Rnordman

In “Central bank policies are diverging. Here’s where to invest now,” Bryan Borzykowski writes:

Mixed monetary policy makes asset allocation more challenging, especially as exchange rates fluctuate. When rates get cut, fixed income yields fall, causing bondholders to go looking for higher yields in other countries. That puts pressure on currencies, because bonds are mostly denominated in the local coinage. When international investors sell Canadian bonds, they’re effectively selling loonies too.

Here are five stocks that may see some upside from mixed monetary signals:

BlackRock Inc.

(NYSE: BLK)
P/E: 18.5
Yield: 2.5%
1-year total return (C$): 41%

The world’s largest asset manager should benefit from rate cuts, in part because stocks tend to rise when bond yields sink, says Mawer’s Paul Moroz.

Wells Fargo & Co.

(NYSE: WFC)
P/E: 12.9
Yield: 2.6%
1-year total return (C$): 36%

Blue chips can do well in a more volatile environment, says Moroz. This San Francisco–based bank will benefit from rising rates in U.S., home prices and consumer spending stateside.

Canadian Western Bank

(TSX: CWB)
P/E: 10.5
Yield: 3%
1-year total return (C$): 21%

This Edmonton-based bank is down 10% year-to-date due to the slowdown in its backyard. People are overreacting, says Leith Wheeler portfolio manager Michael Schaab; he argues that cheaper rates should limit the number of loan defaults.

Tourmaline Oil Corp.

(TSX: TOU)
P/E: 30
Yield: N/A
1-year total return (C$): 20%

Contrary to its name, this Calgary-based company produces natural gas. It’s trading at 31% below its August peak yet continues to grow production. It’s debt-averse, but it could now borrow at a lower rate if need be.

Valley National Bancorp.

(NYSE: VLY)
P/E: 17.1
Yield: 4.7%
1-year total return (C$): 16%

This bank, based in Wayne, N.J., generates more than 80% of its total revenues from net interest income. It does well when the U.S. economy does well.

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The post 5 stocks that could still thrive amidst uncertain monetary signals appeared first on Canadian Business.

SAN FRANCISCO – Amid all the talk of Apple Watch, a new MacBook laptop and a partnership with HBO, a set of Apple tools aimed at promoting medical research didn’t get much attention. The tools, called ResearchKit, promise to help researchers study asthma, Parkinson’s and other diseases by recruiting test subjects through iPhone apps.

These tools could give researchers more data to work with by making it easier for people to offer themselves up to science, but even supporters say the data won’t be appropriate for every study.

Here are key things to know:

___

EXPANDING THE POOL OF RESEARCH CANDIDATES

Test subjects are often picked because they happen to see a doctor involved with a study or are lured by ads promising cash. That excludes a lot of people who might otherwise qualify.

With ResearchKit, anyone with an iPhone can potentially participate. Researchers set criteria. One study on how breast cancer survivors cope requires participants to be breast cancer survivors. But a study on Parkinson’s disease wants data from the general population as well for comparison.

“Most researchers will tell you recruiting and sample size are one of their top concerns and challenges,” says Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice-president of operations. “We see huge opportunities with hundreds of iPhones users, many of whom would gladly participate if it’s just easier to do so.”

Another advantage: Researchers can collect data throughout the day, rather than only during periodic office visits.

___

HOW IT WORKS

Researchers use Apple’s ResearchKit tools to create an app. An iPhone user who wants to participate downloads that app and fills out a questionnaire to determine eligibility and establish a base line for further comparisons. Users will also learn more about the study so they can give consent.

The app will tell accepted participants what to do. In the Parkinson’s study, subjects will be asked to tap on the screen, speak into the microphone and walk several steps to gauge progression of the disease.

Some research apps will be able to tap data from other apps, such as those for fitness trackers. Apple says participants will be able to decide whether to allow that. The company doesn’t see any of that data.

___

WHAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE AN IPHONE?

Apple, naturally, designed the tools to work with iPhones. But the company is making ResearchKit’s “secret sauce” open for anyone to see and modify. Someone could adapt ResearchKit for Android.

___

POTENTIAL PITFALLS

There’s potential bias whenever people actively choose to participate in a study rather than being asked at a doctor’s office. For instance, if you’re motivated enough to step up, you also might be more motivated than others to follow a fitness regime. Then again, it’s easy to download an app — and many participants might drop out once the novelty wears off.

Ray Dorsey, a University of Rochester neurology professor involved with the Parkinson’s app, also says researchers will have to weigh the benefit of getting more participants and more data against not being able to see participants in person. In many cases, the ResearchKit studies will only supplement more traditional research.

Researchers do have the option of recruiting participants via traditional ways and then using the app to collect data more frequently.

Kathryn Schmitz, a University of Pennsylvania professor involved with the breast-cancer app, says the apps will never be appropriate for some types of research, such as surgical follow-ups. But she says ResearchKit could help with many common ailments involving heart disease, obesity and diabetes, as apps could be used as an objective tracker of lifestyles.

___

INITIAL STUDIES AND BEYOND

Apple worked with five groups of researchers prior to Monday’s announcement of ResearchKit and released five apps aimed at studying Parkinson’s disease, asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular issues and breast cancer.

Other researchers will be able to start using ResearchKit next month.

It will take time to see scientific results. Some of the early efforts are about gathering preliminary data — and tailoring more specific research from there.

The post Tapping iPhones for medical research: Things to know about Apple’s ResearchKit appeared first on Canadian Business.

I had the honor of delivering a keynote address this past week in Aruba to an audience for SETAR, the top telecommunications company on the island. After the event, I was able to spend some time meeting with and answering questions from many of the hundreds of attendees who attended the wonderful reception. Several attendees raised the same question (almost word for word): “Our clients have tight budgets. There is more pressure than ever to save money. How do we address that issue?” This reminded me of one of the 2015 Trends I wrote about before the start of the year. To that end, I shared the secret to why some clients happily pay more than anyone thought they would.

As much as we all like to think that we face unique circumstances, I am always intrigued by how businesses around the globe face similar challenges to one another. You might ask the same question they asked me about pricing pressure. Let me share some examples of trend number five on my list: “Customers will pay for verified results.”

Focus On Results

One of my clients, Windward IT, had been facing constant pressure from their customers about pricing. They shifted their business focus from hours and dollars to a share of results. Windward’s management team is confident in their ability to deliver and demonstrate tangible results for their customers. Customers often call upon them to save money while maintaining or improving service related to information technology and support. In the past, Windward would base their proposal on anticipated hours. They would calculate a rate for each hour and provide an estimated budget. Of course, this is how most businesses would address the same scenario. Their customers would often raise objections about the cost. Eventually, there would be a discussion about reducing the billable rate. The competition was offering to expend similar effort for a lower price. All of their great work was being commoditized into hours and dollars.

Since Windward is confident in their ability to deliver results, they submitted a recent proposal to have their customer simply pay a percentage of the savings. The beauty is that by working this way, Windward and their customer share the same goal: Save money while maintaining or improving service. If the service improves while costs go down, Windward can earn as much as $20,000 of each $100,000 in savings. (15% on the cost savings, and up to 5% on the associated service improvement).

Each of their competitors proposed a fee based on effort. If successful, Windward will earn substantially more than the low bidder would charge for their effort. However, their customer said “We’ll only pay you more if you end up saving us more. One way we are paying for effort. In your case, we are just sharing the results.” On their own, the customer proposed paying a bonus if they end up saving more than anticipated. The end customer anticipates saving between $20 and $40 million. Do the math.

If You Agree To Become A Commodity, You Better Compete On Price

I often hear from people that their customers perceive their products or services as a commodity. Recognize that being a commodity is a choice. Saying that your customers perceive you as a commodity is an excuse (sorry for the tough love, here). If you agree to be a commodity, then you better be the low bidder and offer better delivery than the competition.

My client above offers similar services to many other companies. They differentiated themselves by putting their money where their mouth is. They agreed to earn a percentage of the savings instead of getting paid for effort. When you focus on results, your client will happily pay more compared to paying for effort. Instead of thinking why you cannot provide results-based pricing, consider under what conditions you could get paid for results. Once you start, you’ll never go back.

This Is Not New – It Is A Growing Trend

ExpenseToProfit and Expense Reduction Analysts are examples of companies that help their clients save money while sharing in the savings. By focusing on the results, they keep themselves on the same side of the table with their clients, and the sales process feels like a shared mission rather than a sales call. Neither party has any interest in wasting time if the client won’t see results. On the other hand, both parties are enthusiastic about proceeding if they agree there is a potential for big savings.

What Can You Do

It is easy to focus on what you cannot do. If you can clearly define one area or another where you can demonstrate results, then start there. For example, in my business, I use a hybrid model. After all, I realize that can’t force my clients to implement my recommendations or to reinforce behaviors. But, when those who do the work see results, they pay a success fee that can exceed what they paid for the original engagement. Of course, everyone is happy when the success fee is earned (even the client writing the check) since it is entirely based on results. When you focus on results, you put yourself and your client on the same side of the table.

It’s Your Turn

Do your clients have tight budgets? How do you address pricing pressures?

"Change is the only constant" - Heraclitus

The world is changing. Business is changing at the speed of light. Business complexity increases, environmental dynamics evolve, and competitive strategies are continuously reshaped. One thing is for sure: change is the only constant! And the pace of change is accelerating. The field of pricing is not immune to change. New pricing technologies emerge every year and disrupt the way we price products and services (price optimization, dynamic pricing, scientific segmentation, CPQ, multi-channel pricing). Pricing and competitive pressure have definitely intensified since 2009. Pricing professionals are asked to do more with less and increase their level of productivity by quickly adopting some of the latest technologies, methods, strategies available to them. More and more, pricing professionals have to act as change agents to deploy these pricing innovations and to collaborate with project managers to ensure deployment success. In order to do this, they have to become aware of and proficient in change management techniques as well as understand the importance of change leadership skills.

Change management represent the engine of change. It is composed of techniques, methods, and processes that are used to deploy new pricing resources or to conduct new pricing activities in an organization. Change management deals with the people side of change and ensures that things get done within defined process parameters, agreed upon budgets, and the required timeline. Change leadership is the fuel for this change engine. You can have the best change process you want, it is change leadership intensity that will make this engine run at the required speed. That includes drive, conviction, and passion so that the organization understand why the change needs to be done. Not many organizations have a dedicated change management team. When it is the case, pricing professionals have to take over the change management responsibilities. The upcoming workshop with PPS in Dallas was designed to equip them with the necessary skills.

Here are five more considerations that are essential for organizational change and which will be discussed during the upcoming workshop:

1. Change needs to be intentional and focused: Change management cannot be reactive. It has to be intentionally design and managed across the organization. Change requires sense of urgency for doing things differently. It starts with an organizational realization that some pricing issues need to be fixed. It is easier to do when the organization is facing adversity or serious pricing problems. It is less easy to do when an organization is successful. Why should I change when we are doing great? How many times have you heard that?
2. The vision is critical for success: Vision is critical to drive change. The vision rallies people around a goal and an outcome. This is may be one of the most neglected component of change initiatives. Yet all change management methodologies include a shared vision in their change process. Not many firms have a declared pricing vision. In fact, a 2012 survey we conducted with 557 CEO’s showed that only 39% of them had such a pricing vision.
3. Change management is not project management: These are two different disciplines. They are often mixed up. You might hear “yes we do change management as part of our project” when in fact, business professionals focus solely on the technical aspect of their projects. Project management deals with the technical side of moving from current state to future state. Change management focuses on the people side of that transition. They need equal attention and work hand-in-hand in project teams.
4. Pay attention to all relevant stakeholders: A big misconception is that pricing changes only concern pricing teams and sales organizations. Organizational change deals with everyone who touches pricing (finance, supply chain, customer service, etc.) and who interacts with customers (technical support, drivers, sales, etc.). That requires different organizational road mapping exercises: from stakeholder analysis, to what’s in it for me analysis, to holistic training plans.
5. Change requires leadership support: Our survey indicates that change without capable champions and top leadership support is difficult. Resistance to change might come from the top as well. The role of the top leaders are to identify and make resources available to change agents. They remove roadblocks and tackle bottlenecks.

Pricing projects are hard to implement. Pricing transformations are even harder. If your organization is stuck in time or unable to embrace large organizational pricing projects, you have to think differently and bring in change experts. Change management is a science and there are amazing training programs out there. In 2013, I became a Prosci® Certified Change Manager and it opened my eyes on how rich the change management and change leadership fields are. The upcoming workshop was designed to include all these considerations as well as insights from these six change management methodologies. Join us to learn about how change management can improve the chances of success with your pricing projects.

Stephan Liozu (www.stephanliozu.com) is the Founder of Value Innoruption Advisors and specializes in disruptive approaches in innovation, pricing and value management. He earned his PhD in Management from Case Western Reserve University and can be reached at sliozu@case.edu.

Acquiring more quality users is one of the biggest challenges of app publishers today. Both the App Store and Google Play host over 1.2 million apps which makes getting noticed seem like a hopeless mission. We have discussed paid and unpaid acquisition channels but in this article we want to go deeper into a special kind of breed of acquisition channels: alternative app stores.

Although there are some alternatives to Apple’s App Store like Cydia, the potential of these is limited since a vast majority of iPhone owners does not jailbreak their smartphone. This because it comes with some risk and frankly, most people don’t know how to do it and probably don’t care either. Android, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Installing an app from outside Google Play is as easy as checking a box in the settings. Moreover, Android users are generally known to be more interested in tinkering with unofficial software. This is also reflected in the huge number of alternative app markets for Android and the amount of downloads they get. In China, Android users don’t have a choice because Google Play is not available at all in the mainland. Publishing your app on one of these alternatives can therefore greatly improve the number of downloads your app is getting! Additionally, there are benefits in the form of lower fees for publishing and more flexibility/less rules and conditions. Here we’ll discuss our top 5:

1. Wandoujia

This app store is one of the biggest alternatives to Google Play there is. Wandoujia is said to have over 300 million users (January ‘14) and 30 million apps are downloaded every day. Publishing your app on this market seems like a no-brainer but there is a catch: Wandoujia is Chinese and is only available in the Chinese language. Unsurprisingly, it’s users are Chinese as well and publishing an app that is not in Mandarin is most likely not going to bring you many downloads. If you don’t speak Chinese yourself also will be a big barrier. Translating an app is not cheap and not a one time activity. However, with a user base of 300 million you need to seriously consider if it’s not well worth the trouble.

2. Amazon Appstore

The Amazon Appstore generates over 25 million apps downloads every month. It is the exclusive app store for Amazon’s popular tablet, the Kindle Fire. As is with Google Play, app publishers receive 70% of the listing price of their app or from their in-app purchases. Since its inception in 2011 the Amazon Appstore attracted more than 240,000 apps to its platform. Clearly, many developers see the value of this app market but at the same time these big numbers create the same discoverability problems as with Google Play.

3. SlideME

SlideMe is a good alternative to Google Play because of two main reasons. First, SlideME pays out 80% of the revenue your app makes. Second, SlideME has a wide reach because many OEMs preload this app store on their devices. The company even claims to be second to Google Play in terms of global reach. They specialize in providing device manufacturers with a store that is optimized for targeting niche markets and providing an distribution channel for developers to countries where Google Play is not available.

4. GetJar

GetJar is one of the earliest app stores for mobile devices. It was founded in 2004 and hosts apps for a plethora of operating systems. It also introduced a virtual currency called GetJar Gold that can be used to purchase other apps that are participating. Users can earn this by recommending apps to their friends which creates a big cross-promotional platform. Flexibility is a key selling point for GetJar. There are little conditions a developer needs to fulfill to publish his or her app on GetJar. In addition, this distribution platform doesn’t charge any upfront costs for publishing an app.

5. Samsung apps

Given that Samsung sells over 65% of all Android phones it should come as no surprise that they have plenty of momentum to have an own app store. Samsung Apps comes preinstalled with every Samsung smartphone sold which puts it in the hands of millions of people. Needless to say Samsung Apps is a significant player in app industry. Samsung provides numerous SDKs that are designed specifically for developing apps for Samsung devices. As seems to be an industry standard, Samsung pays out 70% of your app’s revenue.

As you can see there is more between heaven and earth than just Google Play and the Apple App Store. Submitting your app to one of the alternatives discussed above can significantly drive more users to your app. In fact, One Platform even claimed that it can increase downloads by 200%. By using One Platform you can circumvent a lot of manual labor and publish your app on many app markets with just one submission. It’s well worth a try!

This article was originally posted on Personagraph’s Think Tank. 

Consider this a wee lil’ sticky-note about stickiness.

When it comes to technology investments and employee engagement, sticky is what it’s all about.

Stickiness means that your employees are hooked and keep coming back.  An employee who’s “stuck” doesn’t need to be bombarded with reminders to use the technology investment you’re promoting – he’s going to seek it out himself and advocate it to others.  Sticky is the cure for software collecting dust and having to explain why you thought the investment was so important in the first place. Stickiness saves your job.

I’m stuck on stickiness today because of some feedback I just heard.

One of the sticky things about Causecast’s corporate volunteering and giving platform is that we send out a year-end donation summary statement to every employee using the system.  We’ve prided ourselves on making the entire donation process, from giving to year-end reconciliation, incredibly easy for all employees to use and track.  By making everything seamless, our clients have encouraged their employees to do all of their giving through our site.  Sending out an automatic donation history to each employee every year is one more way that we can stay close to employees and remind them why they should use our platform and love us.

Well the reviews are in.  We just sent out these donation summaries and I’ve been hearing from several clients that they’re really appreciated by management and employees alike, for so many reasons.  Few people recognized before what this would do to enhance the employee experience and help build stickiness for the platform.  Especially if you proactively issue these reports rather than making it an “on-demand” exercise where employees have to log-in and download the reports themselves.

Question: “Can you just do this for me?”

Un-sticky answer: “No, but let me walk you through the steps.”

Sticky answer: “Of course!”

So many companies have issues with technology investments — you buy it, and nobody uses it, now what do you do?  Whether it’s a volunteer platform or some other kind of software, sticky technology can drive engagement with your employees so you get more value out of your platform investment.  If the technology you’re buying and promoting within your company isn’t sticky, it’s going to be up to you to chase after your employees and force them to use it.

Don’t add “begging” to your job description.  Make sure that your technology investments sell themselves internally through stickiness, and that they all feed into a higher level of employee engagement.

So go stick that thought somewhere to keep it top of mind.

This is quite possibly one of the most important questions you should be asking yourself as a website or business owner…..and probably of your SEO agency too!

What’s the point of pouring money into a search engine marketing campaign if you’re not going to understand what benefit it’s giving you? And with the tools available this can be a really simple exercise.

First,

WHAT IS ROI OR “RETURN ON INVESTMENT”

This is a calculation to determine, as a percentage, how much money you are receiving and will receive from an SEO campaign compared to how much the actual campaign is costing you.

I’ve added “….will receive” as the benefits from SEO will last even after you cease the campaign. How long depends on the competitiveness of your industry and keywords but it could be as much as 12 months.

I would say this on the subject…. “if you don’t know if you’re getting value, then you’re probably not getting any.” Any SEO company worth their salt will not only work out an estimated ROI before a campaign starts but they will be providing actual ROI data as the campaign progresses.

All is not lost if you’re not getting ROI. An SEO campaign is a ‘live campaign” meaning it can be adjusted and improved over time to give you the ROI you require.

HOW TO CALCULATE ROI

It’s a fairly simple formula, no need for any advanced mathematics qualification.

Let’s look at all the data/variables you’ll need first.

Campaign budget or actual spend – This will include PPC cost if relevant, otherwise it’s the total of all out or insourcing costs for strategy development, account management, keyword research, link building, content creation and reporting etc.

Number of new clients acquired (estimated or actual) – As a direct result of the campaign

Average lifetime value per client – This could be calculated in one of two ways, if you’re providing a service, then average profit per client per year multiplied by average client lifetime in years. Or for an a transactional relationship average profit per order multiplied by average number of orders per client over their lifetime.

(Number of new clients acquired x Average lifetime value per client)
——————————————————————————————————————– x 100 = ROI (%)
Campaign budget or actual spend

This calculation can be made before you start the campaign, this should be done to validate your efforts before you start. If you’re not going to get enough from the campaign then should you be going ahead with it? If the returns are low then you could get a better return doing something else.

And after each month as the campaign progresses to give you an actual ROI based on the real numbers.

Then it’s a case of what return are you looking for? Some people may be happy with less than others. As a rule of thumb, an ROI of approx 200% seems worthwhile. That means you are doubling your money at least.

HOW TO WORK OUT ESTIMATED SEO CONVERSION RATIO

Well, this is the 64 million dollar question, and one that’s almost impossible to answer as there are so many influencing factors.

Your best bet is to use the information found in Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics, assuming that they set up correctly they will be able to tell you your click through rate (CTR) and your visitor to conversion ratio from your website.

What if you don’t have those tools setup or you’ve not been collecting data long enough to make any meaningful conclusions? Well you’re going to have to use some heavily caveated generalised data.

From my experience the best “finger-in-the-wind” conversion ratio would be approx. 1%. That means for every 100 visitors to your website 1 converts to a client. This takes into account the number of enquiries and proposals written to get that client.

HOW MUCH TRAFFIC DO I NEED FROM SEO?

OK, well done. You’re still with me. Now we’re going to work out the important part. How much traffic do I need to generate to meet my target ROI of 200%?

Let’s say my organic SEO budget is £400/month and I’m going to run a 6 month campaign, giving me a total campaign cost of £2,400 not including any taxes payable.

I need to generate approx. £5,000 in new revenue from this campaign.

Let’s say that my average profit per client lifetime is £500.

Then I will need 10 new clients from this campaign.

With my conversion ratio of 1%, then I will need to generate 1000 extra visits through my SEO work.

I hope this article has gone someway to provide you with some simple ways of understanding how to determine if your getting any value from SEO. I’ve purposely kept things simple as most if not all of you reading this will not be an SEO expert.

This article originally appeared on Superb Digital and has been republished with permission.

Image via BigStockPhoto.com

People do strange things when they’re desperate to be heard. They might say something outrageous, act inappropriately, or provoke someone into a reaction.

When it comes to marketers and their content, this dynamic can get even weirder.

We’ve all seen so-called “professionals” trying to outshout each other like hyped-up kids at a birthday party, getting louder and crazier as they try to grab buyer attention. From publishing hard-line content to making outlandish promises, the carnival barker school of content offers plenty of gimmicks that sound bold in theory but just look idiotic in practice. Or perhaps the worst of all of these offenses: It makes marketing sound easy.

At the same time, I get it. We’re all trying to be heard. We’re creating campaigns and writing web content and trying to persuade buyers. And given the rapidly evolving digital landscape, it’s hard to know what’s effective, what’s powerful, and what hits that sweet spot of getting heard above the crowd while staying credible and appealing.

The thing is, this dilemma goes both ways. People want to hear genuine wisdom, fresh ideas. They’re not intentionally ignoring your voice. There are just too many marketers screaming to be heard—which means you have to market smart, not loud (highlight to tweet).

Here are my five guidelines on getting people to listen to you in a noisy world.

Go Where People Are Paying Attention

People are busy, which is why they want to aggregate their news in one source. They don’t have time to visit a dozen outlets each day, and they probably won’t be swinging by your blog that often. Why? Because people are congregating in the village square, and your blog is more like a distant outpost.

In digital terms, that village square is social media. That’s why most brands aggregate their content on Facebook and other platforms these days: People turn there for business news because their friends, colleagues, and favorite leaders are there in one place. If you think you’re site is where your buyers eyes are, you’re mistaken.

Be Selective

How many of your social connections do you really know? As the saying goes, the Internet has democratized the distribution of content without democratizing talent. Keep that in mind when curating your online universe. Connect to good people, and you’ll get good information. But if you fill your network with just anyone, you’re going to sort through garbage to find the gold.

Instead, follow smart people who post interesting items. Start with the obvious suspects—the movers and shakers, the trailblazers—but don’t just play follow-the-leader. Surround yourself with people who fascinate you, even if they don’t immediately connect to your end game. You’ll come away inspired, and that will energize your output.

Have a Strategy

How obvious, right? Except a stunning number of marketers still aren’t doing it. They’re churning out content based on nothing but their own loose ideas of an audience. In the competitive jungle we call marketing, that’s the road to failure.

Serious marketers capture abundant data—and there’s no excuse for not doing it with all the advanced tools on the market like Madison Logic Data—and sculpt their content accordingly. They identify the right topics and conversations. They segment by persona. They hone in precisely as a missile and make an impact.

Drop the Stunts

True story: I knew a business owner who really wanted to land a deal with a specific enterprise company. He saw the CEO tweet that he’d traveled to a conference without his trusted piece of technology, so the business owner had one shipped to him with a personal note.

Now, you’ll find plenty of so-called experts who applaud this as a creative move, but let’s be real. The CEO wasn’t going to be so impressed that he immediately reached out to the business owner; he probably filed it away under “trying too hard” and forgot him. Send something that ties into your business: valuable content. I really like the CEO in this example, but I hate stunts.

Build Trust Instead

It’s something of a cliché now to talk about authenticity and the importance of building trust. Well, it’s a cliché because it’s true: Trust is the top factor when it comes to getting heard. If your mind is only on revenue, stop—that’s 25 steps down the road. Your first priority should be making sure your content persuades buyers to view you in a different light than every other business on the web.

You see it every day. Someone recommends doing business with a person, and the first question is, “Do you actually know this person? How well?” People know there are plenty of hustlers and second-rate vendors out there, so they want to connect with someone they can trust. This is why the standard ploy of offering a gated ebook or white paper in exchange for data just doesn’t work anymore. Without any trust established, leads don’t see the value in it.

Next time you want to be heard, let others shout themselves hoarse. With an intelligent foundation, you’ll be the marketer version of President Roosevelt’s “Talk softly and carry a big stick”—creating content that gets listened to because of the value and strength it brings to the table.

Continue the conversation on our Facebook or Google+ pages.

       

Each day, I am honored when people connect with me via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail. Most people want to share a conversation, or ideas. Sometimes we have the good fortune of meeting in person when I travel to their area or vice versa. We build a virtual community or tribe as Seth Godin and Chris Brogan often discuss. Sadly, some people still use annoying tactics on social media sites they presumably learned in slime school. Such tactics destroy your social media reputation and act to repel rather than attract potential business.

Nobody knowingly is guilty of these atrocities. Rest assured plenty of people are using these horrible tactics. You could be guilty and not even realize it. I hope you’ll appreciate why these tactics are not OK either in person, or in social media.

Would You Stand On A Table And Pound Your Chest At A Luncheon?

If you attended a networking event, would you stand in the middle of the room and shout out stuff about yourself? That’s what many people do with social media. They send brilliantly crafted, valuable messages to their community including, “Like my page,” or “Share this with your contacts.” Nobody wants to hear that garbage.

I wish I could find the genius who first told someone that it was a good idea to blast people with information they didn’t request. Think of social media as a community (Derek Coburn shared this concept well in his book). In a community, you most appreciate the person who helps others and adds the most value to other members of the group. This is what makes Chris Brogan such a popular figure. Chris always gives others credit… even when he deserves it. He seeks first to give to others before asking for himself. There is a reason why Brogan is such an in-demand speaker on the subject of building an engaged community for your business.

I was inspired by Shashi Bellamkonda’s article about how people jump the gun with online connections. Shashi highlights how so many individuals have violated the principle of social media. Two of my favorite points he shared:

About Twitter Direct Message: “Definitely never to establish a sales relationship the minute they followed you.” Shashi goes on to share that just because someone connects via social media, you did not earn permission to send them a direct message soliciting business.

About New LinkedIn Connections: “When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, sending them a sales pitch immediately is not good practice.”

Somewhere, someone probably said, “You have to keep telling people what you do. Be sure to ask for the order. Every communication needs to give them an opportunity to buy.” If you sell snake oil, go for it.

The goal of a community is not in raw numbers. If you measure impressions and shares, you might be missing the point of connecting. If the person who connected to you knew you’d be sending them a daily message promoting yourself, they might not have accepted the connection in the first place. Rather, you want to attract like-minded people where you can add value.

Demonstrate The Value You Bring To Your Network

The mistake I often see is that if there is a room of 150 people (or an online community of 50 million), you might be thinking that your goal is to see which of the 150 people is a good potential client for what you have to sell. Instead, realize that each of those people is a potential connection to hundreds of other people you might be able to help. Instead of telling people how smart you are, or what type of work you do, consider sharing a description of the situation your ideal client might be facing where you can offer incredible assistance.

Craft Your Message To Help vs. To Sell

When I met Jordan Harbinger of the popular The Art of Charm, he didn’t start by saying what he did. Rather, he explained how he helps his audience. “I help average guys become extraordinary men.”

Omar Zenhom of the $100 MBA just launched WebinarNinja. “People often rip their hair out trying to get webinar tools to work the way they want. We had the same frustration. After searching everywhere, we finally bit the bullet and designed and built a tool to fix that problem once and for all. If you know anyone with Webinar experience, we’d love to get their feedback.”

Notice that in each example, Jordan and Omar talk about how they help their community, rather than what they sell.

The next time you have a desire to shout out your attributes in a crowded room (physical or virtual), just remember that nobody wants to hear it. But, if you can articulate how you help others, someone in the room just might connect you to someone who would be glad to meet you and learn more.

It’s Your Turn

Post how you help others. I’ll call-out the ones that are not self-promotional, but actually illustrate the people you help most. Also, please take the conversation to Twitter, LinkedIn or your favorite social network.

It can be difficult for small businesses operating in competitive markets to get ahead, especially when you consider the fact that they don’t typically have access to marketing departments and unlimited resources or funds.

So what advantages do small businesses have over their larger counterparts? The answer is their personal brand, as opposed to a corporate identity. This might sound strange, but large multinationals covet what entrepreneuring business owners seem to find with relative ease.

This gives them a competitive edge when dealing with their audience by allowing a human side to shine through more clearly. That’s one reason why approachable content is so important to emerging brands. How can businesses keep their content fresh and interesting over the long term?

Defining the Concept of Repurposing Content

The process involves altering the format of a work for a new intended audience, and there are many reasons as to why you’d want to do this. For example, you may wish to reach a wider audience, create less and promote more, establish your personal brand as an authority or increase your online Web presence.

Overall, the practice can take many guises, as each member of a target audience will prefer to consume their information in a variety of different formats. In this article, we’ll look at seven ways you can transform your personal branding and create engaging content consistently and successfully.

1. Newsjack Appropriate Headlines and Start a Conversation

Many businesses nowadays are tapping into newsjacking, a strategy which involves inserting your brand into conversations that arise as a result of news and current affairs.

In this way, small brands can find a national or international audience, express their opinions or push their agenda – as long as they do it subtly – while pulling from the power of such significant events.

Additionally, repurposing this content for your own goals increases the chance of your information going viral – much like Starbucks did in 2013 when snow storm Nemo hit.

2. Appropriate and Revitalize Your Blog Post Archives

If you’ve been in business and have been running a blog for any length of time, chances are you’ll have an extensive collection of content just waiting to be repurposed in your archives.

If you can revitalize this information and create something new, your personal brand will be able to extend the life of its back catalogue. Your audience will appreciate that you took the time to reframe an idea they cared enough about to read in the first place.

3. Generate Group Discussions in Online Forums

As a fledgling business or established boutique, you shouldn’t forget that your customers are people and have their own interests and hobbies outside of what you offer. Forums such as Reddit, StumbleUpon and others represent some of the best places to begin posting content online.

If you can tap into the vast networks created by like-minded people, you’ll be able to increase the size of your audience and promote your brand to new potential followers. Alternatively, you can even take ideas from these forums and push them to your website to create and encourage a back-and-forth between your online communities.

4. Build an Infographic or Other Interesting Visual

It’s a fact that humans are visual creatures and as such, more than 90 percent of the information absorbed by the brain is done so visually, which makes infographics a powerful tool in the right hands.

These shouldn’t be sophisticated mood boards referencing statistics and dense information, as they are at their best when the content is simplified and presented in a broadly appealing format. In fact, if all you do is reappropriate information from any of these sources, you’ll be well on your way to creating something interesting.

5. Create a Mesmerizing SlideShare Presentation

If you take an infographic one step further, you’ll enter the domain of SlideShare presentations. You can use any of the free photo-editing programs to create powerful slideshows with ease and break down your copy into its major talking points.

Why would you want to put in the additional effort and go the extra mile? Because visual information can attract up to 94 percent more attention online. Also, once you present this information, be sure to tweet about it. Turn your slides into blog articles and push the same content in different directions to maximize its potential and value.

6. Develop an Animation or Motion Graphic

Few forms of communication are as effective as video, and motion graphics are a happy medium between infographics and animation. A great example of this can be seen in Beat the Dealer, a motion graphic from CJ Pony Parts, which aims to simplify the process of buying a car.

For some perspective, you can also see how this information has been adapted and repurposed from the company’s existing infographic to present the same ideas in a different and versatile way.

7. Repost, Re-Promote and Cross-Promote With Social Media

Lastly, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram and others remain important to personal brands. If you’ve been cross-promoting your online content via these channels, you’ve already been repurposing content for different audiences and formats.

While it may seem counterintuitive to post the same information to different networking sites, when quality content is paired with effective social media strategies, businesses can develop and refine their personal brands and reach audiences across time zones and geographic locations.

One thing you should know about when committing to social media is just how important timing and brevity is. As such, you’ll find this information on the ideal length of everything online essential as you progress.

Replicating Results and Embracing a Brighter Future

The great thing about repurposing content is that it’s a process that is repeatable. This means that if you do happen to find success through trialing a few of these strategies, you will be able to replicate the results with accuracy.

While this list cannot hope to include every conceivable way a business can repurpose and rejuvenate content, it should serve as an effective jumping-off point for you to go about your own research into building up your personal brand.

Did you catch my last blog post introducing you to the concept of high-value questions? Hey! That was a closed-ended question, wasn’t it? (Another closed-ended question.) So tell me, how have you been doing turning some of your closed-ended questions into open-ended questions?  

See what I just did there? I went from a couple of closed-ended questions to an open-ended question. Both are appropriate in the right circumstance. But the problem I see all too often is that sometimes in our haste to keep the conversation moving, we limit ourselves to too many closed-ended questions. Remember that a high-value question is almost always an open-ended question. (One notable exception might be the question “Shall I draw up the contract so we can get started?” Closed-end question and, hopefully, a close-ended answer: “Yes!”)

I’d like to give to you some very specific open-ended questions you can use early in new relationships with prospects and clients alike to create more value. These are particularly good open-ended questions, because they provide value to both your prospect or client and you.

1. What are the one or two most important things going on for you right now in your life/business?
2. If we were to meet again three years from today, what has to happen in your life/business/relationships/(insert whatever else is relevant to the situation) to make you feel really good about the progress you’ve made?
3. What obstacles do you currently see that might hinder your ability to realize that goal?
4. Who are some others in your life who have made decisions in this area that you truly respect?

Note that with the last question, you're not only learning more about your prospect or client, you’re also identifying other people who might be candidates for a referral conversation at a later point in time.

There are so many places in the client acquisition process where open-ended, high-value questions play a key role. So this is not the last you’ll be hearing from me on this.

Until next time, I’ll leave you with a very high-value question, “Who are you going to be introduced to today?”

Editor's note: This post is an excerpt from Bill Cates’ newest book, Beyond Referrals, and is reprinted here with permission. 

The euro is pretty much falling as fast as advanced currencies can. It's on course for the largest quarterly drop it's ever had against the dollar. 

And it's now closing in on parity with the dollar. That's something that several analysts expected to happen perhaps by the end of 2016. If the currency keeps falling at anything like this pace, it'll happen in weeks or months, rather than years.

In fact, Deutsche Bank expect the euro to fall to parity this year, and to $0.85 by the end of 2017.

Tumbling currency values prompt a lot of concern, and it certainly sounds like a bad thing. In previous years, when Europe's currency fell, it was a symbol of the break-up risk that investors feared. But now, the tumbling currency is paired with what is probably the strongest economic momentum that Europe has seen since the financial crisis.

The trade-weighted euro — that's the currency measured against a basket of the currencies that the eurozone most often trades with — is tumbling:

There's a lot made of "currency wars" — when two or more countries try to devalue their currencies at the same time — but in this case, the war is over and one side is retreating. The dollar is surging against pretty much every currency, and the euro is falling against all of them.

That weaker euro should be good for growth.

Exports make up a huge chunk of Europe's GDP, more than a quarter. That's twice as high as the United States' proportion and even more than export-heavy China. And the weaker euro makes anything produced in the eurozone cheaper abroad: French and Italian cars, German machine tools and Irish drugs will now be cheaper around the world, boosting those exporters.

According to Credit Suisse - a 10% year-on-year fall in the trade weighted currency should raise GDP growth by 0.7%. That's almost as much as a 35% drop in the price of oil. (In fact, the euro has now dropped by more than 13% in the last year).

Here's Credit Suisse:

The critical issue is that the euro is weakening in spite of a sharp pick-up in relative European economic momentum. Thus, the weaker euro is being driven by policy and real rate differentials, as opposed to issues that had driven it over the past decade, namely weaker growth and perceived risk of break-up.

Policy and real rate differentials is just a slightly complicated way of saying that investments in euros don't make much money at the moment. Interest rates are still very low, so fewer global investors want euros, making them cheaper. The opposite's true for the dollar: With an interest rate hike looming in the US, the American currency is strengthening as people prepare for better returns on their dollar-denominated investments.

That's likely to continue for at least two years. The Fed won't want to change course after it's started to raise interest rates, and the European Central Bank insists it's tied into its QE programme until at least September 2016. So the current weakening could go a lot further. 

Moody's has produced a breakdown of the sectors which will and won't do well from the euro's fall, It's quite clear just from a glance that the number of sectors where there'll be a positive or mildly positive effect from the drop far outweigh those which are negatively affected. 

The short version of the story is that a weaker euro is exactly what Europe has been crying out for half a decade now. The continent's economies are still riddled with problems that the value of the currency can't solve, but the change may be the bloc's best hope for growth right now.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This Video Of The Largest Breakage Of Ice From A Glacier Ever Filmed Is Absolutely Frightening

This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona saw its usual share of product innovations, and the App Planet exhibit featured more than 200 app developers showing off their latest, including some great tools for helping businesses streamline their operations.

In particular, eight business apps stood out. While some of these are specific to a particular industry, their design innovation could well translate to other businesses:

BlackBerry Experience Suite: BlackBerry is still primarily known as a hardware provider, but at MWC, the company announced the expansion of its security, collaboration and communication packages for Android, iOS, and Windows devices in addition to the native BlackBerry platform. The packages include three areas of enterprise applications: Productivity for messaging, Communication and Collaboration for cloud-based sharing and video conferences, and Security for anti-spam/malware protection, privacy settings, and encryption.

MS Office on Android (Samsung Knox): Outlook, Word, Excel, and all of the other key components of Microsoft Office are staples of just about every business. While Android users have had to find workaround solutions for Office integration, MWC saw the joint announcement of Office for Android by way of the Samsung Knox secure workspace. For both IT managers and staff, life on Android is going to get much easier.

TunnelBear: For companies that need remote access to internal networks, VPNs are a necessary evil — difficult to set up, but effective in sharing data and information. TunnelBear helps simplify this process, and the TunnelBear app is an easy and secure solution that connects Android and iOS devices to an independent network. TunnelBear comes in free and premium versions, allowing businesses to scale as needed based on their VPN needs.

Passenger Care: This innovative app represents a huge step forward in customer care for the airline industry. Flight delays and changes are hugely frustrating for passengers, but Passenger Care provides staff with a tablet-friendly tool to offer one on one service rather than problem solving at the front of a long and endless line.

Dynamic Buy-buyer: Retail inventory management gets easier with Dynamic Buy-buyer, an app that combines both purchasing and stocking into one streamlined solution. With Dynamic Buy-buyer, buyers are given the tools to maximize cost-per unit and restocking of high-revenue items; the app is also designed to let buyers know when they are getting a good deal on purchases done outside of the standard buying cycle.

Advisor Alert: Financial advisors base their business on a combination of numbers and hunches. The new Advisor Alert app gives the industry an app that supports both. Featuring a wide range of analytics-based data, financial advisors can use Advisor Alert to make decisions and quantify gut feelings for the best of both worlds.

AMIDuOS: Business users have appreciated the fact that Windows phones and tablets connect with with Office, Outlook, and other Windows standards, but they haven’t been so happy about the small selection of other apps available on the platform. However, American Megatrends’ AMIDuOS app will allow Windows phones to emulate the Android OS, opening the door to countless apps for both work and play.

Advances in infrastructure

Besides these apps, two proven companies made announcements at MWC that will have a positive impact on the app world. Good Technology, used by many leading corporations to securely extend networks to mobile devices, unveiled plans for expanding its mobility management capabilities. Good’s goal is to allow for protected business data on the newest generation of smart devices such as cars, wearables, and non-traditional connected devices. And Hypori, a leader in virtual mobile infrastructure, demonstrated its Android Cloud Environment. The platform, developed in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Defense, focuses on security and privacy in BYOD environments by delineating between a mobile device from its shared application.

These innovations from the recent 2015 Mobile World Congress App Planet event show us how far the smartphone revolution has taken us: better customer service, stronger security, a more flexible workday, and much more. Innovation always begets innovation, and when the 2016 MWC rolls around, these apps may already be industry standard, but what’s beyond the horizon is just as exciting.

Dippak Khurana is CEO of Vserv.

People love to buy but hate to be sold. You’ve heard this statement before, but it isn’t true. What is true is that people don’t want to be pressured to buy something they don’t want or don’t need. But they love to be sold the things they want.

Yesterday, Apple announced their new watch. They already announced the watch last year, and there wasn’t much new to share. But people who love Apple tuned in to watch the live event or spent time reading the news reports. Why? They want to be sold.

• We want to be seduced. We are aspirational. We want to be more, do more, and have more. We love it when we are shown how much better we are going to be when we make some purchase.
• We want to be told we belong. We want to be included. We want to be part of a tribe, some tribe that speaks to our values and our beliefs. We wear the clothes and marks of our tribes. We love it when someone shows us how to join that tribe.
• We want help rationalizing our decision. People love to buy, and they love to have someone help them rationalize their decisions. We love having someone provide us with a logical argument to justify our emotional decisions.

People generally like to be told that they can have what they want, and they want to be told how they can have it.

The challenges for those in business-to-business sales are the constraints that prevent our dream client from making the necessary investments, the distribution of different wants across different groups of stakeholders, and the power of the status quo and the accompanying resistance to change.

Even with these challenges, people still want to be told that they can have what they want. If you want to be a great salesperson, you will sell them on what they need to do to have what they want.

The post People Love to Be Sold appeared first on The Sales Blog.

E-commerce marketers are increasingly seeing the value of direct mail as part of their integrated mix and, in 2014, direct mail spending rose. Why this surprising trend?

Direct Mail Enriches the Customer Experience

Per ERDM VoC research; Mail has the unique dimension of ‘shareability’ that enables BtoB and BtoC buyers to easily share and discuss direct mail with business colleagues or family members as part of the decision making process. Per a representative quote from the research, “The mailer makes it easier to discuss the offer with business associates or family, versus merely forwarding an email or the bother of printing out an email or attachments”.

Using direct mail as a part of a multi-faceted campaign gives recipients multiple opportunities to engage, but for the History Channel it also provided recipients a valued collectable.

Using direct mail as a part of a multi-faceted campaign gives recipients multiple opportunities to engage, but for the History Channel it also provided recipients a valued collectable.

In a unique BtoB campaign to promote the TV program, History Asia/Photo Faceoff on the History Channel, the company used a series of photo postcards which were delivered twice weekly to the media, clients and affiliates.

The campaign, which played up the notion of a picture truly speaks a thousand words, generated excitement not only for the show but also for the art. Each mailing featuring photos and a description of the series with a call-to-action to tune in to the premiere. The pieces were so well received that the network received requests for the photographic images.

The History Channel states that the campaign generated $1.2 million in PR value through professional interest in the series, social media mentions and requests for the actual art pieces.

Per a recent NY Times article, “For many brands, catalogs are the single most effective driver of online and in-store sales, according to analysts and retailers. Some stores, like Anthropologie, rely so heavily on catalogs that they make them their principal form of advertising. “We don’t call it a catalog; we call it a journal,” said Susy Korb, chief marketing officer of Anthropologie…”Of course we’re trying to sell clothes and accessories, but it’s more to inspire and engage.”

Direct Mail as Part of the Purchase Journey

In a recent study by Econsultancy, 1/5th of respondents say an understanding of customer journey is a top cross-channel success factor. However, 57% say that they don’t understand customer journeys, and can’t adapt their marketing mix accordingly.”

Online men’s retailer Bonobos ran a small test to evaluate the impact of a print catalog on their traditionally e-based purchase journey. The results were so promising that the company tried several more tests. They found that online tools to attract new customers, like display ads and emails, often have just one image or text line, while a direct mail catalog can grab consumer attention with a fuller brand story.

Now, 20% of Bonobos’ first-time customers are placing their orders after receiving a catalog. And, they spend 1.5 times as much as new

Direct Mail Helps Build Long-Term Brand Engagement and Loyalty

Homebase, an online UK home and gardening retailer had a problem. Most of their income was generated during the gardening season. Or, as they put it, their spring was every other retailers’ Christmas. So the company decided to use direct mail to get potential high value gardening customers to shop early and spend more.

The campaign, which won a DMA Silver Award for the Best Use of Direct Mail, was called,” ‘Let’s Get Gardening.’ The 500,000 piece mail campaign motivated potential customers to go to the website with a value-driven piece which included ideas, hints, tips, tools, and checklists. Additionally, to make the mailer even more appealing, offers were valid throughout the season. There was also an online community for engaging with other gardening enthusiasts.

Results; customers visited the site 33% more often and spent, on average, 20% more. In addition, 27,594 customers completed a survey which Homebase now uses to communicate more personally with customers.

Takeaways

1. Per VoC research, consumers are saying that mail has to integrate with other media. It is therefore imperative that direct mail include your web address for online access as well as social media access. A sample quote from the research; “The first thing I do, if I’m looking to respond to a mailing, is look for a website to go to and do it online vs. mailing back my order. I hate mailing stuff back.”
2. Understanding customer buying patterns allows you to synchronize mailings to the times they are most receptive. This is critical given the higher per piece cost of mail versus email.
3. Analyzing customer’s lifetime value will enable you to develop personalized mailings for specific points in their customer journey, thus building loyalty and purchases throughout their lifecycle.
4. Use direct mail as part of a larger customer experience to increase brand excitement.
5. Use direct mail with “dated” coupons at specific times of the year or during special events, to stimulate purchases.
6. Have tight attribution metrics to track direct mail performance and it’s impact on other elements of your media mix.

It’s time for marketers to re-examine the role, relevance and ROI of direct mail within today’s multichannel mix. Test direct mail at different points in the customer journey. Also test different mail package formats based impact and value, not just cost. When it comes to mail, don’t just think about Expense. Consider Yield and Revenue.

Referrals and repeat buyers need attention. You can't count on them to be the picture-perfect customer you imagine. They need to be monitored and cared for—or cut loose if their costs outweigh their value.

We’ve all seen it. A new sales opportunity comes in. It’s big. It’s shiny. And it looks really good. Lots of excitement, lots of hope. The buyers want what you have, and the first meeting went really well. Another good one to add to the pipeline.

But, before too long, the deal slows down, buyers don’t respond as quickly, and meetings get delayed. Eventually the deal stalls altogether…and the buying team goes dark.

What just happened? I call it “Reality Valley,” a term we use when internal resistance overcomes deal momentum. Let’s take a look at the causes and steps you can take to unstick these opportunities and move them forward.

There are lots of potential causes for deals ending up in the Valley:

• A change in priorities at the buying company
• A key influential buyer changes roles or leaves the company
• A political battle ensues – and your champion-buyer loses
• And… other possibilities

But the vast majority of the time [say…over 80 percent] the cause is a weak business case. Meaning… the return on investment [ROI] argument has not been made clear. The buying team is not convinced the solution you are offering is worth pursuing over all the other things they have going, including staying with the status quo. The problem is not worth fixing—or they are not convinced the solution you are offering is going to make enough difference.

The result: they pass on the opportunity to fix or improve this part of their business and refocus their time on other issues. It may not be the right decision, but given the information and perception they have, they choose this direction.

Let’s look at some simple ways deliver a clear business case that gets buyers motivated to move forward.

Focus on outcomes, not capabilities.

Buyers aren’t considering your solution for its capabilities, they’re considering your solution for the business outcomes your capabilities can bring. So focus your value message on the outcomes you deliver.

Connect the dots completely.

Use a “From X to Y by Z” approach to really spell it out for them. “On average, we reduce the time sales reps spend searching for materials by 26 percent within six months.” They’re busy. They’re distracted. They have lots to do and not enough time. Don’t assume they can read between the lines and do their own math because they won’t.

Super-sharpen the outcome message.

Take the outcome message as far as you need to clarify the value. Here’s an example.

Value message:  “We give your sales 10 percent more selling time by reducing the time they spend searching for and assembling materials. And we can get you there in six months.”

Super sharpened message: “That’s like adding 10 percent more sales reps to your team, but without onboarding, training and ramp-up costs.”

Super-sharpening puts a point on the value spear. It lets buyers see the outcome and impact in crystal-clear terms.

Collaborate on the business case.

Tell your buyer champions you’re working on a business case for them. You have a few questions. Get them involved and collaborating with you on a business case document. Get their fingerprints all over it. They will feel ownership and quickly begin to own the business case, and usually parade it around the buying team.

So, we’ve covered some powerful actions you can take to clarify the business case and unstick opportunities mired in Reality Valley. Pick some good stuck opportunities and try it out. With any luck, you will have them moving out of the valley and up Sales Success Hill within a couple of months.

Are your sales teams still pounding the pavement and knocking on doors to try to find your next sale? You might be wasting your time and money. Inside sales teams are quickly overtaking the tired approach of outside sales.

What Are Inside Sales Teams?

Inside sales happens in the virtual setting. There isn’t face-to-face interaction. Instead, your inside sales team manages the content of your website, email marketing efforts, phone calls, social media engagement, and other virtual tools that land the deals.

Inside sales teams use the speed and agility of the Internet to improve connections with leads and prospects.

The Proof Is In The Numbers

Inside sales efforts don’t just sound good – they look good on paper too. Just take a look at some of these surprising statistics from across the industry.

• Email marketing outperforms cold calling, networking or trade shows with double the ROI, according to MarketingSherpa.
• Buyers are 60 percent to 90 percent finished with the sales process before ever engaging with an outsides sales team member, according to Forrester.
• Only 13 percent of customers trust a salesperson to understand their needs truly, according to Josiane Feigon.

Do a quick search on the Internet and you’ll find plenty more stats to back up these claims. The point is if you want your company to stay “leading edge,” you need to have a stronger understanding of the way your customers want to be sold to.

What This Means For Your Company

Brands that continue to pour money into travel budgets and outside sales calls will continue to fall further and further behind. These outdated practices are quickly turning people away. As soon as your sales team leaves, your customers open a web browser and do a quick search for your company. It’s what they find online that will make or break the sale.

This research behavior is good news for companies today.

Virtual environments make it easier for businesses to land sales because of how easy it is to test and adapt to market demands.

For example, Mail Chimp, a leader in the email marketing world, found that the optimal time of day to reach potential customers depends greatly on the type of content being presented. For example, government emails are better suited for the morning while emails with content about hobbies maintain decent open rates throughout the morning and early afternoon.

Inside sales teams can use this information to schedule their messages at a time that’s most likely to get heard. They can reach a wider audience by sending a mass message out at the same time – something face-to-face interaction will never be able to accomplish.

The same applies for social media postings. QuickSprout pulled together a series of statistics from various social media management tools to determine the best times to post on various networks.

I know I see an increase in social media traffic by up to 39 percent when I post during ideal times. – Neil Patel, QuickSprout

Where To Start

Inside sales teams are necessary but where do you start? How do you make the transition from outside to internal?

At Groove Digital Marketing, we partner with companies to make the transition easier and the efforts more rewarding. This partnership is one way to ease the transition of abandoning the road warrior mentality in your company.

To give you a better understanding of what it’s like to partner with Groove Digital Marketing, we’ve written an ebook called, “What to Expect in a Partnership with Groove Digital Marketing.” Download it now to learn more about what a partnership with us means for your business.

How To Use Twitter Advanced Search To Bring More Traffic To Your Business

Would you like to make more meaningful connections in your Twitter network?

Are you struggling with generating more leads and sales on social media?

Twitter is a great place for sharing information and building relationships through conversation. While target market research is still essential for lead generation social media can bring even more prospects who can be converted into sales.

As we move forward in this new year statistics show that sales are on the rise with Twitter. According the an infographic on Adweek.com, 33 percent of users follow a brand with 67 percent of those willing to purchase from those companies.

How can your business seize lead opportunities in the midst of a steady stream of tweets being sent out each second?

The key is to connect with the right users for your niche and to go beyond basic recommendations and hashtags with Twitter Advanced Search. This great feature allows you to hone in on the most important information, which produces more results for new connections.

Here are several key strategies you can begin today to build more leads and sales for your business:

Begin with conversations

This is a simple and effective way to immediately find new connections on Twitter, and that is searching with either “to:Username,” or “fromUsername,” which generates communication results. For example, here are results for to:

By scrolling through the tweets you’ll be able to find new connections to start building your network with. Try this with high level influencers first, and drill down from there. This feature is also good to use to learn about user reviews of your products or services or about your competitor’s.

Twitter local search

Use the advanced feature to find users in your area, which is especially helpful for brick-and-mortar businesses. If you are conducting research for a specific area then this can also prove to be very insightful. You will want to enter your information like this for precise results:

“#tophashtag” near:zip code within:miles or km

Find out what others are tweeting about your business

Feedback is a large part of customer service, and most of this is happening on social media, and is very popular on Twitter. Using this type of search will provide insights into how your customers are responding to your products or services, and how to improve on them. Meeting the needs of your target market should be a priority in your marketing strategy, and a term such as ‘can’t sleep :-(‘ or ‘pet dander :-(‘ will bring immediate results:

Try different phrases out to learn more about the preferences for your market. For example, if you own a B&B travel queries can reveal what the preferences are for guests along with their reviews. This is a great opportunity to answer their questions, and create more leads!

Narrow your search options

Use quotations around words or even entire phrases to produce more accurate results in your chosen language of preference. Hashtags, product names, influencer names, ect. can also highlight additional information. And if your search gives you words or phrases you don’t want, you can eliminate those in a new search.

These are just a few features to start using your advanced Twitter research. As you produce results, test out the other features to narrow your results and pin point exactly what your business needs.

Use this powerful tool to aid in your target market research, connect with new leads, start a conversation, and grow your network.

There’s no more umming and ahhing about this one. Twitter is the most important platform for a business in 2015 to be on and we’re going to explain why. Long gone are the days when a well maintained Facebook account sufficed as an entire company’s social media presence and, amongst all the others, Twitter is now well and truly on top.

9 reasons your company HAS to be on Twitter:

1. Your audience is there!

This used to be a major argument against Twitter for business but it is simply no longer true. In November last year, Twitter claimed it has 232 million users worldwide with more than a fifth of Britons using the platform in 2014 (that’s over 13 million!). The latest estimates also suggest the fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55 – 64 year-old age bracket with overall usage of the platform ever on the increase.

2. There is more viral scope than Facebook

Twitter has the most viral nature of any social media platform for two main reasons:

Anyone who retweets a tweet is posting it to their timeline for all of their followers to see (Facebook uses algorithms to determine whose friends see what).

Sharing is easier than on Facebook – your don’t have to add a comment to RT whilst people are less inclined to share things on their own Facebook wall – it’s more personal and private.

This means the sheer potential reach and the speed with which thousands and even millions of people will see one of your posts is far higher over Twitter than Facebook.

3. You can piggy-back on trends and hashtags

Whilst Facebook is trying to integrate this system, it’s not cutting it for business. Hash-tagging gives you the same benefits that come with it on Instagram; grouping similar pictures and posts which appeal to a certain audience. Having a topic relevant to your business trending on Twitter gives your business the chance to be seen by thousands of trend-followers by posting a tweet using that hashtag. Don’t force it and make sure it’s good!

4. Twitter is the only true social media platform

Only on Twitter can any company account openly find and meaningfully communicate with any other. This really is Twitter’s defining feature and why it makes it so important for businesses. Read more on our social media interaction page.

5. Twitter is the best sales and lead generation tool

Reason four underpins the fact that a business can use Twitter as a sales tool. Twitter enables a sales process akin to one you would have in real life. You can find individuals and hand over leads to the ‘real world’ or begin a sales process right there and then on Twitter!

6. Celebrity endorsements

Try getting your product or services formally endorsed by a celebrity with hundreds of thousands of fans by writing to their agent or sending them something. It is incredibly difficult! Not least because celebrities and, therefore, their agents, get paid huge sums of money to endorse products. Approaching celebs over Twitter and managing to get a reply, a retweet or even an unsolicited tweet is gold in terms of social media PR. You only have to take a look at a celeb’s follower numbers and the amount of interaction and reach their posts achieve to see what benefit this will have.

It’s also the perfect platform to contact journalists and circulate your press releases and play a role in your PR efforts. Some journalists actually use Twitter as their preferred method of contact.

7. No fees

Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t categorize your account as a personal account or business page (not yet, anyway!). This means Twitter does not generate its revenue by hiding business’ accounts and essentially making them pay to appear on other people’s news feeds. Over the past few years, Facebook has altered its algorithms to make business pages almost invisible to the public. Why? So it can charge for Facebook ads and promoted posts. Simple. It’s no wonder that putting just £10 into a promoted post gets it seen by hundreds of people – they want you to continue to spend on advertising!

8. Return on investment is more measurable than traditional marketing

Once branded as the ‘black box’ of marketing, social media has proven to be one of the more reliable marketing methods in terms of trackable return on investment. This is due to the rise in third party analytical tools and the power of Google analytics as well as companies having a better idea of their conversion and lead value rates. Twitter is no different and as a savvy marketing director you’ll actually be able to track your return on your Twitter spend.

9. It’s fun!

Social media is fun and for the right businesses, giving the brand a voice can suddenly make a company more appealing to its audience. Adopting a representative voice is vital and it’s something we emphasise in Tweet to the Top and our other Twitter for business material. Creating value-adding content and really engaging people through interaction is hugely enjoyable and you can also learn a great deal about your audience; what they’re like, what their interests are and where they hang out.

If you’re not yet on Twitter, now is the perfect time to capitalise with some companies still not making the most of the platform.

Like to know more? Check out Twitter for business.

What’s new this year in the social media software industry? Not much, at least from our latest findings in an analysis of social media marketing tools.

Products and company taglines commonly used the terms analysis, monitoring, brand, and engagement. However, television and radio were missing from complete “path of news tracking” across both ads and editorial, with a greater focus on social networks, online sites (blogs, forums, etc.).  With product development focused mostly on more Analytics – charts, graphs and visualizations, brands need to wonder, what content sets matter most?

It’s a crowded industry, so we compiled a list of 115 social media marketing platforms to help you find the one that works best for your brand, especially if you’re being mentioned on television.

Many marketers and salespeople tell me that they struggle to gain traction when targeting larger, enterprise-type businesses with their marketing promotions.

Marketing to “The Enterprise” via email presents a number of challenges:

• A smaller pool of potential clients (compared to the larger SMB sector) means that conversion rates (in terms of leads or sales) must be high in order to ensure profitable engagement.
• In a highly competitive space, with many competitive businesses targeting the same potentially lucrative market, your brand must really stand out as a competent leader in its field of expertise.
• Multiple decision makers may complicate the sales process (legal, financial, technical, etc.) increasing the length of the sales cycle and putting additional pressure on your budgets as cash flow is slow to generate.
• Resource hungry, larger enterprises demand a more personal service (meaning dedicating human resource to service their needs) where smaller, (perhaps) more agile organizations’ often accept a more automated approach to everyday communication.

I believe that selling a product or a service to an organization of any size is a fairly simple process. It’s all about delivering a solution that solves a problem for your target audience and hitting the right people with the right message at the right time (perhaps easier said than done – right?). This simple rule works regardless of whether you are selling to individuals, small or medium-sized businesses or major enterprises. I personally, rarely differentiate between B2B and B2C marketing – because at the end of the day corporations never make buying decisions (people do). I also believe that people buy from people they like and are inspired to buy by people they identify with.

This means two things when selling to “enterprise” clients:

1. You need to speak the same language as your potential clients and deliver smart content that addresses their problems (a large enterprise will have very different problems to a smaller org).
2. You need to use case studies and testimonials that enterprise clients can identify with. Enterprise clients are much more likely to believe someone they consider to be a peer in their industry than a salesperson or marketer. Building these case studies can present a number of challenges – with many enterprises preferring to play their cards close to their chests.

Ultimately, successful “enterprise” email marketing is all about proving that you swim in the same circles as your potential clients, understand their problems and have the resource to manage their needs.

How have you used email marketing to crack the “enterprise business” space? Share your comments below:

This post first appeared on the iContact Email Marketing Blog.

“98% of your MQLs will never result in closed business.”

The first time I read this SiriusDecisions statistic, I couldn’t comprehend it. It was the most staggering stat I’d seen in the last several years. Two others struck a chord with me as well:

At QuotaFactory, we see firsthand how hard our clients work to generate an MQL, and how many resources have to be devoted to this task. That makes this “98%” number even more painful.

So how can businesses take control of the issue? Understanding the root causes is a good place to start. Here are the top three things that cause this stat to be real and some suggested fixes to address the problems.

1) It’s indicative of a classic disconnect about MQLs.

If the past 12 years I spent at AG Salesworks have taught me one thing, it’s how to spot a disconnect between Sales and Marketing about marketing qualified leads. In the majority of cases, Marketing is pumping their MQLs into the hands of sales development reps. In this instance, the issue is simple. Marketing has unreasonable expectations and Sales has no regimented plan for follow up.

Solution:

Marketing: Tighten up your scoring and be a little more judicious about who you send to Sales for follow up. If the contact you’ve generated isn’t at a director level or above, don’t send it. Nurture it.

Sales: Automate the follow up. Don’t reinvent the wheel; contract with someone that can automate the call plan follow up for you.

Cheat Sheet:

Hit up our friends at The Bridge Group for some guidance on how to establish rules and metrics around the Marketing and Sales relationship.

2) Your ideal buyer profile is off.

Nothing ensures a lack of closed business from MQLs more than inaccurate customer profiling. Ideal profiling, when done correctly, can drive this metric through the floor. However, it’s not an exact science and requires constant tweaking. If you adopt the Ron Popeil “set it and forget it” mentality then you are doomed to live at the 98% mark.

Solution:

Marketing: Run your ideal profiling exercise once a month. Yes, you read that right. Markets change, and buyer habits shift like the weather. You can’t just set it once and think it’s never going to change. And what if you were wrong the first time? Having a regular cadence to how you manage your ideal profiles is essential to eliminating this problem.

Sales: Make your sales and sales development reps understand the ideal profiles in use. Chances are you’ve got more than one ideal profile, so why do you have only one sales message? Create a separate message for each persona Marketing gives you. You’ll be glad you did.

Cheat Sheet: 

Seek out experts in this space. If you can automate the ideal profile review and get it cranking more frequently than once a month, your sales force will be in great shape.

3) Your sales development team is weak (or worse -- you don’t have one).

I know this sounds harsh, but a weak team is a top cause of the devastating “98%” stat. In many cases, sales development has been treated as an afterthought, haphazardly built in the hopes of maintaining a bullpen for sales talent. Perhaps your organization doesn't even have a sales development team (get one!) and quota-carrying sales reps are responsible for follow up.

Solution:

Marketing: Get a commitment from the sales development team on a call plan for your MQLs and put reporting in place to monitor reps' performance.

Sales: Get the right people to follow up. Salespeople are arguably the worst people to follow up on MQLs. If you have a sales development team, train them on the difference between following up on inbound interest and talking to a prospect sourced via outbound efforts.

Cheat Sheet: 

Check out the Sales Best Practices for Prospecting Inbound Leads guide to help you build a call plan structure for your inbound personas. If you don’t have a sales development team, look to companies like AG Salesworks to build one from scratch for you. If you have a team and need to make sure they are best in class, seek out training from companies like Vorsight to ensure they are up to par on the latest sales prospecting practices.

As always, I’m open to any thoughts on what other factors cause this problem and how to fix it. These are the top three causes we’ve seen. How are you solving them inside your organization?

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Sales Wars, and is republished here with permission.

Bill Maris has $425 million to invest this year, and the freedom to invest it however he wants. He's looking for companies that will slow aging, reverse disease, and extend life. “If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris, president and managing partner of Google Ventures, said one January afternoon in Mountain View, California.

Google Ventures has close to $2 billion in assets under management, with stakes in more than 280 startups. Each year, Google gives Maris $300 million in new capital, and this year he’ll have an extra $125 million to invest in a new European fund. That puts Google Ventures on a financial par with Silicon Valley’s biggest venture firms, which typically put to work $300 million to $500 million a year. According to data compiled by CB Insights, a research firm that tracks venture capital activity, Google Ventures was the fourth-most-active venture firm in the U.S. last year, participating in 87 deals.

Google has spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing a research center, called Calico, to study how to reverse aging, and Google X is working on a pill that would insert nanoparticles into our bloodstream to detect disease and cancer mutations.

My colleague Jay Yarow reports that some Apple shareholders think that the company should buy Tesla. 

It's a provocative, scintillating idea: Apple buying Tesla would create a New Economy Dream team, unifying the most admired company in the world with the one that actually wants to change that world.

Not incidentally, Apple buying Tesla would bring about a synthesis of Silicon Valley and Tesla's game-changing vision for mobility that many people have been yearning for. 

At the level of pure awesomeness, it makes perfect sense for the company that Steve Jobs built (but not by himself of course) and that Elon Musk built (also not by himself) to be joined. My pulse races just thinking about it.

But then my cool head prevails and I settle down. 

When I wrote about this last year, we hadn't yet learned about Apple's Project Titan, which could be a car — perhaps a driverless car, like the Google self-driving car that's been in development for a while now. Or it could be some kind of in-car infotainment system. But Apple is certainly up to something in the transportation space. So there's a greater justification in early 2015 for Apple to use some of its vast cash pile to buy Tesla than there was in late 2014.

But apart from bringing Tesla CEO into the Apple fold, it's hard to see why Apple buying Tesla makes any sense.

Manufacturing a car is orders of magnitude more complex than manufacturing a consumer electronics gadget that's designed to be sold for less than a few thousands bucks and destined to be thrown out or recycled in a few years. The effective life of an iPhone is — what? — three or four years, max? The effective life of a $100,000 Tesla Model S is at least a decade and really more like two or three decades. 

Teslas are built to last. iPhones are built not to.

It's also doubtful that Apple could solve Tesla's production challenges — the company is currently ramping itself up to build far more than the 35,000 cars it managed in 2014. I don't think Apple CEO Tim Cook, adept as he may be at dealing with touchscreens and processors in the Asian supply chain, could breeze in and streamline the production of a car that needs to be very fast, very safe, uses all manner of never-before-seen drivetrain and power technologies, and is currently assembled by huge robots and human beings in California.

Apple is certainly full of guys who dig cars and want to reinvent them — guys on the Apple board, guys who design Apple's products (Jony Ive, Marc Newson), guys who run the business. These guys love hot cars: Ferraris, Aston Martins, Porsches, Bentleys. They want to design and build awesome cars that blow your mind!

But the reality of the business is that while Ferrari, for example, makes wonderful cars and also tons of money, it's a miniscule part of the global market. Just as Apple wants to sell millions and millions of iPhones and iPads, carmakers want to sell millions and millions of cars. And not hot cars, but boring cars: mass-market sedans, workhorse pickup trucks, and versatile SUVs.

After setting a tone for his brand with the the exhilarating, high-performance Model S sedan, Musk can now say mission accomplished and move on to developing the mass-market Model 3, which he hopes to produce in the hundred of thousands.

I doubt that Cook and Ive and all the Apple guys with their Porsches and Ferraris want to grow up just so they can buy a company whose overarching goal is to create the electric Toyota Corolla.

Additionally, few enterprises in human experience are as good at taking cash and making it go away as car companies. At full-tilt, using state-of-the-art "lean" production methods refined over decades, a highly skilled workforce, and selling their product to people who are happy to go into debt for years to sit in traffic for hours — car companies burn billions per quarter, face the constant threat of cyclical downturns when people just drive their old cars and don't upgrade to new ones, and generate moderate profits with limited prospects for significant future growth. 

What person in his right mind would want to get into this business?

Then there's the matter of Elon Musk himself. As we learned last October when the "D" all-wheel-drive version of Tesla's Model S sedan was launched, Musk isn't just Iron Man — he's Iron Man plus Steve Jobs.

But really, he's better than Jobs, who only got to walk around with nifty little glass-and-metal devices and talk about how nifty they were.

For his part, Musk brought out a giant orange robot and commanded it to sling around a thousand-pound car chassis. Then he gave people dragstrip joyrides in the actual vehicle. 

Then he drove home and probably switched over to being the CEO of his other company, SpaceX, and worked all night on designs for a rocket big enough to send people to Mars.

When Steve Jobs left, we did need another Steve Jobs. But we got someone who's aiming higher. We got Musk.

Tim Cook is fantastic, but I really don't see Musk going to work for Tim Cook. Musk is now playing for a level of importance in the human race that far transcends Jobs' very meaningful and important contribution, and whatever advice Cook can offer to improve Tesla's manufacturing processes.

Tesla is ultimately a solution to global warming. SpaceX is supposed to make us "multiplanetary," because you never know...

Musk is in it for the species.

It's necessary to understand this about him. He doesn't care about money, except as a means to an end. His companies aren't companies in the traditional sense — they're solutions to enormous problems, solutions that take advantage of the power that entrepreneurs now wield to gather funding for their dreams. His two main companies — Tesla and SpaceX — are doing the kind of astounding things that capture the imagination.

Smartphones and social networks are super. But they don't do o-60 in 3 seconds with nothing coming out of the tailpipe, and they don't want to go back to the Moon.

Additionally, if Cook wants visionary advice, I think he can just call Musk up and ask him what to do. Frankly, I think Musk would consider it something of a distraction.

So what about the notion that Apple is jumping into cars and should buy Tesla while Tesla is small and (sort of) cheap, in order to accelerate whatever plans are taking shape in Cupertino.

That would be extremely risky. Tesla is operating in our existing world of getting around, which still involves cars and drivers and roads. Musk's plan for the next few decades is about improving that situation. 

Google, meanwhile, is building the actual car of the future, which is small and driverless and something that Apple's car lovers can appreciate at an intellectual level but would very much not like to drive. Or be driven in. It's actually more of a node in a futuristic mobility system that treats your physical location as something to be overcome with very complex maps and extremely powerful artificial intelligence. 

It's pretty much the opposite of what Tesla wants to do, although Tesla will likely be incorporating more and more "autonomous" driving technologies into its cars in coming years. 

Apple buys Tesla now to avoid having to buy Tesla later. But then later arrives and and Apple discovers that it bought the wrong idea.

To me, this is the biggest risk for Apple if it does listen to a few shareholders and conclude that Tesla is worth gobbling up.

SEE ALSO: Apple Should Buy Tesla

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here’s why Oculus Rift should be worried about Sony’s Project Morpheus

In Madagascar, children cannot say their father's name or refer to any of his body parts. In Taiwan, it is inconceivable to write messages in red ink. 

All countries seem to have a baffling number of foreign practices, and Russia has an especially extensive list of taboos that a business traveler would be wise to avoid.

According to Richard Lewis' book, "When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures," it's important to remember these seven things the next time you visit Russia:

1. Don't wear your coat indoors.

It is considered bad etiquette to wear your overcoat inside. Even if the heat is broken, buck up and hang your coat immediately.

2. Don't keep your hands in your pockets.

It is bad form to walk around or stand with your hands in your pockets. If you're doing business in Russia, keep your hands visible to avoid looking sloppy.

3. Do not sit with your legs apart.

In addition, do not sit with your ankle resting on your knee, and never show the soles of your shoes or let them touch your seat, since shoes are considered dirty.

4. Do not whistle in the street.

Whistling in the street — and indoors — is frowned upon. Play it safe, and avoid whistling all together.

5. Do not eat lunch on park lawns.

No matter how beautiful the weather, forget picnicking. 

6. Do not ask people where the toilet is.

It is poor form to ask people where the bathroom is, particularly those of the opposite sex.

7. Do not shake a hand through a doorway.

Russians are known to be very superstitious. It is considered bad luck to shake hands across any threshold, according to The Moscow Times, so save your greeting until you're fully indoors.

SEE ALSO: 8 Taboos You Should Never Break In Japan

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

(Apple)

As expected, Apple took the wraps off its smartwatch on Monday, giving the faithful an idea of how much the thing is going to cost and when it’s going to be available. With this new information, the Apple Watch makes less sense than ever.

It’s going to be an expensive proposition when it lands on Apr. 24. The cheapest version is the aluminum Sport model, which starts at $449 (Canadian). That ramps up to a starting price of $699 for the stainless steel version, with the 18-karat gold model starting at $13,000. Anyone wanting fancier bands is going to cough up even more.

As with most Apple products, the watches are priced as premium goods, or as luxury items in the case of the higher-end devices.

On one level, this makes sense. Less costly smartwatches from other manufacturers have so far failed to catch on with the mainstream for reasons that have been well documented here and elsewhere. In a nutshell, they can’t perform many tasks that phones don’t already handle, they’re ugly and they require constant charging.

There isn’t much evidence that the category is more than a small niche, in which case Apple’s pricing is smart. If the company isn’t going to sell a lot of watches, it may as well make healthy profits from the small number it does move to the faithful, who will buy anything featuring an Apple logo.

The watches make little sense beyond the fanboys, though, because of their natural obsolescence. With various hands-on reports already finding problems with the Apple Watch, such as that it’s complicated to use, inevitable redesigns and iterations are coming.

Apple refreshes most of its products and operating systems on an annual basis, and there’s no reason to expect the watches will be different. As anyone who owns an older iPhone can attest to, it won’t be long before that formerly sleek and fast-moving wristwatch starts to hang and crawl like some sort of digital tortoise. So much for that big investment.

Of course, iPhones also suffer from this update problem – where newer software is simply too demanding for older hardware – but iPhones generally don’t cost most buyers all that much because of carrier subsidies. The Apple Watch, on the other hand (no pun intended), carries no such discount.

Other manufacturers’ smartwatches also face the obsolescence dilemma, but they aren’t selling their devices at sky-high prices. The Moto 360, for example, is only $279 in Canada. Many buyers probably won’t care when it conks out in a few years.

Unlike a non-smartwatch, the expensive Apple Watch going to be so much junk in no time, and that’s going to carry a social stigma. Luxury watches generally paint their wearers as conspicuous consumers, but an expensive watch that degrades quickly is going to mark its owner as a conspicuous consumer who really isn’t that wise about their money.

In that light, it’s hard to really call this a “smart” watch, isn’t it?

MORE ABOUT SMART WATCHES:

• Why the Apple Watch will fail
• 5 reasons smartwatches will be forgotten
• Smartwatches are a dumb idea: numbers show the market is tiny
• How mobile carrier subsidies became Apple’s secret weapon
• Review: The Moto 360 is the best smart watch on the market—but that’s not saying much

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The post Don’t fall for the Apple Watch hype appeared first on Canadian Business.