Together with

Salutations, Olio aficionados! 👋

Happy Hump Day and welcome to the 66th edition of Weekly Olio - your trusty source for giggles, wisdom, and a dash of intrigue courtesy of our tantalizing thought piece (yes, buckle up for Publisher's Parmesan). 🧀

The Quote󠀢 💭

The Tweet 🐦

The Cultural Tutor is one of our favorite Twitter (now X) writers on art and culture. For those of you who want to appreciate art but struggle for a starting point, this thread is a must read. It is a step by step primer on different art styles, the top masters that defined each style and the historical context that led to the emergence of that style. Must read if you want to make sense of what are you artsy friends are talking about!

The Infographic 💹

While Valentine’s Day wrapped up last week, our friends at The Economist put together this interesting graphic on the fifteen most expensive cities in the world for a lavish date: starting with drinks at a swanky hotel, followed by a lavish two-course meal, a trip to the cinema, a taxi home and nice bottle of bubbly to cap things off. Interestingly, couples in Shanghai and Bahrain spend more than entire Europe. Paris - the city of love manages to snag the fifth spot - just ahead of another middle eastern city, Amman. Which city will you choose for next year’s Valentine’s Day?

The Short Read 📝

At 43, why the Rohan Bopanna show has only begun - by India Today

A few weeks back, Rohan Bopanna shocked the world by winning the his maiden Australian Open Men’s Doubles championship at the young age of 43 years! By doing so, he became the oldest person to win a slam and the oldest person to rank number 1 in men’s doubles.

Rohan’s journey is a story of grit and resilience. The last time he won a Grandslam was in 2017 - the mixed doubles title at the French Open. From almost retiring from the sport to coming back and winning a grand slam, speaks volumes about his resilience. Lots of life lessons from his victory in Melbourne.

The Long Read 📜

The business of check cashing - by Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie, also known as “patio11”, is a former Japanese salaryman turned entrepreneur who has run several small software companies. He has worked for Stripe and is known for his prolific writing, particularly on the intersection of marketing and engineering.

The article discusses the alternative financial world of check cashing. The service primarily aids individuals at the socioeconomic margins by converting payroll and other checks into cash or immediately spendable value for a fee. This industry has been controversial due to its existence and the persistence of its customers in using it. The article also explains the process of check presentment, where a banked individual deposits a physical check with their bank, which then makes an electronic copy of the check and communicates it to the bank the check is drawn on.

🎉 Drum roll, please! 🥁 Let's give a hearty round of applause to our guest post writer, Shruti Gupta! 📜🎩

Shruti is currently a multidisciplinary designer and a Founding member of Glowstick building a Conversational Intelligence Platform for post-sales teams. Previously, she has worked with Tribalscale, GOLO and Bankbazaar.

Publisher’s Parmesan 🧀

Account Managers & Dynamic Whitespace Map

Every week on the Glowstick calendar, we have a recurring Design Review meeting with the entire team. Sales, Engineering, and Founders will all attend, and as the Founding Designer, I lead the session where we collectively focus on the design problem or solution for that week. Some days presenting in-progress thinking or completed work is exciting; the conversations spark new insights, collectively ideas are generated, and everyone leaves fulfilled.

But on some days, I feel the nerves kicking in, unsure if I’ve considered the problem from all directions, parsing feedback, tripping on my words and pixels. Showing one's work never gets easy because Design, like Film and Sport, is always open to critique, and we have good days and challenging ones!

So this year, in an effort to embrace the discomfort, I’m adopting the philosophy of "Designing in the Open". Credits to Brad Frost who talks about it as a way to get used to sharing one's work, getting feedback, reaching more users, and sparking conversations.

Today I’ll talk through one of the cool features we’re building at Glowstick - the Dynamic Whitespace Map. At Glowstick, we enable Account Managers in Post Sales to detect insights in their recorded customer conversations using AI. We integrate with call recording software like Gong and CRMs like Salesforce to surface actionable insights that the Account Manager can then prioritize into their workflow.

For those unfamiliar with Sales, the whitespace map visually represents an Account Manager's book of business, highlighting areas where a company can expand its revenue through the sale of products and services. However, the conventional whitespace maps, often crafted in Excel, face challenges with manual updates and complexity, especially in companies with diverse product offerings, vaguely resembling the one below. As a result, they lie forgotten in some folder gathering dust.

via GIPHY

Enter the Dynamic Whitespace Map…

From our research and discussions with multiple Account Managers, we learned that Whitespace Maps are rarely static. Over a customer's lifetime, they are in a constant state of flux, buying new products or churning off of something else, and the Map needs to reflect that at all times to give the AM a true picture of where opportunities really exist.

What you see in this map is a filtered list of 20 accounts, but how does an Account Manager really decide where to focus their attention when quotas have to be met and time is ticking? Keep reading/watching as I share a few ways we’ve designed for this map to help the AMs be more strategic.

1. FILTERING:

The Renewal Date provides crucial information about when a customer will renew their contract. This insight gives Account Managers the bandwidth to strategically plan ongoing deals and tap into existing whitespace. Prioritizing by working back from the renewal date is one way to plan their work effectively.

2. GLOWSCORE:

So you’ve set up filters, and now your list of accounts went from 100 to 80. That's still A LOT of manual lift on the AMs' part. 

🥁 DRUMROLL PLEASE 🥁 

Enter the very cool GlowscoreTM️ – a game-changer. Leveraging metrics such as customer health score, pipeline deals, and last customer engagement, to mention a few, the Glowscore guides Account Managers towards specific accounts ripe for upsell or cross-sell conversations.

3. MEDDPICC;

MEDDPICC (or MEDDIC) is a proven Sales Qualification methodology. With Glowstick's secret AI sauce, we populate these criteria from calls the AM and CSM are having with the customer. This, in turn, empowers Account Managers to move forward with opportunities that exhibit stronger MEDDPICC strength compared to others.

For those hungry for more insights into AI-powered Whitespace Maps, check out the dedicated Glowstick podcast episode right here.

Till then, stay safe and curious! 🌟✨

Olio Jobs 💼

• The Miami HEAT | Miami - Digital Media Strategist

• Extensis | Remote - Digital Marketing Manager

• Instrumentl | Remote - Email Marketer / Copywriter

• Tried and True Media | Remote - Creative Producer

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this edition, we’d really appreciate if you shared it with a friend, family member or colleague.

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We’ll be back in your inbox 2 PM IST next Wednesday. Till then, have a productive week!

Peeyush and Mohit

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.