The Old Reader

10 Mar 19:52

‘Holocaust did not begin in the gas chamber, it began with words': Minister in defence of new anti-terrorism bill

by Canadian Press, National Post Staff

OTTAWA — Canada’s public safety minister came under fire Tuesday for invoking the Holocaust in an attempt to defend controversial new anti-terrorism measures.

Bill C-51 is needed to protect the public from extremists who hate Canadian values, Steven Blaney told MPs as they began hearing testimony on the federal legislation. The law establishes a new category of crime, making it illegal to promote terrorism, and gives authorities the power to seize “terrorist propaganda.”

The minister said the international jihadi movement has “declared war on Canada” and other countries around the world, and he compared their message to Nazi propaganda.

“The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chamber, it began with words,” he said according to media reports.

Violence starts with words, hatred starts with words

The NDP’s public safety critic said Blaney’s comment trivialized the murder of
six million Jews, according to the CBC.

“There is no equivalence in anything we’re talking about here to the Holocaust,” Randall Garrison said. He later accused the government of “overusing fear.”

Blaney reportedly defended his earlier comments, but denied that he was suggesting that the terror bill is needed to prevent a Holocaust in Canada.

“Violence starts with words, hatred starts with words,” he said. “Let’s call a cat a cat … hate propaganda has no place in Canada, and the time has come for the government to take our responsibility.”

The House of Commons public safety committee plans to hear from more than 50 witnesses over the next few weeks.

The Conservatives brought in the bill, which would broaden the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s mandate, following the murders of two Canadian soldiers last October.

The legislation would give CSIS the ability to disrupt terror plots, make it easier for police to limit the movements of a suspect, expand no-fly list powers, crack down on terrorist propaganda, and remove barriers to sharing security-related information.

The new disruptive powers do not apply to “lawful” advocacy, protest and dissent, but some critics say they could be used against activists who protest without an official permit.

Blaney took issue with the idea the bill would allow CSIS to trample civil liberties, telling the committee he wanted to “set the record straight.”

The government’s bill, C-51, has drawn controversy in recent weeks. Critics say it gives too much power to CSIS and the RCMP, and will threaten civil liberties without sufficient independent oversight.

The bill redefines threats to national security to include, among other things, interference with critical infrastructure, including cyber systems, and to the “economic and financial stability” of Canada.

It provides exceptional police-like powers to Canadian spies to disrupt suspected threats to the nation, in many instances without the need for judicial warrants.

It also lowers the legal threshold required for police to arrest and detain suspected extremists without charge and to impose conditions on their release.

The bill allows 17 federal departments and agencies to share and collate personal and other information about Canadians suspected of “activity that undermines the security of Canada.”

With files from the Ottawa Citizen

10 Mar 19:50

Why Canadians should stop stressing about an economy that is stuck in second gear

by Gordon Isfeld

OTTAWA — Get ready for Canada’s “new normal” economy, one categorized by a long period of weak post-recession growth and slower pace of job creation.

Many forecasters, both private and institutional, have been downgrading expectations for the Canadian economy, which — like many major industrialized countries — is still struggling to shake off the lingering impact of the 2008-09 recession and, to a lesser degree, the financial crisis that preceded it.

In fact, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says its most recent gauge of leading indicators for Canada declined in 2014 and will remain weak, although stable, this year.
The OECD’s reading — with 100 as the long-term average — put Canada at 99.9 in January, down from 100 the previous month, while the United States was unchanged at 100.2.

FP0304_GDP_weakness_620_AB

Consumer confidence in Canada’s outlook is also wavering, along with the economy.

In particular, consumers are having second thoughts about buying big-ticket items, according the Conference Board of Canada’s February survey, and many believe employment opportunities are fading.
“The results showed Canadians’ deteriorating confidence about their current and future financial situations, their willingness to make a major purchase, and . . . about future job prospects in their region.”

But the “new normal” for the Canadian economy may not be new at all, according to a study by the Fraser Institute, published Tuesday.

In fact, Canadians have lived through different versions of “normal” after previous downturns, and we have often come out the other side in pretty good shape.

The Vancouver-based think-tank says “slow growth in a recovery is not unprecedented and does not augur [that] weak growth will continue.”

“There is reason to believe that pessimism about growth will prove to be an over-reaction to the current environment, just as happened in the 1930s and 1970s.” Those past periods of prolonged weak expansion “ended when governments adopted better and more predictable policies,” argues Philip Cross, author of the study and former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada.

“Canada is particularly well positioned to take advantage of an upturn in the U.S. economy, since the lasting impact of the recession upon [our] financial sector and labour markets has been much less pronounced than in the United States.

“This will help Canada overcome the recent slump in commodity prices,” Mr. Cross adds.
The Canadian economy grew 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2014, lifting the annual pace to 2.5%, up from 2% in 2013. The final reading for last year matched the Bank of Canada’s forecast.

But with the plunge in oil prices, the central bank expects economic growth of 1.5% in both the first and second quarters of 2015 — with overall yearly advance of 2.1%. Private-sector forecasters put this year’s growth closer to 2%.

And while the U.S. lagged slightly behind Canada in annual output last year, it is likely to post growth of about 3% or higher in 2015.

“Canada’s population is getting older, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But the right government policies will help spur economic growth despite our millions of aging baby boomers,” Mr. Cross says in the study.

Similar to other post-recession periods, he says “governments could encourage more growth by creating an environment conducive to innovation by removing regulatory barriers, such as those being erected to inhibit the growth of innovative new technologies . . . or preserving protected sectors such as telecommunications and finance.”

Some analysts argue that record-low interest rates “are no longer a stimulus to the economy.”
“Against a backdrop of weak demand and excess capacity, low interest rates have encouraged firms to buy back their own shares rather than investing in new plant and equipment,” Mr. Cross adds.

That has to change, as well as more efforts to see the long-anticipated rotation from consumer spending to increased exports and business spending.

As well, Mr. Cross says “instead of increasing aid to groups such as the long-term unemployed, we should be reducing the incentives unemployment insurance gives people not to move to areas with lower unemployment.”

Twitter.com/gsfeld

10 Mar 19:50

OPEC is still kicking, but the World Bank thinks the oil cartel’s days could be numbered

by Andrew Mayeda, Bloomberg News

As OPEC ’s refusal to curb oil production contributes to a nine-month plunge in prices, a new paper suggests the cartel’s days may be numbered.

OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has vowed to defend its market share against higher-cost producers such as U.S. shale drillers and companies developing Canada’s oil sands. Its strategy hinges on the odds that an extended period of low prices will lead other producers to scale back output, enabling the group to reassert its influence.

Yet a brief history detailed by the World Bank Group shows how difficult it can be to maintain a commodities cartel in the face of market forces and technological advances.

Following World War II a number of agreements were struck to govern trade in commodities including wheat, sugar, tin, coffee and olive oil, according to the Washington-based development bank. Producing and consuming nations often negotiated the deals to stabilize price levels. All of the agreements eventually collapsed — with the notable exception of OPEC, which was founded in 1960 and is led by Saudi Arabia.

Take tin. Once upon a time, people wrapped their leftovers in it. Most beverage cans were made of it. Now that job falls primarily to aluminium, a lighter metal that’s less susceptible to corrosion. According to the World Bank, the rise of aluminium as a substitute was a driving factor behind the collapse in 1985 of the tin cartel, which was formed in 1954.

Or look at natural rubber. Its three key producers — Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — formed a cartel in 1979. Rubber prices, which are denominated in U.S. dollars, declined in the late 1990s due to weak demand amid the fallout from the Asian financial crisis. The World Bank notes this should have prompted production cuts, however the sharp devaluation in the cartel members’ currencies caused local prices of rubber to increase, leading producers to expand output. The cartel collapsed in 1999.

And OPEC? The cartel’s power was on full display during the twin oil shocks of the 1970s, when oil prices spiked. But the entry of new suppliers and squabbling between OPEC members eroded its influence over the next two decades, according to the World Bank. “There’s very little evidence that OPEC has been effective as a cartel for some time,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Saudi Arabia, once in a while, has stepped in to stabilize the market.”

The World Bank reckons unconventional and higher-cost players such as U.S. shale drillers and even biofuel producers may be the new swing producers in the oil market.

Still, OPEC’s fate isn’t completely sealed. It may benefit from the fact that, unlike other commodity cartels, OPEC isn’t governed by a legal clause on how it can intervene in the market, giving it more flexibility to respond, according to the bank.

“The last time they were in a parallel situation, with oil prices plummeting in the 1980s, you had all these proclamations that OPEC was dead,” said Benn Steil, also at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he’s director of international economics. “Yet they weren’t, because when the fundamental forces of the business settled at a higher level of oil prices, they started to regain some relevance.”

Now, read the World Bank study, which was authored by John Baffes, Ayhan Kose, Franziska Ohnsorge and Marc Stocker.

Bloomberg.com

10 Mar 19:49

Don’t run with the herd: Warning signs abound in oil and tech

by Martin Pelletier

Human behaviour has always had a meaningful influence over equity markets: investors buy new highs for fear of missing out, catch falling knives while trying to time a bottom, and sell at lows in order to avoid further losses.

It is no different in today’s environment as is evident by investor action in the technology and energy sectors. Fortunately, there are some simple but very effective warning signs to help one avoid following the herd over a potential approaching cliff.

The first warning sign is what is often termed the most expensive four words on Wall Street: This time it’s different.

History has shown that most things in life, including markets, mean revert so investors should exercise caution during large standard deviation events or extreme action.

In this regard, the Nasdaq has now returned to its previous all-time high set in 2000 and pundits, both here and in the U.S., are all saying the dreaded “this time it’s different.”

To be fair, they make a compelling argument. Tech only makes up 43% of the Nasdaq compared to 65% in 2000, there are 2,500 fewer companies in the index and the median company age has risen to 25 years from 15 years. The Nasdaq’s P/E ratio is now only 20x compared to more than 100x in 2000, thanks to the domination of such titans as Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc.

But the Nasdaq’s return to its record high may be indicative of some broader underlying risks, such as Mark Cuban’s concerns about investors chasing the private tech sector despite zero liquidity and record-setting valuations.

“People we used to call individual or small investors, are now called Angels. Angels. Why do they call them Angels? Maybe because they grant wishes?” he was quoted as saying.

Venture-backed companies such as ride-sharing app Uber (worth US$40 billion) and photo-messaging app SnapChat (worth US$19 billion) are just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of other startups with little to no earnings and billion-dollar valuations, some of which have found their way onto the Nasdaq.

It’s a completely different story on the energy markets, thanks to oil prices being halved in the past year. That said, there is an interesting dichotomy happening here in Alberta. Despite the selloff, it feels a lot like 2007 with many spending like it’s still US$100 oil.

It may surprise those in the east, but it’s nearly impossible to get into a decent restaurant in Calgary. Resort hotels are almost fully booked on weekends, shopping malls are packed even on weekdays and there are still waiting lists for luxury SUVs.

A similar situation is playing out with oil stocks, with retail investors piling into dilutive bought deals while institutional investors take more of a cautious approach with their allocations.

Simply look at the share price performance of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNQ/NYSE) and Suncor Energy Inc. (SU/NYSE). They are down only 19% and 12%, respectively, over the past 12 months while oil is down nearly 50%. Consequently, many oil companies are now factoring in oil prices of US$70 per barrel in their valuations.

We think this is because the prevailing attitude about oil and the energy market is that “it will come back, it always does.” This is a very dangerous position to take, especially considering North American production continues to set new record highs and there is the real risk that we will run out of storage capacity as speculators arbitrage the contango.

In conclusion, exercising a little common sense and stepping away from the herd can go a long way in helping to prevent investors from making a baaa’d decision.

Martin Pelletier, CFA, is a portfolio manager at Calgary-based TriVest Wealth Counsel Ltd.

10 Mar 19:47

A short history of giving away your patents

by Graham F. Scott

A Toyota employee checks a Mirai on its final assembly line at the Motomachi factory in Toyota city in February 2015. (Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty)

In January, Toyota announced it would open up its patent portfolio in order to drive wider adoption of hydrogen technology. Under the automaker’s scheme, manufacturers will be allowed to develop products using its patented technology through 2020 without a royalty fee. “The first-generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, launched between 2015 and 2020, will be critical, requiring a concerted effort and unconventional collaboration between automakers, government regulators, academia and energy providers,” said Bob Carter, senior vice-president of Toyota’s automotive operations. “By eliminating traditional corporate boundaries, we can speed the development of new technologies.”

Giving away intellectual property isn’t as rare as it might seem; Toyota provided free access to some of its hybrid car patents when it debuted the Prius nearly 20 years ago, and many companies have built their businesses on such arrangements. Here are some of the ways giving ideas away has paid off.

SEALAND INDUSTRIES

1956
Shared: Shipping containers
Number of patents released: 1
Annual revenue of products based on royalty-free patents: US$440 billion

In 1956, a converted oil tanker called the Ideal X carried 58 stacked shipping containers from Newark to Houston. It was the first instance of containerized shipping—and a hint that a single interchangeable unit of cargo was the future of global trade.

But during the early days of the fledgling industry, different companies were pushing different-sized containers: SeaLand, the company pioneering the new method, had chosen a 33-foot-long container suitable for loading on trucks, while competitor Matson, concerned about weight, was pushing for a smaller 24-foot model. The uncertainty hampered uptake at every point on the supply chain.

Malcolm McLean, who had purchased SeaLand specifically to build his vision of an end-to-end containerized shipping company, ultimately received a patent for the design of stackable shipping containers. But instead of enforcing it against his competitors, McLean leased it to the International Organization for Standardization royalty free, so that anyone could build compatible containers. The resulting explosion in so-called “intermodal” transportation propelled SeaLand’s success more than any patent lawsuit ever could have: within 15 years, SeaLand was the largest shipping business in the world.

AT&T

1970s
Shared: UNIX software
Number of patents released: 8,600
Annual revenue of products based on royalty-free patents: US$478 billion

Not all openness has been by choice. UNIX, an early and highly influential computer operating system, had first been developed within Bell Labs. But its parent company, AT&T, had agreed not to enter the computer business as part of a 1958 antitrust settlement; it had to share its source code with anyone who wanted it, and academic computer science departments were enthusiastic adopters.

That led to a proliferation of UNIX-like operating systems starting in the 1970s—some of them free and open-source, some commercial and locked-down, and many somewhere in between. It also proved that “openness” and “standardization” often had little to do with altruism; companies and contortiums fought viciously, and at length, about which technologies would become “standard” for the whole industry (a period now referred to, only half-jokingly, as “the UNIX wars”).

Scraps of UNIX and its descendants live on today in every computer you touch; both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android contain code that can trace their lineage back to these early UNIX operating systems.

GOOGLE

2005
Shared: Android
Patents controlled by Google: 51,000+
Annual revenue of products based on royalty-free patents: US$255 billion

Openness can also be a weapon. Android, an open-source mobile operating system started in 2003, soon became Google’s big stick in the smartphone wars. At the time of Android’s release, the dominant mobile OS in the fledgling smartphone market was Nokia’s Symbian, which then held more than 75% of the market.

The launch of the iPhone, boasting the much more user-friendly iOS, put Nokia on the backfoot—but in the long run it was Android that did the most damage. By releasing Android under a free license, Google made Android the cheap and easy choice for the next generation of smartphone makers—manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, LG and Xiaomi. Symbian, which charged a license fee for every phone made and offered fewer customization options, quickly withered, ultimately leading to the breakup of Nokia and the sale of its mobile phone division to Microsoft.

FACEBOOK

2009
Shared: Tornado
Patents owned by Facebook: 704+
Annual revenue of products based on royalty-free patents: US$12.4 billion

In 2009 Facebook bought a social network called FriendFeed that was struggling to attract users but had a compelling technology under the hood: a piece of software called Tornado, which allowed FriendFeed to update its profile pages in real time as people added likes, comments, new posts and more. (Sound familiar? Today Tornado powers Facebook’s news feed for hundreds of millions.)

The first thing Facebook did was open-source Tornado’s code, which may seem counterintuitive—why buy a company and then give away its biggest asset? A combination of factors: Facebook was built on a suite of open source precursors and being a good corporate citizen is good PR; but it’s also a good way to accelerate development and testing, spot promising newcomers and retain existing talent.

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TESLA

2014
Shared: Lithium-ion electric car patents
Number of patents released: 200+
Annual revenue of products based on royalty-free patents: US$2.01 billion

Tesla founder Elon Musk announced in a June 2014 blog post that the company “will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.”

Musk is famously skeptical of patents, referring to them as a “lottery ticket to a lawsuit.” His other major venture, SpaceX, holds none at all, and Musk has implied that not publishing the company’s inventions is a way to keep them out of the hands of Chinese competitors who reverse-engineer patent filings.

Tesla is in the midst of constructing its so-called “Gigafactory” to manufacture the lithium-ion batteries that run its cars. But the factory as planned is so large that its capacity will meet Tesla’s needs with plenty to spare. Musk may be looking create a larger market for all those extra batteries by enticing his competitors to standardize on his technological terms.

TOYOTA

2015
Shared: Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle patents
Number of patents released: 5,680
Annual revenue of products based on royalty-free patents: US$40.8 million

Toyota is opening up its patent portfolio, but not to just anyone. Interested companies—automakers, parts manufacturers and energy companies that will operate fuelling stations—will have to apply for access, and Toyota says it will decide on a case-by-case basis. Through 2020, Toyota will provide royalty-free use of its patents, including 3,350 related to fuel cell system software control; 1,970 related to fuel cell stacks; 290 related to high-pressure hydrogen tanks; and 70 related to hydrogen production and supply. (Those final patents have been opened up indefinitely and free licences will not expire with the rest in 2020.)

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10 Mar 17:15

Apple Watch hands-on review: Tech giant’s first wearable doesn’t feel very Apple

by Stephen Pulvirent, Bloomberg News

The Apple Watch is finally here. Again. Only this time, it actually works.

Details were scant when Apple first unveiled its much-awaited watch at a media event in September 2014 and watches featured nothing more than a demo loop of what software might do. Today Apple answered most of the big questions and we actually got to take an Apple Watch for a spin.

The two biggest blanks going into this morning’s presentation were price and battery life. We got answers for both. The Apple Watch Sport ranges from $449 to $519, the Apple Watch from $699 and $1,459, and the 18k gold Apple Watch Edition starts at $13,000 (all prices for Canada). Exact pricing varies based on case size (38mm or 42mm) and strap choice.

No GPS or cellular connectivity

Apple is saying that the watch will provide a “full day” of use on one charge, approximately 18 hours. It’s unclear what that means and how long a charge will last if you’re addicted to Instagram or handle a lot of email. It’s likely to be similar to what you can get from the Moto 360 and a little less than what the Samsung Galaxy Gear S offers. Charging is done inductively through a magnetic pad, and the Apple Watch Edition houses the pad in a leather box meant to mimic the boxes of high-end luxury watches.

A major criticism of the Apple Watch is that while it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it does not have GPS or cellular connectivity, meaning it needs to be tethered to an iPhone to access the Internet, map your run, or notify you of email.

It doesn’t feel very Apple

There are more varieties of Apple Watch than of any Apple product offered before. As if three product ranges and two sizes wasn’t enough, each range also has two finish options and there are dozens of style and colour combinations of straps and bracelets. Apple smartly understands that while most people are ok carrying the same phone as their colleagues and friends, walking into a room wearing the same watch as everyone else feels a little strange. However, even if several varieties is an understandable decision for the marketplace, it still doesn’t feel very Apple.

The smaller 38mm size fits better on my small wrist, but you do get about 20% less screen than with the 42mm and I think that’s real estate I’d quickly come to miss. The fluroelastomer bands (you’ll get chastised referring to them as rubber near any Apple employee) are flexible and comfortable, but a little fiddly to put on, while the leather and link bracelets feel very much like watch bands you’re already used to. The Milanese mesh in particular feels and looks incredible, and fits your wrist perfectly by using magnets instead of sized clasp holes.

David Paul Morris/BloombergOn first use, the digital crown felt a little confusing and clumsy.

Digital crown feels clumsy and unrefined

Since the first Apple Watch announcement in September 2014, Apple has been touting the digital crown as a groundbreaking interface that will set the Apple Watch apart from its competition. So, how is it in practice? On first use, it felt a little confusing and clumsy. Sometimes it seemed to do one thing, and other times just the opposite. The display doesn’t use the familiar pinch-to-zoom gesture used on the iPhone and it seems like the interplay between tapping, swiping, and turning the crown will take some getting used to.

Unanswered questions

We thought we might get the full scoop from Apple on what the final release will look like, but details such as on-board storage capacity and exactly how you’ll manage and purchase apps via your iPhone are still missing. Sure, we got to go hands-on with a working watch, but things will surely continue to shift and change before the watches start popping up on wrists.

The Apple Watch will be sold at Apple stores and special demonstration cases will arrive in Apple stores on April 10, the same day pre-orders begin. Watches will begin being delivered just a few weeks later on April 24.

Bloomberg.com

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10 Mar 17:15

How to Increase Conversion Through Better UX

by Joao Romao

In this series of blog posts, we’re examining the e-commerce conversion funnel from Awareness to Advocacy. Last time I discussed how to gain customer consideration through relevant content. This followed the previous week’s post covering how to increase awareness for your online store.

Once you’re generating interesting content, bringing people to your store, and providing your users all of the information they need to purchase, they’ll be lining up to pay. Now, it’s important to make their checkout experience as seamless as possible in order to increase conversion rates.

Conversion Funnel - Step 3: Increase Conversion

Conversion:

Brick-and-Mortar : Customer goes to cashier and pays
Online : Customer adds items to basket, fills out registration, billing, and shipping information, and places order

How to optimize this? Better User Experience with Fewer Steps

1) Collect Data
Before you start anything else, make sure that you’re tracking your traffic and conversion rates. This will give you a basis for comparison and allow you to mark your progress toward your conversion goals.

Tools:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool. There’s an entire academy and even a certificate for it and describing all of its features would take up dozens of blog posts. But, for our purposes, among its many uses is the ability to track your site’s traffic and conversions. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to set up the conversion tracking. If you have WordPress, here’s a free plugin to display the analytics in your WP dashboard. If you use Shopify, check out this guide instead.

Free for these purposes (Premium version also available)

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg shows you what your users are doing on your site through maps that display what they have seen and where they have been clicking. If you register for their service and use WordPress, be sure to download their plugin, which shows you the analytics in the WP dashboard.

Prices range from $9/month to $99/month.

MixPanel

With MixPanel you can create funnels with a series of events that you want to track. Then, the data will show you where your customers drop off between steps allowing you to monitor any process. This is useful for example to A/B test your different landing pages and see where most of your customers are coming in as well as how long it takes for them to go through the funnel. You can then see if there has been any change in the funnel over time.

Free to $2,000+/month

KissMetrics

KissMetrics is quite similar to MixPanel, but doesn’t show real time analytics. There are blog posts detailing thedifferences, but if you don’t need real-time data, then it’s more of a matter of taste. Want to try them both? Then, you can try Segment.com’s data collection and re-routing service so that you don’t have to do the integration process twice.

14 day free trial, then goes from $200/month to $2,000+

2) Analyze Checkout Process
Once you have an analytics system setup and a baseline established, go through each step of checkout process to see where bottlenecks may be occurring.

Checkout Process

In general, your check-out process should:

Have a minimal number of steps that are as simple as possible
Be completely linear (no redoing steps), and
Exclude repetitive information.
Include a progress bar.

2.1) Proceed to Checkout

This is your last chance to upsell or cross sell, which may help increase revenue to your store, but make sure that these efforts don’t inhibit your customers from completing their purchase. Focus on clear directions for them to continue. Don’t insert a button stating, “Continue” as this could be misinterpreted as “Continue Shopping.” Instead, have the button clearly state “Continue to checkout” or “Proceed to checkout.”

2.2) Login / Register

Let your users continue as a guest. A lot of users get to this point in the page with the singular goal of seeing how much shipping will cost. They don’t want to spend the time filling out a registration form that we won’t use later on. So do them this favor.

If users do register, in the registration page, make your newsletters opt-in and not opt-out. Whatever you do, don’t make it an automatic opt-in. Being seen as spam is a great way to drive away customers.

2.3) Shipping & Payments

Remember that the goal here is to make the checkout process as quick and painless as possible. With that in mind, keep this one form as short and easy to fill as possible.

Automatically fill in information that the user has already inserted. For example, if the user has registered, automatically fill in the shipping and payment information for them so that they merely have to verify the information. Put the payment information first and automatically fill in the shipping information to be the same as the payment information, but allow your users to uncheck this option to remove the information.

Hide fields that are unnecessary. If the user has chosen to pay by PayPal, then there is no reason to show a credit card form. Hiding this until the user clicks to pay by credit card cleans up the page and keeps the user from being overwhelmed.
Add descriptions to the form field labels. For email, tell your users how you will use this email. What is address line 2? What is CVV? What is VAT?
Address security concerns. Make sure that your checkout process is secure and that your users know this. Displaying security seals helps to reassure them.

2.4) Confirmation

Finally, give the user a second chance to confirm the shipping and payment information before proceeding. Then, send them a receipt / confirmation email.

3) Examine data
After you have examined and optimized the checkout process and you have a few clients checking out, then examine the data that you have been gathering. View the percentage drop off from each step and troubleshoot as to why this could be happening. The best practice is to go through the process yourself or with a friend to see what could be happening. Possible other bottlenecks are:

Page loads too slowly
Page doesn’t work in all browsers or on all devices
Directions are unclear as to where to go next

If the user does abandon his/her cart…

4) Cart abandonment
If you still can’t figure out why customers are leaving their carts empty, the next best thing to do is to ask them. Install an app such as AbandonApp by MoonMail, which automatically sends emails to the customer who abandoned their cart.

It runs from free (10 emails) to $99/month (unlimited emails)

Learn from others’ experience. Statista surveyed e-commerce customers to find out why they abandoned their shopping cart and found the following reasons:

Summary:

If there’s one thing you should get out of this post it is this:

– Make the checkout process as quick and painless as possible, with the fewest steps and least amount of information necessary to be entered. Track your users’ movements through an analytical software and check to see where the bottlenecks are appearing.

What analytical software do you use to analyze your checkout process?
Do you have any best practices that you’d like to share?
Comment below!

10 Mar 17:15

Apple's new super-thin MacBook may be a bad deal now, but just wait (AAPL)

by Steve Kovach

tim cook with new macbook

During Monday's big event, the biggest glimpse at Apple's future came not from the Apple Watch but from the company's new laptop, the ultra-thin MacBook.

It's gorgeous, and people were going bonkers over this thing, even though it will sell for a hefty $1,300 or more starting April 10.

Apple may be the iPhone company, but it has not finished innovating PCs.

Still, I have three major concerns about the new MacBook:

First, there's the price. You're paying a premium because Apple pulled off some engineering magic and created a beautiful computer that is not much thicker than an iPhone yet powerful enough to run a full desktop operating system. In fact, it is $300 more expensive than the cheapest MacBook Pro but has weaker specs. (The Retina MacBook Pro starts at the same price as the new MacBook). It is not the best deal on paper unless you value design and portability over everything else.

Then there are the ports. Or, rather, the lack of ports. The MacBook has only one: a special USB C port that is designed for charging the computer, connecting video cables, and plugging in accessories. That means you will not be able to transfer files using a traditional USB stick, and you will have to get a special adapter for a lot of other things. macbook usb c port Finally, I'm not a fan of the fact Apple did away with the MagSafe charger in favor of USB C. If you're like me, you have a habit of tripping over your laptop's cables. Apple's MagSafe charger is a brilliant solution: It holds the charging connector firmly in the laptop but will not do any damage if you yank it out. When I was in college I did some major damage to my old PowerBook when I tripped over its charging cord. I have a feeling there will be more than a few damaged USB C chargers from new MacBook owners. USB C charging feels like a step backward.

But let's rewind a bit. The new MacBook reminds me a lot of the first MacBook Air that launched in 2008. That computer was underpowered, had very little storage, and had minimal ports. It was light, thin, and beautiful, unlike any laptop anyone had seen at the time, but it was also way too expensive for what you got. As with the new MacBook, the original MacBook Air was a marvelous feat of engineering that most people probably didn't need to buy.

Two and a half years later, the MacBook Air was the best laptop in the world. Apple improved everything from the processing power to design to battery life. Today's MacBook Air is even better.

new macbook gold color I bet we'll be having a similar discussion about the new MacBook in two or three years. It's ahead of its time now, but eliminating ports and going fully wireless in favor of an ultra-portable design will be the new norm. Eventually you will not need to plug a zillion accessories and projectors into your computer. Everything will be wireless.

Plus, traditional computers don't need to be as powerful for the stuff most people need to do, hence the exploding popularity of Chromebooks. The new MacBook is Apple's answer to that burgeoning trend. People use their laptops to email, check Facebook, do some word processing, and maybe stream some movies. You don't need a beast of machine to do all that. And if you can get one with a high-resolution display and knockout design, something like the new MacBook is really appealing.

For now, the MacBook Air will remain the best laptop you can buy, just as the old plastic MacBook was when the Air originally launched in 2008. The new MacBook is a glimpse at the future, but you'll probably want to wait until the rest of the world catches up.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Here's Tim Cook answering all your questions about the Apple Watch

10 Mar 17:13

Customize Your Dashboard To Deliver The Most Value

by Sheldon Levine

Last week we were ecstatic to show the world the brand new Sysomos Heartbeat. We updated the look and feel of Heartbeat, but also added a whole bunch of new and exciting features to help you use it better.

One of the best features that we added to the new Sysomos Heartbeat was the ability for every user to create their very own dashboard. That means that every user can see the information that they need to know most at a quick glance as soon as they enter Heartbeat and they can configure that information in any way they see as a best fit for them.

But what setup would be best for you?

Only you really know the answer. Only you would know what information from the world of social is most important to you and what you need to always have ready to go. But thanks to the new Sysomos Heartbeat dashboards you can try different setups and keep modifying them until you have something that you absolutely love and can’t live without.

Today, we wanted to show you a few examples to get you thinking about how you could arrange your own dashboards inside the new Sysomos Heartbeat.

Executive Overview Dashboard

Now, every company is going to have their own goals they’re trying to achieve in social media and your dashboard should reflect those goals, but we’re going to pretend for this example that the executives at our company want to be able to quickly peak in and see what’s happening around our brand on social media. They want to be able to quickly see what people are saying about us so that they can be connected to the consumers voice. So, in this example dashboard below we’ve set it up to do just that.

The dashboard starts by showing our executives what the conversation levels around our brand have been like over the past 7 days. Below that we’ve included a share of voice chart so they can see how we’re doing compared to some of our competitors in terms of conversation levels. We then start moving into overviews of what people are saying us by showing our executives what hashtags are being used most in conversations about us and word cloud of the terms around our brand. We then give them a large and interactive buzzgraph so they can see how people are connecting to our brand in their conversations. We follow that up with a snapshot of where in the world people are talking about us and what the sentiment around our brand is. Finally, we have the latest mentions coming in to Heartbeat around our brand so they can see what people are talking about right at the time they are looking at this dashboard.

A setup like this would allow any executive at our company to take a quick look and see what the world is saying about our brand at any time. They may not have the time to manually go through all of the social channels that you’re active in to figure this out, but this dashboard allows them to get that information super quickly and whenever they’d like.

Sysomos Heartbeat - Executive Overview Sample Dashboard

The World At A Glance

In this next example dashboard we’re a world-wide brand and we need to know all the time what key markets think about our brand. For us, it’s important to keep an eye on how much conversation is coming out of these key markets and to make sure that we’re still in favor with the people that live there.

We started this dashboard by showing a heat map of where conversations around our brand are coming from. Underneath we’ve broken down the languages that people are using when they talk about our brand to help us understand how we should be talking to these people. In the next section we’ve broken out how many mentions are coming from some of our key markets so we can keep a close eye on what the conversation levels are like in those markets. Under each market’s mention level we’ve placed a sentiment chart so that we can also have a snapshot of how our brand is perceived in each of those key markets.

A dashboard like this will allow us to get a quick glimpse at how we’re performing in countries that are important to our company, and if we ever want to know more about any of those markets we can click on the dashboard widget and be taken to the Monitor section of Heartbeat with the filters for that region already set up so we can further explore what’s going on there.

Sysomos Heartbeat - World-Wide Brand Sample Dashboard

Demographic Research

In this last dashboard example we want to do some demographic research to find out who’s talking about our brand so that we can make sure that we’re aiming our efforts to better speak to those people most interested in our brand.

In the first line of this dashboard we have a few widgets that show us how much people are talking about our brand and what some of the key things driving that conversation are. Next, we’ve set up widgets that tell us more about our audience like age groups, gender breakdown, what languages they’re using to talk about us and what countries are talking the most about us. We rounded out this dashboard by looking at who the most authoritative sources are that are talking about us and what hashtags people are using most when they mention us, so we can be sure to be part of that conversation.

A dashboard such as this will allow a brand to keep a close eye on who we should be targeting our marketing messages at most and give us an idea of what they’re interested in when it comes to our brand.

Sysomos Heartbeat - Demographic Research Sample Dashboard

These are just a couple of quick example dashboards that we’ve put together to get you thinking about all the ways that you can customize your own Sysomos Heartbeat dashboards. If you have some great ideas on how to set up a dashboard, let us know in the comments or even send us a screen shot of your dashboard. We’d love to know how you’re using the all new Sysomos Heartbeat.

Not using Sysomos Heartbeat yet? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help you get your very own customized dashboard and a whole lot more.

The post Customize Your Dashboard To Deliver The Most Value appeared first on Sysomos Blog.

10 Mar 17:13

Consistency is Key for Social Media Success

by Trevor Young

Blueprint for success

The urge to jump on social channels to market one’s business is often overwhelming. You just want to get on there and get started!

Then the novelty wears off and the grind (for some) starts: Creating content for your various social channels, not to mention interacting with, and responding to, the public – these activities take time.

But more than just time, they require consistency if you’re going to have any sort of impact with your social media activity.

What does this look like?

Well it means showing up regularly, specifically to:

publish content that is interesting, useful and relevant to your audience;
respond in a timely manner to people who have complaints or queries;
spark conversation around topics or issues dear to the heart of your brand;
identify and proactively interact with ‘like minds’ and influencers in your space.

If you’re a big organisation with resources, the expectation you’ll do all of the above on a consistent basis is ever-present. If you’re a smaller business, not so much, but if you want to make a positive impact, then yes you need to pay attention to such things.

Let’s look at these elements individually:

Publish content that is interesting, useful and relevant to your audience

This is becoming more and more important, and critical in differentiating a brand from its competitors.
Make sure your content efforts have purpose – what do you want to achieve? Are you trying to provide utility and be ever-useful, or maybe your goal is to build reputation and demonstrate knowledge leadership?
Create your original content with heart and soul – don’t punch it out ‘by the numbers’, your brand deserves more respect than that.
Take a multimedia approach: Consider using audio or video in addition to text; remember you can now upload video directly to Facebook and Twitter, giving you extra opportunity to bring alive your brand story.

Respond to people who have complaints or queries in a timely manner

Today’s ‘connected consumer’ will in all likelihood never email or phone your business; if you’re on social channels, they prefer to initiate contact that way – indeed, if you’re on Twitter and/or Facebook, there’s an expectation you’ll respond reasonably quickly.
if you respond in a respectful manner and provide relevant information that’s useful, awesome! More kudos to you!

Spark conversation around topics or issues dear to the heart of your brand

This is where many brands fall down; they simply do not proactively ‘get amongst it’ on social channels, preferring to sit back and push out content.
Want to get a jump on your competitor? Why not strategically identify the conversations you should be (seen to be) leading around your area of expertise and use content (blog posts, videos etc) to ignite discussion on social networks accordingly. One tip is to start, or participate on, a relevant regular Twitter hashtag chat (here is a great example of what that looks like).

Identify and proactively interact with ‘like minds’ and influencers in your space

Every industry has its obvious influencers, and there’s every chance they’re on one social channel or another; these may be bloggers, podcasters and journalists – people who have a platform and an audience of note – but they might also be individuals who are active on social channels and who others in your space look up to and interact with.
The best approach when dealing with influencers is to build genuine relationships with them over time; add value, shine the spotlight on them – it’s not about using them to push your brand, products and services; you need to be more thoughtful than that!
Influencers today are not only more visible thanks to social media, but there’s also a lot more of them. Be considered (and considerate) when reaching out to them, and don’t forget to take the long term view!

In summary, rather than tend to your social media channels in campaign-like ‘spurts’, show up regularly and contribute value to the online community you want your brand to be a part of.

Do this consistently and you’ll increase the opportunities and benefits of your social media marketing efforts as a result.

10 Mar 17:13

Here's how much profit the gold Apple Watch is actually making

by Mike Bird

gold smelting molten To the delight and horror of millions around the world yesterday, we finally got a look at the price of the Apple Watch Edition.

In the US, it's going to cost $10,000 (£8,000 in the UK). There's a super-high end version that will sell for $17,000, too.

But how much does it really cost for Apple to make, and how much will the company be raking in from it? Understandably, Apple hasn't been keen to announce it, but we've broken down the costs to give you an idea.

Here are the three main components:

55 grams of 18-karat gold: As of today, the spot price of 18-karat gold means this would set you back about $1,550.
The Watch itself. It costs about $549 for the watch with a white sport band (the $10,000 gold model also comes with the white band).
Cost of production. This part is hard to say, but remember that the cost of producing the ordinary watch (and some profit) are included in the $549 watch. There may be some extra costs to the gold element, but given the scale of production, they don't seem likely to be a big part of the cost.

If you add the cost of 55 grams of 18-karat gold to the cost of the watch, plus say $100 per unit (which seems quite liberal) for other production costs, you get to about $2,200. The cost of shipping it, marketing it and selling it once it's arrived in whatever country are priced into the basic watch itself. Those things together would imply a mark-up of about 354%. About $7,800 of the price-tag would be profit.

But in fact, that might be too low an estimate.

Forbes notes that the actual gold content of the watch is lower than standard 18-karat gold, and estimates that there's as little as $640 of gold in the model. That's because it's a metal matrix composite that Apple has patented: You can find out exactly what it's made of here.

Apple CEO Tim Cook My estimate used regular 18-karat gold as a base, which uses silver and copper as a mix. Apple's ceramic mix uses less gold than that, and ceramic is less expensive than either of the other metals. That means the $1,550 price I've included is probably too high. If the cost was reduced to $1,000 it would mean a 500% mark-up.

This incredible profitability means that a small increase in the proportion of Edition models that are sold will raise the overall profit of the watch range colossally. Morgan Stanley's analysts broke that down:

If Apple achieves 1% penetration of the 30m-unit a year Swiss luxury watch market with the high-end gold collection, and the rest of the Watch units are split between the entry and mid-range collections, Apple's Watch ASP in the first 12 months would be $618, or 37% higher than our $450 estimate.

Goldman Sachs research thinks the profit would be even larger if the share of sales accounted for by Apple Watch Editions rose to 1%, boosting earnings by two thirds:

If we were to increase our Watch Edition mix to 1% at the expense of the low-end (i.e., keep overall units the same), watch revenue would increase by 27% and gross profit would increase by 66% over the first 12 months of selling.

Apple's products are notoriously profitable. The cost of manufacturing an iPhone runs to just over a quarter of the final price. That doesn't include the cost of marketing and sales, so the Apple Watch Edition is in another league. Even counting those costs (which are really factored in to the $549 basic price), it seems like the cost to Apple to produce, advertise and sell the product makes up less than 20% of the price.

It's safe to say this isn't going to matter to most of the people who are buying gold Apple Watches. The price of the individual parts of the item is far less important than the Veblen effect that its owners will get: Veblen goods confer status. As their price rises their perceived value does too, and demand for them increases likewise. It's the exact opposite of what you'd expect from a normal supple/demand curve, where higher prices reduce demand.

So while you're reading headlines about how crazy it is for Apple to charge $10,000 for a watch, consider that all the company is doing is creating the demand that it will happily meet with supply.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This is what happens to your brain and body when you check your phone before bed

10 Mar 17:13

Social networks are falling over themselves to join the billion-dollar rush in mobile-app advertising

by Mark Hoelzel

MobileAppInstallAdvertisingRevenue(US)

The mobile app-install ad — an ad unit that directs users to download a mobile app – is closely identified with Facebook, the largest social network. But these ads have become so lucrative — driving one-third of all mobile ad revenue — that virtually every other internet property has created their own version.

Mobile app-install advertising is already found on Twitter, YouTube, and mobile ad networks like Millennial Media. Pinterest opened the door to the ad format recently with "app pins," and no online publisher wants to be left out of the rush.

Exclusive data from BI Intelligence finds that US mobile app-install ad revenue will top $4.6 billion this year and grow to $6.8 billion by the end of 2019, increasing by a compound annual growth rate of 14% from 2014. We believe mobile app install ads accounted for about 30% of mobile ad revenue last year.

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Here are some of the key takeaways:

Mobile app-install ads are becoming extremely popular ad units among different types of app publishers, not just game-app developers. App marketers — including e-commerce companies and a few brands — like these ads because they result in significant downloads and measurable ROI. Social networks and ad exchanges like them because they can sell the units at significantly higher prices than other ads.
Easy-to-measure ROI drives demand. In many cases, once an app-install ad generates a download, everything a customer does in the app, such as "lifetime customer value," can be attributed back to that specific ad.
On Facebook, mobile app-install ads cost significantly more than standard units, due to performance and targeting capabilities. The report includes CPM pricing and CTR rates compared to the average Facebook ad.
Prices will hold relatively steady as supply and demand rise in tandem. The mobile install ad is a fairly mature ad unit at this point, and a good deal of competing supply is now available from Twitter and Google. But continued increases in demand for these ads among app marketers will keep prices from declining.
Top mobile publishers and ad networks are competing fiercely for mobile app-install ad dollars, and for the favor of app developers. Twitter and Facebook are doing their best to lure app builders to their platforms and app-install ads with advanced ad analytics and developer tools. We estimate that mobile app-install ads drive one-third of all mobile ad revenue.

In full, the report:

To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a full-access 14-day trial here. Full-access members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry.

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10 Mar 17:12

Why the oilsands would still be economically viable under carbon pricing

by Andrew Leach

(Thawt Hawthje)

As oil prices tumbled in the latter half of 2014, the Prime Minister and other Conservative Party MPs and cabinet ministers became fond of saying that, in these tough times, it would be crazy to implement meaningful greenhouse-gas policies in the oil sands. Of course, the Prime Minister has promised to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from the oil sands directly or indirectly since his first term in office, when oil prices were about where they are today. They’ve been higher, lower, higher again, and now are back down, and still no regulations.

PREVIOUSLY: Why low oil prices aren’t slowing down oilsands development

With this post, the second of three as I prepare for testimony to the House of Commons finance committee on March 10, I’ll look at three questions. First, would introducing new, credible greenhouse-gas policies have a material impact on the prospects for oil-sands growth? Second, what properties of new policies are most important? And finally, is there really a magic bullet in using prices versus regulation? The answers, in my opinion, are: no, average cost, and no.

Would new greenhouse-gas policies have a material impact on oil-sands development? They could, if they were extremely stringent and/or designed specifically to harm oil-sands activity. If neither of those is true, then oil sands will likely prove frustratingly resilient, at least to their opponents, to carbon pricing, or other greenhouse-gas policies implemented broadly in the economy. This is largely because the value derived per unit of emissions remains sufficiently high to justify the activity, even if those emissions are priced and, unlike some other industries, the oil-sands resource is not mobile. If firms want to extract the oil sands, they have to do it here. Sure, companies can look elsewhere for oil, but relocation is not as easy as it would be with, say, cement production.

How big a hit would the types of policies most often discussed have on oil-sands-development prospects? You’ll likely be surprised. Consider here two policies: first, a modified version of the current Alberta Specified Gas Emitters Regulation, which would require either a 30% reduction in emissions intensity or a payment of $30/tonne from oil-sands facilities (referred to as a 30-30 policy below). The requirement would be implemented gradually, reaching full stringency in 2020. The second is an application of a B.C.-style carbon tax, starting today, at $30/tonne. In both cases, the prices would be indexed to inflation, unlike the $15/tonne in the current Alberta policy, which has been fixed at that value since 2007. In the table below, I show the impacts of each of these policies on the returns to a new oil-sands project beginning construction today.

As you can see, the impacts are small but material, at least for the $30/tonne tax, relative to the current situation. All these numbers assume that the firms simply pay the tax, so these are worst-case-scenario figures. For an in situ project, the prospect of Alberta moving to a 30-30 approach would see average profits per barrel drop by $0.22, while moving to the tax that charges companies for every tonne of emissions would drop profits by a little over $1 per barrel on average (all in inflation-adjusted dollars). The impact on the project’s rate of return on investment is small, at 0.17% for the 30-30 approach, but over 1% for the carbon tax; the latter is certainly enough to be noticeable. The impact on the mines is smaller, as they have lower emissions intensity to begin with, but they have lower baseline rates of return, as well, so these smaller impacts could matter more. The B.C.-style carbon tax reduces profits per barrel from the mine by about 50 cents per barrel, while the 30-30 approach lowers profits by about 14 cents.

When the Prime Minister suggested that implementing greenhouse-gas policies in the oil sands would be crazy, the implication was that the policies would have a material impact on the development trajectory. For that to be the case, you have to believe one of two things: Either the resource is so marginal that it’s within a quarter per barrel of disaster, or resource companies are so opposed to greenhouse-gas policies, they’ll overreact to the small actual impacts and substantially reduce investment. Of course, there will always be marginal projects, and there will always be projects contemplated that don’t go ahead, and it’s likely these that worry the Prime Minister more than the health of the industry as a whole; he knows that a new greenhouse-gas policy would provide a convenient talking point for companies with projects already facing cancellation or a negative final investment decision.

The results above also show the importance of the design of the policies in understanding the impact on new oil-sands development. A carbon price sets the price at the margin—the cost of increasing or decreasing emissions by a small amount—but it may also determine the cost of introducing a new source of emissions into the economy, and set the average cost of operating an emissions-intensive industry over time. A carbon tax is a simple program: It charges you a fixed price for emissions whether old, new, high- or low-value, and economists like it for that reason, among others. A program such as Alberta’s, along with the EU emissions trading system, use free allocations of emissions rights to drive a wedge between the cost of increasing emissions and the cost of emissions on average. Under the EU’s system, industries must purchase some permits at auction, but many are allocated for free. Under the Alberta system, emissions rights are effectively allocated freely, as well, based on the history of the facility. The impact of a policy on the average costs of operations is what determines its impact on new investment and, in the table above, you can see the difference between the 30-30 program and the $30/tonne tax in this regard.

Finally, the results above are derived using carbon pricing, but that does not mean this is the only means to address greenhouse-gases in the oil sands, nor even the best way to do so.

What?!? An economist saying carbon prices aren’t the best? Economics tells us clearly that carbon prices generate the most cost-effective emissions reductions by harnessing the power of the market (i.e., they get the most bang for the buck). What economics also tells you is that stringency matters as much, if not more, than cost-effectiveness in addressing the core problem: that the costs of emissions are not taken account of by those who pollute. The first-order problem for any economic policy is to correct that, and there is nothing in economics that suggests a weak carbon price will be better than a more stringent regulation. More than anything, we need a policy in the oil sands (and over the rest of the country) about which we can say that, if everyone else applied similar policies, we’d meet global greenhouse-gas-reduction goals. Whether this is achieved through carbon pricing or regulation is second order, but to ignore the primary problem would be, in the words of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, crazy.

This is the second in a three-part series on the oilsands. Read the first part here.

Andrew Leach is the Enbridge Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Alberta, where he teaches courses on energy markets, energy investments and environmental policy. Leach’s primary research areas are climate change policy, oil sands regulation and clean energy innovation and policy.

This post originally appeared on Macleans.ca

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The post Why the oilsands would still be economically viable under carbon pricing appeared first on Canadian Business.

10 Mar 17:11

3 Secrets To Accelerate Your Business Referrals: Small Medium Business Advantage

by Dave Hubbard

Accelerating Your Business With Referrals

It can be a struggle to grow your small and medium sized business (SMB), particularly if you have a lot of competition who have deeper pockets, bigger brand awareness, and bigger organizations.

However, big is not always better. Many larger companies do not consider their customers as an important contributor to their future success; they simply do not invest enough resources or energy for retain customers, turn customers into repeat buyers and company champions, expand business within existing customers, and leveraging customer referral for new logo business.

In a prior post I discussed techniques to retain your base, to solicit customer referrals, and to improve your prospecting outcomes. In this post I’d like to discuss 3 secrets to accelerating your referrals:

Relationships
Repetition
Reputation

Relationships: Earn The Right to Receive Referrals From Your Professional Contacts

Your customers might be willing to provide you with an occasional referral based upon the quality of the work that you delivered to them, but your customers and your professional network will only provide on-going quality referrals if you’ve earned the right to receive them.

Your customer doesn’t make decisions in isolation, particularly in the B2B and Professional Services market segment. They have trusted advisors influencing them; their banker, their tax accountant, their lawyer, their wealth manager, their insurance company, etc. These professionals can refer you to their other customers or to other rain-makers within their firm. However, if you haven’t nurtured a relationship with them as part of your on-going visits to your common client, you have not earned the right to receive high quality referrals.
What goes around, comes around. If you are only thinking about what’s in it for you, and not trying to help your referral source, you are just a “taker” and you will receive a dwindling number of referrals. Some of your professional network may give you the benefit of the doubt initially, but if you continue to demonstrate a lack of interest in their business and/or a lack of action in helping them, you haven’t earned the right to receive high quality referrals.
Leave the magic tricks to magicians and con artists. If you act like “the wizard behind the curtain” protecting your “secrets”, don’t expect too many referrals. In today’s internet-connected world, knowledge is no longer a big secret, lack of business transparency is no longer acceptable, and a bad referral can quickly damage one’s reputation with a client. If you are using networking techniques from the last century, don’t be surprised if your COIs (Circle of Influence) think that your products/services may also be a little dated, and not worthy of high quality referrals.
Provide a clear, concise, competitive differentiation. If your differentiation is “we do everything”, or, “we put our customers first”, expect to be put in the COI’s huge “generalist” folder, never to be heard of again. Unfortunately, everyone wants to put a label on you. For example, I have a track record in the Sales function for over 10 years, and I have a track record within the Marketing function for over 10 years, and even after I explain to COI’s that I am a Marketing and Sales consultant and how that adds significant value to my clients, they say “Yes, I understand Dave, but are you a Sales guy or a Marketing guy”? Given the reality of human nature, at the end of the day, either you need to determine which folder you want to be in or your COI will decide for you. It’s an extremely difficult exercise to decide your own differentiation without third party input (i.e. customer feedback or expert consultant). If you can’t help your COI identify why they should refer you instead of another vendor, and who your ideal customer is, you have not earned the right to receive high quality referrals.
Walk the Walk. It’s too easy for everyone to talk the talk, so as soon as possible after the meeting, follow-up and demonstrate that you walk the walk. When you do, the COI will feel obligated to return the favor, unless of course, they are just a “taker”. Networking with “takers” is a lose/win proposition that wastes your valuable time and energy. Drop them like a hot potato and move on to COIs that embrace win/win networking..

Repetition: Stay Top Of Mind

It’s been months and you haven’t received any referrals. Why?

If you followed all the steps above, maybe the reason is simply this: out of sight is out of mind. Immediately following your discussion, they were inundated with other personal and business priorities. The more hours and days that passed, the more they forgot about your value proposition, your differentiation, your target market, etc.

How do you stay top of mind on a weekly basis, or even monthly basis, with 300+ COI’s?

You need on-going content that they will value (e,g, insightful customer success story, new industry research findings, an upcoming event, etc.) that also continually re-enforces your value differentiation and your ideal referral.
You also need the help of some inexpensive software technology to help distribute the right content, to the right recipient, at the right time, with personalization. “Dear Friend” is not personal.
However, if you choose to do it the “old manual way”, the best you can do is manually keep track of the last time you requested a referral from each COI and it’s outcome.

The secret is to develop each piece of content so it can be evergreen (i.e. still highly relevant 1+ years from now) and repurposed (good for COIs, for the COI’s clients, and for net-new non-referred prospects).

For example, create a simple two minute video with you personally explaining how to best resolve a common industry issue that 1/ will be viewed by your COI, 2/ can be forwarded by the COI to one of their clients who might be struggling with the same problem, and 3/ can be posted on your website or Social page to educate any visitors. Do not create a corporate slideshow with voiceover.

It’s all about relationships; They want to meet you, not your slide deck.

Reputation: The Silent Killer Of Your Referral Business

There are two critical things you must understand about Reputation.

First, over 50% of referrals decide NOT to call based upon their personal research. The referral source didn’t tell you because they were trying to protect their client’s privacy, and although the client was initially interested, they subsequently decided that you weren’t right for them. According to recent studies by Hinge Research Institute, before a referral reaches out to you, they do the following:

80% will check out your website (and/or your Social profile),
60% will do a Google search on you and your company,
60% will ask a trusted source (colleagues, friends, online social network).
Based upon what they see, or don’t see, they will decide whether you might be right for their situation.

Secondly, your reputation alone can generate referrals from people that have never met you: Based upon your specialty expertise that was demonstrated in a presentation or article that you delivered, or, the specialty reputation that was highlighted by advertising or an award.

The REAL Secret to Accelerating Your Referrals

The real secret is understanding your target buyer/customer, and how smartphones and social networks have turned the buyer, members of the B2B buyer team, and their COIs into self-educating buyers. How has that change impacted your ability to increase business? How should you adjust?

The Buyer Journey

If you really understand the buyer purchasing journey, and understand what they need to know before they make a decision, when they need to know it, who they will trust to help them find out, then you have an excellent chance of not wasting your time or your company’s money on under-performing business development activities. For additional insight on Business2Community please see:

Are you really aligned with your target buyer’s purchasing process or are you still using outdated techniques from 15 years ago? Maybe you should give your revenue generation strategy a tune-up with the help of an experienced Marketing and Sales consultant.

The sooner you start to better align with your customers, the sooner you will start benefiting from higher revenue growth rates and profit margins.

Let’s take the advantage. Please share this with your colleagues to continue the discussion.

10 Mar 17:11

Priciest Metro Vancouver homes draw buyers from China (with video)

Chinese buyers are snapping up some of the most exclusive real estate in the Lower Mainland. The latest jaw-dropping sale was a $51.8-million mansion on three lots, one of which overlooks the ocean.

View attached file (10875652.jpg, image/jpeg)

10 Mar 17:11

Q&A: HubSpot’s Mark Kilens Talks Buyer Personas & Why Customer Delight Makes Or Breaks Your Brand

by Marie Alonso

mark kilens academy team leader Mark Kilens founded and leads the HubSpot Academy team at HubSpot. The HubSpot Academy team delivers training videos, training labs, Inbound Learning Broadcasts and certifications that help HubSpot customers understand how to transform their business into an inbound business. In other words, when it comes to understanding the power of inbound content, Mark Kilens is your guy!

Recently, I was lucky enough to connect with Mark – via text, email and tweet – to get his views on the state of content today as it relates to the buyer’s journey.

Take a few minutes to journey with Mark Kilens and I as we discuss buyer personas, remarkable content – and everything you can do to benefit from both to drive brand and marketing campaigns! Wow, I got to connect with HubSpot’s top HubSpot Academy content enthusiast – that’s one great experience for a content branding and social media loyalist like me! See what you think!

So, HubSpot Academy shares a true understanding of the buyer personas and the buyer’s journey, which are so critical to understanding how to create remarkable content to engage buyers today?

HubSpot’s Mark Kilens: You’re absolutely correct, Marie. We talk a lot about the concepts of Buyer Personas and Buyer’s Journey in our content and education. If you think about higher level themes of the Inbound Methodology, I’d say that these are two of them. Without understanding what these two concepts are, a person can spend a lot of time and redesigning their website, optimizing their website, creating content to attract and convert, create emails and lead nurturing campaigns and so much more without that necessary focus.

And actually, moving forward we’re going to consider adding one other theme through our education and while it’s not necessarily specific to the Inbound Methodology – it is helpful for people in business – and it’s to keep in mind that whatever a person is learning from our content, it’s important to think about how this information pertains to their own business .

The reason for addressing this point is to help people to remember that while these concepts are important to understand, what is more important for a person is to understand how they apply to their own business situation. Some people take every single word we say as absolute musts, and we need to help people see that they’re important concepts, but they have to think about how they apply them to their own business.

The Inbound Methodology has four key components – Attract, Convert, Close and Delight – when it comes to the inbound quest for visitor engagement. What is the most important takeaway from understanding how these four components work together to build customer loyalty and, hopefully, brand ambassadors?

Mark Kilens: I love this question. Yes, there are four key components to the Inbound Methodology, however, it’s crucially important to understand how they all work together. We try to educate people using the methodology so that they understand the information they’re collecting on a website form isn’t just some regular old information they think they should collect, but that information is going to help them understand their leads and customer so much more and that will be the basis from everything they segment their database. It’s going to help a business understand how they can serve their leads and customers with the right products/services, and how to best communicate and educate the different segments of leads and customers. Businesses should use this information to improve all of the interactions that have a customers. Everything from helping a person understand what solution and product to purchase that will solve their problem to recommending additional education after they purchase the product.

This information can also help businesses create magic moments with people. A few great examples of this are Starbucks finding out your birthday (from you at some point) and then sending you an email with a coupon for a free drink on your birthday, or Sephora giving my fiance a free gift-bag on her birthday month and even ColdStone Creamery giving away free ice creams. Hence why it’s critical for businesses to not think about the stages as isolated sections, but rather integrated pieces that work together to make a powerful inbound experience. An experience built by people for people.

Why is customer delight so important?

Mark Kilens: It’s often one of the most overlooked components of business and funny enough, it’s the most important. Delight simply means that you’re solving a customer’s problems, providing additional recommendations and having fun, being enthusiastic while you do so. We call that the customer delight checklist. A business should use the checklist throughout the entire customer experience from pre- to post-sale.

What many folks forget is that the cost of acquiring a customer is higher than it is to retaining a customer that’s already bought (most of the time). And think about the opportunity a business has with a customer who has already purchased be so delighted that they help spread the word about the business, essentially doing some of the education and communication, a.k.a. marketing, for you. Another major reason that delight is so important because yes, we want to delight our customers. However, when our customers are delighted it makes us, as employees, feel good. And who doesn’t want to feel good?

So, trust is critical to creating an inbound experience?

Mark Kilens: Yes. If you think about it, people are often putting their problems into a Google search and are hoping to find helpful results. A business should be trying to build trust at every interaction and a great way to build trust is to help someone overcome a problem or achieve a goal. A person is essentially putting trust into the hands of business when they land on a blog post to read advice and use that advice. This is especially true when they buy your product or service and as they use your product or service.

Trust is much easier to be lost then it is to gain. That’s why a business should use the customer delight checklist at almost every interaction to build trust with that person. If trust isn’t there, they won’t put their information into a form to get your offer. Knowing how to best serve your buyer personas and creating an experience that is there to innovate for them, communicate and educate them, is how we create build genuine trust.

Is it important to view customer delight as a priority for both pre- and post-sale and whenever customers are in the buyer’s journey. True?

Mark Kilens: Customer delight should always be a priority no matter whether they’re a prospect, a new customer or a long-time customer. We try to build relationships and trust with our potential customers by learning about what is important to them in life, in business, their hobbies, favorite sports teams or TV shows – so then we’re able to better tailor conversations and build relationships. Having a relationship at some level is critical is you want to build trust and create promoters. For when they become customers we try to learn more about that so we can follow-up with them and let them know we’re thinking of them. Maybe it’s sending a HubSpot onesie when a customer has a baby, sending a special pin and pen for getting Inbound Certified or something even a bit more out of the box.

What are the 3 Pillars of Delight?

Mark Kilens: They are innovation, communication and education. Innovate to serve people with the right products or services they need to solve their problems and reach their goals. Communicate to help people learn more and be as personal in your communication as you can be. Educate people to grow their knowledge. It could be education about the product they purchases, about the industry, about something that’s more fun in nature. Bottom-line is you need to empower people with knowledge to grow their mind. Having a strong understanding of your buyer personas will help you use each pillar of delight with to serve people with what they need and help you build trust at each interaction.

So, a company’s culture and employee delight directly impacts the organization’s ability to deliver on customer delight?

Mark Kilens: Absolutely. From HubSpot and other companies like Zappos, we’ve learned that happy team members make happy customers. Happy team members love their job and feel like they’re making a difference . They’re going to believe in the company’s vision and will help customers solve their problems and reach their goals. Hiring is critical to ensuring team member happiness will be contagious and living organism.

How important is identifying opportunities to collect qualitative and quantitative data about the inbound experience?

Mark Kilens: Very important and something that we’re trying to do more all the time with HubSpot Academy. An example of this is with our Inbound Certification. Every single time a person passes the exam, we send them a multi-question survey and use real-time feedback to get a feel for what they thought was valuable, what they thought we could improve upon. We then use that feedback to guide our next version or revamp of content to make sure we’re better solving for the people.

How does utilizing social monitoring as a listening tool help in delivering customer delight?

Mark Kilens: Social media at it’s core is a way to connect and communicate with people. Businesses should find what social channels and networks their personas are using and listen and engage in those places. You can use the information for many purposes including what innovative ideas your customers have or what education they may be needing.

Mark, you have said that the businesses that are the best educators will be the most successful. Why?

Mark Kilens: Because learning equals happiness. Think when you’re the most happy or think back to your childhood or college when you’re learning almost 24/7. People don’t want to be ignored, they want to be happy and they want to feel a true connection to a product or business. Inbound is all about being 100% customer foucsed.

Previously in marketing people would push their products, services and causes out to their market and hope to get some sort of response. However, now that there was a shift in how buyer’s buy, there has been a change in how marketers market and sellers sell.

Instead of pushing out to people, we now are pulling them into our websites via our knowledge and great content. Businesses that create remarkable content that helps people solve their persona’s problems are going to be incredibly well received by a person, especially when they need it most. Businesses that are open to sharing their secret sauce, solutions, etc via content are the ones that will get found online, build trust and ultimately be chosen to do business with when the time comes.

Do you really believe a business can build trust in every small interaction?

Mark Kilens: Yes, and in fact, the small interactions are what matter the most. They’re what create the larger big picture of what a person thinks of when they think of your brand. People will forget what you say, but they won’t forget how they feel. You need to try and maintain or build trust every interaction to preserve a strong feeling of trust with the people that you’re serving and who depend on you to deliver.

A great example of small interactions comes from a team member, Sarah Bedrick. She had a redeye flight with JetBlue and while the price of the ticket and every interaction leading up to it was typical, when she got to her seat on the plane there was an eye mask and a set of ear plugs. It couldn’t have cost more than $2 or $3 to be created in mass, and it was probably worked into the price of her plane ticket, but the unexpected, thoughtful touch left her feeling like she made the right decision by flying JetBlue. They solved her problem of trying to fall asleep and helped her achieve her goal of sleep.

Mark, thanks for your time – great information on inbound strategies and understanding the opportunities that exist with inbound energy! I feel inspired – and I bet I am not alone!

Mark Kilens: Thanks Marie…visit me at HubSpot Academy anytime!

10 Mar 17:10

Why Field Organizations Need Software In Visit Scheduling

by Erin P. Friar

Client_visit_start-red Since many field organizations function as a mobile workforce, communication about client visits between managers and reps can be lost in translation. The misunderstanding that can happen with a mobile workforce leads to rushed visits, inconsistent visits and even lost visits.The distinctly mobile character of field organizations demands that scheduling be a streamlined process. Here’s a few key benefits to optimized scheduling through the use of a software solution:

1. Track Visit Completions

Managers of field teams that schedule visits through email or texts (or a combination) may find that reps receive the message too late or misunderstand the message. That means visits can be missed altogether, and in many cases the manager doesn’t know until days later, making it impossible to send a replacement and requiring them to alter their schedule when they do find out. Managers that face these issues should consider a Field Activity Management software solution which allows them to schedule each visit themselves, and have reps check them off as they perform visits updating them in real time as “planned, completed, or missed.” That way, at any given time, managers will be able to see missed appointments as they happen in real time, giving them the chance to send in a replacement.

2. Admin Relief

A study done by Growth Solutions LLC found that managers spend 21 percent more of their day on administrative activities (or non-core activities) than desired. Depending on the size of your organization, scheduling client visits may or may not be considered a “core activity,” or a main focus of daily operations. For organizations with a small number of reps, scheduling may be a critical activity for management, but as a workforce grows it can become a daunting task for managers to effectively schedule all reps. No matter which situation is applicable, it is important to seek out a Field Activity Management software solution that allows the permission of scheduling to be passed back and forth between managers and reps. That way, if the activity needs to be taken over by reps themselves, the option is available. This sort of flexible access will also allow managers to both have control over scheduling and loosen the reigns when it becomes too cumbersome.

3. Analyze Visit Data

Another key advantage of optimized scheduling is the freedom to analyze visit data after the fact. The majority of visits reps will make will be scheduled with current or prospective clients, yet that is not always the case. Paul W. Marks sales veteran Noel Bielawa says that when he is on the road, there are times when he notices a new shop that could be a potential client. If he has time, he will stop by and introduce his company and products. With a Field Activity Management software solution, field reps can record these types of events, and in hindsight managers can see which of those cold calls resulted in new clients. This close analysis of visits will give managers more informed insights into the activities of field reps. In a mobile workforce, having a scheduling tool that tracks visit completions, lifts administrative stress, and allows for closer analysis is invaluable.

10 Mar 17:10

The Art and Science of Presenting: Episode 2 – The Conversation

by Maurice DeCastro

conversation

This is the second article in the series The Art and Science of Presenting. The first article was called ‘Where do we start?’ Episode 2 considers the conversation, what we have to say.

– The Audience
– The Conversation
– The Story

The reason we call it ‘the conversation’ is because that really is what every great presentation is and to help we start with a question which leads the dialogue.

What’s so important that you’ve chosen to call this entire group of busy people together?

It may be:

- A great idea which they haven’t heard before
– One they have heard but don’t understand or buy into
– A solution to a problem
– An opportunity
– Something you need to generate support for
– An important update that has to be given in person
– To get them to see things from your perspective
– A call to action

Once you are clear on what your conversation is really all about then you can begin to shape how you present it to:

- Clarify the purpose of your presentation
– Gather and create content rich material
– Anticipate resistance, apathy or contention
– Build the story

The conversation you prepare will look like a map which takes your audience from:

Point A – Where they are now, i.e. Cynical

Point B – Where you want them to be, i.e. Enthusiastic

The conversation is always about movement:

What they think, feel and do today.

Moving to

What you want them to think, feel and do tomorrow.

It’s about the one very important thing you have to say that will cause your audience to think, feel and act differently to the way they did before they entered the room.

Presenters often make the mistake of thinking of the conversation to be had simply as a topic, i.e. a product, an update, a report, a sales pitch, etc.

For the Mindful Presenter the conversation is much more than a topic, it’s about 3 things:

Perspective – How you and or your organisation see something.
Position – Why it’s important.
Performance – What’s at stake if they don’t act on that perspective and what the benefit is if they do?

For every presentation the conversation you are planning can be summarised in one sentence based on these 3 Ps.

As an example of a critically important presentation I once had to give as a former corporate executive working for a global brand the conversation was summarised as:

“A loss of 200,000 sales a year is crippling this business, in 5 years we will be out of business but we have a plan to not only stem the decline we know we can reverse it and see our company flourish again”

I could have said:

“Our company is in trouble”

“Sales are declining and we are losing market share”

Neither of these statements however, set the scene for a conversation by telling the audience exactly my perspective, position and performance in terms of impact on the business.

Now I have absolute clarity on the conversation I wish to have I can begin to gather and prepare my content to support it.

This is definitely the point where most people turn on the laptop.

Resist the urge.

Human beings are creatures of habit and the odds are if you dive straight into PowerPoint you’ll use the same templates with the same images in the same way you always do. That approach stifles creativity and makes you the same as everyone else.

Dare to be different

Start with large ‘post it’ notes and write down your conversation; that’s the sentence you came up with earlier that summarises your perspective, position and performance in terms of what’s at stake.
Surround that summary sentence with other post it notes that describe how you want your listeners to feel and what you want them to do at the end. Put them up on the centre of a wall together and really take a close look at them.

Brainstorm and write down, on new notes, everything you can possibly think of that will support, influence and add power to those notes already up there on the wall. It will help considerably if you brainstorm in a room you don’t usually use that has the right energy and atmosphere and perhaps even play a little background music to help you think.

Let your mind go wild and free and write down the crazy ideas too.

Don’t dismiss anything just yet.

Write every single thought or idea that comes to mind on separate notes and stick each of them on the wall around your centre piece.

Leave them up on the wall for a few hours (preferably 24) and go and get on with your life.

Go back to your wall, take a good look at what you’ve written and have another go, adding anything new that comes to mind.

If you are preparing well in advance, which you should be and have the luxury of time, leave the wall again for a few hours.

When you return add anything new that comes to mind this time around.

Now stand back and group your ideas into the themes that are emerging.

Select each idea that totally supports your message, what you want them to feel and do.

Be mercenary about selecting only the notes on the wall that will add significant value in supporting the conversation you wish to have and the outcome you want.

Remember the quality of your presentation depends just as much on what you choose to leave out as you include.

If you don’t filter your ideas and present only those points which are relevant and animate your message your audience will filter them and you will lose them in the process. They won’t be happy about having to do your job for you either.

Now you can open up your presentation software.

Open up a series of blank slides and in the outline write a simple, self-explanatory but powerful headline from the points you have captured on your remaining post it notes.
Make sure it’s explicit, not generic, and that your audience will not only get it in an instant but will be keen to want to know more.

It should be as clear and as powerful as a bill board. Most people are on the move when they read a bill board and they have less than 3 seconds to get the message so treat your slides the same.

What could go wrong?

You have absolute clarity of the conversation you wish to have together with a very good idea of the areas you need to cover that will support your message so what could possible go wrong?

Everyone coming to listen to you is individual. They will come with their own views, knowledge, understanding, beliefs and experience, some of which may not concur with your own.
There will always be some degree of resistance and the Mindful Presenter will anticipate it, plan for it and build it in to the conversation.

Post it notes at the ready, again.

The great thing about preparing for challenge and resistance is you give yourself a much deeper understanding of the conversation to be had and you can be ready for arguments and questions that dispute your perspective and position.

If you consider the ideas you are presenting from the different perspectives of your audience, industry, market and stakeholders you can then write down every conceivable objection you can find.
That allows you the option of pre-empting them by building them into your presentation and addressing them with solutions before you are asked. Or, if you prefer to wait for the challenge, have the answers ready.

Watch out for episode 3 of The Art and Science of Presenting where we will share how to turn the conversation into a story.

Image: Courtesy of flickr.com

10 Mar 17:09

Brochure vs Lead Gen websites – how to get the balance right?

by Expert commentator

Let's find out what the experts think...

Last year here at Cicada, we worked with a number of new clients who had nice-looking websites produced by designers they know and trust. As we worked with these customers on the 'discovery process' at the start of the projects, the same issue arose time and time again... While our clients thought their websites looked good, they couldn’t understand why they just weren’t doing well enough at getting visitors and converting them into leads.

We had a good idea why this was, but to bring more oomph to our argument, we spoke to four experts in effective site design to find out their views on the differences between a brochure website that looks great, into one that delivers enquiries for your business. Our four interviewees are from different professional backgrounds within the digital industry, and we were intrigued to find out what they thought.

We spoke to:

Jayne Reddyhoff, Founder and Director of the Wallingford-based Ecommerce Adviser, providing business-focused online marketing services and consultancy to ambitious Ecommerce businesses
Simon Lassam, Managing Director at Ridgeway, a web design and digital marketing agency based in Witney.
Shelley Hoppe, CEO at Southerly, content strategists and writers based in London.
Peter Meinertzhagen, Digital Marketing Manager at Journl, creators of the personal organiser app.

Although our respondents are from a variety of industries, some common themes arose: attitude, strategy, user experience and design.

1. Attitude

When you’re running any website, it seems obvious to say it should be clear about its purpose. Most websites should be putting the customer at the centre of all its activity. But this is often not the case and can require a shift in a client’s whole marketing perspective.

'I think the main difference between a brochure and a lead generation website', says Jayne Reddyhoff, Director of The Ecommerce Adviser, 'is that a brochure website is about us, the company¸ and a lead generation site is about you, the customer'.

Look at Hubspot, the experts in lead generation, and one of their main landing pages. 'GROW YOUR BUSINESS' they say. Big and bold, they are clearly there for YOU. They give you clear directions to get on with it: 'Start a Free Trial' or 'Learn More...'

Understanding the attitude of internet users is also important.

Shelley Hoppe, CEO at Southerly, a London-based creative content agency, points out: 'People these days expect something different from a website. Like many people, I use the internet a lot, from grocery shopping to buying new shoes, but if I go to a website that looks static then it puts me off.

'If your website looks dead then people might assume that it is', she continues, 'That attitude isn’t unusual among people who live their lives on the internet'.

In short, the difference between a lead generation website and a brochure website is a matter of attitude. It is the difference between putting your customers at the centre of your business or yourselves.

But it is also a case of how your customers perceive you: Are you alive or dead?!

2. User Experience

Once you’ve determined whether or not you have a customer-focused attitude, it’s now time to reflect this through your website.

Customer persona

Starting to make your website relevant to your customer means developing a customer persona: a fictional but well developed account of someone in your target audience.

At Southerly, with any given client, they develop multi-dimensional characters in a persona workshop. A persona will be given a name, age, and profession. They’ll paint a picture of their personal lives such as what car they drive, where they go on holiday and the names of their kids or cats.

They’ll then go onto describe their world at work, including the problems they face and a catalyst that may cause them to seek help. It’s describing this catalyst that then makes it easier for you the marketer to come up with content ideas to assist the persona with their need.

This allows them to really embody their customer and understand what makes them tick in the online world: what are their pain points, and how can the website respond?

Ever since Southerly began writing blog articles directly speaking to their personas, they noticed a marked improvement in traffic and conversions.

'It took a while to build up a critical mass of content, and really find our audience, but it was worth the effort and the wait', explains Shelley.

'Last year we noticed people subscribing to the blog, then downloading resources. Then it grew and now the people coming to Southerly are real leads with proper budgets in place'.

Customer journey

Now it’s time to explore your customer journey. This is a careful balance between design and usability, as we’ll discuss later.

Essentially though, you are seeing your website through the eyes of a real person – the persona you’ve just created - and taking the journey from landing on your website to achieving an objective. This could be making a purchase, signing up to a newsletter, registering for an event, applying for a job or contacting you directly.

Why don’t you try it now on your website? As you do this, take note of the obstacles between you and making a quick and easy decision to get what you want from the website. You can then address these issues later.

Jayne Reddyhoff uses an example of one of their clients, a leading B2B software company, to demonstrate the value of a customer journey. 'One of the things they wanted to do is have a website that allows their potential customers to find the information they need, whatever their perspective'.

A brochure site, Jayne argues, 'would only allow people who already know the product to find it, rather than someone who’s looking for a solution to their specific problem'.

Some people don’t always know exactly what they’re looking for. 'Many people in different industries don’t realise that a service or product designed for industry X can also work in industry Y and won’t necessarily believe that their supplier can solve their problem'.

Other functions that allow for a problem free journey might be:

Design that is appealing and intuitive
Clear Calls to Action that lead to where they say they do
Sign-ups forms that are helpful to the user and allow you to keep in touch
White space between content for easy reading
Clear concise content that is useful, shareable and memorable

Don’t forget: track these ‘touch points’ where ever you can in Google Analytics so that you can really understand how users are interacting with your site.

Find out more about Customer Journey in the Smart Insights' Customer Journey Report (2014)

3. Design

Pretty vs functional

The design of your website is a key aspect of its usability. But be careful: a pretty website doesn’t necessarily mean a usable website.

'A car will only function if it’s designed by a team with specialisms relating to its different parts' says Simon Lassam, MD of Ridgeway.

'Engine, wheels, steering wheel, dashboard etc are all specialist components. If you give the design to the guy who knows what makes a nice-looking car, it doesn’t mean the car will perform well.

'It’s the same with websites. If you hire the guy who can make it look nice, he doesn’t necessarily know how to make it perform. This is true of so many small business websites'.

The process of optimising your website for lead-generation starts before you even begin building it. 'Really the first question from any designer should be ‘who is your target audience', says Simon.

'What does success look like’ and ‘how much time do you have to manage and contribute to the website’. If the business doesn’t know the answers to those questions, there’s some research to do before anyone starts thinking about what the site should look like'.

4. Strategy

Underpinning your website’s design and user experience is a focus on strategy, argues Simon Lassam, 'This is why Ridgeway is organised in the way it is, and it’s why you need a mix of skills to make a website that will deliver.

'In 20 years of working in the industry, I’ve not met one person who has it all: UX knowledge, design, technical, marketing, SEO and strategy'.

A website that is strategy-driven should have clear goals for winning and retaining customers.

Southerly has worked hard at this. 'An interactive website can provide a good way of looking after your needs', says Shelley. 'It’s an opportunity to be friends with, and gain confidence from your customers.

'As a customer, you may not quite be ready to make a phone call, but you may want to keep in touch loosely, and be reminded of them via social media, a newsletter or a blog feed'.

Southerly has discovered the value of monitoring their leads through analysing what they download from their site:

'Particularly with B2B companies, the downloadable guide, white paper or free template is a good sales tool. It allows potential leads to understand you better so they can make an informed enquiry.

'It can also give you an in-depth understanding of your prospects'.

Hubspot have a useful matrix to help you visualise how you can optimise your website to lead your customers from 'strangers' through to 'promoters'. They use the 'attract-convert-close-delight' funnel below:

Can you have BOTH?

So, is this all to say that a lead generation website is definitively better than a brochure website? Peter Meinertzhagen, Digital Marketing Manager at Journl, suggests 'most websites should have a mix of the two'.

'Pure lead generation requires a different kind of design than that of a brochure website,' he says. 'Both need considering and they need to work together'.

Simon Lassam expands on this: 'some clients do just want a website presence, and that’s fine as long as they’re not expecting the website to deliver any new customers directly.

'But if there’s a need for it to convert leads of any nature into customers of any nature, then the level of thought that goes into the website needs to be above and beyond ‘look and feel’'.

Thanks to Charlotte Jenkins for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Charlotte is a Content Marketing Specialist at Cicada, an Inbound Marketing agency based in Oxfordshire. You can follow her on Twitter.

10 Mar 17:09

Maximizing Growth Mode With Technology B2B Content Marketing Strategy

by Sarah Greesonbach

Maximizing Growth Mode With Technology B2B Content Marketing Strategy Technology and IT firms in growth mode are always seeking out new ways leverage their initial growth for long-term success. But the most effective way to generate qualified leads and close sales with a digital customer base is to use a carefully customized, data-driven B2B content marketing strategy.

But much like a company’s P&L growth, content marketing advancements won’t happen without effort and focus.

Here’s a look at the five steps you need to take to customize a B2B content marketing strategy for the IT and Technology industry:

Build targeted customer personas and zero in on pain points.

IT and Technology firms need to be particularly careful about developing accurate customer personas. You need all of the information you can get in order to make carefully targeted plays for your customer’s attention. You also need to unpack the logic behind your customer’s research, engagement, and purchase decisions.

Identify your customer’s unique pain points and how your technology solution meets that need. In particular, identify what it is about your unique solution that has caused so much growth in such a short span of time so that you can ride that wave into long-term success.

Use pain points and questions to guide content strategy.

Once you’ve clearly outlined everything you know about your customer in your customer persona, you need to act on that information. Bring in real-life examples of your customer’s pain points from sales calls, surveys, and website inquires to inspire useful, authentic content that resonates with your target customer.

Organize these inquiries according to how long it takes to provide a good answer. It will be obvious which questions can be answered in a short blog post or video clip, and which need the authority and background development of a white paper.

Use website design, conversions, and social media to share your content.

After developing your content assets, it’s time to get them into the right hands. Use the latest design best practices to make appealing conversion opportunities on your website. Then share your content through your blog, email newsletter, and social media networks. Schedule time to join in the action in real-time. Watch for feedback, monitor downloads, and feed these metrics to your sales team.

Use content marketing to generate leads.

As much as people write about closing with content, your blog and your whitepapers are best used to generate leads to fill your sales pipeline.

Your content marketing can help reduce the need for cold calling, because as more people take notice and fill out forms on your website, you’ll have a list of people to call on.

To get more people filling out your lead forms, make sure that your content is specific to your customer’s needs and their industry. For example, don’t be vague and broad — give specific examples that they may relate to.

Document your B2B content marketing strategy.

The latest research shows that technology content marketers who document their content marketing strategy are more effective than those who don’t. That means that after building your B2B content marketing strategy, it is vital that you track and compare your progress over time. Track all of the important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and monitor your inbound marketing lead pipeline to inform your future marketing decisions.

While much is unique about the IT and Technology industries, your B2B content marketing strategy will use the same principles as another industries: look to your customer to guide your moves.

Provide answers in an authentic, authoritative brand voice, and be the helpful, informative partner that helps them solve their problem. After all, if your blog posts or a recent whitepaper informs them on a topic they want to learn about, your company will surface as a potential partner.

If you can use your B2B content marketing strategy to outline clearly how you solve their problem, you’ll be at the top of their list of solutions.

10 Mar 17:09

Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier

by aaron@predictablerevenue.com (Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin)

coloredpencils

It doesn't matter if you have the most amazing lead generation ideas in the world. They won’t work without the right team structure in place. Prospecters should prospect, and closers should close.

Exactly how you specialize your sales team is up to you in making it work for your specific situation. The underlying principle is about helping your people focus and do fewer things better, because when salespeople multitask they’re doing many things poorly.

For example, to have a successful, durable prospecting team, the prospectors need to prospect. They shouldn’t close, respond to inbound leads, or act as part-time telemarketers when Marketing’s trying to fill events. However, when you do need prospectors to juggle tasks, try to have the non-prospecting work account for less than 10 to 20% of their time. The same is true of new business closers -- other kinds of work should take up a only small percentage of their time.

While every team is different and creates different flavors, there are four basic specialized roles in sales:

Inbound lead qualification
Outbound prospecting
Closing new business
Post-sales (account management/customer success)

We realize some of you still need help convincing your team to go "all the way” with specialization. It can be daunting to take a sales team that has been closing and managing its own accounts, and change, well, everything.

Here are four compelling reasons to specialize that might prompt you to change:

Effectiveness. When people are focused on one area, they become experts.
Farm team. Having multiple roles in Sales gives you a simple career path to grow and promote people internally. This creates a cheaper, less risky, and better way to recruit than relying too heavily on outside hires. A rule of thumb: Over the long term, grow two-thirds of your people internally and hire one-third externally for new ideas and blood.
Insights. By breaking your roles into separate functions, you can easily see and fix where the bottlenecks are. When everyone is doing everything, it’s like having a tangled ball of yarn you can’t tease apart.
Scalability. Specialization makes it easier to hire, train, measure, grow, and promote people across the board.

However, there are also some significant concerns sales leaders struggle with when it comes to specialization. Here are the two most common.

1) Relationship Ownership

Doesn’t passing a prospect or customer off from one person to another create problems? Shouldn’t the person who builds a relationship from day one also own and maintain it?

No -- not if you have simple, thoughtful ways to hand off customers, and set their expectations appropriately. In fact, customers get much better service from a specialized sales team. With specialists at each step of the way, prospects are always getting the right answers fast. It’s hard for a salesperson who’s working on proposals to drop everything and follow up with a new inbound lead right away, address an urgent problem at a current customer, or to focus on much of anything important that’s not getting them to their quota this period.

So by specializing -- in a way that makes sense for your business -- you’re actually doing customers a favor.

2) “Those roles don’t fit us.”

The four core roles named above are not absolute requirements, but merely a template for you to adapt.

Don’t be afraid to implement the principle behind specialization -- focus -- in your own way. Give people fewer, more important things to do.

In summary, specializing your salespeople is the most important thing you can do to create predictable, scalable sales revenue. Want to learn more? Check out "Why Salespeople Shouldn't Prospect."

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from the upcoming book The Predictable Revenue Guide to Tripling Your Sales, and is published here with permission.

10 Mar 17:09

How To Create Buyer-Centric Content

by Liz O'Neill Dennison

Buyer Centric Content

You’ve heard it before: the key to converting leads and driving new revenue for your business is through buyer-centric content.

Need proof? Consider these stats:

By 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their interactions with the enterprise without interacting with a human.
60 to 70 percent of B2B content created is never used. The most cited reason why is that the topic is irrelevant to the buyer audience.
79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.

While most marketers believe in the power of buyer-centric content, few actually create it. As a result, up to 70 percent of their content goes unused.

What’s the best way to ensure your content is buyer-centric? Follow these key steps.

1. Form A Content Board

Before you begin creating your content, gather stakeholders from across your organization at the beginning of the quarter. This group is your “content board” and can provide crucial insight into your customers at every stage of the buying cycle, from awareness through retention.

2. Identify Key Pain Points And Themes

At your content board meeting, ask stakeholders to identify key customer pain points and strategic themes they’d like to see addressed with content. List these out in the meeting.

3. Vote On Themes

When you have a long list of potential content themes, go around the room and ask each stakeholder to vote on the themes most important to them. Highlight the themes that have the most votes. Select one to focus on for the upcoming quarter.

4. Build A Content Pillar

Once you have your theme, you can start to plan a content pillar. A content pillar is a major, meaty piece of content (like an eBook or whitepaper) that tackles your selected theme head-on. This asset is then broken out into many derivative assets that serve your buyers across all digital marketing channels and at every buying stage. Here’s your step-by-step workbook for building a content pillar.

By organizing around your buyer concerns and major company initiatives—rather than channels or marketing tactics—you’ll ensure that each content asset you create is relevant for your readers.

Want to see the results of this approach? Join our upcoming webinar with Kapost customer Five9 as they walk us through how they drove 3X new business using the content pillar approach.

10 Mar 17:09

What Do You Need to Do to Improve Sales? Here’s a Start …

by Mark Suster

I write about sales often both because it’s the lifeblood of any organization and because in my experience it is the area in which more startups are least experienced or inclined. I also write and talk about it frequently because raising capital is a part of sales and this is important for entrepreneurs to understand.

To make it simple and easy to remember – there are three basic rules of sales:

1. Why Buy Anything?
2. Why Buy Me?
3. Why Buy Now?

This post will cover the first.

If you ask any experienced sales leader they’ll tell you there are three things to know about being effective at sales: Qualify, qualify, qualify. This is simply because sales people have limited time and can’t afford to waste time with anybody who isn’t likely to buy from them in the near term.

But how do you qualify?

Do you have a problem I could solve?

The starting point is to ask yourself whether the person you’re dealing with has a problem that is solved by the solution you offer. If they don’t – you simply won’t sell anything. That’s why many great sales starts with generating inbound marketing leads. If you create content marketing programs and drive traffic to websites where you can measure how long somebody spends reading your materials or downloading your white papers you’ve at least confirmed some level of interest.

If you have a product, knowing who the “typical buyer” by department or title is helps you greatly because you can quickly get to somebody likely to be familiar with the space in which you’re selling. If you know the title you can use tools like SalesLoft to build lists of potential leads.

If you generate outbound email campaigns to groups of potential buyers you can use SalesLoft or tools like Yesware and ToutApp to track whether people opened your emails, clicked on your links, downloaded your documents, etc. This is a part of determining the interest of potential buyers and allowing you to focus your scarce time on the most important leads you have. All of these products are great and if you’re not using anything to track the interest level of your prospects you’re competing with one hand tied behind your back [note: I’m not an investor in any of the companies mentioned in this post.]

The other obvious area in determining interested parties is to find referrals from trusted sources. That’s why companies partner with vendors with complementary service offerings. At Invoca (where I am an investor) we have partnered with people like Salesforce.com and HubSpot on go-to-market campaigns because our products work really well together. Invoca helps you to manage inbound sales calls (efficacy, attribution, duration, etc) and given how many people have historically only tracked click-based campaigns the shift to mobile ads has made Invoca one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in our portfolio.

What is the single biggest mistake I see inexperienced startup people do in sales? Wasting time with prospects who aren’t likely to buy simply because they show interest and are nice to them. And, because most startup entrepreneurs aren’t used to sales, they hate to ask the tough qualifying question for fear of being told, “no.” Yet, no can be the 2nd most gratifying quick response you can get in sales. Nothing is worse than maybe or not knowing.

Let me make it simple:

If you can’t identify a problem that a prospect has that you can quantifiably solve you won’t sell anything.

This is the definition of “Why Buy Anything?” You have a problem that I can fix. That doesn’t mean you’re going to select me – but at least I know I’m not wasting your time or mine.

2. Do you have budget?

The other big mistake people make in qualifying is not determining whether the buyer has a budget to afford their product. There are two types of people with no budget.

The first is somebody who legitimately has interest in your product and has the level of influence needed to one-day buy your solution but doesn’t have the budget authority in the near-term to pay for your product. This is somebody you drop into your “marketing funnel” so that your marketing department can keep them appraised of your company’s progress, releases and announcements, so that you can follow up with them down the road when the may have more budget. You need to focus your limited time in the near term on people who can close in the near term.

The second type of person who has no budget is a time waster who could never buy your solution but like meeting with you. It’s super easy to get time-wasters to spend time with you because they like the time and attention you’re showing them. And they are usually pretty nice people so it makes you feel good. It feels better than meeting with tough-as-nails leaders of business units who won’t give you a free pass because you’re nice even if you can get shite done.

I call these second type of non-buyers NINAs, because they have “no influence” and “no authority” to buy. Avoid NINAs.

I generally like to tell people that if you have a product or service and can’t identify qualified buyers, “You either don’t have anything of value or more likely you just don’t know how to sell and you need to figure that out if you want to succeed.”

“Why Buy Anything” is single easiest part of the sales equation and if you can’t identify likely buyers you have no hope.

Fund Raising

I wanted to take a final moment to talk about fund raising because it’s obviously vital to building a startup. Raising money is selling. Your product is you.You’re selling that you have unique skills to be successful and a product that end-customers are going to care about. You’re selling the fact that your company is going to be valuable and you’re building trust that through good times and bad you’re going to work your ass off to make money for the investor.

I find that many entrepreneurs talk randomly to VCs about fund raising. But if you’re raising a seed round and talking to a billion-dollar growth-stage fund you’re not being very focused. Equally, if you’re talking with a $100 million fund about your $20 million round your hit rate will be low. So understanding the stage of a VC matters.

Also, you need to consider the type of investments each VC does. Can you look at their portfolio and see deals that are at least similar to what you do? Finally, you even need to qualify down to the partner level. If you are talking with a partner who hasn’t funded any gaming startups and you are a gaming startup it’s worth asking them the question before meeting whether they would consider investing in your sector. Or if you notice another partner in the firm active in that area it’s worth getting to the right partner to increase your hit rate.

So make sure you qualify before even making calls or asking for intros.

Once you have the meeting and do your presentation it’s worth asking directly, but politely, “I’m not asking yet whether my startup is the right fit for you, but do your or your firm even do investments in our space?” It’s worth getting the dialog going because it will help you to handicap how much effort to put into persuading the individual going forward. This is all part of qualifying whether or not this investor will Buy Anything.

As with selling products the research you put into fund raising before you start the process will pay huge dividends in your efficiency and hit rate yet most entrepreneurs take VC meetings haphazardly based on where they can get easy introductions.

Finally, the same rules apply for VC firms raising money from LPs. I met with a person last week who wants to raise a first-time fund but this is a discussion I have with many VCs who are raising 2nd or 3rd-time funds, too. He told me that he had met a big state pension fund and that he was hoping he could get them on board because it was the state pension from where he lived and thus had a “hometown advantage.”

I told him he had nearly zero chance of closing a pension fund on a first-time $50 million VC fund. First, pension funds normally write very large checks – $50m and up often. Many have $25 minimums. Why? Because they manage many billions of dollars so they simply don’t have the resources to deal with small funds. Second, most state pensions are very conservative and wouldn’t likely invest in a VC fund that was in its first vintage. Nobody ever got fired for giving money to Sequoia, Accel, Greylock, Benchmark or now Andreessen so they’re going to start with the big names. Many state pensions can’t get into these “access funds” but there are many other late-stage VC funds that raise $1 billion plus and have been around for 30 years.

It may not make economic sense for a big pension fund to invest in certain funds but if they don’t have the in-house expertise to figure out who the next Fred Wilson, Josh Kopelman or Jon Callaghan is they certainly have no idea whether or not it could be you. So they won’t take the risk.

Understanding the “Why Buy Anything?” question from your prospects and qualifying is important for anybody who needs an economic decision made. And it’s the start of any great sales process.

In my next post I’ll cover “Why Buy Me?”

The post What Do You Need to Do to Improve Sales? Here’s a Start … appeared first on Bothsides of the Table.

10 Mar 17:09

3 Reasons Google Docs Can’t Support Your Content Strategy

by Jordan Rothenberg

Remember that fateful night in October of 2006 when Google Docs hit the scene? It’s okay if you don’t—I’ll admit I had to Google it.

The web-based Docs and Spreadsheets were the hottest tools in town. Well, at least compared to their clunky ancestors Microsoft Word and Excel. Yet while these readily available apps may be helpful in a pinch, the Google Suite is no way to adequately execute an ongoing content strategy. And that’s what we’re here to do.

3 Reasons Google Docs Can’t Support Your Content Strategy

Keeping in mind that Docs need to play nice with other Google Apps and is free to use, the subsequent result is a product intended for the common Google user. If you’re a forward-thinking marketer corralling content from the nooks and crannies of your organization, chances are good you graduated from common Googler status many moons ago.

It’s time to step up to the plate and use a platform designed with content creation at its core.

If you’re still not convinced, here are a few concrete reasons why you should ditch the Docs for the sake of your marketing content.

1. Process Leads to Improvement

Creating and implementing a robust content strategy means there are a number of stakeholders contributing to a given piece. If you were to use Google Docs, this means manually sharing a document with said stakeholders and the onslaught of accompanying questions:

Should I use their company email address or ask if they’ve got Gmail?
Do they know how to track revisions?
Will they even see the invitation to edit?
When is my feedback due?
Will I see the final draft before it’s published?

On the contrary, using a platform built for multiple contributors and a streamlined process eliminates all of this confusion.

You can swiftly invite the right contributors for the piece. Then, once all stakeholders have chimed in, a content marketing manager or editor is able to take the stage. Their role in the chain is to review the information and ensure that tone and style are on-brand, among other duties. This systematic contribution cycle is nowhere to be found when using Google Docs.

2. Content Needs a Calendar

Timing is everything. You’ve heard it in love and life, and the same is true for content creation. If your organization needs to publish a new piece on a specific day and time, there are generally five or more things that need to happen before it goes live. This is where utilizing an editorial calendar comes in handy. Maintaining one will also provide the roadmap needed to consistently produce top-notch content.

Since Google Docs and Google Calendar are mutually exclusive, it’s paramount that your content team is operating outside of Google. Otherwise, deadlines (if set) will be missed and the struggle to be consistently great will become very real.

3. Docs Aren’t Actionable

As mentioned earlier, Google tends to play nice with other Google Apps, but not with external applications or platforms. Even if your company is able to create a worthy piece of content within Docs, you’ve still got a ways to go. Someone will have to format the piece, then export to the proper platform, and finally hit publish. That’s a lot of responsibility.

On the contrary, a system built for publishing content will have workflows and integrations in place for these actions. They’ll play nice with your social stream, allow for added SEO tagging, and more, so that your content is working for you, not against you. You can’t afford otherwise.

The truth is, Google Docs, while convenient for informal collaboration, is not suitable to handle the content needs of your organization. You’ve spent the time sourcing SMEs and have likely coordinated your strategy with marketing and sales, so why drop the ball where it matters most?

There’s a reason that salespeople have graduated from spreadsheets and it’s time content marketers did the same. You owe it to yourself. As creating and publishing content continues to prove worthy to the bottom line, you’ll want to look past Docs and find a product meant for content.

Your organization will thank you.

10 Mar 17:09

How to Pivot Your Pitch to Win Over Skeptics

In sales, we talk a lot about our pitches: our elevator pitch, our Starbucks pitch, that new prospect we can’t wait to pitch.

But what if I told you that any time you say the word “pitch,” your prospect hears “catch”?

The second a potential customer feels like she’s being sold to, she starts looking for holes in your pitch. And that’s just the beginning of the skepticism.

As a salesperson, it can be frustrating to feel like you’re going into a pitch with a disadvantage, and it’s even more frustrating when your lead seems to be missing the point. Here are the four most common types of skepticism I’ve seen in sales and how to pivot your pitch to address these concerns.

1. ‘Why didn’t I know about this sooner?’

Sometimes, skepticism comes from a place of pride, ignorance, or both. Many leads assume that if your solution existed this entire time, it’s impossible that they didn’t hear about it sooner. They may then start to question the legitimacy of your company.

In this case, a lead needs to be shown factual information about your product or service, such as detailed benefits, IT opportunities, staff search assistance, and — most of all — significant savings.

2. ‘You still haven’t told me why I should pick you.’

If your industry is crowded with competitors, leads may be skeptical that your offering is truly better or cheaper than another. To win them over, create a market basket to show apples-to-apples pricing differences and demonstrate the specific value of your offering.

For instance, in our industry, I go over tools for incorporating nutrition into meal ideas and let prospects talk through their needs. Then, I insert exactly how our product can meet those needs better than the competition.

In these cases, it’s important to provide reassurance regarding the stability of pricing due to contracts. Leads need to understand that you’re there to help and that you can help better than the other guys can.

3. ‘If it ain’t broke, why fix it?’

If the product or service they currently use is working, leads may see no reason to change. But it’s important to show them how much money they’ll save with your solution and communicate that coming on board with your company won’t take much effort on their part.

4. ‘Will I lose control?’

Some leads may worry that saying “yes” to your product or service means they’ll lose control over some aspect of their business. In my industry, that means their kitchens.

Prospects are generally key company decision makers, and they don’t take that power lightly. Their role gives them the ability to have the final say in every decision, and they want to keep that power. In these cases, I always reassure leads that my company has absolutely no involvement with an account’s kitchen, staff, or ordering habits. They need to understand that the only thing that will change is the money they’re saving.

Whatever your lead’s fear may be, it’s your job to show what measures you have in place that allow her to retain ownership over that aspect of her business or why giving up control is a worthy trade-off.

The Art of the Personalized Pitch

Your response to different types of skepticism may vary as much as your leads’ concerns, but one common thread remains the same: You need to take a personalized approach to each pitch, and ideally, you should pitch face-to-face.

A more humanized approach can go a long way in our digitally driven world — especially considering that 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. In-person communication builds trust with leads and makes it harder for them to say “no.”

Even if you’re unable to make the sale in person, make your pitch a real conversation. Don’t simply ask the lead about her pain points and take the opportunity to insert your product or service as a solution. Ask the lead to share any concerns she has about your offering, and engage in a genuine discussion that alleviates her worries. Frame your pitch as a recommendation, and arm her with the information she needs in order to make an informed decision. If you’ve properly tailored your pitch, it should be a no-brainer.

10 Mar 17:08

What’s Holding Back Your B2B Lead Generation?

by Louis Foong

“Let it Go, Let it Go…Can’t Hold It Back Anymore”

FROZEN. It’s easy to say that and feel that way too when you live in Canada or the North Eastern United States. It’s been a brutal winter for sure. The good thing is, the weather doesn’t stop the free spirited among us from doing what we want to do. For some others, it becomes a cause for whining, groaning and complaining.

Complaining is what Peter was doing when I chatted with him last week. Peter has been a client of mine for years and is now a good friend too. He wanted to see me about getting his B2B lead generation moving with some new ideas. Their lead generation had frozen over, he said, and need a big push. It was very clear that while Peter, as the CMO of this mid-sized B2B company was enthusiastic about wanting to accelerate lead generation, there were a number of things holding him back. I told him they needed a meltdown. They needed to let go and allow change to happen.

Here are the top 5 issues I found with Peter’s current process—and these are common B2B lead generation challenges:

1. Budget: We have to figure out how to allocate resources and manpower; there is no room to increase our lead generation budget, but we don’t have the results we need.

2. Legacy: This continues to be a big issue for B2B companies. Lead generation for Peter’s company, is being managed largely around their legacy software. They are struggling to accommodate this software which was extremely costly to purchase, install and train the first time. No surprise that they are reluctant to “let it go”.

3. Silos: Everything happens in watertight compartments. Sales and marketing don’t work together and share common goals. The organization lacks the agility to make the changes demanded by this fast-changing environment in the online world.

4. Pace of Change: Sometimes a change also requires a paradigm shift or even a smaller shift, but it can have a big impact when it requires new software or new training. None of this could be achieved by Peter and his team in time to make significant changes for this quarter.

5. Numbers Fixation: Peter’s head was constantly on the proverbial block—the Bean Counters couldn’t look past the numbers. “How much are we spending and how many leads are we getting?” “How much are we spending?” is a good question and you have to know the answer to that. You need a monitoring process to measure every penny’s worth, no doubt. “How many leads are we getting?” is the question that needs to change. “How many conversions are we achieving?” – that is the important question that Team Peter needs to answer.

Quality of Leads is the Number 1 B2B Lead Generation Objective

Take a look at this chart below—these are all the obstacles B2B marketers worldwide said were holding back lead generation in 2014.

Important Lead Generation Objectives (eMarketer)

Source: eMarketer

In the same study quoted by eMarketer, this year’s number 1 goal for marketers is to improve the quality of leads. Finally! This is a refreshing change. Of course numbers are sexy, they give you a high, they give you bragging material. Your heart will race and you will want to include in your next report that you have thousands of new Twitter followers. There is excitement in sharing news that the sales team has connected with a lot of influential people on LinkedIn. If your blog posts have received thousands of views, it is a great feeling. But you have to look past that. Resist the urge. How will you do that?

This is what I recommended Peter’s B2B company should do to “let go” and move their lead generation forward:

Uncover the gold: I concur that with social media, particularly networks such as Twitter, numbers do come into play, BUT you must marry that with extracting the quality leads from it. It’s like being on a treasure hunt—it doesn’t matter how many boxes you find; it’s how much gold is in those boxes!
Engage: We have moved far beyond the “spray and pray” stage of B2B lead generation. You have to play strategically and there is no other choice. So many marketers fail to follow up at the right time, with the right person and in the right way. When you miss the engagement, you aren’t going to make it to the wedding! (click here to Tweet this)
Know your audience: With today’s technology, it is possible to can capture information about so many people in our target group. So make sure you are utilizing every opportunity to do this. Here is a great example from B2C: #taylurking (Taylor Swift’s Christmas video)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3yyF31jbKo
Personalize…but do it sensibly: When was the last time you personalized an email keeping in mind what the recipient’s interests were (according to their social media behaviour)? We have so much information at our fingertips, yet we rarely use any of it. Most often, we just use it to repeat over and over again, “Buy my stuff”, “Try my stuff” or “Meet with me” or the ever hollow, “Tell me what you need”—before we even get to know each other. No kidding, it’s a mess out there! I received a DM the other day on Twitter that started with “Hi The, thanks for the RT. I think the beta version of our product would really help you.” How in the world will I ever want to connect with someone who can’t take the time to figure out that my first name is not “The” because our Twitter account is in the name of our company, “The ALEA Group”? Even worse was a LinkedIn message that said, “Hi {first name}, I wanted to introduce you to this amazing service that automates your LinkedIn outreach”. Yes, it actually said “{first name}”. Probably not a good idea to do this when you are promoting an automated tool!

What steps are you taking to improve your focus on quality of leads over quantity? How will you ensure that your sales team follows up on the leads provided by marketing?

(featured image credit: Shutterstock)

Rnordman

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Publish content that is interesting, useful and relevant to your audience

Respond to people who have complaints or queries in a timely manner

Spark conversation around topics or issues dear to the heart of your brand

Identify and proactively interact with ‘like minds’ and influencers in your space

Relationships: Earn The Right to Receive Referrals From Your Professional Contacts

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Let's find out what the experts think...

1. Attitude

2. User Experience

Customer persona

Customer journey

3. Design

Pretty vs functional

4. Strategy

Build targeted customer personas and zero in on pain points.

Use pain points and questions to guide content strategy.

Use website design, conversions, and social media to share your content.

Use content marketing to generate leads.

Document your B2B content marketing strategy.

1. Form A Content Board

2. Identify Key Pain Points And Themes

3. Vote On Themes

4. Build A Content Pillar

3 Reasons Google Docs Can’t Support Your Content Strategy

1. Process Leads to Improvement

2. Content Needs a Calendar

3. Docs Aren’t Actionable

“Let it Go, Let it Go…Can’t Hold It Back Anymore”

Quality of Leads is the Number 1 B2B Lead Generation Objective