With more ways than ever for customers to connect with companies, the days of hiding behind your product are over. You can’t expect people to engage with your social media, marketing materials and web content if you’re not putting in the effort to cultivate a unified personality behind it all. Building a brand identity takes real time and effort but it can be hugely useful, as explained in this post at Business Insider by Online PR and social media firm Simply Zesty.

While your company’s personality will naturally reflect the nature of your business, there’s always room to develop it around your culture and team. Read the full post to learn why it doesn’t just end with your copy and learn about other areas where it’s important to inject some life.

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Many marketers find themselves grappling with priorities when it comes to getting a content strategy off the ground. Luckily, as online marketing expert Lee Odden explains, when it comes to SEO and content marketing, it doesn’t have to be either/or.

In this week’s Labcast, Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and author of Optimize, discusses how to develop an integrated content marketing SEO strategy that creates awareness and drives conversion.

Listen in as Odden shares the secrets to developing your strategy along with his tips on working with consultants, setting proper goals and expectations, and the resources you need to create an editorial plan.

Labcast 109_ SEO_ Content Marketing_ Lee Odden Describes the Role of Both in an Online Marketing Strategy

Full Transcript

Kevin: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Labcast. I’m Kevin Cain, and
today we’re talking about a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, content
marketing. I’m actually joined today by Lee Odden, who is the CEO of
TopRank Online Marketing, which is a marketing agency based in Minneapolis.
But you may know Lee Odden, as well, just as a content and SEO marketing
expert. He’s also the author of a book called Optimize. In any case, Lee
is here today to talk to me about content marketing, SEO, and how to
develop your online marketing strategy. Hey, Lee, welcome to Labcast. It’s
great to have you here today. How’s it going?

Lee: It’s going great, Kevin. Glad to be here.

Kevin: Well, so as I was saying in my introduction, what we’re talking
about today is this whole idea of content marketing and search engine
optimization and how you use both in an online marketing strategy. And
really the origins of this conversation is a blog post that we had seen you
write not too long ago on your site, and in that blog post you had asked
your readers if SEO and keywords drive their content creation or if content
is being built through content marketing, which is by following a stage of
the customer’s buying cycle. So my first question for you is do you see
those two things as being mutually exclusive?

Lee: No. That’s a great question, and I think some folks that are
specialists in either SEO or in content strategy, or content marketing,
might feel that way. People like to think of things in terms of what they
know and advocate what they know, but they’re not. As I say in the post,
they’re great partners. SEO is a phenomenal amplification method, and
there’s absolutely a strategic perspective that SEO brings to the table in
content marketing. But they’ve got to work together, and that’s where the
win is, is when they work together, not working against each other or
separately.

Kevin: So how do you recommend that people integrate SEO into their
content marketing strategies so that they are working holistically, as you
say?

Lee: Well, the contrast that I’ve outlined is that in the SEO world
accountability is very much driven by organic search-referred traffic, and
the way to achieve organic search-referred traffic is to have as many
optimized pages and digital assets ranking well in search as possible. So
this notion of content is really more about more. The more content we can
create, the better because there’s more to optimize. There’s more to
attract inbound traffic. A content marketing-driven strategy is going to,
as you say, map that customer sale cycle or buying cycle. So the way SEO
can best be included is, I think, not to go identify the most popular
keywords and then create content accordingly, but to create a content plan
that empathizes with that customer journey and then identify the types of
topics and search keywords that can attract traffic to the right kind of
content at the right time.

Kevin: Sure. I mean, otherwise you’re just creating a bunch of noise
essentially, that may be getting people to your site, but not necessarily
helping to move them down the path to purchase.

Lee: Yeah, exactly. It tends to be a little more mechanical. It’s scalable,
it’s process driven, and all that when you’re only focusing on keyword-
drive strategy, but, of course, we know in this sort of social web and
social world that we live in, meaningful is where more productive marketing
investments are being made.

Kevin: How do you recommend that companies go about aligning their
content to their customers and to their buying cycles specifically?

Lee: You’ve got to know who your customers are, so there are existing
buyers, there’s information that’s been captured in the course of them
becoming your customers through web analytics, conversion data, and forms
they filled out. You can actually survey those customers, as well. There’s
generalized information that can be gleaned from third-party websites that
we know our target audience visits frequently. There’s social media
monitoring that we can use. So there are a lot of different data sources
that we can bring into our wheelhouse, so to speak, and analysis that can
specify what clusters of behaviors are most characteristic of our best
customers, and what does that mean across the journey from awareness to
interest consideration, purchase, and even onto the kinds of things that
are helpful for keeping them around and to evangelize our product and
inspire word of mouth to attract other business. So knowing your customers
is first and foremost, and this is not a project. It is a journey. It’s a
journey for the brand as much as it’s a journey for the customer to
discover from you. It’s something you have to maintain on an ongoing basis.

Kevin: Now, you had mentioned before about how some SEO companies were
pushing people to create as much content as possible, and obviously that’s
not necessarily the best route. But what do you think is sort of the right
amount of content that a company needs to create as part of the SEO and
content marketing strategy to really have any momentum? Is a blog a week
from a mom and pop shop going to get the job done, or do you really need to
have some sort of momentum to really hit that terminal velocity?

Lee: Well, that is probably one of the most popular questions here from
folks that are resource strapped or uncertain about how this is going to
work for them, and the most important thing is to start, and you’ve got to
start with what’s reasonable according to your goals, not your resources,
but your goals. So a good marketer is going to forecast what kind of
percentage increase do we want to actually achieve and work backwards to
identify how much content will it take to get us there. And if a company
listening in doesn’t know that and know how to do that, then they should
work with a consultant who does. That’s basically what the answer is. It’s
on a case by case basis. I could say, yeah, sure, one post a week, one post
every month, and, of course, I’d be making a sweeping generalization that’s
going to be true for some people, and it’s not going to be true for others.
So I think you’ve really got to make the commitment to start and pick an
interval, whether it’s once a week or once a month, and get content out
there interacted with and use the data that will be created, as people do
interact with your content, to determine how you can optimize frequency or
velocity of content creation on a go forward.

Kevin: So you had mentioned in your response there about the
possibility, if you don’t have the capability in-house, to work with a
consultant or an agency or something of that nature. Now, obviously there
are some advantages to doing that and some potential disadvantages. Can you
kind of talk through–obviously from your point of view, you’ve got a
particular point of view there–what the advantages of working with an
agency are, and when it’s appropriate to do so, and when it makes more
sense to bring those skill sets and capabilities in-house?

Lee: I think it makes sense to bring in an agency if you want to make the
process of creating a road map or strategy about how to do this, so how to
plan this out as efficient and as effective as possible. There’s a right
kind of agency for that, right? But they should have experience with it,
clearly. There are different needs here with agency consultation. There is
this idea of coming in at a project level and just upping and develop a
strategy, and then the company acts on that strategy with their own
internal resources. There’s another scenario where maybe the company does
that, and they also help with implementation to a certain point, where
either they continue to provide value and innovate, and that makes it worth
keeping that agency around, or eventually the company does bring everything
in-house. Most agencies in this scenario are evolving their services and
capabilities, so, like ours, they tend to have very long relationships with
companies. But I think it’s most important to bring them in early so that
they can be part of the DNA of creating that strategy.

Kevin: Right, absolutely. Another thing that you had said earlier was
just the importance of getting started, and so that just brings me to my
last question. What recommendations would you give for people who are
looking to get started? Is it just to contact that agency, or is it just to
get to your computer and start writing something that you think your
customers care about? Or is there another piece of advice that you would
offer?

Lee: Sure, that’s another great question. So getting started, you have to
have some idea of what it is that you want to achieve, an understanding of
why your people, your customers, because they’re all people. I don’t know,
there might be some cats and dogs buying stuff, but we don’t know about
them–why do they buy from you? Why do they buy from you?

Kevin: Yeah.

Lee: What’s happening in their life or in their business that’s causing
them to need your product and service, and just think about that. Talk to
customer service for commonly asked questions. Talk to sales people for
commonly asked questions. That’s the gold of ideation when it comes to
initiating content, a marketing strategy, is tapping into the actual Q&A
dialog that’s occurring between frontline employees and the folks you want
to do business with, or that you are doing business with, and use that to
construct a sort of editorial plan. If you go to OptimizeBook.com, we
actually have an ungated Excel spreadsheet. Actually, there’s one for
[inaudible 09:47] glossary, but there’s another one for a blog content
plan, and thousands of people have downloaded this spreadsheet. I would
recommend getting hold of a tool like that. You can go to a content
marketing institute and get an amazingly rich education about a lot of
things that you could do, lots of advice and templates and that sort of
thing, as well.

Kevin: Sure, and, of course, there’s that entire book, Optimize, that you wrote, which is also a great resource, and I’m sure available there, as well.

Lee: Yeah, just Google the one word “optimize,” or go to OptimizeBook.com.

Kevin: Great. Well, Lee, I really appreciate your time today. In addition to going there, is there anywhere else that people can get in touch with you or follow you?

Lee: Yeah, definitely. I’ve been writing for nine years at TopRankBlog.com, and there is also where you’ll find links to my profiles on LinkedIn and Twitter, where I spend quite a bit of time, Google+, and that sort of thing.

Kevin: Great. Well, we really appreciate your time today, Lee. Thank
you so much, and look forward to speaking with you again soon.

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Almost every professional B2B sales person comes to grips with one of the challenges of penetrating key accounts. Key accounts aren’t your ordinary sale, and they require more sophisticated skills and strategies. Here are three fundamentals for effectively targeting and landing key accounts.

1) Recognize that Key Accounts are Different

First of all, they are larger, but that’s only the beginning. Their decision-making processes will be much more complex, and in some cases, highly structured. A product that may, in a smaller account, only need one person’s approval to purchase can require dozens of people to sign off on it in a key account.

The people have widely different specialty skill sets, perspectives, and motivations. In smaller accounts, you may only have to deal effectively with an owner or executive. In key accounts, the same product may require skillful communications with an engineer, a purchasing agent, a project manager, and a foreman. Each of these specialties is likely to have a different personality type, challenging the sales person to adapt.

Because of the size and complexity, there are a variety of motivations and agendas inside a key account. A naive sales person can be constantly frustrated because they all don’t think the way he/she thinks.

I can go on for pages on ways in which key accounts are different, but this is sufficient to make the point. If you don’t adjust your strategies and tactics to the unique dynamics of a key account, you will be wasting your time.

2) Organize Your Time with a Key Account Like You Would Your Entire Territory

When you look at your territory, you see lots of independent units we call accounts. You understand that each has a unique set of needs, budgets, and personal dynamics, and that each offers its own set of opportunities.

When you approach a key account, think of it as a territory on its own, with lots of units that act like accounts. These units can be departments, or branches, or plants, or whatever organization exists within that account. Each one of them may conceivably have the ability to purchase or move forward the purchase of your products and services.

Each unit, whatever it may be, has its own unique set of needs, budgets, and personal dynamics.  And, in many cases, the purchasing power of one of those units can far outstrip the purchasing power of one of your smaller accounts.

Just as you would begin your work in your sales territory by first identifying all the potential accounts, so too, should you begin your work in a key account by identifying all the individual units, and then understanding the relationships among them.

Just as you would take six months or a year to come to know the accounts in your territory, so too, should you expect that it will take a like period of time to identify and come to know all of the units within your key accounts.

Just as you would attempt to ascertain what opportunities there were in each of your other accounts, so too, should you attempt to uncover the opportunities in each of the key account units.

While key accounts are more complex and require some more sophisticated strategies and skills on your part, the perspective that you take to managing your time in a key account should mimic the perspective you take in coming to know the accounts in your territory.

3) Understand that you Gain Traction in Key Accounts Through Relationships, Leverage, and Organization

Relationships

If you are going to have influence in a key account, you must have relationships with the influential people. Because of the size of a key account, and the natural movement of people within it, that means that coming to know the influential people is not an event which has an ending, but is rather a constant process that never ends. Make a list of the people who should know you, and update it after every sales call.

Who are the department heads in each of those units? Who are influencers? The decision makers? Who could be a champion for you?

Not only do you need to proactively expand your relationships deep into the organization, but you also need to focus upward, and come to know those people who oversee combinations of units, and the C-level people in the corner suites.

Leverage

There is a fundamental equation in B2B sales, and it operates just as reliably in key accounts as it does elsewhere:

• Relationships lead to opportunities
• Opportunities lead to projects
• Projects lead to sales

So, if you want to increase your sales, begin with relationships. The primary way you do that is to leverage every question, every positive relationship, every conversation, and every opportunity to more of the same. Leverage, in this case, means using something to create something additional. In other words, you use every conversation as an opportunity to open the door to more.

Assume the attitude that there is always more. There are more people to meet, more opportunities to uncover, more problems to solve, and more needs to fill.

In every single sales call, you ought to ask, “Who else should I be talking to?” Or, “Who should I know in XYZ department?” If you successfully sell something, that experience should be leveraged to uncover the next opportunity. If you meet someone, that relationship should be leveraged to create more. And so it goes, unending.

Organization

Finally, key accounts are no place for the unorganized sales person. Successfully selling in a key account requires organizational tools and disciplines that are a stretch for the average sales person.

Imagine all the people who you need to know, multiply them by the relationships and agendas among them, overlay that with the account’s strategies, needs and budgets, factor in all the opportunities and the steps in each process necessary to bring it to fruition, and you’ll begin to get an idea of the degree to which you’ll need to collect information, store it, and continually use it. A sophisticated CRM system is a must, as is the discipline to use it religiously.

While these few ideas are not the whole story, they will get you started in your efforts to successfully sell to key accounts. Recognize the difference, plan your time as if each were a sales territory on its own, and apply the weapons of relationship, leverage and organization to the task. You’ll be well on your way.

Editor’s note: A version of this guest post from Dave Kahle, President of the DaCo Corporation, originally appeared on his blog.

What specific challenges have you encountered selling into key accounts?

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By allowing companies to better evaluate and understand their own metrics, sales benchmarks can give executives and managers a much better sense of what to expect when launching a customer acquisition initiative into a new market or when building a new sales team.

Ultimately, those insights can help companies manage a variety of challenges, including:

• Analyzing sales funnel activity
• Developing a scalable customer acquisition model
• Addressing impediments in new markets
• Building appropriately sized lead generation and sales teams
• Evaluating the performance of existing lead generation and sales teams
• Scaling those teams efficiently

The sales benchmarks covered in OpenView’s report, “Measuring Up: 9 Benchmarks that Can Help Expansion-Stage Companies Build a Scalable Sales Machine” span two categories:

1) Lead generation team performance sales benchmarks, which are critical to analyzing an existing lead generation team’s performance and to efficiently building new teams. They include the following conversion rates:

• Call to conversation
• Conversation to appointment
• Appointment to opportunity
• Lead to opportunity

2) Sales team capacity and productivity sales benchmarks, which can be used as a frame of reference to ensure that you are hiring the right number of lead generation reps, are leveraging those reps effectively, and that you are encouraging sales activities that ultimately fuel optimal financial performance. They include:

• Number of open opportunities per sales rep
• Pipeline coverage
• Opportunity win rate on new customer deals
• Pipeline slippage
• Number of new customer deals won per rep

After reading this report, you will have a better understanding of the metrics your company needs to track in order to hire, manage, and scale its sales organization effectively, and whether or not you are on pace with industry averages.

While there are no silver bullets that you can model to ensure the success of your efforts, the sales benchmarks provided in this report should serve as guideposts for establishing initial expectations and measuring your performance against them.

Ultimately, the most important take away is that it’s essential for your sales organization track these benchmarks. The calculations for them are universal and measuring them is absolutely critical to successfully scaling an expansion-stage sales organization. Over time, the data that doing so yields will allow you to create your own sales benchmarks, which will provide ultimate context for your business going forward.

To see how you stack up against the nine sales benchmarks, download a free copy of the full report by clicking on the download button on the upper right-hand side of this page.

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There’s nothing more dangerous than resting on your laurels. But if your laurels happen to reside atop an impressive list of successes, it can appear to be a pretty inviting place to spend some time. If you’re not pushing change, though, you might find that your list will begin to stagnate. Matt Sharrers offers some sales success tips in this post at Sales Benchmark Index to help you keep a fresh approach.

The conditions of each sale are never identical, so you can’t assume an identical approach will always work, says Sharrers. But success doesn’t often initiate change, which can leave you in a tricky spot. Read the article for ideas on how to stay successful while adopting new methods.

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So far in 2013 I’ve helped 21 software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers from around the world boost customer acquisition and lower their SaaS churn rates. And in just about every instance I have found myself asking them the same questions.

The fact that these questions were not easily answered or — if they were — that the answers were ignored, often shed light on the underlying cause of several different problems my SaaS provider clients faced.

From stagnating growth, to unacceptable churn, to a less-than-acceptable ROI on AdWords and other paid traffic spend, it became clear to me that we have a problem. And this problem isn’t small or to be ignored.

To the contrary, it is resulting in SaaS provider executives — just like you — going back to their investors and board with less-than-stellar results, for Founders and CEOs of SaaS companies who know they have the best product out there pulling their hair out at the lack of new customers or the super-high churn rates.

And for the SaaS CMO and Marketing teams who have implemented rigorous A/B testing programs that are functioning properly but not resulting in statistically significant lift, the crisis is mounting.

What is going on here?!?!?!

Simple — you’re attracting the wrong audience and here’s why.

Attracting Your Ideal Customer Is Not an Accident

We know that attracting the right customers is critical to growing your SaaS business, and this includes reducing your SaaS churn rate.

The reality is, you’re not attracting your ideal customers, at least not in the numbers you’d like, because a) you haven’t identified your ideal customers, or b) you have, but you choose to ignore that fact and continue trying to be all things to everyone so you “don’t miss any opportunities.”

But you also know that’s wrong and goes against everything we know to be true in marketing, right?

And the rules apply to you just like everyone else, right?

Okay.

So, to ensure that you’re attracting the right customers, take some time with your team and answer these questions:

1. Who is your ideal customer?
2. Would they know they’re your ideal customer if they looked at your marketing site?
3. Of your current customer base, what percentage does your ideal customer represent?

Question #3 is a super-interesting metric that few SaaS companies actually monitor (but should).

In fact, when I go through this exercise with SaaS providers who are struggling to achieve the results they’re looking for, the answer is generally less than 10% — indicating that 90% of their customer base is made up of customers outside the “ideal” spectrum.

BTW, I’m very interested to see your answers (especially #3) so email them to me when you’re done.

Ugh… language!

Look, when you don’t know who your ideal customer is, you can’t talk to them using their language.

Whether on your marketing site, your ad campaigns, inside your app, through your email follow-up, or even your sales conversations, if you don’t know who you’re talking to you’re in trouble.

When you don’t know who your ideal customer is — or you aren’t willing to focus solely on them for fear of, you know, missing all those other opportunities — you can’t speak the language of that particular audience.

We can agree that HR pros use different words than chefs who use different words than attorneys and so on, right? Maybe different tones, formalities, etc. Perhaps they even want different things, have different needs, desires, and so forth, right? Sure.

Well, when you try to speak to everyone, you can’t use the words of the HR pro or the chef or the attorney. Instead, you have to drop to the lowest common denominator among every potential customer, which means you aren’t saying anything of value to anyone!

Said another way:

People don’t buy from you because they understand what you do… they buy from you because you understand what they do.

— Lincoln Murphy (@lincolnmurphy) March 20, 2013

But wait — the language issue that comes from not speaking to an ideal customer actually gets even worse for SaaS companies!

Because most SaaS companies don’t see themselves as “services” and instead hold on tightly to their technology pedigree, they often won’t stop at “lowest common denominator” language. Nope, they drop even lower and stop talking about the customer at all, instead focusing 100% on their product, features, technology, APIs, and all the other stuff that doesn’t matter when you’re trying to connect with your potential customers (beyond early adopters).

And because you should extend your marketing/sales funnel into your app knowing who you’re attracting will help you create an in-app experience congruent with their needs/desires/expectations.

Zuora Puts Their Customers Front and Center

Look, I can tell when a SaaS company hasn’t identified (or chooses to ignore) their ideal customer before I ever talk to them — because their marketing is all about their product!

Which means I’m not surprised when I talk to those same SaaS providers and hear that their business is stagnating, their churn is high, etc.

So it’s refreshing to see a company like Zuora take the opposite tact and really put their customers front & center:

Now, I’m not saying you have to go that far, but what a great example of using your (best) customers to help you resonate with more customers like them.

And something to note here is that Zuora isn’t a small, vertical-specific company — anyone that fits into the “subscription economy” is a potential customer of theirs.

But they know who their ideal customers would be and they’re actively marketing to them so they (the ideal customer) will know that they’re Zuora’s ideal customer, too.

Other customers who may not fit into the “ideal” mold aren’t prevented from doing business with Zuora, but by drawing a line in the sand Zuora is saying “these are the types of companies we most want to do business with.”

And, frankly (these are my words; Zuora hasn’t been and isn’t a client), Zuora is — by identifying with certain customer types — also subtly pushing less-than-ideal customers away.

Zuora, without saying it directly, is indicating that early-stage startups and smaller companies might be a better fit for less-complex billing solutions like Chargify or Stripe.

But I also happen to know that some companies are starting to outgrow those smaller billing solutions and, as one of the companies I’m working with recently said about Zuora, “we want to be a $250M/ARR company, so we want to use the systems a $250M/ARR SaaS provider would use.”

That’s what I call an aspirational customer.

So just because you draw a line in the sand and actively try to resonate with your ideal customers, that doesn’t mean you won’t get customers from outside that ideal spectrum. It just means you’ll definitely get customers within that spectrum, predictably, which is probably different than what you’re experiencing now.

Get Crystal Clear and Take Action

So we know a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well that product screen shot on your main marketing page is speaking to me loud and clear — you don’t know who your ideal customer is or you’re unwilling to draw that line in the sand.

It should be speaking to you, too. But are you listening?

You can make some quick changes by simply taking your existing product-centric “sales copy” and replacing it with customer-centric, value-based, actual sales copy.

Remember: What’s in it for them (WIIFT)?

What will your ideal customer get from your offering? Make that your headline and bullet list, instead of you-centric messaging and lists of features. Then you can evolve from there and spread that messaging throughout the rest of your sales funnel.

Of course, to do that means you have to know who your ideal customer is! So…

Who is your ideal customer?

That is one of the most powerful questions you probably don’t have a clear answer to. It’s time to get clear.

Editor’s note: This guest post from SaaS customer acquisition and success strategist Lincoln Murphy has been adapted from a post titled “Who’s Your Ideal Customer?” that originally appeared on his SaaS Growth Strategies blog.

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An acquisition is a huge undertaking. There are plenty of nooks and crannies that can go overlooked as you begin to merge with your new parent company, many of which can go unnoticed until it’s too late. Rod Favaron, President and CEO of Spredfast (an OpenView portfolio company), offers a bit of entrepreneur advice on the things he’d do differently if he had the chance.

Favaron’s previous company, Lombardi Software, was acquired by IBM in early 2010. He admits that, for some of his employees, the transition from a small startup to a larger, more established business resulted in what could best be described as culture shock. In this video, Favaron pinpoints that potential lack of preparation as something other founders and CEOs should focus on in order to help their employees experience a smoother integration.

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Performance improvement expert H. James Harrington once said, “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and, eventually, to improvement.” For anyone trying to take their content marketing efforts to the next level, his words certainly ring true.

For content marketers, key performance indicators (KPIs) provide deep insights into how our content is doing. They tell us how many people are consuming our content, whether or not they like it, what they are doing with it. The right content marketing KPIs can alert us to which ideas we should replicate and which we should look to improve. They are also what give us credibility within our companies by demonstrating that content marketing is both a powerful and worthwhile investment.

That being said, performance metrics can also be misleading if they are not put into proper context.

Here is a quick look at the key things you can expert to learn more about in this post.

The truth is that there is no universal definition for what it looks like when content is “working,” or what that even means. The term currently being tossed around by marketers is “engagement” — we all want our content to engage the reader, to be the epitome of engaging. But what exactly does that mean, and how do you measure it?

One of the keys to measuring engagement is to first determine a desired action or outcome. In other words, what is it that you want your content to accomplish? Doing so will allow you to analyze key performance metrics contextually and better understand what those numbers mean relative to your unique goals. If you haven’t determined specifically what you want your content to do, you are naturally going to have a difficult time measuring its performance (not to mention justifying its existence).

Intro: 5 Content Marketing KPIs that Really Matter

That being said, once you have determined what you want your content marketing program to accomplish there is certainly no shortage of metrics to measure its performance. The problem with the abundance of metrics, however, is that deciding which ones to measure — and keeping track of what matters — can get tricky.

That is where this post should be helpful.

To measure and improve your content marketing efforts (without making that process more complicated than it needs to be), keep an eye on these five content marketing key performance metrics:

Unique Visitors / Page Views

Unique visitors refers to the number of individuals who visit your website during a given period of time. Importantly, each visitor is only counted once and this number is likely to vary dramatically depending on the size of your company, industry, and, of course, the amount (and quality) of content you create.

Page views, on the other hand, is a metric that reflects the cumulative number of individual pages that visitors click on during a given period of time. If your page views are higher than your unique visitors, that may be an indication that your audience is finding your content engaging enough to stick around and check out multiple pages.

Bounce Rate / Average Time on Page

According to Google, bounce rate is defined as the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high number may indicate that site entrance pages aren’t resonating with your visitors. Generally, a bounce rate of less than 40 percent is considered acceptable. (For more see KISSmetrics’s infographic “Bounce Rate Demystified.”)

While bounce rate can be a key measure of visit quality, it is important not to place too much emphasis on it. Bounce rate is incredibly easy to misinterpret, and it may or may not reflect the quality or relevance of any particular post.

For instance, what if a visitor comes to your site, reads a post, and then leaves the site? That is considered a bounce, and you might interpret that activity as disinterest by the visitor. But what if your post gave them all the information they needed? As Tom Ewer, Chief Blog Officer of ManageWP points out in his post, “5 Reasons Why You May Have Your Approach to Analytics All Wrong”, a visitor could be extremely satisfied with the post, and simply decide he or she doesn’t need anything more at that moment in time.

At OpenView, we try to combine bounce rate statistics with a metric like average time on page to more holistically gauge the success or failure of a particular piece of content. By seeing which posts keep visitors engaged for longer periods of time and encourage them to read additional content, we can identify our most effective posts and create more like them.

Search Engine Referral Traffic

This metric tracks the amount of traffic being referred to your site by search engines like Google and Bing. Put into the right context, this number should give you a clear indication of how effective you are at optimizing your content for search. Are you using the right keywords? Are you including the right links? Did you include a meta description?

With some relatively simple analysis though tools like Google Analytics, you can easily measure pages with the most unique views by search engine and/or keyword and compare them to your custom goals (such as the engagement goal described above or a more specific conversion goal like newsletter subscribers).

Social Shares, Comments, and Inbound Links

Compared to metrics like page views, average time on page, and bounce rate, some might argue that social shares, comments, and inbound links are leaps and bounds ahead when it comes to determining the perceived value of your content.

After all, a “tweet this” or a “like” can essentially be equated with the visitor vouching for a post, asserting that it has some value and that it will have value for others, as well. When another website or blogger links to your content, they’re essentially endorsing it and exposing it to a broader audience. And when someone comment’s on an article or blog post, it’s a direct confirmation that a visitor found your content relevant enough to engage and take action with it.

What’s really impactful, however, is developing an understanding of how these referral sources stack up against one another relative to a specific activity or objective (engagement, for example). Looking at your referral traffic through the lens of engagement (number of page views and/or average time on site) can help you to better understand the true value it has to your content marketing efforts.

Conversion Rate

For many content marketers, this is the Holy Grail of all key performance metrics. Ultimately, this measurement reflects the percentage of visitors to your site who take a specific action that your content encourages them to (i.e., signing up for your newsletter, downloading an eBook, contacting you for more information, or digesting additional content that pushes them along the path to purchase).

In a column for Inc., Jeff Haden says that conversion rates — or, what he calls, Desired Action Percentage (DAP) — ranks as one of the top two metrics that every entrepreneur needs to know. But Haden also points out that DAP, like any other metric, is best analyzed over time and through iteration. The more you know about the factors that influence conversion, the easier it will be to make changes that positively impact your content’s performance.

Conversion rates vary considerably based on industry, but they often hover around 2 or 3 percent. That said, you should aim for a conversion rate of 5 percent or higher (may as well shoot for the stars, right?), depending on the specific goals you set for your content.

Warning: Focusing Too Narrowly on Metrics Can Cause You to Lose Perspective

Let’s backtrack a little bit.

While all of the metrics listed above can be incredibly helpful in judging and improving the performance of your content marketing program, they aren’t perfect measurements of success. In fact, the information they yield can sometimes be spotty at best.

With that said, perhaps it is permissible to allow a slightly more old fashioned method of measurement into the mix: editorial judgment.

Yes, that subjective method of analysis is notoriously fickle as well, but there is something to be said of its track record in the publishing world. All too often, content marketers spend so much time chasing stats and data down the analytics rabbit hole that they forget they are equipped with a natural performance gauge of their own.

Ultimately, the best recipe for content marketing performance measurement seems to be combining editorial judgment with analytical assessment, while also sprinkling in sympathetic understanding of your target audience’s interests and needs. Like a good pair of binoculars, that holistic approach will help you clarify and bring things into focus, without losing sight of what you were looking for to begin with.

Additional Resources

• Content Marketing Metrics Fun with Google Analytics by Jill Whalen
• 6 Actionable Metrics for Content Marketers & Bloggers (That You Won’t Get from Google Analytics) by Dan Norris
• 53 Actionable Content Marketing Metrics by Heidi Cohen
• The 4 Types of Content Metrics that Matter by Jay Baer

How do you define and measure content marketing performance? Do you regularly use the metrics above, and how often do you opt to use your own editorial judgment?

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Think it’s hard to find love in this crazy world? Try finding the perfect co-founder for your business idea. There might be less awkward small talk and confusion about how to split the bill, but there’s no less anxiety involved. But CoFounders Lab has come up with an interesting solution for entrepreneur networking, explains Elisha Hartwig in this post at Mashable.

No matter your preferences or quirks in life, there’s a dating website to bring you together with a kindred spirit. But what about star crossed entrepreneurs? CoFounders Lab realized that it’s too important a pairing to leave to the whims of the universe, so they created a unique solution to the problem. Read the full article to learn more.

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While social media adoption is certainly widespread by now, many business professionals still claim to be too busy to commit to personal social media branding activities.

Personal branding consultant Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, says that for the most part, the excuse is just that — an excuse. The truth, Clark says, is that making time for social media and branding takes a lot less time than you might think.

By investing just a couple of hours into beefing up your LinkedIn profile and leveraging social media management tools like HootSuite or TweetDeck, Clark says business professionals can easily (and efficiently) demonstrate their intellectual expertise, set the tenor of their conversations, and take one big step toward becoming trusted thought leaders.

For more tactical tips from Clark, watch the full below and visit http://www.dorieclark.com/.

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How do you separate the top potential performers from the rest?

Ask any manager, VP, or business owner what one of the biggest challenges they face in making their revenue numbers and they’ll tell you it’s in identifying, hiring and retaining good sales reps. If you are familiar with my management philosophy, then you’ve heard me talk about the 80/20 rule in sales, and all you have to do is look at your own company or industry to know it’s still true — 80% of the sales and revenue are made by the Top 20%.

So how do you identify who the Top 20% are BEFORE you spend all that time and money on hiring, training, and then hoping they perform?

3 Secrets to Hiring Inside Sales Reps

There are many ways to try to identify the characteristics in advance, and in fact a whole industry of profiling and assessment testing has sprouted up to help you make the right choice. I have used some of these tests and have found them to be quite accurate and valuable.

I have also found an easier way to identify who the potential top producers are, and I’ve boiled it down into three “real secrets.” If you are responsible for identifying and hiring sales reps in your company, then I recommend you use these techniques to help you find the right sales reps before you spend all that time and energy training, managing, and hoping you’ve made the right choice.

1) The Best Predictor of Future Behavior and Performance Is Past Behavior and Performance

This is a well known fact in psychology, and it’s one you can use to predict how a new sales rep is likely to perform for you. The bottom line is that however much your candidate earned in income in their last job, and the job before that, is mostly likely the amount they are going to earn working for you as well.

What you must determine is exactly how much money that was. Ask your candidate to provide you with pay stubs or verification of income for the last six months, and, in addition, ask them what they earned in income each of the last three years. Find a way to verify this.

Finally, determine how much of your product or service your candidate would have to sell to generate that kind of income again, and ask yourself if you would be happy with that level of performance — because that’s most likely what you’re going to get.

2) Determine What Is Really Motivating Your Candidate

What we exposed in the first real secret was your candidate’s comfort zone.  We all have comfort zones, and sales reps in particular will always live up to — and most likely down to — their comfort zone especially in terms of income.

So if your candidate is really looking to your company and opportunity to better themselves and earn more money, find out what is driving this need and desire for more money. Have their life circumstances changed? For example, have they recently gotten married, had a child, purchased a home? If so, then they may have a real motivation to work harder, make more money and enlarge their comfort zone.

If their situation hasn’t changed, then you can be pretty sure that they will not be motivated to work harder, learn more skills, and make more sales. In essence, they will continue to live down to their current comfort level and you may once again be hiring another 80% producer.

3) Put Their Sales Skills and Previous Training to the Test

This is one of my favorites. During the interview, I ask my candidates how they think they would do selling my product. They all say, “I’d do great!” I then do two things:

1. I ask them to sell me on the product. What I’m looking for is for them to ask me qualifying questions rather than just start pitching. Those who just dive right in and start pitching reveal themselves as middle to low 80% producers. Top 20% producers, on the other hand, start asking me questions and gathering information. They are the ones I’m interested in.
2. Next, I give them a couple of objections and watch and listen to how they handle them. You can immediately tell how much training someone has had, and how successful they were, by listening to them handle age old objections like “The price is too high,” and “I’ll have to talk to someone else first.”

These techniques have saved me hundreds of hours of poor hires, and they have often revealed who the real top producers were. Use them, and you’ll love how they will work for you, as well.

How do you identify top performing sales candidates?

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Anyone with even a passing knowledge of history can tip their hat to many of the truly groundbreaking developments of the Industrial Age. But even the staunchest history buff would agree that, while remarkable for their time, those innovations would be antiquated at best in today’s business landscape. So why do the vast majority of companies continue with an employee hierarchy that wouldn’t seem out of place in a museum? In this post at GigaOM Dave Kashen, founder of Unleashed, points to examples of new business organizational structures and explains why you should consider adopting one.

Kashen points out that while classic organizational structures treat employees more like interchangeable cogs in a greater machine, a few pioneering companies are abandoning these rigid structures for innovative org charts that empower employees more than ever before. Click “Full Story” below for details on some new, innovative structures.

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No matter where you turn, it seems someone is coming up with a truly great idea for an app or product. With a market that’s seemingly saturated with brilliance, how can you stand out? Well, as the team at Divvy has shown, a little quirkiness can go a long way. Sarah Perez explains how they are leveraging non-traditional marketing to build up some buzz in this post at TechCrunch.

Divvy has a truly solid idea for their app, Perez points out. But they’re not exactly reinventing the way you’ll look at technology. Instead, they’re offering a service that cleans up some of the inconveniences other apps force you to deal with. But with a grassroots approach to getting the word out, their product is quickly becoming the talk of the town.

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Our customers are starved for ideas and insight. That’s why, the sales professional who calls offering insight is likely to be more welcomed than the sales person who just “shows up and throws up.” But we all know this.

There are hierarchies of insight, however, and it is critical to understand these and their varying degrees of impact in engaging the customer.

6 Levels of Sales Insight

1. Very general insights: “We see these trends in business which may impact you.”
2. Industry-focused insights: “These are things happening in the XYZ segment which may present opportunities for you.”
3. Functional levels of insight: “Manufacturing/Engineering/Finance/HR/Sales/Marketing (pick one) executives are seeing these issues as critical to the performance of their organizations in the next 18 months.
4. Customer insights: “Your target customers are facing these issues, which present an opportunity for you to address.”
5. A combination of insights (for example: industry/segment and functional): “Sales executives in the XYZ segment are seeing these trends which impact their abilities to achieve…”
6. Insights that are focused and unique to the customer’s specific situation: “We’ve spent some time analyzing your company and see an opportunity to increase inventory turns by X%, reduce manufacturing cycle time by Y%, producing $Z million and savings and improving cashflow…”

These sales insights can range from general to increasingly specific. The very general may provoke the customer to respond, “ho-hum, tell me something new.” The more specific, the more likely you will provoke interest and, hopefully, engage in further conversations.

Customers are pleading, “Talk to me about my business;” “Tell me about opportunities we are missing;” “Tell me how we can improve and help me understand how I can grow.”

The insight customers value most is personalized, specific, and unique to them — their company, their function, them as individuals. It’s making observations like the following:

“I’ve studied your manufacturing operations and your scrap rate is at $X millions, growing at Y%. We can show you how to reduce it by Z%, saving $A millions this fiscal year and $Z millions next year.”

Personalized, specific, unique — these are the types of insights that immediately get virtually every executive to sit up and take notice, engaging you in specific discussions about their business. But how do we generate these insights?

The answers are actually simpler than you might think.

Developing Specific, Personalized Sales Insights

If you really understand your customer’s business, their competitors, and their industries, there is a huge wealth of financial information and other data you can analyze — trends in performance, their performance against competition, their performance against the markets, etc. Looking at this will start giving you more specific insight.

If you really understand the problems you solve — and how they may impact these financial and market indicators, you can deduce a very specific impact that you might have.

For example, if you sell financial systems that impact DSO (if you have to ask what DSO is, you need to do your homework), and you know with other customers you have been able to reduce DSO by 10-12%, you can look at your prospect’s DSO and do a couple of quick financial calculations showing the specific financial impact you can have.

“We see DSO is becoming a bigger problem. We can show you how to reduce DSO from X to Y, generating and improved cash flow of Z.” Now that’s insight! It’s not just a teaching pitch, it’s specific and actionable.

I’m constantly amazed by the amount of very specific insight we as salespeople can generate based on publically or easily obtainable information, knowing what key metrics we impact, and connecting the dots with a proforma impact statement. It just takes a little sleuth work, as well as deep knowledge of key metrics and drivers you can impact.

An Example of Generating Engagement with Insight Selling

I had the privilege of sitting with a team earlier this week who did just that. They were preparing for a prospecting call on a key executive. They had done a deep analysis, just using some simple financial data from the customer’s 10K. They had done a deep dive into some comparative industry data, and before they even talked to the customer they could identify specific areas they could impact and offer a projected savings improvement.

When they conducted the call, I got to listen in. They told the customer, “We’ve noticed some things in your business and we think you have an opportunity to save $27 million in the next 15 months.” The customer immediately responded, “That’s very interesting, how did you come up with that number?” The customer was engaged — he wanted to talk, and he wanted to learn!

The team walked him through the numbers, “This is how we arrived at $27 Million. We saw this data in your financial reports. We assumed your average labor rate was this…. Is that a fair assumption?” They engaged the customer in interacting and providing new information.

“Well, right now it’s actually trending about 3.5% higher than that — it’s a real problem,” he responded.

The conversation went on. In some cases they had made some poor assumptions, in others they were pretty close. At the end of the conversation, the team quickly re-ran their financial model saying “Based on the corrections you provided, we think the real savings opportunity is $23 million, not the original $27 million we estimated.”

All this in a 45 minute call. What do you think the customer said?

They still had a long way to go, but they had an interested and engaged customer who wanted to discover more.

The Payoff

There are other ways to get specific about the insights you might provide. Spend time in the customer’s world — observe, listen, analyze things. Ask questions of the people you can get access to. Put this information into a compelling specific set of insights about the customer’s business.

Insight is important. Customer want ideas, they want to learn and grow. Any insight is better than no insight at all, but truly impactful insight that leads to results is specific and unique to them. If you can meet those two criteria you’re guaranteed to have a discussion that absolutely engages them. And the funny thing is, if you know where and how to look for it, it’s not that difficult to determine.

As you prepare for your next calls, stop and consider whether you are providing “insight” or true, personalized sales insight.

Editor’s note: This guest post from sales and business strategist Dave Brock has been adapted from a post titled “There’s Insight, Then There’s INSIGHT” that originally appeared on his Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog.

How do you develop specific, personalized sales insights? Do you have any successful examples of insight selling in action you can share?

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I’ve recently discovered the power of forming daily habits to reach my goals, and I’m keen to share my experience and thoughts to get some discussion going. As a person active in innovation — as an innovation manager, consultant, R&D manager, business developer, product manager, or C-level leader — you’ve most likely set yourself personal goals around being more inspiring, up-to-date, convincing or creative. Have you also considered which daily habits you could form to reach those goals?

Why Daily Habits?

For better or for worse our habits shape us. Good or bad eating habits, exercising habits, working habits such as single-tasking, email habits, and so on. They have a profound impact on our performance, health, and happiness. A lot of high performers have developed very specific habits. Have a look at top tennis players when they’re about to serve: they have a very detailed habit including the amount of balls they check and steps they take, before aiming for that next ace.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

Studies in this relatively new science show that on average you have to repeat new behavior (let’s say: no emails between 9PM and 9AM) 21 days in a row for the new behavior to become a habit. I’m by no means a routine person myself, but I have to admit habit thinking has had a great effect for me (from enjoying a healthy breakfast each morning to better email habits, single tasking, and regular running). I’m now translating this experience to developing innovation habits. If you want to read more about habits in general, you can check out The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg’s bestseller in this field. Or read people’s stories about forming a morning habit, hacking your sleep habit, and habits to stop now.

6 Daily Habits for Innovative Leaders and Professionals

I’m sharing work in progress here, so please share you comments and suggestions! Which habits do great innovation managers have? Which do I have myself, perhaps without being aware of it? After review and analysis, I’ve gathered the following 6 habits for innovation professionals. I’ve learned that you don’t have to perfect in your habits. Starting and doing it is actually the goal in itself. Why don’t you pick just one of these, and start today?

1. Discover 1 pattern. Associative thinking, or the ability to recognize and combine patterns, is key to innovating. Try to discover one pattern per day. For example, you read about a new start-up in car sharing today, and your company is introducing a open office / flexdesk environment: there’s a pattern of people collaborative using things – cars and desks – without owning just one, and with an overall reduction of the amount of things in the network. Get good at it making associations, and write down or draw one pattern per day!
2. Always be pitching. As an innovator you will have to “sell” your ideas – to executives, client or external investors. Make it a habit: pitch at least one idea per day to someone. At the coffee machine, during lunch, at home, plenty of opportunities. Get out of the building, validate a key assumption about your idea with people on the street. You only have a silly idea today? Get out of your comfort zone, just do it.
3. Daily inspiration & ideas. Intellectual curiosity is proven to be a key trait of successful innovators. Find daily inspiration in blogs, twitter streams, going to events, LinkedIn groups, and totally new experiences. I prefer a mix of 90% strongly selected information sources, and 10% really random information sources that can surprise you. Keep a note book: write down any idea that pops in your mind. Make creativity a habit.
4. Turn one problem into an opportunity. Innovators are almost always positive. During each day you come across tons of problems – from a broken coffee machine to a technology bottleneck for your next project. Make it a habit to turn any problem into an opportunity. Broken coffee machine? Make it an opportunity to go out to a startup coffee bar with one of your colleagues; an opportunity to discover tea; an opportunity to learn how to fix a coffee machine; or any other opportunity you can think of.
5. Fail. And learn. It might be a strange habit but truly innovative people aren’t afraid to fail – like most people are – so you have to exercise and experiment. You need to have a stomach for uncertainty. Take some risks today, fail at something, and learn from it. I personally had some difficulties with this one. Last year I set it as one of my objectives. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone a lot, but I have learned even more and haven’t regretted it for a second. If you have difficulty to fail at something because you’re insanely awesome, than make it a habit to do something new each day (new route to work, talk to a stranger,…). This will give you a large opportunity to fail and learn something. Also, scientific research shows diversifying your experiences has a significant impact on your creativity.
6. Make 1 thing. We all spend too much time analyzing, meeting, and documenting. We are all Makers though! Our making skills and habits are just underdeveloped – thanks to a management-focused company system and a thinking-focused education system. Try to actually make something each day. Working on an innovative idea? Try to make it: discover paper prototypes, collages, coding, mock-ups, 3D printing, and so on. Yes, it’s uncomfortable, I know. But fun and productive too. Some companies like Facebook aim to have all Makers instead of Managers: read more about how everyone at Facebook is encouraged to learn by making, even those in C-suites. What could you make today?

How to Develop Your Personal Innovation Habits

Forming habits is not easy. Not at all. Just think about trying to exercise or eat healthier. You have to stick to it long enough for your new behavior to become a habit. You can read more about the 4 habits that form other habits or the definitive guide to sticking to a habit, but here are the ground rules that I found most useful:

1. Start extremely small. Make sure you can’t fail your first habit. When I started some of my habits, I also had the tendency to start with very ambitious habit goals. That doesn’t work. Don’t start with setting a goal of 10 creative ideas per day (or similar: running 60 minutes per day), rather start with 1 idea per day (or similar: exercises just 5 minutes per day). Do it as long as needed for it to become a habit – on average this is 21 days in a row. Never miss 2 consecutive days. Than build on it and expand your habit. The frequency is way more important than the size.
2. Write them down. I’ve found it very helpful to write down the habit you want to adopt so someone else would be able to follow it. Making your habit very concrete (f.e. each day at 10.00 AM, the amount you aim for, where you will be,…) will boost your chances of success. You have less to think about before doing it. Or in other words: you
3. Share with others. Make yourself accountable by sharing your new habits with 1-5 people. These could be your colleagues, your team, your friends, your family, or any other person. Ask them to check in on your progress, or even more fun, make it a collaborative effort of forming the new habit.
4. Enjoy your habits. A lot of people start habits because they want to reach a goal, like loosing weight, but don’t like the habit in itself. This decreases your chances of actually succeeding. Keep a positive mind and enjoy your habit each time. I guess for innovation habits this might be a bit easier than following a strange diet!
5. Track with Lift. Of course there are apps to help you. My big time personal favorite is: Lift. Lift is an intuitive, social app that let’s you check and track your daily habits. You also have the opportunity to join habits with colleagues, so you can make it a combined team effort to be more innovative.

What Do You Think?

I’ve experienced the benefits and the power of forming daily habits, so I really wanted to share these thoughts. I’m very much looking forward to your experiences and views on this! Which innovation habits do you have? Consciously or unconsciously? Which habits would you plan to form? Which habits do great innovation leaders have? Many thanks for sharing in the comments section or via philippe@boardofinnovation.com. PS: Being Grateful is one of my daily habits so I’ll make sure to thank you personally!

Editor’s note: This guest post from Philippe De Ridder originally appeared on the Board of Innovation blog.

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You might be surprised to find out that becoming recognized as a visionary has very little to do with actually coming up with a vision. Offering another one of their valuable entrepreneur lessons, Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, co-authors of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Entrepreneur, point out that ideas alone don’t make great innovators.

While vision, itself, isn’t as critical to becoming a visionary as you would assume, in order to be a successful entrepreneur you still have to find a way to find an advantage and separate yourself from the pack. In this short video, Cooper and Vlaskovits look back on one of America’s most heralded entrepreneurs and visionaries and show that, despite all his deserved success, it wasn’t necessarily his ideas that truly set him apart.

Future and current entrepreneurs take note — The Lean Entrepreneur offers lessons and ideas you can’t afford to miss.

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A Better Motto for Scalable Company Growth

As your company grows, so should your approach to leading it. In a recent interview with OpenView, Fishkin explained that changing his mindset around speed was the first major shift he had to make.

You need speed to get out in front of your competitors, but now that you’re clear of the pack, it’s time to maintain that lead without careening off the road. “Speed of launch” and “speed to market” becomes less important, he says. Instead, you need to slow down, stop breaking things, and concentrate on developing sustainable growth through scalability and processes.

In Order to Achieve Scalable Company Growth, Sometimes Speed Needs to Take a Backseat

As you shift gears to focus more on scalability, growth planning, and paying down your technical debt (link to first post here), you also need a change in discipline. Resist the urge to slam on the accelerator when it comes to launch dates and bringing products to market.

“It’s almost antithetical to many things that you read about in books like The Lean Startup…or Facebook’s ‘Move Fast and Break Things’” mantra, Fishkin admits, but now “when we move fast and break things, our churn rate goes up.” Once you’ve established product/market fit and it’s clear your customers like the features you already offer, he says, they are happier if those features and any new ones you launch work properly.

Data doesn’t lie, and Fishkin sees in his own company’s numbers that when features begin breaking down, growth rate drops. In one month, SEOmoz’s growth rate dropped to one sixth of what it had been the month prior after several products broke down at once.

When you reach the expansion stage, your company has breathing room for the first time. Take that time for QA.

Process Makes Perfect

“Instead of just plugging the holes one-by-one,” Fishkin says, one of the biggest and important transitions gearing up for growth is “getting process-driven.” He stresses that “finding a repeatable, scalable methodology for everything you do inside the company” makes for a smoother transition into the company’s next stage. Whether for recruiting, on-boarding, financial processing, getting monthly closes, moving payroll systems, or anything else, establishing processes ensures better scalability.

Once you begin developing your processes, document what you learn to ensure that no employee is irreplaceable. As Fishkin explains in a recent blog post, making employees redundant is in fact good for both your employees and your company.

“If you document your work, make replicable all your processes, insure that 2-3 other people know your tasks well enough to keep things running smoothly, and have built redundancy across your position, you can be promoted,” he points out. And at the same time your company isn’t tied to one engineer without whom “everything could fall apart.”

How has your company’s mentality shifted when moving from startup to growth stage? Do you agree there’s a time to slow down and stop breaking things?

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More often than not, a startup is founded with dreams of eventually becoming acquired. It’s a natural thought — most entrepreneurs fall asleep dreaming of a big payday. But according to Rod Favaron, President and CEO of enterprise social media software company Spredfast (an OpenView portfolio company), setting out specifically to make yourself a target for acquisition not only has a tendency of not leading to that result — it can also be a critical mistake.

Building your company for an acquisition is akin to counting your chickens before they hatch, says Favaron, whose previous company, Lombardi Software, was acquired by IBM in early 2010. Instead, allow your company to progress naturally and allow potential acquisition to develop organically. Aim to win the space you go after and let your progress be your guide.

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It’s no secret that the content marketing approach that works best is one that includes a personal touch. One recent study conducted by Marketing Sherpa saw a company increase B2B leads by 124% after incorporating buyer personas into their content marketing strategy.

As your strategy matures to include content tailored for each buyer at every stage of the purchase funnel, however, you can lose the forest for the trees. It gets tough to keep track of what to prioritize in order to create the biggest impact, and it’s easy to get bogged down with the details of individual pieces of content, which takes your attention away from your content strategy as a whole.

That’s why you need a content matrix to get you back on track, and to keep you there once and for all.

What Is a Content Matrix?

Simply put, a content matrix is a map for your content creation. It guides you and your team to help prioritize the content that nurtures leads. A content matrix also helps your team target the key factors that engage your prospects at every stage of their buyer journey.

With this map in hand, you know what to highlight in content aimed at filling the top of the funnel with new leads. You also know what issues and solutions to discuss to pull those new buyers along through subsequent stages of the funnel.

B2B Content Mapping: Create a Content Matrix in 8 Steps

Craft your own version of this invaluable tool and start creating content that you know will make a positive impact on sales.

	1) Identify Your Buyer Personas In order to create content that resonates with your prospects, you need to make sure you understand the motivations, needs, and goals that drive them. Read my 3-part series on developing buyer personas if you haven’t already identified and analyzed them.
	2) Map Out Each Buyer Persona’s Journey Make note of key events and determine which are the motivating factors that move buyers down the funnel. Each buyer persona involved in the purchase process will likely have different problems that your product or service helps resolve, so keep track of all of them.
	3) Determine the Best Medium for Each Stage of the Journey A video may work best for the first stage of your buyers’ journey, but a blog post or an eBook might work better once they’ve moved to the next stage. Look at what types of content have converted best for you in the past and add those notes to your growing content map.

4) Import the Content Map into a Spreadsheet

Put the stages of the buyer journey into the horizontal axis and the buyer personas into the vertical axis. Now, combine your notes from steps two and three to populate each cell in the spreadsheet with the type of content and the key factors that the content focuses on. That way, you can easily match up a buyer persona with whatever stage of the buyer journey he or she is currently in. You know right away what the ideal content is to move that buyer to the next stage.

To make your matrix even more productive, give every piece of content a one or two-line summary for use in marketing and sales communications. Include a hook that speaks to the value proposition of what you’re selling and why it will help buyers with the problems they face.

	5) Identify What Approach Works Best for Each Piece of Content Top-of-the-funnel content works best when paired with a provocative approach that grabs attention and boosts awareness of your products and services. For content that focuses on buyers further along the funnel, try an approach that differentiates what your company offers from your competitors.
	6) Perform a Content Audit Conduct a content audit by looking at the conversion rates for your existing content to determine what’s working well and what needs to be improved. Often, a single piece of content that converts well can be slightly altered to match up with the personalized needs of different buyers at different stages of their journey. Be careful not to force it, however, and be ready to create new content if your existing pieces aren’t a good fit.
	7) Consult Your Sales and Marketing Leaders Speak with those leading your sales and marketing departments for their input on what content has the greatest impact on generating and nurturing leads. Take their suggestions and combine them with your conversion rate data to get a clear picture of where your content marketing team needs to focus its energies.

8) Create a Go-to-Market Version of Your Content Matrix

Apply the approaches from Step 5 and the data from Steps 6 and 7 to your existing content matrix, and you’re almost ready for primetime. You now have a clear, well organized content map that points you to the ideal piece of content for any persona at any stage of the journey.

Armed with your complete content matrix, you can map out the new pieces of content you need to prioritize and the existing content you need to tweak. Apply those priorities to your editorial calendar (see Michele Linn’s post on how to create an editorial calendar at the Content Marketing Institute) to ensure your marketing team is focusing on resolving the content gaps that will have the most impact on conversion rates. Remember, the goal is to shorten the time it takes for prospects to work their way through the funnel.

What challenges and successes have you experienced mapping your content to the B2B buying cycle?

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The story behind Triberr will sound familiar to many entrepreneurs: founder Dino Dogan saw a common problem without an easy solution. “I was doing SEO for a long time,” he says, but optimizing content “didn’t work for what I was trying to do.” Dogan wanted to build a community around his blog to include more than immediate friends who would comment on and share his posts, but that required “a lot of heavy lifting.”

Enter Triberr. Dogan’s social network “allows you to set up a blogging tribe” of like-minded writers who share each other’s work in a “streamlined, frictionless, no-heavy-lifting kind of way.” He recently spoke with OpenView to share how he’s learning from criticism, educating customers, and bootstrapping “a Facebook for bloggers.”

Accepting and Learning from Criticism

Not long after Triberr began to receive attention, Dogan saw that what he was developing was polarizing users. “There’s been a lot of criticism over the years,” he explains, but founders need to remember the negative commentary can contain hard truths that you need to hear.

Take the time to “sift through the yelling,” Dogan says, and you’ll find “kernel truths and actionable items.” Apply those gems of constructive criticism to improve your product. After all, detractors “aren’t sugar coating,” he points out, and they may just provide you with the outside, unbiased perspective that you need to spot legitimate limitations in what you’re developing.

Educating Customers While Selling to Them

With his new product, Dogan learned quickly just how important how-to and support materials can be. The Triberr platform is designed to facilitate what Dogan has dubbed “tribe marketing.” Most of his customers, however, arrive not knowing what this new form of marketing is.

New Triberr users “don’t understand how to build a tribe,” Dogan says, and, “perhaps more importantly, they don’t see the importance of doing that.” To educate customers on the benefits of your product, and to raise awareness of your brand, Dogan suggests turning to content. “I’m actually in the process of writing an eBook that we’re going to give to our community,” he says. The eBook explains “how to build a tribe” and offers “tribal strategies for bloggers.”

Without any guides or support documentation for his platform, Dogan estimates that Triberr has been 60% successful in retaining its users. “I’m hoping that we’ll chip away another 10% or 20% by having this eBook resource,” he says.

Word of mouth and customer referrals are what will determine your product’s success early on, so effective onboarding and customer satisfaction are hugely important. Maximize retention by having your support content in place as soon as possible.

Challenges of Bootstrapping: Prioritizing Features

While startups are always a tough endeavor, Dogan faced the added difficulties that come with building a business entirely on his own. “We’re totally bootstrapped,” Dogan says, and because Triberr lacks any outside financial investment, one of its main obstacles is a lack of resources.

“We have to be really frugal with our time and effort,” Dogan explains, starting with focusing solely on the product’s core features. Dogan laments the “hard choices” that he’s had to make, both in terms of “what features we want to build,” as well as “features we’ve actually built but could no longer maintain.” Even though paring back the product’s scope can be “very painful,” he stresses that you have to be willing to let some features go.

At the same time, Dogan warns against losing sight of the grand vision that drove you to start your company in the first place. With Triberr, he still wants to take the blogosphere and convert it “into one giant social organism.” Carry that elephantine goal with you, but, as Dogan says, there’s only one way to eat it: “one bite at a time.”

What do you think is the most important piece of advice for bootstrapping entrepreneurs?

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Much as some business leaders might wish it was the case, establishing yourself as a thought leader isn’t as simple as setting up a blog, writing a few posts, and trying to acquire as many Twitter followers as possible.

Instead, says branding expert Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, true thought leadership is driven by two distinct things.

How to Become a Thought Leader: Two Critical Steps

1. Create great (not just good) content that makes you easy to find online and shows that you “get” your market, have good ideas, and understand the trends and issues in your industry.
2. Take offline leadership roles that demonstrate your willingness to do more than observe from the sidelines.

Ultimately, Clark says in this video, the visibility that both of those things create will pay huge dividends, because people will be able to easily see your body of work and level of expertise. For more tips from Clark on establishing yourself as a thought leader, watch the full video or visit http://www.dorieclark.com/.

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It’s important to have a co-founder, and not just because you want someone to celebrate with when you get purchased by Google. You want your co-founder to not only complete the knowledge that you lack, but be an integral member of a truly awesome team.

Which is why, in this guest post at OnStartups, Jessica Alter, co-founder and CEO of FounderDating, says choosing a co-founder is such an important step in starting your business.

Alter explains why need, approach and timing are three of the biggest and most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when searching for their co-founder. And while you’ll wisely learn from many of your mistakes over the course of your career, don’t put yourself through the pain of choosing the wrong co-founder. That’s a lesson best learned from the mistakes of others.

Read the full post at OnStartups by clicking the “Full Story” button below.

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Marketing automation can often sound like the silver bullet to solve expansion-stage companies’ resource problems. You automate the tasks that your already-stretched marketing and sales teams have to deal with, freeing up their time and jumpstarting your lead generation machine. What’s not to like?

Well, before you make that dream a reality, you need to ensure that your marketing strategy and your existing technology are ready for this brave new automated world. Here are three steps you should take to help you with your marketing automation prep.

Step 1: Take Stock and Set the Table

In order to get a handle on whether you’re primed for marketing automation, consider the technology your company currently uses. Look at the number of prospects or contacts that you have in your database(s). If you’re using Salesforce.com or SugarCRM, as well as an email service provider, you likely have two separate sets of contacts in each tool. Add in Excel spreadsheets where you cataloged all of the attendees from any recent events, and you are looking at several disparate contact lists.

Marketing automation creates one central repository of contacts from your disparate lists and determines which prospects should be in front of sales. The other contacts are scored according to what they were looking at on your website over a period of time and other criteria that you need to be ready to define. Once scores reach a certain level, they trigger emails to those prospects and alerts to salespeople.

In order for automation to be effective, foundational technology like a CRM tool needs to be in place. Even more importantly, you need to be ready to shift away from a piecemeal approach of tracking and contacting prospects one by one. Remember, marketing automation isn’t about tacking on a new set of activities as much as it is changing the way you carry out your marketing strategy.

Step 2: Define Your Goals by Developing Use Cases

Every company wants to grow its pipeline and bring in more quality leads. But before investing in marketing automation, you need to look beyond broad goals to have a clear understanding of how you will define the success of your new initiative.

• Consider what you want from marketing automation: An easy way to put your finger on it is to develop use cases around how you envision marketing and sales interacting more efficiently with the help of an automation tool. Think about how your teams are executing now, and where there are opportunities to improve.
• Speak with both your marketing and sales teams to find out how each defines a lead: This may sound like an unnecessary step, but marketing and sales tend to disagree about what a qualified lead looks like. Sales often has very specific criteria around what constitutes a lead, whereas marketing is more focused on filling the funnel and qualifying leads over time. As long as both teams are on the same page about which leads sales should respond to and which leads are better off in a marketing drip campaign, then everyone is aligned and ready for automation.

Step 3: Choose the Right Vendor by Putting Those Use Cases to Use

Armed with your specific use cases and departmental alignment, you’re ready to start evaluating vendors. You will have no shortage of options, so get a sense of what your price point is first and focus on vendors in your budget.

Marketing automation systems range widely in terms of complexity. Consider your current technology and whether you’re ready/willing to take advantage of a more robust system. If all you need is a more basic tool to collect your disparate lists of prospects and bring a process to your pipeline, then look for simpler software that’s better suited to your company.

After narrowing down your choices, go through your use cases with each vendor. Stick to specifics instead of having salespeople demo the entire frontend of their software and everything it can do. If you want to see how a multi-wave, multi-channel campaign that incorporates your website and your content would benefit from a vendor’s automation software, then make that a use case and a point of discussion. Be as specific to your needs as possible so that you come away with a better sense of how each tool will perform expressly for you.

Additional Resources for Marketing Automation Prep

To start familiarizing yourself with automation best practices, and to read some helpful implementation guides, visit vendor websites, such as:

• Marketo’s Marketing Automation Success Center
• Eloqua’s Marketing Automation Best Practice Toolkit
• HubSpot’s Marketing Automation page
• Marketing Automation resources and articles from ExactTarget and Pardot
• Silverpop’s Marketing Automation overview

Or for more third-party information, try the following:

• Responsys offers guidance on getting started in automation and developing an RFQ.
• SiriusDecisions and Gartner can point you to the top vendors and provide some insight into what each has to offer.
• Plus, you can take a look at my series of blog posts right here at OpenView to learn more about marketing automation and how to keep your lead-gen machine well oiled.

What was/is the biggest challenge your company has faced implementing marketing automation?

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We’re all familiar with the notion of the entrepreneur as visionary. It’s one that Hollywood loves to perpetuate — misunderstood geniuses and sudden epiphanies always make for a good story. But according to Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, co-authors of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Entrepreneur, believing in the myth of the visionary as an overnight success can be a dangerous thing for aspiring entrepreneurs. In fact, it can severely limit their potential.

It’s easy to think that visionaries were born with brilliant business ideas flowing through their veins. Not only is this not true, of course, it also encourages potential entrepreneurs to either hold their ideas in too high regard or abandon them prematurely altogether.

In this short video, Cooper and Vlaskovits explain the pitfalls of each scenario, and reveal the truth of how legendary “visionaries” really came to be.

Do you think all entrepreneurs have to be visionary in order to truly succeed?

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It’s time to re-create storytelling in your office. And no, this does not mean you should all gather around a campfire with sticks and a bag of marshmallows. If you want to execute great product design, your team of designers needs to start thinking in terms of stories, not in terms of blueprints, according to this post at GigaOM by Braden Kowitz, leader of the Google Ventures Design Studio.

Mimicking the actions of your users by creating dozens of possible stories will help you better understand how the UX of your product should ultimately work, says Kowitz. It also has the added benefit of bringing problems to light sooner, clarifying design goals and speeding up other processes along the way.

Read the full post by clicking the “Full Story” button below.

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Starting this month, college seniors across the country will listen to public figures, successful businesspeople, and, in some circumstances, sophomoric entertainers deliver insightful (or hilarious) commencement speeches.

They’ll talk about what graduating students can expect in the coming years, what they need to remember and plan for, and what they need to keep in perspective when their paths inevitably take turns they didn’t plan for.

Which got us thinking — that actually sounds like advice many startups could benefit from, as well.

After all, the startup phase is very much akin to the development that many students undergo during their four (or five, etc.) years in college. It is a process of self-discovery and skill development — iterating and experimenting until you find something that feels right.

The expansion stage, on the other hand, tends to mimic the career path of those students after they receive their degrees. How do you best execute the skills and knowledge you discovered during the startup phase? What are your current priorities and future aspirations? How can you best manage your resources to set yourself up for a prosperous future?

With that said, we thought it would be fun to imagine which 10 well-known entrepreneurs and investors would make ideal commencement speakers for tech companies graduating from the startup phase to the expansion stage. Keep in mind as you’re reading that the commencement speakers aren’t ranked in any particular order and that we chose people who boasted an ideal blend of operational experience and funding know-how.

Find out who made the list, and feel free to share your commencement speaker suggestions in the comments section!

Top 10 Startup Commencement Speakers for Your Company’s Graduation to the Expansion Stage

1) Larry Page, CEO of Google

1) Larry Page, CEO of Google

It’s hard not to put Page on this list — and not just because he already has experience delivering commencement speeches.

Page co-founded Google, turned it into the global business giant it is today, and has acted as an advisor and investor for several highly successful startup technology companies. He understands how to scale a technology company, as well as what to do with that company once it becomes a market behemoth.

Quotable: “When a really great dream shows up, grab it.”

2) Paul Graham, founder of Viaweb and Y Combinator

2) Paul Graham, founder of Viaweb and Y Combinator

Graham is a legendary programmer and applied sciences essayist, but he’s probably best known now for his work with Y Combinator, the startup accelerator that has invested in companies like Reddit and Dropbox.

Graham is well spoken and, given his work as an essayist, would probably compose a pretty compelling commencement speech.

Quotable: “As long as you’re over a certain threshold of intelligence, what matters most is determination.”

3) Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany

3) Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Where should we start with Blank. Aside from his successful entrepreneurial endeavors, he is also credited with creating the Customer Development methodology, which ultimately launched the Lean Startup movement.

Many consider Blank to be an innovation and operations expert, and his resume certainly backs that up. Four of the eight companies he founded went public, and he’s now a successful consultant, advisor, author, and professor.

Quotable: “The company that consistently makes and implements decisions rapidly gains a tremendous, often decisive, competitive advantage.”

4) Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group

4) Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group

As a long-time early stage investor and advisor, Feld very much understands the exhilaration (and agony) of starting and growing technology companies. His blog is rich with entrepreneurial and operational insight, and he clearly understands what it takes to manage the ups and downs of expansion-stage life.

As for his speaking skills? Well, Feld also happens to be a nationally recognized speaker who has delivered several addresses, including this one for TedX.

Quotable: “Quit what you suck at.”

5) Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!

5) Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!

Though some have questioned Mayer’s decision-making lately, she’s still an absolute tech all-star. As one of Google’s earliest employees, Mayer climbed the ranks quickly and was hired as Yahoo!’s top executive in 2012.

Mayer also happens to be the youngest Fortune 500 CEO, and it doesn’t hurt that she also has commencement speech experience.

Quotable: “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of, 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough. Sometimes that's a sign that something really good is about to happen.”

6) Dave McClure, entrepreneur and founder of 500 Startups

6) Dave McClure, entrepreneur and founder of 500 Startups

McClure’s tech career got off the ground with stops at companies like PayPal and Simply Hired in the early 2000s, but he’s best known for his work with startup incubator 500 Startups.

His blog, 500 Hats, is one of the most read venture capital and investment blogs on the Web, and his insight is a refreshing balance between the entrepreneur and investor perspectives. McClure also happens to be a pretty fiery speaker (see: the 5 minute mark of this video).

Quotable: “Features are like having sex. You make one mistake and you have to support it for life.”

7) Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

7) Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

Sandberg’s sterling reputation as a forward-thinking tech executive was certainly solidified before she joined Facebook in 2008. But after helping turn the social networking site into a profitable enterprise, her status has only been solidified.

Sandberg serves on the board of The Walt Disney Company, recently published her first book, and in 2011 delivered what the Harvard Business Review’s Andrew McAfee called a commencement speech for the ages.

Quotable: “Put your foot on that gas pedal and keep it there until the day you have to make a decision, and then make a decision. That's the only way, when that day comes, you'll even have a decision to make.”

8) Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, author, and investor

8) Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, author, and investor

A Silicon Valley icon, Kawasaki is best known as Apple’s one-time chief evangelist. He also founded news aggregation site Alltop, and he now serves as an advisor to Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, while continuing to author the blog How to Change the World.

His book, The Art of the Start, is a bestseller, and Kawasaki is an accomplished investor, proving that his expertise goes well beyond simply founding and building companies.

Quotable: “Pursuing your passions makes you more interesting, and interesting people are enchanting.”

9) Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of Hubspot

9) Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of Hubspot

As one of the pioneers of the inbound marketing movement, Shah is an absolute visionary that understands what it takes to imagine, build, and grow a technology company.

His blog, OnStartups, is a fantastic resource for entrepreneurs of all industries, providing advice and insight on everything from corporate culture (something HubSpot should know a thing or two about) to product launch and fundraising strategy.

Quotable: “Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant.”

10) Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and founder/CEO of Square

10) Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and founder/CEO of Square

In less than 10 years, Dorsey has built two companies that are valued at more than a billion dollars. What else needs to be said?

As the co-founder of Twitter and current CEO of credit card processing solution Square, Dorsey clearly knows what’s required to take an idea from inception to reality, and then build it into an enormous corporate success. Sounds like someone that an expansion-stage company could certainly learn from, doesn’t it?

Quotable: “Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea."

Which startup sage do you think would make the perfect tech commencement speaker and who else should be on the list? Add your own nominees in the comments section.

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In this week’s Labcast, marketing strategist and bestselling author David Meerman Scott and marketing expert Jeff Ogden give us the scoop on one of marketing’s fastest growing trends: newsjacking.

As Scott explains in his latest book, Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage, the rules have changed when it comes to PR. Innovative B2B companies are now finding that — with the right mix of creativity and dynamic response — when news breaks, they can make themselves part of the story, raising brand awareness and generating new leads in the process.

Listen in for a break down of newsjacking principles, key do’s and don’ts, and examples of how you can set yourself up to capitalize big on breaking news.

Labcast 107_ David Meerman Scott and Jeff Ogden on Newsjacking

Have questions for David or Jeff? Leave them in the comments section below.

Podcast Transcript

Kevin: Hello, and welcome to this edition of Labcast. I’m Kevin Cain and joined by two outstanding marketing strategists, David Meerman Scott, an international renowned bestselling author and Jeff Ogden, a sales and marketing expert who’s helping companies around the country acquire more customers through lead generation programs. Both David and Jeff are here today to talk to me about the idea of newsjacking and how companies can use it as a marketing tactic to take advantage of what’s going on right now in the world to get a lot of attention for themselves. Hey David and Jeff, thanks so much for joining me today on Labcast. How’s it going?

David: Great. How are you?

Kevin: Doing very well.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s nice to be involved with you in this project, it’s fun, and good to connect with David.

Kevin: Absolutely. Well, you know, what we’re here to talk about today is this whole idea of newsjacking. Which of course David, you’re very familiar with, having coined the term. And it’s something that a lot of people are familiar with these days. I know a very recent and public example being the Super Bowl just a few months ago, where the lights went out in Georgia, so to speak, and within just a few moments we saw Tweets going out about Oreos, how they could be dunked in the dark.

Well, what I want to talk about with you today, with both of you though, is sort of more the B2B applications of newsjacking and I’m really going to get a sense of how it works and how companies can use it, and I thought I’d start off by asking you, David, if you can kind of just give a more formal explanation of what newjacking is than sort of this lighthearted example I just gave.

David: Yeah, sure. First of all, I didn’t coin the term newsjacking, I however I definitely popularized it. When I first started talking about newsjacking, there were approximately a hundred hits on Google to some pretty obscure references to it, so I didn’t invent the term. But now I think the last time I checked there was well over 100,000 references.

The idea of newsjacking, is the art of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story. So, what happens is you follow what’s going on in the news and it could be global news, like the Super Bowl, it could be national news, it could be a local news, for just your geographic location or your town. It could be news that’s just in your B2B industry or market and once that news happens, once the breaking news happens, you create something that will be seen by journalists. So, it could be a blog post, it could be a Tweet or some other piece of content that they find at the moment that they’re looking for additional information for their stories and it gets you to be a part of their stories.

Kevin: So, can you give me some other examples of maybe instances where this has been done? Where it’s got more of a business application?

David: Yeah. So, one of my favorite examples is Joe Payne, the CEO of Eloqua, noticed that one of his biggest competitors, a company called Market2Lead, had just been acquired by Oracle. And Market2Lead and Eloqua are in the marketing automation software space.

So Joe wrote an instant blog post, he wrote that blog post with about an hour, a couple of hours after the news broke and now after he wrote the blog post, there are two pieces of information about the acquisition. There’s the announcement by Oracle, which was a terse, three sentence announcement that basically says we’re not going to tell you anything about this, and Joe’s very well written blog post called “Oracle Joins the Party” on the Eloqua blog.

And as reporters were writing the stories about what this means to the marketplace, they quoted Joe Payne in all of the articles. So he ended up in Bloomberg Business Week, in Customer Think, which I think is an important blog, PC World, Information World, a bunch of publications. And then, they email that link to that blog post to all of their clients, sorry, all of the clients that they knew of that are clients of Market2Lead, that they were trying to sell to, the company that was acquired.

And that resulted in a million dollars worth of new business because the companies that they sent that to, that’s for the most part how they heard about the acquisition, because Oracle didn’t actually tell them about the acquisition you know, as it was happening, and it took a competitors blog post to clue them in.

So, in that case it’s B2B, it’s a blog post that took a couple of hours to write and it generated a million dollars worth of new
business. The key to it though was the blog post was written very, very quickly and it was written in the middle of the night, because the acquisition was announced I think it was at 9:00pm at night, and that’s the power. The power of being the first to comment on something in the news, generates press clips in the form of being recorded in the press, and also even has potential to drive new business.

Kevin: So David and Jeff, I’m curious to hear if there are situations where this can actually be a risk tactic. So, you know, we’ve heard of Eloqua, we’ve heard of Oracle, but obviously Oracle’s a much bigger organization. Is there the instance where you could kind of attempt to do this newsjacking and have it backfire on you?

David: I think that there’s a couple of things that you need to be aware of. First of all, most newsjacking attempts don’t fail in that there’s a negative backlash. Most newsjacking attempts, nothing happens. Nobody cares. So I think of it like, almost like a venture capitalist invests in companies and for the most part, the companies invested in aren’t going to do very well and they know that going into it, but they also know maybe one out of ten or two out of ten will be rocket ships which will generate huge returns. That’s the same with news-jacking.

But occasionally with newsjacking, there can be backlash. The ways to mitigate that are to try to avoid newsjacking any negative stories. So don’t go in and talk about hurricane Sandy, which some companies did. You know, because people died. It’s very difficult to newsjack the Boston Marathon. People tried and you know, it’s just a very tough thing to do.

The other thing is, don’t — if you’re doing something related to the competition — don’t try to dismiss the competition. Don’t try to bad-mouth the competition. Rather, add something to the discussion, which is what Eloqua did, around what the acquisition means for the marketplace as a whole. Jeff, what do you think?

Jeff: Yeah. I think you’re right David. And I think the key is to you know, be an educational resource. Because really what you want to do is, for the people writing the story, you want to help them write the story. So you want to take an approach to share some insights into what’s happening, so that they pick up what you’re saying. That goes right along with what you’re saying David.

David: Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin: And what recommendation would you give for how companies can sort of get ahead of these types of stories, I mean as the example, you mentioned with Oracle and Eloqua, this is happening in the middle of the night, how do you kind of best position yourself to be able to take advantage of these opportunities when they pop up?

David: Well, what I always recommend to people is you get permission ahead of time to do it. So, if you’re a marketing person at a company, then you should get preapproval from your bosses and the legal department or PR department or wherever else you need to get approval from, that if a situation like this should arise over the next several months or several years, or whatever it is, that you’ve got approval to go ahead and push out a blog post without asking anybody else, if you think in your judgment it’s the right thing to do.

Because frequently it does happen at night, it happens on the weekends, it happens on vacation period, it happens when the CEO is on vacation. I mean, it happens at weird times, so you get that pre-approval in place. I think that’s critical.

If you run your own business, if it’s a very small business, you just give yourself permission, hey if this is going to happen I’m going to do it. And then you need to keep your eyes and ears open to opportunities for thing that will come up that you can talk about. And what I like to do personally, the way I do it, is I just keep a very open mind and I look at a lot of very broad sort of news outlets. When I’m exercising in the morning, I’ll take a look at some of the cable news shows in the morning and see what they’re talking about. About three or four times a day, I take a look at Google News, unfiltered. That’s news. Google.com, I turn off all the personalizations. I’m looking at all the stories, and just taking a look at what’s going on in the world of sports, in the world of fashion, in the world of business, in international news and what not. Because you never know what you’re going to find.

Kevin: And then, you know, you had mentioned the point of the times being critical and they have to move quickly. What’s sort of your window of opportunity? Is it a matter of hours, or in some cases a matter of minutes?

David: Jeff, you want to take that?

Jeff: I would say it’s not very long. He’s shown me you know how you have to just jump on the story right away because the lifespan of a news story is very brief and you have to get on it when it’s first breaking. You ought to move pretty quick. And I think one of the things too, that David emphasized in his book, it’s also useful to build some relationships with the media ahead of time, so that you’re not contacting them for the first time with your story. So that also I think helps in newsjacking.

David: Yeah, and there’s a couple of things that are yes, you can certainly contact the media ahead of time, that would work
really well. But one of the beauties of newsjacking is that the media can find you, because Google Index is in real time. And if there’s a story that’s breaking, you can put out a blog post or a Tweet instantly, you know, quickly. And a blog post, if maybe it takes half an hour or 45 minutes to write it, push it out, or maybe an hour at the most, the key is that your blog post comes out as soon after the news breaks as possible, but before the reporters are finished writing their story, so you’ve got that window. And it can be three or four hours, five or six hours, even as much as a day, depending on what kind of news story it is.

Or if it’s a news story that it breaking over a longer period of time, and that happens, then you might have a little but more of a window. But seed always works really well.

I think that one of the best ways that newsjacking works, is that reporters are looking for you. You know, if you’re an expert in a topic and something’s happening right now in the news on that topic, then all of a sudden, you’ve got something that people might be interested in.

I’ll give you a really good example. Just before we did this call, I was meeting with an ear, nose and throat specialist, up here in the Boston area and he actually operated on several people who were affected by the marathon blasts. And I said to him, gee, that’s really interesting. Because he was telling me a story about what he did, among other things, he pulled a ball bearing out of somebody’s ear canal. I said that’s really interesting, could you write up a little story about your experiences and push it onto your blog? And he said well, I never really thought about that, sure I can do that. And now it’s too late to be in the breaking news cycle for the marathon bombing, but had he done that, he wouldn’t have had to pitch that story to anybody. If somebody was doing a story about hearing loss based on the marathon blasts, and there were some stories that came out about that, they would find him if they went to Google and did a search.

Jeff: So how do you recommend integrating this whole idea of newsjacking into an overall strategy for a company? So you know, a lot of companies are looking at things like content marketing, where you do a longer term play with SEO and trying to get your content organized and ranking on Google as a long term sort of marathon type approach. Newsjacking is very
timely. You know, it’s happening right now, and it may be a hot story today and a week from now it’s not and your content kind of gets lost. How do you recommend sort of integrating those two approaches?

David: Well I look at it like a portfolio that you, you know like an investment portfolio. And what I find is that most marketers only invest in one thing. They get really good at email marketing or they get really good at some other aspect of marketing and that sort of thing they tend to default to. But the idea of news-jacking is that you’ve got a flyer, it’s a little bit like a flyer, it’s almost like buying options in companies and seeing what happens and once in a while you get one that pays off really, really well.

So you just need to think like a bond trader. You need to say Okay, well sure I can invest in the long term
future and create these long term plan campaigns and you know, work on a new product launch for next quarter and work on my email marketing campaign calendar for the next 6 months. That’s great, keep doing that, nothing wrong with that, but also keep your eyes and ears open for those opportunities that come along only once or twice a month, very rarely. And when those happen, take advantage instantly.

You know, that’s the same idea of an investment opportunity that only comes a long very infrequently that you can take advantage of. And maybe they don’t pay off every time. In the case of newsjacking, they won’t. But I can guarantee you this, if you don’t try, you will not get in the news on that story. I can guarantee you that.

Kevin: Absolutely. Jeff, do you have any other sort of best practices that you would recommend?

Jeff: Yeah. I think one of the things which I learned from David’s book, is the importance of preparing for it. Of like as he said before, opening yourself up to the news, looking for newjacking opportunities. In addition, building relationships with key players before you start your news-jacking. So that, for example, you know, I know some reporters at the Wall Street Journal, right? So if a big story happens I could always write a blog post and email it to a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Well that’s the kind of relationships you need. So it’s serendipity, but its preparation ahead of time to capitalize on those really quickly, and that’s what I really learned from David’s book.

Kevin: And is that something that you would recommend, you know marketers are doing it on an individual basis or CEOs of companies, or do you think it requires a PR firm to get that sort of relationship building?

Jeff: I kind of think it’s really up to the individual. I mean, you got to find people who aren’t shy, willing to build relationships, willing to… I mean, I don’t think there’s one answer whether it can be the CEO, it could be your chief marketing officer, it could be a PR firm. It doesn’t really matter. Somebody’s got to own it and I think, thinking it through ahead of time is one of the key lessons that David is bringing out here.

Kevin: Absolutely.

David: The other thing that I would add is, you can very, very quickly find the Twitter ID of reporters. And if a news story breaks and you don’t know who the reporter is, if you have not already built a relationship with a reporter, but you know that reporter covers a particular type of story that you all of a sudden have an opportunity to comment on, believe me, you’re not always going to know ahead of time when these things occur, but if you find there’s something that you can comment on and you find out that so and so a reporter at the Boston Globe is the right person, you can then find their Twitter ID and you can send them a tweet and say you know, my Twitter ID is @dmscott and many times people do this to me.

Someone just did this to me seconds before we started this call and they say hey @dmscott, I think you’d like this blog post I just wrote about XYZ, and the link is in there. And I’ll look at it, and lot of reporters will do that. And particularly if it’s timely that’s something they’re working on, you know like in the example of we’re talking about an acquisition or something, and all of a sudden you find out that this reporter has written about that company before. You know, let’s say that you don’t know that Oracle is going to make the acquisition, all of a sudden some reporter covers Oracle and you’re writing about your take on that acquisition, absolutely, you should Tweet a reporter and say, hey, check this out.

Kevin: And are you ever at risk of you know, in your sort of haste to get these news stories out whether it’s just to reporters or just into the ether of you know, moving so quickly that maybe the quality of what you’re putting out there is a little bit at risk? Maybe the factual accuracy isn’t quite what you want it to be, or even just the quality of the writing isn’t normally what you would’ve wanted it to be?

David: I wouldn’t worry that much about the quality of the writing. I mean, run a spell check, make sure it’s Okay. If you’re horrible writer, you know, have a couple of friends in reserve who will look at it quickly, as long as it doesn’t distract too much, maybe 10 to 15 minutes from the time frame of getting it out there, and certainly if it’s during regular office hours, if you have a colleague look at it, that’s cool. You definitely want to be you know careful about the facts.

Jeff: You have got to get the facts right.

David: You know, I would not put out something that wasn’t factually correct. But you know, I think there is a little bit of a tradeoff between the quality of the writing and you know. In my case, when I do this, I make sure everything I write is factually correct, but I’m frequently guilty of making mistakes and forgetting to include something that I should have, and I can always go back and add that later.

Kevin: All right, well this has been incredibly interesting and helpful and I really appreciate the time that both of you have given us today. I know our listeners are going to appreciate hearing your insights into newsjacking. So I want to thank you both again for joining me today and look forward to speaking to you both again soon.

David: My pleasure, thanks for the opportunity.

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On any given day, an expansion-stage CEO might have a dozen (or more) things on his or her plate. Analyzing critical metrics. Reviewing cash flow. Leading management team meetings. The list can go on and on.

And those are just the day-to-day, short-term activities — never mind all of the long-term planning and goal-setting that a CEO must always be thinking about.

It can be a hectic (and sometimes lonely) existence, and deciding which things to focus on can be challenging. Is customer service and retention more important than board or senior management performance? What about ensuring sales and marketing alignment? Where should that rank on the to-do list?

Truthfully, all of those things are important to expansion-stage success, and it’s critical that CEOs develop a process for continuously evaluating them throughout the year.

One great way to do that is to put the following six questions on a checklist and answer them periodically, particularly as you launch important initiatives or approach the end of quarters or fiscal years.

A CEO Checklist for Evaluating Performance and Setting Priorities

1) Is Your Mission and Vision on Target?

Every year, as part of your management team’s planning process, you should revisit your company’s mission and vision to validate that they still align with the company’s current state.

In some cases, you might find that your mission statement still aligns with your aspirations, but that you need to refine your vision based on what is happening in your market or company.

Ultimately, your mission should be the fundamental purpose of your organization (a brief description of why it exists) and your vision should encapsulate where you want your company to be in three to four years. If either one is no longer relevant, don’t hesitate to make changes to them.

For more on this topic, check out our eBook, What Really Matters: A Guide to Defining and Realizing Your Company’s Aspirations.

2) Is Your Board Still Relevant?

It is absolutely critical for CEOs of expansion-stage companies with boards of directors to, at least annually, sit down and ask these questions about each of their board members:

• Is he or she still adding value?
• Is he or she still relevant to your current mission and vision?
• Would a different board member with a different profile or skill set add more value?
• Does the board need to be expanded to add a profile or skill set that is currently lacking?

This can be a difficult process for many CEOs and founders because they’ve often developed personal relationships with existing board members who have helped get their companies to where they are today. But if a board member is no longer relevant or adding value, you must take action. A board position is not a lifetime appointment and changes are sometimes necessary as a company evolves.

For more advice on how to get the most out of your board, see our eBook Building a High-Impact Board of Directors: A Guide for Expansion-Stage CEOs.

3) Does Your Management Team Have the Right Skills and Capabilities?

Similar to the last point, evaluating current — and future — management team needs and goals is a very important recurring task.

By nature, expansion-stage technology companies’ needs constantly evolve as they scale. As such, the management team that helped found the business may or may not have the skills and capabilities necessary to take the company to where it hopes to go.

The best CEOs implement strategies that allow them to continuously develop the skills of existing management team members, work with the board to identify the management team roles the company will need as it scales, and upgrade the management team if certain members aren’t pulling their weight.

4) Should You Consider Raising Prices?

Many CEOs are afraid to consider this question for fear of what a price hike would do to their relationship with existing customers or their competitive positioning with prospective customers. And I can’t blame them.

Raising prices isn’t always a good idea, but there are circumstances in which it is warranted. For instance, as entrepreneur-turned-VC David Skok writes in this post, creating a scalable pricing model can be a particularly powerful revenue growth tool for SaaS businesses.

However, for expansion-stage CEOs focused on growth, scalable pricing plans and price hikes must be given serious thought, not implemented on a whim. If it makes sense for your business, be sure to create a strategy for executing it and revisit that strategy every year as part of the planning process.

5) Are You Keeping the Customers You Have?

Customer retention is one of the best indicators of a company’s short and long-term viability, particularly in the SaaS world. So, continuously asking this question should seem like a no-brainer.

That said, how should you be monitoring customer retention and what should you be doing to improve it? In a great post for VentureBeat, ZenDesk COO Zack Urlocker says there are a handful of common sense activities that CEOs should be constantly reinforcing if they want to keep their customers, including:

• Responding at the speed of the Internet
• Apologizing appropriately
• Encouraging corporate transparency
• Stopping problems before they start

CEOs may not see themselves as agents of customer service or satisfaction, but the opposite is actually true. Ultimately, the CEO sets the tone for his or her organization and it’s up to that person to monitor customer issues and act swiftly before they turn into full-blown conflagrations.

6) Are You Measuring Innovation?

As respected product management expert Marty Cagan writes in this post, truly enduring companies grow revenues by successfully introducing new offerings that generate new revenue streams. And they fuel that machine by fostering a persistent culture of innovation.

It’s the CEO’s job to establish that culture by monitoring and measuring innovation. According to Cagan, that means tracking the percentage of revenue that comes from products and services introduced in the past three years. If any less than 50 percent of your revenue is coming from products developed during that time span, you might have an innovation problem. And if that’s the case, it is the CEO’s responsibility to do something about it — and quickly.

One Final Note

This list is by no means comprehensive, and I realize that CEOs deal with numerous other issues on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.

But by tracking the six things above, you can develop a checklist that, at the very least, helps you monitor the health and direction of your business. And doing that can help organize and influence every other issue that inevitably finds its way to your desk.

For more insights into what it takes to develop a truly exceptional business and become a better leader, you may also enjoy my blog series, “10 Entrepreneur Leadership Lessons from My 25-Year Software Career.” I’d also love to hear your feedback:

Are there any items you would add to this checklist? Which one do you think is most important?

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As Kyrie Robinson of Silicon Valley Product Group explains, the most important part for achieving organizational alignment on a project is defining the requirements before attempting the design.

When a new project comes up, designers will often find themselves working diligently to meet the needs of product managers. But diving into mockups too soon can end draining more time from everyone involved.

Product managers can often be prone to loose requirements at the outset of a project, which will often lead to a critique of the mockup that is actually just a fine-tuning of requirements. Watch the video to hear how to properly sequence a project so designers can begin with a clearly developed vision.

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Just because you stand on a taller podium and have a larger audience doesn’t necessarily make you the most influential. But how do you find out who is being truly influential? That’s exactly the task that Haydn Shaughnessy has undertaken at Forbes. After carefully crafting and re-crafting his criteria he has come up with the list of 2013 most important social media influencers.

Unearthing genuine social media influencers means taking a look at their audience, according to Shaughnessy. If a person’s audience isn’t actively engaged, then they’re not truly influential. Other factors include content creation and focusing on social media.

Read the full article to learn more about the criteria and, more importantly, discover who made the list.

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Done right, outbound B2B lead generation can help lower costs, reveal valuable market intelligence, and allow you to identify and vet prospects before they move too far along your sales process.

The Keys to Quality Lead Generation that Produces Results

It’s not enough to simply realize that outbound B2B lead generation could benefit your business and to then begin executing it. To be effective, there’s an array of information that you need to know about your market and its buyers before ever hiring your first outbound lead generation rep. In fact, you should never create a B2B lead generation program until you are sure that it aligns with your company’s stage, maturity, sales process, and sales economics.

Even if you create a B2B lead generation team with all of this information in hand, it’s no guarantee of success. To be productive, outbound B2B lead generation requires significant short- and long-term commitment from the CEO on down, and success is often dictated by several factors, including:

• Hiring the right people
• Creating and following a disciplined prospecting approach
• Managing and motivating people effectively
• Fostering interdepartmental communication
• Setting the right goals and progressively measuring progress
• Making systematic adjustments as necessary

Everything You Need to Know to Build Your Team and Boost Your Pipeline

OpenView’s eBook, Get More Customers! How to Build an Outbound B2B Lead Generation Team that Drives Sales provides a detailed overview of B2B lead generation and how to create an effective B2B lead generation machine. Specifically, it will help you to:

• Understand what outbound lead generation is and why it’s important
• Learn the components of a successful outbound generation implementation
• Improve your outbound approach and process
• Explore the various technologies available to sales managers and how to utilize it effectively to manage the outbound lead generation process

The eBook focuses on small but crucial adjustments you can make to increase your team’s productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. It also provides a framework for the many nuances and complexities of building — or improving — a high-functioning outbound B2B lead generation program.

To find out more, download a free copy of the full eBook by clicking on the link on right-hand side of this page.

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With content marketing continuing to rapidly grow in popularity, your team is probably seeing an avalanche of requests for new content — often with turnaround times that are borderline unmanageable. So how do you decide between the fire drills and the actual fires?

In this post at the Content Marketing Institute, Gina Balarin, Content Manager at Concur, explains two incredibly useful tools for prioritizing content creation.

When it comes to prioritizing your content creation, Balarin says your two best friends are a content marketing mission statement and a content request form. The former will allow your entire company to see how their requests line up with the overall mission. The later allows you to create content that is more targeted.

Read the full article for more information and some great tips on developing your content request form.

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I just returned from delivering a two-day seminar in Dallas for front-line sales managers. I love the variety of my work, but I truly have a soft spot in my heart for this type of engagement. I believe the hardest job in sales is that of sales manager. I never knew how many bosses I had until I received my first promotion into management! And although I love the chase of a sale, I quickly realized that if I remained in “super-rep mode” for too long, I would burn out in this new role.

It became clear that my capacity to lead my team to sales greatness was dependent on my ability to communicate with people who were different than me. Naturally, I turned to the one common language all sales reps speak — money.  I created a multitude of contests and SPIFFS to motivate my teams, and, predictably, ran out of bonus money before our goals were met.

Then it hit me. The truth is that money is only one of many ways we can inspire sales reps to make courageous decisions and to crush their targets. Here are some of my favorite ways you can excite your team. No call to your CFO required.

Top 10 List: How to Motivate Sales Teams without Money

10) Give Them Direct Access (Lunch? Dinner?) to Your Company’s CEO

Most sales people crave to be on the “inside.” They spend their time sleuthing on LinkedIn, combing through SEC filings, and having hushed conversations with their champions, all in the hopes of gaining an insider’s edge that may help them close their deal.

Information is power. So let your reps feel the upside of that power with a one-on-one with the owner of your most critical information: your CEO.

Ask your CEO to share with your selected rep the direction the company is headed, discuss new products in development, and markets the company plans on pursuing. In addition to this great insight, the rep also gets attention from the most visible executive in your company, and feels the love knowing that your company truly values talented salespeople. Small investment, huge reward.

9) Work for THEM for an Afternoon. Sell, EA, Whatever They Want!

Make it fun – cold call for your rep for a few hours, set up future appointments, research prospective accounts, even answer email on his or her behalf. Show your reps that you value their selling time, but you also recognize the parts of their job that are more of a grind.

Besides, nothing pumps up the sales floor more than when the old vet grabs a phone to show them how it’s done. Better yet, let them have a laugh at your expense when the prospect cuts you off with a curt, “Not interested,” and hangs up!

8) Give Them Dedicated Support for a Field-Marketing Event

Provide your top producer with some much-needed support as he or she prepares for a field marketing event.

The facilitation of inviting hundreds of area CxOs to a breakfast event can be exhausting. Assign some support staff to assist with registration, emailing invites, and coordinating event logistics. Hire temporary help if necessary.

More importantly, reach across the aisle and ask for help from your company’s most valuable and efficient sales resource: marketing. This is right in their wheelhouse. Let them do their thing.

By working together on this type of externally focused effort, it will give your reps the chance to show marketing what they do best and help facilitate sales and marketing collaboration on future events.

7) Commit to a 24-Hour Turnaround on Outstanding Expense Reports

Boy, is this an easy one. Your rep’s monthly AMEX bill rarely coincides with his or her quarterly commission check. Nothing bums out a rep more than getting caught between the two, particularly because top reps rarely admit that they may be “a little short” this month.

A well-placed call to Finance may represent a small gesture from you, but it’s one that can often bring a silent sigh of relief. And yet another simple example of how you always have your reps’ backs.

6) Ask Them to Lead the Next Pipeline Review

Turn over the spreadsheets and CRM dashboards to your top performer for your next weekly pipeline meeting. Chances are that she will ask better questions, expose subtle gaps, and highlight secret opportunities with more insight than you can imagine.

Why? Because those units and dollars are just numbers to you — but to her, they represent actual conversations. And there’s something about a peer asking another for a commitment that fuels a competitive spirit and makes things happen.

5) Invite Them and One of Their Customers to Dinner

Nothing bonds you closer to your rep than spending an entire day with him or her on the road. Watching reps plan and execute their day while it unfolds, witnessing how they conduct a variety of sales calls — it really is often the best way to really inspect their talent and ability.

And after the long day, we all frequently like to debrief and coach over a well-deserved dinner. So why not invite a customer along? Not a prospect, but someone who has already bought from you. It gives your rep an opportunity feel pride in front of both you and a customer at the same time.

4) Give Them More Opportunities, Even Ones Outside Their Territory

What’s a top 10 list without something a bit controversial?

Nothing gives your rep (and you) more immediate payback than a little extra time in the batting cage. Reward your rep’s next big close with a brand new opportunity that he or she normally wouldn’t get the chance to pursue.

Maybe it’s transferring a named account to a geo rep. Or maybe it’s an enterprise opportunity for a rep who normally works in the mid-market space. Let them showoff and spread their wings a bit, and watch them rise to the occasion, as not to disappoint.

This also gives you the opportunity to let the existing rep that has failed to give that opportunity any life remember that these aren’t his or her leads — they are the company’s leads. And they can come and go at any time. To the victor go the spoils.

3) Invite Them to an Internal Product-Planning Meeting

Give your top performer a window into how your organization develops and releases a new product into the marketplace. Few reps understand the complexities and the volume of people that are required during a company’s product launch.

Inevitably, the rep will offer observations on time-to-market realities that your product groups are starving to hear. This generates great connections into departments that your reps rarely interacts with, and hopefully lets your rep appreciate that asking for “one little feature,” is a bigger ask than he or she may have originally thought.

2) Offer Them Executive-Level Referrals from Your Board

Spend an hour or two on LinkedIn and look for connections between target account execs and your board of directors. Ask connected board members for a referral on behalf of your rep. Once you collect a few, pass them on.

Knowing how these referrals came about, your reps will work them with high sense of importance and urgency. It also reminds the board that at your company, everybody sells.

1) Invest Some Time in Cutting-Edge Education

One of the top things I look for when hiring salespeople is their level of “intellectual curiosity.” Show them you have some, too, by sharing a cool book, podcast, video, blog, or any “outside the box” thinking that you have personally found helpful and really enjoy.

Pick a topic that may help than sell better, like linguistics or social psychology. Turn your reps on to different types of thinkers on Twitter. Then circle back with them to see what kinds of things they recommend. We all enjoy sharpening the saw.

Bottom Line

At the end of the day, sales reps already have a strong money incentive in place to inspire them to produce — their quota and their subsequent comp plan. But, remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint — so celebrate the small victories with simple and cheap (or even free) rewards that show your team you value and reward courage, success, and excellence. Then sit back and watch them bust through walls for a boss who actually “gets it.”

As always, Happy Selling!

Jeff

What free perks and motivation ideas would you add to the list?

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With an ever expanding number of projects and requests for your time, it’s no wonder when the end of the day rolls around and you don’t feel like you’ve truly been productive. Social media, content marketing initiatives, brainstorming sessions…and somewhere in between it all you’ve got to fit in lunch.

So how do you make your day work for you? In this post at Business Insider, Eric Barker provides you with a cheat sheet of tips to learn how to be more productive each day.

Everyone has tried some tasks to be more productive, but have you ever really committed to them? Checklists, according to Barker, are incredibly effective. But only if you stick with it and consistently use them.

Learn why that is and discover how to more effectively manage your day by reading the full article.

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For the expansion-stage CEO, a well-rounded board of directors is a huge asset. Not only can the board offer valuable advice to guide founders and managers through the challenges that growing companies face, but it can also help attract top talent and bring impartial oversight to financial matters and potential conflicts.

Pascal Levensohn, founder of Levensohn Venture Partners and currently on the boards of Littlecast, ShotSpotter, and Akros Silicon, recently sat down with OpenView Venture Partner Firas Raouf to share his insights into what makes an effective board of directors and how a CEO can get full value and board performance from his or her council.

When to Develop a Board of Directors

Before you begin thinking about your ideal board members, you first need to decide on the best time to bring them onboard. Levensohn points to a singular moment as the signal that it’s time to develop a formal board of directors — the moment your company takes third-party capital. If you don’t form a board of directors the moment you take on outside investment, then “you’re making a huge mistake,” he warns.

Levensohn also suggests that you have “a formal governance structure” from day one of your company. Even if it’s staffed with your friends, this early corporate governance body should be populated “with people who you’re going to listen to,” and, regardless of what you call it, “you must have a formal oversight body that you’re going to take non day-to-day questions of strategy and process to.”

Having this structure in place before taking on outside capital gives you valuable advice during the early days of your company. Plus, it puts you in a position in which you’re better able to adapt to the new reality of directors and oversight that comes with investment.

The Value a Good Board of Directors Brings

Levensohn lists three main benefits that a balanced board of directors has to offer:

1. Experience and Guidance: First, and perhaps most important, “is the pattern recognition that your directors have” after years of experience as professional investors. Your board members know the waters well, and they can spot trouble ahead and help you steer the ship in the right direction.
2. Top Talent Recruitment: The next major benefit that Levensohn points to is the board members’ ability to attract new hires. “They should be a magnet for you to get new talent,” he says.
3. Fiduciary Responsibilities: Rounding out the list is the “corporate governance and oversight” piece – two “fiduciary duties that are extremely important.” The board will “protect the CEO from situations where there are conflicts of interest,” Levensohn says, as members are “objective third parties” who can weigh in from an investor’s perspective. For more on this aspect, see “Addressing Corporate Governance Issues Efficiently”.

Vital Board of Directors Roles

Levensohn compares a board’s makeup to a mosaic. “You like to have different colored tiles in that mosaic,” he says, and that range of colors is the collection of vital roles that constitutes a balanced  board of directors. Here are three roles Levensohn says are typically must-haves:

1. The Industry Vet: Ideally, at least one board member should be “someone who has domain expertise that is complementary to the CEO’s or directly related to the business focus of the company.”
2. The Financial Expert: A balanced board should also generally include “somebody who understands operational finance so that they can actually help as you build the company,” since you will inevitably face “a lot of challenges that you’re going to see for the first time.”
3. The Networker: The last vital board member that Levensohn recommends is “somebody who’s got a deep Rolodex and can help you with contacts.” Even a seasoned CEO may not necessarily have the “Rolodex reach” that an experienced director can bring to the table, he says. Knowing the right people not only helps with acquiring new talent, but also with getting your foot into the door of new accounts.

The Value of Independent Board Members

Adding independent board members brings unbiased voices to meetings. “There’s often a conflict of interest for the shareholder director,” Levensohn points out, “and there’s often a conflict of interest for the management team.” By having someone weigh in on decisions who “is not a major check-writer, but who has the gravitas to be listened to,” you receive clear-headed advice that’s free of any personal financial involvement.

An independent board member can offer particularly valuable advice when the board needs to approve another round of financing, Levensohn says, since he or she has no shares to be diluted. Make this independent director someone from the same industry or a former founder/CEO, and he or she can also act as a mentor to the CEO.

Levensohn also recommends that you avoid taking on an independent director with a background in big business. “They tend not to understand the realities of doing business as a startup,” he says — those who have entrepreneurial backgrounds work best.

Communicating with the Board

Levensohn makes it clear that building a strong relationship with the board through “free and easy communication” is vitally important. He recalls seeing situations where the management team refused to engage with the directors, which typically leads to questions about the viability of the relationship and an uncertain future.

At a minimum, Levensohn suggests that the CEO speak with each of the directors individually prior to every board meeting to give them a sense of what to expect, and also to ask them if there are any agenda items that they would like to have added. If the CEO can’t speak to each director, then he or she should ask the chairman or someone else on the board to follow up with those members who were missed.

Another method for maintaining smooth communication between the CEO and the board is for the directors to speak with one voice. “It’s the chairman’s role really to be the spokesperson for the rest of the directors and to build consensus,” Levensohn says. That way, you nip any fragmented discussions in the bud, and you never have a situation where the CEO takes a “divide and conquer approach” where she “tries to break people people apart.” Meetings will run smoothly, and everyone will be pushing in the same direction, bringing your board performance to a whole new level.

Additional Board of Directors Resources

Infographic: Do You Have a High-Impact Board of Directors?

OpenView recently surveyed an array of expansion-stage CEOs and board members to find out what it takes to create a value-adding board. The results are presented in this board of directors infographic, offering real insight into what makes high-performing boards tick.

eBook: Building a High-Impact Board of Directors: A Guide for Expansion-Stage CEOs

Written for CEOs of expansion-stage technology companies, this free eBook provides insights into how to build and manage a high-impact, value-adding board.

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The economy might be improving, but the job market in most industries has yet to totally stabilize – and it may never return to what it once was.

The truth, says branding consultant Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, is that we’re entering an age in which employees are increasingly commoditized. And the only way to fight back against that shift is to be perceived as a thought leader — the go-to expert in your field.

The Benefits of Becoming a Thought Leader

By doing that, you can make yourself indispensable, even in times of economic uncertainty. “You’ll know that, no matter what happens at a macroeconomic level, you’re safe because people will seek you out for your expertise,” Clark explains. Watch the full video for more from Clark on why branding yourself and becoming a thought leader is critical to future job security.

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You want your company to grow. It’s a natural progression of a developing business. But it can be a tricky road to navigate, and it’s filled with soothsayers and false prophets. As you make your way towards growth you’ll encounter more myths than Aesop could ever hope to document.

In order to develop business growth strategies that are successful it’s important to understand and debunk these myths, say entrepreneurs Keary Crawford and Wayne Simmons at VentureBeat.

In their post, Crawford and Simmons break down some of the more common myths you’ll come across and explain why they are eventually revealed and undone. Read the full article to prepare yourself and your business to avoid falling into the traps of these myths.

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In the early days of SaaS, most companies’ sales and renewal structures looked something like this: Salesperson closes a customer; account manager onboards the customer; renewal sales rep attempts to retain (and, in a perfect world, upsell) the customer before the customer’s contract expires.

Today, that model is old and inefficient, says SaaS expert Jason Lemkin.

“People will disagree with me, but the idea of having separate renewal sales reps is an outdated, pre-SaaS 2.0 idea,” says Lemkin, who co-founded electronic signature company EchoSign and served as its CEO until the company was acquired by Adobe in 2011. “In most leading SaaS companies today, client success owns not just deployment and on-boarding, but the entire customer lifecycle. And that group relies on real-time metrics to decide when a customer’s problem is big enough to intervene.”

As long as the customer success team is doing its job, Lemkin says, SaaS companies shouldn’t have to worry about renewals — at least at a high level.

“If SaaS companies are doing what they’re supposed to be doing — building, selling, and servicing a product that customers can’t live without — renewals should take care of themselves,” Lemkin explains. “If customers love your product, they won’t let their contracts expire.”

The real goal of your client success team, Lemkin explains, should be to create true attitudinal loyalty by building deep, long-term relationships. In other words, they must find ways to make customers love you, your brand, and your product.

Those customers are the ones that upgrade and buy more, and Lemkin says they’re often worth 50 to 100 percent more than other customers who are merely “behaviorally loyal” (i.e., renewing out of habit because they’re already committed to using the product in their enterprise). That customer group only buys more when they absolutely have to.

Who Should Be Responsible for SaaS Renewals?

When he was the CEO of EchoSign, Lemkin tested his theory by performing an experiment — the company didn’t let its sales team play any role in driving customer renewal. And he didn’t generally have client success managers (CSMs) play a role in it, either.

Instead, Lemkin gave that responsibility to EchoSign’s accounting department.

If a customer didn’t re-up by a certain date, the company’s accounting team would send the customer a notice saying that it was going to cancel its account when its contract expired. Incredibly, Lemkin says more than 90 percent of customers renewed on their own without any further prompt.

“Our client success teams put the work in up front so that we didn’t have to re-sell customers on the value of our service at the 11^th hour,” Lemkin says. “Instead, when renewal time came around, those customers simply needed a little nudge.”

How to Reduce Churn Rate: Two Renewal Goals that Should Influence Compensation Plans

Of course, Lemkin knows that EchoSign’s strategy of having accounting handle the bulk of renewals won’t work for every SaaS business.

And he also acknowledges that while customer success reps shouldn’t need to pepper expiring customers with renewal pitches, their comp packages should be tied in some way to a couple of key renewal and upsell goals:

1) Renewal Targets

Lemkin recommends basing this on revenue, not customer number, and advises it should be 80-95 percent of the prior year’s base customer revenue.

“It can’t be 100 percent, because that’s just not realistic,” Lemkin says. “But if you set it lower than 80-85 percent, you’ll fail to really challenge your CSMs.”

2) Gross Churn and Upsell Targets

Medium and large SaaS customers should have net negative churn rates, Lemkin says. CSMs should be asked to grow their base somewhere between 110 and 120 percent every year.

“If, for instance, one rep manages $2 million in customer revenue per year, his or her job should be to preserve $1.8 million of that. From there, the CSM should then go further and grow his or her original $2 million to $2.2 or 2.4 million, including churn.

Companies can incentivize those goals in various ways. But regardless of how they choose to design their comp plans, it is critical that client success reps at least understand that they will be held accountable to those metrics.

“The idea is that incentivizing renewal and upsell will force those CSMs to be obsessive about their metrics,” Lemkin says. “And if they consistently hit them, it will create this virtuous cycle that organically improves renewal and upsell without the need for a separate team of renewal sales reps.”

Do you agree with Jason? How are you incentivizing renewal and upsell goals and driving renewals?

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Imagine being plopped into the dense middle of a foreign city all by yourself. Tiny roads wind this way and that. People scurry about in seemingly every direction at once. You can’t understand a word of what anyone is saying or why they seem to be doing whatever it is they’re doing. It would be exhausting, wouldn’t it?

Well, when you hire a new engineer and throw them into the fire of your already built up systems, it’s essentially the same thing. To avoid that exhaustion, it’s imperative to design a solid system for onboarding engineers, explains Greg Slovacek in a post at the Asana Blog.

By coming up with a process to onboard new tech hires, you can avoid the burnout and confusion many new engineers feel. Slovacek has found that it leads to energized, committed and productive team members. And it can be as simple as having them add value on day one, teaming them up with a buddy and providing them with a starting process. Read the post to learn more about Asana’s system and the fabulous results.

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Most often associated with product management and development, Scrum is an agile development framework for creating high-performing teams and vastly improved organizational productivity. And it’s not just for programmers and product developers anymore.

Scrum can even be implemented to improve the efficiency and performance of sales, marketing, human resources, and customer service departments. Even churches and schools are now adopting the principles of Scrum.

So, is it right for your organization? And if so, how do you implement it?

That last query is the $20,000 question. To better explain what Scrum is and understand how it’s best implemented, we’ve put together a list of five infographics that illustrate the core tenets, uses, and benefits of Scrum, explain why software developers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from it, and prognosticate on what can be done to improve Scrum going forward.

To view the infographics, begin by selecting one of the following links or clicking on the Next button below.

	1) The Agile Business by Gist
	2) The Scrum Overview Diagram by Axosoft
	3) The Scrum Development Process by Softhouse
	4) What Goes On During a Sprint? by Zen Ex Machina
	5) How is Agile Doing? by Serena Software

And for more insights and tips on implementing Scrum be sure to check out our:

Additional Scrum Resources & Further Reading

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When it comes to Walt Disney World vs. Honey Nut Cheerios it would seem that the more talked about entity would be easy to pick. After all, Walt Disney World is full of excitement and characters from the movies you love. Honey Nut Cheerios is the cereal you’ve unceremoniously eaten for breakfast for more years than you care to count. Walt Disney is the sexy pick. And the wrong one. Honey Nut Cheerios has more word of mouth clout. As Sarah Etter explains at Monetate, the reasoning behind it is just one of Jonah Berger’s six triggers to viral marketing.

According to Berger, Honey Nut Cheerios has more social staying power because people eat it daily. While you might rave about your trip to Disney for a day or two, that will likely fade over time. The key is in the frequency. Learn the power of all Berger’s findings by reading the full article.

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Like CRM software for sales and marketing organizations, a content management system (CMS) is the heart of a functioning content factory. It takes much of the coding legwork out of publishing and distributing the content you create and allows you to manage the myriad content related activities in a single, flexible interface.

Of course, there isn’t just one universally lauded CMS for your company to choose from.

In fact, there are numerous CMS options available today, and choosing a content management system for your company is critical to getting your content strategy up and running. WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal are very often named among the best of those platforms, but which one is right for managing your expansion-stage company’s content strategy? And does one system boast the holy triumvirate of CMS benefits (ease of use, cost, and reliability)?

Below, we’ll cover the factors that you should consider before investing in a CMS and pit the three popular CMS options listed above in a triple-threat cage match. Three enter, one will leave. Which solution reigns supreme as the champion of the CMS universe?

4 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a CMS

See the full infographic from DCI.

While many CMS options are open-source software, that doesn’t mean it’s a cheap tool to implement.

Outside of the monetary investment of actually purchasing the software (if applicable), learning to use the CMS also requires time — a resource that many expansion-stage companies tend to be short on. And if you choose the wrong CMS, you’ll not only be out the cash used to purchase the platform, you’ll also likely lose all of the data and content that you already uploaded to that CMS.

Translation: Don’t rush into a decision and choose a CMS on a whim.

Before selecting the content management system that will, more or less, package and ship the fruits of your content marketing labor, be sure that you consider these four questions to help guide your search and narrow your options:

1) At a Minimum, What Should a CMS Deliver?

There are numerous tools, features, and plugins offered by the variety of CMS options out there, but it’s critical that you ensure the platform you choose is at the very least:

• Easy to learn and use, with an intuitive administrative interface
• Able to easily export content and migrate into another system in the future, if necessary
• Capable of integrating with third party systems
• Expandable and flexible, boasting helpful plugins and options that make publishing, editing, and optimizing content relatively simple
  

2) Is There a Strong Company or Community Backing the CMS?

Down the road, you may need to make changes to your site’s structure, layout, or presentation which require more than simply selecting a different radial button. When that happens, it’s critical that the CMS you’re using has an active company or community behind it. Without that, transitioning your repository of content will be a challenge (to put it lightly), if you’re able to do it at all.

It’s particularly important to be cautious of open-source CMS options, which may not have a traditional company supporting the platform around the clock. If you do go the open-source route, then make sure there are communities around the CMS large enough to answer any questions you may have. If you are purchasing a content management suite, then make sure the developer has the resources to support its product – and that the company will still be around in five or 10 years when you inevitably need to update your website.

3) What Types of Content Will You be Publishing?

Depending on what you envision using your website for, the CMS that suits you best can vary greatly. For example, a large corporate website with hundreds of static pages would be better suited to a different CMS than that of a news-focused website publishing and updating pages on a daily basis. Similarly, if you want to build an active community where users can create substantive profiles and spark discussions, then you need a CMS that supports forums.

Be sure to consider the vision for your site ahead of time so that you know what CMS features are must-haves on your shopping list.

4) What is your budget?

Many of the most popular CMS options are open-source, but even if there is no cost to download and install your new software, transforming that blank slate into your vision can be a serious undertaking.

There are a number of different platforms (PHP, Java, Perl) on which open-source CMS software is built, so consult your development team to find out what they’re most comfortable with before making a selection. Or, if you know you’ll need extra help, be sure to factor in design and development contracting costs.

Analyzing the Top 3 CMS Options

The list of choices for a content management system is extensive. However, there are three options in the top million websites, according to a March 2013 assessment by BuiltWith.com, that have pulled away from the rest of the pack: WordPress (65% of the top million websites), Joomla! (11%), and Drupal (9%).

Image provided by: BuiltWith

All three platforms have distinct strengths and weaknesses, and the one that’s right for your content marketing needs might be very different from another company your size.

So, which one should you choose? Let’s start by exploring the features and benefits of each CMS before we crown anyone champion.

WordPress

WordPress

Far and away the most popular CMS, WordPress is a great fit for many different companies. Initially created as blogging software in 2003, WordPress has since evolved into one of the most flexible publishing platforms on the web – it’s even leveraged by hugely popular websites like CNN.com (and, of course, OpenView Labs).

Pros

The appeal of WordPress appeal stems largely from its intuitive interface. The system’s easy-to-use dashboard makes training quick, so content can go from ideation to Google's index in no time. Plus, thanks to its enormous popularity, WordPress has extensive documentation and a huge library of plug-ins to expand its functionality. If you have questions or you need to customize your WordPress site, a quick Google search will yield an answer, a theme, or a plug-in that makes the changes for you.

Cons

On the other hand, despite its flexibility, WordPress is still not a universally ideal CMS for all companies. For sites that seek to build a strong community or host a large volume of static pages, WordPress may not be the right choice. Its roots in blogging make it better suited to news-style content and dynamic pages.

WordPress

Joomla!

Joomla!

Joomla! is another open-source CMS that's risen above the hundreds of other options to become one of the most popular content management systems.

Pros

Currently in use by companies like GE, Barnes and Noble, and eBay, Joomla! is better suited to creating and managing corporate sites with large intranets that consist of hundreds or thousands of static pages.

Cons

On the down side, Joomla! requires a higher level of technical expertise than WordPress, but it still stands as one of the more easily accessible and customizable content management systems. Thanks to user-created templates and modules, a Joomla! site's design and functionality can be altered with a single click. While not as extensive as WordPress', Joomla!'s community is big enough to provide a wealth of support and free-to-download extensions.

Joomla!

Drupal

Drupal

From its start as a message board in 1999, Drupal has grown into an open source CMS maintained and developed by a community of 630,000 users, priding itself on robust collaboration and customization.

Pros

Drupal's strengths lie in its focus on user-driven features. If you want your site to be one in which you build a vibrant community, whether through forums or through detailed directories and user profiles, Drupal is probably the best choice for you.

Cons

Similar to Joomla! and WordPress, Drupal is built for easy customization by installing new themes and modules. Unlike WordPress, however, Drupal lacks an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. For those with the requisite technical skills, Drupal will offer the greatest amount of flexibility and depth, but it requires a serious investment to learn how to build a complex site.

Drupal

The Decision: Which CMS Reigns Supreme?

OK, so maybe this wasn’t a death match, after all.

Truthfully, all three CMS options above are quality products with unique strengths and weaknesses. The key is to decide which features are most important to your content factory and then evaluate which product delivers the best experience and value.

Before you choose a CMS, make sure you know exactly what you plan on using your site for. If you’re focused more on quick, dynamic content that’s updated regularly, choose WordPress. If you’re building a large corporate intranet, choose Joomla!. And if you have a strong development team and you need to build a complex, community-driven site, then you’re better off with Drupal.

Computer World extensively reviewed and compared WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal on a number of different criteria, so consider reading their take on the three most popular CMS options if you’re still unsure of which is best for you.

Additional Resources

Choosing an Open-Source CMS (Part 1: Drupal; Part 2: Joomla!; and Part 3: WordPress) by Computer World

How to Choose a CMS by ElcomCMS

Infographic: Choosing the Right CMS for Your Business Needs by Dot Com InfoWay

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When it comes to human history, it might be all about BC and AD. But as far as your business is concerned, it’s all about BPMF and APMF. For those unfamiliar, that’s Before Product Market Fit and After Product Market Fit.

These two time periods divide the life of any startup. In a post at Startup Marketing, Sean Ellis, CEO of Qualaroo,  says achieving product market fit is the first step in the startup pyramid.

Ellis admits that product market fit can be a bit abstract, but stresses that the haziness makes it no less important. After surveying hundreds of startups he’s determined a benchmark for product market fit success that allows companies to gain traction and continue climbing the startup pyramid.

Additional Resources

Achieving Product Market Fit: Let Your Users Be Your Guide

WP Engine and SmartBear founder Jason Cohen shares his own experience searching for product market fit and discusses the bare necessities of software success: intuition, testing, validation, and iteration — all based on frequent interaction with your users.

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It’s no secret that rapidly growing software businesses love — and thrive on — good customer references. After all, those references are organic, pre-qualified, and, maybe most importantly, inexpensive leads that are very often easier to close. What’s not to love?

So why then, asks OpenView Senior Advisor Chuck Linn, do so many of those businesses approach professional services — their key to higher customer success and satisfaction — ad-hoc?

“The only way you’re going to generate a high volume of good customer references is if you have a system in place that ensures existing customers are implementing and using your product effectively,” says Linn. “And the only way to do that is to develop and leverage a dedicated professional services group.”

That means hiring or putting someone in position to focus solely on services. This focus should include professional implementation services as well as hiring a true customer support team, rather than borrowing manpower from other departments to handle those responsibilities.

“The biggest problem with the ad-hoc approach is that it can lead to inefficiency and misalignment in other areas of the business,” Linn explains.

“For instance, let’s say you close a big client and don’t have a professional services group that can onboard and manage that customer. Who’s going to take on those responsibilities?” Linn asks. “Salespeople? Developers? Not only will that disrupt your future revenue targets, development cycles, and product release strategies, it’s also not going to provide the quality of service that customers expect.”

5 Objectives of Professional Services

After the software is licensed and before the customer sees the benefits of your solution, professional services is the liaison between a company and its customers.

As a result, Linn points out, that group is largely charged with managing a set of objectives that ensure customer success, improve customer retention, and drive strong customer referrals.

Those objectives include:

1. Ensuring customer satisfaction: Professional service must work with customers to help ensure that the clients use and understand the product better and that it solves their business issues. Doing that will improve the likelihood of customer success and yield more (and better) referrals down the line.
2. Protecting the product in the market: Because software products by nature will never be perfect, Linn says professional services is also responsible for ensuring that product issues are quickly fixed and that a product’s reputation in the market isn’t harmed by product misuse or confusion.
3. Driving product improvement and innovation in the field: While most company’s product management teams leverage focus group and advisory boards to collect product feedback, current customers can be a fantastic source of information, as well. A structured professional services group should gather key customer insight and apply it to future product improvements.
4. Capturing and driving the re-use of best practices, implementation, and support: Once a product issue is discovered, professional services can serve as a critical vehicle for determining a fix and rapidly sharing it. That will allow everyone in the company to operate uniformly, Linn explains, and it will prevent the inefficiencies of trying to reinvent the wheel every time a similar issue arises.
5. Pushing rapid adoption of the product: At the end of the day, referrals will never happen if it takes customers two years to fully understand and adopt a product. Professional services teams can help customers make the best use of your product in as little time as possible.

While the five objectives above illustrate the core responsibilities of professional services, Linn is quick to point out that they shouldn’t be the responsibility of professional services alone. For a professional services team to be successful, Linn says, the entire company must be aligned around and committed to those objectives, as well.

“You can’t have a salesperson horribly oversell the product and then ask professional services to manage unrealistic expectations on the backend,” Linn explains. “Everyone has to be focused on their own responsibilities while also being committed to the overarching objective of customer success.”

Getting Professional Services Right from the Start

No two software companies are exactly alike, so there isn’t a universal roadmap for how and when to set up your company’s first professional services organization. The roles and processes you need, for instance, will very likely depend on factors like company size, market focus, product complexity, and industry standards.

However, Linn says the sooner you realize the need for professional services, the more effective it will be in the long-term.

“It’s all about understanding what your customers need to implement your product, use it effectively, and drive a return on their investment,” Linn explains. “The earlier you’re able to understand that, the easier it will be to deliver the services your customers need to be successful and the more you’ll benefit from the referrals that those satisfied customers yield.”

Have you recently developed a professional services team? What challenges did you face and what tips can you share?

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With a seemingly endless stream of meetings, never ending email chains and a variety of one-off fire drills, your workday can fly by before you’ve undertaken any actual work. But in the constant flow of “urgency” put in front of your face, there are more than a few boys who are crying wolf.

In order to take back your work prioritization you must learn when you can ignore the cries and when you actually need to step in and save the flock. In a post at project management software company AtTask’s blog, Raechel Logan explains the guidelines for saying “no.”

You can’t let the demands of others monopolize your time, so knowing when to say no is crucial. But just as important is being able to explain the reason behind your answer. When put together, these skills will allow you to actually get back to the work that you’ve prioritized.

Additional Resources to Help You Prioritize

Free eBook: Get Better Faster: Ultimate Guide to Practicing Retrospectives

Whether you are involved with agile development or not, the best way to ensure continuous improvement in your organization is to reflect and learn from past work. Learn how you can utilize retrospectives to clarify goals and roles, solve lingering problems, and become more productive and efficient.

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In the old days, it used be that perhaps what salespeople knew wasn’t quite as important than who they knew. Networks trumped domain expertise and product knowledge, and a beefy Rolodex full of string-pullers often proved more fruitful than being the salesperson who knew the most about a particular market, solution, or customer pain point.

Today, however, sales strategist Jim Keenan argues that formula has reversed.

“What you know is quickly becoming the way you meet the who,” writes Keenan in a post on his top sales blog, A Sales Guy. “That’s created a new type of network that isn’t based on who you know. I call it the ‘knowledge network,’ and it’s comprised of people we’re connected to because of what we know and what we’ve taught them.”

In other words, knowledge is a hot sales currency. And whether that knowledge is delivered through a blog, newsletter, video, podcast, case study, or whitepaper, Keenan believes unique and relevant insight can help salespeople forge critical customer relationships through learning and teaching.

But he also says it can create a fairly distinct problem.

“As they become these objective thought leaders in customers’ minds, some salespeople find it difficult to then flip the switch and become the subjective closers they need to be,” Keenan told OpenView in a recent conversation. “They almost get stuck in nurturing purgatory.”

Trusted Advisor or Aggressive Closer: Can You Really Be Both?

One of the reasons for the nurturing stall, Keenan says, is that many prospects still remain somewhat skeptical of the sales thought leaders they follow. In many cases, they’re simply waiting for the salesperson to go into pushy sales mode. And when that happens, it’s like a line has been crossed.

“It’s kind of like being a doctor in that way,” Keenan explains. “You’re giving your patient all of this great advice about how to get healthy, and they appreciate that. But the moment you start pushing some brand name drug or prescribing expensive medical treatments, the patient may begin to doubt your motives.”

So how can you avoid that fate?

Know When and How to Transition from Lead Nurturing to Closing

In the context of content marketing and thought leadership, Keenan says there are a few different ways to progressively develop your role from thought leader and lead nurturer to successful closer:

1. Build a lead funnel: Similar to a typical sales funnel, salespeople need to come up with a lead funnel for the prospects they engage through content. That funnel, Keenan says, should have rules that qualify the stage that a particular prospect is in and provide a framework for advancing them.
2. Don’t just speak/broadcast: Listen to what prospects are saying as you deliver insight to them. What caught their attention in the first place? What content can you deliver to more deeply address their problems and move them through your funnel? If your content never pushes prospects to explore an issue further, it will be difficult to ever progress to the point of a sale.
3. Make closing the natural final step: If you’ve progressively addressed all of a prospect’s problems and appropriately moved them through your funnel, closing shouldn’t be such an abrupt surprise. In fact, Keenan says, prospects should be expecting (and maybe hoping for) it to happen.

The bottom line is that if you have a solution that fits what your prospects need, then Keenan says nurturing through thought leadership should simply be another way to usher prospects from opportunity to close.

Make Sure to Put in the Necessary Work Up Front

Keenan does warn that nurturing and closing prospects with thought leadership isn’t as simple as starting a blog and publishing content.

“There’s upfront work that needs to be done,” Keenan explains. “You need to do some research into the topics that your prospects care about, and spend some time truly understanding the solutions to their biggest pain points.”

The good news is that once you’ve done your homework and you begin to produce thought leadership, you should be able to go about your business as usual.

“Content and thought leadership shouldn’t change the timing of your sales cycle,” Keenan says. “Once you’ve put the work in upfront and the leads start to flow in, you should be closing those deals in the same timeframe and in the same way as deals from other lead sources.”

Additional Resources

3 Steps to More Effective B2B Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Are you nurturing your leads or just being annoying? Bestselling author and sales advisor Kendra Lee shares three steps to improve your B2B lead nurturing campaigns and take your prospects from cold to sold.

3 Tips for Helping Reps Avoid Sales Burnout

The year’s first quarter has come and gone. Is your sales team’s excitement about the New Year still burning brightly, or is it already showing signs of fizzling out? Sales strategist and consultant Jim Keenan recommends doing three things to avoid burnout and get back on track.

We Want to Hear from You

Is there an ideal point in the buyer’s journey to transition from thought leadership to closing? How do you know when the time is right?

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When most software companies are founded, they follow a similar developmental path.

First, company founders work hard to build a solution with a great product-market fit. Next, as the business gains traction, its team begins to focus on growing the company’s user and customer base. Finally (and often concurrent with the previous step), the business continually pushes its people to establish a clear competitive advantage in its market.

But as most entrepreneurs know, there’s much more to building a great, big software company than those three things.

In fact, the best companies are able to complete each of the steps above while also developing, deploying, and monitoring another critical component of their business: their economic model.

What is an Economic Model?

An economic model is simply a tool designed to isolate and analyze the core drivers of financial performance in your business. It should weed out excess variables and enable you to focus on the revenue generated by each of your customers, and estimate how that relates to — and can be impacted by — investments in marketing, product development, or administration.

It is important to understand that an economic model is not a business plan or a business model, nor is it the basis for a budgetary or forecasting framework. Instead, it should serve as a lens that allows you more closely examine your business model and make adjustments that:

• Drive growth without consuming a lot of capital
• Develop stronger economic results and gross profit over time
• Communicate to others (i.e. investors) that the business you’re developing will deliver strong economic results far into the future

The ultimate goal of an economic model is to determine whether or not there are gaps or inefficiencies between the company’s targets and its data, which requires establishing some benchmarks to judge the results by.

Boost Your Growth Rate by 25% by Discovering and Optimizing Your Economic Model

As incredible as this might sound, I believe every company can increase its economic model results and its growth rate by 25 percent if it begins to focus more on developing its economic model.

That being said, that can’t happen unless you first invest time into discovering exactly what your optimal economic performance should be. You can do that by executing four fairly basic steps:

1. Uncover your current economic model: How are you delivering value to current customers? What is an average customer worth to you and how much did they cost to acquire? What else do you spend money on and how will those costs scale as you grow? There are numerous components to an economic model and the ones that matter most to your business are likely unique.
2. Hypothesize a better future: Where will your company go if it sticks with its current model? Could you grow faster and bigger by spending more on specific areas of your business? How much different would your future look if you accepted outside financing? The more you study, play with, and understand how your economic model works and how you can improve it, the more you will have an intuitive understanding of what you need to do with your business.
3. Identify actionable opportunities to improve: What initiatives could you execute to lower your cost of customer acquisition? Is it possible to incentivize customers to pay in advance so that you can avoid having to accept outside capital? Your goal here is to create a comprehensive list of ideas that could make your existing economic model better.
4. Experiment and iterate: Prioritize the ideas you come up with to develop a list of your best opportunities and experiment with them. As you go, expand on best ideas and kill the rest.

It’s important to remember that this will be an iterative process. Once you’ve completed the steps above, you should periodically revisit your economic model by going back to step one, and repeating the process again to adjust your model to your current reality.

5 Characteristics of Attractive Economic Models

If you have actually begun to dive into your economic model, you might be wondering how to determine if your model is actually an attractive one.

Here are five qualities that the best economic models have:

1. Your cost of acquiring new customers is low relative to the cash flow that they generate once they become customers.
2. Your existing customers deliver high gross profits/margin.
3. Your customer retention is high and you’re able to increase their business with you over time.
4. You can get away with a small amount of R&D for your existing customer segments and still maintain or grow your competitive advantage to current customer segments.
5. Your target market is large enough to fuel growth in your current customer segments for a long period of time (the longer, the better).

Simply put, the most attractive economic models have low cost of customer acquisition, high gross margins, and customers who stay with the business — and commit more to it — over time. If you have all of these characteristics, your economic model is in good shape.

Now or Later? Deciding When to Optimize Your Economic Model

While there are some obvious benefits to developing (or improving) your economic model now, there are some risks to adjusting it, as well.

For instance, here are two legitimate reasons for waiting to make changes to your existing model:

• You don’t want to distract your product development team from building product features that will drive initial user engagement and customer acquisition.
• By having some uncertainty around your economic model, your business might actually be more valuable to investors or potential acquirers, and more dangerous to competitors. That is, the mystery around what your economic model is (and could be) could cause investors to dream big and competitors to scratch their heads.

That being said, there are risks associated with not optimizing your economic model. For example:

• By not understanding which components of your product are most profitable, you might be wasting time and resources on the wrong things.
• If you don’t explore the economic viability of your current model right now, then you don’t give yourself the opportunity to fail fast and move onto something else. As a result, you may invest time and money into something that will never really be profitable.

The bottom line is that you must spend time exploring your economic model and evaluate that benefits and risks of making changes to it.

There are some successful companies that have been built by worrying about acquiring users first and the economic model second (Google comes to mind), but there are also a large number of companies that have failed by taking that approach.

Are You Blind to Your Economic Model?

While some founders may say they understand the need to develop and manage economic model performance as part of their comprehensive management system, many management team members (including financial managers) fail to truly optimize and capitalize on their economic results.

There are several reasons for this:

• Over-emphasis on users: This is a bigger problem in consumer industries, but far too many businesses become obsessed with user growth when they should be worrying about how to actually make money.
• Singular focus on gross margins and revenue growth: Yes, these financial metrics are fundamental, but they’re just part of a truly comprehensive economic model.
• Numbers aren’t fun to pore over: Most entrepreneurs are busy trying to build their product, team, and customer base, and don’t believe they have the time (or expertise) required to develop and deploy an economic model.
• Financial skills are lacking: Financial people are generally good at satisfying accounting and regulatory requirements, and providing GAAP financial results. But GAAP financial results are very different than economic models and most financial people have not been been trained in business economic modeling.
• Lack of good operating metrics: Economic models need good operating metrics to be truly clear. Making matters worse, it takes a lot of work to gather and clean operating metrics so that they can be used in modeling, and many entrepreneurs argue that they don’t have the time to do that.

While developing an economic model might seem daunting, the truth is that every company has an optimal economic model that is waiting to be discovered. It’s simply up to you to set up a management approach that will allow you to go down the path of discovery.

Additional Resources

How to Use Your Economic Model to Increase Profitability and Cut-down on Costs

By analyzing your economic model you can determine the drivers impacting your performance and then move to improving productivity.

Also:

• Economic Model Series: Summary of Posts OpenView Blog
• Economic Models: Simulations of Reality by the International Monetary Fund
• Eight Realities of Startup Economics by David Capece, Wharton Magazine
• Does the SaaS Sales and Marketing Economic Model Work? by Tien Anh Nguyen

Are there any points you would add to this guide?

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In this week’s Labcast, OpenView Managing Editor Jonathan Crowe takes listeners inside OpenView’s content factory to explain what it really takes to get a content marketing strategy up and running smoothly.

From the secret to producing large amounts of content with minimal staff to the most important elements every piece of content absolutely must have, Jonathan identifies the keys to solving the most common content marketing problems, and lays out a workable plan to help companies hit the ground running and start seeing results.

Listen in for practical content marketing tips and lessons the OpenView team has learned first hand:

Labcast 106_ Jonathan Crowe Explains Content Marketing at OpenView Labs

Note: A transcript of this podcast will be uploaded soon.

At OpenView, we try our best to determine the best approaches our portfolio teams and other tech companies can utilize to grow their businesses. We put a major emphasis on content marketing and would really appreciate you sharing your thoughts, feedback, and any lessons you’ve learned via your own content marketing efforts, especially regarding the following:

• How important do you feel content marketing is to your overall go-to-market success?
• What are the biggest content marketing challenges you have faced or are currently facing?
• What have been some of your biggest success stories?
• What do you attribute those successes to?

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After being buried in code for months, developers can sometimes lose sight of how someone unfamiliar with the product will view and understand it. That’s where Kyrie Robinson, a user experience design expert and partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, comes in. She recently stopped by OpenView Labs to discuss why it is so important to design websites and software with the user in mind, and how impactful an intuitive user experience can be on customer satisfaction.

One point Robinson underscored for startups and expansion-stage companies is that if you get UX right the first time, your minimum viable product will be a success when it hits the market, and you can concentrate on adding features instead of having to go back to the drawing board to redesign your entire interface. Here are three keys she revealed to develop a faster, more intuitive user experience that boosts user adoption, satisfaction, and retention.

1) Provide a Clear Umbrella Structure

Before you begin tweaking individual elements of your design, start with the basics. Robinson recommends that whatever you design — be it a website, a mobile app, or desktop software — be sure that the interface incorporates an umbrella structure.

“The umbrella structure is the overall structure that lays out what the product can do for you,” Robinson says. In websites, for example, the umbrella structure is typically the navigation bar along the header. Robinson points to the iPhone’s central Phone app to demonstrate the umbrella structure in mobile, explaining that the five icons along the bottom of the screen for contacts, voicemail, and other features tell users right away what the main elements of the phone application are as soon as it loads.

Robinson cautions against overloading the umbrella structure. “The most common mistake I see is people getting [the umbrella structure] wrong with too many options,” she says. If your product is up to ten items in the umbrella, then you should pare it back. Along the same vein, Robinson suggests keeping an eye on how you’re labeling the elements. She recommends sticking to one-word names, so that users can “see at a glance what this does for me.”

2) Think Wormholes

Another user experience aspect that Robinson strongly encourages all software developers to consider is nexus structure.

To demonstrate the appeal of nexus structure, Robinson again turns to the iPhone’s main Phone app. “When you tap on a contact,” she says, you see the “main elements of a contact that you expect,” but below those elements, “there are those other tasks” that include send message, start FaceTime, and add to favorites. If a user taps the send message button, then she is taken directly to the Messages app instead of having to navigate to the home screen, tap Messages, and search for the recipient there.

Nexus structure “is a form of navigation,” Robinson says, “but it separates mediocre design from great design,” since it allows users to “flip from one application to another easily through these wormholes.” Instead of forcing users to navigate the interface a single way, nexus structure lets them think and navigate according to the tasks that they want complete.

3) Focus on Empowering Users to Complete Tasks Faster

“When a user has a good experience,” Robinson says, “one of the first things they say that they liked about it is that it was fast.” Since users “equate fast with easy,” Robinson stresses the importance of making adjustments to your design to speed up user interactions and allow them to finish tasks faster, and she offers six ways to do so.

1. Make the app work faster: The first and most obvious method, Robinson says, is to simply “make the app work faster.” This approach will “land squarely in the lap of engineering,” as your engineers will need to think of ways to make pages, searches, and results load faster.
2. Simplify your users’ work flow: Look to pare down the number of screens your users need to view or the number of fields they need to complete in order to complete a given task or submit a form.
3. Make sure your navigation is intuitive: Ideally, a user should be able to understand it at a glance. Umbrella structure will play a part here, as clear, one-word names for your navigation elements will right away point users in the right direction.
4. Reduce the amount of text: Too much text impacts “how quickly users look at the screen, understand what they need to do, and get to the next step.” Every word counts, she stresses, so cut any fat you can find, including phrases like ‘please sign in here’ instead of just ‘sign in’ or, as Robinson puts it, “obvious instructions and obvious text.”
5. Examine your graphics: “Graphics have a lot to do with how people read the page, perceive the page,” as well as “how quickly they can scan the page and understand where they are and what they need to do,” Robinson says. Make sure your graphics are “clean and not distracting,” so that your users “can perceive what the app is fast.”
6. Optimize your calls to action: Buttons should look clickable with bright, high-contrast colors, she says, and they should be clearly labeled with one-word actions like ‘send’ or ‘submit.’ That way, a user’s eyes go right to your calls to action, and she understands right away what to do.

Additional User Experience Design Resources

Ask the Experts: Best Practices in Product Design

In conjunction with a workshop OpenView hosted on user experience process and product design, we gathered a panel of four industry experts — who each know a thing or two about designing successful products — to share their insights and expertise by providing best practices for designing products customers will love.

UX-ceptional: 5 User Experience Infographics You Need to See

Now more than ever, top notch user experience isn’t just a competitive advantage, it’s the difference between failure and success. These five infographics will provide you with the tips, info, and questions to ask to set you on the right track.

Watch the full video series of Kyrie Robinson on user experience design below and learn more about how she can help your company by visiting the Silicon Valley Product Group website. 

What are your tips for developing a more streamlined user experience?

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Board meetings too often turn into a slog through status reports and numbers. Even if you’re on track to power through on time, all it takes is one board member asking for a number to be reflected in a different way to derail the train. Those small requests set off a chain reaction of reporting changes that is felt down the ranks and distracts too much of the company.

Bill Conroy, formerly CEO of Initiate Systems and currently a director at Kareo, Prognosis, and AtTask is a seasoned boardroom veteran who has often been “in companies where everybody is running up and down the hallways” hours before the board meeting is set to begin, frantically trying to finish preparations and reports. He has two remedies for manic board meeting preparation: 1) the control book; and 2) a management meeting prior to the board meeting.

The Control Book: “A source of truth”

Conroy calls the control book “a source of truth,” and considers it the only reporting that really matters. “It is published monthly to the board, as well as to the management team,” he says, eliminating the scramble before the meeting and the numbers update during the meeting since “the directors have been getting the control book in the same format all of the time.”

Inside the control book, board members find performance metrics, a profit and loss breakdown, a cash statement, a retention report, growth drivers, and any other salient reports that you know the board is after. The key is to make sure that all of the numbers are included and presented in the same format month after month. That way, Conroy says, “there is no discussion about what the numbers are in the board meeting, which is a total waste of time,” and you can focus on “what the numbers mean.”

The Management Meeting: “80% of the board meeting”

Conroy recommends holding your management meeting one or two days prior to the board meeting. The format and deliverables for the management meeting should be 80% of what’s needed in the board meeting, making it an excellent form of board meeting preparation.

All presenters in the management meeting should be limited to 2-3 slides but discussion time should not be limited. Kick off the meeting with “somebody who is capable of being very neutral talking about the market,” so that he or she can provide an honest assessment of whether your company is gaining or losing market share. Next, have your product lead present the product roadmap like a forecast. “What are we going to deliver and are we on schedule?”

After that, sales presents a simple breakdown of quarterly deals that have been closed, deals they are so confident in they can commit they will close, and upside deals. The sales leader also needs to take a stab at an end-of-year outlook regardless of what the current quarter is.

The CFO follows sales, and — instead of presenting what the numbers are — presents two slides discussing what the numbers mean, and what the causes for concern are. The CEO closes out the agenda by covering the company’s strategic initiatives and progress made on those fronts. The CEO needs to tell the board “what keeps me up at night” about the company.

• Market overview
• Product roadmap
• Sales recap & forecast
• CFO presentation
• CEO presentation

“If you go through all of those things in a management meeting,” Conroy says, take time afterward to fine tune them, and then have “the exact same people give the exact same reports” at the board meeting, you’re setting yourself up for an efficient discussion with the board.

Between the control book and the management meeting, you create “a lot of extra time for people to be focused externally as opposed to internally.” In board meetings, most of the discussion is around the numbers, and Conroy sees that as the main reason why they get bogged down. But the monthly control book gives “the directors plenty of time to make calls to the CFO” to inquire about numbers, leaving board meetings for what the CEO should really be focused on: strategy.

Additional Board of Directors Resources

Infographic: Do You Have a High-Impact Board of Directors?

OpenView recently surveyed an array of expansion-stage CEOs and board members to find out what it takes to create a value-adding board. The results are presented in this board of directors infographic, offering real insight into what makes high-performing boards tick.

Labcast: How to Run Effective Board Meetings

This Labcast features Part II of the discussion between OpenView Venture Partner, Firas Raouf, and Pascal Levensohn, Managing Partner at Levensohn Venture Partners, on the keys to building and managing effective boards of directors. You can also listen to Part I of the discussion here.

eBook: Building a High-Impact Board of Directors: A Guide for Expansion-Stage CEOs

Written for CEOs of expansion-stage technology companies, this free eBook provides insights into how to build and manage a high-impact, value-adding board.

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If someone told you that your expansion-stage technology company could triple its qualified leads & pipeline in a matter of months, you would probably laugh. But that is exactly what sales consultant and best-selling author Aaron Ross says could happen if your business builds an outbound prospecting team fine-tuned to generate truly qualified opportunities month in and month out, year after year.

Ross previously built Salesforce.com’s outbound prospecting team as the company’s director of corporate sales, and co-authored the best-selling book Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com.

“For the right companies, an outbound prospecting team can give you control over quality and quantity of your lead generation, and thus allow you to exceed your sales goals,” says Ross. “Not just any outbound prospecting team or process will do. There’s a lot of noise and crap out there.”

The secret, Ross writes in a thorough guide on his website, is to design an outbound prospecting process and team, that, like a manufacturing assembly line, yields consistent quality with fewer, better, bigger leads.

If you do it right, Ross states you can triple your pipeline in a relatively short period of time — and his history with previous clients backs that up.

That said, not every business is ready to commit the time and effort required to do inside sales-driven lead generation the right way. Before you run off to start putting Ross’s guide to outbound prospecting to work, you may want to look in the mirror and ask yourself three key questions:

1) Are you really ready to grow?

You wouldn’t blindly create a product without first investigating whether or not there is really a market need for it, would you? And you wouldn’t hire new team members without knowing if you really needed them, right?

Driving growth is no different. The last thing you want to do is step on the gas before you know where you want to go, which is why Ross says it is critical to understand a few things about your customers and market before you’ll get results from an outbound prospecting or any other lead generation initiative. Ask yourself:

• Who is your ideal customer, the ones most likely to buy from you, for the largest amounts of revenue, and get the most value/success from your service?
• How does your product or service make them successful?
• What type of lead generation efforts are working for you now (word of mouth, inbound, outbound)?
• How can you appeal to and serve customers worth at least $10,000 in lifetime value (Ross explains this is a threshold for profitable outbound prospecting)?

The more confident and focused you are in your answers to those questions, the more you can invest to grow and get the results you want, Ross explains. The less confident, the more you should invest to learn in order to figure out what it’ll take to grow faster.

2) Do you have the right people with the right, focused responsibilities?

According to Ross, this doesn’t mean evaluating whether you’ve already got salespeople who are capable of prospecting, or if you’ve got team members who could transition to an outbound prospecting role.  Rather, consider the responsibilities of who does what on your sales team and understand the specialized sales roles required to make prospecting successful and scalable.

For instance, Ross says an efficient sales organization has people specialized in different roles such as inbound lead response, outbound prospecting, customer success, and closing roles. If you have people juggling more than one of these responsibilities, you’ll struggle. Simply put, Ross says true outbound prospecting effectiveness requires role specialization, and you will NOT create a repeatable system unless you have prospectors dedicated 90-100% to outbound.

Even if you’re a small company with a single person doing it all, you can specialize with time blocks, dedicating parts of your week by “role”. For example, schedule a day a week, or specific blocks of time of at least two hours, to prospect.

3) Will it actually work for you?

If you’ve gotten past the previous two questions, this one might trip you up. Yes, you understand your customers and you have a team structure in place to execute outbound prospecting. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your company possesses the executive commitment or entrepreneurial people needed to develop a prospecting machine.

Ross says almost any company selling direct to customers or partners can make this work, if they are prepared, including:

• Assigning outbound prospectors and salespeople to work together on specific territories (prospectors should support 1-3 salespeople, but no more).
• Making learning more important than results. Results without understanding are random. If you understand, you can repeat.
• Promoting a culture of quality over quantity — “fewer, better, bigger.”
• Refining messaging to sell prospects on ideas, not stuff.
• Respecting the prospectors as valued teammates, and working to help them enjoy the role. If people — including salespeople — don’t enjoy their jobs in some way, the team won’t scale.

At the end of the day, developing a high-performing outbound prospecting team is a lot of work, but it is worth the investment if you do it right. It’s added hundreds of millions in revenue to Salesforce.com, and has tripled (or more than tripled) the growth of many other companies.

So, where does your business stand? Are you ready to triple your qualified leads by building a better outbound prospecting framework? If so, it is worth diving into Ross’s full post.

What are your secrets to successful outbound prospecting? How has your business driven stronger, more predictable growth through lead generation?

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In the content marketing world, there are numerous mediums and tactics marketers can use to communicate and engage with customers and prospects. But Andrew Follett isn’t shy about which content format he prefers.

The founder and CEO of Demo Duck, which works with companies like Trulia, Lowes, and Crazy Egg to develop explainer videos (i.e., visual product demos or quick company overviews), says video storytelling allows businesses of all sizes and complexities to create something that is easily digestible, sharable, and memorable.

Explainer videos in particular, Follett says, can allow software companies with confusing products or services to quickly and easily describe their purpose and value proposition. “When you can combine a good story with the right visuals, it makes for incredibly engaging content that very simply tells customers why they should care about you,” Follett explains. “In a world where everyone is inundated with content, I think people appreciate that.”

When Producing Explainer Videos Isn’t a Good Idea

That being said, video can be a dangerous medium if companies don’t execute it right. And just because videos are relatively inexpensive to create, doesn’t mean that businesses should immediately rush out and begin creating them on their own, Follett warns.

“There aren’t many instances in which video doesn’t make sense, but you have to do it right,” Follett says. “You shouldn’t just buy a camera, record a quick product demo, and throw it up on your website. If you do that and the production quality doesn’t match the perceived quality of your brand, or the message doesn’t come across clearly, then video can be detrimental.”

The key is to first think about the style of explainer video you want to produce (i.e., animation or live action?), what your budget for creating it will be, and what you want your video to ultimately accomplish. “Will your video be for marketing or tutorial purposes, and will your audience respond more to an illustrated explainer video or a simple screencast? Those are questions you have to ask,” Follett says.

3 Common Explainer Video FAILs

Once you get past the basics of creating your story and setting your video strategy, however, Follett says there are still explainer video pitfalls to watch out for.

For instance, making any of three mistakes below can undermine even the best-intentioned video production plans:

1) Attempting the DIY Route

Yes, there are financial benefits to creating explainer videos in-house, and some DIY videos are very effective. But there are risks to DIY, too.

“Explainer videos are typically displayed on a company’s homepage, so they’re one of the first things that customers see,” Follett says. “If you have a horrible voiceover, or a grainy, badly produced video, it will reflect poorly on your brand, even if your product is the best one on the market.”

2) Lacking a Clear Vision

Video can be expensive when you’re working with outside companies. If you begin a project without knowing what you want to produce, who you’ll produce it for, and which subject you’ll cover, you may end up with a video that confuses more than it explains.

“Having 100 different ideas and 100 different people involved inevitably leads to a mishmash of ideas,” Follett says. “And by trying to do everything in one video, you ultimately end up with nothing.”

3) Failing to Think about Your Product or Service Objectively

Company founders and employees are often too close to their products or services to really understand the story that their prospects want to hear. Follett says it’s critical to take a step back and think about your company from a potential customer’s perspective.

“You need to see your company through their eyes and then make a video that will appeal to the questions or concerns they have,” Follett says. “Video is no different than any other form of content in that way — understanding your audience is critical.”

Additional Resources for Entrepreneurs Interested in B2B Video Best Practices

The One Vital Skill Every Entrepreneur Needs

No, you don’t have to be the next George R. R. Martin. But as an entrepreneur you need to be able to inspire others, and learning how to tell your company’s story is one of the most important things you can do. Andrew Follett offers five tips to help you create a more inspiring story.

Your Guide to Creating Award-Winning B2B Video Content

Get your acceptance speech ready. Here are all the how-to basics you need to start rolling out Oscar-winning (or at least customer-coverting) B2B video content.

Have you produced an explainer video for your business? What pitfalls or missteps would you advise other companies to look out for? And how have customers responded to your video?

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For a long time Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMoz, found himself in the trenches, working with the nitty gritty of all things SEO. But these days, with his company growing, he’s had to take more of a hands off approach when it comes to the day to day. So when he unexpectedly found himself sitting in on a SEO panel, he had to rethink what insights he now has to offer. In a post on his blog, he details his newfound view of marketing strategy.

Fishkin realizes that he needs to take more of a strategic view these days, and that his company is better off for it. And when you consider some of his tips for building your business, staff and personal network it’s easy to see why.

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In today’s business world geographical barriers aren’t what they used to be, but that doesn’t mean that international expansion is a business growth strategy to take lightly. Going global presents a myriad of potential pitfalls in addition to opportunities, and only those who plan accordingly will meet with success.

Listen in to this week’s Labcast to learn the tips and tactics that will ensure you’re fully prepared to take advantage when the right international opportunity arrives.

Labcast 104_ Dave Brock Helps SMBs Determine If They’re Ready to Go Global

Podcast transcript:

Kevin: Hello. Welcome to this edition of Labcast. I’m Kevin Cain. Today, I’m joined once again by Dave Brock, the president of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a boutique consulting and services company that helps their clients sharpen their strategies and execution around a variety of areas, including business strategy, sales strategy, and performance, as well as globalization. Today, Dave joins me to talk about how SMB’s can determine whether or not they’re ready to go global. Hey, Dave. Welcome to LabCast. Thanks for joining me today. How’s it going?

Dave: It’s great, Kevin. Thanks for inviting me. I’m looking forward to our conversation today. It’s an exciting topic.

Kevin: As I mentioned in the introduction, we’re talking about the whole idea of how small and expansion-stage companies can go global, and what that really entails and the process around it. What I wanted to talk about first today, just sort of how you come to the decision of when is the right time to go global. If you’re an SMB, it is automatic that in today’s global world, you need to be in Europe and Asia? Or is there certain metrics or benchmarks, or I don’t know what, that needs to happen to indicate that it’s the right time?

Dave: That’s a really great question. I wish I had a really insightful answer to it. I think you kind of know when you know. I think, maybe I’ll turn this question around. In a sense, I think a lot of SMB’s don’t think of the opportunity to go global. It’s less one of knowing when the right time is, but they just omit that from their thought processes. They think of themselves as kind of a regional or super-regional player. They define their business as whether it’s in the local community, whether it’s in, say, from a US perspective, in a state or whether we’re national. We don’t naturally think about, “There’s something beyond our country’s borders. There are customers that might be interested in our products and services that are beyond our borders.”

I think one of the great things about the web, about mobile communications, and all, is it’s made distance irrelevant. It’s compressed distance and allowed us to reach out across our country’s borders, around the world and find customers. It’s also created the reverse, where customers in regions where we’ve never served can find us and reach out and ask to do business with us.

Kevin: I was just going to interject that I can imagine, though, that the prospect of going global is a little bit of a daunting one. I imagine the regulation that comes into question, the cultural issues, the myriad of different aspects that you need to consider is perhaps what keeps people from making the jump.

Dave: It is daunting. You clearly have to approach it correctly and sync in ways that you perhaps haven’t thought of before. One of the mistakes I see too many people make is they just think of a global expansion, whether it’s say a US company looking to go to Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin South America, is they just think of it as an expansion into a new market. They extend the same business practices, the same business processes, even the same products, and the same old methods into these new regions where to be successful; it probably requires some very, very different thinking.

Kevin: What do you typically recommend is the best way to go global? Is it through acquisition or partnerships? Or is it just getting some boots on the ground and growing organically from there?

Dave: I think first of all, one; is knowing the right time to go global. One is; I see too many, in particular, I see this in early stage startups, is they immediately want to go global. From the very first day of inception, they want to launch globally. Very, very seldom have I seen anybody be really successful at that.

Usually, you have to have things very stable in your home markets. You have to know the formula for success and be executing that very, very well, because the time and resource it takes to be successful in moving beyond your home markets into global markets is overwhelming. As you start thinking about going global, first is invest time in understanding the markets. Go out and . . . and perhaps even physically, go out and get to know the markets, get to know the customers, get to know the business practices and processes that are required for being successful.

Even if we look at maybe the simplest thing of western markets dealing with each other, so we have, say, a European company that wants to globalize by coming to the US. The practices and processes, and the way we present ourselves to customers are very different. Too often, I see people going global and failing to invest in that and understand it. That will limit their success, or in fact, cause them to make some real failures. Too often, I see people, for instance, just signing up a partner and abdicating their brand, abdicating the strategy, and just giving it to them and saying, “Solve the problem. Sell my product.” Usually, that’s a sure road to failure.

Kevin: Assuming that you are going to go down the path that you suggested; doing the appropriate research and due diligence. I know this is kind of a tough question to answer and it’s going to vary wildly, based on industry, company, and where you’re trying to relocate or go to globally. Can you give our listeners some sort of sense of what type of resources and how much time a global expansion project is going to take? Or strategy?

Dave: In some sense, if you think of the time and resource it took to establish yourselves in your home market, if you look at it, say, from a startup point of view, we invested time in trying to understand who are customers are in our home markets, trying to figure out what’s the best way to attract them and to serve them, and to start doing business and support them? In essence, you’re talking about doing the very same thing all over again. You presumably learned a lot, so you aren’t going to be starting from ground zero, so you can compress that cycle. You do have to say . . . you do have to go in and understand the markets. You do have to invest some in physical presence and research. Then you have to say, “What is the right way for me to enter that market? Is the right way for me to establish an office and establish my employees? Can I find a partner, a reseller, or say master distributor, that can allow me to achieve my objectives and open those markets?” You do that. It takes time; it takes resource.

I’m working with a number of companies right now, and some of the biggest problems I see, one is an unrealistic view of time. Then you take them back to, “Look how long it took you to ramp in your home markets. It probably won’t take you that long, but it will take you some time.” You look at money. People under- invest, in particular if they’re going for a partner strategy, they say, “Let’s just find a master distributor, turn the problem over to them. They’ll solve it and we’ll collect the orders.” You have to invest money in this, you have to. Whether it’s money to develop training programs, whether it’s money to localize your manuals, your website, your product offerings, and it’s money invested in marketing or co-marketing within those marketplaces.

Kevin: You’ve already touched on in our conversation a couple of the mistakes that big companies make when they go global: Not getting the timing right, not having done their due diligence, partnering with someone, and sort of abdicating when they do, and really not understanding their market. Are there other challenges or mistakes that you see companies making on a consistent basis, that you could help our listeners avoid?

Dave: I think just because it works and sells in our country, doesn’t mean it works and sells in another country. We have to respect cultural differences. We have to expect behavioral and attitudinal differences, and we have to understand those and adjust our strategies to do that. There’s a simple example: A number of years ago, I invested in a software company in Paris. As I was recruiting to build the management team, I was using all the things that I had done successfully in the US, in starting a number of very, very successful startups, and growing them. Then all of a sudden, I found I was having difficulty doing that in Paris because all our employees at the time were French. The way they wanted to be led, the way we implemented and executed our strategy, the way we attracted the right talent was very different from the process that I had used in the US. Not that one was better than the other, but they were different, and I was failing to recognize those important differences.

As we look at going global, we have to look at the cultural differences. We have to look at the market differences. Certainly, as you enter, say, the Chinese market, being very attentive to the governmental, the regulatory, and the overall structure of that marketplace is very critical to your success. I think we do have to really understand cultural attitudinal, behavioral, and to some extent, governmental and regulatory differences to be successful.

Kevin: Do you think that that need for cultural sensitivity might lessen in the future, as globalization takes more effect, and we become less culturally distinct as a world?

Dave: Absolutely not. In fact, I think that the recognition of cultural differences probably comes more intense. Certainly, as we look at social media today and the ability to communicate, whether it’s through Twitter or blogs in building communities around the world, we see important cultural differences. I think we become enriched and better people by recognizing and understanding different points of view. I would tend to say that the path to success is almost exactly the opposite; heightened awareness of the cultural differences, heightened sensitivity to it, using it to enter the region that you want much more successfully, and also using it to make your company a better company and global player.

Kevin: Dave, this has been really great. Thank you so much for joining us today. Before I let you go, can you let our listeners know where they can find you online?

Dave: Thanks so much for asking, Kevin. This has been fun. I’m Dave Brock. I’m president of a boutique consulting company called Partners in EXCELLENCE. Probably, the best places to find me online are either through Twitter, @Davidabrock, or through my blog site, which has all my contact information, which is PartnersInExcellenceBlog.com.

Kevin: Great, Dave. Thanks again for joining me today. Really appreciate it.

Dave: Thank you. I really appreciate the invitation, Kevin. Take care.

Kevin: You too.

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There might not be any better teacher than experience, but a few words of advice from someone who’s been around the block can prove invaluable before you set out on the sales track. S. Anthony Iannarino certainly wishes he hadn’t had to learn so many things the hard way, which is why he has 10 tips for new sales reps in a post at The Sales Blog.

While there’s no substitute for experience, Iannarino knows that you can avoid a few mistakes (and more than a few headaches) by taking these lessons into consideration. The things he wishes he had known when he was starting out include the following advice:

• Selling is about creating value
• Prospecting should be your priority
• Disqualify non-opportunities as quickly as possible
• Focus the conversation around value, not price
• Don’t fall off the face of the earth after a loss

Click the link below for Iannarino’s full list and his personal reflections on how these lessons have helped him become a better salesperson.

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Not all leads are created equal. Inside sales expert Mike Brooks offers six insightful questions to help you qualify inbound leads and stop wasting time by identifying the real buyers more quickly.

New marketing funnels and lead nurturing campaigns have created what has always been a salesperson’s dream: more inbound leads. Sales reps love receiving these leads and tell me all the time that these “warm” leads must be better because they called in requesting information.

“These leads are more qualified because they are calling in,” I hear over and over. But we all know this isn’t necessarily true is it? In fact this attitude leads to one of the biggest mistake 80% of your competition is making when they receive warm leads — they go into pitch mode rather than qualification mode.

Eighty percent of your competition mistake the “implied interest” of an inbound lead to mean they are already qualified, and all they need to do is explain their product or service. Wrong!

Top reps, on the other hand, know that inbound leads can be some of the biggest time wasters of all, so they do what they always do — disqualify out people who are “just looking” so that they can identify and spend time with the real buyers.

And they do this by asking questions instead of pitching.

6 Questions that Can Help Qualify Inbound Leads

Here are some great questions to ask the next time you get an inbound lead:

1) How to ask for the buying motive

Question: “Thank you for contacting us today, what was it about our ad/promotion/website that motivated you to call us today?”

2) How to determine a shopper

Question: “Who else are you looking into?”

3) How to determine how close or far away you are from a potential deal

Question: “What do you like best so far?”

4) How to determine further motivation

Question: “How long have you been thinking about (buying, investing, changing) something like this?”

5) How to determine the possible objections

Question: “What has kept you from acting on this?

6) How to determine time frame

Question: “When are you looking to make a decision on this?”

You see how this goes. Just remember, to be a Top 20% producer, you have to begin finding buyers — whatever the lead source. So stop pitching your inbound leads and start qualifying!

Remember, it’s still up to you to find and separate the buyers from the non-buyers.

Editor’s note: A version of this guest post from Mike Brooks originally appeared on his Inside Sales Training Blog as “How to Qualify Inbound Leads”.

Additional Resources

Inbound Marketing and Sales Alignment: Lessons from HubSpot

HubSpot’s SVP of Sales and Services Mark Roberge discusses the importance of inbound marketing and sales alignment and how companies can make the customer’s buying process a more seamless experience.

How Should We Define a Qualified Sales Lead?

The way you define a qualified sales lead may say a lot more about your organization than you might think. In this guest post, Steve Richard, Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Vorsight, discusses the keys to establishing the lead definition that’s right for you.

Three Words to Close More Sales

Inside sales expert Mike Brooks explains why one short, simple question is the key you need to close more sales by opening the door to your buyer’s thinking and process.

What are your keys to qualifying inbound leads?

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Finding, and wining, top tech talent is a huge priority for businesses these days. With the demand for talent bigger than ever, recruiters are using any and every resource that proves useful. Networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are proving that social recruiting is an invaluable tool for finding candidates. But Erin Bazinet points out in a post at ere.net that you would be wise not to ignore Google+ during your search.

Sure, Google+ is a bit maligned for not having taken off since it launched 2 years ago. They might only have a third of the users of Facebook, but Bazinet says it’s important to look at who those users are, not the raw number of them. Google+ appeals to a younger, tech savvy audience, which is probably exactly the demographic you are looking for in your talent search. Read the article for four tips on how to best leverage Google+ in recruiting.

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In one section of your office you have a group optimizing your website. In another, you’ve got a group working to make sure that Facebook is operating at peak performance. In yet another corner, a third group is working on creating the perfect emails. But you’ll never see the big picture with this silo method, says Bruce Ernst in a post at Monetate. In order to become truly customer centric, your entire marketing department needs to come together.

This requires a change in philosophy for many marketing departments — a change companies would do well to institute, according to Ernst. A loyal customer base that fully backs your product and company can be the greatest asset you have. Click through to learn how to start thinking differently and put your customer at the center of your universe.

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A sudden cash infusion brings with it massive changes for a company and its founder. As your team grows, there is often a shift in your function and responsibilities — and your leadership mindset needs to shift along with it.

Rand Fishkin has been documenting the twists and turns of SEOmoz’s journey from startup to growth with remarkable transparency on his personal blog, where he regularly provides fresh insights into his own personal leadership challenges, growth, and lessons, as well. In a recent conversation with OpenView, Fishkin reflected on three key focal points that he believes should shape a founder’s role after funding.

A Founder’s Role After Funding

As a founder navigating the transition to more of an operating executive role, himself, one thing Fishkin underscores is just how important it is “to maintain lots of one-on-one connections with individuals.”

New hires will need to feel connected to the vision and inspired by it if they are going to stick around and go above and beyond what’s asked of them. Your pre-funding veterans will also need your time, since they are the foundation upon which your startup success was built. You can’t afford cracks in the foundation when scaling up, so they need to feel that the company’s new direction is still one they believe in.

Maintaining Personal Connections

With employees old and new, a founder needs to make and maintain personal connections, Fishkin explains. “I have probably about 40%, 50% of my week, my working hours, set aside for one-on-ones with team members all across the organization.”

He sits down with engineers developing new products. He meets with designers working on wireframes, user experience, or re-skins. He checks in with managers to ensure every department is humming and happy. Not only will it ensure everyone’s needs are met, but “it lets me feel like I’m still a part of the ground floor and the operations,” Fishkin says, and it prevents him from becoming “too disconnected.”

You stay as connected as possible to the details and the daily operations of your company without disrupting the flow or veering back into maker mode. Fishkin reminds founders that this is not the time for you to produce things, set strategy, or evangelize. This is the time to take everything you’ve learned from years of hustling to get your startup off the ground and bring that knowledge back to the team, while also making every employee feel heard and listened to.

Patience and Positivity

Leave behind the notion that startup founders must be impatient. Fishkin believes that the expansion stage requires a cool head, calm approach, and a positive attitude.

“Positivity and optimism are extremely powerful weapons,” he says, and too often founders don’t wield them. Criticism and negativity drive a lot of action in startups, Fishkin laments, but it’s a short-sighted motivational tactic. That stress burns people out, and your company ends up losing in the end when you have to spend time and money replacing team members.

Remember that you, the founder, are no longer the rockstar producer who can move the needle all by yourself. Once you have a bigger team, it has to be a great team that pushes together.

Cultivating Company Culture is Key

Despite its rapid growth over the past year, SEOmoz has managed to maintain a low employee turnover rate. Fishkin thinks the key has been hiring with cultural fit in mind and pushing positivity from the top down.

For new hires, make sure that they are a solid cultural match and that their actions after coming on board align with your company’s core values. For team members who have been with your company for longer, make sure that they know they can voice their struggles with day-to-day work or certain tasks that feel overwhelming. Fishkin suggests “moving them into different roles if there’s something they’re most passionate about,” a strategy that’s “worked out terrifically well” for employee retention at SEOmoz.

Additional Resources for Expansion-Stage Leaders from Founders and Entrepreneurs

How to Scale After Funding: Rand Fishkin on Shifting Gears from Startup to Growth

Moving from startup to expansion stage is both a triumph and a trial for any company. Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SEOmoz, outlines the path for transitioning from break-neck development to a focus on scaling your products and services.

Steve Blank on Maintaining a Culture of Innovation

Serial entrepreneur-turned-educator and Silicon Valley legend Steve Blank discusses the challenges companies face during the transition from the startup to the expansion stage, and shares his advice for how founders can successfully navigate it while keeping a culture of innovation intact.

HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah on Developing Remarkable Company Culture

What makes a thriving company culture tick? HubSpot co-Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah offers an inside look behind the company’s roadmap for developing what was recently voted the “Best Company Culture in Tech.”

Are you a founder of a growing company whose role has or is currently evolving? What challenges are you facing and what techniques do you find most effective for supporting your growing team?

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Our hearts go out to the victims of yesterday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon, and to the friends and family of those impacted by this tragedy. At this very difficult time for this great city that we call home, OpenView is committed to lending our support to the many people who have been affected.

We encourage you to join us by making a donation to the Boston Marathon Fundraiser put together by TUGG (Technology Underwriting Greater Good) and the Boston technology community.

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You probably have plenty of items on your company’s checklist to becoming purchased. A killer product, a crack staff and an influx of clients. But it’s time to add one more thing to the list: a startup marketing video. Infant startups like Mailbox and Summly recently rode their videos to buyouts of $100 and $30 million respectively, and well before either was profitable. In a post at Business Insider Megan Rose Dickey explains how they did it and why you need to follow suit.

With high end, catchy and well-produced videos that excellently explained their services, Mailbox and Summly were able to attract investors. The videos were able to illustrate the potential of each company, even though neither had a strong base of users. Click through to learn more and check out the videos.

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A personal touch goes a long way when trying to make a connection with someone. Generic pick-up lines aren’t going to get you too many dates, and generic content won’t bring in many leads. To make an impression and start off on the right foot, whether at the bar or on your blog, you need to make sure the person you’re reaching out to understands that you’re right for them.

By better targeting your content marketing efforts to concentrate on what you know your buyers are after, you immediately improve your chances of generating and nurturing leads. Instead of wasting months throwing topics at the wall to see what sticks, you know exactly how to focus your social messaging, blog posts, white papers, case studies, videos, and more to get the most bang for your buck.

Find Your Feet Faster

Right off the bat, buyer personas help get your content marketing on track. Since they are essentially descriptions of the decision makers involved in purchasing a product, buyer personas not only offer the demographics, firmographics (the characteristics of their organization), and the roles of each of these individuals, but also their motivations and the problems they face.

By understanding each buyer’s problems, you can group a company’s decision makers into distinct profiles based on their unique needs and roles to give you a buyer persona framework.

With that framework in hand, you’re able to tailor your content to include solutions that you know will resonate with each buyer group. You immediately know what content to produce first, and your framework serves as the guide for a scalable content strategy.

Develop Your Buyer Personas

When thinking about your buyers, remember that B2B customers aren’t motivated by the same factors as B2C customers. Demographics and geography may have no impact at all on their decision-making process. Firmographics are also potentially of little relevance, because your buyers are first and foremost motivated by their occupation and responsibilities within the organization.

Following the three steps below and you will be developing effective buyer personas in no time:

1. Think in terms of archetypes: Your buyers are individuals, but they will share certain characteristics based on their roles.
2. Rank personas by influence in the buying process: You’ll want to narrow down your target personas to a manageable number.
3. Flesh out your profiles and focus on “sticking” points: Uncover what keeps each persona from buying your product or service. The deeper your understanding of this key point, the more effective your insight into each buyer persona will be, so speak with actual individuals to learn more.

As your personas develop, continue adding color to them by digging deeper into their goals, their current solutions to their problems and where there’s room for improvement, their daily activities, and what types of media they consume. Start reading what they read. Try understanding where they spend time on the web to figure out the best method for reaching them. The more human you make your personas, the better chance you stand at truly connecting with them.

For more how-to insight on practical next steps, read Karen Goldfarb’s 21 Tips for Creating Buyer Personas.

See ROI Sooner

With content marketing now typically accounting for 33% of a company’s total marketing budget according to Content Marketing Institute’s 2013 benchmarks report, companies can’t afford to take an unfocused approach to their content. The time and resources needed are better spent with a thoughtful, buyer persona-driven strategy guiding them.

Give every piece of content a stronger impact with a personalized approach to begin seeing a return on your company’s investment sooner. Not only will you improve your content marketing’s effectiveness, but since it’s a growing piece of the overall marketing picture, your entire strategy becomes more successful, too.

Add the Highest Octane for Your Lead-Gen Engine

The goal of your content marketing efforts is always to feed the lead machine. You want to generate new leads and keep moving them down the funnel. With B2B content marketing, however, you’re not typically dealing with just a single decision maker, so there may be different buyers involved at each stage of the purchase funnel.

Buyer personas become even more important as you nurture leads, since every person involved in the buying process will have different problems they need solved. With the research done beforehand, your personalized content will address the needs of every person involved, ensuring that you get buy-in across the organization.

Without buyer personas to guide you, research and trial and error are required to feel out what works for each decision maker. Show up with your homework already done, and you can skip right to developing a content matrix to map out the best process for nurturing leads. Then, the content calendar can be arranged to focus on the content needed to turn leads into sales.

Just like in dating, the more personal the connection, the better your chances of success. Move right away to start generating and nurturing leads by using buyer personas to guide your content marketing.

What problems have you run into attempting to develop accurate buyer personas and target your content marketing more effectively?

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The seed of a business might be a spark of inspiration at a dinner table, but ultimately you want it to evolve into a conversation about revenue over a conference room table. It takes a wide variety of people and skillsets to get from one conversation to the other, though. In a post at Forbes George Bradt lays out the key to transforming your idea into reality, offering a crucial bit of entrepreneur advice you won’t want to miss.

Each stage of a developing a business takes different types of people, Bradt explains. You’ll need starters to develop and prove your technology, transformers to take that technology to market and sustainers to manage the business once it takes off. But incorporating each personality type into your business and transitioning from one stage to the next can be tricky. Read on to see how it’s done.

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As a VC partner at Foundry Group and a cofounder of TechStars, Brad Feld has helped numerous young companies and entrepreneurs get through their rocky startup phases. He knows first-hand that it can be a draining business, but after years of experience he’s learned how to manage entrepreneur burnout, deal with failure and stay fresh. He offers advice on those topics and more in an interview with 99u.

If you’re as open as Feld is with his email address, you’re going to be running on empty after a while. So in order to avoid burnout Feld encourages entrepreneurs to unplug regularly so they can get recharged. Check out the interview to learn how Feld unplugs plus other great advice for young entrepreneurs.

Related Content from OpenView

Learn how to keep your employees safe from burnout, too.

3 Tips for Helping Reps Avoid Sales Burnout

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It’s the classic startup tale: a company is founded on one idea, and then pivots dramatically after market feedback. SmartBear Software founder Jason Cohen describes his company’s shift once early adopters saw the true potential of his product and led SmartBear to the honeypot (achieving product market fit).

Founded in 2003, SmartBear offers quality assurance tools that automate and facilitate code review, performance tests, and web monitoring – although that wasn’t Cohen’s initial vision. Currently serving as CEO of WP Engine, a company he co-founded after leaving SmartBear, Cohen sat down with OpenView to discuss his first company’s evolution (listen to the full, previously recorded podcast here).

The Founding

SmartBear Software’s first product was not focused on code review or quality assurance at all. It was a data mining tool for version control named Code Historian.

“My big idea,” Cohen says, “was that version control was ‘write many, read never,’” meaning that “there’s this big corpus of interesting information in there about which files are changing, when, and who’s touching them,” but nobody ever looks at that history.

Code Historian visualized that data and took developers beyond static version control so that they had more tools than simply being able to prevent two people from editing a file at the same time. Unfortunately, Cohen says, it turns out that “there probably is not that much interesting data there,” and Code Historian “wasn’t a great idea.”

Enter the users. Code Historian’s early adopters found other uses for the visualization that the product provided. “What happened was people were using these code visualization tools as part of a code review process, and I didn’t understand that at first,” Cohen says.

The Pivot

Cohen describes the “very strange” feature requests that he began receiving as users started asking for an export tool and a way to edit the reports that Code Historian generated. For Cohen, these requests made little sense, since his product was meant to be an interactive tool with data and graphs, so exporting editable reports didn’t appear to be a useful feature. ”I wasn’t thinking about code review,” he says, “so I was just confused.”

However, Cohen’s users continued to pull him and his product toward code review, as they recognized the value in it. At the time, he says, “there essentially was not any software to facilitate code review,” meaning that it was either “a terrible idea…or a big opportunity.” It turned out to be the latter.

The New Direction

Before SmartBear, software engineers were wasting significant amounts of time peer reviewing each other’s code. “The traditional Fagan-style review involves printing out code and going to meetings,” Cohen says, which, inevitably, “takes a lot of time.” Engineers needed an easier way to check each other’s work and to train new hires on the code base.

After several rounds of iterative changes, SmartBear’s historical tool transformed into a set of code review tools that solved a lot of the problems that engineers were having. Not only did SmartBear software provide an easy means for programmers to review any amount of code, but it also facilitated faster on-boarding for new engineers.

SmartBear’s evolution speaks to the importance of getting products in front of customers as quickly as possible and iterating based on their feedback. “Most of the time, the idea you have going in is not the one that actually really works,” Cohen says, and after the first hundred or thousand customers, your product has often “morphed into something else.”

Of course, the lesson isn’t just for startup founders and doesn’t stop there.

With markets continuously fluctuating and users’ needs and expectations constantly evolving, achieving product market fit and maintaining it is a moving target. Expansion-stage companies may think they know what needs their product should address, who their strongest users are, and what new features they want to see introduced, but true eureka moments always demand user interaction.

In what ways have your early adopters helped you?

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When a customer chooses to spend money in order to use your service, it’s not just some money changing hands. They’re allowing you to run a crucial piece of their business. Which is why, Geoffrey James explains at Inc., they expect you to be just as invested as an internal manager. The days of being simply a consultant or trusted advisor are long gone.

As a sales person, you’re the representative of your firm, says James. So the weight of the job being done falls on your shoulders, and your customers are going to be holding you accountable. Think you can just sit idly on the sidelines? Not anymore. Read the full article to learn more.

Related Content from OpenView

Think customers are really expecting salespeople to be trusted advisors? Get real. Find out what traits really matter.

Top 10 Underappreciated Qualities of Great Salespeople

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In the early stages of most software companies, product development tends to go something like this: a company’s founders identify a pain point or need, assemble a small engineering team to build a solution that addresses it, and proceed to go through a number of quick iterations to tweak the product to better meet the market’s needs.

It’s a system that relies on innovation, flexibility, and customization to fuel growth. And, in that early (often unstructured) environment, it’s a perfectly acceptable product strategy.

But there also comes a time in a software company’s development when throwing a bunch of ideas against a wall — or on the aforementioned engineers’ desks — and seeing what sticks is no longer effective. In fact, that strategy often inhibits efficient growth.

The Need for Software Product Management

At the expansion stage — when a premium is placed on efficiency and scalability — a software company needs to have a stable set of product requirements that can be carefully allocated to a product development team, and a product strategy that more formally aligns with its overall business strategy.

This is why, at some point in almost every software company’s growth, businesses need to develop a true product management function that can act as a buffer between business strategy and product development, and ensure that product strategy aligns with customer and market needs.

Unfortunately, implementing product management can be a little bit tricky, and many businesses often confuse product management’s responsibilities with those of other departments, leading to a host of roadblocks that make life difficult for product management organizations.

This high-level product management guide should help you avoid those challenges by covering three critical steps to successfully implementing a product management function.

1) Define: What is Product Management?

As product management expert Saeed Khan wisely suggests in this post, a true product management function isn’t simply an extension of a software company’s marketing or engineering departments.

Instead, it’s a separate strategic function that must be responsible for driving new product development strategy, focus, and alignment, and market clarity. As such, product management functions must be solely driven by the success of the product, focusing on questions like:

• How will the product compete in each market?
• What can you do to take it to market?
• How should the product be priced and licensed?
• How will customers in each segment use the product?

Essentially, Khan explains, product management is a business optimization function that oversees technology and product all the way from development to go-to-market. Areas such as channel development, marketing strategy and positioning, and customer management are all part of overall product management.

2) Hiring a Dedicated Product Management Team

So, whose job is product management at the expansion stage?

As I’ve written before, it’s not the CTO’s or the CEO’s. Instead, companies need to create a true product management function that houses several different roles and leaders, including:

• The team leader (VP of Product or VP of Product Management): This is the person who will own the product and set the vision and strategy for it.
• Product manager(s): This is the team member (or members) who are charged with developing true empathy for customers and creatively solving problems for them.
• User experience managers, researchers, or designers: This group is responsible for quickly examining a product’s layout and information architecture, and interpreting the changes that can be made to make it easier to use.

Product management guru Marty Cagan, the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group, does an excellent job of describing the various product management roles in greater detail in his paper, “Behind Every Great Product,” which is largely considered the Product Management resource.

Generally speaking, however, Cagan says that implementing a high-functioning product management function begins with hiring a product leader who excels at the following:

• Identifying and assessing opportunities
• Defining the right product at the right time
• Setting the product strategy and roadmap
• Representing the product internally (through evangelism, executive review, and sales and marketing support)
• Developing a deep empathy for the target customer’s needs and pain points

If you can find that person to lead your product management function, he or she should be able to build the team he or she needs to succeed.

3) Overcoming the Inevitable Challenges of Implementing Product Management

Unfortunately, finding product managers who can successfully perform all of the responsibilities listed above isn’t easy.

And even if you do find them, integrating that role and the product management team with the rest of your organization is an altogether different challenge that requires product leaders to overcome several roadblocks, including:

• Determining what exactly you are solving for. Until you know that, you don’t know what specific skill sets you need to hire in-house to achieve that goal. The ideal way to begin, says Central Desktop VP of Product Management Kristy McKnight, is to start with the company aspirations, goals, and objectives, and determine how the product fits in and needs to support them.

• Acquiring the appropriate ownership over the product and the outcomes of product decisions. That can be a tricky transition. In the early stages of a company’s development, the responsibility of product management tends to be shared between the founders, or the marketing, engineering, and sales organizations, typically in an ad-hoc manner. So the challenge when you get started with product management is to show those team members the benefit of passing ownership of those responsibilities to product management and developing the trust that a formal PM function will improve the efficiency and performance of the overall operation.

• Avoiding organizational misalignment: At the startup phase, when the priority is on revenue generation regardless of customer segments, the sales department tends to drive the product backlog. When product management is officially implemented, however, that responsibility must fall on product managers, and it’s their job to keep everything in context and prioritize work on broader needs or larger opportunities. This power swap can create a divide between PM and sales or marketing, and create team-wide misalignment.

The key to avoiding or overcoming those challenges, says McKnight, is to ensure that everyone understands their new responsibilities and respects their role relative to the organization’s short- and long-term goals.

If you’re recruiting the right profile, giving them enough ownership, allowing them to contribute directly to the success of the business, and tying each of those things together, accomplishing that shouldn’t be a problem.

Implementing Product Management Isn’t Easy, but It’s Worth the Trouble

In the end, it’s critical to remember that product management isn’t a replacement for product development, product marketing, or professional services. Those are all very different, but complementary, functions within a growing software company.

As such, the ultimate objective of product management is to understand business strategy, translate it into a product strategy, tie both to the company’s target market segments, and define the differentiated product solutions that product development needs to build to meet those market segments’ needs.

Achieving that isn’t simple, of course, but investing the time into properly developing and managing a true product management function can pay huge dividends and unleash true operational efficiency.

What tips would you add to make this guide to product management more complete?

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Mentions, likes, pins and posts. Wherever you look there’s probably a notification for your company’s social media presence popping up. With more social networks than ever before, it can be easy to get bogged down in trying to stay on top of it all. Matt Wesson explains in a post at Pardot that the reason you’re spending so much time is because you probably don’t have a plan. But by checking out his infographic you can learn how to manage your social media in 30 minutes a day.

How is that possible when social media is a never-ending stream of activity? By identifying the channels you are most involved with and maximizing your productivity on each one, you can drastically reduce the amount of time you spend managing social media each day. And be sure not to count out automating some of your social activity.

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Although Scrum is more popular than ever, the reality is that only 10 to 15 percent of companies are realizing its full potential. Often, this is because Scrum, while easy to understand, can be a difficult process to implement properly. Jeff Sutherland, CEO of Scrum Inc. recently sat down with OpenView (listen to the full interview here) to provide solutions to some of the common pitfalls that cause companies to come up short of achieving the full benefits of Scrum.

1) Not Paying Attention to “Yesterday’s Weather”

One of the most demoralizing things for a team to encounter is when they fail to reach the goals of their sprint.

Teams that are able to consistently finish what they set out to do are able to accelerate at a faster rate, which is why it is so important for you to only be undertaking what you have proven to be capable of in previous sprints. It is what we refer to as implementing a pattern of “yesterday’s weather.”

Not only will this help you cut down on planning time, your team will be more comfortable and confident, as well. They have already proven to be effective and consistent in delivering when using “yesterday’s weather” to pull into a sprint.

2) Neglecting to Incorporate a Buffer Plan For Delays

Naturally, things will pop up that could potentially derail you during a sprint. But because this is an inevitable pattern, you can plan for it.

By creating an interrupt buffer, you can allow a product owner to take on a certain percentage of unexpected, high priority work that crops up during your sprint. He or she will triage interruptions, deciding whether each is:

• work the team must do during this sprint
• work that can wait for the next sprint
• work that isn’t too important and can be thrown in the backlog

In the event that too many interruptions occur, you can simply abort the sprint and re-plan, but with a buffer you will at least be prepared for a reasonable amount of distraction.

3) Failing to Build Repeatable Patterns

The key to successfully completing sprints is to have repeatable patterns you can rely upon. Pulling in the right amount of work and being able to handle your interruptions are key patterns to establish. But you’ll also want to develop emergency procedures for when you find your productivity slowing down even with those two safeguards in place.

That way, when you are behind schedule you can alternate your pattern of work to compensate as a fail-safe. Have a checklist you can work through when things slow down that are designed to help you get back on track. As a last resort, you can also attempt to offload some of your backlog to other teams.

4) Being Afraid to Reset

Sometimes enough disruption will occur to totally derail a sprint. In these instances, it’s actually better to stop and reset rather than continue ahead with little hope of finishing on time.

Instead of allowing your team to coast unhappily into failure, resetting can give them the chance to refocus and reenergize so they can be successful going forward.

What impediments has your team faced implementing Scrum? Have you been able to overcome them?

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Does your board add value to your company or do more harm than good? Does it suffer from bad board dynamics or is it a cohesive, high-performance team? No matter how you answer these questions, chances are that your board isn’t doing everything that it should be and providing your company with the kind of strategic support it needs to succeed.

Earlier this year, OpenView examined the role of boards of directors and how expansion-stage CEOs can get the most out of them in our eBook, Building a High-Impact Board of Directors: A Guide for Expansion-Stage CEOs.

In addition to leveraging our considerable experience working with entrepreneurs like you to navigate the challenges of building and managing the kind of board of directors companies need at the expansion stage, the eBook also examines the results of a recent OpenView survey of dozens of CEOs and board members at companies just like yours.

The goal of the survey was to get insight into their views on points such as:

• the value that a great board of directors can bring
• the ways in which bad boards can cause the most harm
• the most influential factors in determining whether or not a board is successful

We have compiled some of the most interesting insights from that survey into the board of directors infographic below.

If you are the CEO of an expansion-stage company, this is information that you cannot afford to miss. Take a minute to view the full board of directors infographic and to download your free copy of the eBook.

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In this day and age it might as well be a fact: everybody loves a good viral video. They seemingly come from nowhere but get everyone talking.

So how do you go about making sure your video is the next one people see in their inbox or Twitter feed? Cat Jones is the head of business development at Unruly Media, who track the most shared videos on the internet, and she sat down with Business insider to offer some insights on how to make a viral video.

Jones rattles off a variety of tactics, each battle tested, for coming up with your own viral video. She offers advice on being funny (which is hard) and making people angry (which is risky) and all the options that lie between. But the most important things are to know your audience and make sure you spend your money on promotion. Check out the article for more advice (and to revisit some classic videos).

Related Content

Don’t miss viral video tips from Grasshopper, this year’s B2B Oscar Winner for Best Viral Video of the Year

How to Make a Viral Video: Must-Have Criteria and Crucial Do’s & Don’ts

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So, you’ve hired a team of rock stars and convinced them that what your startup or expansion-stage company does is worth getting excited about. Congratulations. Now what?

Unfortunately, many businesses stop there. They make the hire and expect that the rest will take care of itself — that new employees will be enamored with the culture and mission and that they don’t need to do anything else to keep them engaged.

That’s the wrong way to handle it.

Truthfully, companies need to start thinking about candidates and employees the same way sales thinks about prospects and customers. Here are three tips for approaching talent acquisition and retention like you approach customer acquisition and retention:

1) Make Employee Onboarding and Nurturing a Priority

Most great sales organizations don’t just focus on attracting and closing prospects. They also make sure that once prospects are brought on as customers, they’re nurtured and engaged in ways that enhance their experience. You should do the same with your new hires, ensuring employees are properly trained and developed, proactively making them feel valued, and surveying them to find out what they like (or dislike) about their work experiences.

2) Focus on Retaining Top Talent

The simple truth is that it is a lot cheaper to retain existing top employees than it is to go out and acquire new ones. Wait a second — what does that remind you of? (Sales managers, feel free to chime in!)

3) Leverage Your Current Employees as Recruiting Currency

Just as your existing customers can be valuable sales assets via referrals and testimonials, so too can happy employees be one of your best (and cheapest) recruiting assets. By asking them to be part of the recruiting and hiring process, you’ll not only improve the quality of your candidate pool, you’ll also create stronger employee engagement.

Valuing Employee Engagement Alongside Customer Engagement

Many expansion-stage software companies are well aware of the dangers of customer churn, which is why they embrace onboarding and nurturing initiatives designed to improve customer engagement. But employee turnover can be just as damaging, impeding your ability to attract top talent right now, and lessening the likelihood that you’ll retain your highest performers in the long-term.

Ultimately, those two implications alone should be enough to convince you to re-think how you view one of your biggest assets — your people.

What do you think? Can recruiting and HR departments benefit from taking a cue from sales?

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There have been countless startups that have, well, started up over the years. There are plenty of success stories and even more tales of caution. Having run MassChallenge, a global startup competition and accelerator program, since 2010, John Harthorne has been around his fair share of new businesses. In a post at Inc. he offers his thoughts on the five key entrepreneur lessons he’s learned.

Harthorne points out that entrepreneurs must hold on to a belief that they are going to change the world. Without that mindset you’ll struggle to maintain and inspire commitment amongst your team. He also explains why it’s critical to seek advice early and often and share your success stories with the industry. Read on for all his lessons and the reasoning behind them.

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It’s early April, which means Q1 is in the books (and hopefully so is winter).

But we’re also heading into a time of year when the initial burst of renewed energy at the beginning of a new year is quickly wearing off. And that dip in enthusiasm often yields a far less exciting byproduct than sunny skies, says sales consultant Jim Keenan: sales rep burnout.

“Everything that goes up must come down, and that’s certainly true of the initial excitement of a New Year,” says Keenan, a top sales influencer and the author of the popular sales blog, A Sales Guy. “When salespeople get too fanatically focused on making their quotas, they can be driven insane by the numbers. And if they don’t hit their numbers at the end of Q1, all of the excitement they had about a fresh start in 2013 can quickly dissipate.”

Sales rep burnout can be caused by any number of factors, but Keenan says it is typically the result of two things:

• Every sales conversation or review focuses solely on numbers — getting prospects to buy, closing deals, filling the pipeline, etc.
• Customer needs and exciting new initiatives are tossed aside as reps scramble to hit quota.

“Ultimately, that creates this culture where if a sales team or salesperson doesn’t hit their numbers, they’re failing,” Keenan says. “That takes a lot of the fun out of selling and kills team moral pretty quickly.”

So, how can your business avoid sales rep burnout as it heads into Q2? Keenan recommends doing three things:

1) Build a Culture of Learning and Teaching

As much as you need your salespeople to sell, Keenan says they should be doing it in the context of teaching and educating the customer — providing solutions that change their focus and allow them to see the value in your product. Salespeople can’t do that unless they’re taking time to learn about their market, industry, and product.

So, rather than asking your team to focus solely on prospecting and quota attainment, Keenan says you should encourage them to take an hour of their day to read a book about new sales methodologies or learn about the solution they’re selling.

“As salespeople learn, they’ll grow professionally and they’ll feel re-energized,” Keenan says. “And that will make the time they do spend prospecting and closing much more powerful.”

2) Put the Customer’s Needs Front and Center

By encouraging your salespeople to more deeply explore customers’ needs, pain points, and impediments, they will naturally develop a better understanding of those buyers and will be much more prepared to sell to them. Naturally, that will make it easier to hit the numbers that so many companies are obsessed with, Keenan says.

“Salespeople shouldn’t spend all of their time cold calling or drafting proposals,” Keenan explains. “They should also spend time in the customer’s world — reading blogs that matter to their buyers, visiting forums that their customers post to, digesting content that matters to their customers. That will provide critical context and make the process of selling much simpler and more genuine.”

3) Set Aside Time for Feedback and Idea Sharing

When things are going badly for salespeople, their tendency is to feel like they’re the only ones struggling. Typically, that’s not the case. That’s why Keenan suggests providing forums or mediums for team feedback, commiseration, and idea sharing. By doing that, you can let salespeople blow off some steam, gather fresh ideas from their peers, and create a plan for addressing their problems.

“That can be accomplished with something as simple as a brown bag group lunch or a brainstorming session over morning coffee, but the idea is to encourage your reps to take a step back and reflect,” Keenan says. “Maybe they spend an hour learning about a creative new solution, or maybe it’s a super-productive meeting about a new sales strategy. Either way, it will break things up and continue to foster that culture of education.”

Those ideas, Keenan says, encompass a more tactical approach. A more strategic approach would be to establish an ongoing coaching cadence to address potential issues that could cause sales burnout and tackle them proactively.

The Bottom Line

Sales rep burnout is a real thing. Left unaddressed, it can cause your reps to begin focusing on the wrong things or, much worse, Keenan says, they may start looking for a different job altogether.

Have your sales teams experienced sales rep burnout in the past? How have you addressed it?

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Free beer. Foosball tables. Unparalleled transparency. Talk like a pirate day. Each has been touted as a cornerstone of a corporate culture of some kind or another. But the fact is any and all of them can work for your business. In a post at OnStartups, HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah says it doesn’t matter which one you pick, just as long as you truly love your culture code.

Shah points out that if you’re constantly tweaking your culture to stay on trend or bend to what you think you should be doing culture-wise, you’ll never have a chance. But as long as you are invested in your culture and build it up around what makes it unique, you’ll be well on your way.

To learn more about the keys to developing a remarkable company culture, read our full interview with HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah, discussing the importance of finding your company’s guiding goal, why chasing after work-life balance is misguided, and why the HubSpot approach to perks is “less parties, more personal progress” (though they have their fair share of parties, too).

HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah on Developing Remarkable Company Culture

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Process. Just the mere use of the word can spread fear and panic in the workplace. This sad reality exists for a reason — 100% of companies unnecessarily suffer from a process problem.

They suffer to varying degrees, but they are nonetheless suffering. The good news is bad process is one of the easiest things for leaders to remedy. By simply being willing to stop the madness and reclaim the asylum from the lunatics (inept leaders, lazy managers, and fee happy consultants), huge gains in morale and productivity can be quickly achieved.

Get Over the Fear

With the plethora of conflicting information written about process design, implementation, and management, combined with the nightmares we’ve all experienced as a result of bad process, many executives fear the pain associated with flawed process more than they value the benefits created by good process. How sad it that?

Here’s the thing — it’s not what you know, but what you don’t know about process (or perhaps what you’ve allowed process to represent) that has left you fatigued and frustrated. I’m going to crawl out on a limb and make a bold claim: by the time you’ve finished reading this piece you’ll find the topic of process no longer creates untold amounts of brain damage, but has transitioned to something you’ll find altogether invigorating. Trust me on this one.

Process as a Competitive Advantage

One of the ways successful companies gain a competitive advantage is through creating process advantage. The problem is most companies are buried in process disadvantage.

Good process is:

• sophisticated (not complex)
• efficient (simple)
• effective (usable and value added)

Good business processes serve as the central nervous system for your organization providing a framework for every action, decision, activity or innovation to flow from and through.

There are many who would say process stifles creativity and slows production, and while I would concur  this statement is usually the case with bad process, nothing could be further from the truth as it relates to good process. Good process serves as a catalyst for innovation, which in turn optimizes and accelerates engagement, collaboration, work-flow, and enhances the overall productivity of business initiatives.

7 Tips to Filter Out and Replace Your Bad Business Processes

So, here’s where the fun and excitement comes in — I want you to place your business processes under the microscope using the following 7 points as filters for what processes you create, keep, refine, or discard moving forward:

1. The Right Mindset: If your business processes are perceived as a rigid set of mandates and rules, rather than a set of flexible guidelines — you’re in trouble. Good process should provide a fluid framework to inspire creativity, not stifle it. Sound process encourages the use of good judgment, it shouldn’t insinuate people don’t have any judgment. Believe it or not, good process should allow people to take risks not preclude them from doing so. The debate shouldn’t be one of systems vs. talent, but systems and talent.
2. The 20% Rule: I’ve yet to encounter a business that couldn’t eliminate 20% of their existing business processes and be better for it. You (yes, you) are allowing the expenditure of precious time and resources on silly processes that add no value whatsoever — they should be eliminated immediately. Bad process is indicative of an unhealthy mindset that justifies anything currently existing as valuable. The fastest way to inject a breath of fresh air into your business is to a) Give permission and space to your workforce to tell you where bad process exists, and then b) Do something about it.
3. Design Matters: While good process can be inspired from anywhere, it should be designed by those closest to the work. Imposed mandates from above while often well intended, are rarely as effective as organic initiatives created by team members who most frequently interact with said process. Don’t fall into the trap of allowing consultants to “install”  a “best practice” process. Rather, allow your team to create a next practices solution. By choosing the latter over the former you’ll save considerable time, money, and frustration.
4. Simplicity Matters: If your process isn’t simple, it’s going to be very expensive, not very usable, and probably not sustainable – put simply, it will fail. Whether evaluating new processes, or determining which ones to re-engineer or discard, make simplicity a key consideration. Remember this – usability drives adoptability, and simplicity is the main determinant of usability.
5. Don’t Think Product – Think Outcome: I know this will offend some, but process is not a new software program or application. While toolsets can enhance process or can become a by-product of process, they do not in and of themselves constitute process. Don’t get caught in the trap of perpetual spending or development as a solution. Recognize if you’re caught in this trap it’s a symptom of bad process not a reflection of good process.
6. No Band-Aids: Good process is not reactionary. A series of bubble gum and bailing wire solutions put in place in haste as a knee-jerk reaction to the latest problem is not good process design. Process by default will never provide the benefits of good process engineering by design. Think long-term, and if you must, bridge with a phased solution, but be planful in approach.
7. No Panacea: While good process will help optimize any business, it will not make up for shortcomings in other disciplines or functional areas. Process is not the main driver in business, but merely a critical support system built for enablement, delivery, accountability, and measurement.

Good process comes as a by-product of clarity of purpose. It is the natural extension of values, vision, mission, strategy, goals, objectives and tactics. It is in fact working down through the aforementioned hierarchy that allows process to be engineered by design to support mission critical initiatives.

Recognition of the fact that you don’t start with process design, but that process design should be used as a refining framework to enable better execution is critical to the development of good process. Process is the part of the value chain that holds everything together and brings and ordered, programmatic, yet flexible discipline to your business.

Good process results in a highly usable infrastructure being adopted across the enterprise because it is effective for staff, and provides visibility and accountability for management, all of which increases the certainty of execution. Good process across all areas of the enterprise will result in elimination of redundancy and inefficiency, better engagement and collaboration, shortening of cycle times, better knowledge management and business intelligence, increased customer satisfaction, and increased margins.

What Are You Waiting For?

I encourage you to not let apathy, negative experience based upon results of bad process or flawed implementations, or the fear of the unknown keep you from benefiting from the numerous advantages created by good process engineering. I would also strongly encourage you to evaluate all of your current processes so you can discard or re-engineer (simplify) bad process and improve upon good process, striving for excellence in process design.

Now go to work and unleash some goodness of process.

Editor’s note: This guest post from Mike Myatt originally appeared on the N2growth blog as “100% of Companies Have This Problem”.

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If you have ever written a blog, you know that aside from creating your actual posts, your next biggest challenge is often getting people to read your content. After all, with well over 180 million blogs floating around in the ether, there’s plenty of competition, no matter what topic you’re blogging about. That’s why it’s so important to promote your blog socially using Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or any of your other favorite social channels.

Unfortunately, if you don’t have a huge following, it can be a real challenge trying to get traction with your blog. Many bloggers are lucky to get just a few tweets or shares for every post they write. The good news is that there is potential solution out there called Triberr that can make sharing your content a lot easier.

After signing up for Triberr and connecting the site to your blog, you can either join existing tribes or create your own tribe about a particular topic. Then, every time you create a blog post, other members of Triberr can see it and share it with their audiences. Likewise, you have the opportunity to share other people’s content with your followers. It’s basically a quid pro quo where you share other bloggers’ posts and in return they share yours. The net result is that everyone’s content get’s much great exposure.

In this week’s Labcast, one of the founders of Triberr, Dino Dogan, joins us to talk about his popular blogging community site and the entrepreneurship lessons he has learned founding a successful startup. Dogan explains:

• How Triberr came about and why it’s garnering a lot of attention, both good and bad
• The greatest challenges he’s faced since creating Triberr, and how he’s overcome them
• His views on the future of social media

To learn more, listen to the full podcast below:

Labcast 105_ Triberr Founder Dino Dogan on His Social Blogging Site

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At a small, developing startup the hiring of a COO can often be met with skepticism amongst employees.  Having helped build companies including PayPal, LinkedIn and Square Keith Rabois has seen the value that a COO can bring to even an early stage. In a post at First Round Capital he breaks down his thoughts on COO best practices for startups.

In addition to offering his ideas on deploying a COO, Rabois explains how to bring aboard the best talent, and why doing so is essential to maximizing the potential of your business. He also discusses why it’s important to not only be transparent with your employees, but radically so, while offering some intriguing examples from his past.

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In the SaaS world, there are a lot of metrics that founders proclaim as the harbingers of sustainability and corporate health. For instance, some might argue that it’s all about revenue growth rate or churn. Others suggest that lifetime customer value or average revenue per customer are SaaS metrics that deserve top billing.

For EchoSign co-founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, however, those SaaS metrics aren’t nearly as important as one particularly crucial driver of SaaS company success and growth:

Inbound Lead Velocity

(i.e., the rate at which your qualified, in-bound leads are growing month-over-month)

“Churn, lifetime value, and revenue growth rate are all critical metrics,” Lemkin explains. “But all of the great SaaS businesses are built on inbound interest. And if your company has perpetual organic demand, it’s going to be in good shape years down the road.”

The reason, Lemkin says, is that an engine fueled by word-of-mouth and virality naturally drives high lead velocity. And with that in your back pocket, you can solve virtually any other problem given enough time and runway, and upgrades to the team and product.

For instance, if you hire a bad VP of Sales, your revenue growth will likely drop, and perhaps fairly quickly. But fixing that problem might be as simple as firing that person and hiring the right VP of Sales.

Sure, that hiring hiccup will probably look ugly on your balance sheet in the short-term, but as long as you act quickly, chances are it won’t sink your SaaS business. “A great VP of Sales can take half-decent in-bound leads and, no matter what other issues you have, at least increase the revenue per lead materially from where it was before,” Lemkin explains.

In other words, as long as the inbound leads are still there, you can fix whatever is dragging down your revenue per lead. You can upgrade the sales team. Focus on the funnel. Fill the critical feature gaps. But without leads — even with the world’s greatest product and sales team — it’s going to be very hard to get anywhere.

“You can’t really pay for or immediately fix organic demand,” Lemkin says. “Yes, you can batten down the hatches and strategize ways to speed it back up, and outbound demand generation can help. But those processes are much more intense than hiring and firing executives, or developing new product features that one-up your competition.”

SaaS Metrics: What Constitutes a Sustainable Lead Velocity?

Lemkin suggests that if your qualified organic leads are growing by more than 100 percent year-over-year, every other SaaS problem — be it churn or lifetime customer value — should be fixable with the right strategy and investments.

“That’s the one thing I wish I’d known when I was running EchoSign,” Lemkin explains. “When everything just seemed sideways for us in 2008, there were times that I thought we’d never get to the next level.”

The reality, however, was that the raw demand for EchoSign was doing just fine.

Even at its lowest point, Lemkin says EchoSign’s inbound leads were still flowing at the rate they always were. In fact, demand was accelerating. The company’s leadership simply needed to re-focus its strategy and begin to fully leverage its funnel full of inbound interest. So Lemkin hired a rock star VP of Sales, and combined that talent acquisition with a big feature release that closed key gaps in the product. Six months later, the company was on fire.

Focus on Lead Velocity First, Fix Everything Else Later

Truthfully, Lemkin admits that he didn’t fully realize the importance of lead velocity until after EchoSign had been acquired by Adobe in 2011. At that point, he had the chance to decompress and objectively look at what made the business successful in the long run.

He recently had the opportunity to do the same analysis with several other SaaS companies, and was pleased with what he found.

“In one case, this SaaS company’s revenue wasn’t growing, and the CEO was deeply concerned and envisioning an end-of-days scenario,” Lemkin recalls. “But when I sat down, looked at his lead velocity, and saw that inbound leads were flowing in at a solid rate, I said, ‘There might be a lot of things that aren’t working, but I’m not that worried because there’s also something really working here. You have customers and inbound leads. Now we just have to close them.’”

The company hired a well-respected VP of Sales, focused on its most profitable segment, stopped chasing low-ROI market segments, and listened to its leads. In less than five months, it went from flat revenue to adding over $1 million in new ARR per month.

“I don’t mean to make it sound stupidly simple, but it honestly boils down to that,” Lemkin says. “If organic inbound leads aren’t coming in, in most cases your SaaS business is in trouble. At the very least, you have to go back to the drawing board — the evangelical phase — and either re-sell your vision or tilt. You can’t buy your way to organic qualified leads in SaaS.

“So my advice to founders is once you are past the earliest first traction and have any inbound leads at all, then always to look at lead velocity. If you can figure out how to maximize revenue per lead, you can allow that information to drive everything else you do.”

Do you agree with Jason? Of all SaaS metrics, is inbound lead velocity the one that matters most?

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It’s widely known throughout the industry that Google has created a working environment that brings forth an astonishing amount of passion, innovation, loyalty and production from its employees.

But instead of just paying lip service to their company culture, Mark C. Crowley visited corporate headquarters to find out how they got there. In a post at Fast Company he shines a light on four elements behind Google’s workplace satisfaction.

While many point to the crazy perks and unparalleled freedoms that Google provides employees, Crowley discovered that those are only the final results of a much deeper HR pathos that drives the company. Read on to discover the thought process behind Google’s hiring and learn why they’re so committed to sticking to their plan.

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Is your website’s content delivering unique, targeted information to each of your targeted customer segments? If you’re not embracing website segmentation, you’re missing an opportunity to better engage and direct web visitors, and differentiate your brand from its competitors.

So, you’ve built a great website for your B2B technology company. You’ve embraced great design principles, published helpful and high-quality content, and optimized the site for inbound marketing and search engine indexing.

You should be all set, right? Maybe not.

The truth is that the sophisticated design techniques of a few years ago are now commonplace, and businesses must do more to make their websites stand out from the crowd.

One of the best ways to do that is to segment your website’s design and content.

In essence, website segmentation delivers unique, targeted content that speaks to specific customer or industry segments’ needs and pain points, and does so in the clearest, most concise, and most interesting manner.

As Lattice Engines content marketing manager Amanda Maksymiw writes for The Content Marketing Institute, website segmentation is all about providing an experience that allows visitors to self-select themselves into product or industry-specific subpages. And when they get to those pages, they’re met by content — videos, blog posts, case studies, etc. — that is highly relevant to their needs, not another buyer’s.

What You Need to Know First

Before you begin overhauling your website to accommodate your various customer segments, it’s critical to do a little bit of homework to make sure that you’re ready to deliver content that will speak to their specific needs.

For instance, as Vince Giorgi writes for Hanley Wood Marketing, have you determined which personas or markets will make up each of your segments, and what each of those segments cares about? And what about the unique challenges of those segments? Can you speak with enough authority about them, and have you produced enough content to address those challenges on a separate website subpage?

Ultimately, you need to answer three questions before you begin segmenting your content:

• Who is your audience and which product or service best aligns with their needs?
• What topics are they looking for your input on and what problems or issues can your website help them solve?
• What is the most valuable information you can provide them?

It might be useful to create buyer personas for each of your segments, as well. At the end of the day, there’s a big difference between presenting information to a CFO and a CMO, even if they both work for a company that resides in the same segment.

5 Website Segmentation Best Practices

When done well, website segmentation can increase website visitor engagement, differentiate your brand from its competitors, and improve inbound marketing effectiveness by prompting visitors to explore beyond the home page.

Here are five website segmentation best practices that will ensure your segmentation strategy fulfills its promise to deliver clear, concise, and relevant content to target visitor groups:

1. Use visual and interactive cues to prompt self-selection: You want your website visitors to feel like they’re in control of their experience. By using cues, you can encourage visitors to self-select into specific segments based on their industry, problem, or role, and control their experience by providing information that is most useful or engaging for them.
2. Speak directly to each target audience’s needs: Once visitors have self-selected themselves into a specific segment, make sure they’re greeted by content that is relevant to their interests and resonates with their needs. Whether that means sharing how-to videos and blog posts, or pointing to specific product spec sheets, the idea is to make visitors feel like the website was built uniquely for their challenges.
3. Keep segment-specific pages clean, simple, and easy to navigate: Providing too much information, cluttering your page design, and making navigation difficult are all pitfalls that will overwhelm potential customers and cost you visitor engagement. Take care to ensure that your website is neither too bare nor too heavily laden with unnecessary technical details. The key is to provide simple value propositions that speak clearly to the needs of that segment.
4. Diversify and tailor your segmented content: Some content types resonate more with certain buyers than others, so be sure to offer a variety of content formats — bylined articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, case studies, etc. — on each segmented page. Exactly which types of formats you use will depend on your business and industry, but including at least two or three different types of content is a good rule of thumb.
5. Provide segment-focused interactive content: This will show your website visitors your degree of specialization, knowledge, and experience in their market, and increase visitor engagement. For instance, if a specific customer segment aligns with one particular product offering, you might provide an ROI calculator or an interactive video walk-through of its best features.

The basic idea with these best practices is to give visitors an easier way to find exactly what they want as soon as they get to your site. And once you redirect them to a subpage or landing page that’s tailored to their needs, it’s critical to remember that your job isn’t complete.

For each segmented section of your website, you must also consider the specific topics, content formats, and media that each persona will want to consume, and deliver that information in a clean, interactive environment.

Examples of Outstanding Website Segmentation

Location Labs

Location Labs

An excellent example of segmentation by product/use case, with a strikingly clean, uncluttered feel.

Location Labs

Central Desktop

Central Desktop

With three images tailored to specific segments cycling through the homepage, Central Desktop (disclosure: an OpenView portfolio company) delivers well-designed value propositions that make it clear where specific visitors should go for more information.

Central Desktop

Mashery

Mashery

Mashery's homepage features clear segmentation routes for each of its three primary user personas — Business Managers, IT Managers, and Developers.

Mashery

Additional Resources

The ABCs of Content Segmentation by Hanley Wood Marketing

Website Content Segmentation by OpenView Labs

How to Use Content Segmentation to Differentiate Your Brand Online by The Content Marketing Institute

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March was a busy month for HubSpot. Not only did it capture the title of “Best Company Culture in Tech” in OpenView’s first annual Cultural-Fit-ology March Madness Tournament, it also released The HubSpot Culture Code, a presentation of the company’s beliefs, values, and practices that — as of this writing — has racked up nearly 300K views since its release in late March.

HubSpot’s strong emphasis on company culture has been well documented, but the Culture Code may be the biggest indication of the sheer depth of the company’s investment yet. By his own count, Shah devoted nearly 200 hours to writing the Culture Code. With HubSpot growing at a rapid pace of roughly 30 new employees a month, it is a devotion that seems both effective and necessary.

Shah was kind enough to devote even a little more time to discussing the Culture Code with OpenView, addressing such topics as:

• The importance of finding your company’s guiding goal
• Why chasing after work-life balance is misguided
• Why the HubSpot approach to perks is “less parties, more personal progress” (though they have their fair share of parties, too)

Read the full interview for insights into developing your own thriving company culture, and check out the complete HubSpot Culture Code deck below.

Developing Company Culture: An Interview with HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah

OpenView: What is the story behind the HubSpot Culture Code? What compelled you to compile and release it now?

Dharmesh Shah: The original culture code deck was created years ago. It primarily focused on “people patterns” (i.e. documented what kinds of people tended to do well at HubSpot). We used that original deck internally for hiring and reviews. We routinely talked about whether or not someone fit our culture at HubSpot, so that first version has been useful.

But, I was hearing feedback from the team that we should update it. The first version didn’t really go far enough. The goal with the updated version was to not just address the who but also the how and the why.

OV: How important is it for companies to set a “guiding goal” that all other goals should support? How did HubSpot arrive at “delighting customers” and do you have any tips for companies to help them arrive at their own?

DS: I think having a guiding goal is very useful. It helps ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction.

In our case, we’ve always been obsessed with metrics and measuring the business. The number we’ve likely been most obsessed about is customer happiness and the related customer retention rate. We considered making “customer retention” the guiding goal, but that didn’t quite seem right. Customer retention is a by-product of delighting customers. It’s not the goal, itself.

OV: At HubSpot, you place a lot of value in placing the team, the company, and the customer above individual employees, but also in creating an environment where employees want to work. How do you find even ground between encouraging employees to love what they do and make it their passion vs. also encouraging them to maintain a healthy work-life balance?

DS: We think work-life balance is tricky thing — and also misguided. The objective should not be to have an unhappy life at work, and then “balance it out” by being happy in life. That doesn’t work. What we need is to be able to be happy at work, AND happy at life.

What makes people happy at work?

• Exceptional Peers: People they can learn from.
• Challenging Projects: Which provide gratification.
• Social Collaboration: The ability to work with other people.

And, of course, there are the physical things like an office that is well lit, desks and chairs that are comfortable, etc. In terms of the being healthy at work, we’re continuing evolve how we think about this. Everything from the free food that’s stocked in the kitchen to yoga classes and other things.

OV: Creative perks and non-traditional policies have become a bit of a derided cliché at tech companies, but the ones highlighted in the Culture Code deck stand apart — they’re less materialistic and come with responsibility.

They also tie directly in with the core values (thinking specifically of the Unlimited Free Meals Program, which allows employees to take smart influencers out for a meal to network and learn from them and expense it).

Can you talk a little bit about that policy in particular, but also speak to the considerations that go into your policies and why it’s important to make them truly meaningful?

DS: One of the core tenets of HubSpot culture is that we want to increase individual market value. In other words, we want someone’s currency to have risen higher at HubSpot than any other place they could have gone.

We think this focus on individual market value will make for a better, higher-performing team — but it also helps with attracting exceptional people. People who like to learn, grow, and advance.

Now, one of the tricky parts is balancing where we spend our “culture budget”. We have some of the same perks that other tech companies, but want to skew towards spending money on things that increase individual market value. Less parties, more personal progress. (Having said that, we have our fair share of parties).

OV: Can you explain what the HubSpot Alumni program is and describe the thinking that went into it?

DS: It’s a simple program. If you “graduated” from HubSpot (i.e. moved on), you are invited to join an informal group of HubSpot Alumni (other people who have worked at HubSpot in the past).

This is an independently run group. We don’t control it. About every quarter, the group gets together for a meeting. Current HubSpot employees are invited as guests. The structure of the meeting varies, but usually includes a Q&A with members of the HubSpot executive team, some startup pitches (from HubSpot alumni) and other topics.

Last quarter, we had a alumnus speak on the topic of “Things I Learned At HubSpot But Didn’t Know I Learned” (or something along those lines).

The motivation for the HubSpot Alumni group — and investing time in it — is simple. We think the people that join HubSpot are amazing people — that’s why we hired them. When they decide to move on (graduate), it is reasonable to expect that they will continue to be amazing people and do more remarkable things. We want to remain in touch and be friends. It’s a small world. We think HubSpot alumni will often go on to be HubSpot customers, partners — and maybe even shareholders some day.

What questions do you have for Dharmesh Shah about developing company culture?

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Credible. Trustworthy. Consultative. These are the kinds of traits that those in sales are often asked to demonstrate. But are those the right attributes?

Does a 20+ year CIO industry veteran believe that a sales rep is truly “credible” in his or her world? Does anyone really expect a sales person (with little or no serious business understanding) to offer any meaningful insight? And be trustworthy? Are you kidding? Who trusts a salesperson? (Maybe post-sales, we can start to build trust – but that will be the subject of a later blog…)

The good news is that I’m not convinced these conventional traits matter as much as general consensus would have us believe. I think we have been told to demonstrate qualities that no one really expects of us, and our needy pursuit of them only solidifies common stereotypes of salespeople. So I’ve expanded on my Top 10 List of “Underrated Sales Qualities” to highlight some of these hidden strengths that the best of the best demonstrate.

When I observe these reps in action, I find that it’s not that they are doing things better so much as they are doing things differently. And those differences probably aren’t what you’d expect.

Remember, as strange as it sounds, revealing vulnerability often demonstrates high social value. Consider embracing some of these traits on your next sales call. I don’t know about you, but this person sounds like someone I might enjoy meeting.

Top 10 Underappreciated Qualities of Great Salespeople

#10 Grace

#10 Grace

It’s the difference between saying, “You’re welcome” instead of “No problem”. To be graceful one must feel confident. And confidence starts with calmness and presence. When meeting with your prospect at his or her office, accept an offer of coffee, ask for a tour, and behave like a guest (and treat him or her like a host.) You can even demonstrate grace over the phone. For example, when leaving a voice mail, don’t let the message drag on and on. Try ending the voicemail with your phone number, then hang up immediately.

#9 Thoughtfulness

#9 Thoughtfulness

I have screwed up many deals with something I said. But I never have by remaining quiet. Take your time when responding to questions, particularly when the customer asks for something that is difficult to deliver. Don’t jump on the request for customer references, extension of trials, or detailed ROIs without taking a step back first. Often, your “I’m not sure…can we talk about it for a moment?” will prove far more effective than a premature “Sure! Happy to!”

#8 Experience

#8 Experience

Show that you can handle their “no.” Not everything will go your way. Seasoned reps know this instinctively and are able to manage the process smoothly. When you hear a “no” in response to asking for a meeting, move on to a “lesser” close for something like a referral or a specific date for a follow up call. Anticipate the obvious objections, but don’t rush to answer all of them too quickly. And whenever possible, use the phone over email. Every live conversation (good OR bad) is a personal investment in your selling career.

#7 Patience

#7 Patience

Be patient with your customers and impatient with your pipeline. The ultimate secret to higher earnings is to take your time in the moment, but apply maniacal speed within your funnel. Move them on, or move them out, but don’t rush the moment. You asked for the hour, so use it. Afterwards, decide if the time required to get to the next steps outweighs using that time to start new opportunities. Challenge yourself to close for longer, but less frequent, meetings with prospects. I prefer two 60-minute meetings with strong closes rather than four 30-minute meetings where I am just “checking in.”

#6 Competence

#6 Competence

You have sold before. Don't let them doubt that. Be busier than they are. Share your sales process with the prospect and include where you place them in your funnel. Show them your CRM! And know your competition cold. You can’t be credible in their world, but you can certainly be capable within your own.

#5 Intelligence

#5 Intelligence

The one thing you can’t fake. If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested. Always be learning — your market, your industry, your product. Sharpen your sales skills by attending workshops, reading blogs, and following smart people on twitter. And expose yourself to new concepts and ways of thinking by treating your brain like a muscle. Ever heard the expression “use it or lose it”?

#4 Lightheartedness

#4 Lightheartedness

Can we please make this fun? How about some levity? I don't recommend appearing cavalier of course, but why not take the room’s temperature down a notch? Just because it's sales, doesn't mean it has to be overly serious. Everyone relax. You are asking for a meeting, not a kidney. Please, back off from the ledge.

#3 Persuasiveness

#3 Persuasiveness

Here’s another idea — just have an opinion. This notion that we should be impartial is absurd. Customers, executives, even your favorite vendors don’t hesitate to speak your praises. Yet often, the very group PAID to evangelize (that would be us) says things like, “We are different from the other solution in many ways…” Instead, try responding with this. “Different? We aren’t different. We are BETTER. Let me show you how.” The message you are sending is “I do this every day — so yes, I have an opinion.” Pick a lane.

#2 Curiosity

#2 Curiosity

To quote the late Stephen Covey, seek first to understand. Be curious, not “clever.” Clever stinks. Clever is announcing how smart you are with your informed well-researched question. Curious says things like, “I don’t understand. Can you repeat that?” Or my favorite, “Can you slow down?”

#1 Resourcefulness

#1 Resourcefulness

Ask for help from your customers, prospects, and coworkers alike. Seek out your manager as soon as you are stuck on a deal (and well before it gets to your forecast.) Build relationships with leaders in your marketing and product teams to anticipate objections before they happen. Test out your elevator pitch on an existing customer for their feedback. The answer is always out there, but rarely in you're your own head.

At the end of the day, people buy from people.  And they prefer to buy from people they like.  Lean into the things that make your who you are and stay authentic. Whether I am buying or hiring, I’ll take a smart, funny, curious, genuine salesperson any day.

Happy selling!

Jeff

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Earlier this year, Dag Kittlaus, the innovator who co-founded voice-command app Siri and sold it to Apple in 2010, gave a speech to entrepreneurs and tech founders at 1871, a Chicago-based co-working location for digital startups.

Kittlaus covered a variety of common startup issues and shared several lessons from his time with Siri (like, for instance, why you don’t have to be an engineer to build and sell a highly technical software product). But one message in particular stood out to Andrew Follett, founder and CEO of online video production service DemoDuck: “Learn to tell your company’s story.”

As Follett writes on his blog, doing that in a clear, compelling way that inspires your audience to take action can be the difference between success and failure. And he should know.

In 2010, Follett founded DemoDuck to help businesses — from larger brands like Lowes and Trulia, to lesser known companies like eye tracking technology provider CrazyEgg (see below) — create explainer videos that simply, clearly, and compellingly tell their stories.

“Video is a very natural medium for storytelling, but you can tell your story through other forms of content, as well,” Follett told OpenView in a recent interview. “The core idea is to deliver your value proposition and allow customers to understand why they should care, and to do all of that in the most engaging, compelling way possible.”

Five Tips for Creating a More Inspiring Story

Follett says founders often find difficult to clearly convey their company’s story because their version is different than the one their customers need or want to hear.

“If you’re a founder, you tend to be pretty close to your business and that can create blind spots,” Follett explains. “The things that matter to you might not matter to your customers, or you might not speak the same language they do.”

To avoid those potential pitfalls, Follett suggests following these five tips for approaching your company’s story:

1. Figure out what matters to your customers: Survey, interview, and poll existing customers or users (discover 6 Great Survey Tools and Poll Apps for Startups here). Ask them how they view your product or service, and what benefits they see from it. Once you have their viewpoint, you can use that information to frame your story.
2. Explain the pain: What’s the universal problem that your customers are facing? Follett says you need to understand that first and then explain it in a way that people can relate to.
3. Introduce your solution with one line: This is your elevator pitch, and Follett says it’s probably the most difficult aspect of great storytelling. It can take a little wordsmithing and editing, but this step is critical to crafting a concise and clear company story.
4. Tell people how your product works: That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go into great detail or talk about the technical nature of it, Follett says. Instead, focus on the key features and benefits, and list how your product is going to work for the customer.
5. Provide a call to action: Follett says it’s critical to make sure people know what to do after they’ve digested your story. Should they call you? Sign up for a free trial? Whatever the next step is, make sure to conclude your story with a compelling call to action.

The truth is that telling a story isn’t easy. If it were, Follett admits that DemoDuck may not exist.

But if you’re able to boil down the essence of your company into a short, compelling story, you’ll knock down one major barrier to new customer acquisition and rapid growth.

Storytelling Isn’t Just for Complex Products, Either

While crisp storytelling can help simplify complex products, Follett says that seemingly simple products can benefit from a great story, as well.

Take Method Products, which was able to disrupt the once bland, stodgy cleaning products industry by finding a new way to tell the story of soap.

“They took products that didn’t seem to need much explaining and creatively found a way to make customers view those products differently,” Follett says. “The company knew that its value proposition was unique and it understood how to convey that story to its consumers. It wasn’t just about saying, ‘you have dirty hands, here’s a great new hand soap.’ It was about saying, ‘we all need cleaning products, but we know that X, Y, and Z matter to you, and we care about them, too.’”

That’s the gist of great storytelling, Follett says. Take a step back, think critically about what makes your company unique or different, and associate those benefits with specific customer needs.

“With a great company story,” Follett explains, “someone should be able to watch a video or digest a piece of content and walk away knowing exactly what your company is all about and why they should care.”

What companies do you think do a great job of telling their story?

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In November 2011, Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson published The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, the best-selling book based on the premise that sales success isn’t just about building relationships with customers. It’s also about challenging those customers.

To write the book, Dixon and Adamson studied thousands of sales reps across an array of industries around the country. They ultimately concluded that relationship building in and of itself doesn’t work, particularly when selling large, sophisticated business-to-business solutions.

The better approach, the authors maintain, is to bring customers unique insights about how they can save or, better yet, make money. Those insights should be tailored to the customer’s specific needs and objectives. The book goes on to say that rather than give in to the customer’s every demand or objection, sellers should be assertive, push back when necessary, and take control of the sale.

The book has been met with both praise and criticism. In a recent article for Inc. entitled “The Challenger Sale: Not Very Challenging,” for example, Geoffrey James takes issue with the book, stating that it simply “repackages old ideas in a new wrapper.” Though others have surfaced similar concerns, the book’s popularity and influence remains strong.

In this week’s Labcast, Dave Brock, the president of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a boutique consulting and services company that helps its clients with a variety of business and sales strategies, offers his view of the of strengths and weaknesses of the challenger sales model.

Brock argues that the challenger sales model shouldn’t just be a sales initiative, but rather a company-wide initiative that incorporates other functional areas, including marketing, product, and strategy. He also points out what he sees as a major flaw in the book — a lack of clarity on what to do once you’ve bought into the idea of the challenger sale. In addition, he stresses the import of establishing credibility, without which challenging your customers will never work.

To learn more about the challenger sales model, listen to the full podcast by clicking on the link below:

Labcast 103_ Dave Brock Takes Issue with The Challenger Sales Model

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Whether you are developing, fine tuning, or advancing your software you need to keep your users in mind. Although you know your product inside and out, your users will be approaching it from a different angle — often one you may not have considered.

Developing accurate user personas will go a long way toward helping you successfully manage your user experience research, says UX design expert Kyrie Robinson, a partner at the Silicon Valley Product Group. In a recent conversation with OpenView, Robinson pointed out that there are plenty of lessons to be learned from your users, and tuning to them early and often will continuously provide value as your business grows.

“By talking to customers that you think represent your user personas and figuring out what motivates them, what matters to them, and how they use the product, you can develop a much deeper understanding of your users and design products or features that they really want or need,” Robinson says. “Those personas can ultimately feed your design process.”

While there are plenty of things to consider when developing user personas, Robinson says there are two tactics that are particularly important:

1) Use Data to Discover User Tendencies & Validate Your Theories

The most important thing with user personas is to make sure they are grounded in data, Robinson says. While you might have a fantasy of what you want your persona to be, that isn’t going to get you very far.

Simply going out and talking to those who are working with your product is the best way to gather that data. You will uncover countless nuances in your users by discussing their relationship with your product.

“While working for one client, we sent out some UX designers to talk with the admins who were using our service,” Robinson says. “In our minds we were aiming the product at admins who were booking travel. It turns out, however, that there were two distinct groups using our service and a large gulf existed between the ways the two interacted with the service.”

Corporate level admins, Robinson discovered, were operating on a level of fear about the trips that they booked. There was a level of anxiety involved in planning their trips, as they had to be sure not to place their executives on the wrong flight or in the wrong hotel.

Meanwhile, admins who worked for larger teams were more concerned about efficiency. They often booked the same trip over and over again, so they were interested in an easily replicable template.

“The only way to uncover the motivations of those users was to initiate conversations with them,” Robinson explains. “That’s what actually allowed us to drive the product designs. We couldn’t just assume who our user personas were, we had to go out and validate them.”

2) Know the Differences Between Buyers and Users

The marketing material for your product is going to be aimed at your buyer personas, as they are the ones pulling the trigger on the purchase. But UX design should look at the user persona, which Robinson says is often entirely different.

For instance, when Robinson and her colleagues worked with TiVo, the company’s buyers were early adopters of technology who didn’t mind tinkering with wires and video components, and had a higher tolerance for highly technical products.

TiVo’s primary user persona, however, was very different.

“The design personas included the tech savvy early adopter obviously, but it also included that person’s spouse,” Robinson says. “And that spouse was the really critical person, because if the spouse was happy, everyone was happy, and the machine didn’t need to go back to the store.”

By discovering that the spouse persona was less tech savvy and had a very low tolerance for bugs or complex computers, TiVo could design its product for that person — while also keeping the early adopters’ wish list in mind.

“It was an interesting realization at TiVo, recognizing that the marketing team was speaking to a tech enthusiast and the design team was primarily speaking to someone completely different,” Robinson says. “It really changed the way we thought about UX design.”

Are You Creating Products Your Users Love?

Ultimately, Robinson says that a growing technology company’s UX design goal be to conduct a user experience research and locate the user who, if they are happy, all other users are going to be happy. If you can identify that persona — and begin to understand them better through data and real customer feedback — then you can base your UX design around them.

How have you leveraged user personas to dominate UX design? Do you have any interesting stories to share like the one from Robinson’s work with TiVo?

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When it comes down to the end of a quarter or year and your sales numbers aren’t being met, it’s your job as CEO to find out why. If you go in search of answers from your teams, though, you’re likely to find a variety of explanations and possibly more than a little finger pointing. In an article at Sales Benchmark Index, Ryan Tognazzini offers three ways for CEOs to locate the problem and get their sales reporting explained themselves.

If your background as a CEO isn’t in sales or marketing, finding the obstacle to hitting your sales goals can seem daunting. But Tognazzini breaks down the three key areas to investigate – Demand Generation, Lead Management and Opportunity Management.

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Going viral: It’s the white whale of video marketing. Though many have gone in search for the secrets to viral success, few have come close to cracking the code. Even those who accomplish the elusive feat once often have trouble replicating it.

One notable exception — Grasshopper. The virtual phone system provider for entrepreneurs and small business owners has produced multiple viral videos with 1 million+ views, and is a great example of a company successfully applying method to the viral madness.

Watch three of their videos — including “Sh*t Entrepreneurs Say,” voted “Best Viral Video of the Year” by OpenView readers — in the gallery above.

OpenView asked the creative minds behind this year’s B2B Oscar-winning “Sh*t Entrepreneurs Say” to shed light on how to make a viral video by giving us a sneak peek inside their creative process. Grasshopper Content Marketing Specialist Emma Siemasko responded with insights and tips B2B marketers can use to develop their own winning recipes for viral success.

OpenView: What are the key components of a viral video? Or, to put it another way, what gives a video good viral potential?

Emma Siemasko: Videos have good viral potential if they are fun and culturally relevant. Stiff videos rarely go viral. It’s the playful videos that see traffic and shares, even if they’re a “how-to” or “explainer” video.

All three videos in the OpenView Labs contest capitalized on current pop culture trends. “Sh*t Entrepreneurs Say” was a parody of the “Sh*t Girls Say Video,” and HubSpot worked with the infamous “Gangnam Style.” Instructure went with the “Harlem Shake.” All of them were funny. I smiled when I watched them – they all induced an emotional response which is key to viral success. 

OV: How closely should a viral video reflect the company culture?

ES: Business-produced videos almost always reflect the company culture, whether they mean to or not. If a company is super traditional, they’re going to create a safe video. To be honest, I think videos that go viral tend to take some risks. Grasshopper’s made fun of tech entrepreneurs, even though we love and respect them. The best videos are a little boundary pushing. If the company culture encourages that spirit, it will translate over to the videos.

Even so, if your company and clients aren’t particularly wild and crazy, then you should create a video that fits your culture. If it’s a really well-done explainer video, it can still go viral, even if it’s not particularly funny and boundary-pushing. “The Official Ultra-Ever Dry Product Video” comes to mind. The video just shows what the product does, but it’s an awesome product, and it’s seen more than 4.9 million views!

OV: What are some ways companies can reflect their culture in viral videos?

ES: Companies should take a step back and consider what their values are when they are creating a video. “Entrepreneurially Generous” is one of our brand promises, and I think it’s reflected in our video. We’re the sort of company that sent out chocolate-covered grasshoppers when we adopted our new company name, and we created a spoof called “The New Dork-Entrepreneur State of Mind”, highlighting  and poking fun at startup culture.

OV: How DIY should you get with your videos? What should you outsource and what should you keep in-house?

ES: Well, it depends on the size of your company and the resources you have. If you have people in-house with the know-how and the time to create a video, it’s a great project that can bring in awesome rewards. If creating a video means sucking up all of your marketing team’s time for two weeks, it’s probably not the best idea.

If you want a video to be successful, to go viral, then you’ve got to develop the idea and the script in-house. You can’t outsource company culture or company spirit. You can’t outsource the world’s coolest video idea.

That said, marketing video companies exist for a reason, and can help you turn an idea into reality, complete with state-of-the-art cameras and cool cinematography.

OV: What are some key do’s and don’ts for making a viral video?

ES: Here are a few that come to mind:

• DO be generous and open. Ask around the office and among friends about what people think of your video ideas.
• DO think of what’s popular and what’s going on in current events. TV Shows like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show and newspapers like The Onion are so successful because they harp on what’s happening.
• DO be yourself. Create a video that feels genuinely like you and your company.
• DON’T be boring and generic. It’s easy to say, and harder to do, but if you create a video with one person rattling off “Ten Marketing Tips,” people won’t be interested. Be willing to take risks — it will pay off.

OV: Can you walk through the basic steps Grasshopper took in creating “Sh*t Entrepreneurs Say”?

ES: Siamak Taghaddos, our CEO, spearheaded this project. He thought of the viral video after some of the other Sh*t videos came out, and emailed Allen Branch at LessFilms with a bullet list of cliches and phrases that entrepreneurs say. Allen is also a startup guy, so he worked on the phrases, but did so quickly to make sure the video came out before the fad died out.

Siamak told me that he liked the Sh*t videos because they speak to highly targeted groups and could easily spread throughout those groups. As you’ll recall, everyone was searching for the “Sh*t (fill in the blank) Say” video that best represented their own cohort.

Siamak also noted that it’s important to understand the timing when it comes to fad videos — he thought about doing a Harlem shake video, but realized our version would come out too late to remain relevant, especially since the Harlem fad didn’t speak to as targeted a group as “Sh*t Entrepreneurs Say”.

You’ve heard from Emma, now we want to hear from you. What do you think are the most critical elements for making a viral video?

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In 2013, content is king. But in an effort to bring top notch content to your audience, things can start to get messy. Blog posts, videos, social media, marketing materials – there’s no shortage of avenues your content strategy will lead you down, and sometimes you’ll feel like you left the house without a map.

So how do you stay on top of it all? Content Marketing Institute gathered together 6 industry leaders to share their tips on how to keep everything properly aligned.

In the accompanying video, Kelly LeVoyer, OpenView Director of Content Strategy Kevin Cain, Pam Didner, Waynette Tubbs, Elizabeth Gaines, and Michael Kirsten discuss the challenges you’ll encounter as well as offering their own learnings on how to best implement a process for managing your content effectively.

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Any top closer will tell you that the secret to closing sales is in getting your prospect to disclose to you whether or not they are going to be a sale and getting them to tell you what you must do or say to close the deal.

The reason this is key is because only your prospect knows what it will take for them to buy your product or solution (or whether they have the authority, the budget, if they are in the mood, whether they like you, if they need the product enough, etc.). Again, only they know what it will take for you to get their business. This is the great secret all top closers know.

Unfortunately, 80 to 90 percent of sales reps don’t understand this. They continue to pitch at prospects, push their material onto them, and then hound and beg them to do business with them. This is why most sales reps hate sales and why most prospects hate sales reps. If you find yourself (or the majority of your sales team) in this position, then I’m going to share three words with you that will get your prospect to reveal their true buying motives (and why they might not be buying from you as well.)

Because the key to closing sales is to get your prospect to disclose what it is actually going to take to close the deal, you’ve obviously got to find ways to get them to open up and start talking. I’ve written many scripts and techniques to show you how to do this, but today I’m going to share with you three simple words you can use to get and keep your prospects talking.

One Question to Ask to Close More Sales

Here it is — whenever your prospect begins stalling or providing any other excuse for not acting today, you simply reply with three words:

“What happens next?”

Now, before 80 percent of you dismiss this — while the other 20 percent nod your head with wisdom — just try it out and hit your mute button. I guarantee that you will learn more by listening to what they say next than you ever will if you just keep talking and pitching.

Here are some other questions to follow up with depending on what they might disclose to you:

• “How does that process work?”
• “How involved in that are you?”
• “What would you like to see happen here?”
• “When does a decision on this need to be made?”
• “If you had to move on something today, what would you do?”
• “Out of everything you’ve seen from other companies, what do you think?”
• “What’s the biggest thing you can see that is standing in the way?”

I guarantee that if you ask all of the above questions to a prospect — and truly listen to what they tell you — you will know whether or not they are going to be a deal.

There are plenty of other techniques you can use, and I encourage you to use any technique that will help you to get your prospect talking (and get you to shut up and listen). If you and/or your reps get good at this you will be amazed by how much more successful you will be.

Having trouble overcoming “the sales stall,” aka common objects like “Could you email me something?” or “I’ll show this to my manager”?

Register and listen in to Mike’s free webinar “How to Overcome the Stall in Sales” this Thursday, March 28th at 1pm EST / 10am PST.

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Just because you’re the one sitting in the corner office doesn’t mean you should be the one with final say on each and every decision.

In fact, it probably means you’re not qualified to make most of the decisions your company faces day in and day out. Which is why Dennis Bakke, co-founder of Imagine Schools, aims to make only one big decision per year.

In a post at Xconomy, Bakke explains why that approach to leadership decision making empowers and enlivens employees.

By avoiding top down decision making you allow your employees to become more fully engaged with their work and the direction of the business. It also cuts down on lengthy decision processes and, in all likelihood, puts the power into the hands of those with the most knowledge on the subject.

Bakke says that it’s not always easy, but one of the most important things a leader can do is learn to properly delegate decision making responsibilities.

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After four rounds of head-to-head competition with some of the best names in tech, one company has emerged as OpenView’s first ever Cultural-Fit-ology champion.

And the winner is…

The two companies gave us a final to remember, with SEOmoz climbing back from an early deficit to make it anyone’s match on Saturday, but in the end HubSpot rallied to pull away and prevail, winning 56% to 44%.

Capping off a dominating run through the Northeast region and its epic take down of Google in the Final Four, HubSpot proved it was (in)bound for glory, and that this was a title it wouldn’t be denied.

Download a copy of this year’s final bracket.

Congratulations HubSpot! Let’s take one final look at the qualities that set this winning company culture apart, and the path HubSpot took to its championship title.

HubSpot: Cultural-Fit-ology Champion

HubSpot: Cultural-Fit-ology Champion

Headquarters: Cambridge
Company size: 300+ employees
Motto: All-in-one marketing software
CEO: Brian Halligan
X-factor(s): The HubSpot Way; Beer fridge
Road to the Title: Sent home goods retailer Wayfair home packing in Round 1; Added another win for Boston vs. NYC by trouncing Fab in Round 2; Left Google searching for answers in the Final Four; Won the title in the championship match against SEOmoz

You don’t become the second fastest growing SaaS company in history and get named the best place to work in Boston two years in a row without an amazing culture. From its vaunted “No Door Policy,” where CEO Halligan and other top execs sit with everybody else, to its open-thread wiki and its “podjects,” where any employee can organize new projects to improve the company, HubSpot encourages fresh thinking as much as it does fresh beer in its dedicated fridge. Plus, any HubSpotter wants to enroll in a “mini-MBA” course can look forward to classes taught by the CEO, MIT profs, and entrepreneurs like Paul English from Kayak (seed #3). Ping pong tournaments after sundown with spiked slushies are the icing on the cake. For a closer look, watch "Inside HubSpot," which our readers voted Best Recruiting Video of the Year.

While SEOmoz’s run fell short, Roger & Co. can stand tall knowing they have an incredibly passionate fan base who poured in their votes, comments, and support.

What this tournament has made absolutely clear is that both companies have a connection with their employees and customers that goes well beyond the norm, and both serve as shining examples of what putting that connection and company culture first looks like.

Tournament Takeaways

1) Size Can Be a Challenge

There were more than a fair share of shocking upsets throughout the tournament, and we learned that when it comes to amazing company culture, size can actually be a potential disadvantage.

Both HubSpot and SEOmoz took down larger competitors who tipped the scales in terms of number of employees and brand awareness in their favor. If anything, the success of underdogs in the tournament may be an indication that the elements of a vibrant company culture — strong, personal relationships, a cohesive set of values and vision, and both individual and collective passion — is something that is easier to develop and inspire starting out than it is to maintain as you grow.

Perhaps the real challenge is finding ways to scale that passion and cohesive vision, and sustain those close connections in the midst of expansion and transition. With their solid foundations, however, both HubSpot and SEOmoz appear well prepared to take that challenge head on.

2) Great Companies are Community Builders

Both HubSpot and SEOmoz have the power of thriving communities behind them, and that’s because they have taken the time and effort to develop those communities around a focus on shared passions and interests rather than a focus on branded products and solutions. Inbound.org and the YouMoz Blog are two of the most active forums in their respective spaces, reaching beyond their founders to take on lives of their own.

3) Openness and Empowerment Rule

At the core of both companies’ cultures are two distinctly important qualities:

1. An eagerness to be open and share information
2. A passion to empower their customers, employees, and communities

4) It Pays to Have a Code (one that you don’t need to crack)

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons HubSpot and SEOmoz made it so far in a tournament based on company culture is because they have both taken such care in defining exactly what it is that defines them. They are crystal clear about their mission, vision, and values, and they have each put them front and center with the HubSpot Culture Code and the TAGFEE Code, respectively.

Thank You for Following this Year’s Tournament and Congratulations HubSpot!

Thank you to everyone who voted, participated, and otherwise helped make Cultural-Fit-ology possible! Stay tuned for more tips and tactics on developing a strong company culture from our winner, HubSpot, and in the meantime, see The HubSpot Code for an inside peek into the best company culture in tech:

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Take a look at your own inbox. It’s pretty crowded in there, right? Well, so are the inboxes of everyone you’re trying to reach with your emails. Which means enticing subject lines are the most important part of your message. If you’ve got a killer offer, no one is going to find it if you just put together a slapdash subject line. Which is why strategist expert Jill Konrath has a list of email subject line best practices to share with you.

The most important thing, according to Konrath, is to recognize that these emails are not about you. They’re about the customer. It might be a tough pill to swallow, but your customer doesn’t care about you. They’re focused on themselves. So be sure to focus on them and how your company will come to their benefit. Watch the video for additional best practices and start to see your open rates improve.

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It all comes down to this. We started with 16 of today’s top tech companies, each with a reputation for having incredible company culture and lines of aspiring employees wrapping around the block. Now two remain: HubSpot and SEOmoz. Only one will be crowned king of company culture.

Even in a tournament that saw its fair share of surprises and upsets, few may have anticipated this final matchup (one without a representative from the great state of California or a certain online retailer that starts with “Zapp” and ends with “os”). But both finalists came out swinging, and their success here is a reflection of their industry success and business growth — both fueled by a laser-focus on the mission, vision, and values at the core of who they are. It should be a fantastic matchup.

Here is a look at the final tournament bracket:

Download a PDF copy of the tournament bracket here.

And here is one last look at the two finalists, the qualities that have elevated their cultures above the rest, and the paths they each took to the finals:

HubSpot

HubSpot

Headquarters: Cambridge
Company size: 300+ employees
Motto: All-in-one marketing software
CEO: Brian Halligan
X-factor(s): The HubSpot Way; Beer fridge
Road to the Final Four: Sent home goods retailer Wayfair home packing in Round 1; Added another win for Boston vs. NYC by trouncing Fab in Round 2; Left Google searching for answers in the Final Four

You don’t become the second fastest growing SaaS company in history and get named the best place to work in Boston two years in a row without an amazing culture. From its vaunted “No Door Policy,” where CEO Halligan and other top execs sit with everybody else, to its open-thread wiki and its “podjects,” where any employee can organize new projects to improve the company, HubSpot encourages fresh thinking as much as it does fresh beer in its dedicated fridge. Plus, any HubSpotter wants to enroll in a “mini-MBA” course can look forward to classes taught by the CEO, MIT profs, and entrepreneurs like Paul English from Kayak (seed #3). Ping pong tournaments after sundown with spiked slushies are the icing on the cake. For a closer look, watch "Inside HubSpot," which our readers voted Best Recruiting Video of the Year.

SEOmoz

SEOmoz

Headquarters: Seattle
Company size: 100+
Motto: SEO and social monitoring made simple
CEO: Rand Fishkin
X-factor(s): The TAGFEE Code; Paid Internet access and office equipment for employees’ homes; Roger
Road to the Final Four: Won the "Battle for Seattle" by slipping past Amazon in Round 1; Rallied to dominate Rackspace in Round 2; Edged out Dropbox to secure their own space in the finals

When SEO and social monitoring software company SEOmoz opened the doors to its new office in downtown Seattle in 2010, the business welcomed its employees into a space that had some pretty uniquely named areas — The Batcave, The Death Star, and Spider Skull Island, just to name a few. Oh, and it paid to have a crepe maker come and craft custom crepes for every employee. But those things don’t define SEOmoz’s company culture. In fact, CEO Rand Fishkin says they have nothing to do with culture. Instead, Fishkin defines SEOmoz’s culture as its values, mission and vision, and hiring, firing, and promotion criteria (also known as its TAGFEE Code). And judging by SEOmoz’s reputation in a city full of tech heavyweights (it was voted the best place to work and play in Seattle in 2011), Fishkin certainly knows what he’s talking about.

Once again, we asked HR leadership pros and Fistful of Talent alums Kathy Rapp and William Tincup to provide their predictions and encourage you to do the same in the comments below. Game on!

(1) HubSpot vs. (3) SEOmoz

HubSpot raked in the highest number of votes in a single round to dominate its Final Four matchup. Not only did it leave Google searching for answers, it also left our guest commentators wondering whether there’s anything that can stop the “HubSpot Way” from leading straight to the title.

That task falls to SEOmoz, which pulled off another close win over an odds-on favorite, this time against Dropbox (ensuring the champion will not be from California). Can it continue its Cinderella run and ride the TAGFEE Code to a third upset? Or will HubSpot carry its momentum into the final and prove it won’t be denied?

Two great companies with exceptional company culture, but only one can be champion. Who will it be, HubSpot or SEOmoz? Cast your vote below!

Update: The poll is closed and the results are in. Find out who was crowned this year’s Cultural-Fit-ology Champion.

Calls from the booth:

@williamtincup’s prediction: HubSpot.
It’s all HubSpot, man. They slayed the dragon in Google and they deserve the victory. SEOmoz has done really well. They proved to a lot of folks that they have depth and moxie, but the big game is going to come down to a company that is poised for greatness and that company is HubSpot. Again, I think HubSpot has transformed marketing the way Salesforce.com transformed sales. Folks, get ready for a blow out. HubSpot, HubSpot, HubSpot…

@KatRapp’s prediction: HubSpot.
Okay, so the underdog blew away Google and now I’m with ‘em even if they don’t have any Shiner in the beer fridge. From their Gangnam Style video to the fact that they really do seem to have this inbound marketing thing figured out – they have both the culture and the business model to put them on top. This one will be really, really close, but you’ve got to love those crazy kids from Cambridge!

Come back Monday when we will announce the winner of OpenView’s first annual Cultural-Fit-ology tournament and determine who has the best company culture in tech.

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Innovate or die. When put like that, it’s time to schedule some brainstorming sessions. But while innovation is indeed an important aspect for any business, how do you go about managing something that is, frankly, so nebulous? Greg Satell writes at Forbes about some concrete strategies you can use to harness innovation and capture the power it holds by finally understanding the keys to managing change and innovation.

Looking at the history of such innovation leaders as Apple and Google, Satell offers insights into how they go about cultivating innovative progress and reflects on how you can translate their successes to your own business practices. He also introduces his innovation matrix, which is a useful tool in effectively managing change.

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Corporate culture means many things to many people. In a previously recorded podcast, Kris Dunn, Founder of Fistful of Talent and Chief Human Resources Officer for Kinetix, spoke with OpenView to provide a clearer picture of what corporate culture actually entails, the secrets to properly identifying your own company’s culture, and how to develop it into something strong enough to be foundational.

What Exactly is Corporate Culture, Really?

According to Dunn, “Corporate culture is all about really what you value as a company, what you value in terms of how you serve your customers, how business gets done, and what you value from a performance perspective across your talent base.” Although he concedes that there is no single definition that could be overlaid across all of corporate America, Dunn stresses that, at its core, culture represents the manifestation of the guiding principles that underpin every part of your company.

“Like style,” Dunn says, “you kind of know good culture when you see it.”

Culture is less about “free soda and ping pong tables” and more about performance, Dunn argues. Keeping a fun workplace atmosphere may be part of the image that your company presents, but what culture should actually built on is an unrelenting focus on factors that “create a DNA map of the type of employee that a company looks for.” Find the characteristics that lead to high-performing team members, and your company becomes stronger and more successful.

How to Identify Your Culture by Asking One Simple Question

Dunn suggests adding a question to your next employee survey that gets to the heart of who is driving the culture in your company:

“Other than the current person that you work for, what single manager in the organization would you most like to work for and why?”

The answers will not only point to the managers who are most invested in the culture, but also what your employees value in a team leader — and chances are, they’re cultural aspects.

Once you have your survey results, Dunn recommends sharing them across the management team to spark conversations among your team leaders. If you have “two or three names out of 40 that keep coming up” in the survey, and you look at the reasons why, he explains, you can begin to spot the commonalities that define your culture. Plus, it puts a little pressure on the other managers to “challenge themselves to do things better” and to be more “employee-centric.”

Ultimately, Dunn says, “if you take care of your employees, you’re going to take care of customers, and that’s the cornerstone of good culture.”

Getting Serious About Developing Corporate Culture

While it is important to identify the individuals who best personify and drive your company’s culture and highlight them as good examples to follow, Dunn also makes it clear that you need to be willing to fire leaders at your company who are clearly not a good cultural fit.

“If you’re going to define some of the values and potential factors that you look for in leaders in order to build the type of culture you want, not only do you have to be willing to hire for those things,” Dunn says, but regardless of their performance, you’ve also got to be willing to fire those people who are not on board.

Even if managers are getting great results from their teams, if they are detrimental to your culture, then it is time to make a change. “That’s where a lot of companies that have a lot of good ideas from a cultural perspective ultimately lose sight of the big picture,” Dunn laments.

Stay focused on the big picture instead of this quarter’s performance. If you refuse to remove leaders who are getting good results in a negative way, then your company culture will “end up being mediocre at best.”

What are your thoughts on developing corporate culture? Would you be willing to let go of top performers if their management style is detrimental to your culture?

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If you’ve got a talented and driven staff, your staff meetings should resemble a 2^nd grade classroom; you’ll constantly be forced to answer the question “why.” But in order to attract these inquisitive and ambitious minds you’ve got to show employees that you’re capable of opening up their worlds and making them better, says Jeff Schmitt in a post at Forbes.

Talent seeks out other talent, so if you are just going through the managing motions, your brightest employees won’t stick around for long. Which is why Schmitt breaks down 12 leadership lessons that will allow you to not only lead your staff, but inspire and develop them.

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And then there were four. Google, HubSpot, Dropbox, and SEOmoz. One of these companies will be the champion of OpenView’s first ever Cultural-Fit-ology March Madness Tournament. But first they have to make it through another tough head-to-head matchup in the semi-finals.

There were no easy roads to the Final Four. These contenders had to get through two highly competitive rounds to separate themselves from a field of a dozen rival top tech companies, each known for their amazing company cultures and considered some of the most highly sought-after places to work in the country.

Here is a look at the complete tournament bracket:

Let’s take a closer look at the four semi-finalists and their paths to get to this point:

Google: Silicon Valley Region Champion

Google: Silicon Valley Region Champion

Headquarters: Mountain View, California
Company size: 37,000+ employees
Motto: Don’t be evil
CEO: Larry Page
X-factor(s): “Google Ideas” internal think/do tank; Global Education Leave program
Road to the Final Four: Left rival Apple bruised in Round 1; Made Evernote a memory in Round 2

Books have been written about Google’s incredible company culture and the search giant could just as easily be ranked as the top overall seed in this bracket. Google offers an incredible work environment, with its headquarters — nicknamed the Googleplex — providing things like on-site medical and dental facilities, and free breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The company’s international hubs offer culture-specific perks, as well, like a pub-style lounge in its Dublin office.

But Google’s culture is also defined by its commitment to helping employees learn, grow, innovate, and make a meaningful impact. Google does that in a lot of ways, but one particularly interesting initiative is its Global Education Leave program, which allows employees to leave the company for up to five years to pursue further education, reimbursing as much as $150,000 for that education. The company also offers unlimited sick leave and regular meetings with company executives to explore the future of the business.

HubSpot: Northeast Region Champion

HubSpot: Northeast Region Champion

Headquarters: Cambridge
Company size: 300+ employees
Motto: All-in-one marketing software
CEO: Brian Halligan
X-factor(s): The HubSpot Way; Beer fridge
Road to the Final Four: Sent home goods retailer Wayfair home packing in Round 1; Added another win for Boston vs. NYC by trouncing Fab in Round 2

You don’t become the second fastest growing SaaS company in history and get named the best place to work in Boston two years in a row without an amazing culture. From its vaunted “No Door Policy,” where CEO Halligan and other top execs sit with everybody else, to its open-thread wiki and its “podjects,” where any employee can organize new projects to improve the company, HubSpot encourages fresh thinking as much as it does fresh beer in its dedicated fridge. Plus, any HubSpotter wants to enroll in a “mini-MBA” course can look forward to classes taught by the CEO, MIT profs, and entrepreneurs like Paul English from Kayak (seed #3). Ping pong tournaments after sundown with spiked slushies are the icing on the cake. For a closer look, watch "Inside HubSpot," which our readers voted Best Recruiting Video of the Year.

Dropbox: San Francisco Region Champion

Dropbox: San Francisco Region Champion

Headquarters: San Francisco
Company size: 220+ employees
Motto: Simplify Your life
CEO: Drew Houston
X-factor(s): Company-wide “Hack Week” competition
Road to the Final Four: Punched Eventbrite's ticket home in Round 1; Edged out Twitter in Round 2

Karaoke. Jeopardy. Creative job titles. Whiskey Fridays. Kickball leagues. Company cheers. Weeklong hackathons. We could go on, but that should paint a pretty full picture of what life as a Dropbox employee is like. Since being founded in 2007 by MIT pals Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, culture has been central to Dropbox’s growth. The file-sharing and cloud storage company now has more than 200 employees, but Houston tells AllThingsD that Dropbox’s organizational complexity won’t change its relaxed, “you’re smart, figure it out,” approach to employee engagement and management.

SEOmoz: Rest of the West Region Champion

SEOmoz: Rest of the West Region Champion

Headquarters: Seattle
Company size: 100+
Motto: SEO and social monitoring made simple
CEO: Rand Fishkin
X-factor(s): The TAGFEE Code; Paid Internet access and office equipment for employees’ homes; Roger
Road to the Final Four: Won the "Battle for Seattle" by slipping past Amazon in Round 1; Rallied to dominate Rackspace in Round 2

When SEO and social monitoring software company SEOmoz opened the doors to its new office in downtown Seattle in 2010, the business welcomed its employees into a space that had some pretty uniquely named areas — The Batcave, The Death Star, and Spider Skull Island, just to name a few. Oh, and it paid to have a crepe maker come and craft custom crepes for every employee. But those things don’t define SEOmoz’s company culture. In fact, CEO Rand Fishkin says they have nothing to do with culture. Instead, Fishkin defines SEOmoz’s culture as its values, mission and vision, and hiring, firing, and promotion criteria (also known as its TAGFEE Code). And judging by SEOmoz’s reputation in a city full of tech heavyweights (it was voted the best place to work and play in Seattle in 2011), Fishkin certainly knows what he’s talking about.

The only thing left is to decide who goes to the championship on Friday. We asked HR leadership pros and Fistful of Talent alums Kathy Rapp and William Tincup to sound off on their own predictions for the two semi-final matchups, and we encourage you to add your own to the comments. Make your calls and place your votes below!

Update: The final results are in. Find out who was crowned this year’s Cultural-Fit-ology Champion.

(2) Google vs. (1) HubSpot

Google fought its way through arguably the tournament’s toughest region (Silicon Valley) to arrive in the Final Four, but the search giant runs into a company on a roll. HubSpot sailed through the Northeast region, dominating both Wayfair and Fab. Can it make it three big wins in a row or will Google assert its dominance and pronounce the search for our first finalist over?

It’s East Coast vs. West Coast. Established giant vs. hot up-and-comer. Decide who moves on by casting your vote!

Calls from the Booth

@KatRapp’s prediction: Google
As much as I’d love to go with the underdog here, HubSpot lost me when I opened the beer fridge and found no Shiner! You cannot have a serious beer fridge with Budweiser, either (the redeeming quality was I think I saw some Lone Star and Red Stripe). Plus, I’ve been to “Googleland” and have to say there is something special about the place. Perhaps it was the guys playing sand volleyball at 10am?

@williamtincup’s prediction: HubSpot
HubSpot is the new Salesforce.com. Google is closer to Microsoft than not. If you want a rocket-ship HubSpot is where I would focus. Google will occasionally come out with cool things but they are a mature firm — hard to think about it that way but true. My pick is HubSpot.

(2) Dropbox vs. (3) SEOmoz

Dropbox secured its spot in the semis by edging out cross-town rival Twitter, creator of one of the most talked-about recruiting videos of all time. Here, it faces off against what might be the hottest company in the tournament, SEOmoz. After coming from behind to stun Amazon at the buzzer in the “Battle for Seattle” in Round 1, SEOmoz torched fellow giant-killer Rackspace (who had pulled off a huge upset of Zappos) to advance past Round 2.

Can SEOmoz keep its momentum going? Or will Dropbox prevail? One thing is for certain — there’s not enough space in the final for the two of them. Vote to determine who moves on!

Calls from the Booth

@KatRapp’s prediction: Dropbox
Come on. They beat out Twitter! Love that the CEO’s last name is Houston and their motto of “you’re smart, figure it out.” Done. SEOmoz almost had me with the TAGFEE code and gut checks, but the crepes (umm… “cream puffs”) and Roger the robot mascot doesn’t do it for me. He needs to hang with Clutch, the Houston Rocket’s mascot who can do a flying 360, behind-the-back dunk! We are talking B-Ball after all!

@williamtincup’s prediction: Dropbox
This is an easy pick. Dropbox is a true innovator — they allow us to share data in a way that fits our needs. It’s easy to use, easy to consume, easy to make fit around our needs. Dropbox equals innovation, and that is woven through the culture of the organization. My pick is Dropbox.

The results of the two polls will be counted on Friday, when we’ll host the championship match to determine who has the best company culture in tech. Who do you think will make the final? Leave your predictions below!

Download a PDF copy of the tournament bracket here.

The Championship Round is live! Cast your vote to determine the winner here.

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As a marketer you’ve got to juggle a lot of different aspects of your business. While adding more and more balls to the mix might delight the crowd at the circus, you’ll never accomplish your business goals without some assistance. But who should you be turning to for help? In a post at Forbes, Lisa Arthur breaks down the three business executive partnerships marketers need to focus on.

Arthur points out that you’ll need both internal and external help, focusing your energies on your customers as well as your CIO and CEO. Each partnership is powerful in a unique way, but all three will be invaluable in pushing your marketing goals forward.

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Rand Fishkin started SEOmoz in 2004, and, aside from a small round of Series A funding in 2007, the software company survived and grew without substantial investment until 2012. SEOmoz’s 2012 round injected $18 million into the company coffers and was, as Fishkin recently described in a conversation with OpenView, “a huge accomplishment” for his company after four years on the investment roadshow.

The cash fueled new growth for the company, but it also introduced additional pressure. Suddenly, Fishkin was faced with not only “more people having a voice in the company” as the board expanded, but also a shift in the psychological, cultural, and organizational makeup of SEOmoz.

The focus moved from scrambling to bring minimum viable products to market and quickly iterating based on customer feedback to finding a way to achieve scalability and framing everything in the context of the long haul. Welcome to the expansion stage.

How to Scale After Funding: Paying Down Your Technical Debt

Until investment arrives, revenue is the lifeblood of a startup. “You’re on a very tight budget,” Fishkin explains, so “you have to make compromises and choices about what’s going to slide.” You need to ship a product that people will actually buy, so every decision is viewed through a myopic lens that makes rapid development the only priority. A lot of elements crucial to long-term success get pushed aside:

• Scalability
• Reliability
• Documentation
• Teaching more than one person how a particular system works

Those compromises create, as Fishkin puts it, “technical debt” of  “a huge magnitude.” With funding, your company has the breathing room to expand its priorities and stop focusing solely on revenue. You can begin addressing those elements that will allow your company to grow in a sustainable way and create even better products, but that takes time, and you may have to slow down before you can hit the gas.

A Brand New Engine Still Has to Be Installed

Fishkin likens the transition after funding to finally being able to afford quality auto work. Think of your company as a car. Now that you have money to make repairs you can take it to the shop and have it outfitted with a new engine so that your company can really move. The catch is installation doesn’t happen over night.

“You’ve got to wait nine months for the new engine to get installed,” Fishkin says. “They have to pull out all the old parts, and you’ve got to ramp up the team.”

Fishkin points to personnel challenges as likely the first major challenge you need to address, and in the world of software, engineering is probably at the top of your list. When he relates the story of expanding his ten-person engineering team sixfold, he points out the problems that arise when your existing engineers are tasked with interviewing candidates and on-boarding new employees. Development grinds to a standstill, which means no new products, no new features, and no bug fixes.

Expect all of your departments to spend one to two thirds of their time interviewing candidates, bringing new people on, creating documentation, and training. It’s an investment that pays off in the long run, but in the short-term it can be a grind.

Learn and Adapt As You Go

Every company’s list of top priorities and first things to address after funding is different. Keep an overall plan in mind, Fishkin says, but be ready to learn and adjust as you go. You won’t have to go hunting for issues — rest assured they’ll find you. With every plan you put into action and every new initiative you take on you’ll discover new challenges and problems to solve. Many are difficult to anticipate, so you really just have to get good at learning along the way.

For example, recruiting might start taking an inordinate amount of time, Fishkin suggests, so you might decide to streamline the process by adding a technical recruiter to your initial phone calls to ensure you’re bringing the right people in for interviews. Or, you may figure out you can find better cultural fits by focusing on LinkedIn connections from your current employees.

“Like a lot of things in the startup world, you’re driving along, you see a pothole, you’ve got to fix it,” Fishkin says. You don’t necessarily plan for specific issues, but you expect to encounter challenges, and you’re flexible enough to deal with them as they come. The funding doesn’t remove them, but it allows you to put yourself in a position where major obstacles are reduced down to speed bumps further down the line.

You’ve heard from Rand, now we want to hear from you. What are the first things a company should address after receiving funding?

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When operated effectively, webinars can be a great initiator of lead generation for your company.

But you’ll need to execute the entire process, including the before and after, in order to fully leverage them to your benefit. B2B marketing expert Brian Carroll of MECLABS has a handful of webinar tips you can use to increase the effectiveness of your webinars.

In this video Carroll explains the importance of fully understanding your objective in offering the webinar and communicating the benefits for participants. He also stresses that webinars are the start of a dialogue, so you need to prepare your sales team with the appropriate materials for a logical and useful follow up conversation. Watch the video for more advice on how to conduct a successful webinar and start engaging your audience now.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if you could come up with a value proposition that was rooted in real data? It turns out you can, using tools that are most likely readily at your disposal. In a post at Marketing Experiments Blog, they break down how to bring out your value proposition using your email marketing campaign, an idea originally proposed by MECLABS Senior Editorial Analyst Austin McCraw.

As McCraw explained, your email marketing campaign has intrinsic advantages in sussing out what the true values of your company are. It’s easy to change, it offers a large sample size and it operates in a highly competitive market. Read his 5 steps for making the most of your already existing process to develop your value proposition.

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In the spirit of March Madness, OpenView selected 16 of today’s top tech companies — each with a stellar reputation for unique and exceptional company culture — to compete in a bracket-style tournament where readers vote to determine whose culture reigns supreme.

The votes for Round 1 are officially in, and true to March Madness-form, it was a wild one, complete with come-from-behind stunners, Cinderella upsets, and one match-up that was dead heat down to the wire.

While some of the top seeds rolled on, others, including heavy favorite Zappos, fell. What surprises lay in store for this round?

Who will make it to the Final Four on Wednesday? You decide, so get started by clicking on one of the regions below!

Silicon Valley Region: (2) Google vs. (4) Evernote

Northeast Region: (1) HubSpot vs. (2) Fab

San Francisco Region: (1) Twitter vs. (2) Dropbox

Rest of the West: (3) SEOmoz vs. (4) Rackspace

Editor’s note: The Championship Round is live! Cast your vote to determine the winner here.

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When it comes to sales you’re always looking for a leg up. So if you’re not leveraging social media to your advantage during the sales process, you’re leaving a fairly significant weapon sheathed, says HootSuite’s Sensei of Sales Enablement Julio Viskovich in addition to providing you with social selling essentials.

In a post at Social Media Today Viskovich gives you the advice you’ll need to turn social media into a strong resource for your sales team. Increasing knowledge of your buyers, monitoring trigger events and keeping tabs on your competition are just a few of the invaluable insights you can gain by implementing social selling.

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Company culture — it defines who businesses are and what they do, and many agree it is every bit as important as strategy (perhaps even more so) when it comes to laying the foundation for long-term success. But what makes great company culture? Is about mission and values, and conveying those things though unique policies and creative perks? Or is it really just about having a cool office and making it a fun and fulfilling place to work?

To dig deeper, we selected 16 tech companies that have each been widely acclaimed for their exceptional company culture, and we did what anyone who loves making comparisons this time of year would do: we made a bracket.

Introducing: Cultural-Fit-ology: A Tournament to Determine the Best Company Culture in Tech

We’ve grouped 16 of today’s top tech companies — from industry giants to rising stars — into four distinct regions. Choose one of the regions listed below to get started or click the next button.

Silicon Valley
(1) Facebook (2) Google (3) Apple (4) Evernote

Northeast
(1) HubSpot (2) Fab (3) Kayak (4) Wayfair

San Francisco
(1) Twitter (2) Dropbox (3) Eventbrite (4) Square

Rest of the West
(1) Zappos (2) Amazon (3) SEOmoz (4) Rackspace

We need you to decide who goes on to the next round.

Visit each region by clicking the links above to learn more about each company’s unique and innovative approach to company culture, and cast your vote in each head-to-head matchup to determine who moves on to the next round on Monday (see sidebar for full tournament schedule).

You can also download a PDF copy of the bracket here.

Editor’s note: The Championship Round is live! Cast your vote to determine the winner here.