How To Become a Trailhead Ranger
Dreaming of becoming a Trailhead Ranger? Megan Petersen, Director Trailhead Evangelism, shares her advice and tips on achieving Ranger status. It’s more attainable than you think. LIKE.TG’s online learning platform Trailhead has long been loved for its bite-sized content, badges and points. It’s gamified learning at its best, on a platform that anyone can use to build their skills. Trailhead is full of opportunities to ‘level-up’ – Trailhead Ranger is the highest rank. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting from zero or already have 50 badges, becoming a Ranger is a fun way to learn, gain new skills and even help educate others. To become a Trailhead Ranger you need to earn 100 badges and 50,000 points. It’s no easy task and not something you should try to do in a day or a week – the point is to learn and embed the knowledge gained, not simply to earn points and badges. If you’re keen to equip yourself with skills for in-demand jobs, make time for learning and plan your path, the #RoadToRanger program will help get you there. Reskill for a changing world Amid great change, Trailhead’s focus remains steady: breaking down the barriers to learning and empowering everyone to learn the skills needed for the jobs of today and tomorrow. With many people now working remotely and an increased business need for digital transformation, skilling up is more important than ever. That’s where the #RoadToRanger program steps in. #RoadToRanger: the Trailhead Trailmixes that will help you level up If you’re after a reliable way to achieve Trailhead Ranger status, the #RoadToRanger program will help you achieve your goal. The #RoadToRanger program consists of three trailmixes (like learning playlists) with the perfect blend of badges and points that take the guesswork out of how to reach Ranger status. Trailmix 1 — Get started with the basics about Trailhead, LIKE.TG, and important guiding principles Trailmix 2 — Take a look at technology Trailmix 3 — Get hands-on and earn points Complete these and Ranger status will be yours ‒ I’ve done the maths! Saying that, if you’re interested in certain topics or focused on certain roles I highly recommend you choose your own adventure. You can narrow your Trailhead search by applying filters based on roles, products and your learning level. Or if you know exactly what you’re looking for, type a relevant word into the search bar to find suitable Trailhead content. Slow and steady always wins It’s not a race. You should make sure you’re retaining what you’re learning. If you find yourself fading or losing motivation in the face of a tough module, don’t give up! Step away and do something you’re good at. Your positive mindset will quickly return and you’ll be much more motivated to tackle a module or unit you’re struggling with. Aim for a mixture of fun and informative content, such as the Camp B Well Trail, as well as the more product-focused Trails like Building Apex Coding Skills, to keep your mind engaged. The benefits of becoming a Trailhead Ranger Taking the initiative to build skills shows you’re committed to self-improvement and giving back to the business model ‒ a great attribute in any employee. That’s part of why 25% of Trailblazers find a new job or score raises and promotions! But the biggest benefit is to you and your ability to continuously learn. By the time you hit Ranger status, you’ve created a new, useful habit that makes learning part of your everyday life. Earning Trailhead Ranger status helps you to develop the in-demand skills that lead to top jobs, like: LIKE.TG Administrator LIKE.TG Architect Developer Business analyst or consultant Whatever your role, Trailhead helps you on your certification journey and empowers you to help others along the way. That Trailhead Ranger feeling Wondering what it feels like to finally reach Ranger status? I’ll leave it to the experts to explain. Ready to start your Road to Ranger journey? Sign up to Trailhead and complete the #RoadToRanger quest. This post originally appeared on the A.U.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How To Break Down the Complexity of B2B Commerce
While the last year has brought unprecedented change to how we work and connect with our customers, customer experience remains a key differentiator. For the Fourth Edition of our State of the Connected Customer report, we surveyed over 15,000 global consumers and business buyers. Four-fifths indicated that they place the same emphasis on flawless engagement as they do on product quality. The percentage was even higher amongst business buyers. These individuals no longer want to be treated as an entity. They have come to expect a personalised customer experience that is just as intuitive as what they would get when buying a pair of shoes or a jacket online. It’s an important reminder that while B2B purchases can be complex, the buying journey need not be. Here’s how LIKE.TG can help make the B2B buying journey as straightforward as possible: Simplifying customer engagement Technology has fundamentally changed customers’ expectations. Our latest State of the Connected Customer report revealed that 65% of business customers prioritise convenience over brand. It also found that 66% of business customers prefer personalised products and services. These demands are putting digital technology at the forefront of B2B selling. We see many businesses transform processes like quoting and pricing. One of these is PLDT. PLDT is a leading Philippines-based telecom operator that serves both businesses and consumers. The Enterprise Business within PLDT is transforming digitally with LIKE.TG , with the aim of simplifying customer engagement. “We want to make a positive impact on every single business. To do that, we realise that we first have to make an impact on the people of our organisation. That’s why we have endeavoured to drive our vision forward with a digital transformation that will allow us to simplify the complex for our organisation and likewise for our customers,” said Jovy Hernandez, Senior Vice President and Head, Enterprise Business from PLDT. The first step in PLDT’s digital transformation is consolidating all customer needs onto a single platform in order to streamline operations and serve customers better. PLDT also plans to digitise proposal and contract generation. Leveraging LIKE.TG, the sales team will be able to prepare proposals faster. The team will also have access to a product catalogue that highlights all solutions that are suited to a customers’ needs. Customers will be able to sign contracts digitally and receive the solutions they need more quickly. Making online buying easy Changes in customer behaviour are also accelerating the growth of B2B ecommerce. LIKE.TG B2B Commerce can help businesses take advantage of this shift and offer more consumer-like buying experiences. These include seamless online ordering and purchasing recommendations that can be tailored to each customer in real time. LIKE.TG B2B Commerce was recently evaluated by Forrester in The Forrester Wave™: B2B Commerce Suites, Q2 2020. LIKE.TG was found to be a leader amongst 13 B2B commerce suite providers. LIKE.TG received the highest possible scores in the criteria of business intelligence and analytics, content and offer personalisation, and product and service configuration. It also scored on-par with other vendors in the criteria of promotions and order and inventory management. The Forrester report described LIKE.TG as a “powerhouse for end-to-end customer engagement solutions centred around its CRM.” It also said “LIKE.TG is above par in its approach to the market, setting strategies that speak to customer needs and delivering (as promised) with reliable technical and support resources.” Access the full report here to learn more about why LIKE.TG has been named a leader. You’ll also find guidance on what to look for in a B2B commerce solution.
How To Build a Data Culture: What Leaders Need To Know
Your company accumulates mass quantities of data every day. You collect information from marketing, sales, service, and more. There are mission-critical insights locked inside. The question is, what trends are you missing? Can you surface them to make smarter, more strategic decisions? If so, how? Building a data culture is the only way to unearth these buried insights. That’s a formidable task for the 83% of CEOs who want their organisations to be more data-driven. Yet, companies that embrace this approach to decision-making are more successful. In fact, leading data-driven companies to reallocate talent and capital four times faster than their peers. Furthermore, the 58% of companies that make decisions based on data are more likely to beat revenue targets than those that don’t. So, what’s next for leaders ready to build a data culture? See how CEOs can overcome challenges and empower their employees to make smarter decisions faster. CEOs face countless decisions about where to start when building a data culture. Overcome analysis paralysis by starting small with a use case that proves the value of your new data culture. Promote the payoff with skeptics: McKinsey research shows data-driven companies accomplish goals faster and that their initiatives contribute at least 20% to earnings before income taxes. Here’s why this works: Data analysis surfaces actionable trends Data analysis surfaces patterns that unearth value and enable companies to take advantage of market opportunities faster. That drives growth, nurtures innovation, and strengthens differentiation from competitors. Artificial intelligence and machine learning take the guesswork out of decision-making Companies that still rely on institutional knowledge and gut feelings to guide decision-making are leaving money on the table. With artificial intelligence and machine learning, employees make the right decisions quickly and confidently. Strategic work keeps employees engaged When data analyses guide routine decisions, employees spend less time on basic tasks and more time focusing on strategic work. That keeps them engaged and productive. That’s why 84% of data-leading organisations have observed an increase in employee retention. Empower the right team to score a financial win The best way to build a community of data champions is to demonstrate how data-driven decision-making grows revenue and streamlines operations. Don’t choose an analytics use case just because it might produce an interesting outcome. Instead, opt for a project that will yield a financial win and that you can later scale for maximum impact. Here’s how to start: Step 1: Choose the right team members Start a working group that includes diverse colleagues from across the organisation. These team members should bring a collaborative mindset, differentiated skills and abilities, and distinct organisational perspectives. Make sure you include executives, line managers, data engineers, developers, and machine learning architects. Step 2: Equip your team with the right training and technology With accessible technology, you can connect team members and enable them to unlock hidden insights. Don’t assume your team members have the skills or tools to get started on their own. Instead, give them comprehensive training so they can learn how to make data-driven decisions from anywhere (without having to be an actual data scientist). Step 3: Start small Test your assumptions on a small scale and iterate. You’ll know you’ve hit a winner when your colleagues can measure the value of your project on their bottom line. Here’s how this worked at one financial services company. After a simple clustering analysis evaluated subclasses of data across sales territories, right-sizing the coverage led to $1 million in incremental revenue the following year. That win was enough to build enthusiasm for data-driven decision-making across the company. Step 4: Prioritise data culture’s human element Ensure team members review raw data analyses to understand downstream utilisation. Only human eyes can determine if bias has influenced the conclusions. Avoid bias by proxy by not taking data at face value. “Nobody can just drop all your data in and the right answer comes out,” said Mark Nelson, Tableau CEO. “It’s that human insight that helps you jump from raw data to conclusions.” Take the next step to build your data culture The process of iterating and scaling new data strategies means success won’t happen overnight. However, leading companies encourage experimentation because they believe not being data-driven is the bigger institutional hazard. Inaction is the biggest risk of all. This post was orignally published on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How To Build a Digital Transformation Strategy
When you are at the beginning of your digital transformation journey, it can feel like standing at the foot of a giant mountain. When faced with a daunting climb, ascending is almost impossible without a carefully considered plan. Similarly, reaching the top is far more likely with the help of an experienced partner. What is true for mountaineering is also true for digital transformation. Not only do you need a strategy, but you’re far better off by taking the journey with someone who’s been there and done that. Before you start — do you really need to climb this mountain? Before setting out on your journey, you might wonder if digital transformation is the right way to go. Usually, clear signs point to the need to transform, most of which have grown far bigger and brighter since the onset of the pandemic. The most glaring is that ‘business as usual’ is no longer cutting it. Perhaps business isn’t repeating at the same rate, or you’re no longer getting as many referrals, or previously successful promotions are failing to generate leads. If these sound familiar, chances are you need to consider a digital transformation strategy. You may also be getting internal signals from employees. Individuals and teams could be complaining that they can no longer collaborate successfully, especially with the move to the hybrid workplace. They may be asking for features you’re unable to provide, but that have become commonplace in consumer apps. These are just some of the many issues that are best tackled by heading towards that mountain. Make sure you have a vision Any successful endeavour in business, whether short-, medium-, or long-term, begins with the formulation of a vision. To create your own vision, imagine a hypothetical point in the future where you’ve achieved what you set out to do. For the mountaineer, this could be anything from achieving a personal best climb, to reaching the summit of Everest. For a business undertaking digital transformation, it could mean integrating outdated systems so that your entire organisation is working together. You don’t have to scale an entire mountain or update all your systems all at once. However, you can’t take the first step towards either without having at least a general sense of where you’re heading. Prioritise your objectives Once you’ve formulated your vision, it’s time to break the overall goal down into smaller objectives. When it comes to digital transformation, especially on an organisation-wide scale, it’s important to identify the objectives that will drive the most success, and start there. This could mean taking a forensic look at all your departments and verticals and identifying which would benefit most from transformation. You should also consider which departments will deliver the greatest returns the quickest. By starting with the teams that provide the fastest returns, you can prove quicker return on investment. You should also plan how other teams will be a part of that same transformation down the line. If transforming your sales processes is a priority, then it’s important to understand how marketing will become a part of that same digital world, even if that won’t happen for a while. Involve the right people at the right time Digital transformation is a complete change to the way you do business. Even if you’re prioritising certain objectives over others, your entire workforce is going to be affected. Implementing systems incrementally or all-at-once is only part of the process. You also need to make sure that the digital transformation sticks on a human level. In order for that to happen, you need to bring everyone along with you. This doesn’t mean that all employees in all departments have to be involved from day one. But it is a good idea to make everyone aware of the changes—they’ll be involved eventually. It’s important to choose the right people for the team that leads the transformation. Every organisation has employees who embrace change, but there may be those who are hesitant. Make sure that you include both kinds of people in your transformation team. The people excited by change will bring others along with them on the journey. Those who are more reluctant will give you much-needed perspective. Communication is vital. The more transparency, the more likely you are to get a buy-in from the right people at the right time. Consider a partner Climbing a mountain is always going to be more manageable with the help of someone who has been there before. This is particularly relevant for small and medium-sized businesses who may be even further away from the digital world than larger organisations. Digital transformation isn’t always a quick or easy process. Enlisting the help of an expert can simplify and speed up the digital transformation process. This could save you time, money, and energy in the long run. Make sure that you select the right partner, though! Just like with mountaineering, you should make sure that the partner you choose has experience in the landscape you work in. Many providers will claim that they can help you, so take the time to ensure that they understand your industry, and have experience with businesses of your size. Don’t be afraid to fail You will formulate a vision, prioritise your objectives, and take a carefully planned journey towards your ultimate goal. You may enlist the expertise of a partner, and get a buy-in from the right people at the right time. But not everything is always going to go according to plan. Don’t be scared to take calculated risks. As with mountaineering, you may occasionally fail to travel as far as you thought by the end of the day. You may find one route harder than expected, and you may have to pause and find a better way up. Understand that not every move will end in a win. As long as you remember your vision and your strategy, you’ll be prepared to face each new step in the journey. Download our e-book and read about the five steps top organisations take to reimagine their businesses and improve customer experiences. Blaze your trail to digital transformation today!
How To Build A Productive Lead Generation Strategy That Works
Our goal as marketers is to attract people to our brand. But not just any people: we want to draw prospects with a high likelihood of becoming customers. Good lead-generation tactics can help. We define lead generation as the process of creating consumer interest for a service or product, with the end goal of turning that interest into revenue. Leads can be generated when a consumer downloads a piece of content, signs up for a free trial, or creates an account for a free product. They come from organic channels, such as Google search, and paid channels, such as advertising campaigns. Generating mass appeal is good for brand awareness, but here’s the thing: not all leads are created equal. Running a strong lead-generation program is not about the quantity of leads we generate. It’s about ensuring quality leads by targeting the right people, at the right time, and delivering the right content on the right channel to them in their customer journey. Want to learn more about building a productive lead generation strategy? Here are three tips to grow more leads, using examples from how we do things here at LIKE.TG. 1. How to measure lead generation tactics An important metric is a key indicator of business growth and can be tied to the increase in product engagement and revenue. It’s something the entire organisation can rally behind. Our marketing team key metric is when an opportunity reaches the second stage of the sales funnel. At that point, our sales development team has vetted a prospect, and the prospect is verified and accepted by an account executive. Our sales team will estimate the potential revenue from the opportunity, allowing the marketing team to also begin tracking a return on investment. From here, we start to build our measurement framework. We use this metric to measure the success of our lead generation tactics and improve programs. When measuring, it’s important to gauge which sources are bringing in high-quality leads. Are they social platforms like LinkedIn, email newsletters, or ad partners like Google? Also, make sure the money spent on ads is generating high-quality users. An example of a high-quality lead is a ‘hand raiser’ — someone who engages with the brand or asks for information (like requesting a demo or free trial). A passive lead is someone who provides contact info to download an ebook but hasn’t expressed other interest. We pay close attention to hand-raiser leads because they have a higher chance of becoming customers. We focus on content performance from the highest-quality sources of leads. If traffic is dropping from a top-quality lead source, we react quickly because of the expected downstream effect. Possible tweaks include changing our ad design or ad copy, adjusting our paid investment or updating a call to action (CTA). 2. Develop strategies to get the right leads There is a saying that goes ‘a lead is a lead,’ but that’s a big misconception. Customer insight and interest is valuable, and social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn generate revenue by offering targeted advertising that uses the customer data they’ve collected. So, a more targeted campaign on LinkedIn will cost significantly more than a general banner ad. Some leads can be less costly and have huge scale, but are low quality because they aren’t reaching people who are looking for specific products or services (and therefore less likely to convert). Other leads are more expensive but target people who are ready to buy. And then there is everyone in between. The various channels, targeting options, and content that we pair together to acquire leads can produce hundreds or even thousands of iterations. We have to recognise the lead generation tactics that produce quality leads and at what cost. For example, on LinkedIn, our target is sales managers within the financial services industry who have interacted with our business once in the past. We serve them a customer story from a banking customer. These leads might be more expensive, but they’re highly likely to convert, so the cost is worth it. 3. How to test lead generation tactics Improving the efficiency of lead generation tactics is crucial — no matter if it is a one-person team at a startup or a larger team at an enterprise. At LIKE.TG, we improve lead quality and ROI by using Marketing Cloud Intelligence to run tests on our paid ads. We run a test by delivering two or more versions of ad copy or form pages to different segments of our audience at the same time and seeing which ones perform best. These tests are done on our highest-trafficked content. We’ve found that even the most basic changes have driven significant returns — and then we can apply those changes to other programs to make them more efficient as well. For example, we ran a simple test changing the layout of the several fields in a form that readers filled out to access a piece of content. It was simple — just shortening the vertical length of the form. This change increased form submission on desktop computers by 10%. We now do this on all our forms. Again, not all tests require massive change of content. What matters the most is when we do find wins, they are used across many of our programs. Building the right lead-generation tactics takes some work. But when it is done efficiently, these tactics will save cost and time, and bring in new revenue. Building relationships with your customers is vital for your business growth. Learn how to get the most out of your leads and take your business from good to great from this guide. This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How To Build a Strategy Framework That Works
For her first blog in this Strategy series, Lee-anne Knight explained what strategy is and why it’s so fundamental in the success of a business. Now, Lee-anne shares how you can start building your own strategy. Did you know that 74% of executives are concerned that they have not translated their strategy into tangible actions? Did you also know that only 35% of those executives believe their strategy is going to lead them to success? What’s going on? While we know having a solid and inspiring strategic vision is great for rallying the troops and stakeholders, it’s not what gets you to your destination. So, how can you create tangible actions and a plan to help you deliver on your strategy? The answer is with a robust planning framework. And there is no better framework to start with than LIKE.TG’s V2MOM, which stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures. V2MOM: a robust planning framework Before we discuss how you can utilise the V2MOM framework, let’s take a look at how the V2MOM method works. To give you some context, V2MOM is the methodology that helped grow LIKE.TG from a four-person company to one with over 50,000 employees globally. As our Founder and CEO Marc Benioff said: “Success depends on constant communication and complete alignment – we’ve been able to achieve this through V2MOM.” Has this strange acronym piqued your interest yet? At LIKE.TG everyone creates a V2MOM, from Marc Benioff down. It provides transparency and alignment, which in a matrix organisation can be somewhat of a challenge! From an alignment perspective, the V2MOM method allows every employee to clearly communicate what they plan to achieve each year and how. Updated yearly, the V2MOM keeps us all connected as we conquer the year ahead. From a strategy perspective, the V2MOM framework is just as robust in building a strategic plan. The beauty of the framework is it can span multiple years, and can be an instructive reference and checkpoint to ensure you’re holding your course. That doesn’t mean things can’t change along the way; important changes are discussed, agreed, and strategically referenced in the V2MOM. Building a strategic V2MOM Now that you have a better understanding of how the V2MOM method works, let’s dive into how you can use the V2MOM to build your own strategy framework that will lead to a successful delivery of your vision. Vision: What do you want to accomplish? A clear vision is a great starting point for building your strategy – it’s the encapsulation of the big hairy goal you’re aiming to achieve. The vision should be bold, clear, inspiring and importantly, short! If I can’t understand your vision without you explaining it, then go back to the drawing board. For more practical tips on creating a strategic vision, take a look at Gamestorming’s Cover Story exercise I mentioned in my first blog. Values: What are the principles that matter? Let’s be honest: How many of you have read a company’s values and thought they were fluff? Company values are not just ‘nice to have’, they guide us in our everyday decision making and tradeoffs. Values can be what keeps stakeholders engaged, just as they keep us all honest about the intent and impact of the work we’re doing. It’s why it’s so important to be strategic when it comes to determining the values that will help build your strategy. Don’t let them be fluff! Ask yourself these questions: What are the top three values that are key to the success of implementing my strategy? What values are core to my organisation and how we work? Are your strategy values aligned with your organisational values? Do they work in harmony or are they counter-intuitive? Are these values clear and can everyone in the organisation uphold them? After answering these questions and you find there is misalignment, you will need to review your strategy values. Remember, be holistic with your approach and allow your values to build on one another. Methods: What are the actions needed to achieve the strategy? Here’s where you can outperform those executives who weren’t sure how to turn their strategy into tangible actions. Methods are really where the rubber hits the road, outlining the key ‘chunks’ that start to form the strategy. Or in other words, how you are going to achieve the vision. For example, if NASA’s vision was “to put the first man person on the moon”, the methods could have included: Forming a team with the right expertise Finding the right location for launch Engaging other countries and teams for knowledge sharing. Methods allow us to break the work down into manageable pieces, articulating the how and providing clarity on what each of the chunks is focused on delivering. It’s what leads people and strategies to success. Obstacles: What stands in your way? The value of a roadmap is not just knowing where you’re going, it’s having a view on what might stop you getting to your destination. Being able to plan for potential challenges before they arise, means you know how to deal with them when they manifest – saving a lot of future headaches. Although, not every obstacle is identifiable – COVID-19 is a perfect example of that – however, getting into the habit of thinking about and planning your way around obstacles builds the strategic thinking muscle. Heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s officially known as the Paretto principle, and in this case, it means 20% of obstacles will cause 80% of the roadblocks you’ll encounter on a typical strategy journey. When the unexpected does happen, the muscle built discussing and identifying obstacles provides a fast path to escalate out of the challenge when your strategy strays off the path. Measures: Planning for success Every step in the V2MOM process leads to this final destination: ROI. Measures challenge us to call out, right from the start of our journey, what success looks like – and holds us to it. Without having a clear perspective of what you’re aiming for, you won’t know it, much less celebrate it, when you’re at the winning post. A final word on V2MOM The V2MOM is a great tool to use in a collaborative way, ensuring stakeholder engagement and buy-in right from the start. But executive ownership is key – the executive owner has to and must hold everyone accountable to the final plan. Just as with Gamestorming’s vision exercise, building out your strategy roadmap is not a singular activity. At LIKE.TG the V2MOM is a living document. Reviewed on a regular basis, providing a level of accountability that is perfect for the ‘test, revise, deploy’ frameworks necessary to build the roadmap to deliver a successful strategy. Need help writing your V2MOM? There’s a trail for that! Take our Write a V2MOM trail over at Trailhead. This post originally appeared on the A.U.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How to Build an Integrated Real Estate CRM for Tenant Management
COVID-19 is reshaping the office property market as businesses move to decentralised and work-from-home models in the mid to long term. This has implications for Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and their investors as falling demand threatens to drive down the value of CBD office space. In Singapore, for example, the vacancy rate of office space rose to 11% with office rents falling by 0.8%, and prices down 4%. That makes it more important than ever for REITs to work smarter. Some are turning to technology like CRM platforms to generate deeper insights and drive better decision making. Additionally, as businesses change the way they use traditional work spaces, REITs can assist tenants transition to alternative real estate offerings buoyed by the need for collaboration. To be effective in this climate, REITs need a 360-degree view of tenants. But lack of integration between real estate management software platforms can create data silos. This leaves the leasing rep without transparency into lead generation, deal progression, and tenant relationships. LIKE.TG can solve this problem. REITs and real estate agencies can use LIKE.TG to build an integrated CRM for real estate. From integrating legacy systems to marketing automation on the platform, and empowering all this data with AI, a LIKE.TG CRM can provide a single source of truth for leasing reps. Portals can enable collaboration with brokers and tenants. Lastly, help your tenants return to work with ongoing health checks and safety protocols in the new normal. Here’s how to use LIKE.TG to build an integrated real estate CRM for REITs and leasing reps in five steps: Step 1: Set up a CRM platform Sales Cloud in the Customer 360 suite is the core of your CRM for REIT and real estate. This is where you build a lead-to-lease pipeline to give leasing reps visibility into deal progression across the entire tenant journey. Leasing reps can follow tenant journeys through each of the opportunity stages — from new lead to deal closure. They can also use LIKE.TG’s point-and-click approval process to enable seamless and transparent negotiations and discount approvals, and create custom objects in Sales Cloud to give leasing reps seamless access to lease information and property inventory data. AppExchange enables you to integrate relevant apps into Sales Cloud to add specific functionality. For example, Conga is a document generation app that gives leasing reps access to a range of templates they can use to instantly create key documents like a Letter of Intent. Step 2: Add marketing automation Leasing reps need a constant flow of leads funneling into the Sales Cloud pipeline. This is easy with a simple Pardot integration. Pardot is a marketing automation solution that helps you to generate and nurture leads, and seamlessly pass them onto leasing reps without the need for integration. This combines the benefits of marketing and CRM in one platform. Lead transfer can be automated to save time, and leads can be placed straight into an automation journey. This will help leasing reps nurture leads through opportunity stages from project announcements to site visits and leasing discussions. Pardot also has a range of lead generation tools for marketing managers. For example, Pardot enables marketing teams to build web forms to capture prospect information, and build email templates that drive prospects to Pardot landing pages. Built-in marketing analytics enable smart campaign performance monitoring and show the return on investment of each campaign. Step 3: Integrate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) data To create a single 360-degree tenant view, Sales Cloud may need to call on data from various sources including your ERP, broker CRMs, and other legacy platforms. MuleSoft makes this process seamless with easy data integration between systems. MuleSoft connects multiple applications together. It enables simple data syncing between various sources including inventory applications and popular ERPs like SAP and Oracle. For less well-known platforms, MuleSoft uses a point-and-click methodology to create APIs capable of syncing data with Sales Cloud from just about any software platform. With all tenant data brought together from multiple platforms into a single view on Sales Cloud, the leasing rep no longer has to juggle multiple systems to find basic data like contract terms, contract expiry dates, and lease renewal dates. They can access all relevant data and get a 360-degree view of each and every tenant within Sales Cloud. Step 4: Build partner and tenant portals In REITs and large real estate agencies, selling is not a single person play. It often requires collaboration between leasing reps and property brokers. For example, brokers may be responsible for matching prospects to properties and scheduling site visits. To do so, brokers often need to exchange information with leasing reps. Experience Cloud can be used to build a partner portal that boosts collaboration between leasing reps and brokers. Both can use the portal to access key tenant and inventory data. Leasing reps and brokers can also communicate inside the portal with web-based communication tools such as Chatter or Slack. Tenant portals hosted in Experience Cloud can also be used to improve communication between leasing reps and tenants, and enable tenant self-service to ease leasing reps’ workloads. For example, tenants can log in to a tenant portal to view contract information, book meeting rooms, and raise customer service tickets without help from their leasing reps. Step 5: Leverage artificial intelligence Leasing reps can work smarter with artificial intelligence (AI) built into your LIKE.TG real estate management solution. Einstein is LIKE.TG’s AI technology that helps customers sell smarter, deepen customer relationships, scale customer support, and personalise experiences. It is embedded in Sales Cloud to provide leasing reps with critical insights on deal progression, identify upsell opportunities, and complete property evaluations based on existing data. Einstein can also use AI insights to identify important emails based on keyword scans, and help leasing reps prioritise their inbox around high-value tasks. Step 6: Manage Employee Health, Safety and Security REITs and property managers can help tenant companies deploy solutions like Work.com to support safe return-to-work protocols, and ongoing health and safety checks in the new normal. With Work.com your tenant companies can manage health-related interactions and workplace planning on a single platform. This enables companies to boost healthcare and community responsiveness now, and for future crises. Your tenant companies can use the Workplace Command Centre to take swift action on employee wellness, and help their employees adapt to new ways of working with myTrailhead. You and your tenants can also track the latest independent public health data through the Tableau COVID-19 Data Hub. LIKE.TG helps busy leasing reps work smarter, smashes data silos, and creates a single source of truth. Leasing reps get the visibility and insights they need to progress deals, manage tenant relationships, and improve performance across the board.
How to Build One Team Around the Customer
Peter Doolan is EVP of Digital Transformation & Innovation. He shares what it takes to change mindsets, overcome silos, and put the customer at the centre of the business. Who owns customer centricity? Ultimately, everyone in your organisation does. That means collaboration must be your top priority. In a previous article from this series, we talked about the need for customer-centric business processes, which lie at the heart of any customer-focused business. How do you bring these processes to life? You have to act as a unified team across silos so employees closest to the end customer are empowered to create enduring relationships. Customer-centric companies have silos, too. They have clear designations of who’s doing what for efficiency. But they empower distinct departments to share, collaborate, and deliver integrated customer experiences — down to even the most junior employees. Empower every employee to deliver the full force of the company There is a good reason for silos: speed and efficiency. In the past, you could leave that statement and move on, confident in its accuracy. In today’s — and definitely tomorrow’s — digital world, rigid silos might be fast and efficient at repetition, but they are slow, expensive, and critical of change. To move your company from product-centric to customer-centric, you can keep silos but you have to advance them with new tools, new language, and new culture to ensure they become flexible, hyper-collaborative, and sensitive to customer needs. What happens when customers have a poor experience with your brand? They speak to the first person they get from the company, and they don’t care what department the person is in. Unfortunately, and all too often, the customer ends up having to navigate the org chart to get what they want. Employees are simply not empowered and connected to serve the customer’s needs. This requires us to abandon the top-down organisational structures we’ve inherited from the early 20th century, with rigid divisions between sales, service, marketing, and IT. And in a world where your customer is at the centre of your organisation, what the highest-paid person in an organisation wants may not be as important as what the customer wants. It’s time for flexible, flatter, and empowered team structures. Customer-centric companies think carefully about the customer experience and develop a customer-first culture to improve it. They overlay this culture with the tools and information everyone needs to make it easy to collaborate across teams and departments in the service of the customer. These same companies cultivate information transparency and celebrate team behaviour. Thousands of our customers are born digital and customer-first. For them, the challenge is one of formalising the culture and collaboration tools as they scale. For thousands of larger companies, the issues are slightly different. They see immediate results, especially around NPS and CSAT scores when they formalise multidisciplinary teams dedicated to a location. This case study on T-Mobile shows how bringing together cross-functional teams delivers improved revenue, NPS scores, and customer retention. Make a plan with internal stakeholders to get started To start to make this discipline a reality, review your goals and KPIs with peers or departmental leaders outside your team — even those that don’t normally work together. Explore how you can help each other, and find goals you can share. Celebrate successes as a broader team as you step away from partitioned, traditional responsibilities. Review the following list. How can you move from the department-specific approaches on the left to the customer-first set on the right? Have you listened to all perspectives, especially from those who are on the front lines with customers every day? Who is responsible for designing the end-to-end customer experience and where are the internal bottlenecks? To become a customer company, you must have the mindset to evolve your business model, culture, and organisation. One example is the Chief Technology Officer of Edelman Financial Engines, who evolved his department from functional product teams to “customer journey” teams. Technology is only an enabling platform for change. The real transformation takes place when everyone within the organisation shares the commitment to place the customer at the centre of everything. For more information on building your team around your customer, check out the customer 360 playbook. This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How To Build Thriving Slack Communities for Marketers
It’s no secret that marketers love to connect with each other to learn, trade stories, or simply make new friends. But with so many channels to choose from, it’s hard to find a comfortable, virtual place to meet regularly. That’s why I’m passionate about building Slack communities for marketers. I’ve been using Slack within the digital marketing community long before I started working at LIKE.TG. It’s helped me get to where I am today. My role at LIKE.TG focuses on collaborating with our amazing Trailblazer community. I use Slack channels to connect with people on everything from Marketing Cloud certifications to best email marketing practices. Building Slack communities for marketers has helped me build relationships that last — as a mentor, a marketer, and a collaborator. Slack has many tools for knowledge sharing and relationship building, so it’s important to use it wisely. Here are a few of my best practices for making Slack a tool for building strong communities in your marketing space. Be strategic with Slack communities for marketers I won’t lie: Slack can be tricky to navigate. There are public and private channels, direct messaging, Huddles, video calls, and more. I’m a part of 22 external Slack channels and twice that many for my LIKE.TG job. These channels cover a lot of ground and can take up a good chunk of my time, so I have to be very strategic with how I incorporate channel engagement into my day-to-day work life – especially since Slack is always “on” as a global platform. I’m also intentional about creating new Slack channels, knowing that other marketers are in the same situation. Before starting a new channel, I look at what’s already out there on the platform. I consider the community’s needs and how my channel can meet those needs. I also identify the rules for a new private channel, including approval processes, conversation topic guidelines, and other channel guardrails. You may be wondering: what’s a channel? Think about channels like you think about a Facebook group, or even an email chain with multiple parties (but way better organised). It’s a common space for people to discuss a topic, like new marketing strategies, or a place to collaborate on an upcoming campaign launch. Some of the most powerful Slack channels emerged out of a desire to help others attain something, whether it was knowledge, career development, or community. Slack channels must serve the good of the community. When you bring this spirit of service to your channels, you’re more likely to engage with others in impactful ways. Lean in to organic, authentic conversation My introduction to Slack was through Email Geeks, a community of developers, architects, and email marketers. I wanted to write some LinkedIn thought leadership pieces to help customers understand Marketing Cloud, so I reached out to Email Geeks members on their Slack channel for feedback on article ideas. Since then, Slack has been a collaborative space for authentic knowledge sharing in my work as a marketer. Today, I keep the same principle in mind when using the platform. I use Slack to engage with the entire Trailblazer ecosystem in very different ways, from updating people on upcoming events or program opportunities to answering community questions and offering helpful resources. I’m able to connect with other marketers and Trailblazers in these relevant ways because the conversations and interactions come from a place of authenticity – honestly interacting with others in a way that benefits everyone involved. Take one of my favorite public Slack workspaces, for example: Marketers Chat, a place where thought leaders from various companies gather to discuss marketing topics, events, services, suggestions, and tools. I heard of Marketers Chat through word of mouth, as did many of its 7,000 members. Its value as a collaborative, engaging space for knowledge sharing has proved itself naturally. This is the magic of a well-created Slack workspace. It makes space for meaningful dialogue within appropriate guidelines, which makes it a place where relationships can thrive. Know the rules and stick to them Some Slack channels have specific rules around channel use, self-promotion, and selling products to keep the space relevant and distraction-free. When stepping into Slack conversations, it’s crucial to know and adhere to these rules. Remember that Slack is considered a private space for our marketing community to be open, honest, and vulnerable. Many channel admins automatically share channel guidelines to new members upon joining. It’s also helpful to understand what Slack means to other members in these channels – not necessarily what Slack means to you or your organisation. Everybody uses Slack for different reasons. They may use it as a hub for answers to pressing questions. Or it may be a place for venting about a product, service, or certification exam. Regardless, always ask yourself how you can achieve a goal or help a fellow team member in the most respectful way possible. For example, at LIKE.TG we have ‘broadcast only’ channels, where team leads publish critical updates, and designated Q&A channels for company-wide meetings in which employees can ask questions in real time and search for answers afterward. Having a specific purpose for each channel helps everyone get the most out of Slack. When in doubt, check in with channel owners and admins. Back when I was sharing thought leadership on Twitter, for example, I regularly consulted the owner of Email Geeks before posting anything in that Slack channel about Twitter events I was leading. I did this out of respect for the community and also for the sake of transparency, a key piece in building trust with peers and customers. If used mindfully, Slack can be a powerful tool for creating meaningful conversations on the topics we marketers care most about: relationships with our customers, brand strategy, certifications, and so much more. Given that the platform continues to add new features and integrations every year, I’m keeping my eyes on the Slack horizon for even more ways to connect with my digital marketing community. Ready to deepen your own engagement with colleagues and brand fans? Check out my favorite public Slack communities for marketers: EmailGeeks, Marketing Cloud Learning Camp, Ohana Slack, and Pardashians. This post was originally published on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How to Close More Sales Deals While Saving Time and Costs
In today’s changing economic landscape, businesses need solutions that can boost productivity while saving time and cutting costs. As customer expectations continue to evolve, sales teams in particular need to do more with less. The pressure is on to close more deals and meet sales targets today. But at the same time, sales teams also need to identify opportunities for tomorrow. Tiffani Bova, Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at LIKE.TG, calls this dual challenge the ‘seller’s dilemma’. So how can sales professionals focus on the near-term while also planning for the future? To drive long-term growth and success, they need to rethink their sales strategies to adapt to new ways of selling. Optimise, transform, innovate According to our State of Sales research, 72% of sellers’ time is spent on non-selling activities during an average week. These activities often comprise critical but tedious tasks like deal management and data entry. As a result, their ability to meet sales targets is being impacted – 83% of sellers expected to miss their quota in 2022. When sales operations help sellers reduce their number of non-selling tasks, they can help optimise the time available to sales teams to connect with customers and close deals. To enable this optimisation and improve selling efficiency, sales processes may need to be transformed. This can mean automating tasks which sales teams may be completing manually. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can also mine customer data to help with sales forecasting and territory mapping to further free up time for sales teams to focus on selling. Adopting these transformative technologies can provide data-driven insights to help teams have meaningful conversations with customers. It can reduce the time spent on sales management, while allowing them to focus more on their own core skills and be innovative in addressing customer pain points. This can make selling a more rewarding experience while also helping them achieve sales growth. Boost efficiency and cost savings with AI and automation Sales automation can boost productivity. Deploying a platform like LIKE.TG Sales Cloud can help automate and streamline workflows to make sales teams more efficient. For example, when a sales representative books an order in, it is automatically sent to the customer and upon receiving their e-signature, an auto invoice is generated. Such streamlined order management and centralised view of customer data enabled by LIKE.TG have helped Browzwear reduce the manual handling of each order by 65%. The company’s use of Tableau for data-driven decision making has helped save time spent in verifying numbers and data, thereby improving data transparency and efficiency. This has accelerated their digital transformation and helped Browzwear scale up efficiently to achieve 60% year-on-year business growth. When automation is paired with AI, it can help significantly reduce manual work like lead scoring. By carrying out a sales analysis of past deals, AI like Sales Cloud Einstein can help prioritise the leads most likely to convert. This can keep sellers focused on meaningful conversations to close deals faster with customers. As the State of Sales reveals, eight in 10 leaders and sales operations professionals say AI has improved the use of sales representatives’ time. Unlock your sales superpower As sales representatives hone their skills to beat the ‘seller’s dilemma’, Bova says it’s important for them to understand their own strengths. Instead of trying to do too much, they should focus on their own ‘selling superpower’. “If sellers feel they are good at something, say at understanding customer pain points, I say do more of that,” says Bova. “When sellers try to be something that they’re not, it comes off as inauthentic. They never really feel comfortable and confident with it.” While building relationships with customers will always be important, Bova believes the successful sales reps of the future will be those that use technology better than their competitors. “At the end of the day, this is about human and tech – not tech or human alone. Whether you’re using a CRM or chat, email or video, you are using tech. And those that really lean into using tools like AI and machine learning for lead scoring and forecasting, will really build on their own strengths.” So, how can sellers go about using technology to build long-lasting relationships and boost their sales? Set up for sales success To achieve long-term sales success, it is important to have a strong digital foundation. This enables sellers to be agile and innovative by tapping into the power of technologies like automation and AI. Streamlining your tech stack to support your sales strategy can help deliver improved efficiency and cost savings. But where can you start? This e-book offers guidance on using the right technology and human skills to achieve sales success, now and into the future. Download it now for: ✔️ Success tips from LIKE.TG experts, partners and Trailblazers ✔️ Effective techniques to refresh your sales strategy ✔️ A sales readiness checklist – to get you ready for the future of sales Achieve sales success by downloading your free Selling Smarter Not Harder e-book now.
How To Create a Data Culture Starting With Trust
As companies become more digital and have more online interactions with customers, they have an explosion of data at their fingertips. A recent study shows that this data can provide companies with a critical advantage. The study, by Tableau and YouGov, examined the use of data by organisations in Asia Pacific and Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. It revealed that 82% of data-driven companies reported critical business advantages during the pandemic. It also found that 62% of data-driven companies are optimistic about the future. So, how can more companies reap these advantages? We examine this topic in season four of our Future of Work, Now podcast, Tech in Hyperspeed. The season is hosted by Jess O’Reilly, Regional Vice President for LIKE.TG. To kick off the fourth season, she talked to our first guest about how to build a data culture. Here are highlights of the conversation with Robert Wickham, Vice President Strategy & Growth, Tableau Asia Pacific & Japan: Why are data companies more optimistic about the future? The global pandemic has made us feel as though we’ve gone through a portal and come out on the other side, to a world where the laws of physics no longer apply. It’s a little bit like being dropped into the jungle and needing to find a new path. We need new tools to navigate and data acts as our map and compass. For example, by looking at what employees and customers are telling you — whether through surveys or through the data they’re creating — you can create services that are more relevant to them right now. Organisations that have a data culture feel more optimistic about how to navigate these uncertain times. What does having a data culture mean to you? Data culture can sound like yet another buzz word, but within a data culture there are several elements that lead people to value and rely on data to make decisions. One of these is data literacy. Can you read and understand your data? Can you ask the right questions and become a data detective? When we talk to customers about creating a data culture, we encourage them to think about three fundamental pieces of the puzzle. The first is that you’ve got to build trust. The second is that you’ve got to cultivate talent. The third is you’ve got to drive commitment from the top down. If we explore those pieces in more detail, trust has a couple of different facets. First, you need to trust the people within your organisation to be the custodians of the data. So, rather than locking data in silos, you want to create an environment where all employees have access to data and the opportunity to explore it. Secondly, you need to be able to trust your data and know that it is valid. That requires data literacy. How can you cultivate talent and data literacy? You need to bring people into your organisation that already have data literacy skills. That means you need to look at your recruiting practices and your job descriptions, and ensure you’re hiring for those skills. Secondly, you need to create learning pathways for existing employees so that they can learn and develop their skills. We do this at LIKE.TG through Trailhead and there are some organisations that have set up data academies. Building data literacy is not something that can be achieved with a “one and done” mindset though. In addition to offering training, companies need to create data communities where people can continue to learn and share. What does the future of data and analytics look like? I am excited about a future where everyone is thinking about data and analytics, and making data-driven decisions regardless of their role. I’d also like to see data become as significant and easily available as electricity in the developed world. Listen to the full podcast for more insights on how to build a data culture and create data-driven customer experiences. Access the podcast on demand at our podcasts page, Spotify, and iTunes. You can also listen over at the Singapore Community Radio Twitch page, Facebook page, and website. Tune in at 1:00 p.m. SGT Friday, April 23 to hear from Dr Ayesha Khanna, CEO and Co-Founder of ADDO AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) solutions firm and incubator. Sign up here for our LIKE.TG Blog newsletter to get monthly updates on the latest LIKE.TG stories.
How to Create a Winning Customer Journey Map
To succeed in business, it’s important to understand how your customers’ needs and behaviours are changing over time. A transactional relationship is not enough anymore — you need to build long-term, trusted relationships. One way to do that is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and understand how they interact with your business. That’s where a customer journey map helps. An integrated customer journey map plots the various stages a person goes through when buying from your company. It lets you better understand the customer experience (CX), and will reveal where improvements can be made. So how can you create a customer journey map and use it to improve your customer experience? Let’s start at the beginning. Jump to a section What is a customer journey map? What does a customer journey map include? What are the benefits of using customer journey maps? How do you create a customer journey map? Types of customer journey maps Customer journey map templates Join us virtually to hear more about how AI impacts customer journeys at LIKE.TG World Tour Essentials. Register here What is a customer journey map? A customer journey map is a diagrammatic representation of a customer’s experience with your brand. It helps you understand the various touchpoints that customers have with your brand. It also allows you to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement. Of course, not every customer experience is the same. Your customer journey map will show a representative journey relevant to a group of customers with similar attributes. That means you may decide to create several maps if you have significantly different audience groups. Once you have mapped your customer journey, you can analyse it for potential problems. Start mapping the customer journey today with our free templates. Get the templates What does a customer journey map include? Touchpoints – Channels and interfaces where the customer interacts with your business. Moments of truth – High-impact experiences that define how customers perceive and relate to your brand. Potential customer feelings – Alignment of customer experiences at every stage to the most likely customer sentiment. A customer journey map typically includes a timeline of events that reflects the customer’s experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This timeline can include events such as: The customer’s first visit to your website Social media engagement Marketing and sales communications Their first purchase — online or in store Product delivery Post-purchase support Interactions with customer service When analysing your customer journey, make sure that you fine-tune it by researching and interacting with your target audiences. This ensures that the customer journey map accurately reflects their actual experience and needs, letting you create more relevant and personalised customer experiences. To achieve this, you need to combine first-party customer data and analysis with customer feedback and target audience research. What are the benefits of using customer journey maps? When designed using thorough research and data-led insights, a customer journey map is a powerful tool that helps businesses become more customer focused. Here are some more benefits of using customer journey maps: Enhances resilience and business agility Understanding the customer experience and identifying pain points helps you develop strategies to build resilience in the face of unexpected challenges. Customer journey mapping also helps identify the customer segments that are most impacted by disruptions like a changing economy. This helps you adjust your marketing and sales strategies to match. Helps develop new products and boost sales Even the most innovative products can’t help drive sales if they do not address customer needs. Customer-centric product development involves using customer feedback to create a product roadmap. Mapping customer journeys helps you identify customer needs that are not being met by existing products or services, creating opportunities for new product development. It also enables businesses to prioritise product features and functionality based on their impact on the customer experience. Improves customer experience and loyalty Eighty-eight percent of customers agree that the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Customer journey maps point to areas where customer experience can be improved, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. For example, you can use your maps to compare the average time taken to resolve customer queries at different points of contact. This lets you identify where support can be improved and redesigned so that queries are addressed within consistent time frames across all touchpoints. Helps understand evolving buyer behaviour Mapping the customer journey allows you to track the behaviour of your customers at each touchpoint, providing valuable insights into how they interact with your brand. Customer journey mapping is not set-and-forget. Continuous monitoring lets you identify changes in behaviour, preferences, priorities, and expectations. Optimises the CX ecosystem Customer journey mapping is critical for a high-on-ROI customer experience ecosystem. It lets you eliminate ineffective interaction points, break down information silos, and understand data irregularities. It also helps you increase employee accountability and assess ROI on future CX investments. Improves customer engagement By understanding the customer’s perspective at each touchpoint, you can create more relevant and personalised experiences that enhance customer engagement across channels. How do you create a customer journey map? With smart mapping tools, you can connect every interaction across email, mobile, advertising, and the web into a detailed, effective journey map. Follow these steps to create your customer journey map: Understand your goals Align your customer journey map to your business goals to ensure valuable results for your organisation and your customers. For example, your goal in the current economic environment could be to identify touchpoints for intelligent automation, so you could reduce costs without impacting CX. Conduct persona research The journey belongs to the customer. Hence, it is vital to research persona-specific demographics and interests. It allows you to infer behaviour and patterns through the customer journey map. Map customer touchpoints Plotting various points of interaction in the customer journey involves tracking actions and their impact on customer behaviour. These activities could include online and offline ads, social media channels, website UI, or in-store interactions. Map the current state Wondering how to map the customer experience across the whole journey? Use data from an integrated CRM platform to get insights into customer interactions, behaviours, preferences, and pain points. This helps businesses create more effective customer journey maps that accurately reflect the customer experience. It also reveals trends and patterns in customer behaviour that may not be immediately apparent, helping you identify areas of improvement. For example, data around cart abandonment rates lets you learn which stage of customer interaction needs maximum intervention to improve checkout rates. Visualise your ideal future state Once you have mapped the current state of the customer experience, define the ideal future state. This lets you direct customer journeys toward your goals. For example, if you aim to unlock greater sales, you may visualise an ideal future state where customer conversion increases by 5% across the top three touchpoints. To achieve this, you can implement different strategies such as optimising website design and streamlining checkout processes. The customer journey maps help measure the effectiveness of these strategies. Types of customer journey maps Each customer journey map serves a specific purpose and offers different insights. Choosing the right type will help you achieve your objectives more effectively. A few of the most useful map types are: Customer experience map: Lets you measure a range of factors, such as brand consistency, purchase convenience, and service efficacy. It allows you to identify your business’s weaknesses and strengths when offering a delightful customer experience. Current state of the customer journey map: Beneficial for optimising operations across points of contact. It gives clear, visual insights into top-performing and least-performing touchpoints. Future state of the customer journey map: Helps you lay the path for multiple teams regarding future performance. For example, it informs your marketing team about the type of digital assets they should build to support the ideal customer journey. Empathy customer journey map: Understanding how customers feel, think, and act about your product, services, and brand is critical to business growth. This map lets you analyse customer sentiments at all engagement points and learn how and where you can make changes for maximum impact. Device experience journey map: In a mobile-first environment, smooth UI and UX are critical to winning and keeping customers. What works on desktop might not work on mobile — a device-focused map lets you identify gaps and opportunities for each kind of device that your customers use. Customer support journey map: Buyers increasingly associate customer support with the overall customer experience. This map is an effective tool for understanding the ease of access to customer support and the efficiency of your contact centre. Path-to-purchase journey map: In an ideal environment, customers experience a smooth and quick path to purchase. This map lets you identify how your channels perform in this context, as well as opportunities for improvement. Product discovery journey map: A smooth and consistent product discovery across touchpoints keeps a visiting customer engaged. Use this customer journey map for insights into the earliest interactions and experiences that shape a customer’s perception. Customer journey map templates In a digital-first customer environment, mapping integrated, complex customer journeys is time, resource, and effort-intensive. Effective customer journey management needs cross-functional collaboration as well as customer journey analytics and mapping tools. Sounds complex? To ensure that you don’t have to start from scratch, you can use our customer journey map templates — frameworks that help simplify the process and save you precious time. What is a customer journey map template? A customer journey map template is a pre-designed framework that outlines the key stages and touchpoints of a typical customer journey. A handy tool with pre-built fields, it provides a starting point for you to create your own customer journey maps, allowing you to customise the template to your specific needs and target audience. Templates may vary in design and format but typically include sections for customer goals, pain points, emotions, and actions at each touchpoint. A customer journey map template helps you: Visualise end-to-end CX: In an omnichannel environment, designing an end-to-end customer journey map can be overwhelming. You might end up focusing too much on elements that offer little value while missing out on key factors. A template enables easier customer journey visualisation, ensuring you have all the parameters you need to picture the CX journey from start to finish. Ensure a satisfying onboarding experience: The initial customer onboarding experience often defines if customers will stay with you in the long run. An effective customer journey map template ensures that you cover all the necessary steps in the onboarding journey, letting you optimise and enhance the customer experience at this crucial interaction.Unresolved customer pain points are the fastest way to lose business. Customer journey map templates provide structured frameworks that outline each step of the customer journey, making it easier for you to quickly identify areas of friction and implement solutions. Understand different customer personas: Templates enable you to understand and analyse customers based on customer journey mapping goals. For example, a product discovery map template may quickly let you categorise customers into: Review-led customers Ad-driven customers Brand content consumers What does a sample customer journey map look like? Here is an example of a customer journey map for a SaaS company, outlining the ideal customer journey for a new product: Awareness: The customer becomes aware of the product through social media, online ads, or word-of-mouth recommendations. Consideration: The customer explores the product’s features on your company’s website. They may look at product demos, customer reviews, and pricing information. Purchase: The customer makes a purchase online, through a sales representative, or through a reseller. Onboarding: The customer receives a welcome email or call and is guided through the setup process, including account creation, data import, and training. Adoption: The customer starts using the product in their day-to-day business. Optimisation: The customer discovers advanced features and integrations, receives ongoing training and support, and provides feedback to the company. Renewal: The customer renews their subscription or upgrades to a higher tier, based on their evolving business needs and goals. By mapping out this customer journey, the SaaS company can better understand the customer’s needs and pain points at each stage, and tailor their communication and support accordingly. Customer journey mapping is becoming increasingly important for organisations looking to improve their overall business results. By identifying pain points and developing strategies for improvement, customer journey mapping is your golden ticket to winning and keeping customers, engaging more efficiently, and building lifelong trusted relationships. Start mapping the customer journey today with our free templates. Get the templates
How To Create Connected Experiences Faster: MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021
Tracy Wang leads marketing at MuleSoft Asia, a LIKE.TG company that provides integration software for connecting applications, data, and devices. She reveals how MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 will help businesses develop a winning API product strategy. More businesses are turning to reusable Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). APIs are messengers that take requests and tell a system what a user wants it to do, then returns the response back to that user. One benefit of APIs is that they give businesses better data visibility across many different sources. With good data visibility, businesses can make informed, data-driven decisions. This results in smoother business processes, as well as more connected experiences for customers, partners, and employees. Learn how to achieve this and more at MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021, on 3 August at 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Singapore Standard Time). What is MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021? MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 brings together IT and business thought leaders in Asia’s leading integration event of the year. The free 90-minute online event will reveal how to fast track API-led connectivity so you can create connected experiences faster. MuleSoft executives will also demonstrate how you can accelerate your business outcomes using the latest innovations and trends in integration and API management. Finally, hear from business leaders from some of the most successful companies across Asia, who will share their experiences in developing a winning API product strategy. Why attend MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021? MuleSoft helps organisations make better data-driven decisions by leveraging API-led connectivity. The power of data depends on your ability to get it out of silos and integrate it into your daily business operations. Businesses collect, store, and use vast amounts of data across systems like LIKE.TG, Google Analytics, and MySQL. MuleSoft’s industry-leading full-lifecycle API management and iPaaS capabilities enable you to connect all that data together. It’s a little like transforming your siloed data into composable LEGO® bricks. With an effective API integration strategy in place, you can use your data to build connected experiences across your organisation. This enables you to deliver digital initiatives faster, and drive bottom-line growth. Who’s speaking at MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021? MuleSoft CEO Brent Hayward will be there, along with Brian Kealey, VP Asia, and Shaun Clowes, SVP Product Management. They will demonstrate how MuleSoft is addressing the latest trends in integration, full-lifecycle API management, and automation. You’ll also hear success stories from some of our customers across Asia: Get insights into the lessons 7-Eleven learned from a recent MuleSoft deployment. Learn how AstraZeneca leveraged API-led connectivity to transform their business operations and accelerate their COVID-19 vaccine innovation efforts. Discover new use cases that big brands such as INSEAD and Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN) have been able to support when it comes to integrating systems and data. They will also talk about the challenges they faced in their own integration journey, and share recommendations. Find out how Singapore-based Starfish Digital is unlocking MuleSoft’s capabilities with no code integrations. Uncover how Philippines-based Sonak Corporation executed their vision for connectivity in order to set up their ecommerce, retail, and loyalty program efforts. Where and when is MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021? MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 will be held online on Tuesday, 3 August from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Singapore Standard Time). It is completely free and open for all to join. Closed caption language support will be provided for Thai and Traditional Chinese. Whether you are getting started with APIs and integration, or a long-time MuleSoft customer, join MuleSoft Summit Asia 2021 to learn how to create connected experiences faster. Register today to secure your spot.
How To Create Impactful Customer Experiences With Ethical AI
Rob Newell is Vice President, Solution Engineering and Cloud Sales, at LIKE.TG. He’s passionate about helping organisations throughout the Asia Pacific region surpass their business objectives by employing ethical AI and enterprise cloud technology. The challenges around ethics, trust, and artificial intelligence (AI) are real. They can have a significant impact on customer experience and on the market’s perception of brands and businesses. Fortunately, there’s plenty businesses can do to create AI experiences that enhance trust and have a positive impact on customer experience. We know from LIKE.TG research that top performing sales teams are 2.7 times more likely to use AI to determine what action to take next. Compared to underperforming organisations, they’re also 2.4 times more likely to use AI to prioritise leads and 1.9 times more likely to use AI to manage admin tasks. At the same time, there’s a crisis of trust in AI. Why is this? Whenever AI delivers flawed outcomes, customers and employees lose trust. AI will deliver erroneous outcomes as a result of one of three main things: Bias in the data Bias in the algorithms Teams responsible for managing the data and algorithms lack diversity within their ranks LIKE.TG and ethical AI At LIKE.TG, trust is our number one value, and we consider it our responsibility to develop ethical AI. We must also help guide organisations on the principles of building a trusted AI capability that enhances customer experience and enables customer success. This begins with purpose and values, and covers five key areas. AI that builds trust must be: Responsible: by safeguarding human rights and protecting the customer data the business has been entrusted with. Accountable: by seeking and leveraging feedback from stakeholders — including customers, regulators, employees, and communities — to constantly evolve and improve the AI. Transparent: by being clear about how the technology arrived at its predictions or recommendations, as well as how and what data was used to drive the outcome. Empowering: by adding positively to the lives and economies of customers, communities, and societies. Inclusive: by ensuring all teams and stakeholders bring a variety of perspectives. AI drives impactful customer experiences. That’s something we all understand. To build trust with customers still wary of AI, businesses need to be transparent about how they use customer data to create seamless and personalised experiences. Make AI ingredients clear Independent bodies test new cars and give them safety ratings so customers can understand exactly what they’re paying for in terms of protection. Food products on supermarket shelves contain nutrition information to help the customer make healthy choices. Why shouldn’t AI engines that drive various customer outcomes be treated with the same level of transparency? Now, at LIKE.TG, they are. One of the developments driven by our Office of Ethical and Humane Use of Technology is what we call ‘Model Cards’. They communicate the critical information from customers or prospects that we’re using to build a specific model. It might be information around the training data we use, the ethical considerations, or the performance metrics. We publish this information so customers can clearly see how a particular piece of AI capability thinks and works. They can see how it was built and what they can expect as a customer. It’s a simple and effective way of driving transparency. This sets a standard for the way our business wants to operate in the realms of AI. Being a leader in technology, we have an ability to influence the market around us. This is part of our vision for transparency and the ethical use of AI. The danger of ignoring challenges around AI ethics There are numerous influences around ethical behaviour with AI. They’re driven by various forces, including employee activism, increased regulation, increased expectations from customers, and more. When these influences are not enabled and enacted, various serious issues can arise. First and foremost is privacy violations. If you’re not clear with a customer as to why you’re collecting data, how you’re using that data, or the benefits you expect to derive from it, that in itself is a privacy violation. It erodes trust very quickly. Second, you’ll find there will be bias in the data, which could come from originally using an incorrect or undiversified training data set. Third, you’ll see inequality. Your AI will not be pervasive and available to everyone, or it will treat certain individuals or groups differently. This will bring the business to a point where it doesn’t have the desired level of loyalty from the customers. Those customers will churn more quickly. How do businesses ensure this doesn’t happen? They must be clear on what their purpose is and put purpose at the centre of everything they do. Customers want businesses to look beyond profit generation. They want to know what impact a business is having on society. If a business has a purpose, all of its actions will flow from that, including ethics in their AI models and their correct execution. Next, it’s about the cultivation of an ethical mindset throughout the business. That involves putting the customer at the core of everything the business does and ensuring absolute transparency. This might involve the creation of diversity advisory boards and the like, which helps to drive accountability. Finally, it involves the diversification of technology via the diversity of the teams that build technology. Any technological advancement or transformation intended to create seamless, personalised customer experiences must contain these ingredients. Those that do will be well rewarded by the market. Learn more about how businesses like yours are using ethical AI in the real world. Check out our customer success stories here.
How To Deliver a Successful Product Launch
Your brand has a new product on the way. Your marketing team has spent months partnering with product management to understand the roadmap and build messaging and positioning. Now it’s time for the fun part: telling the world about this new innovation with a product launch. LIKE.TG defines a product launch as announcing a new offering to the public. Launches are opportunities to tell compelling stories about your product, not just about its functionality but also the impact it will have on people. A passionate and relevant story builds trust with your core audience. That trust extends to increased awareness and excitement about the new product’s features. And that ultimately leads to more sales. So how do you deliver a great launch? It’s a big, coordinated effort with product, sales, marketing, public relations, analyst relations, and events teams. Let’s take a look at the three types of launches that we have at LIKE.TG and what we’ve learned over the past few years. How to create a marketing launch A marketing launch is often called a “soft launch” and is used when introducing a new product — typically three to six months before general availability (GA) to the public. We do this to build the excitement that leads to the GA of the product and allow early adopters to test it. Soft launches give our product team a chance to see how customers will use the product and what can be improved. Marketers can later use these customer stories when the product launches. A key to success in this early launch is communicating the value of your new product to the media. Earned media is one of the best awareness you can get. Marketers and PR teams must deliver a clear, concise, and consistent story that’s interesting, easy to understand, and is a conversation starter. What makes your new product so interesting and why should people care? Demo videos, blogs, emails, and small events can all work together to explain the answer. Planning a successful GA launch Once your product has finished its pilot program, the product team will be ready to make it generally available to the masses. Preparing for a general availability launch is no small feat. As a marketer, the sales team is your main audience for a GA launch. Your job is to help them clearly explain the product’s value to customers. Sales can be a tough audience! They’ll want content that is clear and direct, which means no marketing fluff. At a large company like LIKE.TG, we believe in keeping it simple and relevant. We focus on use cases: how are customers adopting the product? We also focus on industry-specific cases and always factor how the product ties to the rest of the sales portfolio. Sales is a priority, but your external audience is also crucial during a GA launch. We’ve found that events are a great way to generate excitement and show the product in action. LIKE.TG is an events-driven company, and programs like Dreamforce, LIKE.TG Live: Asia and our travelling World Tours help us scale the launches of the newest versions of the products when they become GA. There’s another benefit. Having a large audience of customers in one place allows us to answer their questions and have meaningful conversations — not to mention celebrating everyone’s success. Support customers with a solution launch So you launched a new product, and it’s finally available to the public. Your job’s done, right? Not quite yet. Solution launches showcase a relevant application of the product for a line of business or an industry. Products often evolve with customers’ wants and needs. This may happen fast or over a longer period. After a GA launch, you may discover new applications for your product. Or maybe there was a major world event or a shift in the economy that turned everything on its head. A solution launch is a way to tell customers, ‘here’s why this product is relevant to you,’ by showing them additional innovations and integrations that are coming. Solution changes also help you extend your marketing reach. You can use them to craft your product message targeting a specific industry or business area. These are great ways to expand into new markets and test which solutions increase your product’s overall sales. Now that you’re familiar with the different kinds of launches, here are three quick tips to help you plan for your next product launch. Tip #1: Understand your product launch goal Are you entering a new market? Are you building and keeping momentum for an existing product? Are you showcasing a new feature or capability? It takes a lot of people across many different teams to make a launch successful, so make sure everyone is clear on what the shared purpose is. Tip #2: Know the product Become best buddies with your product teams. No one knows the product better than the people building it, so collaborate with them early and often. Roll up your sleeves and get hands-on with product functionality, study the product roadmap, and ask questions when something is unclear. The more you understand about your product, the easier it will be to lead different teams through a launch. Tip #3: Be nimble Things can change fast during a launch, so you have to be flexible while staying focused on your goal. I always say that nothing is precious during a launch. In order to move the project forward, you need to accept feedback and make the right decisions, even if it means making a turnaround. Product launches are an exciting way to bring people together across product, sales, and marketing. If done right, you’ll not only delight your customers but also bring your team together around a common goal. That will set you up for success both in the short term and over the long haul. Happy launching! This post originally appeared on the U.S.-version of the LIKE.TG blog.
How To Do Keyword Research That Drives Traffic To Your Site
With over 8.5 billion searches performed on Google globally each and every day, your pool of potential customers is massive. It’s no surprise, then, that you need to make sure your content ranks high in Google and reaches the people most likely to take an action with your brand. That’s where doing keyword research, and choosing the right SEO keyword, comes in. It’s an art and a science. As a search engine optimisation (SEO) marketing manager at LIKE.TG, I know what works, and how to get eyeballs on your content. Let’s say you’ve been tasked with writing a page around “customer service.” Since it’s a broad and often complex topic, you might think that a long-form guide would be the best type of content. But how do you know for sure? Are you certain there are enough potential customers searching for this term? Is the audience large enough to justify creating the page? Are searchers even looking for long form content on this topic? Are they using the same terms to search for content? Do you know what kind of content Google is ranking for your target term? Proper keyword research can answer these questions and help you create content that’s user-focused and SEO optimised. Follow these six steps to develop better content, and get better search results. 1. Verify search volume Start by entering your topic or keyword idea into a SEO research tool such as BrightEdge or SEMRush. These paid tools show the average monthly search volume for your keywords. When verifying keyword search volume, look for terms with an average monthly search volume of 100 searches or greater. However, keep in mind that terms with the highest monthly search volume may not be the most relevant or focused terms to target. You should research and explore all options to find the term with the highest volume and most relevant search results. 2. Research related terms Always ensure that the term you are targeting is the same your audience is using to find content. SEO keyword research tools can help you identify similar or semantically related terms to see if there is greater search volume with another keyword variant. For example, “customer service best practices” returns 590 monthly searches versus “service best practices” with only 30. Additionally, using related terms throughout the copy in addition to your target keyword can help your SEO rank by preventing keyword spamming or stuffing. Remember to write naturally, so Google does not penalise your SEO efforts by hurting your ability to rank well on the first page. Don’t feel that you need to cram the keyword into every other sentence. Google itself warns against it with this example: “We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a customer cigar humidor, please contact…” You get the idea. Not only is it open to penalisation by Google — and less likely to be discovered by searchers — it’s a bad experience for the reader. 3. Explore long-tail keywords Longer, more specific keywords often indicate searchers who are closer to taking an action. The specificity of the search lets you know they have a specific need or problem. While these terms may have lower search volume than their broader counterparts, they will often lead to more qualified conversions. For example: “customer service” vs. “customer service best practices” or “what is customer service?” Additionally, some of these longer tail keywords may help land you in one of the coveted “People also ask” answer boxes in Google, especially if used in the page title or a sub-heading. Google search “People also ask” example: 4. Beyond keyword research: Identify search intent So you’ve found a high volume, relevant keyword. But do you know what types of content Google is presenting on the first page? Based on your keyword research, what types of content are searchers looking for? Do they want guidance, how-to articles, a list of nearby shops, or something else completely?To quickly check, we recommend opening an incognito browser window and searching your keyword to see what Google reveals on the first page. You’ll want to open an incognito or private browsing window so your previous searches and browser cookies don’t influence the presented search results. Based on what’s ranking, will your page topic address the same first page search intent?In the example below, you’ll see that most of the top ranking first page content around the term “customer service best practices” is in listicle format (i.e. “X Best Practices for Customer Service…”). Given these results, it’s best to target your topic in a similar way to increase your chances of ranking on page one. Search intent example: 5. Study your competition Are any of your competitors ranking on the first page? If so, what terms are they targeting? What types of content are they creating? How long is their content? What makes them successful? Identifying this will help inform the content strategy for your page, and give you an opportunity to expand on their success. 6. Don’t cannibalise yourself Always ensure that there are no existing web pages on your own site ranking for or targeted to your selected SEO keyword. Check with your internal SEO team to confirm, or if that’s not an option, perform a site search on Google by typing site:[your website domain] [search query/keyword]. This will bring up a list of pages currently on your site with the target keyword in the copy.If you find a page targeting the same term, you should determine if that page should be optimised further or removed. Before removing any pages, work with your analytics or marketing team to identify the business impact of removing a page. This could consist of traffic loss or a drop in form completes and leads. If you must remove an existing page, always use a 301 redirect to automatically send the searcher to the newly created page. These redirects pass more of the SEO page equity from the page being redirected to the new page. If you follow these tips you’ll be on your way to finding the right keywords for SEO and creating targeted, meaningful content which searchers are looking for and need. Want a deeper dive on keyword research? Check out our SEO Best Practices blog for more guidance on how to write and optimise SEO content for your site.
How to Do Sales Prospecting the Right Way
Prospects — the potential customers you want to sell to — are the fuel for the sales pipeline. Every prospect represents a possible deal. So growing your base of prospects and working to nurture them will grow your revenue. Even though prospecting is important, it may sometimes feel like you’re just wishing and hoping the right people will come. Let’s see how to make prospecting a science instead — less like drilling for oil and more like filling up on gas. What is sales prospecting? Prospects are possible customers, and prospecting is finding possible customers. Sales reps use prospecting to expand the size of their potential customer base. They’ll reach out to leads (potential sales contacts) and nurture them into “opportunities” (leads who have been warmed up over time). There are various sales prospecting techniques, from making calls to sending direct mail, attending networking events, and connecting on social platforms like LinkedIn. The stages of the sales prospecting process The sales process goes from cold leads to warm opportunities to red-hot deals. Prospecting is what happens in between: From leads … Sales and marketing source leads. Leads are unqualified prospects. Leads can come from marketing (think a webinar that requires a form fill) or sales (think cold outreach). … to opportunities … Sales qualifies leads into prospects. Sales gets to know leads and decides whether they’re a good fit for the product. If they are, the lead is “qualified” to become a prospect. Sales nurtures prospects into opportunities. As sales works to make prospects more and more interested in the sale, these prospects become “opportunities” who are more and more likely to buy. … to customers Sales closes opportunities into deals. In the end, after many conversations, there will be two kinds of opportunities: “closed-lost” (boo) or “closed-won” (yay!). How do I find new sales prospects? We could talk about all the different platforms out there, but let’s be real. “When it comes to sourcing prospects online, LinkedIn is the biggest game in town,” says Stephanie Svanfeldt, a strategic account executive at LIKE.TG. Here are tips to get going: 1. Follow the prospect before you connect Unless you’re sending InMail, which is a sponsored message, you’ll need to get connected with prospects before you can message them on LinkedIn. Start by following them. From there, you can begin to comment on, like, and share their status updates and work your way into their world. If they think you’re providing value, they’ll be more likely to respond to a connection request. 2. Find them in groups Joining a group where your prospect is active can give you a shortcut to getting connected. Look for the groups they belong to on their profile and see if there’s one that also makes sense to join. Then you can chime in on the group’s posts. Even if you can’t respond to them directly, they might get email alerts about the best comments left in the group, which is a great way to end up directly in their inbox. 3. Hype them up Everyone wants to go viral. Follow the prospect’s activity and help drum up engagement. This is a great way to show that you’re interested in your prospect’s ideas. You can also look at the information they highlight on their profile — like courses, presentations, and thought leadership — and “endorse” them for skills that matter most to them. How has the sales prospect changed? Prospecting used to be a volume play. Salespeople could make 200 calls a day and send out blasts of emails and know that enough of them would stick to be worth it. Cold outreach is still an important piece of the puzzle, but sales development representatives (SDRs) and sales reps will need to balance broad quantity outreach with targeted quality outreach. Here’s why: The new prospect isn’t waiting by the phone like they used to Prospects are spread out across digital platforms — mainly LinkedIn, but also Twitter, Facebook, and messaging apps — and they have strong opinions about where they like to communicate. The new prospect is flooded with more messages than ever. Our inboxes have never been more crowded. First, in a trend The Economist calls, “It could have been an email,” meetings are getting shorter — by 20%, according to this Harvard Business School study. Conversations that used to happen in meetings are happening in emails instead. Second, that same study shows that more emails are being sent in the pandemic (by 5%) — with more recipients on average (by 3%), and more frequently after hours (by 8%). The question becomes: How can you capture people’s attention as their inboxes overflow? The new prospect wants more out of their interactions. The intense, shared experience of the pandemic has taught us all to go beyond the superficial layer. To get a prospect’s attention now, you have to be authentic and relevant. Get articles selected just for you, in your inbox Sign up now How can I approach this new sales prospect? Account-based marketing made a splash when companies began to personalise marketing campaigns to individual companies. Now this trend of personalisation is coming to sales. Here’s Stephanie Svanfeldt again: “Everyone talks about account-based marketing, but it’s also about account-based sales. We need to study the individual and be relevant when we reach out.” What are the prospect’s preferred channels? How can you stand out from the crowd? How can you find an authentic common ground that gives the relationship traction? Here are the steps to take: Lean on customer relationship management (CRM) Sales prospecting is harder than it used to be, now that we need to be more relevant and personalised with every approach. It takes more time and more care, and it’s harder to scale. We need technology to close the gap. CRM gives you a control room for all your interactions with our prospects — the last email you sent, notes from all of your meetings, and the pitch deck you presented — so all the information you need is at your fingertips. Research your way into their world Research is the groundwork. If it’s a publicly traded company, read their investor reports. If it’s a small or medium business (SMB), then set up Google alerts to learn about their press, and devour everything they put out there about themselves. Insights about opportunities and accounts (at LIKE.TG, we use Opportunity Management) help you bring more value to the table. You’re trying to learn about problems and people, so by the time you reach out, you’re not only saying the right things — you’re also saying them to the right person. Find the channel that sticks Everyone is different. Every approach needs to be different too. Some of us are old school and like to talk on the phone. Some of us live in our inboxes. Some of us really love getting gifts in the mail. How can you find the right channel? The answer is to leave no stone unturned. If the prospect doesn’t pick up the phone, try connecting on LinkedIn. Still no luck? Reach out again and be as relevant as you can. Craft an email that grabs them. Keep working on the interaction until you see a spark. Earn the right to ask them what their favourite communication channel is — and meet them there. How do I qualify a sales prospect? Qualifying a prospect is an important piece of the puzzle, but don’t mistake “qualifying” for “deciding whether someone is important.” Everyone you talk to is important — because if they’re not the right person to talk to, then they can point you to the person who is. Here are questions to help you qualify whether a prospect is a good fit: Is this the right person? Does the prospect match your ideal customer profile? Are they already interested in your product? Can they influence the deal, or even decide to buy it? Is this the right company? Is it in your territory? Is the industry a good fit? What’s the size of their organisation? (Don’t just think of how many employees they have. If you’re selling a subscription or usage-based service, then also think about the size of their consumption.) Is this the right project? Is the department funded to pay your price? Will the project be a priority this year for the company? Will the team be using the product for the right use case — in a way that will create an impact? How can I move sales prospects to the next stage in the sales cycle? Research is important, but you’ll need more than that to take the conversation to the next level. After all, it’s just as easy for prospects to research us as it is for us to research them. We won’t get anywhere with them by repeating the same general information on your company’s website. How can you go deep, and bring them an insight that no one else has? You’ll need to learn their accent — not just their language — and become knowledgeable about their lives at work. That means learning about specific trends in their industries, their companies, and even their lives. Ready to take your very best practices for prospecting, and set them into motion at scale? Sales Cadences lets sales managers set steps for sellers to follow — things like: when to email versus call, what call script to use, and what material to send if they say no. Keep the conversation moving. Don’t just think about closing the deal. Think about closing every step of the deal. It can be easy to get carried away in your excitement to move the conversation along. Here’s how: Obsess over the next step Don’t forget to end every conversation with a question. “Can we connect for five minutes after you’ve taken a look?” “Is there someone on your team I could work with on that?” “If you’re not the right person to ask, can you tell me who is?” Advance but qualify Prospecting is all about marching onward. But don’t over-focus on a deal that won’t be worth the effort. As you move the conversation forward, you need to keep qualifying at the same time. At every stage, ask whether the prospect is still a fit. Qualification also means making sure that they’re ready to move onto the next step. You won’t have all the answers, but someone else will Selling is a team sport. You need to lean on everyone you can to get the information you need. Ask subject matter experts at your company to teach you about a new domain. Reach out to technical and digital advisors to help you map out a solution. Ask marketing for help with a new pitch. You don’t have to do this alone. Head over to Trailhead and learn how to prospect for better sales. You’ll discover why prospecting is important, how to develop a contact strategy, and when it’s best to reach out.
How To Drive Efficient Growth and Scale Your Startup
As startups in Southeast Asia face significant market opportunities, many are looking to accelerate business growth and scale across digital marketplaces. But successfully transitioning from a startup to scaleup mindset — in a global climate of uncertainty — presents some major challenges. As customer expectations are rising, there is a growing need for startups to invest in the relevant technology stack to build customer loyalty. Here are some of the challenges and opportunities that startups need to be aware of to drive efficient growth and build lasting customer relationships. Growth challenges for startups Scalable businesses are built on future-proof processes. From agile internal workflows that enable organisation-wide collaboration, to delivering personalised customer journeys across all channels — your business processes are the engine of your growth. Then there’s funding to think about. Access to a constant source of funding will help put your startup on the growth highway. But how do you attract real interest from venture capitalists and investors? And where do you spend that funding to achieve maximum growth? Startups also need to build an employer-of-choice workplace culture that drives talent acquisition and retention, and prioritises collaboration and innovative thinking. Critical growth drivers for startups These can be difficult challenges to overcome on your own. But you don’t need to face them alone. Expert insights from trusted mentors can help fill your scalability knowledge gap and accelerate your growth. With capable mentorship and careful go-to-market planning, startups are better placed to develop an effective growth strategy that prioritises three critical growth drivers. Customer centricity: Put your customers at the centre of everything you do to drive personalised, intuitive customer journeys. Smart investment: Allocate resources to key growth enablement areas, while avoiding investing in blackholes that don’t impact revenue. Process optimisation: Improve your business productivity with automation and tools that optimise your workflows and reduce operating costs. Process optimisation is key here. As startups continue to grow, it is important to focus on growing efficiently. Your technology stack is the foundation of all three growth drivers. From a CRM that delivers a 360-degree customer view, to real-time reporting that informs investment decision making, and automation tools that optimise business processes — the right tech stack can take your business from a high-potential startup to a rapidly-growing scaleup. LIKE.TG research has shown that by consolidating systems together in Customer 360, it lowers IT costs by 25%*, increases employee productivity by 26%*, and customer satisfaction by 32%*. With LIKE.TG, companies can grow efficiently by improving productivity and automation, reduce the number of technology providers they need to manage their business, save time and money, and reduce complexity. Accelerate your growth with LIKE.TG’s MasterClass Sounds great? But how do you actually get it done? LIKE.TG’s MasterClass Accelerator 101 webinar is helping to connect startups with the expert mentorship you need to successfully navigate Southeast Asia’s vibrant USD$360 billion (SGD$500 billion) internet economy. In this webinar, I joined other industry experts to discuss how you can innovate, grow, and scale your startup with the right tools from the right people. Daisy Hoang, SVP of Sales and Success at KatalonDaisy is a senior revenue generation and management executive with extensive experience scaling go-to-market strategies for SaaS technology companies. She spoke about how an efficient technology stack is the foundation of hyperscaling at Katalon. Danny Chong, Senior Investment Director at Gobi Partners ChinaDanny is a highly successful venture capital professional with a focus on funding early-stage startups in Greater China and Southeast Asia. Growth insights from startup experts In the webinar, Daisy, Danny, and I set out a roadmap to help startups move from exploring your potential to scaling your company across countries. We discussed how to gain access to the opportunities that enable startups to accelerate their growth, and how to use the right technology to create a competitive edge in the digital-first future. In our discussion, Daisy speaks about building a tech foundation ahead of the curve. “Some of the investments [Katalon] made last year, we actually thought were a bit early for us to make those investments. Maybe six months early. But it is now paying off big time by helping us really scale and onboard the team.” “I encourage everybody, as part of your scale up journey, to proactively identify areas that are prime for automation. Pulling tech resources early to help scale, record, document, and then at the end bring up the ROI, is extremely important,” she advises. You’ll learn from this masterclass how to view digitisation as an opportunity to grow faster in Southeast Asia’s digital economy, and how to build a tech stack that will help to: Optimise your operational processes Deliver personalised customer journeys Support an employer-of-choice workplace culture We also talked about how to best navigate the funding journey, including current trends venture capitalists are seeing in successful startups, and how to get noticed by investors. Small business is big business If there’s one key message that I’d love for you to take away, it’s that small business is big business. The right tech stack can give an early-stage startup the agility and competitive power of a large enterprise player. I see it happen every day at LIKE.TG. We’re constantly helping our customers to drive cost savings and scale their business efficiently. Many of our customers use Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to create a single source of customer truth, break down departmental silos, deliver personalised customer journeys, and create collaborative workplace cultures that drive efficient growth. This is how high-potential startups become highly-successful companies. For more growth insights from startup up experts, watch MasterClass Accelerator 101: How you can innovate, grow, and scale your startup now. How can a CRM help startups and SMEs grow more efficiently? Get the recipe for success now.
How To Find, Win, and Keep New Customers in 2022
Building a customer base has always been a big test for startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). This has become an even greater challenge over the past two years. What’s changed? Customers now expect more from businesses than they did before. They desire a richer experience when they are shopping online or have a question. They also want to access personalised services at any time, and are much more likely to deal with companies that meet their needs. Keeping up with changing customer expectations affects the vast majority of modern businesses. In fact, 72% of participants in this year’s global State of Marketing report said that meeting customer expectations has become harder over the past year. The same survey found that the greatest challenge businesses faced in 2021 was delivering real-time customer engagement. There are similar insights in LIKE.TG’s latest Small and Medium Business Trends Report, in which SMBs highlighted the key challenges they are facing: Personalising customer engagements Providing a connected experience Responding to enquiries quickly This shift means businesses need to think afresh about how to find, win, and keep customers. Instead of traditional advertising and marketing, many find that improving how they collect and analyse customer data delivers the best results. Already, 85% of small businesses use data to drive their customer engagement, according to the State of Marketing survey. Just 38% of respondents are satisfied with the completeness of their customer data. The good news is that there are tech tools that can help SMBs collect better data and use it more effectively. Consider using these tools to identify, attract, and retain new customers in 2022 and beyond: FIND customers with Pardot and Marketing Cloud For most SMBs, finding customers is one of many competing priorities. If you’re focused on developing a product or service that people will love, there’s often not much time left for identifying leads. That’s when solutions such as Pardot and Marketing Cloud can be very useful. They help SMBs create meaningful connections with customers, capture high quality leads, and achieve more conversions. Already, 2.8 million SMBs rely on Pardot to help them find customers. There are several ways that Pardot and Marketing Cloud can help you find more customers: They allow you to automate a wide range of processes, thus improving efficiency and freeing up resources. They work seamlessly with LIKE.TG, enabling SMBs to effectively use the data they have already gathered. Data Studio provides sophisticated marketing analysis. With Pardot and Marketing Cloud, you can quickly build personalised, data-driven email campaigns. You can reach customers on their preferred channels, which should speed up your return on investment. Pardot also generates insightful ROI reporting, so you can understand which elements of your strategies are working. These features deliver real results. With Pardot, customers have seen sales revenue increase by 34% and marketing effectiveness increase by 37% on average. WIN customers with Sales Cloud As customers seek businesses that truly ‘know’ them, SMBs respond by accelerating their investment in sales tech. Fifty-three percent of growing businesses surveyed in the SMB Trends Report said they have already done this. Many of those businesses are adopting Sales Cloud, one of the modules that runs on the LIKE.TG platform. Sales Cloud provides companies with the tools needed to modernise how they sell and how customers buy in a digital-first, work-from-anywhere world. Some of the most powerful features are: Rich customer activity timelines that allow you to track sales opportunities and move forward faster. Advanced automation for most daily sales tasks, including activity tracking and email alerts. A mobile app that allows you to access, manage, and update CRM data on the go. Sales Cloud powers every aspect of your sales process with a 360-degree view of the customer. With all your customer data in one place, your sales team can contribute to each sale. No more spreadsheets, searching through emails, or looking for a sticky note. You can also take advantage of AI-powered sales tools to automate day-to-day processes. This frees up your sales team to concentrate on winning more deals. Like other LIKE.TG products, Sales Cloud has an intuitive interface that makes winning a customer a hassle-free process. It also features real-time dashboards to empower and accelerate your decision making. KEEP customers with Service Cloud For many SMBs, retaining customers after the first sale is perhaps the most challenging aspect of growing a customer base. As customers become more selective, it’s far from certain that one sale will lead to another. In fact, more than half of all SMBs around the world have now invested in customer service software, according to the SMB Trends Report. The data speaks for itself. Ninety-one percent of customers agree that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase. More than 70% of customers say that they have made a purchase decision based on the quality of the customer service. Fifty-eight percent have said that their customer service expectations have risen over the past two years. LIKE.TG’s Service Cloud solution is the ideal choice for businesses hoping to establish and maintain high levels of personalised customer service. It allows SMBs to: Engage with customers on their favourite channels Serve them faster with automated workflows Deploy AI-powered chatbots for 24/7 responsiveness Service Cloud also makes it easy to set up self-service options for your customers. That way, customers can easily access knowledge articles, information about their accounts, and community support 24/7. Get the tools to succeed in 2022 The past two years have tested customer-focused businesses around the world. 2022 seems likely to be another challenging year. The SMBs that successfully build their customer bases will be the ones that deliver excellent customer experiences. As you move forward, let LIKE.TG be your trusted partner. LIKE.TG has the solutions you need to find, win, and keep new customers. Read more about the LIKE.TG tools available to small and medium-sized businesses.
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