Think Small to Win Big: How Carriers Should Approach Small Business Buyers at an Individual Level
Market Insights
To meet the needs of small businesses, it is important to remember that inside that account there are individuals making the decisions. And just like consumers, small business buyers have distinct communication preferences, servicing needs, and day–to-day pain points. For example, in our survey of …
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AEP Digital Listening Bulletin #1
Uncategorized
Welcome to week one of our Fall 2019 AEP Digital Listening Bulletin. In this bi-weekly e-mail, we’ll take a look at the trends, conversations, and themes that we are seeing dominate the Annual Enrollment Period discussion as carriers, brokers, agents and enrollees go through this …
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Customer-Centricity: Definition, Challenges, and Solutions
Customer Experience
In this article, I’ll walk through the history of customer-centricity, and how digital technology has ushered in a new era of customer-first marketing and support—at least potentially. I’ll then walk through some of the technological and people-related challenges companies typically face as they attempt to …
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Open Enrollment Digital Listening Bulletin #1
Uncategorized
Welcome to week one of our Fall 2019 Group Benefits Open Enrollment Digital Listening Bulletin. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we’ll take a look at the trends, conversations, and themes that we are seeing dominate the group benefits discussion as many carriers, brokers, heads of HR, …
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What Exactly is Digital Sales Transformation?
Uncategorized
As of 2020, “digital transformation” is a hot topic in corporate America. But “digital transformation” of a salesforce – actual people – is almost an oxymoron. Yes, we can provide sales reps with more software tools but essentially, they are still managing human-to-human interactions to …
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3 Strategies to Win with Customer Experience in the Platform-as-a-Channel Ecosystem
Customer Experience
In a previous article, we discussed the rise of ‘platforms-as-a-channel’ and the implications for companies across all industries. While there is a multitude of factors driving the rise of platform marketplaces, the underlying driver that makes it a sticky trend lies with the customer. Customers are looking …
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Beyond Benefits: Enabling Brokers To Unlock Their Full Potential
Sales Enablement
Brokers are successfully building relationships with small businesses, but they shouldn’t get too comfortable… For individuals buying and managing employer-sponsored benefits at small businesses, the support a broker provides is vital. In most cases, it is even more important than the carrier providing benefits …
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If Customer Centricity Is So Important, Why Do So Many Businesses Struggle to Get It Right?
Customer Experience, Sales Coverage
Customer centricity has never been more important to the success of both B2B and B2C companies. In just a few clicks, today’s customers have the power to shop around for the best price, compare features and even consult customer and influencer testimonials. The shift in …
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Leveraging Channel Partners as Your Frontline to Sales Agility
Channel Partner Enablement, Sales Enablement
As the technology industry landscape continues to shift towards XaaS recurring revenue models, the role of the channel is changing dramatically and forcing a new model for the vendor-partner relationship. While there are clear financial benefits of the recurring revenue transition, the underlying driver is …
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The Changing Face of Distribution Marketing to Seniors
Digital Sales, Lead Generation and Nurturing
When it comes to e-commerce, “rising seniors” have had 20 years to get used to secure e-commerce pages—specifically the little lock that appears on secure sites. The idea that seniors will hesitate to conduct business online is at this point probably more of a stereotype …
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Platform-as-a-Channel: A New Model Disrupting the Channel Partner Ecosystem
Channel Partner Enablement, Digital Sales
The partner channel model hadn’t changed much until a few years ago. Most groceries and consumer goods traveled through supermarkets; most cars were sold through dealers, and most manufacturing items were sold through distributors. These traditional channel models have some combination of nine traits in …
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Why the Ancillary Insurance Market is About to Boom, and Only Some Will Have Competitive Advantage
Market Insights
Offering a health plan is no longer enough. Today’s employers are adding dental, life, long-term disability and other innovative ancillary benefits in order to attract and retain the best talent in the tightest labor market in years. This means brokers and carriers need to follow …
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6 Step Approach to Reinvigorating Your Competitive Positioning – Part 1
Sales Enablement
As tech competition heats up, those that innovate and work faster, better or cheaper, may win, yet while they focus on reinventing or optimizing what they bring to market, businesses that focus on how to position their solutions might be more successful in attracting buyers. …
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9 Requirements for Effective Cross-Selling in High Tech
Buyer Journeys, Cross-Selling, Marketing Analytics
The impact of digital transformation on the Technology sector is staggering. Billion-dollar technology incumbents, hyper-growth emerging stars, and new start-ups alike are not only developing and supplying the catalysts of digital transformation to their customers across all industries, but they also face the need to …
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How Simply “Watching Your Buyers” Can Increase Retention Rates
Market Insights
One of our clients recently came to us with an issue that we immediately diagnosed as a friction problem. A product had been conceived and built which should have been selling well, but uptake was slow. There was nothing functionally wrong with the product; it …
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The Retail Revolution: 5 Ways to Adapt, Survive, and Thrive
Channel Partner Enablement
With the rise of e-commerce and the decline of the shopping mall, the last two decades have seen massive shifts in the world of retail. Consumers are migrating online and demanding more from their purchases: lower prices, faster shipping, sustainable practices. Amazon looms large and …
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What Uber Teaches Us About Great Sales and Buyer Enablement
Sales Enablement
The “last mile” of revenue generation (getting a qualified lead to close) is always the biggest hurdle. Whether B2B or B2C, this ultimately requires some level of personal relationship development and product customization. Yet many times, businesses don’t realize the costs associated in qualifying a lead …
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Cyborgs Will Beat Robots: Building a Human-AI Culture
Digital Sales, Marketing Analytics
There are two competing AI narratives bouncing around the internet. On the one hand, AI is seen as a future scourge, a technology that once unchained will push humanity past a singularity. Past this singularity, we cannot predict what will happen—but many think it won’t …
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How to Take an Omni-channel Approach to Sales Enablement
Sales Enablement
Today’s typical buyer journey was best described as, “…a big bowl of spaghetti,” at the Gartner Sales and Marketing Conference in Las Vegas. Thanks to constant innovation in digital and mobile technology, buyers now have the freedom to self-serve by researching information online and engaging …
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2019: Eliminating Go-to-Market Friction in FinServ
Uncategorized
I had the opportunity over the Holidays to reflect a bit on our Financial Services client experience over the past year, and to think ahead to some of the key industry Go-to-Market challenges we see for 2019. I went through our blogs for 2018 to …
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AWS Goes After Data Center Providers. How to Fight Back
Uncategorized
At the AWS re:Invent conference a few weeks ago, AWS CEO Andrew Jassy made a major announcement outside the norm for the public cloud behemoth. Jassy said AWS would begin taking on traditional data center hardware vendors with its on-premises service AWS Outposts. One response …
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How Sales Content Can Create a Consistent Experience for Tech Buyers
Sales Enablement
Every organization understands the importance of offering consistent products and services, but most don’t understand the role content can play in delivering a consistent customer experience. Consistency encourages regularity and reliability, which in turn makes customers feel safe and open to building a long-term relationship …
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Growth Planning: A Three-Part Model for 2019 and Beyond
Uncategorized
“Where will our growth come from over the next three years?” Every strategic planning cycle should start with some variant on that question. What sounds simple is in fact one of the most complex and fraught decision executives have to make, year after year. In …
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Using Digital “Intelligence” To Source Vertical Opportunities
Market Insights
NOTE: This is part of a blog series entitled, “The Six Chapters of the Social Insights Story.” You can read the intro here. All of us know what it’s like to drive at night in a dense fog. Given the obscurity and lack of clarity in front …
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