One Kings Lane CEO: 5 current trends within the e-commerce space

After being the first to launch a flash sale site in the home market—an idea that not everyone thought would work—in 2009, One Kings Lane is now the second most-visited premium home décor site on the web.

With more than 5 million members, $100 million in revenue in 2011 (up 300% from 2010), One Kings Lane is a rocket ship of e-commerce success, and today at the Online Merchandising Workshop, attendees were treated to some insights from two of the leaders of its “e-commerce dream team”, CEO Doug Mack and VP of Marketing Jim Kingsbury.

7 Traits of Highly Successful Social CEO's

Rising through the ranks is never easy but today it takes more than mere talent or even leadership skills; modern managers, small business owners, entrepreneurs and CEO’s must be adept communicators and social giants. As a social media management firm, we encounter our fair share of budding entrepreneurs, small business owners and top brass CEO’s; there are always a few that stand out head and shoulders above the rest. Of course, our observations are also supported by the research into what makes some CEO’s better suited for social media while others seem to lag behind. Is it age? Gender? Personality type? Nope…none of the above! Do you have what it takes to reach the top? See for yourself by comparing these 7 traits found among highly successful social CEO’s:

Finding The Decision Maker

As sales people, we are trained to ruthlessly seek out the decision maker and focus all our efforts on that individual.  Whether it’s to understand their needs, provide insight, pitch a solution, our focus is on finding the decision maker and locking in on that individual.

We’re trained to ask pointed questions like, “Are you the decision maker?”  There’s only one answer that a customer will give to that question–it’s “Yes,”  or the variant, “Yes, I’m involved in making the decision.”  As a side note, do we ever expect the customer to say, “No, I just had idle time on my hands and thought it would be interesting to spend it with a sales person on something I have no interest in.”

CEOs’ top priority: understanding and serving “markets of one”

“Fundamentally, the only competitive advantage one has is client knowledge,” says Thomas Kalaris, CEO of Barclays Wealth and Investment Management. Understanding customers as individuals has become priority one for CEOs – as a group, they’re investing more in consumer insights than any other area.

After in-person interviews with over 1,700 CEOs from 18 industries across 64 countries, IBM released the results of their biennial Global CEO Study. Here are three key takeaways from the study.

Data will finally define “markets of one”