sales and marketing management tech effect 2015 julaug

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The Tech Effect

Where technology is taking sales and marketing page 40

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DEPARTMENTS

editor’s notebookIt’s a tech tsunami 4

NEXTWhat’s ailing employee wellnessprograms? Plus other sales andmarketing talkers 6

the sales conversationThe allure of doing nothing 12

marketing opinionAre you ready formachine learning? 14

marketingManaging customers as assetshalts the revolving door 16

meetingsTop 10 meeting techtrends for 2015 20

closersAttention is currency, saystechno journalist Ben Parr. Hisnew book examinesk the triggersthat will help you get noticed. 58

cover story 40

July/August 2015 Special Supplement

Incentive Gift Cards Directory

The Tech EffectWhere technology is taking sales and marketing

Incentive

product

review

Cameras and consumer

electronics

24

27

Top performers

An assortment of new incentive ideas from our advertisers

Incentive Gift Card

Directory

A comprehensive list of Incentive Gift Card Council suppliers

52

4 JUL/AUG 2015 SALESANDMARKETING.COM

editor’s notebook

Find these and other onliner exclusives atSalesandMarketing.com

� A link to the full report on technology andy sales from theAberdeen Group, which is featured in our cover story, canbe found in the Additional Web Resources box.

� The extended Q&A interview with technology journalistyand venture capitalist Ben Parr is at SalesandMarketing.com/Closers.

� Save a seata for any ofy ourf free webinars on emergingtrends and sales and marketing managementg challenges.

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It’s a techtsunamiWhen you’re pregnant (or when your partner is pregnant),you start seeing pregnantg women everywhere you go.Something similarg happens every timey we put together ourannual summer issue, with its focus on technology’s impacton sales and marketing.

In the middle of thisf issue’s production cycle, a specialadouble issue of Fortune arrived in the mailbox with its annualcover story ony the Fortune 500. In it, Editor Alan Murrayrelays in his editor’s note that technology sitsy atop CEOs’ listof topf challenges. (See more of hisf comments on page 40.)

A weekA later, my Fast Companyt arrived, with a covera photoof Presidentf Obama anda a featurea story ony how thew presidenthas raided the ranks of Google,f Facebook, Amazon and othertop tech companies to assemble a teama of techiesf who arecharged with “rebooting howg governmentw works.”

“Everything elseg is getting doneg faster. Why shouldy thisinstitution be different?” asks White House Chief off StafffDenis McDonough rhetorically. McDonough marvels at the“hunger” for increasing performanceg that techies havebrought to Washington. “They arey in an industry thaty hasconstantly reinventedy itself andf become more efficient. That’sbecause at the heart of thatf industry isy the belief thatf you’regoing tog get twice as good every twoy years, and that’s held for50 years.”

Imagine if youf could shorten your sales cycle by halfy everyftwo years, or if yourf marketing teamg could double the numberof leadsf it generates in that time frame. Moore’s Law doesn’twapply toy sales and marketing teams,g but there’s no questionthat technology continuesy to increase productivity iny bothsales and marketing acrossg all industries.

Once you’ve finished reading theg cover package, check outour incentive product review (pagew 24), which features someof thef neatest ideas in cameras and consumer electronics forincentive use. Talk about a techa effect�—�these two productcategories have long beeng among theg most popular for drivingincreased performance in the workplace.

And don’t miss the thoughts from noted technologyjournalist Ben Parr on how tow capture people’s attention in aworld that is rife with diversions. Ben is featured in ourClosers Q&A onA page 58.

Paul Nolan, [email protected]

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PUBLISHER Mike Murrell, [email protected], 952-401-1283

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EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORSJeanne Bliss (CustomerBliss.com); Jeff Bullas (JeffBullas.com); Barry C. Collin(CollinGroup.com); Steve Dunn (TravelTags.com); Jeff Erhardt (wise.io);Eric Estrilla (SalesBenchMarkIndex.com); Matt Heinz (HeinzMarketing.com/blog);Jeff Hoffman (HubSpot.com); Chuck Kapelke (b2bmarketing.net/magazine);Peter Ostrow (aberdeen.com); Tim Riesterer (CorporateVisions.com);Dave Stein (DaveStein.biz); Eyal Winter; Tony Zambito (TonyZambito.com)

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Sales & Marketing Management Volumet 96, No. 4 (ISSN 0163-7517) is publishedsix times a year in January, March, May, July, September and November by Mach1Business Media. Copyright 2015 by Mach1 Business Media, LLC. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part of any text, photograph or illustration without thewritten permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited. Annual subscription rate$48 U.S.; $67 Canada plus 7% GST; and $146 all other countries. Single copyprice $10.

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Among other things, complaints that they are invasive, punitive and ineffective

What’s ailing employee wellness programs?

Americans continue to fuel a fitness craze. By any measure�—�total health clubs, fitness trainers and sales of fitness gear�—�growth in the past decade has been astronomical as the general population increasingly embraces a more active and healthy lifestyle.

So it stands to reason that the increase of employer-sponsored wellness programs would be a welcomed trend, right? Not so fast. Some workers have pushed back against their employer’s wellness efforts, claiming that requiring certain medical screenings and answering questionnaires is invasive and illegal.

In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released its long-anticipated proposed rule on the extent to which the Americans with Disabilities Act permits employers to offer incentives to employees to promote participation in wellness programs that are employee health programs. In order to ensure that participation in wellness programs are voluntary, the EEOC’s proposed rule limits the financial incentive that an employer may offer employees to 30 percent of the total cost of

employee-only coverage under the plan, including both employee and employer contributions toward the cost of coverage (or 50 percent to the extent that the additional percentage is attributed to tobacco prevention or reduction).

In response to the backlash about wellness programs being invasive, employers say they are striking a balance between encouraging participation and protecting the choice of their workers. Brian Marcotte, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health, a policy group representing large employers, told National Public Radio that most health care costs are lifestyle related, with a goal of reducing costs for themselves as well as their workers. “At the end of the day, employers want healthy, productive, engaged, resilient employees, and the most competitive workforce possible,” Marcotte says. “Investments in health and well-being are part of that equation.”

Generating employee interest and participation in wellness programs has proved challenging. A report released by Fidelity

What you’ll be talking about.EDITED BY PAUL NOLAN


Benefits Consulting states that 79 percent of employers will offer incentives in 2015 compared with 63 percent in 2010, and the average maximum incentive increased from $594 last year to $693 in 2015. Yet only 47 percent of employees earn the full incentive amount and 26 percent earn a portion of the incentive.

In a blog post at HealthAffairs.org, Soeren Mattke, managing director of RAND Health Advisory Services, says “bending the curve” with wellness programs as currently designed is an elusive goal. He fears some employers will bail out of wellness programs due to lack of ROI.

Allowing employers to shift up to 50 percent more of the cost to employees with poor health choices will substantially increase a system that is already regressive in nature by increasing cost sharing or nudging people to drop coverage.

“In my mind, exposing the most vulnerable employees to that level of pressure would be sound policy if, and only if, workplace wellness programs were powerful enough to reverse years of deeply engrained behaviors,” Mattke states. “Yet our data show that they are not even attracting more than a quarter of employees and have a modest impact on those who participate. That is why I believe it is time to start rethinking workplace wellness, and come up with models that are both fairer and more effective.”

A 2014 New York Times story reported that researchers found that participation in a PepsiCo Healthy Living program that included lifestyle management and disease management components did produce lower health care costs, but only after the third year, and all from the disease management components of the program.

“When more broadly implemented and focused on lifestyle management, as many wellness programs are, savings may not materialize, and certainly not in the short term,” the Times story stated. “Employers may misunderstand the research if they think that just any wellness program, by itself, is the surest route to reducing overall health care spending. That just isn’t the case.

It may be true that, if designed well, some programs can save money for both the employer and employees in the long run, but not by focusing on lifestyle changes. Programs that merely do that may cut employer costs, but only by shifting them to employees. If firms wish to count that as a victory in the battle against health care costs, they may do so, but their employees may look at it differently.”

Employers provide incentives through:

Contributions to a healthcare account:

Cash/gift card:

Premium differential:

27%

43%

57%

Employers prefer incentives over disincentives17% of employers use disincentives for smoking cessation programs

Biometric screening

Health risk assessment

Physical activity program

Smoking cessation program

Weight management programs

Disease/care management program participation

Preventive care services/screenings

Stress management program

Decision support tools for medical decisions

Health care navigators

Health advocacy/second opinion

Decision support tools for health care enrollment

72% 5%

70% 6%

54%

54% 17%

45%

42% 7%

39% 3%

35% 1%

12%

11%

9% 2%

2%

Prevalence of incentives vs. disincentives by program

Incentives

Disincentives

SOURCE: FIDELITY BENEFITS CONSULTING


Should you lose the “I” in your incentives?Team-based goals apply more pressure to perform Formal teamwork is present in a majority of companies and, informally, every organization is in fact a large team of employees. But managers continue to focus their performance improvement efforts almost exclusively on competition rather than cooperation when designing rewards.

In a recent essay for the Washington Post’s “On Leadership” section, Eyal Winter, a professor of economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, makes the case for team-based incentives. Winter points to a real-life experience by Continental Airlines some 20 years ago. Following a loss of more than $600 million in 1994, Continental was on the verge of bankruptcy. In February 1995, it initiated a program that promised each employee a bonus of $60 for every month in which the airline was ranked among the top five carriers in on-time performance. It ended that year with a $224 million profit, followed by a profit of $319 million in 1996.

“It turns out, it was precisely because Continental’s employees were more concerned about not disappointing their peers than about making an extra $60 that this scheme was so amazingly successful,” Winter states. “The fear of depriving your peers a bonus because of your laziness was a much more meaningful motivator than the fear of losing your own bonus.”

Winter says there is a host of business and economics research that supports the superiority of team incentives over individual ones. In 2001, Washington University

researchers found that the move from individual to team incentives at a garment manufacturing facility in Napa, California improved productivity by 14 percent. Last year, two researchers from the University of Montevideo in Uruguay found that team incentives improved college students’ performance on course work and exam grades by 20 percent when compared against individual incentives.

“Team incentives are successful because of our craving for social gratitude and our fear of social pressure,” Winter says. “For such tactics to be effective in the long term, the organization has to maintain a high level of transparency. If workers are poorly informed about peers’ efforts and performance — that is, if it’s impossible to tell the difference between the team’s savers and the team’s shirkers — then social acceptance and social pressure are meaningless.

“Managing teams successfully is always about finding the right balance between the individual and the group,” he adds. “If it’s only about competition, then a worker will invest part of her effort in making other workers’ outcomes less successful instead of exerting all her effort toward making her own outcome more successful. If it’s all about cooperation, then some workers will just capitalize off others’ diligence.”

This makes effective team incentives so hard to design. But they are vital to organizational success. As Winter summarizes, “Getting it right requires managers to stop thinking of workers as entities who simply calculate the tradeoff between effort and money, and to start thinking of them as social and moral figures who have more complex considerations at play.”

4 negotiation mistakes that can kill your dealSales negotiations can go awry quickly, and in any number of ways. While there’s no surefire way to barter a positive outcome, avoiding a handful of common mistakes can decrease the likelihood of the negotiation getting derailed. In a blog post on HubSpot.com, sales management consultant Jeff Hoffman shared the four worst

mistakes reps make when they negotiate.

1. Not negotiating with signing authority. Identify the ultimate decision maker early on or you may be subjected to several rounds of negotiations, each with its own concessions.

2. Saying “This is my bottom line.” The more limitations you introduce into a negotiation, the less likely it is to be successful. Keep hard restrictions to yourself if at all possible.

3. Negotiating too quickly. The longer people are engaged in a healthy negotiation, the more likely

both parties want it to end favorably. Slow the discussion down and build in some intentional silences.

4. Not building in new concessions. No one wants to feel like they have lost a negotiation. Strive to guide the negotiation in such a way that there is no loser — just two winners.


Sell like you’re a startupIf your salespeople think their prospects are hard to impress, try having them sell to venture capitalist David Wells of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “Within the first eight words, I’ve decided whether or not to keep listening,” Wells told Allison M. Shapira of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Communication Program when asked what he’s thinking when he hears a startup pitch.

Shapira asked Wells what he’s looking for in those first eight words. “He replied (and I’m paraphrasing), ‘The core innovation. If it’s not in the first eight words, it’s probably not there. That’s when I either stop listening or interrupt the speaker to ask.’”

“When pitching a start-up idea, you need to get to the core innovation right out of the gate,” says Leslie Brokaw in a blog post for MIT Sloan Management Review (SloanReview.MIT.edu). “When making any kind of presentation, a counter-intuitive statement, surprising fact or arresting story can get people to put their phones down.”

“Brevity requires you to prepare, prioritize and package your material,” adds communications

coach Beth Noymer Levine (SmartMouthCommunications.com). She

offers these brevity tips:

Serve dessert first. If you have a takeaway or call to action, don’t save

it for the end, deliver it up front. It helps set context and expectations, which are important for holding onto audience attention.

Go modular. Build your presentation in chunks rather than in a narrative so you can remain adaptable. Chunks leave you prepared and nimble.

Know your big fish and little fish. Know your main points or “big fish” and your supporting information or “little fish.” (This requires you to…yep, prioritize your material.) Big fish come first. Leading or inundating with lots of little fish is overwhelming to the presenter and the audience.

Newfangled tips for an old-school tactic“Call me old school if you want, but I still love to exchange business cards�—� especially in an event setting,” Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing (HeinzMarketing.com/blog), blogged recently. The exchange of business cards, Heinz says, is “the start of a fast, proven and scalable system that helps me more consistently follow up, stay in touch and ultimately convert more of those new contacts into partners, referral sources, customers and more.”

Without a strategy, many trade show attendees return home with a stack of

cards that stay wadded up in the bottom of a laptop bag indefinitely. Heinz offers these tips for converting those cards into an active network and pipeline:

Take photos of name badges. Another option if they don’t have a card is to take a quick smartphone photo of their name badge. At minimum you can use this to remember and find them on LinkedIn later.

Process them on the flight home. Working through business cards is a high priority for me on the flight home. I’m typically behind on other work as well, but time is of the essence on those new relationships and follow-ups. The faster I follow-up, the more likely I can continue the momentum of the conversation into something more meaningful sooner than later.

Have a specific “processing” checklist. For me, this includes connecting on LinkedIn with a

customized message, adding them to my newsletter list, adding them to CRM, and following up with whatever deliverable I promised (sending a copy of an ebook, making an introduction, whatever). I typically batch these activities, such that I’m doing the LinkedIn and deliverable follow-up first, then the CRM and newsletter integration last.

Set a reminder to review the business cards again in two weeks. This can be done in your office, and is a quick reminder to follow-up on any loose ends from your initial outbound connections on that flight home.

“The lesson reinforced for me [from Heinz’s blog post] is that many�—�if not most�—�business practices never really become obsolete,” commented sales consultant Todd Youngblood (ypsgroup.com). “Sure they need to be updated, adapted and tuned to take advantage of new technologies, but the fundamentals remain in place.”


The millennial B2B buyer can’t be ignoredIt’s clear that millennials continue to greatly impact consumer marketing, but there has been less chatter about how their arrival in the work force has affected B2B sales. By 2020, it is estimated that millennials will make up more than half of the work force. Many of them are being promoted to decision-making positions. Dustin Grosse, Chief Operating Officer of

ClearSlide, a sales engagement platform that empowers sales teams to engage customers, recently shared his thoughts with SocialMediaB2B about the changing dynamics of buying, selling and managing the generation that is out to save the world.

Millennials in the buying processMillennials have a fundamentally different approach to the way they research, recommend and buy. They were born with cell phones and

computers in hand. Traditional sales processes have been linear in nature, from qualification to educating the buyer to creating interest to close. That approach is dramatically changing in part because of millennial buyers.

Social communities like LinkedIn and Twitter allow buyers to understand your value proposition while doing their own online research, and they readily

consume valuable information like videos, blog posts, how-tos, testimonials and more to form their impressions. Since most of the information gathering happens before any direct interaction with a company, sellers have to learn how to adapt to where buyers are in the selling process. Linear sales pitches end up frustrating millennial buyers and risk lengthening the sales process. Sellers today need to ask questions, listen and demonstrate value that aligns to what the buyer already knows and what they need to know to move the sale forward.

Millennials and onboardingIf you hand your millennial sales team a training manual, they’ll likely hand it right back. A better strategy is to encourage your millennial reps to learn from their peers�—�and specifically from leading reps. Use technology to make this possible�—�a homepage of all sales activity (like a social network), daily update emails, or the ability to listen to how top reps pitch via calls or videos are all great learning opportunities. Social learning and collaboration is far more impactful than the traditional “coffee is for closers” sales environment.

Increase transparencyYou can spark millennial salespeoples’ desire to overachieve by making recognition visible. Encouraging peer learning and healthy competition requires transparency throughout the entire sales process. By tracking engagement in a platform that enables every salesperson to see what others are doing, you create learning opportunities and engender competition at the same time. Savvy salespeople will be able to see what top performers are doing and incorporate that into their own selling practice. This higher level of visibility will also benefit sales leaders, because they will have more specific information on what works and what doesn’t.

Millennials should adapt as wellNew blood in an organization forces everyone to learn new and modern ways of doing things, which is good. Buyers are changing, so you need sellers to change along with them. Millennials can push their workplace in new directions by advocating for openness and transparency, peer-to-peer learning, modern tools, mobility and by engaging customers through social media. At the same time, millennials should recognize that they have plenty to learn from other, more experienced colleagues as well.


Secrets to video marketing success

Video has immense potential in B2B marketing, but many companies have been slow to adopt it, states Chuck Kapelke in a story for B-to-B Marketer, a publication of the Business Marketing Association. He provides these quick tips for better use of video:

KEEP IT SHORT. “Less is more” is the mantra of all experienced video makers. “If you can’t deliver a message in a minute and a half, people will tune out,” says Ron Klingensmith, Chief Creative Officer for Slack and Company, a B2B marketing consultant. “Even longer format videos need to be concise in their message, say what they need to say and move on — and do it in an engaging way.”

MEASURE AND LEARN. Like all digital media channels, video is highly measurable. In addition to clicks and conversions, video metrics let you see how much people watch before they tune out, providing insight into where your message could be stronger. “In an ideal situation, you’re constantly taking measurements and using analytics to understand your performance, and you’re making adjustments on the fly,” says Matt Palmer of DesignKitchen.

HAVE A CLEAR NEXT STEP. Every video should end with a clear call to action, such as a link to a landing page or a phone number to call. “If someone clicks the video, the next step might be to send them product information, or to receive a sales call and see if they want to participate in having a free safety audit,” Klingensmith says. Videos can also be produced in pieces to enable customers to take themselves on self-guided content journeys. This not only empowers the viewer, but also lets them self-identify their specific interests.

BE WILLING TO FAIL. “What makes people nervous is the fear that they’re stepping out of their comfort zone,” says Laura Ramos of Forrester Research. “Video is a medium that demands a systematic approach to management.”

A link to the full article by Chuck Kapelke can be found in our Additional Web Resources box at SalesandMarketing.com.

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the sales conversation

The allure of doing nothingIn a joint study on decision making, research psychologists Irving Janis and Leon Mann describe a wartime phenomenon called the “old sergeant syndrome”�—�when infantry on the frontlines, having witnessed the deaths of many comrades, are known to actually delay making decisions that might protect them from a similar fate. Though anecdotal, the old sergeant syndrome illustrates just how powerful the human preference for staying the course can be.

Sellers routinely encounter a similar preference in their customer conversations, and this preference is their most formidable adversary. Deeply rooted in human psychology and common in everyday life, this opponent has nothing to do with the other competitors in your market and everything to do with your prospects’ status quo bias�—�their preference for making no buying decision at all and sticking with their current situation. Humans have a serious predisposition for doing nothing and maintain this preference even when the current situation is clearly to their detriment.

In his study called “The Psychology of Doing Nothing,” research psychologist Christopher Anderson sums it up well: “Delays transform into lost opportunities, and adhering to the status quo is frequently unjustified given advantageous alternatives. Still, individuals persist in seeking default no-action, no-change options.”

Beating buyer inertia

Why is the status quo so compelling for so many buyers? Anderson’s research highlights several key “antecedents” that fuel our human penchant for inaction. These factors provide a helpful way to think about why buyer indecision happens, and what you as a seller can do to make sure it doesn’t.

• Preference stability — Experienced buyers tend to stick with proven methods for making a selection. So, how can you engineer a shift in your prospects’ preferences? One of the best ways to do this in your customer conversations is to tell them something they didn’t already know about a problem or missed opportunity they didn’t even know they had.

That means identifying and introducing their unconsidered needs�—�challenges, problems, gaps or deficiencies in their status quo approach that will make it difficult or even impossible to achieve their desired outcomes. This creates uncertainty in the buyer’s current preferences, which is required for decision processing and persuasion to take place.

• Anticipated regret/ blame – The possibility of regret can be a major source of inaction for buyers during the decision-making process. Anderson notes that anticipatory emotions during the decision process include a cocktail of negative states including dread, anxiety and fear largely due to the notion that humans tend to associate change with loss and pain instead of gain. To counteract this, you have to show prospects how the pain of staying the same�—�the status quo, which poses the biggest threat to their most vital business goals�—�is actually greater than the pain of change.

• Cost of action/change – According to social psychologist Daniel Kahneman, humans are two to three times more motivated to avoid loss than to achieve gain. As a result, if change is risky and appears to cost more than staying the same, it will increase resistance. To make change more palatable to your prospects, you have to identify and quantify the cost of inaction and add that to the gain of change to show significant contrast between their current and future states. The value of doing something different resides in the contrast between where your prospects are today and where they could be with you.

• Selection difficulty – Researchers confirm a concept called “choice overload,” which contributes to indecisiveness and the perception that change is too difficult and abstract to realize. To overcome this, you need to make the complex simple and the abstract more concrete. The best way to do this is with visual storytelling tools depicting buyers’ current and future states so they can picture their status quo as unsafe and see your solution as a new, safe alternative path.

As Anderson’s research shows, the status quo bias is a stubborn foe. Instead of worrying about a competitive matrix that shows how you stack up against a competitor, you should be spending more time on messages, tools and skills that defeat these causes of the status quo bias.

BY TIM RIESTERER

The four reasons people are stuck in the status quo and how to defeat them

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marketing

Are you ready for machine learning?In this era of Big Data, we’re inundated with messages to use data to drive personalized and predictive experiences for customers. But for many, the gap between this data-driven vision and reality is large and growing; according to Forrester Research, most organizations are using a mere 12 percent of their data to make marketing decisions.

One approach to curing these data overload ills is machine learning, an approach to predictive analytics that allows computers to automatically learn by example and continuously adapt to the shifting sales and marketing world. Machine learning alleviates the burden of establishing fixed rules for how to react to data, extracting patterns from every individual customer and interaction in order to help you achieve the business results you want.

But how do you get started with machine learning? Are you even ready? Here are four recommendations to help you answer those questions and get your sales, marketing and support data ready for machine learning.

Don’t boil the ocean

Too many Big Data analytics projects fail by trying to solve everything at once: the 360-degree view of every possible interaction with every customer on every channel. Don’t fall into that trap. Instead, come from the philosophy that you don’t have to solve every analytics challenge right out of the gate.

Choose the right business process

Building on the mindset of not boiling the ocean, segment your business processes to identify where it makes sense to layer on machine learning technology. Start with a process that is relatively mature and stable, and where you see your employees performing repetitive tasks. Maybe it’s a process around assigning leads to salespeople or selecting dynamic content for your next email campaign.

Understand your data

Next up, take inventory to understand what data is available, where it lives and how it’s being used in that business process to make decisions. Since machine learning can work with your existing CRM, marketing automation and support systems�—� and any data types, including text�—�there’s no need to uproot existing systems. Don’t fret if your data is scattered, or if you feel like you “don’t have enough.” Consider an agile approach; initially, you can apply machine learning using the easily accessible data and then gradually add more over time.

Be very clear about the outcome you’re striving for

Are you trying to convert more prospects? Or maybe figure out the best salesperson to close a certain deal or save an at-risk customer? The outcome is the nucleus around which machine learning operates, so the crisper the outcome, the better the value. By understanding past outcomes�—�good, bad, or ugly�—�machine learning can tie your data together in meaningful ways to drive better future outcomes for marketing and sales.

Once you understand your business process, data and outcomes, you’re ready to bring in machine learning to codify intuition�—� that is, to learn the patterns of human decision making and infer the complex rules by which decisions are being made by your customer-facing employees. In turn, you’ll be able to use machine learning to scale and enhance those inherently personalized customer interaction decisions.

Predictive applications are not a black box for decision making, but a supplement to human analysis. Think about which decisions to automate and which to augment by assessing the “cost of being wrong”�—�the cost of an incorrect action. For example, choosing which salesperson should work a deal can be automated; the prospect likely wouldn’t notice if he engaged with the “wrong” salesperson. However, saving an at-risk customer may be better left to an augmented approach. Machine learning can help determine which customers are most likely to cancel and recommend which save technique is likely to work best, but the account manager ultimately controls how to handle the interaction.

Machine learning will play an increasing role in marketing and sales organizations looking to work smarter, not harder. By offering one more way to alleviate the burden of data analysis, it can be the foundation for more personalized interactions and better engagement at every stage of the customer’s lifecycle.

Jeff Erhardt is CEO of Wise.io, which delivers predictive applications across the full customer lifecycle to optimize how businesses acquire, monetize, support and retain customers.

JEFF ERHARDT, CEO OF WISE.IO

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