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How Amazon Became the “Default”

May 22, 2014 by Rosemary

When I need to buy something, whether it’s a set of s’mores skewers or the latest bestseller, I click on over to Amazon.com first.

It’s taken me a while to recognize this behavior, because I was doing it very unconsciously.

Amazon.com logo

How did this happen?

Amazon.com is my “default” place to buy things. They have simply removed every trace of friction from the shopping experience. To the point that other factors like price and diversity of selection take a back seat.

You may not have the resources of Amazon, but you should aspire to be the “default” provider of whatever service or product you offer.

Remove Purchase Friction:

Answer Questions

Amazon has to sell you things that you can’t feel or touch, so it has to provide you with every single bit of information you might want before buying. Consider the lessons of Marcus Sheridan, “The Sales Lion,” who saved his pool company (and built an empire) by answering every single question right on his website.

Establish Trust

As an entrepreneur, you may not have a recognized name. But Amazon started somewhere too. They incorporated a ratings system for their shopkeeper program so that you can clearly see reputation as a buyer. Look for ways to build trust with your prospects and customers– whether it’s social proof, testimonials, or being maniacal about follow-through.

Remember Your Customers

One reason why Amazon is the default is that they store my credit card information, and they remember everything I’ve bought since the site went live. I hate having to go find my purse, pull out my credit card, and type in those numbers. Have you thought about ways you can streamline invoicing for your customers? Do you offer different options for billing, discounts for annual payments? When your customer contacts you, can you pull up a record of their purchase history?

Offer White Glove Delivery

Recent news items about drones, food lockers, and other innovations coming from Amazon make it obvious that they are very focused on delivering as fast as possible. How magical is it that you can, with one click, have a book delivered to your device in seconds? What parts of your product or service can you deliver for instant gratification? Perhaps you can make sure that the customer receives some component of the service immediately, even if the whole transaction can’t be instantaneous.

Be Proactive

Amazon will sometimes offer me recommendations, remind me of family birthdays, and provide other proactive information as I need it. When you see an opportunity to add value to your customers, do it! If you see an article that is directly relevant to your prospect’s challenges, go ahead and send it. Be proactive and be useful.

Reaching default status is the Holy Grail of sales. Think about it…when was the last time you switched toothpaste brands? Do you get all confused when your favorite product changes its packaging?

All of the key points above relate to one thing–considering the customer’s thought process and experience first.

Focus on removing any trace of friction from the customer’s buying process, and you might earn a spot as the “go-to” provider.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, marketing, purchasing, Shopping, strategy

Break the Grip of the Rip

April 24, 2014 by Rosemary

This little stretch of beach occasionally has dangerous rip currents.

The sandbars strung along our part of the coast create strong, narrow currents that run perpendicular to the shore. Unsuspecting swimmers can quickly get pulled far from the beach. If they don’t know what to do, they require emergency rescue to avoid drowning.

avoid the rip current

Marketers can get sucked into the grip of a rip current too.

“You need to post 20x per day on Twitter.”
“You have to have 50,000 Facebook fans.”
“The audience will only read short posts.”
“The audience will only read long posts.”
“We need to strip every link out of our blog posts because Google might blacklist us.”

These rip currents pop up, suck lots of unsuspecting swimmers out to sea, and then dissipate.

How to Break Free of a Marketing Rip Current

Keep your feet planted on the ocean floor

  • Find resources and publications that aren’t trendy. That means more reading Harvard Business Review blogs and less Buzzfeed.
  • Be sure you have someone on your team who will help you focus on your mission when you’re tempted to chase after the latest shiny object.

Remain calm if you get caught

  • If you notice that you’ve gotten sidetracked and sucked into a marketing rip current, don’t just start trashing everything. Go back to your marketing plan, your goals, and your strategy, and remove anything that’s not feeding into them.
  • If you need to take corrective action, do it systematically once you’ve figured out how to proceed.
  • Sometimes it’s hard to remain calm in the face of danger. If you suddenly lose half of your website traffic, or a major client decides to leave, be sure you have a trusted advisor or mentor who can help you navigate the issue. Don’t try to go it alone.

Try to regain your footing and call for help immediately

  • Come up with a plan of action for recovery. If the rip current meant that you suddenly found yourself on page 10 of Google search results, put together a detailed strategy to regain your position.
  • You can iterate and test. Your strategy doesn’t have to be “all or nothing.” Learn about how to do simple A/B testing.
  • Use your data. Numbers don’t panic; use the analytical tools at your disposal to help you sort things out.
  • Don’t try to “wing it,” if you’ve got a problem that needs professional assistance. Consider hiring a consultant or contractor who specializes in the issue (an SEO, a digital marketer, a web designer, a PR pro).

Swim parallel to shore to escape the current

  • When you realize you’ve been pulled out to sea, it’s tempting to swim like crazy, straight for shore. Instead, try a path that makes the most sense for your situation. Rip currents aren’t very wide, so if you swim sideways for a bit, you can return to shore safely.
Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, marketing, strategy

How to Prepare for Your Wake-Up Call

March 27, 2014 by Rosemary

My Academy Award slipped through my grasp when I was in college.

Although I was a Political Science major, I had signed up for Acting as an elective. Sure that I would accidentally become the next Meryl Streep, I emoted my guts out, hung around with artsy friends who were making student films, and made it into the school musical.

There was just one tiny problem.

I was a terrible actor.

In the same way the Hindenberg was a terrible blimp.

And I only realized it when my acting teacher told me I’d better withdraw from the class or she was going to fail me. (Seriously? Who flunks the acting elective?)

Sometimes it takes an outside, objective force to bring you to your senses when you’re in the throes of a bad idea. A wake up call.

wakeup call

Recognizing When to Pivot

Starting a new business is the ultimate gamble. You’re pulling up a chair to the poker table and pushing all of your chips to the center.

It takes a special kind of guts to go beyond having a great idea, and actually start something that creates value.

It’s wonderful to have guts.

But it’s more important to keep perspective on the situation. Blindly charging ahead without ever stopping to evaluate your strategy is not smart.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein

In gambling, you’re taking a calculated risk in order to potentially earn a big reward. Business is the same thing. You don’t have to put all of your chips on the table at once. You can test some ideas, play a few hands while you evaluate your fellow poker players.

When Odeo became Twitter, there was no guarantee that short, wonky status messages would become something that dominated the entertainment industry (hello, hashtag fever). The founders got the wake-up call that podcast subscriptions were about to be gobbled up whole by iTunes, and made a rapid course change.

Just because you decide to change direction, doesn’t mean success is guaranteed either. The jury is still out on whether Fab’s revamp from a social site to a shopping curation engine has worked.

The point is that when the wake-up call comes, you need to paying attention. You need to have resources you can marshal to respond to the call.

Make Sure You Recognize the Wake-Up Call

  • Have someone around who will speak the truth. Don’t hire yes men (or women).
  • Don’t fall in love with your own ideas. Keep an open attitude toward your creations, and allow the oxygen of alternatives into the picture.
  • Read, read, and read some more. Always be learning from others and improving your knowledge base.
  • Build in time to stop and evaluate the numbers. Look brutal reality in the eye on a regular basis.

Are you prepared for a wake-up call?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Alan Cleaver via Compfight cc

Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business, pivot, strategy

How to Boost Revenue by Up-Selling & Cross-Selling

January 10, 2014 by Rosemary

By Jacklin Altman

Most of us recognize up-selling in its most basic form: “Would you like fries with that?” Cross-selling too, “would you like to pair that with a soda?” Sticking with that same example, if just half of the people asked say yes, think about that bump in revenue.

Seems pretty nice, doesn’t it?

Up-selling and cross-selling are valuable skills that you should engrain into all of your sales and customer service representatives. If a customer comes to you looking to buy a certain item, there is no harm in suggesting an upgraded version or attempting to cross sell an item that would pair nicely with it.

Who knows, they might love the pairing and always buy both from now on. They might recommend those items to their friends and so on. Now you’ve started a chain reaction that is sure to boost revenue.

Now, you see the benefits of up-selling and cross-selling but how do you go about it? Train your people. Have your customer service representatives be as well-versed in sales as your sales people. You will increase the efficiency of your workforce while simultaneously increasing your bottom line. There are many ways to go about educating your employees, and what you choose is entirely up to you.

You could go the old-fashioned route and hold a seminar where you, a sales rep, or a hired professional could teach up-selling and cross-selling tactics.

You could distribute reading material (though there is the chance that it will be ignored).

You could also try to pair your customer service reps with your sales reps to have your salespeople teach some of their best tips and tricks to your customer service employees. This will help foster healthy inter-workplace relationships, while also cross training your employees.

Additionally, your customers benefit. Their needs are better met when they receive better products and upgraded services, and more satisfied customers mean more customers, period.

A word of caution; avoid being too sales-y. People are quick to catch on when they’re being fooled, so don’t lie to your customers. Give them honest facts as to why your product is superior to others, and why they should buy an upgraded version or another item with it. If they politely refuse, don’t push it. You risk upsetting customers and scaring away business if you push too hard, so learn to suggest rather than force. Still not quite sure how to up-sell? Check out these up-selling and cross-selling tactics that work.

With you, your employees, and your customers all potentially benefiting, don’t delay. Train your customer service operators (as well as your salespeople) to up-sell and cross-sell to ensure that your company stays profitable and your customers receive the best products and services possible.

Author’s Bio: Jacklin Altman is the current Digital Marketing Specialist at LiveHelpNow (www.livehelpnow.net), a PA-based customer service software company. Jacklin handles new marketing initiatives, maintains the company blog, and handles customer outreach.

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Strategy/Analysis Tagged With: bc, revenue, sales, strategy

Turn Your Weaknesses into Strengths: Five Jiu-Jitsu Principles that can benefit an Entrepreneur

January 2, 2014 by Rosemary

By Andrew Filev

For more than five years I’ve been training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I’d say it’s not just a self-defense system, but a whole art that is based on the concept that even a smaller, weaker person can defeat a stronger opponent if he uses the right technique. For me, Jiu-Jitsu is much more than physical training; it’s a philosophy. It teaches you things that can be applied not only on the mat but in your personal and professional life as well. Here are just a few of the lessons it can teach you in business:

1. The size is irrelevant if you master the technique

‘If size mattered, the elephant would be the king of the jungle,’ Rickson Gracie, black belt in JJ and heir of BJJ founders, justly noted. Likewise, in business, nimble start-ups manage to disrupt markets dominated by ‘elephants’ or even create a market of their own. All such start-ups have one thing in common– the ability to act creatively. You can’t win by simply replicating a big company’s game that’s already been polished. A small company needs to use its own advantages, like agility, being closer to customers, and, of course, being different in some aspect that is important to customers.

For instance, there’s an interesting case study about how Bulldog, a small UK company producing male grooming products, found a way to compete against giants like L’Oreal and Nivea. First, instead of using generic skincare product formulas Bulldog developed its own recipes using all natural ingredients. They also decided to use an unorthodox marketing strategy and teamed up with comedian David Mitchell to sponsor a series of comedy monologues. These videos collected more than 8 million views and grew Bulldog’s retail sales in UK by 65.4%.

When Wrike came to the project management space seven years ago, most of the solutions were built for industrial business models. Instead of entering the market as ‘just another company’, we decided to develop our own market: we specialize in helping creative workers collaborate online. Wrike brought something new ‘real-time collaboration’ and, thanks to delivering the solution via cloud, made it considerably cheaper. This made Wrike one of the fastest growing companies in the project management and collaboration space.

2. “A black belt is a white belt that never quits”

Renzo Gracie, a world famous Jiu-Jitsu coach, phrased the secret of jiu-jitsu champions pretty cleverly in the quote above. They train harder, day after day, year after year. They find ways to organize their life around this tough schedule, and think about improving their skill even when they’re not training.

It may look like Silicon Valley is built on stories of ‘overnight success.’ However, it is determination and persistence that make this success happen. Of course, luck helps, too. But it’s the luck of being persistent enough to find numerous opportunities, and being smart and disciplined enough to make those opportunities work.

3. Dojo is a place to learn

In jiu-jitsu a dojo is a training place where you can share knowledge and try new moves without risk and fear. Often it’s something you’re not supposed to do in competition, where you go with a well-developed game.

In business, the same can be achieved by ‘inducing learning.’ Instead of making a big ‘all in’ move right away, you can run a test project and study the results. If it works well, you can quickly scale it. Prototyping, A/B tests, crowd funded pre-orders in consumer space, you name it. The toolset of techniques grows quickly and becomes more and more sophisticated; all you need to do is to integrate them into your company’s daily processes.

4. Never stop moving

In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu once you stop moving you get caught in a submission hold. In business, no matter how big you are, once you stop moving forward the competition will pass you. Andy Grove, famous ex-CEO of Intel, and Clayton Christensen, who came up with the concept of disruptive innovation, developed this point in their books Only the Paranoid Survive and The Innovator’s Dilemma.

There are many examples of successful companies which became complacent and then when disruptive innovation happened turned into dinosaurs, such as Blockbuster and Kodak. Apple, on the other hand, is a testimony of a ‘paranoid mentality.’ When developing the iPhone, the company expected its sales of iPod to decline; and in developing the iPad, its Mac computer line to be negatively affected. But Apple chooses to constantly one-up itself. In fact, Steve Jobs famously said: ‘If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.’ It is exactly this mentality that allows the company to beat the ‘innovators’ dilemma.’

5. If you want to be a blue belt, make Jiu-jitsu your hobby. If you want to be a black belt, make it your life

Both in Jiu-Jitsu training and in business, genuine love for what you do and what you want to accomplish is, at the end of the day, what keeps you going. There are, of course rough patches, but when someone says that they have no idea how they would function day-to-day without your company (as our customer recently did), you know you must be doing something right. As Steve Jobs once stated, ‘Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.’ So, savor good moments, keep your eye on the goals you want to achieve, and enjoy the ride.

Are there any lessons that you can take from your hobby into your professional life?

———————————————–

Author’s Bio: Andrew Filev is the founder and CEO of Wrike, a leading provider of task management software. He is a seasoned software entrepreneur, project and product manager with 10+ years of experience and advisor to several fast-growing ventures. Apart from business, Andrew is interested in human and artificial intelligence – from cognitive psychology to neuroscience to machine learning. He also trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. You can find Andrew on Twitter as @andrewsthoughts or @wrike (Wrike).

Filed Under: Business Life, Inside-Out Thinking, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, strategy, strengths

I Meant To Do That! How To Turn A Mistake Into Success

December 20, 2013 by Rosemary

By Jon Norwood

I’ve started four businesses and successfully sold three. The common factor in all of them is that I made at least one serious error right out of the gate. When you’re faced with a fixed and immovable object, caused by either a mistake or due to matters outside of your control, if you cannot change it stop fighting it. But simply embracing it is not enough however. Adapt your plan and make this obstacle part of your intentional offering.

Military strategists, as well as every mother of little children, have learned how to roll with the punches. Adapt to the environment and its challenges. If you want to guarantee your failure, approach your business (and life in general) with a stiff neck and refuse to be flexible. If you don’t believe me, just picture all those poor suckers that collapse while standing at attention with their knees locked!

Real World Example

A businessman opened a “ropes” course for corporations. After he founded the company, spent the revenue building the course and marketing the opening of his new venture, he was informed that he could not sell alcohol. He didn’t think it would be a major problem, but as the months went on, he discovered just the opposite.

The corporations discovered that they had a hard time getting “buy in” from their employees and volunteers that were asked to spend an entire day that far out in the country, and not be able to have a happy hour after the event. In fact, the promise of a happy hour was a major selling point for his competition!

After 2 years of struggling, he was considering closing the doors. Then he had the idea that he could embrace the problem. In other words, he could look for organizations that would choose him over his competition BECAUSE he CHOSE to not serve alcohol.

Religious and conservative organizations found this marketing enticing. To his surprise, many organizations began to choose his course because they would no longer be vulnerable to law suits due to alcohol abuse and driving under the influence! His limitation became a powerful selling point.

Embrace your limitations and find a way to position them as strengths.

Bad location? Say it was on purpose and adjust your offering.
Spent a ton of money on a typewriter when everyone else is buying a computer? Learn to research for the next time. Say you love the quality and send out letters from that typewriter with marketing about your dedication to quality!

There is always an angle! You just have to stop freaking out to see it. It’s not a matter of being misleading in any way, it’s a choice of looking at the situation from a positive mindset and marketing from that perspective.

Author’s Bio: Jon Norwood writes about business and technology at http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/tech-talk/. He is also the author of internet providers by zip code. You can find him on Twitter as @mobileinformers.

Filed Under: Idea Bank, Inside-Out Thinking, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, marketing, strategy, strengths

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