This video shares the experiences with Dan Siroker, previously of Google, then head of the New Media Analytics team for the Obama Campaign. Dan describes how the campaign used data to win the presidential election and shares the lessons his team learned along the way. One can apply these lessons to any data-driven decision one needs to make — whether it be in developing, designing, or even marketing.

Evidence, facts, science and feedback and how it was used interactively in the Obama campaign. Learn the top 5 lessons that should define the methodology of any new media campaign.

The five key lessons were:

1. Define quantifiable success metrics
2. Focus on your weakest links
3. Never over-generalize
4. Take advantage of circumstances
5. Question assumptions

Selling will always involve emotion – even to the most rational, hard headed buyer. All prudent marketers are aware of the decision making profiles of their main market segments. Some buyers make decisions purely on emotions and never really apply any logic. Some buy on emotion, then attempt to rationalize their purchase afterwards with rationale to either support their purchase to others or overcome buyers remorse. And the rationale, intellectual will carefully analyze all the pros and cons, but will always be swayed by an element of emotion – more in terms of fear or ego, rather than pleasure. Businesss Intelligence should lead marketing efforts in terms of segmentation and knowing your customers, then emotion comes into play in carefully crafting advertising copy to entice the desired response.

There is always a role for good judgement in business, even outside the hard data.

1. The basis for forecasting
2. The confusion between demand and targets

Many product based companies tend to forecast based solely on SKU. The true demand for any product or service is for the features that a product or service has. Each SKU needs to be regarded as a particular combination of features that define the product. The forecasts must therefore be based on combination of features and only then, linked back to SKU.

It is not uncommon to find many companies adopting the old ‘forecasting’ approach of 5% increase on the same month for last year, and add in any corrective factor for the current economy. This just doesn’t make sense. You may want to set your targets on this basis – if one of your corporate objectives is to increase sales volume by 5% over the whole product portfolio, but it is no way to forecast.

This raises the second fundamental error. Earnings targets are NOT forecasts. Forecasts are driven from the market up. Targets are driven from the boardroom down. They tend to collide in marketing with an alarming confusion of terminology. The demand from the market has nothing to do with the demand from your boardroom. Forecasts are demand planning, and it is hoped that the marketing tactics deployed generate sufficient demand to meet or exceed boardroom demand.

The key is in making this information reusable by multiple parts of the business, hence increasing the return on time invested in gathering it. It must also be available in the format most suited to various business users.

But information sharing isn’t just a one way event. Also now critical in selling more complex solutions, such as software products, is sharing information with the customer before the solution presentation stage of the sales cycle. This is not information about your product. It’s information about how to use a product such as yours in the customers company and what benefits will result. Customers have ready access to information online as to the different technologies available, but the real information that makes the difference is in how the solution can be used in their business. Most business decision makers are faced with rigorous business case requirements for sign off of most technology solutions, and seek greater understanding of how they can increase they can gain wider business support and demonstrate a short payback period and higher return on investment. They often have limited insight into how to apply a solution such as yours across the various parts of the business, so help them by providing access to seminars, webinars, videos, audio, articles and blogs – informational media that will build the value proposition in their minds and help them gain widespread business support to buy your product. These events are both educational and promotional rather than highly product focused selling events. Consider them edumotional.

Rather than helping your customer climb over the many barriers to closing a sale, help them remove the barriers instead. If you want a detailed insight into how to use edumotional selling, watch out for the release of my next book which focuses on analytics and information based selling.

It is often thought that the left side of the brain lacks the ability to provide for innovation, yet it is the very logic of the insights gained from BI tools that is driving organizations that use BI to becoming market leaders.

With the economy seemingly collapsing by the minute, the availability of reliable, relevant information is even more important than ever. The market forces and interrelationships are more complex than ever before, and Sales and Marketing teams that lack this capability will struggle to identify where their efforts will provide the best returns.

Listen to this brief audio on how BI can benefit the effectiveness and profitability of sales teams.

Studies have shown that managers’ behavior dramatically affects an employees’ work. And with the Peters Principle alive, well and kicking it doesn’t take a genius to work out that perhaps delinking an individual’s personal performance from their managers perception and personality might just have a positive impact. In some interesting research by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s carried out over three years daily entries by knowledge workers over revealed how dramatic this impact can be.

People need continuous, honest feedback of their work and the opportunity to improve based on their own efforts. The single most powerful motivator for employees is their ability to make progress in their work. Often this progress is shrouded in a raft of small calamities that naturally occur throughout a workday, or the mood of a work colleague or boss. Having a personal dashboard gives an employee the truth without the attitude. It helps individuals see past the gloom and recognise small incremental gains in their performance. If the dashboard is correctly designed to link performance to corporate strategic goals, it also helps them understand how their work contributes the overall success of the business. This in itself is a powerful motivator.

The motivational strategy of many managers is somewhat misguided, especially when praise is given without real progress. Equally, good progress without recognition is more demotivating; especially for Gen Yrs who thrive on instant feedback.

As an admission, I am not an HR expert, or even a manager of a large team, but I have been a performance coach and consultant for nearly 30 years and have worked with a lot of different businesses, managers and teams. I am however an expert in the power of business intelligence – and it’s not just for measuring operational and marketing performance. Personal dashboards should be on the desktop of every employee. They provide the transparency of real performance, without the filtration by management. They relieve managers from micro-managing their teams and empower individuals to make small incremental improvements in their daily tasks.

The power of personal dashboards is not just with the task workers. Managers also benefit greatly from them. Most managers are generally overworked and overstressed and it is almost impossible to isolate these feelings from your staff. Using technology to help manage team performance makes a lot of sense, and releases managers to evolve to a more coaching and leadership role.