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tap-tap-tap-im-in · 5 years

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Black Mage

“I don’t understand what you do, it all seems like black magic to me.” - A very honest and satisfied customer.

As someone who has had the pleasure and the curse of doing things that my boss doesn’t have the time or the context to understand, I can’t tell you how many times someone has expressed something like the above sentiment to me. I know a huge part of it is because I have been working at companies small enough that I don’t have very many peers who are fully aware of what I’m doing, and those few peers can’t always follow the logic I’m using. I honestly don’t know if that means I’m operating above them, or that my logic is hugely flawed, but after a few years of getting more positive results than negative I’m starting to trust my gut a lot more.

I’ve been called a doctor (I don’t hold a doctorate), a wizard (I don’t practice magic or magicks), and a lifesaver (I don’t know what flavor). I’ve also heard all sorts of negative descriptions of what I do, and its weird. These small companies need results that are affordable to maintain, and quick to implement, but the thing that they seem quickest to cast off, the thing that would bring my work from the shadows into the light, is documentation. I’ve tried my best to leave ample documentation at the positions I’ve left. I have no idea if it was enough, and at this point I don’t even really care because I was far more interested in making sure they had it than they were in me giving it to them.

I’ve learned a couple of things in the last few years of no one really knowing what I do, and I think I’d like to share those with you.

Keep documentation. As much of it as you can. If you’re the only one who knows something, if you forget it, everything is out to sea. Plus, if you decide to leave the position, you can hand over the documentation and not have any guilt about them not understanding what you did.

Find metrics for all of the work you do. They should be as honest as you can make them, but they need to be nicely quantifiable so that if your manager starts wondering about what it is you’re doing, you have a bunch of numbers to give them that look nice in a report to give to a client or upper management.

Lean into the laziness. I don’t mean miss deadlines or do sloppy work, those will get you fired, but instead relish in the fact that the only thing setting your own process is you. Research, learn, gather or build tools, and join online communities. All of these will make you better and faster at your job, and learning can be fun on its own, and you’d be surprised what kind of information you can tie back to your own job. I read about games and game engines all the time, my justification is that I look into the graphics technology and I crib some of their ideas to help me optimize websites and software.

I mentioned this above, but it really deserves its own point. Join a community of people who are doing something close to what you are doing. The hardest part of having a position like this is that there’s no real way to know if what you are doing is the right thing. Sure, it might be working for now, but is it the best? Learning from your peers can better your process, but it will also save you from a bunch of crippling doubt. Most people, even experts in their fields, are just kind of trying things to see if they work. The difference between experts and amateurs seems to be that experts do this ahead of time to plan their future actions, and amateurs do it almost exclusively in reaction to some deadline or emergency.

Be ethical. Having a position like this makes it exceedingly easy to lie. And you will get away with it, possibly for a long time. But it does catch up to you, and when it does it can kill your whole career, as well as get you fired. Plus I’ll hate you, because you’ve helped contribute to a lot of friction I’ve had with managers over the years.

Be understanding that people don’t understand what you are doing, or what you are saying. Learn to laugh it off. They’re not stupid or ignorant, they just don’t have the same specialized knowledge that you do. If you feel anger welling up, remember, your specialized knowledge is why you’re probably going to be very employable for a very long time.

If you would like to know what I do, here’s an incomplete list of projects I have worked on (they’re not all my best work, but they all taught be something):

PCI Complaint Credit Card Encryption (AES-256, double encrypted, second key is kept [also double encrypted] in an external database requiring IP, hostname, and API token to access. This one was extra dumb because for good measure I built an implementation of the Diffy Hellman exchange used in the communication between browsers and SSL websites and used it inside of the exchange that was already happening to connect to the SSL API in the first place. I encrypted the communication inside of the encrypted communication. I still have no idea if this did anything to help secure it, or if it was just giving the server processors busy work. But anecdotally, we never had anyone decrypt our data without both keys… so)

Completely rewriting a custom piece by piece CMS and then transforming it into a CRM (I hate that terrible acronym, it’s a client, employee, and project management portal)

Website optimization

Using Google Maps to outline your driveway to estimate the material needed to repave it (simpler than it sounds, I did this in three hours)

Writing a client to to automated cloud backups of files chosen by the user (Think Kryptonite, but way less of a budget)

Modifying the above client to sent status and health data back to a central server for monitoring (think LogMeIn, but way less of a budget)

Writing crawler with the aim of only requesting every resource once, even if the resource is used on multiple pages. (I hope all crawlers are built this way, but I suspect they’re not)

Evaluating the data from that crawler to create an SEO report about that website (Think SEM rush, but way less of a budget)

The worst API implementations I’ve ever seen, and I’ve used SOAP.

Writing JavaScript libraries for commonly requested “flashy” elements that leverage technology to make the effects as optimized as possible. (Think banner sliders using CSS transform, and parallax effects using HTML Canvas, anything to pass the heavy lifting over the the graphics hardware and free up the CPU for other work)

Database Diff tools for projects that don’t have proper version control for whatever goddamned reason (there’s no good reason, but you play the cards you’re dealt)

Automated migrations of data in and out of OpenCart, WordPress, Drupal, and even once out of static HTML files written in Dreamweaver V1.0 (and we cached back and forth from wordpress every night on the last one, a dumb requirement, but I did it.)

Calling up a client and telling them that their computer has a virus, and they need to disconnect it from the network, or I’m locking them out of their email account before they spam the entire North American continent. (And yes, you really do have to do this sometimes as a server admin when your boss refuses to let you just lock out the user.)

And, I shit you not, a passed over prototype for integration of a major Shipping Carrier’s new “Deliver To Very Large Drugstore Chain” API features into a woocommerce plugin. They would have sold the plugin along side several others, we would have made a few pennies on every order. (Managers, please tell your developers when a prototype is being tested in front a board of directors, then your developer may not go home when the prototype was bricked by a last minute feature the night before, assuming there will be time to work on it tomorrow)

#essay #?#programming #web development #php #javascript #node

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cecillewhite · 5 years

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Podcast: Selecting Association Software – With Chad Stewart of SmartThoughts

WELCOME TO EPISODE 21 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW!

To learn more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 21 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

As an independent learning systems consultant, I’m obsessed with finding the ideal solution for each client’s unique needs. Fortunately, I’m not alone in that quest.

For example, today’s guest, Chad Stewart of SmartThoughts LLC, specializes in helping non-profit organizations navigate the software selection process for all kinds of operational needs.

I invite you to join Chad and me, as we compare notes about key technology trends and their implications for association software buyers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Thanks to technology innovation, member-based organizations are facing significant opportunities and challenges.

In particular, the center-of-gravity for association software has shifted from all-in-one AMS platforms to diverse ecosystems.

With so much at stake, software selection has become a strategic priority that non-profits can’t afford to treat lightly.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

You and I are two sides of the same coin, Chad. We both help associations find software that meets their strategic needs, right?

Yes, our missions are very similar. At SmartThoughts, I work with non-profit organizations that are struggling to find the right systems. I assess their existing technology and help them find the best fit for their particular needs.

Our approach sounds identical. But I focus on learning solutions, while you focus on the rest of the association software ecosystem…

Also, like you John, I don’t derive any income from software implementation, training and support – although I think those services are very important. In fact, I originally offered implementation, training and support when I founded SmartThoughts in 2001.

Back then, software was installed on desktops and servers, so clients had different needs. But now with cloud computing, it’s more important to focus on the front-end of the process, helping clients find the right fit.

Interesting. I don’t cross paths with many other systems selection specialists. Why did you move to this side of the fence?

Honestly, so many new products are available and there’s so much confusion about how to choose systems. There’s a huge disconnect between buyers and sellers. So it makes a lot of sense to rely on an intermediary as an independent guide and advocate.

REPLAY THE WEBINAR NOW!

And why do you specialize in association software?

That shift was actually a gradual process. I started as a specialist in ERP and CRM systems for organizations of all types. But over time, as we began serving more member-based organizations, that naturally became our focus.

Excellent. So, what are the major technology components associations rely upon today?

Oh, gosh, it’s all over the place. And nomenclature is, too, because systems in the for-profit world are similar, but the acronyms are a bit different.

How so?

For example, a customer relationship management system (or CRM) is the terminology most businesses use when talking about customer-focused systems, right? Well, in the association space, the equivalent is an association management system (or AMS).

But an AMS is much more than just a CRM. It’s really an ecosystem that can include a website, marketing automation, event management, ecommerce, membership dues management, financial accounting and online community functionality. Sometimes even learning management is part of AMS capabilities.

With so many moving parts, how do you find the best fit?

Great question. An AMS may purport to be an ideal all-in-one solution. But an AMS can’t be all things to all organizations. And with so many components in the typical association software stack, best-of-class systems may be a better option for some capabilities.

OK. So let’s use learning functionality to understand this concept. How do you know when a specialized LMS is needed beyond the AMS, itself?

With each organization, I start by defining the situation. As we pull back the layers of the onion in that discovery process, it reveals what an AMS uniquely means to that organization.

For some, education and training may be critical, so specialized learning management capabilities would be a requirement.

That makes sense…

LMS components definitely are not a core competency of an AMS, in general, but you may find the capacity to track education activities. For example, you’ll see the ability to track continuing education credits or certifications.

But my job is to define what’s most important for a client. What makes that organization unique? That’s the key.

Absolutely…

Usually, that ties back to money. What’s are primary sources of revenue? Sometimes its dues. Sometimes it’s education. Sometimes it’s conferences fees. Often, there are multiple choices.

An organization needs to understand what drives revenues and choose a system that is strong at supporting those functions.

Agree. So, what are the top trends you’re seeing?

Well, that’s a good segue, because I see an increasing need to integrate with third-party systems. As organizations evolve, they sometimes outgrow specific capabilities in their AMS, so there’s a need to tap into more sophisticated, specialized functionality.

This is especially true of organizations using dated, all-in-one AMS platforms. But the need for expanded technology doesn’t necessarily mean an organization, itself, is growing.

Good point!

For example, one of my clients is a small association with a staff of less than five people. But this organization has relatively sophisticated needs.

They have international reach and their financial accounting is fairly advanced. They also host some very unique events, and most of their revenues come from those events.

They realize that a traditional AMS isn’t enough. So they want to find a system with strong event capabilities that also integrates with their core AMS and their website.

Makes sense…

It’s important to be open to a “best-of-need” approach. This calls for third-party APIs and services that integrate specialized applications into everyday workflows, so associations don’t have to give up anything in terms of understanding member information.

How do you see that playing out?

An association may not be able to get the best standalone platform for every need – for example, job board, email marketing, community management and learning management. But they’ll find an AMS with strong membership management at its core. Then they’ll add-in components to achieve their mission.

So, the underlying AMS will continue to play its primary historical role, but the organization can look beyond the AMS for specialized functionality. That’s more like a best-of-class strategy.

Excellent. Any other notable trends on your radar?

A related trend is increasing interest in what the for-profit world calls customer data platforms or CDPs. With so many systems working in tandem, associations want a central repository that provides access to a persistent, unified “master” record of every member.

It’s essential to consolidate and synthesize relevant data into a “true” single member profile. With a CDP in place, an organization’s relationship with each individual is more accurately and intelligently reflected in reports.

RSVP FOR THIS LIVE MAY WEBINAR!

Interesting. So the AMS is no longer the center of the universe. But are associations struggling with the technical aspects of data integration?

Well, one reason why organizations move to a new system is just what you mentioned – integration issues. Their AMS is based on a closed architecture, so they’re opting for systems that are open and based on standards that facilitate back-and-forth integration.

Many systems of yesteryear were based on closed logic. Those legacy systems may not yet support full data exchange. But modern AMS systems usually offer open APIs to connect back-and-forth with other systems.

I see…

So, integration issues often motivate associations to change. They may change to a new AMS if their system isn’t keeping up with their integration needs. Or they’ll look for an integration services provider that knows their system fairly well and has a third-party relationship with whatever specialized system they want to add.

So about API strategy, are you seeing a trend in how AMS vendors approach this?

I can’t say there’s a clear trend, per se. But I think AMS providers definitely realize that they need to develop integrations for and with specialized systems that offer popular functionality.

What would you say those systems are?

Well, every year, I ask organizations which third-party systems they use in conjunction with their membership management system. Usually, the top of the list includes email marketing, mobile apps, job board, advertising, LMS and community management platforms.

It sounds like the AMS market is as diverse as the learning systems realm. Currently, we see more than 800 learning-related systems on our radar…

800? My goodness, that’s a lot of systems to track!

I’m tracking 128 AMS platforms – or vendors that say they offer membership-based systems. Every few weeks, I find another system that I may not have known, or a vendor goes out of business. So it changes. But it’s around 130 systems…

Oh, I’ve personally reviewed only about 200 of the 800+ systems on our radar, so I have a long way to go. How much do you track about each AMS? What’s your methodology?

That’s a great question! We publish a variety of lists on our website, and there’s no cost to be included. I’m just inquisitive by nature and it’s my job to be aware of the landscape. So I continually explore, evaluate and categorize systems.

I reach out to vendors and review their platform in-depth, even before I have clients that may be an applicable fit. I talk with these companies about their product positioning and I’ll go through a demo process. Then I’ll develop what I call a product report. Finally, I categorize the system and assign a specific fit, based on heuristics (or industry rules-of-thumb).

Yep. Our approach is nearly identical…

Also, since technology is constantly changing, I may re-evaluate a product once a quarter – or sooner, if a client is interested in a particular category.

Do you talk with customers about their experience?

Oh yes. Because we’re always gathering references and we know people who are using these systems, we capture their feedback, too. That adds another dimension to our understanding of each platform’s strengths and weaknesses.

Yeah. Anecdotal information is a great reality check…

FOR MORE QUESTIONS AND COMPLETE ANSWERS, LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST NOW!

WANT TO LEARN MORE? REPLAY THIS WEBINAR:

Technology vs. Innovation: Association Learning Strategies in Practice

REPLAY THE WEBINAR NOW

AI. AR. VR. Digital breakthroughs like these are capturing headlines every day. Clearly, these innovations are promising. But many associations are focused on making the most of learning technologies that are already in place.

So how are these resourceful organizations actually transforming member learning experiences?

Join John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, and Michelle Brien, VP Marketing at WBT Systems, as they explore real-world examples and discuss innovation strategies that will help you create lasting value. You’ll discover:

The push/pull relationship between technology and change

How to develop an innovation roadmap that works for your organization

Tips for creating a business case your board will support

How to avoid missteps when expanding your learning technology stack

Guidelines for measuring results

REPLAY THE WEBINAR NOW!

Need Proven LMS Selection Guidance?

Looking for a learning platform that truly fits your organization’s needs? We’re here to help! Submit the form below to schedule a free preliminary consultation at your convenience.

First Name*

Last Name*

Email Address*

Company

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IMAGE CREDIT: Paul Hudson

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preciousmetals0 · 4 years

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Google’s New CEO; Kodiak’s Rally Is Unbearable; Tesla Stock $1

Google’s New CEO; Kodiak’s Rally Is Unbearable; Tesla Stock $1:

Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride

Hold on to your hats, ’cause we’re going on quite a ride over the next week.

Yesterday, President Trump appeared to punt the U.S.-China trade deal until after the 2020 elections. Today, however, we’re getting a different story. (And if you’re not used to this back-and-forth by now, you’re not paying attention.)

Bright and early this morning, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. and China are moving even closer to a “phase-one” trade deal. Where is Bloomberg getting its information?

Why, the infamous “people familiar with the talks,” of course!

According to these people, the two sides need only agree on issues including Chinese agricultural purchases and which tariffs to roll back. The “people who shall not be named” also said that the markets were making too big a deal out of Trump’s off-the-cuff comments about stalling until 2020.

What’s more, a phase-one U.S.-China trade deal is expected to be reached before tariffs rise on December 15. That’s in less than 11 days.

The Takeaway:

Aside from the obvious “we’ve heard all this before,” there are three very important points to take away from the Bloomberg report:

S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s office hasn’t responded to the report. So, no official confirmation from the U.S. side.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce hasn’t responded to the report. So, no official confirmation from the Chinese side.

President Trump hasn’t directly commented on the potential deal.

Great Stuff regulars will remember back on November 5, when I asked: “Who’s winning the U.S.-China trade war?”

At the time, I posited that China had the upper hand due to the reported promise of massive tariff rollbacks. Media reports at the time indicated that at least $112 billion in tariffs were on the table to pass a phase-one deal.

Just three days later, President Trump put the kibosh on the tariff rollback — essentially taking the whole deal off the table.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

President Trump has the last and final word in these trade negotiations. A deal will happen if he wants one — his own words, paraphrased, not mine.

So, call me pessimistic … call me a bear … call me whatever you’d like. I’ll be playing it safe and holding my enthusiasm until a deal is actually signed and we can read the details.

In the meantime, there’s nothing that says we can’t profit off the continuation of the Great Stuff Trade War Cycle chart. I just updated it this morning:

I’ll add one more thing here. If you are trading this cycle, remember that we have just 11 days until the December 15 deadline for tariff increases. We could go through this cycle rather rapidly if U.S. representatives, China or Trump decide to get chatty.

Be warned: Trading the chart might not be for the faint of heart over the next week.

The Good: Turn the Page

It’s the end of an era at Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG).

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are stepping down from their positions at Alphabet. Taking their place at the head of the world’s most popular search engine is Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Pichai will now head both Google and its parent company, Alphabet.

Despite the high-profile announcement, Pichai and Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat have essentially run Alphabet for some time now. Pichai actually testified in front of Congress in 2016 … not Page or Brin.

So, what does this mean for investors? Pretty much nothing. Honestly, Pichai unofficially took the reins of Alphabet nearly two years ago. It should still be business as usual.

However, analysts are speculating that we may finally see YouTube revenue figures. Alphabet wasn’t required to disclose these figures before because Page — the company’s appointed decision-maker — didn’t see them. Seems like an odd loophole in reporting requirements, but it is what it is.

Pichai, however, does see these reports. So, investors might finally get a peek at YouTube’s revenue.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

The Bad: Weak in the Force

For all intents and purposes, Salesforce.com Inc.’s (NYSE: CRM) earnings report was spot-on.

The company beat both top- and bottom-line expectations, with earnings up 32% and revenue soaring 33% year over year. Subscription revenue spiked 32%, and even billings were above the consensus estimate of $3.89 billion.

Guidance is where things started to go wrong … if you can call it that. Forecasts for the 2020 fiscal year were above Wall Street’s projections, but Salesforce put 2021 revenue projections below the consensus estimate. How far below? About $500 million.

If you’re thinking that this isn’t a “bad” quarterly report at all, you’re not alone. Analysts from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, RBC Capital Markets and Wedbush Securities all came out to defend Salesforce’s quarterly report.

That’s quite a star-studded cast. And it might explain why CRM is down more than 3% after what was a solid financial performance. Essentially, there’s too much optimism on CRM right now. So much so that a $500 million miss on revenue guidance two years from now is enough to prompt investors to sell.

That’s bad. It’s a sign that CRM might need a profit-taking correction to wash out the weak hands before the shares can turn higher once again.

The Ugly: The Un-Bear-able Rise

In the past three trading sessions, shares of Kodiak Sciences Inc. (Nasdaq: KOD) have surged an astonishing 100%.

Part of the reason is the increased bullish hype in the biotech sector, driven by merger and acquisition speculation.

But the big reason is that Kodiak just sold a 4.5% royalty right on potential global net sales of its experimental drug for eye disease, KSI-301. New York investment firm Baker Bros. Advisors shelled out $225 million for the rights.

Investors are excited because now Kodiak has the cash to fund operations through the next couple of years, at least. But Kodiak doesn’t get all that cash up front. It’ll need to pay $100 million just to close the transaction, and it’ll need to reach 50% enrollment in two late-stage clinical studies of KSI-301 in treating retinal vein occlusion, or blocked blood flow in the eye.

By now, you’re probably wondering why this is “ugly.” Well, the $225 million apparently wasn’t enough for Kodiak. Or, it saw the massive run-up in its shares and decided to take advantage of the situation.

Today, the company announced it was pricing a public offering of six million common shares at $46 per share — 55% above last Friday’s closing price.

This is clearly a smart business move, but my mind can’t get past the convenience of the offering or the KOD share dilution.

Once again, I think there is just too much optimism floating around out there. This is definitely a “buyer beware” situation.

Just when I thought I’d seen everything.

Hollywood is actually making WeWork: The Movie. I kid you not. They’ve even gotten Charles Randolph, the writer for The Big Short, to do the script.

This brings up two points. First, Hollywood really is out of good ideas. Second, who wants this movie? I’m not going to see it. If you’ve followed Great Stuff through the WeDebacle, you already watched this live.

Then again, given the media reports of former CEO Adam Neumann’s pot smoking and parties … this could be a fun ride. Look, I even made a poster for it:

(Side note: Did anyone actually see The Disaster Artist? I thought not.)

Great STUF: Buy Into Tesla for $1!

Did that heading get your attention?

I thought it might. You’re probably thinking: “There’s no way I can buy into Tesla for $1. It’s more than $300 per share, you fool!”

First, there’s no need for name-calling. I’m rubber and you’re glue, after all.

Second, yes, there is a way. And none other than Banyan Hill expert Paul Mampilly himself has the answer!

Paul found the quickest and easiest way to buy into some of the most exciting and explosive stocks on the market. Paul likes to call these his STUF stocks — a handy little acronym for the key stocks that represent the heart of Bold Profits: innovation, future, new-world ideas and tech that changes the way we live.

This is truly great STUF … if you catch my drift.

I know you’re dying to know more, so read Paul’s latest article now! Here, I’ll even give you the link: “Easiest Way to Buy STUF Stocks (Ex: Buy Into Tesla for $1).”

Now, what’s better than a Paul article explaining how to buy into Tesla for $1? A video of Paul explaining how to buy into Tesla for $1!

[embedded content]

But wait! There’s more…

Paul has a free report on all of his STUF stocks, and you can get it right here! (Did I mention it was free? Of course I did.)

You’re still here? OK. You want more Paul. It’s understandable.

The only way to truly satisfy your craving for STUF stocks (and Paul Mampilly) is to check out his newsletter, Profits Unlimited.

Click here to find out how to start your STUF collection now!

(I feel like there are too many exclamation points down here. Are there too many? Nah. Just the right amount.)

Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

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goldira01 · 4 years

Link

Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride

Hold on to your hats, ’cause we’re going on quite a ride over the next week.

Bright and early this morning, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. and China are moving even closer to a “phase-one” trade deal. Where is Bloomberg getting its information?

Why, the infamous “people familiar with the talks,” of course!

What’s more, a phase-one U.S.-China trade deal is expected to be reached before tariffs rise on December 15. That’s in less than 11 days.

The Takeaway:

Aside from the obvious “we’ve heard all this before,” there are three very important points to take away from the Bloomberg report:

S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s office hasn’t responded to the report. So, no official confirmation from the U.S. side.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce hasn’t responded to the report. So, no official confirmation from the Chinese side.

President Trump hasn’t directly commented on the potential deal.

Great Stuff regulars will remember back on November 5, when I asked: “Who’s winning the U.S.-China trade war?”

Just three days later, President Trump put the kibosh on the tariff rollback — essentially taking the whole deal off the table.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

President Trump has the last and final word in these trade negotiations. A deal will happen if he wants one — his own words, paraphrased, not mine.

So, call me pessimistic … call me a bear … call me whatever you’d like. I’ll be playing it safe and holding my enthusiasm until a deal is actually signed and we can read the details.

In the meantime, there’s nothing that says we can’t profit off the continuation of the Great Stuff Trade War Cycle chart. I just updated it this morning:

Be warned: Trading the chart might not be for the faint of heart over the next week.

The Good: Turn the Page

It’s the end of an era at Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG).

So, what does this mean for investors? Pretty much nothing. Honestly, Pichai unofficially took the reins of Alphabet nearly two years ago. It should still be business as usual.

Pichai, however, does see these reports. So, investors might finally get a peek at YouTube’s revenue.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

The Bad: Weak in the Force

For all intents and purposes, Salesforce.com Inc.’s (NYSE: CRM) earnings report was spot-on.

That’s bad. It’s a sign that CRM might need a profit-taking correction to wash out the weak hands before the shares can turn higher once again.

The Ugly: The Un-Bear-able Rise

In the past three trading sessions, shares of Kodiak Sciences Inc. (Nasdaq: KOD) have surged an astonishing 100%.

Part of the reason is the increased bullish hype in the biotech sector, driven by merger and acquisition speculation.

Today, the company announced it was pricing a public offering of six million common shares at $46 per share — 55% above last Friday’s closing price.

This is clearly a smart business move, but my mind can’t get past the convenience of the offering or the KOD share dilution.

Once again, I think there is just too much optimism floating around out there. This is definitely a “buyer beware” situation.

Just when I thought I’d seen everything.

Hollywood is actually making WeWork: The Movie. I kid you not. They’ve even gotten Charles Randolph, the writer for The Big Short, to do the script.

Then again, given the media reports of former CEO Adam Neumann’s pot smoking and parties … this could be a fun ride. Look, I even made a poster for it:

(Side note: Did anyone actually see The Disaster Artist? I thought not.)

Great STUF: Buy Into Tesla for $1!

Did that heading get your attention?

I thought it might. You’re probably thinking: “There’s no way I can buy into Tesla for $1. It’s more than $300 per share, you fool!”

First, there’s no need for name-calling. I’m rubber and you’re glue, after all.

Second, yes, there is a way. And none other than Banyan Hill expert Paul Mampilly himself has the answer!

This is truly great STUF … if you catch my drift.

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[embedded content]

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Until next time, good trading!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Great Stuff Managing Editor, Banyan Hill Publishing

#Timor Invest

0 notes

legalseat · 5 years

Text

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter

My first job after completing my undergraduate work was in software engineering at a big technology company where we developed an operating system. After about a year, I had the opportunity to go to an industry event. I came back to the office with the notable realization that customers were people too. It may sound funny but, at the time, the voice of the customer was brought to us from sales, marketing, and product leadership. The event gave me the opportunity to meet users face-to-face. Suddenly, the “customer” wasn’t so anonymous to me. The “customer” had a face, a job, really great ideas, and a family to get home to at night.

Industry events are a valuable way to develop relationships with peers and colleagues, network face-to-face, discuss the big challenges and opportunities, and experience the latest from notable vendors. In the days and weeks that follow all the excitement, there’s an opportunity to digest those “a-ha” moments and reflect on the common themes from the event.

The 2019 Legal Marketing Association (LMA) conference in Atlanta was no exception. From the main stage to panel discussions and presentations to the exhibit hall, it was such a pleasure to learn alongside clients, partners, and colleagues. I discovered two key themes:

(A) individuals are more powerful in numbers , and

(B) the legal market continues to evolve and is becoming increasingly competitive.

Individuals are More Powerful in Numbers Since joining the InterAction® team about six months ago, we have had conversations about who we are as a team and what we represent. CRM isn’t new. There are many players out there. What I love about our team is the focus on the power of people. We believe in the power of people doing good work for (and with) others. This has been a key theme in the development of our product, roadmap, and cohesive approach to teamwork. It’s also a key theme for the industry we serve: Your world is all about people doing good work for others. I was especially excited to see this theme throughout the LMA 2019 conference.

The opening spotlight session on ABA Rule 5.4 included discussion about teamwork and collaboration and how these are often top weaknesses for many firms. As firms evolve from pyramid to pancake models, the practical application of collaboration becomes even more important.

This theme continued with the keynote presented by Jennifer Dulski (Head of Groups & Community, Facebook). Twitter lit up with her new acronym: I.I.C.D.T.I.C.D.A. (if I can do this, I can do anything). We can do things (even when we’re afraid) by working towards a defined future that has a clear purpose. Ms. Dulski continued to talk through practical steps for making our personal brand a meaningful movement. One of my favorite parts was the discussion about influencer mapping and how to start something from an unexpected point to drive more efficient change.

LMA members also had a chance to hear from our very own Mary Olson and Elena Cutri, speaking on Collaboration and Communication Skills, respectively. Collaboration relies on trust, communication, and change management. Our success depends on the ability to understand our stakeholders’ needs and adopting a mutually beneficial approach to achieve the desired results. As part of this work, we must understand our own communication blind spots to effectively communicate with partners, attorneys, lawyers, fee earners, IT, and executive leadership. Our work to continuously develop our communication skills will serve us well but also contribute to the success of the firm as a whole.

Legal market continues to evolve and relationships are the key to differentiation.

Another key theme at this year’s event was the evolution of the legal industry as a whole and the critical work required to

compete effectively. While the idea of evolution isn’t new to the legal industry, sessions included practical approaches for continuous improvement by staying one step ahead of client expectations.

The General Counsel (GC) panel explored the ways law firms can improve to earn their business. Corporations are considering the breadth of capabilities in the market: in-house, traditional law firms and alternative legal service providers. Throughout the conversation, each of the panelists highlighted the value of having a deep relationship with their selected firms and how those relationships differentiate the firms with whom they choose to work. GCs want to work with attorneys who can help set the “goal posts”—effectively equipping them to present to the CFO—and truly partner on the success of their business. Further, the GC panel underlined a desire to better understand the meaningful and sustainable value offered by the firm.

At one point in the discussion, the panelists talked about self-disruption. Ms. Dulski had discussed the same idea using different terminology: a bear hug. As individuals and as organizations, it’s important to embrace competition because it challenges us to see things from a different perspective and, ultimately, improve our craft. The GCs suggested that ALSPs represent another option for corporations as they search for savings and efficiency. They don’t define the end of law firms; there’s room for both options based on the operational strengths of each.

This idea of using personal relationships as differentiation in a changing market was reinforced by Mo Bunnell. Mr. Bunnell helps professionals learn to develop business and often highlights that decisions can be made in the first five minutes of a conversation. He also states that people buy in to what they help create. Accordingly, we have five minutes to show clients that we know them and want to truly partner on the work to minimize their risk and drive their success. (No pressure!)

The Big-4 have already adopted a model for business development by teaching their attorneys to “sell.” Law firms must help their professionals sell by equipping them to have authentic and personal relationships with their clients.

Relationships and the role of technology.

I’m a firm believer in the value of relationships. It’s no longer about being connected anymore. It’s about the value of that connection. We have all heard that people buy from people so an honest and thoughtful approach to personal connections and authentic caring goes much further than tracking an opportunity through a pipeline.

There’s a lot of technology out there, even in just the marketing technology realm. (Check out Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2019): Martech 5000!) The good news is that the technology can help design a preferred client experience. The bad news is that we have a lot of options in that design and clients absolutely care about what that technology stack looks like because data is powerful and everyone needs to protect themselves and their business. Our clients want to help their businesses succeed and they want partners (and technology) that make it easier to do their work and get home to their families.

I’m really proud to say that InterAction is full of great people who are authentic and smart. We don’t do technology just because it’s available—we partner with our clients to discern the best application of technology given the unique nature of professional services.

Your client data can help empower your professionals to deliver a personalized and comprehensive service—one that is differentiated in meaningful ways. InterAction for Office 365® is the latest piece of our portfolio that makes this even easier—putting your CRM data in the right place at the right time, making it easier to contribute to and benefit from the data. If you didn’t have a chance to stop by our booth at LMA, I invite you to reach out for more information about this offering and the hybrid cloud model that delivers on the belief that your data is yours to protect as you choose.

All of that said, thank you for allowing me to become part of the Legal Marketing community. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to get to know you better and I hope to speak with you soon.

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter published first on https://divorcelawyermumbai.tumblr.com/

0 notes

legalroll · 5 years

Text

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter

(A) individuals are more powerful in numbers , and

(B) the legal market continues to evolve and is becoming increasingly competitive.

Individuals are More Powerful in Numbers Since joining the InterAction(r) team about six months ago, we have had conversations about who we are as a team and what we represent. CRM isn’t new. There are many players out there. What I love about our team is the focus on the power of people. We believe in the power of people doing good work for (and with) others. This has been a key theme in the development of our product, roadmap, and cohesive approach to teamwork. It’s also a key theme for the industry we serve: Your world is all about people doing good work for others. I was especially excited to see this theme throughout the LMA 2019 conference.

Legal market continues to evolve and relationships are the key to differentiation.

Another key theme at this year’s event was the evolution of the legal industry as a whole and the critical work required to

compete effectively. While the idea of evolution isn’t new to the legal industry, sessions included practical approaches for continuous improvement by staying one step ahead of client expectations.

Relationships and the role of technology.

All of that said, thank you for allowing me to become part of the Legal Marketing community. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to get to know you better and I hope to speak with you soon.

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter published first on https://medium.com/@SanAntonioAttorney

0 notes

gladyspbarton · 5 years

Text

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter

(A) individuals are more powerful in numbers , and

(B) the legal market continues to evolve and is becoming increasingly competitive.

Legal market continues to evolve and relationships are the key to differentiation.

Another key theme at this year’s event was the evolution of the legal industry as a whole and the critical work required to

compete effectively. While the idea of evolution isn’t new to the legal industry, sessions included practical approaches for continuous improvement by staying one step ahead of client expectations.

Relationships and the role of technology.

All of that said, thank you for allowing me to become part of the Legal Marketing community. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to get to know you better and I hope to speak with you soon.

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter published first on http://businessoflawblog.com/feed/

0 notes

kathidearing · 5 years

Text

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter

(A) individuals are more powerful in numbers , and

(B) the legal market continues to evolve and is becoming increasingly competitive.

Legal market continues to evolve and relationships are the key to differentiation.

Another key theme at this year’s event was the evolution of the legal industry as a whole and the critical work required to

compete effectively. While the idea of evolution isn’t new to the legal industry, sessions included practical approaches for continuous improvement by staying one step ahead of client expectations.

Relationships and the role of technology.

All of that said, thank you for allowing me to become part of the Legal Marketing community. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to get to know you better and I hope to speak with you soon.

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter published first on https://injuryhelpnowcom.blogspot.com

0 notes

mrdanielblack · 5 years

Text

The agent and the Robot

The panel discussion at Inman Connect that featured Sarah Bell was about how AI is changing real estate for consumers. It centered on whether robots will replace real estate agents. Sarah has the view that the real estate agent will remain central and very important in the transaction. She explains today as she talks to Sherrie Storor.

Topic – Will agents become redundant?

Mentor – Sarah Bell

Transcript:

Sherrie: This time in the show we’re talking to Sarah Bell, and Sarah Bell is the co-founder and the chief operating officer, and CMO of Air. She’s most well known for a beautiful product called RITA, so Sarah thank you so much for joining us today.

Sarah: Thanks for having me.

Sherrie: You have just been on the stage at Inman and been invited to speak, which is a massive, massive coup. So congratulations.

Sarah: Thank you.

Sherrie: But tell us a little bit about what you shared on stage today? There were some massive takeaways that I know the audience loved.

Sarah: So the panel was about how AI is changing real estate for consumers. It kind of begged this debate about whether robots will replace real estate agents, especially when we’re talking about the customer interface. I kind of have the view that the real estate agent will remain central and very important in the transaction. I think one of the points that we talked about yesterday was this thinking that a job has to be done by either a robot or a human. It’s kind of flawed thinking about this technology, because as human beings we already work in teams. We work in teams with creative people, with people who are great at financial intelligence, or business intelligence. Machine intelligence I think will become just an essential member of the team. It’s not always a question of whether or not it’s a robot or an agent, I think that a much better question is how can we connect human beings to computers so that collectively they can be more intelligent together.

Sherrie: Yeah, well I must admit I heard something yesterday saying that personalization is AI plus human, which I thought was really cool, which is I know exactly what you’re all about. I think on that point most people really know you as RITA’s mum, right? But you actually had a background before you became RITA’s mum. So tell us a little bit about your journey and what your background is?

Sarah: Yeah, so I had a strange kind of trajectory in and out of real estate. My first job at uni was doing quantitative statistics and research for my professors at uni. So some of the stuff that RITA does I actually used to do with a pencil and a bit of very, very basic software. But the worlds moved on and so did I. After uni I was recruited into the Commonwealth Ombudsman as I worked as an investigator for a while. Then I met this tall bloke who happened to be in real estate, and pretty quickly after we met we made a decision to purchase his family real estate agency, and I spent the next sort of decade in the business. Made a point of learning every job, and went on to study business and really kind of take apart real estate and use those analytical skills to find ways to put it back together in a machine that would work better.

Sherrie: Well I think this is really important actually, because the fact that you actually have been so heavily involved in real estate is what actually really gives you the power behind it, and why I think RITA is so special. Tell us a little bit about RITA and what she’s really all about. Her personality, and what makes her think and tick?

Sarah: Yeah sure, well RITA, it’s an acronym, and I’ll clear that up right now. RITA stands for real estate intelligent transaction assistant.

Sherrie: RITA’s way more fun.

Sarah: RITA’s faster. She’s not designed to replace the agent, she’s not designed to kind of be disruptive, she’s designed to be supportive technology. I think that we’re at a place in real estate where agents really demand that of technology. So what RITA does is the identity problem that we’ve found is that real estate agents have all of this data that they don’t know what to do with. You take data that’s sitting in the CRM and it’s kind of all of this latent opportunity, the CRM is really a warehouse of opportunity.

Sherrie: Well it’s all collection and no engagement.

Sarah: That’s right, and you know a lot of the analysis that we’ve done, a lot of the research that we’ve done shows that agents just aren’t making that human to human engagement. So what RITA’s really famous for is taking all of that latent opportunity and then mashing it against some other data, so data from the marketplace and giving those contacts and those relationships some context, and some purpose. Then suggesting to agents who would be the best people to contact each and every day in order to convert data into opportunity.

Sherrie: So does it work? Like you must have some great case studies.

Sarah: Yeah we do, and we’ve been really grateful and lucky that clients that came onboard early have allowed us to really partner with them and refine what we’re doing. Part of RITA being born and growing up has been her learning, and we do that through feedback. So RITA’s essentially getting smarter and better all the time, but some of the algorithm or some of the math has outputs that put conversion from data to appraisal, anywhere from 20 to 35%.

Sherrie: Yeah, well I think what’s really interesting is that most agents have been hearing about AI for a little while now, and to I think most of the industry it’s super scary, because it’s just like this amazing thing which is gonna kind of take over and they don’t really know how to implement it. So can you kind of just run us through like I guess how RITA comes in as AI and how it essentially helps the business, how it’s kind of different to a lot of other bots?

Sarah: Yeah sure, well there’s kind of two ways of looking at AI. So you can look at it like a tool, and I think when you have things like chat bots that you use, or you react with, or you ask questions of and they return answers it feels like software that you use. Then there’s also this other camp, which RITA kind of sits in, where she’s not so much a tool but a colleague. So unlike a chat bot where your kind of gonna dial in and ask for answers, RITA’s more of a proactive suggestion engine. So we’ve created her and engineered her to feel like the dream assistant.

Sherrie: The dream assistant.

Sarah: The dream assistant, and it’s funny-

Sherrie: There is such a thing?

Sarah: There is such a thing, it comes in technology form because you don’t have to manage her, there’s no burden to actually having that staff. There’s no emotional overhead, there’s no … Certainly the cost overhead is much lower, and she’s infinitely scalable. If you get really busy you don’t need two RITA’s, she can just expand and amplify what she does. But in terms of how you work with RITA, you don’t have to train her. Out of the box she analyses the CRM and understands, she reads every single note in the CRM, so understands the context of every single relationship in your business-

Sherrie: That’s pretty sexy notion really isn’t it?

Sarah: Right, so straight out of the box you’re gonna have this fully cognized and fully trained employee that you don’t really have to spend any time getting up to speed. Then the next thing that’s really cool about that, the way I explain this to people is, remember back in the day, and I don’t want to give away my age too much, but back in the day-

Sherrie: You’re super young babe.

Sarah: … when the CRM was a list of cards in a Rolodex. That system in its simplicity kind of worked because you just pulled out the first 20 cards, made 20 phone calls, put them at the back. As that cycled through you’d sort of talk to everyone, but then what happened with software is that we took that visibility away, and we had to then manually search, and create call lists, and do that data search-

Sherrie: We had more.

Sarah: Yeah, and we had much more, so we did that data search and planning ourselves. But I try and explain RITA in her most simple way is this magical assistant that comes in every night, reads every single card in the Rolodex, looks through everything that’s happened in your marketplace and picks the best people for you to call. Then leaves them for you to call in exactly the best order. So she might suggest 20 opportunities for you to connect with, and if you’ve only got four, if you call the first four they’re going to be the best four. If you’ve only got time to call four. So the whole things prioritised-

Sherrie: So that’s great, yeah.

Sarah: … and optimised, and understanding that agents have this resourcing challenge where they need to meet fluctuating demand in the marketplace. It’s very difficult for a human being when you’re the supply, when you’re the product. So she’s really capable of adapting and understanding how agents work, and she’s supportive, she’s not demanding. She doesn’t kind of punish agents for being human.

Sherrie: I guess that’s where the heart to heart connection sort of comes in, the fact that you still pick up the phone but you’re actually just really making sure that you’ve got this super hyper kind of time efficient, kind of what would you say? Ability to be able to contact the best leads.

Sarah: Absolutely, and I think it’s also about identifying a purpose for a phone call. So if you take like a traditional trail, if you like through the CMA, there’s no natural anthropological conversation that happens on day 18. Right? And again on day 24, that’s awkward to call someone and say, well its day 18 and my computer says I should call you-

Sherrie: Call you, yeah it’s very artificial.

Sarah: Yeah, so RITA’s also as well as suggesting who you should call with, she’s suggesting reasons that you might connect with them. So an example of that is she might notice that 15 Smith Streets come on the market, and if as an agent you know the property owners of number 8 and number 12. She’s gonna suggest that you get in contact with your property owners to let them know about the new event that’s happening in their street, it’s a brand messaging about being a market expert. It’s a very current position for a real estate agent to take. The context of the conversation that you have with property owners should change, and should be hyper relevant based on what’s happening in their direct location. So she’s really trying to support the agent to be that local expert without them having to constantly monitor, and constantly do all that mental labour to be in that position and defend it.

Sherrie: Yeah, well I absolutely love that you explained that, ’cause I think for a lot of people its kind of, we all know that AI is absolutely spectacular, and it’s all gonna change our lives, but we don’t know how. So thank you so much for going through that. Look we don’t have a lot of time but I just wanted to run through some quick rapid fire questions. So tell me Sarah, structure or chaos?

Sarah: You got to have both. If you’ve got too much structure things are rigid and you can’t innovate. But if you have too much chaos no one knows what’s happening and there’s no normal.

Sherrie: Your favourite time wasting app?

Sarah: I would say Facebook, but I would debate whether or not that’s time facing.

Sherrie: pple or Windows?

Sarah: Apple.

Sherrie: Apple, love it. Tech gadget that totally changed your world?

Sarah: The iPhone, we’re heading in a direction where the smart phones gonna have more computing power than the human race, it’s not gonna change.

Sherrie: What was the tech gadget that did it?

Sarah: i Watch.

Sherrie: i Watch, yeah okay it’s very cool. .

Sherrie: Well look Sarah thank you so much for joining us today, congratulations, we loved listening to you on stage, it was really wonderful to see an Aussie. To you, we really appreciate you being part of our show today.

from Real Estate Uncut https://ift.tt/2T0wazD

0 notes

ncmagroup · 6 years

Text

“Where are they in your sales pipeline?”

A simple enough question to understand for those familiar with sales, sure—but what if you didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the sales department before starting your own business?

It can be tough to become a salesperson for your own business if you don’t come from a sales background. Plus, it’s easy to feel like a fish out of water when surrounded by acronyms and expressions that, when you don’t come from a sales background, can mean very little.

What is a sales pipeline?

While the format of the so-called sales pipeline is flexible (more on that later), the fundamentals of the sales pipeline are relatively similar, no matter who you ask.

A sales pipeline is:

A visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process

A way to show a path through which prospects are moved

A way to demonstrate the stages of the sales path

What is a sales pipeline not?

We’ll go into what a sales pipeline includes in more detail in a minute, but first, it’s important to discuss what a sales pipeline doesn’t include.

A sales pipeline is not the exact same as a sales funnel, though the two are often used interchangeably. They share overlap, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to separate the two into two distinct concepts. The sales pipeline shows what stage of the process a prospect is a part of; the sales funnel shows similar information but is more concerned with conversion rate throughout the process.

That is to say, a sales pipeline demonstrates the stages through which a prospect can travel in order to go from lead to closed sale. It is a tool for the salesperson to use to better communicate with leads and determine where a lead is at any given moment. Its purpose is more to represent what stage a particular prospect is in at any given time than to shed light on conversion information. The sales funnel, on the other hand, represents conversion rate, as it narrows as it progresses—or as potential leads fall away.

Is there a formula for a sales pipeline?

So, we’ve established that the sales pipeline should be a representation of where a customer is in the process of going from a lead to a closed deal. But, what does that actually look like?

The reality is that your sales pipeline will depend on what you are selling, and how you are selling it. Unfortunately, there isn’t one hard and fast sales pipeline formula.

However, I’ll go over some of the key stages you’ll likely include.

Stages of a sales pipeline:

Stage 1: Lead gathering

The first stage of the sales pipeline involves collecting your leads. There are, of course, nearly infinite ways you could do this—whether your leads are site visits, in-person connections you’ve made via a marketing event, cold call prospects, and so on.

This stage is simply focused on acquisition; when a lead appears at the outset, it falls into this stage of the pipeline.

Stage 2: Lead qualifying

During this stage, you will go about the process of qualifying the leads you’ve gathered in stage one. Now again, “qualifying” leads means something different depending on your industry, but at the end of the day, a qualified lead is a lead that has been well-researched and vetted and is likely to become a customer.

They have done more than just engaged with you or your brand—they may have requested further information by filling out a form or downloading your newsletter, or taken some other action that indicates interest. If you’re selling in-person, perhaps your lead qualification process involves research on the prospect, their company, and their status within the business (are they qualified to make purchasing decisions?).

Stage 3: Lead validation as a sales opportunity

At this point, you (or in many cases, a salesperson or sales team) will invest real time and effort into this lead, as there is a large potential for them to become a client. There may be increased ad spending directed toward leads that are at this stage, or meetings may be scheduled to discuss the sale with the potential client.

The intricacy of the lead validation process is hugely dependent on what you are selling; a SaaS solution is going to have a more complex sales pipeline and validation process than that of a business that sells office chairs, for example, and does most of their sales work in person. Similarly, an entrepreneur who functions as a sole entity and is selling their services (say, as a writer, designer, programmer) might condense the process of qualification and validation.

The main takeaway for this stage, however, is simple—when a lead is at this stage, it’s time to start selling.

Stage 4: Proposal

If you imagine the traditional sales pitch delivered in a room, between salesman and manager (in my mind it’s always a scene from “The Office,” but perhaps this shows the fact that my experience tends more toward the e-commerce environment!), this is where the salesperson outlines their offer. You may be delivering a carefully crafted sales pitch, sending a proposal, or down to the final email in your drip series. However you define proposal, it should be the moment that you ask your lead to become a client and hope they will give you their business.

Stage 5: Deal closure (involving conversion or a lost deal)

Finally—did your lead become a paying customer? This last stage represents whether or not your sales efforts were successful for the lead in question. This is the culmination of your sales efforts, and when you get to determine if you’re adding a client to your roster, or are back to the drawing board.

But wait—what if my sales pipeline needs more steps?

If your sales pipeline is more complicated and requires more steps to accurately represent the stages your leads go through, by all means, add more detail. The idea here is not to lay out a concrete structure, but rather to illustrate the concept—and the concept of a sales pipeline is inherently flexible.

It is also nearly impossible to detail steps that will transcend industry; depending on what you’re selling and the method in which you’re selling it (do you make sales in person? Via an e-commerce store? Do you sell a physical product or a subscription service? Do you deliver personalized, involved project work to a select few clients, or do you sell to the masses?).

As you construct your own pipeline, think about how you’ve made sales in the past. What process did you go through? How did your sales go from leads to customers? Document this process, considering the framework above, and make it replicable. If you’ve yet to make a sale, do plenty of research on your industry, consider how you plan to move forward, and go from there. Your sales pipeline can be an iterative tool that you use to maintain a clearer understanding of the status of potential customers.

What about the “visual representation” aspect?

Depending on how much attention (and money) you would like to devote to your sales pipeline, you can make the visual aspect as intricate or as simple as you choose.

There are tons of sales and marketing pipeline management tools available; if you’ve been considering a CRM (or customer relationship management) tool for other aspects of your business, most CRMs have their own built-in way of illustrating where your leads are within your sales pipeline. Salesforce, for example, is perhaps one of the most well-known and popular CRM tools, and it will allow you to monitor your sales pipeline, and Close.io is another CRM I’ve heard good things about.

If you’d rather go lower tech, it’s also completely possible to represent your sales pipeline in a free solution like Trello and customize it based on your requirements. There are also free sales pipeline templates available, like this one from Hubspot and these via Sales Hacker.

At the end of the day, just like the steps of the sales pipeline process, what you use to actually track your pipeline is dependent on how complicated you need the process to be based on your industry. If you are dealing with just a few clients at a time, a feature-heavy CRM that allows you to detail extensive information about your clients may not be necessary. However, if you’re dealing with a large volume of leads and need to organize the information in order to focus your sales efforts correctly for each stage of the pipeline, choosing to use a pipeline management tool is potentially a smart idea.

Can I leverage the information gathered from my sales pipeline to help drive more sales?

In a word, yes. By keeping an eye on key sales metrics and tracking them over time, you can see areas where you will be able to move the needle and drive more sales.

For example, if you are tracking “new leads per month” as a key metric, you will be able to see, on a month-by-month basis, if you’re adding new leads at a faster pace, or if you’re falling behind. This can then inform a look at your marketing efforts or other factors that may be contributing to more or less leads over a given period of time.

This is really the valuable takeaway at the heart of the sales pipeline: the sales pipeline, when used as a tool to monitor key metrics, can allow you to both see how your sales are progressing at any given time and shed insight into the effectiveness of your overall lead generation strategies.

Do you have a sales pipeline that you use within your business? Do you use a CRM or other pipeline management system to keep track of your sales pipeline? Which metrics do you track? Let me know in the comments!

Go to our website: www.ncmalliance.com

The Sales Pipeline, Explained “Where are they in your sales pipeline?” A simple enough question to understand for those familiar with sales, sure—but what if you didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the sales department before starting your own business?

0 notes

alienation2016-blog · 7 years

Text

New Post has been published on Alienation

New Post has been published on https://alienation.biz/nine-tips-to-choose-the-best-website-development-company/

Nine Tips To Choose The Best Website Development Company

Web improvement firms have a extra function in enhancing the client employer’s logo name and their reputation online. In quick, the success of a logo on-line often relies on the information of net builders. More and extra customers are delivering to web to get details concerning the products and offerings offered through a particular brand. And because the famous say goes, “First affect is the first-rate affect” which means a internet site should be as catchy and awesome as feasible to turn a potential consumer in to a commercial enterprise.

A lot of internet layout companies are to be had to create internet site to your enterprise in line with the finances you have got. But most effective a expert net development organisation can see the larger picture of their client requirements in place of compromising for their quick-term desires. A lot of studies should appear earlier than choosing the quality internet site designing and improvement organization. Landing in to the incorrect development partner will bring about long-time period results that is probably unfavourable for the recognition of your emblem.

Here are some hints to help you choose the proper internet site development business enterprise.

Are they Receptive?

This is an vital component inside the choice of the right net improvement firm. You may have to check whether or not the web site design employer is serious in coping with your queries and returning calls. If they’re making delays in replying for your queries previous to organising a settlement with them, then it is acceptable so as to avoid them considering their responsiveness within the long-term once the website online launches can’t be guaranteed at all.

Do they have got an advisor to brief you?

Companies imparting fine web development offerings can have advisors who will try to understand your requirements and will recommend you whether or not you’ll should make any modifications within the designing and functionality of the internet site which you have in mind. Usually if the designing of the website does no longer in shape with the offerings you offer, it’d end up a waste of money. An marketing consultant allow you to clear this impediment before the start of the net improvement manner itself.

Take a observe the internet improvement company’s own website

Most web layout corporations show off their very own internet site to draw clients toward them. If their internet site isn’t always appealing, then how can they make your internet site attractive?

Does the internet development enterprise offer you with repeated pointers?

These are sturdy symptoms of a proper internet site development offerings enterprise. They frequently serve you as a trusted guide via claiming that some of your ideas are bad and could have the explanations for it too. It is not vital for maximum of the manufacturers approaching website design agencies to have an intensive knowledge regarding the adjustments happening across net standards, eCommerce and safety standards, internet requirements and usability reports.

Have a examine the previous completed projects

It is crucial for the patron groups to check the preceding projects executed by means of the net development firm they’re approaching and like to talk with the ones customers to get a comments about the internet development agency.

How after sales service are controlled?

This is one location where most of the groups sense upset at times with their client web improvement organization. The motive, the lack of enthusiasm to assist the emblem employer as soon as the venture is over. The satisfactory web development corporation would interact in a protracted-term relationship with the purchaser by way of offering uninterrupted spherical the clock offerings to them concerning internet site preservation.

Whether direct communication is permitted with the web builders?

More than a marketing person, it’s miles the technical character with a view to be of use for the duration of the improvement stage of your website. Usually a crew of net designers and net developers might be involved within the developmental tiers of your internet site and it’s far best them who will be able to excellent apprehend your requirements on the subject of the creative in addition to technical mind.

Do you or the net improvement employer very own the internet site code?

Most of the internet site development companies own the internet site code on account that they count on the consumer to method them in destiny additionally if any adjustments ought to be made. But take a look at whether or not your agency will be relaxed with such regulations. The customer website improvement company could make the adjustments effortlessly considering they have hands-on revel in developing your internet site in which as in case you very own the website code, you’ll have the liberty to make any changes. But the undertaking would be a piece difficult for the IT branch for the reason that code is evolved by using the consumer web development business enterprise.

Are complete offerings presented?

The first-class web development organization might provide comprehensive services and thereby takes the entire obligation of your web site design, development and renovation. The technique starts of evolved from growing a preliminary strategy, making plans, design, improvement, trying out as well as advertising.

It needs to be taken notice that most of these companies also are supplying cellular utility improvement. Most of the client corporations are shifting in the direction of growing a cell utility for their services and products similarly to the website improvement services on the grounds that a majority of the customers now uses smartphone for on-line purchases.

Total Company Resource Management

One of the demanding situations that companies face is providing a regular stage of provider to its customers. This is even greater hard for organizations with more than one vicinity. In the hunt to guarantee regular carrier, many agencies impose standardized guidelines on its personnel. Unfortunately, standardization can result in service that is regular however appears insensitive and uncaring to the patron!

In this short treatise, I suggest a technique for overcoming that weakness.

Many inside the enterprise international will apprehend the acronym CRM as Customer Relationship Management. Like many acronyms, it has distinctive meanings in different industries. In the aviation world, as an example, CRM stands for Crew Resource Management. As a pilot, I turned into required to learn and use CRM ideas every day. With my varied reviews in aviation and in business, I consider there’s a need for Crew Resource Management inside the business world.

History

Today in aviation, CRM is the software of personal and crew control principles to beautify the safe operation of aircraft, both on the ground and inside the air. In the early days of aviation, the Captain became the only source of presumed know-how on the flight deck, even supposing there was an skilled and competent co-pilot inside the right seat. In reality, jokes had been made that co-pilots had been “self-loading bags.”

After some excessive profile injuries, along with United Airlines Flight 173 in 1978, it was recognized that all contributors of the cockpit group ought to be extra assertive in making sure the safety of flight. Thus turned into born Cockpit Resource Management.

Shortly thereafter, it have become clean that flight attendants had an crucial component in ensuring the safety of flight, and the same acronym now stood for Crew Resource Management to well known their significant function. It become soon diagnosed that every company employee performed a function in flight safety, and, for a short length, the acronym have become Company Resource Management. It has reverted to Crew Resource Management, probable as it sounds more compelling.

CRM consists of no longer handiest the pilots, however the complete aircrew, floor crew, and all others inside and outside the business enterprise who paintings together to make certain the aircraft arrives appropriately.

I recommend a brand new acronym for the business global, TCRM, Total Company Resource Management, to indicate that personnel at each stage need to understand their function in gratifying the business enterprise project. To accomplish this, senior management need to make sure that each one ranges of management recognize the human elements involved in staffing a a hit enterprise. Since not all will clearly have this information, managers, and particularly new managers, must participate in human factors schooling. This is the simplest manner that TCRM concepts can grow to be employer philosophy.

Basic Concepts of TCRM

Management have to take into account that lasting modifications in conduct take time. Company employees aren’t only a collection of equipped people with a single task; they are individuals who engage with one another on a daily foundation, a crew, if you will, all operating to accomplish the organization venture.

Everyone’s behavior must foster company effectiveness, with absolutely everyone contributing to fulfillment. To achieve success, there need to be opportunities for practice. For instance, off web site meetings may be applied to train employees on how to make contributions, aside from their daily job venture, to organisation success. Who’s to say, for example, that the mail clerk who visits each branch cannot take a look at a procedure and ask why it’s accomplished that way, and provide a suggestion for development.

This will most effective manifest if there’s an open surroundings of inclusion, with a standardized vehicle for making recommendations for improvement. In many groups, but, the bodily proposal field has grow to be a funny story, resulting in its elimination. The successor to the proposal box is a corporation e-mail gadget with an area for employees (and customers, inside the nice groups) to provide feedback and pointers.

But greater essential than a virtual idea container, is the opportunity for managers to look the worker in movement. A great control style, for my part, is that utilized by a few corporations in the early 1970’s and made famous via management representative Tom Peters in 1982. This is known as Management through Wandering Around (or occasionally, Management by using Walking Around). Why wait for a monthly or quarterly document to identify a trouble, while you may mingle with people and right away have a look at or listen that a trade is wanted. Managers need to apprehend that companies are made from human beings, now not numbers!

Furthermore, every supervisor have to practice the precept that what is proper is more critical than who’s proper! Managers should additionally understand why people do what they do. There are constantly underlying motives why we behave the way we do. Every manager need to be required to read appropriate mag articles and books on human conduct as part of his or her activity. The wheel does not need to be re-invented, however we do need to recognize the way it works. If we will manage our conduct, we can predict our overall performance. This is true at every degree.

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mikegchambers · 7 years

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Slightly Cloudy with a Chance of SaaS

SaaS is often so brainlessly easy to implement that for many executives it should be the first toe-test into cloud

There is a logical progression in the psychological Stages of Cloud Acceptance among business and IT executives:

Do nothing. Hope it goes away.

Get concerned that you’re last to the party.

Realize that the security issues are perfectly manageable.

Trial some low-risk SaaS applications.

Test cloud with a tiny, non-critical new project so nobody gets fired if it doesn’t work out.

Migrate all the back-ups and disaster recovery to the cloud.

Road bump! Find it’s costing more than expected… and then rearchitect quietly to do it properly this time.

Seriously embrace hybrid cloud since it seems to offer everything.

Ditch hybrid because it’s not delivering as expected — go full public cloud.

Wonder what to do with all the data centers you no longer need.

These are the 10 steps to True Cloud Enlightenment. It can take between 2 to 5 years from “no cloud ever” to boasting at executive lunches how you predicted the whole cloud thing and saved millions on data centers.

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The Enterprise Adoption Curve

— @swardley

In my prior blogs we’ve discussed that the cloud isn’t going away (all growth charts are up and to the right), you’re not too late to the party, and there are all sorts of robust security solutions that can solve your PCI, HIPAA and other regulatory and compliance needs.

The next step in our cloud evolution is SaaS — pronounced ‘sass’ by the cool kids — which is like the Häagen-Daz of software naming.

SaaS is the Gateway Drug to Cloud

If you like your acronyms to have upper and lowercase letters, you’ve come to the right place since we have SaaS, PaaS and IaaS all as descriptors for different levels of cloud.

Software-as-a-Service (Saas) might sound mysterious, but think of it ‘more like Gmail, less like installing from CD’. SaaS is usually software that runs in a browser and takes care of itself — major apps like Salesforce, Concur, Workday, Jira and Slack — and for regular users the perception is that it works much better than in-house applications.

All of these SaaS tools have the full usefulness of a piece of software you might have once installed from a DVD, tar file or diskette — remember that? But now the software platform itself automagically manages upgrades, backups, security and other boring activities that you would perhaps screw up if you did them in-house.

An important takeaway here is that although these apps appear to be stand-alone — after all, they are outside your company — they can integrate with other software very easily. All popular SaaS apps talk to other on-premise and cloud-based applications using APIs, which are basically like commands for passing information back and forth without needing to know how the systems work internally.

Most work with LDAP so you can use your existing corporate directory of users. And there are also some great tools like Zapier which help wire up how these applications chat to each other, so you can automate a calendar invite from Google Mail when a new lead appears in a Salesforce from a Marketo landing page (not the most useful examine I know).

The net effect is that SaaS apps behave like in-house apps but they are much faster to deploy — and work all the time.

Arguably the biggest drawback of a SaaS app is that it’s a black box managed by another company. But unless your corporate mission is to run commoditized applications better than Google or Microsoft, you should quickly shun such negative thoughts. SaaS will go a long way to simplifying your technology costs, managing headcount and reducing misery and suffering caused by your badly implemented versions of the same thing. It’s also a very safe first step if you are in IT Management (hint, hint).

SaaS is often so brainlessly easy to implement that for many executives it should be the first toe-test into cloud.

How Much Does All of This Cost?

On the one hand, SaaS apps are nothing like the usual IT boondoggle which can be bad for executives depending on vendor dinners and charity golf events to fill their social calendars. Importantly, much like other cloud services, your spend will move almost entirely from capital expenditure to operating expenditure, so no more depreciation games for the accounting department either.

While the total cost of ownership will drop overall, there are some subtleties:

Licensing fees generally move from single purchase, per-seat or “let’s pick a number” to standard per-user subscription monthly pricing.

You may require outside advisory services for configuration and migration, and often companies forget to budget for this.

Change management costs are usually overstated since SaaS usability is often much better than what its replacing.

Sometimes migration costs are hard to predict but will depend on how much of a undocumented, labyrinthine, Kafka-esque cluster your existing system is.

A Quick Round-up of the Best SaaS

This is becoming a crowd marketplace and there are hundreds of quality apps in this space. Still I wanted to mention a few of the best SaaS offerings currently out there, especially the ones with broad applicability.

Google Suite — the Gold Standard of SaaS

Google’s Microsoft Office alternative was one of the first SaaS offerings and is probably the most widely known. A few years ago, I rolled out Google Docs (then renamed Google Apps, then Google Suite) to a few companies and the power of SaaS was quickly obvious. Let’s be honest — corporate email services usually suck, especially if you’re a road warrior with mobile devices, stumbling over large files, systems upgrades and spam floods. For on-premise Outlook users, even moving PCs at work can make you want to never touch a keyboard again.

Google Mail is a fantastic corporate alternative since it takes the suck out of what is essentially a very well established and unexciting piece of technology. Why run your own exchange servers when Google will do this for you for $5 a month? Even Outlook die-hards can tie on their favorite outdated mail client around the service and everyone is happy.

To me, Google Suite embodies all that it great about SaaS. It’s not a clone of Office but does feature the most compelling real-time collaboration tools. A team of people can all edit the same spreadsheet and see each other’s update in real time (no emailing documents back and forth) and it works from any device anywhere equally well. The administration tools are also first-class and going back to on-premise Exchange feels like using a VCR after you’ve seen how Netflix works.

There are big cost savings here if you employ the entire G Suite toolset properly. It can handle your SSO using two-factor and security keys, manage spam better than any other platform, host all your files, and integrate with a Marketplace full of powerful CRM, payroll, accounting and workflow tools. When I hear IT people dismiss it as “just email”, they clearly haven’t seen it in the last decade.

The startling difference between the speed, reliability and cost of on-premise email versus Google is, well, no contest really.

Manage Your Pipeline with Salesforce

Salesforce became the first billion dollar cloud company for a reason — it enabled Sales and Marketing teams to select and configure their own software without dealing with their godawful IT departments. Since it operates in a browser, shadow IT evolved from Excel and Access into the major leagues and by the time IT complained, it was already running a substantial part of the company.

Quickly forgotten after a weekend away.

It’s a decent platform and a good fit for many medium-to-large size companies. Its own sales force can be Oracle-like in trying to use Jedi mind tricks to make you buy everything — you don’t need all the add-ons. It does pay to find a couple of good developers to help with the integration and customization, since this step can easily double the cost of implementation. That aside, CRM has always been a painful software category and Salesforce is a good solution in a difficult space.

There is a common love-hate relationship with Salesforce. Users hate it until you try to take it away.

You Should Really Be Using Workday

I once had the misfortune to work on a large PeopleSoft project and honestly didn’t know software could be architected that poorly. PeopleSoft is/was on-premise and let’s companies customize its performance by writing their own code in the wrong places.

The eventual result is that every upgrade requires consultancy organizations to ‘help you’ analyze your customizations, apply the upgrade, and then reapply the offending code. PeopleSoft implementations break so many established tenets of good coding and architecture standards, I don’t even know where to start.

Workday is great for escaping the PeopleSoft cycle of despair, since it allows rampant customization yet they manage the upgrades invisibly. This is achieved by allowing extensibility (the tech equivalent of adding neon lighting under your car) using well-worn approaches such as plug-ins. Any change you make for your own business doesn’t impact the core code base or any of their other customers in the environment. This is a classic win-win case for SaaS but couldn’t be more stark when compared to the spaghetti coding in the on-premise alternative.

Jira, Confluence and Atlassian

Atlassian makes some solid cloud products and they’re based in Austin so I’ll throw a little Texas love their way. Jira is a wonderfully elegant cloud tool for managing workflow pipelines for agile teams, especially software engineers. This is great if your project tracking tends to happen in spreadsheets and scraps of paper, or you’re trying to make Trello and Basecamp jump through hoops and do unnatural things. For sure, Jira can be a horror show on-premise for complicated reasons but it hums along in the cloud with no issues at all.

Confluence is a Wiki tool by the same company that can tame and replace the on-premise SharePoint dragon that plagues large firms. SharePoint has a tendency to become a maze of outdated documents and pages incredibly quickly, and somehow manages to be both hard to use for the casual user while not really seeming to do very much. The staleness issue is more to do with the fact that philosophically Wikis make much more sense for many businesses experiencing rapid change. It’s easier to keep smaller portals up to date with current information for now than keeping a document archive that somehow is supposed to be the history of a company.

Consider dumping your existing process document repository and replace it with a wiki.

Slack — the Ultimate Communications Tool

There are some strong opinions about Slack especially from people who’ve never used it. On the surface, it’s Skype, Hangouts and every other chat tool rehashed — but why! — until you start testing in different groups of people and realize how closely it mirrors how we all work together today. Out of all the software I’ve used in the last few years, Slack is the biggest surprise in terms of how a brilliantly executed and blissfully simple design accelerates productivity and team communication.

Development teams love Slack almost universally due to its automation capabilities and the sort of off-the-cuff informal chatting options (like using giphy) that dev teams enjoy. But regular humans also quickly embrace the tool’s elegance and I’ve seen it reduce email clutter dramatically as a ‘mass cc’ alternative. It’s also surprising how Slack scales to group of thousands of users and somehow doesn’t drive you insane with updates — many messaging apps look pretty backwards by comparison.

These are just some of the most well known SaaS applications but there are thousands out there. Ever heard of Git? Cloud9? Zendesk? Twilio? Docusign? I guarantee at least one of these will rock your company.

Did you enjoy this? Let me know by the clicking the little heart icon!

In upcoming blogs, I’ll dive into AWS and see how to use various services for a simple cloud-based project.

Slightly Cloudy with a Chance of SaaS was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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seanmeverett · 7 years

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Diary of a Madman, Page 38

10,900 people peering inside, you’re one of the chosen.

I. This Week’s Analyses [Aerospace & Business]

Biodegradable Battery [FEATURED]: your future biohacked, personal power station, available today. Learn more on the Energy channel.

ULA’s Roadmap for the New Space Economy [fountainhead]: notes from the international workshop a month ago. Learn more on the Space channel.

Acronyms for Autonomous Airplanes [free]: a decade of insight collapsed down into a few vocabulary words. Learn more on the Aviation channel.

2017 Startup Compensation Report & How To Understand It [fountainhead]: take it from 5 years of experience designing incentive compensation programs for some of the most valuable businesses in the world. Learn more on the Startup channel.

What Dark Energy Has To Do With Your Soul [fountainhead]: the point at which physics crosses the spiritual. Learn more on the Philosophy channel.

200-Page Talent & Organization Design Notes [fountainhead]: an entire set of class notes from one of my Chicago Booth classes. The machine that builds the machine. Learn more on the HR channel.

How To Apply Hodinkee’s Business Model to Other Businesses [fountainhead]: three very simple mechanics that make all the difference. Learn more on the Business channel.

II. Manifestation Beads

We all need a little help in life, especially from those who give more than they receive. We met a friendly couple on Sunday who quit their nursing and programming jobs, sold their house, and started on their passion. Since they did that and jumped into the river of the Universe, it has carried them ever-forward faster than they could have imagined.

A storefront opened up the moment they decided they wanted one, a man selling bags showed up the moment they spoke their desire out loud. And off they were to the races. They don’t have a web store up, but after witnessing their small cottage business and remembering back to the Hodinkee business model analysis earlier this week, we think they’re really onto something.

First, their product starts with the benefit to you. Ultimate Prosperity Bracelet. Ultimate Wealth Bracelet.

They use high quality parts in their product. The beads aren’t just off-the-shelf.

They describe their product in detail with the hang tag. Both in terms of each crystal’s vibration and benefits to the wearer.

But most importantly, the woman is a Light Worker, and customizes the experience just for you. She asks you what you’re seeking. She recommends a bracelet or makes one custom with the right combination of crystals to help you achieve exactly what you’re looking for. Then she talks to you for about 5 to 10 minutes and gives you some advice.

Say out loud what you want from the universe and the time period you want it. Just like ordering from a restaurant you know your food will come to you. And then, don’t feel guilty about wanting something or having achieved it.

All for an obtainable price point of $25 to $40.

When you compare this to most software startups selling marketing or CRM software, this husband and wife team are running circles around them. Crowds form just to wait and hear her speak to you, giving your own special message. And then you have a physical object to take home and wear to remind you of how powerful you are, and what you’re capable of manifesting.

We might just help them with eCom since we do have a store of our own. Give me a shout if you’re interested in their product and I can put you in touch.

III. Newsworthy News

Music: as a control mechanism from Coltrane’s math to user interfaces. Listen to our Spring 2017 Think Tank Playlist, nearly 3 hours of feel good vibrations in honor of Coachella.

Space: the innovation landscape from NASA. Quarterly Space Tech funding chart for the last 5 years. It’s comin’ up. In the meantime, the new Star Wars trailer dropped. The new Space Economy is just getting started. Goldman Sachs even believes in it.

Energy: we’re now a Top Writer on Medium for Energy.

Throwback: the biggest problem with every search engine.

Social Media: Instagram now has more Stories users than Snapchat. That didn’t take long.

Emotions: they are just your Biologic Intelligence interpreting the billion bits of sensory inputs you’re receiving. A shortcut, if you will.

China: been telling ya, they’re getting in too deep to US startups for the Pentagon’s tastes.

A Good Deed: she’s giving two grants of $5K each to live your dream.

Investing: mutual funds are the devil. Also, look at Japan and Emerging markets, so say the “experts”. Read more than them and you will become your own.

VC: 74-page deck on global VC trends. Seed funding is down because people are sick of silly mobile SAAS apps. Invent, don’t innovate, entrepreneurs.

Invention: Bezos’s annual shareholder letter, this time, mentioned invention, not innovation. Thanks for believing the reading, Jeff.

Robotics: investment [per Michael Hartnett of Bank of America]: Sept 2016: $200M, Apr 2017: $1.12B. That’s a 5.5x increase in 7 months.

Cell Service: we made the switch to T-Mobile a year ago, loved the $0 overseas fees, and now they’ve invested $8B in their next gen 5G network.

Apps: binaries are getting massive, to the point you need to be connected to WiFi to do any sort of updates. Their CDN bill must be massive.

AR: AirPods are on back, back order. People ordering now have to wait 14 weeks. We ordered ours 9 weeks ago, won’t get until May 1st. Also, Apple’s secret diabetes team working on health integrations for future AirPods? Our analysis on where they’re heading.

Animation: the MoonBot guys are old friends with great storytelling chops. The future of animation is AR.

Video: Brightcove finally got themselves a Live platform. Welcome to the party, chaps.

Chips: more efficient microchips make themselves super.

Biohacking: this time, at Six Flags.

Self-Driving: Deep Learning gets you to Level 3 self-driving. Years of data gets you to Level 4. But making the quantum leap to Level 5, means you need something altogether different. PROME’s Biologic Intelligence is what comes next after you reach the limits of Deep Learning. Visualized. VW invests $180M in a Chinese AI startup. Not biologic in nature. Whoops.

Tech Cars: Apple building its own GPU and hiring key Imagination folks + QNX CEO is a play for in-car AR. The writing is right there on the white wall.

Roadmap for the Species: A computer in every house. A phone in every pocket. A robotic friend in every mind.

CARS SOLD Toyota: 10.2M cars sold in 2016 Daimler: 2.2M Volkswagen: 10.3M Honda: 4.7M GM: 9.6M Tesla: 76,230 Ford: 6.7M

VALUATION Toyota: $172B Daimler: $76B Volkswagen: $72B Honda: $52B Tesla: $51B GM: $50B Ford: $45B

The difference between fun and danger might just be perspective of age.

— Sean

Read The Rest

In one list or: 37, 36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Join The Fountainhead Movement for exclusive access to bleeding edge think pieces and technological inventions.

Humanizing Tech is a premium technological think tank for building humanity’s future. It covers Biologic Intelligence, autonomous robotics, self-learning AI, superhuman augmentation, personal hedge funds, editable DNA, SAAS space platforms, personal power stations, and video as an app. This newsletter is a peek inside the Editor’s mind.

Diary of a Madman, Page 38 was originally published in Humanizing Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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timothyakoonce · 7 years

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Transcript of How to Produce Content with a Limited Budget

Transcript of How to Produce Content with a Limited Budget written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Transcript provided by Verbatim Transcription Services

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Transcript

John: We all need content but what does it take to produce content when you have no budget and no resources and no time. We’re going to talk to Chris Moody about producing content with little budget.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Active Campaign. This is really my new go to CRM, ESP, marketing automation, really low cost, any size business can get into it, starting at like $19 a month. You can keep track of your clients, you can see who is visiting your website, you can follow up based on behavior. Check out active campaign, there will be a link in the show notes but it’s ducttape.me/dtmactive.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, this is John Jantsch and my guest today is Chris Moody. Among other things, he is the content marketing leader at GE Digital. So Chris, thanks for joining me.

Chris: Thanks for having me John.

John: So you know most of my listeners, many of my listeners are small business owners or marketers, working with small business owners and so let’s set the table straight, I mean we’re thinking you know, GE Digital, you got essentially leader GE Digital with content, you’ve got unlimited resources to execute on content but tell me what the reality is for what it is — you know what does that look like for your role.

Chris: Sure and this role specifically I — the title is concept marketing but right now I’m an individual contributor. So that would be the first caveat to say okay there’s some limits of resources and one guy trying to organize a lot of stuff around content marketing right now there are ways we work cross-functionally and tie into other resources but when I first started I actually didn’t have a budget. And this budget season we will have some budget to put towards content marketing but the challenges are extremely different. I came from an acquisition at Oracle which was an Oracle marketing cloud where I running marketing for a content marketing start-up. And we had quite a bit of budget to put towards content because that’s what we were doing, we were marketing to marketers. And now at GE Digital you know we’re trying to close million dollar deals. So you don’t really tweet your way to a million dollar deal or blog your way to a million dollar deal necessarily which puts a different set of constraints on how we try and align marketing to actually driving revenue here.

John: Well let’s start of by — and I know this is an impossible question but at least from your point of view you know, what is — how do you define content? You know when somebody says — when you tell people you’re a content marketing leader I’m sure they’ll like, what does that mean? So how do you define content or can you?

Chris: Sure. I think — Just broadly, it’s essentially everything that we do as marketers. And content marketing is used as a term to categories a certain set of activities but everything we do is a form of content. Every email that we send, every webinar that we do, every presentation that we create, all of this is content marketing and that’s one thing that… it’s not necessarily e-books and whitepapers and blogs, it could be emails and turning your emails into a source of content. So I look at it in the broad sense of the word and say it’s everything that we do, everything is a source of content whether we define it that way or not.

John: Yeah I have been for the last couple of years referring to content as the voice of strategy. And I think that’s sufficiently broad enough but that to me is what it really is. It’s just the various ways you communicate your overall marketing or business strategy.

Chris: Right. I love that.

John: So everybody needs content. I mean as we started talking you know it was fashionable five/six years ago to talk about content as king and I talk about it as content is air now. It pretty much powers every channel. So — but it’s also hard and expensive. So what is a personal on a limited budget to do?

Chris: I think the first step and this is something that Marcus Sheridan has been saying all along; answer questions. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, FAQ pages have gradually disappeared from websites and it became less fashionable to have frequently asked questions on your site. And I know that people turn each question into blog posts which is definitely a best practice. But if you’re not answering every single question that your customers and prospects have and making that content available, someone else will. And the best educator wins and that’s something Marcus has preached, so that’s the first thing I mean interview everyone you work with, talk to sales, what are their most common objection, that’s where I would start just asking the questions. But a lot of it is philosophical and the mindset. I think as marketers, we’ve become entranced by the next big thing. And watching companies that do amazing content regardless of budget and resources right, we woke up to LinkedIn and Hubspot and some of the pioneers of inbound marketing and the great e-books that they create. And sometimes that just doesn’t work for your business. And the approach of trying to hit a home run with everything that you create is one that gives me a lot of angst and drives me crazy because we are not all LinkedIn or Hubspot and sometimes that won’t even work as well as other things in your business so keep a voice and an ear to the ground and understand the voice of your customer, what do they want? What questions are they trying to answer and then you can figure out the best form-factor for that piece of content. But that’s really where everything starts, it’s answering the questions of the people who can drive revenue for you.

John: Yeah and I think another thing that gets really lost in the conversation about you know, more content is more content, is that I think we have to get very good at figuring out what content we need for where the buyer is in a lot of content like blog posts you know maybe are great for awareness, maybe for a little education but you know, don’t we have to actually think about all the intent for our content and create different forms of content for trust building and conversion and nurturing and I think that conversation seems to get lost often in the idea of content just being blog posts.

Chris: That’s exactly right. And that’s where my head is now at GE Digital. I mean we have TV spots, everybody knows General Electric. Pretty much everyone in the world has heard of Thomas Edison. So it’s a completely different set of problems and challenges and opportunities for me as a content marketer to say, “Okay. I’m not trying to tell everyone who GE is or even necessarily who GE Digital is. I’m trying to solve the problems of our customers. And what are those? How do we get content in front of them? ” And how do we interact with sales to make sure that that’s actually getting in front of the customers. And how do we create a strategy for sales where they’re looking for our content, not necessarily us sending that out to them and this is the big thing at Oracle too. You’re marketing your marketing is something no one really talks about, it’s always what’s your most popular blog post, which for me, it’s the blog post about getting sued over a blog post, which is a whole other rabbit we could go down. But I don’t… I don’t necessarily understand why so often we forget what is most important and that’s driving revenue. And it may have nothing to do with blog posts depending on your business and for me right now, my head is not around blog posts, my head is around how do we teach industrial manufacturing companies how they can optimize their productivity because a 1% improvement can be hundreds of millions of dollars. So how am I going to do that as a marketer?

John: One of the other challenges I see a lot of companies struggle with is you know, content production is a pretty good sized job yet they give it to you know one maybe part-time person in some cases. How do you get — you know and a lot of times that part-time person doesn’t you know they don’t have sales conversations or engineering conversations and so it’s very difficult for them to even produce the content. So how do you make content everyone’s job?

Chris: I think your analogy, your metaphor earlier you know content is air. I think that’s a perfect approach because I’ve always viewed it as kind of this glue or some type of material that transfers across everyone because the job of anyone in content is to figure out what challenges are there for their potential customers and how do we best meet those challenges and no matter your industry, you’re working with subject matter experts. And you know, I’m surrounded by PHDs and people who’ve invented terms you know, acronyms used in manufacturing, some of the people who invented those are peers. And sure, I’m maybe one person but I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk to them and try to understand hey, what are you hearing from the customers? And it’s not this formal process, it can just be an email or a phone call, a message on slack. It could be any way of communication. But just checking in and saying what are you hearing? And you can start to put that in Excel or whatever and aggregate the most popular responses. It doesn’t have to be a formal process and I think too often we stay in the marketing bubble and we don’t venture out of that bubble to talk to other people. But almost every time I’ve ever approach anyone in sales or customer support or services and said hey, I’m trying to create content that will help us close deals, I’d love to understand some of the pain points and where you see opportunities, they perk up, they want to have that conversation and that’s how you turn everyone else into content practitioners. You help them understand you know, we can talk on the phone for 30 minutes and record that and then I can go back and create in written form or maybe we do a podcast, like we’re talking on the phone right now and this is a form of content, you’ll turn that into a blog post and then you’ll share it on social media. It’s the exact same approach but there’s this fear of the blinking cursor and I think that’s the laziness of many of us in our profession is to say, hey Joe, I need you to write a blog post. Hey Joe, I need you to write a white paper. And when you stare at a blank word document or blank Google doc, it’s completely different to saying I’d love to ask you some questions and really understand what you’re encountering. So that you know, journalistic approach I think it turns everyone into content practitioners because they don’t necessarily have to write it.

John: I think to some degree it’s a culture shift in an organization too because so many people have you know, marketing known’s marketing people are over there producing all the content and I think you hit on a very good point, I think there’s a lot of people that would love to be asked because they actually do have better insight into the customer or better insight into the challenges of the customer and so you’re almost doing a disservice to the organization but not including them.

Chris: I completely agree and the sad reality of marketing right now — I mean the a group did a study a couple of years ago and 80% of CEOs aren’t satisfied with their marketing teams. 80%. And when you think about that what are the reasons? And when you dive into that it’s usually tied back to revenue or profitability or understanding the numbers. And for us to assume that we have the answers and we can you know figure it out with Google search or Google trends, which sometimes those are indicators. But in many industries, they may not be as digital savvy as marketing to marketers. So that may not be an accurate trend line. It may be people inside the walls and talking to them. So I completely agree with you. It’s a disservice not to talk to those folks and it’s not something that’s hard to do in practice, it just requires picking up the phone or walking somewhere else in the office.

John: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Thriveleads. This is a tool that we used on the Duct Tape Marketing website thoroughly for content upgrades, for slide-in boxes, actually we even used the visual editor for all the pages and landing pages that we designed. So go check it out at ducttapemarketing.com we’ll have a special link in the show notes for today and check it out.

So you mentioned answering questions is a great way to generate or get ideas for content. I will tell you another way that I’ve used for years with organizations is you know those engineering folks or sales folks or service folks probably are sitting on a treasure trove of content in their sent email.

Chris: Yep.

John: So you know again another great place to go and find you know highly technical answers and consultative you know approaches that you probably can turn into things — and in many cases probably repeat themselves.

Chris: That’s exactly right. I mean how many times have we sent emails and then you know you’ve sent it, but you can’t find it. And you search and you search and you search and you can’t find the exact one. One thing — we had a customer that was a large seller of tires online, which that narrows it down to two really. So you can figure out which one. They set up a system where they BCC’ed every email and it was specific to each sales rep. But it put it into the marketing platform but it put it into a content marketing system for a marketing manager could strip out the personally identifying information and say, alright instead of this thing, dear John, here are the three best tires for your Honda Odyssey in the Winter – they turn it into a blog post; three best tires for Honda Odyssey in Winter season. Or something like that. And then they go through and they add pictures and links to the store and every link has a trackable code that attributes to the sales rep. So what actually happened there is those emails they were sending that died in their inbox, they turned into blog posts and then the blog posts can get pulled into emails and marketing automation and anytime someone clicks to buy, the rep got paid. And that’s a very simply cycle to create. So I’m with you, I think that’s one of the single biggest opportunities because someone will say oh I can’t right, I’m not a content person. And then you ask them how many emails do you send a day and I guarantee you they’re sending tons of emails so I complete agree with you there I think that’s a great thing to recommend to anyone.

John: Another thing that I again, I work with so many business owners that getting them to do this is really tough so I try and come up with as many shortcuts as possible or ways for them to leverage what they’ve already done. And so I’ve been preaching this idea of planned repurposing, so in other words, if you’re going to write — you know you write one big blog post about seven ways to do X, Y and Z and then with the idea that all seven of those will eventually become a blog post as well. Any thoughts on ways to get more efficient like that? Chris: I think that’s a great way to do it. Plan out the pillar piece and then the smaller pieces. You know another thing, most people don’t go back and look at the content that’s being created. And there’s always this assumption that everyone has seen it. I hear this at every company I’ve ever been, oh we’ve used that, we’ve used that in that campaign. Right, but what’s your open rate? What’s your click rate? There are so many people that have never seen anything.

John: Yeah there’s no question. In fact, another really great tactic for someone who’s been producing content for years is to go back and re-optimize and all of that, update it, freshen it up, get rid of the bad links, change the images is a great way to take a piece that maybe has been serving you for years and bring it back to new life.

Chris: I completely agree and we ran into this at Oracle, we combined social and content into one group. And it was a net new team and the first year we create tons and tons of content and then the next year we came back and said we’re creating 25% of the content we created last year and there was an initial freak-out, but we had a baseline, we had analytics, we could track what was working and the waterfall approach to leads, and we went back and updated lots of things and everything you said we did and then you know, updating statistics and the introduction, the look and feel and the design or turning it into a different form factor, take the blog post and make it an e-book or a slideshow presentation. And that’s something that — it’s just sitting there and I don’t — I’m not necessarily sure why we do it, it feels like it’s when we default back to activities based marketing, so not thinking about what are ways we could save time and energy but there’s so much content that we could continue to use. If you’ve ever created content, you can go back and search for that and something from 2014 is probably 80% accurate for 2017 with just a little bit of polish.

John: So this idea of you know everyone’s finally come around to I need to produce content. A lot of the folks out there you know leading the charge years ago are producing tons and tons of content I mean Hubspot’s probably producing five new e-books every week it seems like. You know are we at a point where people are just — it almost becomes worthless because there’s so much of it? We can’t consume it, we can’t even filter it? Or where do you think we are with the state of content?

Chris: I go back and forth on this. I know you’ve had Mark on the podcast, Mark Schafer and he coined the term content shock and there are many elements of that that I agree with because there is an abundance of content. But there’s not always an abundance of relevant content. Especially tied to the buying’s journey which you were talking about before. I mean if someone’s comparing products and they’re at that last stage in comparing your marketing automation to another person’s marketing automation or your jet engine to another jet engine regardless of what it is, to throw your hands up and say well yeah, people have already created that content, I think that’s another fallacy. It’s something where if they want to know it, you will continue to research it. If you’re buying a car you don’t get fed up and close your laptop and say you know I just can’t read any more about Camri versus Accord, you want to read everything until you feel comfortable with that decision because everyone knows the stats too. So much of the buyer’s process is done before you ever talk to anyone. So no matter how much content gets created there’s always a need for relevant content.

John: Let’s end up today with — I always like to talk to people about tools. What are some of your favorite tools for consuming, creating, tracking content?

Chris: You know I’ve kind of turned into a curmudgeon a little bit with this. I guess Mark was right with the content shock. I’ve started to parse down and surprisingly enough, I’m using LinkedIn and Facebook a lot more than I ever thought I would. And the reason for that is everyone’s already curating the content. If you build a decent network — I don’t necessarily have to go outside and use tools and set up RSS readers and try to parse through content. If I’m surrounding myself with smart people I can pull on what they’re creating. Because many of them are much better than I am at that, you know one example — well obviously Duct Tape Marketing I’ve been following that for years but look at what Scott Montey has done you know his weekly digest… it’s gold. I don’t think I could do that if I spent an hour, two hours a week trying to find the best content. So it’s the whole you know, the five people you spend the most time with, the profound impact it has the Jim Rohn quote — that may be a copout answer but Facebook has been a great tool for me because I surround myself with people who are much smarter than I am and I defer what they’re curating.

John: I think you’re actually identifying a pretty significant trend. I think a lot of people are. I think they’re even some statistics that suggest people are doing fewer and fewer searches because of you know, instead of turning to a search engine they’re going to Facebook or as you said, LinkedIn and just looking at the groups they belong to or the folks that they follow. And I think that’s probably something we’re going to see more and more of that Facebook groups have actually made Facebook more useful again. Chris: Yeah I completely agree with that and you know I watch TED talks, I’m a sucker for those and I know some of them are old and outdated but that’s something that I like to do, TED talks and podcasts. That probably is the original source where I go through and watch those and I even watched an old Tony Robbins one and there was quote which was exactly what we’re talking about, he said casually, almost a throwaway line, “The defining factor is never resources, it’s resourcefulness.” And I thought that was one of those Ah ha! Moments where I paused the video and switched to that tab or whatever I was doing and wrote that down because I think no matter the size of the company, how much money we have or how many people we have, even with $100 million budget it’s the execution that makes the difference. So that resourcefulness and taking some of the tips we talked about today, that’s what can really differentiate you, regardless of what your company sells or does.

John: So true. So Chris, where umm — would you suggest people who would like to engage you or find out more about what you’re doing, where would you have them check you out?

Chris: Sure. I’d probably say LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn or Facebook, either one it’s just Chris Moody so Linkedin.com/Chris Moody. I have a blog where I don’t really blog frequently that’s Chris-Moody so if you want to go to Chris-Moody.com and read about me being sued over a blog post which is still the number one blog post that’s a pretty entertaining sort.

John: Well great we’ll actually put those links in the show notes as well. So Chris thanks for taking a moment to share about content and content marketing and hopefully we’ll run into you out there on the road soon.

Chris: Thanks for having me John.

from Duct Tape Marketing https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/transcript-produce-content-limited-budget/

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legalseat · 5 years

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My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter

(A) individuals are more powerful in numbers , and

(B) the legal market continues to evolve and is becoming increasingly competitive.

Legal market continues to evolve and relationships are the key to differentiation.

Another key theme at this year’s event was the evolution of the legal industry as a whole and the critical work required to

compete effectively. While the idea of evolution isn’t new to the legal industry, sessions included practical approaches for continuous improvement by staying one step ahead of client expectations.

Relationships and the role of technology.

All of that said, thank you for allowing me to become part of the Legal Marketing community. It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to get to know you better and I hope to speak with you soon.

My First LMA Conference: Relationships Matter published first on https://divorcelawyermumbai.tumblr.com/

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