Sales face unprecedented challenges for organisations and salespeople.  <ul><li>One reason is the massive increase in competition. The average company today has twice as many competitors as five years ago. </li><li>The other reason is that relying on innovation to beat competition has a diminishing window of opportunity. In previous years, innovation could give you a year or two advantage. Now, you’re lucky if you have a few months at most.</li></ul> That is why many leading companies focus on organic growth by using sales and marketing. However, the trick is how to pull it off successfully.

Sales is in a strategic spotlight

<ol><li>“Hire the same successful salesperson every time.” (The Sales Hiring Formula)</li><li>“Train every salesperson in the same way.” (The Sales Training Formula)</li><li>“Hold our salespeople accountable to the same sales process.” (The Sales Management Formula)</li><li>“Provide our salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month.” (The Demand Generation Formula)</li></ol>

The four components of making sales scalable

<ul><li>Create a theory of the ideal sales characteristics, then score every candidate for each characteristic on a scale of 1 to 10.</li><li>Define an evaluation strategy for each characteristic. Consider what behavioural questions to ask.</li><li>Score candidates against the ideal sales characteristics. For example, fill out the interview scorecards after each interview.</li><li>Learn and iterate on the model while engineering the sales hiring formula. Which characteristics do top performers have in common and will it predict success at your company?</li></ul>

The sales hiring formula

<ol><li>Coachability: The ability to absorb and apply coaching.</li><li>Curiosity: Understanding a potential customer’s context through effective questioning and listening.</li><li>Prior Success: Does the candidate have a history of top performance or remarkable achievement?</li><li>Intelligence: The ability to learn complex concepts quickly and to easily communicate those concepts.</li><li>Work ethic: Pursuing the company mission with a high degree of energy and activity.</li></ol>

The five traits great salespeople have

<ul><li>Find quality passive sales candidates on LinkedIn. Use filters to improve search results, such as Zip code, job title, school, company. Screen the search results using the candidate’s LinkedIn Profile. Look at longevity at their employers, alignment between the prospect’s current buyer context and our buyer context, school and major, quality of the LinkedIn profile.</li><li>Engage with the prescreened candidates.</li><li>Understand the sales talent pool in your area. Find all the companies with inside sales teams in your area. Interview at least one person from each team.</li></ul>

How to find top-performing salespeople

Three elements of the sales methodology:<ul><li>The buyer journey: It increases the likelihood that the buyer’s need will remain centre during all aspects of the selling process. </li><li>Sales process: The sales team can step back and reflect on how to accelerate the buying journey.</li><li>Qualifying matrix: It defines the information you need from a potential buyer to understand if you can help the prospective buyer. Use the BANT matrix (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing)</li></ul>

Sales training formula

Sales coaching is vital to drive sales productivity.<ul><li>Start with the buying journey. Look into examples of the questions buyers ask at each stage of the buying journey.</li><li>Add exams that focus on factual information, such as product knowledge and certifications to the training process.</li><li>When a hire is on the job for six months, ask him to complete a review of the sales training program. </li><li>Give salespeople an in-depth understanding of your buyer’s day-to-day existence.</li><li>Salespeople should take some time to engage in social media.</li></ul>

Create a training curriculum

Metrics-driven sales coaching. Pick one skill at a time to focus on. Use metrics to find which skill will have the biggest impact on a salesperson’s performance.Motivate through sales compensation plans and contests. There are many ways you can develop your commission plan. However, it is best to let it evolve as your business grows. To keep salespeople motivated, run monthly contests.

The sales management formula

Convert from cold calling to inbound. To make this transition, salespeople should position themselves as thought leaders using blogs and social media. Once the leads come, do not send every lead to sales. Instead, create a buyer matrix to understand who is interested in your product and how they journey before purchasing. When you understand your buyer's journey, you can create a customised experience.

The demand generation formula

Marketing and sales can measure their performance and hold each other accountable. <ul><li>Marketing teams should define how many leads in each buyer persona they are passing on to sales and should be able to calculate the implied value.</li><li>The sales team must decide how to follow up with each lead and work toward the conversion goal.</li></ul>

Marketing and Sales Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A useful book to figure out a framework for the sales process.

Use data, technology, and inbound selling to build a remarkable team and accelerate sales The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a scalable, predictable approach to growing revenue and building a winning sales team. Everyone wants to build the next $100 million business and author Mark Roberge has actually done it using a unique methodology that he shares with his readers. As an MIT alum with an engineering background, Roberge challenged the conventional methods of scaling sales utilizing the metrics-driven, process-oriented lens through which he was trained to see the world. In this book, he reveals his formulas for success. Readers will learn how to apply data, technology, and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand. As SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for software company HubSpot, Mark led hundreds of his employees to the acquisition and retention of the company's first 10,000 customers across more than 60 countries. This book outlines his approach and provides an action plan for others to replicate his success, including the following key elements: Hire the same successful salesperson every time — The Sales Hiring Formula Train every salesperson in the same manner — The Sales Training Formula Hold salespeople accountable to the same sales process — The Sales Management Formula Provide salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month — The Demand Generation Formula Leverage technology to enable better buying for customers and faster selling for salespeople Business owners, sales executives, and investors are all looking to turn their brilliant ideas into the next $100 million revenue business. Often, the biggest challenge they face is the task of scaling sales. They crave a blueprint for success, but fail to find it because sales has traditionally been referred to as an art form, rather than a science. You can't major in sales in college. Many people question whether sales can even be taught. Executives and entrepreneurs are often left feeling helpless and hopeless. The Sales Acceleration Formula completely alters this paradigm. In today's digital world, in which every action is logged and masses of data sit at our fingertips, building a sales team no longer needs to be an art form. There is a process. Sales can be predictable. A formula does exist.

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Marketing & Sales

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Business

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Books

Use data, technology, and inbound selling to build a remarkable team and accelerate sales The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a scalable, predictable approach to growing revenue and building a winning sales team. Everyone wants to build the next $100 million business and author Mark Roberge has actually done it using a unique methodology that he shares with his readers. As an MIT alum with an engineering background, Roberge challenged the conventional methods of scaling sales utilizing the metrics-driven, process-oriented lens through which he was trained to see the world. In this book, he reveals his formulas for success. Readers will learn how to apply data, technology, and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand. As SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for software company HubSpot, Mark led hundreds of his employees to the acquisition and retention of the company's first 10,000 customers across more than 60 countries. This book outlines his approach and provides an action plan for others to replicate his success, including the following key elements: <ul> <li>Hire the same successful salesperson every time — The Sales Hiring Formula</li> <li>Train every salesperson in the same manner — The Sales Training Formula</li> <li>Hold salespeople accountable to the same sales process — The Sales Management Formula</li> <li>Provide salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month — The Demand Generation Formula</li> <li>Leverage technology to enable better buying for customers and faster selling for salespeople</li> </ul> Business owners, sales executives, and investors are all looking to turn their brilliant ideas into the next $100 million revenue business. Often, the biggest challenge they face is the task of scaling sales. They crave a blueprint for success, but fail to find it because sales has traditionally been referred to as an art form, rather than a science. You can't major in sales in college. Many people question whether sales can even be taught. Executives and entrepreneurs are often left feeling helpless and hopeless. The Sales Acceleration Formula completely alters this paradigm. In today's digital world, in which every action is logged and masses of data sit at our fingertips, building a sales team no longer needs to be an art form. There is a process. Sales can be predictable. A formula does exist.

Mark Roberge

The Sales Acceleration Formula

Amazon is known to be one of the biggest selling platforms in the world. According to Statista, as of April 2021, Amazon registered around 407 million visits per month in the UK alone. One of the best things about Amazon is that anyone can sell on the platform ‒ you don’t necessarily need to be a big retailer with a huge warehouse.You can sell on Amazon even if you have no selling experience. Want to start selling on Amazon? Here’s how to do it.

Sell On Amazon

Amazon is a go-to website for shoppers and sellers alike. As an Amazon seller, you’re part of a diverse community of retailers and sellers of all types and sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to creative visionaries selling their handmade wares from home.According to statistics on Amazon’s website, they have more than 300 million active customer accounts. These accounts exist in more than 180 countries.  By selling on Amazon, you contribute to providing those customers with the best selection, the best price, and the best customer experience.

The Benefit Of Selling On Amazon

Amazon has two selling plans: Individual and Professional. These can be considered standard and premium selling plans. These two plans offer you flexibility in the type of selling you wish to do ‒ you can sell one item or thousands if you choose.  Amazon’s Individual plan charges the seller $0.99 per sale, whereas the sellers opting for the Professional plan are charged a flat fee of $39.99 per month, no matter how many items they sell. Amazon suggests that it makes the most sense to buy the Professional option if you sell more than 40 items a month.

The Selling Plans

The registration process is very straightforward:<ul><li>Visit https://services.amazon.com</li><li>Click ‘Sign Up’</li><li>Follow the prompts and create your Amazon Seller Account</li></ul> Some things you’ll need on hand to complete your registration are:<ul><li>Bank account number and bank routing number</li><li>Chargeable credit card</li><li>Government-issued national ID</li><li>Tax information</li><li>Phone number</li></ul>If you’re prepared with the above, your entire registration process will take minutes to complete.

Register As Amazon Seller

Depending on your selling plan, there are different fees for selling on Amazon. There are three main types of fees related to being an Amazon seller:<ul><li>Subscription fees – Subscription fees are the fees that you pay for your selling plan</li><li>Selling fees – Selling fees are what you are charged per item sold. </li><li>Shipping fees – Amazon shipping rates apply when you fulfil orders yourself.</li><li>Fulfilment by Amazon – There are fees for order fulfilment, storage, and optional services for products that Amazon fulfils for you as part of Amazon’s dropshipping equivalent, Fulfillment by Amazon service.</li></ul>

The Cost Of Selling On Amazon

If you are selling a product that another seller is already selling on Amazon, you can match their existing product listing. If you are the first and only seller of a product, you will need to create a new listing. Each seller’s selling plan determines how they upload and list their products. If a seller has chosen to use a Professional seller account, they will have the option to list all of their products in bulk with bulk uploads or inventory management using third-party systems. Sellers with the Individual plan must list each of their products one by one.

Create A Product Listing

When selling products on Amazon, the website needs a product ID to properly identify the precise item you’re selling. These IDs are typically an ISBN, a UPC or an EAN. Amazon may require that you purchase a UPC code for a new product or request an exemption for the listing of a new product. Each product listing will also need the following to be complete:<ul><li>Stock keeping unit (SKU)</li><li>Name of the product</li><li>Description of the product and bullet points</li><li>Images of the product</li><li>Relevant keywords as well as search terms</li></ul>

Product Listing: The Details

Amazon prides itself on giving its shoppers a safe, comfortable shopping experience. They want their customers to shop with confidence. For that reason, certain products are known as restricted product categories. To sell in these categories, Amazon will likely request that you supply additional fees, performance checks and other qualifications. To receive approval to sell certain brands or list items within a restricted category(like alcohol or tobacco), you can request approval from Seller Central.

Restricted Product Categories

If you follow best practices when adding listings, you can greatly increase your chances of success. Shoppers will be able to find your products more easily if you are sure to add descriptive titles, use clear pictures and have concise feature bullets to your listings. Some factors that could negatively impact your product launch include:<ul><li>Variation problems</li><li>Image compliance</li><li>Product IDs</li></ul>

Ensuring a Successful Listing and Product Launch

This simply means that the seller stores and manages their inventory and ships their products to their customers themselves. As soon as an order ships, Amazon charges a shipping fee based on the product category and the shipping service selected by the customer. The shipping fee is then passed on to the seller in the form of a shipping credit. There are set shipping rates for all products with an Individual plan, so you need to decide if you can still price your products profitably when factoring in shipping costs.

Delivery: Merchant Fulfilment

The company operates 175 fulfilment centres around the world that contain more than 150 million square feet of storage space. When sellers choose Fulfillment by Amazon, they can store your inventory in those warehouses, saving sellers the expense and inconvenience of storing and managing inventory. These sellers also become the beneficiary of Amazon’s customer service and returns, automatic Prime eligibility and Free Super Saver Shipping.

Delivery: Fulfilment By Amazon(FBA)

<ul><li> Step 1: The seller ships their inventory to Amazon where it will be scanned and put up for sale.</li><li>Step 2: When a purchase is made, each order is packaged and shipped directly by Amazon to the customer.</li><li>Step 3: Amazon is responsible for collecting payments from the customer. The seller is paid any available funds by Amazon every two weeks.</li><li>Step 4: In the event of any problems, any questions, returns, refunds and such are handled by Amazon’s customer service team, saving the seller the stress of dealing with unhappy customers.</li></ul>

Steps To Use FBA

Once you have registered as an Amazon seller, you will be able to access your Seller Central account. Seller Central is an important resource for selling on Amazon, acting as a portal to your Amazon business and providing all of the tools you need to manage your selling account. With Seller Central, you can also add product information, make inventory updates, list all of your products and manage payments. It is a hub of useful information that will help you along your journey in navigating your Amazon business.

Amazon Seller Central

<ul><li>Check for new orders daily – Keep on top of when customers order a new product so that you can promptly fulfil the order and ship it out.</li><li>Keep track of your inventory – Be sure that you are always aware of exactly how much stock you have. This way, you’ll avoid ever being unable to fulfil a product due to being out of stock without realising it.</li><li>Keep your pricing up to date (and competitive) – Keep an eye on similar products to yours and make sure that you are pricing yours within the right range, as customers frequently gravitate towards the lowest price.</li></ul>

Tips And Tricks For Sellers

Strong customer response is essential to being a successful Amazon seller and improving your credibility on the platform. Some ways to cultivate that rating is:<ul><li>Accurate product descriptions</li><li>Prompt shipping</li><li>Be upfront with customers about any delays or changes to their orders</li><li>Respond quickly to questions (within 24 hours)</li><li>Encourage positive feedback on your packing slips</li></ul>

Get Five Star Rating

Selling products on Amazon is a great business opportunity, no matter the size of your business. Want to start selling on Amazon? Here's how to do it.

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Economics

How To Start Selling On Amazon

Always start with a naming brief — even if it’s an informal one — that defines the strategy behind the company, product, or service being named. Make sure to include a description of what’s being named, ideas you’re hoping to convey via the name, a description of your target audience, and the names of your competitors. This will help guide you as you consider your various options.Bringing strategy into the naming process ensures your name will send the right signals to the right people, align with brand and business strategy, and take the cultural and competitive backdrop into account.

Be Strategic

<ul><li>Is your name meaningful? Does it convey the intended message and evoke the right feelings? Tesla is a name that does a great job of suggesting electricity and technical prowess.</li><li>Is it adaptable? Is it able to stretch to accommodate foreseeable changes in the brand? Pizza Hut and RadioShack have trouble explaining that they sell more than pizza and radios, respectively. </li><li> Is it distinctive? Will it stand out when compared with your competitors? When Apple was named, other computer companies included Commodore, Microsoft, and IBM. The simplicity of Apple stands out in that crowd.</li></ul>

Questions To Consider

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Startups

How to Pick the Best Name for Your Company

Ikea has an enviable position in the struggling retail landscape. As of 2021, it boasts:<ul><li>~$47.6B USD in annual retail sales</li><li>458 stores in 61 markets</li><li>775m store visits + 5B web visits per year</li><li>225k global employees</li></ul>It’s estimated that 60% of Ikea purchases are <a href="https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/bit5414/2012/03/20/the-ikea-layout-and-impulse-buying-a-case-study/">impulse buys</a>. And Ikea’s own creative director has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYKUJgMRQ7A">said</a> that only 20% of the store’s purchases are based on actual logic and needs.

The Retail King

Ikea sells meatballs and lamps under the same roof. It has been described as both “Disneyland for adults” and “a nightmare hellscape.” And the idea of spending an afternoon stuck in a one-way maze — then going home and assembling your own bookcase — isn’t exactly appealing.But these eccentricities are intentionally engineered to get you to make unplanned purchases, and come back for more.

A Unique Retail Model

In general, retailers design their stores with 3 goals in mind:<ul><li>Intelligibility: Easy to understand the floor plan</li><li>Accessibility: Easy to navigate</li><li>A clear visual field: Exposure to products and the lay of the land </li></ul>Most companies use store layouts that give customers the freedom to explore at their own will.Commonly used configurations — grid, racetrack, freeform, and spine — don’t have defined routes: You can wander down any aisle you please, in any order you want.

The Normal Store Layouts

The unique one-way labyrinth design of Ikea: Forces wider product exposure: At most retail shops, customers only lay eyes on ~33% of all the items for sale; Ikea’s layout herds shoppers past its entire catalog.Creates a false sense of scarcity: When shoppers pass by items they’re on the fence about, they’re inclined to just put them in the cart because they don’t want to backtrack through the maze later on.Creates a sense of mystery: Every 50 feet, the path breaks left. Shoppers never know what’s around the next turn, stoking their desire to continue exploring.

Breaking All Layout Rules

Ikea has mastered the use of a psychological principle called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer#:~:text=In%20shopping%20mall%20design%2C%20the,susceptible%20to%20making%20impulse%20buys.">Gruen effect</a> — when the layout of a store is so bewildering that it makes you forget the original reason you came there, leading to impulse buys.You get lost in a maze, and then are surrounded by nothing but ever-changing fantasies of what your life could be like. It’s like you can walk into a magazine advertisement and pick up the dishes, sit on the couch, try out the desk chair. It’s very tactile and participatory.

The Gruen Effect

Strategically placed mirrors: When you catch a glimpse of yourself in an Ikea room, you’re primed to believe you belong in it.Contextual positioning: Rooms are set up exactly as they would be in a natural setting. Familiarity encourages purchasing. “Bulla bulla” (dump bins): Ikea places overstuffed crates of dirt-cheap products (plush toys, slippers, pillows) along the route to reinforce the idea that its products are a good deal.

The Small Tricks Of Ikea

Something else you’ll likely see at play in Ikea is decoy pricing: when a retailer throws a less appealing option into the mix to make other products seem like a better deal.Let’s say there are 2 cabinets for sale: a $40 budget unit, and an $80 unit with more premium materials. Ikea might create a 3rd unit — one that offers neither the low price of the budget unit, nor the premium materials of the pricier unit — to make the others look better.Studies have shown that the decoy effect can increase retail sales by as much as 14%.

The Decoy Effect

Ikea often follows a “price first, design later” philosophy: It starts with a price target — say $6.99 for a new stool — then reverse-engineers the design process to meet that goal.And once an Ikea product hits the shelves, the company is militant about maintaining or even reducing, its retail price.Researchers at Boston University and the Wharton School studied hundreds of Ikea catalogues in 6 different countries between 1994 and 2010 and found that many of the company’s products get cheaper over time.

Affordable Prices

The main ingredient of the company’s affordability is a technique called flat packing.The company reduces manufacturing, logistics, and fulfilment costs by disassembling items and fitting pieces together in a box as tightly as possible. “We hate air” is a common mantra at Ikea: Every pocket of space is accounted for and minimized.Ikea designs products with manufacturing and transit in mind from the get-go. They design products for the realities of the supply chain, rather than having to make sacrifices for it.

How Prices At Ikea Stay Affordable

In a 2011 Harvard Business School study, researchers divided subjects into 2 groups: One was given pre-assembled origami, and the other was given paper to build their own origami. At the end of the experiment, subjects were asked how much they’d pay for the creations.The result: Those who built their own origami were willing to pay nearly 5x more than the non-builders.The researchers dubbed this the Ikea effect: a cognitive bias wherein we place a higher value on items we build ourselves, regardless of the quality of the end result.

The Ikea effect

In the 1950s, manufacturers noticed that powdered cake mix sales were suffering. All the consumer had to do was add water. But this process was too easy: It removed the effort and emotion from baking. When manufacturers <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171027-the-magic-cakes-that-come-from-a-packet">took out the egg powder</a> and made consumers add their own fresh eggs to the mix, sales went back up.

The Cake Mix Story

Ikea may be a home furnishings store, but it also reels in ~$2.4B in food sales per year (~5% of its overall revenue).To put that into perspective: If you were to look at Ikea’s food operation as a stand-alone entity, it would rank as one of the 50 highest-grossing food chains in the world, right above IHOP.A typical Ikea has 2 dining options that can accommodate 600+ diners at a time:<ul><li>A Swedish food market on the main floor that serves up meatballs, gravlax salmon, and other Scandinavian entrees.</li><li>A bistro near the exit that slings hot dogs, cinnamon buns, pizza, and other fast-serve favourites.</li></ul>

Ikea The Food Court

The real objective of selling cheap food at the furniture store is to reinforce Ikea’s low price profile.A person might not know if $500 is a good price for a couch, but they surely know that $0.99 is a fantastic deal for breakfast. The idea is that customers will associate Ikea’s low food prices with the store’s other offerings.Ikea might be selling some of that food at cost, or even at a loss. But it’s worth it to lose money on scrambled eggs if it means helping them sell more couches.

Selling Cheap Food

The home furnishings giant enlists a maze-like layout, cheap food, and crafty psychology to get you to fill up your cart.

How Ikea tricks you into buying more stuff

While mass-market players and luxury brands are launching NFT collections, many consumers still try to understand the 2021 NFT world of Bored Apes and CryptoPunks. The usability of blockchain technology is still in its infancy and not consumer-friendly. However, NFTs are not a passing fad. On the contrary, NFTs has the potential to be the killer app of Web3. The interesting thing about NFTs is the tech they run on. It reveals their broader promise as a vehicle by which brands can reclaim ownership of their digital consumer relationships.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are going mainstream

NFTs seem intertwined with digital collectables. Many brands' first step into the NFT waters is to launch their own collections. But a first step isn't a strategy. In the dot-com era, successful brands didn't stop after buying a domain name and posting a website. Similarly, brands need to ask what to do next.

Early days: From collectibles to digital product-line extensions

Companies in the media business can use NFTs to create a new class of media assets. For example, NBA's TopShot shows this kind of product line expansion. Likewise, apparel companies can envision digital versions of their physical clothing and accessories. For example, Ralph Lauren sells branded digital apparel in virtual worlds like Zepeto. These projects port a current product line into the metaverse, expanding how consumers engage with and experience the brands.

Extending product lines into digital worlds

<ul><li>NFT is not exclusively for collectables or creating digital assets for virtual avatars. Looking forward, NFTs could be the central digital touchpoint between brands and their consumers that is controlled by the brand itself.</li><li>The underlying technology of NFTs could identify a unique experience or physical-world object, for example, the fact that you attended an event.</li><li>NFTs could allow us to showcase our non-digital lives in our digital spaces more expansively.</li><li>The blockchain-based tokens of authenticity could revolutionise secondary markets for physical items.</li></ul>

The real promise: NFTs as the basis for a multifaceted digital consumer connection

It took some time for established companies to figure out how to use Web1 to make meaningful connections between the Internet channel and their existing businesses. Walmart only started to actively sell online in 2000, six years after Amazon's founding. Web3 is developing more slowly as a commercial technological infrastructure and will take a few years to realise. However, it's vital for brands to ensure they don't fall behind.

Brands’ path towards an NFT future

The immediate NFT mindset will centre around digital collectables. It is important to engineer the right tradeoffs between availability and exclusivity when creating an NFT collection. However, making your NFT collection too abundant can seem that it has low value. Brands can also leverage the programmability of NFTs to make them more engaging and collaborative. For example, Gap has gamified its NFTs collection by allowing several common NFTs to be combined into fewer limited ones.

Start with smart digital collectibles

Most brands don't want to remain in the business of creating and selling digital art. Connecting your NFT collection to your brand identity is essential. You can start to strengthen NFT connections with your products or services. Give away a physical product tied to a digital NFT collectable. For example, when Coach launched an NFT collection featuring the art of animals from its holiday promotions, it promised a custom Coach bag to each NFT holder.

Tie your NFT collection to your brand and core product

Trial, error and observing what succeeds and fails will help brands figure out what works for them. The true impact on NFTs will unfold gradually, so there's room to figure the space out. Your eventual audience will be your existing and future customers.

Experiment with authenticity and a view of the future

Wading into a new space always comes with risk — but so does staying out of it.

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Cryptocurrency

How Your Brand Should Use NFTs

Our brain is symmetrical, consisting of left and right hemispheres. However, these two parts have entirely different functions. Generally, in everyday life, we use the left hemisphere of the brain, not using the capabilities of the right. However, it turns out that we can achieve a lot when our brain works as a whole and both hemispheres are synchronized. We become more relaxed and creative, our intelligence increases, we absorb new information faster. You will learn how to get the brain hemispheres in sync from this article.

How do we bring the brain hemispheres into synchronization?

The left hemisphere enables us to think logically, solve mathematical problems, analyze issues rationally, and operate verbal structures. When working with the left hemisphere, we focus on details and encode information step by step. We are concrete and literal.

What can the left hemisphere do?

The right hemisphere enables us to use intuition, see the world holistically, and create syntheses. Thanks to the right hemisphere, we can operate with associations, symbols, and images. We are creative people with great imaginations.

What can the right hemisphere do?

If you use the logic of the left hemisphere and the imagination of the right, your abilities will increase significantly. Your memory and concentration will improve. You will learn and work better and solve problems more efficiently. You might start to be seen as brilliantly creative, who has great ideas, does not make mistakes, and successfully achieves goals. Your self-esteem will increase, your mood will improve, you will be more relaxed and calm. Thanks to the synchronization of hemispheres, you will also have a more significant impact on your life - become more energetic and productive.

What can a synchronized brain do?

Juggling is a straightforward, funny, and effective method leading to the synchronization of brain hemispheres. It develops concentration and eye-hand coordination - which activates many brain areas. Since the left and right hands perform different activities, we start both brain hemispheres working together.

Just juggle

A simple crayon and a piece of paper are enough to change the functioning of your brain. Draw with both hands; start with simple motifs: a Christmas tree, a house, a stitch, a spiral, hearts. It is essential that your mirror hand movements each other. For example, draw the left side of the tree with your left hand and the right side - with your right hand. Gradually, you can make more and more complicated drawings.

Draw

Listening to Baroque music can help you study and concentrate. Thanks to it, you can calm down. When we are in a state of relaxation, it is durable for both brain hemispheres to work together. Reach for composers such as Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The effects will surely amaze you.

Baroque music

American Monroe Institute developed the Hemi Sync technology. It is a method of synchronizing the brain hemispheres by emitting sounds of a specific frequency. Thanks to a computer program, it was possible to generate a wave of the so-called differential beats, which produces a sound with parameters corresponding to a person's brain waves immersed in deep relaxation or sleep. The recording is listened to through stereo headphones or speakers in such a way that the left ear receives sounds from the left speaker or headphones while the right ear receives sounds from the right speaker.

Hemi Sync Technology

The SITA method is a method of learning that uses the properties of the state of deep relaxation when the brain is in the alpha state by synchronizing the work of both cerebral hemispheres. It was developed at Bundeswehr University by Prof. Reiner Dietrich. A device working on the principle of biological feedback was used, consisting of, among others, special glasses and headphones.

SITA Method

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Personal Development

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Communication

HemiSync – Binaural Beat Brainwave CDs – patented alternative therapies from Hemi-Sync – Monroe Products

TikTok is contagious and addicting. It drives some of the strongest engagement numbers across the board and has inspired large-scale shifts and imitation from other platforms such as Instagram (i.e., its Reels feature).TikTok’s explosive initial growth was fueled by young adults. Now, the short-form video content platform is gaining cross-generational appeal. This consumer shift will likely drive a shift in brand spending, and sponsored content partnerships will become more common on the platform.

TikTok Will Gain An Even Bigger Share Of The Pie

Social media platforms make money based on engagement. It’s in their best interest to keep influencers motivated to create and share interesting content. That’s why several leading platforms are investing in resources that encourage collaboration.Despite TikTok’s popularity, Instagram wins when it comes to new features focused on content creators and brand partnerships. Last year, Instagram developed Collabs, which allows creators to build content together and then take advantage of a larger shared audience, as well as “Add Yours” stickers to boost Story engagement.

The Race For Creator-Friendly Tools Is On

The pandemic proved the importance of a digital presence and e-commerce capabilities.<ul><li>On the development front, Instagram recently announced testing for a native affiliate tool that allows creators to earn commissions for purchases they drive through the app. TikTok has been promoting a suite of social commerce solutions called TikTok Shopping and expanded its partnership with Shopify.</li><li>With platforms’ push for in-app shopping, influencers are becoming the entire marketing funnel. Brands will be able to leverage them as an awareness strategy and as a purchase driver.</li></ul>

Influencers Will Take Over The Entire Marketing Funnel

LinkedIn has seen a new category of influencers emerge — more executives, CEOs and business owners — and is building tools to support them accordingly.<ul><li>Last year, LinkedIn launched a new function — “Creator mode” — aimed directly at professionals seeking a foothold in the influencer world. This mode allows business leaders to leverage their expertise and be intentional about building community on the platform.</li><li>Brands should look at this as an opportunity to leverage the reach and expertise of LinkedIn influencers in their respective industries and develop cross-promotional partnerships.</li></ul>

LinkedIn Influencers Will Emerge

In 2021, the global esports industry was worth more than $1.08 billion; that number is expected to grow to nearly $1.7 billion by 2024.Esports is a natural fit for influencer marketing because of the high level of audience engagement and interaction. Esports fans are loyal, and enthusiasts stay engaged for hours at a time.While early esports influencer campaigns focused on gaming-related products, we’re seeing a wider variety of brands seeking to capitalize on this audience: mega-brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, Intel, and BMW have gotten in on the game with sponsorships of esports influencers.

Esports Influencers Will Go Mainstream

In my business, we’ve seen growth in influencer activity across multiple platforms. Here’s what we’re predicting.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

Council Post: The State Of Influencer Marketing: Top Insights For 2022

Brand assets can include the following elements:<ul><li>Brand name</li><li>Logo</li><li>Color palette</li><li>Packaging</li><li>Slogans or taglines</li><li>Songs or sounds</li><li>Brand guidelines</li><li>Mascots</li><li>Typography</li><li>Design elements</li><li>Voice and tone</li><li>Videos</li></ul>Well-designed brand assets can help you deliver a consistent, unified experience and bring your business to the top of customers' minds. But it should never be mistaken for a competitor's brand. You want every element to reflect your company so it's immediately recognizable.

Brand Assets

<ul><li>Logo: Research shows that people retain information better when it's paired with a relevant image, and a logo is the thing that helps customers recognize your brand and begin to build an emotional connection.</li><li>Color palette: Up to 90% of an initial impression is based on color alone. Considering that people form an opinion about people or products within the first 90 seconds, it's easy to see why a color palette is a top brand asset.</li><li>Tagline: "Can you hear me now? Good." "Just do it," and "What's in your wallet?" are all famous taglines. A</li></ul>

Top Three Brand Assets

Ready to take your brand to the next level? This guide tells you exactly what you need to create brand assets potential customers will love. 

What Are Brand Assets? 6 Examples to Inspire You

<ul><li>Start with small companies when recruiting B2B clients. They are more open and willing to collaborate, have fewer decision makers, and the entire sales process is shorter. Then go to medium companies, and finally to big companies. By the time you reach big companies, you'll have enough supply/demand in your platform to be attractive to them.</li><li>Generate demand for your supply as soon as possible, even in small quantity. Otherwise, suppliers lose trust in your platform.</li><li>Balance supply and demand to prevent either party from becoming frustrated.</li></ul>

Getting clients

<ul><li>Unit economics become important as the business grows and becomes more mature and stable.</li><li>Don't obsess over them in the beginning. Focus on getting a critical mass of supply and demand, even if the unit economics don't make sense.</li><li>Unit economics improve as your business gains momentum and your clients spread the word and bring in new customers.</li></ul>

Unit economics

Tonight I joined a meetup about products as multiplayer platforms. Here are my takeaways

🤼 ProductTank Bucharest Meetup

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Supply and Demand @ 7Card, Pluria, Ajusto

Hey! You're amazing.Now that I've got your attention let's talk about what just happened: telling you something positive about yourself focused on producing a singular emotional response. You might even have felt some warmth in your chest from this message.But what if I said something negative instead?You'd be jolted and might even start to feel heat rising to your face making you angry thinking of all the reasons you are NOT what I just said. <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/emotion-marketing">Hubspot</a> says that emotional marketing refers to "marketing and advertising that use emotion to make you notice, remember, share, and buy."

Emotional Marketing: Branding with Heart 

From three basic colors (red, blue and yellow) and 11 main colors you can create 10 million shades on a spectrum that can be seen by the human eye. Emotions have a similar spectrum. According to studies reported in <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)01519-4">Current Biology</a>, researchers observed facial signals to identify four basic human emotions:<ol><li>Happy;</li><li>Sad;</li><li>Afraid/surprised; and</li><li>Angry/disgusted.</li></ol>Psychologist Robert <a href="https://www.6seconds.org/2020/08/11/plutchik-wheel-emotions/">Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions</a> explains the emotional spectrum we feel based on personal experiences. These nuances are the emotional core of consumer decision-making.

Role of Emotion in Consumer Behavior

Plenty of research shows that emotion influences <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/consumer-behavior">consumer behavior</a>. <ul><li>Studies using fMRI showed that personal feelings and experiences drive consumer decisions more than information like features and facts.</li><li>Advertising research showed emotional responses to ads and the likability of a brand influences buyer intent 3x more than anything else.</li><li><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/inside-the-consumer-mind/201302/how-emotions-influence-what-we-buy">Positive emotions</a> towards brands have a far greater influence on consumer loyalty than trust or brand attributes.</li></ul>Emotions will drive us to choose more expensive, branded products that we feel good about over practically identical, cheaper generic ones.

Emotional Consumer Decisions

Emotional responses to marketing actually influence a person’s intent and decision to buy more than the content of an ad or marketing material.

The emotion your marketing targets will depend on your industry, offer and audience. But consider the difference between <a href="https://www.nicolecw.com/marketing/copywriting-positive-framing-negative-framing/">positive & negative framing</a>:<ul><li>Positive Framing focuses on the benefits of getting something by promoting progress or growth. </li><li>Negative Framing focuses on the pain of losing or missing out on something by promoting prevention & solutions to avoid pain. </li></ul>So which should you use?Scientists at Yale and Duke concluded that human beings respond better to positive framing than negative framing.

Brand & Marketing: Which Emotion Should You Target? 

Scientists at Yale and Duke discovered that humans have a preference for the positive that is deeply rooted in our DNA. This cognitive bias has been illustrated in thought experiments and scientific studies for years. <ul><li>Positive Framing: ATTRACTS</li><li>Negative Framing: REPELS </li></ul>That means people will be attracted to your solution when you use positive statements. Crafting statements that scare consumers by using negative words intended to make them anxious for not using your solution, actually pushes them away.

Why Your Brand Should Use Positive Framing 

As human beings we are influenced by thousands of messages per day. Brands want our attention, purchase and loyalty. So what's the best way to get it? Appeal to our human emotions. Let's explore whether positive or negative messaging works better, and why all brands must focus not so much on WHAT they say but HOW they say it.

Learn how to leverage emotion to connect with your audience and encourage them to act.

The Ultimate Guide to Emotional Marketing

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