Nicholas Biron
Chief Executive and Research Officer
nbiron@3sixtyinsights.com

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Nick has more than 25 years of experience in high tech, including 24 years of corporate sales and organizational growth experience in the enterprise software, high tech and technology research industries. Over the past 18 years, he has specialized in building and managing a variety of organizations & territories in the enterprise research industry. As a team leader with Boston’s Aberdeen Group, Nick was responsible for the initial launch of new and emerging enterprise technology research practice areas, such as Wireless & Mobility, Network & Application Performance Management, and Unified Communications. This role was dedicated to building out and maintaining these new areas along with creating the initial research and account planning. As Co-Founder of Boston’s Blue Hill Research, Nick was responsible for the initial business plan, launch, and continuous growth overseeing Sales, Marketing, and Operations. Later, Nick served as the US North East & United Kingdom business lead overseeing account and research strategies for the territory for Mercator Advisory Group. After spending the past 24 years strategizing with businesses of all shapes and sizes, Nick noticed a pattern of challenges within the software buying cycle, both on the buyer and seller side and founded 3Sixty Insights with a goal of helping organizations make better and more efficient decisions.
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HR Tech Alliances | December Virtual Collaboration Zone – HR Buyers Suppliers Showcase – December 8th 2021

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Join the 3Sixty Insights team as we join executives from top suppliers of HR Buyer at HR Tech Alliances upcoming HR Buyer Suppliers Showcase, a virtual collaboration zone being held December 8th 2021. During this event, you’ll be able to meet with executives from top suppliers of HR buyers via Service Briefings, Q&A and Roundtable sessions, learning about how they are driving quality leads in 2022, their offerings, and client success stories. To learn more or receive access complements of 3Sixty Insights ($200 value), you can visit their website here: HR Tech Alliances | December Virtual Collaboration Zone – HR Buyers Suppliers Showcase – December 8th 2021

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The Importance of Customer Support to Keep a Business Financially Viable

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We recently wrote about the importance of delivery in keeping businesses afloat, arguing that maintaining your current customer base is in many ways even more important than winning new business. After all, you have already put in the work to win your clients over, and if you disappoint them now, you risk losing them. While your leads represent potential, your customers represent an investment you have already made. Maintaining the good will of your current customer base should always be your top priority, and support is a critical component of customer satisfaction. We have seen many organizations prioritizing outsourcing and automation in recent years, and we agree, efficiency is great—unless it comes at the cost of customer support. As customers of other organizations ourselves, we […]

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Research Note: The Software and Technology Decision-Making Cycle—How it Has Changed

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The past 15 years have seen dramatic changes in software and technology: leaps from flip phones to smart phones, desktop computing to laptops and tablets, on-premises software to cloud, big data, the Internet of Things, and others. With these new technologies and platforms have come an explosion of software vendors profoundly shifting the information technology and software landscape. As an example, we’ve seen a jump from 1,876 vendors in the marketing space to over 8,000 in just the past five years in marketing technology—not the only industry that has seen this exponential rate of growth. Almost every technology and software segment over the past few years has seen similar growth. However, we are not just seeing a fundamental change in the solutions available; there have […]

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The Importance of Not Making Decisions in a Bubble

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As a leader, one of the most difficult aspects of the job, and most common at the same time, is decision making. Each day, leaders are constantly faced with making choices. Big or small, decisions will ultimately affect individuals, the company, or customers at any given time. Any leaders worth their salt are aware of the gravity of their decisions and the downstream ramifications regarding them. However, after peeling back the layers of failing businesses, what we find as the number one root cause of most failures simply comes down to bad executive management decisions. These decisions, typically made in a bubble, will begin leading the company down a downward spiral. As leaders, we like to think we know best—this is why we are leaders, […]

How to Develop an Account Planning Strategy – Infographic

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It can be difficult to figure out a routine that helps to streamline account strategy. How do you manage contacts and leads and follow-ups and use your resources in the most efficient manner possible? It can be overwhelming and lead to a lot of inefficiencies. And there’s the notion of trying to figure out how to personalize that account strategy, too. Luckily there are ways that you can use accepted account planning strategies to do just that. Of course, you can start by figuring out what type of account you have – number of employees, industry, etc. But to really personalize things, you need to layer in the individual needs of the owners, employees, and customers in order to get a better understanding of how […]

Decisions That Can Help Carry Your Business Through COVID-19

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This is a difficult time for small business owners. The pressure is higher than ever for companies that already lived on narrow margins. Right now, smart moves are necessary for pushing your business into the future. Fortunately, we live in an era where technology is on our side, as long as we know how to use it. Here’s a look at a few types of tech that can aid business owners now: Connecting While Apart Social distancing never looked so efficient: Video chat software and other virtual connection tools allow your team to meet from the safety of their own homes. Remember, you need to take a tailored approach to virtual meetings to ensure they go well. If you haven’t already, make sure your team is using secure communications to prevent […]

17 Life Lessons Learned to Do Better in Life and in Business

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When anyone becomes a parent, they instantly want the best for their child and hope that they can achieve more in life than they ever did… I’ll be sharing something a little personal. Since before my son was born, I began somewhat of a journal to keep a chronology of his life events… Something to share with him when he gets older to reflect upon his life experiences, but through my eyes. Honestly, it’s extremely gratifying how he has progressed so much over the past few years and that we have a way of capturing those life moments.  Recently, I wrote a passage of life and professional lessons learned over my years. My hope is simple: one day he will read them, and hopefully they […]

The Importance of Delivery to Keep a Small Business Financially Stable

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Too many times we see businesses focus so hard on winning new business, they forget everything that follows the initial customer win… The stark reality is that only focusing on the initial customer win will ultimately lead to a large majority of businesses’ failures. Let us share with you a brief example. A few years back, 3Sixty Insights worked with a firm that was in the consulting services industry… This firm had seen six years of exponential growth, until they hit snag and had four years of declining bookings numbers. Their CEO thought they had strong brand in the industry and couldn’t for the life of him understand why their bookings numbers were declining. Afterall, they always had a large number of projects in the […]

The Importance of Technology in Your Small Business

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A common theme within the writings and consultation that 3Sixty Insights takes on, is the pure and simple fact that businesses that remain stagnant can and will eventually fail… To avoid becoming stagnant, it is important for a business to constantly look into the mirror of self-reflection in order to find ways to continuously improve their business. One enabler within small businesses that we find commonly overlooked, is the area of technology… Technology costs money, and in the eyes of most small businesses, anything that costs money and doesn’t have a direct financial ROI, is taking money directly out of profits. However, technology is the unsung enabler within a small business that directly impacts how people perceive a business and its ability to efficiently communicate […]

11 Tips to Realign Your Small Business for Success Today

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We are in some difficult times. With essentially the entire world on lockdown, business has been tough. We are seeing businesses freezing budget, pulling back on expenses and laying off employees in record numbers, just to keep their heads above water. All is not lost, business around the world is being conducted and people are winning new deals. It has just become more difficult. In times like these, we continuously need to remind our teams that the slowdown is not a result of their actions and that their hard work can and will eventually pay off. Our rule of thumb is you have to work two or three times as hard in order to close the same (if not less) business… No level of complaining […]

Five Tips to Quickly Help Get Your Business Online, Before It’s Too Late

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Something that we at 3Sixty Insights have been educating the small business market about for years, has been the need to have a digital and online presence The Importance of Having an Online Digital Presence for Local Small Businesses. Yet, some still haven’t made the change. As a result, slowly but surely, businesses that have not adopted digital and online strategies have been disappearing from the landscape one by one. However, up until recently, it has been process that has been slowly but surely killing them off… But, given the current economic pressures with essentially the entire world on lockdown, businesses no longer have years to make the shift. With most small businesses looking at significant loss of revenue, and in some cases losing their complete […]

Marketing Performance Metrics Need to Be Just as Visible as Sales Metrics

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When you think about the health of any business, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Most people immediately go to sales numbers—pipeline, bookings, and revenue. And, they are not wrong. However, here at 3Sixty Insights, we push our clients to focus on another aspect of the business: marketing. Let’s put this into context a bit. How often do you personally purchase a product or service from a business that you’ve never heard of before? If we are being honest with ourselves, the answer is “never” or “very rarely.” This is why we believe that tracking the performance of marketing is as equally important to the health of the business as tracking sales performance. Current statistics show that it takes an average of […]

Why Small Businesses Should Always Respond to Inquiries

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As a consumer, one of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that most small business do not respond to inquiries. I’ve lost count, both personally and professionally, on how many times I’ve reached out to a business, only to never receive a response. We are talking anything from questions about a product or solution to direct buying questions on pricing and delivery timeframes—and yet, nothing… There is nothing that will guarantee a loss of business more than simply not following up on an inquiry. With so many small businesses struggling to grow or keep their doors open, it still amazes us the staggering amount of businesses that ignore inquiries… The concept is not lost on us, that back in the day there was a […]

Small Business Owners’ Resistance to Change Is Slowly Killing Them

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We live in economic times where each industry segment can have literally hundreds of companies that could be considered direct competition, all vying for the same business. This increased competition has put significant pressure on businesses to perform like they never have before in order to just stay afloat. Unfortunately, we are finding businesses that were once successful now struggling, and there is an ever increasing gap between those that are successful and those that are now forming. The retail industry is almost a perfect example of what is happening across all industries. Long-time titans of industry such as Sears, Toys R Us and countless others are closing locations or declaring bankruptcy. In contrast, you have others such as Target and Best Buy seeing some […]

Why Email Marketing Is Broken, and How to Fix It

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Email marketing is broken but still remains a strong communication channel… Most business professionals spend an unprecedented amount of time per day (28% of the week to be exact) chained to their inboxes responding to countless amounts of email! This would make one think: if you have such a captive audience, then why is email marketing so broken? Well, it isn’t broken; it’s the way the majority of businesses structure their messages that makes it broken. When you break down the messages from most email marketing campaigns, they fundamentally fall into a few categorical buckets, but they tend to focus on one thing: the sender of the message and not the receiver. Let’s dive in a little deeper on this. Most campaigns can fall under […]