Category Archives: marketing

AI is a Powerful New Tool for Entrepreneurs

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AI is a Powerful New Tool for Entrepreneurs

by Braden Kelley

In today’s digital, always connected world, Google too often stands as a gatekeeper between entrepreneurs and small businesses and financial success. Ranking well in the search engines requires time and expertise that many entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t have, because their focus must be on fine tuning the value proposition and operations of their business.

The day after Google was invented, the search engine marketing firm was probably created to make money off of hard working entrepreneurs and small businesses owners trying to make the most of their investment in a web site through search engine optimization (SEO), keyword advertising, and social media strategies.

According to IBISWorld the market size of the SEO & Internet Marketing Consulting industry is $75.0 Billion. Yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’.

Creating content for web sites is an even bigger market. According to Technavio the global content marketing size is estimated to INCREASE by $584.0 Billion between 2022 and 2027. This is the growth number. The market itself is MUCH larger.

The introduction of ChatGPT threatens to upend these markets, to the detriment of this group of businesses, but to the benefit to the nearly 200,000 dentists in the United States, more than 100,000 plumbers, million and a half real estate agents, and numerous other categories of small businesses.

Many of these content marketing businesses create a number of different types of content for the tens of millions of small businesses in the United States, from blog articles to tweets to Facebook pages and everything in-between. The content marketing agencies that small businesses hire recent college graduates or offshore resources in places like the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Ecuador, Romania, and lots of other locations around the world and bill their work to their clients at a much higher rate.

Outsourcing content creation has been a great way for small businesses to leverage external resources so they can focus on the business, but now may be the time to bring some of this content creation work back in house. Particularly where the content is pretty straightforward and informational for an average visitor to the web site.

With ChatGPT you can ask it to “write me an article on how to brush your teeth” or “write me ten tweets on teethbrushing” or “write me a facebook post on the most common reasons a toilet won’t flush.”

I asked it to do the last one for me and here is what it came up with:

Continue reading the rest of this article on CustomerThink (including the ChatGPT results)

Image credits: Pixabay

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Branding versus Bonding

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The Importance of Community in Marketing

Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer

Mark W SchaeferConventional marketing wisdom says that communities are a great way to connect with your target audience in an engaging and meaningful way. Typical justifications for building communities include:

  • Creating an opportunity for your brand to stand out from the competition
  • Providing a platform for customers to interact and collaborate with you and each other
  • Monitoring and responding to customer feedback quickly
  • Helping build trust and loyalty with your customers
  • Driving organic growth and engagement

But successful communities go beyond company-outwards branding and instead create customer-inwards bonding.

I had the opportunity recently to interview Mark Schaefer, a globally-acclaimed author, keynote speaker, and marketing consultant. He is a faculty member of Rutgers University and one of the top business bloggers and podcasters in the world. Mark is the executive director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions, Chief Executive Officer of B Squared Media and on the advisory board of several startups. He has been a contributor to Harvard Business Review and Entrepreneur magazine.

His latest book is Belonging to the Brand: Why Community is the Last Great Marketing Strategy and explores how companies can make more effective use of communities in their marketing activities.

Below is the text of my interview with Mark and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Belonging to the Brand presented in a Q&A format:

1. Marketers are trained to reach the right audience with the right message to be successful. How is community different from audience?

From a brand marketing perspective, an audience — a group who opts-in to your content — is very important because they’ve allowed themselves to be connected to your message. However, an even more powerful opportunity exists if you can turn that audience into a community.

There are three distinguishing features of a community:

  1. There is communion. People know each other. They may become friends, collaborate, and help each other. This is important because that emotional benefit transfers to the brand!
  2. Purpose. People need a reason to gather. They want to grow something, change something, build something. How does this purpose intersect with the purpose of the brand? That’s when the magic starts to happen.
  3. Adaptability. The priorities of a community will change over time as the world changes. A community cannot be rigid in its structure or it will become irrelevant.

2. Why should marketers invest in learning how to build and connect with communities?

I have been in marketing nearly four decades and I can say with some authority that our job is harder than ever! Many traditional channels just don’t work any more. We are in a streaming media society now and most people sim0lt block us out.

Community provides a new way to connect in a meaningful way with customers. In fact, it might be the only type of marketing people won’t block. It’s the only kind of marketing people actually need because community is essential to our psychological health, especially now.

So, I think it makes sense for businesses to at least consider community since that may have no other choice.

3. Why do people join communities?

Psychological studies show that community is not just a nice-to-have. It is essential for our social well-being. Studies show that we are even physically better off when we have meaningful relationships in a community. So this is a deep-seated need in us from the beginning of time and it will always be there.

4. How can we be more connected than ever before, but also more alone?

I think social media gives us the impression that we are just a click away from a relationship but we’re not. Much of this time online is empty social calories. There is definitely a positive role social media can play in connecting people and building relationships, but it is also a powerful source of disconnection, depression, and isolation. Much of this problem was amplified by the pandemic, but the global mental health crisis has really been creeping up on us since the 1960s.

5. Are there secrets to intentionally building a community?

Belonging to the Brand - Mark SchaeferMy book provides a framework for building a community. Some of the essential steps include:

  1. Assessing the culture — Community is a business strategy, not just a marketing strategy. Is the organization behind the idea?
  2. Establishing purpose — is there a meaningful reason to gather?
  3. Building a tribe — Where are the important early members?
  4. Leadership — Nurturing a community is much different than what we are accustomed to in a traditional marketing role.
  5. Building — Building a community is constant hard work
  6. Measurement — This is difficult in a community but my book provides a path forward

6. What should marketers be most careful of when using community as a marketing strategy?

Most communities fail because they are designed to sell stuff! Obviously, we do need to sell stuff, but that’s not a reason to gather. If you provide great value to your customers, they will naturally be attracted to your products and services.

7. Should everyone be equal for a community to be successful?

I’m not sure if people are ever equal in every way. We all have our own unique talents. In a community, leaders will naturally emerge. A big part of community management is recognizing emerging leaders and bestowing them with status.

8. Where should companies build a community?

There is no cookie-cutter answer to that. But it helps if the community is part of a person’s natural daily organic experience. For example, if your customers like Facebook and visit there every day, it would be easy for them to find your community there. Try not to build your community in a place that requires new skills or an extra click.

9. Who in the marketing department should own community strategy?

I’m not sure that is important as long as it IS the marketing department. It’s unbelievable to me that 70% of existing brand communities do NOT report to marketing. This is frankly hard to understand. A community is the front line of your business — the most important customer connection. How can that no be part of marketing?

10. What does community success look like?

In the long term, there has to be a financial benefit, but in the short-term, engagement is probably the most important metric. For example, Sephora is a global cosmetics retailer with hundreds of brick-and-mortar locations. However, 80 percent of their revenue comes from their online community.

Their most important metric? Engagement. If people are talking about the company’s content and activities, it is a sign that are staying relevant and moving in a way that will lead to more brand advocacy and sales.

In the context of social media, I’m not a big fan of engagement as a metric, but in community, it is probably the most important leading indicator of financial success.

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mark!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the inspiring new title Belonging to the Brand!

Image credits: BusinessesGrow.com (Mark W Schaefer)

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Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars of 2022

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Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars

by Braden Kelley

Recently Forbes and HundredX partnered together to produce a list for three hundred (300) customer experience all-stars utilizing an extensive online survey over the course of 2022, gathering 3.7+ million ratings of more than 2,220 unique brands.

121,000 respondents chose and rated the brands and products they view most positively across more than a dozen categories scoring the company’s products, services and treatment of customers.

The list at the link above can be searched for a specific company or sorted by brand category. If you want to see all 300, go there, but if you just want to see the Top 20 Customer Experience All-Stars, here they are:

  1. Buc-ee’s
  2. Chick-fil-A
  3. Toyota
  4. Costco
  5. In-N-Out Burger
  6. See’s Candies
  7. Trader Joe’s
  8. Chewy
  9. Lexus
  10. Publix Super Markets
  11. Honda
  12. Wawa
  13. Mario
  14. Dutch Bros. Coffee
  15. Zelda
  16. QuikTrip
  17. Marriott
  18. Apple iPad
  19. Wegmans Food Markets
  20. Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants

Here is an example of the first page of a brand survey from their methodology:

CX All Stars Survey Page 1

From here it goes into what’s good and not so good about the product, what’s good and not so good about the platform & company, and then digs into why the survey participant said certain items were good or not so good, before finishing with an open comments box and a rating of future usage and 10-point scale on likelihood of recommendation. People can rate up to seventy-five brands.

Takeaways

Customer Experience is incredibly important, and recently in my article Brewing a Better Customer Experience I laid out both the Seven Characteristics of a Great Customer Experience and also the Seven Steps to a Better Customer Experience. Both lists are available there as downloadable PDF flip books.

And while I disagree on certain elements of the methodology used to craft this list, particularly the comingling of brands and products together in the same list, it nonetheless helps to shine a light on the importance of focusing on delivering a great customer experience – and that’s a good thing.

People often underestimate the importance of customer experience in the success of any business. Luckily research has been done on the impact of customer experience on sales, and here are three of my favorites:

  • “86% of users are inclined to pay more for a great customer experience.” (source: Super Office)
  • “32% of customers “break up” with a favorite brand after one poor customer experience.” (source: Iperceptions)
  • “64% of buyers consider customer experience more important than price.” (source: Iperceptions)

Finally, very soon I will be publishing a series of new Customer Experience articles on the HCLTech Blog that will go into some of the next practices for customer experience research, personas, journey mapping, and experience improvement. I will introduce and link to them here, so stay tuned!

Image credit: Unsplash, HundredX

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Do your customers trust you?

Are you sure?

According to PwC’s 2022 Consumer Intelligence Series Survey on Trust, 87% of executives think customers highly trust their companies, but only about 30% of customers do. That’s a 57% gap!

The PwC survey also found 71% of consumers say they’re unlikely to buy if a company loses their trust, and 71% of employees say they’re likely to leave if they lose trust. The lack of trust can result in huge problems.

Deloitte reports that of more than 260 C-suite executives surveyed, 61% claimed their organizations would work to improve trust with customers and employees. However, just 19% have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort, and less than 14% have a way to track trust. Ashley Reichheld, principal and trust leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, says, “Building trust is among the most powerful ways brands can earn loyalty, drive differentiation and create competitive advantage.”

According to David Horsager, global authority on trust, “A lack of trust is your biggest expense in business.” His research has found that when a leader is untrusted, both employee and customer satisfaction decreases. Conversely, if a brand is trusted, revenue and employee retention increase.

The goal is to narrow the trust gap. Ideally, you want to eliminate the gap altogether. Here are ten ways to make that happen:

  1. Be Transparent – Being open and honest about your policies, delivery times, processes and more builds trust and confidence with your customers. You want them to know you and how you operate.

  2. Do What You Say You Will Do – Deliver on whatever you promise. There are many ways to lose a customer’s trust, but the fastest may be to break a promise. In short, a broken promise is a lie.

  3. Provide Excellent Customer Service – Our customer experience research found that 84% of consumers trust a company or brand more if it provides an excellent customer service experience.

  4. Protect Your Customer’s Privacy – Data protection is a hot topic. With all the data breaches, customers need to know you make a great effort to protect any information they share with you.

  5. Don’t Abuse Your Customer’s Data – This goes right along with protecting your customer’s privacy. If they are willing to give you information about themselves, even if it is just payment information and an email address, don’t abuse it by spamming the customer or selling the information to others.

  6. Be Reliable – A customer expects that what they buy from a company does what it is supposed to do. Products must be reliable and dependable. In addition, they also expect the company to stand behind what it sells with the right level of customer service.

  7. Fast Response – Customers have different tolerances for how long they will wait on hold, wait for a return phone call, an email response, etc. When it comes to customer service, fast means meeting a customer’s expectations.

  8. Be Accessible – Start with being easy to reach. Easy-to-find contact information on a website is important. Hours of operation, at least for customer service, must also meet your customer’s needs and expectations.

  9. Act on Customer Feedback – It’s one thing to gather feedback. It’s another to act on it. And once you act on the feedback, let the customers know they were heard. Always thank customers for their feedback, and follow up if it is appropriate to do so.

Create a Chief Trust Officer Role (or Something Similar) – This goes back to the finding from Deloitte at the beginning of this article. Just 19% of companies have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort of creating trust with customers.

Now that we understand more about the importance of trust, we might say those companies with a dedicated “trust officer” are a step ahead, taking advantage of a somewhat overlooked aspect of customer service. Seems like a great opportunity for any company to step up and focus on building trust—and the business that is sure to follow.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Most customer-focused businesses work very hard to streamline their encounters and interactions with potential clients, curating the experience to the smallest detail so every step of the process can be managed and controlled. It all starts with a customer journey map that optimizes the process. When the process is consistent and predictable, you start to build trust with your customers. And, there’s a way to take that trust to another level, and that’s with transparency.

Darryl “The Hammer” Isaacs, a Kentucky-based attorney, has built a profitable career by being surprisingly straightforward — another word for transparent — with his clients. He has the process down, which means he knows the law and how to litigate. But just as important as winning a lawsuit is how his clients are treated.

Since it opened in 1993, his firm, Isaacs & Isaacs Personal Injury Lawyers, has helped thousands of people recover over $2 billion from insurers. He is a celebrity in the three states where he operates (Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio), with plenty of TV ads and billboards lining the highways. But Isaacs will tell you that his secret goes beyond exposure from a big ad budget. And it isn’t about knowing the law and winning. For him, it’s just as important to build a reputation by being transparent. And he takes the concept to an even higher level by being radically transparent.

I had a chance to learn from Isaacs’ success and his thought process, which he says is based on three concepts: being humble and embracing adversity, providing easy access and trusting the public with your pain.

1. Embrace Humble Beginnings and Adversity

Isaacs’ journey to becoming a lawyer wasn’t easy. It began at age six when he watched his father’s legal swearing-in ceremony. That inspired him to want to practice law, but inspiration wasn’t enough. He failed the bar exam the first two times he took it. No one would blame Isaacs for keeping that information from the public. After all, in the competitive legal field, lawyers like to let clients know about their prestigious law schools, industry awards and big wins. Isaacs recognized the importance of that, but also chose to embrace his “humble beginnings” as a possible advantage. He believed people could relate to his struggle. This transparency makes him real and approachable to his clients. He also has an incredible work ethic. Isaacs says, “I’m not smarter than other lawyers, I just work harder.” His clients may not know about the legal world’s awards and top schools, but they understand and appreciate hard work.

2. Provide Unexpected Access

Have you ever tried to reach the CEO or owner of a successful company? Typically, the bigger and more prosperous the company, the more challenging it is to get through to the business owner or high-level execs. Isaacs is not only successful, but his advertisements and reputation have given him celebrity status in his market. His firm has more than 55 employees, many of whom could act as a “first line” of defense for deflecting calls, emails, letters, etc. But Isaacs embraces the concept of approachability. He happily shares his direct line and cell number with his clients. Text him, and he responds. Call him, and he returns the call. Isaac believes, “If you provide unexpected direct access, clients feel valued and appreciated.”

3. Trust the Public with Your Pain

Similar to the way Isaacs embraces his humble beginnings, he embraces the transparency of results. In an age of social media, it’s nearly impossible to hide any negative news affecting a high-profile business. Issacs says, “The best option is to get comfortable and let the public in.” In other words, embrace the negative and view it as an opportunity to be authentic and transparent. And it goes beyond social media reviews and comments. Isaacs took this concept to a personal level in 2015 when he was hit by a speeding car while riding his bicycle. His neck was broken in two places, and he sustained a traumatic brain injury. The face of a successful company was now in the hospital in a near-death situation. That could have been the beginning of the end for the firm. He might not ever be back. And what if people found out about this? Well, rather than try to keep the news out of the press, Isaacs did a phone interview from the hospital. First, he wanted to let the world know he wasn’t dead and would be back. Second, he was now experiencing a similar condition to many of his clients. Isaacs knew transparency—and even vulnerability—at this level would make him more approachable. The result was an even higher level of trust.

Isaacs uses the word radical, meaning extreme or intense, to demonstrate just how important it is for him and his firm to be transparent. But are his three concepts really that radical or extreme? Maybe, because customers aren’t used to this level of transparency, but isn’t this what customers want? Isaacs’ three concepts could easily form a foundation of transparency that would help any company or brand, big or small, build trust, create confidence and connect emotionally with customers.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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How to Turn Customers into Superfans

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How to Turn Customers into Superfans

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

What do Apple, Zappos, and Chick-fil-A have in common? They are considered “rockstar” brands. Their loyal customers—and they have many—keep coming back and evangelizing these brands, singing their praises to the world. The customers are also willing to defend their favorite brand should someone say something negative about it.

There is a word to describe these types of customers. They are fans, and more specifically, they are superfans. Brittany Hodak may be the foremost expert on the concept of creating superfans in business. In her recently published book, Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers Into Lifelong Advocates, she defines a superfan as “a customer or stakeholder who is so delighted by their experience with a brand, product or service that they become an enthusiastic advocate.”

Hodak’s mantra is:

If your customers aren’t telling their friends about you, you’re in trouble.

So, how do you get your customers to come back, defend your reputation, and spread compliments about you? Follow Hodak’s SUPER model. The word SUPER is an acronym. To whet your appetite for this important literary contribution to the world of customer experience, I’ll share what each letter of the acronym means, followed by my commentary. Some of this is my own interpretation of Hodak’s model, but you will get the idea. So, here is Brittany Hodak’s SUPER model:

  • S – Start With Your Story: Sharing your “story” is powerful. Just make sure it’s the story that will get your customer excited about doing business with you. How should it start? Ask yourself, “Why does a customer want to do business with us (instead of our competition)?” Responses that are truly different will be important to the story. Hodak says, “Your story is your superpower.”

  • U – Understand Your Customer’s Story: Why do customers need you? The answer is their story, and when their story intersects with yours, you have the opportunity to do business, grow the relationship and create a superfan.

  • P – Personalize: The concept of personalizing the experience is a hot topic. Using data about the customer (in the right way) will create a connection. Abuse the data, and the customer will disassociate from you. Hodak uses Chewy, the online pet food, and supply retailer. The company not only know its customers’ buying habits but also often knows their pets’ names—and they use that information to create a better relationship and emotional connection with the customers. This is an excellent example of personalization.

  • E – Exceed Expectations: People often think exceeding expectations is difficult. The reason is because they confuse exceeding expectations with going above and beyond. There are opportunities to do that in special situations, but most of the time, you just need to be a little better than expected. Even the slightest bit better. When you’re at a restaurant, and you are told the wait will be ten minutes, but your name is called in eight minutes, that’s an example of exceeding expectations by being slightly better than expected. The key is to do this consistently. You want your customers to use the word always followed by something positive, such as, “They are always helpful,” to describe their experience with you.

  • R – Repeat: I love the idea of repeat. Create the system with an outcome that drives a positive customer experience every time. The key word here is system. A system can be scaled and is repeatable. It is consistent, and customers love consistency. If the initial experience was good, the next time they come back, they want more of the same. When it happens again and again, the customer “owns” the experience. They can count on it happening. Their confidence about the experience is so high they not only come back, but they also tell others. Creating superfans is an everyday, never-ending effort. Do what works again and again.

Okay, I admit it. I’m a Brittany Hodak superfan. I fall under the category of evangelizing her brand, and recommending her to clients, and now I’m writing about her book. I’m a perfect example of one of the ways Hodak describes a superfan, which is a great way to wrap up this article:

Superfans are customers who create more customers!

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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Today’s Customer Wants to Go Fast

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Today's Customer Wants to Go Fast

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Customers don’t want to wait. Specifically, they don’t want you to waste their time. If you do make them wait, you risk losing them. Making your customers wait sends the message that you don’t respect them or their time.

Jay Baer, a customer experience and marketing expert, proves this in his latest study, The Time to Win, which measures the impact of speed and responsiveness on customer experience and loyalty.

Just how important is speed? Consider these findings from Baer’s report:

  • Two-thirds of customers say speed is as important as price.

  • More than half of the customers surveyed hired the first business to respond to their requests, even if it was more expensive.

  • Half of all customers will not wait more than three minutes in a store.

I had a chance to interview Baer on Amazing Business Radio, where he shared some important insights that should be considered. Here are six of my favorites, followed by my commentary:

  • Speed is the most important component of customer experience and the only one that never pauses or goes backward – Calling it the most important component of the customer experience is bold, but consider a key finding from the report: 50% of customers are less likely to spend money with a business that takes longer to respond than they expect. Baer says, “Customers’ expectations for speed and responsiveness escalate every year without fail.”

  • Everyone has the same amount of time, 1,440 minutes a day, and there is nothing we can do to get more – Time is the same for everyone. Nobody gets more than anyone else. It has nothing to do with being rich, poor, young or old. And once it’s gone, you can’t get it back. Starting with that premise, business leaders should ask themselves, “What can we do to make sure we’re not to blame for wasting our customers’ time?”

  • Age makes a difference – In our interview, I was surprised when Baer shared the generations that were most and least patient. I would have thought Baby Boomers (the older generation) would have been more patient, but I was wrong. Gen-Z is the most patient generation. Boomers are the least patient. The point is to know your customers. Who do you cater to? Understand the demographics and improve your response time accordingly.

  • The first company that responds to a customer has an incredible advantage – If your company is the first to respond, you could win the customer’s business, regardless of price. Specifically, 53% of consumers hired the first business that responded to them. Customers want to make decisions and move on. If you give them what they want, they can skip the hassle and time of comparing all the competition.

  • Fast response impacts your bottom line – Just as customer service and convenience make price less relevant, so does quick response or fast service. The research found that customers would pay an average of 19% more for “always immediate service,” which includes no waiting in line, not waiting on hold, etc. In other words, customers put a premium on speed. It’s about convenience. Furthermore, 27% of customers are more likely to spend money when the brand responds faster than expected.

  • Right now is not really right now – As customers’ expectations and their need for speed increase, the concept of “right now” can seem daunting. According to Baer, the concept of “right now” is the optimal amount of elapsed time in every customer interaction throughout the entire customer journey. If that sounds technical, here’s a simpler way of putting it: “Right now” is simply slightly faster than the customer expected.

With only 1,440 minutes available each day, customers want to devote as few minutes as possible to waiting, as Baer’s research proves. This is so important that people will pay more for it. The security lines in airports are perfect examples of this. If you’ve taken a flight in a major U.S. airport, you’ll notice three lines to get through security. The TSA security line is for most passengers. This is free. Then there is TSA PreCheck. For a small investment of $78 (which covers you for five years), you can get pre-qualified to use a shorter line where you don’t have to take your computer out of your bag, take off your shoes, and more. And for a bit more money, you can sign up for CLEAR, which allows you to jump to the front of the TSA lines.

Baer’s research makes an important point. If you want a competitive edge in business, respect your customer’s time. Don’t make them wait. Respond quickly to their questions, requests, and problems. Find ways to incorporate speed into your customer experience and you’ll reap the benefits of returning customers who spend more and say, “I’ll be back!”

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Startups Must Be Where Their Customers Are

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Startups Must Be Where Their Customers Are

GUEST POST from Steve Blank

“A CEO running a B-to-B startup needs to live in the city where their business is – or else they’ll never scale.”

I was having breakfast with Erin, an ex-student, just off a red-eye flight from New York. She’s built a 65-person startup selling enterprise software to the financial services industry. Erin had previously worked in New York for one of those companies and had a stellar reputation in the industry. As one would expect, with banks and hedge funds as customers, the majority were based in the New York metropolitan area.

Where Are Your Biggest Business Deals?

Looking a bit bleary-eyed, Erin explained, “Customers love our product, and I think we’ve found product/market fit. I personally sold the first big deals and hired the VP of sales who’s building the sales team in our New York office. They’re growing the number of accounts and the deal size, but it feels like we’re incrementally growing a small business, not heading for exponential growth. I know the opportunity is much bigger, but I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong.”

Erin continued, “My investors are starting to get impatient. They’re comparing us to another startup in our space that’s growing much faster. My VP of Sales and I are running as fast as we can, but I’ve been around long enough to know I might be the ex-CEO if we can’t scale.”

While Erin’s main sales office is in New York, next to her major prospects and customers, Erin’s company was headquartered in Silicon Valley, down the street from where we were having breakfast. During the Covid pandemic, most of her engineering team worked remotely. Her inside sales team (Sales Development and Business Development reps) used email, phone, social media and Zoom for prospecting and generating leads. At the same time, her account executives were able to use Zoom for sales calls and close and grow business virtually.

There’s a Pattern Here

Over breakfast, I listened to Erin describe what at first seemed like a series of disconnected events.

First, a new competitor started up. Initially, she wasn’t concerned as the competitor’s product had only a subset of the features that Erin’s company did. However, the competitor’s headquarters was based in New York, and their VP of Sales and CEO were now meeting face-to-face with customers, most of whom had returned to their offices. While Erin’s New York-based account execs were selling to the middle tier management of organizations, the CEO of her competitor had developed relationships with the exec staff of potential customers. She lamented, “We’ve lost a couple of deals because we were selling at the wrong level.”

Second, Erin’s VP of sales had just bought a condo in Miami to be next to her aging parents, so she was commuting to NY four days a week and managing the sales force from Miami when she wasn’t in New York. Erin sighed, “She’s as exhausted as I am flying up and down the East Coast.”

Third, Erin’s account execs were running into the typical organizational speedbumps and roadblocks that closing big deals often encounter. However, solving them via email, Zoom and once-a-month fly-in meetings wasn’t the same as the NY account execs being able to say, “Hey, our VP of Sales and CEO are just down the street. Can we all grab a quick coffee and talk this over?” Issues that could have been solved casually and quickly ballooned into ones that took more work and sometimes a plane trip for her VP of Sales or Erin to solve.

By the time we had finished breakfast it was clear to me that Erin was the one putting obstacles in front of her path to scale. Here’s what I observed and suggested.

Keep Your Eye on The Prize

While Erin had sold the first deals herself, she needed to consider whether each deal happened because as CEO, she could call on the company’s engineers to pivot the product. Were the account execs in New York trying to execute a sales model that wasn’t yet repeatable and scalable without the founder’s intervention? Had a repeatable and scalable sales process truly been validated? Or did each sale require a heroic effort?

Next, setting up their New York office without Erin or her VP of Sales physically living in New York might have worked during Covid but was now holding her company back. At this phase of her company the goal of the office shouldn’t be to add new accounts incrementally – but should be how to scale – repeatably. Hiring account execs in an office in New York let Erin believe that she had a tested, validated, and repeatable sales playbook that could rapidly scale the business. The reality was that without her and the VP of Sales living and breathing the business in New York, they were trying to scale a startup remotely.

Her early customers told Erin that her company had built a series of truly disruptive financial service products. But now, the company was in a different phase – it needed to build and grow the business exponentially. And in this phase, her focus as a CEO needed to change – from searching for product/market fit to driving exponential growth.

Driving Exponential Growth

Exponential Growth Requires Relentless Execution

Because most of her company’s customers were concentrated in a single city, Erin and her VP of Sales needed to be there – not visiting in a hotel room. I suggested that:

  • Erin had to quickly decide if she wanted to be the one to scale the business. If not, her investors were going to find someone who could.

  • If so, she needed to realize that she had missed an important transition in her company. In a high-dollar B-to-B business, building and scaling sales can’t be done remotely. And she was losing ground every day. Her New York office needed a footprint larger than she was. It needed business development and marketing people rapidly creating demand.

  • Her VP of Sales might be wonderful, but with the all the travel the company is only getting her half-time. Erin needs a full-time head of sales in New York. Time to have a difficult conversation.

  • Because she was behind, Erin needed to rent an apartment in New York for a year, and spend the next six months there and at least two weeks a month after that. Her goal was to:
    1. Validate that there was a repeatable sales process. It not, build one
    2. Build a New York office that could create a sales and marketing footprint without her presence. Only then could she cut back her time in the City.

  • Finally, she needed to consider that if her customers were primarily in New York and the engineers were working remotely, why weren’t the company headquarters in New York?

I Hate New York

As we dug into these issues, I was pretty surprised to hear her say, “I spent a big part of my career in New York. I thought coming out to Stanford and the West Coast meant I could leave the bureaucracy of large companies and that culture behind. Covid let me do that for a few years. I guess now I’m just avoiding jumping back into an environment I thought I had left.”

We lingered over coffee as I suggested it was time for her to take stock of what’s next. She had something rare – a services company that provided real value with products that early customers loved. Her staff didn’t think they were joining a small business, neither did her investors. If she wasn’t prepared to build something to its potential, what was her next move?

Lessons Learned

  • For a startup, the next step after finding product/market fit is finding a repeatable and scalable sales process

  • This requires a transition to the relentless execution of creating demand and exponentially growing sales

  • If your customers are concentrated in a city or region, you need to be where your customers are

  • The CEO needs to lead this growth focus

  • And then hand it off to a team equally capable and committed

The full article originally appeared on Steve Blank’s blog

Image credits: Pixabay, Steve Blank

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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022

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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022:

  1. Robyn Bolton
    Robyn BoltonRobyn M. Bolton works with leaders of mid and large sized companies to use innovation to repeatably and sustainably grow their businesses.
  2. Janet Sernack
    Janet SernackJanet Sernack is the Founder and CEO of ImagineNation™ which provides innovation consulting services to help organizations adapt, innovate and grow through disruption by challenging businesses to be, think and act differently to co-create a world where people matter & innovation is the norm.
  3. Greg Satell
    Greg SatellGreg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, was selected as one of the best business books in 2017. Follow his blog at Digital Tonto or on Twitter @Digital Tonto.
  4. Mike Shipulski
    Mike ShipulskiMike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog Shipulski On Design.
  5. Braden Kelley
    Braden KelleyBraden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
  6. Teresa Spangler
    Teresa SpanglerTeresa Spangler is the CEO of PlazaBridge Group has been a driving force behind innovation and growth for more than 30 years. Today, she wears multiple hats as a social entrepreneur, innovation expert, growth strategist, author and speaker (not to mention mother, wife, band-leader and so much more). She is especially passionate about helping CEOs understand and value the role human capital plays in innovation, and the impact that innovation has on humanity; in our ever-increasing artificial/cyber world.
  7. Douglas Ferguson
    Douglas FergusonDouglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.
  8. John Bessant
    John BessantJohn Bessant has been active in research, teaching, and consulting in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. Today, he is Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Research Director, at Exeter University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank, and the OECD. John has authored many books including Managing innovation and High Involvement Innovation (Wiley). Follow @johnbessant
  9. Shep Hyken
    Shep HykenShep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken
  10. Pete Foley
    A twenty-five year Procter & Gamble veteran, Pete has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Find him at pete.mindmatters@gmail.com

    11. Build a common language of innovation on your team

  11. Geoffrey A. Moore
    Geoffrey MooreGeoffrey A. Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo! Best known for Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win with the latest book being The Infinite Staircase. Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute
  12. Soren Kaplan
    Soren KaplanSoren Kaplan is the bestselling and award-winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an affiliated professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, a former corporate executive, and a co-founder of UpBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top keynote speakers and thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.
  13. Steve Blank
    Steve BlankSteve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement that changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.
  14. Arlen Meyers
    Arlen MyersArlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyers/
  15. Jesse Nieminen
    Jesse NieminenJesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500. He’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organizations and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.
  16. Alain Thys
    Alain ThysAs an experience architect, Alain helps leaders craft customer, employee and shareholder experiences for profit, reinvention and transformation. He does this through his personal consultancy Alain Thys & Co as well as the transformative venture studio Agents of A.W.E. Together with his teams, Alain has influenced the experience of over 500 million customers and 350,000 employees. Follow his blog or connect on Linkedin.
  17. David Burkus
    David BurkusDr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.
  18. Diana Porumboiu
    Diana PorumboiuDiana heads marketing at Viima, the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world, and has a passion for innovation, and for genuine, valuable content that creates long-lasting impact. Her combination of creativity, strategic thinking and curiosity has helped organisations grow their online presence through strategic campaigns, community management and engaging content.
  19. Art Inteligencia
    Art InteligenciaArt Inteligencia is the lead futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. He is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Art travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. His favorite numbers are one and zero.
  20. Howard Tiersky
    Howard TierskyHoward Tiersky is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, innovation consultant, serial entrepreneur, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”

    21. Accelerate your change and transformation success

  21. Paul Sloane
    Paul SloanePaul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, both published by Kogan-Page.
  22. Bruce Fairley
    Bruce FairleyBruce Fairley is the CEO and Founder of The Narrative Group, a firm dedicated to helping C-Suite executives build enterprise value. Through smart, human-powered digital transformation, Bruce optimizes the business-technology relationship. His innovative profit over pitfalls approach and customized programs are part of Bruce’s mission to build sustainable ‘best-future’ outcomes for visionary leaders. Having spearheaded large scale change initiatives across four continents, he and his skilled, diverse team elevate process, culture, and the bottom line for medium to large firms worldwide.
  23. Patricia Salamone
    Patricia SalamonePatricia Salamone is a career strategist having worked across the financial services, CPG, media and telecom sectors – seeking resonance with every problem she is hired to solve. Patricia sees innovation through the lens of human need, framing what is to be solved not through the problem at hand, but rather the mystery to be unraveled. Patricia is currently an Account Strategist at Gongos, Inc.
  24. Dainora Jociute
    Dainora JociuteDainora (a.k.a. Dee) creates customer-centric content at Viima. Viima is the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world. Passionate about environmental issues, Dee writes about sustainable innovation hoping to save the world – one article at the time.
  25. Dean and Linda Anderson
    Dean and Linda AndersonDr. Dean Anderson and Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson lead BeingFirst, a consultancy focused on educating the marketplace about what’s possible in personal, organizational and community transformation and how to achieve them. Each has been advising clients and training professionals for more than 40 years.
  26. Brian Miller
    Brian MillerBrian Miller is the senior VP, strategic development, at BMNT Inc., an internationally recognized innovation consultancy and early-stage enterprise accelerator that is changing the future of public service innovation.
  27. Phil McKinney
    Phil McKinneyPhil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”​, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.
  28. Tom Stafford
    Tom StaffordTom Stafford studies learning and decision making. His main focus is the movement system – the idea being that if we can understand the intelligence of simple actions we will have an excellent handle on intelligence more generally. His research looks at simple decision making, and simple skill learning, using measures of behaviour informed by the computational, robotics and neuroscience work done in the wider group.
  29. Ralph Christian Ohr
    Ralph OhrDr. Ralph-Christian Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.
  30. Jeffrey Phillips
    Jeffrey Phillips has over 15 years of experience leading innovation in Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and non-profits. He is experienced in innovation strategy, defining and implementing front end processes, tools and teams and leading innovation projects. He is the author of Relentless Innovation and OutManeuver. Jeffrey writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog. Follow him @ovoinnovation

    31. Get the Change Planning Toolkit

  31. Shilpi Kumar
    Shilpi KumarShilpi Kumar an inquisitive researcher, designer, strategist and an educator with over 15 years of experience, who truly believes that we can design a better world by understanding human behavior. I work with organizations to identify strategic opportunities and offer user-centric solutions.
  32. Robert B Tucker
    Robert TuckerRobert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.
  33. Norbert Majerus and George Taninecz
    Norbert Majerus and George TanineczNorbert Majerus is a popular keynote speaker and consultant. His latest book, Winning Innovation – How Innovation Excellence Propels an Industry Icon Toward Sustained Prosperity, is available now. Follow him on LinkedIn or visit leandriveninnovation.com. For more than 20 years, George, as president of George Taninecz Inc., has helped executives publish award-winning books that illustrate applications of lean thinking. He also supports companies and associations with white papers, articles, and case studies on the deployment of lean in manufacturing, healthcare, and other industries.
  34. Farnham Street
    Farnham StreetFarnham Street focuses on helping you master the best of what other people have already figured out.
  35. Scott Anthony
    Scott AnthonyScott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.
  36. Anthony Mills
    Anthony MillsAnthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group (www.legacyinnova.com), a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm working with organizations all over the world. Anthony is also the Executive Director of GInI – Global Innovation Institute (www.gini.org), the world’s foremost certification, accreditation, and membership organization in the field of innovation. Anthony has advised leaders from around the world on how to successfully drive long-term growth and resilience through new innovation. Learn more at www.anthonymills.com. Anthony can be reached directly at anthony@anthonymills.com.
  37. Paul Hobcraft
    Paul HobcraftPaul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Follow @paul4innovating
  38. Jorge Barba
    Jorge BarbaJorge Barba is a strategist and entrepreneur, who helps companies build new puzzles using human skills. He is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog www.Game-Changer.net
  39. Nicholas Longrich
    Nicholas LongrichNicholas Longrich is a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology and paleontology at the University of Bath. He is interested in how and why the world is the way it is and studies dinosaurs, among other things—pterosaurs, fossil birds, lizards and snakes.
  40. Rachel Audige
    Rachel AudigeRachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.

If your favorite didn’t make the list, then next year try to rally more votes for them or convince them to increase the quality and quantity of their contributions.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021

Download PDF versions of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020, 2021 and 2022 lists here:


Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020 PDF . . . Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022

Happy New Year everyone!

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Winning in a Downturn Requires Delivering the Whole Product

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Winning in a Downturn Requires Delivering the Whole Product

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

In a downturn, everyone has to prioritize. For sales prospects, this means funding their most pressing needs first. For vendors who want to thrive, it means focusing on offers that match those needs, marketing that speaks to those needs, and sales coverage that is targeted specifically at winning those deals. And the key to winning is to deliver the whole product.

The whole product, as Ted Levitt taught us a generation ago, is the complete set of products and services needed to fulfill the compelling reason to buy for the target customer. In normal times, it is often OK to deliver most of the whole product, as either the customer or a channel partner will likely have resources and motive to fill in the rest. But in a downturn, not only are budgets scarce, so is expertise. Moreover, in a downturn, it is more critical than ever to deliver 100% on the promised outcome, as the customer is counting on that ROI to make their plans work.

Creating a bill of materials for your whole product is a straight exercise in design thinking. Just put yourself in the shoes of your target customer, get the compelling reason to buy square in your sights, and figure out what you would need to take that problem completely off the table. Once you have a draft, then test drive it with friendly prospects and let them show you all the things you missed. Take that input back to the team and construct a go-to-market offer that fills the bill, with every need taken care of. That’s what’s going to differentiate you from the competition. That’s what’s going to get you not only the sale but a radiating customer reference. That’s what’s going to let you thrive in a downturn.

Start-ups have an inherent advantage here over established enterprises because for them a single whole product focused on a single target market with an urgent use case is enough to get them across the chasm and into the mainstream market as a viable long-term player. But product managers in established enterprises can orchestrate the same play if they can garner executive support. The trick is to get the product team to prioritize some slightly off-road-map features, the service team to create a small corps of use-case experts, and the go-to-market team to field a dedicated target market initiative. The resources are always there to do this, but the inertial momentum of large enterprises works against such tightly focused efforts—hence the advantage to start-ups.

Whole product delivery has been greatly advanced by two seminal developments in the software world in this century. The first is the SaaS business model, especially when augmented by managed services. This transfers a large portion of success responsibility from the customer to the vendor. The second is the emergence of telemetry data processed by AI and ML. This allows service providers to get better and better at delivering customer success.

One company I am on the board of illustrates these advantages to a T. WorkFusion, experts in Intelligent Robotic Automation, no longer offer high-tech projects to early adopting visionaries. Instead, they supply digital workers to financial services companies needing to staff their regulatory compliance functions in a time of staff attrition (the job really is not that much fun) and high demand (the crooks are out in force). The point is, their digital workers do not just automate a task—they act like real colleagues who do the work and deliver the needed results. You can fund them out of the IT budget, of course, but you can also fund them out of your HR headcount (and they are a lot cheaper, don’t mind coming to the office, and actually appear to enjoy their work—certainly the people that program them do).

The key takeaway here is that downturns create new, pressing needs that prospects will prioritize over their traditional budget spend. These are problems that are both urgent and important—real threats that need to be addressed quickly and efficiently. To thrive in a downturn, you need to detect these opportunities quickly and pivot to meet them head on and let the other chips fall where they may.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pexels

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