Decreasing product lifecycles and heavy competition force many manufacturers to hit the market as rapidly as possible. The MarketStar FlexTeam offers a flexible labor model service that is primarily used for part-time (less than 30 hours per week) or short-term project based work. We perform event based marketing (experiential, sampling, etc.), brand advocacy, training, demo day, assisted selling, merchandising, and market research for some of the hottest brands on the planet.

Our clients trust FlexTeam to quickly increase their retail expansion, improving their experiential marketing efforts, while controlling costs. As a Director of Recruiting, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon in our recruiting process. The Flex Recruiting Team sees thousands of applications per month, and many of those are never completed. In our system we have over 100,000 applications since 2010, and only 56% of those have been completed. What is with candidates not finishing? We ask a lot!

We see candidates not take our state-of-the-art Predictive Index, or only select a few of the boxes to try to move through it as fast as possible. Some simply upload a resume alone and say “that’s good enough.” Those candidates do not make the cut to be one of our employees, as we will not consider those who don’t complete it.

How to Stand Out from the Start: Diligence

We stand for diligence at MarketStar. Our clients demand it, our customers demand it; so we demand it from our part-time and project-based field staff.  We promise our clients the best of the best, we’re not “warm-body” staffers. We vet our candidates with a fine tooth comb. For those who don’t finish the application, it’s a sign to us that they’re not diligent, and we’re OK washing out at that early stage, rather than dropping the program after they’re on.

We absolutely want to make sure we put the right person in the right position, reducing turnover as much as possible. We know we’re asking a lot for someone who may only be with us for a few months, and sometimes only a few weekends. We’re attracting top-notch staff, and once a rep makes a commitment to MarketStar, we make a commitment to that rep. It opens a plethora of doors to other potential work. So if you think you want to apply to opening, be prepared to jump through a few hoops.  If you really want the job, show us what you’re made of!

When creative power and analytical prowess combine, magic happens. Here at MarketStar, we believe the intersection of science and art is the sweet spot for marketing impact. In fact, we love this concept so much, last year our Marketing Director designed a Beginner’s Guide to Science. Art. Impact. Our global team of marketing and sales professionals bring together a collective strength of creativity and intelligence, proven over 25 years of measurable, innovative sales and marketing solutions.

In a rapidly changing business landscape, the evolution of marketing and IT has led some companies to (drumroll, please….) even combine the two into ONE department. Sheryl Pattek, VP-principal analyst at Forrester Research was reported recently in BtoB magazine to have said, the “ability to track marketing ROI through technology is the most important change contributing to the evolution of the marketing profession.”

Our friends at Salesforce and Pardot also see the magic of blending marketing and technology, illustrated well in their recent infographic shown below. Part artist, part scientist, the modern marketer must have both the capacity to persuade intelligently with relevant content, while navigating campaign results into actionable steps.

Which do you consider yourself: scientist, artist, or both?

Infographic credit: Originally posted on the Salesforce blog

For years, I hosted a weekly poker game with my sales team. We worked for one of the biggest tech companies in the world at the time and the sales team was ultra-selective. These were some of the brightest people in the company.  One of my teammates, who also was one of our best sales reps, was notorious for never folding his favorite starting hand, which was a Q and a 9.  After weeks of hearing about how much he loved these starting cards, I finally explained that this hand was mathematically inferior to my favorite starting poker hand, two aces.  He was certain that I was wrong.

He loved the Q9, and was convinced that he won the large majority of times that he started with this hand. I proposed a bet. We would each start with our favorite hand. We’d play out the remaining five cards 100 times.  For each time he won, I would pay him $2.  For each time I won, he only had to pay me $1. We played out the hands and something amazing happened. No, he didn’t beat the odds. He lost money. The amazing thing was the extent of his surprise and dismay. In truth, starting with AA, I was a 5:1 favorite against his Q9 before the first community card was played.

This guy was smart, but his faith in his method had become so strong, that he didn’t feel the need to even explore the underlying math. This kind of thinking is absolutely standard among sales people.  In fact, it’s probably required. Knowing that you’re going to pick up the phone 10 times to get one sale, you have to have a bit of a gambling streak and a healthy disregard for the odds.  The pain that sales teams experience from this thinking, though, is that it can lead even the best salespeople to ignore some fundamental facts about pipeline math and rely on hope to make their numbers. Below are the three facts of life that every sales team should face to ensure they are getting the most out of their data.

Pipeline activity is the single best predictor of sales success.

When we look at our sales teams across dozens of clients, selling a huge variety of products, one thing is persistently true: the best performers over long periods of time are the reps who have the most active pipelines.  This activity needs to be measured by progress from the prospect, not the rep.  A rep can send a thousand emails and get absolutely no result.  By measuring progress in your sales pipeline, you can eliminate the need to figure out if your sales team’s activity is productive or not.

Walk your sales reps through the math.  It takes X number of leads in Y stage of the pipeline over Z number of days to make a sale.  Of course, there will be small, short-term variations by rep depending on close rates and lead quality, but this math will hold up over time.  By showing your sales team the exact math that goes into making a sale, you can reduce the tension that can be created by just asking them to work harder. The pipeline math is an objective way to show them why you’re asking for more activity.  Don’t accept that one person on your team can persistently meet targets without doing the top-of-pipeline work necessary to sustain performance.  Low activity at any stage of the pipeline will catch up with even the most talented sales person.

Close rates are basically the same for all reps.

One of the most common misperceptions in sales is that the best reps close at significantly higher rates than the lowest performers.  Data simply doesn’t support this perception across most organizations.  Over time, the variance in close rates tends to be very small across reps.  Of course, you’ll always have reps who have a killer month or even a killer quarter. In the long run, even the best reps will close at only slightly higher rates than average reps.  Close rates vary dramatically by lead source, but if one of your sales people is crushing her teammates in performance, it’s a near certainty that she’s just working harder and talking to a wider variety of prospects.  To be even more precise, she was probably working harder Z number of days ago.

You can’t afford to have sales managers who are ‘not math people’

Knowing the details of your sales data, and understanding what it can tell you about your team’s performance over time are absolutely essential.  Every sales manager should have a basic understanding of what metrics to watch, why they should be watched and how to explain them to the sales reps.  Sales reps are gamblers and risk-takers by nature.  They won’t intuitively do the math, nor should you expect them to.  That’s what your sales managers are for.  Trust me; you don’t want to hire math enthusiasts as your front-line sales force.  If you have great sales managers who aren’t good at math, ask them to get better.  They can do it, I promise.

Managing sales people is always going to be an inherently human, non-formulaic function.  There is no exact formula for getting high production from your team.  However, you can and should use data to make sure that your sales people are not setting themselves up to always be fighting the odds.

Photo credit: blog.reidreport.com

Being integrated with corporate marketing and a business development sales team has its advantages. Everyday I get to work with some of the brightest and most dedicated professionals within our industry. MarketStar partners with everyone from startup companies to the largest brands on the planet. We know how to sell. Period. We know how to intelligently position your products and services regardless of how you’re structured.  Whether it’s direct, channel or retail, we’ve got you covered.

A conventional prop and rudder.

While planning for an upcoming marketing campaign, we came to an interesting analogy when speaking of MarketStar’s offerings. We came to how brands of all sizes could be likened to a great ship surging ahead through the open sea. Massive engines and propellers whisk them all over the world requiring fuel, and lots of it. Ships, whether they’re ocean-liners, tankers, cruise ships, ferries, research vessels, or yachts, consume tons of fuel per day.

To boost profit margins, a newer drive train technology called podded propulsion is being fitted on modern ships. Essentially, podded propulsion replaces both the traditional propeller and shaft as well as the rudder. The system has not only gained a reputation for its 360 degree maneuverability, quick response and smooth, quiet operation, but also for its higher efficiency and lower emissions.

Because the propellers are on the front of the pod rather than the back, they actually pull the ship in optimum, undisturbed water instead of a traditional push. This equates to huge fuel savings in oil as much as 55,000 liters per week by ships fitted with this technology. Testing has shown that the propulsion efficiency of a twin propulsion prop solution is typically 10-20% higher compared to a conventional shaft and rudder system which pushes.

Newer “pod” propulsion that acts as both a rudder and a prop

MarketStar has a similar “pull” style offering. We sell and execute solutions to companies looking to be more agile and maneuverable in the open waters. Adding “podded propulsion,” or our proven methods, to an already super vessel makes it more competitive.  Outsourcing with MarketStar stretches the ability to start and stop as the ‘ship’ seems fit.  Switching directions at the drop of a hat, or turning profits on a sharper, quicker dime than hiring an internal sales team is a breeze. Having a hard time turning your sea of leads into sales with marketing automation? Are there areas of your ‘ship’ that could be more profitable?  Would you like to grow or improve your fleet of partners? Our streamline process and methods will help pull you through the waters improving your efficiency. I invite you to learn more. Allow me to demonstrate to you the ROI we offer our clients on a daily basis. Or, in other words, it’s smooth sailing with MarketStar on board.

Photo courtesy of ABB
http://www.hightech.fi/direct.aspx?area=news&prm1=129

As Director of Training at MarketStar, my efforts recently focused on teaching Robert Cialdini’s “Six Principles of Influence.” While persuasion is a tool to create influence, sales reps must understand influence is essential – higher sales only result from a positive change in the customer’s behavior.

It is a common misconception that the ability to influence is a character attribute some people possess and others lack. True, influence comes naturally for some individuals. Fortunately for everyone else, scientific research conducted over the past 30 years indicates virtually anybody can apply the six principles of influence to change the outcome of personal interactions, including the sales process.

This research is based on extensive observation of top-performing salespeople inside a wide variety of industries, including: insurance, automobile, photography, charity, advertising, telecom and so forth. Through decades of trial and error, organizations have learned what works in sales situations.

While sales reps (and others) have good reason to believe getting to ‘yes’ is a matter of offering a product or service of value to the customer, research indicates the individual or organization that presents in an influential manner will capture the lion’s share of the sales.

What are the 6 principles of influence?

• Reciprocation. Customers feel obligated to say yes to those they owe.
• Scarcity. Customers are more likely to say yes if they believe the product or service  being sold is rare or dwindling in availability.
• Authority. Customers are more likely to say yes if they view the sales rep as having special knowledge or unique credibility.
• Commitment. Customers are more likely to say yes if saying yes is consistent with a prior commitment they have already made in your presence.
• Social Proof. Customers are more likely to say yes if they are presented with evidence that people just like them are also saying yes.
• Likeability. Customers are more likely to say yes if they know and like the sales rep.

How to apply these principles

The key to applying these principles is preparation. Prior to every sales interaction, you should find out what you can about the customer, including their interests. The reason for this is simple: the better you understand the customer, the more likely you’ll be able to apply one or more of the principles while you pre-position for the close.

At MarketStar, we use these principles to make sales impact for our clients. Have you recently had success using these principles? Please share your experience in the comments.

If you work in marketing, perhaps you’ve heard the news your department’s spending will pass IT’s spending on technology in the next year or so. Gartner’s analyst, Laura McLellan, also staked the claim last year, and we’re still feeling it in the beginning of 2013.

So why does this tech-happy spending matter?

Marketers love proving their work, making fancy reporting and nurturing tech tools look really attractive. As a marketer myself, the thought of adding more tech into my job conjures up images of myself as the Wizard of Oz more than images of Bill Gates.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I want to sound all great and powerful and kick the wicked witch competitors off my turf, but I would rather do it with crushing skills than smoke and mirrors. Marketing technology is grand, and we have the opportunity to make everything peachy on our proving grounds, but we first have to figure out how to utilize this rush of tech before we make a fool of ourselves.

The real question is, how do you make technology more than merely smoke and mirrors?

First and foremost, figure out what fits best in your market. Have a unique market? Make sure you express that and present the challenge when you talk with a company about using their SaaS or product in your company. Drill them! Don’t just sign up for it because every Sally and Joe are saying it’s the next best thing to sliced bread.

Once you’ve decided, take them one at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself or your team with a gaggle of fancy new tools or services. Taking the time to train in advance means less time wasted during the day and saves you money on a tool that could otherwise go unutilized.

If you can’t learn the tool, hire someone who can. That can mean hiring someone internally, or outsourcing to someone else. If you hire someone internally, make sure to cross-check your resources with people who may already be running the program. Make sure you are hiring the right person with the right qualifications. If you don’t want to take that risk, outsource the practice. Whether it’s operating a lead nurturing campaign through marketing automation or running a data dashboard, there’s always an agency for that.

In real talk, no one wants to be the dude stuck with a ton of technology and no idea how to use it for a real advantage. Decking out your sales or marketing department in dashboards, devices, and data organizers won’t make you more efficient. You make your department more efficient.

Photo credit

As we prepared content for our Propel Your Cloud webinar, one of our executives in our client operations group challenged me with a very pointed question: “What makes us experts in selling cloud services and what thought leadership do we have to offer?”

At first, I kind of took this as a slight on the campaign we were creating, and a slight on MarketStar in general. I think I bristled a little bit, but found my answer was quick and just as pointed. And it surprised me a bit. I blasted out this reply:

We are experts because we know how to develop and support the channel better than anyone in the world, and because we are — quite literally — a cloud company ourselves.

The first part of the answer made him smile a bit and he said that I was dead on. We do know the channel, and we have built programs for many of the biggest IT names on the planet, including a little cloud company named VMware. Fundamentally, we are as strong as anyone, and even though a good portion of our channel business is dedicated to hardware, that doesn’t mean we don’t excel at pushing SaaS, Paas, Iaas or any other “something something” as a service.

You don’t sign Peyton Manning to be your quarterback because he knows your offense by heart. You sign him because, fundamentally, he’s better than anyone in the game. That’s MarketStar.

Now the second part of my answer left him a bit confused. But as I elaborated (as I have before on this very blog), we essentially provide SPaaS (sales people as a service).

We are a people cloud.

Our value prop as a provider of “people cloud services” is the same now as it was when I mused on the subject in 2010:

• Agility, flexibility and scalability in regards to growth
• Services that are on-demand and can be amplified or scaled back when necessary
• Services that allow you to grow, but keep costs down.

Attend our webinar

We provide all of these things, and we know how to sell this type of service in and outside the channel. Now, if you want to see what we really CAN DO for your cloud services in a channel environment — sign up to join us tomorrow at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST).

I have to admit it – I HATE “what to expect in 20##” lists.

I’m not all that keen on listening to people tell me “tablets are going to be hot this year” or “the PC will finally breathe its last gasp of oxygen in 2013.” I think both are kind of true, and both are kind of false. You really can never tell for sure what will or won’t happen, but for this blog post, I can tell you what I HOPE will happen.

Let’s call this my first “Here’s what I hope will happen in 20##” blog post. Perhaps we can make it a tradition.

So, what do I hope happens in the CE industry? How about nothing short of a complete transformation of the television as we know it?

Recently, I watched Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, talk about the company setting its sights on the television market. His exact quote was he thought “the TV market had been ignored for a long while.” I agree with him. Oh sure, you can get HDTV, 65-inch screens and TVs so thin they look like panes of glass hanging on your wall, but really, aside from the box itself, not much has changed.

If I may be blunt, I’d like to see Apple turn the TV into a giant iPad. As simple as that sounds, let me go into the details on what such a move would entail.

Apple has always been keen on launching a technology or UI that is intuitive and also transitional – meaning, it leads you to the next logical step. The iPod leads to iTunes, which leads to purchasing music digital files, which leads to video iPods, which leads to purchasing digital video files, which leads to purchasing apps, etc. I think the Apple Television is the next frontier.

Imagine, if you will, a large beautiful screen hanging on your wall that is seamlessly linked to your iPad. I use this iPad as the remote control (or just simply get off the couch and touch the screen to do the same thing). I go to iTunes and fire up the latest movie I downloaded, or instead of using the Xbox that is now collecting dust, I fire up Halo or Angry Birds (app form, of course).

Maybe I don’t want to sit for a movie or play a game. Maybe I’m just looking to catch up on news. Fire up the new CNN-TV app I purchased for $.99, but also subscribe to. Now I can watch the news WITHOUT a cable subscription or satellite dish. Eureka!

Looking for some other networks? Bust out your ESPN app, or the Food Network app, or even the Cartoon Network app.  Want to go local…why not your local CBS affiliate app, or the PBS app? All of these are free content, but maybe we paid $3.99 for the apps up front. Either way, changing channels is not like when I was a kid – now we just change apps. No more cable bills, no more satellite TV with 500 channels you don’t like, just the eight or nine you watch all the time. Sure, you have to buy the apps, and probably pay a monthly subscription fee, but could this be the answer to all of our TV-watching prayers?

Could Apple Television and its TV channel apps finally be the “cable TV a-la-carte” we’ve all been hoping for?

Well, that’s what I hope happens in 2013.

Happy Holidays from our MarketStar family to yours! As you prepare for the new year and its encompassing strategies for new business, I propose to you retail folks a category of customers you might be overlooking.

Millennials have been generating noise among industry professionals as they start to settle into adulthood while holding onto habits they’ve picked up along their way. Their buying habits are drastically different of those of their parents, the Baby Boomers. They are poised to surpass the Baby Boomers in size and buying power, according to a survey done by the Boston Consulting Group, Barkley, and Service Management Group.

The focus of the study was determining the difference between millennials and non-millennials, based on true underlying characteristics and habits, not on age and life status. One of the most interesting points, contrary to popular belief as the most entitled, lazy generations in American history, was that millennials are very involved in consuming and influencing, particularly online.

They put a very high importance on the ability to affect change and spend about the same amount of time online as non-millennials, but utilize the web as a way to broadcast thoughts and contribute their own content.

The study done of 4,000 millennials aged 16 to 34 also found that millennials would much rather hear from their peers than from an expert. They read more reviews from their peers online, and are actively engaged in crowd sourcing activities.

As far as purchasing goes, millennials are far more likely to make purchases from companies with Facebook pages and mobile websites (33 percent to 17 percent) in addition to checking out brands on social networks (53 percent versus 37 percent). Their acceptance and willingness to buy from companies that are behind a cause is also far higher than the baby boomer generation.

For retailers who are run by non-millennials, the ‘entitled generation’ train of negative thought could become a dangerous hindrance to their future business argues Jeff Fromm, executive vice president at Barkley advertising agency. Fromm argues those who are dismissive about millennials “won’t be able to provide relevant products and services that resonate with these consumers and meet their needs.”

Fromm says there is a potential for competitive “differentiation and advantage for companies that not only deeply understand but also embrace this generation.” The brand affinity garnered early on in their path to adulthood will stick with them.

So I leave you with one thought:  As you begin to draw up plans and profit goals for 2013, what line are you drawing in the sand for millennials?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Prepare yourself for next week’s haul with MarketStar’s “Black Friday Ops” infographic. Only T-minus seven days ’til the big shopping day arrives, so make sure you know the latest stats and trends for the 2012. With Targets, Recon, Tactical, Tech, and Spending, we’ve got your Black Friday covered.

MarketStar—Outsourced Sales and Marketing