4 Questions The Best Managers Answer To Energise Employees
“The best managers reinforce how and why each person’s contribution is fundamental to the team’s success.” Gallup.
First Question: What is your contribution?
People are energized when their contribution is understood and appreciated.
Here’s a walk-about question you might use today. “I believe you’re making important contributions. What contributions do you think you’re making?”
(Find creative ways to complete the above question, “to our customer’s success,” for example.) Note: If you’re afraid to ask the question, maybe it’s time to work on helping people know they’re contributing.
Second Question: What are you great at?
People are energized when their strengths are understood, appreciated, leveraged and improved.
“The best managers … actively create a culture of continuous learning.” Gallup.
Here’s a walk-about question you might use tomorrow. “I think you’re really great at … . What do you think you’re great at?”
Third Question: What are your aspirations?
People are energized when their current work develops their skills and advances their career.
Here’s a walk-about question for Wednesday. “What are your aspirations?” Or, “Where would you like to be in five years and how can I help you get there?”
Fourth Question: How can we set you up for success?
People are energized when the path for success is clear and attainable with hard work. Success is about:
- Challenge
- Training
- Feedback
- Coaching
42% of Millennials want feedback every week—more than twice the percentage of every other generation. HBR
Here’s a walk-about question for Friday: “Who’s helping you develop your skills and advance your career?” (Everyone goes further with someone.)
How Google Chrome’s cross-site cookie & fingerprinting changes will affect marketers
This change will enable users to clear all [cross-site] cookies while leaving single domain cookies unaffected, preserving user logins and settings. It will also enable browsers to provide clear information about which sites are setting these cookies, so users can make informed choices about how their data is used.
By most estimates, Google Chrome is the world’s most popular web browser with market share above 60%.
That means when Chrome changes, the effects can be significant and at recent the Google I/O conference, the Chromium team announced upcoming changes to Chrome that will likely impact marketers.
The first change addresses cookie privacy and will soon require website owners to explicitly specify when cookies should work across websites. In a blog post, Ben Galbraith, director of Chrome product management, and Justin Schuh, director of Chrome engineering, explained:
“This change will enable users to clear all [cross-site] cookies while leaving single domain cookies unaffected, preserving user logins and settings. It will also enable browsers to provide clear information about which sites are setting these cookies, so users can make informed choices about how their data is used.”
The second change addresses fingerprinting. As browser makers have added greater privacy protection for users, some players in the digital ad ecosystem have responded by creating clever ways to circumvent browser makers’ measures so that they can continue to track users across the web.
Understanding that its cookie changes would create even greater incentives for fingerprinting, the Chromium team says it will be “reducing the ways in which browsers can be passively fingerprinted, so that we can detect and intervene against active fingerprinting efforts as they happen.”
How Chrome’s updates will affect marketers
Chrome’s upcoming cross-site cookie clampdown and fight against fingerprinting will likely be felt by marketers to varying degrees. In some cases, the effects could be significant.
The ability to identify unique individuals as they move around the web, either through cross-site cookies or fingerprinting, is a fundamental component of many digital marketing campaigns. For example, many marketers rely on retargeting solutions to deliver marketing messages to users they’ve interacted with previously.
If the pool of individuals marketers have the ability to target in this fashion shrinks, or the length of time they are able to track individuals across the web is reduced, many marketers might feel that they are in effect taking a big step back in time as far as their targeting capabilities are concerned.
In addition to the effects Chrome’s updates could have on marketing campaigns themselves, companies could find that they also hamper their attribution efforts as cross-site cookies and fingerprinting are commonly employed by analytics solutions.
A reduced ability to answer attribution questions could make it harder for marketers to make smart budget allocation decisions, especially at a time when customer journeys are becoming more complex.
But wait…there’s a catch
While marketers shouldn’t underestimate the impacts the pending Chrome changes could have, it’s important to remember that the changes are ultimately being pushed by Google, the 800-pound gorilla of digital advertising.
Google certainly isn’t going to upend the digital ad market. Instead, it would appear that it’s simply trying to maintain and expand its role in it.
As The Wall Street Journal’s Patience Haggin and Rob Copeland observed, the changes will largely spare Google, which has some 3bn users and handles some 90% of all internet searches, at the expense of its rivals.
In other words, the Chrome changes could potentially make Google even more important to marketers and those negatively affected by the Chrome changes might find themselves tempted to send even more of their dollars to Google as its data edge grows.
Full article at: Econsultancy
How people are ‘ghosting’ their employers
From faking their own deaths to hiring people to talk to their bosses for them, vanishing from the office without a trace is now a common method of workers quitting. But it’s risky.
Yuichiro Okazaki and Toshiyuki Niino are great at quitting. In the last 18 months, they’ve resigned from at least 1,500 jobs.
But the Tokyo-based pair aren’t leaving their own positions. They’re the co-founders of a start-up that offers a bespoke service to employees who are dying to resign but need a bit of help.
“Most of them are scared of their bosses,” says Okazaki. “They know their bosses are going to say: ‘No, you cannot quit’. I think it’s because of the culture of Japan – to quit something is bad. When they want to quit, they feel like they are a bad person.”
That’s where Senshi S and its quitting service, Exit, comes in. For a fee of 50,000 yen ($457, £353), Exit will call a client’s boss and deliver a resignation by proxy. Sometimes it takes several calls. Other times companies don’t want to deal with Exit and say the employee must come in to deliver the message themselves.
But when it’s done, the relief from clients can be immense. “There was one client who told us, ‘you are a Messiah’,” says Okazaki. The man had been wanting to leave for 10 years and “was really suffering from that job”.
He estimates that there are probably 30 companies offering a similar service in Japan. Workers there have traditionally stayed with one employer for life, but in recent years more people have been switching jobs and the shrinking labour force means it’s also a job-seekers’ market.
People are changing but the culture is not changing and also companies are not changing… and so that’s why people need us,”
Of course, getting someone else to hand in your notice is one of the more unusual ways to resign. But how to leave a job is a dilemma most people have faced. And while talking to your boss is probably still the most popular option, much will depend on the circumstances of your departure.
What if you need to leave quickly or find the job really isn’t what you had in mind – or maybe even find out you can’t do it? What if, instead of having the awkward chat, you just disappeared?
This form of work-place behaviour is known as ghosting – a phrase that evolved in the dating world and means to suddenly end all contact without any explanation. Now it appears to be transitioning to the workplace.
Chris Yoko, who runs a web design company in the US state of Virginia, had a bizarre experience with a contractor who was meant to be completing a digital project from home.
“This guy had just started with us – he seemed like a good fit, seemed like a genuinely good guy. We get him started with a pretty simple project by our standards. He agreed, [but] Thursday comes along – there’s nothing there.”
Multiple emails and phone messages got no response. The man missed another meeting on the project. In the end, amid total silence from the contractor, the work was given to someone else.
A short while later, a man purporting to be a friend of the contractor got in touch via email. He said the man had died in a car accident and requested some tax files that the family needed. But something felt off, so Yoko checked the contractor’s Twitter account.
On social media, it appeared the contractor was very much alive. In fact, he’d just responded to a tweet from a cousin about attending a family gathering.
“He replied to this person with a picture of himself with a handle of whiskey in his hand saying: ‘Not only am I coming but I’m bringing this’,” says Yoko. “I screenshotted that and forwarded it to the guy and said: ‘Hey some good news, looks like he’s just fine!’.”
It’s not just workers who disappear without a word. Most people will have had a job application go unacknowledged by a potential employer
Pretending to be dead to avoid following through on a job is obviously an extreme example. But walking out and cutting off all contact with an employer does seem to be on the up.
One middle manager employed in the UK retail sector (who did not want to be named) said she walked out on her company because – although she was contracted into a three-month notice period – she’d found a new job and they needed her immediately. So she left.
It happened early in her career, at the height of the recession. She says her departure was in part linked to a realisation of how “insecure and fickle” relationships with employers could be.
“I had colleagues who would go into an end-of-year review and never come back because they had been cut from the team. You see how cut-throat an employer can be, so then as an employee it makes you think: ‘I don’t actually have to come in tomorrow’.”
And perhaps she has a point. It’s not just workers who disappear without a word. Most people will have had a job application go unacknowledged by a potential employer. Others may hear nothing after attending a face-to-face interview. One man told the BBC he had been ghosted by prospective employers after writing strategy documents, taking tests and even making it through three rounds of interviews.
Chris Gray, a managing director of recruitment company Manpower UK, says the fact that workers are turning the tables is in part a symptom of booming job markets in the developed world.
Low unemployment in the US and UK means it’s “just very easy for them to jump out of the process and jump on to another horse, as it were”, he says.
Some people don’t like conflict or letting others down, while others may lose interest in a drawn-out recruitment process
And he acknowledges that there is very little to be done once someone has gone dark.
“Once you’ve already wasted time as a recruiter or an employer on someone who’s just disappeared, you don’t want to waste more time on trying to find out why they disappeared,” he says.
“I think all we can do in terms of mitigating some of this is to become more proactive in building talent pools; build relationships as early as possible. Get to know people before you need them.”
As for workers, while walking out might suit their immediate needs, they should also consider the potential long-term impact of ghosting an employer. Because, just like in the dating world, no-one thinks particularly fondly of someone who never said goodbye.
“It’s very unprofessional,” says Dawn Fay, district president of the US employment consulting firm Robert Half. “I don’t recommend anybody, whether you’re an employer or employee, ever, ever ghost.
She acknowledges the reasons behind it – some people don’t like conflict or letting others down, while others may lose interest in a drawn-out recruitment process, for example. Companies, she says, can do their part by “moving people through the process quickly” and communicating clearly.
But she says ghosting can return to haunt you.
“It is something that can really come back to bite you later in your career. You never know where people are going to be, so you want to make sure you always handle yourself professionally, no matter what.”
For more excellent insights please visit BBC Capital.
How to capture what the customer wants
Companies often fail across digital channels because they are insufficiently aware of the real needs and preferences of their customers across omnichannel journeys.
Customers now have an unprecedented number of ways to engage with companies, from traditional channels to an ever-growing array of digital modes. Many organizations have responded by investing in digital channels, frequently in an effort to replace traditional modes of engagement. The thinking is that as customers become more technologically savvy, they favor digital channels, significantly reducing the need for live agents and thus saving significant costs. Many companies have expected to save more than 40 percent through reducing live contacts. Yet companies that take this approach often see their customer interactions increase rather than decline, despite significant efforts and resources.
To understand what such companies got wrong in their omnichannel strategies, one needs look no further than digital leaders. Amazon, for example, has also built self-service and e-care capabilities, but with a key difference. Because self-service has thus far largely proven inadequate—that is, customers still often seek out a live agent on the phone—Amazon steers customers to the channels that are best suited to their preferences while also offering digital live interactions and company-initiated contact. So despite being a digital leader, Amazon has designed an omnichannel customer-care strategy in which live agents still figure prominently to handle complex requests, demonstrate empathy, and resolve issues quickly.
Companies seeking to keep pace with industry leaders must embark on an omnichannel transformation—one that views touchpoints not in isolation but as part of a seamless customer journey. And since customer journeys aren’t simple and linear but a series of handoffs between traditional and digital channels that can vary significantly by customer type, an effective strategy requires an in-depth understanding of what customers truly want. To design an omnichannel experience, companies should follow a sequential process composed of four essential components:
- Setting the design principles based on an overarching omnichannel strategy
- Designing service journeys, ensuring that the end-to-end digital and live-contact journeys address identified customer needs and preferences and have clearly defined digital migration points.
- Identifying foundational enablers to support the journeys, featuring multiskilled agents and best-practice contact-center operations to engage with customers live.
- Defining the IT architecture with next-generation enabling technology to support a seamless omnichannel experience.
An omnichannel transformation is the only way for a company to address rising complexity, provide an excellent customer experience, and manage operations costs.
Critical insights to build successful omnichannel strategies
Our research on the future of customer care in 2017 reinforced the importance of omnichannel and digital and the key role that live channels play in creating an excellent experience. Many of the trends we highlighted, particularly the growing number of digital channels, have made the journey to omnichannel more arduous. Three trends in particular are reshaping successful approaches to customer care.
Digital channels have completely changed the ways that customers prefer to interact.Beyond the expectation that information and service will be accessible with a few keystrokes, customers have also become accustomed to engaging with companies through multiple channels. Many customers, for instance, use different channels to gather information on products and to make a purchase. Social media and chat are also rapidly gaining channel share. Companies that believed digital channels would reduce the volume of engagement and the number of touchpoints have been disappointed to find both often continue to increase.
Quality customer care is highly dependent on digital performance. Many companies have subpar digital capabilities that actually increase customer demand for engagement. Indeed, organizations that attempt to migrate customers to digital channels before they are fully ready can trigger the “boomerang effect,” in which customers can keep coming back to a company multiple times in an effort to resolve a problem. In our experience, trying to implement digital care channels prematurely can significantly increase both the number of transactions and the cost per transaction.
Individual touchpoints must be seen through the lens of the end-to-end customer journey. While companies can be tempted to focus on optimizing individual touchpoints, believing that the whole will automatically be greater than the sum of its parts, such targeted intervention can magnify variations in service and inconsistencies in other interactions. Moreover, no matter how successful specific tools are (for example, online self-service), companies that lack visibility into where customers are choosing to interact from touchpoint to touchpoint can still experience service breakdowns.
Customers still favor live agents for complex requests. In a British Telecommunications survey, 52 percent of respondents indicated they want to speak to a live agent when they are facing a crisis and need a solution to a problem with a product or service. Even 24 percent of customers looking to complete a routine task, such as paying a bill, sought out a live agent. Companies with strategies that seek to minimize access to live agents at all costs often see lower customer satisfaction without reducing their overall customer-care expenses.
These trends all conspire to make omnichannel customer care that much more complex. Live agents clearly are not going away; in fact, they are more important than ever for certain kinds of interactions. Digital channels can be invaluable when well executed and integrated, but they can also create issues and increase demand for live agents when poorly managed. Therefore, companies embarking on an omnichannel transformation must ensure that each channel, as well as handoffs across channels, are optimized for each customer interaction. To do that, they must seek to understand what customers truly care about on a granular level.
What really matters to customers
Conventional wisdom can be an insidious obstacle to improving customer care. Companies frequently assume they know what their customers care about. The result is that customer care often settles on standard approaches to resolving issues that aren’t based on actual customer needs and preferences. In general, customer expectations in service journeys fall into three categories:
- Speed and flexibility, defined as minimum processing time, responsiveness, and needs-based service.
- Reliability and transparency, including proactive outreach and communication.
- Interaction and care, consisting of comprehensive competence, personal attention, empathy, and simplicity and clarity.
That said, not all customer expectations fall into predictable categories. Organizations should gather direct, up-to-date feedback from customers to understand what matters most to them. Additionally, not all of the above factors contribute equally to overall experience, so homing in on the most important factors or combination of factors is critical. One company, for example, made speed of issue resolution a top priority because customers were consistently complaining that its service was too slow. In response, customer care redesigned processes and made significant investments to enable agents to move more quickly. It was only when these moves didn’t translate to improved customer satisfaction that the executives realized they needed to get greater visibility into their customers to understand what combination of factors was at play.
An in-depth analysis of data and surveys uncovered some interesting insights (Exhibit 2): customers were dissatisfied when they received fast responses but little information on an issue. The real revelation was that customers were content with longer wait times—provided that they received regular updates and felt fully aware of why issues were taking longer to resolve.
Four steps to a successful omnichannel transformation
The sheer range of variables that customer-care functions must account for—not just on the customer side but also internally—can quickly become overwhelming. But by first establishing some parameters on what good looks like and setting priorities by customer segment, companies can gain clarity on where to direct resources.
1. Define strategy and design principles
Companies must develop a customer-service strategy, or set of principles, that encompasses not only a vision for how to deliver an excellent experience but also how these interactions should feel for their customers. These principles help companies design service journeys that strike the right balance of speed, transparency, and interaction within each channel and that achieve a successful interplay of digital and live channels. Such an approach can ensure that companies apply an omnichannel lens to each service journey rather than focusing on optimizing individual touchpoints (such as interactive voice response, chat, voice, and digital).
To apply an omnichannel lens to the service journey, companies must understand customers by their digital behavior and offer the right channels that best align with the interests of each segment. Not all customers are the same, and it’s how they differ in their behavior and preferences—particularly on digital—that should have an outsize influence on how service journeys are designed. Our research into digital customer experience identified four different personas, and each is receptive to different ways of being engaged.
Digital by lifestyle (23 percent).
For these consumers, digital is fully integrated into their lives. They don’t perceive a separation between the digital and traditional worlds—that is, they use social media every day and tend not to watch traditional TV or read newspapers.
Digital by choice (35 percent).
Individuals who enjoy the advantages that digital brings, such as Netflix, Skype, YouTube, online check-in for travel, and online banking transactions, have options for how they engage but opt primarily for digital channels.
Digital by need (25 percent).
Digital is beyond the comfort zone of these consumers, who engage with digital channels only when necessary.
Offline society (17 percent).
Individuals who live in the nondigital world and prefer personal contacts make up nearly one-fifth of all customers. They use bank branches, shop in brick-and-mortar stores, and typically do not use the internet.
Focusing on the right set of customers will help companies prioritize efforts and identify key attributes and characteristics that would motivate each group. Best practice is to design primary service for each segment, using contact volume distribution and persona profiles that differentiate by digital behavior to determine engagement strategies and the necessary investments in each channel. For customers who are more tech savvy, the goal might be to promote online self-service and automated tools for basic tasks such as payments and installation updates. Only a small percentage of contacts—around 10 percent—require a highly skilled live agent. These contacts include cancellation requests and complaints, interactions for which the right engagement can turn a potential issue into an opportunity to strengthen customer relationships.
2. Map service journeys
Once companies have gained greater visibility into customer personas, they can design end-to-end service journeys across digital and live channels. These journeys should take into account the migration of a customer across channels to ensure seamless handoffs. It’s also critical to note that customer preferences aren’t static; they will continue to evolve, sometimes in surprising ways, based on the channels at their disposal, demographic shifts, and other factors (such as the influence of digital leaders in raising customer expectations). Companies can use the principles to construct a vision of how the customer journeys would look three years from now in a fully omnichannel world and then develop ambitious solutions that can keep pace with this change.
Understanding the end state of the most important service journeys can help companies set goals accordingly. To start, companies must determine which service journeys are most important in terms of the cost of the journey to the organization, the complexity involved in improving the journey, and how important the journey is to the customer. Companies must also overcome entrenched thinking and assumptions; senior managers, for example, often believe that customer care should seek to resolve issues in one session. However, this perspective can overlook opportunities to strengthen customer relationships. Take the claims process in insurance: if a customer has a car accident, he might feel guilty and could look to agents for emotional support. If an insurer is too focused on first-call resolution and speed, the customer might come away with a negative view of the encounter—and, by extension, the insurer.
Companies should apply a “test fast and learn” methodology. Tactics such as design thinking and ideation sessions with customers can structure these interactions; industry best practices show that “customer-experience labs,” which are built like innovation centers with customers and employees jointly designing journeys, can support the quick implementation and live-testing of prototypes with customers. This rapid, iterative approach can be summed up as, “Test, fail, adapt.”
In addition, quantitative research (including customer surveys) and qualitative efforts (ethnographic research) can offer a comprehensive view of customer groups and segments and open executives’ eyes to customer needs. By conducting this process for the most important journeys, companies can piece the omnichannel experience together—including additional touchpoints, detailed personas, a deep understanding of pain points and delight moments, preferences, and trade-offs about channels.
A customer might begin online by researching products but then reach out to a live agent to get more information and inquire about inventory. After comparing prices online and through a mobile app, he or she purchases the product online. A call to a live agent to check on the order status confirms the package’s delivery time. When the customer decides to return the product, it sets off an additional round of contact with a live agent to manage the process. Since movement between channels has become a common occurrence, managing this movement seamlessly and providing a consistent experience are paramount to customer satisfaction.
This in-depth consideration of service journeys can enable companies to determine what capabilities they need across technology, people, and the organization.
3. Invest in foundational enablers
To design and implement an effective omnichannel strategy, companies must embrace a culture of customer orientation across all employers and managers. This commitment helps to guide the development of three foundational enablers. First, agile process redesign empowers customer-care managers and agents to move more nimbly, improve transparency, and ensure frontline processes and actions are aligned with overarching business objectives.3 Agile methodologies create ownership for care groups, deepen their resolution skills, and establish appropriate incentives—all to accelerate progress on a customer-first, omnichannel experience. Companies should establish and test interaction models to confirm that they are providing a seamless experience across channels.
Second, the workforce must have the right service skill sets. An omnichannel transformation also requires a shift in mind-set, from one focused on execution to continuous improvement and problem solving. To support this shift, employees must also build new skills. Care agents who possess the range of skills to resolve the most complex issues are a critical component of the omnichannel model.
Last, these efforts all need to be supported by well-designed and efficient foundational capabilities, from automated measurement that enables a meaningful performance management to routing based on personal attributes, harnessing customer data using advanced analytics.4
Measurement and accountability are also critical to gauge the progress of these efforts. For example, lots of companies measure Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction, among other metrics, at a company level, but this approach doesn’t highlight issues in specific parts of the customer journey. Therefore, measurement must be sufficiently frequent to identify patterns in customer engagement and granular to get an accurate picture of how customer care is performing at crucial interactions in each journey.
Accountability often requires companies to build a cross-functional team. Most companies are still organized by function, so improving a customer journey could involve operations, product development, the back office, legal, and compliance. These functions, when left to their own devices, typically focus on optimizing their area of the process rather than thinking about overall customer satisfaction. Providing an excellent customer experience across multiple touchpoints requires functions to coordinate their efforts more closely. Companies should set up a cross-functional team of senior managers that is responsible for improving the customer journey. They can then convene on a biweekly basis to determine how they can collaborate to reach the business’s goals instead of just focusing on their own function’s.
4. Build out IT architecture
The principles, service journeys, and functional enablers must be supported by an integrated IT architecture that can help to deliver a seamless experience. This architecture consists of the following elements:
Omnichannel desktop. Each agent’s command center integrates chat, cobrowsing, and email via applications. Routing and analyses efficiently direct complex requests to skilled agents, and chat and callback are offered via digital channels using javascript applications.
Omnichannel platform. This platform coordinates all channels used by representatives and routes and manages all incoming requests. An integration platform brings together a customer’s entire contact history and coordinates with the back end. Through a 360-degree customer perspective in the omnichannel desktop, representatives gain access to a self-service portal and can steer the process for customers.
Back-end interfaces. A self-service portal uses back-end interfaces to handle all requests. Data from these interactions are saved in data storage where they are quickly accessible. The portal also interfaces with the back end for synchronized communication.
Advanced analytics and new technologies, such as predicting issues before the customer explains the reason for the call, allow first movers to create “wow moments.” Similarly, algorithms based on natural language processing allow companies to promote behaviors to their agents that could affect customer satisfaction. For example, a system could coach an agent to talk slower or to use more energy in the conversation. New technologies and applications are seemingly arising each day; in the near future, they will enable companies to implement an IT backbone for their omnichannel experience that we cannot even imagine today.
The push to omnichannel is not confined to specific industries. Instead, it emanates from the evolution of customer preferences and behaviors as more channels emerge. And though customers are becoming more tech savvy, their comfort with digital channels only serves to elevate the importance of live agent interactions. Companies that understand this apparent contradiction, truly commit to understanding customer journeys, and build the capabilities to provide seamless omnichannel service will be well positioned to delight customers for years to come.
Please view McKinsey for more excellent insights.
Changing remuneration models: Is it leading to better client-agency relationships? (Marketing Interactive)
According to a Global Agency Remuneration 2018 report by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and The Observatory International, majority of the companies believe that a different approach to the way they pay their agency partners will improve the client-agency relationship. 71% of the respondents in the research said that changing the current agency remuneration models would improve the relationships with their agencies.
In the report, 81% of respondents expected a continued shift towards performance-based remuneration models with a focus on outcomes in the next 12 months. This was also said to continue the ongoing decline of labour-based and commission-based models. The number of respondents currently using output-based fees as the main corporate remuneration contract has risen to 28%, up from 20% in 2011. While, a further 15% combine performance with a labour-based payment, an increase from 9% in 2011.
The research was based on responses from global and regional senior marketing procurement experts from 42 companies with a total communication spend in excess of US$84 billion. The research looked at how advertisers are evolving the way they pay agencies of all types and in all markets. The findings, said WFA, reflects a continuing trend, noted in WFA research during 2011 and 2014 when the percentage of pure labour-based contracts was the main model, currently at 36%. This decreased from 49% in 2014 and 54% in 2011.
Across all types of agencies, on average less than 20% of the total remuneration is linked to performance for 80% of the respondents. However, more than half of the respondents and less than 10% of remuneration is related to this. Performance payments also come in many shapes and sizes; earn back or true joint risk and reward, as it represents different outcomes for the agency involved.
Businesses have to ensure realistic and achievable KPIs are set and that there are methodologies in place to ensure appropriate measurement. The report said that the increased recognition of the business contribution that agencies make to its clients is “likely to be welcomed” by agencies. However, this is only if the framework used ensures that both parties interests are considered and balanced.
The pace of change
The pace of change over the past seven years has been different among agency types. Creative agencies have seen a 20% decrease in the use of FTE (full time experience)-based models and a 14% rise in the use of fixed/output-based models since 2011. Meanwhile, creatively-oriented agencies would prefer to focus on return on investment, which delivers far greater value.
Media agencies have experienced a fall in the use of labour and commission-based models. Around 44% of respondents (compared to 16% in 2014) now offer a performance-based fee/bonus to their agencies on top of labour fee, while 7% have also started to use fixed/output-based remuneration models. Despite the recent furore about transparency, more respondents are ‘happy’ (77% from media planning and 69% for media buying) with their media remuneration models than any other agency type.
PR agency remuneration also see declining reliance on labour-based models
In addition, PR agency remuneration also see declining reliance on labour-based models in past seven years, with increasing usage of fixed/output-based models (up from 20% to 29% in seven years) and a small number are now using commission-based models (4%). PR outputs are notoriously difficult to measure and 41% of respondents are not happy with their arrangements.
Production house remuneration has been fairly consistent. The majority (67%) of respondents seem happy with their approach to remuneration in this area, with the majority sticking with output-based fees (41%) or labour-based fees (35%). Value-based remuneration has almost vanished from this area.
“Agencies are vital partners for many advertisers and the way they are paid is a critical step in establishing a productive relationship that delivers real return on investment while also offering agencies the chance to be rewarded for the success they help generate. The move to performance-based remuneration is a recognition that where agencies and advertisers are aligned, the outputs are more likely to be better for both,” Laura Forcetti, global marketing sourcing manager at the WFA said.
“Whilst there has been some positive change in approaches over recent years, many have yet to define the most appropriate remuneration model to deliver positively to all stakeholders. Advertisers need greater insight into the range of models being used, and what each delivers, if they are to develop the most appropriate model, one that can deliver positively against their specific business needs,” Stuart Pocock, co-founder of The Observatory International said.
Moreover, the study also found that perception of the value delivered by agencies has been positive. 87% of respondents said that they feel that they are getting genuine value for money from their agencies (up from 67% in 2011). In addition, nearly 70% agree that their agencies are now accountable for the value that they create. About 52% of respondents said that focusing too much on remuneration has a detrimental impact on agency relationships. The report also highlighted that transparency concerns remain with more than half (52%) of the respondents not feeling that they are getting full transparency on their agencies’ costing models. Getting sufficient detail on scope of work is a significant issue for respondents with only 31% believing they get a highly detailed scope from their marketing counterparts. This also has been highlighted as the cause of the majority of issues with fee negotiations.
Original article at Marketing-Interactive.
From Alibaba to Zynga: 40 Of The Best VC Bets Of All Time And What We Can Learn From Them
These venture bets on startups that “returned the fund,” making firms and careers, were the result of research, strong convictions, and patient follow-through. Here are the stories behind the biggest VC home runs of all time.
In venture capital, returns follow the Pareto principle — 80% of the wins come from 20% of the deals.
Great venture capitalists invest knowing they’re going to take a lot of losses in order to hit those wins.
Chris Dixon of top venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has referred to this as the “Babe Ruth effect” in reference to the legendary 1920s-era baseball player. Babe Ruth would strike out a lot, but also made slugging records.
Likewise, VCs swing hard, and occasionally hit a home run. Those wins often make up for all the losses and then some — they “return the fund.”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures recently wrote that for his fund, this translates to needing at least two $1B exits per fund:
If you do the math around our goal of returning the fund with our high impact companies, you will notice that we need these companies to exit at a billion dollars or more. Exit is the important word.
Getting valued at a billion or more does nothing for our model.”
These venture bets on startups that “returned the fund,” making firms and careers, were the result of research, strong convictions, and patient follow-through. Here are the stories behind the biggest VC home runs of all time.
In venture capital, returns follow the Pareto principle — 80% of the wins come from 20% of the deals.
Great venture capitalists invest knowing they’re going to take a lot of losses in order to hit those wins.
Chris Dixon of top venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has referred to this as the “Babe Ruth effect,” in reference to the legendary 1920s-era baseball player. Babe Ruth would strike out a lot, but also made slugging records.
Likewise, VCs swing hard, and occasionally hit a home run. Those wins often make up for all the losses and then some — they “return the fund.”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures recently wrote that for his fund, this translates to needing at least two $1B exits per fund:
“If you do the math around our goal of returning the fund with our high impact companies, you will notice that we need these companies to exit at a billion dollars or more,” he wrote. “Exit is the important word. Getting valued at a billion or more does nothing for our model.”
CBInsights analyzed 40 of the biggest VC hits of all time to learn more about what those home runs have in common.
To do so, they pulled data and information from web archives, books, S-1s, founder interviews, the CB Insights platform, and more.
For each company, they dove into the remarkable numbers they posted before their IPOs and acquisitions, the driving factors behind their growth, and the roles of their most significant investors.
The full report analyses the following companies:
- Groupon
- Cerent
- Snap
- King Digital Entertainment
- UCWeb
- Alibaba
- JD.com
- Delivery Hero
- Zayo
- Mobileye
- Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC)
- Meitu
- Zynga
- Lending Club
- Genentech
- Stemcentrx
- Workday
- Rocket Internet
- Qudian
- Acerta Pharma
- Nexon
- Zalando
- Ucar Group
- Webvan
- Qualtrics
- Mercari
- NIO
- Meituan Dianping
- Xiaomi
- Pinduoduo
- Ele.me
- Adyen
- GitHub
- Flipkart
- Spotify
- Dropbox
Click here to read a detailed report on each company.
What Deep Breathing Does to Your Body
Breathe in for 4, out for 8
For being free and incomparably easy to practice, deep breathing is a pretty miraculous healing exercise: It can reduce anxiety, bring you into the present moment through mindfulness, and even help you remember how to respond to your specific stressors.
The average person is cognizant of deep breathing’s psychological effects; we feel it slow down our racing minds and calm us down. But what’s actually going on in the body here? Why, physiologically speaking, does taking a deep breath make me feel slightly less rattled, at least temporarily?
Before understanding deep breathing’s physiological benefits, you first have to grasp how your body responds to stress. As most people have experienced, when you’re worried, upset, or anxious, you can feel it viscerally — your heart starts to beat faster and faster, you can feel dizzy, and blood rushes toward your heart and your brain. According to Dr. Tania Elliott of NYU Langone Health, the system responsible for this is your sympathetic nervous system, better known as your “fight or flight response.”
“Evolutionarily, you’ll only develop this stress response if you’re being attacked by a predator,” she told the Cut. “But what’s happened over time is that because we’re experiencing so much chronic, low-level stress on our day-to-day life, you have this low-level activation of the stress response all the time.” She’s referring both to stressors that may not seem overwhelming in isolation — long work-commute times, work conflicts, and lack of time for social interactions — as well as more major sources of anxiety, like marital problems or high cost of living.
When your sympathetic nervous system fills your body with all that cortisol and adrenaline, you don’t feel so stellar; this is where deep breathing comes in. To help explain how your body’s relaxation response can oppose its stress response, Esther Sternberg, research director at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, uses a car metaphor: If you want to “reduce” your stress response, in which you directly combat the stressor, that’s like “taking your foot off the gas.” Instead, Sternberg recommends stopping this response — i.e., putting your foot on the brakes — as it’s much more efficient.
“A much more effective and quicker way of interrupting that stress response is to turn on the vagus nerve, which in turn powers up the parasympathetic nervous system,” she told the Cut. “Deep-breathing turns on the vagus nerve enough that it acts as a brake on the stress response.”
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The vagus nerve, along with stimulating your body’s relaxation response, can inhibit inflammation, slow down your heart, and even help you make memories. It’s the longest and most complex of the cranial nerves, as it sends sensory fibers from your brain stem to all your visceral organs. If you’ve ever been punched in the pit of your stomach (the solar plexus) so hard that you faint, Sternberg says you’ve experienced your vagus nerve “turned on high-power.”
She continues: “It slows the heart so much that you faint.”
While fainting from a direct blow to the stomach is objectively unpleasant, this trigger does come with a whole slew of health benefits: It can help quell anxiety, decrease blood pressure, and relax your brain waves. Per Elliott, some EEGs have actually shown that deep breathing can lead to an increase in alpha brain-waves, which are typically present when you’re feeling relaxed, like when you’re meditating or even daydreaming. (There are five types of brain waves, with alpha brain-waves measuring a frequency between 8 and 12 hertz.)
But deep breathing can do more than just stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in the midst of a stressful moment; it can prevent your stress response from overacting in the first place. To “overcome the unhealthy day-to-day stress response,” as Elliott puts it, you should practice this type of breathing daily, and not just when you’re feeling stressed. When starting out, she recommends putting aside two minutes, once or twice a day, to slow down your breath: In for four counts, out for eight counts. (Sternberg, conversely, recommends Dr. Andrew Weil’s popular method: Breathe in for four counts, hold for seven counts, and breathe out for eight counts.)
“Most people don’t realize the chronic, constant stress we’re under every day, which has a cumulative effect,” she told the Cut. “We need to get back to our baseline relaxation to bring us to our calm, normal state.”
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Consumers Receptive To Mobile Ads While Watching TV, Before Bed
Aki Technologies' survey also found a generational shift in how consumers pay attention to ads.
Consumers are more receptive to mobile ads in front of the TV and in the moments before they fall asleep in bed, according to a survey from mobile ad platform Aki Technologies.
The company contracted audience marketplace Lucid to conduct an online survey of 1,000 U.S. adults in November 2018.
More than half of respondents (59 percent) said that they pay attention to mobile ads while at home watching the big screen and 51 percent said they were receptive to them in bed.
The survey also found that different generations pay attention in different ways. For example, Millennials are 7 percent more likely to be receptive to ads in front of the big screen, while Boomers were 6 percent less.
Why you should care
Marketers are increasingly looking for ways to round out their customer view by analyzing metrics like consumer sentiment, intent and emotions. Though this survey provides only a small snapshot of user receptivity, it points to a metric that could be just as valuable.
“Understanding the various states or ‘moments’ is critical to delivering a message that the consumer will be receptive to,”
Even though consumers are using two devices at a time, they say they aren’t distracted away from mobile ads.
“TV advertisers need to realize that the second screen is equally important to the flatscreen,” Black said. “Brands must include mobile in their media mix—it’s not optional or experimental anymore. We all have these devices in our hands at all times. So marketers should be looking for unique ways to take advantage of that and get creative in how they appeal to us on these hand-held, always-on content-delivery platforms.”
Conor Ryan, CIO of ad automation platform StitcherAds, agreed.
“Advertisers are missing opportunities to transcend the big screen by encouraging interaction with branded content on their smartphones,” Ryan said.
Advertisers should also note that receptivity to mobile ads shifts between generations and plan placements accordingly.
More from the study
More than half of the survey respondents said that brand familiarity (54 percent) and interesting creative (52 percent) captured their attention.
The survey found that though the factors that motivate attention are consistent, they are less effective for customers who define themselves as being “on the go.”
Full article can be found here.
1B+ Market Map: The World’s 310 Unicorn Companies In One Infographic (CBInsights)
This map highlights which markets boast the most private companies with billion-dollar valuations.
There are 310 private companies around the world valued at $1B+ as of 1/23/2019.
These companies are collectively worth as much as $1,052B and have raised a combined total of nearly $257B.
Last year, 112 new companies joined the global unicorn club — a 58% increase from the 71 new unicorns in 2017.
This market map sorts unicorns into 13 categories, from auto tech to e-commerce. The Other category includes companies within real estate, ed tech, renewable energy, aerospace, and more.
Click here for a zoomed in version.
Original article can be found here.
30 Questions To Ask Before Joining A Startup
Vetting a startup is inherently difficult.
You're trying to evaluate the company while still impressing your interviewers, and that balance can be tricky. At the same time, candidates have a tendency to make this process harder than it needs to be by being uncertain of what they actually want out of a company.
Understanding what you want out of a new job is prerequisite to joining the right startup. Before you apply for any new jobs, you need to figure out what your top priority in a new role is. For most candidates, this will be one of three things:
- Compensation
- Career
- Culture
For each of these priorities, we have broken down 10 questions that will help you vet whether or not a startup will satisfy your goal.
Note: There can certainly be overlap. Wanting more cash and a better culture aren't mutually exclusive goals. In reality, however, one of these priorities is going to be more important to you than the others.
1. If You Want To Make More Money
If you want to work in tech and make the most money possible, you should be applying to tech giants (think Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google). Simply put, they offer the highest compensation in the industry.
However, for many people, working at a startup will always be preferable to working at a giant corporation. Some people prefer the high risk, high reward potential of owning equity in a startup. Others simply can't work in a non-startup environment.
If you'd rather take a chance at being an early employee at the next Google than being employee #85,000 at a tech giant, or if you just love startups but want to maximize your income, you need to do three things:
Figure out how much pure cash you can make.
This is obvious, but you want to establish that you'll be making the most cash possible via your salary and bonuses. Additionally, you want to make sure there is a clear path for your salary to increase as you progress in the company.
Ask these three questions to figure out your immediate earning potential with this company:
- “What is the salary range for this role?” Simple, but critical. A higher range means the potential for more money.
- “How are raises calculated and awarded?” You want to make sure raises aren't uncommon in this organization.
- “How do bonuses work?” You want to see generous bonuses that are tied to plausible goals.
- As a bonus question, ask yourself “How competitive is this offer?”
Establish the long-term viability of the company.
Startups crash all the time. A startup can offer you the most generous compensation imaginable—if it crashes in six months, you're still out of work. You need to make sure this startup is going to last.
Ask these three questions to get a sense of the startup's long-term viability:
- “Do you have product-market fit?” If not, they don't have real money, and there's no guarantee they ever will.
- "What is your current growth rate?” Your earning potential grows with revenue. Slow growth means less income.
- “What is your runway?” The longer the runway, the more financially stable the company is.
If all three of these questions produce positive answers, then you know you are interviewing at a company that has the momentum, stability, and cash on hand to satisfy your goal.
Evaluate the real worth of your equity offer.
Startup equity is a complicated topic that is worthy of an entire book, but for the sake of brevity, we'll keep this simple. You need to know that equity in this startup actually has a chance of producing a nice windfall for you. Also, while other questions in this article can be asked mid-interview, these questions should be asked after you've received an offer.
Ask these three questions to establish whether or not equity is valuable at this startup:
- “What percent of the company do these shares represent?” Your percentage of ownership means more than your number of shares.
- “What is your total preference stack?” The more owed in liquidation preference, the less your equity is likely worth.
- “What's the minimum price you would exit for?” This gives you a reference point for valuing your potential payout.
If the startup is offering you a good percentage of the company, isn't carrying an insane preference overhang, and would like to exit at a realistically high price (or IPO), your equity is in good shape.
2. If You Want To Advance Your Career Quickly
If you're looking to move forward in your career—whether that means stepping into more senior positions, or switching to a different role entirely—you need to use a completely different framework for evaluating this startup.
Instead of thinking of the money you'll make immediately by joining this startup, you need to think of how this startup will affect your career years from now. To do that, you need to do three things:
Chart your room for growth in this company.
Many startups suffer from overly flat structures, in which it can be next to impossible for a team member to step up and take on a more senior position. You want to avoid getting trapped at all costs.
Ask these three questions to understand your growth potential within this startup:
- “What progression do you envision for someone in this role?” You want a company that plans for your growth.
- “Does this role contribute to higher-level decisions?” The more responsibility you get out of the gate, the better.
- “Will I be able to learn new skills and technologies in this role?” You don't want to get stuck maintaining legacy code.
If this role is going to allow you to engage with high-level business strategy, learn new in-demand skills and technology, and move quickly through the company, then this startup is offering you a high growth potential.
Decide if this startup will open doors for you later in your career.
Joining the right startup will allow you not only to grow within the company, but will unlock new opportunities for you even after you've moved on. The network the startup gives you—and the brand it allows you to put on your resume—are incredibly important factors to consider.
Ask yourself these three questions to discern whether or not this startup will help you later in your career:
- “Does this startup have a big 'brand' already?” Answer this yourself. Being an alumni of a famous company will qualify you for later opportunities.
- “What are the founders' backgrounds?” If the founders have had successful exits in the past, they're great relationships for you to have.
- “What are the backgrounds of the people on your team?” In general, you want to work with world-class people. The more impressive your team members are, the better your network will be.
Joining a startup with a respectable brand, whose founders and team members could potentially form an incredible network for you in the future, is a great career move.
Determine where you want to be and if this startup will get you there.
You will have to ask yourself, not an interviewer, all of these questions. Candidates often hurt themselves by settling for startups that, on paper, seem like smart career moves, but in reality, are the furthest thing from what they want.
Ask these three questions to figure out whether not this startup can get you what you want, career-wise:
- “Is this startup in the field you ultimately want to work in?” If there's a field you're incredibly passionate about, join it. Don't waste time.
- “Will this startup expose you to technology and problems that excite you?” You will not do your best work if you aren't excited about it.
- “Does this startup have the sort of role you'd ultimately like to be in?” If you'd like to be a PM, but this company doesn't have PMs, don't accept a different role hoping you can change the company's strategy.
- As a bonus question, ask yourself “Do I know any investors or founders who can share insight with me?” Any investor or founder familiar with the company will be able to give you some insight as to whether or not this would be a good career move.
3. If You Want A Great Culture Above All Else
For many candidates, working in a company where culture fits their lifestyle is far more important than maximizing their income or career potential. To evaluate how well you'll fit into a startup's culture, you need to do three things:
Get a sense of this company's values.
Culture begins with a company's core values and principles. To understand whether or not you'd fit into their culture, you have to know if you agree with their values.
Ask these three questions to get a better picture of the company's culture, and the values that drive it:
- “What are this company's core values?” A company with a strong culture will have values that go deeper than buzzwords.
- “How are these values reflected in company processes and policy?” You can measure how important culture is by how prominently it features in business decisions.
- “What kind of people—who are otherwise successful—don't work out here?” A strong culture means that some people won't work out at the company, not because they're untalented, but because their personalities don't fit.
- As a bonus question, ask yourself “Do I embody this culture?” If so, this company may be a perfect fit for you.
Evaluate the company's communication style.
A big, and often ignored, part of enjoying life at a startup is fitting into its communication style. For example, if you're a quiet, head-down type of worker, you may not enjoy your day-to-day in a chatty, open office layout.
Ask these three questions to get a sense of the company's communication style:
- “What is the general level of socializing?” If constant conversation stresses you, or if it energizes you, this is crucial information.
- “Do team members have structured 1-on-1s?” If you need a structured process for communicating with leadership, 1-on-1s are huge.
- “What are company social events like?” If you hate socializing after work, a mandatory weekly happy hour will probably be soul crushing for you.
You want a team whose communication style is effortless for you. If something as basic and unavoidable as communicating with your team causes friction for you, you're probably in the wrong place.
Gauge the flexibility this company provides employees.
Whether you want a culture where you can take time off at your discretion, or you want a culture in which everyone works into the evening, understanding the flexibility of a startup is crucial.
Ask these three questions to understand the startup's flexibility:
- “What is the policy on remote work?” Being able to work from home is a good indicator of overall flexibility—and a great perk if you want to spend more time at home.
- “What is the vacation policy?” Depending on your life situation, you may need flexible time off.
- “Did the founders take vacations this year?” Whether you get unlimited vacation time or two weeks PTO, the important thing is that people in the company actually use their vacations.
- As a bonus question, ask yourself “Are there other people in similar life situations to mine working here?” While you obviously won't have complete access to employees' life stories, look around the office and get a feel for the people that work there. If the company only attracts people of a certain age and background, it's policies are probably tailored to their needs.
Never Ignore Red Flags—Regardless of Your Priority
Just because you choose to vet a company for one of the above priorities doesn't mean you can completely ignore the others. A company in great financial shape is still likely to fail if they have an absolutely toxic culture. A company with an amazing culture will fail if they can't make money.
While you should pick one priority and optimize for it, be cognizant of the others. You can ask all thirty of these questions, and simply place more weight on the answers you're prioritizing.
No career move comes without risk, but by looking at your potential new startup through the above three lenses—and emphasizing the one that matches your priorities—you'll have the highest chance of landing in the best spot for you.
The full article (and other similar great articles) can be found here.