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Cold Calling Tips Revealed From Super Bowl Data
Like football, sales prospecting is a contact sport. Identifying qualified leads, crafting the perfect pitch, and reaching out in the right way at the right time all take strategy, tenacity, guts… and the right data.
About three years ago our sales reps started telling us that when they called into Atlanta as it was raining, everybody answered the phone, and they made more sales. Industry research shows the single biggest obstacle that sales reps face is reaching busy decision makers.
Could the weather actually affect sales by affecting the ability to reach people? We put our data scientists on the question and they came back with a resounding "Yes!"
Then our reps noticed that before big sporting events like the World Cup or when Jimmer was sinking his wicked 40-foot 3's, the whole game of sales seemed to be affected. Could sporting events also affect sales prospecting? The Moneyball model Oakland A's have already been a model for predictive analytics in sales.
This week, InsideSales.com's data scientists looked at national and regional datasets collected over the past three years in our Neuralytics predictive analytics engine to see how the Super Bowl affects contact rates between sales reps and their leads.
Big Game Hangover
National contact rates drop just after playoff season, and descend even further after the Super Bowl. Hordes of fans around the country are mourning losses and need some time to recover. Over the past three years, the Patriots displayed the biggest decline (-46 percent) in contact rates of all participating teams. Let's hope (for the sake of sales reps calling into the Boston region) that the Patriots take home a win this year.
This is especially true for the losing team's region: For the three weeks after the Super Bowl, losing regions decrease their likelihood to accept sales calls (25 percent) and experience an even greater decrease in their contact rates (about 29 percent) (see Chart 2).
The Joy of Winning
There is an exception to every rule, and the exception here is with the winning team. Winning regions experience a significant spike in their likelihood to accept sales calls (32 percent), with contact rates increasing by nearly 10 percent for a month following the game (see Chart 2.)
The fans of teams that eventually become Super Bowl champions are unlikely to answer as their eyes are probably glued to ESPN. Contact rates for these fans maintain below-average rates during the playoffs and in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, but skyrocket following their eventual win (see Chart 2).
Here are a few "key plays" every sales team should consider:
Start Early to Tap Into Nationwide Euphoria
Four weeks before the Super Bowl, the NFL playoffs are in full swing and fans around the country are electrified and hungry for a chance at Super Bowl glory. This is an optimal time to contact Americans nationwide for a sales pitch (contact rates increase by 15 percent). However, you need to know when to back off as contact rates drop off significantly as teams are eliminated.
Don't Bother Me, I'm on ESPN
During the week prior to the big game and for two weeks following, people across the nation are less likely to accept sales calls.
East Coast vs. Central vs. West Coast: Understand the National Fandom Heat Map
All fans are not created equal as passions play out regionally in the week following the Super Bowl. The Upper Midwest wins the true "fanatic" title in the variance of swing of willing to engage in phone contacts, with Central not far behind. Eastern and West Coast fans have a more laid back reaction to the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat (refer to Chart 3). Use this little nugget to sharpen your sales prospecting strategies in real-time.
Just Happy to Be Here
From a historical perspective, regions that eventually return home without a victory have contact rates above average during the playoffs and in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, but drop off significantly following their big loss (see Chart 2).
Are these fans just happy to make it to the big game? Who knows, but sales teams can take advantage of their excitement before their team loses with some targeted prospecting.
The Super Bowl is only one of many factors that influence whether a sales rep will be able to reach a prospect (and, in turn, close a sale). The outcome of sporting events doesn't have the same impact on contact rates as immediate response to leads, time of day or day of week, for example.
To win in sales or football, you have to take risks, and based purely on the historical data on contact rates of winning and losing teams in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and admittedly correlative and probably not causative, and if contact rate profiles were the primary deciding factor; then New England fans are matching contact rate profiles of a winning Super Bowl team this year.
So, here goes… New England for the win.
How fanatic are you?
What's your prediction?
NOTE: Here is a more in-depth analysis of the InsideSales.com Super Bowl Sales Playbook.
2015 Trends Report Says Sales Process and CRM Use is Decaying!
Barry Trailer, Jim Dickie, and their company CSO Insights have been the leading sales research firm for 20 years; it's all they do. CSO is the Chief Sales Officer, and that is who tunes in to anything they say. Every year they do four annual research studies that have so much rich data behind them that Barry and Jim have become the sages of the sales industry. Their four research studies, each with key trends analysis are:
- 21st Annual Sales Performance Optimization Study (SPO)
- Sales Management Optimization Study
- Lead Management & Social Engagement Study
- Sales Compensation and Performance Management Study
The Sales Performance Optimization Study is going on as we speak. If you hurry you can still take it and get your own copy of what was a 214-page study last year when they wrap it up in the middle of February. I got to spend an hour with Barry on a sneak peek webinar last week and picked his brain about some of the things the data is showing. Barry is speaking about highlights of last year and forecasting trends again this week in the 1st Annual Inside Sales Kickoff event that also includes some insightful research from the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP.)
Bob Perkins and Larry Reeves are the founders of AA-ISP and also contribute annually to the research foundation of the inside sales or remote selling industry. I reached out to them as well as they prepare for their Kickoff and their first full day event on February 12 in San Francisco. I will mention a few things their research has found.
There is also some great research being done in the Inside Sales space by Dr. James Oldroyd, Vorsight, The Bridge Group, and the Reality Works Group.
This year Barry warns that both alarming and exciting things are happening.
Looking back at last year's study we see some very worrisome trends developing in:
- Quota Attainment
- Revenue Plan
- CRM Usage
- Process Decay
- Forecasting Accuracy
I have a 3 minute video summary here:
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Quota Attainment: Percentage of Reps Making Quota in 2009 – 2013 is going down.
- 2009 = 51.8%
- 2010 = 59.4%
- 2011 = 63.0%
- 2012 = 63.0%
- 2013 = 58.2%
The 2009 number was an all time low on the heels of the economic tailspin at the end of 2008. 2013 was the first decline in four years.
Company Sales Plan Attainment: Percentage of Revenue Plan Attainment 2009 – 2013 is also going down.
- 2009 = 77.9%
- 2010 = 85.9%
- 2011 = 89.0%
- 2012 = 89.2%
- 2013 = 83.9%
The downturn in 2013 was also the first such shift in four years across the 1200+ firms surveyed.
CRM Usage: CRM usage is going down for the first time in 15 years. CRM engagement is a leading indicator of the assembly line upon which almost every other sales process and sales application run in the sales industry. Barry thinks we may be taking our eye of the ball. We are missing the blocking and tackling that makes up successful sales. His trend lines and key indicators show that the Great Recession of 2008 was a big wakeup call for companies everywhere and for four straight years sales leaders and teams improved their numbers every year in a row.
Until 2012… Then things leveled off and the last two years they are heading back down. He warns we are all becoming complacent, and like the herd mentality, it looks like we are all doing it together. That leaves great opportunity for those who buck the trend and tighten up their CRM usage and sales process.
Sales Forecasting Accuracy: Barry warns that sales forecasting is as bad, maybe worse, as it has ever been. I joked with him that in years past we could flip a coin and get as good of odds as the accuracy of the average VP Sales guessing what their team would bring in.
"This year it's worse!" Barry laughed. "Try just over 45% accuracy. Flipping a coin provides better odds than our best sales guess."
Sales Process: One of the most impactful aspects I look forward to in Barry's research study is the CSO Insights Sales Relationship / Process MatrixTM. This is probably the meatiest and most proprietary aspect of the study that compares five levels of relationship a provider has with their customers:
- Approved Vendor: Legitimate provider but no significant competitive edge.
- Preferred Supplier: Your marketplace reputation makes you preferred among competitors.
- Solutions Consultant: Your product, insights, or services place you as a consulting resource.
- Strategic Contributor: Above and beyond consulting, you are a source of strategic planning resource for broader challenges.
- Trusted Partner: Your long term contributions—products, insights, and processes are viewed as key to your client's long-term success.
And the four levels of sales process they employ to leverage their performance:
- Random process: Your Company may be perceived as anti-process.
- Informal process: Process is neither monitored nor measured but exists loosely.
- Formal process: You enforce use of defined sales process with periodic reviews.
- Dynamic process: You dynamically monitor and receive continuous feedback on your formal process and improve it based on key changes in market conditions.
It highlights 3 levels of performance and looks like this:
Those familiar with the work of Barry and Jim will be familiar with their contention that how you sell can be a sustainable competitive edge. The finding originally arose from the trends they observed year-over-year and was based on research they initially published in Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 2006 and then expanded to a paper published in HBR in Europe in 2011. The outcome of those analyses was that the level of sales process rigor applied to the marketplace in sales, combined with the level of customer relationship developed with your client base, directly affect sales performance.
The gray section of the SRP MatrixTM illustrates that if companies are totally random with process, individual sales contributors may reach the status of trusted partner with their own clients, the company as a whole does not get to that level. Here is a backwards glance at the comparison of what happened last year in 2014 between the three levels:
They ask CEOs, which sales organization would you rather have? As investors, which company would you rather own stock in? And as for the Chief Sales Officer, which level of sales organization do you want to lead in 2015?
They point out that the distinctions that separate these organizations have been consistent over the last seven years and are becoming wider each year. In 2008 the SPO report showed the outcome of forecast deals at Level 2 were 5 points higher than Level 1; today that spread is 9 points. And the range between level 2 and Level 3 firms has increased to 7 full points. Barry warns that the only thing Level 1 companies see are the tail lights of Level 2 and Level 3 companies.
Process matters!
And sales process is wholly in your own hands.
Instead we are taking our eye off the ball and letting our sales processes decay. Again a backwards glance at the three levels show a peak in companies operating at Level 3 and Level 2 in 2012:
You will have to quickly take the study by the middle of February to see what happened last year.
So what areas of 2014 are exciting?
Inside Sales or Telesales This next generation of sales is widening the gap between the tradition model that hasn't adjusted to the virtual sales model defined as professionals sales done remotely model that has been called inside sales. This approach is often now being referred to by enterprise companies like Cisco, whose own Luca Felli and many others coin the phrase Virtual Sales or the Next Generation Sales Model.
The AA-ISP report their most recent research shows that 52% of companies are increasing headcount this year in their Inside Sales department, while 85% are increasing their training programs.
The Top Challenges in the Inside Sales arena was looked by the AA-ISP from two perspectives, the individual sales reps, and sales leadership.
The Top 3 Challenges of frontline sales reps in 2014 were:
- Quality and Quantity of Leads
- Career Development
- Training
The Top 3 Challenges of sales leadership in 2014 were:
- Training
- Recruiting & Hiring
- Lead Quality & Quantity
Traditional field or face-to-face models have already embraced a hybrid design that combines outside and inside or remote sales together as outside reps are spending more and more of their day on the phone and web conferencing resources as buyers have less time and need to meet face-to-face. Barry moves from this SPO study to a special research project around the Telesales initiative in March.
Social Media Social Media is finally coming of age. Even last year Barry warned it wasn't producing the actual Sales Performance results all the hype and buzz were indicating. No longer. Social selling with social media is finally getting the traction that the trend was indicating. Barry says that there will be more specific data in the third study this year called the Lead Management & Social Engagement Study.
There is a great article by my Forbes colleague Jayson DeMers called The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015
Sales Tools & Technology There are more sales tools for sales acceleration than ever before. This may be the most exciting trend for organizations who need leverage to improve the velocity of their next generation sales models (as long as they keep their sales process from delay and decay.) Be warned that there are specific sales acceleration technologies and specific sales acceleration principles and best practices that are needed to wring the most value out of the trends that arising.
The AA-ISP contribute some interesting tidbits around technology use: 65% of sales organizations still do not use video in their sales efforts, while only 6% use it regularly. 20% of sales reps now actively use text messaging to reach out to customers.
Top Sales Objectives for 2014
It will be a very interesting update to see what this years top objectives are. Which, with Barry's permission we will update when the research comes out. A slide right out of the webinar Barry and I did shows the Top Sales Effectiveness Initiatives for 2015:
The research I have highlighted that Barry provides is only a small fraction of the overall Sales Force Demographics Analysis in the study. Barry and Jim do a deep dive into real critical answers to questions like:
- Your Team's ability to hire sales reps that will succeed.
- How will your sales force change in size this year?
- What is the annual turnover rate in your sales force?
- How do your salespeople spend their time?
- What is the average quota of your salespeople?
- How long does a sales rep take to ramp to productivity?
- What is the average size of a sales deal?
- How long is the average sales cycle?
- What rep behaviors does your comp plan actually motivate?
- What percentage of your sales force is "actively engaged" in their selling?
The survey is just finishing up and you can still participate if you are in management of a sales team and you want access to this incredible data about sales performance trends in 2015. Barry summarizes his advice based on this entire study in one line:
Find More, Win More, Keep & Grow More.
You can watch Barry's most recent sneak peak webinar or tune in to his overview with the AA-ISP and nearly 50 other thought leaders all summarizing in about 5 minutes what they learned in 2014 and the trends of 2015. I am hoping to do a follow up article that summarizes each of their predictions.
Top 30 YouTubers Came Together To Break A Record And Bring This Moving Christmas Hymn To Life
How do 30 YouTuber entrepreneurs and musicians collaborate to send the ultimate Christmas card to the world and their combined 20 million subscribers?
They decide to form the world's largest live nativity, complete with shepherds, wise men, angels, and a live camel all shot in the air and on the ground.
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They invite Peter Hollens, David Archuleta, and The Mormon Tabernacle choir to share their vocal talents, accompanied by The Piano Guys.
They start with an ornament on a tree in a nativity silhouette of Joseph, Mary, and the Christ child and end with the same ornament, now a living silhouette of over 1000 angels surrounding the wisemen, the shepherds, the couple, and the baby Jesus.
Jon and Steven start playing, Peter and David begin to sing, and then the YouTubers and their families combine to put on a play of the manger scene that soon becomes a vignette of the original event.
The final location was Rock Canyon Park, in Provo, Utah, where an official Adjudicator of Guinness World Records showed up to certify that 1,039 participants actually broke the previous record set a year ago in Britain with 898 volunteers.
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The Harmon Brothers decide that to pull it all together in less than a month they better make a call to Ricky Ray Butler, of Plaid Social Labs, perhaps the one boutique media agency that has connected big brands to YouTubers better than anyone and whose call the YouTubers will always take, to make the ask: come to Provo during the busiest season of the year to do something that has never been done before.
Their fear is that there isn't enough time and that these YouTubers, some of the busiest people on the planet, will all be booked solid.
Then the first of the miracles begin… every one they call answers their phone or gets back to them immediately. And each of them in turn remarks how amazing it is that their schedule has suddenly freed up. And every YouTuber says "We're in!"
Only then does Jeffrey and Daniel Harmon set to work with more than 1300 people to pull it off. Over 10,000 hours are invested, a thousand angel costumes to be made from fabric they haven't even secured yet, logistics mastered of inventing a weather balloon camera rig for safety instead of the chopper drones they are far more familiar with, securing a live camel, and even crowd control with that many people.
Devin Graham, of the extreme video devinsupertramp YouTube channel agrees to bring in his video shooting experience and equipment to shoot at 5K pixels on a Red Dragon camera, pretty much the same camera that was used to film Lord of the Rings.
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Shay Carl Butler, of SHAYTARDS, the YouTube Channel that produces a family episode nearly every single day for seven years and has more views daily than the Tonight Show is asked why he is involved in a project like this, "It's all about my kids, it's cliché to say it's all about Jesus and not the commercialism, but I wanted to do something to show them that."
Ellie and Jared, DychesFam, Mommytard, Stuart Edge, Jeremy Warner of Studio C, Chris Newman of CineChopper, Derrel Eves is Associate Producer and one of the leading YouTube consultants, the Gardiner Sisters, amazing hair styles done by CuteGirlHairstyles, identical twins Brooklyn and Bailey, funding from Radiant.org, and many more each contribute a piece of their specialty to the project.
It was Jeff Taylor who had the original idea to actually try and break the world record for the largest nativity scene with live people that sparked the creative fire of the YouTubers.
Daniel Harmon drove the creative design that started with the idea from Jeff Taylor who came up with the single golden ornament, created by Valerie Atkisson, that becomes a live ornament of 1000+ angels surrounding the wise men and shepherds bowing before the family of the Christ child.
Jeffrey Harmon tells the story of people, from different faiths, who just drove far to just be a part of this event.
Steve and Jon of ThePianoGuys host the video on their site and Steve shares his thoughts at the end.
Alex Boyé borrows the camel for his own individual creative contribution to the celebration of the birth of Christ from the perspective of the wise man who dreams of the star and ends with experiencing the hustle and bustle and shopping for gifts that has come to mark the season that started in a poor manger, filled with animals and straw.
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They all unite to say one thing in a way not unique to YouTubers…
"Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!"
4 YouTube Tips: The Harmon Brothers Share Their Viral Video Secrets
Half a million dollars … that's what it would cost you to hire business renegades The Harmon Brothers to craft a viral video for your company on YouTube.
They may be the best in the business, and they are willing to share the 4 multimillion-dollar principles that got them where they are:
- Content
- Consistency
- Collaboration
- Call-to-Action
Just how good are they?
They have made more than 100 YouTube videos for companies that average over 1 million views each.
That's almost impossible to do … especially for business. Viral videos are the holy grail of marketing online and data-driven business.
I just got to sit at their feet for two hours and ask them any question I wanted.
I had been busy interviewing YouTube greats Lindsey Stirling (800+ million views) and Devin Graham (Extreme YouTuber Devin SuperTramp) to learn their formula for success on YouTube. After mentioning the Christmas mistletoe kissing prankster Stuart Edge, both of them said I better be starting my series on video social media by talking to Jeffrey and Daniel Harmon if I really want to know how to film successful YouTube videos for entrepreneurs.
Jeffrey Harmon is the mad scientist behind the Orabrush videos that have become the poster child for selling a product on YouTube and driving purchases through every Walmart in the United States. He turned what was rejected as a measly 8% segment of a market that would probably buy a brush for your tongue to cure bad breath into millions of dollars and a whole new industry.
Neal Harmon is the technician behind the curtain that codes Jeffrey's vision into reality. Daniel Harmon makes you love their work with his designer's eye.
Benton Crane is the only non-Harmon on the team. Benton makes sure they hit budgets, proposals, timelines, and deadlines. The Orabrush campaign is taught as a case study in business schools all over the world and recognized in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Mashable, Huffington Post, and hundreds more.
PooPourri came to the Harmon Brothers after being rejected by multiple large ad agencies when they tried to turn a poo product into a dinner-table conversation across America. The campaign ran from August 2013 to January of this year and increased web traffic by 13,000%, selling out inventory and creating back orders for weeks. It more than doubled annual revenue in what seemed like overnight.
Their college-level potty humor struck a nerve worldwide:
They are courted by politicians and scheduled for speaking engagements for the likes of Startup Grind, VidCon, Google, and Video Fest YouTube conferences internationally.
When asked for the simple principles of success, Jeffrey said it only happens when you can yoke content with distribution, which agencies and big brands are only now getting a small clue about. He said if he were going to recommend one key thing to do, it would be to watch other really great YouTubers do what they do for at least 2 straight weeks. Don't watch the big brands or companies, you won't find many who even know what they are doing.
Jeff coaches specifically to watch Kickstarter and Indiegogo and look at every video that actually gains real crowd funding success and then practice crafting even better calls-to-action for each one as if you were in charge.
Then learn to test. He says if you only pick one thing to do well … it's all about Call-to-Action. That's it. OK, there's a bit more.
Jeffrey turned to Daniel to share what they call the 4 C's: the principles of YouTube viral secret success. (I'm blown away by how closely my 6 C's of Social Media coincide.)
C #1 – Content: Find your passion; pick a niche, something that people think is genuine to you. Tap your genius and deliver great content.
You can't deliver crap and hope people will watch it … well maybe hot girls with a British accent can.
The Internet rewards the two extremes: Stack it deep and sell it cheap like Amazon, eBay, and Vitacost … or a unique boutique niche like a dancing violinist, a brush for your tongue, your pet's tongue, a blender grinding an iPad, wheatgrass kits, or potpourri bottled scent for the loo.
Then you test everything: the message, the thumbnail, the first seven seconds, the headline, the call-to-action …
Tested content is king.
C #2 – Consistency: You have to be consistent in your style and your release times.
TV learned this a long time ago. It's one show, like "Friends," on the same night every week at 7 p.m. You don't vary from that. We all miss the consistency of "Happy Days," "Gilligan's Island," "Starsky and Hutch," or "Seinfeld."
Viewers want to tune in and watch; same bat time, same bat channel.
The difference with TV is that they say a YouTube Channel is not like a TV Channel with lots of shows.
A successful YouTube Channel is a show … one show.
The other portion of that consistency isn't just the release dates and times but the kinds of content, your brand. It always must feel consistent, the same.
They mention "Studio C," consistently gaining viewers as perhaps the funniest family friendly comedy show on all of YouTube. But it's bundled on a channel modeled after traditional TV channels with other shows.
Many warned BYUtv, probably the pioneer of online video by a major university, not to bundle "Studio C" into the BYUtv Channel with other great but vastly different shows like "American Ride" and "Granite Flats." Those in the know say to break it out on its own or you would have to undo things later anyway with lots of expense, time, and confused viewers.
Hilarious "Studio C" content like the Top Soccer Shootout Ever with Scott Sterling, with nearly 16 million views in the last month,
or their incredibly creative episode The Hunger Games Musical: Mockingjay Parody – Peeta's Song,
or my favorite (and funniest of all) episode, Drivers Ed,
it continues to beg the question if "Studio C" should stand alone.
The brothers claim that Google algorithms reward YouTubers for consistent content; day in and day out. And whether you can crank out content daily, or take time for more epic projects, you need to deliver on cadence daily, weekly or monthly.
Shaytards YouTuber Shay Carl Butler struggled four years into his seven-year run with flat search rankings in a two-year lull when his heyday seemed to peak. His ambitious goal of an episode of family life filmed every single day at the Butler home was getting penalized until Google woke up and started rewarding this principle of consistency with higher rankings than ever.
Now Sontard, Princesstard, Babytard, Rocktard, and Mommytard have settled into a 5-day-a-week schedule for the sake of sanity, but their near daily schedule viewership hasn't dipped below 600,000 to 800,000 views per episode more than once or twice in a month.
The top YouTubers dwarf the The Tonight Show.
Where's Johnny Carson?
So I ask them how I stay consistent writing for Forbes when I have no time as a crazed founder of a hyper-growth company.
They both grin … good luck.
C #3 – Collaboration: No YouTuber is an island.
You pair up with people, especially people above you who have distribution. Usually a new content developer doesn't have the money to buy distribution, and paid doesn't do very well anyway for subscribers.
You are building an asset, which requires a following. Paid distribution doesn't tend to build a following.
A respectable Cable TV station has 400,000 subscribers. These YouTubers basically own their own Cable TV stations, the new Cable TV networks. But in the mind of the viewer, it is a show, not a station.
YouTubers have learned the value of a cameo appearance or a little luv from another YouTuber, hopefully with more, but similar, subscribers. I promote your channel; you promote mine. We cross-pollinate and both do better … the ultimate online win-win.
Perhaps that is why YouTubers become a community that cares for its own. The top three YouTube communities globally reside in London, Los Angeles, and Provo, Utah; and they tend to stick together. With my corporate offices right here in Provo, I'm only 10 minutes from some of the best in the world.
Both Lindsey and Devin mentioned the same thing; it's all about "Collabs," as they call it.
And right next to collaboration among YouTubers, is what they call "Covers." This is where YouTubers in the know tap into a river of existing traffic given off by a big brand and draft off the wave already created by the much bigger brand or community. This is another form of collaboration, though usually covert; there isn't a single big brand that minds the added lift from derivative work that gives a little luv and backlink collaboration along the way.
Lindsey confesses it was when she played her violin in a Zelda medley, dressed up in a fairly authentic Link costume from the record-breaking Nintendo video game, and danced her way to 20 million views, that her independent music-recording career was assured. Even after "America's Got Talent" voted her off in the finals. Nobody thought there was a market for a dancing violinist.
Her own top music video "Crystallize" at 110 million views done onsite in another form of collaboration with my friend Brent Christensen and his now world-famous ice castles, as well as her recent world tour, suggest otherwise.
Years ago I predicted huge success for my scrappy friend Brent Christensen in an article called Buzz Marketing: Beanie Babies, Flying Wrenches, and Ice Castles.
That same ice castle became the setting not just for Lindsey, but also for my friend young diva Lexi Walker who collaborated with Alex Boye and drafted a cover of "Frozen" by Disney to 57 million views:
C #4 – Call-to-Action: This is the one principle above all that makes the difference between success and failure in a business that actually makes money.
Jeffrey and Daniel have tested this more times than they can count, and the answer is the same.
People only know what you tell them; they only do what you ask them.
So ask!
And keep asking.
In fact, keep posting your single most important call-to-action for the entire last 30 seconds of your video if you really want results.
Orabrush was putting calls-to-action in every single video.
Old Spice, who didn't follow suit with consistent calls-to-action, though their content and viewership crushed the small plastic implement, got schooled by Orabrush with 3x better subscribers per view … because of calls-to-action.
"Studio C" took advice from the brothers Harmon and took off with subscribers when they pioneered putting the actors themselves at the end of every episode asking, pleading, or begging (if necessary) for subscribers.
They specifically coach aspiring YouTubers to have a character from the content, both verbally and visually, make a plea to subscribe, follow, buy, or try.
They have tested and discovered that you want one verbal and visual call-to-action if you are selling a product. If you are driving subscribers, you can have a few visual cues, but still have one verbal call-to-action for best results.
You don't want a call-to-action to be an afterthought.
Jeffrey and Daniel pause here and remind me that my "Forbes" readers will gain a lot of value from these 4 C's. They get paid a lot of money to share what they just shared, and a heck of a lot more to actually do it.
Because it works … and it works for business.
And when it works, it works better than anything else on the web.
Stay tuned for more on how entrepreneurs use YouTube for business.
Team, we're getting a YouTube channel!
Survey: Top 10 Reasons People Love Salesforce.com and Marc Benioff
On the eve of the week of Dreamforce '14, the annual tradeshow of salesforce.com in San Francisco, we reached out to tens of thousands of customers of the cloud-based sales, service, marketing, and analytics platform and asked what they loved most about the company and the man behind the company, CEO Marc Benioff.
Trending to #4 Most Popular on Forbes and #5 Most Active Conversations
Here is what 280 respondents said were their Top 10 favorite things about the company offering:
1- Ease of use – 16.1%
2- Customizable – 12.0%
3- Cloud based – 11.9%
4- Reporting – 8.0 %
5- Organizational capability – 6.9%
6- Dashboards – 6.3%
7- Integration options – 5.9%
8- AppExchange ecosystem – 5.2%
9- Pipeline management and forecasting – 2.7%
10- Continuous improvement – 1.9%
Other notable mentions were availability, innovation, mobile integration, lead management capabilities, and the fact that it was built by people who care about customers and know about sales.
The company itself was noted for culture, social responsibility, market leadership, unique community, and emphasis on client success.
Specific products mentioned often were Chatter, Data.com, the API, Pardot, and Work.com.
Only 6 people said they don't like the Salesforce products.
Of those respondents who knew about Marc Benioff his Top 10 endearing qualities were:
1- Visionary – 18.6%
2- Philanthropist – 14.1%
3- Leadership – 10.2%
4- Innovation –7.3%
5- Guts – 6.8%
6- Focus on Client Success – 4.1%
7- Public Speaking capability – 4.0%
8- Cloud pioneer – 2.8%
9- Smart – 2.8%
10- Energetic – 2.3%
Most notable after his visionary status were his philanthropic ventures which have set an example of a corporate giving-back model that Marc calls the Salesforce Foundation.
His innovative 1/1/1 Model where the company donates 1% of time, equity, and product to integrate philanthropy into their business has influenced countless individuals and companies including our own InsideSales.com to 'Take the 1/1/1 Pledge' over the last 15 years.
He has plowed the deep snow in so many areas that matter.
The foundation website shares that they have given $68+ million in grants, 680,000 hours of community service, and donations to over 23,000 nonprofits. Stated causes include reduced poverty, more jobs, less hunger, better education, fewer homeless, cleaner planet, productive workplace, and more successful graduates.
His annual Concert for Kids is featuring Bruno Mars, 2013 Billboard's Artist of the Year, on October 14th, at the City Hall and Civic Center Plaza to benefit the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals.
Marc was particularly hailed as a leader and innovative and courageous in taking on Larry Ellison of Oracle and for his emphasis on sharing what he had learned and gained to improve client success.
Noted just outside the Top 10 were his inspiration, relentless improvement, attitude, charisma, ability to execute, and the fact that he comes across as a real person.
Only 3 people had anything negative to say about Mr. Benioff.
His hair, shoes, and book Behind the Cloud were also recognized, as well as a call-out for getting his start as an inside sales representative years ago while still at Oracle and the fact that he used a telesales or inside sales model for the first 6 years to launch the Salesforce CRM to market leadership.
Several hashtags were highlighted like #DF14 and #RoadToDF14, and others were started including #WeLoveSalesforce, and #ThanksMarc.
With so much craziness leading up to Dreamforce 2014 it's important to recognize that hundreds of people were willing to take time and share why they love Salesforce.com…
And to say…
Thanks Marc!
Author: Ken Krogue
Connect with me on LinkedIn | Follow me on Twitter | Follow me on Google+
Summary of Ken Krogue's Forbes articles
The 6 Basic Core Skills of Social Media
These are the very basics of social media I call the Core. They all start with C.
They are a more detailed analysis of the 6 Core Skills mentioned in What
These are the basic skills of social media and apply to any social media platform:
- Complete
- Content
- Community
- Connect
- Comment
- Call to Action
Skill 1: Complete. The obvious rookie to social media is the one who never even puts their picture on their profile and wonders why nothing is happening. The next sign of a rookie is a picture that is so small or of so many other people that nobody can see who you are. Follow the 7 P's:
- Purpose
- Platform
- Plan
- Prepare
- Prioritize
- Profile
- Persist
First define your Purpose: Why use social media? Many want to follow someone famous, or catch the latest news on Twitter in 140 characters, or just connect with their friends and family. Others want to listen to their customers, promote a good cause, grow their business by generating interest or leads, gain a following, or become a thought leader. If you know the why, you can figure out the what and the how.
Second choose your Platform(s): LinkedIn is for business, my platform of choice. Facebook is for personal use and consumers, though many consumer companies use it well for business. Blogs are the true platform for serious authors and thought-leaders. Google+ is the key to your message showing up in the search engine owned by the same company. Twitter amplifies and broadcasts your message. Pinterest and Instagram promote the images of your thought and expression. Each platform plays specifically to your purpose, or lack of purpose. Choose wisely.
Third form your Plan: There is a lot of learning that comes first. I recommend spending time searching Google for How-To's, Best Practices, Tips, Tricks, Top Mistakes, etc. The one article that really opened my eyes to the light of perfecting my original blog www.KenKrogue.com was 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. This got me serious about my social media adventures. It gave me a plan; 1 thing to do per day for a month.
This was my inspiration as I wrote my own Forbes article called 31 Twitter Tips: How To Use Twitter Tools And Twitter Best Practices For Business that has become a top article globally on the keywords like Twitter Tips, How To Use Twitter, Twitter Tools, and Twitter Best Practices. I did a similar one on LinkedIn Tips and one on Social Nurturing that might be helpful as you plan. Set down your plan and goals in writing to accomplish your purpose.
Fourth Prepare your resources: Once you have your purpose, platform, and plan. Now start preparing your resources for the other social media skills and stages. Most important is continuing to prepare your knowledge and experience by daily and weekly study of thought leaders and what is working. I will mention resources at later skill levels and stages.
Fifth Prioritize your resources: Many social media platforms allow you to Tag, Circle, Group, or List people by categories. These categories should reflect your purpose and plan. LinkedIn connections should be targeted to your market and community. Facebook Groups allow you to follow, like, and share with likeminded people by hobby, interest, locale, etc.
Sixth complete your Profile: Now you are ready to begin using social media. Take the time to incorporate all you have done into the structure of your profile. As already mentioned, use a nice closeup picture so people will recognize you. If your purpose on LinkedIn is to promote your business, then don't make it look like an online resume that is trying to get you a job. My good friend Koka Sexton, the #1 Social Salesperson in the World has curated his Epic list of LinkedIn Profile Tips… start there.
Seventh Persist: Consistently work your plan.
Weekly is a minimum, daily is ideal. The reason so many people feel that too much time is wasted on social media is because they aren't accomplishing their purpose, or they have no purpose. That is the definition of wasted time.
There are many tools like BufferApp and Hootsuite and TweetDeck that provide incredible leverage so that very little time is wasted.
Persist until you complete your Profile. Discipline yourself to define your Purpose, choose your Platform, make a Plan, and Prepare and Prioritize your resources.
Skill 2: Content. There are several levels of content you need to deliver.
First is the content for your own profile. If you are a good writer, speaker, or videographer, you can generate your own content. If not, you can do just fine by curating, or shaping and promoting other peoples content.
As you get more advanced you learn to pull all of the skills and content together in specific campaigns to promote your purpose. Even more advanced skills and influence allow you to collaborate with other strong content generators to dramatically enhance your overall effect. Follow the 6 B's:
- Bio
- Background
- Backstory
- Beliefs
- Bridge
- Benefits
Your Bio. Tell the world who you are. This is your elevator pitch. When someone asks, "So tell me about you." You have 30 seconds… go! If it is on Twitter you have 3 seconds and 140 characters to do the same thing.
Your Background. Why should somebody believe you? Do you have credibility? Do you inspire confidence? Are you real? Share pictures and videos. Show (don't just tell) where you came from: your family, your friends, your education, your work experience, your hobbies, your passions, your mistakes, your successes. What have you done?
Your Backstory. This is the deeper part of your background, your struggles, your growth, your setbacks, your success. This is your heart and soul. Don't be afraid to share some of this to your audience so you become real.
Your Beliefs. Share your own unique slant on things, your opinions, what makes you unique. Don't be afraid to open up. I'm not a fan of political correctness, because it of itself is too politically charged and skewed, it doesn't allow people to be themselves. Don't be afraid to stir the pot a bit by speaking out. A little controversy is ok. The best conversations are when you take a stand with a strong opinion. My Death of SEO article was number one on all of Forbes for a week because I believe the whole profession of grey or black hat search engine optimizers who game the Google system are a blight and I knowingly or unknowingly called them out. Google rewards real great content, not fake content. I stated it and stirred a hornets nest with over 500 comments. Be yourself. Be you. Most of all… be real.
Social media is about real content.
Provide a Bridge. The word rapport comes from a similar root to the word rappel. Rappel is to throw down a line and climb down a mountain or cliff. Rapport is to throw a line across to another person. It is a common connection. Some of my specialties are inside sales and social selling. I also like to get sales leaders and marketers talking. I call this a bridge. The best conversations I have on social media is when I constructively connect to people that I don't normally connect to within my everyday communities.
I also recommend bridging or moving from passive media to more assertive media. Tweets or Instagram pictures are passive, personal messages are more assertive. Moving to a LinkedIn connection request from an email is a bridge. Scheduling a phone call is more assertive, meeting face-to-face is even more assertive.
State the Benefits for following you.
Why should someone join your conversation?
What's in it for them?
What memories, knowledge, gossip, ideas, prestige, or career advancement do you offer?
My personal blog took off to number one in the world on the topic of inside sales when I decided I would give away every tip, trick, best practice, and idea freely. In fairness most of my fellow thought leaders in the space make a living doing this, so they need to hold back their core value and only provide teasers for free. For the core they charge a lot of money. My purpose has been to help grow industries: first inside sales and sales acceleration, then to provide a framework to assist anyone accomplish their core purpose in using social media.
I quickly learned that all that really matters is value.
Value is key.
What value do you offer?
What stories can you tell?
What content can you share to help others?
Don't preach… coach. Don't teach… mentor. Help people do… not just know. Respond when others ask questions. Don't just tell why and what, show them how. Think of everything you do as a blog. Whether it is WordPress, or LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest or Instragram, YouTube or Vimeo. It is all a blog. Be consistent, be relevant, be real.
There are more advanced content strategies like the ACQUIRETM model of Social Selling, Social Nurturing, and the 7 Levels of Content.
Skill 3: Community. Now that you have completed your profile and filled it with your content, it's time to target your communities. What is a community? A community is a group of people with common experience or interest:
- Family
- Friends
- Neighbors
- Schoolmates
- Military
- Work
- Professions
- Hobby Groups
- Networking Groups
- Common Passions (aka Mac owners)
A good strategy as you join or rejoin communities is to start with your past, move to the present, and plan for the future. The best communities are those that already exist with common interest or common experience; they may just need boundaries put around them.
I focus on business communities, but these Core Skills apply just as readily for individuals, families, non-profits, churches, gamers, or hobbyists.
My friend Trish Bertuzzi formed a LinkedIn Group years ago called Inside Sales Experts. As of this writing there are 38,752 members who are active in the inside sales profession. It's the strongest single networking group in the inside sales space, the fastest growing segment of sales and marketing. As one of the top consultants in the space, she tapped a river of need and put a name and rules of engagement to it. Rising trends tend to create communities.
We at InsideSales.com recently coined a name for a new industry we call Sales Acceleration. Companies or applications that offer products, services, or solutions that increase the velocity of the sales process. It is now an exciting new community.
Community Resources. Just the past week I decided to reconnect with my former classmates at the United States Naval Academy. Where did I go?
My yearbook… A yearbook not only gives you a list, but pictures, events, memories, and written words of advice from people long since grown up. There is nothing more fun than sharing the comment some goofy teenager made in your yearbook decades ago.
Community content builds immediate rapport, common purpose, common experience.
I scanned in sections from an old poster from Woods Cross High School from my junior year when our marching band celebrated it's prowess nationally. Those pictures on Facebook sparked dozens and dozens of comments from my old classmates.
Find content that naturally appeals to your community.
The internet rewards extreme strategies; business that are the ultimate in stack it deep and sell it cheap like Amazon, or tightly focused boutique stores around one specific kind of product like Organic Wheatgrass Growing Kits.
I learned this when I decided to write my blog, www.KenKrogue.com, about inside sales. In 2007 inside sales was a niche, now it's a canyon; the fastest growing segment of sales. I went to Google in 2005 and typed in the keyword phrase 'inside sales' and there wasn't a single competitor, not a single Google Adword, but there were 40,000 searches a month and tens of thousands of companies hiring inside sales reps.
An inside sales community was forming.
Choose your target community to accomplish your purpose.
Skill 4: Connect.
Connecting to other people is a skill all it's own. When I first started as a newbie on my own LinkedIn account years ago I tried to connect to people everywhere, whether they knew me or not. I just about got banned because people didn't know me and wouldn't connect. I soon learned that to connect I need an existing connection or relationship. They needed to be aware of who I was or they wouldn't approve my connection.
I learned to bridge from other media, messaging, or meetings to an immediate follow up in LinkedIn. When I received or sent an email to a person not on my LinkedIn I mentioned, "Oh, by the way, let's connect on LinkedIn, shall we?" I did the same thing with voice messages, or at events when I received somebodies business card.
Now when I speak or write something new I get dozens of LinkedIn Invitations within minutes. With help from my team we try to respond to every one.
Our research at InsideSales.com continues to reinforce that it takes about 5 interactions before somebody will think of you on their own. Here is a typical interaction:
1- I had a conversation at a trade show, and received a business card.
2- I went back that night to my hotel and reached out by email and asked if I could connect on LinkedIn.
3- I would reach out by LinkedIn with a personalized message in my Connection request.
4- I tagged their account and made notes so I would remember them.
5- Shortly thereafter I would follow up with a personalized message that would start with a question based on the interaction we already had.
I just had a family reunion from my mother's side of the family and I took my laptop with me and we built a Facebook Group with all of the pictures we took at the reunion as well as Photo Albums with pictures and stories of our grandfather William E. Baker. This got many of the aunts, uncles, and cousins to immediately connect, some I hadn't interacted with for years. Some even joined Facebook just to be part of the conversation… more conversions to the gospel of social media!
One of the key ways to get people to connect is to offer content around a mutual common interest or experience. Even more powerful is where all who participate shares content.
Start connecting with people in your target community.
Skill 5: Comment.
Comments are the basic element of interaction on social media. Comments start engagement.
Politicians have a rule from years ago when people still really wrote letters and mailed them through the US Postal Service. They learned that somebody who was willing to write a letter was worth about 2500 people who felt the same way but didn't have the commitment to actually write and send a letter. Social media is much easier, and therefore probably isn't worth 2500 people, but it is still very valuable to make and receive comments. A comment is an extremely valuable way to measure opinion and engagement.
I compared the value of comments on Forbes to views and social sharing in an article called The Currency Of Digital Media: Views, Shares, and Comments where I found a comment is worth 472 views.
How should you comment?
Be thoughtful. Show that you have read or viewed their content. Don't just make what I call a "drive-by comment." Ask a compelling question or make a strong statement that begs a response and starts a conversation.
A conversation is the key to engagement. A Conversation is two-way comments going back and forth.
How do you get others to comment?
- Ask a question.
- Request feedback.
- Stir the pot.
- State a strong opinion.
- Prime the pump with a first comment.
Practice by making comments on Facebook posts, blogs, books reviews on Amazon, and articles on Forbes. As you do so invite the author or other commenters to respond to your comment, if they do you now have a conversation, which is the measure of good comments.
Skill 6: Call to Action.
A Call to Action is key to using social media to accomplish your purpose. The simplest call to action is to ask a question or to elicit a comment.
Next would be to get someone to follow you, friend you, share your, pin you or to fill out a form to capture an email address, or to bridge to another media like email, or the phone.
If your purpose is generating leads, a call to action would include offering a valuable piece of content in exchange for a name, phone number, and email address. The offers you make should align with your purpose.
If your purpose is supporting a cause, a call to action would be to join a group, or perhaps to make a donation, or provide a referral.
Practice by asking people to do something.
Once you have the 6 Core Skills of Social Media under your belt you are officially ready to join and shape the world conversation.
Now you can begin progressing through the rest of the 7 Levels of Social Media and convert others to the cause you espouse.
Author: Ken Krogue
Connect with me on LinkedIn | Follow me on Twitter | Follow me on Google+
Summary of Ken Krogue's Forbes articles
What is a Social Media Missionary in Business?
Guy Kawasaki is regarded as the father of evangelism business. It is a religious term. And with religious fervor he was the Chief Evangelist of Apple. He got the job through his Stanford roommate and was Chief Evangelist for four years. He drove loyalty to Macintosh computers by converting followers to the gospel of Apple. It worked so well that this loyalty is akin to a religious belief and carries on unabated today.
In his books The Macintosh Way, The Art of the Start and How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, he praises evangelism as the act of wanting to make the world a better place by building a critical mass of support for a technology or product.
His latest theme book Enchantment extends his evangelistic crusade. It is done out of pure belief and hope, doing it for money may even offend the pure evangelist.
So it is with being a Social Media Missionary.
You can't help but share the gospel of social media. You are drawn to it. You love it. It doesn't work without converting friends, family, and following celebrities, colleagues, and business prospects.
Some regard it as a mission, a crusade, others aren't offended at all by huge amounts of money that come their way as a result of being a social media missionary.
The whole point of social media is sharing. Nobody would spend so much time on Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, or Instagram if there wasn't some deep passion driving the process.
The problem with social media is that it is surrounded with hype and chaos; many don't know why they do it, what to do, or how to do it.
A lot of people are worried about safety on the internet, for them, their kids, or their business. Business leaders, parents, and some children are worried about wasting time on social media, and many, without a productive plan or purpose waste incredible amounts of time.
Others listen to social media to check the pulse of their reputation or gauge the loyalty of customers. Conversations are going on, the question is whether they will participate in the conversation that is happening with or without them. Proper conversion to the gospel of social media allows one to participate in and shape conversations around the world.
What is often lacking is a clear strategy.
Here are 7 Levels of What to do to Be a Social Media Missionary:
- Core
- Coach
- Curate
- Contribute
- Campaign
- Collaborate
- Consult
Level 1: Core. Most people don't get past Level 1, or the Core Skills, of which there are 6 that we will focus on:
- Complete
- Content
- Community
- Connect
- Comment
- Call to Action
Level 2: Coach.
Now that you have the basics down it is time to preach the gospel of social media. Now it is time to share. Coaches are more powerful than teachers because a coach teaches, demonstrates, models, provides feedback, and stays with their subject over an extended period of time to make sure they know how to do the skills, not just understand the skills… big difference.
Teachers help pupils understand.
Coaches help their players learn… they share what they know how to do.
Sharing is what social is all about.
Help someone learn to do all 6 Core Skills, now you are a Coach.
Level 3: Curator.
What a strange word. Where do you find a Curator? In a museum, or an art gallery. They arrange content , usually from other people. They shape the flow of people to optimize and maximize enjoyment and education. They arrange content to increase value and engagement.
I noticed years ago on my own blog that people would read one article and leave.
I wasn't giving them anything after the foyer of my own content gallery other than a side door right out of the building. I started listing my favorite articles I wanted them to enjoy. They would start at the top and read 3 or 4 more. These articles gained the most views by default. Some avid inside sales professionals would come back and read every thing I wrote. I learned to curate my own content to maximize value for my readers.
Forbes offers their Most Popular articles across the entire site as well in every section. People come to Forbes from all directions, and they stay and browse and enjoy. Other publications, authors, data feeds, and site crawlers from around the world to come to watch what is trending on Forbes and add similar content on their own site.
Guy Kawasaki was a founder in massive curation website called Alltop.com, in which his staff summarizes all of the top headlines on the web; a perfect way to have a voice in shaping what is seen of other peoples content. Many people get their news from Alltop.com
An online Curator can shape thought all around the world.
Curate other people's content on your own social media platform aligned with your purpose.
Level 4: Contributor.
A Contributor writes or generates content instead of arranging content from other people. Forbes.com calls their non-staff writers Contributors. They contribute well-written content in categories with which they have expertise. For years those who wrote in a recurring fashion for print magazines or newspapers were called columnists, because they wrote enough to fit in one column.
The most powerful content rides a wave of existing need or traffic.
Divert a river, don't dig a well.
Write about trends or needs that already exist instead of trying to cause a trend. Google is probably the most powerful river of existing traffic that there is. The Google Keyword Planner Tool will tell you the amount of searches that exist for any given keyword per month. You can see if anyone is actually searching on or caring about what you want to write about.
Celebrities or big name brands or great ideas already have traffic flowing, I call them a shark.
Swim with the sharks.
There are two kinds of fish that swim with sharks. Pilot fish swim with sharks and don't get eaten because they give benefits back to the shark. Remoras or sucker fish attach themselves to the shark for a free ride and give nothing back, they are a parasite.
Always give back. Be a contributor.
The Internet has lessened our attention span and many find that an article with 400 to 600 words is about ideal for a blog; the key is consistency. Writing weekly is about the minimum cadence for people to want to follow you. This blogging mindset is important.
Write an article aligned with your purpose or take a picture that is interesting to your target community and share it.
Level 5: Campaigner.
A Campaigner is someone who can pull it all together with a clear strategy and cause action, lots of action. There are seven steps you have to address for a strong campaign, I call it the CLOSERS Model.
C = Campaign strategy
L = List or leads in your target community
O = Offer your valuable content
S = Skill in your writing or content generation
E = Effort, lots of effort
R = Reporting on the results you cause
S = Systemize with process and automation
The Campaign is the strategy, based on your purpose and plan. Without this you have chaos.
The List is probably the biggest key to the Campaigner level. The bigger and better the list of followers, the more powerful the results. A Lead has need, a List has interest. A Lead comes to you, while you target a List with your content. A Lead is typically someone who responds to the content in a Campaign.
Setup a full campaign with a strategy, a list, an offer, your own skill in Curation or Contribution, lots of effort, reporting on your results, and a system that you can duplicate in the future.
LEVEL 6: Collaborator.
Now that your campaigns generate results, it is time to increase the effect by aligning with other social media missionaries.
My favorite story about collaboration is Lindsey Stirling, the dancing dubstep violinist with 700 million views that is one of the most popular stars on YouTube. Her most popular original music video Crystallize alone has 104,152,469 views. Crystallize – Lindsey Stirling (Dubstep Violin Original Song)
Her backstory was that three years ago she was thrown off America's Got Talent and rejected by normal music labels as too different. No market … Wrong!
She tried her hand at YouTube and did her first Collab music video with Devin Graham, known as Devin SuperTramp; the master videographer. Her followers followed Devin, and his followers followed her, a true win-win.
Devin had already made a huge name for himself on the team with the Orabrush videos that went viral, claims to have finally solved bad breath, and drove sales through every Walmart in America. Clients soon followed like Ford and Mountain Dew and crazy extreme video projects like filming the Worlds largest rope swing (24 million views!)
Lindsey Stirling collaborated with new independent recording artists like The Piano Guys, Pentatonix, Peter Hollens, Alex Boye, Kuha'o Case, John Legend, Tyler Ward and many more.
She tapped followers from well known video game communities with her rendition of music themes from Zelda , Pokemon, Halo, Assassins Creed as well as lovers of Phantom of the Opera, Star Wars and Mission Impossible.
Watch closely for more from Lindsey Stirling and Devin SuperTramp!
Level 7: Consultant. The final level is the one that helps others through the 7 Levels of Social Media. Now that you Coach others through the Core Skills and have proven you can Curate, Contribute, Campaign, and Collaborate, it is time to Consult to help individuals and organizations do the same. When I consult with a client I ask "What would I do if I were you?" Then I help them accomplish their purpose with a plan. I guide them through the pitfalls and accelerate their learning curve.
Many of my friends like Jamie Shanks and Jill Rowley make a full time living consulting and spreading the gospel of social media. Others evangelists like Koka Sexton, the product manager at LinkedIn on the Sales Navigator product, share their own flavor of the 7 Levels of Social Media to help people take advantage of their products and services.
Author: Ken Krogue
Connect with me on LinkedIn | Follow me on Twitter | Follow me on Google+
Summary of Ken Krogue's Forbes articles
7 Principles Lindsey Stirling Can Teach The Best of Us
1- Divert a River, Don't Dig a Well
She knows there is a huge river of traffic already flowing from fans of Skyrim, Star Wars, Assassins Creed, Zelda, Halo, Pokemon, Lord of the Rings, Phantom of the Opera, Lzzy Hale, Game of Thrones. Why create need from scratch?
2- Swim With the Sharks
She taps the amazing traffic already there by collaborating with the likes of Pentatonix, Peter Hollens, Alex Boye, Kuha'o Case, Imagine Dragons. Her brand soars as she leverages every one of theirs. Why not collaborate?
3- Know Your Audience
She makes sure she is true to the details that fans of Zelda, Assassins Creed, Peter Hollens would know as well as everyone she collaborates with, right down to the exact costume and setting.
4- Be Absolutely Unique
Piers Morgan said a dancing dubstepping violinist could never make it, but with such unique innovation she could never fail.
5- Be the Underdog
Bouncing back by being cut from America's Got Talent in 2010 showed her David and Goliath story would be a favorite. 102 million views in her top video proves her strategy.
6- Don't Compromise
She doesn't have to follow the de-Disneyfication Hollywood formula of every single teen star having to shed their pure image with every imaginable form of stomping on the image that made them famous.
7- Tell Your Story
Every single new musical work has story woven throughout it and she and her producers tell it masterfully with every touch of media, to the tune of 675 million views, check out Lindsey's Top 10. She not only insists on every story being authentic, she was not afraid to share her own battle with anorexia.
Way to go Lindsey!
Author: Ken Krogue
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Summary of Ken Krogue's Forbes articles
Level 6 Time Management: Week At A Glance PDF
This is a resources page for the article I wrote for Forbes called Level 6 Time Management: Managing Change And Trends.
Week At A Glance planning tool. This chart I have developed is one of the most powerful tools I've ever used. We have used it for years at InsideSales.com to help people plan their week, which Covey recommends to be both effective and efficient.
Date Range: do a new chart for each week.
Weekly Tasks: This is a place to capture (list) the main things you want to do that week.
Week At A Glance Calendar: This is where you arrange the events of your week to accomplish the tasks.
Top 6 Weekly Tasks: This is where you grab the top 6 in order of priority from your Weekly Tasks list above. Then you arrange your Top 6 Weekly tasks by day in bold or all CAPS so they are obvious. Then flow in the rest of your Weekly Tasks above by day.
Priorities: This is where you remind yourself of what or who is most important that week.
Notes: This is a place for key notes related to your week.
Key Recurring Actions: Notice there are five columns, one for each day of your work week. The top row is just to mark that you planned and marked each day below.
Here is where you list your Top 7 Key Recurring Actions which MUST occur daily or 1-3 times a week.
6 Keys to Change Management: VitalSmarts Bestsellers 'Influencer' and 'Change Anything' Even Explain How to Lose Weight!
(This is an expanded version of the second article on managing change and business transformation… and weight loss! — Ken
Why is it so hard for companies and people to change?
My long time neighbor Ron McMillan recently co-wrote two amazing books on change: Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, and most recently, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success.
Ron helped found Vitalsmarts and he and three other colleagues are probably most known for writing the New York Times landmark bestsellers as Crucial Conversations and Crucial Accountability. Ron was unavailable for an interview but his co-author David Maxfield joined me for half an hour on the topic of change management for companies and individuals.
I was sitting on my phone, taking notes in Evernote at a table at Roxberry, drinking a green smoothie to lose weight as I listened to David.
I had already heard he and his colleagues speak several times on these critical topics at BYU Education week every August.
The book Influencer is already on it's second edition and is currently ranked in the Top 20 on Amazon in three categories.
Influencer stresses the importance of leadership in helping others change.
Change Anything is about changing yourself.
I asked David, "Why did Vitalsmarts choose the topics of change leadership and changing oneself?"
David responded, "Because change management isn't working."
"The Standish Group says 9 out of 10 large scale IT engagements don't deliver on time, within budget, or to the specs that were promised."
"At the more mundane personal level, we spend $2 billion a year on diets, but 19 of 20 people lost nothing but their money. Stanford studied the top 3 diets available and found that they all work… if you stick with them. But almost nobody does. We can't live up to the change commitments we make."
I said, "Wait, don't call weight loss mundane! I represent that remark!" I at least lost 13 pounds on my last very expensive dietary adventure.
I go on, "So let's attack both directions; how to change an organization and weight loss. Every day we have leaders in companies come to us to help them change their technology, but they don't want to change their behavior or their culture. They've been working under the traditional sales model for decades. They have salespeople going face-to-face all over the country. They are faced with competitors who are generating web leads and inside sales people on the phone and they are getting hammered. They pull me aside privately and admit they don't have the skills to actually change."
I continue, "They buy salesforce.com, they hire sales trainers. They try to get marketing to stop worrying about un-trackable advertising and branding and start generating web leads, but nobody wants to change. They can't get the reps to make the calls, to use the CRM, to follow the skills training. They can't get marketing to focus on all that matters… leads!"
He laughs. "There are two forces at play here. Those things like technology, tools, and skills are above the water line. You can see them. But then there is everything below the water line: The cultural norms, what people do, the internal politics, the things you have to do to get things done. Change stops when it hits the iceberg below the waterline."
"Here's an example," he continues, "Hospitals in the US are all trying to get 100% hand hygiene. There are 100,000 deaths a year in the US alone because people don't wash their hands enough in hospitals. We stress what we call 200% accountability; for you, and for everyone else."
"If you are a housekeeper cleaning the window, you wash your hands. And you better speak up to the surgeon who hasn't washed her hands who walks in the room with the patient. But that is hard, very stressful. That is countercultural. Housekeepers don't speak to surgeons, nurses don't even speak to surgeons."
"Unless you change that norm you don't get hand hygiene. Putting up posters doesn't work. But if you can change this one thing, you change all other areas of patient safety and cost control because you address personal factors, social factors and the environmental factors of change."
I joked about drinking my Roxberry and my own crazy cycle of weight loss in a high stress environment. I asked David next, "So tell me about these six sources of influence."
He responded excitedly, "Before the six sources of influence you ask two questions: Can I change? And, will it be worth it?"
He goes on, "Then you dive into personal motivation and ability, whether others around you enable or disable you, whether there is a system of incentive and if your environment makes it easy to do the right stuff, or tempting to do the wrong stuff."
From his book, "Influencers do three things better than others. They are clearer about the results they want to achieve and how they will measure them. They focus on a small number of vital behaviors that will help them achieve those results. They overdetermine change by amassing six sources of influence that both motivate and enable the vital behaviors."
The Influencer teaches how to master six sources of influence from psychology, social psychology, and organizational theory:
1- Personal Motivation: Help Them Love What they Hate. Work to connect vital behaviors to intrinsic motives.
2- Personal Ability: Help Them Do What They Can't. Build personal ability to do behaviors through deliberate practice.
3- Social Motivation: Provide Encouragement.
4- Social Ability: Provide Assistance
5- Structural Motivation: Change Their Economy. Attach appropriate incentives or sanctions to motivate people to pick up or stop vital behaviors.
6- Structural Ability: Change Their Space. Things such as systems, process, reporting structures, visual cues, work layouts, tools, supplies, and machinery support vital behaviors.
Combining all six of these sources of influence help an Influencer overdetermine change.
I ask, "So tell me about your newest book, Change Anything."
He responds, "We challenge you to escape the willpower trap and evolve a plan that works perfectly for your subject: you."
He goes on, "When people can't change, it's rarely because they lack the will. They are blind and outnumbered: They're blind to all but 1 or 2 of the 6 sources of influence… and there are far more sources under the waterline working against them than there sources acting for them."
"People who see and use all six sources of influence are 10 times more likely to change and create change."
"We all think we have the power to change just through our force of will. We know we should change. We want to change. But we don't change!"
"That calls into question the belief that we actually do have power to change on our own. We call it agency."
"The numbers say we don't have as much as we think we do!" I pipe up.
He continues, "In the book we quote research that shows: 85% of efforts to drive new behavior in organizations fail. 87% of employees have suffered economically because they didn't change. Only 1 in 5 American adults are financially prepared. Only 1 of 10 couples in marriage counseling actually stay together. 90% of those getting coronary bypass surgery are back to the same behavior within 2 years."
Then his tempo increased, "4 years ago we studied 5000 people who tried to change. 4400 failed. 600 succeeded. How much more successful were the 600? As I said, they were 10x more likely to change. Why? They did 6 things better."
He lists them, so I number them:
- They learn to love what they hate.
- They learn skills to do that they couldn't.
- They recruit accomplices to help them change.
- They remove the accomplices that stop them from change.
- They use or lose incentives to help them change.
- They control their space, their surroundings, to make it easier to change."
"They focus on the 6 sources of influence, 6 levers they can pull, rather than endlessly tugging on willpower alone."
So I stop him, "So where do you begin? How does a business leader start?"
He responds, "Ask first… is the problem worth solving?"
He laughs, "My dad always said, 'If something's not worth doing at all, it's certainly not worth doing well!' So build a business case. In the hospital example we call it a clinical case. Is it worth it? Or more important, what happens if you don't change?"
"Ouch!" I say, "I better stick with my green smoothies! So teach me to lose weight, what would you tell me to do?"
He eagerly responds, "Start with what we know. Calories. Eat right and exercise. Track progress. If you are normal you will encounter setbacks. Instead of being frustrated, turn a bad day into good data. You are a scientist. What were the ingredients of the setback?"
"Let's say you stop at Starbucks, you are late for a plane, you order a beverage with 3000 calories. Then later you say, Dang! That was a horrible thing to do for my diet. What was I saying to myself? I skipped lunch. I've been standing all morning, I deserve it. I'm worn out, I'm tired."
"Should I say something else to myself?
"Identify crucial moments when I fail. The 6 sources come in when I light up an exercise strategy. Are there obstacles that I can turn into advantages. My plan is to run an hour for 3 days a week. Personal motivation. What do I dislike most? The place I run. Indoors? Go outdoors."
"Do I love music playing? Download your favorite songs to your iPhone 5s. Get a carrying case to strap on your upper arm. Maybe there are a new pair of shoes to make it more pleasant."
"That us Personal motivation."
"Personal Ability? Learn more about running groups. Learn a new exercise for when it's raining or my knees are sore."
"Social motivation. Partner to run with, email a partner when you run. Have them email you also."
"Social ability side. Maybe I need to work with my spouse to free up time with me in the morning, she fills in, then I help her out in another time…"
"Structural. Incentives work. If I can find short term rewards for myself it makes a big deal. Also, put skin in the game. Put something at risk."
"My neighbor is on the Olympic Nordic combined team. His coach asked him to lose 10 pounds. Strict diet. Weigh food. Exercise. He decided to put a pile of $20 bills on the mantle. Every Friday his wife and daughter would evaluate whether he did good. They would so something fun or burn the $20 bill in the fireplace. Yale expert Dean Carlin studied that and found it is very effective."
"Structural Ability. How about a heart monitor. New shoes. Identify more trails. Moving to a location on a trail. That is changing your environment to help you succeed."
I interject, "So I'm stacking the deck every possible way for my success! Where does building a predefined plan fit in?"
He responds, "It would fit into defining Vital Behaviors. We often map out a plan, it really starts getting meaty when you get setbacks. Here is a crucial moment when you combine 6 sources of behavior.
"Who is the german general said there is no war plan that withstood the first battle? You have to extemporize. It was often cited by Henry Kissinger."
"No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force." – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
I'll try and find the quote. With the interview coming to a close, I ask, "Of the 6 variables, which is the one they don't do? And what are the easy ones?"
He chuckles, "Couple of different answers. Easy answer, people are different. That is a copout. I was working with the leader of an addiction center. He said he can put all sources in place for a Hollywood starlet, but they have to want to change." Personal motivation is first. Agency, or what little they have.
He went on, "The ones they underplay the most is the social support. Adding a social element, getting a partner. Many times the people you think of as friends, are accomplices. They enable or discourage the wrong stuff. Your friends won't tell you to lose weight, if you give them permission they will help you. If you don't, they won't."
It finally dawns on me, "So I guess I get my friends involved, especially my wife Crystal. So what's first, how to get started? Where do you begin?"
David concludes, "Is it worth it? What is your default future? If you don't lose the weight, what will happen? Where do you want to be? Can you visit it and make it tangible?"
I start thinking that it's hard to lose weight. But it's also hard living life without losing weight. Which life do I want?
"Ok," I respond, "I'm in."
Long interview, breakfast is over. I order another green smoothie for lunch. 132 calories, light and lean. Fresh Pineapple, celery, other green stuff. I wonder if I can do the same for dinner.
Time to change.
Author: Ken Krogue | Follow me on Google+
Summary of Ken Krogue's Forbes articles


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28 year old woman | Atlanta, GA, USA | Seeking men 28-33 within 50 miles
Are you the person the person your looking for is looking for?"- Andy Stanley
Well for starters, I'm not gonna lie I can't believe I'm actually on this thing ... kinda freaks me out, ha. But I'm over the bar scene, so here we are right? Just a southern girl looking for a southern boy.No, I'm not from TX but have a slight obsession with that State and it's culture :) I was born and raised in GA moved to NYC after college where I worked for 3 years and have been back in ATL for about 3 years now. I Love and have an amazing family and am fortunate to have such an amazing group of friends. Other than those two -Jesus and Country Music (no not the pop country crap-Outlaw, 90's and Red Dirt ) are the other two loves of my life.... and are probably my top "musts" when looking for someone. I picked up guitar as a bucket list thing a couple years ago and fell in love with it. Other than that, I'm pretty much up for anything, love to travel, cook, live music, eat out, do random stuff and hate drama-communication is key and can eliminate a pretty good amount of that :) I'm witty and like someone who can enjoy a good laugh and doesn't take themselves too seriously. Not really too sure about this whole online dating thing so If you wanna know more, feel free to ask! Submitted from mobile
Alumni connections , Coffee and conversation , Business networking , Cooking , Dining out , Movies/Videos , Music and concerts , Exploring new areas , Playing sports , Religion/Spiritual , Travel/Sightseeing , Volunteering , Watching sports
Baseball, Football, Skiing, Walking / Hiking
I exercise 3-4 times per week.
Don't display my sign
Middle of the Road
Take every opportunity I get to travel. Fortunate to have visited many places and look forward to many more. My is always drawn to the lonestar state, I love Texas.
90's country And Red Dirt music is where it's at! southern rock, anything other than rap, no dub step please.
Truly southern at heart, love football and country music, guitar
White Girl Problems
Her | What she is looking for | |
Appearance | ||
Height: | 5'1" (154cms) | 6'0" (182cms) to 6'7" (200cms) |
Body type: | Slender | Slender, About average, Athletic and toned |
Eyes: | Blue | No preference |
Hair: | Light brown | No preference |
Lifestyle | ||
Smoke: | No Way | No Way |
Drink: | Social Drinker | Social Drinker, Moderately |
Occupation: | Sales / Marketing | No preference |
Medical Recruiter |
Income: | I'll tell you later | No preference |
Relationship: | Never Married | Never Married |
Have kids: | No | No |
Wants kids: | Someday | Definitely, Someday |
Background | ||
Ethnicity: | White / Caucasian | White / Caucasian |
Faith: | Christian / Other | Christian / LDS, Christian / Protestant, Christian / Other |
I believe in the man with a plan and the B.I.B.L.E :) |
Languages: | English | English |
Education: | Bachelors degree | Bachelors degree, Graduate degree |

subset: commoncrawl


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Processing Security Deposits Part I
Posted on 20. Feb, 2013 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
Security Deposit processing continually challenges property managers across the country. In theory, this should be one of the easier things that property managers are required to do. The tenant provides management with a security deposit that will be held during the life of the tenancy.
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How to Reduce Carbon Footprint Tips for Property Managers
Posted on 14. Feb, 2013 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
While there are several long term investments you can make to reduce your carbon footprint such as installing low flow toilets in each apartment, or xeriscaping the lawn to reduce water consumption, there are several easy, inexpensive things you can do to conserve energy and leave the environment just a little bit cleaner and your carbon footprint a little bit lighter.
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America On The Move (Infographic)
Posted on 07. Feb, 2013 by Bryan Ives.
According to the Geographical Mobility 2012 report by the United States Census Bureau, Americans are finally relocating after record low numbers in 2011. So what finally got them to pack up and move out?
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Insurance: A Must-Have or No Go?
Posted on 05. Feb, 2013 by Jennifer St. James.
Some days it feels like companies are pushing for every kind of insurance, and it's hard to imagine shelling out any more of your hard-earned dollars for something you're not sure you need. But at the heart of it all, insurance is about one thing: Protection.
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As Goes Housing So Goes Property Management
Posted on 30. Jan, 2013 by Marc Courtenay.
It seems like every month we're reading or hearing about the resurgence in home sales and prices. I'm confident that in most regions of the country the bottom has been established for the housing market, yet it's good to see more clues (data) that confirm that the housing bust is over for now.
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Raising Rents Without Raising Turnover (Webinar Recap)
Posted on 25. Jan, 2013 by Bryan Ives.
We co-hosted a fantastic webinar with Grace Hill titled "Raising Rents Without Raising Turnover" featuring Doug Chasick, the Apartment Doctor. Along with being a great educator, Doug has years of property management experience in the multifamily industry and we were fortunate to have him as our featured presenter.
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A Property Managers Dream: An Expanding Number of Rental Houses
Posted on 22. Jan, 2013 by Marc Courtenay.
It's official! Home prices are on track to have their first yearly gain since 2006. This would make it the strongest year of price growth since home prices began to plunge, reaching their nadir in 2009.
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Apartment Living In The Future (Infographic)
Posted on 17. Jan, 2013 by Bryan Ives.
Renting has become an economic and lifestyle choice for more than half (57%) of those under the age of 34 and 46% of those under the age of 45. The United States population seems to favor apartment living, and according to the National Apartment Association (NAA), this trend will continue for many years to come.
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Leasing Best Practices for Property Managers
Posted on 15. Jan, 2013 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
Leasing up your apartment community can be challenging in the best of time. But for smaller property management companies or those managing smaller properties, it can become even more difficult to compete with larger companies with a more robust marketing budget.
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Meetings Between the Resident and the Owner: More Cons than Pros
Posted on 11. Jan, 2013 by Marc Courtenay.
This thoughtful topic came to my attention as I was reading the PropertyManager.com discussion page at LinkedIn. My first reaction was, "Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where these kinds of people-to-people discussions could be mutually beneficial and rewarding."
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Three Forces Driving Real Estate Sales and Prices
Posted on 08. Jan, 2013 by Marc Courtenay.
An investor friend of mine called recently to ask if I could recommend some competent property managers in our area. Fortunately I knew of several so I gave him the names plus the pros and cons of each one (my way of being helpful and objective). In the course of our conversation he told me that mid-range houses were being snapped up by income-oriented investors the same day they were put on the market for sale.
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How Property Managers Can Use Yelp.com To Their Advantage (Webinar Recap)
Posted on 28. Dec, 2012 by Bryan Ives.
We co-hosted a great webinar with Grace Hill, featuring Darnell Holloway, Manager of Local Business Outreach at Yelp.com. Darnell covered a lot of material in this webinar from outlining the Yelp basics to unlocking your free online business tools.
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Year End and Occupancy
Posted on 28. Dec, 2012 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
With the exception of the retail sector, business is typically slow during the holidays, and the property management business is no exception. Leasing rates between mid-November and December 31st can be extremely slow for even the most visible properties, with the units that are vacant at the end of October statistically more likely to still be vacant at the end of the year.
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Are You Up to Speed on Your Customer Relations Management?
Posted on 20. Dec, 2012 by Marc Courtenay.
Everybody's talking about it and there are some big, publicly-traded companies that specialize in Customer Relations Management (CRM). I had no idea how big of a topic this was until my associates at Casey Research brought me up to date.
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New Year's Resolutions for Property Managers
Posted on 17. Dec, 2012 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
The end of the year is always a time of reflection; what we've accomplished, what we would like to change, what we need to improve.
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'Tis the Season to Show Your Clients and Your Employees Some Good Cheer
Posted on 12. Dec, 2012 by Marc Courtenay.
Hope this article reaches you on time, because this is the #1 time of the year to let your owner-clients and your staff know how much you appreciate them. Don't be alarmed if you've put this off or forgot, because here's two easy ways to keep from being The Grinch.
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The Rent Index and What it Suggests for Property Managers
Posted on 10. Dec, 2012 by Marc Courtenay.
On almost a daily basis I hear anecdotal reports of syndicated investors as well as rogue opportunists seeking to find bargain houses that they can buy, fix up and rent out. At the same time the number of Americans who can't qualify for a mortgage or don't have enough money for a down payment is on the rise.
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100 Ways to Generate Revenue by Charging for Your Services
Posted on 07. Dec, 2012 by Nora Betz.
We hosted a fantastic webinar this year featuring Robert Locke on the topic of increasing your revenue in order to run a more successful and profitable property management business. In the webinar we learned that the single most important event that starts your revenue stream pumping out money is the "move-in."
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Selecting The Right Property Management Software (eBook)
Posted on 05. Dec, 2012 by Bryan Ives.
Choosing the right property management software can be a challenging process for many property managers. This eBook (originally published in '50 Interviews with Successful Property Managers') breaks down each factor you should consider when selecting the best software solution for your business.
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The Advantages of Offering Month to Month Leases
Posted on 03. Dec, 2012 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
While all properties are not well-suited to offering month to month leases, there are a variety of reasons why it would prove profitable for property managers to investigate the possibility of doing so.
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Rental Property – How to Project Cash Flows and Returns
Posted on 29. Nov, 2012 by Leonard Baron.
If you are thinking about buying some rental properties as investments, you should probably understand how to project cash flows and evaluate the investment returns you hope to achieve on your hard earned invested cash equity.
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Pet-Friendly Apartment Communities
Posted on 27. Nov, 2012 by Mary Girsch-Bock.
Twenty years ago it was difficult to find apartment communities that would rent to pet owners. For years, dogs and cats were not welcome at the majority of apartment communities, with managers citing a variety of reasons, some valid, others merely an excuse in disguise.
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A New Lease On Millennials: What Gen Y Renters Want (Infographic)
Posted on 21. Nov, 2012 by Bryan Ives.
It is estimated that about 80 million Gen Y Renters will hit the rental market in the near future. While developers adapt to meet the needs of this informed and tech savvy group, property managers should also address the changes that need to be made in order to attract these renters.
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Your Imagination is a Property Manager's Best Technology
Posted on 20. Nov, 2012 by Marc Courtenay.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" said Nobel-prize winning physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), one of the greatest thinkers of the past century. Dr. Einstein knew that the creative process begins with the use of our imagination.


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What Tesla and Google Share
NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- Tesla Motors (TSLA - Get Report) shares something important with Google (GOOG), which may be driving its latest stock mania. Tesla shares jumped almost $20 in one day yesterday, and are up 18% in just the last week, to more than $153.
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Dictionary » P » Pomace Fly Pomace FlyAny of numerous small insects whose larvae feed on fruits. Please contribute to this project, if you have more information about this term feel free to edit this page Results from our forumThe Fiber Disease... ScienceDirect - Bioresource Technology : Production of high molecular weight pullulan by Aureobasidium pullulans HP-2001 with soybean pomace as a nitrogen source -nadas
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From $1,500 / night
Hide Property Details
- 4 bedrooms
- 5 bathrooms
- Sleeps 10
- Villa
Description from the manager
Created for gracious living in a relaxed atmosphere, the large covered lanais give you almost 7000 square feet of indoor/outdoor living space. The two-story great room defines the center of the home. The four large bedrooms are located at opposite ends of the house for maximum privacy.
The Kona and Kohala master suites have stunning ocean views, lanais, and new king size mattresses. Both have generous bathrooms with dressing areas and large open-air showers filled with sculpture and tropical plants.
The two spacious upstairs bedrooms have expansive ocean views and a private lanai that runs the length of the house. The Aloha suite has a new king ...Read more
Home of the Hula Moon
Puako, Hawaii
What's Nearby:
Additional Location Information
- Clothes Dryer
- Washing Machine
- Ceiling Fans
- Safe
- Hair dryer
- Internet Access
- Telephone
- Shared outdoor pool (unheated)
- Parking
- Toaster
- Microwave
- Grill
- Blender
- Dishwasher
- Stereo or CD player
- DVD Player
- Satellite or cable TV
- Television
- Outdoor Dining Area
- Pet friendly - no
- Smoking allowed - no
- Suitable for children - yes
- Suitable for the elderly - ask
- Wheelchair accessible - no
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