7 Essential IT Upgrades to Enhance Market Productivity

(Source: business2community.com)  

Angela Hausman, PhD | June 16, 2021

Digital marketing changed the nature of marketing and the skills required to effectively manage the day-to-day marketing operations. That means upskilling your people as well as upgrading your computers and other hardware to enhance market productivity in your operation.

First, let’s take a look at the enhanced skill set needed by your marketing staff, as it’s these skills that determine the limits of your existing hardware to enhance market productivity or drain that productivity.

Here are the emerging skills needed by your marketing employees to perform in today’s increasingly digital world.

 

Notice the emphasis on data analytics, user experience modeling, and video production. Each of these tasks strains your computer hardware, potentially slowing down your marketing department, making them uncompetitive. Some tasks might overwhelm your current system to the point where the software crashes the computer, which really stops your marketing strategy in its tracks.

Gone are the days of the traditional marketing department or agency. In the days of traditional media, you had a digital design department, an analytics department (commonly doing surveys and focus groups), a music department, production departments for visual and video commercials, and a host of other support departments. That meant each department used hardware and software designed to meet their specific tasks. Production took months of hard work and coordination, which was the same in every organization.

In a digital world, content marketing happens every day, not once or twice a year. And, you require access to real-time analytics, monitoring, and listening so you can adjust your content marketing strategy on a dime to external demands. Further, you no longer send needs to a department specializing in certain types of content. You now require video production for a post next week, images for multiple posts today, and other content needs requiring immediate production.

These changes mean you require different hardware that’s faster, can multitask without bogging down, and handle various operations seamlessly. To enhance market productivity, you need to upgrade your hardware or face declining productivity resulting in lower profits.

Enhance market productivity

Speed

Speed is a serious concern if you wish to enhance market productivity. Sitting around waiting for your computer to render a video, crunch through a dataset, or enhance an image just wastes precious time, increases frustration, and reduces the productivity of your marketing department, reducing your ability to compete in crowded markets.

When it comes to increasing speed, various hardware improvements enhance market productivity, including the ones listed below.

First, let’s look at classic computer architecture.

Apple M1 computers

Don’t worry too much if this image doesn’t translate too well for you. Just know that a computer motherboard is the lifeblood of your computer. It houses various components, including your CPU, which is the brains of your operation, RAM or random access memory, GPU, which is your graphics card, and a cache that speeds processing by storing some information contained in your hard drive for easy access. The hard drive is your computer’s memory. Each of these elements impacts performance and if you want to enhance market productivity, you can change one or more of these elements.

Next, we discuss each of these elements in turn. Let’s start with the brains, the CPU.

1. CPU

The CPU or “central processing unit” is the brain of any computer. Even devices like your smartphone and tablet have a CPU, as well as laptops and desktop computers. Without a CPU, your computer wouldn’t do anything. CPU is contained on a chip and not all chips are equally good for processing speed and ability. Upgrading your CPU is probably the biggest factor to enhance market productivity.

That’s why I recently upgraded to the M1 chip available on new Apple Mac products. I ordered the new iMac 24 although I must wait 5 – 6 weeks due to the high demand for the product. The M1 chip offers serious tools to enhance market productivity at my firm as it processes video 3.9 times faster and images 7.1 times faster than the older chip found in Macs. Since these visual elements are the bread and butter of my organization, these increases offer a great opportunity to enhance market productivity at Hausman & Associates.

Most desktop computers allow you to upgrade your CPU, although upgrading a laptop or tablet voids your warranty since you must open the case to gain access to the motherboard. They’re just not designed for internal upgrades. The same is true of the iMacs that feature a unitized monitor and processor.

To upgrade your desktop, it’s a relatively simple process to open the case swap out the CPU for a compatible unit, then experience the advantages offered by the new CPU. Remember to backup your information as you don’t want to take the chance you’ll lose information in the transfer.

2. SSD (Solid-State Drive)

Are you tired of waiting for things to happen when you use your computer? If so, one of the most common bottlenecks of any desktop or laptop, irrespective of whether it runs Windows or macOS, is the hard drive. In a nutshell, an SSD is like a large-capacity USB flash drive – only it’s fitted inside your computer. You can also upgrade to an external hard drive.

The good news is you can upgrade to an SSD (solid-state drive) or external drive to increase storage capacity and supplement your RAM, which we’ll discuss next. The key to gaining efficiency from upgrading your hard drive has more to do with the speed of the drive than the storage capacity. A faster drive sends data to the CPU faster, so look at clock speed before storage capacity.

3. RAM

The next IT component to upgrade in your computer is the RAM or “random access memory.” Your desktop or laptop needs plenty of RAM to run multiple applications simultaneously without slowing down, video editing efficiency, enhanced search, and faster printing.

Modern systems might allow you to upgrade your system to at least 16GB of RAM. The cost of such upgrades is low, and yet they pay for themselves as you soon experience a productivity boost.

4. Graphics Card

Do you spend much of your time using GPU (graphics processing unit)-intensive applications like Adobe Illustrator, video editing software, or image design? If so, and you have a standard computer system, now’s the time to upgrade to a dedicated graphics card. Most Macbook Pros and iMac come with a dedicated graphics card, as shown in the image above, while the Macbook Air doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card but uses an integrated graphics chip built into the CPU.

Aim for dedicated graphics cards that boast a minimum of 4GB RAM to make processing graphics files and visual processing more straightforward and quicker. Of course, gaming is better with these cards, as well.

5. Monitor

A larger monitor makes it easier to edit images and text while also allowing you to use the screen for multiple tasks simultaneously, which can enhance market performance. A nice monitor, such as the Apple retina display makes a big difference in the quality of your display that reduces eye strain and improves concentration.

Increasingly, you find marketers and others connecting multiple displays to their computers to allow enhanced multitasking, so consider adding another monitor or two to your workstation to enhance market productivity.

Of all the upgrades discussed, adding a monitor is probably the easiest since most devices plug into a USB or HDMI port on your computer (Apple products such as the Macbook, require a dongle to allow these ports).

6. Keyboard and Mouse

The most used items on your workstation are undoubtedly the keyboard and mouse. With that in mind, it’s worth upgrading to a quiet ergonomic keyboard and mouse. Of course, noise levels aren’t the only reason why you should upgrade.

Premium keyboards and mice are easier to use and won’t cause so much strain on your hands, wrists, and fingers.

7. Multi-Function Printer

Lastly, if you use a printer for your work regularly, it’s a good idea to upgrade to a multi-function device. Such a printer enables you to print, scan, and copy documents and images from multiple sources such as your computer, a camera card, or a USB drive. Newer printers allow printing via WIFI, allowing you to share computers easily and print from anywhere.

Conclusion

Changes in the digital landscape mean you must constantly upgrade your digital marketing strategy and tactics. I hope this post helped by highlighting some of the major changes to the digital world and suggesting ways you can adapt your hardware to enhance market performance.

Choosing a Cloud Computing Service

(Source: business2community.com) 

Diane H. Wong | June 16, 2021

Cloud computing is a broad term that compasses everything from Facebook and Twitter to Google Docs and Amazon Virtual Private Clouds. At its simplest, cloud computing is the practice of making applications, software, or other services available to consumers on-demand over the Internet. Many businesses have started to use cloud computing services for their productivity as not all computer brands manufacturers are able to provide customers with a cheap and high-quality product. For example, a company may use Amazon’s Simple Storage Service to store their company’s data on the web freeing up the time and resources storing the data on a private server would take.

While the use of cloud computing services can change the way businesses run and consumers interact, users should be aware of the risks and educated in protecting their privacy and data before signing up with a provider.

Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Allows users to make use of applications, services, and software they would otherwise not have the physical or technical capabilities to use
  
  
• Prevents data loss by placing data on servers that are more reliable and secure. Such servers often store data in multiple locations.
  
  
• Allows data to be accessed from any computer with the required Internet connection
  
  
• Increases productivity and efficiency by allowing resources to be used on expanding business function as opposed to the upkeep of technology

Drawbacks of Cloud Computing

• The data owner does not have direct supervision over the data processors
  
  
• Data placed in the “cloud” (ie: the Internet) is less protected than data that remains in a private computer or network
  
  
• Technology has outpaced the ability of the government to develop timely regulations and ensure privacy.
  
  
• The data owner loses complete control over data accessibility and destruction. Problems such as data outages, wrongly employed encryption, accidental deletion, and failed destruction of files are all risks involved with storing data with a cloud computing service.

When considering placing personal information or important business information with a cloud computing service there are several things to consider:

Reliability and Viability

Using a Software as a Service (Saas) provider means trusting another company with sensitive information that is vital to business function. Companies looking to move their information databases to a cloud service should do a fair amount of research before locking in with one particular vendor.

• Find out the number of companies the vendor services.
  
  
• Read user testimonials.
  
  
• Find out the history and mission of the company.

Nothing is worse than trusting important information to a company that may be plagued with data outages, dealing with legal issues, or going bankrupt. Ensuring that the data will be protected and can be instantly and immediately accessed through the cloud service should be a top priority.

Transferability

Many cloud computing services lock-in their users by making it extremely difficult to download large quantities of data after it has been loaded. Bulk downloads are not a standard part of most services and fees may be charged for the downloading of files. Make sure to investigate a service thoroughly before uploading information as it may be extremely costly and time-consuming to switch service providers.

Accountability

A data owner is still legally responsible for protecting the privacy and integrity of data that is serviced by a third party. If a cloud computing company paid by a business to process customer data violates the privacy of the customers, the business will be subject to any legal ramifications. Some cloud services store their data in countries without data protection laws so that they may collect and store personally identifiable information without implementing privacy policies. Individuals and business owners should investigate every service provider to ensure they comply with U.S., E.U., and any other relevant data protection laws.

Service Level Agreement or End User License Agreement

An SLA or EULA or another formal contract should be signed upon entering into business with a service provider. These documents define the rights and responsibilities of both the user and the provider, legally protecting them in case of a dispute. If a vendor refuses to enter into any sort of contract, the user is not protected and should look elsewhere for a service provider.

With the increase of cloud computing as a viable option for both consumers and businesses, more and more personal information will be stored in the cloud. Users must understand the risks involved with making use of such services to make educated decisions regarding their privacy.

How to Write an Eye-Catching Networking Email Subject Line

(Source: business2community.com)  

Nick Brown | June 16, 2021

Regardless of your industry or just how much your sector’s landscape has changed through the years, networking still remains crucial. It’s one of the main pillars for professionals like yourself looking to move forward in their respective career paths.

Meeting prospective co-workers and sharing ideas with your peers will always be an integral part of networking and link building. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically reshaped how job-seeking professionals interact with each other, mostly due to the social distancing measures needed to face the recent health crisis.

As a result, in most cases, digital networking holds the keys to many career paths. This means that online communication channels such as social media, job hunting platforms like LinkedIn, and good old-fashioned emails are now more important than ever in terms of networking.

In that vein, if you are looking at how to write professional emails, you should start by asking yourself what is the first thing that your prospective readers are going to look at. Because, when you really think about it, there is only one answer: the subject line.

Crafting a professional looking and eye-catching subject line will help you better your digital networking skills. This often overlooked part of writing an email determines how good (or bad) a business email’s first impression is.

Luckily, we have gathered some tips and ideas that can help you create an attention-grabbing subject line for that important message that could launch your career.

Match the subject line to the reader

Let’s start by discussing the very basics of crafting an engaging subject line to give you a better chance of having your message read. As you may already know, the best sales email subject lines are those that match the demographic of their targeted reader and use smart PR outreach. Well, the same concept applies to networking emails!

The first step towards writing the perfect subject line is picking a style that fits the prospective reader. The word choice, formatting, and length will vary depending on who the email is aimed at.

Let’s use a simple example, emails sent to higher-ranked peers (CEOs, business owners, managers, or supervisors) need to be more serious and simpler. As you’ll know, writing short and to-the-point subject lines that do not mislead the reader is an essential aspect of email etiquette for job searching. Remember to strategically utilize data you have on the person you are emailing.

However, if you want to get in contact with a former co-worker or classmate that is currently working for your dream company, you can go for a more laid back approach. And might even throw an emoji in the mix!

Emojis are used by many marketers and advertisers during email sales campaigns. Often, including emojis in an email increases open rates and boost email engagement. Why? Here are some reasons:

• They save space. Subject lines are not meant to be particularly long. Emojis are useful because they can say a lot and they only take up one character.
  
  
• They stand out in an overfilled inbox. If you have a look at your inbox right now you are very likely to be overwhelmed by a sea of letters. However, a small image in the middle of so many words will instantly catch your eye. The human eye is very good at processing visual information and your brain has been trained to instantly see “misplaced” elements within patterns. This means that seeing an emoji in a sea of words is easier for your brain than you think.
  
  
• They can convey emotion and tone. Because sometimes an image speaks a thousand words.

Treat it as a sales pitch

Let’s be very clear about this point. It is extremely important to not come across as desperate, fake, or salesy. The idea here is to create an eye-catching subject line that doesn’t scream “I desperately need a job”.

The good news is that if you have any experience working in customer service, SaaS marketing, or sales departments then you have half of the battle won! Just remember to bring out that charm, skills, and know-how when crafting your eye-catching subject line for that networking email.

How can you do that? Well, when you think about it, networking messages are not very different from outbound calls. If you ask yourself “what is outbound calling good for?” you will come to the sudden realization that, in essence, networking emails are very similar to trying to convert a lead over the phone. The entire thing revolves around the idea of contacting someone before they contact you, in order to get something out of that interaction.

If you have no experience in advertising or selling and you have never contacted a lead or tried to sell a product, then do not despair. Embracing that side of doing business is not as difficult as you may think.

Even if you have the best email content, the question is how to break the ice with your subject line. The best way to do so is to approach the entire process like a cold call. Cold calls are non-scheduled and spontaneous phone calls used by sales departments looking to contact a potential customer that has no previous relationship with the company in question.

A networking email is basically that, a prospective worker looking to be hired by a company that reaches out with the intent of working for said company. If you have no experience in cold calling do not worry, just check out these top 5 cold call script strategies to book more appointments for some ideas.

Understand how (and when) to use automation

Nowadays, thanks to the rapid increase in computing power, the implementation of the cloud, and the massive improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning, many business processes such as software testing and client outreach have been automated.

Digital companies such as online shopping platforms or SaaS brands that offer services with features such as a free booking app, are great examples of how automation can boost a company’s productivity.

Email marketing, too, can be easily automated by implementing AI-powered RPA solutions. Data driven email marketing campaigns, for example, use RPA software in order to send automated and generic emails for leads. Thus reducing the costs that would come with employing a human workforce for the task and boosting productivity, since RPA tools can send more emails in less time.

In the case of networking emails, robotic process automation can help you be more productive by scheduling when your automated emails should be sent. However, when it comes to crafting the subject line, it is important to know when automation works and when it does not.

As mentioned before, personalization is key, and your subject line should match the type of reader that you are aiming at. Much like in other areas of business, such as customer support, the customer email must feel personal.

According to a study conducted by Campaign Monitor, emails that include personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened by prospective readers. The best way to personalize emails is including the reader’s first name, a personal detail about their company or career, or using capital letters to catch their eye.

Although the data retrieved by Campaign Monitor’s survey specifically refers to email marketing, these practices can be implemented in networking emails easily, and there is no reason why the results shouldn’t be equally effective.

Patience is a virtue

Now it’s time to address the worst-case-scenario, just so that you are ready in case that any of your emails’ subject lines do not work as you expected. Let’s say that you have already sent that first email and, for whatever reason, that ice breaker did not do the job.

If your first message did not get a reply, there is no reason for you to lose any faith regarding the possibilities of email networking. In the unlucky case that the first message was not successful, let’s have a look at what your second email’s subject line should look like.

The best way to approach this is to use the same techniques that companies deploy in order to tackle buyer silence. Recalibrate your strategies, conduct SEO competitor analysis, and see if there’s anything to do to improve your approach. In essence, do what you must to reassess the situation but don’t freak out. If you were expecting a longer answer, then just follow these two approaches for things that you should avoid doing:

Do not send a “break up” email

Sending a message with a subject line like “Sorry I bothered you” or “Is everything ok?” will not only paint a bad picture of you, making you look desperate. It will also ruin your chance of a possible reply. It’s like customer engagement, in a sense; your goal is to reduce churn and build relationships.

Sometimes it takes a while to reply to networking emails and other email users only check their inbox once or twice a week. The best way to know if the prospective reader has received or opened your email is to implement email software tools that track your emails.

These apps are compatible with most email providers such as Gmail and they work in a similar way to product lifecycle management software; tracking the entire journey of the email, from its creation to its “shipment” (once it’s sent) and when it is received and read.

Do not reference their silence

Some psychologists think that the best way to react towards indifferent interlocutors is to “punish them with silence”. Sometimes people will just ignore your networking emails. The worst thing that you can do in that case is to lash out, be offended, or act nervously.

If someone doesn’t get back to you after an email the best thing to do is to simply move on. Build a better email list and send an email to a more likely contact who might engage with you. Remember, only invest your time networking with those who might add value to your career and who might really have an interest in hearing from you.

If you follow these and all our previous tips regarding how to create eye-catching subject lines for networking emails, then you are more likely to increase your chances or engage in fruitful conversations that might help you launch your career in a positive way.

LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes data of 92% of users, including inferred salaries [U]

(Source: 9to5mac.com) 

Ben Lovejoy - Jun. 29th 2021

Update: PrivacyShark appears to have been the first to report this, and has now obtained a statement from LinkedIn, below.

A second massive LinkedIn breach reportedly exposes the data of 700M users, which is more than 92% of the total 756M users. The database is for sale on the dark web, with records including phone numbers, physical addresses, geolocation data, and inferred salaries.

The hacker who obtained the data has posted a sample of 1M records, and checks confirm that the data is both genuine and up-to-date …

RestorePrivacy reports that the hacker appears to have misused the official LinkedIn API to download the data, the same method used in a similar breach back in April.

On June 22nd, a user of a popular hacker advertised data from 700 Million LinkedIn users for sale. The user of the forum posted up a sample of the data that includes 1 million LinkedIn users. We examined the sample and found it to contain the following information:

• Email Addresses
• Full names
• Phone numbers
• Physical addresses
• Geolocation records
• LinkedIn username and profile URL
• Personal and professional experience/background
• Genders
• Other social media accounts and usernames

Based on our analysis and cross-checking data from the sample with other publicly available information, it appears all data is authentic and tied to real users. Additionally, the data does appear to be up to date, with samples from 2020 to 2021.

We reached out directly to the user who is posting the data up for sale on the hacking forum. He claims the data was obtained by exploiting the LinkedIn API to harvest information that people upload to the site.

No passwords are included, but as the site notes, this is still valuable data that can be used for identity theft and convincing-looking phishing attempts that can themselves be used to obtain login credentials for LinkedIn and other sites.

With the previous breach, LinkedIn did confirm that the 500M records included data obtained from its servers, but claimed that more than one source was used. PrivacyShark notes that the company has issued a similar statement this time:

While we’re still investigating this issue, our initial analysis indicates that the dataset includes information scraped from LinkedIn as well as information obtained from other sources. This was not a LinkedIn data breach and our investigation has determined that no private LinkedIn member data was exposed. Scraping data from LinkedIn is a violation of our Terms of Service and we are constantly working to ensure our members’ privacy is protected.

The someone was indeed able to scrape millions of records, whether using the API or otherwise, that is definitely a security breach …

What Every Small Business Needs to Know About Data-Driven Marketing

(Source: business2community.com) 

Jill Davis | June 16, 2021

As a small business owner, you’re the CEO, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Customer Service Rep, everything all at once. You have multiple balls in the air and are switching roles at any given time. You always have one eye on growing your online sales, but you might find it tough to stay on top of best practices in marketing due to competing priorities.

The truth is, marketing has changed a lot in recent years. With more people making online purchases (and boatloads of customer data being collected), marketing has become very data-driven. More and more of our customers who sell online (and have more than 2,500 email subscribers) are moving to our Ecommerce Pro plan because it supports this relatively new way of marketing.

Data-driven marketing might sound a little intimidating and time-consuming, but with the right approach, it’s actually totally accessible, even for novice marketers. Below, I’ll explain what data-driven marketing is, and how it can make your life easier and your small business more successful.

What is data-driven marketing?

Ok, I’ll admit, the term “data-driven marketing” sounds vague and complicated but it really boils down to using customer data to better engage with your customers and improve the effectiveness of your marketing.

Think about all the data that is collected when you shop online:

• Which email brought you to the site to make the purchase?
  
  
• At what time of day did you read and take action on the email?
  
  
• What did you purchase?
  
  
• Are you a first-time or repeat customer?
  
  
• Did you take advantage of a sale or pay full price?
  
  
• What other products did you browse?

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the many types of customer data that are collected and stored.

The highest-performing marketing platforms can use all this data and knowledge to connect with your customers and keep them interested in the brand. Think about it — which types of email messages are you happy to receive? They are likely ones that provide you with interesting, helpful, or entertaining content, tailored to your preferences.

Those great email messages are no accident. They’re possible due to data-driven marketing. A sneaker brand might know that you typically purchase twice a year, and opt for bright colors. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, to skip the weekly promo blast emails (that could annoy you and drive you to unsubscribe) and send fewer messages, featuring sneakers in bright colors?

Data-driven marketing is easier than it sounds

Do you think you need to be an analytical wiz to get started with data-driven marketing? You don’t, because technology allows you to collect, organize and make sense of all of your data. For example, small business owners who opt for our Ecommerce Pro plan benefit from the built-in customer data platform (or CDP).

This CDP pulls in the data from your various marketing tools and ecommerce platforms (e.g. Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce) and gives you a clear picture of every customer, and when and how you should market to them. You can learn so much about your customers and their buying habits and interests, and that knowledge allows you to be much better at marketing to them.

Could you dig in further and learn more about data-driven marketing if you wanted to? Of course you could. Our team of ecommerce experts and data scientists (the ones who built the technology powering the Ecommerce Pro plan) could explain why your customers are being segmented the way they are, and why certain products are being recommended to certain customers.

They could explain things like the smart subject lines feature, a nifty little tool that uses data from the millions of emails we send every month to show you which ones are predicted to perform better (indicated with a green up arrow) or worse (indicated with a red down arrow). Why is this so useful? Subject line effectiveness is closely linked with email open rates, which are linked to revenue.

Smart Subject Lines helps you make a data-informed decision on the best subject line to use to maximize your email open rate.

New Ecommerce Pro plan customers also find the ecommerce playbooks helpful, because they are a preconfigured, “out of the box” feature that gets you up and running immediately with data-driven marketing. The playbooks use your customer data to ensure your emails get to the right prospects or customers no matter where they are in their buying journey.

Data-driven marketing is the key to keeping your customers

I alluded to this earlier, but one of the biggest reasons for writing this article is to underscore how important data-driven marketing is for keeping your customers. If you use your customer data to deliver personalized messages to your customers, they will be more likely to engage with your brand, make repeat purchases, and remain loyal.

So do you need a degree in data science to be successful with data-driven marketing? Absolutely not. You just need to continue doing what you’ve always done, keeping your eye on the ball and adapting in order to stay competitive.

How COVID-19 Changed Behaviour in Retail

(Source: business2community.com)  

Sophie Beard | June 15, 2021

The closure of non-essential stores in March 2020 in the UK and lockdowns across the world, opened up a possible permanent shift in consumer behaviour. In turn, with retail owners unsure when they would lift the shutters again they swiftly adopted new strategies in order to serve customers and, ultimately, for the company to survive.

The first notable change in consumer behaviour was the turn to social media, websites and online forums to learn about products and make purchases. For retail owners, this meant moving online was the natural direction. This entailed either updating and perfecting their online platforms or beginning their journey online from scratch and deciding where to be. Most have thrived at this and their strategy paid off, as overall, online sales rose to a record high of 33.9% as a share of all retail spending (ONS, 2021).

To further adapt their strategies, a recent survey from Apteco, which included respondents from retail, found that over the past year:

• 50% changed their marketing approach and moved online
  
  
• 39% changed the style of their communications
  
  
• 36% changed the frequency of communication

Adapting strategies to reach customers is vital to survive, and these actions and decisions must be based on insights. When it comes to this, it’s important not to underestimate the power of in-depth data from your social media accounts to influence your wider strategy. Particularly as social media marketing tools can provide you with a great deal of understanding into your audience demographic and their behaviours, in terms of where, when and what content they want to see from you.

By investing time and money into exploring marketing technology retail owners are enabled to rely on software to gather important data, and instead spend more time on the high value work to drive sales. For those unfamiliar with what marketing tools can tell you, we’ll, naturally, use Locowise as an example. As a social media reporting tool we highlight:

• The best time for you to post, for each platform you use
  
  
• The content type most engaged with
  
  
• The ideal post frequency – should you posts once per day, four times a week etc
  
  
• Your sentiment score, so you can see how liked your posts are
  
  
• What are your competitors doing, stay ahead of the game
  
  
• Do you use a specific hashtag, has it got off the ground?
  
  
• Your predicted follower growth
  
  
• And so much more!

As life starts to gradually return to normal and the long awaited sound of stores lifting their shutter again returns, it’s important for retail owners not to consider bricks and mortar or online as an ‘either or’, but as an omnichannel approach. This will help you maintain a presence to suit all customer needs and that you are where they want you to be, at the right time and with the right message. With this, it’s important to continue to review online activity as consumer behaviour will undoubtedly change.

Why Your Customers Want to Buy Is as Important as What They Want to Buy

(Source: business2community.com) 

Bob Apollo | June 14, 2021

You’d hope, wouldn’t you, that most salespeople understand what their prospective customers want to buy. You’d expect, wouldn’t you, that your salespeople understand what their prospects think they need before making a proposal.

That may, of course, be sufficient in a relatively simple, transactional environment where the prospective customer is in the process of making an inevitable purchase.

But no matter how good a job your salespeople do when it comes to understanding and hopefully influencing what their prospects think they need, understanding what their prospects want to buy is only part of the picture.

In complex, discretionary B2B buying environments it’s just as important – often more important – to understand why your prospective customer has embarked on their buying journey.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that no matter how perfect your salespeople’s understanding of their prospect’s needs is, and no matter how good a job your salespeople have done in influencing those needs in your favour, if you don’t understand why your customers are buying, you’re flying blind.

Too many salespeople – faced with an apparently well-qualified prospect that matches their ideal customer profile and key buyer personas – make the dangerous assumption that the prospect is inevitably going to buy something, and that their role is to persuade and convince the prospect to buy it from them.

The statistics tell a different story. Around half of all apparently well-qualified opportunities end up not buying anything. In any discretionary buying environment, your salespeople’s most significant competitor is typically not another vendor, but the status quo.

That’s why it’s so important to understand why any prospective customer set off on their buying decision journey in the first place, and if and why they are currently completely convinced that they need to change, or whether they still need to be persuaded.

This is a critical lesson – the presence of a defined significant need (even the presence of an RFP) does not guarantee that the customer will actually do anything. And the absence of a defined significant need virtually guarantees that your prospect will not do anything.

This is why answering “why change” is the first and in many ways the most important of the four questions every prospective customer needs to answer before they agree to implement a significant buying decision:

• Why should they change (rather than staying on their current path)?
  
  
• Why should they choose you (rather than any other option)?
  
  
• Why should they act now (rather than later)?
  
  
• Who is going to benefit from the change (and how)?

Why change?

Your prospective customer’s decision to abandon the status quo and move in a new direction involves a number of interconnected elements.

First, they need to see their current situation as being unsatisfactory and to accept and acknowledge that continuing on their current path involves unpleasant consequences – the cost of inaction. Unless and until they associate staying on their current path with significant and growing pain, they will have little motivation to change.

Next, they need to have a vision of a future better outcome that justifies the inevitable disruption associated with change. The benefits of change need to be clear, significant and – preferably – to continue to grow over time.

The contrast between their current situation and their better future outcome – the perceived “outcome gap” needs to be as wide as possible. When the outcome gap is small and stable, they are likely to stick with the status quo. When the outcome gap is large and growing, they are far more likely to acknowledge the need for decisive action.

The chances of change are further amplified if the project can be associated with and seen to support one or a number of the organisation’s high-priority corporate priorities or initiatives.

Finally, change is more likely if their preferred approach is seen to eliminate some of the obstacles that may have previously prevented progress towards their objectives.

Salespeople have a critical responsibility to understand their prospective customer’s change drivers, to do all they can to stretch the outcome gap to a point where their prospect concludes that action is essential, and to have the discipline to qualify out opportunities where the outcome gap is weak or non-existent.

What was the trigger event?

In addition to identifying and shaping their prospective customer’s outcome gap, salespeople also need to understand what triggered the prospect’s interest in searching for a solution in the first place.

Typically, something happened to draw the prospect’s attention to an issue. This could have been an internal change such as new leadership being appointed to a key function, a new initiative or priority, or the failure of an existing system or process.

External trigger events often involve new legislation or regulation, changes in the competitive environment or changes in customer behaviour. But if there is no obvious trigger event, the motivation to change is also likely to be weaker.

Discovery and qualification

Effective discovery and rigorous qualification are both fundamental to assessing the likelihood that a prospective customer will decide to take action. I hope that I’ve managed to persuade you that understanding why your prospective customer embarked on their buying decision journey is at least as important as understanding what they think they want to buy.

And I hope – if your salespeople cannot identify or create a wide enough outcome gap – that they will have the good sense to politely and professionally disqualify the “opportunity” rather than wasting their time on something that is never likely to come to fruition.