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Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Jan 12, 2010 @ 07:15 AM
Okay, I know I promised to publish the second part of my interview with Linda on Marketing Becoming Enablers BUT that post garnered so many comments here as well as on LinkedIn that I had to temporarily take a different path.
The following was written by Kirko Papajanis, President of Boxpilot (the World Leader in Guided Voicemail and a passionate advocate of the importance of personal contact to B2B sales and marketing) and is a very interersting comment to our position. Have to tell ya, wish I had written it! This post is a bit longer than usual but SO worth the read!
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Much has been written lately about lengthening sales cycles and the preference of prospects not to engage with sales reps until much later in the buying cycle. It is accepted as an idea whose time has come and heavily supported with a wealth of statistics.
Some of the highest profile minds in Marketing are responding to this trend with a renewed call to improve the development of online content, lead scoring and analytics; better understand the buyer persona and to continue to enhance automated marketing programs to provide more product/price/comparative/competitive and benefit/ROI information, for prospects to peruse at their leisure. There is a stampede onto the bandwagon to keep your sales reps away from prospects until they have basically made up their mind about what they want.
There is a misguided perception that the way to win the hearts and minds of your prospects is to leave them in peace to develop their own conclusions based on what they think they know about you.
Years from now, management will look back at this "Slap Yourself On the Top of Your Head", moment in time and ask, "What were we thinking?"
So, What Are You Thinking?
A prospect who would rather not engage with sales teams is nothing new, just a current example of why response rates for hard and soft offers have always been different.
- There is no difference between a preference for online content and the historical sales brush off, "Send me something in writing".
Sales people used to get fired for doing what companies can't seem to do enough of now, which is to give value and get nothing in return. This isn't to say content should be withheld, we have indeed past the point where that tactic is in any ones best interest, but self- serve content is NOT king and can work against you. When every selling opportunity is a little bit different, involvement, interest and trust are equally important.
- While companies are rushing ahead to provide the selective answers to prospects' most frequently asked questions, they are doing nothing to ensure that those prospects ask the right questions.
- Finally, there's an assumption that prospects are truly reading and accurately absorbing all the information they're collecting on their own. This defies human nature.
Keeping Your Sales People Away From Your Prospects is a TERRIBLE Idea.
- Many decision makers are highly intelligent quick thinkers, capable of summing up the gist of an argument swiftly.
But they have an unfortunate (for you) tendency to ignore the detail once they believe they have grasped the content. A well documented flaw of many quick thinkers is a failure to review ALL the information available to them. So, you can't be sure what content they have pulled from your materials or the materials of your competitors and you can't predict what conclusions they have come to.
- Your prospects will gravitate to the information that answers questions they already have an interest in and will respond best to information that fits their preconceived notions and preferences.
- You don't really want a level playing field and neither do your competitors.
When one of them successfully inserts a sales contact into a one-on-one relationship with a prospect, while your company is content to be held at an arms-length, you have sacrificed an irrevocable piece of the high ground and probably the sale.
- Statistics, trends, campaigns and group behaviors do not buy.
Purchase decisions are made by people who will not always behave in a predictable or even logical way. Their decisions will be influenced by factors that your company will never understand unless you can establish the dialogue that ONLY comes with personal contact and that point of contact is your sales rep.
Why Are Sales Teams Not Screaming "Bloody Murder"?
Ironically, along with all the leading edge marketing thinking, the role of the Sales Rep has been pigeon-holed into an outdated and inconsistent cliché "The Closer". In a world where the buying cycle is stretching out past the foreseeable horizon, Sales Reps still live and die by the quarterly revenue goal. To meet these goals they can't afford the time to engage anyone who isn't ready to buy. That's half the reason that Sales Reps are happy to wait to engage.
The other half of the reason is that sales people put themselves on the line. It's not a pleasant thing to expose yourself over and over to the responses of people who don't want to talk to you. So, while it's not to the credit of sales people to be willing to sit back and wait for people who WANT to talk to them, it's understandable. It's not acceptable though and unless your sales people are willing to put themselves on the line to make a personal contact with your prospects, your revenue will suffer.
Current stats all point to a failure of many nurturing programs to translate raw leads into sales and the timing and distribution of new content seems to be the leading solution, but the removal of personal sales contact is probably at least partly to blame.
The role of a Sales Rep shouldn't be diminished, but it needs to evolve. The challenge facing sales teams is to approach your prospects with enough knowledge and skill to serve the needs of both the buyer and seller. The new Sales Rep is the voice of your marketing program and will subtly take ownership of the sales process by ensuring that your prospects are not cherry picking information, but actually absorbing the right information that will lead them to make the choice to buy from you.
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Trish here again. Thanks Kirko. Okay readers, let us hear what you have to say. And Sales, where are you? I know you read this blog so why is it that only Marketing chimes in?
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Jan 05, 2010 @ 07:28 AM
This fall, I had the pleasure of attending Silverpop's B2B University in Boston. At the event, I shared a table with Linda Duchin the VP of Marketing from PowerSteering Software.
During breaks, Linda & I began a conversation about how the line between Sales and Marketing is starting to blur and what some of the implications of that may be.
PowerSteering provides Enterprise SaaS Project and Portfolio Management software to help large organizations manage IT, New Product Development, Six Sigma and other strategic initiatives. They were recently recognized by Forrester Research as a leader in IT and Business-Driven PPM.
I followed up with a call to Linda and here's a summary of the first part of our conversation:
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Linda, I'm starting to be concerned about the view that Marketing is responsible for a prospect until they are scored as "sales ready". My take is that it is a slippery slope that could result in lost deals. If a prospect is in my nurture process and my competitor is fully engaged in their sales process, I think I am at a distinct disadvantage.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think it is fantastic that Marketing wants to assume more responsibility, but as a salesperson shouldn't I be the one to determine when a lead is "sales ready"? As a salesperson, my job is to convert interest to opportunity. Why delay that process?
Linda: Trish, I share your concern! In fact, I think we're already at the point where some sales organizations feel they no longer have to do outbound prospecting. Their skills in this area are starting to become rusty because they are not used to it.
So where do you draw the line? What's your vision for a best practice and how does it work within your Sales organization?
Linda: Internally, we don't use the terms sales ready or marketing ready. It just adds a level of complexity to the process that we don't need. We agreed on basic qualification parameters and we adhere to those. And when necessary, we revisit those qualification criteria.
Our internal group handles most of the leads we generate, but we do assign the customer leads directly to the Sales Reps. We sell to large global organizations so new contacts within those organizations represent potential expansion value to us. Our Sales Reps maintains the relationship with our customer, so it makes sense for them to leverage that knowledge to penetrate new groups, divisions etc.
We also send them leads for companies where they are already engaged in a sales cycle to ensure continuity of follow up We want the Sales Rep to have immediate access to any contact that may impact the ongoing sales process. It also eliminates the potential for Inside Sales to be calling into an existing opportunity.
Our goal is to have one point of contact for every Account at the relationship level and we try to facilitate this through marketing automation tools like Salesforce.com and Marketo.
At this event, and throughout the industry, there is much discussion about Sales and Marketing working together to build out lead definitions, scoring and nurture programs. Conceptually, most companies are in agreement with this strategy. What have you seen in terms of implementation?
Linda: Well, that is a bone of contention with me! You never want Sales and Marketing to be silos, but when push comes to shove, there is only so much time in the day for collaboration. At some point you have to draw a line in the sand and move forward with a strategy which of course can and should evolve through ongoing feedback. The pundits preach nirvana, but you have to make sure that this doesn't come at the cost of sales and end up becoming a distraction from selling. Practically speaking, it's already challenging just to get basic sales follow up data documented adequately.
The reality is that in the current environment, it's harder to sell than ever before. That is what has created a lot of this backlash with Marketing owning more of the process. As Marketers, we are trying to lighten the load for Sales. We are trying to give them the bandwidth they need to focus on closing business in the current quarter.
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We will publish the rest of the interview next week. My question to you is: What do you think?
Is Marketing being forced to assume too much of the sales process? Are pipelines at risk because our Sales people are waiting for perfection as opposed to getting out there and converting interest to opportunity?
Are "sales ready" leads the bullet that moves us forward or shoots us in the foot?
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Fri, Nov 06, 2009 @ 06:54 AM
On this day in 1989, American professional football (aka "soccer player") Jozy Altodore was born. Wait, people born in 1989 are professional anythings? Scary!
Now onto our B2B Friday thoughts!
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B2B Thought #1: Don't forget the Golden Question
Every day I talk to Marketers struggling with the modern lead management dilmena: "When should I pass a lead as sales-ready?" Unfortunately, the 3 most common practices I encounter are:
- Firehose
- Trickle
-and-
- Alternating firehose & trickle
Then I ran into this post by Dale Underwood that really got me thinking: Before Nurturing a New B2B Lead, Ask the Golden Question. Dale argues that the "only thing worse than sending a non-qualified lead to sales is not passing one and finding out 6 months later that the lead turned into a customer...for your competition."
To make sure that doesn't happen, Dale shares this example of the golden question:
|
Mr./Ms.,
My name is YYY and I approved your request for ZZZ. This is a courtesy follow-up to make sure you received it. If you have not received it, please check your spam filter.
May I ask you one question? Have you defined the requirements for your XYZ project, or no? For future reference, we have compiled a "Top 20 Customer Requirements List" from our customers and would be happy to share it with you.
Thank you for your interest in WWW.
YYY |
Matt here: I really love this approach.
- First, it's personalized. It's a message from an actual person, who I can call or reply to.
- Second, it makes sure I received what I requested. I am sure we all think our sites are perfectly designed for the visitor, but let's face it - requested item fullfillment is never as easy for a first time visitor as we imagine.
- Third, it promises an additional piece of highly valuable content that should interest me IF I'm a serious buyer. But, I have to reach out to the Rep and begin a dialogue to receive it.
- Fourth (golden question time), think of this as the lead management trump card. If "yes," nothing else matters - the lead goes to Sales- period.
Am I crazy to think a single question can trump the mighty scoring model? Please let me know if you are using anything similar in your organizations.
B2B Thought #2: Persistence & Process
Garth over at the Jigsaw blog had a post this week on Persistence. It's a great read with funny tidbits about persistence being the key to success. Here's an excerpt:
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It sounds so annoyingly simple, but persistence is the only trait that I have seen common in all successful people- from salespeople to CEOs to founders of companies.
When it comes to sales, I'm not talking about a penchant for annoying and aggressive communications. Nothing is more pathetic than a sales guy who tries to talk someone into something. Don't put that idiot pan on your head and repeatedly slam yourself into a brick wall by ignoring it when a specific individual tells you "no." But do make sure you that you have exhausted all other avenues and connections, and that you have in fact been given a "no" for good |
Debbie here: I could not agree more that persistence is a key selling trait. I'll add to that with the need for a rock solid sales process behind it. So you aren't "stalking" your prospect by leaving a voicemail every day or WORSE not leaving one at all (the phantom caller ID trail).
I believe in a 4x4 calling methodology:
Put "4" contacts from a target companies through a "4" touch process - all within
10 business days. Hey, if you don't have a sense of urgency why should your prospect?
If you don't connect, make sure you kick them into your company's nurture strategy.
Persistence & process - far from magic, but it gives you something that is repeatable and measurable.
Think about the most successful sales people you know, are they persistent? Do they have a solid process?
(Photo Credit: priskiller)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Fri, Sep 25, 2009 @ 08:30 AM
It's the final Friday of Q3. Good selling to everyone out there working hard to bring in business.
Now on to our B2B Thoughts...
B2B Thought #1: Ch-ch-changes in the seller/buyer relationship
In Nailing Down Evidence That the Nature of the B2B Buyer Has Changed, Adam Needles share his thoughts around the fundamental changes in the B2B buyer/seller relationship. Adam argues that:
| Buyers increasingly set the ground rules on when and where they will engage. Buyers also increasingly turn to trusted third parties for education, not sales people … whom they engage as an almost final stage in their process. This means B2B marketers must focus heavily on ‘getting found,’ nurturing prospects and managing pre-sales buyer dialogue.
This is a critical re-framing of the B2B buyer/seller relationship. Much has been written about how sales and marketing strategy is evolving — becoming more sophisticated via CRM and marketing automation. Yet this is not an asynchronous evolution, and buyers are setting the pace … and getting ahead of sales and marketing organizations. |
Matt here: Adam goes on to lay out evidence in the following areas:
- Buyers turning to online sources
- Increased leveraging of social media
- A multi-channel buying process
- The rise of the savvry buying unit
It's a very good read, and the first attempt (I've seen) to show hard data around the changing buyer/seller relationship. I am really interested in what you think!
B2B Thought #2: The magic of the not-to-do list
Gerhard Gschwandtner of Selling Power wrote a great piece this week on 15 Things Salespeople And Sales Managers Should Put On Their Not-To-Do List. Here is his thought process:
| Think of your to-do list. It takes a lot of work to get things done. Chances are that you are starting the day with 7-10 major action items, and you are lucky if you are able to cross off the first three items by the end of the day. Start a fresh to-do list every day. Don't agonize, prioritize.
The not-to-do list doesn't change every day. This list doesn't take more work on your part; it creates less work for you. It helps you recognize new patterns. It helps you prevent self-defeating actions. Like Michelangelo chipped away all the unnecessary marble from a gigantic block to create a masterpiece, your not-to-do list will bring out the best in you. |
Trish here: great advice. There are 15 tips in each category and I have selected my favorite 5 from each.
5 things salespeople should have on their daily not-to-do list:
- Don't waste time chasing unprofitable leads.
- Don't pretend to listen; stay focused.
- Don't talk about features without explaining the benefits.
- Don't quote price before establishing value.
- Don't lie; build trust.
5 things sales managers should have on their daily not-to-do list:
- Don't make hiring decisions based on your gut instincts alone.
- Don't slip back into the role of the super-salesperson.
- Don't resist change, embrace it.
- Don't reject technology because you don't understand it.
- Don't think that your sales process is perfect; it needs to be renovated all the time.
Great list, huh? But now let's turn the tables around and we want to hear from you. What are your top 2 things you want your sales reps or sales manager to think about on a daily basis?
What should a "To Do" list look like? Thanks for reading. I'm looking forward to your thoughts!
(Photo credit: Tim Yates)
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Fri, Sep 18, 2009 @ 08:53 AM
On this day in 1837, Tiffany & Co. was born. Here's a Seth Godin (not word for word) insight about those light blue box-ers:
Tiffany's gives the jewelry away for free. It's the box that costs money. Because the box is all the person getting the thing talks about. They say "I can't believe you cared enough to spend 3-4x as much."
B2B Thought #1: It's not them it's us
In Is Your Follow-up Communication Guilty of Prospecticide?, Paul McCord discusses how follow-up communications teach prospects to either value us as an attention-worthy resource or train them to avoid us as self-interested timewasters. Paul argues that:
| Prospects don't have their calls screened, ignore voice mail messages and e-mails, and throw written correspondence in the trash without reading it to be rude. They do these things because they have been taught by salespeople that answering and returning calls and reading the material salespeople send have no value. Salespeople have taught them to avoid salespeople at all costs.
Does that mean you can't communicate with your prospects?
Certainly, you can. However, your first job is to teach your prospect that you, unlike other salespeople, value of their time; and that when you call, when you send an e-mail, when you request a return call, when you send a letter or package, it adds value for the prospect and that spending a few minutes speaking with you or reading your communications is worth the time spent. |
Matt here: This one really got me thinking. Lead generation is a contact sport. When we expend huge effort and dollars to drive inquiries, are we subsequently shooting ourselves in the foot on follow-up?
I am really interested what you think!
B2B Thought #2: Is relationship sales an oxymoron?
The post “A Random Walk Up Sales Street – 12” by Tibor Shanto caught my attention this week. Tibor and his friend Trevor (also a Sales guy) were discussing the real goal of selling activity:
| Which brings up an interesting question, what should a seller aspire to, winning a deal or winning a client, are the two compatible or mutually exclusive? Trevor felt that the two are not mutually exclusive, but if he had to choose he would take the deal. As he tells it, much of the relationship talk in his estimate is just political correctness creeping into sales. There are a lot of different sayings in sales, and they all serve a purpose, but they also tend to be contradictory. For example, he referred to the common notion that incentives drive behaviour, “if my company wanted me to have relationships, they’d pay me for that, but they pay me for solid orders that can be invoiced. |
Debbie here: Can “building the relationship” and “winning the deal” go hand in hand? Trevor makes an excellent point that he is paid to make sales, not relationships.
What’s your viewpoint?
(Photo credit: minxlj)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 @ 10:46 AM
Welcome to B2B Friday, sharing the best most & most useful content we've recently run across.
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B2B Thought #1: You can't increase "conversion rate" and ignore "connect rate"
Craig Rosenberg at the Funnelholic blog threw down the gauntlet yet again with his post on Increase in Connect Rate = Increase in Conversion Rate. I love Craig...he gets a conversation going! Here's an excerpt:
| To be clear, it is my firm belief that demand generation is the art of getting the right person connected with the right sales rep at the right time. Just take that in for a second. Marketers ALWAYS try to achieve too much with their campaigns and in most cases they are trying to sell the product when what they really need to do is sell the next step. I have said this a million times and I will say it again: The number one tool for conversion is the PHONE. You can run campaigns until the cows come home and they will fail if your lead qualification or sales team is not on the phone converting them. |
Trish here: I left this comment on the post:
Amen brother! The only thing a phone based lead generation team should be selling is the next step in the process. Arouse curiosity, close on the next step, arouse curiosity, close on the next step - rinse and repeat.
Now, that doesn't mean lead gen teams are drive by "appointment-setters" and then their job is done. The human touch should be integrated with effective delivery of content and all steps should move the process along. MOVE being the operative word. A lead is only good when it converts to a customer and to get them to do that, you have to move it through your well defined and repeatable process.
So, I am on your bus...connect and connect again - that is how you win.
Your thoughts?
B2B Thought #2: Take 5 minutes to congratulate yourself
In There's Light at the End of the Tunnel-But It Isn't the Time to Celebrate, Paul McCord warns us against letting up one iota even if we notice a "slight feeling that the weight of the past year may be easing". Paul delivers a hopeful and motivating thought:
| Don't let your guard down but don't despair either. You can get through this. The demands of slogging through this recession and then taking aggressive advantage of an improving market won't last a lifetime (although it may seem that way now). You've come a long way in the past year or so. You've done what so many haven't-survived a terrible recession.
No, it isn't over.
No, you can't let up.
But you're winning the battle and when the economy does recover, you'll be in a position to expand your sales business-and your income.
Take five minutes to congratulate yourself for your endurance, your determination and commitment to succeed.
OK, now back to work. |
Matt here: Given what we've all been through and remembering today's somber anniversary, take those 5 minutes. Congratulate your team. Congratulate yourself. Like Paul says, "OK, now back to work."
Thanks for listening. Please share your thoughts.
(Photo credit: Cathérine)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Tue, Aug 18, 2009 @ 07:23 AM
I recently had the pleasure of attending a conference where one of the topics was Sales 2.0. As everyone who reads our blog knows, we are proponents of the 2.0 movement and believe that (though a buzzword) if you implement Sales 2.0 correctly you will build a better sales and marketing machine. I wanted to share a story with you about how even Sales 2.0 Evangelists can get the application of this new approach wrong.
Here is our definition of Sales 2.0:
|
Sales 2.0 is an approach not a sales process. It requires you to transform your business from one that is focused on selling to one that is focused on letting the market buy from you.
Sales 2.0 requires a change in mindset. It requires focus on buyer personas, lead nurturing, content development, social networking, web 2.0 tools, etc. |
So my story involves a Marketing executive (and client) who also happened to attend this conference. After the conference, she sent me this email (the names have been changed to protect the innocent).
Trish - This sort of email drives me crazy, and it is from a vendor at the event no less. Seems like the vendors were not very savvy.
I never spoke with this company - and yet they are writing a "personalized" email thanking me for speaking with them.
Lesson learned - make sure I don't make the same mistake.
Here is the copy of the email she received from a vendor at the conference who must have been given all of the attendees contact information as part of their sponsorship package:
| Hi NameRemoved,
I wanted to follow up and thank you for attending ABC and speaking with Guy TradeShow. If you recall XYZ automates blah, blah, blah.
Link to Quick Flash Demo
Does it make sense for us to connect and discuss further our xyz solution. If you are not the appropriate person to hold this discussion, would you mind referring me to that contact?
Thank you for your time. I look forward to speaking with you soon. |
So, what made her crazy about this email?
- She never spoke to the vendor. How could they discuss something further if they had never had a conversation in the first place?
- They included a link to a flash demo. How old fashioned is that?
- They asked for her time (and if not then a referral) without establishing any credibility.
I thought to myself: OK, so they do not have a flawless process in place. Too bad especially considering the wasted time, effort and energy they put into attending the conference. Then I received the following email...
|
Hi Trish, I wanted to follow up on your attendance to the ABC event and touch base to learn where improving and automating your xyz process might stack up in your 2009 priorities.
If you aren't familiar with Xyz, we are the leader in xyz. Xyz provides a cost-effective solution to manage xyz, eliminating the pain-staking process of xyz, therefore composing error-free, real-time visibility of xyz. Our 200+ customers include BigSoftware, BigB2C, BigInternet, BigBiotech and many more.
Please let me know if you have time for a quick conversation this week or next. If there is someone else that I should contact, I greatly appreciate in advance any assistance you can provide.
Check out a quick flash demonstration here |
Hmmm....at least they didn't say I had spoken with them at the conference. But where did they go wrong with this one?
- The foundation of the Sales 2.0 value proposition is based on knowing and understanding your unique buyer personas. In this situation, my client (the Marketing executive) and I (the President of a small professional services organization) are in no way the right target conatcts.
What should the vendor have done? First of all, figure out if we meet your Ideal Customer Profile based on vertical, size of company, size of staff or whatever the right criteria may be. Second, one of the biggest mistakes companies make is in qualifying the contact not the company. They do this with inbound leads all the time and we are ever vigilant with our clients to make sure this doesn't happen.
What the vendor should have done is said...hmmm ABC Company attended this conference. That means they have a potential interest in xyz. I am going to pick up the phone and call (insert relevant buyer title here) and see if they are interested in having a dialogue about this particular problem that we solve. See, attendance at the conference was the trigger event not the lead. See Uncover a New Lead Source: Trigger Events for Sales for more ideas along those lines.
- The 2nd paragraph goes off the rails for two reasons. First, it is all about them and filled with what David Meerman Scott calls "gobbledygook" (see 09 Resolution: No More Marketing Gobbledygook).
Then it gets even worse by referencing customers that in no way, shape or form even remotely resemble my company or that of my client. As a matter of fact, they serve to make us say "Oh, you don't work with companies like ours so I won't even bother to respond or refer you".
- Finally, the emails were sent by their Inside Sales Manager. Dude...pick up the phone! The first communication with me is via email and a bad one at that? Pick up the phone, deliver your value proposition, do a bit of qualification and then ask for a referral if not within my company then maybe within my client base.
OK, rant over but you get where I am going. You can't just stick the 2.0 tag at the end of whatever you do or say you are a key player in this revolution and think you are all good. You need to "Walk the Walk".
Does your Sales 2.0 strategy match your tactics? When was the last time you took a peek at the emails going out to your prospects? Makes you want to run right down the hall and do so doesn't it? Thanks for listening!
Posted by Matt Bertuzzi on Thu, Aug 13, 2009 @ 07:00 AM
(I have been sitting on this post for a few weeks trying to figure out if it is just a rant. Well I just read the umpteenth "XYZ notion is dead" post and it set me off. So here you go...)
A couple weeks ago I was in the car and caught part of an NPR interview with Irish writer Nick Laird.
The following is a snippet that caught my attention because it was so illustrative of our society:
| "... in the age of Twitter and Facebook, and all the rest of it, language is just witty and snappy, and quick, and meant to amuse rather than be profound in any way, and certainly the brevity of it sort of precludes that..." |
 He went on to give examples (I've added a few) that illustrate the modern clash between fast & slow:
| FAST |
SLOW |
| Fast Food |
The Slow Food Movement |
| Tweets/Status Updates |
Sharing stories and anecdotes |
| Email |
Voicemail |
| Movie Adaptations |
Novels |
He really got me thinking. While not a perfect analogy, I feel we are witnessing a battle between the fast & slow camps in the world of B2B selling.
On the fast side, we are focused on those portions of the sales process than can be quantified by hard metrics. Today we are increasingly concerned with:
- more intelligence about Buyers
- more scoring of prospect interest
- more metrics on campaigns, conversion, Rep activity, ROI, etc.
There are countless points of measurement in every step in the marketing/sales process.
 On the slow side, many soft benefits have fallen by the wayside. We are devoting far less time to:
- formalized (as opposed to tribal) knowledge
- sales interactions based on information & engagement as opposed to data & activity
- having conversations as opposed to emailing/texting
- face to face meetings that still make sense in many situations
- customer service that is actually a service and delivers value
Can we calculate a hard ROI in:
- demonstrating why our solutions are the low risk option
- voicemail that probes into the issues surrounding a white paper download v. just noting the download itself
- ferociously pursuing customer service to support our reputations
- conversations that move the sales process forward v. emails that "touch base/check in/see what's new"
If we cannot, does that mean they are unimportant?
On a related note, I ran into Scott Santucci's article A Story of Empathy - The Lost Art of Selling? . In it Scott discusses a Forrester study that presented 150+ Executives with the following question:
| "When you meet with a vendor sales person, in general how often are they prepared for the meeting in the following ways:" (% are for respondents who answered 'usually')
Knowledgeable about their company and products - 88%
Knowledgeable about my industry - 55%
Can relate to my role and responsibility in the organization - 34%
Knowledgeable about my specific business - 29% |
Scott highlights what separates the knowledgeable 29% from the other 71%:
"This ability - to connect the dots - between an organizational issue, the points of view of all the impacted stakeholders, and the capabilities you bring to the table is what your top sales people are doing."
Call it what you will, but my point is this: connecting the dots is slow selling.
Slow selling cannot be automated, scored, ROI modeled or put neatly into a vertical stack chart.
Please note, I am not arguing against metrics and ROI. They are crucial. But I am arguing against any religiosity that argues "everything you know about sales is wrong" or that "Sales and Marketing is 100% science (or alternatively 100% art)".
Much energy and effort is being spent today proclaiming
- The elevator pitch is dead! Long live the mini-pitch/buyer-pitch/twitter-pitch.
- Cold calling is dead! Long live inbound marketing/warm-calling.
- Social Networking is where business happens. Sales and marketing guys are obsolete.
Here's my take: just because you're a bad driver, doesn't mean your car is broken.
Elevator pitches don't need a character limit, sales people need to improve their game, communicate more effectively and think in terms of their buyers and not themselves. Times are tough, but chasing shiny objects is a distraction.
People, tools & process: improve and overcome! Probably as true in 2009 as it was in 1909.
Thanks for listening. I am really eager to hear what you think. Please share!
(Photo credit: selva & miss bliss 55)
Posted by Trish Bertuzzi on Thu, Aug 06, 2009 @ 07:17 AM
I recently read a great post Robert Lesser, of Direct Impact Marketing, wrote called Use Outbound Marketing to Target These Buyer Types. It coordinates nicely with our recent discussion around The Flaw In Calculating Inbound v. Outbound Marketing.
The meat of Robert's argument is that having an intimate knowledge of your buyer has never been more important. It is key to understand:
- The challenges they face on a day to day basis
- The projects that are important to them
- How their boss measures success
These data points should serve as the foundation for outbound messaging.
Some buyers will reach out to you...that is the power and the beauty of inbound marketing. But, like it or not, some buyers require that you do the reaching. Understanding how, how often and with what medium to reach out - that is the secret sauce of outbound.
Effective outbound also mandates you understand what kind of buyer you are targeting. Robert did a great job defining different buyer types and we added our two cents on how to sell to them:
The Unaware Buyer - is evaluating but is unaware of your solution despite your high level of marketing activity.
With this buyer you are late to the game. The other vendors have already set the agenda so you need to go in with guns blazing. Don't waste time on fluff, go right to the meat of your competitive advantage and be relentless.
The Buyer with Unmet Needs - may have underlying needs that have not been openly discussed with a third party. Or perhaps, the buyer was unaware of a solution that would address their needs so had not initiated an evaluation. Early stage solutions that are new-to-market often target buyers with latent needs.
Even in a Sales 2.0 world there remain sales situations that require taking latent pain to recognized pain. This is most especially true if you are selling to the innovator and early adopter space. Here is where drip marketing and lead nurturing are critical. Identify your buyer, arouse curiosity, begin a conversation and then delver relevant content combined with the human touch to educate them and position your solution. Not an easy task but with the advent of some of the great technologies out there like Eloqua, Genius, Marketo, Silverpop and others, it is a lot easier than it has ever been before.
The Tuned-out Buyer - not all buyers participate in social media or conduct online searches. Some buyers expect that some vendors must reach out to them as a precondition to considering their solution.
A typical decision maker will get a minimum of 30 unsolicited calls and/or emails a day. Cutting through the noise is key to success in outbound marketing. Note what your Reps are communicating in their voice and email messages. Is it all about you or is it about the buyer and what they care about? If you don't know or it is all about you, now is time to step back and spend some time redrafting your message.
The Buyer at the Tipping Point - B2B marketing is part art and part science. Given the length of the marketing and sales cycle, we can often identify many of the touches that led to a closed sale but we are unable to pinpoint the catalyst that converted the buyer.
The moral of the story here is "Know Thy Trigger Events". Spend some time knowing what trigger events would lead a buyer to look at you. Then invest in a technology like InsideView to deliver notifications to your sales organization of those events. To make this work, make sure your sales organization is prepared with messaging that incorporates the trigger events into their outreach. Don't waste an event opportunity by delivering vanilla messaging.
So, thanks Robert for a great post. And readers, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts on how buyer types impact the inbound/outbound marketing mix! (Photo Credit: mbgrigby)
Posted by Cindy Littlefield on Thu, Jul 23, 2009 @ 06:54 AM
The other night I saw the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness." (Note: their spelling not mine.) It is a brilliant father/son movie that was a real tearjerker. At times hard to watch. 
It's a true story about Chris Gardner, who is in a dead-end job selling door to door in the early 80's. He can hardly pay his bills and put food on the table. He discovers a highly competitive internship at Dean Witter and applies - 6 months, a "training period" & no salary.
In the internship, he has to sell investment products into large companies. He is given a list of prospects and told to start making calls from the bottom of the list to the top. The list was in order of total capital investment.
He soon learns that starting at the bottom of the list is getting him nowhere. So bucking his instructions, he goes directly to the top of the list and makes a call. He gets a meeting with a top level executive and develops a relationship. He doesn't get the executive's business, but he networks his way through the executive's friends and (SPOILER ALERT) earns himself the single position. When I saw that I thought what a brilliant move, starting at the top of the list.
It got me thinking: In your Reps outbound calling efforts, who do they start calling first? Do they call the top of the food chain or somewhere in the middle? Or do they call both?
Nigel Edelshain shares his point of view in his ebook; Prospecting is Changing: Ideas to harness this change and tilt the playing field your way. Nigel argues:
| Call "high" or call "low"? Both!
"High" or "low" is relative. Depending on the type of product you are selling "high" does not always mean the CEO!
I've noticed in the technology industry specifically that to counteract lengthening sales-cycles companies have repositioned their products so they can be purchased at a lower level in an organization. In these circumstances it does not make sense to call the CxO suite when appropriate decision-makers who are more accessible reside at lower levels in your target accounts.
On the other hand, you do not want to call too low for your product and "work your way up" to the decision-maker you need. This approach inevitably fails. You have to convince people at lower levels to give you access to their boss - something people rarely feel comfortable with. |
Nigel talks about focusing tightly on the highest probability buyers and the need to develop a "prospect profile" identifying: which markets and which individuals you are targeting within those markets.
So should your Reps be selling top-down or bottom-up? It depends on your market. Ask yourself these questions:
- Will calling high lengthen or shorten the sales cycle?
- Will calling low require your Reps to bargain for access to the decision maker?
- Should you tell your Reps to be a Chris Gardner and throw caution to the wind and just go for it or do you want them to follow a process?
I would love to hear your thoughts on what is most effective. Thanks for sharing!
(Photo credit: A-m-z-xO)
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