In the software industry before releasing a product commercially to the market the solution is to be given to so-called beta customers.
The idea is that these companies or users will test the software thoroughly in real life situations experiencing real life events in the hope to debug the application as much as possible and to test have real life strain tests.

Reasons for becoming a Beta user
Why should people or companies sign-up for the Beta?
- They have the opportunity to influence the development of the solution
- They can have a solution at no cost

Beta vs future customers
- Are the suggestions made by the Beta users the same level of importance for your future real customers ?
- Could using Beta users drive and change your solution surpassing the original goals set as these Beta customers are far more technically advanced than the potential customers of the marker you are targeting ?
- Is the Beta customer representative for your future paying customers ?
- Will Beta customers eventually become paying customers ?

It is the myth of Beta customer.

Finding beta customers
In reality finding and having signing-up user as Beta is not that simple. It requires a complete marketing campaign to generate interest and having people to take the risk.
Getting the Beta customers to sign-up is not that easy.
Especially with business applications, as these companies need to take the risk:
- For the benefit of having a free solution
- Having to stumble on all the possible problems and errors
- Interrupting the normal activity due to these bugs
- Reporting the required feedback to the vendor
Whereas the main rule for companies is risk-avoidance.

The myth of the Beta company customer is even bigger.

Currently we have the Beta for popupbooster:
- Providing relevant content to your visitors in real-time.
- Dynamic web pages: less bounces
- Matching landing pages: keep their attention
- Decrease cart abandonment: more sales
- Exit stopper: win their interest or gain awareness
- Conditional conversation starter using popular web services
You can sign-up a Beta user here – If you want.

Sales bonus plans for continuous growth
If sales bonus systems would be the perfect motivator, then market leading companies would only grow bigger as the sales bonus system would continue to fuel the sales(men).

However this seems not to be the case.
Could it be that sales bonus systems are not really stimulating and motivating?
Or stimulating the wrong or less effective sales actions and efforts? Not optimal ?
Even the most complex commission plans (that are hard to understand) can miss their initial beneficial goal for the company.

Salesmen will optimize their benefit
As with any mathematical system based on rules and conditions, salesmen will optimize for their own benefit.
Thus the smallest mistake in any of the assumptions made during the design and development of the bonus plan will generate less optimal sales efforts as the salesmen will optimize their bonus – not the benefit or bottom line of the company.
Their bonus is the most important.

Salesmen have no full control
On the other hand the salesman is not completely in control of the products or solutions he can propose to his potential buyers: R&D, development, quality control or production can be late in delivering the new product, version or the specific adapted solution for a market segment. Delayed delivery means fewer bonuses for the salesman.

The assumptions are wrong due to constant change
All bonus system are based upon assumptions and starting from a given fact or measurement.
However during the course of just one year the market changes, new products are introduced by the company and the competition. Hence the assumptions or starting point are no longer reflecting the reality of the market and the level of competition.

Sales bonus systems are locked-up systems that reward sales efforts in a changing market.
Commission systems will always fail as the market is constantly changing.
As sales people are driven by their commissions much effort is wasted to achieve the wrong goals.

As the salesmen of the bigger or leading companies have the wrong focus or goal, it creates opportunities for the competitors or smaller companies to step in or start-ups to have a window of opportunity. the larger the company the slower it will react to the ever changing market.

What if there would be a bonus system for R&D or development dept.?
– A bonus system for delivering products on time
– A bonus plan for delivering products with a minimal number of bugs
Or should salesmen have no commissions a constantly changing commission plan is not manageable?

The main competitor:

The main competitor for:
- Coca Cola isn’t Pepsi but water, tea, nimbupani and Pepsi
- Vittel isn’t Evian, but tap water
- ABInbev (Anheuser-Busch InBev) isn’t Heineken, but wine
- Visa isn’t Mastercard or American Express but cash
- Newspapers isn’t Google but Twitter, Facebook or the web as a whole
- Microsoft isn’t Google or Open Source but pirated software and older Microsoft software
- Banks in BRIC and emerging countries it isn’t the other bank, but the un-banked people
- Many software solutions are pen and paper.

The unmarketed market

You nearest competitors aren’t always the other leading brands but often the replacement products that are in place since ever.

The biggest challenge is to get people move from a certain solution or service to an innovative or new solution. Once people are convinced of products or services then they have taken the big step.

Now as these newly acquired customers have gotten used to these services, the competition between brand competitors will start. They might shop around in case better deals or more features are offered.

Two competitors is a market – just like two is a crowd

In any market it is always better to compete with several competitors instead being sole in this market. In that case you need to ask yourself if there is a real market and a market demand.

Together with your competitors you will send more marketing messages to the potential buyers and you will create more interest than alone. The competition creates interest.
People like to compare between products or solutions.
Alone is alone – Two is a crowd.

You have to investigate into your direct competitors.
However you should look beyond them and try to obtain a picture of the entire market or the problem that you are solving

Who are you really competing with ?
What is the problem that you are solving ?
What competition are you really in ?

At first it seems interesting and challenging:
To be a international traveling salesman voyaging from customer to customer visiting many cities in a continent or even the world.

It seems the journey opportunity of your life.
The chance of your life-time to see and meet many different people and cultures.
Seems like holiday forever all paid by the company.

However the reality is:
- You leave home in the early morning or even in the weekends
- You spend many hours waiting for the next connecting flight
- You need to commute from the airport to the customer with a taxi driver that you have to trust
- You need to verify every spending to make sure they don’t cheat upon you
- You need to collect and keep all the bills for your expenses report
- You take your lunch alone on the way to the customer
- You have meetings with people that seemingly have no time pressure, unlike yourself
- At the end of the day you have dinner again alone
- You prepare the meetings for the next day or reply your emails alone in your room
- In the hotel room you zap the TV-channels – mainly viewing the news as you can’t follow tv-shows.
- Maybe have brought some movies DVD’s to watch on your portable
- You might read a book, but these consume space and weigh a lot to carry
- When trying to go asleep you stare at the ceiling which is remarkably similar to all other white hotel ceilings
- In the middle of the night you wake up due to the jet-lag and stare at the white ceiling again.
- You have your breakfast again alone
- You pack your luggage, hoping to leave nothing behind (stress)
- You pay the hotel bill – hopefully at the agreed rate – else you need to discuss and argue
- Leave for meeting the next customer
- The stress you get from waiting lines in the airport, queuing in the taxi line, missing or canceled flights
- You go through many climate changes in a short amount of time (one week)
- In the air plane you are with many other people who can have diseases and viruses: more chance to become ill
- You get ill over the weekend at home
- The air miles earned are harder to spend than you ever could imagine. You hardly can use them: mainly for an upgrade to business class.

The life of the traveling salesman becomes boring rather soon as you start missing your family, your social contacts at home, your spare time activities and your free time.

In the end you come to the conclusion that:
- All hotel rooms have white ceilings
- The excitement of travel becomes the stress of travel
- You hardly meet up with local people
- You hardly see any foreign cultures as all major cities have become rather similar
- You may know many people that you don’t know really

You are locked up between travel, waiting in the airport lobby’s, commuting, meetings, lonely meals, your emails and the hotel rooms with the white ceilings.

The apparently challenging and exciting life of the traveling salesman is asocial and becomes boring too soon as all the hotel ceilings are white.

What was your expectation as a traveling salesman ?
How fast did you get cut off from your family, friends and social life – and got bored ?

When your main competitor gets acquired you probably should be happy about it.
Instead of becoming a bigger threat your competitor is likely to become less threatening – at least for the first couple of years.

Executives – Management

If a company gets acquired the main objective of all CxO’s, VP’s, directors and managers of the company is not to increase or improve business, but to keep their job and position. Some might even hope getting a better position or more power.
For every CxO, VP, director and manager in the company there is at least one person having a similar function in the acquiring company. The battle of survival will start as soon as the acquisition negotiations start.
Internal politics and shifts of power will make executives and managers spending their time on internal matters.
Politics, perception, image and status become more important than achievements or business.

Wasting time and money

After an acquisition the two companies need to unify in products and solutions.
Time and money will be wasted in meetings, forecasts, budgets and reports on products or services, business plans and human resources.

Once the new visions and plans for the future have been agreed upon (if ever) and laid out, then this vision or message needs to be shared and explained to the employees of both companies.
Next the market with potential customers needs to be informed, educated or ‘brainwashed’ with marketing.

During all this wasting of time and money, the existing marketing spending of both companies will keep on being executed not having a unified or complete fitting message. The main change executed is the new logo or a mention of the acquiring company next to the brand name of the company.

Less business – more internal affairs

Thus instead of doing business, the newly emerged company will need to spend a lot of time and money on:
- Their internal affairs
- Their execs, managers and employees will waste efforts on politics
- Defining a plan for the future
- Laying off excess personnel
- Informing and motivating the employees
- Laying off (excess) employees
- Unifying the company cultures (or not)
- Building branding awareness the new company to the market and potential customers

In most cases these matters and issues will take a few years.

Window of opportunity

In case your main competitor gets acquired, you have a window of opportunity of a few years for expanding your market presence and market share, while your competitor is fighting internal struggles instead of doing business.

Your actions during this window of opportunity can be:
- Increase your marketing spending
- Hire salesmen from the company: promising them stability and income
- Sign-up their resellers or partners: stability, continuity of products and support
- Go after their customers: better service – better customer relation

After this window of opportunity time has elapsed, you need to be prepared for fierce competition.
However in some cases the new competitor starts to focus on another market segment: typically high-end as more operational or overhead costs need to be carried.
The best thing to happen is when the acquisition was a bridge to far: too complex, too different culture, too different products, too big, too different business, … your window of opportunity continues.

Is your competitor becoming an acquisition target?

The era of interruption marketing

In a world not so long ago, there were about six ways to get noticed or to get attention from the public or companies:
- Cold call using a huge staff of people
- Buy advertising: print, broadcast or online
- Beg journalists to write about your products or solutions
- Bribe journalists to write about your products or solutions
- Issue a press release containing interesting information or original content to get attention from journalists
- Getting into the news due to an event or hazard related to your business or products (even car crashes)
- Presenting on conferences

Observations:
- Cold calling, buying advertising and presenting on conferences only last as long the money supply lasts.
- PR agencies are good at begging journalists due to their contacts.
- Once you have bribed a journalist, you cannot beg them to write for free.
- Writing an interesting press release requires creativity and distributing was still not free.
– Hoping on an event or hazard to get press coverage is like hoping to win the lottery.
- Presenting on conferences needs: presentation skills, content and a room with an audience

This was the era of interruption marketing where coercion was not far as products and solutions could almost be imposed by the mass media to the public.

Content marketing benefits and challenges

Since the Internet became the default source of information for both consumers and companies, you can get noticed by publishing interesting or valuable or original content on the Internet.
Moreover content that has been published can be found long afterward: the long lasting effect of the free content on the Internet that your buyers want to consume.

All kinds of organizations (public, private, non-profit, individual) are becoming content publishers.

One of the problems related is the Internet noise all this content marketing makes as there is so much content available and published almost every second that even the search engines have problems keeping up to date.

Even if people find your content on the Internet through search or links, you need to grab, catch and keep their attention.
This can only be achieved by serving:
- Highly interesting or unique content
- Shocking content.
- Content generating emotions.
- Entertaining content.
or both.

Almost in all cases it needs to be entertaining.
The emotional content is entertaining.
Even the shocking content is a form of entertainment: shudder or shiver your audience.

Eventually in marketing we all will become entertainers bringing entertainment adjusted for each specific market segment.

That’s all folks !

If you are in sales you need to be confident.
Potential customers from the influencer, decision marker to the purchasing manager will all notice when you are lacking confidence. This can lead to the spiral of negativity making you loose one of the virtues of the salesman.
Your jar of luck can become empty before your jar of experience has become full.

In order to keep or regain your confidence you need to climb a mountain.
It doesn’t need to be a physical mountain: it can be anything from a physical effort, to a travel, a journey.

It doesn’t even need to be a physical challenge as it can be something you achieve in your social life that you have considered as a challenge. The goal is that the conquering of the challenge only has to make you feel good and give you the confidence to be able to achieve something special. You are special.

The climbing and the conquering of your of challenge, the achievement to reach the top or your goal will:
- Give you your confidence back
- Increase your confidence
You so necessarily need for achieving in sales by being confident in sales.

Find your mountain.
Climb it.
Become confident.

Is their feedback relevant ?

Before releasing a new product into production / operation or during the life cycle of a product or solution it is common to ask your users / customers feedback in order to improve the service or product.
Product management of companies ask for suggestions, defects, errors, improvements, features and ideas in order to have a feel of the issues, adoption and the acceptance of a product or solution in order to be prepared for the ever changing market demand.

The question is whether the feedback is relevant and representative for you population of customers.
Those people that provide feedback are probably those who are the most negative, the most difficult, the most positive or the best outspoken of your customers.
The people at the extremities of your user population will give you feedback.
The average user, who might currently be happy with your solution, finds the balance between functions / features and the complexity to use just adequate or ideal
Those who don’t give any feedback just stay quiet and some might even quietly change vendor without letting you know.

Biased feedback requires interpretation and relevancy

There will be always customers challenging you with their negative feedback in order to get lower pricing, recognizable by their threatening to change vendor.
Others will write a feedback because they have a very specific need, not applicable for the rest of your user community.
Any feedback can be very biased for various reasons as they all have another agenda than you.
You should find out or know the real motivators of the people giving feedback.
If you pay or reward people for their feedback, then your information can be completely fake.

Feedback from your customers is to be handled carefully, needing interpretation and relevancy before taking the decision to launch into a redesign of your product or solution as your average user is not the one making the most noise or speaking the loudest.
Any redesign based upon the loudest speakers only could define a product no longer suited for your main market of average users.

Observe the behavior instead

In order to obtain feedback the behavior of your users with the application or appliance should be investigated and observed.
The goal is to find out what users actually do with the product or solution and what they don’t do or identify the feature they don’t use.

Just asking for feedback and suggestions will project a very biased image of your product or solution.
Feedback can be and is in most cases biased.
In the behavior the real and true feedback is embedded.
Hence you should observe your customers and not listen to your customers in order to avoid biased feedback that can or will lead to biased conclusions bringing the wrong products or solutions to the market.

What are the motivators for you to give feedback ?

When a sales deal gets closed it is always the salesman who gets the applause and the commission. Especially when he has closed a big deal he becomes the sales hero of the company.

A sales team achievement

In reality in most cases sales deals are team work, especially with larger deals.
Not only the salesman has worked to obtain the win, but the sales secretary, the sales engineer, the pre-sales engineer, the marketing team.
All have brought their contribution to the deal.

Even a seemingly unimportant telephone call or statement from one of the team members can have induced the shift towards the decision in favor of the company.
As an example: the receptionist picking up the telephone faster and dispatching the incoming telephone efficiently to the appropriate person, can be one of the decisive reasons if the competitor isn’t picking up the phone.

Probably it is hard to pinpoint exactly what has made the decision makers to change their mind or to elect the solution. In most cases it is the total of all efforts of the entire team that has made it possible to close the sale.

The best salesman of the year is not alone

Still in many companies the best salesman of the month, quarter or year gets his picture in the entrance hall after getting his award during a company event.
It is the cult of the person and personality.

Maybe the community just needs heroes and wants to worship heroes. This need for stardom is achieved by defining the sales hero.

However all the other employees involved might just get frustrated and lacking motivating by not getting the attention, reward and status. Even if the sales hero during his speech thanks his collaborators or sales team, as it is he who walks away with the bonus and the status.

In reality there is no sales hero as he works in a team and needs the team.
Instead the sales team should be praized and cheered.

Did you ever got salesman of the year?
Are you still proud of this achievement?

Search
You use search engines and go to the information.

Social
The information is presented to you by your network.

Search

Since many years we use search engines to find information on the Internet.
This gives you the power to find information at the cost of taking time to search the Internet.
You use the search engine to filter out the most likely links and then manually visit and evaluate in order to find the interesting of matching content.
The investment is made when you need it.

Social media

Social networks present you the interesting information through your social network.
Your contacts in the social network will filter out the information and that is being offered to you at no effort. Your contacts are your search agents: selecting and filtering out data.
The effort and investment is in the build up of your social network – long before your need or can use the information.

Content marketing

Content marketing can be used in both cases:
The information available on the Internet – including on your website – can get found and filtered by both the search engines and the people in social networks.
The difference is the ranking and the chances of getting presented.

For search engines:
Content marketing is aimed at getting found by search engines: hence the need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keywords and Meta tags.

For social networks:
Content marketing is aimed at people as social networks are powered by people:
Hence the need to be remarkable, bring original content or valuable information.

Attracting search engines or people is quite different.
For example: the visual appealing content will attract and be remembered better by people than by search engines, especially if emotion is involved.

The end result should be the same:
Getting found and noticed by a possible buyer looking for valuable information in the content published.

Who is on your side? The search engines or the people in social networks?
Invitation:
Would you be interested in www.popupbooster.com Beta? For dynamic websites presenting relevant content – behavioral targeting.
Sign-up here