<ol><li class="ql-align-justify">Identifying the leadership roles needed to transform your company for the future. For your company to remain relevant, it will need distinct capabilities that allow it to deliver on its purpose, along with leaders who can envision its new place in the world and mobilize it to get there. What positions do you need on your executive team to make that happen? </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Assembling the right people. Having identified the roles your team needs, you next have to think about who will best fill them. Which individuals should you bring together so that you have the necessary talent and diversity in the C-suite </li></ol>

How (1/2)?

<ol><li>Focusing your leadership team on driving the company’s transformation.What structures and mechanisms will help you lead the company to its new destination? </li><li>Taking ownership of your leadership team’s behavior. Building the distinctive capabilities that will allow you to create real advantage requires a high degree of collaboration and a commitment to developing a team mentality so that the disparate parts of your organization operate as a harmonious whole. How can you build trust and a culture that powers the organization’s collective success?</li></ol>

How (2/2)

<ol><li>Look for people with varied experiences, who have worked within different ecosystems and understand the capabilities, technologies, channels, and transformational approaches you will be deploying. </li><li>You want leaders who have demonstrated that they can build and scale up the capabilities you aim to perfect. </li><li>Your team should reflect the diverse voices of your total ecosystem—including the customers you seek to serve, your workforce, and your partners. Very likely, those voices will cover a range of gender identities; national, racial, and ethnic origins; abilities.</li></ol>

Details Steps!

We talk about the need to both perform and transform. If you only transform but don’t perform, you have no here and now. If you only perform but don’t transform, you have no future. Therefore, in our scorecards we measure both. In our reviews we talk about both. And the targets that I give to all my executives…always [include] some transform objectives.

The role of the leadership team does not stop with making big choices; senior executives must also see that their decisions are successfully implemented. That’s what the “strategic executor” leadership paradox is all about. Your top people will need to get their hands dirty working through the implementation details and making sure that the activities of disparate parts of the organization add up to a coherent whole.

Strategic Executor

<ol><li>How much of your time is spent running the day to-day versus shaping the future</li><li>How much of your time is spent reacting to what others in the organization bring to you, rather than driving the top team’s agenda? </li><li>How often do your strategic discussions lead you to make hard choices about your company’s future? </li><li>When your team spends time on strategy, do you focus on the external environment or the bold choices that your organization must make? </li><li>How much time do you spend reviewing actions after the fact versus proactively shaping actions and a direction? </li></ol>

How to tell is team is actually leading? (1/2)

<ol><li>How often do you ask people to come back with more-detailed proposals because your team doesn’t quite have the energy or the clear vision to be decisive? </li><li>How often do you spend time debating who is responsible for solving an issue rather than addressing it? </li><li>How often do you and other members of the leadership team work together on issues? </li><li>How well do you know your colleagues on the leadership team? </li><li>Do you get the feeling that they care about your success, and do you care about theirs?</li></ol>

How to tell is team is actually leading? (2/2)

Your organization’s future depends on getting this right.

Reinventing Your Leadership Team

<ol><li>Your customers are overwhelmed with information. Help them figure out what they need to know</li><li>Analyst reports, corporate blogs, display advertising, email marketing, infographics, podcasts, white papers, word-of-mouth recommendations: All are competing for the opportunity to influence buyers.</li><li>So much accurate and trustworthy information exists online that B2B customers dedicate only 17% of their purchase process to talks with potential suppliers.</li></ol>

Sensemaking for Sales

<ol><li> Salesrep employ a version of the Socratic method, not telling customers what to think but instead helping them create a framework within which to make their own decisions. </li><li>The aim is to support customers regardless of the outcome. When the buyer’s direction aligns with the supplier’s capabilities, the reps make that abundantly clear; conversely, they bow out early and direct their attention elsewhere when alignment proves elusive. Above all else, they help customers make sense of the information they’ve encountered to make confident purchase decisions. Their approach is a form of sensemaking</li></ol>

Sales Rep use it as opportunity to sell

<ol><li>At Gartner, we surveyed 1,100 B2B customers. </li><li>Nearly 90% agreed that the information they encounter as part of a purchase is generally of high quality; believable, relevant, backed by data, supported by expert analysis, and conveyed in a compelling manner. But they struggle to make sense of it. </li><li>Fifty-five percent of respondents find the information to be trustworthy but relatively undifferentiated. And 44% find the information to be trustworthy but contradictory; the various pieces are relevant and believable, but they suggest opposing directions.</li></ol>

Facts

<ol><li>When forced to decide in the face of overwhelming amounts of information, people often fall back on cognitive biases </li><li>Common ones include anchoring (relying too heavily on the first piece of information offered), belief perseverance (clinging to one’s initial thought), and the status-quo bias, which in B2B buying often translates to customers’ saying, “We’ve decided to study this more. Call us in six months.</li></ol>

Why it makes Sense?

<ol><li>Customer’s decision confidence: the degree to which the buying group believes it has determined the right questions to consider, prioritized the information that matters most, and identified consistent themes. Customers high in decision confidence have managed to make sense of the information and feel assured of their ability to make a potentially bigger, broader, more impactful decision. They are 157% as likely as others to complete a high-quality, low regret deal.</li></ol>

What can sellers do?

<ol><li>Trust in the seller: Things typically end poorly when a customer senses that a rep has failed to provide complete and accurate information because the rep is focused on meeting his or her own needs. Customers who are highly skeptical of a rep’s claims are 1.6 times less likely to make a high-quality, low-regret deal than are customers who believe their rep’s claims.</li></ol>

What can sellers do (Contd.)? 

<ol><li>Connecting customers with relevant resources: Sensemaking reps curate the information they share for utility and clarity, including only what will help customers advance with increasing confidence along their purchase journey. Sensemaking reps readily admit the limits of their knowledge. When skepticism of sellers can be so damaging, there’s clear value in simply saying, “I don’t know” rather than manufacturing a half-truth that can be easily fact-checked. And admitting one’s limitations can forge a powerful connection with buyers, who probably don’t know either. </li></ol>

1. What sensemaking sellers do Differently?

<ol><li>Clarifying information: In many ways, a sensemaking rep’s key to success is the ability to boost a customer’s belief that the rep empathizes with the difficulty of making a complex purchase decision. That requires helping customers feel that they’ve asked the right questions, understood competing perspectives, and accounted for potential contingencies. Sensemaking sellers are particularly adept at clarifying complex problems, explaining technical information, and turning abstract concepts into understandable, shareable, and compelling insights. </li></ol>

2. What sensemaking sellers do differently?

<ol><li>Collaborating on customer learning. A sensemaking rep ensures that the conclusions customers reach are their own. The goal is to Socratically guide buyers on a learning journey, not tell them what to do. Sensemaking reps often encourage customers to independently verify seller provided information and give them an easy way to do so. They offer a framework for learning that makes customers feel in control; that confidence increases the chances that buyers will make a decision rather than delay or stand pat</li></ol>

3. What sensemaking sellers do differently?

Your customers are overwhelmed with information. Help them figure out what they need to know.

A scanned object, or building in some cases is not a digital twin, it’s a digital representation and static. It serves a purpose by populating the space and depending on the level of the scan will only be the exterior facing, or it will include the interior structure allowing you to fully traverse through it.

IOT & Metaverse

Pulling a digital twin into the metaverse not only allows you to recreate it in full with live data, you can place it into the rest of the rendered world where live data also is fed — meaning it will operate or behave exactly how it would in the real world. Want to model how a car’s characteristics would behave with the same conditions that are taking place right now (weather, population, other vehicles on the road) then you can in the metaverse.

Digital Twin & Metaverse

“The metaverse is this digital world that lives alongside our physical one and allows us to live, work and play alongside each other. And digital twins are the foundations that the metaverse will be built on.”

What is Metaverse?

Some time ago I wrote a piece on Forbes about the Internet of Things together with Artificial Intelligence and how they would be inseparable. It’s maybe time to revisit that in the scope of the…

Digital Twins, IOT and the Metaverse

Test

Linkedin Learning

Use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for all your web code tags - Google Tag Manager Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

<ol><li>Kenshoo - Deals with Social media marketing and search media marketing</li><li>Wordstream - Good for small orgs doing PPC adv</li><li>Marin - Offers the same features like Kenshoo and Wordstream</li></ol>

Bid Management Tool

<ol><li>Size of Email list is important because the cost of the tool will depend on this</li><li>Lead generation tool will be an important consideration to connect with other tools for digital marketing. We should be able to send different emails to different customers in their specific purchase cycle</li><li>Automation - Need to choose tools that allow automation </li><li>Easy to Use</li><li>Scalability - We should be able to easily upgrade that allows us to add more users later</li><li>Anaytics-to know open rate, drop rate, and AB testing</li></ol>

Email Marketing Considerations

<ol><li>Google Adv Manager </li><li>Search Engine Marketing for Yahoo (Verizon Media) and Bing (Microsoft Adv)</li><li>SEM for China - Baidu</li><li>SEM Rush - Can analyse competitor information</li><li>SFYFU - Also lets analyse competitor information. How much is a particular competitor being searched</li></ol>

Search Engine Marketing

<ol><li>Hubspot - The industry leader for Email Marketing. </li><li>Constant Contact </li><li>Aweber - Good tool for Lead generation for people to opt into your emails. Integrates well with WordPress</li><li>Active Campaign - Fully functional email marketing campaign like Hubspot with inbuilt CRM and integration to WordPress</li><li>Mailchimp - Industry Leader. Multiple app integrations. It is popular with some people and others don't like it at all. It is the only one with has a free plan and we can send up to 2000 emails</li></ol>

Top Email Marketing Tools

<ol><li>Google Ads is just to manage ads on google tools like Youtube, instagram </li><li>Google Adv Manager is for larger organization but it is better to use Google Adv Manager for all companies</li><li>OpenX - It is a step up from using google adv manager and shows ads on premium ads</li><li>AppNexus - AT&T tool for video advertisement</li><li>Facebook for Business - also supports video adv</li></ol>

Video Advertising Tools

Considerations:<ol><li>Payment Structure (CPC/CPA) - Choose the ones that pay only based on action</li><li>Robust tracking features</li><li>Commission Customization - Find platforms that have high-quality affiliates.</li><li>Reputation </li></ol>

Selecting Affiliate Marketing Platform

<ol><li>Google Ad Mob</li><li>Media.net - Does both mobile and web</li><li>Apple Search Ads - Show the adv in apple app store. This is the only tool to advertise on app store</li><li>Unity Apps - Use it to advertise within the mobile games</li><li>Inmobi - High quality large network for moible advertising</li><li>Text Magic - Reaching your audience via text mesages</li></ol>

Mobile Adv Platform

<ol><li>CJ.com - Commission junction. In terms of volume it is great but not great quality</li><li>Rakuten Advertising - Focuses on quality and ensures that publishers are of good reputation</li><li>Click Bank - Popular liek CJ. Is it great option for Digital Products and sell and intangible product. </li></ol>

Top Affiliate Networks

<ol><li>Adobe Spark - Free and allows to create graphics </li><li>Adobe Products - Adobe Create Suite is complex and paid</li><li>Final Cut Pro from apple - Very high learning curve </li><li>GIMP - Free open source tool similar to photoshop.</li><li>Canva - Easy to learn and use</li><li>PIXLR - Tool for editing images. More easy to use than GIMP</li></ol>

Options for Creating Content

<ol><li>Scoop.it - Most popular application to embed content on website</li><li>Feedly - Great tool to subscribe to blogs and get to know if new content is published</li><li>Pocket - Similar to evernote but very useful for content curation</li><li>Pinterest</li><li>Scribly.io - Full fledge solution for markets. You can hire marketers on this platform who will help you create high quality content</li><li>Pearltrees - Easier to use than Scribly.io</li></ol>Feedly to find all of your content. You've got Pocket and Pinterest to save it, and then you've got Pearltrees and Scoop.it to present it to the end users. Again, don't forget how much value you can get out of content curation.

Web Analytics Tool

<ol><li>Sitespect - Used by large organizations. Robust tool for optimization of the website. These are people who are going to help improve performance, security of the website</li><li>Mixpanel - It is a behavioiral analytics tool. It is for A/B testing. Measure the success of launches and learn about your users</li><li>Crazy Egg - Show the heatmap analysis of your website. Use it for doing A/B testing</li><li>Hotjar - Similar to Crazy egg</li></ol>

Website User Experience tool

SEO helps to get more users to the website<ol><li>Yoast SEO - It is an SEO plugin for Wordpress. Free version is great</li><li></li></ol>

SEO Tools and techniques

<ol><li>Social Media - HootSuite</li><li>Advertising - Google Ad Manager - Display, SEM, Video Advertising</li><li>Email Marketing - HubSpot</li><li>SEO - Ubersuggest is the best tool, Moz Pro, Yoast SEO</li><li>Design - GIMP and CANVA</li><li>Curation - Scoop.it</li><li>Affiliate - CJ Affiliate</li></ol>

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Rishabh Arora
@rishabharora

Reinventing Your Leadership Team

Sensemaking for Sales

Digital Twins, IOT and the Metaverse

Use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for all your web code tags - Google Tag Manager Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Comparing bid management platforms - Marketing Tools: Digital Marketing Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Rishabh Arora@rishabharora

Reinventing Your Leadership Team

Sensemaking for Sales

Digital Twins, IOT and the Metaverse

Use Google Tag Manager (GTM) for all your web code tags - Google Tag Manager Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Comparing bid management platforms - Marketing Tools: Digital Marketing Video Tutorial | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Rishabh Arora
@rishabharora