Tag: social

Q4 2014 Sales Enablement market news and trends

As my list of Sales Enablement solutions has grown, I would like to take a look at some recent Sales Enablement market news and trends:
Highspot which is on my list of Sales Enablement solutions and is led by Microsoft veterans, nets $9.6M to hone sales pitches according to a gigaom.com article by Barb Darrow from 7-Nov-2014:

Highspot, which aims to help sales and marketing people do their thing better and more efficiently, now has $9.6 million in Series A funding from Madrona Venture Group. Most big companies create a ton of content — marketing collateral, spec sheets, white papers, PowerPoint presentations — but have little idea of which of those pieces will appeal to what segment of customer or would-be customer. Highspot’s goal is to sort through all that, figure out what material to send and then track how it is received. Was it opened, forwarded, referred to the circular file? Which one slide of a deck of 15 was viewed (if any)?

Seattle-based Highspot, which competes with Clearslide, Brainshark

(Now Bigtincan)

and others, offers what it calls an “intelligent portal” to make it easier to find, share and repurpose the right content, scores the content and provides real-time alerts on customer engagement. It will integrate with Salesforce.com CRM and popular file services like Box and Dropbox. Highspot is led by a cadre of former Microsoft hands. CEO Robert Wahbe was formerly corporate VP for Microsoft’s Server & Tools Division; Oliver Sharp was GM of strategy for that group; Scott Gellock was GM of engineering for Identity and Networking Services for Azure; and Chief Architect David Wortendyke was partner architect for Azure.

This funding comes atop $2.7 million raised last year.

5-Nov-2014, startupbeat.com wrote about San Francisco-based Immediately.

immediatelyapp.com is was a cross-platform email tool for salespeople designed to enable closing deals from anywhere, as opportunities happen. From both your phone & computer, you can track when your emails get opened, get reminders to follow up with leads, offer suitable meeting times in a couple taps, and use email templates for sales pitches. Automatically syncs your prospect emails into Salesforce, and pulls relevant contact information from LinkedIn, so that you always know who you’re talking to at-a-glance. “Sales enablement is a huge space with a lot of players and fragmentation.”

If you’re a salesperson, you most likely use a CRM system, lead gen software, a campaign tool, and a bunch of email tools. Email is where the action happens, and there should be no need to have five apps opened to be able to reply to a sales prospect’s inquiry.

Sales, or closing deals in general, is no longer a 9-to-5 job. You’re always selling, always closing. If you don’t, your competition will. And so having perfectly-timed actionable information, and the right tools to take action, is the winning formula. We give you both, as opportunities happen, immediately.

Brainshark (Now Bigtincan) which is on my list of Sales Enablement solutions unveiled a tool/platform that provides sales reps with more contextual content as per this destinationcrm.com article by Maria Minsker from 13-Oct-2014:

Sales enablement solution provider Brainshark has launched the Sales Accelerator, a tool designed to help sales representatives easily access onboarding and training resources as well as find the right content to drive sales based on the context of different customer engagements. […] and is deeply integrated with the Salesforce platform. […] [The] key functionality allows sales representatives to organize and categorize content in the way that’s most relevant to them and gives them access to the right content in the right context. Often, sales teams find content created by the marketing department to be obsolete or not appropriate

— according to the IDC, a whopping 75 percent of marketing material isn’t used in sales.

The Sales Accelerator makes it easier for salespeople to sort through existing content to find the right fit and can also deliver content based on context, such as a specific rep’s account records, the prospect’s industry, and other factors.

The taxonomy that sales reps use within Salesforce will be translated into the categorization within Brainshark to streamline the experience between the two systems […]

“Content plays a crucial role in the selling process. Sales Accelerator not only helps sales representatives get a handle on the content they need, but also helps sales heads keep an eye on what’s working and what isn’t,” […] “They can ask ‘What content are the A players using to sell? What content are the B players using? What are the A players doing to drive opportunities forward that the B players might not be?'” […] Marketers can also use the solution to inform their content creation efforts by determining what content actually works on the sales end. Additionally, Brainshark’s new platform empowers sales reps to create their own rich content, such as video, quickly. As video becomes an increasingly effective sales tool, sales teams are looking for ways to incorporate it without getting bogged down in a lengthy editing process. “Buyers don’t want to read PDFs anymore. They would much rather see a quick video, and we’re making it very easy for sales reps to create them. They plug in some information, and they’ve got an interactive, effective piece of content,” […] The video content is mobile-ready, available through Salesforce, and is responsive to different device makes and sizes. Also available on the Sales Accelerator platform is smart search, which allows users to create shortcuts and mark frequently used or self-authored content as favorite content. The platform also offers detailed analytics and dashboards that enable sales teams to access their Salesforce data and see how content is performing.

Tamara Schenk made great points on these kinds of platforms in part 1 and part 2 of her series:

[…] Buyers can find what they need online, and make their purchases online. But in complex selling environments where various different stakeholders from different levels and functions are involved in buying decisions, conversations don’t follow a script. Critical, strategic thinking and adaptive competencies are key elements for sales success. Mapping a provider’s capabilities to the customer’s context and to their concepts requires a thoughtful, strategic and tailored approach.

[…] Every customer makes every decision differently, every time, so there is always a need to adjust, to customize and to tailor content, messages and strategies. Examples include adjusting the content wording to fit the customer’s terminology, and helping the customer clarify or even redefine the objectives and desired results they want to achieve. Sales force enablement can only design content and messages for pre-defined buying situations and buyer roles. Mapping to the real buying situations and mapping to the real buyers, the individuals – that makes the difference.

[…] In complex sales, critical and strategic thinking can never be replaced by sales enablement.

[…] It’s not enough to get the creation process right and to provide value messages on an enablement platform. To be effective, salespeople have to be trained to deliver the value messages effectively. This is a challenge that’s often overlooked. Messaging training has to cover two dimensions in parallel: knowledge transfer and behavioral change because value messaging is different from pushing products. […] Sales enablement can create real value if the messaging creation process is changed and if salespeople are trained to deliver those value messages in different situations.
Often overlooked, but key to success: The front line sales managers’ coaching approach has to support exactly this transformation to reinforce continuous improvement – training, practicing, coaching, adjusting, practicing -> learning.

Finally, salespeople are always responsible for the messages they use in front of customers. Only they can decide, based on synthesizing the customer’s context, the different stakeholders’ concepts and their specific decision dynamic, what kind of messages will create value and support their perspectives.

4-Nov-2014, Alyson Button Stone did some predicting for 2015:

[…] According to a recent report by InsideView [http://www.insideview.com/social-selling], 41 percent of companies on Facebook report generating more leads; companies on Twitter report twice the number of leads; and companies with active blogs report 67 percent more leads per month. IBM reported a 400 percent increase in sales in their first quarter, tied to a pilot program of social selling. The list goes on and on. Given these trends, 2015 should be a banner year for adoption of social selling techniques — from C suite executives, sales managers, and individual sales reps. This is all for the good, as it not only builds the organization’s brand, but the individual’s personal brand as well. Individuals become trusted experts engaging potential and current customers, which of course builds trust in the company and its products and services. A salesperson’s personal brand, I believe, is the best long-term investment they can make. Once everybody figures out that all selling is social selling, it will be their most precious asset. […]

Loyalty and rewards programs in Canada

Shario app
Shario app (also see these visuals)

Normally, this blog is focused on Sales Enablement for b2b.

Also see my list of Canadian Sales Enablement companies / experts.

Here is my worldwide list.

As a Canada-based co-founder of Shario – mobile app for customer referral & loyalty at brick & mortar businesses – I started a work in progress list of similar apps / solutions / companies in Canada.

I also added a few eCommerce players.

Let me know what I’m missing. Last update 20-Apr-2023:

“A 2014 Maritz (Bond Brand Loyalty) report found that 90 percent of Canadians are members of at least one loyalty rewards program. We have also quickly embraced online shopping and have a high penetration of mobile usage. Almost 80 percent of Canada’s addressable population owns a mobile phone, according to a 2014 eMarketer report. These factors, along with companies like Starbucks and Tim Hortons who have tied loyalty to mobile payments, are helping to drive Canadian comfort levels with mobile payment adoption.”

AdvanTag advantag.me
Aeroplan Montreal-based Aeroplan loyalty program for Air Canada Used to be made by AIMIA. Aeroplan Membership Card. Aeroplan is a coalition loyalty program. Used to be owned by Aimia, a global loyalty management company. The Aeroplan program was created in July 1984 by Air Canada. Montreal, January 10, 2019 – Data-driven marketing and loyalty analytics company Aimia Inc. (TSX: AIM) (“Aimia”) today announced the completion of the previously-announced sale of Aimia Canada Inc. (“Aimia Canada”), the owner and operator of the Aeroplan loyalty program, to Air Canada, pursuant to the share purchase agreement entered into and announced on November 26, 2018 (“the share purchase agreement”).
AIMIA (see Aeroplan). Montreal, January 10, 2019 – Data-driven marketing and loyalty analytics company Aimia Inc. (TSX: AIM) (“Aimia”) today announced the completion of the previously-announced sale of Aimia Canada Inc. (“Aimia Canada”), the owner and operator of the Aeroplan loyalty program, to Air Canada, pursuant to the share purchase agreement entered into and announced on November 26, 2018 (“the share purchase agreement”).
Air Miles by LoyaltyOne, Inc. AIR MILES Reward Program Membership Card www.airmiles.ca Airmiles is currently testing iBeacons and will be testing Android Beacon technology soon (end of 2015 / start of 2016)
Altitude – Air Canada rewards its most loyal customers through its top tier recognition program, Altitude, that offers frequent flyers
AMEX Rewards / catalogue.membershiprewards.ca American Express Rewards
Android Pay / Google Wallet app
AvidTap
Avion points – RBC’s Avion cardholders earn RBC rewards points. The most significant benefit of RBC’s Avion card is that you can fly on any airline, with no blackout periods or seat restrictions. “Two of the most popular travel rewards programs in the country are CIBC’s Aerogold and RBC’s Avion.”
belly card bellycard.com by mobivity mobivity.com @mobivity new name Hatch Loyalty: Hatchloyalty.com stuzo.com
Best Buy Rewards Best Buy Reward Zone
BMO Perks – BMO partnered with merchants for exclusive offers and savings when using a BMO MasterCard with specific merchants
Bond Brand Loyalty (see SynapzeINSTANT™)
Buytopia (Toronto’s buytopia.ca launched SnapSaves, now owned by Groupon; an app that pays consumers cash to shop) snap.groupon.com
CAA The Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) is rebranding its two-decade old loyalty program to CAA Rewards™ from Show Your Card & Save. Over the last 15 years, CAA Rewards has grown to be one of Canada’s largest loyalty programs, with the most partners worldwide – more than 164,000 locations for savings worldwide, including 110,000 retail locations in North America & popular online merchants.
Canadian Tire Rewards / Canadian Tire Money – Canadian Tire debuts mobile credit card app, game and loyalty card; September 23, 2015: “new mPay & Play mobile app available to all holders of the retailer’s Canadian Tire Options MasterCard. Allows users to pay for all of their Canadian Tire store purchases, redeem loyalty points, and unlock badges to collect bonus digital Canadian Tire money.” Canadian Tire’s new mPay&Play app for its MasterCard customers combines mobile banking payments with loyalty programs & promotional offers.
cardstar cardstar.com expresscheckoutapp.com
Carrot Rewards app. More Rewards morerewards.ca was one of four charter loyalty providers – joining Aeroplan, the Cineplex Scene movie rewards program and Petro Canada’s Petro Points – to partner with the new Carrot Rewards app, which rewards customers for making positive lifestyle choices. Toronto-based Social Change Rewards, which developed the app Carrot Rewards. Created with funding from both the federal & B.C. governments, as well as a reported $2m from VCs, the Carrot App awards points to users who make positive health & lifestyle choices, such as taking a healthy quiz or looking at a healthy recipe. The app is designed to capitalize on Canadians’ love of apps & loyalty programs. The average Canadian has 4 loyalty cards in their wallet, with more than 50% saying they frequently use them to accumulate miles & points.
Checkout 51 checkout51.com
CIBC Aerogold. Two of the most popular travel rewards programs in the country are CIBC’s Aerogold and RBC’s Avion.
CIBC mobile payment app
Clubovahi clubovahi.com Toronto, Canada
Drop Loyalty Inc. “One rewards program for all your favorite brands.” Launched in Canada on the iOS app store June 29, 2016. earnwithdrop.com https://www.joindrop.com “By linking any credit or debit card you use for every-day purchases, Drop will find your purchases as you make them. As Drop discovers your relevant purchases, it rewards you with points” (Built in Toronto, ON). “Already raised $1 million CAD in funding from U.S.-based investors like ff Venture Capital, White Star Capital, and Rothenberg Ventures.” Highline VC is the only Canadian investor. “The company is partnered with brands like Wealthsimple, Foodora, Chef’s Plate, Urbery, Thirstie, Carnivore Club, & FanXchange, […] “With some of the programs out there in market, a lot of brands that are promoted are not exactly the brands that young people shop at,””
Delta (see Marriott Rewards)
Denny’s Canada loyalty and rewards program – MyDenny’s, a new social, loyalty platform
Esso Extra
Flipp (iOS/Android) flipp.com Flipp takes the weekly flyers crammed in your mailbox and puts them on your phone or tablet in a clean, searchable app.
GasBuddy (iOS/Android/Blackberry/Windows Phone) gasbuddy.com finding the station closest to you with the lowest price per liter
Global Payments Inc. / Global Payments Canada; integrating their payment technology offerings with Virtual Next’s (see below) mobile payment & loyalty solution. Merchants will be able to accept payment via both Apple’s & Google’s digital wallets. Goal: launch the product in fall 2015.
GoodLife Fitness Member Advantage goodlifefitness.com/member-advantage/ goodlifefitness.com/rewards.html “Living the GoodLife is more than just a gym membership.” Introducing the GoodLife Member Advantage Program. Exclusive to GoodLife members
Groupon snap.groupon.com
HBC Rewards hbc.com/hbcrewards/ Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) Hudson’s Bay Rewards™ Card. thebay.com
hmv Canada, retail destination for music and entertainment. The company’s loyalty rewards program is called pure purehmv.com. 1.7 million plus activated members. The affairs, business and property of Pure HMV Loyalty Limited (In administration)(the Company) are being managed by the Joint Administrators. The Joint Administrators act as agents for the Company and contract without personal liability. Neil David Gostelow, William James Wright and David John Pike are authorised to act as insolvency practitioners by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Pure HMV Loyalty Limited (In administration) is registered in England No 08384690. Registered office: 15 Canada Square, London, E14 5GL. We are bound by the Insolvency Code of Ethics.
Holt Renfrew – Feb. 11, 2015 registration for Holt Icon Privileges was opened; microsite, HoltIcon.com Canadian department store chain Holt Renfrew is rolling out a new bespoke rewards program: Holt Icon Privileges
Influitive influitive.com helps companies mobilize their advocates to boost referral leads, reference calls, social media participation and more. Toronto & San Francisco. PostBeyond postbeyond.com cloud-based Employee Engagement & Advocacy Platform that enables employees & partners to post approved brand content to their personal networks in an efficient, consistent, & measurable way. $9M in revenue? PostBeyond Inc. Toronto, ON, Canada. 8-Dec-2021 Influitive Inc influitive.com @influitive (also Toronto, ON, Canada) acquired PostBeyond for an undisclosed amount.
Kangaroo Rewards kangaroorewards.com mobile loyalty and rewards program. Muscle Depot already deployed the Kangaroo Rewards program across all their locations in Montreal, Laval and Blainville. A Mobicept Product
Key To The City: T.O. Key To The City @TorontoCityKey Toronto Key To The City! Get instant loyalty perks citywide with your own key. Show The Key. Get The Perks. torontocitykey.com
KnexxLocal (with Instamonial, KnexxLocal’s free mobile app, local businesses can get more word-of-mouth referrals) Canada, Toronto, ON
Kobo Super Points aims to make reading more rewarding. Kobo launches rewards loyalty program where customers instantly earn points with every eBook and magazine purchase they make online at Kobo’s site, or via Kobo’s free reading app. They can redeem those points from a catalogue of more than one million titles across a variety of genres.
Linkett linkett.com formerly WestonEx / westonexpressions.com “Creating Consumer Engagement & the Ability to Track it”. Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Loblaw (see Ugo and PC Plus)
LoyaltyOne, Inc. (see AIR MILES)
Marriott Rewards, Marriott International’s award-winning loyalty program, is being expanded to include Delta Hotels and Resorts. Marriott Rewards members can now earn points or miles and Elite night credits, and redeem for free night stays, at twenty-one Delta Hotels across Canada, with the brand’s fourteen remaining Canadian properties joining the program in late April 2016. Delta Privilege members will also now enjoy the full benefits of Marriott Rewards membership. “Marriott Rewards’ expansion to include Delta Hotels gives our members even more choice when traveling in Canada,” said Don Cleary, President of Marriott Hotels of Canada. Delta Hotels features properties located in major Canadian centers of business as well as popular tourist destinations, including its flagship property Delta Toronto, Delta Ottawa City Centre, and the elegant Delta Grand Okanagan Resort—all of which are now available for members to earn and redeem points. Marriott International acquired the Delta Hotels brand in Apr-2015.
McDonald’s offers a McCafe sticker card for regular coffee drinkers
Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), mobile payments venture co-owned by US retail chains. CurrentC, CurrentC & Logo, MCX, MCX Merchant Customer Exchange & Design and all associated proprietary marks are trademarks of Merchant Customer Exchange LLC
Metro (adds mobile component to loyalty program)
metro moi Program
mobilexco The Mobile Experience Company, Whitby, ON, Canada mobilexco.com Mobile marketing platform, Tether™, helps businesses build relationships with people. Fosters 1:1 connections between merchants & customers and tracks their actions across all media touch-points (online & offline). Measures everything in real-time & easy to identify actionable insights. Simplified the world of mobile marketing – No apps to download. No special hardware required. Tether-Experience-Management-Platform
mobizou mobizou.com Location Based Mobile Marketing Platform with loyalty & referrals. Calgary, AB
Mopals
More Rewards morerewards.ca is one of four charter loyalty providers – joining Aeroplan, the Cineplex Scene movie rewards program and Petro Canada’s Petro Points – to partner with the new Carrot Rewards app, which rewards customers for making positive lifestyle choices.
New Rewards – a joint program between Copeesh! and New Canadians. Coming soon.
Omnego Inc omnego.com (white-label mobile app platform that empowers mobile engagement between businesses and their mobile users)
PayRange Inc. payrange.com mobile payment solution for machines, launching the vending industry’s first mobile based rewards and loyalty platform designed specifically for automated retail. The company is distributing its BluKey device to operators in the US & Canada. Consumers can download the free mobile app for iPhone or Android.
PC Points/Plus anyone can join the new and improved PC Plus programme to earn free groceries at select stores across Canada. Besides being your actual points card, the app lets you load special offers of the week (the items that are going to earn you extra points), see your points balance, find participating stores, get recipes and create shopping lists. 1000 points equal $1 in groceries.
Perka digital loyalty marketing platform launched Apr-2011. First Data, the global payment processing company, acquired Perka after purchasing Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile payments startup Clover
Perkopolis perkopolis.com
Perkville perkville.com
PETRO POINTS
plum rewards; Chapters plum points are collected by buying in-store at any Indigo, Chapters, Coles, Indigospirit, World’s Biggest Bookstore, SmithBooks and The Book Company locations
PunchTab
pure (see hmv Canada)
Qriket qriket.com
RBC Royal Bank of Canada grew its mobile wallet user base since moving from a SIM-based model to host card emulation (HCE). Support for gift cards, loyalty cards and digital receipts is also being added to its HCE wallet. The new features will allow customers to manage and redeem loyalty points from more than 150 loyalty programs as well as track the return or warranty period for purchased items by interacting with digital receipts stored within the app. Royal Bank of Canada Exploring Blockchain Loyalty Program
Ribitt ribitt.io @ribitt_rewards Ribitt is was a platform to discover & experience the best local shops in every neighbourhood. Be Rewarded for Shopping Local: Earn points on purchases you already make at neighbourhood shops & redeem them at any shop for anything you want. iOS & Android app. Toronto & Peterborough, ON
RBC Rewards – Redeem your Visa rewards points for merchandise, travel, gift cards/certificates, charitable donations & RBC Financial Rewards vouchers.
RedFlagDeals (iOS/Mobile web) redflagdeals.com If there is a deal to be had in Canada, it is most likely being discussed on RedFlagDeals long before you hear about it.
Referral Rock referralrock.com @ReferralRock Customer Referral Service – Design, track and manage your program to get more customers
RewardingYourself Loyalty Wallet by LoyaltyMatch Inc. loyaltymatch.com (Loyalty and Gamification Saas Platform)
RewardLoop (mobile rewards program that rewards you for spending at your favorite merchants) rewardloop.com
Richtree Market Pass By Natural Markets Food Group richtreenaturalmarket.com
Rogers readies loyalty points program in bid to keep customers from switching to rival carriers. Rogers Communications will launch the national rewards program in stages, starting in Red Deer, Alta.
Rogers Mobile Shopper solution (enables customers to engage with brands in-store through mobile offers, applications & mobile payments technology. RioCan, Canada’s largest owner of shopping centres, is first to trial the Rogers Mobile Shopper solution in select Ontario-based shopping centres)
Save On More
SCENE Card http://www.scene.ca sceneplus.ca SCENE points / Scene Plus
Scotiabank SCENE Card. Earn SCENE points by paying with your Scotiabank SCENE debit, SCENE VISA or SCENE Prepaid VISA card.
Sears Card Sears Canada Inc announced updates to loyalty program and credit card transition process; says enhanced Sears club loyalty program is set to launch before the holiday shopping season 2015. Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. Ceased operations: 14-Jan-2018
Shario @shario https://angel.co/shario customer referral & loyalty app for brick & mortar businesses. [Full-disclosure: I’m was co-founder of Shario. It was designed by User Experience Design company MING Labs] behance.net/gallery/11853341/Shario-App
Shopify (Reward customers for each new customer that they bring to your store: Apps like Zferral and ReferralCandy automate this. Traditional loyalty programs where rewards are offered to repeat customers based on how much they buy: Apps like PunchTab & Incentify)
Shopkick
Shoppers Drug Mart (Optimum Rewards Program) Shoppers Optimum Card
Simply Good’s coupon app GetLoop
SmoothPay smoothpay.com
Snapsaves (iOS/Android) snapsaves.com now owned by Groupon snap.groupon.com
Snipp Interactive Inc. Loyalty Program Of Choice For Unilever, L’oreal, Proctor And Gamble, Kellogs
SnipSnap Coupon App by SnipSnap App LLC
SPC Card student loyalty program SPC Card with 1.1 million members; digital Student Price Card. The digital SPC Card is available via the SPC Card mobile app on iTunes and Android devices. Giving students relevant offers based on their location, making redemption easy via the Digital Card, and adding personalized offers the SPC app is engaging millennials. Soon to be accepted at all of SPC’s 15k partner locations throughout Canada, making it one of the largest mobile loyalty card activations currently in market.
Square (“Create and Apply Rewards with Square Register”)
Starbucks (My Starbucks Rewards). Starbucks has both an app & rewards card that gives free drinks & food to frequent customers. Starbucks Canada announced that it will bring the company’s innovative mobile ordering feature, Mobile Order & Pay, to approximately 300 company-owned stores in the Greater Toronto Area. Beginning in April 2016, you will no longer reach gold status with 30 stars or 30 transactions, and then score free food with 12 stars. Instead, with 2 stars awarded for each $1 spent, it takes 300 stars to get to gold and 125 stars for gold members to get freebies.
Stocard is a mobile Startup from Germany that has set the goal to make customer loyalty go mobile, thus making loyalty solutions more powerful for consumers and retailers.
Subway is expanding its Wi-Fi-enabled loyalty program to 600 Canadian stores following a successful pilot, highlighting how fast-food chains can leverage mobile to drive in-store traffic, especially among millennials. Subway has collaborated with Turnstyle to power the rewards platform, which will send a mobile coupon for a free sandwich to consumers who sign into the store’s Wi-Fi for the first time. This tactic is well-poised to bring hordes of new consumers into Subway locations and fuel a myriad of loyalty sign-ups, even among individuals who initially only want to use the complimentary Wi-Fi.
suretap wallet by Rogers Communications rogers.com/web/content/suretap
Sweet Tooth Rewards (turn-key points & rewards app for your Magento eCommerce store)
SynapzeINSTANT – 27-Jan-2016 – Bond Brand Loyalty has rolled out an innovative new solution to help North American banks lead in the competitive landscape of reward and loyalty programs, all while offering bank customers a near “endless aisle” of instant redemption with leading retail brands. Better yet, the standalone rewards app requires no large-scale retailer POS integration or associated expense. SynapzeINSTANT™: A new app-based solution for any bank with a credit card loyalty program. It was created to help ease the ever-increasing costs financial institutions endure while trying to differentiate.
Tab Payments: Canadian restaurants currently using Tab Payments will be able to upgrade to Velocity’s payment and loyalty platform
The Club Sobeys Program
The More Rewards Program
Thirdshelf (retail app & loyalty platform) thirdshelf.com
Tim Hortons added a smartphone payment option to its lineup of mobile apps across iOS, Android, BlackBerry. Called “Pay with TimmyMe” it uses a pre-registered Tim Card to allow payments from the smartphone. Also launching its own loyalty rewards program partnering with CIBC for a Visa credit card that accumulates points redeemable at Tim Hortons stores.
TimePlay the company behind Cineplex TimePlay. Platform that delivers interactive, multi-player experiences while providing a targeted portal for offer delivery & e-commerce. Turns a mobile device into an interactive gaming device enabling thousands of participants to engage together and influence outcomes on a second screen. Toronto, ON, Canada & Los Angeles, Venice, CA
Turnstyle. “Subway’s expansion of Turnstyle throughout its network will continue to help the brand learn more about its customers, increase its marketing base and grow meaningful customer engagement opportunities,” said Chris Gilpin, CEO of Turnstyle. “The platform will enable new Subway restaurants to increase customer loyalty (visit frequency) and create compelling omnichannel marketing initiatives.”
Ugo (initially allow customers to load their TD Visa, President’s Choice Financial MasterCard & PC Plus cards into a mobile wallet. PC points can be redeemed at Loblaw & banner store locations)
Velocity: Canadian restaurants currently using Tab Payments will be able to upgrade to Velocity’s payment and loyalty platform
vicinity rewards (developed by US-based company, FiveStars. Launched in Canada by Rogers Communications. Vincity is a loyalty program for small business that rewards customers when they visit their store.)
Virtualnext virtualnext.com, Toronto, Canada & US based. Virtual Next is working together with Global Payments (see above)
Wallet (part of iOS)
Walmart Rewards
WestJet Rewards

Prospecting and lead generation

PhantomBuster

Screen Shot 2022-06-30 at 8.59.17 pmphantombuster.com @officialpbuster PhantomBuster opens a new era of Lead Generation. Automations & data extraction to help you grow faster. Salespeople & Marketers shouldn’t need to code to be the best at their job. Phantom Buster is their toolbox to extract the data they need, automate actions & get the job done better & faster.

7-Feb-2012, Lauren Carlson wrote ‘5 Social Media Strategies for B2B Sales Success’. In her post Lauren presents five ways in which B2B sales professionals can leverage social media to find and win more business. E.g.

“[…] Try searching social media sites and tools for certain signal phrases, such as “seeking vendor recommendations,” or those that mention specific pain points your company can address. Refine your searches to social media channels your target customers use, such as by relevant industry hashtags on Twitter or industry-specific groups on LinkedIn or Facebook. This method of discovery requires minimal effort and can uncover leads that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. […]”

From my own experience, I would add zapier.com and ifttt [both can be set up to search twitter etc], socialmention socialmention.com @socialmention developed by @jonnyjon, and of course Google Alerts [which can be a bit slow] as free tools that allow companies to track their brand, to identify their potential customers, or as Laura writes to “track their competition. They can see what tactics their competitors are using” and when the competition is failing at something. However, Lauren also mentions “that many C-level execs aren’t chatting it up on Twitter and LinkedIn”, but that the people, who influence them or at least have access to them, could be.

The Importance of Context

On September 7, 2010, Matthias Roebel from BizSphere wrote “The Importance of Context for the Enterprise 2.0”:

Just a few days ago Joe Galvin from Sirius Decisions wrote about how important Social Media – as an approach for better internal collaboration – is as part of a Sales Enablement strategy. I think he is absolutely right. What used to be the informal coffee corner chat before nowadays is mimicked in Social Media platforms. Over time, people will learn that even within an enterprise the sharing of information is beneficial for everyone in the end. Yes, there may be a lot of sceptics around, especially in sales teams, but with the right programs and incentives offered, they will make the jump to the new social collaboration paradigm.

However, the flip side of extensive social collaboration might be the appearance of new information silos as well as growing information overload. Without the social collaboration being moderated to a certain extend, it might lose some of its potential impact on the overall performance of the sales teams. Aaron Roe Fulkerson discussed this in a recent blog post: “The importance of context: why Enterprise 2.0 still fails to deliver value”.

web 3.0 with BizSphere

 

A company might use a lot of different types of social collaboration platforms – the challenges is: How can they be orchestrated in a way, that actual knowledge exchange is taking place across existing team and functional structures? And how can the content generated be aligned to some generally agreed upon enterprise structures? What companies, that are serious about implementing a Social Media strategy for sales, should think about, is to create and maintain an enterprise context.

Enterprise 2.0 from a Sales Enablement point of view

Then collaboration can take place within this context and will add greater value to a broader audience. Ideally, the enterprise context should constantly evolve based on feedback gathered during the ongoing social collaboration.

Chief Listening Officer – Chief Listener – CLO

One of my past job titles explained by Advertising Age:

‘Chief Listeners’ Use Technology to Track, Sort Company Mentions
Relatively New Role Is Becoming More Commonplace in Major Marketing Companies

by Irina Slutsky
Published: August 30, 2010

“[…] the CLO’s job is one of “broad listening” – as Dell has such a deep penetration globally in so many different markets.

“Our chief listener is critical to making sure the right people in the organization are aware of what the conversations on the web are saying about us, so that relevant people in the business can connect with customers,”

Unlike many social-media jobs, this position is very inward-facing. She’s listening to Dell customers and consumers and giving all the intel to her Dell colleagues internally.

[…] “Dell has been listening for four years and created a position called ‘Listening Czar’ two years ago.

[…] said their companies were driving innovation through customer feedback. […]”

An Enterprise 2.0

I just found the following graphic in the blog post ‘The hyper-social organization’ by Joachim Niemeier @JoachimNiemeier from June 29, 2010. I’m not sure who the author of the graphic is. When this is an Enterprise 2.0, then I can’t wait to see how an Enterprise 3.0 looks like (with everything being semantic).
Hyper social

Relating this to Sales Enablement, I would like to point to my post ‘Information Architecture?’.

Graphic from Dion Hinchcliffe but altered with regards to ‘Sales Enablement Application’ instead of ‘online community’.

Also of interest to you might be my posts ‘Constant loop of quantitative and qualitative feedback in a sales enablement portal’ and ‘Without a guiding context you can never be sure how a word used as a tag was meant’.

Reading list – 9-Jul-2010

9-Jul-2010

The Sales Force of the Future

pixelsandpills.com/2010/07/09/sales-force-future/

By Dan Bobear (@dbobear)

A salesman has got to dream – it comes with the territory.

Playwright Arthur Miller wrote that quote in 1949, but for today’s pharmaceutical sales force, the words still ring true. As door-to-door sales have given way to more sophisticated approaches, sales organizations need to dream big with their eyes wide open. The sales force of the future is, after all, the sales force of today – but more.

More mobile: One trend that will continue is the need for mobile applications and sales force automation to improve responsiveness and provide better pharmaceutical communication and education. Pharmaceutical sales representatives will still need to make informative presentations, provide pricing and order-history information, produce all necessary forms and capture signatures during time-constrained meetings. While that won’t change, computing devices such as handhelds, wireless e-mail devices, conventional notebook computers and tablet PCs will give way to even more robust and affordable mobile devices.

Getting information to physicians quickly will be even more critical. Investing in technologies such as the iPad and physician-oriented mobile and health apps will provide new ways to sell and are easy to implement. Through more interactive content, reps will be able to provide more detailed information and deliver a richer, better and more effective sales experience.

More metrics-driven: More careful, accurate and constant campaign tracking and analysis will also shape the sales force of the future. Technology that helps reps better understand metrics such as physician prescribing preferences, patient demographics, and how many sales reps need to be assigned to a particular practice along with the resources to manage, interpret and communicate findings will increase sales force effectiveness. After all, you can’t measure what you don’t know.

Organizations need to keep pace with changes in how prescribing decisions are made and gain fact-based insight into what drives prescribing behavior. The rapidly changing drug market place and heightened regulatory requirements will require more targeted promotion activity for new Rx and OTC products. Pressure to differentiate from the competition will continue to intensify. As a result, the sales force of the future will need better insight into how promotion activity influences behavior to drive higher performance.

More reliant on hard data: However, it’s not enough to simply gather data. Organizations need to analyze it and use the information swiftly to make informed business decisions. The opportunity lies in transforming data from a support tool to a strategic weapon. A new breed of data-driven sales forces will emerge, incorporating information analysis and management as a distinctive capability. By understanding critical business trends, sales organizations can create physician-centric campaigns, make decisions based on real data and establish relationships built on value.

More social: Relationship building will also continue to be an integral part of sales success in the future, but how those relationships are cultivated and strengthened will rely on more than just in-office sales calls. Sales representatives will need to integrate more into the physician’s social stream – whether that’s through online events, webinars, or other multimedia platforms – and educate consumers through social mediums such as YouTube or Facebook applications. Videos, chat rooms and other interactive portals promote a better understanding of health and treatment options available. Supporting traditional sales activity with a digital strategy enables organizations to demonstrate thought leadership, forge discussion between doctors and patients about treatment options and exposes a wider audience to key brand messages.

The sales force of the future needs to do more than just dream. They need to embrace new technologies and find innovative ways of enhancing productivity, effectiveness and influencing behavior.

The future is already here. Are you ready?

By Dan Bobear (@dbobear)

Bloomberg:

Otsuka Pharma to Buy 1,300 IPads for Sales Employees (Update1)

7-Jun-2010

By Kanoko Matsuyama

June 8 (Bloomberg) — Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. said it will buy 1,300 Apple Inc. iPads for its sales representatives in Japan to market the company’s medicines.

Otsuka will purchase the devices from Softbank Corp. by the end of July for its sales force to give presentations to doctors and study company training materials, the Tokyo-based drugmaker said in a statement. The company is considering using the iPad globally, said Yuko Kikuchi, a spokeswoman for Otsuka.

“It’s getting more important to provide new medical information to doctors more quickly,” Kikuchi said by telephone today. “The iPad will help employees improve the quality of their work.”

Otsuka, the closely held company that discovered the antipsychotic drug Abilify, will spend about 230 million yen ($2.5 million) on the iPads in the first year, including service fees to Softbank, according to Kikuchi. The electronic device from Cupertino, California-based Apple began selling in Japan less than two weeks ago after making its U.S. debut on April 3.

Otsuka has 1,070 sales representatives as of April 1, according to the statement posted on its website yesterday. Employees who support the sales staff, including product managers, will also use the iPad, Kikuchi said.

The Japanese drugmaker and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. jointly market and promote Abilify in Europe and the U.S. Otsuka also makes and sells the Pocari Sweat drink and Soyjoy nutrition bar.

More on Social Media and B2B Buying Cycles

How Knowledge Management Is Moving Away From the Repository as Goal
(video blog)

Transcript:
One of the interesting ways of capturing the problems with traditional knowledge management is it came at knowledge from a stocks viewpoint, a stocks of knowledge. The problem is, we have knowledge, it’s distributed and dispersed throughout the organization. How do we capture it and make it available to others?

Certainly a big challenge, I don’t want to diminish that as a value, but I think what people found as they tried to implement the various systems and methodologies to do that is there wasn’t really a lot of motivation for people to invest the time and effort to develop and define those stocks and make them available as part of a broader repository.

This kind of approach really shifts the attention from stocks of knowledge, what we know today, to defining and developing new knowledge, addressing critical performance objectives that the company, the firm, has in front of it, so that you’re driving and not by learning in the abstract, but because there is a real performance challenge in front of us; how do we identify the right people, bring them together, create the environments, and by the way; because of the digital platforms that we have now, as we create these environments, we are capturing, as a byproduct, the knowledge that’s created as part of that environment. So, it becomes available to others but it is not the primary focus. It’s a byproduct.

How Enterprise 2.0 Sales Teams Will Use Social Networks

On Mar 24, 2010, on cmswire.com Len Rosen wrote: How Enterprise 2.0 Sales Teams Will Use Social Networks:

“Are private social networks becoming entrenched in Enterprise 2.0 businesses with sophisticated sales forces? “We’re not there yet,” states Jennifer King, Director of Sales, Central Region for SAS Canada, the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. SAS is one of many software companies involved in complex solution selling. “Our sales teams are knowledgeable with many years of experience,” states King. “They are just getting their feet wet when it comes to understanding public social networks.”

SAS in many ways is an Enterprise 2.0 business. But it is still getting its head around the tools of social networking. King states, “We have invested in a lot of communication tools including email, bulletin boards, internal chat, blogs, and SharePoint for document sharing. But we have yet to embrace social networking internally.”

At Avnet, an international distributor of electronics, computing and storage products, and a company that is embracing Enterprise 2.0, Charlie Babb, Vice President of Sales and Marketing states, “the answer to every single sales challenge we face already exists somewhere in our company.” Babb recognizes that mining that information is critical to sales success. He asks, “How do we go get it? How do we synthesize it? How do we improve it? How to we get it out to the field? How do we update it?”

SAS and Avnet have been using technology to support sales for many years. They along with many other companies have embraced today’s CRMs, software tools that are great at capturing lead demographics and tracking sales cycles. Knowledge sharing tends to be vertical, that is, sales managers can see what is occurring through report roll ups usually to some kind of dashboard. But CRMs are inherently clumsy when it comes to cross-fertilizing knowledge from one member of a sales team to another.

When Social Networks Interact with Sales DNA

Think about the social networking experience on a public platform like Facebook. Information can be shared in many conversations whether you create a discussion, post something to your wall, or respond to someone else’s posting, view a friend’s video, write your own blog or comment on a friend’s blog. Now translate this functionality into a sales department. Are sales people willing to be a friend to others? When I entered sales 37 years ago it was clear to me right from the start that I was in competition with every other sales person in my company. This competition was company fostered. Rewards were never given for sharing. Every year the best of us survived the “cut” to continue selling. The worst of us got “pink slipped.” Knowledge sharing was not in our sales DNA. But every sales manager wants answers to the questions that Charlie Babb posed, and one way of fulfilling that goal is through the deployment of a private social network.

Two years ago I was approached by a company here in Canada that had 400 locations coast-to-coast, a central office in Winnipeg, and regional offices in all 10 provinces and the 3 territories. The sales force was 4,000 strong. Imagine creating a network for knowledge sharing and cross-fertilization of ideas for such a distributed army of individuals, many of them working from home offices with their only connection electronic using the phone and Internet.

I sat down with the VP of sales and asked him what were the challenges within his organization. One was harvesting the knowledge that existed within the staff. Another was spreading the knowledge wealth. A third was retaining staff. The company had web resources, email and other means of electronic communications but they didn’t have a social network. The company had a tradition of rewarding peak performers, not just for sales success but also for attaining levels of certification based on taking company-sponsored programs.

This is the perfect scenario for deploying a private social network framework with all of its communication attributes. enableconsultants.com Enable Consultants, a Toronto-based software developer, encounters many of these types of companies. Faith Exeter, President, remarks, “Organizations need a way to harvest collective wisdom that is friendly, informative, engaging and fun, and serves to meet revenue and other business objectives.” Enable builds many different types of private social networks, each meeting particular industry or market niche requirements. “We find when we talk to marketing people, who tend to be younger and digital natives, they immediately grasp the value inherent in implementing social networks inside the firewall.”

However, Exeter goes on to state, “getting sales departments to buy-in takes considerably greater effort largely because they tend to rely on past experience as their model. And experienced sales people tend to be digital immigrants, not as savvy or accustomed to social networking and its uses.”

In an Enable sales social network every sales person has a profile, a personal calendar, a bulletin board for receiving short messages, a blog, a place to store documents, a place to upload videos and pictures, chat, and receive and send email. Every sales person can be partnered with a team. Interaction is encouraged and rewarded through a point system with points given for online participation and group interaction. Knowledgeable sales people acts as content experts and through sharing information with knowledge seekers receive rewards.

Sales 2.0: The Rise of Social Capital

The adoption of social networking in sales organizations has recently been given a new name, S2.0 or Sales 2.0. The implementation of a private sales social network changes communication. Company sales knowledge gets quickly disbursed. When a knowledgeable sales person answers a question the information is not only read by the person asking the question but is captured for all letting other sales people view the results or enter key search words to see the answer and other answers of similar relevance.

In a sales social network answers can come from unlikely sources. Employees who may be quiet in a meeting may feel empowered when in a virtual space, sharing knowledge that is uniquely held. These are the hidden gems within your organization that a social networking application can mine.

Insights from known knowledge workers can be flagged by the application with automatic system alerts going company wide whenever they post something new. Instructional videos can be posted online, accessible anytime, anywhere. Sales departments can build best practices wikis, or industry-specific documentation shareable company-wide. The knowledge shared internally can be made available to externally, giving selected customers and prospects access to important information to help them make buying decisions. Postings can go mobile as well making any cell phone a knowledge resource.

For companies who have sales teams that are multi-generational, facilitating communications using the media that is most comfortable represents a real challenge. Baby Boomers get email. Digital natives, those in their 20s and early 30s, use instant messaging, texting and social networks. For young workers email is communication for old people. Social networking and all its many communication tools is where it’s at.

In the Miller Heiman report, “Megatrends That Will Impact The Way We Manage Sales Organizations,” it states:

“today’s young social networkers are tomorrow’s salespeople. Having grown up with social networking, they’re likely to continue relying on this way of communicating and collaborating throughout their careers.”

The report refers to the collective value that social networking provides as “social capital,” almost as important to an organization as intellectual capital. They conclude, “Organizations with rich social capital enjoy access to venture capital and financing, improved organizational learning, the power of word-of-mouth marketing, the ability to create strategic alliances, and the resources to defend against hostile takeovers.”

About the Author

Len Rosen is a Toronto-based consultant working with companies on the use of technology to enhance small business productivity. He has a particular interest in the business application of social media and social networks. Len has been at it for 36 years. He is a contributing author to a number of web sites and publishes his own small business technology blog.

Social Media Marketing for B2B – A podcast interview

Podcast interview with Paul Dunay from Avaya on social media marketing for B2B (SMB) by Chris Herbert, 4-Jun-2010:

Producers: Chris Herbert, B2B Specialist & Founder of Mi6 and Donna Papacosta
Industries: Cross industry with emphasis on hi-tech
Audience: Senior Leaders, Marketing/Sales managers and professionals

Welcome to our second episode of “The B2B Specialists” podcast series. A series dedicated to having and sharing interesting conversations with professionals in our field.

In this Podcast Episode

What’s new in B2B marketing for 2010? We dive right in to a conversation with Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director of Services and Social Media marketing for Avaya. (see below for more details about Paul). We talk about how social media is being used in B2B marketing and sales both at Avaya and in general.

Show Notes

00:49 We welcome Paul Dunay who tells us a little bit about his career, publishing endeavors and educational background.
02:35 Paul talks about what’s new in B2B marketing. The conversation includes:Linkedin and SEO; Facebook advertising; Mobile marketing “grows up” and the role a corporate web site plays vs “offsite content”.
05:10 We talk about how some companies are neglecting their web sites. Sites need to be current and a content production schedule should be in place. Paul’s advice: “Think like a publisher. Plan what content you will produce and over what time frame”.
07:10 We talk about how a blog platform, like WordPress, is an ideal platform to use to produce a website, especially for small to midsized businesses. It’s a “swiss army” knife for web marketing.
08:19 Paul gives some great examples of how Facebook can be used for B2B marketing.
14:00 The conversation turns to the adoption of social media. Where should a company start and how to measure ROI? What Paul is doing to show ROI at Avaya.
18:23 We talk about Avaya’s use of Twitter to support customers and how advocates (loyal customers) are helping support Avaya in return. These brand ambassadors act as unofficial spokespersons for Avaya. They can also become formal references and case study candidates.
22:55 Paul talks about how he shows examples of Twitter conversations to members of the Avaya management team so they can see the positive impact they are having on the Avaya brand. This helps turn social media skeptics into believers. One twitter conversation led to a customer purchasing an Avaya systemin less then 15 days.

About Paul Dunay

Paul Dunay is the Global Managing Director of Services and Social Marketing for Avaya, a global leader in enterprise communications, and author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009). Paul is an award winning business to business marketer and publisher of the blog Buzz Marketing for Technology. Paul is on our “A” List of B2B marketers.

Links of Interest

Paul’s Blog
Paul on Linkedin
Paul on Twitter
Blog post on Linkedin and Search Engine Optimization
Avaya’s Customer Support Twitter account

Market Intelligence Information

BidManagementTools.org posted ‘One Company’s Approach to Marketing Intelligence’, on March 26, 2010:

“[…]

Market Intelligence Is More Accessible Than Ever

Thanks to improvements in technology and to the social Web, even bootstrap/small companies can cost-effectively access and process market information.

Examples of relatively, inexpensive easy-to-use sources of market information include highly-specialized blogs, search engine analytics, off-the-shelf customer relationship management (CRM) and sales enablement systems, and hybrid solutions that integrate basic functions from several of these technologies to help businesses determine what’s working and then replicate success.

Larger, better-capitalized companies have even more options. They can purchase better systems, and they can afford the human resources to make better use of the systems already in place.

But Resources Are Tighter

Still, everyone is trying to do more with less. Which means that companies that formerly invested in market intelligence as well as strategic and tactical marketing are now figuring out where to make cuts. If the want ads are any indication, many smaller companies are beefing up marketing communications at the expense of strategy and market intelligence.

On the other hand, some of the larger companies are taking the opposite approach. One sales executive told me recently: “A few years ago, we had lots of opportunities and pursued those that were easy to close. Now that everyone has to justify every penny they spend, we really have to understand and communicate our unique value to even get in the door.”

Consequently, his company has stepped up its market research and invested in honing its value propositions in each of its major market segments. […]”

 

See below BizSphere’s view on the information architecture for Sales Enablement where Market Intelligence (MI) and Competitive Intelligence (CI) have their place as well as value propositions for each industry vertical etc…:

information architecture for sales enablement

%d bloggers like this: