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April 3rd, 2012
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April 2nd, 2012
By Brian Solis & Jeremiah Owyang
Companies are quick to add influence metrics into their social support systems, and marketing prioritization despite having full understanding of how these measurement tools actually create their indexes. This report, wr
itten as a playbook for businesses focuses on how to benefit from desirable effects and outcomes through social media influence. The report also helps consumers and academics understand how influence is scored and how these scores affect online reputations.
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April 2nd, 2012
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March 27th, 2012
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March 26th, 2012
Even experienced Smalltalkers need help from time to time. You don't have to go it alone! If you haven't had time to upgrade to the latest release of Cincom Smalltalk, don't sweat it—Cincom Professional Services can help. Our team knows the small, impossible-to-document steps that can increase the value you receive from Cincom Smalltalk and ensure that you're taking full advantage of the po
wer in each new release.
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March 20th, 2012
What customers value most changes constantly, and the pace of change has increased exponentially with the economic recession, says marketing/management expert and best-selling author Jaynie L. Smith.
“The businesses who become relevant by addressing what customers really value at any given time will be the first ones out of the recession,” says Smith, author of Relevant Selling.
“One year ago, people were looking for financial stability in companies they were purchasing from because of all of the business closings,” she says, citing surveys conducted by her company, Smart Advantage, Inc. “Now, on-time delivery outranks that because so many businesses cut back their inventory during the worst of the recession. With demand increasing, customers have more difficulty getting what they want on time.”
Smith’s company analyzed more than 150 customer surveys to learn why customers buy particular products or services from particular companies. It’s an essential practice for any business owner during any economic cycle, Smith says, but most don’t do it. Her analysis of 10 years of double-blind customer market research for more than 100 businesses revealed that, 90 percent of the time, most businesses do not know their customers’ top values. They are often shocked to learn what is at the top of the customers’ value list.
Smith offers these tips for getting to know your customers – and potential customers – so you can deliver what they want and adjust your sales and marketing message to become more relevant.
• Customers are usually looking for “how” things are sold, not “what.”
For most products, there are any number of suppliers. If someone wants to buy a camera, a doorknob, a car, they can drive to the nearest store or order from the first company that pops up on Google. But they don’t. Why? Because there’s something else they value more than the product itself. It may be product durability, the company’s reputation for customer service, or safety features. “If you don’t value what you bring to the customer, they won’t value it either,” is Smith’s mantra. Very few companies know how to effectively articulate what differentiates them, so price often becomes the tiebreaker.
• Understand that existing customers and prospects usually have different values. cheap viagra online
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Smith’s company research analysis shows that 70 percent of the time, customers and prospective customers differ in what they most value. When that happens, your message to customers should be different than your message to prospects. Very few companies make this distinction in sales and marketing messaging. Existing customers may have come to depend on your top-notch help desk. It’s what they’ve grown to value most about your company. Prospective customers haven’t yet used your help desk so they don’t know how essential this benefit is yet.
• Use what you learn.
If you find customers most value speedy responses when they have a problem, and your customer service department is slow, then fix customer service. Make sure to tell the customer service employees that customers have rated fast response time as their top priority. When you’ve got stats you can brag about – brag away: “98 percent of customer calls are returned within 30 minutes; 2 percent within 1 hour.” Now you’ve used that information in two valuable ways: to make your company more relevant to customers, and to let customers know you’ve got what they want.
• Invest in disciplined customer research.
Research data collection costs have gone down 30 to 35 percent in the past few years and can now be affordable to smaller companies. Double-blind customer market research is the gold standard and well worth the expense, but it’s not feasible for all companies. However, even a small investment in research can reap huge returns. Some less expensive and free alternatives to find out what your customers want include sharing the expense with an industry association; partnering with an organization that needs the same information or a peer that doesn’t compete with you; hiring a college intern; or creating an online survey using a free basic service, such as Survey Monkey.
About the author
Jaynie L. Smith is CEO of Smart Advantage, Inc., a marketing/management consultancy whose clients range from mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies. Her first book, “Creating Competitive Advantage”, is in its 11th printing.
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March 20th, 2012
The curse for many of us modern-day movers and shakers is that we never seem to have enough time to do everything that needs doing. There simply aren’t enough hours in the work day (or even the work week!) to accomplish everything on our to-do lists. Worse yet, when we finally do get on a productivity roll, there always seems to be a distraction (or two, or three) waiting in the wings to throw us off course. But the reality is that we could actually accomplish a lot more each day if we would just learn to recognize and acknowledge when we’re done with what we’re doing.
One of the biggest time wasters we all face is spending too much time on those things that don’t require it,” says Womack, a workplace performance expert, executive coach, and author of the new book Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More. “When we do so, we lose the time we actually should be spending on more difficult or time-intensive tasks. But when you learn to recognize when you’re done with a task, you’ll have valuable minutes and maybe even hours added back into your day.”
It often seems that we put off the most important things on our to-do lists until we feel like we have the ‘time’ to work on them. When you learn to recognize when you’re done with projects, big and small, you’ll immediately find that you have a lot more time than you thought you did. Time you can use to focus on those things that truly matter. Here's how to get there.
Stop majoring in the minors.
Many of us spend a lot of time on those projects and tasks that are easy for us. Then, we convince ourselves that we “just didn’t have enough time” to get to the harder stuff. But when it comes to knowing when you’re done and freeing up time during your day, completing these easy tasks quickly and efficiently is essential.
Before you start your work day, think about what your high leverage activities are and what your low leverage activities are. For the low leverage activities, force yourself to move through them as quickly as possible. With these tasks—for example, writing an email to a colleague—perfection isn’t necessary, and there’s no need to waste time wringing your hands over every word. When you can accomplish these minor tasks more efficiently, you’ll have the time you need to do those major tasks justice.
Don’t overwrite emails.
Much of your time—probably too much—each day gets eaten up by email. Make a conscious effort to keep your emails as short and sweet as possible. Get to the point quickly and use action verbs in subject lines so that both you and the recipient know what needs to happen before the email is even opened. And while long emails waste the time it takes you to write them, keep in mind that the person receiving the email doesn’t want to have to spend so much time reading it either. Chances are your boss doesn’t want or need a three-paragraph rundown of how your client meeting went. He just wants to know if the client is happy and continuing business with you.
Quit over-staying at meetings and on conference calls.
Often meetings and conference
calls will take as long as you’ve allotted for them. Set an hour for a meeting and you’re sure to go the full hour. Pay close attention to how much of your meeting is actually spent focused on the important stuff. If you spend 15 to 20 minutes at the beginning or end of the meeting discussing your coworker’s golf game, then next time reduce the amount of time allotted for the meeting. And always know the meeting’s or call’s objectives before you begin. That way you can get to them right away.
Set your own deadlines and stick to them.
It’s very easy to get distracted or sidetracked by things you think you should do or things others think you should do. Having a self-imposed deadline will help you ignore those distractions. If a colleague calls you about a non-urgent task, you can let him know you’ve got a 3:00 p.m. deadline that you have to meet. There’s no need for him to know that it’s self-imposed! And then as 3:00 p.m. draws near, start wrapping up that particular task.
Know when it’s time to ask for help.
Have you ever been stumped by a certain project or task? Did you walk away from it for a while and then come back to it hoping you’d suddenly know what to do? Sometimes knowing when you’re done is knowing when you, specifically, can’t take a project any further. You simply might not have the right expertise to completely finish a certain project. And that’s okay. Wasting time on something you’re never going to be able to figure out is much worse than asking for help!
When you put in place steps to help you know when you’re done, you’ll be surprised and pleased with how much, well, you can get done. It will truly free up time in your day that you can use to focus on areas where it’s really needed. As a result, you’ll have a more gratifying work day and you’ll be happier overall.
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About the Author:
Jason W. Womack, MEd, MA, provides practical methods to maximize tools, systems, and processes to achieve quality work/life balance. He has worked with leaders and executives for over 16 years in the business and education sectors. His focus is on creating ideas that matter and implementing solutions that are valuable to organizations and the individuals in those organizations.
Author of Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More, Jason shows that working longer hours doesn’t make up for a flawed approach to productivity and performance. Entrepreneurs need to clarify their habits, build mindset-based strategies, and be proactive. Womack’s signature workplace performance techniques offer specific strategies to consistently and incrementally improve performance.
About the Book:
Your Best Just Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More is available at bookstores nationwide and from major online booksellers.
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March 20th, 2012
By Mark Miller, Author of “Great Leaders Grow”
One of the most critical parts of our role as leaders is helping people see the future as we see it. This is an ever-p
resent challenge. One of the reasons this task is so formidable is that people are different – what resonates with one person may not connect at all with someone else.
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March 20th, 2012
By Jim Edwards, Business Insider
P&G is the world's largest advertiser, controlling a $10 billion ad budget. The company signaled it wanted to save money by shifting marketing dollars into
digital at the beginning of the year. The question, as always, is how to persuade consumers to engage with P&G's brands, most of which are not inherently social.
Is the answer Pinterest?
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March 19th, 2012
By Lou Washington
You now have your vendor responses from your initial RFP ERP request. Much of what happens now will be determined by what you did in the conceptual and exe
cution stages of your ERP RFP. The main goal was the collection of actionable information; so hopefully, the answers you sought are there.
Do you publically declare a winner?
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March 19th, 2012
By John Bethune
Rightly or wrongly, we tend to believe that the truth is eternal, that facts live forever, and that, by contrast, mistakes so
oner or later die off unaided. Hence our attitudes about errors tend to be lax. But on the Internet, at least, errors are surprisingly resilient.
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March 19th, 2012
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March 6th, 2012
The Economist interview with Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder
Successful firms tend to be the ones willing to explore uncharted territories. “Me-too”companies do not do well over time. As companies grow, there is a serious danger that novel ideas get snuffed out by managers’ desire to conform and play it safe. Social cohesion comes at the
expense of truth. The best way to guard against this is for leaders to encourage their staff to work on big new ideas.
It’s like exercising muscles,” says Bezos. “Either you use them or you lose them. Encourage risk-taking, disruptive innovation and innovators … or you'll end up getting group-think and creative atrophy.”
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March 6th, 2012
By Ryan Taft
Look
around. Any business. The iPad is making amazing inroads. Let us count the ways … and benefits.
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March 6th, 2012
By Dr. Andrew Currah
The rise of the social customer and social enterprise.
Was 2011 the year that 20th century customer service started to disappear?
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March 5th, 2012
By Roger Dooley, Neuromarketing
If you think your sales challenge is daunting, try selling yourself to Harvard Business School. Even though most applicants are amazingly well qualified in terms of academic, career, an
d personal accomplishments, almost 9 out of 10 are rejected. When the Wall Street Journal interviewed Dee Leopold, managing director of MBA admissions at Harvard, she weighed in on the adjective vs. verb debate and…
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March 5th, 2012
By Eric Markowitz, Business Insider
Guy Kawasaki wears many hats. He's the founder of Alltop.com, a bestselling author on social m
edia and marketing, and still somehow manages to fit in about 75 speaking engagements each year. Here, Inc.com reporter Eric Markowitz chatted with Kawasaki to get his thoughts on how entrepreneurs treat social media—and how they're doing it all wrong.
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March 5th, 2012
By Dave Davies, Search Engine Watch
We all use tools and access resources to keep us reacting quickly and professionally in this ever changing industry. On top of that, every day I get requests from people to test or review new res
ources, think up ideas to build internal tools and many more get developed that I may or may not even be aware of. So how is one to sort through everything out there, separate the good from the bad, the expensive from the inexpensive and figure out how to tell when the price difference is worth it?
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February 22nd, 2012
Vehicle History – Alternative To Carfax And Autocheck
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