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When the Founder Is the Rainmaker: How to Scale Without Losing the Spark
In many founder-led businesses, the founder isn’t just the leader—they’re also the best (and often only) rainmaker. They land the big deals. They have the trusted relationships. They know the pitch inside and out because they are the pitch.
It works—until it doesn’t.
As the business grows, this model creates a bottleneck. Every new opportunity depends on one and only person. And it’s the same person every time. But there’s a downside. When that person is also responsible for running the business, mentoring the team, and shaping the vision, something eventually gives.
Is It Time to Replace Marketing Staff with Automation Technology?
Fri, Jul 5, 2019 — One of the biggest challenges CEOs face, aside from hiring the right talent, is balancing the number of employees against the need for driving growth. Business leaders are always looking closely at their marketing departments and questioning the return on the human resource investment. With the continued evolution of technologies, marketing automation is generating vast amounts of performance data and reaching business prospects in ways never before possible and, frankly, in ways that humans cannot. It makes sense, then, that companies are increasingly investing in technologies to improve the speed and effectiveness of marketing efforts as well as to provide a direct data link demonstrating marketing’s impact on company performance. Now that artificial intelligence is becoming more sophisticated, technology will start to significantly shift personnel needs in marketing departments of the future.
How to Build a Customer-Centric Organization and Avoid Technology Fails
Tue, Apr 23, 2019 — For everyone who tosses an iPhone in disgust or screams when Instagram is down, there are legions of people who praise technology—particularly for its ability to provide better customer service. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) advances; programs that analyze and target messages to the right consumers, in the right amounts; and just software that puts a customers information at the fingertips of a telephone support agent—all are helping to smooth the confluence between tech and service. So why is it that it sometimes, technology actually deprecates the customer experience? And what can be done about this?
Better Living Through AI: How Computers Will Improve the Service Experience
Wed, Mar 27, 2019 — For consumers tired of endless hold times, long-snaking lines, and difficulty getting customer service, help is on the way. The often confusing, maddening connection to some of our favorite brands and services is about to improve substantially—driven by a pair of tech-powered developments poised to move into the consumer and B2B mainstream sooner than most people think. The first is Artificial Intelligence (AI)—something that, for years, seemed to be the domain of Hollywood hype. Today, whether we know it or not, real learning software is in active use today in a wide variety of areas, ranging from cyber security to your Netflix app.
The Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends to Leverage in 2019
Tue, Dec 11, 2018 — As you get your staff and business operations ready for 2019, it’s also critically important to consider your marketing plan. Since your customers expect to easily find and enjoy the products and services they need and desire, you’ll need to invest in more customization and ease of use than ever. By sharing my annual “What’s Hot” list with your marketing department now, they can begin prepping for the changes and alterations they need to make to better reach your target audience and enjoy a full year of success. Let’s get started by diving into the top five trends you need to know:
An Audience of One: Neuromarketing the New Reality
Wed, Jun 14, 2017 — If you buy into the old corollary that the “future is now,” be prepared to be blown away by what tomorrow’s future holds. If you thought that today’s wave of marketing analytics tools represented a bold new frontier in how enterprises can track and nurture consumers through the buying cycle, well, in the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive – “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” And, if you believed that the kind of brain-reading technology that served up personalized advertisements to Tom Cruise in the movie “Minority Report” was the stuff of fiction, it may be closer to reality than you ever thought.
Your 2020 Vision Is Now A Five-Year Plan
Wed, Jun 24, 2015 — For those who have been disciples of futurist Arthur C. Clarke, it’s quaint to look back at his prescient interviews of a half-century ago, and try to imagine how he could possibly pinpoint conventions like the internet, instant messaging and even the way we as a society would interact. Even just two decades ago, the year 2020 still seemed a destination so distant, that it was difficult for many to bring into focus a realistic vision of what it could be. But author John Kotter, in his 1996 book, Leading Change, said, “The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades."