THE CASE FOR TEAMBASED INCENTIVES ...........

8
INCENTIVE GIFT
CARD DIRECTORY ............. 27
SALESANDMARKETING.COM

JUL/AUG 2015 $10

ATTENTION
AND HOW TO GET IT ........ 58

The Tech Effect

Where technology
is taking sales
and marketing

page 40

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cover story

40

The Tech Effect

DEPARTMENTS
Where technology
is taking sales
and marketing

editors notebook
Its a tech tsunami

NEXT
Whats ailing employee wellness
programs? Plus other sales and
marketing talkers 6

the sales conversation

The allure of doing nothing

Incentive
product
review

Top performers
An assortment of new
incentive ideas from
our advertisers

Cameras and
consumer
electronics

12

marketing opinion
Are you ready for
machine learning?

14

marketing

24

52

Managing customers as assets

halts the revolving door 16

meetings
Top 10 meeting tech
trends for 2015 20
July/August 2015

Special Supplement

closers

27

Attention is currency, says

techno journalist Ben Parr. His
new bookk examines the triggers
that will help you get noticed. 58

Incentive
Gift Cards
Directory
Incentive Gift Card
Directory
A comprehensive list of Incentive
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editors notebook
Its a tech
tsunami
When youre pregnant (or when your partner is pregnant),
you start seeingg pregnant women everywhere you go.
Somethingg similar happens everyy time we put together our
annual summer issue, with its focus on technologys impact
on sales and marketing.
In the middle off this issues production cycle, a special
double issue of Fortune arrived in the mailbox with its annual
cover storyy on the Fortune 500. In it, Editor Alan Murray
relays in his editors note that technologyy sits atop CEOs list
off top challenges. (See more off his comments on page 40.)
A week later, my Fastt Company arrived, with a cover photo
off President Obamaa and a feature storyy on how
w the president
has raided the ranks off Google, Facebook, Amazon and other
top tech companies to assemble a team off techies who are
charged with rebootingg how
w government works.
Everythingg else is gettingg done faster. Whyy should this
institution be different? asks White House Chieff off Staff
Denis McDonough rhetorically. McDonough marvels at the
hunger for increasingg performance that techies have
brought to Washington. Theyy are in an industryy that has
constantlyy reinvented itselff and become more efficient. Thats
because at the heart off that industryy is the belieff that youre
goingg to get twice as good everyy two years, and thats held for
50 years.
Imagine iff you could shorten your sales cycle byy halff every
two years, or iff your marketingg team could double the number
off leads it generates in that time frame. Moores Law
w doesnt
applyy to sales and marketingg teams, but theres no question
that technologyy continues to increase productivityy in both
sales and marketingg across all industries.
Once youve nished readingg the cover package, check out
our incentive product review
w (page 24), which features some
off the neatest ideas in cameras and consumer electronics for
incentive use. Talk about a tech effectthese two product
categories have longg been amongg the most popular for driving
increased performance in the workplace.
And dont miss the thoughts from noted technology
journalist Ben Parr on how
w to capture peoples attention in a
world that is rife with diversions. Ben is featured in our
Closers Q&A
A on page 58.

Paul Nolan, Editor

paul@salesandmarketing.com

JUL/AUG 2015

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

PUBLISHER Mike Murrell, mike@salesandmarketing.com, 952-401-1283

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Paul Nolan, paul@salesandmarketing.com, 763-350-3411
ART DIRECTOR Susan Abbott, susan@abbottandabbott.com
EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS
Jeanne Bliss (CustomerBliss.com); Jeff Bullas (JeffBullas.com); Barry C. Collin
(CollinGroup.com); Steve Dunn (TravelTags.com); Jeff Erhardt (wise.io);
Eric Estrilla (SalesBenchMarkIndex.com); Matt Heinz (HeinzMarketing.com/blog);
Jeff Hoffman (HubSpot.com); Chuck Kapelke (b2bmarketing.net/magazine);
Peter Ostrow (aberdeen.com); Tim Riesterer (CorporateVisions.com);
Dave Stein (DaveStein.biz); Eyal Winter; Tony Zambito (TonyZambito.com)
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Gary Dworet, gary@salesandmarketing.com, 561-245-8328
Lori Gardner, lori@salesandmarketing.com, 952-451-6228
PRODUCTION MANAGER Tony Kolars, tony@salesandmarketing.com
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Vicki Blomquist, vicki@salesandmarketing.com
OFFICES Mach1 Business Media, LLC
PO Box 247, 27020 Noble Road, Excelsior, MN 55331
Phone: 952-401-1283 Fax: 952-401-7899 Online: www.salesandmarketing.com
PRESIDENT/CEO Mike Murrell
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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Tim Houlihan, BI Worldwide; Mike Landry, Tumi; Michael Leimbach, Wilson
Learning Worldwide; Dave Stein; Jay Zemke, Clockwork Active Media Systems;
Lee Salz, The Revenue Accelerator
Sales & Marketing Managementt Volume 96, No. 4 (ISSN 0163-7517) is published
six times a year in January, March, May, July, September and November by Mach1
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Subscriber Customer Service: circ@salesandmarketing.com, Fax: 801-998-1732

smmconnect.com

ONLINE
Find these and otherr online exclusives at
SalesandMarketing.com
A link to the full report on technologyy and sales from the
Aberdeen Group, which is featured in our cover story, can
be found in the Additional Web Resources box.
The extended Q&A interview with technologyy journalist
and venture capitalist Ben Parr is at SalesandMarketing.
com/Closers.
Save a seat for anyy off our free webinars on emerging
trends and sales and marketingg management challenges.

Spark happiness.
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JUL
AUG

2015

Whats ailing employee

wellness programs?
Among other
things, complaints
that they are
invasive, punitive
and ineffective

Americans continue to fuel a tness craze. By any measuretotal

health clubs, tness trainers and sales of tness geargrowth in
the past decade has been astronomical as the general population
increasingly embraces a more active and healthy lifestyle.
So it stands to reason that the increase of employer-sponsored
wellness programs would be a welcomed trend, right? Not so fast.
Some workers have pushed back against their employers
wellness efforts, claiming that requiring certain medical
screenings and answering questionnaires is invasive and illegal.
In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) released its long-anticipated proposed rule on the extent
to which the Americans with Disabilities Act permits employers
to offer incentives to employees to promote participation in
wellness programs that are employee health programs. In order
to ensure that participation in wellness programs are voluntary,
the EEOCs proposed rule limits the nancial incentive that an
employer may offer employees to 30 percent of the total cost of

JUL/AUG 2015

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

employee-only coverage under the plan, including both employee

and employer contributions toward the cost of coverage (or 50
percent to the extent that the additional percentage is attributed
to tobacco prevention or reduction).
In response to the backlash about wellness programs being
invasive, employers say they are striking a balance between
encouraging participation and protecting the choice of their
workers. Brian Marcotte, president and CEO of the National
Business Group on Health, a policy group representing large
employers, told National Public Radio that most health care costs
are lifestyle related, with a goal of reducing costs for themselves
as well as their workers. At the end of the day, employers want
healthy, productive, engaged, resilient employees, and the most
competitive workforce possible, Marcotte says. Investments in
health and well-being are part of that equation.
Generating employee interest and participation in wellness
programs has proved challenging. A report released by Fidelity

BJORN RUNE LIE/GETTY IMAGES

What youll be talking about.

EDITED BY PAUL NOLAN

Employers provide incentives through:

It may be true that, if designed well, some programs can save

money for both the employer and employees in the long run, but
not by focusing on lifestyle changes. Programs that merely do
that may cut employer costs, but only by shifting them to
employees. If rms wish to count that as a victory in the battle
against health care costs, they may do so, but their employees
may look at it differently.

Contributions to a healthcare account:

27%
Cash/gift card:

43%
Premium differential:

57%
Employers prefer incentives over disincentives
Benets Consulting states that 79 percent of employers will offer
incentives in 2015 compared with 63 percent in 2010, and the
average maximum incentive increased from $594 last year to
$693 in 2015. Yet only 47 percent of employees earn the full
incentive amount and 26 percent earn a portion of the incentive.
In a blog post at HealthAffairs.org, Soeren Mattke, managing
director of RAND Health Advisory Services, says bending the
curve with wellness programs as currently designed is an elusive
goal. He fears some employers will bail out of wellness programs
due to lack of ROI.
Allowing employers to shift up to 50 percent more of the cost
to employees with poor health choices will substantially increase
a system that is already regressive in nature by increasing cost
sharing or nudging people to drop coverage.
In my mind, exposing the most vulnerable employees to that
level of pressure would be sound policy if, and only if, workplace
wellness programs were powerful enough to reverse years of
deeply engrained behaviors, Mattke states. Yet our data show
that they are not even attracting more than a quarter of
employees and have a modest impact on those who participate.
That is why I believe it is time to start rethinking workplace
wellness, and come up with models that are both fairer and more
effective.
A 2014 New York Times story reported that researchers found
that participation in a PepsiCo Healthy Living program that
included lifestyle management and disease management
components did produce lower health care costs, but only after
the third year, and all from the disease management components
of the program.
When more broadly implemented and focused on lifestyle
management, as many wellness programs are, savings may not
materialize, and certainly not in the short term, the Times story
stated. Employers may misunderstand the research if they think
that just any wellness program, by itself, is the surest route to
reducing overall health care spending. That just isnt the case.

SOURCE: FIDELITY BENEFITS CONSULTING

17% of employers use disincentives for smoking cessation programs

Prevalence of incentives vs. disincentives by program

Biometric screening
72% 5%
Health risk assessment
70% 6%
Physical activity program
54%
Smoking cessation program
54% 17%
Weight management programs
45%
Disease/care management program participation
42% 7%
Preventive care services/screenings
39% 3%
Stress management program
35%

1%

Decision support tools for medical decisions

12%
Health care navigators
Incentives

11%
Health advocacy/second opinion
9%

Disincentives

2%

Decision support tools for health care enrollment

2%

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

JUL/AUG 2015

Should you lose the I in your incentives?

Team-based goals apply
more pressure to perform
Formal teamwork is present in a majority of
companies and, informally, every organization
is in fact a large team of employees.
But managers continue to focus their
performance improvement efforts almost
exclusively on competition rather than
cooperation when designing rewards.
In a recent essay for the Washington
Posts On Leadership section, Eyal Winter,
a professor of economics at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, makes the case for
team-based incentives. Winter points to a
real-life experience by Continental Airlines
some 20 years ago. Following a loss of more
than $600 million in 1994, Continental was
on the verge of bankruptcy. In February
1995, it initiated a program that promised
each employee a bonus of $60 for every
month in which the airline was ranked among
the top ve carriers in on-time performance.
It ended that year with a $224 million prot,
followed by a prot of $319 million in 1996.
It turns out, it was precisely because
Continentals employees were more
concerned about not disappointing their
peers than about making an extra $60 that
this scheme was so amazingly successful,
Winter states. The fear of depriving your
peers a bonus because of your laziness was
a much more meaningful motivator than the
fear of losing your own bonus.
Winter says there is a host of business
and economics research that supports the
superiority of team incentives over individual
ones. In 2001, Washington University

researchers found that the move from

individual to team incentives at a garment
manufacturing facility in Napa, California
improved productivity by 14 percent. Last
year, two researchers from the University
of Montevideo in Uruguay found that team
incentives improved college students
performance on course work and exam
grades by 20 percent when compared
against individual incentives.
Team incentives are successful because
of our craving for social gratitude and our
fear of social pressure, Winter says. For such
tactics to be effective in the long term, the
organization has to maintain a high level of
transparency. If workers are poorly informed
about peers efforts and performance that
is, if its impossible to tell the difference
between the teams savers and the teams
shirkers then social acceptance and social
pressure are meaningless.

Managing teams successfully is always

about nding the right balance between
the individual and the group, he adds. If
its only about competition, then a worker
will invest part of her effort in making other
workers outcomes less successful instead of
exerting all her effort toward making her own
outcome more successful. If its all about
cooperation, then some workers will just
capitalize off others diligence.
This makes effective team incentives
so hard to design. But they are vital
to organizational success. As Winter
summarizes, Getting it right requires
managers to stop thinking of workers as
entities who simply calculate the tradeoff
between effort and money, and to start
thinking of them as social and moral gures
who have more complex considerations
at play.

4 negotiation mistakes that can kill your deal

Sales negotiations can go awry quickly,
and in any number of ways. While
theres no surere way to barter a
positive outcome, avoiding a handful
of common mistakes can decrease the
likelihood of the negotiation getting
derailed. In a blog post on HubSpot.
com, sales management consultant
Jeff Hoffman shared the four worst

JUL/AUG 2015

mistakes reps make when they

negotiate.
1. Not negotiating with signing
authority. Identify the ultimate
decision maker early on or you
may be subjected to several rounds
of negotiations, each with its own
concessions.

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

2. Saying This is my bottom

line. The more limitations you
introduce into a negotiation, the less
likely it is to be successful. Keep
hard restrictions to yourself if at all
possible.
3. Negotiating too quickly.
The longer people are engaged in a
healthy negotiation, the more likely

both parties want it to end favorably.

Slow the discussion down and build
in some intentional silences.
4. Not building in new
concessions. No one wants to
feel like they have lost a negotiation.
Strive to guide the negotiation
in such a way that there is no
loser just two winners.

Sell like youre

If your salespeople think their prospects are
hard to impress, try having them sell to venture
capitalist David Wells of Kleiner Perkins
Caueld & Byers. Within the rst eight
words, Ive decided whether or not to keep
listening, Wells told Allison M. Shapira of the
Harvard Kennedy Schools Communication
Program when asked what hes thinking when
he hears a startup pitch.
Shapira asked Wells what hes looking for in
those rst eight words. He replied (and Im
paraphrasing), The core innovation. If its not in the
rst eight words, its probably not there. Thats when
I either stop listening or interrupt the speaker to ask.
When pitching a start-up idea, you need to get to the
core innovation right out of the gate, says Leslie Brokaw in
a blog post for MIT Sloan Management Review (SloanReview.
MIT.edu). When making any kind of presentation, a
counter-intuitive statement, surprising fact or arresting story
can get people to put their phones down.

a startup
Brevity requires you to prepare, prioritize and
package your material, adds communications
coach Beth Noymer Levine
(SmartMouthCommunications.com). She
offers these brevity tips:
Serve dessert rst. If you have a
takeaway or call to action, dont save
it for the end, deliver it up front. It helps
set context and expectations, which are
important for holding onto audience
attention.
Go modular. Build your presentation in chunks
rather than in a narrative so you can remain adaptable.
Chunks leave you prepared and nimble.
Know your big sh and little sh. Know your main points
or big sh and your supporting information or little sh.
(This requires you toyep, prioritize your material.)
Big sh come rst. Leading or inundating with lots of little
sh is overwhelming to the presenter and the audience.

Newfangled tips for an old-school tactic

Call me old school if you want, but I
still love to exchange business cards
especially in an event setting, Matt
Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing
(HeinzMarketing.com/blog), blogged
recently. The exchange of business cards,
Heinz says, is the start of a fast, proven
and scalable system that helps me more
consistently follow up, stay in touch and
ultimately convert more of those new
contacts into partners, referral sources,
customers and more.
Without a strategy, many trade show
attendees return home with a stack of

cards that stay wadded up in the bottom

of a laptop bag indenitely. Heinz offers
these tips for converting those cards into
an active network and pipeline:
Take photos of name badges.
Another option if they dont have a card is
to take a quick smartphone photo of their
name badge. At minimum you can use
this to remember and nd them on
LinkedIn later.
Process them on the ight home.
Working through business cards is a high
priority for me on the ight home. Im
typically behind on other work as well,
but time is of the essence on those new
relationships and follow-ups. The faster I
follow-up, the more likely I can continue
the momentum of the conversation into
something more meaningful sooner
than later.
Have a specic processing
checklist. For me, this includes
connecting on LinkedIn with a

customized message, adding them to my

newsletter list, adding them to CRM, and
following up with whatever deliverable
I promised (sending a copy of an ebook,
making an introduction, whatever). I
typically batch these activities, such
that Im doing the LinkedIn and
deliverable follow-up rst, then the
CRM and newsletter integration last.
Set a reminder to review the
business cards again in two weeks.
This can be done in your office, and
is a quick reminder to follow-up on any
loose ends from your initial outbound
connections on that ight home.
The lesson reinforced for me [from
Heinzs blog post] is that manyif not
mostbusiness practices never really
become obsolete, commented sales
consultant Todd Youngblood (ypsgroup.
com). Sure they need to be updated,
adapted and tuned to take advantage of
new technologies, but the fundamentals
remain in place.

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

JUL/AUG 2015

The millennial B2B buyer cant be ignored

Its clear that millennials continue to
greatly impact consumer marketing,
but there has been less chatter about
how their arrival in the work force
has affected B2B sales. By 2020, it is
estimated that millennials will make
up more than half of the work force.
Many of them are being promoted to
decision-making positions. Dustin
Grosse, Chief Operating Officer of

computers in hand. Traditional sales

processes have been linear in nature,
from qualication to educating the
buyer to creating interest to close. That
approach is dramatically changing in
part because of millennial buyers.
Social communities like LinkedIn
and Twitter allow buyers to understand
your value proposition while doing their
own online research, and they readily

Millennials and onboarding

If you hand your millennial sales team
a training manual, theyll likely hand
it right back. A better strategy is to
encourage your millennial reps to learn
from their peersand specically from
leading reps. Use technology to make
this possiblea homepage of all sales
activity (like a social network), daily
update emails, or the ability to listen to
how top reps pitch via calls or videos
are all great learning opportunities.
Social learning and collaboration is far
more impactful than the traditional
coffee is for closers sales environment.

Increase transparency
You can spark millennial salespeoples
desire to overachieve by making
recognition visible. Encouraging peer
learning and healthy competition
requires transparency throughout
the entire sales process. By tracking
engagement in a platform that enables
every salesperson to see what others are
doing, you create learning opportunities
and engender competition at the same
time. Savvy salespeople will be able to
see what top performers are doing and
incorporate that into their own selling
practice. This higher level of visibility
will also benet sales leaders, because
they will have more specic information
on what works and what doesnt.

Millennials should adapt as well

ClearSlide, a sales engagement platform
that empowers sales teams to engage
customers, recently shared his thoughts
with SocialMediaB2B about the
changing dynamics of buying, selling
and managing the generation that is out
to save the world.

Millennials in the
buying process
Millennials have a fundamentally
different approach to the way they
research, recommend and buy. They
were born with cell phones and

10

JUL/AUG 2015

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

consume valuable information like

videos, blog posts, how-tos, testimonials
and more to form their impressions.
Since most of the information gathering
happens before any direct interaction
with a company, sellers have to learn
how to adapt to where buyers are in the
selling process. Linear sales pitches end
up frustrating millennial buyers and risk
lengthening the sales process. Sellers
today need to ask questions, listen and
demonstrate value that aligns to what
the buyer already knows and what they
need to know to move the sale forward.

New blood in an organization forces

everyone to learn new and modern ways
of doing things, which is good. Buyers
are changing, so you need sellers to
change along with them. Millennials
can push their workplace in new
directions by advocating for openness
and transparency, peer-to-peer learning,
modern tools, mobility and by engaging
customers through social media. At the
same time, millennials should recognize
that they have plenty to learn from other,
more experienced colleagues as well.

Secrets to
video marketing
success
Video has immense potential in B2B
marketing, but many companies
have been slow to adopt it, states
Chuck Kapelke in a story for B-to-B
Marketer, a publication of the
Business Marketing Association.
He provides these quick tips for
better use of video:
KEEP IT SHORT. Less is more is the mantra of all
experienced video makers. If you cant deliver a
message in a minute and a half, people will tune out,
says Ron Klingensmith, Chief Creative Ofcer for Slack
and Company, a B2B marketing consultant. Even longer
format videos need to be concise in their message, say
what they need to say and move on and do it in an
engaging way.
MEASURE AND LEARN. Like all digital media channels,
video is highly measurable. In addition to clicks and
conversions, video metrics let you see how much people
watch before they tune out, providing insight into where
your message could be stronger. In an ideal situation,
youre constantly taking measurements and using
analytics to understand your performance, and youre
making adjustments on the y, says Matt Palmer of
DesignKitchen.
HAVE A CLEAR NEXT STEP. Every video should end
with a clear call to action, such as a link to a landing
page or a phone number to call. If someone clicks the
video, the next step might be to send them product
information, or to receive a sales call and see if they want
to participate in having a free safety audit, Klingensmith
says. Videos can also be produced in pieces to enable
customers to take themselves on self-guided content
journeys. This not only empowers the viewer, but also
lets them self-identify their specic interests.
BE WILLING TO FAIL. What makes people nervous is
the fear that theyre stepping out of their comfort zone,
says Laura Ramos of Forrester Research. Video is a
medium that demands a systematic approach to
management.
A link to the full article by Chuck Kapelke
can be found in our Additional Web
Resources box at SalesandMarketing.com.

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11

the sales conversation

The allure of doing

nothing

The four reasons people are stuck in the status quo

and how to defeat them

In a joint study on decision making, research psychologists

Irving Janis and Leon Mann describe a wartime phenomenon
called the old sergeant syndromewhen infantry on the
frontlines, having witnessed the deaths of many comrades, are
known to actually delay making decisions that might protect
them from a similar fate. Though anecdotal, the old sergeant
syndrome illustrates just how powerful the human preference
for staying the course can be.
Sellers routinely encounter a similar preference in their
customer conversations, and this preference is their most
formidable adversary. Deeply rooted in human psychology and
common in everyday life, this opponent has nothing to do with
the other competitors in your market and everything to do
with your prospects status quo biastheir preference for
making no buying decision at all and sticking with their current
situation. Humans have a serious predisposition for doing
nothing and maintain this preference even when the current
situation is clearly to their detriment.
In his study called The Psychology of Doing Nothing,
research psychologist Christopher Anderson sums it up well:
Delays transform into lost opportunities, and adhering to the
status quo is frequently unjustied given advantageous
alternatives. Still, individuals persist in seeking default
no-action, no-change options.
Beating buyer inertia
Why is the status quo so compelling for so many buyers?
Andersons research highlights several key antecedents that
fuel our human penchant for inaction. These factors provide a
helpful way to think about why buyer indecision happens, and
what you as a seller can do to make sure it doesnt.
Preference stability Experienced buyers tend to stick
with proven methods for making a selection. So, how can
you engineer a shift in your prospects preferences? One of
the best ways to do this in your customer conversations is to
tell them something they didnt already know about a problem
or missed opportunity they didnt even know they had.
That means identifying and introducing their unconsidered
needschallenges, problems, gaps or deciencies in their
status quo approach that will make it difficult or even
impossible to achieve their desired outcomes. This creates
uncertainty in the buyers current preferences, which is
required for decision processing and persuasion to
take place.

12

JUL/AUG 2015

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

Anticipated regret/
blame The possibility of
regret can be a major source
of inaction for buyers
during the decision-making
process. Anderson notes
that anticipatory emotions
during the decision process
include a cocktail of
negative states including
dread, anxiety and fear
largely due to the notion
that humans tend to
BY TIM RIESTERER
associate change with loss
and pain instead of gain. To
counteract this, you have to show prospects how the pain of
staying the samethe status quo, which poses the biggest
threat to their most vital business goalsis actually greater
than the pain of change.
Cost of action/change According to social psychologist
Daniel Kahneman, humans are two to three times more
motivated to avoid loss than to achieve gain. As a result, if
change is risky and appears to cost more than staying the
same, it will increase resistance. To make change more
palatable to your prospects, you have to identify and
quantify the cost of inaction and add that to the gain of
change to show signicant contrast between their current
and future states. The value of doing something different
resides in the contrast between where your prospects are
today and where they could be with you.
Selection difculty Researchers conrm a concept
called choice overload, which contributes to
indecisiveness and the perception that change is too
difficult and abstract to realize. To overcome this, you
need to make the complex simple and the abstract more
concrete. The best way to do this is with visual storytelling
tools depicting buyers current and future states so they
can picture their status quo as unsafe and see your solution
as a new, safe alternative path.
As Andersons research shows, the status quo bias is a stubborn
foe. Instead of worrying about a competitive matrix that shows
how you stack up against a competitor, you should be spending
more time on messages, tools and skills that defeat these causes
of the status quo bias.

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marketing

Are you ready for

machine learning?
In this era of Big Data, were inundated with messages to use
data to drive personalized and predictive experiences for
customers. But for many, the gap between this data-driven
vision and reality is large and growing; according to Forrester
Research, most organizations are using a mere 12 percent of
their data to make marketing decisions.
One approach to curing these data overload ills is machine
learning, an approach to predictive analytics that allows
computers to automatically learn by example and continuously
adapt to the shifting sales and marketing world. Machine
learning alleviates the burden of establishing xed rules for
how to react to data, extracting patterns from every individual
customer and interaction in order to help you achieve the
business results you want.
But how do you get started with machine learning? Are you
even ready? Here are four recommendations to help you answer
those questions and get your sales, marketing and support data
ready for machine learning.
Dont boil the ocean
Too many Big Data analytics projects fail by trying to solve
everything at once: the 360-degree view of every possible
interaction with every customer on every channel. Dont fall
into that trap. Instead, come from the philosophy that you dont
have to solve every analytics challenge right out of the gate.
Choose the right business process
Building on the mindset of not boiling the ocean, segment
your business processes to identify where it makes sense to
layer on machine learning technology. Start with a process
that is relatively mature and stable, and where you see your
employees performing repetitive tasks. Maybe its a process
around assigning leads to salespeople or selecting dynamic
content for your next email campaign.
Understand your data
Next up, take inventory to understand what data is available,
where it lives and how its being used in that business process
to make decisions. Since machine learning can work with your
existing CRM, marketing automation and support systems
and any data types, including texttheres no need to uproot
existing systems. Dont fret if your data is scattered, or if you
feel like you dont have enough. Consider an agile approach;
initially, you can apply machine learning using the easily
accessible data and then gradually add more over time.

14

JUL/AUG 2015

SALESANDMARKETING.COM

Be very clear about the

outcome youre striving for
Are you trying to convert more
prospects? Or maybe gure out
the best salesperson to close a
certain deal or save an at-risk
customer? The outcome is the
nucleus around which machine
learning operates, so the crisper
the outcome, the better the
value. By understanding past
outcomesgood, bad, or
JEFF ERHARDT,
uglymachine learning can tie
CEO OF WISE.IO
your data together in
meaningful ways to drive better
future outcomes for marketing and sales.
Once you understand your business process, data and outcomes,
youre ready to bring in machine learning to codify intuition
that is, to learn the patterns of human decision making and
infer the complex rules by which decisions are being made by
your customer-facing employees. In turn, youll be able to use
machine learning to scale and enhance those inherently
personalized customer interaction decisions.
Predictive applications are not a black box for decision
making, but a supplement to human analysis. Think about
which decisions to automate and which to augment by
assessing the cost of being wrongthe cost of an incorrect
action. For example, choosing which salesperson should work a
deal can be automated; the prospect likely wouldnt notice if he
engaged with the wrong salesperson. However, saving an
at-risk customer may be better left to an augmented approach.
Machine learning can help determine which customers are
most likely to cancel and recommend which save technique is
likely to work best, but the account manager ultimately controls
how to handle the interaction.
Machine learning will play an increasing role in marketing
and sales organizations looking to work smarter, not harder. By
offering one more way to alleviate the burden of data analysis,
it can be the foundation for more personalized interactions and
better engagement at every stage of the customers
lifecycle.
Jeff Erhardt is CEO of Wise.io, which delivers predictive applications
across the full customer lifecycle to optimize how businesses acquire,
monetize, support and retain customers.