In times gone by employees didn’t have the chance to meet their boss and bosses did not have the need to motivate their staff, these times have come to an end! Motivated people have a higher productivity in their jobs, have a better performance time wise and meet the targets of the company. So, why not take on board the following tips to increase the motivation of your employees?

Be grateful – letting everyone know that you’re thankful for their hard work. Who doesn’t like being recognized for his work? You could also consider giving small awards like dinner or spa vouchers.

Spend time with your employees building a good relationship. Let them know how important they are for the company and show interest about their personal life. Be open to listening to what they need to say (new ideas, suggestions for improvements, any issues affecting the normal functioning of the company…etc.) they might even surprise you with new ways of working and even saving money.

Be flexible. Remember, employees have a life outside work! When possible, be open to accepting reasonable requests like leaving early to pick up a child, taking care of a relative, or why not let them leave a couple of hours early just as a small award!

Keep your staff updated with company related information. Nobody likes finding certain information out from others, so make sure you share all the information concerning your employees.

Keep your word and don’t make promises that you know you can’t fulfil. For an employee it can be quite frustrating and actually end up demotivating staff! Also, be clear when providing the information they need so that your employees will know exactly the type of job they need to carry out and what is expected of them.

Promote autonomy allowing them to be freer when carrying out their tasks. You could also make your employees more autonomous by asking their opinion. For that, you could organize meetings, carry out a survey or use a suggestions box.

So, as you see, it shouldn’t be so difficult to increase you employees’ motivation, although keep your expectations real, as it might be a little bit unrealistic for every day to be wonderful!

Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media can be so much fun, everyone tweets; everyone’s Gran is on Facebook. You can check out all those dirty photos from Saturday night and keep tabs on your old school friends. “Who got married??”
Instagram lets us all pretend to be photography pros., and allows us to explore our vintage themed outlets. The whole world of social online can be so exciting that businesses get swept up.

It makes sense. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. Why wouldn’t businesses want to be online?
The thing is, business isn’t the same as personal, and many companies large and small are making that crucial error. It’s true that you need to be engageable, connected and interesting. But don’t sacrifice you business aims in favour of social popularity. And on the other side, if you’re content is rigidly academic, you’re going to be labelled dry and ‘buttoned up’.
So where is the balance? A social media marketing strategy is absolutely crucial to maintaining any sort of balance. If you can work out ahead of time what and when to post, you can then devote your attention to interacting with your followers and enjoying all those snippets of customer engagement. Without a marketing strategy you may as well be posting in the dark. A random article there, posted in an incorrect format; and a skewed photo here. What’s the point? Just hand the whole job over to an intern and focus on sales, or recruitment, or innovation. Social media needs proper attention, it needs to be planned and nurtured and formatted.

Social media users want information, but they also want to be entertained. So keep this in mind when planning your posts, and use the below points as a skeleton for your marketing strategy:

• Work out how many posts per day – Too few and you lose your fan base, too many and you annoy people.

• Spread them out to access the widest audience possible
• Keep content relevant to your industry

Nearly everything can be made relevant, it only takes a few minutes of creative.

• Keep your platform in mind (micro blogging for Twitter, visual for Pinterest)
• Develop content your audience would be interested in

And finally:

• Don’t post random, stupid stuff. Leave that for the personal account:

This is a guest post from Alexis Short

Alexis Short, SYNNEX marketing specialist. State-side southern girl with a universal point of view. Channel marketing newbie with a background in traditional branding, advertising and consumer research. Cellist in the making. Adjunct professor and eternal student of life.

“People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”-Simon Sinek, author of “Start With Why”

Often in the channel, our marketing communications to customers are transactional in nature. We focus on the latest speeds and feeds, highlight the reasons to believe in this product and what this product can do for end-users. While all of these communication pieces are viable and necessary information in marketing communications-they place dominance on “what” rather than “why”.

In 2009, Simon Sinek released the book “Start with Why”– a synopsis of the theory The Golden Circle (pictured below). This theory is meant to explain why some people and organizations are more innovative, more influential, command greater loyalty and are able to repeat their success over and over.

In relating this concept to the channel and our everyday, think about what motivates a purchase. Price, availability, and features are all elements that are a part of the decision process, but why do they purchase through the channel? By tapping into “the why” for choosing the channel, we can shape buying behavior versus just trying to influence it.  At SYNNEX, our marketing department has taken on this initiative for 2013 with the SYNNEX call to action. We believe it’s not only important to drive customers to the product, but why they should purchase through SYNNEX. By promoting the “why” to choose the channel, we can begin to drive greater loyalty and repeatable successes as outlined by The Golden Circle.

Are you committed to understanding your why? We are.

Normally, post holiday season activities for the online retailer may include a virtual pat on the back for getting the right products to the right customers at the right time, however, with increased sales come increased returns. A recent UK expert panel of key online retail players revealed that return rates for 2012 rose to 25% and that this figure is expected to rise in the future.

The online shopper is now making their purchasing decision on availability, reliability, and ease of returns! Now more than ever, online retailers need to get it right, making it both easy for their customers to return items and to make enquiries (on anything from order status to returns) on their channel of choice and most importantly resolving their queries as soon as possible.

Unhappy or disgruntled customers may not only choose to shop offline, but also distance themselves from all of the retailers’ channels altogether after a single negative online shopping experience, word of web is fast replacing word of mouth!

At Concentrix, we have over 12 years of experience working with some of Europe’s leading online retailers including the fashion, entertainment and travel sectors. Working in close partnership with all of our clients, we ensure that their customer experience stands out from the crowd supporting every facet of our clients’ customer’s lifecycle. We were recently recognised as industry leaders in our approach to working with our clients- 2012 Winner – Best Outsourcing Partnership – The European Call Centre and Customer Service Awards.

The Concentrix team is made up of passionate and dedicated people who can provide the support you need in order to drive customer satisfaction and ensure that your customers have access to the information they need on the channel they choose. We also believe that first contact resolution is paramount to every customer interaction and consistently strive to reduce our clients’ customer contact ratio.  Over the years we’ve proven our expertise in multi-lingual voice, chat, email, community forum and social media customer service channels.

We are eager to hear more about your customer service and engagement objectives, let us know what you think in the comments below.

1. List your requirements
The first step towards switching suppliers is to figure out exactly what you need them for. Make a list of all of the ‘necessities’, ‘desirables’, ‘nice-to-have’s’ and even the ‘not necessaries.’ Ensure that every person in your company that needs this product or service contributes to this list, it’s important to ensure that all of your requirements are met. Use a table to list your requirements, and colour code them by importance.

 
2. Shortlist up to 10 potential suppliers
The number of suppliers that you shortlist will depend on a wide range of variables including the cost of the contract, the duration of the contract, the size of your company, the number of potential suppliers, market research such as Gartner’s Magic Quadrants, and so on. The more suppliers you shortlist, the more difficult and time consuming it will be to complete the process, but shortlist too few and you’ll need to be 100% sure that the ones you’ve omitted don’t meet your requirements. Between 5 and 10 suppliers should give you a good overview of the market, and don’t forget to include your current supplier!

 
3. Ask them if they can meet your requirements
How will you know if your vendors can meet all of your requirements? You can spend a lot of time researching their websites, emailing them, talking to their current customers, or you can just ask them! Send them your list of requirements, ask them to check off all of the requirements that they meet, and provide an explanation for each one.

 
4. Vendor rate them
A vendor rating is a simple tool which will give you a mathematical decision making process. Here’s an example of how it looks:

As you can see, there are three values for requirements. If a vendor scores 2, this means that they can meet your requirement in full, 1 means that they’re half way there or there’s some way to meet you’re requirement but maybe it isn’t intuitive or easy to do, and 0 means that they don’t meet your requirement. But hang on, what if a supplier meets all of your ‘not necessary’ and ‘nice to have’ requirements, but none of the necessities? You need to work in a weighting system. Your system will depend on how big the difference is between what’s necessary and what’s not, but here’s an example:

Now you need to add up the score for each supplier, and pick your top two. In this case, supplier 3 scores 52, and supplier 2 scores 34. I can discard the three lowest scoring suppliers, as I know that they cannot meet my requirements as well as 2 and 3 can.

 
5. Trial
Your vendor rating matrix isn’t a fool proof way to make the final decision on the supplier switch, so you now need to trial the top 2 suppliers. Ensure that you have a plan for your trial that involves all of those who rely on this product or service. You should ensure that your trial group are provided with the full list of requirements from step 1, and they’re focussed on testing the product or service for all of these requirements. Ask your trial group to score each supplier against your requirement list using the 0-1-2 scoring system.

 
6. Vendor rate again
Now that you have new data from your trial group, you need to conduct your vendor rating again. Discard your vendors’ scores from the previous matrix and fill it out using the average scores from your trial. Again, use the weighting system from step 4 to emphasise more important requirements, and your final score will give you a top vendor.

 
7. Negotiate and sign!
Now that you have your preferred vendor, not only can you enter into negotiations and sign a contract knowing that you have made your decision using an impartial and stringent process, but you can also provide specific feedback to your current supplier as to why you’re not renewing your contract.

 
Is this process helpful? Let us know in the comments.

Today’s new technologies, markets and business demand for leading edge products and business services are creating an opportunity for all of us channel players to capitalize – especially by doing things differently, simplifying and focusing on what works. I believe the B-to-B market affords marketers so many unique ways to capitalize on how the channel is changing marketing – not the other way around.

Below are the guidelines I intend to use to influence our audiences (vendors and re-sellers) and educate my marketing team to implement new programs and campaigns throughout 2013:

1. Think solutions – deliver strategic integrated marketing campaigns, not one-off projects built to capture your funding; create thoughtful messages central to solutions designed to address real world problems for our re-sellers’ end user customers

2. Change the conversation – engage channel audiences with marketing according to their preferences; champion new marketing techniques (video) and increase our presence in social media and the interactive marketing universe

3. Stand out – add value to our marketing programs and identify a unique position for your channel solutions and services; use new ideas to differentiate ourselves

4. Close the loop – increase marketing accountability, justify budgets and plans, define where marketing and sales should align, and demonstrate marketing’s impact on results with defined reporting and ROI

5. People first – become trusted channel marketing advisors and seize every vendor engagement as an opportunity to do more for our mutual success; create lasting, meaningful experiences.

These are simple guidelines but they are designed to change marketing implementation behaviors and to focus on things that matter and can work toward making an impact.

What’s your marketing focus for 2013?

When we talk about great content we mean quality posts, pictures, videos, polls, blogs, and shares, in general every action you take on social media has the potential to be seen and drive a comment from someone you are connected to.

Some actions generate more engagement than others; Photos drive a lot of engagement but must be in context. Videos also drive a lot of engagement but must be short and relevant. Cupcakes are one of the most shared and engaged with bits of content on the internet, as well as cats.

The amount of engagement you get is all relevant to the size, interest and level of commitment of your following. For example if you have 100 people interested in Cloud Computing connected to your Facebook page and you start posting recipes on there with little relevance to the cloud or technology, expect little engagement. On the other hand if you were to post something along the lines of “Fastest Cloud networks available right now” this will probably get a much higher level of engagement.

At Concentrix we believe that engagement is the start or the extension of a relationship with another person or company. When you post and you get some engagement like a comment or a reply, what do you do with it? Replies and “Likes” on Facebook comments fuel conversation based around great content and from it your reach will increase even further.

Whether you are creating content about cats, cupcakes, cloud computing or all three, your focus should be to remember the audience understand what is important to them and if they engage with you, respond…no one likes to be ignored!

To have an understanding of what customer’s experience (and ultimately establish and exceed their expectations) it is becoming essential for organisations to map their customer’s journeys on all channels. By doing this they have a real opportunity to positively influence the experience.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

Many organisations are blind to their customers journey, in many instances this can be put down to lack of foresight on managements part, how can you have any impact on a customer journey if you have not taken the time to map it out in the first place?

“Customer journey mapping is the process of tracking and describing all the experiences that customers have as they encounter a service or set of services, taking into account not only what happens to them, but also their responses to their experiences.”

To deliver a customer service on any channel that exceeds expectations it is vital that organisations take a step back and understand how their customers interact with them and where they can elicit the most positive customer experience.

Customer Cartography: Plotting your way!

Senior Management Buy In

Like any major initiative within an organisation Customer Journey Mapping requires significant resources behind it and most importantly it needs senior management buy in Like any change management imitative, without this, it will not be successful.

Holistic View

Defining the customer journey is not the sole responsibility of the marketing or customer care departments. It is important that a pan-organisational view of the customer journey is captured. For this, it will be necessary to have a cross functional perspective, which will mean having adequate representation and commitment from across the whole organisation on the mapping project team.

Mapping the Journey

Once a particular customer journey has been identified that requires mapping (such as contacting the customer care through the website) it is important that all internal management information (MI) is gathered and collated. Many organisations will already have useful information at their disposal that will provide important insights into the customer journey.

Mapping this information can be done formally or informally. Many teams kick off literally with post-its on a white board during a brainstorming session, while others may adopt a more analytical approach using mapping or project software. There is no right or wrong method; the main objective is to gain a clear and accurate visual of the customer’s journey.

In many of these sessions gaps in the journey may also be identified, where no one on the cross functional team has ownership or even knowledge of what happens. Such instances should be welcomed as they reinforce the need for mapping and also help align all areas involved in this process.

Identifying Hotspots

Once the knowledge of the customer journey has been mapped it will be possible to identify existing and potential hot spots. Hot Spots are points along the journey that may cause a customer to drop out of the journey and negatively impact on their satisfaction, (they are also often referred to as moments of truth). Identifying Hotspots is a crucial output of customer journey mapping, obviously even more so if the journey you are mapping has a potential sales output.

Once identified, these hot spots can be qualified on the impact they are having on the customer journey. This is often done through workshops internally, to assess how different functions impact on various hot spots and what changes can be made. In addition to this many organisations may research the journey and gain an external perspective from customers through qualitative research (such as focus groups or surveys).

Embed, Embed, Embed!

Like all change initiatives customer journey mapping will only have a positive impact if it is embedded in the culture of the organisation throughout all levels and functions. This also means that recommended changes identified through mapping are implemented and not just discussed. It is only then that the true benefits from mapping will be realised through monitoring customer satisfaction on the particular journey.

Mary Ellen Grom, @SYNNEX VP of US Marketing, @MaryEllenGrom High tech value-added distribution channel marketing junkie who is passionate about strategic marketing planning, social media, team management, leadership development and motivation. Knowledge seeker. Kindle addict. Diabetes advocate. NASCAR & PBR sports fanatic. Navy brat. Ohio State Buckeye. Proud wife and busy mom of 2 enjoying the perks of southern hospitality here in South Carolina, USA.

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Today, businesses operate in hostile and increasingly complex environments. The ability of a business to achieve profitable results is impacted by dozens of factors, many of which are inter-connected. It often makes sense to try to bring some order to this chaos by understanding and applying a rigor to your strategic marketing planning. A strategic business plan combined with a robust, solid marketing plan can improve company efficiency, which helps improve revenue and market share growth, and minimizes expenses — all of which lead to higher overall profitability.

With the pace of the technology channel, it is easier than ever to get caught up in the ‘marketing idea of the week’ syndrome. Planning starts with strategy (the plan to achieve an overall goal) and completes with tactics (the methods for achieving the strategy). Often it seems like we start with the tactics and forget to ask why we are doing these marketing initiatives in first place. We also don’t allow ourselves time to plan accordingly with a 3-month or 6-month window of opportunity. Unfortunately this is not effective.

A marketing plan is useful to many people in a business – not just the marketing department. It can help professionals to:

• Identify sources of competitive advantage
• Gain commitment to a strategy
• Get resources needed to invest in and build the business
• Inform key channel stakeholders
• Set objectives and milestones
• Monitor and measure performance

For a truly effective marketing strategy, you must study and evaluate your business and its target audience, then create a plan of action, follow through with and measure it. Marketing teams capture this information initially in the form of a creative brief after collaborating with key vendor contacts and our business unit team members (product manager/director, business development manager, etc.) to identify marketing project opportunities.

Don’t over-think this. Strategic marketing planning is important—but it shouldn’t be all consuming. Taking time to review what has been done in the past and how effective it’s been, thinking about new opportunities, talking to our sales reps and re-sellers customers, scoping out the competition, and writing down a plan can be incredibly valuable. It defines who you serve, what problems you solve, and how you solve them differently from everyone else.

Creating a solid marketing plan can be the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a failed one. As most people have already experienced, marketing can be an expensive and complicated endeavor. Let’s not rely on hope as our marketing strategy.

So what can you do to ensure that you are getting the most out of Twitter?

Well, it starts with the basics first by having a complete bio with some company info; company website, company logo and a background image can really add some personality to the twitter page and provides people with some information on the Twitter feed and your company. Next, you can follow industry leaders, journalists and you can also include members of staff as that will increase your reach.

Now, just what is reach? Well, reach is quite simply the potential amount of people that could see your particular tweet. You can see the estimated reach using a number of tools, such as Mentionmapp.

This gives you a visual map of your latest mentions and the people connected to them and so on. It provides a great graphical representation, but doesn’t give you much in the way of figures, for that we need to use another tool – TweetReach.

This will tell you the amount of account that your tweets will reach, and can really help to decide how your audience is growing and what is contributing to the success of the Twitter feed.

If you are looking for an all in one solution then SocialBro might be the choice for you. It’s simple to use and it can be used for free as a Google Chrome extension. This will allow you track all sorts of stats, from influence and reach to followers, the best time to tweet and competitor analysis.

Here is the dashboard for SocialBro:

The paid versions do include some nice, additional features, though the biggest change is in the amount of followers that SocialBro handles.

These three tools, in conjunction with your social media strategy, can really help you chart your success on Twitter. Of course, there are plenty of different tools to help analyse Twitter, some paid and some free, it is just a case of find the right on for your particular needs.