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Comprehending the psychology of selling is crucial for anyone in sales. It involves recognizing how consumer behavior and emotions affect purchasing decisions. Key elements include building trust, establishing rapport, and employing psychological triggers like scarcity and urgency. These strategies can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, in the end increasing conversion rates. But how can you effectively implement these principles in your sales approach? Exploring the nuances of these techniques can provide valuable insights. Key Takeaways Sales psychology focuses on understanding consumer emotions and behaviors to tailor effective selling strategies that drive conversions. Building trust and rapport enhances customer relationships, increasing the likelihood of purchases and repeat business. Psychological triggers like scarcity and urgency motivate quicker buying decisions by tapping into consumer fears and desires. Simplifying choices reduces cognitive burden, making it easier for consumers to make decisions and enhancing their overall satisfaction. Empathy and active listening foster deeper connections, improving customer loyalty and satisfaction, which are crucial for long-term sales success. Understanding Sales Psychology Grasping sales psychology is crucial for anyone looking to improve their sales techniques and connect more effectively with customers. Sales psychology focuses on comprehending consumer behaviors and emotions, enabling you to tailor your strategies to meet their needs. Key principles, such as reciprocity and social proof, highlight how emotional and psychological factors influence purchasing decisions. Building trust and rapport with prospects boosts the likelihood of successful conversions. To deepen your insight, consider exploring notable sales psychology books, including those that investigate the psychology of selling. A thorough psychology of selling book can provide insights into engaging customers through personalized communication, eventually leading to increased loyalty and long-term relationships. Mastering these concepts can drive revenue growth and elevate brand loyalty. The Importance of Empathy in Sales Grasping sales psychology lays the groundwork for recognizing the fundamental role empathy plays in the sales process. Empathy in sales means comprehending and relating to a prospect’s feelings, needs, and challenges. This nurtures deeper connections and builds trust, which is vital for successful transactions. Research shows that empathetic sales interactions can boost customer satisfaction by up to 60%, making clients feel valued. Salespeople who actively listen and demonstrate empathy are 50% more likely to close deals, as prospects appreciate the personalized attention that addresses their unique concerns. Additionally, expressing genuine empathy can lead to a 12% increase in customer loyalty, encouraging clients to return to businesses that understand their emotional and practical needs, ultimately enhancing sales outcomes. Building Rapport With Prospects Building rapport with prospects is essential for creating a successful sales environment, as it establishes a connection based on mutual respect and comprehension. In sales psychology, effective communication techniques improve your ability to engage with prospects. Consider the following strategies: Use open-ended questions to encourage prospects to share their thoughts. Practice active listening and provide empathetic responses to show you value their input. Personalize interactions by recalling previous conversations or acknowledging shared experiences. These methods help create a comfortable environment where prospects feel understood and respected. Demonstrating genuine interest in their needs and challenges not only cultivates stronger relationships but also boosts your credibility. In the end, these elements contribute to building rapport, increasing your chances of successful sales conversions. The Role of Trust in Sales Relationships Trust plays a pivotal role in sales relationships, as it helps you build lasting connections with your customers. When you establish credibility and authority, you not only influence purchase decisions but additionally cultivate long-term loyalty. Building Lasting Connections Establishing strong connections in sales relationships hinges on the foundation of trust. According to studies, 81% of consumers require trust in a brand before making a purchase. You can cultivate this trust by building meaningful connections through personalized interactions, as 70% of consumers prefer brands that understand their needs. Engage regularly with your customers to maintain visibility and strengthen relationships. Encourage positive testimonials; 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family. Communicate often; 50% of customers are more likely to engage with brands that do. Demonstrate expertise through consistent messaging to improve reliability; 61% of consumers are more inclined to buy from knowledgeable brands. These strategies, highlighted in sales psychology books, emphasize the psychology of selling effectively. Establishing Credibility and Authority Credibility and authority play a pivotal role in shaping effective sales relationships. To establish trust, you need to demonstrate expertise and knowledge, often through relevant experiences or certifications. Sharing a solid educational background can resonate with potential clients, enhancing your credibility. Studies show that 70% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands they trust. Utilizing testimonials and reviews boosts your authority, as 79% of consumers trust online reviews like personal recommendations. Endorsements from recognized experts can further solidify your credibility. Transparent communication is key; research indicates that transparent companies maintain customer loyalty 60% more effectively. For deeper insights, consider exploring sales books pdf or the psychology of selling summary to grasp strategies from the best sales psychology books. Influencing Purchase Decisions How do you decide which brand to trust when making a purchase? Trust is crucial in sales relationships, as 83% of consumers need to feel confident in a brand before buying. You can improve your credibility through various strategies: Utilize customer testimonials and peer recommendations for social proof. Show empathy and actively listen to your customers’ needs. Maintain consistent communication and deliver on your promises. These practices not just influence purchase decisions but also nurture loyalty. According to Brian Tracy in “The Psychology of Selling,” establishing trust is key in the sales process. For more insights, check out the best sales books PDF available, which can offer deeper strategies on influencing purchase decisions. Psychological Triggers That Drive Sales Psychological triggers play a crucial role in influencing consumer behavior and driving sales, as they tap into innate human responses. Scarcity creates urgency, making you more likely to purchase when you perceive an item as limited in supply or time. Fear of missing out (FOMO) also motivates quick action, driven by anxiety over missing valuable opportunities. Anchoring techniques, where higher-priced options are presented first, make the subsequent choices seem more reasonable, nudging you in the direction of pricier items. Furthermore, simplifying choices by limiting options reduces analysis paralysis, empowering you to make quicker decisions. For more insights, free sales books can provide deeper comprehension into the psychology of selling and persuasion, equipping you with strategies to improve your sales techniques effectively. The Principle of Reciprocity The principle of reciprocity plays an essential role in consumer behavior, as people often feel compelled to return a favor after receiving something of value. When you offer small gifts, like free trials or samples, it can create a sense of obligation that increases the likelihood of a purchase. This emotional need to reciprocate not just drives immediate sales but likewise builds long-term loyalty, nurturing a stronger connection between you and your brand. Emotional Need to Reciprocate When you receive something of value, like a free sample or useful information, it often triggers an emotional need to reciprocate, which plays a crucial role in sales. This principle of reciprocity encourages you to feel an obligation to return the favor, often by making a purchase. Research shows that businesses that offer free trials or gifts can greatly boost customer engagement and conversion rates. This give-and-take relationship not only improves customer loyalty but likewise encourages repeat purchases, as you feel valued. Marketing strategies that leverage this emotional need lead to higher satisfaction and long-term success. Consider these aspects: Free samples create a sense of indebtedness. Generosity cultivates customer loyalty. Acts of giving improve satisfaction. Acts of Kindness Acts of kindness play a significant role in the principle of reciprocity, where businesses create positive interactions that promote goodwill. When you receive something valuable, like free samples or helpful advice, it triggers a psychological obligation to reciprocate. This creates a cycle where you’re more likely to make purchases. Acts of Kindness Impact on Customers Free Samples Increases likelihood of purchase Personalized Service Boosts customer loyalty Surprise Gifts Nurtures long-term relationships Exclusive Offers Drives repeat business Implementing strategies centered on kindness can yield substantial returns by not merely increasing sales but also improving overall customer satisfaction, making you feel appreciated and valued. Building Loyalty Through Reciprocity Building loyalty through reciprocity hinges on the comprehension that customers often feel an innate obligation to return favors. When you provide something valuable, like free samples or personalized service, it encourages customers to reciprocate, typically through purchases or brand loyalty. Research shows that 70% of consumers are more inclined to buy from companies that have given them something for free. Here are some effective strategies to implement: Create loyalty programs offering rewards for repeat purchases. Provide special discounts to returning customers. Share valuable content or services to increase engagement. Commitment and Consistency in Selling Grasping the principle of commitment and consistency is fundamental for anyone involved in sales, as it plays a crucial role in shaping customer behavior. When customers make a small commitment, like signing up for a free trial, they’re more likely to follow through with larger purchases later. Public commitments likewise amplify this effect, as individuals want to appear consistent to themselves and others. To further improve commitment, engage customers with questions that align with their goals, reinforcing their desire to purchase. In addition, maintaining consistency in branding and messaging promotes familiarity and trust, encouraging ongoing engagement. Leveraging Social Proof for Credibility When considering how to improve your sales strategy, leveraging social proof can be a transformative factor. This psychological phenomenon influences potential buyers by showcasing the actions and opinions of others, enhancing your credibility. Studies indicate that 70% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, making testimonials essential. To effectively use social proof, consider these strategies: Highlight user-generated content to showcase real experiences. Display the number of satisfied customers to build trust. Incorporate endorsements from influencers or industry experts to boost perceived value. Creating a Sense of Scarcity Creating a sense of scarcity can drive consumers to act quickly, as they often fear missing out on limited-time offers or exclusive products. When you highlight low stock levels or use countdown timers in your marketing, you effectively communicate urgency, prompting immediate decisions. This strategy not merely encourages faster purchases but likewise improves the perceived value of your product, making it seem more desirable because of its limited availability. Urgency to Act Comprehending how urgency influences consumer behavior is crucial for effective marketing. Creating a sense of urgency through scarcity can greatly boost your sales. When customers perceive limited time offers or stock, they often feel compelled to act quickly because of the fear of missing out (FOMO). Research indicates that urgency can increase sales by up to 332%. To effectively implement urgency, consider these strategies: Use countdown timers in your promotions to visually emphasize the time constraint. Highlight limited stock levels, such as “only 5 items left,” to encourage immediate action. Position your offers as exclusive or time-sensitive to improve their perceived value. These tactics can motivate consumers to prioritize their purchases and make quicker decisions. Limited Availability Strategy Utilizing a limited availability strategy effectively taps into the psychological principle of scarcity, which greatly influences consumer purchasing behavior. When you perceive a product as scarce, its value appears to increase, prompting quicker decisions. Tactics like “just X left in stock” or “limited time offer” create a heightened sense of urgency, pushing you to act swiftly to secure the item before it disappears. Research shows that items presented as scarce can increase in perceived value by up to 50%. This strategy not merely boosts immediate sales but additionally cultivates customer loyalty, as you feel a sense of exclusivity when acquiring limited items. By comprehending and applying this principle, you can considerably improve your marketing effectiveness. Fear of Missing Out When you encounter a limited-time offer or a product labeled as scarce, the fear of missing out (FOMO) often kicks in, compelling you to make quicker purchasing decisions. This psychological trigger drives urgency, making you feel pressured to act before the opportunity disappears. Scarcity marketing effectively boosts perceived value, leading you to view limited items as more desirable. Countdown timers improve urgency, prompting immediate action. Messages about limited stock can intensify your desire to purchase. Scarcity raises the attractiveness of items, increasing demand. The Power of Authority in Sales In the domain of sales, influence plays a crucial role in shaping consumer behavior and decision-making. When you perceive someone as an expert, you’re more likely to trust their opinion and make a purchase. Research shows that endorsements from authority figures greatly boost product credibility, leading to higher conversion rates. This social proof can be influential; testimonials from recognized experts improve a brand’s reliability and influence your decisions. Authority can be established through professional credentials, media appearances, or published content that showcases expertise. When advertising features authority figures, it can amplify marketing messages, as you often rely on trusted opinions to validate your purchasing choices. Leveraging authority effectively can raise your brand’s position in a competitive market. The Impact of Emotional Connections Emotional connections play a pivotal role in driving sales, as they directly influence customer behavior and decision-making processes. Research indicates that 70% of purchasing decisions stem from feelings rather than logic. Building trust through emotional engagement can lead to a 50% increase in customer loyalty. When salespeople actively listen and address emotional needs, they can boost their closing rates by up to 30%. Furthermore, emotional storytelling improves brand recall by 22 times, making it easier for consumers to remember products linked with positive experiences. Customers with strong emotional connections show a 306% higher lifetime value. Empathy and rapport-building are crucial in the sales process. Brands resonating with emotions tend to cultivate long-term relationships. Simplifying Choices to Avoid Overwhelm When you face too many choices, it can lead to decision fatigue, making it harder to commit to a purchase. By simplifying options and limiting your selections, you can make quicker and more confident decisions, ultimately enhancing your satisfaction. Incorporating expert guidance can further streamline your experience, ensuring you navigate your choices effectively without feeling overwhelmed. Reducing Decision Fatigue Reducing decision fatigue is vital for enhancing the buying experience, as too many choices can overwhelm consumers and lead to analysis paralysis. Research shows that when you limit options, you’re more likely to make a purchase. A curated selection simplifies your decision-making process, making you feel empowered and satisfied. To help streamline choices, consider these strategies: Present a limited number of options to decrease cognitive burden. Use effective pricing tiers to clarify value and decision pathways. Highlight a few top products instead of an extensive inventory. Limited Options Strategy In a marketplace overflowing with choices, employing a limited options strategy can greatly boost the buying experience for consumers. By presenting customers with three to five carefully selected options, you reduce analysis paralysis, leading to quicker decision-making and higher satisfaction. Research shows that this balance of variety and simplicity encourages more purchases. For example, implementing a tiered pricing model, like three subscription plans, allows you to highlight features without overwhelming buyers. Simplifying choices improves the overall customer experience, as studies indicate that 60% of consumers prefer straightforward decision-making. By focusing on fewer options, you create an environment where customers feel confident in their choices, eventually increasing the likelihood of a successful sale. Expert Guidance Benefits Offering expert guidance can greatly improve the buying experience by simplifying choices for consumers. When faced with overwhelming options, expert advice helps you navigate complex decisions, increasing your satisfaction and likelihood of purchase. By providing curated selections, you feel empowered without succumbing to analysis paralysis. Sales professionals can highlight key features and benefits, ensuring you grasp the value without drowning in details. Customized solutions that match your needs Effective anchoring techniques for better decision-making Clarity on product value to improve comprehension With targeted questions, experts can identify your preferences, presenting options that resonate with your goals. This streamlined approach makes the buying process smoother, leading to a more fulfilling shopping experience. Staying Top of Mind With Customers How can you guarantee your brand stays at the forefront of your customers’ minds? Consistent brand exposure is crucial, and utilizing an omnichannel approach is key. This strategy can improve consumer desire and boost sales conversions. Repeatedly exposing your customers to your brand nurtures familiarity, which influences their decision-making, making them more likely to choose your products. To reinforce your presence, implement follow-up communications and promotional offers as effective reminders. Engaging content and regular interactions on social media and through email marketing can further increase visibility. When customers are ready to make a purchase, staying top of mind guarantees they remember your brand, making it a preferred choice. Prioritize these tactics for stronger customer retention and loyalty. Anchoring and Pricing Strategies When consumers make purchasing decisions, they often rely on the first piece of information they encounter, known as anchoring. This cognitive bias greatly influences their perception of value and pricing. By presenting higher-priced options first, businesses create a reference point that makes subsequent lower-priced items appear more reasonable, increasing the likelihood of those choices being made. Anchoring can improve perceived value and quality. Pricing strategies using anchoring can boost revenue. Strategic price displays, like discounts, prompt quicker purchasing decisions. Effective anchoring not just enhances sales of premium products but also improves consumer perception of savings. Comprehending these strategies can help you navigate pricing and make informed choices when shopping. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Psychology Behind Selling? The psychology behind selling focuses on grasping consumer behavior and emotions. You influence purchasing decisions by leveraging principles like reciprocity and social proof, which create trust. Using psychological triggers such as scarcity or urgency can motivate quicker buying decisions. Building rapport through personalized interactions boosts trust, increasing the likelihood of conversions. What Are the Main Points of Psychology of Selling? The main points of the psychology of selling include comprehending consumer behavior, emotional drivers, and the importance of meeting customers’ needs. Key principles involve reciprocity, where customers feel obligated to return favors, and commitment, nurturing loyalty through small agreements. Social proof and authority improve trust, whereas effective communication techniques help build rapport. Finally, always consider “What’s In It For Me?” as customers prioritize their own needs during sales conversations, guiding your approach. Is the Psychology of Selling Worth Reading? Yes, the psychology of selling is definitely worth reading. Comprehending its principles can elevate your sales strategies and improve customer relationships. Key concepts like reciprocity, commitment, and social proof provide insights into consumer behavior. By recognizing psychological triggers such as scarcity and fear of missing out, you can create urgency and boost conversion rates. Literature on this topic, like Cialdini‘s “Influence,” offers actionable strategies that can transform your approach to selling effectively. How Does Human Psychology Work in Sales? Human psychology in sales revolves around emotional drivers and cognitive biases. When you receive something of value, like a free sample, you may feel inclined to reciprocate with a purchase. Moreover, if you commit to a small request, you’re more likely to agree to larger ones later. Social proof, such as testimonials, influences your choices, whereas the fear of missing out can urge you to act quickly when offers seem scarce. Conclusion In conclusion, comprehending the psychology of selling is crucial for effective sales strategies. By employing techniques like empathy, building trust, and using psychological triggers, you can create stronger connections with your customers. Simplifying choices helps reduce decision fatigue, facilitating purchases. Staying top of mind through consistent engagement reinforces brand loyalty, whereas effective pricing strategies can influence buyer perceptions. Overall, excelling in these elements can greatly improve your sales performance and nurture lasting relationships with clients. Image via Google Gemini This article, "How Does the Psychology of Selling Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Comprehending the psychology of selling is crucial for anyone in sales. It involves recognizing how consumer behavior and emotions affect purchasing decisions. Key elements include building trust, establishing rapport, and employing psychological triggers like scarcity and urgency. These strategies can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, in the end increasing conversion rates. But how can you effectively implement these principles in your sales approach? Exploring the nuances of these techniques can provide valuable insights. Key Takeaways Sales psychology focuses on understanding consumer emotions and behaviors to tailor effective selling strategies that drive conversions. Building trust and rapport enhances customer relationships, increasing the likelihood of purchases and repeat business. Psychological triggers like scarcity and urgency motivate quicker buying decisions by tapping into consumer fears and desires. Simplifying choices reduces cognitive burden, making it easier for consumers to make decisions and enhancing their overall satisfaction. Empathy and active listening foster deeper connections, improving customer loyalty and satisfaction, which are crucial for long-term sales success. Understanding Sales Psychology Grasping sales psychology is crucial for anyone looking to improve their sales techniques and connect more effectively with customers. Sales psychology focuses on comprehending consumer behaviors and emotions, enabling you to tailor your strategies to meet their needs. Key principles, such as reciprocity and social proof, highlight how emotional and psychological factors influence purchasing decisions. Building trust and rapport with prospects boosts the likelihood of successful conversions. To deepen your insight, consider exploring notable sales psychology books, including those that investigate the psychology of selling. A thorough psychology of selling book can provide insights into engaging customers through personalized communication, eventually leading to increased loyalty and long-term relationships. Mastering these concepts can drive revenue growth and elevate brand loyalty. The Importance of Empathy in Sales Grasping sales psychology lays the groundwork for recognizing the fundamental role empathy plays in the sales process. Empathy in sales means comprehending and relating to a prospect’s feelings, needs, and challenges. This nurtures deeper connections and builds trust, which is vital for successful transactions. Research shows that empathetic sales interactions can boost customer satisfaction by up to 60%, making clients feel valued. Salespeople who actively listen and demonstrate empathy are 50% more likely to close deals, as prospects appreciate the personalized attention that addresses their unique concerns. Additionally, expressing genuine empathy can lead to a 12% increase in customer loyalty, encouraging clients to return to businesses that understand their emotional and practical needs, ultimately enhancing sales outcomes. Building Rapport With Prospects Building rapport with prospects is essential for creating a successful sales environment, as it establishes a connection based on mutual respect and comprehension. In sales psychology, effective communication techniques improve your ability to engage with prospects. Consider the following strategies: Use open-ended questions to encourage prospects to share their thoughts. Practice active listening and provide empathetic responses to show you value their input. Personalize interactions by recalling previous conversations or acknowledging shared experiences. These methods help create a comfortable environment where prospects feel understood and respected. Demonstrating genuine interest in their needs and challenges not only cultivates stronger relationships but also boosts your credibility. In the end, these elements contribute to building rapport, increasing your chances of successful sales conversions. The Role of Trust in Sales Relationships Trust plays a pivotal role in sales relationships, as it helps you build lasting connections with your customers. When you establish credibility and authority, you not only influence purchase decisions but additionally cultivate long-term loyalty. Building Lasting Connections Establishing strong connections in sales relationships hinges on the foundation of trust. According to studies, 81% of consumers require trust in a brand before making a purchase. You can cultivate this trust by building meaningful connections through personalized interactions, as 70% of consumers prefer brands that understand their needs. Engage regularly with your customers to maintain visibility and strengthen relationships. Encourage positive testimonials; 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family. Communicate often; 50% of customers are more likely to engage with brands that do. Demonstrate expertise through consistent messaging to improve reliability; 61% of consumers are more inclined to buy from knowledgeable brands. These strategies, highlighted in sales psychology books, emphasize the psychology of selling effectively. Establishing Credibility and Authority Credibility and authority play a pivotal role in shaping effective sales relationships. To establish trust, you need to demonstrate expertise and knowledge, often through relevant experiences or certifications. Sharing a solid educational background can resonate with potential clients, enhancing your credibility. Studies show that 70% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands they trust. Utilizing testimonials and reviews boosts your authority, as 79% of consumers trust online reviews like personal recommendations. Endorsements from recognized experts can further solidify your credibility. Transparent communication is key; research indicates that transparent companies maintain customer loyalty 60% more effectively. For deeper insights, consider exploring sales books pdf or the psychology of selling summary to grasp strategies from the best sales psychology books. Influencing Purchase Decisions How do you decide which brand to trust when making a purchase? Trust is crucial in sales relationships, as 83% of consumers need to feel confident in a brand before buying. You can improve your credibility through various strategies: Utilize customer testimonials and peer recommendations for social proof. Show empathy and actively listen to your customers’ needs. Maintain consistent communication and deliver on your promises. These practices not just influence purchase decisions but also nurture loyalty. According to Brian Tracy in “The Psychology of Selling,” establishing trust is key in the sales process. For more insights, check out the best sales books PDF available, which can offer deeper strategies on influencing purchase decisions. Psychological Triggers That Drive Sales Psychological triggers play a crucial role in influencing consumer behavior and driving sales, as they tap into innate human responses. Scarcity creates urgency, making you more likely to purchase when you perceive an item as limited in supply or time. Fear of missing out (FOMO) also motivates quick action, driven by anxiety over missing valuable opportunities. Anchoring techniques, where higher-priced options are presented first, make the subsequent choices seem more reasonable, nudging you in the direction of pricier items. Furthermore, simplifying choices by limiting options reduces analysis paralysis, empowering you to make quicker decisions. For more insights, free sales books can provide deeper comprehension into the psychology of selling and persuasion, equipping you with strategies to improve your sales techniques effectively. The Principle of Reciprocity The principle of reciprocity plays an essential role in consumer behavior, as people often feel compelled to return a favor after receiving something of value. When you offer small gifts, like free trials or samples, it can create a sense of obligation that increases the likelihood of a purchase. This emotional need to reciprocate not just drives immediate sales but likewise builds long-term loyalty, nurturing a stronger connection between you and your brand. Emotional Need to Reciprocate When you receive something of value, like a free sample or useful information, it often triggers an emotional need to reciprocate, which plays a crucial role in sales. This principle of reciprocity encourages you to feel an obligation to return the favor, often by making a purchase. Research shows that businesses that offer free trials or gifts can greatly boost customer engagement and conversion rates. This give-and-take relationship not only improves customer loyalty but likewise encourages repeat purchases, as you feel valued. Marketing strategies that leverage this emotional need lead to higher satisfaction and long-term success. Consider these aspects: Free samples create a sense of indebtedness. Generosity cultivates customer loyalty. Acts of giving improve satisfaction. Acts of Kindness Acts of kindness play a significant role in the principle of reciprocity, where businesses create positive interactions that promote goodwill. When you receive something valuable, like free samples or helpful advice, it triggers a psychological obligation to reciprocate. This creates a cycle where you’re more likely to make purchases. Acts of Kindness Impact on Customers Free Samples Increases likelihood of purchase Personalized Service Boosts customer loyalty Surprise Gifts Nurtures long-term relationships Exclusive Offers Drives repeat business Implementing strategies centered on kindness can yield substantial returns by not merely increasing sales but also improving overall customer satisfaction, making you feel appreciated and valued. Building Loyalty Through Reciprocity Building loyalty through reciprocity hinges on the comprehension that customers often feel an innate obligation to return favors. When you provide something valuable, like free samples or personalized service, it encourages customers to reciprocate, typically through purchases or brand loyalty. Research shows that 70% of consumers are more inclined to buy from companies that have given them something for free. Here are some effective strategies to implement: Create loyalty programs offering rewards for repeat purchases. Provide special discounts to returning customers. Share valuable content or services to increase engagement. Commitment and Consistency in Selling Grasping the principle of commitment and consistency is fundamental for anyone involved in sales, as it plays a crucial role in shaping customer behavior. When customers make a small commitment, like signing up for a free trial, they’re more likely to follow through with larger purchases later. Public commitments likewise amplify this effect, as individuals want to appear consistent to themselves and others. To further improve commitment, engage customers with questions that align with their goals, reinforcing their desire to purchase. In addition, maintaining consistency in branding and messaging promotes familiarity and trust, encouraging ongoing engagement. Leveraging Social Proof for Credibility When considering how to improve your sales strategy, leveraging social proof can be a transformative factor. This psychological phenomenon influences potential buyers by showcasing the actions and opinions of others, enhancing your credibility. Studies indicate that 70% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, making testimonials essential. To effectively use social proof, consider these strategies: Highlight user-generated content to showcase real experiences. Display the number of satisfied customers to build trust. Incorporate endorsements from influencers or industry experts to boost perceived value. Creating a Sense of Scarcity Creating a sense of scarcity can drive consumers to act quickly, as they often fear missing out on limited-time offers or exclusive products. When you highlight low stock levels or use countdown timers in your marketing, you effectively communicate urgency, prompting immediate decisions. This strategy not merely encourages faster purchases but likewise improves the perceived value of your product, making it seem more desirable because of its limited availability. Urgency to Act Comprehending how urgency influences consumer behavior is crucial for effective marketing. Creating a sense of urgency through scarcity can greatly boost your sales. When customers perceive limited time offers or stock, they often feel compelled to act quickly because of the fear of missing out (FOMO). Research indicates that urgency can increase sales by up to 332%. To effectively implement urgency, consider these strategies: Use countdown timers in your promotions to visually emphasize the time constraint. Highlight limited stock levels, such as “only 5 items left,” to encourage immediate action. Position your offers as exclusive or time-sensitive to improve their perceived value. These tactics can motivate consumers to prioritize their purchases and make quicker decisions. Limited Availability Strategy Utilizing a limited availability strategy effectively taps into the psychological principle of scarcity, which greatly influences consumer purchasing behavior. When you perceive a product as scarce, its value appears to increase, prompting quicker decisions. Tactics like “just X left in stock” or “limited time offer” create a heightened sense of urgency, pushing you to act swiftly to secure the item before it disappears. Research shows that items presented as scarce can increase in perceived value by up to 50%. This strategy not merely boosts immediate sales but additionally cultivates customer loyalty, as you feel a sense of exclusivity when acquiring limited items. By comprehending and applying this principle, you can considerably improve your marketing effectiveness. Fear of Missing Out When you encounter a limited-time offer or a product labeled as scarce, the fear of missing out (FOMO) often kicks in, compelling you to make quicker purchasing decisions. This psychological trigger drives urgency, making you feel pressured to act before the opportunity disappears. Scarcity marketing effectively boosts perceived value, leading you to view limited items as more desirable. Countdown timers improve urgency, prompting immediate action. Messages about limited stock can intensify your desire to purchase. Scarcity raises the attractiveness of items, increasing demand. The Power of Authority in Sales In the domain of sales, influence plays a crucial role in shaping consumer behavior and decision-making. When you perceive someone as an expert, you’re more likely to trust their opinion and make a purchase. Research shows that endorsements from authority figures greatly boost product credibility, leading to higher conversion rates. This social proof can be influential; testimonials from recognized experts improve a brand’s reliability and influence your decisions. Authority can be established through professional credentials, media appearances, or published content that showcases expertise. When advertising features authority figures, it can amplify marketing messages, as you often rely on trusted opinions to validate your purchasing choices. Leveraging authority effectively can raise your brand’s position in a competitive market. The Impact of Emotional Connections Emotional connections play a pivotal role in driving sales, as they directly influence customer behavior and decision-making processes. Research indicates that 70% of purchasing decisions stem from feelings rather than logic. Building trust through emotional engagement can lead to a 50% increase in customer loyalty. When salespeople actively listen and address emotional needs, they can boost their closing rates by up to 30%. Furthermore, emotional storytelling improves brand recall by 22 times, making it easier for consumers to remember products linked with positive experiences. Customers with strong emotional connections show a 306% higher lifetime value. Empathy and rapport-building are crucial in the sales process. Brands resonating with emotions tend to cultivate long-term relationships. Simplifying Choices to Avoid Overwhelm When you face too many choices, it can lead to decision fatigue, making it harder to commit to a purchase. By simplifying options and limiting your selections, you can make quicker and more confident decisions, ultimately enhancing your satisfaction. Incorporating expert guidance can further streamline your experience, ensuring you navigate your choices effectively without feeling overwhelmed. Reducing Decision Fatigue Reducing decision fatigue is vital for enhancing the buying experience, as too many choices can overwhelm consumers and lead to analysis paralysis. Research shows that when you limit options, you’re more likely to make a purchase. A curated selection simplifies your decision-making process, making you feel empowered and satisfied. To help streamline choices, consider these strategies: Present a limited number of options to decrease cognitive burden. Use effective pricing tiers to clarify value and decision pathways. Highlight a few top products instead of an extensive inventory. Limited Options Strategy In a marketplace overflowing with choices, employing a limited options strategy can greatly boost the buying experience for consumers. By presenting customers with three to five carefully selected options, you reduce analysis paralysis, leading to quicker decision-making and higher satisfaction. Research shows that this balance of variety and simplicity encourages more purchases. For example, implementing a tiered pricing model, like three subscription plans, allows you to highlight features without overwhelming buyers. Simplifying choices improves the overall customer experience, as studies indicate that 60% of consumers prefer straightforward decision-making. By focusing on fewer options, you create an environment where customers feel confident in their choices, eventually increasing the likelihood of a successful sale. Expert Guidance Benefits Offering expert guidance can greatly improve the buying experience by simplifying choices for consumers. When faced with overwhelming options, expert advice helps you navigate complex decisions, increasing your satisfaction and likelihood of purchase. By providing curated selections, you feel empowered without succumbing to analysis paralysis. Sales professionals can highlight key features and benefits, ensuring you grasp the value without drowning in details. Customized solutions that match your needs Effective anchoring techniques for better decision-making Clarity on product value to improve comprehension With targeted questions, experts can identify your preferences, presenting options that resonate with your goals. This streamlined approach makes the buying process smoother, leading to a more fulfilling shopping experience. Staying Top of Mind With Customers How can you guarantee your brand stays at the forefront of your customers’ minds? Consistent brand exposure is crucial, and utilizing an omnichannel approach is key. This strategy can improve consumer desire and boost sales conversions. Repeatedly exposing your customers to your brand nurtures familiarity, which influences their decision-making, making them more likely to choose your products. To reinforce your presence, implement follow-up communications and promotional offers as effective reminders. Engaging content and regular interactions on social media and through email marketing can further increase visibility. When customers are ready to make a purchase, staying top of mind guarantees they remember your brand, making it a preferred choice. Prioritize these tactics for stronger customer retention and loyalty. Anchoring and Pricing Strategies When consumers make purchasing decisions, they often rely on the first piece of information they encounter, known as anchoring. This cognitive bias greatly influences their perception of value and pricing. By presenting higher-priced options first, businesses create a reference point that makes subsequent lower-priced items appear more reasonable, increasing the likelihood of those choices being made. Anchoring can improve perceived value and quality. Pricing strategies using anchoring can boost revenue. Strategic price displays, like discounts, prompt quicker purchasing decisions. Effective anchoring not just enhances sales of premium products but also improves consumer perception of savings. Comprehending these strategies can help you navigate pricing and make informed choices when shopping. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Psychology Behind Selling? The psychology behind selling focuses on grasping consumer behavior and emotions. You influence purchasing decisions by leveraging principles like reciprocity and social proof, which create trust. Using psychological triggers such as scarcity or urgency can motivate quicker buying decisions. Building rapport through personalized interactions boosts trust, increasing the likelihood of conversions. What Are the Main Points of Psychology of Selling? The main points of the psychology of selling include comprehending consumer behavior, emotional drivers, and the importance of meeting customers’ needs. Key principles involve reciprocity, where customers feel obligated to return favors, and commitment, nurturing loyalty through small agreements. Social proof and authority improve trust, whereas effective communication techniques help build rapport. Finally, always consider “What’s In It For Me?” as customers prioritize their own needs during sales conversations, guiding your approach. Is the Psychology of Selling Worth Reading? Yes, the psychology of selling is definitely worth reading. Comprehending its principles can elevate your sales strategies and improve customer relationships. Key concepts like reciprocity, commitment, and social proof provide insights into consumer behavior. By recognizing psychological triggers such as scarcity and fear of missing out, you can create urgency and boost conversion rates. Literature on this topic, like Cialdini‘s “Influence,” offers actionable strategies that can transform your approach to selling effectively. How Does Human Psychology Work in Sales? Human psychology in sales revolves around emotional drivers and cognitive biases. When you receive something of value, like a free sample, you may feel inclined to reciprocate with a purchase. Moreover, if you commit to a small request, you’re more likely to agree to larger ones later. Social proof, such as testimonials, influences your choices, whereas the fear of missing out can urge you to act quickly when offers seem scarce. Conclusion In conclusion, comprehending the psychology of selling is crucial for effective sales strategies. By employing techniques like empathy, building trust, and using psychological triggers, you can create stronger connections with your customers. Simplifying choices helps reduce decision fatigue, facilitating purchases. Staying top of mind through consistent engagement reinforces brand loyalty, whereas effective pricing strategies can influence buyer perceptions. Overall, excelling in these elements can greatly improve your sales performance and nurture lasting relationships with clients. Image via Google Gemini This article, "How Does the Psychology of Selling Work?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Based on the (really rather excellent) comic book series from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, Prime Video's satirical superhero romp The Boys picks up the genre deconstructionist torch passed by Alan Moore's Watchmen. The tone is less philosophical but even more cynical, suggesting that power doesn't just corrupt—it makes people absolute dicks. It's set in a world where people with superpowers work for a powerful multinational corporation, with plenty of money and a powerful PR machine behind them to clean up their messes and excesses, and keep them in the public's good graces. When the girlfriend of Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) is gruesomely killed by an indifferent superhero, he's recruited by the titular group, which is determined to keep the "supes" in line by absolutely any means necessary. The show's rude and crude veneer masks a disturbing truth: If superpowered people really existed, this is probably how they would act. While you wait for the premiere of the show's fifth and final season next year (and prepare for the forthcoming prequel Vought Rising), you can check out the spin-off Gen V, the animated miniseries Diabolical—and these 12 other shows that might scratch the same itch. The Boys at Prime Video Learn More Learn More at Prime Video Creature Commandos (2024 – ) The old DCEU ("old" as in 2023) was definitely not shy about being edgy—consider that the plot of cinema's first Batman/Superman team-up turned on a urine explosion—but the new, James Gunn-lead iteration is willing to go harder. This animated show sees Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, reprising the role) assembling a black-ops team to protect a foreign nation from the Amazonian sorceress Circe. Waller can't be trusted with actual humans, so her team is made up entirely of literal monsters: The Bride (Indira Varma), Doctor Phosphorus (Alan Tudyk), Eric Frankenstein (David Harbour), and aquatic mutant Nina Mazursky (Zoë Chao), alongside Nazi-obsessed G.I. Robot and the rodent-like Weasel (both Sean Gunn). The cartoon is extremely violent with a dark sense of humor, but Gunn also brings an impressive amount of heart. Stream Creature Commandos on HBO Max. Creature Commandos (2024 – ) at HBO Max Learn More Learn More at HBO Max Slow Horses (2022 – ) Go with me on this one. Based on the Mick Herron books, this series does for spies what The Boys does for superheroes. Headed by Gary Oldman's rude, farty Jackson Lamb, Slough House is a dumping ground for has-been (or never-were) MI5 agents, who either can't be trusted with important missions or, in Lamb's case, have pissed off far too many people. They're not super-spies, mostly being only mediocre at their jobs, but their expendability frequently puts them in the line of fire, and their general scrappiness and disregard for the rules has saved them more than once. Kristin Scott Thomas is Lamb's foil, a politically savvy spymaster in the main office. It's probably my favorite Apple TV+ show, and it earns extra points for coming out on a consistent schedule; it has been renewed through a seventh season. Stream Slow Horses on Apple TV+. Slow Horses (2022 – ) at Apple TV+ Learn More Learn More at Apple TV+ Doom Patrol (2019 – 2023) Here's an uncharacteristically bold and indescribably freaky entry in the superhero canon, including characters like the non-binary Danny the Street (a literal street), paranormal investigators the Sex Men, Imaginary Jesus, and orgasm-generating body builder Flex Mentallo. But all the weirdness is grounded in excellent, frequently emotional character work from the entire cast, including Brendan Fraser, Matt Bomer, April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, Joivan Wade, Michelle Gomez, and Timothy Dalton, all playing characters processing copious amounts of trauma and guilt while becoming something like superheroes in spite of themselves. It’s very queer and very sex-positive, making it a standout among the usually chaste, straight world of superheroes on TV. Stream Doom Patrol on HBO Max. Doom Patrol (2019 – 2023) at HBO Max Learn More Learn More at HBO Max Deadloch (2023 – ) The cleverly titled Deadloch flips classic crime drama tropes on their heads. It's also an excellent mystery/crime procedural that simultaneously works as a genre send-up—not superhero stories, but dour "murder shows" like Broadchurch and its many imitators. The Australian import stars Kate Box stars as Dulcie Collins, the fastidious senior sergeant of the police force in the fictional town of the title. When a body turns up on the beach, Dulcie is joined by Madeleine Sami's Eddie Redcliffe, a crude, obnoxious detective brought in to help solve the case. The web of secrets and mysteries in the tiny Tasmanian town makes for an addictive narrative, with the added bonus that it's all frequently a hoot. Stream Deadloch on Prime Video. Deadloch (2023 – ) at Prime Video Learn More Learn More at Prime Video Legends of Tomorrow (2016 – 2022) After a rough first season spent trying to find its footing while shoehorning in characters from other CW shows, Legends quickly evolved by taking its core premise seriously. Assembled by a rogue time traveller, the Legends were initially brought together because, while they all had useful powers, none of their lives were destined to have an appreciable impact and, thus they could be pulled from their timelines with impunity. With that in mind, the show developed a sense of humor about its crew of time-traveling losers, and an even bigger heart. Caity Lotz leads the team as former assassin Sara Lance alongside her wife, future-clone Ava Sharpe (Jes Macallan); they're joined by a romance-novel-wiring pyromaniac, a stoner from an alternate timeline, British occult detective John Constantine, and a rotating crew of unlikely heroes. Stream Legends of Tomorrow on Netflix. Legends of Tomorrow at Netflix Learn More Learn More at Netflix Watchmen (2019) A standalone sequel to the groundbreaking Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins graphic novel from the '80s, this series plays in the sandbox of that book (arguably the wellspring of all modern superhero deconstruction). In an alternate Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a world where super-powered vigilantes exist and have been outlawed, the series starts, dramatically, with a depiction of the real-life massacre and destruction of Tulsa's Black Wall Street by white residents in 1921. Regina King plays Angela Abar, a modern cop whose grandparents were killed during those attacks, an event that echoes throughout the series, which focuses on the fallout from the plot of the original comic, and the conspiracies that grew out of it. Stream Watchmen on HBO Max or buy episodes from Prime Video and Apple TV. Watchmen (2019) at HBO Max Learn More Learn More at HBO Max Riverdale (2017 – 2023) Veering from superhero action to teen serial but keeping the thread of comic book deconstruction, Riverdale offers up a wild take on the once entirely wholesome Archie comics universe. The show veers wildly between genres, starting out by blending a coming-of-age story with a sexy whodunnit. The dour, elderly Miss Grundy of the comics is having an affair with Archie in the series opener, leading into a bloody murder mystery. Before long, we're folding in supernatural horror and alternate universes, made all the weirder by the way the show continues to take itself absolutely seriously in the face of absolutely bonkers plot twists. Steam Riverdale on Netflix or buy episodes from Prime Video. Riverdale (2017 – 2023) at Netflix Learn More Learn More at Netflix Talamasca: The Secret Order (2025 – ) Who watches the watchers? That's the question central to The Boys (and its spiritual antecedent, Watchmen), and it's taken up by this surprisingly fun and zippy supernatural spy show. The third series in what AMC is calling its Immortal Universe of shows based on the works of Anne Rice, this one stars Nicholas Denton as Guy Anatole, a new recruit to the title organization of supernatural spies. William Fichtner plays a vampire making a play for control of the organization, and Downton Abbey's Elizabeth McGovern brings us yet another delightfully confusing accent as the leader of the Talamasca's New York motherhouse. Throughout the first season, we, like Guy, are entirely in the dark as to whether the Talamasca are the goodies or the baddies—but maybe there's no clear answer to that question. Stream Talamasca on AMC+. Talamasca: The Secret Order (2025 – ) at AMC+ Learn More Learn More at AMC+ Hit-Monkey (2021 – 2024) A breath of fresh air among Marvel's million+ hours of TV and movie content, the animated Hit-Monkey eschews pat morality in favor of, well, monkey violence. Named only Monkey (Fred Tatasciore), the lead character is a particularly aggressive macaque forced from his tribe and mentored by Bryce (Jason Sudeikis), a dead assassin who has returned to the world as a helpful ghost. It's all impressively animated, and Ally Maki, Olivia Munn, George Takei, Leslie Jones, and Cristin Milioti are among the talented voice cast. Stream Hit-Monkey. Hit-Monkey (2021 – 2024) at Hulu Learn More Learn More at Hulu Murderbot (2025 – ) One of the smartest new shows of the year is also a dark comedy based on the Hugo-Award winning book series by Martha Wells. Alexander Skarsgård is the title's hilariously deadpan robot, a private "security construct" who's managed to hack its way through its own programming and gain free will—which it mostly wants to use to watch its favorite streaming shows. It can't just run off for fear of drawing attention, but the self-named Murderbot (it's being ironic, kinda) is content to do the bare minimum when it's assigned to a team of inexperienced and naive hippie researchers who don't see the need for a killer security robot—at least, not until they're enmeshed in a complicated capitalist plot in which they're all just cogs. Stream Murderbot on Apple TV+. Murderbot (2025 – ) at Apple TV+ Learn More Learn More at Apple TV+ Harley Quinn (2019– ) Kaley Cuoco voices erstwhile Joker sidekick Harley Quinn in this very adult cartoon series starring the anti-hero who made her debut in Batman: The Animated Series way back in the day. Don’t expect traditional superheroics, nor the epic narrative swings of The Boys—this one's mostly a zany comedy that delivers solid queer representation alongside moments of personal growth for our (anti)heroine in the wake of her big breakup with Mister J. Stream Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn (2019– ) at HBO Max Learn More Learn More at HBO Max Peacemaker (2022 – 2025) Peacemaker spins out of James Gunn's snarky 2021 entry The Suicide Squad, bridging the gap between the old DC movie universe with the current one. John Cena's title character, having survived the events of that film, is once again recruited by the United States government to join a team trying to stop mysterious butterfly creatures from taking over their human hosts. It's got the movie's bloody comic tone, but adds just enough dimension (and emotion) to the jingoistic superhero's story that it's easy to root for him, even as his self-awareness remains...limited. Stream Peacemaker. Peacemaker (2022 – 2025) at HBO Max Learn More Learn More at HBO Max Legion (2017 – 2019)Though vaguely an X-Men spinoff, this show from Noah Hawley (Fargo, Alien: Earth) stands entirely on its own, and winds up feeling like nothing else on TV. Dan Stevens plays David Haller, diagnosed with schizophrenia and possessed of tremendous psychic abilities. In one of the many psychiatric hospitals to which he's been committed, he meets first the freewheeling Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) and then Syd (Rachel Keller), who can trade bodies with anyone she touches. Veering in and out of trippy astral planes and deeply damaged psyches, David soon comes to realize that he's not crazy—and also that he's probably not the hero of the story, even as he's caught between the authorities who'd like to use him for his power, and the Shadow King who's been haunting his mind since childhood. Stream Legion on Hulu. Legion (2017 – 2019) at Hulu Learn More Learn More at Hulu View the full article

So far, Nvidia has provided the vast majority of the processors used to train and operate large AI models like the ones that underpin ChatGPT. Tech companies and AI labs don’t like to rely too much on a single chip vendor, especially as their need for computing capacity increases, so they’re looking for ways to diversify. And so players like AMD and Huawei, as well as hyperscalers like Google and Amazon AWS, which just released its latest Trainium3 chip, are hurrying to improve their own flavors of AI accelerators, the processors designed to speed up specific types of computing tasks. Could the competition eventually reduce Nvidia, AI’s dominant player, to just another AI chip vendor, one of many options, potentially shaking up the industry’s technological foundations? Or is the rising tide of demand for AI chips big enough to lift all boats? Those are the trillion-dollar questions. Google sent a minor shockwave across the industry when it casually mentioned that it had trained its impressive new Gemini 3 Pro model entirely on its own Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)—another flavor of AI accelerator chips (GPUs). Industry observers immediately wondered if the AI industry’s broad dependence on Nvidia chips was justified. After all, they’re very expensive: A big part of the billions now being spent to build out AI computing capacity (data centers) is going to Nvidia chips. And Google TPUs are looking more like a Nvidia alternative. The company can rent TPUs in its own data centers, and it’s reportedly considering selling the chips outright to other AI companies, including Meta and Anthropic. A (paywalled) report from The Information in November said Google is in talks to sell or lease its GPUs so they can run in any company’s data center. A Reuters report says Meta is in talks to spend “billions” on Google’s TPUs starting in 2027, and may begin paying to run AI workloads on TPUs within Google data centers even sooner. Anthropic announced in October that it would use up to a million TPUs within Google data centers to develop its Claude models. Selling the TPUs outright would, technically, put Google in direct competition with Nvidia. But that doesn’t mean that Google is gunning hard to steal Nvidia’s chip business. Google, after all, is a major buyer of Nvidia chips. Google may see selling TPUs to certain customers as an extension of selling access to TPUs running in its cloud. This makes sense if said customers are looking to do the types of AI processing that TPUs are especially good at, says IDC analyst Brandon Hoff. While Nvidia’s GPUs are workhorses capable of a wide range of work, most of the big-tech platform companies have designed their own accelerators that are purpose-built for their most crucial types of computing. Microsoft developed chips that are optimized for its Azure cloud services. Amazon’s Trainium chips are especially good at e-commerce-related tasks like product suggestion and delivery logistics. Google’s TPUs are good at serving targeted ads across its platforms and networks. That’s something Google shares with Meta. “They both do ads and so it makes sense that Meta wants to take a look at using Google’s TPUs,” Hoff says. And it’s not just Meta. Most big tech companies use a variety of accelerators because they use machine learning and AI for a wide variety of tasks. “Apple got some TPUs, got some of the AWS chips, of course got some GPUs, and they’ve been playing with what works good for different workloads,” he adds. Nvidia’s big advantage has been that its chips are very powerful—they’re the reason that training large language models became possible. They’re also great generalists, good for a wide variety of AI workloads. On top of that, they’re flexible, which is to say they can plug in to different platforms. For example, if a company wants to run its AI models on a mix of cloud services, they’re likely to develop those models to run on Nvidia chips because all the clouds use them. “Nvidia’s flexibility advantage is a real thing; it’s not an accident that the fungibility of GPUs across workloads was focused on as a justification for increased capital expenditures by both Microsoft and Meta,” analyst Ben Thompson wrote in a recent newsletter. “TPUs are more specialized at the hardware level, and more difficult to program for at the software level; to that end, to the extent that customers care about flexibility, then Nvidia remains the obvious choice.” However, vendor lock-in remains a big concern, especially as big tech companies and AI labs are sinking hundreds of billions of dollars into new data center capacity for AI. AI companies would prefer instead to use a mix of AI chips from different vendors. Anthropic, for one, is explicit about this: “Anthropic’s unique compute strategy focuses on a diversified approach that efficiently uses three chip platforms—Google’s TPUs, Amazon’s Trainium, and NVIDIA’s GPUs,” the company said in an October blog post. Amazon’s AWS says its Trainium3 chip is roughly four times faster than the Trainium2 chip it announced a year ago, and 40% more efficient. Because of the performance of Nvidia chips, many AI companies have standardized on CUDA, the Nvidia software layer that lets developers control how the GPUs work together to support their AI applications. Most of the engineers, developers, and researchers who work with large AI models know CUDA, which can cause another form of skills-based organizational lock-in. But now it may make sense for organizations to build whole new alternative software stacks to accommodate different kinds of chips, Thompson says. “That they did not do so for a long time is a function of it simply not being worth the time and trouble; when capital expenditure plans reach the hundreds of billions of dollars, however, what is ‘worth’ the time and trouble changes.” IDC projects that the high demand for AI computing power isn’t likely to abate very soon. “We see that cloud service providers are growing quickly, but their spending will slow down,” Hoff says. Beyond that, a second wave of demand may come from “sovereign funds,” such as Saudi Arabia, which is building the Humain “AI hub,” a large AI infrastructure complex that it will fund and control. Another wave of demand could come from large multinational corporations that want to build similar “sovereign” AI infrastructure, Hoff explains. There’s a lot of stuff in 2027 and 2028 that’ll keep driving demand.” There are plenty of “chipmaker challenges Nvidia” stories out there, but the deeper one delves into the economic complexities and competitive dynamics of the AI chip market, much of the drama drains away. As AI finds more applications in both business and consumer tech, AI models will be asked to do more and more kinds of work, and each one will demand various mixtures of generalist or specialized chips. So while there is growing competitive pressure on Nvidia, there’s still a lot of good reasons for players like Google and Amazon to collaborate with Nvidia. “In the next two years, there is more demand than supply so almost none of that matters,” says Moor Insights & Strategy chief analyst Patrick Moorhead. Moorhead believes that five years from now Nvidia GPUs will still retain their 70% market share. View the full article

New York developers are transforming struggling office buildings into more than 12,000 new apartments in a bid to help offset the city's worst housing crisis in decades. View the full article

This PPC Pulse recap covers evolving AI Max match type dynamics, real-time retail performance signals, and Google’s expanding use of AI-generated ad language. The post PPC Pulse: AI Max Insights, Cyber Monday Trends & A New Google Asset appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

On November 19, Block Inc. held its first Investor Day in three years. Jack Dorsey, the company’s cofounder, chief executive, and “Block Head,” took to the stage and summarily posed what many investors and others in the industry were likely thinking. “Our business is complicated,” he said. “We want to make it much easier to understand going forward.” Dorsey—notably clean-shaven—proceeded to summarize the past few years at Block. The company is indeed much more complex now than when it was founded in 2009 as Square, named for the point-of-sale system that was the company’s first product. Four years ago, it changed its name to Block, a much more fitting moniker given its increasingly multidimensional portfolio, which now includes not only Square but also Cash App, Afterpay, Tidal, Bitkey, and Proto. For Oakland, California-based Block, the growing pains were real as it has evolved from a single-product company to one that now facilitates payments (and buy-now-pay-later features) for both customers and merchants, has its hands in the crypto space, and even offers a streaming platform for musicians and creators. The numbers bear it out: After going public in 2015, Block saw its stock price peak in 2021 at more than $270. Like many other tech companies, Block has seen its shares fall from their pandemic-era highs. The stock is down roughly 26% in 2025 and the company fell short of Wall Street’s projections for its third-quarter earnings in November. But Block has been making some behind-the-scenes moves over the past few years to right the ship. A major philosophical change, key acquisitions, and a renewed focus on simplicity have Block’s leadership excited about the company’s future. A lesson in shape-shifting Changing from a Square to a Block required fundamental organizational and philosophical shifts, which have been the most important aspect of Block’s evolution. “We decided to ‘functionalize’ the company,” says Owen Jennings, Block’s business lead. That meant making big internal shuffles and reorganizing how information moved between engineers, designers, sales staff, and executives. It also meant putting “functional leads” into positions where they could be most impactful, whether they were working on product development or sales strategies. “We dissolved the business units and brought functional leaders to the top who reported directly to Jack,” he says. He adds that the company’s multiple business units were “siloed” and had different goals and models, which were “leading to the wrong outcomes.” What became evident was that Block needed to find ways to serve both merchants and customers—using its products to either transact (via Cash App) or process payments (via Square). “The most obvious [thing] we could bring to the world was connecting the two worlds: consumers and sellers,” Jennings says. “But it wasn’t happening based on the structure we had. Since the reorganization, “it feels like we’re one massive company,” Jennings adds, but those changes took time to implement. “Functionalization happened within 18 months,” says Nick Molnar, Block’s sales and marketing lead and the cofounder of Afterpay, who decided to stay with Block when it acquired Afterpay in early 2022. Molnar says that while he is a relative Block newbie (Jennings, by contrast, has been at the firm for more than a decade), he’s seen a notable shift at the company. Meanwhile, most people aren’t even seeing the full results yet. “The back half of this year, you’re seeing the work of the previous 18 months,” he says. Block’s leaders have also married the “functional” model to the “Rule of 40,” a metric common in the SaaS sector, which says that a company’s growth rate and profit margin should sum up to 40%. Amrita Ahuja, Block’s foundational lead, says that prior to instituting the Rule of 40 framework, “the company had expected that we’d advance margins every year—we wanted to share the trade-offs behind long-term growth and profitable long-term growth.” “So we reoriented the company from the inside out,” she added. “That was really a language we built for the company. It helped us move faster and become more efficient, and ensure investments were going to drive growth.” The Rule of 40, paired with the new “functional” model, also allowed Block to reorient its larger focus on simplicity—something it had gotten away from over the years as its business and structure have grown more complicated and convoluted. Basic building blocks Ahuja first came to the company as Square’s CFO in 2019. “The thing that was striking to me, working at my first tech company, was the level of trust and transparency,” she says. “There was so much information, and everybody had access to it.” But, naturally, things get more complicated as a company grows, as Square did when it contended with the pandemic and then morphed into Block. “Square started with payments, then we built more than 30 products around it,” Ahuja says. It was a similar situation with Cash App. “The kernel was around social money, peer-to-peer transactions,” she adds. “Now we have built a dozen products around that.” Over the years, it’s become increasingly important to get back to basics and “focus on the things that mean the most to our customers,” Ahuja says, adding, “We’ve already built a lot of depth and complexity—now it’s about making sure the right product gets surfaced at the right time for customers.” That is exactly what Block is doing now. In recent months, Block has announced several new products, including new tools and features under its Square AI suite, Square Bitcoin, and Neighborhoods, a new feature for Cash App, which connects customers with local businesses. With crypto finding wider adoption and a friendly regulatory framework, and AI being basically everywhere and anywhere, developing and releasing these types of products clearly makes sense for Block. But Jennings says that Dorsey is not merely jumping on trends for the sake of doing so. “He’s willing to be patient for a long period of time to the extent that he has conviction, and he’s been proven right many times,” Jennings says of Dorsey, who is also a cofounder of Twitter and, more recently, the competing social media platform Bluesky, although he’s no longer involved in either. “The power of Jack is that when he comes to the all-hands or presents the company strategy, it’s incredibly simple,” he adds, “and gets to the essence of what we’re trying to do.” The big question: Will it all pay off? A chip off the new Block Block’s leaders say that the pieces are in place for a sort of corporate renaissance. “I believe that Block has the ingredients it needs to accelerate its growth, that flows through a really strong, profitable business that’s growing in line with some of the best companies in the world,” says Molnar. So even as it may seem like the company’s been underachieving—perhaps in terms of sagging stock and recent earnings misses—those on the inside say they are brimming with confidence. “We’re leading, and will continue to lead,” says Jennings, who is particularly confident about Square Bitcoin, which offers no-fee Bitcoin payments for sellers around the world through its existing point-of-sale systems. He thinks Block is well-positioned to take advantage of the growing ubiquity of Bitcoin payments in the years ahead. As for Block’s broader goals? During its Investor Day 2025 presentations, the company’s 2026 guidance showed expectations of nearly $12 billion in gross profit, an increase of 17% year-over-year. It also released, for the first time, a three-year financial outlook that lays out what Block’s leadership is expecting, a sign that Block is fully grown up out of its startup stage, and that it’s here for the long haul. By 2028, Block’s outlook shows, the company anticipates gross profit growth will be in the “mid-teens,” and that adjusted earnings per share growth will be somewhere around 30%, and on track for further revenue growth. That would mark quite a turnaround, but Block executives believe they have the team, product mix, and leadership to persevere—even if it takes some time. “Jack is very good at knowing when to be patient and impatient,” says Ahuja. “From the first day I joined the company, there was a conversation about what his title should be: CEO or editor? He’s the editor—he’s the person who guides us in how we focus our efforts.” During his comments at Investor Day, Dorsey echoed Ahuja’s sentiment. “I’ve never felt more confident that we have all the tools, the structure, the team, and the people to prove this out,” he said. View the full article

The EU faces a historic choice: whether or not to unlock frozen Russian assets and save the Ukrainian war effortView the full article

Your service desk metrics look great. Average handle time is down. First response time is under ten minutes. Ticket volume is steady. Then the VP of Sales corners you after standup: “Why does it take three days to reset someone’s laptop permissions? My team is still waiting on that CRM integration issue from last week.” You pull up the tickets. Both were closed by your service desk within the Service Level Agreement (SLA). Both were handed off to specialist teams (security, integration support), and that’s where they vanished into the void. Your service desk did its job perfectly. The work still didn’t get done. This is the coordination problem that most IT directors face right now. You’ve optimized your service desk. You’ve integrated your tools. But you’re still getting blindsided by problems that fell through the cracks between teams. The bottleneck isn’t in your queue anymore. It’s in the handoffs your dashboards can’t see. How handoffs kill context Here’s what typically happens when your service desk routes a ticket to a specialist team. A user reports: “Can’t access the customer data in the CRM.” Your L1 agent asks good triage questions, verifies the user’s role, confirms they can access other systems, and checks recent permission changes. They document everything, tag it for the CRM team, and hand it off. The CRM specialist picks it up three hours later. They’re staring at a ticket that says “can’t access data” with a bunch of context that made sense to the service desk but doesn’t map to how CRM permissions actually work. They need to know which specific objects the user can’t see, whether this is new data or data they previously accessed, and what their Salesforce profile looks like. They ping the user directly or send it back to the service desk for more information. The user, already frustrated, answers the same questions again. The service desk agent, also annoyed, watches their perfectly documented ticket come back marked “insufficient information.” You’ve automated the handoff. You’ve integrated the ticketing systems. But you haven’t solved the translation problem. Your service desk agent knows how to extract information from users, but they don’t know what the CRM team needs. Your CRM specialist knows exactly what questions to ask, but they’re not the ones talking to the user. The faster you route tickets, the faster you’re throwing context over a wall that the receiving team can’t see over. Most IT directors try to solve this with improved integrations. You connect your ITSM platform to your development tools, your ticketing system to collaboration channels. Tickets flow smoothly between systems. Status updates appear automatically. Everyone can see the same information. But the integration moved the data. It didn’t translate the meaning. It didn’t capture the three questions the user answered verbally but didn’t make it into the ticket notes. It didn’t convey that this is the fifth similar issue this month, or that the user is a VP’s executive assistant who’s now escalating through different channels. Your specialist team is making decisions based on incomplete context, not because they’re careless, but because the context they need doesn’t exist in structured fields that integrations can sync. Outside of IT, industries with higher stakes have been studying handoff failures for decades. Healthcare learned that handoffs fail because different specialists literally see different things as important. An ER doctor hands off a patient, thinking about immediate stabilization. The surgical team receives that patient thinking about operative risk factors. Their solution isn’t better note-taking. It’s structured handoff protocols where both sides must be present for the transition, creating a moment where both parties can ask questions before the handoff completes. IT keeps missing what healthcare and manufacturing learned: handoffs fail when specialists optimize locally. Your service desk gets good at triaging and documenting. Your specialist teams get good at solving complex problems. Neither optimizes for the handoff itself, because neither feels responsible for what happens in that gap. Six interventions that preserve context across tool boundaries The strategies that actually work don’t require replacing your entire stack or implementing some new framework. They require treating the handoff as its own domain that needs explicit design. 1. Create embedded liaison roles that speak both languages Instead of having your service desk route tickets directly to specialist teams, position someone who understands both domains at the boundary. This isn’t a manager or a coordinator. It’s someone technical enough to understand the specialist work but familiar enough with front-line support to know what context matters. A senior service desk agent who specializes in CRM issues and maintains a relationship with the CRM team fills this role well. They don’t solve the CRM problems themselves, but they translate the initial ticket into the language and structure the CRM team actually uses. When the CRM team has questions, they ask the liaison, who knows whether to pull more information from the user or whether they can answer from their accumulated knowledge of similar issues. This role only works if the person maintains credibility with both sides. The service desk needs to trust that the liaison will push back on the specialist team when they’re asking for information that won’t actually help. The specialist team needs to trust that the liaison understands their domain well enough not to waste their time with incomplete handoffs. Where to start Identify your highest-volume handoff categories. Pick one. Find someone who’s good at those issues and interested in developing deeper expertise. Give them explicit time to build relationships with the receiving team and learn their mental models. What good looks like The specialist team stops asking for additional information on most tickets from this liaison. The liaison starts predicting what the specialist team will need before they ask. 2. Implement structured handoff rituals that slow down to speed up When your service desk is under pressure to clear their queue, they optimize for getting tickets handed off quickly. When your specialist teams are under pressure to deliver projects, they optimize for batching similar tickets and working them asynchronously. Both behaviors make sense locally but destroy context at the boundary. A structured handoff ritual forces a synchronous moment where both sides are present. Set up a daily fifteen-minute sync between your service desk and your most common specialist handoff (usually network, security, or application support). During this window, review tickets that are ready for handoff. The service desk agent explains the issue and their triage. The specialist asks clarifying questions immediately. If information is missing, the service desk can pull the user into the conversation right then, rather than starting an asynchronous information-gathering cycle. This feels slow and seems to defeat the purpose of asynchronous workflow tools. But organizations consistently see it reduce total resolution time because it eliminates the multiple round-trips that happen when context is lost in translation. Where to start Start a pilot with one specialist team that handles high-impact issues. Make it optional for the first two weeks while people learn the pattern. Track resolution times for tickets handled through the sync versus tickets handed off asynchronously. What good looks like The specialist team starts bringing tickets to the sync that they’ve already received because they’d rather get clarity immediately than spend time investigating in the wrong direction. 3. Build real-time escalation mechanisms with human override Your service desk has escalation paths defined in your ITSM tool. Priority levels, SLA clocks, and automatic notifications when thresholds are crossed. This works fine for keeping tickets moving through queues, but it doesn’t solve the problem where a ticket is technically being worked on but the actual resolution is stalled. The ticket sits with the security team for two days, the status is updated regularly, but the user still can’t do their job because there’s a dependency the security team is waiting on from another team. Your SLA dashboard shows everything within acceptable ranges. The user is furious because nothing is actually happening. Build a lightweight protocol where anyone involved with a ticket can flag it as “blocked” or “stuck” with a brief explanation of why. This flag surfaces the ticket to a designated escalation coordinator (often a service delivery manager or senior service desk lead) who has the organizational authority and context to intervene. They don’t solve the problem themselves. They unblock it by connecting people, clarifying priorities, or escalating to leadership when there’s genuinely a resource conflict. The key is that this isn’t automatic. The person flagging the ticket makes a judgment call that human intervention will help. The escalation coordinator makes a judgment call about the right intervention. This preserves context and maintains credibility that automatic escalations destroy. Where to start Create a simple “blocked” status or tag in your ticketing system. Designate one person to monitor these flags and respond within two hours. Set the expectation that this is for genuine blockages, not routine delays. What good looks like People start using the flag proactively when they recognize a ticket is stuck, before users escalate through management channels. The escalation coordinator develops enough pattern recognition to predict blockages and design improved handoff processes. 4. Establish visibility protocols that surface who knows what Most of your coordination problems stem from information asymmetry. The service desk knows things about the user’s situation and history that the specialist team needs. The specialist team knows things about recent changes and common failure modes that the service desk needs. Both sides have this information. It’s just not visible at the point where decisions get made. You can’t solve this by documenting everything in tickets. That creates noise, and no one reads it. Instead, create lightweight visibility protocols that surface the right information at the right time. For the service desk, this might look like a question they ask before every handoff: “Is there anything about this user, this timing, or recent patterns that the receiving team should know?” If yes, that goes in a specific “Context Notes” field that the specialist team knows to check. If no, leave it empty. For specialist teams, this might look like a brief weekly summary of common issues they’re seeing and recent changes they’ve made, distributed to the service desk in a standardized format. Not detailed technical explanations, but awareness: “We pushed a CRM update Tuesday that’s causing intermittent sync issues. If users report delays seeing new data, it’s likely related and should clear in twenty-four hours.” The goal is to make tacit knowledge explicit at the moments when it matters, without creating documentation overhead that everyone ignores. Where to start Identify one category of issues where a lack of context regularly causes delays. Design a minimal visibility protocol for just that category. Make it specific. Not “document things better” but “these three pieces of information in this specific place.” What good looks like The receiving team starts referencing the context notes in their resolution updates. The service desk starts adjusting their triage based on the awareness summaries. 5. Design collaborative workspaces for cross-team issues Some issues don’t fit the handoff model at all. They require ongoing collaboration between multiple teams, but your ticketing system forces you to pick which team owns the ticket at any given moment. So the ticket bounces between queues, each team adding their piece of the puzzle with no one seeing the full picture at once. For these complex issues, you need a collaborative workspace that sits outside the normal ticketing workflow. Create dedicated channels or spaces for specific cross-functional issues, with clear naming conventions and explicit expectations about participation. Invite representatives from each involved team. Use the space to share context, troubleshoot in real time, and coordinate testing or validation steps. Keep the ticket as the system of record for formal tracking, but do the actual coordination work in the collaborative space. The mistake most teams make is trying to use their ticketing system as the collaboration space, or creating collaboration spaces for routine handoffs that don’t need them. The ticket system is for tracking and accountability. The collaboration space is for solving problems that require simultaneous attention from multiple domains. Where to start Next time you encounter an issue that bounces between three or more teams, create a dedicated space for it. After resolution, document what made collaboration easier or harder. Use those learnings to define when this approach makes sense. What good looks like Teams proactively create collaboration spaces when they recognize an issue needs it, before the ticket has already bounced around for days. 6. Create feedback loops that capture handoff failures Your metrics tell you how long tickets take and whether SLAs are met. They don’t tell you how many times a ticket had to come back for more information, how many tickets were routed to the wrong specialist team, or how much time users spent providing the same information to multiple teams. After tickets close, implement a brief review process for any ticket that involved multiple handoffs or re-routing. Not every ticket, but enough to identify patterns. Ask: What information was missing at the first handoff? What questions got asked multiple times? Where did context get lost? What would have prevented the extra round-trips? The people doing this review should include representatives from both sides of common handoffs. You’re not looking for who messed up. You’re looking for where your current handoff process has systemic gaps. Maybe your CRM tickets consistently require follow-up questions about which objects the user can’t access, suggesting your service desk needs a more specific triage checklist for CRM issues. Where to start Pick one high-volume or high-impact handoff category. Review ten closed tickets from the last month. Just look for patterns—don’t try to fix everything at once. What good looks like You start seeing measurable reductions in round-trips for specific ticket categories after implementing targeted improvements based on the patterns you identify. Making handoffs visible and functional The strategies that actually improve service desk outcomes aren’t about making your service desk faster or smarter. They’re about recognizing that your service desk is part of a larger support system where handoffs matter as much as individual team capabilities. When work crosses team boundaries that span multiple tools and teams that think differently about the work, you need explicit mechanisms to preserve context and enable coordination. This is where ticket escalation workflows that maintain context across systems become essential. When your service desk hands off to security, and security needs to involve the application team, and the application team needs development support, the context captured at the beginning needs to travel through each handoff without requiring manual copying or translation between systems. Start with one high-impact handoff. Implement one of these strategies. Measure not just ticket velocity, but how often context is preserved and collaboration happens without escalation. That’s the metric that actually predicts whether your users experience your service desk as helpful or as the first step in a frustrating multi-team runaround. See why your service desk needs Unito Meet with a Unito product expert to learn how Unito's two-way sync can enhance your ticket escalation workflows. Talk with sales View the full article

PPC for ecommerce operates differently from PPC for lead gen or SaaS. The way campaigns learn, the volume of conversion data, and the role each platform plays all require a distinct approach. After shifting into ecommerce, it became clear which fundamentals matter most. The guidance in this article reflects those lessons and can help whether you’re new to ecommerce PPC or building on existing experience. We’ll look at how the core differences between ecommerce and non-ecommerce models influence PPC strategy and how to use each platform’s strengths to support your products. 1. Performance Max is built for ecommerce Google Ads is a key platform for ecommerce businesses largely because of Performance Max campaigns. I’d go as far as saying PMax works best for ecommerce. Nine times out of 10, nonecommerce businesses will struggle with it. PMax requires substantial data to learn and improve, and ecommerce brands generate that data quickly through higher sales volumes and lower ticket sizes. Non-ecommerce brands that drive large numbers of leads may be candidates for PMax, but for most ecommerce businesses, it can deliver strong results. To get the most out of PMax, you must: Optimize your feed. Segment your campaigns. Ensure conversion tracking is in place. Feed optimization Optimizing your feed is one of the easiest ways to improve PMax performance, and it can have an outsized impact. Focus on refining your product titles and descriptions so they are well-written, use the available character limits, and include your keywords. The process is simpler now. You can: Export your feed from Google Merchant Center. Upload it to ChatGPT. Ask for optimized titles and descriptions. The more direction you provide, the better the output. Give title-length limits, your primary keywords, preferred placement, and any brand tone guidance. Once updated, reupload the feed to Google Merchant Center. Campaign segmentation The better your feeds are categorized, the easier it will be to segment campaigns in Google Ads. By default, you can segment your feed by: Product type. Condition. Brand. Channel. These fields are defined in Google Merchant Center when you edit a product. You can also create custom labels, which are powerful and enable you to build your own categorization system. For example, you can use custom labels to define products by: Sales location. Status. Whether an item is on sale or overstock. In the example below, we define a product with “Source Market = au” and “Status = stranded,” meaning it is overstock and needs to be sold. This data then flows into Google Ads, where I can structure campaigns based on these custom labels. I usually begin with one large PMax campaign that is segmented internally. Once certain labels deliver a higher ROAS than others, I break them into separate campaigns and give them dedicated budgets. This serves two purposes: Ensuring that top-performing labels get the exposure they need. Giving underexposed labels more opportunity to prove themselves within the original campaign. Conversion tracking The last key consideration with PMax is ensuring you have accurate conversion tracking. Ideally, you should pull in not only sales numbers but also revenue and costs for each product. Shopify makes this easier because it integrates directly with Google Ads and sends your conversion and revenue data into both Google Merchant Center and Google Ads. With this data in place, you can set up automated bidding strategies, such as tCPA or value-based bidding. You can also run campaign experiments to see which bidding methods deliver a stronger return on advertising spend (ROAS). Dig deeper: 6 tips for successful ecommerce search campaigns 2. Amazon is the strongest ad platform for ecommerce I’m surprised by how many ecommerce businesses are not on Amazon and not running Amazon Ads. Amazon is likely the best advertising platform for an ecommerce business when used properly. Several key features make it stand out and worth serious consideration. Transparency Amazon is more transparent with its data than its competitors as advertisers receive far more detailed information. From Google and Meta, you may get keyword-level metrics like impressions, clicks, CPCs, and CTRs. Even then, as much as 80% of that data can be hidden. While click-level data is useful, it only reflects activity during the search phase, not what happens at the product level. Amazon goes a level deeper. It provides information about: Your target keywords and how they convert compared with your competitors. Actual conversion rate data for your own SKUs and for the overall market for the keywords you are targeting. Amazon’s Search Query reports show your conversion rates alongside market conversion rates. The screenshots below show the Amazon Search Query Report with product-level data for each keyword driving traffic. The first one shows impressions and clicks for the advertiser’s product (“Brand Count”) versus the aggregated market (“Total Count”). The second screenshot shows the same for add-to-carts and purchases. From these numbers, you can derive key insights into conversion rates. Higher conversion rates Because Amazon is a closed platform, the listings, ads, and purchase funnel all occur in one environment. Other platforms like Meta typically send customers off-site to your website. As a result, Amazon tends to deliver far higher conversion rates and more accurate data. Where a website might convert at 5%, it’s not unusual to see 20% on an Amazon listing. This also reduces attribution issues. The full customer journey – impressions, clicks, add-to-carts, and sales – is captured in one place. This seamless experience removes much of the guesswork from understanding performance and measuring results. Rankings philosophy Amazon also takes a different approach to rankings. Google Ads states that ad spend and organic rankings are not directly related. Regardless of how much you spend on PMax or other campaigns, it will not influence your organic rankings. While this sounds fair, in practice, it leaves unclear guidelines and creates confusion about how to rank products on Google. It often leads advertisers to spend heavily on experts who claim to solve the mystery of organic rankings, even though many are not fully confident in their own methods. Amazon takes a different approach. While not explicitly stated, it is widely understood in the industry that ads play a pivotal role in organic rankings. Amazon’s algorithm ranks product listings for keyword searches based largely on conversion rate. When an advertiser runs ads, they generate more clicks and sales, which in turn produce a conversion rate. That conversion rate is used to determine rankings against competitors. Products with higher conversion rates are more likely to rank higher. This system allows advertisers to quickly understand what it takes to rank for a keyword. If conversion rates are low compared with the market, the offer needs to be improved. Skilled marketers can use this data to build plans – improving their offers, adjusting pricing, testing different keyword sets, and reevaluating results. By comparison, SEO on Google remains far less transparent. For advertisers experienced with Amazon, this means: More transparent and lower-funnel data. More engaged customers with higher conversion rates. Better attribution and less guesswork about platform value. More control over rankings through ad management and offer improvements. All of this makes Amazon a powerful platform for ecommerce marketers. Dig deeper: Optimizing for Amazon branded search: Best practices to boost visibility. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 3. Social platforms are not built to drive conversions Social platforms are important for ecommerce businesses, but for most products, they are not ideal for driving direct conversions. If you want to generate sales quickly and have a small budget, Amazon Ads or PMax should come first. This is true for most ecommerce brands, though social can work for direct lead generation if you have a fun or highly engaging product. For the remaining 90%, social media is still a critical part of your marketing strategy and should be integrated thoughtfully. It’s an effective channel for generating awareness and building customer lists. Here are the primary ways to use it. Customer lists Your email list is a valuable asset, and you should prioritize building it. Email allows you to run promotions, sell overstock, introduce new products, cross-sell, and more. Social is a strong tool for growing these lists. Competitions and giveaways, in particular, have been a cost-effective way for us to build customer lists. Everyone loves a free giveaway. Awareness Social and display are strong awareness channels. You might pay $10 for a single click on PMax, while on social you could pay a $10 CPM for 1,000 impressions. Building impressions and awareness is especially important for products that are new to market, and social handles this well. These campaigns should not be judged on immediate sales but on the visibility they generate. Remarketing Remarketing funnels, both in-platform and cross-platform, are effective for ecommerce. Social’s strength is its ability to generate awareness and buzz. Platforms like Meta let advertisers gauge engagement through metrics such as video view rates and ad frequency. Using social to measure engagement, then building customer lists for additional remarketing – either in-platform or to feed signals into your PMax campaigns – is an effective way to refine audiences as they move down the funnel. 4. Dashboarding is essential for visibility and profitability The value of third-party dashboards cannot be overstated. They allow you to track performance across multiple platforms and ad consoles. You might be: Selling products on Shopify and Amazon. Running ads on Amazon, Google, Facebook, and TikTok. Sending automations and EDMs through Klaviyo. This can get messy quickly. How do you track everything and understand what is working and what is profitable? The goal of a great dashboard is to simplify your workflow and provide clear insight and context. I’ve written elsewhere about what makes a strong dashboard report. At its most basic level for ecommerce, you want a dashboard that can: Combine multiple data sources in one place. Simplify large amounts of data into meaningful reporting so you can make good decisions. Sellerboard has been an excellent tool for us in solving these two problems. It connects to Amazon and Shopify, as well as ad platforms via API. It pulls in revenue and associated costs down to the SKU and order ID level. This allows us to isolate each SKU and attribute all variable costs from various platforms. It calculates profitability and ROI for each SKU and shows where that performance is coming from. We can see what happens when we pause a platform and how it affects overall revenue, giving us insight into what drives results for each product. Dig deeper: How to deliver monthly PPC reports clients love Where these ecommerce PPC insights lead you next Understanding how ecommerce changes the way PPC platforms behave is essential to making the right decisions. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, these are the lessons I wish I had when getting started, and they continue to shape how I approach campaigns today. I hope these takeaways help you build or support successful ecommerce programs with clearer insight and stronger performance. View the full article

I can be motivated to do just about anything if an app offers me a badge or "streak," which I've made abundantly clear in various reviews here on Lifehacker. When it comes to the apps I use to stay on top of my health and fitness, that's true to an extent, although I also derive at least a little of my satisfaction from actually, you know, working out. As likely as I am to get up and exercise on an average day, getting some kind of digital reward makes me all the more excited, which has been true the past four days as Peloton rolled out its Holiday 2025 challenge. It's a simple challenge, but one you might be interested in if you're also encouraged by celebratory pixels or if you want to get a head start on your New Year goals. What is the Holiday 2025 challenge on Peloton?Peloton's app is great overall because it has a wide variety of class types, can be used to track non-Peloton workouts better than native workout trackers, and offers a multitude of ways to get the sweet dopamine bop of motivation, from daily streaks to Club Peloton status. (As of today, I'm on a 263-day streak and am sitting firmly in the Silver III tier of Club Peloton.) The app awards you badges and milestones for things like taking a certain number of meditation or strength classes, taking a class with music from a specific artist, or participating in a challenge. As of Dec. 1, we're in Holiday 2025 challenge territory, which means if you take holiday-branded classes through the app, either on your mobile device or one of the brand's proprietary pieces of equipment, you earn a badge. If you take three holiday classes between now and Dec. 31, you get a bronze badge, if you take five you earn silver, and 10 will get you a gold one. That's good enough for me! The badge appears on your profile along with any others you may have earned. Though there isn't much more to it than that, there is something crucial you need to know: Peloton Members have to opt into the challenge. You can do that on the app or by following this link. I did not do that until today, which means I just spent four days taking holiday classes (simply by typing "holiday" in the search bar) but not contributing toward my ultimate badge. Luckily, some of the ones I took did count retroactively once I opted in. I did, strangely and inadvertently, earn a badge called "Holiday 2024," which appeared on my profile today, I assume because I took some holiday classes that were released last year. That is not exactly what I was after, but I'll take the bonus badge and be grateful nonetheless. Credit: Peloton Once you opt in, just do what I've been doing and search for "holiday." You'll see classes as well as a "Holiday" collection, which also just shows you classes, but those are sorted by the year they came out. Taking any holiday class, regardless of year, will help you earn your badges. There are holiday rides, holiday lifts, holiday yoga flows, holiday walks—you get the point. Like all Peloton offerings, they range in intensity levels and duration, so you can find something to fit in no matter what you want to do and for how long. Why I like this challengeI am easy to please, I'll admit, and can be convinced to do anything if it's even mildly whimsical or unique, but I do think a challenge like this is solid for a number of reasons. First, it's not intimidating. You have 31 days to do just three classes and still earn a badge, plus there are plenty of classes in the collection that are simple and low-commitment. For a beginner or someone with limited time, it isn't like you have to commit to a ton of super-difficult classes. Credit: Peloton I also just like anything novel and appreciate that this provides a fun little way to prioritize movement during a time of year that is, at least for me, both busier and more slovenly than the other 11 months. When it's cold out and there's an abundance of baked goods around me, I'm not always reliably inclined toward choosing a workout over some pajama-and-couch time, but knowing I have to keep up with my routine to earn the gold badge can be a motivator. Finally, I'm kind of in the middle of my own personal challenge: Last week, I was, for some reason, inspired to drop a bunch of money on a one-month unlimited pilates membership, which I am now hell-bent on making worth every cent by taking a class every morning at around 5:30. There's something nice about getting done with a strenuous reformer session, walking back home in the cold, and getting to relax with a holiday-themed yoga or stretch. I can even play a holiday-themed walk as I amble back to my apartment. At a time when I'm already pushing myself pretty hard, I appreciate the whimsy and fun of "10 min Backstreet Boys Holiday Stretch." Remembering that movement is supposed to be enjoyable—especially during a season notorious for getting on my nerves with all its events, responsibilities, and hassle—is grounding. View the full article

HMRC data points to impact of UK government’s crackdown on tax advantages of workplace schemes View the full article

Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare on Friday said it was investigating an outage that took place in the morning that brought down several global websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and others, the second such crash to affect the company in less than three weeks. Cloudflare said the issue had been resolved, and that it was was “investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs,” or application programming interface that allow software systems to communicate with each other. The company said the outage was not due to an attack. A change to how its firewall handles requests “caused Cloudflare’s network to be unavailable for several minutes this morning,” the company said. Users on social media platform X also reported problems accessing the website. Edinburgh airport had to shut down briefly on Friday morning. But the airport later said the outage was a localized issue that was not related to Cloudflare. In November, a Cloudflare outage affected users of everything from ChatGPT and the online game, “League of Legends,” to the New Jersey Transit system. Last month Microsoft had to deploy a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that left users unable to access Office 365, Minecraft and other services. The tech company wrote on its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage. Amazon also experienced a massive outage of its cloud computing service in October. This version has been updated to reflect that Edinburgh airport says its temporary shutdown was not related to the Cloudflare outage. —Associated Press View the full article

Finding your Business Registration Number (BRN) doesn’t have to be an intimidating task. Start by visiting your state’s Secretary of State website, where you can search their business registration database using your company name or other details. If you prefer a more streamlined approach, consider Middesk. Verifying this number against your official documents is essential for accuracy. But what if you encounter challenges during your search? Key Takeaways Visit your state’s Secretary of State website to access the business registration database for direct information on your BRN. Check your formation documents, like Articles of Incorporation, where the BRN is typically listed. Review correspondence from the IRS, as your Employer Identification Number (EIN) can serve as your BRN. Use automated tools like Middesk to aggregate data from multiple state databases for streamlined verification. Ensure your information is current by regularly checking official sources to maintain compliance and legitimacy. Understanding Business Registration Numbers A Business Registration Number (BRN) serves as an important identifier for your business, ensuring that you comply with legal requirements and maintain operational legitimacy. Comprehending the different types of BRNs, such as the Company Registration Number (CRN), Employer Identification Number (EIN), and State Registration Number, is imperative since each serves specific regulatory purposes. Knowing how to find your business registration number can streamline processes like filing taxes, opening bank accounts, and obtaining necessary licenses. The format and naming of BRNs can vary considerably by jurisdiction, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with local requirements. A valid BRN not just improves your business’s credibility but also builds trust with clients, suppliers, and regulatory bodies, making it a critical asset. Importance of Obtaining a Business Registration Number Obtaining a Business Registration Number (BRN) is essential for legal compliance and operational legitimacy. This unique identifier not just helps you meet local regulations but also builds trust and credibility with customers and partners by ensuring your business is recognized and verified. Without a BRN, you may face challenges like difficulties in opening bank accounts, securing loans, or fulfilling tax obligations, which can hinder your business growth. Legal Compliance Necessity When you start a business, securing a Business Registration Number (BRN) is fundamental for legal compliance. This unique identifier is significant for your dealings with government agencies, banks, and tax authorities. A valid BRN helps you fulfill payroll tax responsibilities and guarantees your business operates within federal and state regulations. Many states require a BRN to apply for necessary licenses and permits, reinforcing your legal recognition before offering services or products. If you’re wondering where can I find my business registration number, it’s imperative to obtain one prior to launching operations. Operating without a BRN can expose you to legal liabilities, including fines or penalties from regulatory agencies, making it essential to secure your BRN for a smooth business expedition. Trust and Credibility Building Establishing your business’s legitimacy is vital, especially in a competitive marketplace where trust plays an important role in attracting clients and partners. Obtaining a business registration number (BRN) confirms your legal authority to operate, which builds trust with clients, suppliers, and regulatory bodies. A BRN is significant for compliance with regulations, helping you avoid legal liabilities during the maintenance of a solid reputation. It likewise improves your credibility, as many JPMorgan and lenders require a BRN for opening accounts or securing loans. During the onboarding process, verifying a BRN protects you from risks associated with unverified entities, reducing potential financial pitfalls. In the end, a valid BRN signals financial stability, making your business more appealing to those who prioritize trust and compliance. Steps to Register Your Business To register your business, you’ll need to prepare crucial formation documents like Articles of Incorporation or an LLC Operating Agreement, which define your business’s structure and purpose. After that, file these documents with your state’s Secretary of State office, often through an online portal for added convenience. Don’t forget to pay the required registration fees, as these can vary depending on your state and the type of business you’re establishing. Prepare Formation Documents Preparing formation documents is a crucial step in registering your business, as these documents lay the foundation for your company’s structure and operations. You’ll typically need the Articles of Incorporation for corporations or the Articles of Organization for LLCs. Furthermore, an LLC Operating Agreement is recommended to clarify member and manager roles. Be sure that all your documents meet state-specific requirements, which can vary by business type and location. Document Type Purpose Notes Articles of Incorporation Defines corporate structure Required for corporations Articles of Organization Outlines the LLC structure Required for LLCs LLC Operating Agreement Details roles and responsibilities Highly recommended Compliance Checklist Guarantees all documents meet state laws Check state-specific regulations State Registration Fees Required payment for filing Fees vary by state and structure Once your formation documents are ready, you can file them online to find your company registration number easily. File With Secretary of State Once you’ve prepared your formation documents, the next step involves filing them with the Secretary of State’s office. You’ll need to submit your Articles of Incorporation or LLC Operating Agreement, which outline your company information and operational structure. Many states allow you to file these documents online, simplifying the process. Make sure to carefully follow the specific guidelines for your jurisdiction to avoid any delays. Furthermore, appoint a registered agent who’ll receive legal documents on behalf of your business, as this is often a requirement. After submitting your documents, you’ll need to wait for state approval, which can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, before you receive your Business Registration Number (BRN). Pay Registration Fees Paying the registration fees is a crucial step in the business registration process. Once you’ve determined the appropriate registration authority, usually your state’s Secretary of State office, you need to prepare the necessary formation documents like Articles of Incorporation or an LLC Operating Agreement. After that, you’ll pay the state-specific registration fees, which can vary widely from $50 to several hundred dollars based on your state and business type. It’s important to have a registered agent appointed, as this is often a requirement. Once you submit your documents and payment, you’ll need to wait for state approval. This approval will provide you with your unique business registration number, which may take a few days to several weeks to receive. Finding Your Business Registration Number Finding your Business Registration Number (BRN) is vital for various administrative tasks, and there are several straightforward methods to locate it. First, check your business formation documents, like the Articles of Incorporation or LLC Operating Agreement, where the number is typically listed. If you’re wondering, “where do I find my business registration number,” visit your state’s Secretary of State website. They often have a business search tool that allows you to look up your BRN using your business name or other identifying information. Furthermore, for federal identification, your Employer Identification Number (EIN) can be found on IRS documents. If you still have trouble, consider using automated verification tools like Middesk to streamline the search process. Tools for Business Registration Lookup When you need to locate your business registration number, several effective tools can simplify the process. Here are three resources to evaluate: State Secretary of State Offices: Many offer free online business search tools for company name searches in the United States, allowing you to access their databases directly. SEC’s EDGAR System: This platform lets you search for filings and registration information for publicly traded companies, providing a thorough view of business activities since 2001. Automated Third-Party Tools: Services like Middesk aggregate data from various state databases, streamlining verification and offering insights on business legitimacy. Utilizing these tools can help you efficiently find your business registration number and verify operational status. Challenges in Locating Business Registration Numbers Locating a business registration number can be more complicated than it seems, especially since each state has its own unique portal with different interfaces and requirements. Some states require you to create an account or pay fees just to access registration information, adding unnecessary barriers. If your business is registered in a different state from where you operate, you may need to search multiple databases, complicating your efforts further. Moreover, smaller, non-publicly traded businesses often have limited information on platforms like SEC’s EDGAR, making company verification difficult. Inaccurate or outdated data can also hinder effective decision-making during B2B onboarding, so it’s essential to verify that the information you retrieve is current and reliable for your business needs. Best Practices for Business Registration Verification To guarantee the accuracy and reliability of your business registration verification, it’s crucial to follow established best practices. Here are three key steps to take into account: Use Official Sources: Access business registration databases through your state’s Secretary of State office. These sites offer the most reliable information for your company check. Leverage Automated Tools: Employ third-party services like Middesk to efficiently navigate multiple state databases and gather necessary business information. Cross-Reference Documents: Always verify the Business Registration Number (BRN) against documents like Articles of Incorporation and IRS correspondence to ascertain consistency. Additionally, stay updated on the specific formats for different BRNs to avoid confusion. Regularly refresh your verification methods to adapt to changing regulations and resources. Frequently Asked Questions How Do I Find My Business Registration Number? To find your business registration number, start by checking official documents like your Articles of Incorporation or LLC Operating Agreement. You can additionally visit your state’s Secretary of State website, where you can search for your business name to access your number. If you have an Employer Identification Number (EIN), look at your IRS tax documents. Finally, consider using third-party verification tools for quicker access. Is My EIN My Business Registration Number? Yes, your Employer Identification Number (EIN) is a type of business registration number, but it’s not the only one. An EIN is particularly issued by the IRS for tax purposes, especially for businesses with employees. Other registration numbers, like Company Registration Numbers (CRN) or State Registration Numbers, may likewise be necessary depending on your location and business structure. Make certain you understand the requirements for your particular business to guarantee compliance. Conclusion In conclusion, locating your Business Registration Number is a straightforward process that involves utilizing state resources and online tools. Start by visiting your state’s Secretary of State website and searching their business registration database. For additional support, consider using automated services like Middesk. Always verify your findings against official documents to confirm accuracy. By following these steps, you can efficiently obtain your BRN and maintain your business’s compliance with regulatory requirements. Image via Google Gemini This article, "How to Find Your Business Registration Number Easily" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Finding your Business Registration Number (BRN) doesn’t have to be an intimidating task. Start by visiting your state’s Secretary of State website, where you can search their business registration database using your company name or other details. If you prefer a more streamlined approach, consider Middesk. Verifying this number against your official documents is essential for accuracy. But what if you encounter challenges during your search? Key Takeaways Visit your state’s Secretary of State website to access the business registration database for direct information on your BRN. Check your formation documents, like Articles of Incorporation, where the BRN is typically listed. Review correspondence from the IRS, as your Employer Identification Number (EIN) can serve as your BRN. Use automated tools like Middesk to aggregate data from multiple state databases for streamlined verification. Ensure your information is current by regularly checking official sources to maintain compliance and legitimacy. Understanding Business Registration Numbers A Business Registration Number (BRN) serves as an important identifier for your business, ensuring that you comply with legal requirements and maintain operational legitimacy. Comprehending the different types of BRNs, such as the Company Registration Number (CRN), Employer Identification Number (EIN), and State Registration Number, is imperative since each serves specific regulatory purposes. Knowing how to find your business registration number can streamline processes like filing taxes, opening bank accounts, and obtaining necessary licenses. The format and naming of BRNs can vary considerably by jurisdiction, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with local requirements. A valid BRN not just improves your business’s credibility but also builds trust with clients, suppliers, and regulatory bodies, making it a critical asset. Importance of Obtaining a Business Registration Number Obtaining a Business Registration Number (BRN) is essential for legal compliance and operational legitimacy. This unique identifier not just helps you meet local regulations but also builds trust and credibility with customers and partners by ensuring your business is recognized and verified. Without a BRN, you may face challenges like difficulties in opening bank accounts, securing loans, or fulfilling tax obligations, which can hinder your business growth. Legal Compliance Necessity When you start a business, securing a Business Registration Number (BRN) is fundamental for legal compliance. This unique identifier is significant for your dealings with government agencies, banks, and tax authorities. A valid BRN helps you fulfill payroll tax responsibilities and guarantees your business operates within federal and state regulations. Many states require a BRN to apply for necessary licenses and permits, reinforcing your legal recognition before offering services or products. If you’re wondering where can I find my business registration number, it’s imperative to obtain one prior to launching operations. Operating without a BRN can expose you to legal liabilities, including fines or penalties from regulatory agencies, making it essential to secure your BRN for a smooth business expedition. Trust and Credibility Building Establishing your business’s legitimacy is vital, especially in a competitive marketplace where trust plays an important role in attracting clients and partners. Obtaining a business registration number (BRN) confirms your legal authority to operate, which builds trust with clients, suppliers, and regulatory bodies. A BRN is significant for compliance with regulations, helping you avoid legal liabilities during the maintenance of a solid reputation. It likewise improves your credibility, as many JPMorgan and lenders require a BRN for opening accounts or securing loans. During the onboarding process, verifying a BRN protects you from risks associated with unverified entities, reducing potential financial pitfalls. In the end, a valid BRN signals financial stability, making your business more appealing to those who prioritize trust and compliance. Steps to Register Your Business To register your business, you’ll need to prepare crucial formation documents like Articles of Incorporation or an LLC Operating Agreement, which define your business’s structure and purpose. After that, file these documents with your state’s Secretary of State office, often through an online portal for added convenience. Don’t forget to pay the required registration fees, as these can vary depending on your state and the type of business you’re establishing. Prepare Formation Documents Preparing formation documents is a crucial step in registering your business, as these documents lay the foundation for your company’s structure and operations. You’ll typically need the Articles of Incorporation for corporations or the Articles of Organization for LLCs. Furthermore, an LLC Operating Agreement is recommended to clarify member and manager roles. Be sure that all your documents meet state-specific requirements, which can vary by business type and location. Document Type Purpose Notes Articles of Incorporation Defines corporate structure Required for corporations Articles of Organization Outlines the LLC structure Required for LLCs LLC Operating Agreement Details roles and responsibilities Highly recommended Compliance Checklist Guarantees all documents meet state laws Check state-specific regulations State Registration Fees Required payment for filing Fees vary by state and structure Once your formation documents are ready, you can file them online to find your company registration number easily. File With Secretary of State Once you’ve prepared your formation documents, the next step involves filing them with the Secretary of State’s office. You’ll need to submit your Articles of Incorporation or LLC Operating Agreement, which outline your company information and operational structure. Many states allow you to file these documents online, simplifying the process. Make sure to carefully follow the specific guidelines for your jurisdiction to avoid any delays. Furthermore, appoint a registered agent who’ll receive legal documents on behalf of your business, as this is often a requirement. After submitting your documents, you’ll need to wait for state approval, which can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, before you receive your Business Registration Number (BRN). Pay Registration Fees Paying the registration fees is a crucial step in the business registration process. Once you’ve determined the appropriate registration authority, usually your state’s Secretary of State office, you need to prepare the necessary formation documents like Articles of Incorporation or an LLC Operating Agreement. After that, you’ll pay the state-specific registration fees, which can vary widely from $50 to several hundred dollars based on your state and business type. It’s important to have a registered agent appointed, as this is often a requirement. Once you submit your documents and payment, you’ll need to wait for state approval. This approval will provide you with your unique business registration number, which may take a few days to several weeks to receive. Finding Your Business Registration Number Finding your Business Registration Number (BRN) is vital for various administrative tasks, and there are several straightforward methods to locate it. First, check your business formation documents, like the Articles of Incorporation or LLC Operating Agreement, where the number is typically listed. If you’re wondering, “where do I find my business registration number,” visit your state’s Secretary of State website. They often have a business search tool that allows you to look up your BRN using your business name or other identifying information. Furthermore, for federal identification, your Employer Identification Number (EIN) can be found on IRS documents. If you still have trouble, consider using automated verification tools like Middesk to streamline the search process. Tools for Business Registration Lookup When you need to locate your business registration number, several effective tools can simplify the process. Here are three resources to evaluate: State Secretary of State Offices: Many offer free online business search tools for company name searches in the United States, allowing you to access their databases directly. SEC’s EDGAR System: This platform lets you search for filings and registration information for publicly traded companies, providing a thorough view of business activities since 2001. Automated Third-Party Tools: Services like Middesk aggregate data from various state databases, streamlining verification and offering insights on business legitimacy. Utilizing these tools can help you efficiently find your business registration number and verify operational status. Challenges in Locating Business Registration Numbers Locating a business registration number can be more complicated than it seems, especially since each state has its own unique portal with different interfaces and requirements. Some states require you to create an account or pay fees just to access registration information, adding unnecessary barriers. If your business is registered in a different state from where you operate, you may need to search multiple databases, complicating your efforts further. Moreover, smaller, non-publicly traded businesses often have limited information on platforms like SEC’s EDGAR, making company verification difficult. Inaccurate or outdated data can also hinder effective decision-making during B2B onboarding, so it’s essential to verify that the information you retrieve is current and reliable for your business needs. Best Practices for Business Registration Verification To guarantee the accuracy and reliability of your business registration verification, it’s crucial to follow established best practices. Here are three key steps to take into account: Use Official Sources: Access business registration databases through your state’s Secretary of State office. These sites offer the most reliable information for your company check. Leverage Automated Tools: Employ third-party services like Middesk to efficiently navigate multiple state databases and gather necessary business information. Cross-Reference Documents: Always verify the Business Registration Number (BRN) against documents like Articles of Incorporation and IRS correspondence to ascertain consistency. Additionally, stay updated on the specific formats for different BRNs to avoid confusion. Regularly refresh your verification methods to adapt to changing regulations and resources. Frequently Asked Questions How Do I Find My Business Registration Number? To find your business registration number, start by checking official documents like your Articles of Incorporation or LLC Operating Agreement. You can additionally visit your state’s Secretary of State website, where you can search for your business name to access your number. If you have an Employer Identification Number (EIN), look at your IRS tax documents. Finally, consider using third-party verification tools for quicker access. Is My EIN My Business Registration Number? Yes, your Employer Identification Number (EIN) is a type of business registration number, but it’s not the only one. An EIN is particularly issued by the IRS for tax purposes, especially for businesses with employees. Other registration numbers, like Company Registration Numbers (CRN) or State Registration Numbers, may likewise be necessary depending on your location and business structure. Make certain you understand the requirements for your particular business to guarantee compliance. Conclusion In conclusion, locating your Business Registration Number is a straightforward process that involves utilizing state resources and online tools. Start by visiting your state’s Secretary of State website and searching their business registration database. For additional support, consider using automated services like Middesk. Always verify your findings against official documents to confirm accuracy. By following these steps, you can efficiently obtain your BRN and maintain your business’s compliance with regulatory requirements. Image via Google Gemini This article, "How to Find Your Business Registration Number Easily" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Netflix has announced that it intends to buy legendary Hollywood studio Warner Bros. in a deal valued at approximately $82.7 billion. The deal, which must be approved by regulators, will further consolidate the entertainment industry and give Netflix ownership of some of the most iconic films and television franchises ever, not to mention HBO. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happened? Today, Netflix and Warner Bros announced a deal in which Netflix will purchase the legendary Hollywood studio, along with its HBO Max and HBO divisions, for a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (which Netflix says has an equity value of $72.0 billion). The deal isn’t exactly a surprise, as Warner Bros had previously put itself up for sale publicly and Netflix was expected to be one of the primary bidders for the company’s assets. However, the deal marks a major milestone for the streaming giant, which is not known for large-scale acquisitions. The news comes after Warner Bros. Discovery, the company’s owner, announced this summer that it would split the current company into two, with the new ones owning its Streaming & Studios assets and Global Networks divisions, respectively. With today’s announcement, Netflix is essentially buying the “Streaming & Studios” company that will spin off from Warner Bros. Discovery next year. When the deal closes, Netflix says each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash as well as $4.50 in shares of Netflix common stock for every share of WBD common stock they own. Announcing the deal, Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix, said, “With our global reach and proven business model, we can introduce a broader audience to the worlds [Warner Bros. creates]—giving our members more options, attracting more fans to our best-in-class streaming service, strengthening the entire entertainment industry and creating more value for shareholders.” What IP will Netflix acquire under the deal? Netflix’s purchase deal for Warner Bros, HBO Max, and HBO will give the streaming giant ownership over one of the most lucrative intellectual property portfolios out there. If the deal closes, Netflix will own: DC Universe Batman Superman Wonder Woman Friends Game of Thrones The Big Bang Theory The Harry Potter film franchise Touching on the IP aspect of the deal, Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said, “Our mission has always been to entertain the world. By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies—from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends—with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we’ll be able to do that even better.” What has Warner Bros said about the deal? In a statement, David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said, “Today’s announcement combines two of the greatest storytelling companies in the world to bring to even more people the entertainment they love to watch the most.” When does the Netflix-Warner Bros deal close? Netflix says that it expects the transaction to close in the next 12-18 months, putting a likely closing date sometime in 2027. However, Netflix and Warner Bros can likely expect extreme regulatory scrutiny of their deal. While Netflix’s and WBD’s boards of directors unanimously approved the deal, it will not be finalized until regulators give the go-ahead. How have the companies’ stock prices reacted? Shares in Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) fell in premarket trading on Friday. As of this writing, Netflix stock is down just over 4%. Shares in Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBD) were essentially flat in premarket trading as of this writing. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Let's face it: Secret Santa exchanges can be a minefield of disappointing, forgettable gifts. It's tough to shop for someone when you know that gift is going to be opened in front of all your friends, family, or coworkers at some holiday party. Then there's the price limit to contend with—a good gift exchange should keep it under $20, but some creep closer to the $50 range. What's the best way to win at Secret Santa without breaking the bank, or bending the rules? The name of the game for any gift exchange is to get something I call "strategically eccentric." You need to find something quirky and unique, so that you have a better chance of resonating with the quirks and uniqueness of the individual you're gifting. I've rounded up some ideas for crowd-pleasing presents that are both budget-friendly and hopefully a little useful, too. Whether you're shopping for a coworker you barely know, or the friend you know all too well, here are the best types of gifts to help you crush at Secret Santa this year. Quirky tech gadgetsWhen in doubt, go for something practical with a fun twist. LED bluetooth beanie. It's a great move for a gift exchange: Perfect for music lovers, cold weather, and it satisfies the need for something unique. I mean, I'd be shocked if anyone owned one of these of their own volition. Get one for $12.99. Portable charger (with a nice design). Keep their devices juiced up with a charger that's both functional and fun. A good charger should stick within the $20-25 range, like this Amazon best seller for $20.99. Smart mug. What better way to share warmth than a favorite drink at just the right temperature? A good smart mug can keep your drink at your preferred temperature (between 120°F - 145°F) for up to 80 minutes on a full charge, or all day if it stays on its charging coaster. A quality one will run you over $100 on Amazon, but this more affordable one for $16 seems perfectly fine. Ember Smart Mug 6"W x 6"H, 295 Milliliters, Scratch Resistant, Programmable $109.95 at Amazon $129.95 Save $20.00 Get Deal Get Deal $109.95 at Amazon $129.95 Save $20.00 Foodie crowd-pleasersAfter all, everyone needs to eat. Gourmet hot sauce set. Maybe they're a true spice enthusiast; maybe they just love watching celebrities sweat on Hot Ones. Either way, help them add some heat to their meals with this hot sauce variety pack for $24.99. Unique tea or coffee sampler. Ooh, a collection of exotic flavors to tantalize their taste buds. If you know that spices or sweets are going to be too much for your gift recipient, you can play it safe while still giving them something new to try. Depending on your budget, you can stick to a tasteful Tea Forte Tea Tasting Assortment for under $20, or spring for the Atlas Coffee Club World of Coffee Discovery Set for $59.99. Artisan chocolate tasting box. Because who doesn't love high-quality chocolate? Or, who doesn't love re-gifting high-quality chocolate to someone else? Again, your personal Secret Santa budget will dictate how decadent you get. Consider my personal favorite, this Taza Mexican-style chocolate sampler $28, or perhaps a fancier assorted truffles Godiva box for $50.00. Cozy comfort gifts'Tis the season for snuggling up and embracing laziness. Fuzzy socks multipack. Soft, warm, and always appreciated. If you're working with a tighter budget, you can play it safe with a multipack for just $17.99. Weighted eye mask. A luxurious touch for better sleep and relaxation. I stole one from my mom last year, and now I don't go a night without it. I recommend one with lavender stuffed into it, but everyone has different scent preferences. Here's a 3D sleep mask currently on sale for $15.99. Microwaveable heated slippers. The ultimate comfort gift for cold days. And delicious once warmed up! Just kidding. Please don't eat them. Available for $26. Creative findsGet them something you're sure they won't get themselves. Desk plant terrarium kit. A mini garden for the plant lover or office dweller. Get a cool geometric glass pattern, like this one currently on sale for $37. Raunchy adult card games. Think Cards Against Humanity or any similar party game that encourage players to let loose and feel funny. I recommend We're Not Really Strangers to really streamline breaking the ice with acquaintances and close friends alike. Prompts include "what part of your life works," "what part of your life hurts," and even just "admit something." Available for $25. Scratch-off adventure poster. A fun way to track and plan future experiences. Get ones themed around national parks, date ideas, or even "things to do with dad." All reasonably priced around $22. Cute Farms Glass Terrarium Kit | Just Add Your Own Plants (Geometric Glass) $36.76 at Amazon $45.95 Save $9.19 Get Deal Get Deal $36.76 at Amazon $45.95 Save $9.19 Self-care indulgencesHelp them treat themselves to a little luxury. Essential oil diffuser. A compact way to bring calm and aromatherapy anywhere. You can get the diffuser itself for around $20, but a smart move is to bundle it with premium essential oils, currently on sale for for $30.99. Fancy face mask set. Pamper-worthy skincare that feels like a spa day. Everyone has done a sheet mask before, but I highly encourage you to try out a true clay mask. This fun K Beauty variety pack is $14.95. Stress-relief squeeze toys. Cute and functional stress-busters. Make sure to share a knowing look with your fellow weary coworkers on this one. This fidget cube for adults is on sale for $13.95, or a significantly sillier "calma llama" is on sale for $12. Essential Oil Diffuser with Essential Oils Set 6.6"L x 6.6"W x 4.76"H, 500 Milliliters $30.99 at Amazon $36.99 Save $6.00 Get Deal Get Deal $30.99 at Amazon $36.99 Save $6.00 Extra tips for Secret Santa successThe advantage of Secret Santa over White Elephant is the ability to gain intel on your target. So, make sure to actually consider your gift recipient's interests and personality. Do research by asking mutual friends about their interests, stalk their social media for clues, and of course lie to your recipient about who you have so you can throw them off the scent. Remember, presentation matters—a little creative wrapping goes a long way. Another budget-friendly bonus: Most of these gifts come in under $25, giving you some wiggle room for a cute card or extra little add-on. Lifehacker's Stephen Johnson says that he goes with a lottery ticket—who knows, they could be a winner! Ultimately, the best gifts show you've put thought into the person, not how much money you've spent. (And hey, no matter how confident you feel in your gift-giving abilities, always include a gift receipt.) View the full article

After writing about productivity and organization for the past few years, I understand better than most that the vast majority of the advice you'll get about working more efficiently asks you to carefully schedule your day, plan out the exact type and number of tasks you're going to do, and be diligent to the point of near-militancy—literally. I also know better than anyone else what works for me, personally—and it usually looks like nothing so meticulous. Assiduous preplanning and scheduling can be beneficial for a lot of people, but there is no universally effective productivity technique. If the intricate routes aren't working for you or you simply find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer number of items on your to-do list, there's a far simpler, more straightforward, and easier method to try. It's the "one more" approach, and it's one of my favorite productivity hacks because it works extremely well in a variety of situations. What is the "one more" approach?I'm borrowing the name "one more" from a Reddit poster who referred to the technique that way, though I've done this for years without putting a name to it. The creator described how they prefer to break their tasks up into small pieces, then continually challenge themselves to do just "one more" mini-task before stopping. The example used was dealing with emails: When you have a load of messages to sort through and respond to, it can be daunting. If you use a classic technique to schedule time into your calendar just to tackle them all, you'll be faced with the harsh reality that there are dozens of pieces of correspondence that need your attention. It's demoralizing, and it may even cause you to procrastinate, making things worse in the long run. But if, instead of setting a time or amount, you just get to work and urge yourself to tackle "one more" email at a time, you'll feel motivated every time you you cross one off the list. If you feel energized enough to continue, well, you only have to do "one more." Examples where this will be effective abound. When I was discussing the concept with my colleagues this morning, Lifehacker Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki noted she does something similar in the gym: She asks herself, "Can I do one more rep?" or "Can I do one more minute?" and that keeps her moving. And actually, the gym is where I use this strategy the most: It's overwhelming to realize you have 17 minutes left to go on the treadmill, or five reps left on a heavy weight, so don't think that far ahead. Can you do one more? And can you still do one more after that? And after that? Where I find this most helpful, though, is cleaning. I hate cleaning, but I must do it, especially because I love being in a clean space. I have tried every kind of approach you can think of, but the only one that works is a combination of the two-minute rule and the one-more rule. Basically, as soon as I think of doing something or the motivation hits me, I just pop up and do it. If I catch sight of a dirty baseboard at the opportune moment, no matter what I'm doing, I just try to get up and get it over with instead of concocting some convoluted, multi-step cleaning strategy I will surely punk out on. When I finish the baseboard, I ask myself whether I can do one more thing. Almost always, after feeling a little motivated from my first task, I find I can take the garbage out, clean my fan, vacuum my rug, or whatever. Why "one more" is an effective productivity strategyAll big tasks are really comprised of smaller ones and, taken individually, those smaller tasks aren't as daunting. It's overwhelming to write a 10-page essay, but not that bad to think about it one page at a time. Every time you get one of the small parts done, you feel good about having done it. You get a boost of confidence, and you're ready to do it again. This approach is best suited to tasks that aren't especially urgent, so use a system like the Eisenhower matrix to figure out which of the jobs on your to-do list can be tackled this way. Then again, even that is a lot of planning and I don't practice what I preach here too well. I'm more inclined to make a big list of to-dos, but then, just by virtue of them being fresh in my mind from writing them down, get after them when the mood hits me. I keep a loose idea of what is and isn't important, hit the important ones first whenever I can, and try to push forward—at least with tasks that don't necessitate scheduling. This doesn't work for me at my job, of course, but it works on personal pursuits. That said, while you can use "one more" for one-off tasks, it can also work when you break complex jobs down into smaller components. Even as you're working on something bigger, you'll get that small sense of accomplishment and reinforce the feeling that you're chipping away at the larger task. Especially when it's something you don't really want to do—like working out or cleaning—thinking small in this way can keep you from getting burned out. If a project is overwhelming you, break it down into its smallest components and just do one, without worrying about how much time you have. Keep going with just one more until you you're out of time or finished with the job. If you find you can't do one more, even just because you feel tired or burned out, take a break. Taking breaks is fundamental to maintaining productivity, so let the honest answer to, "Can I do one more?" actually guide you. The goal is to boost your motivation and confidence, not demoralize you, so don't beat yourself up if you can't get through everything without a rest. View the full article

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning people to stop using certain types of glucose monitor sensors after the company that makes them, Abbott Diabetes Care, said the devices were linked to seven deaths and more than 700 injuries. Certain FreeStyle Libre 3 and FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus sensors may provide incorrect low glucose readings, FDA officials said this week. Such readings over an extended period may lead people with diabetes to make bad treatment decisions, such as consuming too many carbohydrates or skipping or delaying doses of insulin. “These decisions may pose serious health risks, including potential injury or death,” the FDA said in the alert. The sensors are devices that measure glucose levels in fluid just beneath the skin to provide real-time measurements of sugar in the blood. Information from the sensor is sent wirelessly to a device or phone. The warning affects about three million sensors in the U.S. from a single production line, Abbott officials said in a statement. About half those devices have expired or been used, the company added. As of Nov. 14, the company reported seven deaths worldwide and 736 serious adverse events. No deaths occurred in the U.S., where 57 injuries were reported. Abbott has notified all customers of the problem. The company said it has identified and resolved the issue in the affected production lot. The FDA said people should stop using affected sensors and discard them. The problem involved FreeStyle Libre 3 sensors with model numbers 72080-01 with unique device identifiers 00357599818005 and 00357599819002. It also involved FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus sensors with model numbers 78768-01 and 78769-01 and unique device identifiers 00357599844011 and 00357599843014. People can visit www.FreeStyleCheck.com to check if their sensors are potentially affected and request a replacement, the company said. No other FreeStyle Libre products are affected. —— The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. —Jonel Aleccia, AP Health Writer View the full article

Residents in London commuter town have been warned not to use the water to drink, cook, brush teeth or bathe childrenView the full article

Scented candle lovers, the day you have waited for all year is finally here. Today marks the kick-off of the annual Candle Day sales event from Bath & Body Works, during which the retailer’s pricey scented wax pillars will go for just a third of their regular cost. Here’s what you need to know about Candle Day 2025. What is Candle Day 2025? Candle Day is Bath & Body Works’ annual candle sale bonanza. Throughout the year, many of the company’s three-wick candles go for $29.95 each, but during Candle Day, many of those candles can be had for prices as low as $9.95. Due to the massive savings, Candle Day is a sales event that candle lovers across America look forward to each year. However, don’t let the “Candle Day” name fool you. Much like Amazon Prime Day, the title of the event is a bit misleading. As with Prime “Day,” Candle “Day” is not actually only a 24-hour event and instead runs across multiple days. During the event, Bath & Body Works says, over 180 varieties of candles will be on sale. When is Candle Day 2025? There are two different elements to Bath & Body Works’ Candle Day 2025: the online element and the in-store element. Candle Day’s deals are available both in-store and online, but the online portion of the sale actually kicks off earlier. For Candle Day 2025, the online (and mobile app) deals began at 10 p.m. last night, December 4. The in-store Candle Day event officially kicks off this morning at 6 a.m. Candle Day 2025 then runs both online and in-store from Friday, December 5, through Sunday, December 7. How much are Candle Day prices? Most three-wick candles at Bath & Body Works cost around $29.95 throughout the year. But during the Candle Day sales event, many of those same candles can be purchased for just $9.95. Customers will get the same sale price no matter if they shop online, in the mobile app, or in-store. Are there any new or limited-edition candles for Candle Day 2025? Yes. This year, Bath & Body Works is unveiling new, limited-time, and limited-edition candles for Candle Day 2025. The 2025 limited-edition candle is called Holiday Dill-ight, which the company describes as “Inspired by the quirky holiday tradition.” The company is also unveiling several new candle collections. The “Sunday Funday” collection includes Neapolitan Ice Cream, Gummy Candies, Glazed Cherries, Butterscotch Swirl, Sugared Waffle Cone, and Hot Fudge Drizzle. The “Perfect Pairings” collection includes Coffee & Donuts, Chips & Salsa, Pizza & Ranch, and Popcorn & Slushie. And the “Holiday Bucket List” collection includes new candles like Rum Rum Reindeer and Christmas Road Trip, along with returning holiday favorites Sweater Weather, Merry Mimosa, and Vanilla Balsam. Candle Day 2025 marks the retailer’s 14th Candle Day event. It comes just days after Newell Brands, parent company of Yankee Candle, announced it would be closing 20 Yankee Candle stores this year. Bath & Body Works has also struggled this year, reporting a 1% decrease in net sales for its third quarter. It expects sales will decline in the “low single digits” for the full year. Shares in Bath & Body Works (NYSE: BBWI) are down almost 50% in 2025. View the full article

This week, we, of course, covered the ongoing Google Search ranking volatility. Google is now blending AI Mode directly into AI Overviews. Google's home page search bar added a new upload feature to take you into AI Mode...View the full article

Modern performance tracking requires KPIs that reflect margin, lifetime value, and pipeline contribution instead of inflated platform numbers. The post The 8 Most Important PPC KPIs You Should Be Tracking appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virgina (DMV) region is emerging as a national test case for the future of office space. As cities across the country grapple with persistent office vacancies, D.C. is taking a bold approach: Instead of focusing solely on residential conversions, it is pioneering a broader strategy to convert offices to…anything. While the concept of office conversions isn’t new, most efforts have been centered on residential use. D.C.’s strategy breaks that mold. In January 2025, the city launched the Central Washington Activation Projects Temporary Tax Abatement, better known as the Office to Anything program. This policy targets buildings that aren’t suitable for housing conversion and opens the door to a wider range of uses. With this program, D.C. is positioning itself as a laboratory for alternative office conversions, from data centers to hospitality and mixed-use spaces. As federal workforce reductions continue and General Service Administration (GSA) leases expire, the DMV faces mounting vacancies. This presents a rare opportunity for other cities to watch D.C.’s approach in action and consider how similar policies could reshape their own urban cores. WHY D.C.’S OFFICE MARKET SIGNALS A NATIONAL SHIFT The DMV is ground zero for federal downsizing, with one-fifth of all federal workers, according to Brookings, and 46 million square feet of office space leased by the government. With our Federal Property Pulse (FPP) tool, we are tracking these GSA leases and cancellations across the U.S. Since January 2025, 24 leases in the region have been canceled, contributing to 1.9 million square feet of vacant office space. This is over 4% of the total space leased by the GSA. The FPP shows that another 9.98 million square feet of space could enter the already struggling DMV office market in the next year. This is a critical moment for the region. As the structure of the federal government continues to evolve, so must the economic core. Brookings’ DMV Monitor reported a mismatch in displaced federal government workers and available private sector positions. While there are new jobs entering the market, many of these are unsuited to the 17,000 displaced federal government workers, as the new roles are concentrated in construction, hospitality, and healthcare sectors. As GSA lease expiries and cancellations increase and federal workforce reduction continues, D.C. could become a case study for the role of office conversions in supporting a shifting economic core. FEDERAL LEASE EXPIRIES: A TICKING CLOCK FOR OFFICES A wave of expiring federal leases is approaching. As part of the effort to cut government spending, the GSA will reduce its leased footprint by allowing expiring leases to lapse without renewal. With the GSA leasing 145 million square feet of office space across the U.S., the DMV will not be the only region affected. Of that space, 51.4 million square feet are already in holdover, soft-term, or nearing soft-term. While we can predict an influx of former GSA-leased properties will enter the market, lease terms make it difficult to know exact timing. GSA leases typically include a noncancellable “hard-term” followed by a “soft-term,” where leases can be terminated with 120–180 days’ notice. This creates uncertainty around when properties will re-enter the market. UNLOCK NEW USES FOR OFFICE SPACE The initial hype around office-to-residential conversions was driven by a rise in vacant office properties in favorable downtown neighborhoods. These properties helped address housing shortages, but many of the most viable buildings have already been repurposed. With residential conversion options narrowing, cities must assess market demand and local economic drivers to identify alternative uses. The D.C. Office to Anything policy seeks to reposition underutilized office assets into higher-performing uses based on zoning, market demand, and building characteristics. Key alternative uses include small-scale industrial, data centers, hospitality, and mixed-use spaces. Looking beyond the office-to-residential model could offer cheaper conversions and shorter timelines. Small scale industrial and logistics conversions come in around $100-$150 per square foot with timelines of 6 to 12 months, while residential conversions cost $250-$400 per square foot with 24-to-36-month timelines. Not only do industrial uses offer lower conversion costs, but shorter timelines could also result in quick returns on investment. It isn’t only a matter of cost and timelines; alternative office conversions are better suited to meet the needs of an individual market. For some cities, data centers are emerging as an opportunity for conversion. With a projected shortfall of over 15 gigawatts of processing power by 2030, vacant office properties located near economic and urban centers could help to curb demand. In particular, offices can be converted to edge computing facilities that distribute processing and data storage, keeping these capabilities closer to data sources. WHAT MAKES CONVERSIONS WORK? Successful conversions depend on two things: physical feasibility and financial viability. Local government support is key to improving the viability of conversions through streamlined approval processes, zoning flexibility, and financial support. Zoning is one of the first, and more formidable hurdles that office conversions face. If a commercial property cannot be rezoned, the entire viability of the project falls apart. Downtowns with zoning flexibility will see the most success in the long run. In Texas, statewide zoning flexibility is enabling office conversions in cities like Dallas. Local government can also play a major role in determining the financial viability of a conversion project. Without tax incentives or subsidies, the cost of conversions could be prohibitive. This is part of what makes D.C.’s Office to Anything conversions so appealing. Providing a 15-year temporary property tax freeze, the policy improves viability. Combined with the potential for lower conversion costs for nonresidential uses, these projects could become more appealing for developers. SCALE THE STRATEGY The DMV isn’t alone in facing office vacancy challenges. Across the U.S., millions of square feet in GSA properties stand to enter the market. D.C. can show us what to do with that vacant space. Office conversions don’t have to mean housing, they can mean anything. As cities continue to rethink their economic cores, the success of D.C.’s Office to Anything strategy could redefine how we use space. Mark Rose is chair and CEO of Avison Young. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. A major component of productivity is prioritizing your daily responsibilities and addressing them in an order that makes sense, which is why to-do lists are so important. Usually, I suggest using the Eisenhower Matrix, which helps you visually sort tasks according to how urgent and important they are, but there is another way: The ABCDE method, which comes from Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy. Obviously, eating the frog—or doing your biggest, most demanding task first each day—is one way to tackle the day’s duties, but structuring out how you’ll do the rest is pretty important, too. Here’s how it works. What is the ABCDE method of productivity?The ABCDE method is a simple way to categorize whatever you need to do and figure out which things are most pressing, most demanding, and most relevant. Using it can be a solid first step to making your to-do list, especially if you’re following a model like the 1-3-5 list, which requires you to do one major task, three medium-sized ones, and five small ones every day. Figuring out the big, medium, and small tasks is actually a task in itself (but it doesn’t count as one of the five, sorry). This approach is a little easier than similar prioritization techniques because it's more subjective. When you are planning out your day, you’re going to give each task in front of you a grade. First, list out everything you need to do. This can be a list of your tasks for the day, week, or month—you’ll weed it all down eventually. Then, give them each a grade based on this outline: A is for the most important tasks, like anything that will have a consequence if it doesn’t get done. These are the “frog” tasks that will require resources and time, but they can also be something that doesn’t take a lot of time but does have a hefty associated punishment for failure, like paying a bill on time. B tasks are ones that also need to get done, but won’t have such serious ramifications if they’re not done immediately. You know you need to do them at some point (lest they escalate to the urgency of an A task) but you have a little wiggle room. If you have a make-or-break exam in a month, studying for it now might be a B task, but if you wait too long, it'll quickly become A. C tasks don’t have any consequences for not getting done, but are things it would be good to get taken care of. For me, a C task might be responding to a PR pitch to say I’m not interested in interviewing their client. I didn’t need to do it, but it’s a nice thing to do that keeps a professional relationship friendly. (Conversely, a B task would be responding to someone’s publicity agent right away when they’re trying to nail down a time for an interview. An A task would be doing the interview.) D tasks are anything that you can delegate to someone else. The person you give it to shouldn’t have any A or B tasks it will take away from; it should become a priority for them, even if it’s not major for you or simply something you trust they’ll get done right. This is where it gets a little subjective and may not work for everyone. If you're a manager at work or the adult in your household, this is easy enough, but if you're working on personal tasks, it's not always relevant. You can think a little more abstractly here, if it helps. Sometimes, when I have a lot of laundry to do, I'm overly busy, and it's bordering on being an A task, I actually turn it into a D task by calling a pick-up and delivery service. Think of things you can outsource, even if you aren't exactly in a position to "delegate." Even an A or B task like "plan tonight's meal" or "clean the house" could be a D task if you're in a position to order a pizza or hire a cleaner. Be open to seeing D tasks among everything on your list, even if it takes some practice, as it clears the way for more As and Bs. E tasks are ones you eliminate altogether. If they serve absolutely no purpose, have no consequences attached to them, or may even pull you off course, just don’t do them. This is a pretty relative grade, though: Say you wanted to go to the grocery store and try a new recipe tonight but just don’t have time. You have enough food at home, so you don't even need takeout. It’s fine to eliminate it this time, but when you deplete all your food, the grocery store trip will roar back onto the list in a higher position. Other E tasks may never reappear; they’re just inconsequential. Ignore them to reduce pressure on yourself. Even giving yourself permission not to do things can be a major motivator and is a productivity method of its own. Like I said, this is a little subjective and it may take some time to get the hang of accurately categorizing your tasks. There are other, more intense ways of prioritizing your daily responsibilities and if you're struggling with giving your to-dos a grade, you might need to try something a little more data-focused. The goal here is to be quick and efficient so you can stop stressing about what needs to be done, then prioritize it, and just start doing it. Use the ABCDE grades to be more productiveOnce every task has been assigned a grade, start planning out your day (and week and month). Here’s where that 1-3-5 to-do list comes in: The one big task should be an A task, something that is urgent and timely, and/or requires major resources and focus. The three medium-sized tasks might include a smaller A-level one, but will most likely be Bs. For the five smaller tasks, pick up any leftover B grades and, if you want, Cs. As for the D-level things, outsourcing and coordinating on them might still require enough work to qualify carrying out the delegation as one of your five smaller tasks, but it depends how much effort that really takes and what the rest of your day is looking like. Don’t shoot the messenger, but you might have to fall back on a C task to get the delegation taken care of. The E grades can just be crossed off. Go ahead and delete them or strike them out. It’ll feel good (and productive) to get that finality on them. Once you’ve organized which tasks are necessary for the day, look ahead at the week and make sure you keep any B-level responsibilities in mind and roll them over to a day that works for you if you don’t have time that particular day. Putting them off will turn them into As pretty quickly. As always, rely on timeboxing to schedule out the day from there. Allocate time for each task in your calendar, giving yourself the most time for major A-level duties and less and less time for B and C. Don’t multitask; instead, do each thing in order, starting by eating the frog and moving through the other things one at a time until they’re done. (The exception here is that if you’re delegating tasks, try to get it done early so the other person has time to complete what should be an A- or B-level job for them, too.) Grading your responsibilities is an easy way to get perspective on them and enhance your sense of urgency around them, which compels you to be more productive. Getting it all into an ordered list gives you structure and direction, wastes less time throughout the day, and will give you a sense of accomplishment when you’re done, which itself is a productivity win. View the full article