Across our society today, norms of noisiness run deep. Demands like constant connectivity and maintaining a competitive advantage still prevail in most office cultures. Few organizations prize or prioritize pristine human attention. But there are simple strategies we can employ in order to find our own personal sanctuaries and to shift broader cultures. By reclaiming silence in the workplace, we can create the conditions for reducing burnout and enhancing creative problem solving.

Get Quiet For A While

There’s empirical evidence that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/the-end-of-silence/598366/?msclkid=1bb30c64ba5a11ec9d700cf68c9ed273">life is noisier</a> than ever before — there are louder and more ubiquitous TVs, speakers, and electronic device notifications in public spaces and open-plan offices. Across Europe, an estimated 450 million people, roughly 65% of the population, live with noise levels that the World Health Organization deems <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Why-Noise-Matters-A-Worldwide-Perspective-on-the-Problems-Policies-and/Stewart-McManus-Rodgers-Weedon-Bronzaft/p/book/9781849712576">hazardous to health</a>. All this has serious implications for our <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020319693">mental</a> health, our <a href="https://newsroom.heart.org/news/chronic-exposure-to-excess-noise-may-increase-risk-for-heart-disease-stroke">physical</a> health, and our ability to <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-busier-you-are-the-more-you-need-quiet-time">generate creative work</a>.

A World of Noise

The meaning of noise can sometimes be subjective. One person’s symphony is another person’s annoyance. We define “noise” as all the unwanted sound and mental stimulation that interferes with our capacity to make sense of the world and our ability to act upon our intentions. In this sense, noise is more than a nuisance. It’s a primary barrier to being able to identify and implement solutions to the challenges we face as individuals, organizations, and even whole societies.

What Is Noisy To Us

If we want organizational cultures that honor quiet, there are a few general principles we need to apply to make the transformation. The first is that we have to deliberately talk about it; we need to have clear conversations about our expectations around constant connectivity, when it’s permissible to be offline, and when it’s acceptable to reserve spaces of uninterrupted attention. These conversations can get into deeper cultural questions like whether it’s possible to be comfortable in silence together rather than always trying to fill the space.

Talk About The Noise

Maybe you unwittingly leave ringers and notifications on full blast. Maybe you “think out loud” or habitually interrupt others. Perhaps you impulsively post on social media or send excessive texts or emails that require responses. Maybe you play music or podcasts in common spaces without checking in with others or jump on important work calls while your daughter is sitting next to you doing her homework. If your self-observation doesn’t yield clear insights, ask a truth-teller in your life for observations about how you could do better.

A Noise Creator

While you can’t set the overall group norms and culture unilaterally on the basis of what you think is right, you can be on the lookout for new ideas to propose or new possibilities for managing the soundscape or enhancing the ambiance, especially ones that serve the interests of those who lack influence.

Give Others Quiet Time To Think

Across our society today, norms of noisiness run deep. Demands like constant connectivity and maintaining a competitive advantage still prevail in most office cultures. Few organizations prize or prioritize pristine human attention. But there are simple strategies we can employ in order to find our own personal sanctuaries and to shift broader cultures. By reclaiming silence in the workplace, we can create the conditions for reducing burnout and enhancing creative problem solving.Even in an increasingly noisy world, we can be quiet together.

Transforming Norms of Noise

Across our society today, norms of noisiness run deep. Demands like constant connectivity and maintaining a competitive advantage still prevail in most office cultures. Few organizations prize or prioritize pristine human attention. But there are simple strategies we can employ in order to find our own personal sanctuaries and to shift broader cultures. By reclaiming silence in the workplace, we can create the conditions for reducing burnout and enhancing creative problem solving.

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

business

Business

How to Build a Culture That Honors Quiet Time

Every Business needs to update its technology and adapt to the changing needs and market conditions along with it are the challenges in moving to the new SAP S/4HANA Product Suite. The Idea focuses on how SAP ECC Systems can be transformed and the key steps involved during the transformation.

Introduction

<ul><li>Start by creating a high-level plan</li><li>Understand your current landscape</li><li>Identify different ways of moving to S/4HANA</li><li>Conduct a feasibility analysis</li><li>Are all the solutions and solutions available on ECC also available on S/4HANA?</li><li>Identify the advantages of moving to S/4HANA</li></ul>

How to get started

<ol><li>What is your current SAP system landscape?</li><li>How many systems do you have?</li><li>How many users do you have?</li><li>Which version of SAP are you currently running?</li><li>Do you have any custom developments in place?</li></ol>

Answer key Questions

<ol><li>What are your key user applications?</li><li>Which parts of your application landscape will be affected by this migration and what will be the impact on business processes in these areas?</li><li>Are there any processes that use non-SAP systems or data sources (e.g., Unix jobs, mainframe files)?</li><li>What are your current resources for supporting the existing systems and how will this change after migration to S/4HANA?</li><li>Are there any upcoming projects that would need to be integrated with the new system (e.g., CRM, BI)?</li></ol>

Identify Potential Challenges & Risks

<ol><li>Reviewing business process flows;</li><li>Identifying pain points;</li><li>Understanding critical success factors;</li><li>Determining key process improvement opportunities;</li><li>Collecting requirements for future capabilities needed;</li><li>Discussing required changes or extensions to standard functionality based on regulatory or other requirements</li></ol>

Focus on Design Thinking Workshops

There are two options: New implementation and System Conversion which are opted by the industries worldwide. While there is also a Bluefield Approach which involves Selective Data Transition. I would like to focus more on the below 2 approaches in this articles

Know different ways of Moving to S/4HANA

The first option is called New Implementation. This is where you start from scratch and decide on the level of functionality that you want to implement in your organization. There are up to three different levels-SAP Best Practice, SAP Activate or a Customized Project for example. You will also have the opportunity to activate various S/4HANA modules and applications as well as preconfigured business processes based on Best Practices from SAP. I will go into more detail about this methodology at a later stage of this blog series.

New Implementation

The second option is called System Conversion and involves converting an existing ECC system to S/4HANA (on premise or cloud). You can choose between In-Place conversion or Landscape Transformation which I will explain in further detail later in this blog series.

System Conversion

In order to address challenges in knowing your business impacts and the stakeholders involved, <a href="https://ktern.com/">KTern.AI </a>helps with its <a href="https://ktern.com/digital-maps/business-process-mining">process mining </a>that helps with providing detailed insights of your current landscape.

Process Discovery tools like KTern.AI

<ol><li>Transitioning to S/4HANA requires a lot of planning and testing</li><li>The timeline depends on the size of the company and the industry</li><li>Planning should be done in stages</li><li>You need to check for compatibility of your existing solutions with S/4HANA</li></ol>

Recommended Timeline

<ol><li>First, learn about S/4HANA capabilities.</li><li>Next, identify what aspects of your current system won't work well and need improvement.</li><li>Then, decide which business processes are most important to transition first (i.e., what systems do you need up and running immediately after the move?).</li><li>As part of this third stage, you should also conduct compatibility checks on all your existing solutions to make sure they will still run smoothly when integrated with S/4HANA Cloud and other new tools you want to add to the mix during the transition phase</li></ol>

Conduct Feasibility Analysis

<ol><li>System Discovery : Locate all instances of your SAP landscape and connect them with KTern.AI's Digital Maps</li><li>Process Analysis : Identify high-risk areas where changes will need to be made - such as the finance or supply chain modules - by analyzing your current business processes.</li><li>Functional Mapping : Test how your existing solutions integrate with S/4HANA, and identify gaps so you know which ones to replace.</li></ol>

Steps in Feasibility Study

<ol><li>Improvements to the user experience</li><li>Simplified data model</li><li>Integration of data from multiple sources</li><li>Ability to create custom apps</li><li>Increased business agility</li><li>Improved data security</li><li>Reduced hardware costs</li></ol>

Key Advantages of S/4HANA

Every Business needs to update its technology and adapt to the changing needs and market conditions along with it are the challenges in moving to the new SAP S/4HANA Product Suite. The article focuses on how SAP ECC Systems can be transformed and the key steps involved during the transformation. Source Article : https://ktern.com/article/how-sap-ecc-systems-can-be-migrated-to-s-4hana-and-challenges-faced-by-a-cio-during-a-digital-transformation/

Every Business needs to update their technology and adapt to the changing needs and market conditions with it are the key steps in moving to the new SAP S/4HANA Product Suite.

How SAP ECC Systems can be transformed to S/4HANA ?

"I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you, it's the same hamburger."

"I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I'd competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I'd trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that's only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I'd learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past."

"We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services."

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

"What I love doing is creating things I can be proud of, and if you create things that you can be proud of, the byproduct of that can be that you become a millionaire or you become a billionaire, because people like what you've created."

"I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

What better way to get a glimpse inside successful people's heads than to study the wisdom they've already imparted?

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

startup

Startups

6 quotes from self-made billionaires that will change how you think about money and success

We ask prospects to give us their personal data for free and in exchange, we offer them a few uncertain benefits. If all you do is ask a user to become a subscriber, there’s no engagement. The best way to overcome this difficulty of low customer engagement is to offer something very valuable in exchange, such as a free guide, service, or discount.

Lead generation is tough

Lead magnets are also known as a "bribe to subscribe" offer and a way to get your visitor's information in exchange for something valuable. You can offer anything that can be received immediately via email. If it hits the target, visitors subscribe and you earn leads.

Lead magnets: a smart approach to lead generation

<ul><li>They are engaging. They know your customer's problems and can offer an immediate solution.</li><li>They generate quality leads. A specific offer can attract customers that are already interested in your offering and may want to learn more.</li><li>They provide value. If your bait is relevant and intelligent, it shows your customers you are not trying to just get their money.</li><li>They are shareable. It's easy to share links to your research or to use your video in a blog post.</li><li>They promote your brand as an authority. </li></ul>

Why Should You Try Different Types of Lead Magnets

Offer a piece of content that can solve your customer's challenges. When they click the button and enter their information, they'll receive an email with your content attached. For example:<ul><li>Text content: How-to guides, reports, whitepapers, cheat sheets, case studies, checklists.</li><li>Video content: Video guides and video courses.</li><li>Visuals: Infographics.</li></ul>

Сontent “Bait”

Widgets are built-in tools that integrate with your website or landing pages. They enable you to collect valid personal data, such as email. <ul><li>Some widgets offer a service, a report, or other important information that is difficult to get for free.</li><li>Another way is to add a callback widget to your website that enables a potential client to contact you directly and request a response.</li></ul>

Widgets

Gamification can be an effective way to attract leads. You might create interactive quizzes and send the results via email to encourage users to leave their email addresses, and you can use the collected data for multiple purposes.

Quizzes

A survey that exists primarily for your market research can also be used as one of the best B2B lead magnets. Prospects provide their opinions on the topic related to your industry, and you can, in turn, collect data about their interests.  You can encourage users to answer the survey questions and share their contact details in exchange for the whole industry report for free or as a data pack in exchange.

'State of the Industry’ Surveys

Engaging your customers in a question-and-answer session can connect them ‘live’ with your customer care. You can show them ‘in person’ exactly how your product can resolve their problems. When you add the possibility of sharing your screen with them,  you can reveal any hidden function of your service.

Online Demos

<ul><li>You can ask industry experts to take part in your webinar.</li><li>You can promote your company’s expert reputation by providing useful tips while showing them the benefits of your offer.</li></ul>

Webinars and Podcasts to Engage With Your Audience

Organize online events, such as industry conferences and roundtable discussions. Instead of granting open admission, ask people to leave their email addresses to register for an event.

Online Events

Free trials allow your product to sell itself. When your customers decide that they need your product after trying it for some time, you’ve provided them with a great experience.

Free Trials

Contests have the potential to go viral. Challenge your audience and get them feeling excited about your offer. For example, an agency engaged users by asking them to share how they wanted to activate their business and marketing goals.

Contests

Special offers: Coupons, discounts, or a few valuable freebies are powerful ways to entice an audience to subscribe. Live Chats: Chatbot technology that enables you to engage with your customers via a personal assistant on your website can create leads in your CRM and book meetings in your calendar for qualified leads.

Special Offers, Live Chats

<ul><li>Give Your Lead Magnet a Suitable Name: X ways/tips/resources to get Y. "9 tips for success in job interviews."</li><li>Ensure the offering is obvious and easy to understand.</li><li>Use Actionable Text: Encourage users to click on your CTA. "Get started."</li><li>Try Opt-in/Opt-out Buttons that are different in size, design, and colour.</li><li>Add Social Proof: Display customer reviews and testimonials to highlight the value of your offer and prove that other clients are satisfied.</li><li>Be Open and Honest About Your Messages. Subscribers should know when they’ll be receiving your messages and that they won’t be excessive.</li></ul>

How to Create Lead Magnets that Engage

What are lead magnets and why should you use them on your website? Find out how to attract more leads for your business and get inspiration from these 12 ideas.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

12 Lead Magnet Ideas for Your Website

The critical path method (CPM) was developed in the late 1950s to resolve the problem of increased costs due to inefficient scheduling. The technique can help you identify and map out critical tasks you need for project completion. The critical path is the longest sequence of tasks that must be finished on time. Any delays in critical tasks will delay the rest of the project. This technique allows you to set realistic timeframes and manage task dependencies.

Creating a project roadmap

CPM helps to plan projects, allocate resources and schedule tasks. CPM benefits:<ul><li>Improves future planning: CPM can be used to compare expectations with actual progress. Current data can inform future project plans.</li><li>Effective resource management: CPM helps project managers prioritise tasks and give them a better idea of how and where to deploy resources.</li><li>Helps avoid bottlenecks: CPM will give you a better idea of which activities can and can't run in parallel.</li></ul>

CPM provides valuable insight

Finding the critical path involves looking at the duration of critical and non-critical tasks: CPM steps:<ol><li>List activities</li><li>Identify dependencies</li><li>Create a network diagram</li><li>Estimate task duration</li><li>Calculate the critical path</li><li>Calculate the float</li></ol>

How to find the critical path

List all the project activities or tasks required to produce the deliverables of each task. The list of activities in the work breakdown structure serves as the foundation for the rest of the CPM.

List activites

From your work breakdown structure, determine which tasks are dependent on one another to identify any work that can be done in parallel with other tasks. The dependent tasks, known as an activity sequence, will be used to determine the critical path. For example, a marketing team is producing a new interactive blog post. In the example above:<ul><li>Task B is dependent on A</li><li>Task C is dependent on B</li><li>Tasks C and D can run in parallel</li><li>Task E is dependent on D</li><li>Task F is dependent on C, D, and E.</li></ul>

Identify dependencies

A network diagram is a flowchart that shows the chronology of activities. Create a box for each task and use arrows to show task dependencies. Add other time-bound components to the network diagram until a general project schedule is worked out.

Create a network diagram

To calculate the longest sequence of critical tasks, you need to estimate the duration of each activity. How to estimate the duration:<ul><li>Make educated guesses based on previous experience and knowledge.</li><li>Estimate based on previous project data.</li><li>Estimate based on industry standards.</li></ul> Use the forward pass and backward pass technique to calculate float.<ul><li>Forward pass is used to find early start (ES) and early finish (EF) dates by using a previously specified start date. EF is ES + duration.</li><li>Backward pass is used to calculate late start (LS) and late finish (LF) dates. LS is LF -duration.</li></ul>

Estimate task duration

Calculating the critical path can be done manually, but a critical path algorithm can save time. Step 1: Write down the start and end time next to each activity. The first activity time is 0 and the end time is the duration of the activity. The next acitity start at the previous activity end time. Do this for all activities.Step 2: Look at the end time of the last activity in the sequence to determine the duration of the entire sequence. Step 3: The sequence of activities with the longest duration is the critical path.

Calculate the critical path

Float, or slack, refers to a given task's flexibility. It shows how much the task can be delayed without impacting subsequent tasks or the end date of the project. Critical tasks have zero float. Their dates are set. How to determine the two types of float: <ul><li>Total float is the time an activity can be delayed without impacting the project finish date. Total float = LS - ES or LF - EF .</li><li>Free float is how long an activity can be delayed without impacting the following activity. Free float = ES (next task) - EF (current task)</li></ul>

 Calculate the float

<ul><li>CPM provides visibility into your project’s progress.</li><li>At times, a project deadline may e pushed up with fast-tracking (parallel processes speed up overall duration) and crashing (allocating more resources to speed up activities.)</li><li>Resolve resource shortages. When there is a resource shortage, like an overbooked team member or lack of equipment, you can use resource levelling techniques to solve the issue. </li><li>Compile data for future use.</li></ul>

How to use the critical path method

product

Product & Design

Critical path method: How to use CPM for project management

Sales funnels used to be the domain of big corporate. As a small player, you would struggle to break into the market. Today, a well-performing sales funnel can take you to a million-dollar brand.

The World Revolves Around Funnels

<ul><li>Who Is Your Ideal Client? Write out their characteristics and find an actual picture to represent them.</li><li>Where Can You Find Them? What email newsletters and blogs do they read? What other interests do they have?</li><li>What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them?  For example, a physical book, or a recording. Anything that would match what your ideal customer would want.</li><li>What Result Do You Want To Give Your Clients? Once you (and they) understand that concept, then the price is no longer a problem.</li></ul>

The Secret Formula

The value ladder revolves around selling to a customer over and over again. It can help build additional layers of income and provide more ongoing value for your customer. What is the first thing you have to build out before starting working on any sales funnel? The goal is to take the client to a place where you can provide the most value and charge them the most. Then you want to add a good continuity program you can bill for each month. You should give insane amounts of value at each step.

You Need a Value Ladder

A sales funnel is the online process you take someone through to get them to move through the different levels of your value ladder. The top of the funnel is the bait that will attract your dream customers.  The deeper your funnel, the more things you can offer your clients, and the more each customer will be worth to you.

From a Ladder to a Funnel

To find congregations, type “keyword+forum” in Google or search for groups related to your keywords on Facebook. When you’ve found your target audience, ask:<ul><li>Who Is Your Target Market? What are their pains and passions? What do they desire?</li><li>Where does your target market congregate? Where do they hang out online? What newsletter and blogs do they read and what Facebook groups they are a part of? What are they searching for on Google?</li><li>How can you get a customer to leave the congregation and check out your page? Your ads must grab people’s attention.</li></ul>

Finding Your Dream Customers

AC is a person you're sharing with your audience. AC consists of  3 components:Elements<ul><li>Backstory - where you came from. </li><li>Parables - speak about things that happen throughout your life to teach, inspire and sell products.</li><li>Share character flaws so that others can relate.</li><li>Share opinions on hard issues.</li></ul> Identity<ul><li>The leader: The goal is to lead your audience from one place to another.</li><li>The crusader sets out and brings back treasures to share with your audience.</li><li>The reporter.</li><li>The reluctant hero who doesn’t want the spotlight.</li></ul> Storylines<ul><li>Loss and redemption</li><li>Before and After</li><li>Amazing Discovery</li><li>Secret Telling</li></ul>

Build Your Attractive Character (AC)

When somebody joins your list for the first time, it’s important to quickly build a bond between them and the Attractive Character. The key to making this sequence work:<ul><li>Email #1: Set the stage: a thank you note</li><li>Email #2: Open with high drama.  Explain how you hit a wall and then found the answer. But don’t give the answer yet.</li><li>Email #3: Epiphany.</li><li>Email #4: Hidden benefits when using your product: Use parables to demonstrate those hidden benefits</li><li>Email #5: Urgency and CTA. Create a special sale that ends soon or give readers a coupon that expires in 24h.</li></ul>

The Soap Opera Sequence

The secret to keeping your subscribers happy to hear from you every day is using the Seinfeld format. Be entertaining. Every email and each story must be tied back into some type of offer for your audience.<ul><li>What’s going on in your Attractive Character’s life?</li><li>What happened that’s embarrassing?</li><li>Where are you planning your vacation this year?</li><li>What did you buy recently that you regret or adore?</li><li>What made you scream with rage yesterday, that you’re laughing about today?</li><li>Is there a funny thing that happened in your past that teaches a lesson?</li></ul>

Daily Seinfeld Emails

<ol><li>Where Are Your Competitors (Both Direct AND Indirect)? Make a list of your direct and indirect competitors and their landing page URLs. Look for the paid ads.</li><li>What Are They Doing? 	Check SimilarWeb.com to see each of the paid traffic sources that the competitor is using.</li></ol>

Reverse Engineering a Successful Funnel

Don’t be afraid of high-ticket sales. Those who are serious will come on board with your back-end offer. The high-ticket sales are a few select customers who have already bought from you. If they have purchased and are satisfied, then they will like and trust you over the long term.

High-ticket sales are on the backend

<ol><li>Organic content marketing (A slow and long burn can take years)</li><li>PPC spend on social media (Expensive and requires serious skill)</li><li>Using affiliates (Hard to enrol unless you have a converting offer)</li></ol>Essentially, it’s hard to start. It’s even harder to continue going for the long term.

Traffic can be achieved in 3 ways

A manual for how to grow your business and generate more revenue through processes, funnels and scripts.

Master the science of funnel building to grow your company online with sales funnels in this updated edition from the $100M entrepreneur and co-founder of the software company ClickFunnels. DotCom Secrets is not just another "how-to" book on internet marketing. This book is not about getting more traffic to your website--yet the secrets you'll learn will help you to get exponentially more traffic than ever before. This book is not about increasing your conversions--yet these secrets will increase your conversions more than any headline tweak or split test you could ever hope to make. Low traffic or low conversion rates are symptoms of a much greater problem that's a little harder to see (that's the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that's the good news). What most businesses really have is a "funnel" problem. Your funnel is the online process that you take your potential customers through to turn them into actual customers. Everyone has a funnel (even if they don't realize it), and yours is either bringing more customers to you, or repelling them. In this updated edition, Russell Brunson, CEO and co-founder of the multimillion-dollar software company ClickFunnels, reveals his greatest secrets to generating leads and selling products and services after running tens of thousands of his own split tests. Stop repelling potential customers. Implement these processes, funnels, frameworks, and scripts now so you can fix your funnel, turn it into the most profitable member of your team, and grow your company online.

strategy

Strategy

books

Books

Master the science of funnel building to grow your company online with sales funnels in this updated edition from the $100M entrepreneur and co-founder of the software company ClickFunnels. DotCom Secrets is not just another "how-to" book on internet marketing. This book is not about getting more traffic to your website--yet the secrets you'll learn will help you to get exponentially more traffic than ever before. This book is not about increasing your conversions--yet these secrets will increase your conversions more than any headline tweak or split test you could ever hope to make. Low traffic or low conversion rates are symptoms of a much greater problem that's a little harder to see (that's the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that's the good news). What most businesses really have is a "funnel" problem. Your funnel is the online process that you take your potential customers through to turn them into actual customers. Everyone has a funnel (even if they don't realize it), and yours is either bringing more customers to you, or repelling them. In this updated edition, Russell Brunson, CEO and co-founder of the multimillion-dollar software company ClickFunnels, reveals his greatest secrets to generating leads and selling products and services after running tens of thousands of his own split tests. Stop repelling potential customers. Implement these processes, funnels, frameworks, and scripts now so you can fix your funnel, turn it into the most profitable member of your team, and grow your company online.

Russell Brunson

Dotcom Secrets

There's no single right way to get started or build a business. Timing, luck, and grit often play an outsize role. However, we can learn from how the best entrepreneurs went about building their companies.

How to know when an idea is promising

<ol><li>Market first: Start with a market or space that you find interesting, then look for a specific problem.</li><li>Experience ripe for improvement: Look for areas where you believe there should be a better consumer experience and iterate from there.</li><li>Problem first: Start with a problem you’ve experienced firsthand, then find out if enough other people have the same problem. </li></ol>

How to come up with an idea

If you have a market in mind, talk to people in that space to better understand their experiences and challenges. Look for a pain that is so bad that customers will try almost anything to solve it. For example, Christina Cacioppo, CEO of Vanta, discovered that SOC2 - the way a company needs to prove its security competency, was a major pain point. While security consultants can offer help, people wanted an easier solution.

Start with a market/space first and look for a problem

When you're at the idea stage, it's easy to throw ideas around and poke holes in them. Don't do this. All ideas are flawed, you're limited by what you know, and it's hard to get honest feedback when you're talking through hypotheticals. Instead, get out into the market, have conversations, and test early models.

Finding an idea

First build a MVP (minimum viable product) to test with potential customers and validate that people want the product. For Christina at Vantra, she knew they were onto something when people proactively reached out to ask about what she was building.

Validating the idea

<ul><li>Don’t rush into just starting a company—wait for the right thing to hit you personally, emotionally, and logically.</li><li>If it feels like you’re pulling teeth to find the pain point, you haven’t found a problem worth solving.</li><li>Be sure to validate the pain points for each persona you’re targeting.</li><li>Build prototypes and test your early ideas on real customers.</li><li>Don’t build a complete product until you’re feeling a real pull from the market. </li><li>Figure out who you can sell to most easily, and start there.</li><li>Develop a product that unlocks revenue for your customers.</li></ul>

Quick startup tips

<ul><li>Asking the wrong questions. Ask people about their past and current actions and problems, not to predict their future behaviour.</li><li>Settling for a "nice to have" reaction from early customer discovery. Instead, search for a big problem and solution.</li><li>Not having enough conversations. You need to start new conversations until clear patterns and themes emerge.</li><li>Selling a vitamin, not a painkiller. Painkillers are a “need to have”. while vitamins are a “nice to have”. Classic painkiller products include Google search and Mailchimp. Vitamins include Google Glass and CNN+.</li></ul>

Common traps to look out for

<ul><li>Take time to appreciate the small and large wins.</li><li>Document your metrics and share them with your investors and advisors.</li><li>Keep updating your roadmap and goals, so your team knows where to focus their efforts.</li><li>Carefully expand your team. Ensure to build to company culture you want while keeping an eye on your burn rate and cash reserves.</li></ul>

What to do once you have validation

Lessons learned from Flexport, Vanta, Rec Room, LaunchDarkly, Pinwheel, Snackpass, Good Dog, and Cocoon—a guest post by Todd Jackson

How to validate your startup idea

Many new business owners underestimate the importance of having a marketing system. This system needs to:<ol><li>Generate Leads.</li><li>Nurture leads into getting you more sales.</li><li>Making your customers become repeat customers that automatically refer you to others.</li></ol>

Allan Dib shares the nine fundamentals to a successful marketing plan, that can be fit onto one page (hence the name).Before you read this book, get a piece of paper and make a 3x3 grid. Label each grid as follows:

Creating Your One-Page Plan

<ol><li>My Target Market</li><li>Message to my Target Market</li><li>The Media I will use to Reach my Target Market</li><li>My Lead Capture System</li><li>My Lead Nurture System</li><li>My Sales Conversion System</li><li>How I Deliver a World-Class Experience </li><li>How I Increase the Customer Lifetime</li><li>How I Orchestrate and Simulate Referrals</li></ol>

The Nine Squares Of Your Marketing Grid

At the end of each chapter, you’re prompted to fill in a square of the grid. This can be helpful so that each square is filled with fresh information. By the end of the book, all the squares should be completed.

Keeping Up

Define a specific group of people to which 99% of them are facing a problem that you can solve. This is your target market.Generic Targeting: Starting a fitness program for people who want to get in shape.Niched Target Marketing: Starting a post-partum fitness program for mothers who want to get back in shape.

My Target Market

<ul><li>Determine your target market’s pain points.</li><li>Find out the underlying fear that is a result of them needing their pain soothed. Once you figure that out, you can easily soothe their pain.</li><li>Find out the common enemy that causes their initial pain.</li></ul>

Message To My Target Market

Develop more than one channel to use to reach out to your target market. Once you’ve laid out your media channels, stay consistent with them

The Media I Will Use To Reach My Target Market 

<ul><li>Create calls-to-action to engage your prospects.</li><li>Use current trends to be relatable and relevant.</li></ul>

My Lead Capture Ststem

<ul><li>Prospects don’t line up for your business overnight.</li><li>It takes 12 interactions to turn a prospect into a raving fan customer.</li><li>Most salespeople give up on their prospects after the 3rd interaction.</li><li>Send Shock & Awe packages by mail to your nurtured leads.</li><li>Develop a sphere of influence.</li></ul>

My Lead Nurture System 

<ul><li>Let your prospects test out your products or services before fully investing in you.</li><li>Address the Risk Reversal: What you would do for them if anything went wrong while you were providing your product or service.</li><li>Curate an unlimited offer.</li></ul>

My Sales Conversion System 

<ul><li>Your product or service doesn’t serve its purpose until you’re done selling it to them and received your compensation, which causes the prospect to feel lost about what to do with your product or service afterward.</li><li>Make your prospects feels encouraged even after you’ve sold them.</li><li>Imagine who your ultimate customer would be to buy your business when you’re to exit in the future.</li></ul>

How I Deliver A World Class Experience

<ul><li>Slowly and reasonably raise your prices to match inflation over time.</li><li>Bundle in high margin add-ons.</li><li>Avoid poisoning your business with satisfying customers that are never satisfied.</li><li>Use genuine complaints to grow your business.</li></ul>

How I increase The Customer Lifetime

<ul><li>Be specific and direct about who your offer your products and services to.</li></ul>Generic Referral Method: If you know someone who needs a plumber, tell them to call me.Orchestrating Leads: If you know anyone who struggles with a leaky faucet, please have them reach out via email.<ul><li>Boost the ego of the customer by acknowledging how they benefit you before you make referral requests.</li></ul>

How I Orchestrate And Simulate Refferals

A Marketing plan doesn’t need to be 20 pages long to grasp the main points of your business. 💡

WARNING: Do Not Read This Book If You Hate Money To build a successful business, you need to stop doing random acts of marketing and start following a reliable plan for rapid business growth. Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and time-consuming process, which is why it often doesn't get done. In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's literally a single page, divided up into nine squares. With it, you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero. Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover: - How to get new customers, clients or patients and how to make more profit from existing ones. - Why "big business" style marketing could kill your business and strategies that actually work for small and medium-sized businesses. - How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money. - A simple step-by-step process for creating your own personalized marketing plan that is literally one page. Simply follow along and fill in each of the nine squares that make up your own 1-Page Marketing Plan. - How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice. - How to get amazing results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing. - How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers actually thank you for it.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

WARNING: Do Not Read This Book If You Hate Money To build a successful business, you need to stop doing random acts of marketing and start following a reliable plan for rapid business growth. Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and time-consuming process, which is why it often doesn't get done. In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, serial entrepreneur and rebellious marketer Allan Dib reveals a marketing implementation breakthrough that makes creating a marketing plan simple and fast. It's literally a single page, divided up into nine squares. With it, you'll be able to map out your own sophisticated marketing plan and go from zero to marketing hero. Whether you're just starting out or are an experienced entrepreneur, The 1-Page Marketing Plan is the easiest and fastest way to create a marketing plan that will propel your business growth. In this groundbreaking new book you'll discover: - How to get new customers, clients or patients and how to make more profit from existing ones. - Why "big business" style marketing could kill your business and strategies that actually work for small and medium-sized businesses. - How to close sales without being pushy, needy, or obnoxious while turning the tables and having prospects begging you to take their money. - A simple step-by-step process for creating your own personalized marketing plan that is literally one page. Simply follow along and fill in each of the nine squares that make up your own 1-Page Marketing Plan. - How to annihilate competitors and make yourself the only logical choice. - How to get amazing results on a small budget using the secrets of direct response marketing. - How to charge high prices for your products and services and have customers actually thank you for it.

Allan Dib

The 1-Page Marketing Plan

Nurturing relationships with your customers is a crucial part of growing a successful business.In this age of automation,caring for your customers has never been more important.At any moment,an unhappy customer can share their opinion with the masses through social media and the web and negatively affect your business.That's why it's even more important than ever to create an excellent experience for your customers to help develop your companys relationship with them into loveCreating love between your company and your customers can help scale positive word of mouth that's absolutely priceless

Intro...

Making a business is not that tough, but standing out from the competition becomes difficult when customers does not fall into your business. This all idea is about how can customer fall in love with your business...

At any moment, an unhappy customer can share their opinion with the masses through social media and the web, negatively affecting your business. That's why it's important to create an excellent experience for your customers to help develop your company's relationship with them.

5 Ways to Make Customers Fall in Love with Your Business

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