Cultivate a New Approach to Business and Customer Engagement

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We are operating in a new environment with respect to interacting with customers and prospects. And this environment will be different tomorrow than it is today—literally. That's how fast things are changing; as new technology is created at accelerated rates, the only thing moving faster is consumer adoption of the "latest and greatest" app or gadget.

As a result, companies must adjust their approach. And while focusing on improving a customer's experience is important, broadening the scope to include opportunities to facilitate improvement of customer lifestyles when possible offers the potential to build longer, more intimate relationships. Most likely it will take a different approach to deliver the experiences customers expect.

Here are a few key tenets companies are taking to heart to create organizations that can keep up with customer behaviors and expectations.

Fast and Flexible (F)

Every second counts when it comes to meeting customer expectations. A study by Kissmetrics found that 47 percent of consumers expect a Web page to load in two seconds or less, and just a one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by 16 percent. According to a recent University of Massachusetts study, if a video hasn't started streaming in five seconds, about 25 percent of potential viewers will bail before viewing, and if it doesn't start in 10 seconds, that jumps to almost 50 percent.

Speed thrills and lack of it kills. We've never liked waiting for things we want, and technology enables us to wait less and less. Book buyers are used to getting e-books downloaded in less than 60 seconds, where just a few years ago they didn't mind waiting days for a book to be delivered—or even going to a bookstore to get it.

With less time to make a connection and convert it into a meaningful relationship, companies have to act quickly—and react even quicker, which means taking a hard look at their current capabilities to make fast moves.

Agile and Analytical (A)

There has never been more information about consumers, much of it coming from consumers themselves. Companies that invest in creating a strategic social listening culture supported by tools can effectively understand what's important to customers and prospects in real time.

Being able to integrate social data with transactional information is critical to discovering important insights. And while aggregating disparate data and analyzing it calls for analytical tools and skill sets, it also calls for an empathic approach to convert those insights into appealing interaction opportunities.

Interactive and Integrated (I)

Social, mobile, and cloud technologies have unleashed people's collaborative nature, and it's important for companies to not only embrace this, but to find ways to facilitate it. And as customers, people want to be valued beyond the financial transaction their business brings.

Pamela O'Hara, CEO of social CRM vendor Batchbook, says early customers are crucial to her business. They help figure out who the company's market is, how to reach that market, and at what price point. Because of this, O'Hara says it is important for her entire team to be involved in the relationship they are building with customers. Integrating customers' voices—not just their wallets—is key in building a business today.

Responsive and Reliable (R)

That building trust is critical to finding and keeping customers isn't news. But it's something that can get lost in the excitement generated by social media, mobile technology, and the cloud. And listening sometimes, responding when you can, or doing things right occasionally won't get you far with customers. It raises expectations quicker, and disappoints faster when those expectations aren't met.

Because consumers are operating differently today, and more differently tomorrow, companies must embrace the environment in which we're operating. It's only fair to customers that companies rethink their approach to doing business and building relationships with them.

This post originally appeared on DestinationCRM.com.

http://www.frontrow-solutions.com/

5 Reasons 2014 is the Year of Video in BtoB Marketing

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92 percent of B2B customers watch online video and 43 percent of B2B customers watch online video when researching products and services for their business, according to this Inc. article. Video engages multiple senses, resulting in deeper engagement.

In addition, CK Kerley, mobile marketing expert, shared, “Jeff, video is the killer application for mobile.” Since we live in a mobile world today, you need to embrace video.

So how can you use video in BtoB marketing in 2012? Let’s take a page from Jay Baer’s appearance on Marketing Made Simple TV,  where Jay leaned into the camera and said, “Hey, I don’t know how to create awesome content, and I bet you don’t either. But I do know how to be helpful.” There’s the first key to success with video – just be helpful.

Here are five reasons why video marketing is king in 2014:

1. Be helpful in a good way

Create How To instructional videos, tell stories and provide tips and insight all with short videos on your website or blog.

2. Entertain as well as inform

Inject some of your own personality into the videos, like Kinaxis did in their hilarious Suitemates series.

3. Capture leads 

Video can generate sales leads, provided you have good bait on your hook (offers) with a clear call to action. You can also put a form in front of your videos in an effort to capture leads.

4. Mobile-friendly

More and more content is consumed on smartphones and tablets each year. You simply cannot be sure your prospect will be in front of a computer screen any more. Video is highly engaging on smartphones and tablets.

5. Story-telling

Human beings are programmed to respond to stories. What’s one show that consistently beats NFL ratings? It is The Walking Dead – a story about people trying to survive in a world filled with zombies.  Storytelling is so powerful that I was not surprised to find an article entitled, “Zombies devour the NFL.”  Spend time and invest right in video production services to deliver great stories and the world will respond.
I’d love to hear what you think and appreciate those who share our content.  Lastly, I invite you to check out the new Video Production Service offered by Find New Customers.

4 Rules for Strong B2B Sales Performance

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In AntiFragile, author Nassim Taleb explains what companies can do to lower their risks of catastrophic events, despite prevailing complexities and uncertainties in sales and beyond.

Firms that thrive on uncertainty benefit more when they’re right, than harmed when they’re wrong. If you are looking to minimize risk and increase the resilience of your sales performance, here are four rules for being "Antifragile":

1. Learn from trial and error

Taleb contends that companies that learn are buffered from making big mistakes. They exploit small errors by detecting and fixing them fast. When every trial gives you info on what doesn’t work, you start zooming in on a solution. Trials that fail let you figure out where to go, one step at a time.  In practice, such trial and error makes high performance a logical result of learning that’s incremental and personalized.

2. Focus on reducing risks rather than prediction

When predictions fail, there’s often a call for better forecasts. Taleb contends this is a flawed response when the situation is complex or uncertain. We’ve come to rely on technologies that have errors and interactions that are harder to estimate or predict. When you’re dealing with situations fraught with uncertainty, you’re far better off modifying your exposure than honing your calculations.

3. Measure the chain of effects

To avoid risks of big mistakes, there’s a need to avoid what Taleb calls, “Confirmation fallacies that show what has worked without a complete picture of what’s worked and what’s not worked." Spotting and fixing small mistakes requires an approach to measuring performance that broadens the picture, reveals what needs fixing, and confirms that the fix really fixed things in the full chain of effects. This requires more organic feedback mechanisms that help us sense faster, and with greater granularity, when we have an error to correct.

4. Focus on bad practices instead of best practices

Don’t look for the path to the big win. Look for early signals that you’re on a path to a loss and fix associated mistakes. This is akin to the Moneyball future of B2B sales management…the Oakland A’s out-performed expectations by avoiding being struck out at home plate. By getting on base, the team left themselves in a position to still score runs. Put another way, if you want better outcomes, focus less on improving predictability and more on modifying your exposure to errors that could produce a big, negative, event [like a deal that unexpectedly didn't close].

How are you de-risking the uncertainties of your revenue performance? How has it affected your sales management practices and the revenue growth you’ve achieved?


http://www.frontrow-solutions.com/

Customer Service Skills: How to Satisfy and Delight Your Customers

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In the world of customer service, a lot of attention is given to the concept of customer delight. There are books written about it, and training classes offered on how to do it. Influential customer service experts tell us we’ve failed if we don’t delight every customer every time.

Legendary tales are breathlessly retold around the customer service campfire. Did you hear this one? A store once gave a customer a refund on a set of tires despite the fact that the store didn’t even SELL tires.
There are also valid arguments against trying to delight everyone. Giving one customer a refund on set of tires you don’t sell is the stuff of legend, but you’ll go bankrupt if you do it for everyone. Something that delights one customer may annoy another. What delights a customer today may simply satisfy that same customer tomorrow as they become accustomed to a new level of service.

So, is customer delight truly a business imperative? Or, is focusing on customer satisfaction enough?
The answer is somewhere in the middle. Delight and satisfaction actually co-exist quite nicely. In fact, they need each other.

Satisfaction and delight defined

Customers’ perceptions of service are based on how the experience matches their expectations:

• Satisfactory service occurs when expectations are met
• Delight occurs when service exceeds expectations
• A service failure occurs when service falls short of expectations

The rub is that we only really notice experiences that are different than what we expected.
Imagine you walk into a room and flip the light switch. You expect the lights to turn on. That’s exactly what happens 99% of the time, so you hardly pay any notice when they do. Satisfactory service is a lot like that.
What if something different happens?

You’d be sure to notice if the lights came on to reveal a room full of people shouting, “Surprise!” A surprise party would be an unexpected delight.

Delight is great, failure is bad, but most of the time the lights just come on as expected and you go about your business.

Customer service is the same way. We get satisfactory service most of the time but we don’t really notice it because that’s what we expected. The delight and failure outliers are what we notice and remember.

 

Why we need satisfaction AND delight

Our tendency to only notice the unusual plays an important role in customers’ perceptions of service. If a customer has four satisfactory service experiences with your company and one delightful one, their overall perception will be heavily influenced by the delightful encounter.

Imagine a frequent flyer who settles into a comfortable routine with her preferred airline. The flights are generally on time, the flight attendants are friendly, and her elite status provides a few extra perks that make travel easier. One day, a severe storm cancels all departing flights and the traveler must wait until the next day to fly home. While other passengers scramble for accommodations, an airline employee seizes the opportunity to be a hero and books the frequent traveler in a nice hotel room at no charge.

These hero moments don’t happen every day, but they’re the experiences that are remembered.
It’s impractical to create hero moments like this all the time. It’s also not necessary. Providing satisfactory service most of the time and delightful service in the right moment is often enough to make your service stand out.

Companies that seize these hero moments benefit from another quirk of human perception called "confirmation bias." When people have a strongly held belief, they’ll selectively filter information based on whether or not it supports that belief.

If the frequent traveler pledges her unwavering allegiance to her favorite airline after they put her up in a hotel, she’ll unconsciously find herself biased by this experience. Good travel experiences become further proof in her mind that the airline is great. An occasional poor experience is dismissed as an anomaly and quickly forgiven.

The opportunity and danger of service failures

Strangely, service failures also represent an opportunity to delight customers. Service failures can and will happen in every company, but what happens next separates the great organizations from the rest.
By definition, a service failure is an experience that falls short of a customer’s expectations. This puts the customer at a crossroads. The service failure is amplified if the company fails to fix the problem. It might even negate the impact of previous satisfactory experiences and cause the customer to dwell on the one service failure. The customer can develop confirmation bias where they expect the company to provide poor service and selectively filter information based on whether it supports their opinion.

But, what happens if someone seizes the hero moment and quickly fixes the problem with style and grace? Now, the feeling of delight is amplified because the customer started out feeling so poorly.

 

Start with consistency

If you want to delight your customers, start by being consistently good. Fix chronic problems. Get the basics right every time.

Do this well and your hero moments will stand out and delight your customers.

http://www.frontrow-solutions.com/

Hit All Your Sales Goals in Just 5 Hours a Day

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Bill is the successful CEO of the most effective sales organization in his industry. In just ten years, his company has skyrocketed from $0 to $50M with organic growth in the very traditional copier industry. He attributes much of his success to developing a first-class sales team and asking his salespeople to sell only five hours per day.

But, what is the “Five Hour Sales Day”?

Realize What an Effective Day Is

The “Five Hour Sales Day” is a beautifully simple system, which ensures that Bill’s sales team is performing productive, sales-related activities for the majority of their day. Research by Pace Productivity shows that the average salesperson only performs 2 hours (23% of their time) of sales-related activities per day, such as sales meetings, prospecting, sales follow-up, etc.

Sadly, the majority of an average salesperson’s day is wasted performing non-sales-related activities like putting out fires, processing orders, doing paperwork, entering data, or just getting distracted.
Therefore, spending five hours on purely sales-related activities is actually a massive increase in sales output—a 250% increase on average.

Assign a Time-Value to Activities

This system works by assigning a time value to each desired sales-related activity. For example, twenty prospect calls equals one hour. An initial sales meeting equals one hour. A sales presentation equals one hour. Ten client up-sell calls equals one hour. So, you get the picture (but notice that tasks such as doing paperwork, researching, and solving client problems are not on the list). Each day of sales-related activities must then add up to five hours. After Bill’s salespeople have completed their five hours of sales work, they can go home. It’s truly that simple.

Hold the Team Accountable

The key is to stop counting the total hours in the day. Whether you manage a team or are selling yourself, forget about the eight or ten hour work day. It just leads to wasted time. Instead, only track the activities that actually matter, which will ensure that the most important sales-related activities take priority and get accomplished. In fact, Bill’s company attaches part of a salesperson’s compensation to whether or not that individual is actually achieving his goal of five hours of daily selling. This guarantees that appropriate output and high selling productivity are maintained. It also cultivates a healthy business culture, in which no one focuses on who is first to show up and last to leave the office. Instead, being hyper-efficient is what really matters.

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to design your own “Five Hour Sales Day.” Simply allot a time value to only your critical sales-related activities, and be sure that your daily activities add up to five hours.
And, don’t forget the best part. After you or your salespeople have achieved the five hour goal, feel free to head home. This system will not only ensure an improved quality of life, by providing you with more time away from the office, but it will also enable you to hit your sales goals, eliminating daily guesswork.

Bill is the successful CEO of the most effective sales organization in his industry. In just ten years, his company has skyrocketed from $0 to $50M with organic growth in the very traditional copier industry. He attributes much of his success to developing a first-class sales team and asking his salespeople to sell only five hours per day.
But, what is the “Five Hour Sales Day”?

Realize What an Effective Day Is

The “Five Hour Sales Day” is a beautifully simple system, which ensures that Bill’s sales team is performing productive, sales-related activities for the majority of their day. Research by Pace Productivity shows that the average salesperson only performs 2 hours (23% of their time) of sales-related activities per day, such as sales meetings, prospecting, sales follow-up, etc.
Sadly, the majority of an average salesperson’s day is wasted performing non-sales-related activities like putting out fires, processing orders, doing paperwork, entering data, or just getting distracted.
Therefore, spending five hours on purely sales-related activities is actually a massive increase in sales output—a 250% increase on average.

Assign a Time-Value to Activities

This system works by assigning a time value to each desired sales-related activity. For example, twenty prospect calls equals one hour. An initial sales meeting equals one hour. A sales presentation equals one hour. Ten client up-sell calls equals one hour. So, you get the picture (but notice that tasks such as doing paperwork, researching, and solving client problems are not on the list). Each day of sales-related activities must then add up to five hours. After Bill’s salespeople have completed their five hours of sales work, they can go home. It’s truly that simple.

Hold the Team Accountable

The key is to stop counting the total hours in the day. Whether you manage a team or are selling yourself, forget about the eight or ten hour work day. It just leads to wasted time. Instead, only track the activities that actually matter, which will ensure that the most important sales-related activities take priority and get accomplished. In fact, Bill’s company attaches part of a salesperson’s compensation to whether or not that individual is actually achieving his goal of five hours of daily selling. This guarantees that appropriate output and high selling productivity are maintained. It also cultivates a healthy business culture, in which no one focuses on who is first to show up and last to leave the office. Instead, being hyper-efficient is what really matters.
So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to design your own “Five Hour Sales Day.” Simply allot a time value to only your critical sales-related activities, and be sure that your daily activities add up to five hours.
And, don’t forget the best part. After you or your salespeople have achieved the five hour goal, feel free to head home. This system will not only ensure an improved quality of life, by providing you with more time away from the office, but it will also enable you to hit your sales goals, eliminating daily guesswork.

Bill is the successful CEO of the most effective sales organization in his industry. In just ten years, his company has skyrocketed from $0 to $50M with organic growth in the very traditional copier industry. He attributes much of his success to developing a first-class sales team and asking his salespeople to sell only five hours per day.
But, what is the “Five Hour Sales Day”?

Realize What an Effective Day Is

The “Five Hour Sales Day” is a beautifully simple system, which ensures that Bill’s sales team is performing productive, sales-related activities for the majority of their day. Research by Pace Productivity shows that the average salesperson only performs 2 hours (23% of their time) of sales-related activities per day, such as sales meetings, prospecting, sales follow-up, etc.
Sadly, the majority of an average salesperson’s day is wasted performing non-sales-related activities like putting out fires, processing orders, doing paperwork, entering data, or just getting distracted.
Therefore, spending five hours on purely sales-related activities is actually a massive increase in sales output—a 250% increase on average.

Assign a Time-Value to Activities

This system works by assigning a time value to each desired sales-related activity. For example, twenty prospect calls equals one hour. An initial sales meeting equals one hour. A sales presentation equals one hour. Ten client up-sell calls equals one hour. So, you get the picture (but notice that tasks such as doing paperwork, researching, and solving client problems are not on the list). Each day of sales-related activities must then add up to five hours. After Bill’s salespeople have completed their five hours of sales work, they can go home. It’s truly that simple.

Hold the Team Accountable

The key is to stop counting the total hours in the day. Whether you manage a team or are selling yourself, forget about the eight or ten hour work day. It just leads to wasted time. Instead, only track the activities that actually matter, which will ensure that the most important sales-related activities take priority and get accomplished. In fact, Bill’s company attaches part of a salesperson’s compensation to whether or not that individual is actually achieving his goal of five hours of daily selling. This guarantees that appropriate output and high selling productivity are maintained. It also cultivates a healthy business culture, in which no one focuses on who is first to show up and last to leave the office. Instead, being hyper-efficient is what really matters.
So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to design your own “Five Hour Sales Day.” Simply allot a time value to only your critical sales-related activities, and be sure that your daily activities add up to five hours.
And, don’t forget the best part. After you or your salespeople have achieved the five hour goal, feel free to head home. This system will not only ensure an improved quality of life, by providing you with more time away from the office, but it will also enable you to hit your sales goals, eliminating daily guesswork.

http://www.frontrow-solutions.com/