Kevin L. Brown

On Leadership-Some Great Tips

2012-01-13T08:28:00.001-08:00

NOTE- While this article references Federal Leader- I'd suggest you just substitute LEADER By Tom Fox, Published: January 10Justin Menkes is a leading expert in the field of evaluating C-suite executives and preparing individuals for the CEO position. He is the author of two books about executive leadership, Executive Intelligence and Better Under Pressure, published by Harvard Business Press. This interview was conducted by Tom Fox, who writes the Washington Post’s Federal Coach blog.Based on your experience, what traits are needed for a federal leader to be successful?There are three attributes that I think best enable a leader to maximize the efforts of the 21st century workforce: realistic optimism, subservience to purpose and finding order in chaos.What is realistic optimism?Realistic optimism is especially important for a federal workforce. I think that if you’re going to lead people, you can’t sit there and tell them, “Everything’s going to be fine.”When you look at poor performing or inept leaders, you find they are often incredibly optimistic. The difference is that they have blind optimism. So, if you say, “We will conquer all. The obstacles and adversities you’re discussing are not important for you to worry about because we’re going to win anyway,” you’ll lose them.But those with realistic optimism are the ones that say, “These are the challenges that we face and these are some of our proposed solutions. None of us is sure what the final solutions to each problem will look like, but here are our contingency plans for trying to address them. And, I do believe that together, as a group, we’re going to meet our challenges. I have no doubt about it.” That is what it looks like to express realistic optimism.What about subservience to purpose?Today, a paycheck is not enough. Workers have to get out of bed every morning believing in what they’re doing. They have to believe that their presence and the activities that they perform on any given day will make positive, meaningful impacts on the world.Southwest Airlines is a great example. Their people outperform competitors on every metric of productivity that exists. They believe that not only the rich should be able to fly in this country. So they’re going to get those airplanes off the ground on time and as inexpensively as possible, because they believe that that’s an important mission for America. This sense of purpose has lasted since Herb Kelleher founded the airline 35 years ago.Explain bringing order to chaos.Finding order in chaos is critical. Leaders cannot throw up their hands and give up. In many ways, today’s workforce has fallen behind in this area. It’s not being trained to find joy in the pressure-filled situations that we face. In the world and the economy today, there is more unfamiliar than familiar. So, you’ve got to get comfortable with it.The best example of this is A.G. Lafley at Proctor and Gamble. Before he retired, he was in Brazil watching housewives do their laundry in the bayous. When I asked him why, he said that his company had introduced a laundry detergent that should have been hugely popular among this particular Brazilian population. The detergent required no rinse cycle for clothes to be clean, [but] nobody wanted to buy it. Ultimately, what he found out was that the detergent didn’t make suds. As soon as they added suds, the women felt like the product was working. They started using the detergent and the product became a huge hit.How can current senior federal leaders cultivate these three attributes in their emerging executives?There are some wonderful things they can do. One of the great teachers of realist optimism is David Novak at Yum Brands. One of the things he’s done is use catch phrases. He found that when people are not taking responsibility or accountability for their actions, being realistic but optimistic is achievable.He introduced this phrase called ‘victimitis.’ So whenever people would say, “Oh, it’s not my fault,” or attempt to defend their bad actions, all of their colleagues would say, “Victimitis, victimitis!”Part of what he did was about building a culture and giving people tools they can effectively use — and in some places, playfully use. We need to remind ourselves that our destinies are in some ways beyond our control, but that our day-to-day, work-to-work, minute-to-minute experiences are still very much under our control.As a leader, if you’re sitting there having to block Internet sites on your employees’ computers, you’ve already lost the battle. You have to have them be interested and motivated to do their work without you looking over their shoulders.- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Mammoth Mountain, Mammoth Lakes, CA

3 Mistakes in Sales Compensation Plans

2011-12-30T09:45:00.001-08:00

Sales Force Effectiveness Blog

3 Mistakes that Alienate ‘A’ Players When Designing Sales Compensation Plans

When you are designing sales compensation plans for 2012, don’t make the mistake of alienating your ‘A’ players. Our firm is at its busiest in the fourth quarter in large part because we are hired to help our clients improve their sales compensation plans. Here are three common mistakes that arise again and again that you should avoid when you design your sales incentive plans next year.

1. Caps – For some reason, companies try to “mitigate risk” by putting caps on commission plans. There may be no greater risk of demotivating your ‘A’ players than showing them their earnings will be limited with a cap. It’s the equivalent of telling Michael Jordan his baskets will stop counting after he scores 50 points in a game.

Call to Action – Push your chips into the middle of the table on your sales compensation plans. If someone blows it out next year and earns more than anyone else, so what? Pay your sales reps for doing what you hired them to do: Sell. If you are having a hard time accepting the mental model of unrestricted earnings for your sales people, consider the alternative of poor performance resulting in you being replaced.

2. Claw Backs – 90% of all compensation plans we review have some type of “claw back” language in them. This is the premise that companies reserve the right to make a rep pay back their commissions and bonuses if something changes in the account. For starters, most state laws state that if you “overpay” an employee, they have to volunteer to repay the money back. Good luck. Secondly, if you are clawing back commissions for anything other than gross negligence on the part of the rep, your incentive plan is the problem.

Call to Action – Remove this language from your sales compensation plans in 2012. This is a close second to plan caps in the demotivation department. Want to build trust and credibility with your sales team? Tell them you are taking this out and designing a sales compensation plan for them that makes claw backs irrelevant.

3. Plan Descriptions – Companies seem to measure the worth of a sales compensation plan document by its length. A 15 page sales compensation plan document is 14 pages too long. We sales people are simple animals. Don’t overcomplicate the issue. More importantly, lead with the headline. The commission plan and calculation method should be front and center on page 1, not buried somewhere on page 13.

Call to Action – Don’t bury the lead. When ESPN announced Albert Pujols’ new 10 year, $250M baseball contract, they didn’t read the fine print to viewers. Why? Because the audience wants to know what he will earn. Nobody cares that he isn’t allowed to hang glide in the offseason.
The competition for ‘A’ players in the job market is increasing every day. If you want to hang onto yours in 2012, avoid these 3 common mistakes when designing sales compensation plans.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Via Chianti,Indian Wells,United States

Why Customer Service Is The New Marketing

2011-12-29T15:32:00.001-08:00

ENTREPRENEURS | 12/28/2011 @ 1:43AM |13,726 views
Why Customer Service Is The New Marketing
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Treat yours customers as if they were newspapers reporters; this is the new mantra for savvy companies of all sizes.

As consumers, we’ve become disenchanted with advertising and marketing of all sorts, having being duped, tricked or made to feel foolish on more than one occasion. The last true medium that holds sway is referrals from friends, colleagues, or online reviews from the likes of Yelp, AngiesList or TripAdvisor. According to a survey by the American Marketing Association, 90 percent of consumers trust peer reviews and 70 percent trust online reviews. It’s the last, true, medium that many consumers turn to when faced when inundated with choice, and confused by similar-sounding sales pitches.

Perhaps it is because reviews are the last sacred ground, that a flurry of outrage spread like wildfire across the Internet when news leaked that Reverb Communications (a PR agency) was paying interns to write positive reviews on iTunes for their clients Apps. Or when the occasional Amazon.com author gets ousted for disparaging competing books while positively reviewing their own. If you can’t trust advertising messages, and you can’t trust reviews, what else is left?

Based on my experience growing 99designs into a company that earns 7-figures per month, based largely on word of mouth, here are my three golden rules:

Think long-term reputation vs. short-term profit.
Trying to optimize profit on a sale-by-sale basis is a fool’s game, leads to frustrated customers and lost repeat business. When FedEx left an eBags package without a signature at our office building over the weekend which got stolen, a single email to the company resulted in a quick refund to my credit card. Compare that to a recent experience with a National Retailer, where a request for an exchange or refund took two store visits, three people, and more than 90 minutes of waiting while employees scoured the back-room for inventory that turned out to be non-existant.Even Apple lived up to its reputation recently, happily issuing me a partial refund on a laptop order after I failed to claim a discount I was eligible for. It would have been easy to transfer me around different departments, put me on hold, or outright say “no” to retroactively applying the discount. But the first person I spoke to happily made it happen even though they had no idea that we had 90+ employees on MacBook’s that we regularly refresh, spending thousands in the process. You never know who the customer is on the other end.

Identify your top customers and make them feel special.
With many companies, the most feverently loyal customers represent a disproportionately huge chunk of revenue. Knowing who those people are — and giving them special attention — is a must-do for every company. I recently had a conversation with the founder of a large Las Vegas based conference that’s been running for more than 10 years who used Klout.com to identify his most influential attendees. By offering just a little bit extra (free limo service to and from the airport), a dozen influencers directly contributed to over 100 additional tickets being sold with almost no additional marketing costs.

Make yourself available.
I had my personal cell phone number on sitepoint.com for 10-years (a site visited by more than 2.5 million people every month and ranked Top 1000 in the world), and was happy to answer more than 30 calls on Christmas Day, when a special deal we were running on the website went wonky. These days, we have dedicated support reps for us on three continents, and we’ve never outsourced to a call centre to cut costs.

Tony Hsieh from Zappos says his company loves to talk to customers, and classifies customer service as a marketing investment, rather than an expense that must constantly be slashed and analyzed. Zappos has no metrics that reps have to hit around calls per hour, average time per call, or other silly nonsense that leads frustrated customers.

Some businesses are even taking it a step further, by turning their most prolific fans into advocates and online sales people. Under Armour and Skullcandy have recruited an online sales force made up of their most loyal and knowledgable customers and are paying them with cash and gear for answering live chat requests from prospective customers on their websites. After all, who better to make authentic product recommendations and answer detailed product questions, than the customers already using them? No outsourced call centre team can match the passion, product knowledge and helpfulness of your most ardent supporters. There is hope.

Courtesy of YEC
Matt Mickiewicz, the co-founder of 99desings, started his first company while still in High School, and has leveraged his early success into 3 profitable businesses which have have published 50+ web design books in 20 languages, paid designers over $24 million for their graphic design work through 99designs, and helped entrepreneurs sell over $60 million in websites and domain names on Flippa.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:On Holiday- somewhere by a pool in Southern California desert

The Amazing Power of Deflationary Economics for Startups

2011-12-24T21:47:00.001-08:00

Both Sides of the Table
Entrepreneur turned VC

The Amazing Power of Deflationary Economics for Startups
by MARK SUSTER on DECEMBER 22, 2011

I’m often asked by people what investment areas interest me.

It’s true that I have a functional focus on three areas: Performance-based marketing, digital television and mobile computing. I try to invest in things that I know and that I believe I might have better knowledge and relationships than the masses of VCs.

I have other areas of interest & competence such as cloud computing and document management given my background.

It’s also true that I’m mostly founder driven, where the founding team & my personal relationship with them leads to a strong mutual working relationship. If that bond isn’t there or if it feels like I’m in a bidding process for the highest price, I might as well be Wells Fargo.

But one theme in pervasive in all my thinking about investing in Internet-based companies: Deflationary economics.

And it’s something I think you ought to consider when building your Internet businesses.

Here’s what I mean

When you think about the great achievement of the Internet in aiding content, commerce & communication they include:

Large scales of connected people & information never seen before in humanity
Unprecedented transparency of information
Open standards that make it easier to plug into other products & services, creating a global bazaar
Socially connected individuals and platforms that enable faster roll-outs of successful products
Payment ready consumers (Amazon, iTunes, PayPal) and businesses (Google AdWords, Square)
So which types of businesses become super successful given this environment?

Ones that offer amazing value (low relative margins) at high volumes that makes it nearly impossible for high-cost incumbents to compete. That’s what I mean by deflationary economics.

It is a classic case of the Innovator’s Dilemma in practice. If you’re a startup and you haven’t read my summary of Clay Christensen’s seminal work please do.

It’s the single most influential piece of work in determining my investment philosophy and how I think about markets. In a recent panel discussion I participated in with Fred Wilson he said the same.

Why Deflationary Business Win

In the simplest form, new startups have a product that is INFERIOR to that offered by the competition but at a dramatically lower price with the seller opting for a very thin margin on their product.

Initially their only customers are people who can get by on the reduced functionality or perhaps don’t have the money to spend on the expensive product.

Often it turns out that the market is greatly expanded by having a lower price point new entrant. And over time the new entrant attracts enough business that, as depicted in the graph above, the quality of the product slowly increases over time.

The new entrant keeps margins low but suddenly has a lot of profits due to large volumes of business.

How does the incumbent respond? Not by dropping price & quality – they don’t have an advantage there. Instead they spend more money trying to innovate on product quality and call attention to the weaknesses of the new entrants product quality.

Often major customers defect en masse to the new entrant as they realize that the huge price premium is not justified by the product differentials.

That is what Clay Christenson defined in his book as “The Innovator’s Dilemma.”

And this approach to looking at startup industries is what I call “deflationary economics.”

How it May Apply to Your Business?

When I’m asked about all of the mistakes I made at my first startup (I made them all) I often tell people that the single biggest mistake that I made was charging too much for my products.

We knew how to sell – we had clients paying $1 million / year. We knew there was value in what we provided. In order to grow we hired successful and expensive sales people who in turn were able to (and incentivized to) sell projects at higher margins and close big deals.

This was a mistake.

We grew really fast for a few years. But eventually low-cost new entrants came into the market offering most of our features at 10% the costs. We still won large customers but over time it became harder to compete.

Had I taken the lower-margin approach I really think I’d be sitting atop a $1 billion+ company today.

So when you start your company think carefully about whom your target customer is. If you’re trying to be a value-based product or trying to scale to a large market size you may want to think about deflationary economics.

Does your product dramatically reduce costs in an industry with large incumbents and fat margins?
Can you provide a narrowly focused product to a niche of that market who will be attracted to dramatically lower costs?
As your business grows can you find ways to continually lower your costs by whatever means?
I would also think about how you use scale to your advantage to keep margins low.

Are you offering a product where the supply costs will continue to drop precipitously? (think Amazon’s Storage costs)
Are there alternative ways to monetize your product where incumbent are not? (think virtual goods of Zynga, ad supported models, freemium models)
Are there ways to offer super low margins on your product knowing that you will overlay other product offers to the same customers later that will improve your margins?
Most of the Internet’s Greatest Successes Have Been Deflationary

Craigslist – Think about what Craigslist achieved. It’s remarkable. They took an industry that had charged people large sums of money (the classified industry) and made it almost entirely free. How do existing incumbents compete with that?

Craigslist is kind of an anomaly in that it’s founder seems to run it in a non-traditional style and with some objectives other than the pure profit motive. But by providing free listings he build critical mass (volume) so charging small amounts for certain types of listing (i.e. recruiting) he could build a very profitable business.

Craigslist is everybody’s favorite business to say, “I’m going to disrupt them” but somehow nobody has really been able to. Given their terrible UI I’m sure it will eventually happen. But beating free is hard, as is creating a two-sided market (chicken & egg problem).

Amazon – Amazon is the ultimate deflationary business. Everybody knows the story well. They launched as an online book seller.

They had huge scale advantages because they could offer a much wider book selection since they didn’t need to be limited to the physical floor space of a physical retailer.

They had huge cost advantages because they didn’t need to pay for retail space or all of the retail workers. They even

had a government break because they didn’t need to charge taxes and thus consumers got an even better price.

But Amazon didn’t try to build a hugely profitable business. Does that sound dumb? I always see naïve journalists comment negatively on businesses that are “not profitable.” Sometimes it’s good to not focus on profitability & sometimes it’s bad.

There is a tension between profitability & growth. The more you want the latter the more investments you make in people and infrastructure now to pay for faster growth that expense of short-term profitability.

It doesn’t work for every business. But if you are growing uber fast, building for scale and have access to capital to fund your growth then it’s always the smart play.

So instead of maximizing price they kept cutting costs. Innovator’s Dilemma. How do physical retailers compete with that? Especially when Amazon will offer free shipping for its best customers.

And Amazon wasn’t content with just being books, they wanted to be THE Internet retailer. Walmart in the cloud. This generation’s Sears Catalog. So they kept cutting costs of everything they offered.

And then they decided they wanted to be the Internet retailer of computing services so they created Amazon Web Services

(AWS). And they made it so cheap that everybody gravitated towards them. They had a scale advantage and were driving deflationary economics (in other words, massively driving down the costs of goods & services).

I was at Salesforce.com when Amazon was super aggressive on that storage pricing. I met with our network experts to figure out whether we could launch a competing service. The assessment of our best experts was that we couldn’t. Their view was that Amazon was taking a loss on providing Internet storage.

I have not inside data on that but I’ll be they were right. I’ll bet that Amazon’s view was to start with a loss leader because they knew that storage costs could come down and that they could add more service on top of their storage product and ultimately provide a profitable bundle of IT services to their customers.

In other words, storage might have been a “loss leader.” In any event, they had such scale advantages in providing this Internet infrastructure that to this day nobody in the industry has come close to matching them.

In my estimation this is one of the biggest strategic mistakes Google has made in not competing more aggressively with AWS. The Cloud is the future at Amazon has an enormous lead. As far as I know, the revenue in AWS is not publicly broken out but the last rumor I heard was that it had crossed $1 billion per year.

Google – They have led the deflationary pressure on advertising, bringing whole industries into chaos. This has particularly hurt the print media businesses that can no longer charge enough to pay for editorial, printing & distribution.

They are bringing deflationary economics to word processing, spreadsheets and office automation. They are bringing deflationary economics to local advertising.

I guess I would describe Google as the ultimate scale & deflationary business.

Skype – As with many deflationary businesses, Skype started by giving away its product for free. Free phone calls anywhere in the world is as deflationary as it gets.

Telecommunication companies are still charging people for phone calls when the costs to them of providing the calls is infinitesimally small. Data transfer is what costs telecom companies money these days.

Ultimately when Skype had 10’s of millions of users it rolled out products that made money. They started with “Skype Out” which was placing a call from a Skype line to somebody on a normal telephone. They charge for this call, but they charge at rates that are an order of magnitude cheaper than a telco.

Expect this industry to be whiplashed by deflationary economics in the next 5-10 years. It’s no wonder they’re pushing so hard to be become our Internet supplier and our TV suppliers. Unfortunately for them neither of these businesses will escape the deflationary maelstrom either.

TextPlus – Speaking of telecom disruption, a new breed of mobile telco is emerging that are riding the deflationary wave. It’s the reason I invested in TextPlus. At 25 million downloads & 10 million monthly active users we’re achieving a scale that makes it a very attractive opportunity.

We started offering free text messaging at a time when most telcos are still charging $240 / year for unlimited-texting plans. In many parts of America that’s a lot of money for families to be absorbing for something that costs the telcos almost zero. That’s one reason a free texting app has been so popular.

But beyond that TextPlus now offers free phone calls to other TextPlus users and out-of-app calls are a fraction of the normal costs by mobile providers.

Expect a deflationary revolution in the global telecom market – at a minimum for voice services. And with 6 billion global handsets you can imagine what an immense market this will be.

LinkedIn – Lots of people talk about LinkedIn as a social network. What interests me is the deflationary impact that LinkedIn and other recruiting websites have had on the recruiting market.

Think of the principles I described about Internet economics of Craigslist: huge scale, many parts of the service are free and monetize the narrow features where businesses are willing to pay – and at hugely deflationary prices to their normal recruiting fees.

Zynga – Deflationary. In the offline world people were buying consoles and then paying for game titles separately – many in the $29-49 price range per game. Along comes an immensely scaled business that offers games for free.

I know, it isn’t offering the same quality of games so I’m not arguing that the entire game console business goes away over night. But it is hard to argue longer-term against the deflationary pressures that Zynga brings.

Maker Studios – Network television costs $50,000 – 100,000 per minute to produce. Reality shows can be cheaper, with the lowest-end costing $6,000 – 8,000 per minute.

Maker Studios is an Internet producer of content relying on deflationary economics. It produces shows for $500 – 1,000 per minute. It’s no surprise that it has now become one of the most viewed networks of video programming in the world, achieving 500 million video views per month having only raised $3 million in venture capital.

Maker Studios produces shows like =3 by Ray William Johnson (NSFW), one of the most subscribed to shows on YouTube. Many episodes are garnering 8-12 million views while its network competitor (and equally brilliant show) Tosh.O is getting 3 million views.

Other shows like Epic Rap Battles of History (my personal favorite – if you get addicted we’ve produced about 15 or so now. The best ones have been watched more than 35 million times) and Animonsters are delivering huge audiences and significant revenues.

I know that the networks, studios & cable companies don’t yet see this business as a threat. My experience in looking at deflationary businesses says that they should pay attention to it. Deflationary economics tend to eat at the core of traditional offline businesses.

Of course I could go on and on including businesses like AirBnB, DropBox, Box.net, Yammer and so on. All deflationary. But by now you more than got the point.

So What Do I Look for In My Investments?

Exactly what I’ve outlined.

Teams that care about keeping costs low.
Teams that want to drive waste out of the system.
Teams that have a “lean” mentality.
Teams that are comfortable with transparency of pricing & costs and don’t mind competing in that environment.
Teams who aspire to build really big businesses and believe in deflationary economics.
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- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Coaching Mistakes You're Definitely Making

2011-11-09T08:26:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, the most intuitive coaching methods are usually the worst. Here are the top five mistakes managers make when coaching a sales rookie.

By Geoffrey James | Nov 3, 2011 Inc.com http://ow.ly/7o0qm

In business, a manager is expected to prepare employees to succeed by providing the resources, tools, and development they need to achieve their objectives. Unfortunately, many managers have little or no idea how to coach effectively.

I will soon cover exactly how to coach salespeople (based on inputs from best-selling author and sales training firm founder Linda Richardson), but, first, check out the five most common coaching mistakes.

Mistake #1: Confusing Coaching with Performance Evaluations. Some managers think that the best time to provide coaching is during the employee's yearly performance evaluation. However, evaluation and coaching are dramatically different animals. Evaluations happen every year or every quarter, while coaching, to be effective, must be an ongoing daily or weekly process. Similarly, evaluations focus on what happened in the past, while coaching focuses on what could happen in the future. Finally, evaluations mean paperwork and bureaucracy, while coaching is, by its very nature, informal and personal.

Mistake #2: Treating Coaching as Low Priority. Managers have many demands on their time, and they're often forced to focus on the numbers, or their own manager, simply to survive. As a result, it's all too easy to treat coaching as something that can be postponed indefinitely. Unfortunately, without coaching, sales numbers are likely to suffer and, sooner or later, will gather negative attention from top management, investors, and (worst of all) the customers themselves.

Mistake #3: Finding an Excuse Not to Coach. Managers who have sold, and were good at it, may realize that the skills to succeed in sales are not the same as those needed to succeed as a coach. Managers who haven't sold for a living may wrongly believe that they can't possibly coach somebody who already knows how to sell. (In fact, anyone who has been sold to can provide valuable sales coaching.) Finally, some companies just don't have much of a "coaching culture", which means most managers don't get coached and are not rewarded for coaching.

Mistake #4: Providing Feedback and Suggestions. Many managers coach by telling the person what he or she did wrong, and what to do to fix it. While this process is time-efficient, most people respond to this kind of coaching by becoming passive-aggressive (quietly accepting but seething inside) or completely defensive (arguing the point). The manager typically fails to get buy-in from the employee and misses a chance to see where the employee is on the learning curve. Worst case, feedback/suggestion coaching damages the relationship.

Mistake #5: Coaching By Example. This is the worst mistake of all. The manager and the rep go on a sales call together and, the moment it seems as if something is going awry or not according to the manager’s expectations, the manager jumps into the situation and "shows how it’s done." This type of coaching destroys the sales person's credibility with the customer and, worse, can easily backfire, because the manager may not know the entire situation with that customer.

I hope that nobody recognizes themselves in the mistakes described above. If so, don’t take it to heart. Such mistakes are so common that most sales reps don’t expect anything better. Fortunately, coaching more effectively is easy to learn, as you’ll find out soon.

3 Ways Sales Management Can Make Their Quota

2011-11-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

Posted by Dan Perry on Sun, Oct 30, 2011 http://ow.ly/7m66g
57% of all sales reps will make their quota this year. Sales Management: This means almost HALF of your reps are missing their goal. Unless you have some unbelievable ‘rainmakers’ on your team, you are probably missing your quota as well. With the end of the year approaching, most CEOs and VP of Sales are thinking about INCREASING your Sales Management quota for next year.

What are you going to do?

Making your quota for 2012 requires changing things. The status quo is no longer acceptable. You have to increase your sales team’s quota attainment. If your quota has been set properly, the sales reps on your team will need to hit at least 65% of their quota. This means 6.5 out of 10 sales reps must be 100%+ to quota.

Can you make this happen without LOWERING the quotas?

You make your number by coaching to your sales process. You make your number by coaching to success metrics (Close Rate increase, Sales Cycle Length decrease etc.) You make your number by coaching to dealstrategy.

3 Ways Sales Management can make quota (by coaching):

# 1 - Delivery of your message. The way you DELIVER your message has a direct impact on the perceived CONTENT of the message. The way you use effective words and pitch in the message is critical in your point to be taken. Most successful coaches talked at a faster rate than ‘normal’ and their emphasis was is consistent throughout their delivery. They BELIEVED in their message and the ‘receiver’ thought the coach had their best interest at heart.

Remember: You can’t fake confidence.

MIT’s Sloan School of Management had 42 MBA students write and then present a business plan. The students, all who had previous business experience, were ranked in three areas: persuasion, content and style. Even though the three areas were ranked separately, if a student ranked HIGH in ONE area, they scored well in all areas. When separate judges just READ the plans, they chose differently than the judges who witnessed the presentations.

#2 - Situational Coaching. Don’t peanut butter spread the coaching. One size does not fit all. New hires need different coaching then tenured reps. Average performers are coached differently than Top performers. You must change your style to the sale rep you are developing. Assess where they are and use the below chart as a rule of thumb:

#3 - Regular Cadence. Establishing a fixed schedule that allows you the ability and opportunity to coach at all times is critical. You must be in the field with your sale reps. This results in situations which you can observe their behavior and develop them. Use the scenario, their exact words to help them improve on flawed behaviors. Things like questioning skills, non-verbal communication, adherence to following the sale process etc. These will improve their productivity. Use this table for guidance:

Sales Management Coaching Situations	Actions Required
Planned One On Ones (in the calendar)	Set an agenda with regular items formally reviewed each session. Sales Rep comes prepared with tools, responses and action items
In the Moment	Coach specifics that were just observed or discussed. The most critical and impactful of all coaching, this needs to be done on a regular occurrence (Like Daily!)
Scheduled Semi Annual Reviews	Formal sessions discussing long range development usually tied to success metrics (quota attainment) and competencies. You must develop an Individual Development Profile and monitor the progress.

Making your quota is much more than simply filling the team’s pipelines and closing sales. It is coaching your sales rep and developing them into ‘A’ players. It is training to the sales process. We work with many sales managers who have ‘jumped off the Ferris wheel of doing deals’ to creating awesome sales reps.

One of the most significant sales management changes witnessed is by Brent Babbs . Brent took over a struggling sales team in Chicago moving from ‘A’+ sales rep to sales manager. Brent carried the quota for the team for many years being recognized as a top sales rep in the company. When he was promoted, the first year Brent was 99.9% of quota for his team. Good enough to get his bonus but definitely not practicing the three steps outlined above. His team made the quota because Brent sold all the deals. His reps would get him into the prospects and (as one sale rep told me) Brent would take over and close the sales. He had no turnover in sales reps that year (because they made all the commissions on the back of Brent).

The following year, Brent dedicated himself to coaching his people. He devoted his time to the steps above and had awesome results (top SM in a company of 65 SMs). He subsequently got promoted. He made his sales team quota by not selling all the deals himself but coaching his sales people to sell while he coached them to improve.

Do you exhibit Brent’s early characteristics? Can you change? Devote your energy to the 3 ways to make your quota and you will do it!

3 Dumbest Sales Job Interview Questions... and What to Ask Instead

2011-11-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

Need a stronger sales team? When you've got a potential hire in the hot seat, make sure you're asking the right questions.

By Geoffrey James | @Sales_Source | Nov 2, 2011

When it comes to generating revenue and profit, there is simply no task more important than hiring the right sales staff. Unfortunately, most companies find this process extraordinarily challenging, as evidenced by high turnover rates.

According to CSO Insights, a company that surveys and studies sales teams worldwide, one out of three sales professionals on average leave the organization within a year. Between ramp-up costs and lost opportunities, a bad sales hire can easily cost $150,000… or much more.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing plenty of "how to" information about building a top performing sales team. For now, though, let's start with the basics. Here are three questions that often get asked during sales interviews, but which tend to lead to hiring the wrong sort of person.

Question #1: "What experience do you have selling this kind of product?"
Why It Gets Asked: You're assuming that years of experience automatically translate into real world sales ability.
Why It's Dumb: Three reasons. First, it's perfectly possible to make the same mistakes repeatedly over multiple decades. Second, the process of selling, especially B2B, has changed so radically over the past decade that past experience, even when it once generated big sales, may not be applicable any longer. Finally, and most importantly, if the candidate has been selling for a competitor, the experience is likely to irrelevant, since your competitor probably plays a very different role in your market than your own company.
What to Ask Instead: "What experience do you have selling for companies of our size in a similar industry?"
Why This is Smarter: Small and medium companies have to sell differently (i.e. better and faster) than their large competitors, otherwise they'll get forced out of business. Even when smaller companies compete for the same business, there will usually be a price leader (where the main buying motivator is cost), a brand leader (where the main buying motivator is reputation) and a value leader (where the main buying motivator is the impact of a solution), according to Mary Delaney Mary Delaney, president of Personified, a subsidiary of CareerBuilder. "Rather than hiring from your competitors, you want to find sales pros who have been successful selling for the same type of successful company as your own, but in another industry," she says.

Question #2: "Can I have some customer references?"
Why It Gets Asked: The logic is simple: if candidates know how to make former customers happy, they’ll know how to make your customers happy.
Why It's Dumb: As the saying goes, "a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while." Even the worst sales pros are likely to have a couple of customers willing to sing their praises. Worst case, the "customer" may actually be a relative or friend queued up to say nice things, no matter what.
What to Ask Instead: "How can I contact the managers for whom you’ve worked in the past?"
Why This is Smarter: Poor sales performers leave a trail of dissatisfied managers in their wake. "Never hire a candidate unless you can talk to somebody who’s paid the candidate in the past and who says that you'd be crazy not to hire that candidate," says Jerry Acuff, author of the bestseller The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success. "Hiring problems occur when we hire people we like and, because we like them, we want to believe that they have talents that they don’t actually have."

Question #3: "How much money did you make at your last sales job?"
Why It's Asked: You want to ensure that you make a competitive offer.
Why It's Dumb: Sales compensation is always an "apples to oranges" comparison. Unless your company has the identical commission and bonus structure, the actual compensation will be different, even if the candidate, after being hired, sells the same amount. Furthermore, the candidate may exaggerate his or her past performance in the hope of getting a better deal.
What To Ask Instead: "What was your quota? How often did you make it? And what did you report on your W2?"
Why This is Smarter: These questions cut to the nub of the sales process, which is the ability to perform consistently and according to plan. What’s more, they allow you to assess candidates for honesty and candor. "Before you hire anybody, make certain that they’re trustworthy by asking the same question multiple ways," says Delaney. "If there's any disconnect between the answers, then you know that the person you're interviewing might not be entirely honest."

Beware the Digital Disruptors: They’re Coming for Your Industry

2011-10-26T23:26:00.001-07:00

Beware the Digital Disruptors: They’re Coming for Your Industry

James L. McQuivey, Ph.D. is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals. Follow him on Twitter at @jmcquivey.

Growing up in the ’70s, I was the world’s biggest fan of The Bionic Man. Every Sunday night at 7 p.m. you could find me glued to our Trinitron TV to watch Steve Austin battle every villain from Bionic Sasquatch to the evil Dr. Dolenz. The appeal of the show was simple: Amplified by technology, the Bionic Man is better, stronger, and faster than his enemies.

It turns out to be a morality tale for our own day. But you are not the bionic man in the drama I’m unfolding — you are his target. Because while you were carefully planning your business strategy, hundreds — if not thousands — of individuals and competitors have been exploiting technology to make themselves better, stronger, and faster than you.

We call these people digital disruptors. And they’re coming right for you.

No matter what industry you are in, you are their target. Where you could once dismiss digital disruption as the sole province of the music or other media industries where it destroyed billions in value, digital disruption has now expanded. These disruptors employ technologies — and the platforms they enable — to build better products than you can, establish a stronger customer relationship than you have, and deliver it all to market faster than you ever thought possible.

Oh, and it doesn’t cost anywhere close to six million dollars for them to get started. I offer Lose It! as one of many case studies worth considering. Targeting the weight loss and fitness business — one of the most analog industries on the planet — Lose It! is disrupting the more than $40 billion Americans spend on weight loss each year. It’s a costly industry to enter — think of Jenny Craig’s marketing budget alone, then add its hundreds of physical locations, prepared meals, and all the infrastructure to support the entire enterprise. So while franchises like The Biggest Loser have succeeded in entering this business recently, they have done so at great cost.

Meanwhile, a single app that helps dieters keep track of the calories they consume on their smartphones has gone from 0 to 7 million downloads in just a few years. FitNow, the company behind the app, pulled this off with four employees, establishing an unheard of customer-per-employee metric of 1.75 million.

This is digital disruption at its finest: better, stronger, faster. The app got to market quickly, partly because as a digital disruptor, FitNow could afford to launch something that didn’t try to solve all the problems in the weight-loss world. As Charles Teague, CEO, told me recently, “Let’s not pretend that we know the endgame here. Let’s do the least amount of features to know if it will work. Then improve it if people use it.” And improve it they have, adding fitness tracking and more recently a robust social community of like-minded dieters.

Because it sounds so easy, a CEO I shared this with asked me why, if digital is so quick and dirty, his company’s website redesign was over time and over budget. I told him it was precisely because he staffed up his business under assumptions about design and functionality that were true in 2005 but are no longer the case. Digital disruption has even disrupted the digital businesses that preceded them.

While digital disruptors are better, stronger, and faster, they are not untouchable. Their ease of entry comes from the fact that traditional barriers have fallen to zero. That means your direct cost to emulate their practices can also be low.

That’s why I recommend you steal the digital disruptor’s handbook. Use the iPad, the Kinect, and whatever platform is next to build a digital bridge to your customers. Like with Lose It!, your bridge must engage customers more often than your current product can, packaging and delivering benefits that you didn’t realize were part of your consumer contract because before now, they weren’t. You have to change your understanding of your product so you can then change your customer’s understanding of it as well. This will require better thinking than you currently do – I previously explained how digital disruptors take advantage of a type of thinking called “innovating the adjacent possible.” It’s crucial to generating more ideas more quickly so that you can find the nearby opportunities that will succeed while quickly culling those that will fail.

There’s more to do, but before you can even begin, you have to know: Are you ready to do this? Does your company have the energy, skills, and policies to turn into a disruptor or are you more likely to be displaced by the digital disruptor nearest you?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:HSH

The Best-Kept Secrets Of Doing A Competitive Analysis

2011-10-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Best-Kept Secrets Of Doing A Competitive Analysis

Scott Gerber Founder, The Young Entrepreneur Council (Y.E.C.)

When recently asked about their best-kept secrets to performing a competitive analysis for their brands, YEC members had the following to say.

1. Have an undercover ambassador

Performing your own market research for a competitive analysis, especially when you are publicly known among your competition, just doesn't work. Identify people who can act as an undercover ambassador on your behalf and go into the market to get firsthand feedback on how your brand is perceived and insight on your competition and how they are doing. Organic data points provide the most value.

—Lauren Maillian Bias, Luxury Market Branding

2. Look to product review sites

One thing that we commonly do is look to product review sites like Amazon.com or eBay and search for user reviews. What are customers saying about the product? What do they want to see? What did they like/dislike? Do this for both your product and that of your competition and you will be really surprised by what you see. Plus, it gives you an action list of things to do to make your products better.

—Greg Rollett, The ProductPros

3. Use compete.com

Competitor analysis is imperative to any business in order to improve products/services in order to gain an edge over the competition. Utilize a service like compete.com to understand how your competitors are driving traffic and acquiring customers online. This information will help you devise a more comprehensive marketing strategy.

—Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings

4. Don't stare down the competition

While it's important to keep an eye on what other's in your field are up to, it's equally—if not more—important to ignore the competition. Don't let what everyone else is doing drive you to change your values and direction as a company. Focus not on being better than everyone else, but instead on being your very best.

—Matt Cheuvront, Proof Branding

5. Conduct a survey

When I was building the coaching arm of my business, I released a survey to my already-existing audience in order to get a feel for where my readers were hanging out, who loomed large in the industry, and what affected their purchasing decisions. It helped me pinpoint my primary competition and find ways to distinguish myself.

—Steph Auteri, Word Nerd Pro

6. Do a mini analysis on social media

The best way to perform a competitive analysis for your brand is to do a mini social media analysis to see how you compare to your competition in terms of followers, fans and type of content posted. You also want to measure level of engagement with their fans versus your own fan base to see how you compare to the competition!

—Kris Ruby, Ruby Media Group

7. Use BoardReader

I use BoardReader whenever I'm doing market research, be it for a current project or a new idea. It's a nice way to assess the world of forums, specifically, which is often overlooked despite it being the original manifestation of niche communities online.

—Derek Shanahan, Foodtree

8. Test your customer loyalty

There are many companies that boast about massive mailing lists and thousands of users, but what makes a company valuable is the level of interest and loyalty your customers demonstrate towards your brand. This can be converted to monetary equity and rapid growth quite easily. Ask your customers for a favor and objectively track the number of customers who follow through. Then share your results.

—Kent Healy, Healo Capital

9. Use an objective eye

Coming from the bar and restaurant industry, I can't go to my venues to conduct an analysis about my brand because my staff acts differently when I'm there. So instead I go to my competitors and simply act like a customer. I then send secret shoppers to my venues and compare my feedback of the competitors with the spotters' feedback of my venues.

—Michael Sinensky, Village Pourhouse

10. Use OpenSiteExplorer.org

SEOMoz's tool, Opensiteexplorer.org, allows you to see links linking to your competitors, so you get a better idea of how they've been able to market their brand, which media outlets are talking about them and how much work you need to do to catch up and overtake them.

—Danny Wong, Blank Label Group

11. "SizeUp" your competition for free

SizeUp.com is a free business intelligence tool that will rock your entrepreneurial world. It instantly develops interactive charts to illustrate how your business compares to competitors, identifies best places to advertise and maps competitors, customers and suppliers. It's a great tool to utilize for investment pitches, business plan enhancements or overall business development tactics.

—Erica Nicole, YFS Magazine

12. Buy from your competitors

It always amazes me how few people don't go beyond looking at what's publicly available on a competitors website; going through the entire sales process (and yes, that includes submitting credit card information) will give you much more useful information. We've even done usability studies which include our top three competitors to see how customers perceive our brand versus theirs.

—Matt Mickiewicz, 99designs

13. Check out what YC and 500 Startups are investing in

Y Combinator, 500 Startups and Tech Stars are investment groups/incubators that are constantly carving out the tech landscape. If you are in the tech space and researching the competition in your space, you can be almost 100 percent sure that some of the most promising up-and-comers in your vertical are part of one of those groups

—Brenton Gieser, JoynIn

Avoid These Simple Grammar Goofs in Your Business Marketing

2011-10-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

American Express OPEN Forum http://ow.ly/6TaFa

Barry Moltz Small Business Speaker, Consultant, and AuthorOctober 7th Many business owners did not pay attention in English class. After all, they were too busy dreaming about the company they wanted to start. But using poor grammar in your company’s marketing (or any e-mail) communication reflects poorly on our business.

It hurts our business because many customers reason that if the company can’t get the spelling correctly, how can they trust them to solve their problem, right? And it’s a valid point. I am guilty of spelling and grammar mistakes in my communications—and sometimes in these articles.

Here's what you can do to ensure your spelling and grammar are correct in all our communications.

1. Let it age

We are in too much of a rush to get work out the door—but every type of marketing communication needs to age. Do the work and leave it for a few days. Go back and read it with a fresh set of eyes to see if it still makes sense. Better yet, have at least two people proof the information.

2. Turn spell check on

It's amazing how many people don't use this feature in their word processor. Turn it on and note the changes it suggests!

3. Read it out loud

Reading the material out loud (or whispering at your desk and yes, you must move your lips for this to work) will often point out parts that need to be improved that may not be apparent when things are read silently.

Additionally, here some of my top grammar problems and how to cure them.

The Problem: “He will send Sara or myself a message.”

The Cure: Practice deleting anyone else in the sentence and then read it aloud to get the right pronoun. “He will send Sara or me a message.”

The Problem: Well vs. good.

The Cure: Good describes things, places and people. Well describes an action.

The Problem: Affect vs. effect.

The Cure: The majority of the time use affect with an a as verb and effect with an e.

The Problem: Fewer vs. less.

The Cure: If you can’t count them, use less. Fewer hours. Less time.

The Problem: Loose vs. lose.

The Cure: Think about what the words mean. Loose is something not fixed in place. Lose is to not retaining something. Remember, you can’t be a “looser.”

The Problem: It’s vs. Its vs. Its’.

The Cure: It’s is a contraction short for It is. Its is a possessive pronoun referring to ownership. Its’ is just plain wrong.

The Problem: i.e. vs. e.g.

The Cure: i.e. means "that is" and e.g. means "for example." Don’t ask why.

The Problem: Your vs. you’re.

The Cure: Your is possessive and you’re is a contraction short for you are.

The Problem: Than vs. then.

The Cure: Than is a comparison while then is a description of time.

The Problem: Would vs. could.

The Cure: Would is definite—if certain things happen. Could is only a broad possibility.

Has grammar got your company in hot water? What are your top pet peeves and how do you fix them?

Social Power -and the Coming-Coporate Revolution

2011-09-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

David Kirkpatrick, 09.07.11, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 26, 2011

Civilizations have clashed in an unexpected way this year, as ordinary people using Facebook and Twitter knocked down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—and are threatening absolute rule in Syria. A so-called Arab spring brought waves of liberation to a long-oppressed region. Something similar is happening in more democratic countries. In Spain throngs of young people, known as “the indignant ones,” occupied public plazas nationwide, protesting unemployment and exclusionary politics. In Israel ordinary citizens from both right and left united in massive demonstrations against high housing prices. And in India one man’s campaign against corruption went viral, bringing thousands to the streets in support.This social might is now moving toward your company. We have entered the age of empowered individuals, who use potent new technologies and harness social media to organize themselves. A few have joined cause with WikiLeaks and its terrifying stepchild dren, upending the once secure corridors of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But most are ordinary people with new tools to force you to listen to what they care about and to demand respect. Both your customers and your employees have started marching in this burgeoning social media multitude, and you'd better get out of their way--or learn to embrace them.
The institutions of modern developed societies, whether governments or companies, are not prepared for this new social power. People are changing faster than companies. "I don't think it's crazy to ask if your CEO is the next Mubarak," says Gary Hamel, one of business' most eminent theoreticians of management. "The elites--or managers in companies--no longer control the conversation. This is how insurrections start." Says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com: "This isn't just about Arab spring. This is about corporate spring."
In this new world of business, companies and leaders will have to show authenticity, fairness, transparency and good faith. If they don't, customers and employees may come to distrust them, to potentially disastrous effect. Customers who don't like a product can quickly broadcast their disapproval. Prospective employees don't have to take your word for what life is like at your company--they can find out from people who already work there. And longtime loyal employees now have more options to launch their own, more fleet-footed startups, which could become your fiercest competitors in the future. "Companies that have been around more than five years are having a hard time because this is so different from what they know" is the jarring observation of Doreen Lorenzo, president of design and consulting firm Frog.
But overall these changes suggest a bright future for business and society globally. The world is becoming more democratic and reflective of the will of ordinary people. And pragmatically, social power can help keep your company vital. Newly armed customer and employee activists can become the source of creativity, innovation and new ideas to take your company forward. A growing number of executives and companies are converts to this point of view.
It calls for humility of a sort most business leaders aren't used to. "Trust is built by sharing vulnerability," says John Hagel, a longtime author and consultant who cochairs Deloitte's Center for the Edge. "The more you expose and share your problems, the more successful you become. It's not about the top executive dictating what needs to be done and when, it's about providing individuals with the power to connect."
Benioff recounts his own epiphany about humility and transparency at Salesforce, which sells online software for salespeople. "In 2005 we had reliability problems with one of our servers. We weren't talking about it, and customers were upset. It turned into a p.r. problem. And my marketing leader Bruce Francis came in and said, ‘Marc, you need to expose everything. You need to have a website that is directly connected to the computers. If they are running, the website should be green, and when they're not it should be red.' I had to open up." Such a system has been in place ever since. "Social success is really based on trust," Benioff opines. "If you don't have transparency you will be eliminated by the system around you." He is now writing a book arguing that every company must become what he calls a "social enterprise."
The headlines abound with examples of the precariously shifting dynamic. Companies that show greed or insensitivity to workers or customers quickly find themselves on the defensive. Hershey looked Scrooge-like and clueless in August when 400 college students hired through a State Department-sponsored foreign-exchange program revolted, walking off their jobs. They didn't like their stressful work in a candy-packing factory, sometimes on all-night shifts. These kids from China, Nigeria, Turkey and Ukraine are facile digital communicators and used YouTube, Facebook and other tools to bring attention to their plight.
Adidas recently found itself under attack in New Zealand when fans of the hugely popular national rugby team were outraged to learn that Adidas team jerseys were being sold for significantly more there than elsewhere in the world. Fans went online to research comparative product prices in New Zealand and the U.S. and then to organize fellow fans in protest. Soon national news programs were focusing on the protest and Adidas' flat-footed response. People started returning Adidas clothing to stores in disgust, and employees felt so threatened they removed logos from company vehicles, reported the New York Times.

Executives can't hide from the outrage. In the Netherlands earlier this year a social media campaign against bankers' bonuses focused on Amsterdam-based ING. People began threatening en masse to withdraw deposits. CEO Jan Hommen voluntarily waived his upcoming $1.8 million bonus and ordered all company directors to do the same. British Prime Minister David Cameron recently proposed shutting down social media during riots like those that brought chaos to the U.K. recently. But Google Chairman Eric Schmidt replied to that idea in an interview in the Guardian with advice that applies equally to CEOs: "It is a mistake to look into the mirror and try to break the mirror. Whatever the problem was [that caused the riots] the Internet is a reflection of that problem. If you have a problem, use the Internet to understand what the problem is."
f there's a primary culprit for this changed landscape, it's Facebook. The social network's astonishing success in less than eight years has brought it more than 750 million active users in every country on earth, made it the world's busiest website--and the most popular tool for fomenting insurrection around the world. Why? Because Facebook gives all its users a personal broadcast platform. In the past only a select few had such power--Walter Cronkite, for example, or those at the BBC. People on Facebook, by contrast, usually just broadcast to friends, which seems only modestly impactful, at first. However, a peculiar new dynamic--call it a viral consensus--may develop. Say you post a status update, photo or video that expresses a view that your friends agree with or respond to; that message can spread like influenza. Friends click "like," or comment on the update, saying, for example, "Yeah, I think Mubarak has got to go, too!" or "I'm throwing out all my Adidas stuff!" That rebroadcasts it to their friends. The "meme," or idea, can go viral and spread almost instantly to vast numbers, if it happens to strike a chord with the zeitgeist.
LinkedIn is another central tool for empowerment all executives ought to ponder--and not only because they already maintain a profile there (along with more than 115 million others). At its heart LinkedIn is a way to maintain a permanent public work résumé. Many of your company's most valued employees now have CVs out on the street fulltime--searchable by millions, including your competitor's recruiters. Do you want to take a chance mistreating or ignoring such people?
Plenty of other social software tools are now in the hands of ordinary people as well. They live on mobile phones that are really powerful computers--broadcast terminals able to spew opinion or information at will, as well as receive it. YouTube, for example, provides endless hours of light entertainment--or can be used by anyone anytime to broadcast video. In 2009 one appeared showing a Domino's Pizza worker putting cheese in his nose while making a sandwich, among other abominations. Its stock dropped 10% in short order. One employee's bad judgment damaged an entire company's reputation. Twitter is a potent broadcast tool for anyone with a following; FourSquare, a way to coordinate in the physical world; GroupMe, just sold to Skype, enables you to send a single text or make one telephone call to a group of up to 25. All these services are basically free.
New incarnations of social power emerge almost daily from legions of entrepreneurs worldwide who see how rapidly success can come in a densely networked world. That ease of company creation is yet another example of individual empowerment. GroupMe's two founders--ages 24 and 29--sold their company in August for around $50 million just one year after it debuted.
o Fishback created his tool of social power with stunning speed. He's CEO of Zaarly, a location-based marketplace for buyers and sellers of both products and services; buyers post what they want, and people looking to earn money make offers to provide it. The company was born in February, when Fishback--a perpetual entrepreneur--attended"Startup Weekend"in Los Angeles. He pitched his idea Friday, had a working prototype by Sunday and says that Tuesday he closed $1 million in financing. (He already knew veteran investors, granted.) Two weeks later Zaarly launched in beta at South By Southwest Interactive in Austin, Tex. and did $10,000 worth of transactions. The service debuted in late May in several cities and by late August $3.4 million in transactions had been requested and 50,000 people had registered.
Fishback's whole life as a Net-centric businessman presumes social power."Empowered individuals are what drives Zaarly on both sides of our marketplace,"he says."On the buyer side it transcends typical marketplace dynamics where you can only buy what someone else is already selling. On the fulfiller [or seller] side this demand-driven market gives people a new way to work for themselves.”
If you want your company to tap into social power, a range of emerging software products can help you do so. Some aim to make it easier to conduct an ongoing dialogue with customers. But a thriving industry is also building tools to harness employee power inside a company. Four prominent businesses offer their version of a hybrid Twitter/Facebook for employees: Salesforce.com with its product Chatter, IBM with its Connections software, as well as startups Yammer and Jive, which just announced it intends to go public. The aim is to tap a company's internal social energy to speed collaboration and innovation. Craig Herkert, CEO of SuperValu, which owns or supplies over 4,000 U.S. grocery stores, is a convert to Yammer."With the old way, all information flowed via e-mail. Now store managers and support staff all over the country can post on Yammer what they're doing, what they're proud of, or say, ‘Hey, I've got a problem. Does anyone know how to fix it?' I have Yammer on my desktop, my laptop, my cellphone and my iPad. I can see what everyone is doing--that's radical transparency.”
A little Toronto startup called Rypple applies social thinking in a different way--for internal employee management. Its social evaluation tool lets everyone in a company rate everyone else and gives people continuous realtime feedback. It taps social and peer pressure to make job evaluation more effective at driving future performance. The product was largely developed in a beta installation at Facebook itself, whose internal organization strives to be flat and unbureaucratic. (At Facebook newly hired product engineers get a few weeks of technical training and then pick a team to work on.) Anne Benedict is senior vice president of Global Talent at MediaBrands, which has started rolling out Rypple to its 6,500 people."The highest-value employees are introspective enough to want feedback on themselves,"she explains."MediaBrands is a media agency, so the technology is perfect for us, because it promotes the use of social networking we preach to our clients.”

The humility and authenticity that social power demands of you can yield numerous benefits with customers and employees. Nadira Hira, 30, is writing a book to be published next year about at- titudes toward work in her generation, those who are roughly 16 to 32 years old today."What many companies get wrong when they think of ‘social' is they think of it as a marketing ploy, rather than as just a way of extending what you already really are as a company or a brand,"she says."If you do care about your employees and your customers, it allows you to show it and extend your reach."Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, used Twitter and his personal blog in late 2008 to announce and manage unexpected layoffs. He talked extensively about what was happening and how painful the process was for himself and others in the company. The layoffs went surprisingly smoothly, especially after he responded to feedback by, for example, extending an employee discount until after the holidays.
When confronting social power, you might as well jump in with both feet, because you just can't hide."One common mistake of old-school companies is to ban social media across the company,"says Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social, whose software helps businesses, mostly consumer brands, manage their social media."But at least in America our job is such an important part of our identity that most people want to talk about it. Passionate employees are going to talk about the brand and the company on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn."When her clients defend lock-down policies against social media, claiming they've successfully kept employees offline, Shih unleashes Hearsay's"rogue page finder."For one big company it recently turned up 60,000 different social media pages where employees mentioned or discussed company matters. (Not to mention the thousands of employee profiles on LinkedIn.) Hearsay's tools presume something elemental in a world of social power: that the empowerment of employees is directly tied to the empowerment of customers--because they will inevitably end up working, maybe even conspiring, together.
Ordinary people often seem better at managing and accessing information than the giant corporations they work for or buy from."Companies literally don't know what's being said about them,"says millennial maven Hira."They don't even Google themselves! But that's the first thing somebody will do if they're thinking about going to work at that company."This is a critical shift in power."In the old days the managers were on phone calls and in briefings. They had information,"says Chris Cox, who oversees product at Facebook."The underlings were just working away. But with technology that makes it easy to share and organize stuff, that imbalance goes away."Adds David Sacks, CEO of Yammer:" ‘Information is power' used to mean that hoarding information gave you power. Now we're seeing that sharing information is power. The more you can share, the more you can help other people--and the more it becomes apparent you're an expert and a valuable employee."Long before most of us saw it coming, Ray Ozzie, one of the software industry's most celebrated communications toolmakers, focused his product-development career on a shift toward social power. But he still doesn't think companies get it. Ozzie replaced Bill Gates as Microsoft's chief software architect after the company bought Groove Networks, which he founded. He left Microsoft last year."Individuals are elated with these new capabilities, yet corporations are as risk-averse as they always were. Many companies are hesitant to create a culture that permits self-empowerment because they are afraid of what might happen if people did things by themselves."Ozzie's creation of Lotus Notes back in the late 1980s aimed to arm employees with better information and allow them to collaborate in teams. But though it was a commercial success, Notes' potential to promote employee empowerment went mostly unrealized. Since then, however, powerful collaborative software--notably Facebook but also Skype, LinkedIn and other tools--has crept into corporations over the Net and in handbags and pockets, carried by employees bringing superior consumer software into the workplace. Companies are still scrambling to catch up, and most of them probably never will. Consumer technology will remain better and cheaper than what's made for business. The larger size of the consumer market attracts more investment and innovation, and economies of scale drive down prices--a formula at the heart of the relative empowerment of the individual over the company. David Stein, Co-CEO of Rypple, says that for ordinary employees"the expectation now is that the tools people use at work are as easy and fun as the ones they use in their personal life. If you use 1950s-based management systems, employees are going to revolt. They don't want to feel like ‘the man' is just telling them to do things."And at Skype, CEO Tony Bates isn't bothering to target the business market, because, as he says,"individuals are bringing it into business themselves. In many companies Skype is the number one form of communications.”
Shoshana Zuboff has been describing this fundamental shift toward individuals and social power since 2002. That's when the longtime Harvard Business School professor and historian co-wrote The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism. She says the clash between empowered people and hierarchical institutions was set in motion in the 1950s."The mass-production economy provided existential security for many, many people,"she says."That, in turn, produced a new human mentality--of a self-determining individual. This mentality was once the unique precinct of the elite: the wealthy, artists, poets, philosophers. And it became the mentality of everyone.”
She now argues for an urgent rethinking of how all business is conducted."We're talking about a fundamental shift away from a mass production model,"she says."Value has been understood as something companies create: How do I take what I have and sell it to you? But in this new world value is not created inside the organization. It rests in the unfulfilled needs and desires of the individual. Now I have to come to you and say, ‘Who are you? Tell me about yourself. How do you want to live?'"She says the music industry notoriously failed at this in the past decade."It brought forward the value it had created--the CD. And if you didn't want it, how did they respond? Well, how about if they hunt you down and put you in jail?”
An increasing number of enlightened companies aim to turn social power to their own advantage by putting customers not in jail but on a pedestal. They become healthily obsessed with what's said about them online. Gatorade now operates a full-time social media command center where it not only monitors what's said about it on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and elsewhere, but also intervenes when appropriate to clarify or offer assistance. And Domino's Pizza responded somewhat brilliantly to that egregious employee video in 2009 with a self-effacing social media and advertising campaign that did not pretend the incident hadn't happened. By mid-2010 it had regained market share and dramatically boosted online reputation and e-commerce sales. Farmers Insurance uses Hearsay Social's software to help 15,000 agents nationwide maintain their own Facebook pages. It has even begun marketing itself, aptly enough, in the Farmville game people play inside Facebook.
Ford takes cues from young people immersed in social media in how it designs cars and how it communicates."Digital suffrage is upon us,"proclaims Venkatash Prasad, Ford's high-wattage leader of product social networking efforts, in an e-mail."Everyone has a right to a byte of the action, and we have embraced this might of the byte within Ford, through the use of internal and external social networks."Prasad brags that Ford recently sent a car across America, tweeting:"Not a human in a car, a car."Adds Sheryl Connelly, Ford's manager of consumer trends, in another e-mail:"If you want to reach a millennial, you have to go where they live, and that means online. Millennials want more than engagement. They want their contributions to be meaningful.”
Accepting social power as inevitable can significantly change the kind of products you design. Coca-Cola is installing machines in fast-food restaurants that allow customers to formulate their own beverages. No longer choose just a Coke or Sprite. Now you can come up with new flavor combinations and other customizations that your newly empowered heart desires.
If you ignore these forces, you will probably fail. Says consultant and author Gary Hamel:"The underlying principles on the Web of natural hierarchy, transparency, collaboration and all the rest-- those characteristics are going to have to invade management. The idea of a hierarchy that fundamentally empowers the few and disempowers the many is more or less dead."To demonstrate what's possible in this new world, Hamel helped spearhead an online forum for Web-influenced management ideas at www.managementexchange.com.

Don't think that the trends in technology, and resulting social power, will ever give you a respite from the tides of change. Says Microsoft and Lotus veteran Ozzie:"All this was unstoppable from the moment somebody installed the first network--this steady march toward reducing friction and reducing transaction costs faced by individuals. And you ain't seen nothin' yet.”
Additional reporting by Adam Ludwig.

Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips

2011-09-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips for a Zoom Start! Pam Moore

There seems to be a mad rush to get on the social band wagon. Even though you and your business have been without Facebook, Twitter, a blog, LinkedIn or Google+ for your entire life and business history all of a sudden someone in your organization who has authority has decided you need to “get on social media,” by next Friday.

Whoooaaa horsey, slow down!

“Doing social” or “getting on social” is far different from being a social business.

This is the first in a series of posts I will be writing about being social versus doing social. For the purpose of this post let’s dive into the first question… Are you ready to BE social? Are you ready to BE a social BUSINESS?

10 Questions To Confirm If You’re Ready To Become a Social Business

1. WHY are you doing social media? Do not move to question two, do not pass go as you will not collect your $200 and will go straight to NO ROI jail if you can’t answer this question. Think about what social media can and will do for your business? How can it help you better meet your business goals? How can you better connect with your audience of clients, prospective clients, partners, media etc.? What benefits do you expect because of your efforts in social media? If your only answer to the “why” question is “my boss told me to” or “we have to because all of our competitors are doing it” then I challenge you to hit the pause button now. You are doing it for the wrong reasons.

2. Are you committed? Is your management committed? They need to be committed in both mind and wallet. Are you ready to put in the appropriate amount of resource, time and budget? Social media is not free. It will steal your greatest asset which is time. You must be committed to setting goals, objectives and building an integrated plan for success.

3. Can you put people before tools? This is critical. You must be willing to take a step back to take two steps forward. Stop focusing on learning every feature of every social network. Instead start with your business objectives, your audience and how you can help and connect with them.

4. Are you willing to invest in real people? Are you willing to invest in talking to people like they are human? In getting to know them? In learning what makes them tick? Learn what makes them happy, sad, excited, mad and inspired. The more you can learn about the audience the more you can develop and execute a plan that will deliver results.

5. Can you stop the random acts of social media? We call these rotten random acts of marketing and social media RAMs or RAMMIES. They are not good. They may feel good, taste good while you’re eating them. Hoewver, like a bad hangover they leave you feeling rotten, lifeless and out of gas when they’re done. They eat your bottom line and ROI for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Avoid them at all cost if you want success.

6. Can you spell INTEGRATION? I know this is a word that has been used for decades in business marketing. Some say it’s a word we should remove from our vocabulary. However, until they can tell me a better word to use to help people understand then I will continue to use it. Bottom line, to eliminate the RAMs in your business, marketing and social media you must integrate. Business leaders usually think integration and planning takes more time and is expensive. WRONG! Yes, it may take some time up front. However, the results can be exponential. You must know where you are going before you can get there. Integration is what helps you get there faster, more enjoyable and with far better return.

7. Can you accept failure? This is a big one. You at one point in social media will fail. You will make a mistake. You will launch a social network page that nobody will “like” initially. You will post post on your Facebook wall and nobody will comment or like except you and your mom. However, you can’t let the failures stop you. When it happens go back to your “why”. Go back to your plan. Go back to the ”how” you can help your audience. Focus on your audience and helping them meet their objectives and you will fail far less.

8.Are key departments in the game? The only way you are going to be able to deliver and execute an integrated plan that is focused on your audience that will help you meet business goals and objectives is if your key stakeholders and departments are in the game. If your customer service team is the main interface to the world outside of your office and they are not in support of the business doing social media then it is a recipe for disaster. We have worked with clients where we have spent the first year simply training them and helping them integrate social media into their business. We took 3 steps backward so we could help them take 10 steps forward. We have some case studies being documented but I can tell you the results and decision to do such has been exponential to if we would have rushed them onto Facebook. They now have an integrated platform with an internal team ready to zoom social media!

9. Can you handle the skeletons in the closet? If you properly integrate, work to eliminate the random acts of social media and focus on your audience I can almost guarantee most businesses there are going to be big skeletans that fall out of the closet. It’s okay. It happens to the best companies. There will be sales processes that fall out of the closet that are 100% broken, there will be customer service phone calls that are monitored that show where the bottleneck and black holes are for sales. The best thing you can do is throw the skeletons on the table and deal with them. Have a positive attitude and the rest of your team will too. You are taking a step to move forward. Don’t keep them locked in the closet as they’re bound to come out someday! Might as well deal with them now!

10. Do you have a social zoom agent? This is someone who is internal to your company. The person may or may not be you. It’s someone who will take on responsibility for the success of becoming a social business. If the social zoom agent is not an executive with authority then at minimum you need to have an executive social zoom champion who will support the social zoom agent. The agent will not pause until the job of becoming a social business is started in a really big way! They will own the success of the engagement, content, approach, strategy, integration. They will see to it randomness is avoided. There is only one result & that is success. This person must eat, sleep and breath a goal of becoming social business.

What you say?

So are you ready? Or do you have some work to do? First step is to admit if you have work to do. Social media is about communication. It’s about connecting with real people. If you can’t talk about the above 10 things internally you are not going to succeed when you venture out into the open, viral world of social media. Be open. Be honest. If you are empowered, take the lead within your organization to achieve success.

What tips can you share with others for how to start social media in the right way? What did you learn the hard way? What would you do different if you had it to do all over again?

Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

What’s Your Approach To Managing Performance

2011-09-16T07:29:00.001-07:00

What’s Your Approach To Managing Performance?
by David Brock on September 11th, 2011

As leaders and sales managers, a key aspect of our jobs is to manage performance. I find lots of different approaches people use, but at the core the approaches tend to reflect two completely different views of performance. (Stuart Cross has an interesting perspective, looking at 4 views–we’re actually not far apart, I’d encourage you to watch his short video on this.)

I find managers who are problem solving oriented and others who are developmental oriented.

The problem solving oriented manager is focused on today’s performance issues and addressing them. They look for shortcomings in current performance—someone not making their number, a person not making the right number of calls, a person needing sales skills development, enabling them to close more business. They focus on addressing today’s specific issues and crises. Their goal is to find and eliminate today’s problems.

Some of these problem solving oriented managers are terrible in their approaches—they don’t coach, they tell. They berate the individual, sometimes telling them to shape up or ship out. Other problem solving oriented managers can be very good coaches. They sit with their people, seek to understand the challenges people are having, and work to solve or eliminate problems. They work with each person on their team, knocking off each problem as it comes up.

There’s another approach some managers take to performance management, it’s a developmental approach. These managers take a slightly different perspective of performance management. Their focuse is not just on today’s issues–though that provides a foundation, but rather on developing the person to achieve their full potential — both in their current role and in future roles. They actively look to develop the capabilities of their people so they can step into bigger roles, take on more responsibility. Managers focused on a developmental approach to performance management seek to avoid problems in the future. They try to find ways of coaching the person, getting them to develop themselves, to stretch, to learn, to grow.

Developmental managers are not just concerned about their peoples’ performances today, they want to see them reach their full potential–contributing in greater ways to the organization and to their own attainment. They have a proactive approach to performance management–not only focused on great performance today, but sustaining and improving that performance over time.

What kind of manager are you? How do you manage performance? Do you focus on today’s problems and address only the performance issues of your people today? Do you look at today, and tomorrow? Do you help your people identify and avoid problems? Are you focused on helping them achieve their full potential–both for themselves and for the organization?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:http://partnersinexcellenceblog.com

INSTANT MBA: Your Customers Own You

2011-09-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Karlee Weinmann Sep. 13, 2011 Business Insider

Domino's has learned tremendously since an unfortunate YouTube video surfaced in 2009.

Its CEO Patrick Doyle says that the company is now completely customer-focused.

"They own your brand ... You have to make sure they know you're listening to them, and make changes based on their expectations. As we've shown, it can lead to pretty dramatic business results for you as well."

Consumers' perception of Domino's quality went from positive to negative in a matter of days after the video went viral, according to YouGov, which surveys 1,000 consumers daily about hundreds of brands.

In response, Domino's revamped its menu and launched a new social media strategy. Sales jumped 14.3 percent after the reworked recipe debuted.

So far, the company's newfound transparency has resonated with customers.

KB's notes;

Over the years I have witnessed what seems like countless small business owners who have great products and great enthusiasm for their products and businesses. What so many fail to acknowledge is that THE MARKET IS HOLY. What does that mean? It means that you can think, feel and believe whatever you want about what people should do, how they should feel about your products/service or why your mousetrap is the best. The reality is that is archaic thinking left over from an era of when people had fewer choices, minimal access to information (remember the Sears Roebuck catalog) and typically focused on single brands. Today we have more choices than ever before. We have instant access to product details, consumer reviews and even price comparisons all at the click of a mouse and available almost instantaneously.

Well what does all that mean? It means that the MARKET IS HOLY. The market will tell you, assuming you care to listen, what they want in product details, how they expect your marketing $s to be spent, how they expect your return process to work, how they expect your customer service to work and how you should package your products. You have the choice Mr. Small / Medium businessman. Will you be customer centric or wonder why your business is struggling while you are continuing to do things your way. The Market IS HOLY and it tells us what & how they choose to be serviced. 9 times out of 10 if you won't offer them products and services the way they want it they will find someone who does.

Listen to the market, listen to your customer, listen to your customer facing employees about what the MARKET SAYS IS HOLY.

How to Set Up Sales Territories

2011-09-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

Deciding how to divide sales territories create the most efficient environment for your sales team is more difficult than just drawing lines on a map.
By Tim Donnelly | @timdonnelly | Sep 2, 2011 -Inc Magazine

When you're looking at the map and figuring out how to split up sales territories, how do you decide which salesperson to send to drive all up and down North Dakota and which one gets to just walk a few blocks around downtown Manhattan?

Deciding how to divide sales territories create the most efficient environment for your sales team is more difficult than just drawing lines on a map. The process requires a good dose of foresight that's needed to make sure you allow room for the company to grow.

Poorly aligned sales territories can cause low employee morale, lost clients and squandered resources. Experts from the fields of sales management and data analytics share these tips for setting up the best sales territories.

Keep Your Ultimate Goal in Mind When Establishing Sales Territories

Before you start carving up the map and sending your sales team out into the world, take some time to think about what you're trying to accomplish.

"Start at the top: what is the target revenue, the overall revenue goal?" says Marie Warner, president of Warner Professional Sales. "Given that goal, what are my targets? Once I have those targets, how am I going to sell to them?"

If you're a start-up, you can't come right out of the gate hiring a huge sales force. You have to start strategically by meeting revenue goals in small areas and then gradually growing the territories.

"It's like a chess game," she says. "Do not do point to point; try to think moves ahead."

By the time you've built up a base with a sales team and some clients, you can start thinking about how to allocate the sales staff.

"When you've got 10, 25, 50 salespeople in the field, that's when you start to look at how to create balanced territories that are matching your investment in salespeople," says Ralph Rothfelder, president of Mapping Analytics.

Doing some preliminary planning will help you identify the qualities that will help you set up all your sales territories in the future: what kind of clients you're going after, where they're located, and how much resources it will take to reach them.

Collect Lots of Data

Many companies these days use some form of analytics software to figure out the best way to establish their sales territories. But experts say the quality of the outcome is only as good as the data you can feed into it.

Most pros say they start by ranking customers or clients into different categories based on the percentage of revenue they generate vs. the time spent servicing them. The "A" clients might be the most reliable ones, the "Bs" and "Cs" might be promising but work-intensive clients, while the rest are require a lot of effort for little return.

Basically, you want to be able to distinguish what makes one account different from another, says Alex Machinis, president CEO and founder of Empower Geographics. Does geography matter at all, or can you deal with clients without putting your sales team behind a windshield?

You should collect data about the location of the customer (whether physical or virtual), how much time a salesperson needs to spend on the phone with them and their order history. Analytics programs can spit out a model to show you what each hypothetical sales area would look like in terms of size and profitability.

"After that it's a function of what data is important to you to look at with respect to making decisions relevant to territories," Rothfelder says. "What makes a good territory for you?"

More than half of businesses still use nothing more complicated than an Excel spreadsheet to split up the sales load.

"If it's complex at all, you really can't do a good job," he says. "It's amazing how many companies, even large ones, are not taking advantage of the tools that are out there to do a much better job."

Each company needs to decide for itself if it needs to hire an outside consultant to come in and establish the sales territories. But the option to do it in-house is easier than ever: sales territory alignment software used to cost up to $6,000 per company; now you can download it for $29, he says.

Review the Sales Territories Periodically

Sales managers make a common mistake of blaming the territory for a bad salesperson. While a certain member of the team may be better at locking down clients than another, you shouldn't be messing with the territory boundaries to help the weaker employee.

"One of the biggest helps I convince people of is to try to get away from the quality of the sales reps," says Phil Brennan, president of Analytics In Focus. "You can hire better sales reps. You want your territories to be balanced. Even if your sales rep isn't cutting it, don't give them a smaller territory; get a better sales rep for that territory."

In addition to undermining your sales team, messing with the territories too often could hurt your relationship with customers in those territories.

"Clients and prospects do not like to see a continuing stream of new faces," Warner says. "Looking ahead is so key. You have to monitor it but if you continually tweak it you are shooting yourself in the foot."

You should, however, perform regular maintenance on the territories and you may have to tweak them to make sure they are functioning properly.

Machinis says most companies shouldn't expect to get it right on the first try and should review territories once a year.

"It takes time to do it right," he says.

Brennan says when a company is first starting out, its goal should be to create sales territories that stay valid for about a year. Once established, you can go three to five years without having to touch the territories. But the key is planning ahead so that even if you can't start with the full sales staff you want, you are prepared for growth.

"It's better to design a year ahead and not fill them until you can afford to than to be realigning every three months," he says.

Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

Facebook Ads-5 Tips for Success

2011-08-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

Facebook Ads: 5 Tips for Success
Leyl Master Black - MASHABLE

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Facebook Ads have emerged as a popular and cost-effective way to promote a small business online. According to recent research from MerchantCircle, 22% of small businesses have used Facebook Ads, and 65% say they would use Facebook Ads again, citing ease and flexibility as the top reasons to run another campaign. But not everyone enjoys success with Facebook Ads — among the one-third of users who say they wouldn’t run another campaign, nearly 70% say that it didn’t work to acquire new customers.

With this in mind, here are five tips to ensure you’re set up for success with Facebook Ads:

1. Set Goals and Plan Your Approach Accordingly

The first step is understanding what you want to achieve with your ad. Are you looking to building awareness for your company, drive traffic to your web site, promote a specific event or generate sales?

Facebook offers a number of different ad options that work to achieve different objectives. If you’re looking to build awareness and grow your fan base, you might want to start with standard marketplace ads. These ads point to your Facebook Page and allow users to “like” your page directly within the ad unit. If you already have a sizable fan base, you might also try a “Page Like” sponsored story, in which the ad shows friends who have liked your Page.

“Targeting with Facebook Ads allows you to advertise to the right people based on their real interests. You can even target people who are friends with people who already “like” your Page. This social context will show up around the ad,” says Grady Burnett, VP of global marketing solutions at Facebook. “A study from Nielsen shows that on average, people are 68% more likely to remember seeing an ad with social context than without, twice as likely to remember the ad’s message and four times as likely to purchase.”

When you want to promote a particular post from your page, such as a special offer or important news, you can also use “Page Post” sponsored stories to convert your post into a News Feed item.

But this approach isn’t limited to your own posts; Burnett also notes that “you can use Sponsored Stories — Facebook’s newest marketing tool — to help surface the word-of-mouth recommendations about your business that are already happening in the News Feed. For example, you can sponsor stories about people checking in to your business or “liking” your Page.”

Whatever your goals and approach, make sure that you are set up to measure success. While click-through rate (CTR) is an important metric to track, it’s not the only one, and according to Webtrends, the average CTR for Facebook ads is only about 0.05%, which is half the industry standard of 0.1%. Clint Fralick, VP of client services at social media agency Pandemic Labs, recommends that you aim instead for increases in comments, Likes, impressions and active users.

“If you pick up 500 new fans, but all those other numbers stay the same, you haven’t gotten them engaged — and you probably won’t make any money off them,” says Fralick.

2. Get Creative with Targeting

The Facebook ad interface makes it very easy to select the demographic profile of an audience you want to target, including age, sex, location, education level and interests, but it is also unique in its ability to micro-target very specific audiences.

Sheila Hibbard, founder of small business marketing firm The Marketing Bit, notes that while most advertisers come to Facebook with the traditional advertising mindset that says “more is better,” that isn’t the case with Facebook.

“It’s better to have a couple thousand very targeted people than tens of thousands of disinterested folks,” says Hibbard. She suggests that you zero in on a very specific target audience with your ads, even if it means reducing the size of your audience. For example, if you’re using Facebook Ads to promote an event or a seasonal sale, you might want to only target your existing fans, who may be more likely to respond to an immediate offer.

When targeting local audiences, Fralick also recommends that you look beyond self-reported location and “use every possible angle to find those locals,” since not everyone lists their city in their profiles. “Put the names of popular local businesses, colleges and clubs into the ad manager to find the people that city and zip code doesn’t,” Fralick says.

Another creative idea is to develop and target birthday ads, says Anthony Nitz, founder of Facebook marketing firm PageonFacebook.com.

“One of the most fun targeting methods is sending an ad that shows up the week before your fan’s birthday,” says Nitz. “I tell business owners to create an ad that links to video of them wearing a birthday hat or throwing confetti while delivering a birthday message, or their staff singing ‘Happy Birthday’ that ends with a special offer and a link to where they can download their special birthday-only coupon. I can assure you that when someone sees an ad in their sidebar that says ‘Happy Birthday,’ and they click on it and the guy from the local deli is singing Happy Birthday to them, it gets huge mileage.”

3. Choose Text and Images That Pop

When designing your ad, Facebook recommends that you write clear, targeted ads with concise text that speaks directly to the audience you will reach. Be sure to highlight any special offers or unique features that differentiate you from the competition. If your goal is brand and company name recognition, Facebook also suggests using your company name in the ad title or somewhere in the body of the ad.

While your ad can include up to 135 characters, Ben Nesvig of Fuzed Marketing cautions businesses “not to feel like you have to fill the entire ad. Sometimes a simple line does the trick.” For example, some experts recommend asking a question or making a bold statement rather than touting your features.

Either way, remember to include a call-to-action that encourages users to click on your ad and explains to the user exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page.

The pictures you choose for your ad are also critical, since this is what will catch people’s eye, and you should think beyond your logo.

“Typically the best photos for conversion are close face shots of people — smiling women tend to generate a high click rate,” says Harley Rivet of Deep Dish Digital. Rivet recommends that you avoid typical stock photos and instead try use more natural photos with colors that contrast with the blue color scheme of Facebook, such as red, yellow and orange.

4. Create and Test Multiple Ads

“One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners making is creating and running only one ad within each campaign,” says Caroline Melberg, founder of Small Business Mavericks. “Even the smallest change in the words you choose or the graphic you use can have a large impact on the click-through rate for your ad, so it’s best to create multiple versions of your ad and test them to see which ad gets the best response.”

Facebook makes this process easy: Once an ad has been created, you have the option to “Create a Similar Ad” and simply swap in a new picture or text.

Melberg suggests creating four different ads for the same campaign, running them for a day or so and then viewing your ad statistics on Facebook to discover which ad performed the best. You can then create a new ad that is similar to your best-performing ad, but tweak it just a bit to see if you can beat the previous performance.

And, don’t forget to swap out ads after a short period to reduce fatigue. According to WebTrends, social ads have a very short shelf life, with interest waning after three to five days.

5. Be Ready To Capitalize on the Traffic

According to Nesvig, a common mistake small businesses make with Facebook Ads is focusing on their ad while neglecting fresh content on their Facebook Page. “They might spend a $100 on ads, but the last update on their fan page was a month ago,” says Nesvig.

Fralick agrees. “Your ads are only as good as your Wall. Remember that most people don’t click through to your Facebook page; they click ‘like’ right in the ad. Have status updates or special offers planned that follow up on the messages in your ads, and get people to connect more than once.”

In fact, Fralick urges clients to think of a click as the beginning of the campaign, not the end. “When someone likes your page, they’re giving you permission to talk to them over and over again,” says Fralick. “That’s just as valuable as an outright sale.”

Have you run ads on Facebook? What was your experience? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Art of Asking Questions

2011-08-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

Ron Ashkenas HBR Blog Network

1:39 PM Tuesday August 30, 2011

How well do you ask questions? From my experience, most managers don't think about this issue. After all, you don't usually find "the ability to ask questions" on any list of managerial competencies; nor is it an explicit part of the curriculum of business schools or executive educationprograms. But asking questions effectively is a major underlying part of a manager's job — which suggests that it might be worth giving this skill a little more focus.

We've all experienced times when we've failed at being good questioners, perhaps without realizing it. For example, not long ago I sat in on a meeting where a project team was reviewing its progress with a senior executive sponsor. During the presentation it was clear from his body language that the executive was uncomfortable with the direction that the team was taking. As a result, without any real questioning of the team, he deferred approval of the next steps until he could have a further discussion with the team leader. When he met with the team leader later, he ripped into him for allowing the team to go off-course. Eventually the team leader was able to explain the thinking behind the plan, convinced the executive that they would indeed achieve their objectives, and was given the go-ahead to proceed. But in the meantime the team had lost its momentum (and a week of productivity), and began to focus more on pleasing the sponsor rather than doing the project in the best way.

This is not an isolated incident. Many managers don't know how to probe the thought process of their subordinates, colleagues, and bosses — and instead make assumptions about the basis of their actions. And when those assumptions are wrong, all sorts of dysfunctional patterns can be created. In a financial services firm, for example, a major product upgrade was delayed by months because the product and IT managers had different assumptions about what was to be delivered by when, and kept blaming each other for delays. When a third party finally helped them to ask the right questions, they were able to come up with a plan that satisfied both, and quickly produced incremental revenue for the product.

There are three areas where improved "questioning" can strengthen managerial effectiveness; and it might be worth considering how you can improve your skills in each one.

First is the ability to ask questions about yourself. All of us fall into unproductive habits, sometimes unconsciously. Good managers therefore are always asking themselves and others about what they could do better or differently. Finding the right time and approach for asking these questions in a way that invites constructive and candid responses is critical.

Second is the ability to ask questions about plans and projects. The examples mentioned above both fall into this category. The challenge with questioning projects is to do so in a way that not only advances the work, but that also builds relationships and helps the people involved to learn and develop. This doesn't mean that your questions can't be tough and direct, but the probing needs to be in the spirit of accelerating progress, illuminating unconscious assumptions and solving problems. This is in contrast to some managers who (perhaps out of their own insecurity) ask review questions either to prove that they are the smartest one in the room, or to make someone squirm. On the other hand, many of the best managers I've seen have an uncanny ability to engage in Socratic dialogue that helps people reach their own conclusions about what can be done to improve a plan or project, which of course leads to much more ownership and learning.

Finally, practice asking questions about the organization. Although usually unspoken, managers have an obligation to always look for ways that the organization as a whole can function more effectively. To do this, they need to ask questions about practices, processes, and structures: Why do we do things this way? Is there a better approach? Asking these questions in a way that does not trigger defensiveness and that is seen as constructive is an important skill for managers.

Most of us never think about how to frame our questions. Giving this process some explicit thought however might not only make you a better manager; it might also help others improve their inquiry skills as well.

Tip: Look at Your Company Through the Eyes of Your Customer

2011-08-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

Modern Distribution Mag MDM Blog, Management Tips
August 24,2011

In distribution, it's often said that relationships are the core of the business. But be careful not to lull yourself into a false sense of security just because you have the "relationship" with the customer. Having the "relationship" is often an excuse for simply being lazy, says Ross Elliott in How Well Do You Really Know Your Customers? You don't work the account the way you would an account you are trying to win. You count the customer's business as being in the "bank."

The world today demands more, he says. Customers demand more. And it starts with looking at the company through the eyes of the customer to really understand what they want. Is it just a buddy relationship, or do they trust you enough to share the challenges they are facing? Do they trust that you have the expertise to help them succeed? Will they tell you when (and where) they’re looking to expand?

Or will they take that to your competitor who appears more interested in their business?

Customer-centric companies don't just rely on the relationship; they build on it with information and tailored responses. They collect data on the where the customer wants to go, not just when his kids' baseball games are. They view their customers as partners, and not just things to be won or lost.

Facebook Posting Techniques that Really Work

2011-08-22T08:09:00.001-07:00

Facebook Posting Techniques that Really Work

August 18, 2011 by Mikal E. Belicove
There’s a fine line between a scientific approach to marketing on Facebook and a haphazard shotgun approach. For those of you who prefer not to "point and shoot," a new study from a San Francisco-based social media strategy firm offers an in-depth analysis of the top 20,000 Facebook Pages and up to a quarter million posts in an effort to determine the most useful posting techniques.

In the just-released report called Engagement and Interaction: A Scientific Approach to Facebook Marketing (link opens a PDF file), Momentus Media. provides answers to the seven most frequently asked questions by Facebook page administrators:

When’s the best time to post? While weekends and off-peak hours from 2pm to 5am are the times when page admins are least likely to add a new post, those are the posts that receive the highest interaction rates. Thursdays, on the other hand, shoulder the highest number of postings during the week and the lowest interaction rate. And since a high level of postings results in a lower interaction rate from users, it only stands to reason that posting in off-peak hours means you’ll gain more interaction from fans.

How many times should I post per day? You’d think too many posts would offend your followers but the report suggests frequent posting increases interaction. As you might suspect, fewer posts reduce the chances users will see them. And while unsubscribe rates go up after three posts per day, they level off at higher frequencies. The secret is to find that balance between optimizing interaction and managing unsubscribes, which is going to be different for every business.

What type of content elicits the most interaction? By far, photos generate the highest interaction rate for the six varieties of content, with status updates ranking No. 2. Others -- in descending order -- include video, music and links. The fact that links are at the bottom is interesting, considering they are posted the most often. Photos rank at the top because they’re visual, easy to digest and they elicit emotion.

Should I ask fans to Like or Comment on my posts? Absolutely. Just by taking advantage of a "Like" call to action boosts your interaction rate by 216 percent. Momentus Media analyzed 49,266 Page posts, comparing interaction rates for posts with "Like" and "Comment" calls to action and those without. And while only 1.3 percent of status messages had a call to action attached, those who used "Like" or "Comment" showed a huge boost in interaction rates.

Should I ask my fans questions? You’d think that by asking questions you’d get a better interaction rate, but such is not the case. However, Facebook page admins looking to achieve the highest comment rate should pose questions and then directly ask for fans to reply with comments.

How long should my status messages be? According to this study, size does matter. While there’s a higher posting rate for shorter posts (especially those that stay within the 140-character limit for cross-posting purposes on both Twitter and Facebook), interaction increases as the length of the status message increases.

How long do my messages remain in the Newsfeed? In the first hour of a Facebook status update, half of the users who will click on the post will have done so, with 90 percent of the clicks occurring within nine hours of the post going live.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

How to Delegate Like Donald Trump

2011-08-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the simple stuff is the most powerful.

Kristi Hedges, ContributorA few weeks ago, my business partner and I were leading a workshop for senior executives on the topic of creating change through personal influence. Our client was in the midst of a market shift, requiring it to realign strategy and execute new processes quickly. Our role was to ignite energy and ideas to equip leaders to enable that change.

We had assembled big, engaging ideas to present, and somewhat reluctantly included a section on delegation. Delegation is not particularly sexy content to cover. It feels too obvious, particularly for a seasoned professional audience. We planned to go over it quickly as a refresher.

As it turns out, the part on delegation was the most discussed and valued part of the entire workshop! We ended up getting our own refresher on the appetite for improving this evergreen issue. Weak delegation plagues most of us, and frustrates us by producing substandard outcomes. From GE to Google, organizations hinge on crisp and effective delegation.

After all, there’s more opportunity to trip over the routine actions.

It struck me that others might benefit from a delegation tune up, so I’m throwing the ideas out into the world. Think of channeling your inner Donald Trump — bear with me here, I realize he’s a love him or hate him kind of figure. But when it comes to asking and getting what you want, he’s doing all right. (And you can figure out your own take on his style.)

1. Be obvious.

This is the first point in effective delegation because it’s the most essential. You are more likely to get what you want the more explicitly you ask for it. A good request has a firm:

WHO: This is a specific person or people, not a team, group of people in a meeting, or the royal we, i.e. We need a new process here!
WHAT: These are the specific deliverables or outcomes you are looking to receive. In general, the better you can visualize them, the clearer they will be for the other person. Use examples if you have them.
WHEN: This is a calendar date and time. COB, ASAP, tomorrow AM, beginning of next week, etc. are recipes for miscommunication (and potential frustration).

The process seems easy enough, but consider how common weak delegation is and how different it sounds when strengthened:

Weak: This team needs to come up with a new marketing plan ASAP.

Strong: John and Amy, I’d like you to develop a new marketing plan and present it back to the team next Wednesday at 2 PM. It should look similar to the one you did last year for the product launch.

Weak: Brian, you need to be more proactive with that customer request.

Strong: Brian, I’d like you to call the customer today by 5 PM and develop an agreed upon schedule for the delivery. Then email the client a status report every Friday by noon until it’s complete.

For many people, the “strong” options feel too much like micromanaging or bossiness. (Or a common reaction is “I shouldn’t have to say it…they should know!”) Of course you can have a good back and forth until you get to the actual delegation. But think of it this way, wouldn’t everyone rather be clear about expectations than guessing? When everyone knows what to expect it saves time and produces better results.

2. Provide context.

Giving context takes more time, and is often skipped for that reason or because shared understanding is assumed. Err on the side of redundancy. Take a few minutes up front to tell the person WHY the delegated project is important, how it fits in or will be used, and what has worked before. At times you can even give a past example as a guide. Don’t presume the other person wants a blank slate for creativity. If you need a new sales report for the board, show one you like — the employee can then negotiate how much of their own spin they want to put into it.

3. Don’t be vague as a courtesy.

As mentioned above, we often avoid being specific because it feels discourteous. This becomes exacerbated when dealing with a person in a higher position at work. In most companies, leaders have to delegate not just to their direct reports, but to colleagues and those above them. Being purposefully vague feels safer, and less likely to appear stepping out of bounds. However, I can tell you that it’s one thing to be polite, and it’s quite another to be unspecific. Higher ups are busy, and will respect you more if you save them the time by being clear about what you want them to do. They realize they can say no. Try something like, “Here’s what would be ideal (WHO, WHAT, WHEN, CONTEXT). How would that work for you?”

4. Make the ask.

As Wayne Gretzky so memorably put it, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Even when it involves a professional superior or distant colleague, you will get further if you simply ask. We all self-censor, even coaches who are teachers of this work! It’s human nature. (I recently had a friend give me a swift kick in the pants when I was vacillating on asking for high-profile endorsements for my new book.) Recognize that it’s a natural feeling, and respectfully ask for what you want. After all, Donald would.

Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

Taking your company overseas? Look before you leap.

2011-08-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Sure, emerging markets provide opportunities for tremendous growth in business. But companies need to do their homework before going abroad.

By Shelley DuBois, writer-reporter

FORTUNE -- Ask just about any CEO about the best growth strategy, and you'll hear about faraway places. Business leaders, frustrated with sluggish developed markets, are looking abroad for future growth.

This can be a great approach for many companies, asFortune pointed out last week. But while executives may feel the need to enter emerging markets to grow as fast as investors want, many mistakenly assume that a U.S.-born business plan will succeed abroad.

In fact, an overwhelming majority of companies enter emerging markets without doing their homework before setting up shop in other countries, says Randy Allen, associate dean for international and corporate relations at Cornell's Johnson School of Management.

Emerging markets may be attractive, but companies looking for an easy growth spurt are getting in over their heads. There are a couple of key points to consider before rushing abroad.

A BRIC imagination

"There is no such thing as BRIC," says David Martin, an emerging markets specialist with Deloitte Consulting. BRIC, a term coined by Goldman Sachs (GS), refers to the pack of countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- considered ripe for new business.

But BRIC is a false grouping. For one, Russia has been much less exciting to big business since the downturn in 2008. And, in general, countries shouldn't be clumped together because each requires a distinct strategy. Even within countries, differences between regions make for different markets. The differences between, say, urban and rural areas in China require distinct business plans that take into account everything from consumer preferences to transportation.

While many companies think that making their products cheaper by removing features is the equivalent of tailoring them to emerging markets, Martin says, but they're wrong. While some markets may demand less expensive products, "you don't have unsophisticated consumers," he says, "they know what they're getting."

Word is bond?

Like consumer preferences, local legal systems in emerging markets can vary. In the United States, the contract is a strong binding force for businesses. But contract agreements in emerging markets can bend. In many markets, the strength of a deal depends more on a long-lasting relationship than a signed piece of paper, says Benjamin Jones, an associate professor at Northwestern's Kellogg school of management. Even those relationships can be jeopardized by fluctuations in the political climate.

Enron suffered from this problem (among other things) with its Dabhol power plant in India. In 1992, the company began a $2.9 billion power plant project with the Dabhol Power Company, backed by the Indian government. Starting in 1994, an opposing political candidate ran on an anti-Enron platform, and won, setting off a legal back-and-forth that ultimately forced Enron to pull out of the project.

Companies are also facing difficulties with intellectual property rights abroad. In China, for one, proprietary information is proving hard to protect. Just this past week, Chinese authorities have identified 22 retail outlets in Kunming city copying the the iconic Apple store .

There are a couple of ways that companies are trying to sidestep patent issues, says Jones. One is the same tactic used on the Ford (F) Model-T assembly-lines: manufacturers build parts of products in different facilities, making them difficult to reverse-engineer. An alternative method is to form partnerships with local companies or governments, Jones says, to "make sure they have some skin in the game."

You're not the only show in town

Either way, emerging market consumers and businesses are redefining the terms of engagement with companies from larger economies. Companies looking to slap a Western business model on operations abroad are going to be sorely disappointed.

"Many advanced countries still have a colonial mindset, of 'we invent here, we commercialize it, and now it's possible to market it there,'" says Jagdish Sheth, a professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School.

The colonial mindset won't work anymore. In fact, many countries require multinationals to transform their business models to gain access to their market. Take India, which has tariff laws that make it much easier to import computer components than finished computers, which pressures manufacturers to produce in their country.

Other U.S.-based companies are competing for these markets too. Most big multinationals have already staked their claim. Now, medium-size companies are scrambling not just for a piece of the action, but for talent as well.

For example, one of Deloitte's clients outlined plans to hire 20,000 Chinese employees over two years. "I've talked to three of your competitors," Martin told the client, "and I've read about four others. I can't tell you there aren't 20,000 people with the skill set you need, but I can tell you there aren't 120,000."

It was a wake-up call, Martin said. For companies who are eyeing overseas expansion, it's far better to have one of those before you make the leap.

B2B Or Not B2B: Does B2B Social Marketing Work?

2011-08-15T11:13:00.001-07:00

B2B Or Not B2B: Does B2B Social Marketing Work?

BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER DAVID LAVENDAWed Aug 10, 2011

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.

Social media has become an important tool for marketing to consumers. But what about in the business to business (B2B) space?

Depending on what you read or who you talk to, social media is either one of the most important components of a B2B marketing program because so many influencers are online, or it is completely ineffective because so few business buyers are active in social media for business purposes.

Conflicting views of the efficacy of the new technology are not surprising, particularly in light of the dearth of convincing ROI sales metrics. Sales metrics looks at how much business was actually generated from social media outreach, not the number of comments or re-tweets, or a sentiment analysis score. While there are so few data points for sales impact, there is no shortage of B2B marketing-site predictions of how much money marketers are going to spend on digital marketing, or how many are already spending money on digital marketing. Some even point to B2B social-media "successes," which almost always mention technology companies.(Here is one example.) But none of these studies point to sales metrics. Admittedly, digital marketing encompasses more than social networks, but certainly a significant portion of marketing dollars are earmarked for social media.

Referring specifically to Twitter, all the success stories on the Twitter site, reference business to consumer (B2C) cases. Where are the B2B success stories? I suspect there aren’t that many.

I also suspect the impact of B2B social marketing is less significant than reading business magazines would lead you to believe. Here are some (admittedly unscientific) findings that I have noted in the last few months:

At the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference, a panel session featured 5 people responsible for collaboration in their (very large) companies. Of the 5, only 3 had "obvious" Twitter accounts; and between the three, none had more than a handful of followers or tweets.
At a recent SharePoint Conference, approximately 10% of attendees of a session on SharePoint business challenges had a Twitter account. This compares to the approximately 8% of American adults who have access to Twitter. Not much of a difference, but I would have expected much more from a crowd of technologists whose jobs center around enterprise collaboration.
While following up on a very-successful survey that looked at the impact of digital distractions in the workplace, I looked for the Twitter handles of reporters who covered the story. Guess what? Of the many tier-1 business and technical press reporters, more than half didn’t have Twitter handles, and of those who did, hardly any had more than 10 followers.

Putting Twitter aside, let’s take a quick look at LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a great B2B marketing resource, but mostly for research--e.g., getting information on companies and people, not for reaching business buyers with ads. My own attempts to market on LinkedIn have generated some good quality leads, but at extremely low volumes. Interestingly, a recent study by Performics found that almost 60% of active social networkers said that LinkedIn was their most important social network. Sounds great, but it turns out that this is mostly because people are looking for jobs, according to Perfomics’ CEO Daina Middleton.

My experience with trying to reach business buyers with ads on Facebook as also produced very poor results.

I am sure that by now many of you are thinking that social media is not about advertising, it is about creating relationships with people so you can educate them about problems, solutions, and generally becoming a valuable resource. I totally get it. I think this is a great way to reach out and touch people and that is in fact the primary value in social marketing B2B. But two important questions remain: Are the people you are trying to reach, using these channels, and if they are, how can you calculate the value of B2B social media from a sales perspective? Before you blow the budget on social-media outreach, you should be able to answer these questions.

13 SIMPLE WAYS TO HANDLE “IT COSTS TOO MUCH”

2011-08-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

13 SIMPLE WAYS TO HANDLE “IT COSTS TOO MUCH”

LeapZone | Branding & Business Ideas for Entrepreneurs » 13 Simple Ways To Handle “It Costs Too Much” http://ow.ly/63FiH

I recently read a great article by sales trainer Geoffrey James and wanted to share it with you. As small business owners, we are all too familiar with the “It Costs Too Much” objection from a client and most of us don’t quite know how to handle it effectively. We are uncomfortable and unwilling to dig deeper and find out WHY?

Meanwhile, “It Costs Too Much” is the single most common objection to a sales pitch. When that phrase (or something like it) comes up, it means that you haven’t yet shown the prospect that your offering is valuable enough to justify the price. Your next move should be to ask for clarification, so that you know how to adjust the cost/value equation.

Below are thirteen questions you can ask when you receive the “it costs too much” response. These questions will move the conversation forward and get you the information you’ll need to reposition your product. When using any of these questions, you should preface them with a phrase that confirms that you’ve heard and understood the objection. (Examples: No problem, Just out of curiosity…, I understand that cost is always an issue.., etc…)

Here are the questions:

When you say it costs too much, what do you mean?”
What has been your past experience with solutions like ours?”
How do you know that it costs too much?”
What do you know about us or our industry?”
What has been your past experience with companies like ours?”
What are some of your priorities around _________?”
What if our solutions weren’t really expensive at all?”
What if it turned out that we didn’t really cost as much as you thought?”
What if we really could solve the problem of __________?”
What if we really could generate a measurable business value?”
What if we could help you create a competitive advantage?”
What if we could show you how our solution would actually save money?”
How do you plan to handle this problem or opportunity without our offering?”

What’s important is that it not seem as if you’re questioning the validity of the objection, but rather to change the way that the prospect views the cost issue. The “no problem” and the “just out of curiosity”, provide the bridge to keep the conversation going and give you the opportunity to show that your offering has value that more than offsets the cost.

Leap of the Week:
If and when the excuse is about money, let me assure you that it’s NOT. It’s about the perceived lack of value for the amount of money asked. So, re-read the above questions carefully and keep them close by when reviewing a proposal with a client. Digging deeper always pays off. Give it a try and you’ll see, it’s much easier than you think.

Kevin Brown-www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

Amazing Tidal Surge From Japanese Earthquake-Dana Point California

2011-08-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

Wife and I went down to harbor to view-someone on docks took some amazing video!

Title Surge in Harbor Near My Home Following 2010 Chilean Earthquake

2011-08-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

http://youtu.be/x3Gj-1w0X1U

How I'm Using Google+ (Hint: It's About Relevance)

2011-08-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Posted by Melissa Parrish on August 8, 2011

If you were to glance at my Google+ profile, you’d probably think I’m practically inactive. But what you’re seeing is the public view of a very targeted set of actions, based on relevance.

I like to have different kinds of conversations with different people, so when I share content it’s with circles that designate not only relationship but topics too, and Google+ makes it really easy for me to be highly relevant in this way. Take, for example, politics. I like to talk about it, but I’m rarely interested in fighting, so when I share a politically focused news article, it’s not enough to be in my Friends circle. To see it, you have to be in my Friends-Politics circle, where I’ve included people who I know I’ll have an interesting conversation with that won’t result in insults and multiple exclamation points.

There is one thing missing if relevance is an aim of the platform. As of today, my relevance-based circles only apply to what I share with others. What would be especially helpful would be a way to limit the content I see from others in that circle to the topic I’ve assigned it. For example, I’m following Christian Oestlien, one of the Google+ product managers, specifically for updates about Google+. So while the YouTube music videos and Onion articles he posts are probably funny, I can’t say I’m particularly interested in seeing them from him. Now, if one of the people in my Friends-Hilarious circle posted them, that’s another story . . ..

So what are the implications for brands?

Once business pages become available, brands may get the most from Google+ by prioritizing relevance over scale, regardless of how quickly the user base grows. If your audience uses the service like I do, it’s going to be in your best interest to get your brand in our Brands-Deals I’ll Use or our Brands-Great Links or our Brands-Things I Want For My Birthday circles. You’re not going want to end up in Brands-General.

Since business pages haven’t been revealed yet, I can only offer ideas on how brands might be able to accomplish this, but 2 possibilities come to mind:

1) Brands can launch their Google+ presences with a single, focused content theme first (deals, links, new products, etc.). This would mean that users who add you to their circles are interested in that specific content. Then your interaction with customers will be around that particular content theme so engagement expectations will be set on both sides.

2) Consumers could tell the brand what type of content they want, and the brand would create circles and share content accordingly. If business pages work mostly like consumer pages do today, then this would be a manual process involving something like comments from users, spreadsheets, and manual circle creation -- probably not something a lot of brands will have the time and energy to do. But this could be a really compelling strategy if Google were to build an easy way for marketers to collect content-theme “opt-ins” and auto-populate circles based on that info. That would allow marketers to diversify the content they’re sharing to maximize the size of their Google+ audience, while still respecting relevance needs.

What business pages will do remains to be seen, and it’ll be some time before true user trends emerge that will show whether I’m alone on the relevance thing or not. In the meantime, what do you think? Is Google+ all about relevance for you? How are you using the platform?

Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com

Modern PR Tactics: Blending The Old & The New

2011-08-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

Topic: Small Business MarketingQuick, what does the term "public relations" mean? If a variety of answers popped into your head, youre on the right track. “Public relations” is a fairly broad term that can have different meanings depending on the company, objective and situation. A large corporation might see it as a tactic that puts it in a good light with the public at large. A government agency or nonprofit association might see it as a direct voice to residents and members on a variety of different issues. A small business may view it as an opportunity to generate name recognition and free advertising for their products and services. Still others regard it as a response mechanism to unforeseen or unplanned news or crisis.

All of these viewpoints –as well as many others—are correct. Public relations plays an integral role in the operations of businesses and organizations of all sizes. And thanks to the Internet and Web-based services, it’s become an even more valuable and versatile tool in getting your business’ name in front of prospective customers and landing more of them on your Web site, Facebook page or other online property.

HIT-OR-MISS

Before the Internet took hold in our daily lives, public relations activities were largely hit-or-miss. A business owner or staffer (or an agency, if the business had the means to afford its services) would come up with a catchy, news angle for a press release, story pitch or media advisory to send to the local media in hopes of getting some coverage. And by “send”, we mean faxed or mailed, as this was the preferred method of receiving information before e-mail became standard in newsrooms and magazine production offices. This usually was followed up with a phone call to the recipient.

The topic and its appeal to readers typically determined whether a business would receive coverage. Having established media contacts was important as well. However, despite the strategy and planning in pushing an announcement or information to a media outlet, uncertainty was a given. If successful, a business could expect a few lines in the publication or perhaps even a phone interview with a reporter interested in its proposed topic. But more often than not, that mailed press release or story pitch ended up in the wastebasket instead of on the mind of an editor or reporter.

Regardless, engaging in public relations activities geared toward print publications, radio and television outlets was still important, as these were the primary means by which prospective customers got their information. This all changed when a little technology called the Internet came along and changed the way people found information. Instead of picking up a newspaper, magazine or phone book, they instead went online. This changed the dynamics of not only the dissemination of information on local, national and worldwide levels, it also significantly altered press release distribution tactics.

A NEW AND IMPROVED WAY

As the Internet expanded into our personal and professional lives, so did the number of services offered through it. These include press release distribution services, article submission sites and directories, blogs, and other venues that allow users to distribute their information online. Unlike the uncertainty that comes with sending a press release to a member of the media and not knowing if and when it will run, this method almost guarantees that information will be available to interested parties. In some instances, the copy is live and on the Internet instantly; in others, the press release distribution service may have to approve the copy first, which may take a few days.

And it’s not just confined to one page of one edition of a publication. Unlike communication vehicles of the past, individuals are now actively searching out information through search engines, in which press releases, articles and blog posts can appear. Additionally, RSS feeds, other Web sites and blogs regularly pick up articles of interest and link to them or repurpose them, resulting in even greater exposure.

This new approach to public relations still relies on the fundamental strategies that have proved successful for decades, such as producing clear, concise and attention-grabbing headlines and copy. Press releases have essentially remained the same in terms of format and look. What’s different is the manner and speed with which they’re distributed.

In addition to building awareness and exposure, these online publications can also be a valuable component of a business’ search engine optimization (SEO). Inserting key terms back-linked to pages on your Web site can not only trigger an action from the reader—such as visiting the site to learn more or purchasing or scheduling a service—it also helps build the SEO power needed to ensure that your Web site and online pages have prominence in online search results.

Today’s public relations activities are no longer just a way to garner a short mention in the local daily or to promote an upcoming event. By taking advantage of online services and tactics, you’ll discover an affordable (and oftentimes free) and effective way to educate your prospective customer base about your business and, ultimately, increase sales.

Eric Richard is the senior technology writer for Appointment-Plus, a cloud-based scheduling software application that has booked over 60 million appointments since 2001

The Top Five Social Media Mistakes

2011-08-05T06:48:00.001-07:00

Sure you're marketing with Twitter and Facebook, but are you doing it well? Here are the most common traps you might be falling into.
By Starr Hall http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220099

No matter how you slice it, reaching out, connecting and having conversations with customer online costs a business owner time and money. Could your social-media efforts be yielding better results?

Here's a list of the biggest mistakes I've seen business owners make with social media and how to avoid them.

1. Talking One-Way: Many business owners start posting status updates because they think that is all they need to do to grow their company online. But the way they do it cuts off any chance of having a two-way conversation. In today's messaging marketplace, consumers want to be heard. If you are just talking to customers but not letting them to talk back and engage with you, then you are wasting considerable time and effort online.

When you go online and post in a status update area, do not just talk at or to people; speak with them. Tag people in a post and ask them a question. Tagging simple means that you write directly to a person on their facebook wall or on their Twitter feed. On Facebook you put the "@" sign in front of their profile name, for Twitter this sign would go in front of their username.

Also, take a few minutes to stop by the "neighborhood" of each social site that you frequent and say hello, find out what your neighbors are up to, and post a quick reply. By actively engaging in these spheres, you keep your business top of mind.

2. Not Knowing When to Ask for Business: Many online businesses have conducted conversations with their connections for quite some time now, without translating this dialogue into any sales. Some companies fail to ask for business online or they ask too soon. You need to build some rapport first; people will buy from you only as much as they trust you. Set up a rule to convert conversation into clients or customers.

I follow the 3/3 rule, whereby I talk to someone no more than three times, for not more than three minutes on each occasion, freely offering tips, exploring another company's branding or directly helping them, before I ask that person for some business. When I do the asking, I send the prospective customer a closing script or a post to indicate how I can help further.

3. Shiny Object Syndrome: With all the flashy new websites and with social networking capabilities changing by the minute, no wonder you are swept up in checking out a new site or a fresh feature when you go online. Instead of spending countless hours exploring new dazzlers, devote only a set amount of time each day or week to review the new happenings online. Otherwise you will be sucked into a vortex of shiny objects and before you know it your week is over and you have not converted any online relationships into profits. Flag interesting sites or novel capabilities in a folder or on your calendar to revisit later for research and development.

4. Poor Messaging: A consumer can become overwhelmed by dealing with all the wrong messages that are crowding the Internet lately. Company owners are projecting the wrong image through what they say online. In some cases, their posts have absolutely nothing to do with their company, brand, or personality.

Too many entrepreneurs do what I call panic posting -- just posting for the sake of posting and sharing ideas that do not highlight their overall brand image. If you have a serious company, don't post jokes and funny videos; instead post statistics and updates about your company's team members. If your business has a relaxed image, inject humor into your posts; a funny YouTube video can go a long way.

5. Sales Faux Pas: Writing how much your product or services cost in a status update or post is not only a time waste; it is plain wrong. Would you walk up to someone before you have even introduced yourself and say that your latest product is now available at a certain price for a limited time? If so, you would probably end up not only talking to yourself (the person would walk away), but also you likely would lose the entire room of people as customers just from their overhearing your sales introduction.

Instead, try sharing the pros and cons about your industry or product category and ask people to provide feedback and participate. This is a great way to bridge the distance between you and your prospects and get them involved with your company's brand. Ultimately newfound fans will promote you without being asked because they feel included; the fact that you asked and listened goes a long way.

Whether yours is a one-person business or it has 150 employees, take time every month or quarter to examine your social media practices. You could save thousands of dollars and hours -- and have more to show for it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

More on Social Media Return on Investment!

2011-08-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

Q-and-A with Susan Bratton: 23 ways to look at social media ROI This blog series, featuring interviews with speakers from the SES Conference & Expo, scheduled Aug. 15 to 19 in San Francisco, is brought to you by Incisive Media.

This interview is with Susan Bratton, CEO of Personal Life Media, a lifestyle brand that publishes 20 online home-study courses. She founded, took public and sold eight consumer-publishing and tech companies and two industry associations.

Is content truly king when it comes to social media? Do businesses need to become publishers to make the most of social channels?

Social media include Flickr, YouTube, webinars and blogging — the list of social outlets and platforms is endless. Content is not king; it’s simply one tactic. Where is your audience? What are your existing programs? What are your corporate assets, talents and budgets?

How will you measure return on investment — what are your bottom-line goals? Before worrying about creating content, think about the broader role that social media can provide to your business and customers.
The only aspect of social media that I think is mandatory, and only if your brand registers any noise in the social sphere, is a social-listening strategy.
What advice do you have for companies that succeed in developing thought-leadership content but then have trouble promoting it?
Make it someone’s job internally to promote the content on a regular, editorial schedule. Find someone who would like the job. It can’t take that much time; how much thought-leadership content could one have? If the content is that great, hire a public relations firm or hand it off to an agency so it’s well managed, if there are no resources internally. Having a thought leader who’s willing to produce content is a valuable asset. Treat it as such.
How do you approach the social media ROI question? Are you looking at sales? Connections? Something else?
Whatever strategy you choose will determine the ROI you can track.
Brand buzz? Market presence? Brand building? Reputation? Networking with customers and prospects? Customer service or social customer-relationship management? Customer insight and market research? Prospecting and lead gen? Direct response? Competitive tracking? Crisis management? Customer segmentation? Campaign development and design? Share of voice? PR outreach? Thought leadership? Revenue generation? Collaboration with customers, vendors, partners or employees? Product feedback and research and development? Universal search linking? Local and geo-location? Loyalty or advocacy programs? Credibility via ratings or reviews?
This is a short list of the myriad ways social media can be used by a brand. Trackable ROI depends on the strategy, the channel and the available metrics.
Download my Social Media Super Powers slide deck for free, which leads any brand through the decision logic for determining the best social strategy by taking into account all of the ramifications of the decision. At a top level — there’s significantly more detail in the presentation, and you can paste your logo on it and call it your own — consider:
Who is my audience, and where do they aggregate socially?
Can I target customers and prospects?
What are my business objectives?
How would a social strategy align with existing messages?
Who are the stakeholders, internally and externally?
What are my customers’ desires? How could I delight them most?
Which channels work best for me based on reach, assets, capabilities and strategies?
What are my internal and external assets and employee talents or skill sets?
How will I monitor the metrics and ROI?
How much can you budget, not only for launch, but for maintenance and growth of your successful programs?
When will you kill programs that are not providing results?
How can marketers use social media to better understand potential customers?
There are clever marketers who use social to understand customers, especially with insight, R&D, collaboration, feedback and customer support. The oft-quoted IdeaStorm concept by Dell proves this is useful. Yet I still like good, old market research — surveys, verbatim, focus groups, interviews and questionnaires. If you want to understand potential customers, use the classic tools and check in with your social-listening platform as well.
To find out how to enter the conversation that your prospect, and customer, is having in his head, download my free Conversion Triggers presentation, in which I show how the Four Realms of Persuasion: copy writing, storytelling, neuro-marketing and structured communication. They significantly increase conversion to sale when fed with empathic market research that’s easy to collect.
Kevin Brown www.kbsinsight.blogspot.com