The post What the slumping economy is doing to Ottawa’s bottom line appeared first on Macleans.ca.

It seems like everyone either wants to be an expert or thinks they already are. Don’t believe me? Just check out Twitter and see how many user’s bios proclaim them as an expert in some certain field, real or imaginary.

Sadly, many of these people are not experts and may not know much at all about the topic they claim to rule.

The technical way to become a real expert is to receive a terminal degree in a specific area. That being said, I’m writing my dissertation now and I am fully aware of how little you feel you know about your subject of expertise during this process. Of course, this probably is just a feeling, not reality, since I actually know more about my research topic than I ever have before in my life. But, I digress.

Another, less academic, way to become an expert is through professional experience in a certain area. This experience can be documented and shared through a white paper, establishing your expertise in a quasi-academic manner and helping develop your reputation as an expert on that topic.

What is a white paper?

A white paper is a position paper that outlines your or your organization’s position on an issue.

Why write them?

Aside from establishing your expertise on a specific topic, a white paper differentiates your position on an issue from others’.

What are they about?

A white paper can be about any debatable topic. The important thing is to know your audience and industry so you can determine the best, most current problem to address. Is there something happening in your industry that you want to establish your expertise on? Identify these types of issues, then decide what your audience is most likely to want/need to read.

Who are they for?

White papers are for audiences who are more educated on a topic, allowing for more advanced writing. White papers are intended for professionals who want to know more about an issue or understand an individual’s or organization’s position on an issue.

What is the structure?

A white paper contains citations, academic/professional sources and researched support for claims that are made. When writing a white paper, use sources your readers will find credible, including good data.

The typical structure of a white paper is:

• Introduction/summary – provide an overview of the topic and allow the reader to easily understand the main point.
• Background/problems – provide readers with general background information about the issue that will help them make a decision based on an understanding of the facts. This also his where you establish yourself as an expert on the topic.
• Solution/your side – propose your solution to the issue or explain your stance on the debate.
• Opposition/their side – present the opposition’s side of the issue, then refute it.
• Conclusion – reaffirm your own position and conclude in a way that allows the readers to understand what they know better as a result of having read the paper.
• References – always include a list of works cited at the end of your white paper.

White papers are anywhere from eight to 20 pages long, with a typical white paper falling at about 15 pages. The most important thing is to focus on providing value for your reader. When the value is gone, you should stop writing.

White papers are written in third person. They can use subheads to help break up text.

Of course, like any professional writing, you want to spell check and carefully proofread your white paper before it is distributed. They can be distributed in electronic or paper format.

White papers allow you to establish your expertise on a topic by designing a course of action and shaping future debate on that issue. Establishing your expertise benefits your professional brand by making you more sought after and desirable to work with. Writing white papers also adds another skill to your professional skill set.

I should start by saying that I love data – or more importantly I love the information that data can unveil to an enquiring mind. I am seldom happier than when I am looking for trends in whether salespeople decide to make more telephone calls straight after the sales meeting on Tuesday afternoons, what the average sales cycle is for Widget A versus Thingummy X, and if there is a correlation between customer spend and activity. I could spend hours in there, figuratively speaking.

However, I’m afraid I am a walking cliché – a sales professional with a natural disposition to spend as much time as possible talking to clients, and as little time as possible in the “non-revenue-generating” task of capturing the correct and complete data in my CRM system. Salespeople don’t do attention to detail, right? They are the hunter-gatherers who stalk the beast, slay the beast, bring the beast back home and put it on the fire they made. Someone else can do the washing up. If they did attention to detail, they’d work in systems analysis surely?

Well yes, all of this is true. Up to a point. I called it a natural disposition deliberately. It doesn’t mean I don’t do quality data capture, it just means that I need to work at it a little harder. I do this because my many years of working in sales have lead me to witness the odd uncomfortable situation, such as;

• Products, desperately needed, sat at the wrong office because I didn’t check the address properly
• Commissions on substantial orders left unpaid, as the invoice sent from the washing up department known as Accounts disappeared into the black hole that I’d created. Compounded by the cost of replacing the bit of worn-out carpet between my desk and the financial controller’s office
• Losing a whole day to trawl through my CRM before I could answer the simple request from Marketing, “who would you like to target with this campaign?”
• Bare-knuckle brawling on the sales floor over 2 John Smith’s at ABC Co, on whom 2 of us had been working simultaneously on separate CRM records (I exaggerate, slightly, and some names have been changed to protect the innocent)

All of the above semi-fictional scenarios lead to loss, or waste. Loss of reputation, time, and revenues. That’s why now I work a little harder. I may not always get it right, but my heart’s in the right place.

So from the lofty position of Sales Director I can impart this well-earned wisdom to sales teams. I can reward commissions based on completeness of the data. I can even use psychometrics to ensure that I recruit salespeople who have a high natural disposition to attention to detail and completeness, also often known as an Introvert Thinking style. However if I have a “sales rock star” in my team who is consistently overachieving and is loved by clients, but CRM-averse, then perhaps the easy thing for me to do is to accept the odd bit of wasted profit and inter-departmental ill feeling?

Luckily there is another way. I’m now fortunate enough to work for an organisation that is passionate about data being the lifeblood of business. And what I’ve discovered is that companies who whole-heartedly embrace this principle do so not through a top-down, push behaviour approach. Rather, they create a culture that encourages everyone to contribute to absolute data quality, and support them with the tools, techniques and technology to do so.

Technology to enhance, validate, verify, authenticate and cleanse your customer data is readily available. It comes from DQ Global. And the good news is, it costs much, much less than the cost of lost orders, duplicate mailings, missed opportunities and replacement carpet.

If as a Sales and/or Marketing Director, you have just made a career-defining investment in a CRM system, it is worth considering what you are also doing to protect that investment; to protect the lifeblood of your organisation. If those brilliant yet data-shy salespeople in your team are finding it too difficult to overcome their natural disposition, and are risking the value of the data you hold inside that expensive new vehicle, then perhaps we could talk.

Original Post

I have a friend in SEO who consistently pumps out posts about strategies to drive “massive traffic” to your blog or website. As any experienced marketer knows, nearly all of this traffic is represented by people who take a quick glance at a link and then never come back again. They are little more than tourists to your site.

When I asked him why he put so much emphasis in this area, he replied, “Where there’s traffic, there is hope.”

That’s a nice sound bite, but frankly a lousy marketing strategy. If I presented a marketing strategy based on “hope” to my boss, I would probably be kicked out of the office—and deservedly so.

Instead, I would humbly like to present another way to think about actionable marketing strategy by focusing on an area you may not have fully considered before.

I recently wrote a book called The Content Code, and for more than a year, I dove deeply into the economic drivers of content and social media. Here’s a statistic that made me pause: 83 percent of CMOs claim that social sharing is the primary benefit of social media marketing.

Wait. What?

You mean it’s not clicks, followers, or likes? It’s not even traffic, for heaven’s sake?

The Economics of Transmission

These CMOs are smart people. They know that 70 percent of their customers are more likely to buy something when they see content about a product or service shared by a friend. People who share content are likely to read and understand what you do before they make a decision to share it. In essence, they are becoming your advocates.

When people “like” something, they are only lightly and temporarily bonding with it. But when they share something, it is a bold and intimate act. They are raising their hand in a virtual way and saying, “I believe in this. I stand for this. Pay attention.”

This forces us to re-consider the real metric that is the best leading indicator of sales: content that moves. Power on the web does not come from content. It comes from social transmission (highlight to tweet). All this money you’re putting into content development does nothing for you if it is not seen and shared. Content that doesn’t move has the same economic value as an unseen movie script locked in a cold, dark vault.

The Psychology of Sharing

Let’s peel the onion even further.

Why do people share?

Another deep discussion point in my book is the psychology of sharing. To understand social transmission, we must understand why people decide to share.

Here are the three primary reasons people share:

• Because the content serves as an extension of their self-identity (It makes me look cool, relevant, smart, etc.).
• It helps others.
• Because they believe in the person or brand creating the content so much that they want to support them no matter what.

The Dilemma

These motivations present an extraordinary shock to the way we think about marketing. If the real economic value comes from the transmission of content, and people share content for intrinsic and emotional reasons, why do companies spend so much money to try to get people to share content for economic reasons?

Sure, through paid means like SEO, advertising, and promotion, we might be able to trick somebody into viewing a piece of content, but we can’t trick them into sharing it.

I interviewed more than 50 experts for this book, and here is the word that came up over and over: “trust.” Emotional ties to content and brands are created by trust. Pretty easy to understand, right? If it makes sense to you, then why are you spending a good portion of your content budget on things that don’t create trust? Shouldn’t that be our laser focus?

Now, before you come after me, let me emphasize that there is absolutely, positively a role for SEO and all of these promotional tools in a content marketing plan. In fact, they can be crucial, and I have an entire chapter devoted to it.

Trust, Not Traffic

I want to challenge you: Are you taking the easy way out in your marketing plan? Are you spending money on advertising and SEO because they are easy and familiar? Because you can get the budget approved? Because it’s convenient to outsource to an ad agency (and outsource accountability)?

On the other hand, building trust instead of traffic takes time, a new mindset, a new commitment, and perhaps even a leap into the unfamiliar.

If your marketing department was singularly focused on the biggest economic driver on the web (increasing the number of people who share your content), how would that transform your strategy?

How would you build a strategy based on trust, not traffic?

Continue the conversation on our Facebook or Google+ pages.

       

       

One of the first things I do when I join a new social network is to upload a profile picture.

But which profile picture should I choose? Is there a best one?

Profile pictures have always been a bit of a gray area for me inasmuch as I post a picture I think looks good without knowing its actual effect on my audience.

Is there such thing as a perfect, best profile picture?

Interestingly, there’s been some rather great research about the different elements of profile pictures that have the biggest impact on an audience. The psychology and science behind a perfect profile picture leaves some great guidelines on how to influence your audience and possibly gain more followers.

I’m happy to share what we’ve found about the perfect profile picture, based on the best science, research, and psychology out there.

The 7 Elements of the Best Profile Pictures

In 40 milliseconds, we’re able to draw conclusions about people based on a photo.

That’s less than one-half of one-tenth of a second. Wow!

This finding from Psychological Science underscores the vital importance of a profile picture and the effect it has on making an impression.

There’s been a host of research done on the various elements of a profile picture—how to look, how to not look, what to wear, whether to smile. The specifics of these studies are outlined below.

Here’s an overview of all the best practices for coming up with the best profile picture on social media:

• Smile with teeth
• Large eyes
• Less masculinity
• Dark-colored suits, light colored buttondowns
• Jawline with a shadow
• Head-and-shoulders, or head-to-waist
• Squinch
• Asymmetrical

Worth trying out:

• Facing the camera (or not)
• Bright background

And things to avoid:

• Hats
• Sunglasses
• Hair, glare, and shadows over the eyes
• Laughing smile
• Sexiness

Here’s a bit more about the science, research, and psychology behind these recommendations.

How to appear approachable, helpful, and attractive

Researchers at the Department of Psychology at University of York analyzed 1,000 images of faces in order to find the specific facial tics and features that help make a good first impression.

They came up with 65 different features that could affect one’s perceptions, things like “nose curve” and “cheekbone position” and “head area.” For each of the 65 features, they noted the effect of each on the following three distinct dimensions:

1. Approachability – “Does this person want to help or harm me?”
2. Dominance – “Can this person help or harm me?”
3. Youthful-attractiveness – “Might this person be a good romantic partner or a rival?”

(It’s amazing the level of detail the researchers found. They created cartoon-like faces based on every possible variation.)

Here were the findings:

(How to read this chart: App stands for Approachability, Yo-Att stands for Youthful-attractiveness, and Dom stands for Dominance. A positive number means a positive correlation, and a negative number means a negative correlation.)

Overall, the researchers noted that the most meaningful factors in each of the three dimensions seemed to group around common traits.

For approachability, the mouth was key.

• Mouth area
• Mouth height
• Mouth width
• Mouth gap
• Bottom lip curve

This is consistent with previous research that smiling is a key component to approachability.

For youthful-attractiveness, the eyes were key.

• Eye area
• Iris area
• Eye height
• Eye width

This is consistent with previous research that relatively large eyes link to a youthful appearance.

For dominance:

• Eyebrow height
• Cheek gradient
• Eye gradient
• Skin saturation
• Skin value variation

These all link to stereotypically masculine appearance.

In the final report, the researchers put together composite faces that show the range in each of the three dimensions—e.g., from least approachable to most approachable, left-to-right. Can you notice the variations in the aforementioned facial features from one face to the next?

How to appear likable, competent, and influential

PhotoFeeler, a neat tool that lets you get feedback on your profile pictures via feedback from actual people who vote on your picture, shared their learnings from over 60,000 ratings of competence, likability, and influence that were left on photos submitted to the PhotoFeeler app.

Here’s a quick overview of what they learned:

• Don’t block your eyes. Sunglasses drop likeability score, and hair, glare, and shadows drop competence and influence.
• Define your jawline. A shadow line that outlines the jaw all the way around helps with likability, competence, and influence.
• Show your teeth when you smile. A closed mouth smile has a small increase likability. A laughing smile increases likability even more, but you lose ground in competence and influence. The best smile, according to PhotoFeeler, is a smile with teeth. This leads to gains across the board in likability (nearly twice that of a closed-mouth smile), competence, and influence.
• Try formal dress. Dark-colored suits and light-colored buttondowns (with ties, for men) had the greatest effect on competency and influence out of all other factors.
• Head and shoulders (or head to waist). Close-ups on just headshots brought scores down, as did full body shots.
• Try a squinch. A squinch is a slight squint. The idea behind it is that wide eyes look fearful, vulnerable, and uncertain. Slightly squinted eyes may come across as comfortable and confident. PhotoFeeler found that squinching eyes has an increase across the board in competence, likability, and influence.

(The photo on the left is the normal, wide-eyed headshot. The one on the right is a squinch.)

What avatars can teach us about profile pictures

Researcher Katrina Fong of Toronto’s York University conducted a study on 2D avatars, coming up with some neat observations that could extrapolate to profile pictures.

Participants were more interested in being friends with people whose avatars had

• open eyes
• oval face
• smiling expression
• brown hair

A few characteristics that turned participants away—going so far as to signal traits like intorversion, neuroticism, and disagreeableness—included

• neutral or negative expression
• black or short hair
• hat or sunglasses

Should your profile picture be alluring?

Former Oregon State psychologist Elizabeth Daniels polled 118 teenage girls and young adult women about their impressions of a 20-year-old woman’s Facebook profile. Half of the participants were shown a sexy profile picture; the other half saw a more conservative image.

The results: The conservative image won out in all three categories.

• Attractiveness: “I think she is pretty”
• Social: “I think she could be a friend of mine”
• Competence: “I have confidence in her ability to get a job done”

Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Times had a great takeaway from the study:

It demonstrates the degree to which, even among footloose digital natives, edgy photos are seen as a sign that the subject isn’t credible or competent.

Which matters more: Profile pic or bio?

Dating website OkCupid is well-known for its data analysis. Last year, they released some interesting details on the influence of profile pictures compared to text descriptions. How much of each matter for a person’s overall impression of your profile?

OkCupid hid their profile text for a sample of users, showing just the profile picture. This gave the site two sets of data to analyze: one for “the picture and the text together” and one for “the picture alone.”

Their takeaway:

Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you.

Guy Kawasaki’s 4 keys to profile pictures

Canva’s Guy Kawasaki, an early evangelist for all things tech and social media, has found four factors to be key for a profile picture.

1. Faces only. No family, friends, dogs, logos, etc.
2. Asymmetrical. Use the Rule of Thirds to create your profile picture
3. Face the light. The source of light should come in front of you.
4. At least 600 pixels wide. There are varying shapes and sizes of profile pictures on social media. A 600-pixel image will look great no matter where it’s viewed.

The asymmetrical advice in particular has a lot of solid psychology and design history behind it.

The Rule of Thirds is a method for composing the elements of an image to be visually pleasing and to be in sync with the way our eyes prefer to scan an image. Photographers know the Rule of Thirds well; it is a foundational piece of photography.

The way it works is by dividing an image into a grid of thirds both horizontally and vertically. Basically, put a tic-tac-toe board on an image.

The tic-tac-toe board creates intersections of lines, and according to Rule of Thirds, these intersections are where the eye is most likely to be drawn.

The design lesson here is to place your key elements along these intersections. Avoid placing a key element right in the center.

Blogger, author, and speaker Rebekah Radice does this to great effect with her profile picture.

To face the camera or not to face the camera

Another study from OkCupid looked at the profile pictures of over 7,100 users and noted which effects brought the most contacts. One of the most interesting takeaways here was the effect of looking at the camera vs. looking off-camera.

For a woman’s profile picture, the greatest effects were noticed when looking at the camera.

For a man’s profile picture, the greatest effect came when looking away from the camera.

What eye-tracking studies say

“You look where they look.”

This title from a Usable Word blog post provides a great synopsis for the research on eye-tracking studies.

We follow the eyes of the people we see on screen. Looking directly into the camera can help make a direct connection with someone. Looking to the left or right will help guide the reader’s eyes in that direction (toward a “Follow” button maybe?)

KISSmetrics has done a great job of explaining a bit about this reasearch:

Human beings have a natural tendency to follow the gaze of others, and we have been coached since birth to follow arrows directing us to where we should be looking/going.

And this picture helps put it into great perspective:

Try a bright, orange background

Orbit Media dug up this gem from Rand Fishkin of Moz: Test different background colors for your photos.

Brightly colored backgrounds are Rand’s recommendation. For his personal profiles, he found that orange worked best. (Rand has since changed to a green background.)

Summary

What have you found to work best for your profile picture?

The recommendations here cover all sorts of research, science, and psychology. They may be great jumping off points for research of your own. If you’re interested in trying something new with your profile picture, consider trying images where you’re

• Smiling
• Squinching
• Asymmetrical
• Head-to-shoulders
• Head-&-torso
• Facing the camera

And feel free to report what works best! If you’d like to share any possibilities for profile pictures, it’d be great to see them and hear your thoughts in the comments.

Image sources: Pablo, The Noun Project, UnSplash, OkCupid, KISSmetrics, PhotoFeeler

The luckier salespeople are provided with decent sales training, but there is always room for improvement. Many trainers insist on memorizing scripts and practicing role-play. The problem with this is that the salespeople who excel are anything but average, but this type of training is for the average person. So it only serves to frustrate those who have the potential of performing the best on the company’s behalf.

The second dilemma is how the training comes across to the majority of classroom participants. Many are afraid to ask clarifying questions and so information is misinterpreted and used incorrectly. The worst part is most are not aware to adapt the advice to their unique style of delivery. This works against the hope of building credibility, trust and ultimately the sale.

Example #1 Hiding Fees

Online marketing services are sold in a variety of ways such as annual or month service as well as creative packaging. The value is derived in the reach to targeted clientele, and anticipated conversion from click-throughs to a sale.

Some trainers instruct their students that instead of discouraging prospective clients by announcing the large annual sum, to break it down to the smallest possible amount. One telemarketer made the following pictch for an online marketing service:

“We are only asking $.20 per conversion. “

You might initially believe the request of $.20 per conversion to be reasonable. But, should you have many thousands of followers, even if 5% clicked through, you might be presented with a sizeable bill. It could very quickly add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month.

Solution

A more honest approach is to stick to the annual and payment plans so the prospect may budget appropriately. It’s far better to be honest upfront than have to explain yourself to an angry client after the fact.

Example #2 – The Wrong Job Offer

Sadly, the recruiter calling Jack to make an offer did not first read his resume. Instead, he made an offer of minimum wage, for a part-time job of inside sales. Jack sent his application in along with resume to become the corporate sales trainer. The insulting offer was obviously dismissed.

Solution

Always do as much research upfront as possible to have a fruitful conversation.

Example #3 – Thoughtless Communication

The sales consultant received this message online, “You need my service for only $5,000”. What incited anger was the fact it was the very service on which she trains others. A terse note was sent back. The second message received said, “Well then let’s partner”.

Would you partner with someone who doesn’t first do their homework?

Solution

Proper preparation ahead of any type of communication will provide the opportunity to further the conversation. Questions and answers, truthful statements, and working to serve your clientele, builds your personal brand and trust in you.

All learning requires full comprehension and thoughtful implementation of principles to your unique style. This is the first step to building a strong business. The reward for hard work upfront is experiencing the Smooth Sale.

You may have played the game of “telephone” as a child. Your teacher sat the class in a circle and whispered a sentence to the first kid, who whispered it to his neighbor, and so on until the last child in the circle told the group what she thought she heard. Inevitably, this final sentence was markedly different from the original and was usually also wildly incorrect (hence the hilarity of the game).

This distortion is due to a concept called cumulative error. Organizations fall victim to the same phenomenon in innovation. When implementing new customer offerings and experiences, an original idea is often inadvertently manipulated as it moves through development. The game here is called “silos,” and it too results in cumulative error. A new concept is developed and, when ready for execution, is passed from department to department in a process not much different from “telephone”: a number of individuals, each tasked with sharing and repeating a phrase, will invariably distort it slightly as it moves along. Organizations liken this process to a manufacturing assembly line, which is effective when repeatedly producing a known item. However, when developing something new, this rigid and linear approach falters since there are no precedents for reference.

Business case developed? Yep, pass it on. Product specs outlined? I’m good, next. IT integration? On it. And so on through legal and compliance, training, and marketing.

Loop-backs and check-ins may occur, but they often involve the department before and after you in the assembly line, rather than the full roster of stakeholders. The end result is a highly produced, ready-for-scale solution — executed incorrectly.

This missed opportunity in execution occurs because the original intent of the idea was not maintained. The shape of the offering evolves as each subject-matter expert makes inevitable tradeoffs, editing embodiments and adding or subtracting features and language until what made the concept compelling to customers is left in tatters.

The fix is fairly straightforward, although it requires abandoning the assembly line approach and embracing a new way of structuring teams and working to develop customer-centered ideas for launch.

As a result of coaching clients across industry and geography to maintain the intent of their ideas as they bring them to scale, I’ve observed four common characteristics of successful innovation implementation teams.

They’re a tight-knit core. The first step in maintaining the intent of an idea is to build a cross-functional implementation team that is co-located and works together all the way through launch of a pilot, or minimum viable offer. Ideal team sizes will vary based on the concept being developed, but the most productive teams range from 5-9 people. The larger the group, the harder it is to align and communicate with speed. (Remember how long you had to wait for your turn to whisper to your neighbor in telephone when the circle was the size of a kindergarten class?) Similar to a Scrum team in software development, this model allows for real-time collaboration and quick decision-making.

They represent customer needs and the value proposition all the way through launch. Ensure your team has a member from the original customer learning and concept development work to serve as the voice of the customer throughout the development process. Their role is to identify, document, and socialize the “non-negotiables” from a customer point of view, to serve as guardrails that protect the intent of an idea as tradeoffs are discussed.

One team we worked with in an insurance company included several members who participated in the original customer research and concept development phases. They advocated for customer needs, protecting the integrity of the idea as decisions were made to ensure it would continue to resonate with end users. During pushback from legal on changing product names, the customer advocates were able to find a compromise by simply adding brief, approachable descriptions. However, they held the line when it came to assigning customers randomly to call center employees. Dedicated call center support was a critical aspect of the concept learned during customer research and had to be protected.

They use experiential storytelling to keep key decision-makers informed. Leadership and subject matter experts need to understand the “whys” behind customer-facing decisions so that as a pilot goes to market, the right elements of the concept are kept. While documentation can be helpful, it is often dense and rarely referenced by senior people. Instead, the team needs to put senior stakeholders in customers’ shoes.

For example, to support a client team at Holiday Inn focused on redefining their lobby experience, we built a full-scale foam replica and, in partnership with the internal implementation team, led tours for the project’s key stakeholders and sponsors. Experiencing the concept firsthand allowed them to understand how it addressed customer needs. This served to reinforce the customer “non-negotiables.”

Other methods of visual storytelling might include sketched user stories and narrated animation sequences. In each of these instances, the original intent of a concept is represented through a story-based artifact, which each stakeholder can access and reference, so that it never changes. While a verbal or even a written narrative can morph slightly each time a different person recounts it, a video or a sketch can travel without getting distorted.

They work with prototypes, not vague, abstract, or digital-based tools. Too often, the traditional assembly line implementation process relies on documents to generate discussion, and share information and progress. These tools simply cannot represent the design decisions, rationale, and imperatives the way a prototype can. Whether it’s a storyboard sketch of a shopping experience, 3D-printed model of a consumer product, or clickable PDF to mimic an on-screen offer, the creation of an artifact to interact with benefits all involved.

The core team should build this prototype together, forcing them to debate the merits of their suggestions and understand the implications as they decide what to include and what to remove. Once aligned, the prototype serves as a stimulus for customer testing and ultimately, in its refined state, as a detailed, experiential set of requirements for building for launch. The specificity of particular choices represented in a prototype allows for robust discussion and iteration among subject matter experts that Excel and PowerPoint alone simply cannot do.

“Telephone” makes for a fun children’s game because the outcome is so different from the input. But such surprises aren’t fun in business. Instead of playing “silos,” use these four principles, so that when your new offering comes to market, it’s exactly what your customers want.

The concept known as the golden hammer is an over-reliance on a familiar tool; as Maslow (he of ‘pyramid of needs’ fame) wrote in 1966: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

So lets talk about User Acquisition, see the parallel? UA is often discussed as nearly an abstract problem. The user acquisition team sit somewhere else in the building or somewhere else in the company – success is gauged in dollars per install, and cheap is good. Got a problem with revenue? Acquire more users.. not enough people finding a feature? Acquire more users – and so on.

Now I know this is a simplification but unfortunately too many of us probably hear familiar echoes of real meetings we’ve been in. If the only tool you have is User Acquisition pretty soon every problem looks like it can be solved with more users.

Here’s the thing; user acquisition is not the solution. I talking to a senior exec from TenCent  a few years back and he summed it up like this- “the problem in the industry is simple, it’s retention”. The point, which I’m only now fully grasping, is that everything flows from having your users attention. Sure, you may not yet be delivering your business goal of tables booked, or games played or items purchased but you’ll get that figured out over time. Once people are sticking around you’re pointed in the right direction. If retention is poor then you need to stop and fix it as soon as you can.

I think the problem in mobile is accentuated by the fact that User Acquisition is being pushed so hard right now. Facebook, Twitter, Google and 101 different ad networks need to sell you “downloads”, and they are working hard to get in front of you and convince you that this approach will solve your problems. It won’t, or at least not alone. But unfortunately these sales efforts fall on receptive ears, simply because acquisition

Retention is the foundation you build upon – you need to obsess about day-1, day-7, day-21 retention figures, you need to build nurturing campaigns to capture the high percentage of users that won’t “get it” first time, you need to automate re-engagement campaigns to bring back every possible user with smart messaging and compelling value. Put simply: you need to build a retention machine.

It might help to stop thinking of your users as nails to be bought in bulk and treated identically – instead recognize that we’re all a little quirky, a little different and need to embrace any experience at our own pace. Build you app so it can retain the higher possible percentage of the funnel – and then call those User Acquisition sales guys back!

Selling yourself is the first step.

What really separates the best salespeople from the rest of the pack? Our research shows that top performers not only understand each customer company — they understand the person making the buying decisions as well.

Most sales training courses emphasize the importance of addressing the customer’s needs. They teach salespeople to explain how, “your product or service”, can help achieve key business goals. Those discussions are critical for making sales.

But few training programs address how buyers view salespeople as they’re presenting that information — knowledge that can be an equally powerful sales tool.

Our research indicates that, from the buyer’s point of view, the best salespeople:

1. Listen. Buyers want to deal with professionals who ask the right questions and truly listen to the answers, people who can take what they’ve heard and translate it into appropriate solutions. Want to boost your listening skills to top-performer level? Take notes, summarize and restate what buyers tell you and — just as important — listen when they confirm whether you’ve gotten it right.

2. Tell the truth. I cringe when I hear salespeople tell customers or prospects, “Let me be honest with you,” as if they haven’t been honest so far. If you don’t know the answer, don’t make it up. If you aren’t professional enough to sell without lying, find a new profession.

3. Do more than push products. Of course, it’s vitally important for salespeople to know about the products they represent, but talking only about features and functions went out in the ’70s. Top performers focus on helping buyers achieve their business goals. One way to do that: Videotape and watch your own sales presentation to see from the buyer’s point of view. Are you helping or just selling?

4. Know the customer’s business. Going after vertical markets has become a major emphasis for many organizations. Stay abreast of developments in your customers’ worlds. When prospects see that you’re familiar with their businesses and industries that generates trust and confidence — key ingredients in any successful sales formula.

5. Know what the customer’s clients need. See No. 4. Why do their customers buy from them? Knowing their customers will help you sell them.

6. Address pain points. Top performers outdo the competition by personalizing their presentations, showing how their solutions help customers resolve specific business problems, achieve important goals and generate impressive ROI.

7. Keep promises. Buyers keep track of what you say you’ll do and whether you actually do it. If you offer to send a white paper or list of references, follow through. And get it there when promised; never request an extension.

8. Avoid wasting time. As a salesperson, you’ve got the right to be persistent and to be respected, but not to be a pest. Dropping in unannounced because you were “in the neighborhood” falls into the latter category; it’s also the mark of an amateur. Instead, schedule your calls, have a stated objective for each meeting and be sure the time spent results in value for the customer.

9. Serve as an information resource. Top-performing salespeople often provide customers with useful background materials, typically from reputable outside sources. Consider giving your buyers relevant information from The Wall Street Journal, local business journals, industry magazines and newsletters.

10. Make the buyer a hero. Top performers know what personal factors drive each buyer’s behavior, whether it’s ego, desire for a bonus, the potential for promotion or some other factor. Do what’s necessary to make sure an important buyer regards a particular sale as a personal win. Do you know their personality style?

Long ago, someone told me the three key factors in sales are: Emotion, emotion, emotion. No question about it: If you recognize your buyers’ emotions, you’ll accelerate your sales.

We caught up with Mark Leslie, Principal of Leslie Ventures in Silicon Valley, Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and author of “The Sales Learning Curve,” and asked him the most important things to consider in understanding your sales process and cycle.

Almost a decade ago, Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway wrote a Harvard Business Review article entitled, “The Sales Learning Curve.” That piece, written as the SaaS industry was just beginning to emerge from the womb, prognosticated the realities of technology sales that, here in 2015, are now indisputable.

The article’s point: There’s a learning curve for getting every emerging product to market maturation. The learning curve is both internal and external.

The world has changed substantially in the nine years since Leslie wrote the article, so we reached out to him and asked to take a few minutes, revisit his original article, and discuss some of the major ways technology, marketing automation, and Millennials are impacting his findings from 2006.

Mark Leslie Talks All Things “Sales Learning Curve”

What factors go into your sales cycle? How do you figure out the right buyer profile of your product? How do you know when to switch from onboarding a new Sales Rep to putting him out in the wild?

These are all critical questions every sales team faces, especially those in growing companies that have yet to achieve full maturation within their market. They’re part of the so-called learning curve every growing business, B2B or B2C, faces in scaling out its sales team and reaching full market penetration.

There’s always a learning curve in sales. Not just for new Sales reps you’re looking to onboard, but for managers and all members of the leadership executive team.  Which is why we asked Mark Leslie to join us and answer three key questions we had about what’s impacting sales curves in 2015.

Ambition: What is the impact of technology on the Sales Curve?

Mark: Technology is an enabler, on both the consumer and the sales end. We now have the internet consumer and things of that nature.  A lot of tech companies, SaaS companies as an example, have a much lighter weight sales model or marketing model than the companies that follow the classic enterprise model. So if you go into world of SaaS applications as an example you might find that there is more demand-driven model and inside sales transaction model, rather than the enterprise model.

If you go to the B2C, you’ll find that it’s all marketing. However, the lessons of the paper remain true. Once you believe it’s time to turn a switch and say this is my product and it’s in the market, you have to go thru a learning curve. And the progress of the learning curve can be measured and show your maturation within the market. For the inside sales guy with the light touch high transaction rate, the yield curve could be return on your marketing efforts.

Ambition: Inbound marketing has taken on much more prominence. How much more of an emphasis should sales teams be placing on inbound marketing vs outbound sales efforts versus what they were doing in 2006?

Completely depends on the product and strategy of the company. As an example, if you’re building a product that’s going to be sold B2B, that’s expensive, a long-term solution, and complicated, and you’re selling into a market that’s very competitive with a smaller number of potential customers, you have high touch sale that’s going to require outbound and require an end-user sales model. An extreme example of that would be General Electric selling jet engines to airplane manufacturers, which it can only sell to a 100 companies in the world and hits all of the above.

An example of the other extreme, on the B2B end, would be Proctor and Gamble selling toothpaste. Many users, B2C, very low cost, very simple sale, et cetera. So the Proctor and Gamble is all Proctor all marketing and no sale, and the General Electric example is the opposite. An as you look at your product, questions like how complicated is it, how much does it cost, how difficult is the sale, how many users am I trying to reach, how long is my sales cycle — that all informs you where you belong in this model.

Ambition: When you wrote your first article, that was just prior to an influx of Millennials into the learning force? What is the impact of them into the Sales Curve?

I wouldn’t say that the generational differences matter as much. It’s driven by the product. If Millennials are the people who can’t do execute, then they’re not the right ones for the business.

But I don’t think generations matter in terms of the ability to get the job done. Not every job is the right thing for every person, and that remains true regardless of generation.

Understanding Your Sales Learning Curve in 2015

Mark’s answers are revealing in a somewhat surprising sense: At its core, very little about the sales learning curve has changed over the past ten years.

Questions like — who are my ideal buyers, how big is my potential market, how competitive is my industry — still play an important role in determining the best courses of action. The same goes for questions like, what is my ideal sales cycle, what is the proper balance between inbound marketing and outbound in my sales process what is the appropriate time for onboarding a new sales rep.

In creating a scalable sales model, organizations now have more tools at their disposal to help them ramp up faster. But they still must go through the learning curve, make mistakes, and use buyer feedback to continuously refine and improve their process. Special thanks to Mark Leslie for being gracious enough to appear and for his valuable insights.

The connected car is already on the market and generating significant revenue for car makers and tech companies. 

Over the past year, there has been a significant uptick in the number of connected cars on the road. And as internet integration becomes more commonplace, the automobile as we know it will transform.

Over the next five to 10 years, this internet integration is expected to change the car ownership model, create a new platform for consumers to access content, lead to fully autonomous vehicles, and revolutionize the auto industry.

The market position of the car today is similar to where the smartphone was in 2010 — it's just taken off and is ready to explode. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we examine the transformation of the automobile. We examine all areas of the changing automotive market, including the market size for connected cars, automakers benefits and connection strategies, market leaders, consumer demand, and more.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Over 380 million connected cars will be on the road by 2021. The market has seen a significant increase in automakers plans to connect the majority of the vehicles they sell and as a result, we've increased our 2015 forecast.
• Automakers are connecting the vehicles they sell because the connection offers clear business opportunities.
• Consumers are adopting the connected car faster than expected. We identify the 3 factors that causing the increase in demand.
• Tech companies will play a major role in the future of the automotive market. The big question is whether tech companies will eventually manufacture cars?
• Fully autonomous cars are only a few years away. Technological, regulatory, and consumer adoption hurdles still remain, but there have been many strides towards a car that can drive itself from point A to point B with little to no human interaction.

In full the report:

• Forecasts connected car shipments
• Identifies automakers strategy for connection
• Analyzes consumer interest in the connected car
• Examines Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
• Discusses the potential changing car ownership model
• Describes the evolution of the self-driving car
• Identifies top connected car and fully autonomous car barriers

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:

1. Subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and over 100 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now
2. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now

Join the conversation about this story »

Gold, oil, money, land ... what is the ultimate source of power in 2015?

Contracts.

Reuters published a story Tuesday about how Libya's recognized government — which has fled to the east of the country after being forced out of the city of Tripoli by a rival government — is attempting to control the country's oil wealth by setting up its own national oil company (which is confusing because both are called the National Oil Company, or NOC).

This, however, is unlikely to happen, Reuters explains, because international buyers are wary of purchasing oil from an illegitimate "national" oil company.

Libya has one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Production tanked after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, but oil exports are still the major way that the government, or, rather, governments, have of paying the bills. These days, those bills seem to consist mostly of paying militias to fight the other government's militias.

"Various rebel groups that opposed the dictator were put on the public payroll after his downfall and have refused to disarm," Reuters writes.

And thus, Libya is basically being held together by the central bank.

"The bank is one of the last institutions largely left untouched by the power struggle, paying public salaries across the country, including those of the armed groups on the state payroll who are fighting on both sides in the civil war," Reuters reported.

The bank's stability seems to come from the fact that oil exports are such a huge source of revenue for both sides. And in order to export oil, you by and large have to follow the rules of the international financial system.

And that means adhering to contracts!

This is nominally a story about the Libyan civil war. But really this is a story about contracts: 

"Oil contracts... are signed with the (Tripoli) NOC and paid into central bank accounts," said Mattia Toaldo, policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"I don't think that materially the ...(eastern) government could change that without modifying these contracts," he said. "It'd have to assure to the companies that it is in fact in control, which is not the case."

Introducing a new payment system would mean breaking up the central bank, which has processed oil exports though accounts used by buyers for decades, and which is the only source of hard currency for the importers who feed Libya's 6 million people.

And while the government in the east may still be the officially recognized government, being forced out of the capital has had some downsides. Once again, the contracts:

Although Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, now operating in the east, claims the authority to assert control over oil exports, those involved in the trade say it would be all but impossible for him to do so.

Thousands of documents, contracts, maps and geological sheets are stored in Tripoli at headquarters of the NOC and its subsidiaries, where hundreds of employees work.

SEE ALSO: US oil train accidents won't go away any time soon

Join the conversation about this story »

“The spring wakes us, nurtures us and revitalizes us.”

The onset of spring brings a feeling of change and growth. In places like the Midwest and the East Coast, this change can be more visible – especially after a winter like this one! But, even here in California, we experience the difference.

With the rush to hit the first quarter’s numbers almost over, spring can also be a good time for sales organizations to examine and assess sales processes. Because customer-buying patterns have shifted so dramatically, it’s important to take time to reflect on your existing processes and see whether any ‘sales’ spring-cleaning might be in order.

To get started, ask yourself a few key questions.

Are your sales processes in sync with marketing?

At the beginning of the year, three top Gartner analysts – Hank Barnes, Todd Berkowitz, and Tiffani Bova – each wrote a blog about where they’d spend a million dollars if they ran marketing. Although they took different approaches, all agreed that investments needed to be made to increase collaboration between sales and marketing teams.

Can your sales reps easily access and leverage the latest marketing content to competitive advantage for your business? Does marketing benefit from your sales team’s customer insights – and vice versa? To improve communications and performance, organizations must ensure that systems become integrated between these two groups.

Does your sales team understand your buyers’ issues?

If you listen to executive buyers, many of them don’t think so. According to Forrester Research, nearly 80% of executive buyers say sales reps don’t understand their issues and can’t help them. If you feel your team lacks sufficient insights into customer needs, consider new sales engagement analytics. Advanced sales analytics can give deeper and more comprehensive visibility into customer buying behaviors – so your reps can see what product features are of most interest and quickly spot all stakeholders involved in the purchasing process.

Do your reps spend too much time on routine tasks?

Research shows that 70% of sales reps work within multiple systems that aren’t streamlined or connected. Going back and forth between systems and manually inputting sales data take away time from core selling activities. With processes to automate routine sales tasks, reps can accelerate their sales efforts – and get to a close faster! Now’s also a good time to take a look at best productivity practices – like the 10 calls by 10 am or the 4×4 rule for new account acquisition. Sales expert Sally Duby, GM for the Bridge Group, Inc., has great tips in this recorded webinar: “Productivity Best Practices.”

Do you think your organization is ahead or behind the competition?

“If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.” Bob Hooey

This is a great sales quote. Think for a moment. Is your sales organization doing everything it possibly can to take care of your customer?

Relationship building, of course, will always be the cornerstone of sales. But, as a result of changed buying patterns, you have to consider new ways to take care of your customer – or risk losing out to your competition. To help solve customer problems, you need to understand their issues. To understand their issues, you need more insight. By showing buying behaviors in granular detail, new sales acceleration technologies can give you that insight and empower you to strengthen customer relationships.

Earlier this year I sat in on the 2015 Virtual Sales Kickoff hosted by my friend S. Anthony Iannarino (along with Jeb Blount). I was particularly impressed with the first speaker Mike Weinberg—sales coach, consultant, and author of the book New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development. Mike's presentation, “4 Tips to Power Up Prospecting in 2015,” blew me away.

Naturally, I followed up to “meet” Mike via email and asked him if I could share his tips with my blog audience. To my great delight (and yours), he graciously agreed to this request. We’ll review each tip one at a time—but first, let's see what they are:

Mike Weinberg’s 4 Tips to Power Up Prospecting in 2015:

• Part 1: Tip #1 Believe it Works
• Part 2: Tip #2 Commit to It
• Part 3: Tip #3 Sharpen Your Story
• Part 4: Tip #4 Reconcile Your Relationship with the Phone

Mike is unashamedly passionate AND practical about prospecting. So, what is prospecting, exactly? Mike sums up the definition of prospecting in three P’s: Proactively Pursuing Prospects. Throughout the presentation, he debunks the argument of inbound marketing “experts” and social selling gurus who preach that outbound is out, and inbound is … well, in. Mike’s passion is backed up with information that is clear, direct and concise. No riddles, no secret codes—no puzzles to complicate matters. He is spot on. You’ll walk away informed and, dare I say, inspired.

Tip 1: You have to BELIEVE prospecting works.

Prospecting continues to be an effective and successful way of identifying and creating opportunities. Unfortunately there’s a growing population of naysayers—“Detractors to Prospecting”—who refuse to acknowledge this to be true. These are the folks who conspire to tell you that prospecting doesn’t work. They tend to fall into one of two groups: Peers and Experts.

Peers are colleagues or people in the same industry that secretly do not want you to succeed for fear that they will be forced to do what you’re doing. Their approach is subtle. Their message—a whisper.

Experts, on the other hand, preach from the pulpit that prospecting today is fruitless, outdated … even dead. They claim that buyers are 70% of the way through the buying process before engaging a salesperson. To which, Mike responds, may be true when it comes to lazy salespeople who wait around for leads to be served up to them on a silver platter. Otherwise, it’s nothing more than a straw man—a deterrent from the truth.

Why raise such a fuss? Why does Mike so vehemently oppose such claims? For one thing, inbound marketing alone can never generate enough leads to work and fill a pipeline. Case in point: The CEO of one of the largest inbound marketing companies revealed to him that they actually use an outbound marketing team to sell the service of the inbound marketing team. Secondly, it’s hard to be perceived as a consultant and value creator when you arrive so late to the party. Those who fall for this will inevitably find themselves eating the dust of their more proactive competitors. And finally, these “experts” are just flat out wrong!

Coming up next: Tip #2 Commit to It. 

About Mike Weinberg

Mike is a consultant, sales coach, speaker and author on a mission to simplify sales and his specialties are New Business Development and Sales Management.

In 2014, he was named a Top Sales Influencer by Forbes and OpenView Labs, and his first book New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development became a #1 Amazon Best-Seller and spent a full year as the Top-Rated book in its category.

Web: http://www.newsalescoach.com

Twitter: @mike_weinberg 

Are you sick and tired of hearing how amazing email marketing is for your competitors but you’re getting minimal results? I mean, you compose this great email based on best practices and then…

10% open your email but only 5% (of those 10%) click-through.

What happened between you pressing send and them sending it to the junk box? Well, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

In this article I’ll be sharing with you some tips and tricks, which, while not claiming to “skyrocket your engagement rate by 1000%!” will, legitimately, do some good.

Here are nine email hacks that we’ve found to get your emails opened and make your engagement rate soar.

Let’s get started, in 3, 2, 1. Go!

1. Highlight the important parts of the email to help people skim

The emails you send need to be easily read in order for people to get the main points without reading every word (kind of like a landing page but a little less intense).

Help your readers get your key messaging as quickly as possible by making it easy for them to skim for the most important points.

There are a few ways to draw attention to the important parts of your email:

• Bold keywords in your text to contrast the words and draw the eye. Do not CAPITALIZE the words as it’s annoying, spammy, and the same thing can be accomplished by bolding.
• Create lists like the one I’m currently using. Lists break up text and make it easier to read the most important points.
• Encapsulate the most important information.
• Use a call-to-action button that stands out from the rest of the email.

Look at the two emails below and tell me which one you’re more likely to convert on?

This email:

Or this:

Hi there,

What’s the point of a contest? Really, what’s the point? Real-world sales, right?

I mean, who are we kidding?

Facebook Fans don’t pay the bills. Leads don’t fill your bank account.

This article, by Claire Grayston, gives you five essential steps you need to take after your contest is over to turn success into dollars.

Read the article here: [link to article]

Cheers

James Scherer

They both contain the same information but the first one uses bolding and has a bright and informative call-to-action (“Check out the article”). The first one draws the recipient into the most important parts of the email. The second one requires the person to read the entire article to get the main points.

2. Offer an additional piece of content

When a person takes an action on your website and provides their email address, it’s the perfect opportunity to market to them further. You could just send them what they asked for but why not use this an opportunity to market to them further with an additional piece of content?

This will also increase the chances of them clicking through on at least one of your email’s links so long as your second CTA is relevant and actionable.

Picture these scenarios to see what you could send:

• A person registers for your webinar but doesn’t attend. It happens, no need to stress yourself out. How about (instead of just sending them the webinar recording) you also send them another piece of content related to the webinar. If your webinar was on running a contest on Facebook, send them an ebook on using Facebook ads to drive traffic to a designated landing page (or contest).
• A person signs up for notifications from your blog. Create an automated welcome email which lets them know that you have a collection of ebooks to get them started with the basics or include a link to your social media accounts so they can stay up-to-date.

By offering relevant and useful information related to the actions your leads have already taken, they’ll be more willing to read and click-through on your email.

3. Include a click-to-tweet

Increasing your engagement rate could be as simple as including a click-to-tweet in your emails. This will get the word out about your content easier and faster because it’s making it easy for your subscribers to share your valuable content. This isn’t just for blog posts but really for anything in your online marketing strategy.

Here are three ideas of CTTs you could include in your emails:

1. Get people to share your webinar to encourage their social network to register

   CTT: “Excited to be attending “[name of webinar”] on [date of webinar]. Register to attend too! – link

2. Get them to talk about your cool new product in exchange for a discount.

   CTT: I just tried [name of your product] and it’s helped me do [X-benefit]! RT for your chance to win a years supply.

3. Get them to share your latest blog post

   CTT: [Question related to article?]: Check out [name of post] #hashtag1 #hashtag2

Basically, they easier you make it for your email recipients to share the content of your email the more likely it is to be engaged with.

4. Post the link near the top of the email

Before you get too deep into the nitty gritty of your email’s content, provide a link to whatever it is that you’re promoting. This makes it easy, if they’re already hooked by your subject line, to click-through on your offer.

Let’s say that I was writing an email to share the exact article I’m currently writing:

Hi there,

Is your email engagement not as awesome as you want it to be? Here are 9 email hacks you can use to boost it.

You can read it here: [link to article]

In this article I’ll be going over some of the things I’ve done in my emails to increase engagement, including:

• Adding a click-to-tweet so recipients can easily share your content
• Offering an additional piece of content to move recipients down the sales funnel
• Making it easy for recipients to easily skim your email through the use of lists and contrast
• +MORE

If you want some more advanced tips be sure to check out: [link to a more advanced but relevant article you’ve written].

Cheers,

[your name]

By including a link as close to the top as possible you avoid risking the immediate drop off. People could be interested in what you’re sharing, but the length of your emails may (again, like a landing page) discourage a click-through.

5. Tell someone to do something

Including a call-to-action on your emails is what’s going to get you click-throughs. This sounds too simple to be true but a lot of people forget to ask.

The email you send can include a series of mini CTAs that guide the recipient towards your overall end goal.

For example, let’s say that I was trying to get someone to download the email-gated content they requested:

• I’d start by stating in the subject line that action is required by saying “Action Required!”
• Next, I’d go on to compliment my recipients by saying that they’ve made a smart move by requesting this ebook, whitepaper or report (anything email-gated). This gets them excited about the offer and thinking something along the lines of “Yes, I am a smart person and I did make the right move.”
• Include a call-to-action button that stands out from the rest of the page and has actionable copy. Something like, “Get My Ebook.”
• Finally let them know when they’ve scrolled too far down the page. Something like, “Click the button above” or “You’ve gone too far, scroll up one inch and try again.”

I may or may not have gotten this idea from Chris at Spokal. Super cool idea :)

6. Make your video a gif

Videos are incredibly popular at the moment. The thing is, simply showing the video in a still frame or sharing a link to the video isn’t going to be as appealing as the video itself.

But how do you get people to click on it?

There are tools available that allow you to turn your video into a short gif. Let’s say you have a 3 minute video, take 10-15 seconds worth of video in which you move around a lot. The gif will play without sound but will be more eye-catching and encourage people to check out the video.

7. Link your images and insert marketing messages into the alt text

Including linked images to a site of your choosing is a sure-fire way to increase engagement within your emails.

Start by placing an image in your email but ensure it includes a call-to-action. Having a photo with no context may leave some people wondering why you’ve placed it there in the first place and won’t encourage them to click.

For example, if you were running a webinar on email marketing you could have your headline read: “Webinar: Email Marketing Tips That Are Guaranteed to Skyrocket Your CTR.” Include a picture with an open email and a call-to-action button that says, “Save my seat.”

When you link an image you have the chance to include alt text in your email’s code. Most standard marketers will either ignore this option or simply repeat the subject line, article title, or what the image is.

Smart marketers, like you, include marketing messages or encourage email recipients to click on your CTA.

You see, if people view their emails without images (as many do) on their mobile they’ll receive a transparent box with the alt text in the middle. Normally, it’d look something like this:

But what if you took the opportunity handed to you, and instead wrote, “Click this box to register for the webinar!” or something even more creative?

This is how you stand out from the crowd people.

8. Send a last chance email to create urgency

The last chance email is a doozie. It’s that crucial email right before a particular action, step, or offer expires.

You’re telling your email recipients “this is your last chance to complete some action before something bad happens.”

The something bad could be anything from missing out on an event to having your subscription expire or having a price go up!

Let’s look at these three events in detail to show how you can create urgency to get your email recipients to complete the desired action.

If you want the recipient to:

• Register for an event so they don’t miss out:

  “Don’t miss out! There are only 2 hours left until [the event] starts. This is the first time [qualified person X] will be sharing the secrets of [XYZ]. You don’t want to miss this. Register for the event here, [link], before it’s too late.”/i>

• Go from free trial to a paying user:

  “Eek, there’s only 1 day left on your free trial. This means that starting tomorrow your account will be canceled unless you click here to join us: [link]. For a limited time only (the next 24 hours) we’re offering you an upgraded account for the price of the base account. This means you’ll get tons of additional features including: [list your features]. Don’t miss out on this awesome opportunity to [something cool/benefit of your product].”/i>

• Get them to shop your sale items:

  Share a couple pictures of sale items and say, “Only X number of these items are left. Get them before they’re gone.”

Sending a last chance email will not only increase the chance of engagement, but will also encourage people to stick with you as a customer for a bit longer.

9. Make it something no one has seen before

The amount of emails I receive that have absolutely no creativity thrown into them make me depressed.

They’ve shot their plain text into an email with a hyperlink to the offer they’re giving you and expect the recipient to be wowed by their complete lack of effort.

If you want someone to click-through on your offer, it’s a good idea to make it visually appealing.

Most professionals receive dozens of emails every day. If your business can find a way to prepare an email that is different from the others? Then you’re onto something.

Warning, science ahead:

When you deliver an email to your recipients that is different (or novel) from the ones they receive every day (either through tone, design or offer), the chemical dopamine is released. Dopamine, as you likely know, is responsible for affecting the pleasure sensors in the brain.

You heard me: original and creative ideas will, genuinely, make your email recipients feel more excited about clicking on your offer or engaging with your brand.

Things you could include that are novel:

• Try implementing an animated template.
• Include background images or gifs.
• Be an out of the ordinary wordsmith.

Conclusion

There’s no one guaranteed way to encourage your email recipients to click-through or engage with your offers. That said, there are a load of things which have worked for other businesses and could work for you. It’s all about testing and tweaking as much as possible.

Do you have any email hacks that have helped you increase your email engagement? I’d love to hear them. Please share in the comments below.

In the past, employee engagement wasn’t a priority for driving the bottom line.

In the 1980s, for example, companies focused on product quality and management processes. In the 1990s, there was a shift to Six Sigma programs and web-based processes like Knowledge Management. However, what many companies now realize is that the most profound investment returns come from recognition programs for employees.

According to Gallup surveys, organizations with high levels of employee engagement showed 27 percent higher profits, 50 percent higher sales, 50 percent higher customer loyalty and 38 percent above-average productivity.

Companies with unhappy employees have greater absenteeism and less productivity. These same companies have a 51 percent higher turnover rate than similar companies with engaged employees. Gallup poll info also shows that only 29 percent of employees are actually interested and loyal; 54 percent are neutral; and the rest frankly couldn’t care less.

In terms of metrics and hard facts, the annual loss to the U.S. economy due to lack of employee engagement is a whopping 350 billion dollars in lost productivity and profits.

The Importance of Employee Recognition

In light of these grim statistics, smart companies are implementing employee recognition programs on a global scale. This is achieved by fostering a climate of appreciation across the organization through a strategic recognition program. Not only do these programs increase profits and productivity, they also reduce the millions of dollars wasted on recruiting and training new employees.

According to Gallup, employees who feel they are recognized and appreciated are half as likely to leave their company. Additionally, engaged employees generate stronger customer connections, higher customer retention, greater profitability, and long and sustained market growth.

Building a Culture of Engagement

So what are the types of practices that foster a culture of employee engagement? The company Globoforce has outlined five key components to such a program:

• Knowing your workforce
• Building confidence into your leadership and your corporate strategy
• Inspiring others to achieve greatness
• Steady communication
• Building a culture of appreciation

Knowing your workforce simply means understanding what motivates them both culturally and psychologically. Building confidence into your leadership means investing in your management team so they have the leadership skills necessary to produce the company vision and values by demonstrating these variables in their own management behavior.

Inspiring others to achieve greatness is simply a feedback loop of recognition and rewards that echo the company’s values by praising those who reinforce the company vision. This approach is proven to inspire employees to do better.

Constant communication raises awareness, increases participation, boosts performance and leads to the final component: the culture of appreciation. The culture of appreciation is one where individuals give employees thanks on both a formal and informal basis.

Globoforce also has five key building blocks to this employee engagement program:

• A global, not just regional, strategy
• Recognition aligned with corporate values
• Executive sponsorship with clear goals
• Opportunity for all participants
• Unlimited choice for rewards

Getting Everyone On Board

A clear global strategy means just that: understanding that employees in each specific region of the world will have unique rewards needs based on geography and culture. The idea here is to cross all global divisions with region-specific motivators.

Recognition aligned with corporate values means that the organization, when praising employees, is actually mirroring the company values, with the end goal of making the value system come alive to all employees.

Executive sponsorship with clear goals is a key component to the system; because usually employee recognition is the very thing left out of most strategic initiatives at a senior level. In this employee engagement model, however, the senior management supports middle management to award activity.

The opportunity for all to participate is to make sure that not only a few select employees are awarded, but everyone. In this model, each and every recognition award acts as a marketing and commination event of sorts, reinforcing core corporate values directly into the workplace.

Unlimited choice for rewards is simply eliminating the “one size fits all” mentality, since such a mind frame misses opportunities to reinforce positive association in different regions based on each region’s specific culture.

The ROI of Employee Engagement

Companies with a real commitment to getting a return on their investments in employee engagement programs can use Globoforce practices and building blocks to start offsetting workforce apathy and non-engagement.

Certainly, knowing what motivates one’s workforce and providing management with the leadership skills needed to demonstrate the company’s values while inspiring employees to greatness is a sound first step. Additionally, constant communication where employees received both formal and informal thanks will further foster a workplace culture rich with recognition and reward.

The “global strategy” view will insure that employees’ needs are being met, regardless of their location in the world. Aligning the praise with the corporation’s values will provide the much-needed experiential component to the program, so that employees see that the company “walks its talk.” Senior level engagement is also critical, since these executives can keep the middle management on task.

Finally, when all employees can be recognized, and recognized in a manner befitting their specific culture, the odds of the employee engagement program providing an actual investment return increase.

My fascination with segmentation started early in my marketing career when I realized the power of extracting, analyzing and applying data.  While the technologies have advanced, the need for marketers to understand who their ideal customers are remains constant.

Sophisticated relational segmentation techniques balance the principles of statistics with the realities of today’s marketing budgets and, in most cases, can predict the likely success of B2B marketing programs.

My goal in writing this “Smart Segmentation” blog series is to share information that can save you significant dollars, time and resources by providing tips to help you:

•  Avoid the missed potential that occurs with traditional database clean-ups.

•  Understand why a clean list doesn’t equate to a high-performing list.

•  Identify your most valuable segments and apply that knowledge predictably to generate higher return.

•  Achieve a higher number of more profitable sales in a timely manner at a lower cost.

Conversations about data today are blurred by the very popular focus on “big data.” Big data is all the rage. Nevertheless, despite the wealth of insight it contains, big data has the potential to complicate, instead of simplify, decision making. When big data becomes the primary focus, “little data” errors often get overlooked—and the results are extremely costly.

I have worked in data (big and little) for more than 30 years. I once worked with three Ph.D. statisticians, and all they did was big data analysis. We routinely analyzed data on 100,000,000 prospects before deciding to whom we’d mail 5,000, 10,000, 500,000, or even several million catalogs. Our multivariate data analytics capabilities between 1985 and 1989 were more sophisticated than most B2B companies today. The process, a form of Smart Segmentation, resulted in improvements from just single digit to multiple digit increases in response over control groups (not segmented).

So I am not naive about the potential for big data. My concern, however, is that companies are ignoring the existing, little data already in front of them.

According to a Harvard Business Review article:

The biggest reason that investments in big data fail to pay off is that most companies don’t do a good job with the information they already have… Until a company learns how to use data and analysis to support its operating decisions, it will not be in a position to benefit from big data.

HBR’s analysis is spot-on. Until a company learns how to use information they already have to improve results, they are not in the position to gain much from more sophisticated “Big Data” analysis because they will be faced with the problem of having too much data and no idea what to do with it or about it. As such, prior to performing Smart Segmentation we recommend driving all of the benefit out of the existing little data that is mostly unused.

Here are some examples of little data that can be mined for value:

1. According to SiriusDecisions: “Both sales operations and marketing operations recognize the importance of data management, but most survey respondents reported little success with collaborating on data. The biggest issue is data validation and duplication between sales and marketing databases; 63% of respondents indicated that they are unsatisfied with sales and marketing data alignment”. The problem with most big data clean-up exercises is the money is gone before any value is recognized. That is because cleaning up data is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Once you have completed painting the bridge, it is time to start over and paint it again. With data, once you have cleaned up everything in your database, you have run out of money and a lot of the data is already out-of-date again. In most cases, you can derive close to 100% of the value of database clean-up with about 20 to 30% of the investment. Specifically, you should divide your entire customer and prospective client  database into homogeneous groups or  “cubes.” (I call them cubes because the segmentation is not always limited to two dimensions.) Next, take a small segment of each cube and clean it up. Finally, test market to the cleaned-up segments using some intuition about which should be more heavily marketed to. You will find some segments are as much as nine times more productive than others (more on that later in the series).

2. Lists are hard and there is no such thing as the perfect list. It has always amazed me that the same executive who approves spending $25 on a “lumpy direct mail package” fights over 25 cents per name for a list. Pay attention to the little data details because bad list decisions lead to ugly databases. Lists should be tested. Smart testing includes list segmentation; which will begin to stratify the suspects so that more of them turn into prospects. No matter how smart your big data strategy, it will go nowhere with bad lists and data.

3. Apply laser-like focus on metrics as leads move from suspects to prospects to customers. On average, five percent of any given B2B market (for more complex products or solutions) is sales-qualified. Most companies start and stop there. In reality, however, another five percent of the same B2B target market is what we call “pipeline.” These have met the qualification criteria and shown interest, but have not yet committed to the next step. As many as four out of ten of these will be turned over as highly qualified sales opportunities in as few as one to two additional conversations. Another 25 to 30 percent of the same B2B target market is qualified from an environment perspective, but don’t have any interest or need at the current time and should be placed in a nurturing program.

Stay tuned to my next post on Smart Segmentation. We will talk about what causes CMOs to lose their marbles over little data and what to do about it.

This article is part 1 of a 3-part series on Smart Segmentation titled “Nailing Optimized Lead Development With Smart Segmentation” and was published originally at Dun & Bradstreet Connectors

Long before I joined iContact as an employee, I was a client of the company. I selected iContact over a number of other services trialled because they were the only company to pick up the phone and thank me for trying the product out. They didn’t try to sell me anything but made sure I knew there was great support available from a real person should I ever need it.

This one quick call not only sold me the service, it made me want to work with the organization – largely because of the great people it employed.

Supercharging Your Email Marketing Efforts with People Power

Many small businesses look to online technologies like email marketing to drive efficiencies. They believe in the concept of “one-to-many” marketing (the practice of hitting multiple people with a targeted campaign in the hope of driving sales while reducing the time every salesperson must spend with tire-kickers and time wasters). It’s a practice I wholeheartedly endorse – but not always at the expense of real human engagement.

Sometimes great email marketing needs a little human touch to turn browsers into buyers.

So how do you find the right balance between automating your marketing activities and the old, time consuming, labor intensive way of doing things?

Cold Calling Is Dead, Long Live Warm Calling

I find the one-to-many sales approach works best when you factor in a little people power.

Great content, timely email campaigns, and engaging social media posts are a great way of communicating with and identifying potential buyers. Sometimes, particularly in a competitive market or when you are selling complex or perhaps more costly items or services, you’ll need to pick up the phone to close the deal. If your email marketing campaigns have hit the mark this should ensure any sales calls are “warm” (as opposed to “cold”) and therefore stand a greater chance of success.

Hint: You can use the free analytic tools provided with your iContact account to identify your most engaged clients. The people who have opened and engaged with your campaigns multiple times are the people who are most likely to welcome your sales calls.

Remember: Not all sales leads are created equal. Picking up the phone and calling every name presented to you as a lead is a very inefficient and, quite frankly, soul-destroying task. This is where the one-to-many sales approach comes into its own. Smart email marketing will not only help you get your message out there, it will help you identify the hottest prospects and make you a better a salesperson.

How are you using email marketing to make your sales operation more efficient? Share your comments below:

This post first appeared on the iContact Email Marketing Blog.

Of all the segments of content marketers we’ve studied over the last year, technology marketers are the most focused on lead generation as a goal for content marketing. While tech marketers were the group most focused on lead generation last year as well, the percentage has increased from 86% in 2014 to 91% this year.

It’s also notable that the tech marketers are shifting away a bit from brand awareness (which does not generate leads) as a primary goal, and more toward getting measurable results (using leads as one measure).

Those are some of the key insights from our new report, B2B Technology Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America sponsored by International Data Group (IDG). Here are some additional findings.

Metrics align with goals

Like their B2B peers overall, technology marketers continue to cite website traffic as their top metric. However, technology marketers are much more focused than their B2B peers are on sales and lead-related metrics: sales lead quality (62% vs. 49%), higher conversion rates (61% vs. 48%), and sales lead quantity (54% vs. 40%).

LEARN MORE: 8 Metrics to Conquer a Content Marketer’s Fear of Measurement

Content marketing is often situated under the demand gen umbrella

When compared with their B2B peers overall, technology marketers are more likely to report to demand gen marketing (32% vs. 18%) and product marketing (23% vs. 19%) departments. Enterprise technology marketers (1,000+ employees) are most likely to report to product marketing (27%).

LEARN MORE: Make Your Demand Generation More Effective with These 3 Processes

A documented content marketing strategy improves ability to track ROI

Of the total sample of technology marketers surveyed, 24% said their organizations are successful at tracking the ROI of their content marketing program (compared with 21% of B2B marketers overall). Confidence rises, however, when the technology marketer has a documented content marketing strategy (40% of those who have one say they are successful).

LEARN MORE: The Essentials of a Documented Content Marketing Strategy: 36 Questions to Answer

73% are working to create more engaging content

Out of a list of 28 initiatives, the highest percentage of technology marketers (73%) said they are working to create more engaging content, which is also their biggest challenge (63%).

Other priorities for technology marketers include:

• Doing better at converting website visitors (71%)
• Better understanding of audience (69%)
• Finding more/better ways to repurpose content (66%)

LEARN MORE: Discover which internal processes, content marketing strategies, and execution tactics marketers are prioritizing.

Get all the results

Download the entire report today to learn more, including:

• How do technology marketers budget for content marketing?
• Which tactics, social media platforms, and paid promotion methods do they use? Which of those are most effective?
• How often do they publish new content?
• How many audiences do they target?

Do you think technology marketers are growing in their sophistication with aligning metrics and goals, challenges and initiatives, and other areas of content marketing? Are they improving with measurement? What questions do you have? Let us know in the comments.

Join us at Content Marketing World 2015 for a one-day industry lab dedicated to technology marketing.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Research: Technology Marketers Align Around Lead Gen appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

So much is written and said about Marketing and Sales alignment, with thought leaders recommending that Marketing do this, or Sales do that. At the heart of the conversation is how to get Sales and Marketing to see eye-to-eye.

But in my opinion, Marketing and Sales alignment isn’t about meeting each other’s gaze; the goal should be to share a common focal point. To achieve true Marketing and Sales harmony, both departments need to turn their focus outside the company entirely -- to the customer!

Data shows that Sales and Marketing alignment impacts the funnel at almost every stage -- conversion rates, win rates, lifetime value, and even attrition. While not enough research has been conducted around how alignment affects customer advocacy, I strongly suspect that a positive correlation can be found there as well.

Think about what that means. Digitally-enabled modern buyers have a choice and a voice. If they’re unhappy with their vendor, they have a plethora of social platforms to sound off on. Not to mention that potential buyers trust these sorts of peer reviews far more than they do any marketing collateral your company publishes.

But those same customers also make their voices heard when they’re happy. Consider that referrals have the highest customer conversion rate of any lead source type and generally close at higher margins. Customer advocates are incredibly powerful, and if more tightly aligning Marketing and Sales can get you more, it’s a no-brainer.

When I think about Marketing and Sales alignment, I start with the “why,” and then move on to the “what” and the “how.” 

• Why: Organizations with tightly coupled Marketing and Sales functions have higher lead acceptance and conversion rates. Less friction = more money. It’s that simple.
• What: The customer, above all else. Both Marketing and Sales need to be customer-centered, customer-centric, and customer-obsessed.
• How: Study the customer journey and formulate a shared set of processes around it.

With these guidelines in mind, here are some specific action items for each function:

Marketing

• Learn more about the sales process to be able to provide content relevant to specific paths and points.
• Seek input from salespeople about what content they think would be most helpful to buyers.
• Build, nurture, and collaborate with a community of customer advocates.

Sales

• Learn how to network with potential customers on the social web instead of over cocktails or golf.
• Study the buyer’s journey, and understand how you can help (not sell) at each stage.
• Be where your buyers are and interact with them. You are what you tweet -- get involved and show that you’re trustworthy and knowledgeable about industry issues.

Above all, a shared focus on the customer requires a shift in the definition of success for both Marketing and Sales. Yes, lead generation and revenue goals won’t -- and shouldn’t -- go away. But what’s more important than generating a certain amount of leads or closing a certain amount of business? Customer success.

I used to revel in crushing my number as a sales rep. But over time, watching my customers get promoted, receive industry recognition, or win awards brought me even greater joy. Their success was my success, and I firmly believe Sales and Marketing functions need to adopt this motto if they hope to be truly aligned.

Instead of nitpicking Sales for dropping the ball here, or Marketing for slacking in this area, concentrate on making your customers successful. Striving together toward a shared goal can create more natural harmony than any other alignment initiative. 

B2B buyers are becoming more like B2C consumers in the way they shop and buy products and solutions. Instead of waiting for an invitation, they’re starting the buying journey on their own, gathering information and doing research long before they’re ready to buy. In fact, according to Forrester Research, prospects wait until they are 65% to 90% of the way through their journey before approaching a vendor.

This shift in buying behavior is transforming B2B marketing. Simple outbound strategies just aren’t enough anymore. These days, many B2B marketers are getting superior results by using short- and long-term nurturing programs:

• Forrester Research found that companies excelling at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads, at a 33% lower cost.
• Nurtured leads make purchases that are 47% larger than those of non-nurtured leads, according to the Annuitas Group.

Launching a nurturing campaign can be overwhelming, however. You have to map out the steps in your buyer’s journey, create and assign content to be delivered at the right time, develop a lead scoring strategy to identify where leads are in the funnel, and create an action plan for leads that are ready to buy. It sounds like a lot of work, but if you just take it step-by-step, you’ll find that the automated nature of nurturing campaigns ends up saving you a huge amount of time and resources in a relatively short amount of time.

Here’s a quick look at the basics of lead nurturing from Olivia W., Strategic Account Manager with Act-On Software.

Taking the Leads

If you’re ready to dive in, let’s take a look at the basic steps for creating a campaign that nurtures leads throughout every stage of their journey – from the first moment they become aware that they have a problem to solve or a need to fulfil, to the final purchase and beyond.

Mapping the funnel your potential buyers travel through is a great way to start the process. Here’s an example showing the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and the bottom of the funnel.

To go with your funnel, you can create a lead scoring matrix defining where a lead lands in it. Here’s an example that demonstrates scores that align to each stage of the funnel, with a target qualification number of 40. Your scoring matrix may vary, but however you define it, this will be the foundational tool for identifying the qualification of a lead based on their engagement.

Marketing Funnel Stage Lead Score Unengaged 0 Top of Funnel (Engaged) 1 – 10 Middle of Funnel 11 – 29 Bottom of Funnel 30 – 39 Marketing Qualified/Sales Ready 40 – 60 Hot Leads for Sales 60+

You’ll also want to set up your lead scoring values used to target the actions your prospects would take as they travel through the funnel. Here’s an example of scoring based on behaviors.

Action Score Reason Opened an email 1 If a message has been opened, it doesn’t really indicate buying interest. We’ll score it with one point, however, because it’s better than if they never opened it. Clicked on an email 5 Clicking on a message, even to view it in a browser shows, that the prospect may be interested. However, it’s not a demonstration of buying behavior. Viewed a form 5 It’s great that a prospect viewed a form, in combination with other behaviors. But if the prospect doesn’t submit their information, they’re not quite ready yet. Submitted a form 10 Submitting any form means a prospect has become ready to trade information for content. This is a strong indicator of interest.

Your own matrix and scoring list will be customized based on the actions you want the ideal customer to take. Watching a webinar, viewing a pricing page, or downloading product data sheets are all potential lead-scoring activities.

Nurturing Programs in Action

Now let’s look at some of the ways your lead nurturing campaign could play out throughout the funnel based on our sample matrix.

Step 1: Capture Top-of-Funnel Prospects with High-Level Content
Audience: (Score 0 – 10)

• Send a series of messages that present helpful solutions related to the pain points your prospects experience – and that your company addresses. Prospects that open and click on the message will be sent the next email in the nurture stream. Those that don’t open or click will be sent a new message with different content.
• Once the prospect takes key actions or achieves the appropriate lead score, they will be routed to step 2.

Step 2: Nurture Unengaged Top-of-Funnel Prospects
Audience: Leads returned to marketing and unengaged leads

• Long-term nurture programs can also be set up for leads that are returned to marketing from sales for additional nurturing or those who continue to be unengaged with the program.
• Send a series of messages presented at a slower tempo but similar in functionality to step one.
• No engagement after six months in this program should permanently disqualify a lead from marketing.
• Upon taking key actions or achieving the appropriate lead score, leads can be routed to step three.

Step 3: Nurture Middle-of-Funnel Leads with Content about Your Offerings
Audience: (Score 11-29)

• Deliver a series of messages that present the products or services offered by your company that are looking for a specific call to action, such as a “view a demo” page or “contact us.” Direct engagement with one of these actions removes the contacts from this program and converts them to qualified lead.
• Indirect engagement (like viewing a “contact us” form but not submitting it) routes a lead to step four.

Step 4: Convert Bottom-of-Funnel Leads with Sales Engagement
Audience: (Score 30 – 39)

• Send a series of personalized messages from a real person, such as a sales representative or a business development manager requesting a meeting and providing more information.
• These programs can be set to trigger alerts to the sales team when key actions or behaviors are taken.

Step 5: Keep Your Customers Engaged
Audience: Existing Customers

• A series of messages sent monthly can develop relationships and build recurring business and referrals.
• Developing a referral program and incentives for repeat business is a great way to build loyalty and gain new customers.

Early Exit Conditions

This step is up to you, but you may want to build your nurturing programs with a “sales engaged” early exit condition. This could be based on a form that your sales team would submit for leads they are engaged with. That would trigger the removal of the lead from the automated program flows.

Ready to start nurturing prospects and creating more sales-ready leads? Download this comprehensive eBook, 10 Ways to Nurture the Buyer’s Journey, to learn how to build a successful lead nurturing campaign in today’s complex B2B marketing world.

Like marketing automation, social selling can be a bit of misnomer. Many marketers believe marketing automation technology will turn their painstakingly crafted work into robotic white noise. But while automation software revolves around scheduling content and marketing messages, its true value lies in its powerful targeting and personalization capabilities.

Similarly, social selling does entail activities that advance the goals of a sales rep, like prospecting and account updates, but it doesn’t promote closing leads through 140 character tweets or hard selling every second degree connection in your network. Social selling describes the tactics salespeople use to stay relevant in their industries, connect with more prospects, and expand their thought leadership.

Unfortunately, not enough sales professionals use social selling -- effectively or at all. Which begs the question: If the hype is so strong and the results are so spectacular, why aren’t sales teams adopting social media?

The truth is many professional closers may not know how to sell on social. Research from earlier this year indicates that only 31% of salespeople incorporate social mediums into their sales cycle, probably because the remainder doesn't feel confident using social networks to sell.

The exact methods used to find new opportunities or establish a better industry profile will vary depending on the personality of each organization. But preparation and planning are common ground for anyone interested in social selling, and salespeople will need the right tools to create that perfect mix of relevancy, authority, and friendliness that generates more opportunities.

Here are examples of three types of tools that you’ll need to perform the three main approaches to social selling.

1) Listening

Before you can start garnering LinkedIn group fame and riding the wave of each industry-specific hashtag, you’ll need to do some research. Social listening tools provide sales professionals with the requisite intel to make their contributions to the social community memorable and informative.

Any article on social selling tools would be remiss without mentioning LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. After years of building the internet’s most reliable database of professionals, LinkedIn has unveiled a tool that empowers sales reps to explore and research the organization’s sprawling network.

Like many software applications, it features tiered pricing with different levels of functionality. Some of the main features include lead recommendations that suggest prospects based on your criteria and saved leads, and the ability to view profiles outside of your third degree connections. 

Twitter hasn’t produced a similarly comprehensive tool, so effective social listening and prospecting on the platform often takes more than one solution. Topsy, for instance, provides free analytics that track the historical usage of hashtags. This tool can be used to identify what topics your audience is talking about, and where you can add value.

Once you’ve identified your hashmarked terms, you can see who has been tweeting about them with Hashatit. And if you want to vet your Hashatit list for influencers and prospects, Riffle can break down their Twitter activity, reach, and interests into a single dashboard.

2) Participation

After the planning is finished, it’s time to start participating. After all, you can’t create any opportunities if you don’t engage with people. From simply liking a prospect or influencer’s status to leaving informative comments on a blog post or publishing content of your own, engaging with your community is a multifaceted affair.

Your goal should always be to keep these interactions as authentic as possible -- but that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from shortcuts. For example, Triggerfox is a mobile app that analyzes social data from Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, and Facebook and makes recommendations for how to interact with other people. A recent birthday, promotion, or professional accomplishment are all fuel for Triggerfox’s recommendations. 

While keeping your one-to-one interactions authentic is crucial, posting content manually to all your networks can be time consuming. That’s why social media automation tools like Buffer have become popular. If your marketing team is creating excellent content, then you’re well equipped to automate posts in LinkedIn groups, Twitter, Facebook, or other networks. And even if you’re not backed by an ace group of writers, you can still curate and automate content from around the web to show that you’re doing the research and know what you’re talking about.

3) Collaboration

While listening and participation take place in the digital equivalent of “the field,” collaboration and management take place at home, i.e., in your CRM platform. To help bridge these two areas, sales professionals are typically best served by choosing CRM software with pre-built social media integrations and tools.

These social CRMs will supply you with the means to augment your contact records with behavioral data from all your networks. If you want to call in reinforcements for the list of prospects you’ve built, they also make it simple for other team members to glean the most important details about each opportunity.

Finally, using business-wide messaging software will work wonders for collaboration among sales teams as well as with outside departments -- like those content people upstairs who keep writing all those blog posts. This type of software has taken on many personalities, from more formal, corporate-oriented programs like Microsoft Lync to casual platforms like Slack.

Social selling isn’t only about the sale. It’s mostly about the pre-sale. Social selling dictates that even the “always be closing” sales rep takes some time to lay the groundwork for a more productive social pipeline by becoming an active member of a community rather than an interloper looking only for leads. And to do this, you need the right tool kit in place.

60% of content marketers say their number one goal is to generate new sales leads. This is not an easy thing to do. 

I’m going to show you how to make a quiz that produces a steady stream of brand new qualified leads. 

Read more...