Kevin Elliott is a Marketing Manager for NiceJob, a platform that helps businesses collect and share customer reviews to improve their reputation and leverage it to increase sales and drive growth. He enjoys writing about business tips, workflow management, digital marketing, and customer experience. He has a cute puppy named Karl.

SaaS businesses and B2B sellers face unique challenges across the business landscape. You have to deal with long sales cycles and supposedly fickle buyers with multiple stakeholders who need to comply with internal policies—barriers unknown to many small, B2C businesses. But it’s exactly these circumstances that make tried-and-true techniques from consumer marketing so valuable for SaaS brands.

Think about it – getting a lead to book a demo or convert on a landing page, let alone actually buy, ultimately comes down to one thing: trust. In other words, are you a trustworthy brand?

All buyers, at the end of the day, are human. B2B buyers of enterprise software carefully evaluate SaaS providers for a reason: they want to feel like they can trust you. And there’s no better indicator of trust than leveraging social proof – the act of using client data, feedback, reviews, or sentiments – to your advantage to gain the trust of leads. So it’s no surprise that social proof is incredibly valuable to B2B companies.

Clearbit – one of the world’s largest marketing-data companies – added a testimonial to their landing pages and increased conversions by 84%!

In this Process Street article, you will learn all about what social proof is, what its benefits are, and some examples of social proof for SaaS businesses to help your company take off to new heights!

• So what is “social proof” exactly?
• The benefits of social proof marketing for SaaS companies
• 4 tips to jumpstart your social proof marketing strategy

Let’s dive in!
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Teams are like families.

No, I don’t mean in that cheesy, woo-woo “We are family” way we all roll our eyes at.

Yeah. I’m gonna be singing that song all day.

Teams are like families in the very literal sense that you’re thrown together with a bunch of random people you may or may not have anything in common with, may or may not even like, forced to interact on a daily basis, and expected to – somehow – make that all work.

If you’re lucky, you end up with the Bradys; less lucky, you’d be right at home among the Bluths. Or the Bateses.

Most of us – hopefully – probably end up somewhere in between, but team psychological safety is important even if your manager isn’t hiding in the attic after faking his own death.The fact is, though, you can’t force psychological safety; it has to be something you create organically – as a team. Not everyone’s sense of safety will be the same, and more significantly, each person may not be able to explain exactly why or why not they feel safe in a particular group or situation.

But fear not, dear reader: I have a solution. By focusing on your team’s workflows, you can substantially improve their psychological safety and foster an environment of mutual trust and respect.

Coincidentally, perfecting workflows is what we do here at Process Street, so in this post, I’ll explain five ways you can use workflows to improve psychological safety within a hybrid team.

• What is psychological safety?
• The impact of psychological safety on team performance
• How to improve your team’s psychological safety
• Your 2-minute psychological safety check

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Big Data freaks me out.

Chalk it up to being spoonfed George Orwell at an early age or adolescent heroes like Fox Mulder and Neo. Maybe it’s being one of those darn, pesky Millennials always rousing rabble while perpetually straddling the conflicting worlds of analog vs digital.

Regardless: I do not trust institutions, especially institutions that want my information.

On the other hand, I use Google for everything, Alexa lives in every room of my house, and I get really annoyed when Netflix doesn’t remember that I watched something. 10 years ago. On DVD.

We will live within this dichotomy of acceptable spying and unacceptable spying. “Cyberstalking” acquaintances, colleagues, and future partners is considered the norm, as a consumer, it’s fantastic. Who doesn’t love being shown that exact thing you don’t really need the minute you pop ‘round to your friendly internet megastore?

All of those things depend on Big Data. As data collection methods improve, more and more applications for that data are coming into play. In addition to customer profiles, education, healthcare, and finance are all jumping on the Big Data bandwagon.

While traditionally more art than science, HR departments have also become recent converts to the sway of data collection. Applying hard data to soft skills may feel wrong, but people analytics has a vital role to play in measuring the employee experience.

But with additional metrics, new sources, and faster methods of collection popping up every day, what will the future of people analytics look like? More importantly, what role will Big Data play in that evolution?

In this Process Street post, I’m going to look at exactly what Big Data is and the three primary ways it will affect the hows, whys, and whats of people analytics going forward.

• What exactly is “Big Data”?
• The 4 V’s of Big Data
• The future of Big Data and people analytics

To the future!
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“I really must go to the third floor,” Renfield insists over the other employees’ protests. “I’ve been asked to consult with the head of people management about creating an analytics team. They’re expecting me.”

One of the nearby workers grabs Renfield’s lapels and pulls him close. “You don’t understand,” the man says. “We here in the office believe that people management is…” He glances around, nervously, leans closer and whispers, “We believe they’re really… human resources!”

“Oh, that’s just assistants’ gossips,” Renfield says. “Now, really, you must let me through. I have an appointment.”

“Wait!” The office manager pushes through the crowd, waving a form above her head. “If you won’t listen, then take this W-2. It’ll protect you.” She thrusts the form into Renfield’s hand and adds, “It’s riddled with mistakes.”

The third floor is dimly lit, offices still only partially constructed, furniture still draped in plastic. No signs indicate where he should go and a sense of abandonment clings to the scent of still-wet paint. “Hello?” he calls.

A figure appears, the light flickering around them. “I bid you welcome,” they say, and Renfield notices the tappity-tap-tap of many fingers rushing over keyboards. “Listen to them, the collectors of data. What music they make! Come along,” the People Team leader instructs, gliding down the hallway toward a single shaft of light Renfield can swear wasn’t there a moment ago. “Data is the life, Mr. Renfield.”

Wait. Why are you talking about vampires again, Leks?

There is a reason, and I assure you it’s not merely a way to shamelessly shoehorn my side interests into work-related topics. (Mostly.)

For contemporary businesses, data really is the lifeblood of your company. It’s what keeps everything moving from making sure there are paper clips in the supply cabinet to getting your product into the hands of the right user. Without accurate, up-to-date data, your organization isn’t even in the running to be a successful company.

While gathering quality consumer data is essential for the contemporary organization, data analytics has another equally important role to play: people management.

There are four main categories you need to think about for an effective analytics framework: Enablers, Deliverables, Stakeholder Management, and Governance.

In this Process Street post, I’ll explain what they are, how to use them, and how to not be creepy about it. Before you know it, you’ll wonder how you ever made HR decisions before people analytics came along.

• Will you be an HR hero or an HR hooligan?
• Is it time for you to form a people analytics team?
• Isson & Harriot’s 7 Pillars of People Analytics Success
• The 4 ingredient categories of the People Analytics Effectiveness Wheel
• Power tools for your people analytics team
• A word of caution on people analytics procedures

Let’s analyze some data!
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Bora Lee is the Manager of Customer Enablement at ChurnZero. She is passionate about helping customer success teams succeed by crafting big-picture strategies executed through automated, streamlined processes that put the right data in front of the right customer at exactly the right time. She works hand in hand with customer success leaders to create fruitful, long-term relationships and to maximize customer satisfaction. In her free time, you will find her scuba diving and traveling.

Since customer success (CS) is still an emerging field, it’s not uncommon to find CS leaders who are founding their company’s first CS team or creating CS processes from scratch. Being the new department on the block, you may have had to find workarounds to other team’s more established processes. Or you might have encountered the common workplace scenario of inheriting your predecessor’s way of working.

No matter how your processes came to be, I can tell you one thing: they’re not perfect.

You can’t put your processes on a pedestal or become complacent with their adherence. Your market, solutions, and customers are constantly evolving. Your processes must adapt to the people and to the context – not the other way around.

Especially when you’re implementing CS processes for the very first time, it’s impossible to account for the multiple variances that will occur when you put concept into practice.

Instead of striving for process perfection, a goal more worthy of your efforts is the continuous improvement of your processes – routinely assessing their design, usage, output, and effectiveness.

And that’s where audits come in. By auditing your processes, you can uncover if dips in your performance metrics are merely a fluke or perhaps the cause of an undiagnosed bottleneck. Or if outwardly unrelated customer complaints actually stem from the same source.

As you audit over time, your small incremental efficiency gains add up. Consistent and measured refinement is the key to sustainable growth.

When auditing, it’s all about asking the right questions to uncover both the visible and underlying issues in your processes. To keep your customer success operations running smoothly, in this Process Street article, we’ve detailed a few simple, yet commonly overlooked questions to ask during your next process audit:

• Does your process align with your team’s responsibilities?
• What parts of your process generate the most feedback?
• Outside of the process, what other work does your team perform?
• Where do you have process bottlenecks?
• Where’s your team spending too much time?
• How should the process ideally work?
• Are you getting the data you need?

Let’s get right to it!
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“It is largely determined by the mindset and practices of teamwork, not by the design and structures of effective teams. Teaming is teamwork on the fly.” – Professor Amy Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

When I started this post for Process Street, it suddenly occurred to me exactly how much of my time is spent on the concept of “teams” – writing about them, talking about them, thinking about them, participating in them.

Teams have taken over my life. It was only a matter of time before I ran into “teaming.”

Teaming was coined and developed by Professor Amy Edmondson, who also has the rather distinguished achievement of founding the MIT Leadership Center.

Obviously, she’s a very qualified person who knows what she’s talking about, but when has that ever stopped my skepticism before?

I’m kidding. Teaming is an idea purpose-built for the contemporary tech-centric, remote office, pivot on a dime work environment. This post will explain what it is, how it’s been used, and how Process Street makes it easy for anyone to adopt.

• “Teaming on the fly”
• Successful teams, teaming, and a Chilean mine
• Teaming the Process Street way

Let’s team up!
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During Sicily’s summer heatwave, Floridia’s famouse snails were baked alive in their shells when temperatures reached an alarming ~120 Fahrenheit (49 Celsius).

Wildfires have been blazing elsewhere in Italy, as well as in France, Greece, Australia, California – can anyone remember when there wasn’t a relentless, uncontrollable wildfire somewhere?

2021 was also the year it rained on a Greenland ice cap for the first time and Canada’s last arctic shelf collapsed.

Meanwhile, July 29, 2021 was declared Earth Overshoot Day, meaning the world’s population had already consumed more that year than the planet could regenerate.

(For the record, the US and Canada hit their overshoot day on March 14, while the UK managed to last until May 19. Pat yourselves on the back, folks.)

What does this have to do with HR management? Isn’t green branding more of a marketing problem? Or operations? Or any other department but HR?

Actually, no.

The fact is: No company can go green without employee buy-in. Don’t get me wrong – leadership has to be all-in, too, but if your people aren’t on board with your green initiatives and policies, they’re going to fail and fail hard.

Which is where HR comes in.

In this Process Street post, I’m going to lay out 9 fairly simple best practices that you and your team should be doing if you want to ensure that your pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) succeed.

• The business of going green
• Best practices to boost your GHRM yield
• Reaping the rewards of GHRM

Let’s get to work!
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Unless you work with small children or large animals, the expectation of staying dry at work is pretty high. I know my workstation is very not water-resistant.

So when Blake Thorne (our product marketing manager) pitched me an article about DRY, I had no idea what he was talking about. According to our three wise men in engineering, that’s to be expected. The DRY principle is almost exclusively used in software development; those of us outside don’t have much cause to consider it.

Or do we?

And this is what Blake wanted to get at. “It’s the principle of ‘don’t repeat yourself,’” he explained. “Cut out all the unnecessary, repetitious code.”

“But one of our values is to overcommunicate,” I countered. “Everything. Twice, even. Don’t those two concepts cancel each other out?”

“Maybe,” he conceded. “But what if they actually don’t?”

I am a sucker for a good what-if.

Here I’ll go over the principle of DRY – plus WET and AHA (oh, those rascally devs) – and how here at Process Street we manage to overcommunicate without repeating ourselves. Because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll also point out the 4 best features to get you on the same path.

• The 3 principles of programming (when you’re not a programmer)
• Process Street’s DRY-est features
• At the risk of repeating myself…

Let’s get to it!
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I view most management gurus with the same wariness and suspicion the average person might approach a traveling medicine show peddling sparkling water as a miracle cure. Or, in this case, basic common sense as innovative management techniques.

Recently, I picked up Reengineering the Corporation by Dr. Michael Hammer and James Champy, both highly lauded as leading practitioners of their own concept. Based on their personal bios and their book, both are imminently pleased with themselves about this.

Fair enough. If I’d built an entire career on a single concept, I’d be pretty pleased with myself, too.

But is their idea still relevant nearly 30 years later?

I wanted to find out, so I asked many experts many, many questions (shoutouts to the ones who didn’t file restraining orders! You’re the best ) and read far too many long-winded reports.

These are the things I’m willing to do for you. That’s how much I care.

And because I care, I’ve taken all that super relevant knowledge, filtered it through my usual scampishness, and now offer you an overview of the book, the concept, and what it means for your favorite COO.

• Be the process that you want to reengineer
• If it ain’t broke: Reorganizing organizations the Hammer & Champy way
• Reengineering the Corporation: Benefits & backing
• Reengineering the Corporation: Criticism & consequences
• Can today’s COO still learn from Reengineering the Corporation?

Let’s go break some stuff.
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Every company needs HR, but not every company needs an HR department.

For those who aren’t looking to set up the traditional HR team, Payroll Processors has the solution: an entire HR department stuffed into a single platform so you can streamline all your payroll and employee management needs in one place.

Much like us here at Process Street, the folks at Payroll Processors believe: let us take care of things so you can focus on your business.

It’s no surprise, then, that when Payroll Processors wanted to focus on its business, it came to us, and so began a beautiful relationship.
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