New Tools for Sales Training
Inc.
Welcome to the world of sales training 2.0, where innovators are leveraging new technology—and new thinking—to make better sales people.

Eric Richardson believes there's a serious disconnect in the world of sales.

"Here's an analogy," says Richardson, a keynote sales speaker and chief executive of Growth Development Associates, which is based in Naples, Florida. "Think of a sales person as a professional athlete. Professional athletes go through a period of training. But unlike athletes, business people don't continue training. Sure, you can have a three-day training event, but when you send them back to their jobs, there's no more practice. That's like a football player going a whole season without practicing between games, or like Tiger Woods saying, 'I don't need to practice chip shots, I've already practiced that before.'"

In fact, a recent study by The Bridge Group, a sales consulting firm based in Hudson, Massachusetts, found that one out of seven companies never train their sales people, and more than half of the companies studied train their employees one to four times a year. Another study found that more than one-third of third-year sales professionals average only three to six days of sales training annually, and 39 percent of tenth-year sales professionals average zero to four days of sales training. Despite the lack of training, that study concludes: "Success meeting sales quotas was positively correlated with the degree to which sales training is integrated with the corporate learning function. The more integrated the sales training, the greater the success in meeting sales quotas. Simply put, integration is related to more sales." All of which comes during a time when nearly 50 percent of sales reps are missing quota, which, one consultant described as "mind-boggling" statistic.

Ad Spending Grows for Fifth-Consecutive Quarter, But Rate of Gain is Sinking
AdAge
U.S. ad spending totaled $32.5 billion in the first quarter of 2011, a 4.4% gain over the first quarter a year earlier, Kantar Media said Monday. That marks the fifth-consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, but also the smallest rate of growth in those five quarters.

"With the advertising recovery in its second year, 2011 gets bench-marked against the elevated spending levels of last year and that makes for tougher comparisons," said Jon Swallen, senior VP for research at Kantar Media Intelligence, in a statement accompanying the first-quarter report.

"Despite slowing growth, there are positive signs," he said. "The market expanded by $1.4 billion during the first quarter, which nearly equals the amount of gain at the start of 2010 when the recovery began. In addition, a rising proportion of advertisers are increasing their ad budgets and this indicates spending growth is still rippling outward through the market."

Spending among the 10 largest advertisers in the first quarter totaled $4.3 billion, a 6.7% increase over the quarter a year before, as cutbacks of 5.9% at No. 1 Procter & Gamble, 24.4% at No. 5 Verizon and 11.1% at No. 6 Pfizer were overcome by spending growth at the others. No. 7 Chrysler increased its spending a whopping 58.6%, followed by No. 4 Comcast with a 47.7% boost, Toyota with a 30.3% increase and Ford with a 27.3% increase.

Social Games Are Glue for Brand Engagement
Media Post / Marketing Daily News
Social Gaming panelists at the OMMA Social conference in New York on Thursday said the power of games to get people to engage with brands is driven by the addictive nature of the games, and if they are at the right place, they can have captive audiences who are also willing to share what they learn.

"Thirty percent of viewers of prime time TV are watching with another screen open," said Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe. "It's a great medium for storytelling, but why spend money on a Super Bowl ad and then ask people to go find it on YouTube?" He said SocialVibe worked with Kia to drive engagement within Zynga's social games during the last Bowl Game. "We saw three-minute average engagement because they were still playing FarmVille."

Samit said that social gaming is valuable because brands become a gateway to virtual goods or the chance for consumers to engage with a game on a different level. "We call it value exchange," he said. "It used to be that 100% of all advertising was interruptive. Here, it's the opposite. A person has reached a point in the game where they can't progress, so they say, 'Yes, I'll engage with brand.'"

Nine Lessons From Successful Brands on Twitter
Mashable
Brands are beginning to establish best practices for communicating with their customers and prospects on Facebook. But many of those same brands with large Facebook fan bases have smaller Twitter followings or none at all.

With more than 300 million user accounts, Twitter has become an important network for companies to leverage in their communication plans. Here are nine brands that have found success on Twitter along with takeaway lessons on what they do right and how you can emulate their success.

The First (and last) Adman
AdWeek
Thoughts on the writer, rule-maker, and business genius. David Ogilvy was the most famous businessman of his generation, one that went from shortly after the Second World War through the 1960s. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to put him, in his time, on the level of Steve Jobs in ours. That ought to prompt a curious question: Why has no one in the advertising business matched him in stature (save arguably the Saatchis for a flash) since?

P&G, Levi’s, GE Innovate by Thinking in Reverse
AdAge
Some of the most compelling innovations of our time are poised to emerge not in the U.S. or other developed countries but in emerging markets such as China and India. Dubbed "reverse innovation," the concept encompasses any innovation that is adopted first in the developing world and then migrates into mature markets.

It's a new idea, but one that is gaining steam as companies ranging from General Electric to Procter & Gamble, and Levi's to Coca-Cola innovate and introduce products with global implications in the developing world. Vijay Govindarajan, a professor in the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, believes reverse innovation will permanently alter the way companies do business, as resources, talent and investment shift to poor and developing countries. It will also present major marketing challenges.

"It's logical to see where a poor man wants a rich man's products. Reverse innovation is the exact opposite," said Mr. Govindarajan. "Why would a rich man ever want a poor man's products? It requires some transformational thinking for marketing and advertising."

The Ultimate ‘Brand Community’
Media Post, Marketing ‘Sports’ Blog
"Passion" and "engagement" are probably two of the most over-used words in today's marketing vernacular. Yet when it comes to describing the audience delivered by live sports events, they are also probably the most accurate. This has become particularly resonant to me of late, as I observe and analyze sports fans both professionally as a marketing researcher and anecdotally as an avid fan who will, this year, complete my bucket list of all 30 MLB stadiums. (The opening of the new Marlins Park in Miami next year will render that accomplishment temporarily short lived).

At a time when every marketer is jumping on the social media/viral marketing bandwagon—often, it seems, just because everyone else seems to be doing it—it's important to pause and recognize that the literal audience gathered for a sports event was and remains the original embodiment of a social community driven by special interest. Coming together to watch a sports event is like being in a fraternity or sorority in that you are in a most comfortable and cherished environment, surrounded by people who share your enthusiasm and connection with the event before you.

NBC keeps Olympics, wins four-Games package with $4.4B bid
CBS Sports
NBC retained its hold on U.S. Olympic television rights Tuesday in a four-Games deal through 2020 worth nearly $4.4 billion, defeating rival bids from ESPN and Fox.

"I can say the Olympics are really in their DNA," IOC president Jacques Rogge said, referring to the network, which has dominated the Olympic broadcast scene in the U.S. for 20 years.

Now controlled by Comcast, NBC won the bid despite last month's resignation of longtime sports and Olympics chief Dick Ebersol in a dispute with the new owners. NBC has broadcast every Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002, and it was the network's experience and familiarity with the IOC—as well as its money—which won over the Olympic body again.

NBC now will have exclusive rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the 2018 Winter Games and 2020 Olympics, whose sites have not yet been chosen.