My Marketing Sucks... Where Do I Start?

Many organizations' marketing efforts either do not exist or produce sub optimal results. There are many reasons for this.  For purpose of this post, we will start by looking at what organizations should to if their marketing efforts consist of hiring sales representatives and hoping that they have a book of business and can close deals.  Unfortunately this is a common practice and most often ends with a couple of superstar sales reps staying with the company for years and the rest falling to the wayside.

Any company (whether new or not) that does not have a real marketing department needs to start by doing 4 things:

• Identify what industry will best be able to find benefit in their product
• Identify the best list of target companies that can afford to buy the product
• Identify who within the target companies will use the product
• Define the most cost effective strategy of communicating value to the final user

Notice that I use certain words, like value, benefit, user.  Marketing is about communicating value.  Business is about providing additional value to a user.  No one will buy a product if they do not see an additional value or benefit for using it.  Great product capabilities, or functionality is not enough.  Google+ is an example that is very relevant.  Google+ offers a number of features that Facebook does not, but so far most people are not deactivating their Facebook accounts for Google+.  The issue of creating and communicating value is the most important issue to understand and master in marketing.  It doesn't matter if you are cold calling, spamming or going door-to-door, you have to provide additional value to the potential customer and communicate it well.  

The next thing on the list is identifying what industry your product will fit in the best.  If your company makes widgets designed for hospitals you may not want to be marketing to the Automotive industry. (Okay, that was an extreme example, but the lesson is the same).  Finding these markets, verticals or targets is not always easy.  I worked for a company that offered so many different software packages that it was very confusing.  Package A, with Feature D&M were best for Industry A, but Package D with Feature A&Z was best for Industry K - huh?

This was so complicated that the majority of the time the Lead Generation Reps would call a company on their list and try to talk to executives on a cold call to try and learn what they were looking for, and then find that package that best fit them - this is putting the cart before the horses!  A better way is to have a clearly defined list of features aligned with industry pains and trends.

Make no mistake about it, finding and understanding these pains and trends are extremely difficult and aligning them to your product is also hard.    If you are a small firm and just starting, you probably have an idea already and the next exercise can help to materialize what you and your team have in your heads into usable knowledge.  The Five Product Levels consists of the following levels:

1. Core Benefit:  What is the most basic benefit that my product offers?
2. Basic Product: What is the most basic form of my product that produces the core benefit?
3. Expected Product:What does the buyer expect from the product?
4. Augmented Product: How does the product exceed the expectations of the user?
5. Potential Product: What could our product be in the future?

These questions can give you a start.  Translating the answers into marketable material will take a little bit of creativity.  There are so many channels to use to push you value proposition to the world that is daunting at times.  My advice is choose one (or two), and master that.  Make sure it is measurable and produces results - quickly!  If your product is truly complicated, in a big-boy industry and selling to corporate giants cold calling can work. Just be sure to train your lead generation reps to get an interested contact on the phone with a knowledgeable and experienced sales rep as soon as possible.  Email marketing may work if you are smaller, but I would not start sending spam to corporations - their firewalls are too good to produce results.  Webinars can be fun, but it is really hard to make sure you have the right people there unless you cold call and personal invite each one.  Doing that, negates the need for a webinar because if there is any interest it is better to do a personalized one.

So, true to the nature of business, there are always more questions than answers.  Good executives are good, not because they have all of the answers, but because they can find them and figure out complex problems.  If your marketing sucks your activities and value proposition is most likely not aligned with what the market is looking for.  Figure that our (Product, Market Need, Value) and then realign and your results will improve.  If they don't, you should be working in marketing.

What the (bleep) does "Business Development" actually mean?

I recently read and participated in a discussion about the difference between Business Development and Sales executives. Although I responded, I did so in passing and did not really take the time to lay out what a clear definition is for each of them and how they integrate and overlap. I stated quickly (bad grammar and all) that "Business Development develops business and sales closes business." Seems simple enough I guess. But I think everyone would agree that there is a hell of a lot more that goes into Developing Business and Closing Business.

Even companies that enjoy recurring revenue from existing customer (I have heard of companies northward of 80%), have to to find new customers. There is only some much you can sell existing customers. In a perfect organization there are three types of activities that have to happen in order to obtain new customers. To obtain new customers you need to:

1. Understand your markets and the needs of non-customers 
2. Develop new relationships and become a trusted adviser to new prospects 
3. Close new deals! 

Ideally, these three aspects should be separate roles and in some cases departments. For now, let's leave marketing out of this (refer to my post I Work in MARKETING, not Advertising!). Let's assume that we already understand points 1 and 2, ready to go to market and start creating relationships. This is where Business Development comes into play. Business Development professionals should be experts in four things:

1. Identifying the right people to talk to 
2. Making initial contact with executives and gaining their trust 
3. Navigating an organization and understanding its structure 
4. Finding hot button issues and common pains across the organization 

These are the ends. There are a million means. What is important to remember is that this is not time to sell! During the business developing part of the sales process the potential customer is not ready to buy If they were, they would have already contacted you (as long as marketing is doing their jobs). Business development is about doing the research, working with executives that now trust you to better understand your industry. These executive are busy but very smart. They are experts in their industry, not yours. A VP of R&D may be knowledgeable about the ERP industry, but not like you are. It is your job to help them to understand the landscape. Who you are, what you offer, who your competitors are (and for pete's sake, don't say "we don't have any")? The more information you share, the more they will trust you, talk openly about their pains, concerns, and more importantly, help you to understand and navigate their organization (steps 3 & 4).

Business development is not about selling your product or service. It is about selling yourself, your company and your industry. In today's complex sales' process, it is impossible to call someone and end the call with a commitment to buy. That should not be your goal. The call should always end with sending information and an agreement to follow up at a later date. If you get an appointment scheduled with the prospect one of two things has happened: 1) You pushed too hard and will waist an hour of time for him and your sales rep or 2) you got lucky and found some one that is ready to buy. The prospect should hang up the phone and think "that was good, knowledgeable and looking forward to their info!" This is the foundation that will lead to further understanding whether or not they have a need for your product or service.

Later on when the sales rep is trying close business, the work that business development has put into questions 1-4 will make it much easier to close business. Closing enterprise deals (6-7 figure deals) has only gotten harder. Now companies are more strapped for budgets, more people are involved and decisions are more political. Getting in good with the VPs and C-level employees helps, but doesn't seal the deal. Plus, with more competitors in every market trying to sell similar or the same functionality can make it a nightmare for evaluation teams. Companies now have more buying power than ever before (thanks to the internet) and usually have a preconceived idea of who you are before they even contact you. Sometimes you may be behind before you even start. Most companies have become great at portraying themselves as the leader in a particular market by spending more money on marketing than they do on their product. Not a bad strategy if you are finding deals 10-to-1 over your competitor that is spending more on their product and less on marketing.   In this environment, business development has to be the bridge between sales and market. Business Development does both, has to be involved in both and has to own the process of finding new customers and entering new markets. Sales should not being doing this - they should be closing deals that they have in their pipeline. Marketing should not be doing it - they should be creating killer content and quit honestly, most marketing people lack the people skills and determination to be on the front lines! 

Additionally, please do not make the mistake of compensating your business development people according to revenue contributions. This is unfair and isn't the right tool for motivation. If business development reps wanted to be compensated and judged by revenue, they would be in sales. Instead, pay them well and put a great lead scoring process in place and reward them for great leads. Give them bonuses when things close. Get them involved in the development of the content as they are the Voice of the Prospect. Get them involved deep into the sales process with the sales representative. This will provide them additional experience, knowledge and confidence about how to control a good conversation with senior executives as well as provide support the sales representative while he/she gets comfortable and builds rapport with the project champion.

Make your business development representatives the bridge between your sales and marketing groups. I guarantee you will not regret it.

I Work in MARKETING, not Advertising!

It is almost without fail that when I tell people that I do marketing for a software company there are two assumptions placed on me; 1) I am a technical person and 2) I do advertising, and send out spam.  This could not be further from my realty - I am not technical at all :) 


So, I decided to set the record straight on what Marketing really is, as a profession!  Marketing is a very important function of business,  maybe the most important.  In small organizations, marketing is confused with sales and in large organizations it is confused with advertising.  There are a lot of overlaps, but according to James Henley  and the MARKETING CONCEPT AND PHILOSOPHY, marketing has a very simple focus - meet the customers' needs at a profit.  As such, marketing is truly a function of every function in business.  


More specifically, there are a  number of activities that the marketer people have to be able to do - effectively:

1. Know who the customers are
2. Know what they want
3. Know what you can offer (products or services)
4. Know what you and the customer can afford
5. Communicate that you understand 1 through 4 in a way that adds value and gains attention

This is the core function of marketing, in its simplest form.  For each of these activities there are a lot of people and even professions that only focus one or two of them.  The most important aspect of marketing for any company is 1 and 2.  If you are a sales person an executive or anyone else and do not know who your potential customers are and what they want - FIND OUT and fast.  This knowledge it priceless.  You have to know your markets. 

David F. D'Alessandro makes a very clear point in his book Career Warfare.  To be indispensable, at any company, make sure that you poses some knowledge about how to do something that no one else knows how to do as well as you!  What else is more valuable than knowing who your potential customers are and what they need.  That is information that the CEO, VP of Sales, Chief Marketing Officer, R&D people and other functions in a company will want to know. If you play your cards right, they will ask you what you think! 

Going back to "advertising" for a minute. Advertising, Pay-Per-Click, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and email marketing (spam) are all functions of communicating what customers want.  Imagine if the customers desired a new widget that did ABC and you spent millions on a TV spot, a new website and a Facebook page offering DEF... would you sell anything?  NO!  

Marketing is simple and it is not spamming people.  Marketing helps the R&D and Innovation groups understand what people want.  Marketing is not responsible for selling people things they don't want or don't need.  Marketing is the most strategic of functions, making sure that the company is going in the same direction as their potential customers.  Understanding what people want is hard work.  Making sure that you can offer them what they don't realize they will need in 5, 10 years is even harder.  


The solution, learn who your potential customers are and what they want.  Learn it well, and communicate it even better!  Be the Voice of the Customer!

The Right to Win!

A while back I read an article by Booz & Company called The Right To Win.  Although this company, website and magazine is geared towards business, I thought that this was an interesting concept for personal application as well.  Similar to Cheshire's point in his last post - Anonymity  - The Right to Win is more about being relevant and a leader than it is about winning.  The idea of marketing ourselves is not a new one and it is a skill that everyone has (or needs to develop).  Without it, none of us would have the jobs that we currently have - we sold our skills, experiences and personalities to the hiring managers of where we work.

The Right to Win theory goes a lot further.  When we compete against other businesses, applicants, or any other form of competition for that matter, the best product or person doesn't always win.  Remember back to the SuperBowl XLII.  Sorry everyone, The Giants were not the better team.  They played better that day, but were not the better team.  Their strategy going into that particular game, coupled with their flawless execution gave them The Right to Win that day, the only day that mattered.  (Yes, I am a Patriots fan)

Gaining The Right to Win takes vision, determination, strategy and flawless execution.  Knowing where you would like to be in 5, 10, 15 or 20 years helps you to work on gaining the skills you will need to place yourself in the best position for success.  A lot of people believe that they already have this right due to some sort of entitlement from birth, or a specific degree from a specific institution   Although these things do help to achieve goals and increases your odds of winning, they do not entitle you to The Right to Win.  In this global economy The Right to Win can only be achieved by matching your skills perfectly  with what someone is looking for.

This is true on a personal and business level.  Your product can only have The Right to Win is you find a potential customer that has the exact features your product offers.  This does not mean that you should add more features (or personal skills), but instead it means that you should focus your features and skills on the exact market that is looking for exactly what you have to offer.  Remember, the essence of strategy is lies in what you don't do..... This gives you The Right to Win!

InnovAAAAAtion

InnovAAAAAtion is what you hear every CEO yelling at the top of his lungs to his Senior VPs.

"We MUST innovATE!  We have to be innovATIVE to stay competitive!"

What he doesn't realize is that these VPs already know this!

Who are these VPs and what is the innovation that Mr. CEO is looking for?  Well, titles usually range from VP of R&D, Chief Innovation Office (this is newer), VP of New Product Development and of course you have some VPs of Engineering and Marketing.  Innovation in its simplest definition is any product or service that meets an unmet need in the marketplace.  A new way of doing something (Ford's Line Manufacturing) or a new feature to an existing product (the windshield wiper) or a completely new product (although these are rare).

In Scott Berkun's book "The Myths of Innovation" he explains that even the popular belief of innovation relating to a completely new product is a myth.  The iPod was not a completely new product, but an innovative way of using 1,000 existing products in a new way.  The shape was the only thing new.  Innovation has to be grounded in existing products or materials, or they take forever to develop and there usually is not a market for them (aka: no knows how the heck to use them).

So how does Mr. CEO go about getting his team of VPs to innovate.  There are a million strategies on answering this question but, most companies (and I have dealt with many) usually start with a common exercise (which actually relates well with Jason's last post on a personal level as well).

1. What are our core competencies?  What do we do well?  
2. What products or services can we reposition into adjacent markets?
3. What products or services in our markets are we not making now, that we could make better than our competitor?
4. What products or services do not currently existing in our existing markets? What cool new features do our customers want in a new product?  
5. What markets can we combine into one product offering?  (Blue Ocean Strategy)

After answering these questions, I guarantee you will have more questions to figure out:

• Do we have the right people with the right skills to makes these products?
• What type of Return on Investment (ROI) will we see?  What is the potential Commercial Value (ECV) of this product?
• What are our competitors doing?
• And on, and on, and on it goes.....

Companies are able to manage this madness with a simple formula:  The Right People, The Right Culture, The Right Process and The Right Technology.  Without all four of these aspects Innovation is not sustainable.  The right people are entrepreneurial at heart and love figuring out new things; otherwise they get bored.  The culture is founded in executives that are not afraid to fail (often and fast), and are not afraid of letting their employees experiment.  The right process has to take you from Ideation, through development and post-launch of new products.  There are many processes out there, I recommend Stage-Gate, although it is not the end-all, by-all process.  The right technology has to do with software - MS XL and MS Project will kill you trying to find and manage data....TRUST ME!  Do yourself a favor, get a PPM software solution if you are managing lots of projects.

How important is this topic and sub-topics?  The Aberdeen Group found that companies that have a robust portfolio management process (all four parts of the formula) realize 25% more revenue from their innovation projects.  A study from Kalypso found that 52% of medical device companies were unhappy with their return on investment.  Remember, what is not growing is dying!  Don't let your business be one of them!  In order to grow your business, you need new products and services that meet unmet needs.  Otherwise you are competing in price alone and that is a recipe for disaster.  No one can always be the low cost provider and be profitable!

So, Mr. CEO is right - you must innoVATE!

Cold Calling - 101!

Last week while in the office I got a cold call from a “Lead Generation” company.  Seeing that I make about 50 cold calls a day and this is my bread and butter, I am usually very nice to struggling telephone sales people.  This started wrong, and went terrible south, fast, and then proceeded to get worst.

Here is what happened and how to do it better.

Me: This is Jeremy!
Caller: Hey Jeremy, what’s up, this is Jimmy from ABC Lead Generation...
Me: Mmmm, Ok, How can I help you?
Caller:  I got an email from one of my colleagues stating that you don’t have any need for outsourcing your lead generations any time soon; I wanted to follow up to make sure I understand everything.
Me:  Mmmm, Sure... (although I don’t know what else there is to talk about).
Caller: So, as I understand it, your company doesn’t do any lead generation and your sales reps wait for info requests from your website - is that right?
Me:  No, that is not right, I do what you do, only better.
Caller:  I doubt that!
Me: Thanks for calling!

About five minutes later I receive an email from him with a brochure, no text and his signature - that is it!  I didn’t read the brochure!

So, let’s look at how bad this call really was!

First, never use “What’s up!”  We are not friends, I don’t know you and it sends the message you are trying to be too informal and friendly.  Secondly, the caller started by reaffirming that I have no interest.  Restating this negativity only further turns me off.  Thirdly, if I make a joke at your expense, go with it , DON”T try to defend yourself, you are only going to offend me (which he did!).  

Cold calling has a very negative imagine.  No one likes doing it, no one likes to interrupt their days’ activities to answer the phone and be sold on something they probable don’t need.  That is why real cold calling is not about selling . It is about making connections and starting relationships that may or may not result in a sale.  

The first 10 seconds of any call makes or breaks it, based on a simple formula:  No one will ever buy anything from you if they don’t trust you, and they won’t trust you if they don’t listen to you and they won’t listen to you if they don’t like you!   Getting some one to like you in the first 10 seconds has to be the goal of a cold call not to sell your product.

Using “what’s up” doesn’t send the right message, which is “I am smart, aggressive and busy just like you - I don’t want to waist your time, nor mine.”   Making sure you understand that there is no need waists people’s time.  Defending yourself after a small and harmless joke reinforces the stereotype that the rest of use professionals in the industry are trying to reverse and just PROVES MY POINT.  

If a call does go bad, DON”T send an unsolicited email with no text, this just shows that you are regurgitating the material that your marking team worked hours to develop and unable to communicate the value of your company yourself.

You

Me
BETTER!

Lap Dances Are NOT Expansable!

A while back I was sent a youtube video called "A Few Good Salesmen." If any of haven't seen it, watch it right away. You will either love it or be offended by it - either way it is worth watching. 

I bring this up because a lot of people have a bad impression of sales people and unfortunately rightfully so.  No one likes to be sold, and although entertaining the late Billy Mays was he was not a sales person.   He was a pitch man, not a salesman… there is a big difference.  Additionally, in corporate America, sales people are disliked because of lavish bonuses and sometimes favoratism. My point and perspective is that sales is the only part of the business that generates revenue - everything else is overhead. The sales team pays for their own salary and arguably, your too… thank them the next time you get the chance. Lead generation is a close 2nd, depending on the organizational structure. I am in debt to my organization (figuratively) if you add up my salary, benefits and bonuses minus revenue generated, but we are just now getting past the start up phase and I am not too far behind the brake even point. Marketing is not a revenue generating group within an organization as their job (again depending on the organization) is to provide sales the necessary info (brochures, product info, flyers and other material) to close deals and generate revenue. Yes (I think I know what you are thinking) sale and marketing have to work hand-in-hand and going on step further, lead generation should be the bridge between sales and marketing, but that is another blog. 

Back to the point. Sales people have a bad reputation for selling people (think of a used car sales person or Dwight from The Office) by not motivating people to buy. Here’s what I mean, people love to spend money, right?  If you can do three things (the last being the most important), you should go far in sales. People will give you their ATM PIN if they trust you and no one will ever trust you if they don't like you, you can't get someone to like you unless you engage them. Forget about impressing them ... That what used car sales people and marketing do... instead engage them, ask them how they are doing and listen.  On a cold call (another future blog) your first question should be “How are you?” – and LISTEN!  Build some rapport, then some trust, and then you can motivate them to see the benefits, build the business case and to be the champion for you. More importantly, you will gain a trusted friend and advisor forever.  I have connections that I have never sold anything to that have given me recommendations and still talk to on a regular basis... 

Good, no sorry, GREAT sales people are able to find the real reason that you want or need to buy something.  You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo unless you first realize that all of their ice is contaminated or something like that.  Really great sales people are able to understand you business, your needs and pains that you may not even realize.  It doesn’t matter if you are selling the enterprise software, cars or the Awesome Auger – the point is to find out what the buying motive is and then help your future customer see the benefits.  We get in trouble (sales people) when we find a pain and exploit it to sell a bunch of stuff they don’t need, or knowingly go through with a deal that we cannot deliver.

So you can do it this... Or you can take your contacts/prospects out for lap dances and try to expense them.

Just my $0.02 worth ;)

JS