Brand Identity Crafting

Brand Identity: Crafting a Timeless Presence

Brand Identity: Crafting a Timeless Presence

Brands are no longer just symbols, names, or designs. They have become an identity. A cohesive message delivered in unison.

Products have become abundant in the market. There is a technology that can solve every business problem. And, with the technology comes the buyers and competitors.

An organization or individual must compete for the attention of the buyer.

With social media, individuals can position themselves as solutions to problems, too. This could be a marketing problem, as the rise of influencer marketing would suggest. Or they could sell their product, like Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest. Have no doubt, he is an SEO influencer and the face of his organization. People buy his product because his name is attached to it.

But why is this? Some organizations and individuals present themselves in a manner that we find refreshing.

Their charisma is infectious and investing our attention is entertaining and enlightening. Once an organization or individual is perceived to be charismatic, they begin to hold the attention of a relevant audience.

These organizations and individuals are called brands.

For all the vagueness of the term, we must ask: What is a brand?

Why is brand identity important?

Let us talk about a famous story: Michael Jordan and Nike. In 1984, Nike and Michael Jordan created a historic moment in sports and fashion: the Air Jordan.

The legendary red and black Jordan pair were on full display during a pre-season game when Michael Jordan wore it for the first time.

The NBA was furious. They sent a letter to Nike stating the shoes violated policy and would levy a fine of $5000 per game. Nike agreed and paid the fine for each of his games, revolutionizing marketing.

The Air Jordan became an anti-establishment and a rebel-figure sneaker in the market, becoming the most popular individual-led brand ever. The legendary sneakers sold enough copies in May to reach $70 million in sales.

You may think that Nike here is the brand in question, but let us pivot and understand that while Nike defined itself as a disruptor and risk taker, it was Michael Jordan, the conqueror, who would take the limelight. And not just for his exceptional skills on the court but his presence and sense of marketing.

From his iconic ‘Be Like Mikeʼ marketing campaign to Space Jam, he became a phenomenon. A brand.

Defining a brand.

A brand is any distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services. That is what it says on the American Marketing Association.

But looking at Jordan, doesn’t it feel more than that? He had no term or design. All Michael Jordan had to offer was him.

In the influencer market of personal branding, where thought leadership has become vital to stand out—a brand should be defined as the ability of an organization or an individual to craft a recognizable voice that creates an emotional response within an audience.

The need for a brand voice or identity

Have you heard about CEPs? These are Category Entry Points. These cues inside the buyer’s head help them retrieve a brand from their memory banks.

In any category, certain brands will come to your mind. Think about smartphones. Which brand comes to your mind? Apple or Samsung?

Think about AI. It’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is it not? Whatever the category, you have associated certain products with a brand. For a brand you trust, you don’t buy only for the product but rather the experience the brand provides through them. You want to be identified with it.

A brand voice helps organizations and individuals develop a unique voice that can be thought of easily in buying situations. This voice can generate an emotional response. Or generate trust from B2B buyers in the market for risk-mitigating solutions. A brand voice helps buyers understand what you/your organization stand for.

Crafting a brand identity takes creativity, patience, and experimentation.

Why do you connect with certain brands? It is because something resonates with you. Something that the brand does or conveys speaks to you on a personal level.

That is the brand identity. A way of saying and expressing their ideas. Crafting this voice or identity takes patience, a readiness to experiment, and creative risk-taking.

Let us break the brand voice down into two parts.

  1. Crafting an identity from the organization/individual perspective.
  2. The importance of the voice for the buyers/consumers.

Brand Identity: The creator’s perspective

To find the brand identity, the creator— organization or the individual—must understand the why. This is the noble mission of the brand. For businesses like Apple, it is to bring the best user experience through their services, products, and software.

For SEMrush, it is to make marketing competition fair and transparent. For individuals, take the de facto productivity brand, Ali Abbdal. For him and his team, it is helping people build a life they love.

Knowing the why helps brands craft a clear and concise message. The why provides the core of a brand identity.

Once a brand identifies its core, it can move towards the next layer, the how.

The how details the process of you bringing your mission into reality. If Apple wants to create the best user experience, how are they doing it? It is by using the best available specs in the market and designing their products to have a premium feel.

Or Ali Abbdal? How does he help people lead a life they love? Through free productivity resources online and actionable steps for successful and time-efficient people.

The how brings your why into existence and provides a platform for people to believe in you.

The next layer of this equation is the what. What are the methods by which you deliver your why and how? For Apple, the iPhone, iPad, and Mac are the what.

For individual-led brands, the recent trend is that of the content. Individual brands deliver the what by showing themselves to the world. It is their personality and their life that draws audiences in.

Many platforms enable this, from the GenZ culture of TikTok to thought leadership on LinkedIn. Social media empowers anyone to rise, organizations included and become a cultural phenomenon.

And brand identity is all about it: Becoming a cultural icon.

Keen readers must have noticed that a brand voice follows Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. But it is not that he discovered the formula. He observed that successful leaders and brands followed this type of identity exploration. A differentiating brand builds from the inside.

Brand Identity: For the buyer

Why would the buyer decide to go for your brand? For B2B buying scenarios, they want to mitigate risk without disturbing the status quo.

While purchasing, they think along these verticals:

  1. Will our purchase integrate well within our existing systems?
  2. Does the purchase solve a problem we are facing?
  3. Will it solve any potential risks we will face in the future?

There is a reason why SEMrush, Salesforce, and HubSpot are so easy to integrate with existing software and data collectors. And vice-versa.

Usually, the conversations are around avoiding market failures and adding organization-elevating solutions. For B2B buyers, disruption of their organization is not a safe option. This rings true for most traditional organizations.

According to Gartner’s survey, the B2B buying committee has 6 to 10 individuals. Each individual has concerns and options they would prefer. Yet this group of opinionated individuals manage to reach a conclusion.

ABM is to be greatly appreciated for this. The core of ABM campaigns is a cohesive, consistent, and seamless brand identity.

If the majority in the buying committee: –

  1. Can identify with your brand
  2. Find it relatable
  3. Believe the solutions align with their mission and values.
  4. Accepting the promise to deliver a positive outcome is tangible and achievable.

They will accept your solution as the best in the market for them. With an over-flooded market of goods, services, and personalities, buyers will purchase from you because of trust and perception.

Your brand identity will do the selling. Now, it is your product team’s job to deliver on the promises the voice has made.

Marketing and Storytelling.

Human beings are wired for stories. We derive meaning from understanding a person’s or organization’s story.

Microsoft as the underdog, Or Metaʼs electric rise to stardom. We love a good story. Here is where brand identity is found, in the story of your brand.

Marketing messages can do a lot of things. But it cannot replace a good story. All good stories are marketing, but not all marketing is a good story.

Some messages seem underhanded, while some feel shallow and full of empty promises. A brand’s story relies on resonance and the ability to deliver. A brand that cannot make good on its promise will not find its identity because it is based on false promises. But truth without a distinct voice will fall flat on the audience’s ear.

Marketing teams must deliver the message with creativity, passion, and a deep understanding of their “productˮ and audience.

To understand what works, use a growth marketing approach. Experiment, analyze, create, and reiterate.

As David Ogilvy says, tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

Brand voice and identities are an organization and individual way of showing their personality and explicit truth. It is a platform to attract and engage with the right buyer.

However, the line of cultural relevance and customer sensitivities must be considered. What kind of cultural impact does your brand want to make?

Believe it or not, every organization and individual has the power and accessibility to become an icon. The trick is to find the correct audience and the right voice.

Create an identity with your brand positioned to say something unique to you.

Points of Parity and Points of differentiation The players of innovation 10 1

Points of Parity and Points of differentiation: The players of innovation

Points of Parity and Points of differentiation: The players of innovation

We often compete to be different. But what happens when the audience can’t relate to us? Think, it’s all about parity.

Competition between organizations is a necessary factor for economic growth. As markets worldwide become saturated with solutions, the buyer asks: What do you do differently?

This is an overlooked, almost silent question lurking in their minds.

The customer drives comparison between two businesses. They want something different; they want to be served according to the market standards.

A business must offer what its competition has and more. It’s called parity and differentiation.

Parity and differentiation are crucial for a brand to thrive in saturated markets. While this may seem like a lot to ask for, business success boils down to meeting a customer’s needs better than anyone else.

But how can a brand create a positive loop that benefits customers and organizations alike?

Parity and Differentiation are a positive loop that drives innovation.

Innovation has driven every part of our society and will continue. Especially in the knowledge era, we find novel solutions to most problems. But are these innovations in your opinion?

Innovations are considered great works. To do great work, Paul Graham of Y Combinator says, one must find a knowledge frontier and identify its gaps.

Within the context of brand strategies, it means recognizing the points of parity and bringing differentiation.

It is a continuous process as standards evolve and new opportunities arise. Brands that succeed at this process sit at the top of the food chain for longer periods. They identify emerging trends and cause disruptions. But to understand how you can do it.

You need to understand

What are Points of Parity (POPs) and Points of Differentiation (PODs)?

Parity POPs and Points of Differentiation PODs
  1. Points of Parity: Every industry has a standard that they must maintain. If a business wants customer segments to take them seriously, they must provide these services. These services are uncompromising and expected from any player.
  2. Points of Differentiation: These are the unique selling points of a product. What does a business’ product do differently than a market? PODs empower a business to bring a change that gives them a competitive edge.

What makes them so important?

As we have said before, you could say these two are the dimensions necessary for innovation.

If your product is too different from its competitors and does not do the basics of what is needed, there is a chance it could be ignored completely. On the other hand, if it is just as good as the competition, then there is a zero-sum game. For new companies, it is difficult to supplant an existing player in the field.

For brands and their organizations, if they wish to create a difference, they first need to provide the market with what they want. Blind differentiation or straightforward parity will cause difficulty in competing, slowly causing downfall.

And that is best exemplified by the two products below.

  1. The Google Glass:

Google Glass is an innovative technology. But it was ten years ahead of its time. General people did not understand the use of the glass. A unique product with no competitor. And that is where it failed. Only tech lovers understood what it was trying to do. It was not relatable to the public at large.

There was no parity.

Between privacy concerns and low profits, Google had to discontinue the product, to the dismay of many. In the VR/AR market, it is difficult to imagine the product losing.

  • Microsoft Zune:

The Zune presented itself as a competition for the iPod. But it did not take off. Zune was plagued by a single problem: It had no differentiating features.

The iPod was established, and it had the advantage of iTunes and Steve Jobs backing it up. Zune, on the other hand, failed at conveying its message. There was no clear message. Zune presented these beautiful and artistically inspired ads but it failed to reach the wide market.

And in the end Zune couldn’t establish a real reason to choose it over the iPod. Causing its failure.

For a brand and product to work, it has to walk the thin line of parity and differentiation. Organizations are bound to this loop, but it is not a negative loop. This loop sets the industry standards and then breaks them by innovating inside the frame of reference.

It allows customers to adapt and change with the product instead of causing a backlash or misunderstanding.

That is true innovation.

Points of Parity: Competitive Advantage

Parity can be used to undermine your competition’s uniqueness by adopting it as a market standard. As such, these innovation loops are not just good for isolated companies but for the competitive market in general.

Point of parity avoid the pitfall of alienating the audience by providing context and a frame of reference for the product. Ensuring that a large portion of the market does not find the product irrelevant or unrelatable.

And they empower a business to disrupt another by emulating or providing a better experience for the end customer.

Example: Google Workspace has been disruptive to Microsoft Office. Google’s tools allow users to collaborate worldwide because of its cloud-native solutions and cost-effective pricing.

It enabled small businesses to set up their workspaces quickly and at cost. On the other hand, big organizations could use sheets, docs, and Google Meet to set up meetings and work on large projects together.

This caused a problem for Microsoft. So, what did Microsoft do to break this advantage? They adopted Google’s toolset. They rebranded Office 365 as Microsoft 365, providing cloud applications and AI-driven features. And integrated Teams in their suite, helping businesses streamline their communication in one place by offering safe file sharing, chatting, and video conferencing.

It helped Microsoft not lose relevance as a collaborative solution. But they could not break Google Workspace’s market share, which sits at 44% compared to Microsoft 365’s 30%.

Even though Microsoft was an early player in the productivity game, Google broke it by adopting its point of parity and then putting their spin on it. They overtook Microsoft by a margin, making Microsoft adopt their differentiation as a new point of parity.

By understanding a market’s point of parity, you can position yourself as a disruptor, thereby adopting the points and differentiating.

Understanding your brand and the market is the road to finding parity and differentiation.

Discovering parity is not as simple as copying the existing trends that your industry falls into.

Parity is found by understanding the needs of your market, the existing solutions to their problems, and customer expectations.

A phone that does not provide advanced network connectivity will fail to the one that does. Even though it is the same market, there is a difference in expectations.

The two dimensions are closely linked together. And differentiation, essentially, is putting a spin on parity.

To find parity, an organization will usually go through these steps: –

  1. Conduct Market Research
  2. Identify customer expectations and existing solutions.
  3. Match your product to the existing market
  4. If the product is not ready to be understood by the market, it lacks relevant parity.
  5. Integrate customer expectations (A picture editing tool, for example, must have a .raw file editor)
  6. Rematch the product to check if it has the basic functions of an “industry-standard” product.

Once you know the points of parity. What is your brand or organization ready to add to it?

Adding your unique proposition to the market standards will create differentiation and innovation.

For Google Workspace, this was their cloud-native environment.

Equality and difference— that is innovation.

Parity and differentiation cannot exist in silos. To bring forth innovation, organizations must base their brand strategies on implementing the two together.

A unique perspective that does not resonate with the intended buyer will fall flat. And the same set of solutions will not rouse anyone into buying either.

After all, the race is on to provide an unmatched experience. But if the experience is not a mix of known and unknown, the end buyer will be disoriented and unable to understand what you offer, even if it is good.

Only by incorporating old strategies, finding their gaps, and then spinning them will organizations place themselves as customer-centric and innovators at the same time.

Business-Intelligence-Platforms

Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms to Help Optimize Your Workflow

Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms to Help Optimize Your Workflow

How can businesses overcome the challenges of data mining to unlock the hidden potential of raw data and convert them into meaningful insights?

Organizational discipline is the key to workflow management. Decluttering and sorting through the data we work with streamlines our operations and boosts productivity.

To play chess, the pieces must be staged in a specific way and move strategically. We consider all the positions on the board before making a move against the opponent.

Managing the heaps of data is one of the most complex tasks. Our business objective should be improving our management skills to curate a smart business strategy. The more sorted the data is, the higher the possibility that it’s manageable, accessible, and easier to understand.

Data is omnipresent but how we interact with and study it remains different. We streamline these ways by engaging and understanding it through data analysis software.

Businesses require such tools for swift and comprehensive analytics to drive growth.

Each department in an organization understands and presents the relevant data differently to condense the condition of the business.

Significant BI tools for workflow management

These platforms combine software and additional services transforming raw data from multiple channels into actionable insights.

Business intelligence platforms work as catalysts, converting raw data into meaningful information, i.e., declutter and sort. These platforms collect, manage, organize, and analyze large quantities of data to make informed business decisions.

Additionally, it is through their functioning that data becomes accessible. They help businesses retrieve the latest, past, in-house, third-party data, etc., to help evaluate the performance. BI platforms allow the IT and other departments to work with and understand each other beyond making assumptions.

The nervous system of your organization

Business intelligence software integrated with visualization tools, advanced analytics, and data mining technologies offers a centralized platform.

By providing accessible insights, this software propels your business to become data-driven, and gain a competitive edge by helping simplify customer behavior.

In this fast-paced juncture where everyone requires a kickstart, business intelligence tools help you stay ahead of the curve.

How do these tools help us do that?

In practical terms, the standard BI tool helps identify the snags and address them accurately to streamline workflow operations. Additionally, it has become an efficient tool to optimize overall operations and track key metrics introducing cost-effective solutions into the business structure.

Business intelligence solutions are integral in administering your organization as data-driven.

Automation is the vehicle unleashing its potential to become one.

Use of automation in the fast-paced digital world

Across the business intelligence landscape, automation is crucial to maintaining a competitive edge in the fast-paced digital world.

Automation in business intelligence helps streamline, optimize, process, and analyze the collected data by boosting the capability to save time. Equipped with automation tools, business intelligence platforms underscore strategic and recurrent business decisions and tasks.

Have you heard of the terms, technologically-challenged or technophobe?

This is what you are labeled as if you manually attempt to collect and enter data into the system.

Introducing automation in business intelligence platforms helps save time and effort. Certain automated processes help avoid manual data entry or processing, increasing employee productivity by allowing them to focus on other strategic tasks.

Automation also helps negate other human mistakes. It reduces and corrects any errors in reports, ensuring the business maintains updated, precise, reliable, and accurate data.

In simpler terms, there are specific components of automation through which business intelligence platforms cater to your data processing and management preferences:

Data collection

In this step, raw and unstructured data is collected from different sources (internal and external systems), segregated to find clean authentic data, and structured uniformly for comprehensive data analysis.

Clean data is a requirement for accurate, to-the-point insights. Hence, the automation highlights and eliminates any inconsistencies, duplicates, or discrepancies.

Data Analysis

Automation helps in the reliable data description, modeling, and interpretation to make data-driven decision-making using advanced analytics. In this stage, the tools help identify patterns and trends to establish correlations between data sets.

After finding a correlation, it becomes much simpler to extract meaningful insights, accentuate important information, and draw conclusions to plan a roadmap for the future.

Monitor and Track

It simplifies report generation through customizable dashboards for a clear visual representation of data and automated reporting tools.

By creating and sharing detailed and accurate reports across a user-friendly interface, stakeholders can easily access important business information.

Automation in business intelligence platforms can manage and organize large heaps of data. As the business gradually expands, it is needless to expend additional costs and resources as the automation tools have scaling-up capabilities.

The overall function of business intelligence platforms is catering to real-time insights for organizations without slowing down, such that resources and time are freed up for more significant tasks.

Understanding market trends with business intelligence tools

But the major question is – are they reliable?

Each organization has distinguishable business requirements. Choosing the perfect business intelligence software depends on the department’s needs and the volume of data.

With the data mountains inherently present within, how do businesses harness their power? Through BI systems.

However, before finalizing the right tool, your business has to consider particular specifications –

  • Ease of access and use: The BI platform should be easily accessible by all employees, i.e., from tech-savvies to technophobes. It should confidently allow the user to configure the data, process natural language, and provide required setup assistance.
  • Automation capabilities: Automation is the principal foundation of business intelligence platforms. The chosen BI platform should then seamlessly integrate automation, and support natural language insights and visual report creation with one click.
  • Does it support AI? With the onset of AI, we aim to look past data. To establish simpler customer service structures within the business, the software should allow chatbot assistance and other interactive and conversational AI services.
  • Seamless Integration: To elevate operational management and seamless integration of processes, is the BI platform part of an ecosystem of apps? This enables an organization-wide improvement in productivity. Does the BI software allow integration with multiple data sources?

Broadly, your chosen business intelligence tools should be adept at data management. It should assist data warehousing, allow easy data mining, and aid in data modeling processes.

Top services to manage your workflow

The ideal tools and services for your business can transform your workflow and instill productivity.

Here are the 5 best business intelligence platforms of 2024:

QlikSense by Qlik

Qlik is available for Web, iOS, and Android.

QlikSense comprises a diverse range of visualization and data reporting features offering versatile options.

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Image source: https://www.qlik.com/us/products/qlik-sense#:~:text=Qlik%20Sense%20is%20a%20complete,to%20fully%20customize%20analytics%20solutions

QlikSense is a complete, fully customized analytics solution.

Sample data is already available within QlikSense which saves you the importing time. This BI platform works efficiently with one dataset or hundreds, enabling comprehensive visuals detailing the sales numbers.

These are structured into customizable graphs and provide an overview of the dataset(s). After the platform completes uploading and visualizing your data, its built-in AI-powered Insight Advisor allows you to ask questions regarding natural language, insights, summaries, and predictive analysis across different data sources.

One of the best features of this platform is its accessibility. Available across different devices, you can access your reports and graphs to make edits anytime and anywhere – all-in-one-functionality.

Microsoft Power BI by Microsoft

Microsoft Power BI is available for Web, iOS, and Android.

Power BI is one of the most widely used business intelligence platforms.

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Image source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-bi

It allows effortless integration with other Microsoft products to quickly track any edits/changes made to the available data. One of its most supportive features is access to Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams with a click.

Microsoft Power BI, a web-based business analytics suite, highlights real-time trends and offers valuable insights through comprehensive data visualization. This BI tool seamlessly integrates and is highly intuitive. If two datasets are connected, it can recognize the correlation, and changes to one are visible in the other dataset as well.

Zoho Analytics by Zoho

Zoho Analytics is available for Web, iOS, and Android.

Zoho Analytics is a self-service business intelligence software.

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Image source: https://www.zoho.com/analytics/whats-new.html tm_source=Ent_analytics_campaign&utm_medium=Ent_BI-banner

Zoho Analytics offers in-depth analysis and reports using automatic data syncing, scheduled periodically. This BI tool is one of the straightforward platforms to navigate and learn through a free on-premise plan.

It has built-in AI-powered features such as conversational AI, unlimited detailed reports, and predictive analytics and allows third-party integrations.

Zoho Analytics is designed to help solo entrepreneurs manage and analyze big data, even for the novices.

If you do not understand its functionalities, it offers demo videos with a user-friendly interface with walk-throughs.

Zoho Analytics leverages visual data representation to signify data flow from one end of the pipeline to another. It offers geo maps, i.e., map layering that unearths multiple data layers and identifies the hidden dimensions.

One of its most fascinating features? Immersive report viewing between different tabs, widgets, and an upgraded dashboard builder.

Domo Data Experience Platform by Domo

Domo is available for Web, iOS, and Android.

With cloud computing taking over the internet for flexible resource sharing and economic scaling, Domo is one of the best business intelligence tools for optimizing your workflow.

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Image source: https://images.app.goo.gl/4us1wVgUzPZSKNKu9

Domo allows seamless data integration from multiple sources such as databases, spreadsheets, social media, etc. It is entirely cloud-based with a faster load speed, making it easier for multinationals and small businesses.

Imagine it as a data library that connects, supporting over 1000 pre-built ones. Once the data is connected, managing it is as easy as a pie.

Additionally, it helps prepare your data, identify relationships, automate, and filter without any prior SQL knowledge. The Domo app hosts APIs, data management, and manipulation tools for all your data management preferences. It can also make the required data calculations with the Beast Mode available in the app.

Tableau by Salesforce

Tableau is available only on the web.

Tableau is one of the dynamic data visualization builders that allows diverse sharing options for team collaboration.

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Image source: https://www.tableau.com/products/tableau

Tableau is one of the top-rated BI tools for team collaboration. It specializes in data visualization and discovery and its collaborative capabilities.

Using this, you can share dashboards and workbooks with your teammates. They can leave the necessary comments on the work and collaborate on the data analysis process to streamline workflow.

Tableau supports data integration from multiple platforms such as SalesForce, Google Analytics, and MS Excel and has in-built workbooks, known as Accelerators, to support the imported data. Tableau offers different products depending on your business needs, such as Tableau Server for organizations, Tableau Desktop for the general audience, and Tableau Online for hosted analytics.

What’s next for the business intelligence market?

The Business Intelligence market, valued at $33.34 billion, is expected to grow by $61.86 billion by 2029.

Making important business decisions in the minimum amount of time is the need of the hour.

Business intelligence platforms rely on technological advancements to analyze data and help employees and high-level executives make significant decisions.

The business intelligence platforms help administrators extract, monitor, and enhance data from internal and external systems while producing reports and dashboards easily accessible to stakeholders and decision-makers.

Graphs, infographics, and scorecards are increasingly necessary to develop these reports.

The BI platforms offer a helping hand in Zoho analytics, data mining, modeling, and statistical analytics to harness insightful conclusions and curate these embedded graphics smoothly.

Data is the backbone of every industry.

Business intelligence platforms offer a structure to this heap by organizing and attributing meaning to them.

With the focus on automation in recent years, the demand for BI software will increase significantly for all businesses as they rush to propel their decision-making processes with confidence that their data is accurate and trustworthy.

An AI breakthrough by Demis Hassabi & Dr. John Jumper in protein structure wins the Nobel Prize

An AI breakthrough by Demis Hassabi & Dr. John Jumper in protein structure wins the Nobel Prize

An AI breakthrough by Demis Hassabi & Dr. John Jumper in protein structure wins the Nobel Prize

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(Source: Science.org)

AI turns a 50 year-old-dream of scientists into a reality! A chess genius creates history.

For a groundbreaking discovery, Sir Demis Hassabi was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Google DeepMind Director, Dr. John Jumper. Hassabis, the Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs invented AlphaFold— a unique system that integrates predictive analysis of protein 3D structures from their amino acid sequences.

Over recent years, the world has witnessed impactful transformations introduced by the advent of artificial intelligence in various domains. There is a new addition to this list of applications—protein design.

Protein structure is increasingly complex, involving a series of amino acids in different arrangements/patterns. For several decades, researchers have attempted to decipher proteins’ 3D structures with various experimental techniques that involved extensive procedures.  Predicting the structure is cumbersome and intense, but not anymore. The latest AI-integrated innovation has simplified this process and made it possible.

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(Source: Chess.com)

Before pioneering AI to decode protein structures, Demis Hassabi was a chess prodigy. He believes that the strategic thinking he applied in chess was the driving force behind his AI journey. In 2018, when he first competed with the algorithm, it was based on a comparative analysis. However, the updated model added deep learning which is quick to identify patterns and determine protein structures accurately.  

There is no doubt that the AI revolution is an asset for not only brands but also scientists. It is paving the way for technological adoption in developing novel solutions for complex processes such as protein sequencing. As the world continues to adopt and integrate AI on a larger scale, we are sure to experience more marvels thanks to this technological advancement.


Sales-Pipeline-Metrics-to-Track

13 Sales Pipeline Metrics to Track

13 Sales Pipeline Metrics to Track

Weaknesses in your sales pipeline are detrimental. Can sales pipeline metrics help elevate the buyer’s journey?

Numbers and data, when isolated from each other, are meaningless. They exist within specific contexts.

We turn them into a quantifiable metric by tracking, analyzing, and comparing them to churn out meaning. This is how metrics help us gauge the effectiveness of a method.

Across the marketing and sales landscape, metrics help us assess and measure sales performance or production. It quantifies your marketing efforts to measure their effectiveness in boosting conversion rates and lead sales velocity. Sales pipeline metrics operate in the same manner.

Importance of sales pipeline metrics

A sales pipeline helps examine a prospect’s journey through different stages of a purchasing process.

A sales pipeline is a visual representation of how your prospects are moving through the different stages in the sales funnel from initial contact to a close. It tracks the movement of each prospect across the sales process, analyzing the overall buyer journey.

The sales pipeline is unique for every business and industry because it depends on the buyer’s journey, depending on their interests, preferences, priorities, and research.

Each buyer moves distinctly to accommodate the pipeline according to their journey, i.e., personalizing and making it effective. More than being sturdy, the pipeline is elastic and adapts to the prospect movements.

It generally includes three processes: lead generation, lead nurturing, and deal closing.

And, these are broader stages covered within the sales pipeline:

sales pipeline

The most crucial objective here is that the pipeline should be able to handle the volume of leads without compromising the engagement quality or performance. If your brand is witnessing low conversion rates, certain challenges within your pipeline should be addressed.

Some of the common challenges your sales and marketing team may encounter comprise:

  • Lack of historical data on closed deals
  • Off-market target audience guiding leads off-base
  • Absence of measurable targets
  • Lack of visibility or knowledge regarding the status of the sales pipeline
  • No use of effective CRM tools to track leads
  • Not following up on cold leads
  • Inadequate conversion status updates
  • Neglected workable and high-quality leads

These are the potential weak spots of your sales pipeline.

So, how do we overcome them?

Certain metrics let us assess how to alleviate these concerns and improve the different stages across the sales journey.

Pipeline metrics are crucial.

Each team member should familiarize themselves with tracking them regularly. Even if the sales pipeline metrics vary for businesses, some general ones should still be tracked by your team.

Understanding what drives your prospects to close a deal in a win or what makes them drop off midway through these metrics also offers significant opportunities for improvement.

What are the most common sales pipeline metrics

Opportunities

The total number of opportunities matters because it portrays the results of your lead generation efforts. Your lead generation efforts should target prospects fitting the ICP, i.e., the ideal customer profile.

What factors qualify prospects as opportunities? There are some criteria most businesses focus on.

Factors qualify prospects as opportunities 1

A prospect does not have to follow each criterion, as they vary according to the organization.

The focus is on the lead quality, which eventually becomes the most valuable lead and easily converts into opportunities. By analyzing who you count as an opportunity, your team can optimize its marketing efforts and improve lead nurturing processes to keep them engaged as they move through the pipeline.

How can we assess and track the number of opportunities?

To simplify this, your sales team can use the BANT or MEDICC lead qualification framework.

The opportunities should be tracked and assessed weekly, monthly, or bimonthly, depending on the preferences of your company. However, it can also be done regularly in case of rapid market fluctuations, multiplying lead volumes, or during push season due to an event.

New Leads

Tracking the number of new leads entering your pipeline helps analyze the success of your marketing campaigns, outlines your brand’s market reach, and offers quantifiable data to back your efforts.

It is necessary to highlight these new leads to establish whether your lead generation strategies are efficient.

Once in a while, we should question whether we are chasing hollow leads with no future potential and wasting our resources.

The end solution follows a comprehensive tracking system and establishes a timeframe depending on the pace and volume of generated leads. Record the leads, analyze the trends, and then compare the different lead gen efforts to help optimize your strategies.

Overall, the quality of the lead aligns with your sales and marketing efforts. It largely depends on the business size, industry, and marketing strategies.

Hence, there is no “good” or “bad” number of leads. If your tracking system tracks the acquired leads regularly, the results will convey if your strategies are useful.

MQL to SQL Conversion Rates

This conversion rate calculates the number of marketing-qualified leads who convert into sales-qualified leads. They show interest, sign up, provide their contact info, and subscribe for a demo period to further inspect the solutions offered to them.

These metrics highlight the effectiveness of your lead qualification strategies. An effective lead nurturing process with suitable engagement results, such as high conversion rates, indicates a healthy alignment between the sales and marketing teams.

How often do we assess the MQL to SQL conversion rates?

Calculate MQL to SQL conversion rates monthly. At this frequency, you allow the lead qualification processes to work at their pace, enabling you to make adjustments and understand their effectiveness.

The acceptable range for these conversion rates depends on the industry, business objectives, and past performance. These are your MQL-SQL conversion rate benchmarks.

Lead Velocity Rate

Velocity measures whether an object is accelerating or decelerating. This applies to a sales pipeline. The lead velocity rate compares the leads generated in the current business period to the previous one.

The velocity rate calculates qualified leads, helping you analyze whether your lead-generation efforts are fruitful and effective. It aids in strategic resource allocation and sales processes, amplifying your efforts.

This metric is crucial to understanding your business revenue growth.

If the number of generated leads for the latest sales cycle remains similar or lower than the previous sales cycle, you know you’re doing something wrong. Thus, it should be assessed monthly or quarterly depending on your company’s needs.

There is no acceptable velocity rate.

It depends on the industry and your business. Remember, you are your biggest competition.

In every sales cycle, the target should be to generate more leads through improved strategies compared to the previous one.

Average Deal Size

Average deal size is another significant factor that measures the health of your sales pipeline. It represents the monetary value ascribed to a sale.

Tracking the average deal size your business is partaking in helps with sales and demand forecasting.

In the long term, regularly tracking average deal sizes can assist in optimizing and streamlining strategies for marketing and sales initiatives. It is important to reach your brand targets and meet broader market conditions.

Sales Cycle Duration

Analyzing the monetary value of a sale is as significant as calculating the duration of the deal. This metric focuses on the details. It offers an insight into how a deal got stuck and why, with ways to improve it.

Sales cycle duration is the average time a deal spends at every specific stage of the sales cycle. Tracking minute errors resulting in potential delays is easier by calculating the sales cycle duration.

Additionally, this provides crucial insight into the sales cycle length, i.e., the time it takes from the initial contact to the lead being closed. This is also one of the sales pipeline metrics to track.

After all, this also affects the time a deal takes to close.

There are three metrics that we are addressing – average sales cycle duration, sales cycle length, and time taken to close.

These three metrics also help sales forecast, so your brand can establish practical targets.

A long sales duration can cause a huddle in your pipeline, resulting in relatively high lost deals or drop-offs.

Both these metrics depend on diverse factors, such as the complexity of the product or service. In B2B, the sales cycles are generally longer due to the several decision-makers involved in the process.

To overcome this, you should strategize your marketing techniques to understand your target market.

target market

These sales pipeline KPIs are mutually dependent on each other to some extent. But their goal remains the same, i.e., measuring how efficiently your sales and marketing efforts convert leads into paying customers.

Numbers of Deals Won

This pipeline metric tracks the number of successful deals. This is relative to the total number of opportunities during a specific period.

Conversion rates are crucial to driving business growth. The higher the conversion rates, the more your business moves forward to attain its goal; hence, conversion rates are one of the most essential sales metrics to track.

If the conversion rates are low or don’t align with the industry benchmarks, you can implement new strategies by identifying and meticulously addressing areas of improvement.

What factors contribute to a successful deal? What have you done differently to win a deal than the one dropped off?

These are the questions you ask your sales and marketing team while analyzing the conversion rates and other trends in your data.

Most often, the opportunities may be high, but the win rates are low, signifying a major lack in the closing stages of the pipeline.

Age of a Deal

This is one of the effective and simple metrics you can use when a deal is taking an unnecessarily long time to move through the pipeline or the prospect themselves are taking too long to make a decision.

With an increasingly long decision-making period, it is less likely that a prospect converts.

You need to assess why the lead didn’t convert and where they got stuck.

How do you avoid this? – Identify the bottlenecks, remove them, and boost the sales velocity.

To move this forward, your company should equip the sales representatives with the right resources and sales enablement or acceleration tools to drive the purchasing process.

By accelerating the sales processes, the age of the deal will automatically reduce, offering space for more successful closes.

Sales Rep Activity

This metric offers insight into the sales team members’ sales performance. Measuring this helps foster team productivity and takes team accountability.

It outlines how your sales team performs through outreach emails sent, the number of calls made, and the meetings booked by each sales representative. Track the sales and categorize them based on factors such as rep, team, region, product/service(s), etc. using efficient CRM tools for sales in 2024.

Through the results, your team can assess whether the sales rep is compensated for their contributions. And once analyzed, underperformers can be equipped with more resources and support from their superiors.

How do you improve the number of top performers, boost sales rep activity, and amplify sales?

The lack of correct skills and knowledge is a huge obstacle. To improve this, offering regular training and coaching sessions to newbies is a way to go.

The training should include actively engaging with prospects and staying updated with industry trends. Actively assessing and improving individual sales per rep will help boost the sales team’s productivity.

Total Pipeline Value

This sales pipeline metric measures the total value of deals in your pipeline. The total pipeline value depends on the value of the sales opportunity, the pipeline stage, and the time taken to close it.

By tracking the value of the current opportunity, it is possible to measure the total forecasted business revenue. Hence, it is a valuable metric for sales forecasting.

If you compare your total pipeline value with your win rates, it can help you forecast how much sales revenue could be generated at the end of the sales cycle. If combined with the sales cycle length, it can help analyze the total revenue potential.

To calculate TPV, each opportunity is provided with a specific monetary value, helping to estimate the total sales amount.

Customer Churn Rate

Also known as the customer turnover rate, it’s the number of customers you’re losing or the customers dropping off from the purchasing journey.

This can be quite a requisite KPI for businesses, as it indicates customers are losing interest in your product or service. However, this might not be the actual case.

Drop-off rates are as important as win rates. It becomes difficult to identify the improvement areas without highlighting the weak points.

Customer churn rate is a necessary metric in subscription business models.

It calculates the customer percentage that doesn’t renew and cancels their subscription services within a month or a year. Hence, this pipeline metric is significant for companies that rely on a recurring pricing model like SaaS or subscription services.

Implement CRM tools to determine how to boost the workings of your subscription models. And highlight the number of paying customers currently compared to the beginning.

For the broader picture, the customer churn rate helps highlight the forecasted revenue, improve customer loyalty, prioritize customer success, and enhance marketing strategies.

Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost signifies the company’s expenditure on acquiring new customers. It includes marketing and sales expenses, salaries, overheads, commissions, bonuses, etc.

However, CAC in marketing implies something different.

The main expenses entail the content, training, software, and other overhead costs. The goal is to prioritize investments that generate regular returns with the minimum maintenance costs such as curating content-specific blog posts.

It helps you assess the profitability, i.e., the amount you spend on a customer compared to the profit you make from selling your services to the customer.

This metric helps with resource allocation, making your customer acquisition process efficient and simpler. Simply put, there is no significant need to focus too long on this process. Sometimes an expensive customer might not mean that they are equally profitable.

Your sales and marketing teams should incorporate smart and streamlined strategies. An uncommonly high CAC might mean inefficiencies that require vigilance to enable long-term stability.

Remember to research your target audience. Host automated testing regularly to maximize your ROI using the existing customer acquisition efforts.

How can you calculate the customer acquisition cost?

First, add all the sales and marketing expenses. Then, divide this total by the number of new customers.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

After spending an ample amount on your cost acquisition efforts, how do you assess whether it is profitable?

Through customer lifetime value.

This metric calculates the value the customer brings to your business, including the amount they spend on your services, their time as customers, and their purchase frequencies.

By taking individual CLV into account, you can analyze the value of your entire customer base. It will offer insight into how much effort you should spend on customer acquisition.

To enhance CLV, focus on customer retention.

Implement new customer service strategies promptly addressing their concerns to build a strong professional relationship. When the customers are satisfied and happy, they are likely to remain loyal and purchase your services.

The most significant sales strategy for driving customer lifetime value is improving customer service – personalized recommendations, discount offers, user-friendly websites, etc.

Now that we have listed the most significant and common sales pipeline KPIs, why is it important to track them?

Assess why a lead did not convert by tracking their movement throughout the sales pipeline and using the right metrics.

Finding a solution based on the metrics can help you improve your sales and marketing strategies. One of which would be to reduce the stages in the sales funnel that are unnecessarily time-consuming.

Jeff Hoffman, an entrepreneur and sales executive, argues that a sales pipeline is a cocktail glass rather than a funnel, stating that the latter is inaccurate. Most prospect drop-offs happen near the top in the first stage when the lead comes across a demo, trial, or sign-up.

After passing through this milestone, the opportunity pool should remain approximately the same, and the probability that the opportunity is won is highly likely. This is the make-up of a healthy sales pipeline.

To some extent, we may think about how the shape of the sales pipeline aligns with reality.

The stages and the shape of this movement vary according to the buyers, industry, and sales processes.

Maintaining a simple and efficient sales pipeline is healthy for your business and sales revenue. But how do we know what “healthy” looks like?

5-Step Sales Process : The Effective Framework - Ciente

5-Step Sales Process : The Effective Framework

5-Step Sales Process : The Effective Framework

With an undefined sales strategy, reaching the critical mile may seem like an endless struggle. These 5 steps map out the route to closing more deals.

The success of your brand relies on a solid sales foundation. Without knowing the critical markers, it is hard to measure sales performance. The lack of a clearly defined sales strategy may be why 45% of surveyed sellers believe their biggest challenge is incomplete data. When your sales team follows a system, it allows them to take the right actions at the right time. The 5-step sales process is a structure to improve the efficiency of your closed deals. It is a guideline to ensure that you are on track and open to tweaking your sales approach.

While the sales approach requires tailoring as per your product or services, the five-step sales process lays a strong foundation to get the pipeline moving. Your sales team can utilize this linear approach to move through each step efficiently. These sales steps allow you to seamlessly monitor the performance and identify gaps that require improvement.  

Mastering this framework makes it easier to tweak or modify your sales process strategy in alignment with your goals and the client’s needs.

Step 1: Prospecting

Prospecting involves developing a list of prospects likely to convert into paying accounts. This step has everything to do with researching potential leads and knowing them as much as possible. Understanding the target niche is the stepping stone to drive a sales strategy that yields the results. Focus on your ICP instead of randomly targeting a pool of audience and going nowhere in the journey.

Step 2. Connecting with the customers

Ace the first impression with your target audience. While interacting with the prospects, work toward not making the conversation sales-y. The goal of this step is to transform from a generic call to schedule a first appointment that could potentially close a deal. So, setting the tone right is of utmost importance here.  Building a strong relationship with your client can go a long way.

Step 3: Identifying the pain points

Spend enough time figuring out the challenges of your target audience. You can begin by asking relevant questions to draw out the problem and understand how your offering could address the pain points. As you do your research, also find out their preferred solutions and whether they have budget constraints. Communicate your understanding of their problem and how your solution can help. When doing so, emphasize the winning points while at the same time not sounding too sales-centric.

Step 4: Sealing the Deal

Closing a deal involves a series of discussions and reasonings. As you move towards the final step, make sure you walk through the right questions. Talk about the details of your sales flow chart and be open to handling questions and client objections. Have a clear plan in place as to what you will do if the client objects or if they are not ready to commit yet. Such preparation will pave the way for overcoming roadblocks swiftly.

Step 5: Keeping up with the Follow-up

The journey doesn’t stop at signing a deal. Once you have closed a sale, make sure to follow up with the client. You need to make sure that the client receives the product/service as discussed and the whole experience simulates customer satisfaction. This small initiative can work in your favor, promoting brand loyalty. A happy client is likely to be loyal to your brand. At this stage, do not hesitate to ask for referrals to generate new leads.

Wrapping up

Sales are centered around fulfilling milestones. Every aspect of the sales cycle revolves around garnering the right clients, identifying their pain points, strengthening bonds with them, and offering an ideal solution. These 5 steps can be a real game-changer for your business, aligning with your vision and adding structure to an otherwise complex sales process. You gain clarity and can deliver the best solution to address the customer’s pain points.