The best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. See what they get right.

A few years back, I interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. I learned that the "best of the best" tend to share the following eight core beliefs.

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of "troops" to order about, demonize competitors as "enemies," and treat customers as "territory" to be conquered.

Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers ... and even competitors.

2. A company is a community, not a machine.
Average bosses consider their company to be a machine with employees as cogs. They create rigid structures with rigid rules and then try to maintain control by "pulling levers" and "steering the ship."

Extraordinary bosses see their company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. They inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.

3. Management is service, not control.
Average bosses want employees to do exactly what they're told. They're hyper-aware of anything that smacks of insubordination and create environments where individual initiative is squelched by the "wait and see what the boss says" mentality.

Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.

4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can't be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.

Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.

5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
Average bosses see fear--of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege--as a crucial way to motivate people.  As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.

Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they'll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization's goals, truly enjoy what they're doing and (of course) know they'll share in the rewards.

6. Change equals growth, not pain.
Average bosses see change as both complicated and threatening, something to be endured only when a firm is in desperate shape. They subconsciously torpedo change ... until it's too late.

Extraordinary bosses see change as an inevitable part of life. While they don't value change for its own sake, they know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.

7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
Average bosses adhere to the old IT-centric view that technology is primarily a way to strengthen management control and increase predictability. They install centralized computer systems that dehumanize and antagonize employees.

Extraordinary bosses see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. They adapt their back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.

8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.
Average bosses buy into the notion that work is, at best, a necessary evil. They fully expect employees to resent having to work, and therefore tend to subconsciously define themselves as oppressors and their employees as victims. Everyone then behaves accordingly.

Extraordinary bosses see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.

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By SALES SOURCE | Geoffrey James  

Every day someone asks me how much it costs to build a mobile phone application, a website, or an e-commerce site. As a co-owner of Crowd Interactive, and the CEO of an online 360º performance review service called ClearGears, I'm acutely aware of the costs associated with building and running online businesses.

Here are a few guidelines to help get your head around your overhead:

Informational websites are cheap, often free: You're in luck if your site is informative rather than interactive. You can build a Wordpress site in a matter of hours if you're not picky about design, and in weeks if you hire a designer. You probably do not need a web development company to build an informational site. You can probably hire one person to design and build your site.

Development is expensive: Mobile and web applications and stores are interactive and more expensive. Smart web development companies will bill for their services like a law firm--for time and materials. The more time it takes and the more people involved in building your system, the more it costs. Some companies will charge a fixed fee--and then they deliver late and lose money.

To build an online store or application from scratch expect a team of 4 developers to spend at least 6 months designing, implementing, testing and launching it. At $50 per person per hour, working full time each month, the monthly cost is $32,000 per month. In this case you would pay $196,000 over six months.

Development doesn't end: Development costs don't decrease after launching. They can actually increase. Consider Amazon.com, Zappos.com, or even Facebook. All of these companies spend millions each year on innovating and changing their site. Innovation aside, the changing nature of Internet--and how we access it--forces companies to constantly update their sites. As browsers and hardware change, your site must also change.

Business growth requires more development: When you first launch an online store the volume of sales might be low enough to handle sales with an email sent to one or two people. But once you start handling hundreds or thousands of orders and returns, you'll need a custom solution.

Customer service is expensive: The best online sites also have the best customer service. In fact, customer service may help you grow faster than a sleek design or adword marketing. Customer service is also people-intensive, so you will need to pay staff to answer phones, respond on the Facebook wall, and even write hand-written notes to new customers.

Success is expensive: By some estimates, Facebook spends over $1 million per month on electricity. While your business may not become as large as Facebook, you will have to consider the extraordinary people, hosting, power, and equipment costs that come with running a popular site.

With all these expenses, you're going to need to get resourceful.

Some strategies to reduce costs:

• If you're just starting out online, use a templated system like Magento, Shopify.com and BigCommerce.com. Implement custom designs on top of those. Use the templated system until you've established a following, great customer service, and business viability. Build a custom site from scratch later.
• Build a following through blogs and real customer service. Winning business is not about SEO, paid search, or a glitzy ad campaign. Early on, it's all about connecting with and impressing one customer at a time. In practice this means hand-written thank you notes, sending people info that you think they'd enjoy, and reaching out to them for advice.
• Don't spend on traditional print marketing. Spend on online marketing exclusively. When you do think it's time to advertise, skip the posters, radio ads, and other traditional marketing. Instead try to get in front of customers with helpful blog posts, paid online search, and Facebook.

Some cost-reduction strategies to avoid:

• Don't have your friend/husband/neighbor who is a designer build it for you for free. Building an online business is a massive endeavor. Unless you're formally becoming business partners, don't ask friends and family to build your site or application, because you'll probably ruin both your business and your relationship at the same time.
• Don't rely on unpaid interns to build your online business. You want three things in your technical partners: competence, stability, and accountability. You may have a really sharp intern, but if you're not paying them and they plan to leave at the end of the summer, then you won't have stability or accountability.
• Don't put the cart before the horse. If you're selling stuff, don't load up on inventory until you have traffic to your site.  The great thing about the Internet is that you can sell inventory you don't even have yet. You can measure clicks and orders to determine how much of each product you should carry, and only after collecting some real data should you start holding much inventory.

Keep all this in mind before you quit your day job to join the startup gold rush. For online startups, cash is king, and your access to it can determine your success.

Arshad Chowdhury, a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about improving life at work, is CEO of ClearGears, a software as a service business that replaces traditional reviews with real-time, social feedback. Prior to developing ClearGears, Chowdhury led two culture-first ventures: a web-consulting firm called Crowd Interactive, and a fatigue-management company called MetroNaps. For more insights, read Arshad's blog and follow him on Twitter.


BY ARSHAD CHOWDHURY
This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.

Summer signals the beginning of budget season. Before making marketing investment decisions, analyze this year’s three marketing must-haves: social media, content marketing and mobile. While aspects of these marketing formats may not have direct costs, they all require budget and resources.

1. Social Media

Social media provides platforms, enabling marketers to interact with their target audience. Social media involves more than a Facebook page or Twitter account. It requires an integrated social media strategy including a social media persona to ensure it’s an integral part of your marketing.

1. Assess current social media presence. Is your brand present on appropriate social media networks? Are you actively managing your presence? Are there emerging social media platforms relevant to your firm, focus, or target market where you must establish your presence?
2. Evaluate your brand’s portrayal across social media platforms. Is your brand consistently presented? Do your branding guidelines need to be enhanced?
3. Determine the engagement level you need on social media platforms. Remember, you can’t rely on three tweets a day written by your agency. You need a human face behind your social media presence. Ensure you’ve got appropriate in-house resources to respond to social media requests.
4. Create relevant content to feed social media needs. Assess requirements across content formats and social media platforms. Include formal content marketing as well as social media interactions like Facebook comments and Twitter responses.
5. Support your social media presence with targeted advertising. Do you need to enhance your social media presence with related paid advertising? Consider the use of social media ads.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is promotion-free information that fuels social media and overcomes purchase decision hurdles. (Here’s an outline of content marketing’s basic steps.)

1. Analyze content marketing needs. Assess the existing content within your organization. Then determine where you have content marketing needs and where you have holes in your existing offering. Specifically examine the entire purchase process and social media interactions.
2. Integrate content marketing into an editorial calendar. Determine where content is needed, the format and topic required, and the timing of its creation based on your assessment. Incorporate this information into a plan across platforms to ensure it’s synched with your promotional calendar. Plan for content reuse to extend the life of each element.
3. Acquire appropriate resources for your content creation team. At a minimum, you need an editor and a copy editor. While you can encourage employees and customers to contribute content, determine where you need additional support. Don’t underestimate the need for designers, photographers, writers and technology support. These resources can be internal, freelance or agency-based.
4. Expand content marketing reach. Make it easy for readers to share your information with social sharingbuttons. Where appropriate, use advertising to promote your content and build an audience.
5. Ensure content marketing closes sales. Content marketing by itself can’t drive sales. It needs calls-to-action and related dedicated promotional codes. Further, create tailored landing pages and streamline the sales process to efficiently convert prospects to sales.

3. Mobile

Mobile is a must-have for every business with a retail presence or that competes with a business that has a retail presence since mobiles and tablets go shopping.

1. Be present on mobile search. Mobile search is separate from web search. Local businesses that people seek on-the-go must be findable on mobile search.
2. Build a mobile website. Don’t just assume people can read your web-optimized site on a mobile device. Create a streamlined mobile website focused on the information customers want on-the-go.
3. Build a mobile phone number house file. If you don’t have a mobile phone list, start building one now.
4. Optimize your emailings for mobile devices. Email is the primary content consumed on mobile devices. Ensure readers can easily read and take action on your emailings via a connected device.
5. Assess need for a mobile app. In the past year, mobile app usage has surged ahead of mobile web, according to Flurry. Depending on your business, this shift may require investment in a mobile app.

According to IBM’s State of Marketing 2012, marketers face an array of challenges. Top on their lists are channel and device choice expansion and customer collaboration and influence. This is no surprise given social media’s exponential growth, increased smartphone usage, and the quick adoption of tablets. These elements require new ways of engaging and selling prospects and customers through content marketing and social media delivered via various mobile devices.


by Heidi Cohen for ClickZ 

Are you worried that your ad — the one you have been working so hard on and is about to go up onto the Internet where everyone can see it — might just be… horrible?

There’s still hope. Through the years — and careful analysis of lots of truly bad advertising — Gary Stein Labs has created a simple five-point checklist that will help you determine for yourself whether or not this ad is worth anything at all.

1. Is Your Headline a Tagline?
Taglines are great. When done correctly, a tagline neatly sums up the idea behind a product and what value it brings into the world. It should be short and memorably phrased. It should be inspiring and make it seem like the product is worthwhile. And, it should come somewhere near the bottom or the end of the ad.

Too many companies (or their agencies) fall too deeply in love with the tagline and want to put it up in a prominent spot. But that’s too early in the discussion. You can’t start by talking about you. You need to start by talking about them. If your headline — the big text at the top of the ad — says “Brand X: Changing Underwear Washing Forever,” you missed the consumer. You need to have a headline that is about the consumer and her needs. Let the press write headlines about you, after you’ve achieved success. For now, write about the consumer.

2. Does Your Call to Action Feel Absolutely Unignorable?
Assuming that you are not doing a pure branding effort, where simply watching an ad is the reward in and of itself, you need to tell people to do something. Or, rather, you need to invite them to do something, whether it is to buy something or visit your site or forward something on to a friend. You can’t just have an ad that says something but doesn’t compel another action.

But, that call to action has to seem like something you can’t ignore. If someone could reasonably respond to your call to action with “no thanks,” you blew it. If your call to action is a question like, “Would you like to see some more information?” You missed the opportunity. The call to action has to be phrased as an imperative. “Act Now” is the classic, but there are plenty of others that are less harsh. Make sure you are really calling on the consumer to do something meaningful.

3. Does Your Graphic Element Have Anything to Do With Your Product?
There are a lot of images out there that you can choose to put in your ad. A quick Google Images search can yield anything that can be plopped in. But, if you have decided to put one of those images into your ad, it has to communicate. It has to help convey a message and (hopefully) compel an action. It has to give the ad some life or humanity or help put the product in context or give some new information — maybe about what the product looks like or how it is used.

If you have an image in your ad, and it is not immediately, totally clear why it is there, take it out. You have a very short window of opportunity to connect with your consumer and give them a new idea. An image is a great shortcut to getting your idea across. But if that image doesn’t communicate in the way you need it to, you’re just wasting your time.

4. Is Your Ad Relevant and Differentiated?
Advertising is the art of creating something that’s relevant and differentiated. That’s it. You need to have a message that’s relevant — it’s clear how the product you are advertising fits into the consumer’s life and solves a real need. But you also need to be unique — your ad needs to stand separately from any other ad that exists out there that is advertising a product that is also relevant to the consumer.

It’s so tempting to simply say what the product does or what the benefit is. But unless you are the absolutely only brand that can make that claim, you’re going to have to make sure that your claim is presented in a unique way.

Want to know the secret to creating great ads? Tell a compelling story that reveals a product attribute. Every brilliant ad follows this format. If you do this, you have a great shot at success.

5. Is Your Ad About One, Simple, Compelling Thing?
Let’s face facts: There is too much stuff out there. It’s not that people don’t want all this stuff. They are signing up for cable and subscribing to magazines and getting RSS feeds and everything. The problem comes, especially for ads, when they try to communicate too many things.

You have to cut. The key to design is not so much knowing what to put in as it is knowing what to leave out. That has to be your mandate. Apple’s success has much to do with the fact that every new thing it creates gives you more abilities with fewer buttons. Consider the trackpad on the MacBook.

Ten years ago it was tiny, did nothing more than move the pointer around, and required a button. Today, it is huge, allows you dozens of functions, and has no button. Do that with your ad: cut, cut and cut. Ask yourself what single thing can a person do that would be valuable to you and point everything toward that.

Sound good? The thing about these pointers is that it’s not really about digital, per se. That’s because we have long left the era when digital was a thing in and of itself. Now it’s a core part of most people’s media lives and we need to respect that. And that means holding digital ads up to the same scrutiny that we do with all other ads in all other formats.

by Gary Stein for ClickZ 

Mashable’s new video series, Behind the Launch, follows Vungle on its startup journey toward a launch later this month. Each week on Mashable, the Vungle team offers our readers some tips and lessons learned from their own startup experience. This week, Vungle is approaching launch, and the team is making sure the business and product sides are working together to close deals and recruit publishers and advertisers. Watch the episode above, and be sure to tune in to Behind the Launch on Monday — you’ll see the startup officially launch.

There’s no need to be scared of selling; it’s something that should be an integral part of every business. Startups are often focused on creating a great product. This is crucial to the success of any business. However, it is equally important to be able to convey the greatness of your product and company to the right people, in a way that makes them want to do business with you. Fail to sell your product effectively, and you sell your business short. If you have a solid product, it is important to be talking to the right people. Here are seven tips for closing deals.

1. Identify Your Targets
It’s easy to get carried away when promoting a product that you’re passionate about. It’s important to first identify those individuals whose organizations will get you the most traction. Creating a list prevents you from spending time chasing targets who will do little to help you. Remember, it’s easy to get distracted, so stick to your goals, and be strategic.

2. Make a Plan
Make sure you know your targets thoroughly and understand what drives them. You need to have a proposal in mind that you think will fit in with their motivations and concerns, so try to predict their needs. If necessary, talk to people who are in the same industry or close to the decision makers to get a feel for what will move the needle for them.

Sketch out a deal structure that will pander to their motivations and dull their concerns. This needn’t deviate from your own plans. For example, lengthening deal contracts in return for a larger sign-up bonus is one way of compromising. You’ll be surprised at how framing your deal differently can affect your target’s perception.

3. Network
Now that you’ve identified your targets and know what motivates them, you need to get close. On a basic level, start with LinkedIn to see whether you have mutual connections who may be able to introduce you. If you’re lucky and you have strong connections, you’ll get a good head start. However, the more face time you have, the easier it is to build rapport and trust. As such, find out where you can best approach your targets — at events, in Starbucks or even on the beach. Wherever they are, you need to know and you need to be there (no stalking, though!).

4. Pick Up the Phone
Face time is better than a telephone call, and telephone calls are better than emails. It’s easier to convey your message and capture your target’s attention verbally than in written form. Emails are easy to ignore and discard — particularly if you receive hundreds of them per day. Make sure to set aside enough time to hit the phones and cold call. After all, a cold call is still much more effective than a cold email.

5. ListenEpictetus wisely said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” The most common mistake in sales is to talk without listening. Not only do people appreciate being listened to, but you can use your target’s response to craft a pitch that addresses them directly. Watch out for negative responses, such as “I’m not sure” or “I’ll have to think about it” — such responses indicate uncertainty and should be avoided. Take a second to craft a more careful response.

6. Don’t Be Afraid
Don’t be afraid to challenge — this shows you’re thoughtful and resourceful. If you’re pitch is responded to with negativity, don’t be afraid to ask why. Unless you ask, you won’t know what’s wrong. Often you’ll be surprised by the answer and be able to address the concern before it becomes a rejection.

Don’t be afraid to close. You need to let your target know what you want, or your conversation may become confusing. Feel free to be direct if you feel your message has been received positively. A short statement or summary confirming how future progress will be defined sets goals and puts you both on same page. For example, “Great! All I need now from you is a check for $9,000 and we can get started right away!” This way your target has understood what is required of them and will respond in a way that lets you know where you stand.

7. Follow Up
Nothing happens without a pipeline. Even a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesperson has to build a pipeline; it’s just a simple fact of sales. You need to stay on top of your contacts and make sure you stay in touch on a regular basis. Regular contact ensures that a target thinks about you when he’s ready to proceed with the deal, or you may be alerted to changes in circumstances that provide an opportunity for you.

Make sure that you remember the details — “How was Paris? I bet it was amazing!” These details are conversation starters and show that you really care about the person beyond closing the deal. The more frequently you call or email, the more important it is to stay on top of the details.

Have any else tips for closing deals? Please leave your comment :)

by Colin Behr