At one time, customer purchase records, financial statements and other mission-critical information would be stored in filing cabinets that could be securely locked at the end of every day. The challenge, of course, was that those files could often mysteriously go missing, and keeping it all organized could occupy an entire team of employees.

The digitization of data has helped address many of these issues. Information is more widely available than ever before. It can be shared with others inside and outside of organizations to collaborate. Many of us can now also manage our own data, rather than delegating it all to assistants or administrators, letting those professionals devote their time to higher-value tasks.

Cloud computing offers an even greater benefit, in that it allows files to be easily stored and retrieved. Sometimes, however, people get nervous about using the cloud instead of keeping everything on their hard drives.

The “cloud” can sometimes seem mysterious and ephemeral, because you can’t see it the way you can a piece of hardware. There are ongoing questions about whether cybercriminals could somehow hack their way into the cloud and steal your data. And is there really just one cloud, or several?

Let’s start by answering the last question first. Yes, there are multiple clouds, but think of them more as services offered by different providers. The underlying technology is likely the same, but some of the pricing plans and feature sets might be more preferable than others depending on your business needs.

The overarching benefits of cloud storage, however, are likely the same no matter whose services you turn to for help. The potential risks or disadvantages of not using the cloud to store your files are also consistent, regardless of the kind of business you’re running.

Whether you’re trying to make the business case for cloud storage to your boss or just trying to make up your own mind, here’s a shortlist of the five reasons to say “yes”:

1. You’re saving as you go

When computers were first introduced to the workforce you heard countless stories of people working on an important report, spreadsheet or other document when, suddenly, disaster occurred.

It could have been as simple as a temporary outage that shut down power to your office, or something more specific to the desktop you were using. The impact was consistent, though: if you weren’t routinely hitting some kind of “save” button, all or parts of your work could be lost forever.

Cloud storage applications were designed with these scenarios in mind. Saving happens automatically, even while you’re working on a specific document. You’re not waiting until you’re finished to ensure it is properly stored. Instead, storage becomes part of the process of working, and remains trustworthy long after.

2. You’re safer from cyberattacks

A coworker clicks on a link they receive within an email. Sounds innocuous enough, but in some cases those links could be part of what’s called a phishing attack, which leads to that employee’s computer being infected with malicious software or malware.

Worse yet, that malware or computer virus can spread to the systems of everybody using the same network — including yours.

Cloud storage can be the best insurance against IT security incidents you can have. Your files are essentially abstracted from physical hardware, which means they can remain safe and isolated from a network infected by a virus. It also means you may still be able to access those files on another device while the security incident is cleared up.

3. You’re protected by passwords

Filing cabinets and physical storage units used to require employees to carry around a key in order to get what they needed. Cloud storage offers a great improvement on that practice by allowing you to set up a password that will be unique to you (and possibly your IT administrator).

Sometimes password security gets a bad rap, but it has remained a standard business practice because they really do work. Just make sure you create a password that isn’t easy to guess, and change it periodically to add an additional layer of security.

4. You’re backed up no matter what

Hard drives break. An office building can catch fire. An earthquake can wreak havoc across an entire city.

These are all different levels of disaster, but they all spell trouble for businesses that will rely on access to files to get back on track serving customers. It’s why the most successful organizations always have a strong disaster recovery or business continuity plan in place.

Cloud storage is ideal for these kinds of plans because those providing cloud storage services make sure to have redundant servers. Even if the worst happens and one server shuts down, in other words, there are backups ready and able to make sure your files are not lost.

5. You stay synced

“Sorry, that’s the wrong version” Is not a great way to get work done with your colleagues — or to try and build trust with your customers.

Storing files locally almost always leads to mistakes, because people have a hard time keeping track of the various versions of the same document.

Cloud storage is a boon to collaboration not only because multiple people can access files from anywhere, but because all changes are synchronized every time they are made. You’ll always be working with the right files, no matter what you’re working on.

These benefits of the cloud have been around for several years now, but as more people try it out, the more business professionals are recognizing their value. Trust in cloud computing is only going up, so think about putting your files there today.

The post Why You Can Trust The Cloud For Storing Files appeared first on Salesforce.

The great thing about cloud computing, apps and mobile devices is that, in theory, the entire world can be your customer. For small and medium-sized businesses, that can be game-changing because they no longer have to think about prospects that are within a specific location or niche.

In reality, of course, creating an effective sales and marketing strategy starts with a target that is focused and allows you to make the right decisions about where to invest your time, talent and other resources. The notion that there are only so many actual people or organizations that will purchase a particular set of products and services is referred to as your total addressable market (TAM). Calculating and honing in on your TAM may be among the most surefire ways to grow your business.

1. Define — And Discuss — Your TAM

There are many ways to think about and quantify TAM, and it may be easier or difficult depending on the nature of your company and what it offers. The book Innovation-Based Entrepreneurship101: A Handbook on 24 Steps to Help Make Entrepreneurs More Successful from MIT may have one of the best ways to think about it. According to the authors, TAM is the amount of annual revenue, expressed in dollars per year, that your business would earn if you achieved 100% marketshare. Even if you’re particularly optimistic about sales, it’s best to look at what volume of customer acquisition and selling will be sustainable over the long term.

“You are looking for a market that is big enough for you to get to critical mass, develop key capabilities and get to cash flow positive in the market,” the book says. “On the other hand, if the market is too big, you will likely not have sufficient resources to compete and you may get overwhelmed and either not succeed or have to raise money without much of a track record for potential investors to evaluate.”

TAM is something that, once properly understood, should be discussed and communicated across your team as widely as possible, so that each key player can adjust their own goals and objectives accordingly. This includes:

• Key verticals, segments or named accounts that the marketing department or marketing lead should be nurturing through demand generation campaigns.
• Quotas for the sales team, and objective around growing share of wallet within the TAM.
• The technologies that will best help the entire organization discover, engage and convert the TAM into customers.

2. Forecast TAM Changes, Then Change Your Plan

Most companies operate the same way: they create or update products and services, develop a sales and marketing plan, and then go after their customer base as though it was a static, stable entity. Much like an individual business, your TAM will look different from one year or even possibly one month to the next.

For example, consider when a mature industry is suddenly turned upside down by a technological advance that threatens their business model. Taxis, newspapers and hotels are just three examples. The TAM for products and services aimed at those companies changes significantly based on how competitive they need to be, or how hard they need to work to merely survive.

The flip side is when technology or some other factor spurs more companies to form and grow within a particular segment. Mobile apps, for instance, allowed many developers to create businesses that would not have existed before. It also opened up new opportunities within large incumbent businesses that wanted to take advantage of mobile apps.

Beyond technology, think about things such as economic fluctuations, mergers and acquisitions within your TAM and even particular budget cycles that may influence how willing your TAM is to make a purchase in a given period. A TAM should be “managed” the way you could a specific customer relationship.

3. Use Data To Determine A More Accurate TAM

In the early days of a company’s life, the TAM may be based on anecdotal evidence or fairly rudimentary, generic market research information. A big part of evolving as an organization depends on how well you collect and manage information to not only close a deal, but provide predictive intelligence about how big or small your TAM really is.

Companies that use CRM, for example, often keep track of each customer interaction in order to upsell, cross-sell and so on. That data is valuable in isolation, but it becomes a gold mine for strategy when it’s looked at more holistically across customers. To see how often they buy, who’s involved in the decision, the key elements that contribute to a close—these will provide a much more granular sense of whether, based on your current size and resources, you can take on a larger TAM. This could influence everything from additional technology investments to hiring you’ll do in the year ahead.

Remember that the “T” in TAM may represent something you’ll never entirely reach, but is a benchmark for your company’s day-to-day performance. Sales is always about hitting your number, but this may be among the most important numbers you have to know.

The post Calculate (And Capitalize On) Your Total Addressable Market appeared first on Salesforce.

Even if you’re not a fan of science fiction, you may have heard a famous quote from William Gibson, a Canadian author who once said: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” It’s an idea that rings true even more loudly if you’re talking about the future of work and SMBs.

Perhaps because of differences in resources—or just the speed at which technology changes—the way large enterprises organize and empower their staff may sometimes seem like The Jetsons compared with smaller or medium-sized firms. No matter how you define “the future of work,” it’s probably easy to imagine people working faster, more autonomously and more productively thanks to advances in IT.

The question is, how do you get there without stretching your budget to the breaking point, and avoid any painful process changes along the way? It may not be easy as 1, 2, 3, but here are at least three ways to break it down.

1. Reverse-Engineer Work As It Is Today

Few firms proactively establish a “future of work” strategy. More often, there is a particular trigger or tipping point that requires companies to rethink their traditional approach to getting things done. This could be shifts in the way their customers prefer to receive information—like moving from paper-based to digital sources of content, for example. Sometimes there are competitive threats, such as the move to offering services from a mobile device rather than a physical location or over the phone.

Though some organizations manage to respond to such things relatively quickly, they are inevitably in “catch-up” mode compared with firms who have more foresight into how technology could improve their internal and customer-facing methods of interacting.

Avoid this problem by following the example of R&D departments, who sometimes “reverse-engineer” or take a competitor’s product apart in order to understand how it functions. In this case, reverse-engineer your own organization and look at some of the following areas:

• What are the most critical steps that help the company achieve its business objectives—selling to a customer, for example, or bringing on a new employee. What areas of work deserve attention?
• What are the biggest barriers or impediments that make these steps longer than desirable, or add complexity? Do some free-form association with your team or leadership.
• What would the ideal future look like, based on the technology that’s available on the market today? This could include cloud-based applications, mobile devices, analytics and more.

Once this is mapped out, prioritizing and looking at what can be done in a phased approach becomes much more feasible.

2. Create A ‘Future Of Workback’ Schedule

You don’t need a certification in project management to know about workback schedules. For any initiative that involves multiple departments, a key client deliverable or a longer-term investment, workbacks help detail the granular tasks that get the team from A to B, with the owner of each task clearly named next to due dates.

What makes the move towards “the future of work” so overwhelming, in many cases, is that it lacks this kind of breakdown. For SMBs that don’t have their own IT department, implementing digital tools becomes haphazard and unwieldy if they don’t have some kind of workback, even if it’s just a simple spreadsheet.

Consider a workback like this one, which is based on a move to offer the sales team cloud-based CRM via their mobile phones. Some of the tasks in a workback to make this future a reality might be:

a) Inventory of existing mobile devices across the team (if not company-issued)

b) Overview of the planned deployment with key stakeholders and FAQs

c) Scheduling check for team members out of office or absent on a client engagement during the deployment period

d) Identification of a pilot group and dates for initial deployment and training

e) Date for feedback from pilot group and any tweaks to phased deployment strategy

f) Team review on initial usage and suggestions for improvements in phase two.

Of course, your actual workback could be much more involved and may be developed in collaboration with your key suppliers, but this will bring the future of work closer than ever before.

3. Go Back To ‘The Future’ Frequently

To anyone employed in the days when typewriters still sat on most desks, the future arrived a long time ago. But much like the advent of personal computers, the rise of the cloud, apps and analytics doesn’t tend to transform businesses across the board at once. It’s a series of incremental and iterative changes that make a meaningful difference.

As you experiment these tools, consider how you can integrate or align them with other ways you measure business success, such as:

• Performance reviews: Whether it’s part of a formal evaluation or even self-evaluation, how does the introduction of new technology contribute to a more engaged working experience for your employees? Have them rate their comfort level on a sliding scale and offer room for comments on other tools they’d like to see deployed.
• Customer support enquires: A lower volume of questions or complaints may be attributable to the ability for more employees to address issues while outside the office. Try to identify changes based on when and how technology was introduced.
• Revenue: Once you’ve achieved return on investment with technology —whether it’s reduced costs or increased productivity—it’s time to revisit that reverse-engineering discussion you held at the beginning. How is the most critical work being done now, and what is the “before” and “after” picture in terms of those barriers and pitfalls?

Even if you improve business processes with one IT investment at a time—and many do—a strategic and disciplined approach will make each transition a little easier. Welcome to the future.

The post Make ‘The Future Of Work’ Happen Today appeared first on Salesforce.

Think back to your last big purchase. You may have been standing in an auto dealership, a clothing store, or even filling a virtual shopping cart. At any point, did you stop to check your mobile device to and Google about the product or service?

According to Marketing Land, 82 per cent of smartphone users would answer yes.

Studies show that where you rank on search engine results pages (known as SERPs) has a direct impact on your website traffic. In fact, Search Engine Watch states that the top position on Google receives 33% of search traffic. For many small to medium-sized businesses, this could be a make or break moment on their customer’s path to purchase. A quick search on Google could reveal a competitor’s sales incentives or top selling features, and ultimately sway a buyer’s decision in the other direction. With search rankings weighing heavily on web traffic and conversion rates, it’s essential to make sure your business comes out on top. But how?

Here are three simple ways to improve your organic, or un-paid, search ranking position on Google—even if you’re not a search engine specialist.

Write longer content, and more of it.

Backlinko recently examined one million Google search engine results to figure out the factors that determine which pages receive top billing. In a summary of the post, Marketing Profs found that content still reigns over the world of SEO and that the “average piece of content on Google’s first page contained 1,890 words.” Other forms of content, such as short form blog posts or infographics, are still great ways to offer your audience bite-sized pieces of information relevant to their business. However, it’s important to include timely, relevant and – most importantly – lengthier articles in the mix. Not only will it boost your SEO performance, but you’ll likely find that they lead to higher conversion rates.

Use metadata to ‘file’ your website correctly

Metadata is a term used by web teams and digital marketers to refer to the data on your site that’s been inputted to describe the actual on-page information. It helps to think of a search engine as a virtual library, and each web page a book with a unique title and description that help users locate it. You can check on your website’s metadata manually by right-clicking anywhere on a page and selecting “View Page Source”, and scrolling to the top or <head> of the page. Alternatively, you could use a free online application like SEOCentro to generate a report. Given the billions of web pages on the internet, users have no choice but to judge a book by it’s cover – it’s important to make this opportunity count!

In addition to your title and description, certain tags can help search engines properly index your site to improve SEO. Search Engine Watch sites the robots tag as one of the most important, “not so much for the proper implementation, but the improper.” When used incorrectly, these tags could quickly remove your site from a search engine’s index altogether, but can just as easily be reversed.

Metadata can be updated easily in your content management system (CMS) or with the help of your web team. And be sure to check in on how search engines are using metadata, as this changes frequently. When describing the once-crucial keywords tag, Search Engine Watch stated: “Much like the dinosaurs, this tag is a fossil from ancient search engine times.”

Reduce, reuse, and republish

Like a fine wine or cheese, a good web page gets better with age – at least according to Google, who doesn’t take age into consideration when ranking quality content. For example, here are the top two results for “how to improve organic search,” both of which are over a year old:

Updating content is not only an opportunity to re-visit an article or blog post for mistakes, dated information, or missed opportunities, but it can also help boost your SEO. A case study by Backlinko recently found that updating and republishing a post increased organic traffic by 111.37%. Not only is this a great way to save time and money on curating new content, it can ensure that older pages are still presenting accurate information – all while improving your organic search rankings.

One of the first steps to succeeding at SEO is assessing and monitoring your progress, so start by using free online tools like Google Search Console or SEOSiteCheckup that can help you determine where your website stands against its competitors. Like your annual physical, this will give you an idea of how you’re doing and where to improve over the year ahead.

The post Surefire tips to improve your organic ranking on Google appeared first on Salesforce.

Everybody understands the value of a celebrity endorsement. When a professional athlete or actress is shown driving a particular car or wearing a piece of clothing, it’s not long before their fans start clamouring to buy the same thing. Understanding how to replicate this effect in the B2B space, on the other hand, may not be quite as intuitive.

The idea of an “influencer network,” as they’re called by marketing experts, stems from a simple but very strategic idea: that establishing relationships with the right people could offer nearly as effective a mechanism for nurturing a sales lead as a traditional cold call or pitch meeting. Influencers are not necessarily salaried employees, but have an authentic connection with a target customer or audience that is used in ways that educate and inspire deeper connections with a company.

Influencers Defined

The fastest way to find the people who could be legitimately called “influencers” is to think of all the people your customers might be paying attention to – especially the people they are more likely to prioritize over, say, your company and its sales and marketing team. This could vary widely by company or sector, but influencers often fall into the following camps:

• Bloggers or traditional media
• Public speakers or those closely involved in industry events
• Social media users with a strong following
• Customer’s peers, subordinates or leaders

That last group is often forgotten. Even if their role is largely behind the scenes, influencers are essentially the people who are one step away from your key decision maker. As more B2B organizations move towards account-based marketing and selling, influencers may also be clustered into groups rather than seen as a set of individuals. Map this out before determining how you’ll approach and work with influencers.

Validate Your Way Into An Influencer Relationship

Influencers are powerful because they have your customer’s attention, and the quickest way to get closer to them and to your end target is by demonstrating you’re aware of their influence and the value it provides. In other words, if you become a follower or fan of your customer’s influencers, you’ll immediately look more relevant and connected to their interests.

Here’s are just a few tips to establish your credentials with influencers:

• Share the influencer’s recent posts on social media channels through your firm’s accounts, adding your own thoughts or takeaways where appropriate.
• Profile influencers through your company’s content marketing channels. This could be as simple as an e-mail Q&A posted to your firm’s blog, or a video interview taken at an industry event which you share via social media.
• Show up to where influencers are speaking at conferences and ask thoughtful questions your customers may be hesitant to ask, or that help enlighten them further.

Engage Your Influencers Directly

If this kind of activity gets an influencer’s attention, look for opportunities to help them further. While the long-term objective might be using an influencer to help position or promote your products and services, this is very much about investing as much as possible into the relationship up front.

Everyone wants or needs something. In fact, it might make sense to think of approaching influencers the same way you might a new customer or prospect: starting by getting a solid understanding of their main challenges or goals, identifying where your company has a way to contribute, and formalizing an arrangement. The difference is that the result might not be a financial transaction but a goodwill gesture of some sort that ensures an influencer keeps your firm top of mind when they’re in front of your customers.

Introduce your influencer to someone who can help grow their business, for example. Offer free or trial versions of your products and services to let them understand why they’re useful. Invite an influencer to speak at your next customer event or buy tickets for your customers to attend their next speaking engagement. Or, if the influencer is merely an extended member of the customer’s team, offer content that helps them do their own job better. This could range from books to white papers, blog posts and more.

Clearly Credit Your Influencers

Customers don’t want to feel manipulated – it’s the surest sign of influencer marketing gone wrong. That’s why the relationship between a company and influencers needs to be transparent.

If you sell cameras and video equipment for example, you might run a program where talented videographers create a series of clips using your equipment. Don’t assume the nature of the relationship is obvious and over-communicate where necessary. Your paying customers should understand that the influencers were deliberately engaged to demonstrate the quality of the products and how the process worked.

The good news is that, when executed properly, influencer networks have a trickle-down effect on the companies that nurture them – to the point where the company starts to become more influential, too.

The post How To Find (And Grow) Your Influencer Network appeared first on Salesforce.

The best customer service agents just have a certain way about them. It could be a reassuring voice that keeps customers calm as they wrestle with a difficult or frustrating problem. It could be their ability to instantly diagnose a common issue with a product or service and explain the solution in an accessible and comprehensible way. Or it could be that sense of humour that diffuses a tense moment where customers are downright angry.

Using these traits in a call centre doesn’t mean they transfer easily to social media. As wonderful as services such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook are to connect with other people, they also impose some constraints. These include the space you have to communicate a message, the frequency with which a small or medium-sized service has to keep up with their audience, and the fact that it’s often text-based interactions rather than a dialogue by phone.

SMBs can’t afford to ignore customer service issues that come up via social media, but they may need to ensure that those dealing with them are prepared for the nuances they introduce.

Prioritize And Escalate The Three ‘Ds’

Given that traditional customer service channels (like phone calls) aren’t going away, SMBs should consider categorizing what they see on social to develop a better game plan. Think of the following as a sort of inverted pyramid in terms of urgency:

• Downtime: If you’re offering any kind of service that needs to be available 24/7 (and this includes many services offered online, such as e-commerce), a period where customers can’t use it can quickly lead to a public relations nightmare. Immediately acknowledge that you have seen their alert and that you are working with the appropriate parties to get things back on track ASAP.
• Delays: When customers make a purchase, they want it yesterday. If items aren’t shipped on time or there are other problems with product fulfillment, expect them to inform their connections on social media. Being the company that jumps on this immediately and gracefully will be the only thing that repairs your firm’s reputation before it’s damaged.
• Dissatisfaction: If products or services don’t function the way customers expect, they’ll tweet about it or post it on Facebook or LinkedIn. Rolling with these punches is a bit of a fine art and certainly critical, but you may have slightly more time to finesse your response.

Take It Offline

The good thing about traditional customer service is that it’s somewhat private – a conversation essentially between two people. Social media is like walking the tightrope, where the world is just waiting to see if you’ll fall (and how you land). That’s why after acknowledging that you’ve seen their issue, the next steps are particularly delicate. You have a few options:

1. Offer a toll-free phone number, e-mail or other means of contact that will move the customer service issue out of social media, particularly if it’s not a service-wide outage but something pertaining to a particular customer.

2. Ask questions that allow you to determine who the customer is – social media account names don’t always make this clear – so that you can proactively contact them through more traditional means.

3. If possible, offer links to resources that might give them some kind of self-service capability to resolve their issue – just make sure their comments suggest an openness or interest in handling things themselves.

No matter what you do, make every effort to understand the customer you’re dealing with, using whatever tools are available, such as your marketing cloud, in order to effectively triage your response strategy. Ideally these tools will connect to your CRM to quickly bring up purchase histories and other interactions with the customer to better understand the existing relationship – and how to make it even better.

Socialize The End Results

Customer service issues may take myriad journeys, but those that start on social media should end on social media.

If a complaint is posted on Twitter, for instance, and the issue winds up going offline to be dealt with more directly over the phone or via e-mail, make sure whatever was resolved doesn’t stay behind closed doors. If it’s a positive outcome, offer the same kind of thank-you message or other appreciation you would through a more traditional channel. It’s the best way to not only get in front of a public-facing issue but demonstrate you’re committed to excellence in customer service.

In fact, one way to consider measuring the effectiveness of your social media customer service efforts is whether those customers react to the way your firm closes the loop on those channels. This could be as simple as a “like” or sharing your thank-you message with their followers – holding your firm up as a company that excels in customer service no matter where the conversations take place.

The post Migrating the soft skills of customer service to social media appeared first on Salesforce.

Constant Access

One key benefit of utilizing cloud services for your business is constant access to files, emails, and other data. Trackvia found that companies looking to implement cloud computing for employees will likely see an almost 60 per cent increase in productivity, as well as a 82 per cent improvement in the execution of tasks.

If you are on a train or riding in a car and need to review a file, you could simply pull up the company cloud file backup or email and access it on your phone for instant reference.

Multiple Benefits For Customers

Just as cloud access to data makes employees’ jobs easier, it makes your customers’ lives easier, too. In addition to access of reports, contracts, and other information from your company, cloud computing can also increase real-time collaboration, which, according to Cloudwards, can lead to faster project completion rates.

Cloud computing also offers great security, better document control, and backup measures should something go awry at the local level. A layer of protection and an automatic backup of data will allow customers and employees alike greater peace of mind when it comes to project reports, data, and documents.

SaaS or Cloud-Based Offerings

If you are a service-focused business, consider moving your services to a cloud-based platform. SaaS, short for software as a service, offers companies the ability to build robust platforms for their customers that can be accessed from anywhere.

If you previously offered downloadable software, content, or other products, consider loading it onto the cloud instead for a monthly or one-time access fee. Customers will appreciate being able to access and use the product on multiple devices, and a SaaS offering allows for faster updates in real time.

Online Support

Customer service was traditionally done over the telephone—and even through the mail. While this is still an option today, you can improve your customer service satisfaction by utilizing the cloud to keep track of customer problems and inquiries.

There are cloud-based customer service and help desk suites, like those from Salesforce, that allow you to assign tickets to different employees, keep up with the progress of a request in real-time, and make decisions faster than ever before.

For instance, if a customer changes his mind about a product and requests a refund, a customer support agent could instantly send a return label to the customer action that would automatically be saved and logged in the ticket and the customer’s file. This would solve the problem much more quickly than tracking the process on paper or through email, manually creating a return label, and would make sure the customer didn’t have to wait for approval to go through.

Online support quickly and efficiently leverages your existing support team to keep customers happy.

While your company may not be looking to develop initiatives for every area of cloud computing, just implementing one or two solutions can make a big difference in employee workflow, customer retention, and overall ease-of-use for your products or services. Consider which of your workflows or regular tasks could benefit from cloud-based services and decide on options that are best for your company.

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Don’t let this happen to you. Instead, plow ahead as the true innovators do:

Study and Borrow

Sometimes the best ideas come from beyond your own walls. Whether reading business publications, attending industry conferences or listening to what companies similar to yours are saying on social media, pay attention to what technology they’re using. Look and listen to results-based information, rather than mere enthusiasm for a trend. For example, one company might be quick to adopt a particular mobile device based on consumer hype, but pay closer attention to the firm that discusses how data segmentation improved their e-mail open rates.

Write A Strong ‘If/Then’ Statement

In order to frame your objectives in adopting new technology, think past the traditional approach of “we want to be more productive,” or “we hope to save costs.” Instead, think of some of the common processes and tasks that take place in the course of your team’s work and use an if/then statement to frame it. For example, “If we use a mobile app to access CRM en route to a customer meeting versus waiting until we pull data at our desktop, then we’ll save one to two hours.”

Form An IT Department Alliance

Your servers may not always operate with 100% reliability. The printer gets jammed for no reason. You feel like you have to constantly ask permission to use new applications. If you really want to be a first-mover on game-changing technologies, however, brokering a healthy relationship with the IT department – which in some SMBs might simply be the owner – is a critical starting point. Position what you need as less of an order than the beginning of a collaborative effort to move the company forward. Talk about how you’ll both demonstrate leadership and value and what you can learn from each other. Also, make sure you build in enough lead time – technology staff are charged with protecting data and ensuring compliance in some cases, so they won’t want to rush a decision or deployment.

Pick A Pilot Project

Let’s suppose you’ve heard about the promise of predictive intelligence and want to see if it could make a measurable difference in how well your marketing campaigns create demand or your sales team close deals. Applying predictive intelligence across everything you do may seem too disruptive to the rest of the organization, so look for low-risk but meaningful niche areas. This could be everything from a product that’s already been growing steadily to a new offering that is being planned for release later in the year. Starting small is often the fastest way of being able to start at all.

Prioritize By Phases

When you buy your first car, you expect to be able to immediately drive it anywhere you want. Technology adoption isn’t always like that. That’s because unlike buying a car, it can take time to learn how to “drive” the technology (in terms of understanding all the features) and learning how the roads work (the impact on business processes). As you map out what a technology like marketing automation could do, think about what benefits or use cases you want to pursue in “phase one” (which could be as short as one month or as long as a year) and what you’ll incrementally add in terms of process changes and the application of additional features. This will keep everyone calm through the transition.

Allow For Setbacks And Failures

No matter how promising the technology, there is often a dissenter in organizations who talk about what they believe will never work and what they are sure will go wrong. Instead of disputing or ignoring that person, embrace their worry-wart nature and plan accordingly. To what extent can their worst-case scenario be mitigated, and if something even more unexpected happens, what is the plan for communicating to all the necessary stakeholders and reverting to an earlier process? A realistic conversation about failure will make actual failures a lot easier to bear.

Revisit (And Refine) Objectives Frequently

Remember those “if/then” statements? They were probably developed before you talked to IT, other people who might be affected by adopting a new tool, and before you fully understood what the technology was capable of. How accurate do those in/then statements look now, and should you think about rewording them? You can still stick to your original goal, but how you articulate it should evolve as the project gets closer to execution.

Communicate To Customers

You don’t need to create a brochure informing your target audience how you’re now adopting marketing analytics. On the other hand, ensure that if they receive new kinds of communication from the organization – perhaps more personalized and contextual – they understand what you’re trying to do. Offer feedback mechanisms, even if it’s just an email address, to help gauge reactions and to improve your approach.

Celebrate and Share

If technology allows you to make real inroads in marketing or sales, don’t just hold a pizza party for the staff. Now it’s your turn to share your story in those business publications and start appearing on stage at industry events. The degree to which your tech strategy becomes a talking point or marketing tool for your brand is another metric to consider as you look at the overall benefits.

Stay A Step Ahead

The early adopters who first started working with cell phones quickly realized they were only at the start of the journey. They moved on to making or using apps, employing lean/agile methods of working with IT and stay close to where innovation is happening. The same goes for you. Once you’ve made the cultural shift from fast follower to early adopter, there’s no turning back.

For more data on how top-performing companies are often early tech adopters, download the 2016 State of Marketing, a new report from Salesforce.

The post 10 Steps To Staying Ahead Of Tech Trends appeared first on Salesforce.

For small and medium-sized businesses, determining customer service success is even more straightforward: when customers are truly dissatisfied, they simply don’t come back.

Even worse, customers can use all kinds of technology, from social media to e-mail and chat apps to share how they feel with their friends and family. That’s why Canadian SMBs need to start using some technology of their own — cloud-based customer service and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions — to ensure that they have a holistic view of their customers so they can anticipate potential issues before they happen, act quickly on ones that have already occurred and keep their customers coming back.

If you haven’t already moved customer service and CRM to the cloud, you are likely wondering what the benefits are. Cloud computing takes away the need for your business to manage computer hardware and software so you can focus on perfecting your services and growing your business. The cloud is also infinitely scalable, meaning it can grow as your business does.

A CRM solution collects and manages a company’s key customer information in one place. It tracks leads and prospects across marketing, sales, and service, as well as tasks and performance. The right CRM can increase sales and productivity and improve engagement and retention of your customers.

That’s just the beginning, however. Over the last few months a number of research reports have started to identify some of the trends in customer service where the cloud play an important role. Use this list to build the business case for cloud and CRM and to get started on growing your sales and business and improving your customer service.

Customers Start The Research Process Early — And So Should You

According to a survey from consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, 39 per cent of Canadians aged 18-24 are using their smartphones to research products, while 33 per cent are checking online reviews. And if they find inconsistencies between what’s on a firm’s web site and what they see in a physical store or what they receive via e-mail, they’re not happy.

“A disconnect within one channel can create customer confusion and potentially alienate customers before they get to the purchasing stage of their journey. When it comes to making a profit, the key is customer conversion,” the study said.

Where Cloud-Based Customer Service And CRM Comes In: The way young Canadians shop in their consumer lives will likely mirror how they research and study the perspectives of their peers before making purchases in their professional lives. The cloud will ensure all your data is one place and can be distributed effectively across CRM to get customers closer to a purchase, and have that same information handy if an after-purchase issue arises.

Social Mentions Matter — So Customer Service Should Live There Too

In its Internet Activities report based on telephone interviews with more than 4,000 Anglophone Canadians, Media Technology Monitor showed that 86 per cent have visited a social networking site in the last month. That may be an opportunity to share a status update or a photo, but it’s also a growing channel for voicing what they think about a particular product or service. If SMBs aren’t actively following those conversations, they may be missing out on opportunities to save their reputations from online ruin.

Where Cloud-Based Customer Service And CRM Comes In: Cloud-based platforms are often the only way to consolidate multiple applications in a way that’s cost-effective and simple. This includes social media monitoring within customer service tools. When paired with CRM, the cloud also becomes a way to tap into alerts and more detail about a particular purchase even when employees or SMB owners are away from the office and have nothing more than their smartphone or tablet on hand to respond to social comments.

No One Wants To Be Anonymous When There’s A Customer Service Issue

The title of Accenture’s recent report says it all: Retail Customers Are Shouting — Are You Adapting? The global study, which included Canadian responses, showed that customers can be particularly vocal when they feel companies treat them like a number or an unknown. In fact, 45% of shoppers said a retail website that automatically tailors to “who I am, what I like and I have previously purchased” is “cool.”

“As consumers turn up the volume regarding their customer experience demands, retailers face a unique set of hurdles that will require a fundamental shift in the customer/company relationship,” the report said.

Where Cloud-Based Customer Service And CRM Comes In: In the B2B sector, CRM offers the best way to ensure SMBs can approach customers with knowledge about who they are and what they’re purchased. Cloud-based customer service takes that up a notch by allowing multiple members of the same team to collaborate on customer service issues — essentially guaranteeing that if customers come forward with a question or complaint, they won’t be left waiting around for answers. Rather than multiple callbacks or emails, customers that require assistance from more than one department may get the help they need in a single contact.

Keeping customers satisfied is half the job for many SMBs, but it’s a job the cloud and tools like CRM can make a lot more seamless.

Find out more about why your company needs CRM:

The post Three reasons why CRM and Cloud Computing are Critical to Your Business Growth appeared first on Salesforce.

So what happens when someone starts talking about “the Uber of” your particular kind of company?

Canadian small and medium-sized businesses may feel particularly at risk from digital disruption because they are already struggling to compete against larger competitors, and also because adopting digital technologies might seem even more disruptive to the way they work internally as it does to the way they work externally.

If it’s any consolation, enterprise-sized companies feel much the same way. In fact, according to the Technology Vision 2016 report it released earlier this month, consulting firm Accenture said 86 per cent of the more than 3,000 executives it surveyed believe technological change will take place at an unprecedented rate over the next three years.

“Many companies, already reeling from the impact of technology and the changes they need to make in response, find themselves temporarily overwhelmed – some even paralyzed as they absorb the magnitude of the tasks ahead,” the report says. “But once they’ve paused for breath, they’ll need to start changing their products, their business models, and all of the processes that support them . . . the business is digital, so the organization, its people and its culture must now become digital too.”

That may sound like a lot for the average small or medium-sized Canadian business to take on. Instead, think about breaking it down into three key pieces that can be worked on in phases:

The Digital Organization

To some extent, digital transformation should begin much like other sea of changes in the business world. A recent post on ZDNet outlined a four-step approach that SMBs could easily make their own.

• Step one: Focus on steady-state management: Don’t use digital technologies that make core areas of your business unstable, but look for areas where there is future growth. This could include a move towards e-commerce if you haven’t started already, for example, or even using digital technologies to better track and analyze the way your marketing activities are conducted.
• Step two: Employ incremental improvements of existing products and services: Digital transformation doesn’t have to be revolutionary but evolutionary. Think about ways social media channels could be used to gather customer feedback or support about products and services, for instance. What kind of service do you offer via your web site today that could be better served by a mobile app instead?
• Step three: Look for significant improvements in those existing products or services: One of the big benefits of digital interactions is the increased ability to measure what customers do. Are they spending more time with your products and services? Is the path to purchase any shorter? Think about these metrics even before the second step for an increased likelihood of success.
• Step four: You have achieved significant benefits and developed entirely new products and services: This is your “Uber moment,” when you’re not only ready to embrace digital changes but can identify opportunities to use it in ways that address unmet customer needs.

Preparing Your People For Digital Transformation

Not everyone is a technophile, so how do you motivate employees to be excited about using digital tools? The answer, as an article on eConsultancy suggests, is to tap into the most common trait of successful SMBs. This is a tendency to be obsessed with what customers want, and using that as a basis for setting priorities.

Use the following checklist to help employees get up to speed quickly on digital opportunities:

1. Where are customers searching for information? Yes, they’re still putting queries into Google, but they’re also browsing through online stores, asking recommendations from friends and family on social media or searching on their mobile phone instead of a desktop. Think about how this changes the way they decide to make a purchase.
2. How can we listen in? Some online communities offer a level playing field for companies and customers to discuss issues together. In other cases, it might be easier to start conversations and offer opportunities for feedback. This could be through blogging or other content marketing activities that avoid hard selling in favour of educating and collaborating with customers.
3. Design from digital and then backward: If history is any guide, people tend to move from manual or analogue behaviours to digital. This is true of shopping (which migrated from brick and mortar stores to online stores), communications (snail mail to e-mail) and much more. Now look at the way your customers interact with you today. How might that look different as digital processes mature? Start there as you design your next product, service or distribution channel rather than wait for someone else to beat you to it.

Digital Culture

A story on CIOReview sums it up well for any firm, whether it’s big enough to have a CIO or not.

“Leaders must learn to let go, embrace change, accept small failures and emphasize learning,” it said. “Successful leadership in digital business requires leaders to . . . protect and defend the vulnerable disruptors driving positive change from the slings and arrows of detractors, resistors and skeptics.”

In practical terms, this means leaders, even if they’re only running a small company with a few employees, need to be crystal-clear about the attitudes towards digital that lead to positive outcomes. It means taking educated risks but being transparent with customers about what you’re doing, and why. Finally, it means recognizing that digital transformation could take time. Despite what the headlines might suggest, few organizations become an “Uber of” overnight.

Digital transformation is a challenge but also an exciting opportunity. It’s about leveraging the right strategies and technology to help you get there. Find out how on-premise legacy solutions are holding you back and why now’s the right time to move to the cloud with Salesforce’s free eBook:

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