Experts’ Top Gadgets For 2012

There are some gadgets that technology experts are really anticipating their release this year. Now as an ordinary consumer, you should know by now that if technology experts highly recommend a gadget, then that gadget must be really great. So, for 2012 there are a few gadgets that have been said to be going to be one of the best ever.In 2012, we see a lot of new and unique trends when it comes to gadgets, so there is definitely a lot in store for the consumer. There are so many trends and a lot of technology websites have taken the liberty to showcase them and provide consumers with information on all the new gadget releases as well as those that will be released in the future. Consumers will be excited to find out just how much the manufacturers have in store for them when it comes to technology.Top Gadgets For 2012One gadget that you should have this year is the Toshiba Excite X10 tablet. This tablet is 7.7mm thick, which is why it has been said to be the thinnest and the lightest tablet ever seen. Now, don’t let its size fool you into thinking that it is limited in features. In fact, this small packaged dynamite has a 1.2GHz processor, 1GB RAM, and a 2mp front camera as well as 5mp rear camera. The tablet also has a 10.1 inch display, Micro HDMI port, SD card slot, Micro USB port, and comes in a 32GB and 16GB models. Now the Huawei Ascend P1 S has been said to be the thinnest smartphone yet, with a size of just 26 inches. The smartphone has a dual core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4460 CPU which runs on Android 4.0 and 1GB RAM. Huawei Ascend P1 S also has a 4.3 inch qHD 960×540 Super AMOLED touchscreen that is protected by Gorilla Glass and a SGX540 graphics processor.Another gadget you have to have is the Asus EeePad Memo which has found its place on the top 5 list of the best gadgets for 2012. Asus has also been said to be one of the best Android manufacturers so, the EeePad Memo runs on Android ICS and has NVIDIA Tegra 3 Chip. The LG 84 inch HDTV has gesture and voice recognition capabilities. This latest release has a Smart TV browser which is able to support HTML 6 and Smart Share Plus Wi-Fi. All this allows you to be able to watch what is on your television directly on your mobile device. There is also the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 which is the latest version of the remote-controlled quad-copter controlled using an iOS device. It has a 720p camera that can be used for recording and it allows you to view live streaming. The Gorilla Glass 2 is the second version of the Gorilla Glass that is widely used today by tablets and smartphones. This latest version is said to be thinner, but tougher.

Generating Revenue With Account-Based Marketing

Before getting into Account-based Marketing (ABM), let’s see how sales personnel get business without it. Imagine that you want to make a sale for your company. You can either do cold calls or do direct walk-ins and hope the person you talk to is a decision maker in the company, which can end up as a disappointment if he’s not. Then you will have to ask for a call or a meeting with his manager, which may or may not get approved and if it’s approved you will have to wait for the scheduled time which may change again at the last moment.The sales person will have to patiently go through the whole process until the final call to make the closing. Those who have worked in sales knows how time consuming the whole process is and I bet that sales people will do anything for solid leads which can make their work easier. And this is the sole reason that marketers all over the world are embracing ABM techniques for simplifying their work.Sales made easy through Account-based MarketingABM can be referred to as a blend of a company’s sales and marketing functions, which is a strategic approach to B2B marketing based on goals for specific target accounts. In the current business world, Key-Account Marketing is considered as a more strategic way to do outbound. With the help of ABM, the sales team can directly approach the key-decision makers of targeted companies without going through the entire process of random cold-calling, unnecessary meetings etc. The key advantage is that the sales process which takes several months for closing can be accomplished in a much lesser time.The Need for Account-Based MarketingThe phrase coined by ITSMA in 2004 has its roots in the 1990s when companies began to realize the importance of personalized marketing. However, it wasn’t until recent years that Key Account marketing has really begun to catch on in the B2B industry due to the increase in the importance of inbound marketing and in the rise of vendors who offer the ABM services. With the help of ABM, companies started to expand their knowledge of potential customers, which in turn, helped them in acquiring more sales and profit. This technique also applies the psychological factor that customers respond more when approached in a personal manner rather than being approached as just another sales lead. Moreover, if you are linking Account-Based Marketing with the CRM of your company there will be additional benefits of maintaining critical information like the client’s role in the company, the status of the account, company industry type, company size etc.Account-Based marketing & it’s workingPresently, there are different Account-Based Marketing technologies in the market. Productive key account marketing involves a multichannel approach and requires close alignment between an organization’s sales, marketing, and customer success teams. To reach target accounts, digital targeting is used by Account-based advertising to fit an organization’s ideal customer profile. CRM or marketing automation tools are integrated with ABM platforms to run campaigns targeting the company’s target accounts. This provides an ability to run multichannel campaigns for ads across different channels like mobile, display, video and social media. By doing this you can understand which message resonates the most, through which medium and get the exact data to back it up – with A/B testing in near real-time.One of the reasons that Account-based technologies have seen great success is that they engage customers on their terms using digital channels other than e-mail and phone calls. Key Account Marketing can be done on a larger scale rather than traditional methods because it engages the entire account as well as the targeted leads.Benefits seen after using Account-Based Marketing· Faster DealsWith the help of ABM, leads are funneled to the most targeted ones, the chances of getting rejected narrows down to a minimum and deals get closed much faster.· Higher returnsSince sales people are targeting on the best accounts for business with the help of Key-Account Marketing rather than typical demand generation, the returns are higher.· Reduced Time ConsumptionWith ABM, the sales team will focus only on the accounts that have high conversion rates. It means they don’t waste their time on leads that don’t matter or are unqualified.· Alignment of marketing and salesThere are chances that the marketing and sales teams of the same organization are focusing on separate accounts. Key-Account Marketing requires cooperation between the two teams so that they work together to target key decision makers within the same accounts.Account-Based Marketing – The FutureAbove all, ABM is finally about the customer. A fact that business professionals should focus on is that buyers are not looking for a cold call or a random marketing email, rather they want to explore the solutions for their pain points on their own terms and only receive communications from vendors that are meaningful and relevant. ABM makes it easy to deliver on this need across the buyer’s journey.

The Human Side of Branding

There is a lot more to branding than identity, advertising and public relations. Brands also need to get in touch with their human face.”I want to build my brand.”I have lost count of the number of times I have heard this statement in the 11 years since we started brand-comm, a consulting company dedicated to building brands. And yet, as is to be expected, people have different expectations from branding and the entire process of branding. The next steps to these statements usually follow one of the following courses of action. ‘I think our identity is dated and today’s consumers are young, so let’s change it, and shouldn’t we be thinking global?’ This is good news for international brand consultants and design experts as they instantly see (million) $$$ signs. The identity change is announced with great fanfare and it usually goes down like the Indian team went down in Zimbabwe – with scarcely a whimper – as nothing except the identity has changed and the brand is still the same boring brand.Another alternative is to try to build corporate image through a high-profile TV commercial, probably shot in New Zealand, but without the benefit of a core idea that defines the essence of the brand. “The execution will be clutter-breaking” says the agency Creative Director. The brand promise is not delivered, after all “Yuvarajs” exist in corporate life too!Another way forward is to hire a public relations firm which goes hammer and tongs at the media – organises one-on-ones, speaker and photo opportunities – all of which generate intense interest about the MD in cocktail parties and amidst head-hunting firms but nothing much happens to the brand. And today there is another option as well.Sponsor some high-profile IPL team and even if the team does not win a single match, the players dutifully land up at post-IPL parties wearing your brand on their sleeves (if not their hearts) on them.I know that I am perhaps sounding cynical, a not unexpected reaction from someone my age, but that is hardly the impression I wish to convey or the point I wish to make. There is a whole lot more to branding than identity, colours, TV advertising, sponsorship, events and public relations. While I am not denying the importance or value of these, I think there is something more basic, more obvious and yet, perhaps, more difficult to manage, which is why companies seem to spend so little time on this and that is what I would call the “human side of branding”. Here are a few examples of how companies, however big, get this important aspect of their functioning woefully wrong.The first impression…… has the potential of being the worst impression. You enter an impressive building, exquisitely designed, wonderfully architected with a façade that could make you stop in your tracks. You cross the manicured gardens and enter the plush reception. And whom do you meet? A security guard in place of the young, efficient, smiling, helpful receptionists that people of my age were used to seeing earlier, but then this is perhaps the order of the day in most companies.Of course, some of these security guards are smart, even speak good English and can be courteous enough, as was the security guard at the Oberoi in Bangalore last week. He welcomed me in the traditional Indian way. But many are not the way they ought to be and you can easily imagine the impact on the brand when they are found wanting. Of course, I am fond of repeating my experiences of having been welcomed in a company by a security guard whose company name tag read “Doberman”. Obviously, you can understand my nervousness! Did the Chairman of the company ever walk past this, I wonder, or does he have his own private elevator that enables him to bypass this welcoming committee?You don’t call me,I will call youAnother quick reality check for a brand is the way the company answers, or should I say does not answer, the phone. How often do we get the impression that the phone is ringing and the operators are having a good time, when the phone is actually busy?Let’s assume that you have achieved the holy grail of actually getting through to the company and to an operator who puts you on hold. Of course, you may be calling the company not because you are in love with it, but probably because it has goofed and you want to give it a piece of your mind.What happens then? You are put on hold and the company’s jingle of how it is God’s gift to the human race goes on endlessly like the maiden overs that Nadkarni used to reel off and you are seething. So what is your view of the brand at that particular point in time? Top-of-mind for all the wrong reasons is probably your reaction.Let’s move on to a slightly more sensitive topic of company or brand culture. Have you ever tried getting in touch with the CEO of a large company? Life seems to be one long meeting; senior people are constantly in meetings, unreachable despite being online 24 x 7. They never take calls, respond to text messages or answer mails. After all, they are busy. I remember my first boss telling me “you are paid to be busy”.But are these captains of industry so busy as to be completely unresponsive, sometimes to calls even from their friends and former colleagues? But what happens then? The company takes its cue from the CEO and soon you have a company that is completely, totally inaccessible, at times even to the media.If, for whatever reason, the company needs you, it will call you a few hundred times! Do these companies ever bother to assess what the rest of the world has to say about them? Do they even care?And this is precisely how the brand comes across to the rest of the world and I cannot imagine the ignored parties being quiet about the company and its total lack of response. Surely there has to be a better, more sensitive, more humane way of doing business that can impact the brand and the corporate image positively?A better way to recruit?Bangalore is the software capital of India, if not the world, and if you were to believe everything that you read about these companies then you would be convinced they are the greatest places to work in. They probably are.Make no mistake about this, I am a great admirer of Indian software companies and yet here is an incident that made a profound impression on me, even if it had me a bit concerned about how the brand was getting it wrong.I am going to talk about one of the top software companies in India if not the world. They needed a director for their brand and I had with great difficulty organised one of my juniors from IIM for this; she was the head of a large advertising agency and went for the meeting at my insistence.There were many calls reminding her of the meeting. She went to the complex and found herself with hundreds of engineers looking for a job. She also found herself at the venue much earlier because the company wanted her to fill up a form! She was hopping mad, and to add insult to injury, it was not the HR head that she met but her lackey.Clearly, the company was better suited to recruit thousands of engineer trainees but was probably not geared to deal with a senior employee, particularly someone who needed to be wooed. Luckily the lady in question did not have a blog or she could have told the world about the company and its manner of recruitment.There is nothing wrong with the company, its financial results or even its image. It is still admired and will continue to be admired but such incidents can and will hurt the brand. But then someone has to be aware of the implications of the acts of commission and omission of each and every one of its employees and we are not talking of CEOs here.Let me end this piece with a quote by Lee Clow: “Managing brands is going to be more about trying to manage everything that your company does.” Yes, everything that your company does! Every action that every employee or your outsourced partner does or does not do continues to impact your brand.Let’s continue this discussion next fortnight. But in the meanwhile can you think about how good your brand’s human side is? Let us discuss it in my blog: Third Umpire On Branding(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.)

What Does a Property Valuation Report Show?

The chief item that a property valuation report shows is just the single sum or the price range determined by the professional property evaluator as the proper market price of the property. However, all property valuation companies offer different things and some of them provide a lot more information than this single figure in valuation reports. They will give you a complete overview of the steps that they followed in their research to reach a correct conclusion. They also provide their clients with some basic guidelines which help them to use and interpret the information. Here is a list of some of the items that you may get on a property appraisal report.Legalities – These are the most essential part of any property valuation report:Registered owners or proprietorsA Legal description of the property including the land the structuresResource/zoning managementAssessments including ratesRegion – In this section an evaluator will describe the details about the area and the demographic description. This includes the features and facilities available in that area and its surroundings.Description and basic detail of the property – In this section a description of the different aspects of your property related to its commercial or residential market valuation are provided. The things not affecting the final price guide in any way are normally ignored. For instance, you may have to walk a little distance from the laundry to the washing machine. This kind of detail would be considered as insignificant as most people do not consider it and would not be included.A complete description of improvements – This is the most important and crucial part of any property valuation report. Any improvements made in the property can increase its value significantly hence they are always mentioned on the valuation report.The approach used – Normally three methods are used by most property valuers to value the property – sales approach, Income appreciation approach and depreciated replacement cost approach.List of similar sales – Most property valuers will provide you with a list of equivalent or similar sales so that you can assess the value of your property properly.In spite of following all these steps and keeping these point in mind while forming a property valuation report, there are some other factors that affect the selling price of the property. Is the transaction an arm’s length transaction? Have you conducted proper marketing before offering the property for sale? Are all parties acting with proper knowledge and is there any compulsion on either the buyer or seller side?Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that property prices all over the world change quite fast. Hence you property assessment report will be valid only for a short duration. The sooner you sell the property after the report is made, the more accurate it will prove to be. If you are looking for good Property Valuation Company in any part of the world, you can find them on the Internet. These companies have user friendly websites which describe their expertise and skills in detail. You can compare the information on different websites and make an informed choice.