By Aaron Agius

In the 2003 film Paycheck, Ben Affleck’s character is paid a huge sum of money to be locked in a clean room where he reverse engineers products, breaking them down into individual components to determine how they were made. He not only replicates processes, but he also discovers ways to create newer, better products.

You can utilize the same approach with some of the most successful marketing campaigns, minus the conspiracy, gun play, and Hollywood special effects.

Fortune 500 campaigns aren’t successful just because of the messaging or images, or because they have millions of dollars behind campaigns that are produced by agencies like Grey or Ogilvy & Mather. It’s the individual components of those campaigns that come together to create a high return. When you break those campaigns down, you can examine the separate components to see how your startup might benefit from similar strategies.

Here’s what you should pay attention to:

1. Get the messaging right. It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at a marketing campaign. If the messaging is wrong, you’re going to severely limit your chances of succeeding.

I don’t want you to think that it’s just black and white, though. It’s a lot more like Skee-Ball. Sink the ball in just the right place and score big. Miss it by just a bit, and you still get some points. Miss the mark by a long shot and you don’t get squat.

Another important factor is the scale of the message. Some of the most effective campaigns from major companies say more with a single sentence or word–or even just an image–than with content-heavy ads. It’s not really what they say, it’s how they say it. The picture the messaging creates, or the story behind it and the emotional connection it makes, likely contributes to the success of these campaigns.

Focus on painting a big picture around the value proposition to get your messaging on point.

2. The role of distribution. Not all of the best and biggest Fortune 500 campaigns were rolled out in traditional marketing channels like TV, radio, and print. Old Spice’s most successful marketing campaign, in fact, was done with online video.

Look at how Fortune 500 companies distribute their content, and you’ll begin to see patterns in how they focus on specific channels. Some target video, others leverage written content, and while many have a diverse network of channels, they might not use all of them.

The channels and distribution tools they use aren’t arbitrary; they’re based on research. Fortune 500s know where the majority of their audience can be found, and they know what types of content are most likely to get the most engagement.

Instead of trying to replicate the success of Fortune 500s, take a cue from their research and find out where your audience is spending their time. Look for missed opportunities and watch for untapped channels where audience segments may be hiding.

3. How the campaign is promoted and carried. The process through which content is promoted and carried is one aspect that you can try to replicate with your own marketing, especially if larger brands are in a similar industry. When big campaigns take off, pay close attention to how the content is being carried and promoted across the web. Whether it’s a landing page, a video, a blog, or a social post, you can follow the conversations throughout social media to see how fans share it with one another.

Likewise, trace the backlinks on campaigns to find out who is talking about them in articles and blogs. When you run your own campaigns and start publishing content, you should contact these sources to try and boost the signal.

4. Perfecting the timing. There are two aspects to consider with timing when you’re trying to reverse engineer marketing success.

The first has to do with the timing of an event. Some campaigns are time-sensitive and play off of trending topics, fads, one-off or annual events that would be nearly impossible to replicate once the campaign is live.

For Mother’s Day in 2012, P&G launched a “Thank You, Mom” campaign that featured athletes training from a young age to become Olympic athletes. The video emphasized the impact mothers had on their children as they struggled, overcame obstacles, and went on to become winners.

It was a step outside of P&G’s norm since the company’s products don’t really relate to sporting goods, but according to Hubspot, each of the “Raising an Olympian” videos received close to a million views, and the main “Thank You, Mom” video received nearly 53 million views, resulting in more coverage than Nike. The campaign was immensely successful thanks to a combination of timing and understanding the lifestyle of the audience.

Another aspect of timing comes in when content gets released. Buffer published research about the best times to post content through various channels, painting a clear picture about the rise and fall of engagement based on time of day and day of the week.

Look at the most successful campaigns from major companies and you’ll begin to see patterns in the timing and frequency of content publishing.

5. The audience is key. There’s a recurring theme through each of the above points: the audience. When you reverse engineer any successful marketing campaign, whether it’s for a Fortune 500 company or a small startup, it’s always going to end with the audience.

Audience research is critical for any campaign and it provides you with a road map for moving forward including:

• What they want or need to hear
• Their pain points
• How they like to consume content
• Where they gather online
• How they socialize and share content
• When they’re most active

Break down any successful campaign into those components and search for opportunities to do it better, especially in how the audience is targeted. By doing so, you’ll see tremendous growth in your startup’s marketing campaigns.

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By David Turetsky

It seems HR leaders are consumed with Big Data these days—how to gather it, organize it, and effectively use it to contribute to an organization’s success. There’s no doubt that there’s immense pressure on CHROs to glean meaningful insight from the reams of HR data they deal with daily. But in their zeal to extract big-HR-picture trends, they may be overlooking the value of smaller data that’s right in front of them.

It’s like opening the lid of a treasure chest and being so awed by the collective wealth before you that you’re blinded to the individual beauty of each jewel inside. Small data is the separate, discreet jewels that comprise the HR Big Data treasure.

All companies manage an ocean of information, which often gets created as pockets of independent data sets. Small data is that Excel spreadsheet of competitive pricing analysis saved on an employee’s desktop, or that Word document containing an individual’s performance review. Both of these work products contain invaluable data and takeaways that, when centrally aggregated and analyzed, can provide actionable business insights. Those insights can be on almost anything: The state of a company’s workforce conditions, productivity, talent management, retention levels, and even potential flight risks.

Ultimately, small data represents individual work products or processes that employees or groups create to do their jobs better. It’s imperative to make these disparate work products or processes accessible on a shared drive or through a project management system in a secure environment. That way, they can be leveraged across multiple users and enable business leaders to deliver value to a broader community of users.

Better access to data and analytics can help executives and their HR teams address bubbling issues and implement organizational changes. But to begin this process, senior leaders need to understand where the data exists, establish a standard process for collecting the information, and have an end-goal in mind so there’s structured progress.

Organizations need to ask questions like: What is HR trying to achieve by using analytics? What are the short-term and long-term goals for its use? Is the company trying to find ways to reduce overhead costs, or improve recruiting and hiring practices?

The fundamental goal is to bring all of the information together in a central inventory and use it to derive key insights and plan strategies to tackle specific business challenges. Four ways senior leaders and HR practitioners can do this are:

1. Build awareness. Work with other senior leaders to build awareness of the importance and value of your company’s small data sources. Find all of the pockets of small data so they can be saved in a central repository, analyzed and shared. Consider launching an internal communications campaign to increase awareness among employees about the importance of finding and leveraging small data to make more informed business decisions and improve outcomes.

2. Standardize data collection. Given the independent nature of small data, it’s crucial to establish best practices for gathering and saving data so it eventually can be used in an apples-to-apples comparison among data sets. Simply offering better access to data doesn’t lead to better outcomes; the right tools and a structured system and protocol are necessary to enable employees to mine small data for successful outcomes.

3. Clarify goals. Whether you’re searching for cost savings or striving to improve your company’s talent management process, set clear goals—short-term and long-term—to establish benchmarks for your small data analytics program. Identify those “low-hanging-fruit” goals first. This will help your organization achieve a few early wins and encourage momentum as you tackle larger, more complex projects requiring more time and patience.

4. Create a data culture. Whether the focus is on small data or Big Data, your organization’s primary goal should be to build data acumen, intelligence and, over time, confidence among senior leadership and your entire staff. Help employees who are typically not involved in using HR data analytics see their role in creating and capturing small data sets in their day-to-day activities.

The future of data analytics will include personalized, understandable insights that allow workers to do their jobs and, ultimately, live their lives better—and, of course, insights that contribute to business success! So don’t neglect the smaller jewels in your HR data treasure chest. Those assets can help drive insights into business decisions large and small.

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I recently read The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun. What struck me after reading this book is that the same myths that apply to innovation also apply to sales. So what’s the sales lesson here? Don’t get caught up in the myths of sales because they can fool you into being less successful.

Eureka doesn’t work for innovation and it doesn’t work for sales.

The innovation myth is that great ideas come in a flash in an epiphany. You may remember the myth about Archimedes who ran from his bathtub yelling, “Eureka!” through the streets after realizing that he could use water displacement to distinguish between the density of gold and false gold. Except that myth is not true.

Innovation progress doesn’t occur in a straight timeline and it involves a long sequence of experimentation and discovery that can take years to reach fruition. Archimedes worked on his problem long before that productive bath.

What’s that mean for your sales success? Too many salespeople think that it will take only one sales call and their customers will miraculously understand why they should buy. Eureka moments, however, don’t often happen in sales. Customers realize they should buy after you work your sales process which includes building rapport, doing skillful questioning, and demonstrating proof of performance.

The lone inventor is a myth.

When you think of air flight innovation, you think of the Wright brothers. Thomas Edison comes to mind when you think of electric lighting. Henry Ford is the inventor of the automobile, right? Wrong. And that’s the myth that there is a lone inventor.

Back in the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci was creating designs and models for transport vehicles. Karl Benz from Germany then created the first true automobile in 1885. Ford therefore built on previous knowledge; he’s just easier to remember.

What you have are multiple people innovating. It starts with the person who came up with the initial idea for an item. Then there’s the first person to build a working model. Last, it’s the first person to successfully commercialize the invention.

Sound like sales? It’s a myth when salespeople believe that the sales process revolves around them. It’s at your peril when you forget about the other people who work to make your selling successful.

How could you sell without people in credit, operations, delivery, tech service, manufacturing, and customer service? That’s a scary thought. Your sales success depends on your working with so many other people doing their jobs well so you can deliver your sales promises. You may be the one with the sales quota, but you don’t sell by yourself.

Looking for a path to innovation is a mistake.

All too often, there are those who think there’s a clear map that will guide someone to produce innovation—there isn’t. Instead, one’s attitude is important to foster innovation because so many innovators’ ideas are initially rejected because they make people feel uncomfortable and force them to deal with change.

What kind of attitude helps? It’s the ability to deal with failure and be persuasive.

Galileo’s sun-centered solar system was opposed by the Catholic Church. Did you know that Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was rejected by Western Union? Even Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were turned down by AltaVista and Yahoo, the dominant search companies of the day. How did they prevail? They had the right attitude. They were persistent in the face of failure and they were persuasive.

Salespeople without that attitude are destined to be much less successful in sales. They have to find other ways to make the sale when their customers say no. Most successful salespeople believe that a “no” is simply a no for now. Being persuasive is not about strong-arm tactics either; it’s ethical persuasion where a great idea is communicated effectively so that the other person wants the solution.

Scott Berkun says that innovation is complex, has many meanings and factors, and can’t be captured in the pithy quotes that make for good myths. Sales is also complex and depends on many factors. That’s why the same myths apply to both.

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Small businesses have had an important decision to make over the past decade. In the words of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To add an e-commerce channel to your business model, or not to add one, that is the question.” Okay, Hamlet didn’t actually say that, but you get the picture.

As a small business owner, it’s very important to consider the value of taking your business online in a 21st century economy that loves the convenience of online shopping.

Tips to Successfully Add an E-Commerce Channel

The benefits of adding an e-commerce channel to your existing business are numerous. For starters, you’ll increase your availability to 24/7/365. Whereas your brick-and-mortar stores likely closes at a certain hour, your e-commerce website stays open.

Furthermore, with very few barriers to entry, there are very few reasons to not go online. “Starting out online means very low startup costs,” online business expert Brian Haines notes. “You have no buildings to construct, no vehicles to buy, and few (if any) staff to hire. Simply build your site and start selling.”

Haines is obviously simplifying things a bit, but he’s right on the money. In just a few days, you can have an e-commerce site up and running. Here are a few things to think about:

1. Understand the costs. The first thing to think about is cost. Building an e-commerce site is going to require an upfront investment, and it’s best that you estimate this dollar amount as accurately as possible before getting started.

For what it’s worth, most e-commerce sites cost between $5,000 and $10,000 to develop, design, and launch. But you certainly don’t have to spend that much. Thanks to site builders like Shopify, you can get started for free and realistically develop a basic site for less than $1,000. However, if you plan on really investing in e-commerce, expect to spend $5,000 or more in the long haul.

2. Launch a site. Actually taking action and launching a site is the hardest part. But once you get started, you’ll realize that it’s fairly easy—especially if you use a site-building platform.

During this phase, focus less on the aesthetics of your site and more on the user experience. You can always come back later and change things like color schemes, images, and graphics, but it’s much harder to make adjustments to things like navigation.

If you’re unsure of what you’re doing–even with a site builder—it’s best to pay for a professional developer. This is not the place to cut corners or save money.

3. Make mobile a priority. When moving online, your goal shouldn’t be to follow the status quo. In order to make your presence known, you need to do things differently. One key area where you can stand out is with mobile. Roughly 30 percent of all mobile shopping is now done on smartphones and tablets, yet few sites are properly optimized.

“Steps can still be taken to enhance the mobile shopping experience, and help give consumers the extra push to complete their purchase before losing interest,” supply chain expert Paul Trujillo points out. “The impulse buy is a major source of revenue for many companies, and it’s important to capitalize on that urge when you have the customer’s attention.”

4. Figure out inventory logistics. When an online channel is added to your business model, you obviously have to make changes to your supply chain and inventory practices. Specifically, you’ll need to answer questions like these:

• Where will inventory be stored?
• How will orders be processed?
• Who will pick and ship orders?
• What will online demand for specific products look like?

There’s a lot to think about and you want to make sure you aren’t assuming anything. If you aren’t careful, you could overwhelm your supply chain, and ultimately compromise both channels of your business.

5. Don’t forget about brick-and-mortar. When adding an e-commerce channel, it’s easy to forget about your existing brick-and-mortar channel. Be aware of this and make a point of not compromising your current business model. The goal is not to cannibalize your existing sales, but to instead increase sales via another channel. If you have the resources, consider hiring someone to head up your e-commerce division, so that you can focus on the core business.

What Will You Do?

There may be certain businesses that have little to gain from moving online, but the majority of brick-and-mortar small businesses can increase sales and grow revenue by venturing online.

As you can see, it’s not as difficult as you may have previously thought.

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All businesses need to keep track of an online reputation. It only takes a couple hours for a bad customer experience to go viral and impact your bottom line. It’s even worse if you don’t know it’s happening and you don’t get on top of the situation.

Here’s what you can do to improve your online reputation management:

1. Know What’s Going On with Your Brand

The first step to effective online reputation management is understanding what is being said about your brand. You need to be aware of what is happening with your brand, and what others are saying. There are brand monitoring tools like Mention that can help you holistically manage your brand and keep on top of your reputation. Another good idea is to set up Google Alerts about your brand so you can see when others post about you.

Once you know what’s going on, you can move forward.

2. Keep Your Site and Social Updated

You need to remain relevant if you want to show up higher in search results than unofficial sources. Keep your site and social updated so that you are relevant. This means you need to keep your content fresh and pay attention to your social media strategy.

It’s possible to hire others to help with your content creation so that you can focus on other aspects of your business. Just make sure you are putting out the freshest, most relevant info so that it pushes the other stuff down in the search results.

3. Don’t Respond Immediately to Bad Press

The gut reaction when you are facing a potential PR disaster is to respond immediately. Sometimes, though, it makes sense to step back and wait. While you might need to say something like, “we are looking into this,” it’s important that you don’t get negative, attack your detractors, or in any way melt down. You also need to avoid a cover up.

Gather more information before you start responding. Do it quickly, and be ready to respond as soon as possible, but don’t respond immediately, and try not to go negative.

4. Admit Mistakes and Commit to Fix Them

Your next move is to admit to mistakes and do your best to fix them. In many cases, people like to give second chances. This means you can redeem yourself. Be frank about the mistake, even if you don’t go into detail. Apologize, and describe the steps you are taking to fix it. Digging in and denying the problem won’t help; it will only make things worse. You can overcome a poor online reputation, but you need to start by projecting openness and regret and working to win back trust.

5. Keep Building Relationships with Your Audience

It’s important to continue building relationships with your audience. Online reputation management has a lot to do with how many people actually believe what is being said about you. Create a brand that people love, and you can weather most storms. Reach out to your fans, and let them do the fighting for you. You might be surprised at how you can better manage your reputation when others feel connected to you and feel the need to defend you.

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Do you ever feel like you have to leave work to get any actual work done? Between interruptions, meetings and distractions, sometimes the office seems like the least productive place on earth. You’re not the only one who feels this way: Many employees say they get more done when working outside than inside the office. Is sending them home or to Starbucks the only way to make your employees more productive?

Not necessarily. A recent study by Oxford Economics reports that, although employees want to be productive at work, open-plan offices, constant conductivity and technology hiccups are all standing in the way. But there are solutions. Here’s a closer look.

When asked what attributes are most important in the work environment, being able to focus at work without interruptions ranked number one. In fact, employees care more about being able to concentrate than having their own offices, subsidized child care or free food at work. In other words, as the survey puts it, it’s not about “beanbag chairs and free burritos.”

What’s hampering productivity? The study found three key elements:

1. Noise Level

Open-plan offices fit well with today’s emphasis on collaborative work, and being able to collaborate is one thing that employees value. However, open spaces can be noisy, especially if workers are squeezed close together as they may be if a small business is trying to save on space. In addition to distracting workers, noise can make talking on the phone to customers or clients more difficult as people on both ends of the call strain to hear. Filtering out background noise is mentally tiring, sapping employees’ productivity. Somewhat surprisingly, Millennial employees are more likely than other age groups to be distracted by noise, and find it more annoying than other demographics.

Solution: Take steps to minimize noise. Carpeting hard floors or putting down rugs will help absorb noise, as will window coverings, plants, sound-absorbing ceiling tiles and even wall decor. Basically, the more hard surfaces in your location, the noisier it will be; adding softer elements will bring the noise level down. Also be sure you provide quiet spaces where employees can hold meetings without disrupting others. Employees who need to be on the phone constantly, such as sales reps or customer service staff, should be concentrated in a space away from others who need quiet. Noise-canceling headphones, white noise machines or smartphone apps, and even earplugs can help, too.

2. Tech Tools

While technology has made our jobs a lot easier in some ways, the study finds it’s still got a long way to go. Just 38 percent of employees in the survey say they have all the tools they need to do their jobs, and only 36 percent say the devices they use when away from the office work seamlessly with workplace technology. This adds to frustration over distractions: Employees may try to get work done in a coffee shop or at home because the office is too noisy, but find that they lack the tools to work effectively anywhere else.

Solution: Make sure your employees have the proper tech tools they need to get their jobs done wherever they are. If your employees work remotely, for example, or travel frequently on business, provide them with technology to use on the go. If employees prefer to use their own devices, as many do, try to find apps that work with multiple platforms or with the platforms that most employees use. This will help ensure that the devices your team uses in the office, at home and on the road all integrate smoothly, meaning greater productivity.

3. Constant Connectivity

Constant connection via devices and technology is another factor contributing to distraction. Higher-level employees are more likely to feel the pressure to be constantly “on.” Collaboration technologies that indicate when people are on a social network or chat app can contribute to the belief that people are always available to be interrupted. There’s also a gap between expectations and reality: While only one-fourth of executives say they frequently expect employees to be available after hours, nearly half of employees think their supervisors expect this kind of responsiveness. More than one-third of respondents in the survey say they feel compelled to check their devices frequently due to social pressure and fear of missing something.

Solution: Set limits on connectivity. Try actually getting up and talking to each other instead of conducting every communication via electronic device. Make sure employees know what is and isn’t expected of them regarding responsiveness. If you don’t expect your team to respond to your emails on weekends, tell them so! That may be the only time you can get around to sifting through your emails, but they may feel pressure to respond. Some companies try email-free days or eliminate emails on Friday afternoon; others set rules such as no emails before 7 a.m. or after 8 p.m. See what works for you and your employees.

The bottom line in improving productivity by eliminating distractions: It’s all about clearly communicating with your team regarding their needs, your expectations and how the two can meet.

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By Zak Mustapha

Frustrating isn’t it? You’ve been working really long hard hours on your business, but no one’s showing appreciation. You’ve tried reaching out to several influencers, but…no response. In fact, you’re starting to doubt if you sent your message to the right email addresses in the first place.

Oh no, don’t worry you’ve got the right addresses. You probably just made a few deadly mistakes that sent your message to their trash folders. Good news for you, those days will soon be over once you learn to avoid these mistakes and implement these solutions.

But, before I get into that, let me tell you about the Golden Rule of outreach–the rule you must abide by if you ever want to succeed in influencer marketing and PR. Here it is:

Thou shalt make everything about them, offer them value, and continue to offer value WITHOUT asking in return.”

Read that a few times so it sticks in your head. Now, let’s get started.

1. Trying to Be Batman (or Batgirl)

There’s a 10/10 chance you’re not reaching out to save someone’s life; you’re reaching out because you want something. Yet, some marketers still insist on going anonymous. Your first and last names aren’t enough (unless you’re famous). Here’s why.

The people you’re reaching out to are busy. They don’t have time for everyone. For that reason, they need to prioritize and pick whom they want to work with (and help). The way they do that is by figuring out who’s worth their time, and one way they do that is by looking at your name, job title, and company.

For example, if you’re just “John Doe,” then the chances of getting a response are low. For all they know, you could be a spam bot. On the other hand, if you’re “John Doe, VP of Growth at Cool Startup”… now we’re talking.

Action Plan: Make sure you introduce yourself in the beginning and end your message with a solid signature with your real contact details to prove that you’re a real person. Don’t hide behind a mask.

2. Thinking You’re the Only One in Their Life

You wish you were; unfortunately, you’re not. Remember, you’re reaching out for a reason (Hint: It’s because they can offer something) and most likely other marketers are reaching out for the same reason as you are.

When marketers forget that the person on the other end is loaded with emails, they begin to smack out paragraph after paragraph, forgetting that the person on the other end doesn’t have the time to read such an email.

Starting off your relationship with a long email is already taking up a lot of their time. They’ll be actually doing you a huge favor if they even read it, let alone respond.

Action Plan: Keep your emails short and to the point. Your emails should be no longer than 200 words, preferably 150 words or less.

3. Fanning Out

Appreciating the recipient’s work is nice, but sucking up to them like they’re out of this world is not. It makes them feel uncomfortable and it also burns your credibility. Oh and by the way, credibility is important if you want to get a response.

Action Plan: Show moderate appreciation and respect to the recipient. Speak to them in a professional tone.

4. You Sound Like a 6 Year Old

Nothing can hurt your credibility more than terrible grammar and typos. Granted, your English doesn’t need to be perfect, but that’s not an excuse for poor writing. Even if you don’t believe in judging someone based on their writing, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what the other person may be thinking. You want something from them–not the other way around.

Action Plan: Proofread your email before sending it and let someone else read it. Letting another pair of eyes have a look will sometimes point out errors you never thought existed.

5. Asking for Food, Shelter and Their Life

Not literally, but many marketers tend to have huge “asks.” Whether it’s asking for multiple things in one email or just having one massive ask, they are both bad. Remember these people are busy and they get asked for things all the time. Unless you’ve built a solid relationship beforehand, it’s best to keep your ask small and quick.

A good thing to do is to imagine you’re in a video game and you need credits to make asks. Whenever you give, you increase your credits; whenever you take, your credit bank reduces. So what are some ways to increase your “ask credits” with influencers?

• Make them look good by offering a case study or testimonial for their books, courses, or products.
• Refer clients and customers to them.
• Offer valuable feedback and ideas on a regular basis.
• Engage with them on their blog, social media, and newsletters.
• Volunteer to do something for them.
• If they’re hiring, introduce them to an awesome candidate.

And the list goes on and on. Just find a way you can offer value.

Action Plan: Give before you ask for something. Make sure to ask for one thing at a time.

About the Author

Post by: Zak Mustapha

Zak Mustapha is the founder of Zonifer.com and FoolishnessFile.com. He’s on a mission to help entrepreneurs progress faster through learning from other people’s mistakes. When he’s not working on his startups, he’s working out and practicing his Ninjustu.

Company: Foolishness File
Website: http://ift.tt/20qtEvK
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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You’ve done a lot to get your business off the ground. Now it’s time to plan for your business‘s future. From your company’s sales strategy to its processes and procedures, there are plenty of steps you can take now to guarantee meaningful growth down the road.

That’s why we asked 11 successful entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council the following question:

Q. What’s the one thing my company should be doing right now in order to see meaningful growth down the road?

1. Focus on the Top of the Funnel

Early on, you have to focus on the top of the funnel. Creating content for marketing purposes, getting quoted in magazines, speaking at events, and generally making your customers aware of your existence is the best thing you can do to guarantee future growth. Once you achieve growth, then you can focus on optimization and unit economics. —Brennan White, Cortex

2. Become a Media-Focused Company

We are all in the business of media. You may not be a content marketing company, but you should be a company with content expertise. You may not be a venture capitalist, but you should have fiduciary responsibility. Become a media-focused company by being dedicated to creating and publishing useful blog posts, videos, podcasts, social shares, and live streams. Appear to be everywhere with your target demographic. —Peter Awad, Slow Hustle

3. Invest in Online

People are purchasing, browsing, and finding more businesses online than ever before. If your online presence isn’t up to speed, you’re going to get passed by. Invest now and do it correctly. Don’t skimp in the place where you can easily see the biggest growth. —Brooke Bergman, Allied Business Network Inc.

4. Improve Your Processes and Procedures

If you don’t have documented processes and procedures, you won’t have a way to improve them. Make sure every process in your company has a written standard operating procedure and that your employees all have access to it. Then take a process a week and look for ways to improve. By the end of the year, you will have improved 50 processes, which will have an effect on your bottom line. —Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now

5. Focus on a Specific Niche

It’s easy to spread yourself too thin with a new venture since there seem to be endless opportunities. Achieving growth in the future is easier for startups that are able to identify a niche market that values their core competency. Becoming a leader in a specific niche will naturally allow for growth if that market matures, but will also provide valuable tools and lessons for success in other markets. —Charles Bogoian, Kenai Sports, LLC

6. Plan for Diversified Growth

When it comes to growth, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket by focusing on acquiring a few large customers. While this has a positive effect in the short-term, it’s not the meaningful type of growth you want. Nothing is guaranteed; that one big client could leave you in the dust at any point. By setting diversified growth metrics, you’ll ensure sustainability. —Elle Kaplan, LexION Capital

7. Focus on Relationships Over Transactions

Transactions are a byproduct of the great relationships you’ve built with prospects, customers, and referrers. Your business will grow and change, but the rock-solid relationships you cultivate will transcend whatever services or products you sell. So focus on more high-value, long-term, growth-oriented relationships rather than give-and-take relationships with your prospects, customers, and referrers. —Charlie Gilkey, Productive Flourishing

8. Be Consistent

We always tell our clients the most important thing they can lock down is their brand voice and tone. Everything across all social channels should feel consistent and on point. Consistency is how you drive people to your brand and keep them there. —Bryanne Lawless, BLND Public Relations

9. Focus on Search Engine Optimization

Building a website is a good start, but there’s more to it. The biggest concern I hear is that most businesses don’t want to spend $2,000 a month on SEO. It takes time to develop trust from Google—you need to create great content, post on social media, build more review sites with user-created content, and get great links. Google takes time, but it will be the cheapest acquisition cost in one year. —Tommy Mello, A1 Garage Door Service

10. Have a Ready-to-Execute Plan

Having a detailed growth strategy with realistic goals is crucial. Even more important is having extensively developed executions ready to go that you’ll use to meet these goals. If you have goals with no way of reaching them, you’re going to miss all of your targets or spend time trying to figure them out when it’s “go” time. —Duran Inci, Optimum7

11. Focus on Your Go-To-Market Strategy

Focus hard on your go-to-market strategy. Figure out what’s broken and fix it. If your GTM is working, it’ll be easy to grow and scale your business in the long run. If it isn’t, you’ll be in for a tooth-and-nail struggle every step of the way. —Simon Berg, Ceros

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Every business, regardless of industry, owns some type of equipment. It may be something as basic as an office printer or as complex as industrial machinery. However, no matter the price or function, it’s imperative that you understand when to repair versus when to replace equipment.

Making the wrong choice can set you back thousands of dollars and could ultimately lead to safety and productivity ramifications. In other words, you don’t want to take these decisions lightly.

1. How to calculate repair costs. When it comes to repair costs, you need to think about all the different factors involved. These include possible expenses like:

• Maintenance costs for the remaining service life
• Impact of the repair on productivity and product quality
• Total cost of unscheduled downtime
• Cost of diagnosing issues

Unfortunately, nothing is very straightforward. The estimate a repair company gives you is just the starting point.

2. The ’50 Percent Rule.’ In repair-replacement debates, businesses have long used the “50 Percent Rule” as a guiding factor. The rule simply states that if repairs exceed 50 percent of the total cost of a replacing a piece of equipment, then you should go with replacement. In other words, it doesn’t make sense to pour money into an outdated piece of equipment if it can be cost-effectively upgraded.

While you have to take this rule with a grain of salt, it’s a good starting point. If you’re well above the halfway mark, then you should absolutely go with replacement; if you’re well below the halfway mark, then a repair makes more sense. Difficulty arises when you’re hovering in that 45 to 55 percent range. In these instances, you’ll need more than a rule of thumb to decide.

3. Think about tax credits and rebates. Tax credits and rebates are often available when purchasing certain types of business equipment. When you add in these benefits, they could dramatically reduce the cost of replacing whatever is broken.

For example, if your office’s HVAC system goes out and you have to make the choice between repair and replacement, did you know that there are actually federal tax credits available for purchasing high-efficiency systems? There may be utility rebates available as well. These all could add up to thousands of dollars in savings in the first year alone.

It’s little details like these that you have to consider. You can’t just look at the sticker price on a replacement piece of equipment.

4. The repair new and replace old theory. Common sense logic says that it’s much better to repair new equipment and replace old equipment. This simply has to do with the fact that older equipment will need to be serviced more often and any issues you experience now will probably occur again in the future.

However, a lot depends on your piece of equipment. In some industries, older equipment is actually made of better quality materials and may last longer than newer pieces of equipment made with cheaper materials.

5. Consider all the benefits of replacing. “Safety becomes a crucial point of consideration when dealing with older equipment,” according to Polaris Engineering. “No matter how many repairs are made to a piece of equipment, it continues to age and wear down. In addition to being more prone to breakdowns, older machinery is more likely to malfunction and cause injury to workers.”

Furthermore, think about efficiency. While an old piece of machinery may perform the same job as a new piece, are they both doing so with the same level of output? More efficient machinery will save you time and money in the long run.

6. Study tax implications of asset disposal. If you do end up replacing your equipment, then you’ll obviously have to dispose of the existing piece of equipment. Before deciding what to do with it, consider all of the tax implications of asset disposal.

There’s a little section on your tax filing documentation each year that’s entitled “assets” or something similar. “This page is a listing of all depreciable assets that you purchased for your business–which includes everything from computers to leasehold improvements to equipment and furniture,” tax expert Bonnie Lee says. While you may normally skip over this page, it’s the place to show that you no longer have possession of a specific asset.

Speak with a tax professional about the benefits of selling, abandoning, trading, or donating. Each has different implications and can be used to benefit your bottom line.

Make an Educated Decision

In the end, there may not be a perfect answer regarding whether to repair or replace a specific piece of business equipment. However, if you’ve done your due diligence and looked at every possible angle, then you can at least make an educated decision and avoid regret in the future.

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Making a sales pitch can be nerve-racking–even for an experienced salesperson. The best way to get through it is to practice your presentation carefully, hit your stride and get to the end.

When a customer starts asking hard questions and challenging your pitch, however, you can get taken out of your comfort zone. The fact is confrontational customers can be among the most valuable customers to have.

Here are four important reasons why it is advantageous–instead of anxiety-inducing–to be asked difficult questions:

1. Sophisticated buyers are interested customers

The most important reason to be excited at the thought of prospects asking hard questions is that you have someone who is interested in doing business with you. Challenging clients can be quite intimidating, but that does not mean they are not valuable–in fact, the opposite is true. You should be worried when clients are overly agreeable or not asking any questions at all. This means they are not engaged and probably not serious about moving forward in the process.

Prospects who ask difficult questions, on the other hand, are taking the time to really think about your company and how it fits with theirs. You have them on the hook; you just need to see how big an opportunity these customers are and how to land their business.

2. Practice improves future sales pitches

Consistent sales growth is a direct result of a regularly evolving sales pitch, and practice makes perfect. In fact, certain experts believe that how you communicate the value of your product or service is one of the most influential aspects of the sales process. A prospect wants to hear what your company can bring to the table; they cannot get that from marketing materials and a boring presentation. Engaging in a back-and-forth dialogue is the best way to communicate this value to your prospects.

Nobody provides a better opportunity for practice your sales pitch than challenging customers. They ask sophisticated questions and keep you on your toes. If they aren’t likely to make a purchase, you have an even better chance to practice your pitch since you don’t have to worry about losing the sale. If you and your sales team make the most of these situations, you will be better positioned to successfully sell to all types of customers.

3. Salespeople more easily extract unmet needs

Another reason that it’s important to value demanding customers is because they are taking the time to sit down and talk with you. As the information gap between customers and sellers dwindles, many prospects default to independently researching solutions for their specific needs. But when the Internet does not have all the answers, this is when they’ll approach your company, exercising just enough skepticism and caution to see if they can make a confident purchasing decision.

When you get into deep discussions with challenging customers, you will learn a lot about how their businesses operate and what their biggest pain points are. Even if you don’t close the sale, you can use information that you gather to help influence future product developments and develop more effective sales pitches.

4. Sellers are forced to use more authentic and honest strategies

Customers do not like to be sold to. Instead, they want mutually beneficial conversations that will help them overcome their current business problems. Buyers aren’t interrogating you just to be hostile. Rather, their intention is to give you the opportunity to demonstrate domain expertise and introduce ways your product can truly benefit them. Learn how to respond to challenging questions, dig a bit deeper, and subtly highlight your company’s greatest strengths.

It’s fun to rattle off the answers to easy questions, but no one learns anything until they’re asked challenging questions. Make sure you and your staff are prepared to deal with demanding prospects and taxing objections, and you will end up uncovering more leads and securing new business.

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