I love winning.

It doesn’t matter what’s involved or what the prize is, I’ll do what I can to achieve my goal of clinching that ‘winner’ title.

When I was 6, my primary school held an egg and spoon race as part of its sports day activities. The prize was a yardstick of chocolate. Let’s just say that, by lunchtime, there were tears and tantrums elsewhere while my face was smeared with chocolate.

To this day, I’m still (perhaps unhealthily) incentivized by goals. Particularly in the workplace. I’m not alone in this though, as numerous studies show that goal-setting improves employee performance and engagement.

Do you relish winning, too?

And do you want the next quarter to be your team’s best quarter ever?

Then you need to know about OKRs (objectives and key results). It’s basically an adult version of the egg and spoon race.

That’s why, in this short, informative Process Street post, I’ll define OKRs, describe their business benefits, give advice on how to write solid OKRs, and also provide OKR examples from the likes of Google.

Just make your way through the following sections to learn all about OKRs:

• What is an OKR?
• The business benefits of the OKR methodology
• How to write inspiring, useful OKRs
• 3 OKR examples — including ones Google use
• Moving forward as an OKR-aligned team

Now, let’s make this quarter more than OK.

Let’s make it internally record-breaking, thanks to OKRs!

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This is a guest post by Jack Paxton, the co-founder of VYPER, a marketing tool that helps brands build email lists, social followings, and revenue using viral giveaways, referral, and reward programs. Jack spent millions of dollars testing different marketing strategies at his marketing agency. He then also co-founded Hyax a fast, conversion & design-focused course and funnel builder for creators.

Famous SaaS brands like Dropbox and PayPal witnessed explosive growth in their platforms. Since 2007, Dropbox has grown into a $4 billion-dollar company, and PayPal went from 1 million users to 5 million in the same year (2000).

Dropbox and PayPal are two entirely different businesses operating in different markets. However, they share a similar viral growth strategy, one that is still used today.

Any ideas on what this strategy might be?

You got it, they both harness the power of referral marketing.

SaaS brands worldwide, including us at Process Street, are realizing the benefits of referral marketing: to constantly acquire new customers, build platforms, and promote customer loyalty and trust.

In this article, we present world-famous referral programs to determine what made them successful and how you can do the same.

Click on the relevant links to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say, to optimize your growth strategy via referral programs.

• What is referral marketing?
• The power of referral marketing
• How to create a successful referral program

Let’s jump to it!
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Agent *reader*, I call upon you today as we’re at a time of crisis. Humans have annihilated 83% of all wild animals and are disrupting a natural climate balance, throwing us into a projected future that is 4.1 – 4.8°C (39.38 – 40.64 °F) warmer.

It’s our duty, as citizens, business owners, and employees to change the narrative for our children’s lives; to kickstart a transition into a more sustainable future, one that enriches biodiversity and a balanced climate. And for this, we turn our attention to sustainable cities.

According to the World Health Organization, the global world population living in urban areas is expected to increase to 66% by 2050, making cities a perfect place to transform society and support biodiversity and a balanced climate.

In this Process Street article, we’ll become time-travelers, zipping into the future to assess two separate predicted scenarios.

• Scenario 1: The continuation of human activity as normal.
• Scenario 2: Transforming into a more sustainable future, starting with our cities.

Today, we meet at a crossroad, where our future could go two ways. We’ll explore these two separate scenarios, before addressing the role of sustainable cities in creating a more desirable world. We’ll look at how businesses must adapt to survive in a future that is carbon-neutral with rich biodiversity.

After all, who wouldn’t want such a future?

• What are sustainable cities?
• Our future cities are sustainable
• Sustainable cities: Key takeaways for corporate sustainability

Seat belts on, time-machine ignited, to the future here we come!
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Dave Nevogt is the CEO and co-founder of Hubstaff Have you ever been enjoying a productive streak when — out of nowhere — a meeting invite interrupts your day? He leads a 100% remote team that builds time tracking and productivity tools, including the Agile project management software, Hubstaff Tasks.

Have you ever been enjoying a productive streak when — out of nowhere — a meeting invite interrupts your day?

Or, has someone ever requested a meeting with you, and after some investigation, you realize that this could have been answered in an email?

Let’s face it, meetings are often met with disdain, and for good reason: many are unnecessary.

You can tell by how often meetings are studied, and how much time goes into rethinking them. It turns out that:

• 73% of people multitask while in meetings. Clearly, most meetings are not worth our full attention.
• Detailed agendas can decrease the amount of meeting time up to 80%. Yet only 37% percent of companies use them.

It’s time to make a change. And that change is to clear your schedule as much as possible. Fortunately, this Process Street blog post is here to guide you in making these changes.

• The benefits of holding productive meetings
• The 7 secrets to productive meetings
• Avoid overload and focus solely on productive meetings
• How can Process Street help you run productive meetings

Let’s dive in! Continue Reading

Q: What do you get if you cross Santa with a duck?
A: A Christmas quacker!

The only thing better than a good old Christmas cracker joke is a good old Christmas ad.

Festive, heartwarming, and thought-provoking, TV Christmas ads signify the start of Christmas.

And they’re a marketers dream. According to research, for every $1.30 that’s spent making a Christmas ad, retailers can expect to get $31 back.

How do Christmas ads generate so much revenue? When did Christmas ads become such a huge deal? What are the best Christmas ads EVER made? And what makes a Christmas ad the best EVER?

Time to find out as we get ‘Santa-mental’ and ‘sleigh’ our way through the following topics in this Process Street post:

• ”It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas ads”: When did it all start (and who started it)?
• ”On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…”: How do Christmas ads affect the bottom line?
• ”Last Christmas ad I gave you my heart”: Why are they so effective?
• ”All I want for Christmas ads is you”: What are the best EVER Christmas ads & why?

Ready? Hold on for ‘deer’ life and let’s ‘snow’…

(The ‘presents’ of these terrible Christmas puns do ‘snow’ down – I promise.) Continue Reading

Project management requires a wide spectrum of skills, organizational abilities, and attention to detail to make sure everything moves forward according to plan. A good project manager is able to keep all the plates spinning in sync while making it appear effortless at the same time.

However, the more plates you have spinning at once, the harder this is to accomplish. Critical path method (CPM) is one of the tools project managers can use to create a comprehensive plan and organize complex projects with many moving parts.

In this Process Street post, I’ll take you through the CPM process step-by-step, and then show you how our templates and checklists can take some of the stress out of your project management.

Read on, or feel free to skip ahead:

• Project management 101
• What is critical path method?
• Steps to effectively (and easily) use the critical path method
• Project management with Process Street

Let’s jump in!
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This is a guest post by Jin Choi. Jin Choi is a writer who runs the MoneyNam blog. His favorite hobbies include learning about the newest trends in online marketing and lifting heavy iron at the gym.

The customer lifecycle consists of the stages that a customer goes through from the moment they become aware of your company to the moment they purchase your product.

It’s essential to apply the right strategies for each stage of the customer lifecycle if you want to maximize your customer lifetime value (CLV).

In order to build a successful company, it’s important to focus on the CLV.

Why?

Because repeat customers are nine times more likely to buy the same product from a new seller.

This Process Street guest post provides you with the tools to understand each of the stages of the customer lifecycle so that you can maximize the value of each and every customer you acquire.

• The stages of the customer lifecycle
• Customer lifecycle stage 1: Awareness
• Customer lifecycle stage 2: Engagement
• Customer lifecycle stage 3: Evaluation
• Customer lifecycle stage 4: Purchase
• Customer lifecycle stage 5: Post-purchase
• Customer lifecycle stage 6: Advocacy
• Customer lifecycle marketing: A summary

Let’s get started.
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Have you ever typed out a full message on your phone, only to realize that you’ve misspelled something at the very beginning?

It can often take you longer to navigate the teeny-tiny cursor back to fix your mistake than it did to write the message in the first place, right?

I’ve got a little trick that will make correcting your texts 10x easier.

If you slide your finger over the spacebar, you can move the cursor around quickly, easily, and accurately, letter by letter.

Try it!

With this small but effective tip, I’ve not only taught you how to get more value out of your phone, but I’ve also given you an example of how customer success works.

“When you teach your clients how to maximize the value of your product, you help them succeed and you show them why it pays to stick with you.” – Tenfold, 10 Companies Mastering Customer Success

Now, if I was an organization, I’d want to provide this type of value to my customers on a far larger scale – all of the time. And, judging by the fact that the use of customer success software platforms has risen from 25% to 43% over the past few years, so would a lot of other people.

Allow me to elaborate as we go through the following in this Process Street post:

• What is customer success software & what does it do?
• Why you need customer success software
• How do you choose the right customer success software?
• 4 customer success software platforms to consider

So, put your phone aside, and let’s get cracking!
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Way back in 2014, we first tried our hand at launching on Product Hunt with an early version of Process Street. It got featured, but that was a different time; when Product Hunt’s staff manually selected each product feature (these days Product Hunt claims that an automated algorithm decides).

It was hunted (Product Hunt lingo for “promoted”) by Audrey Melnik of Funnel Ventures, didn’t even have a maker (another Product Hunt termin for the creators of a product), yet still found its way to the front page of Product Hunt.

Six years, a couple of relaunches, and a $12 million Series A on from that humble effort, Process Street has changed a fair bit. We’ve shipped over 30 products on Product Hunt; from podcasts, new Process Street feature launches, to whole product launches, to eBooks.

Some of them were great successes, with multiple top 4 spots and a whole bunch of front-page features. Others weren’t so great; some garnered next to no traction and were essentially dead-on-arrival.

The point of this article is to impart some of the lessons we’ve learned, from common myths and misconceptions, to what worked well for us (and what didn’t work so well).

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ll be covering:

• Why you should care about Product Hunt
• Common misconceptions about Product Hunt launches
• How to prepare for a Product Hunt launch (free checklist)
• Key takeaways: How to have a successful Product Hunt launch

Let’s start with the basics, which often get taken for granted when it comes to deciding whether or not to launch on Product Hunt.
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I have a riddle for you:

What has four sides, often goes missing, comes from trees, and can be expensive to reproduce?

I’ll give you a hint.

It wastes up to 40% of on-the-job time, and about $120 billion per year in the US alone.

Need another?

Around 7.5% of them will be lost or misplaced each year (about one lost every 12 seconds), and for each that gets lost you’re looking at a loss of between $350 to $700 in employee time.

Did you get it yet?

Condescending sarcasm aside, I am of course talking about paper forms. But this article isn’t about paper forms, per se; it’s about how you can get rid of paper forms in your business with form automation software.

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