Marketing Leads

2009-03-30T13:56:00.002-05:00

Why Is Enterprise 2.0 Not Yet More Widely Adopted?

On March 25th, Ethan Yarbrough asked the following question on LinkedIn: Why is Enterprise 2.0 not yet more widely adopted? A simple yet compelling question.

In the intervening five days, 22 people have commented on this question, resulting in one of the best discussions I've seen on LinkedIn, and a great example of the power of social media. Here is a summary of what I believe are some of the key themes across the 22 comments thus far:

- Enterprise 2.0 adoption will be slow until it comes to be understood as Work 2.0. This means a dramatic change in how we think about work; not just how we do work.

- Work 2.0 solutions can't just be "stood up"; they must be designed to enable specific business goals.

- Design is not the same as Adoption, though both are important.

- Work 2.0 solutions must integrate with and enhance real business workflow processes. E 2.0 solutions as stand-alone social media islands will never deliver the ROI to encourage rapid uptake.

- The difficulty in defining a hard business case for Work 2.0 solutions is a major challenge in an ROI fixated business culture. This challenge will go away when we have the tools to measure the impact of Work 2.0 solutions on interaction, communication, and contribution.

- Work 2.0 solutions address deep cultural and inter-personal issues related to tradition, hierarchy, respect, etc. that very few previous technology solutions have touched on so directly.

- Off-the-shelf solutions such as MS SharePoint have tainted business understanding of the potential of Work 2.0 solutions.

To the above points, I would add this thought:

- Work 2.0 is transformational. Success requires visionary and committed leadership at the very top who understand the transformational potential of Work 2.0 and are prepared to embrace and champion it despite the many obstacles. A great example is John Chambers at Cisco. Adoption of Work 2.0 will continue apace with the development of Leadership 2.0 in corporate America and globally.

2009-02-26T19:22:00.003-05:00

7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers: Kris Colvin

Posted using ShareThis

Great new blog post from software developer Kris Colvin on how to use Twitter effectively. It's a rather long post, so I thought I'd summarize the 7 habits here, although I encourage you to read the full post if you really want to take your use of Twitter to the next level.

Chris's 7 Habits:

1. Be proactive

2. Know your mission

3. Prioritize your Twitter time

4. Make relationships mutually beneficial

5. Listen, don't just talk

6. Synergy is the magic of Twitter

7. Twitter can help sharpen your mind

2009-02-19T09:29:00.002-05:00

The Most Innovative Companies in Web 2.0 Fast Company

Posted using ShareThis

Interesting to see Google still at the head of the list, despite becoming a corporate behemoth in its own right. Other pundits are suggesting Google may be the next victim of the "creative destruction" that characterizes our capitalist system in general - and the technology industry in particular. At current levels, Google is almost a value stock.

What's your view - edging over the hill or destined to dominate for a long time to come?

2009-02-02T21:08:00.009-05:00

Let’s Talk Some Sense

REPUBLISHED WITH PERMISSION FROM AMANDA O'DONOVAN. This is actually Amanda's first ever blog posting and I think it's terrific! If you like it also, please follow her at www.amandaodonovan.com/blog .

Sometimes, I think we’re in danger of drowning in our own babble. At work we surround ourselves with a language of protective terms that mean very little to an outsider. It’s a great way to avoid saying what we mean, or knowing what we’re talking about. Many of us are so good at it that we’ve skilfully managed to confuse our suppliers, competitors, clients, prospects and even our colleagues.

As a freelancer, I’ve worked with many different organizations. Each one has its own corporate language —spoken with great pride and many acronyms. It’s very hard not to get sucked into this vortex of business babble, because deep down we all want to wear the badge that shouts, “I belong here.”

Most of us wouldn’t dream of using techno terms at home with our loved ones, so why do we park our personalities at the office door on a Monday morning? Why do we insist on talking about optics, low-hanging fruit, burn rates, pushback, face time and helicopter views?

Imagine how ridiculous it would sound if we started using business jargon in our private lives:

“Hey Dad, can we talk about my allowance? It’s been the same for so long — and I can’t afford to buy the stuff I need.”

“Son, you may need to get your burn rate under control. You probably need more granularity in your expenses going forward.”

“What?”

“I’d like to schedule a town hall this evening. We need bring your sisters to the table on this, because any change in your reward package is likely to affect our entire family unit.”

“OK.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll need to run this up the flagpole and see if Mom salutes.”

“So, does that mean you’ll talk to her?”

“Yes, I’ll book some face time, but don’t drive beyond the headlights on this one. We may get pushback.”

“Is there anything I can do to help persuade her?”

“You’ll need to get your ducks in a row. Bucketize your ideas —a helicopter view will do — and then bottom line it with some bullet points. Once you’re done, I can take a look at the treeware and give it a legal scrub before you present it to the C-level.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“You’re welcome, Son. The optics are looking good. I’m hoping to get you somewhere north of fifty. We’ll circle back this evening. Let’s hope the juice is worth the squeeze.”

Now, I realize that I may have exaggerated the content of this conversation to push home a point, but most of you reading this will have used one or more of these expressions in the past week. You’re guilty. I’m guilty. Can we change our business behaviour? Yes, we can!

For more ridiculous business jargon, and for a translation of some of the terms used in this post, take a look at theOfficeLife.com. It’s well worth the detour.

Amanda O’Donovan is a corporate communicator with a passion for plain speaking. Although she tries to avoid sinking to the darker depths of the jargon basement, she has, on more than one occasion, been found guilty of speaking techno babble. With your help, she too can kick the habit.

2009-02-02T20:36:00.002-05:00

LIVING IN THE TWITTERVERSE - WITHOUT LOSING YOUR LIFE IN THE PROCESS (or How I Learned to go with the Twitter Flow…)

Twitter is an interesting phenomenon. Millions of people currently use it, some love it more than air, some put up with it but aren’t sure why, and oodles more have given it a try and beat a hasty retreat. There is no correlation across these groups with intelligence, writing ability, character or speed typing skills – so what gives?

This post is written primarily for the second group – those struggling to get what this whole Twitter thing is all about – although perhaps it will also encourage some people in the third group to giveTwitter another try.

This is not a “how to get started on Twitter” guide. There are hundreds of those and many are very well done. What follows are the lessons and insights I’ve gained over the past six weeks regarding how to participate in Twitter, give and receive value, enjoy the process, while keeping the whole thing in perspective. I hope this helps you in some way and would appreciate your feedback.

· Be clear about the topics you are interested in tweeting about.

· Be clear about the kind of people you’d like to connect with (your future tweeps) and reach out to them. Tools such as MrTweet and TwitterGrader can help here.

· Make it easy for people to find and understand you - create an accurate and informative profile, use your real name, upload a photo.

· This one is KEY: Ignore the competition for big numbers of followers! Let others beat their chest about this.

· Connect with who you think it makes sense to connect with. You are not duty bound to follow everyone who follows you.

· Don’t try to read every tweet (no-one will know!)

· When you are checking in, let it flow over you like water, and let the appropriate posts for reading/consideration/response catch your attention.

· Post or reply when you think you have something interesting to say or share, and don’t when you don’t.

· Reward tweeps for their valuable posts by retweeting them to your own twitosphere (aka forwarding).

· Set a time limit for your Twitter updates and stick to it.

· Try to check in regularly rather than disappearing for days on end and then making up for it with 39 posts in 2 hours.

· Use a tool such as Tweetdeck to help you organize and manage your twitosphere. I currently use all 10 columns available in Tweetdeck – some for groups and some for permanent keyphrase searches – and wish there were more of them.

· Some other tips on twetiquette:
o Send a personal thank you tweet to people who choose to follow you, whether you choose to follow them back or not.
o Stay on top of all general replies (i.e. a reply to you also seen by your network).
o Always acknowledge and reply to direct messages (i.e. messages seen only by you).
o Be careful of trying to be too funny. 140 character is not a lot to work with.
o Avoid sarcasm – it’s very easily missed and misunderstood.
o Be careful about being too controversial. Remember that twitter is the essence of viral. Before you send any tweet make sure you’d still be comfortable if it was read by 1,000 people – or one million – or your mother and Aunt Agnes.

· And lastly, don’t get caught up in the “secret handshake” of Twitter language, jargon and acronyms. If you pick up some along the way that’s great. On the other hand don’t sweat it. I’m sure I’ve managed to mangle and mis-use quite a number of twords in this one little post alone. In fact, make up some of your own (like I just did)! Twictionary is a good reference if you want to try and get it right.

· Last rule – have fun always. (Actually, this has nothing to do with Twitter. It’s just a good general rule… )

2009-01-26T15:18:00.001-05:00

TEST from ping.fm

2009-01-19T10:26:00.002-05:00

Customer Service - It's the little things...

The first hint that it was going to be a challenging evening on the service front came when my cousin ordered a $13 glass of wine and what arrived was an incredibly small portion. My cousin asked in a friendly tone “are you sure this is the correct amount?” The waitress replied in a surly tone “It sure is. Besides, YOU ordered it!”

A little while later as the main courses began to arrive, the waitress didn’t bother removing the empty appetizer dishes. We eventually cleared them ourselves to an adjacent table that happened to be empty.

The main courses were, of course, served to the wrong people, but we made the exchanges across the table to set things right.

A while later, the waitress poured scalding hot coffee on the foot of my cousin’s husband and barely managed to murmur an apology.

But the coup de grace was the arrival of the bill. We asked for the bill to be split 50/50. Instead, my cousin received a bill for her 50% while we received one for 100%. Now I’d like to believe this was simply “human error” but another possibility exists… Whether intentional or not, when we asked for our bill to be adjusted, our waitress acted as if it was no big deal and actually harrumphed a bit as if we were being a terrible bother.

Needless to say, we won’t be going back – despite the fact that the food was excellent.

How could this same situation have played out differently? Here’s how:
1. When we murmured about the small portion of the wine, the server could have smiled graciously, agreed that it did appear a bit small, and then poured in an extra ounce or two. Total cost to the restaurant – near zero. Impact on our satisfaction – big.
2. When the server realized she forgot to clear the appetizer dishes, she could simply have acknowledged the error and made a simple apology.
3. When pouring scaling hot coffee on my friend, she could have displayed some genuine human concern and asked if there was anything she could do to help. There wasn’t; but the concern would have been appreciated.
4. Assuming the over-charge on the bill was accidental, a genuine expression of regret would have been nice, and an offer of a free coffee, desert, whatever to compensate for the error would have gone miles to helping us give the benefit of the doubt.

If any of the above actions had been taken, there’s a good chance we would be returning to the restaurant. If all of them had been taken, we would definitely be returning – and would likely be recommending it to others. “To err is human. To make amends divine.”

2009-01-11T20:15:00.008-05:00

More on incenting balanced DG production across territories

In my last post, I talked about using a Balance Bonus to incent even DG Rep attention to multiple territories. Trish Bertuzzi, CEO of the Bridge Group, asked if this approach can work when territories have unequal potential. The answer is – absolutely, as this was definitely the case at Eloqua.

The key is where you set the bars. In our case, the "high bar" that allowed a DG Rep to earn her balance bonus was 80% of her quarterly MQL quota across all 3 (or 4) Field Reps supported. Come in under 80% on one Field Rep - no bonus. Conversely, the "low bar" was 60%. In other words, a DG Rep paid a penalty (negative bonus?) for every Field Rep that they were below 60% of quota on. The message here was the I don't care how tough the territory is, you've got all quarter, give it the extra effort to get to at least 60%.

Think of this as a "leave no man behind" approach to DG. Although a new Field Rep might get an extremely "challenging" territory, it was in our best interest as a company to do everything possible to help them be successful. The cost of slighly over-allocating DG resources pales compared to the cost of recruiting, training, ramping up, losing and then starting all over again for a $250k Field Rep.

(NB: Some people are uncomfortable with penalties in a comp plan. If that's the case, leave out the stick and work with just the carrot.)

2009-01-11T20:06:00.003-05:00

DG Rep ratios and encouraging balance across field territories

The Bridge Group just released their 2009 Lead Generation Metrics and Compensation Report, chock full of interesting data and insight for those involved in demand generation. You can get your own free copy at http://tinyurl.com/86v57f.

One of the metrics examined in the report is the ratio of Field Sales Reps to one Demand Gen Rep, with the conclusion being that 3:1 is about optimal.

At Eloqua, we experimented with the ratio ranging from 2:1 to 4:1. I would agree that the demand gen model starts to break down beyond 3:1 for all the reasons listed in the report (i.e. co-ordination and communication challenges, lack of attention to tougher territories, etc.). If you're in very high growth mode in a hot market space, I think a case can be made for 2:1.

The Rep ratio led directly to the question of how much/little to try and control where a DG Rep spends his time across multiple Field Reps/territories. While you don't want to handcuff or micro-manage your DG Reps, at the same time, all field Reps need some level of DG support.

The way we balanced these conflicting needs at Eloqua was to add a "balance bonus/penalty" to the DG Rep incentive comp plan, such that they could earn extra money by achieving a certain level of MQL production across all supported Reps (the "carrot"), but if they really underperformed in a given territory, there was a financial penalty to be paid (the "stick"). This approach left the decision with the DG Rep how best to optimize his incentive compensation, which was primarily driven by MQL/SQL production, but with a clear message that some level of balance across supported territories was also important.

Bottom Line: it seemed to work exactly as intended. Reps knew some level of balance was important, but weren't micro-managed as to where they spent their time to the point of hurting overall DG output and efficiency.

2006-11-12T17:24:00.000-05:00

The Critical Role of Trust in Sales - and Marketing

Who is the most successful sales person? Is it the salesperson with:

the best product knowledge?
the best sales skills?
the best customer knowledge?
the best looking?
the most likeable?

According to a couple of articles in the Gallup Management Journal (http://gmj.gallup.com/default.aspx - subscription required), by Benson Smith, co-author of Discover Your Sales Strengths, none of the above factors differentiate the most successful salespeople from the mediocre. This is not to say that the first three factors are not important. They are important. However, they do not differentiate the best from the rest.

“A company that Gallup has studied tested all of its sales employees on product knowledge at an annual sales meeting. Much to the company's surprise, its top performers didn't score any better on product knowledge exams than did the rest of the sales force. The company also had each of the representatives perform in role-playing scenarios only to find out that their best people didn't necessarily give the best presentations either. And many of their superior producers didn't follow the company's scripted sales presentations. Even more surprising, the best reps didn't necessarily know more about their customers than did the rest of the sales organization. If you objectively look at your own selling organization, you will likely draw the same conclusions.”

While factor #4, best looking, has been shown to impact pay levels and hiring decisions, Gallup research did not find top performers were any "better looking" than average performers. Other studies have shown similar results for likeability.

After researching over 250,000 sales reps, Gallup found that the talents most predictive of success in these sales roles had to do with motivation, an ability to build trust quickly, and a willingness to ask for commitments.

The subtle challenge of helping sales reps become more trustworthy is a fascinating topic, but beyond the scope of this post. However, I do want to explore the role marketing can play in helping a company’s sales reps be more worthy of trust.

To begin with, ensure that your marketing is honest and authentic. Know who you really are and what you’re all about as an organization and reflect that in your branding and all your marketing communications. Don’t put your sales reps in the awkward position of having to choose between representing a corporate identity that’s false and that even they don’t believe in; or representing the company in person in a manner that conflicts with the corporate message. This is a true lose/lose as either choice will damage your sales reps' credibility and integrity in the eyes of the customer, and in their own eyes.

The second thing marketing can do is to provide truly useful sales tools that help a sales rep substantiate your marketing claims and positioning. Whitepapers, independent research, and third party evaluations are all examples of this type of sales tools. Although they won’t in and of themselves make a sales person more “trustworthy” they can help a sales rep develop the inner confidence in their company and its message that they will sell with a greater sense of confidence and integrity. That inner confidence will shine through to the customer, making them more willing to place their trust in the sales rep that clearly believes in himself and his company.

If you’d like to explore how to give your sales force the support it needs to sell with confidence and integrity, please contact me at 416 948-2926 or rgaasenbeek@marketingleads.ca.

2006-11-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

Technorati's Annual "State of the Blogosphere"

If you’re a blogger yourself, you should definitely check out State of the Blogosphere, October, 2006 . David Sifry and Technorati give us our annual update and checkup on all things blog related. It’s a “big picture” view of the blogosphere and how it is growing and evolving. How do blogs rank compared to mainstream media, how fast are new blogs being created, how often do bloggers post, what languages are people blogging in, when do they post, etc.? Definitely NOT an introductory primer to blogging – I’ll cover that in future postings – but well worth a look if you’re already a blogger.

2006-11-07T09:58:00.000-05:00

Search still most efficient by far at acquiring customers, study says

At an average cost per acquisition of $8.50, Internet search was shown to be more than twice as efficient as the next-best marketing channel in a study of five channels by Piper Jaffray & Co.

The study, “The New eCommerce Decade: The Age of Micro Targeting,” which was released earlier this month, compared the customer acquisition costs of search, Yellow Pages, online display ads, e-mail and direct mail.

Yellow Pages came in as the second-most efficient at $20 per customer acquisition, followed by online display ads, $50; e-mail, $60; and direct mail, $70.

In other matters related to search, the study found that consumers are becoming more likely to use Internet search to find products and services, rather than going to online marketplaces. And with the growth of local search, the current number of 700,000 online advertisers could reach 2-4 million over the next five years.

Source: Internet Retailer, October 26, 2006

This study reinforces our view that for many small and medium size businesses, Search Engine Marketing delivers the best bang for the buck and should be the starting point of any marketing strategy. Rule #1 is to get found by those people already looking to buy what you're selling. And the place they're looking today is the online search engines.

2006-11-05T17:27:00.000-05:00

Effective Marketing Building Block #1 - Have Something Good to Say

It’s amazing how many companies want to launch into a direct mail campaign or trade journal ad campaign without ever really knowing what they want to say. Without knowing what they want to say, they default to generic “boilerplate” communications which is a mixture of platitudes pulled from their dated corporate brochure, with their logo big and bold at the very top. In fact, there’s a direct co-relation between the size and prominence of the company’s logo in its advertising, and the vagueness of its message. The bigger and more prominent the logo, the less clear the company is on its message.

Before spending a dime on any form of marketing, a company first needs to be crystal clear on what makes it worthy of the customer’s business. This may sound like a “messaging” issue but it’s not. At its core, it’s an issue of business and marketing strategy.

So what does it mean to “have something good to say” and how do you get there?

Having something good to say really means that you’ve understood your customer at a very deep level, and have aligned everything about the way you do business to satisfy or exceed the needs and expectations of your customers. This goes well beyond the traditional “features, advantages, benefits” of your products or services. Of course, your products and services must be providing some value to your customers or you wouldn’t still be in business. But to excel, you need to address real client wants and needs in a way that is superior and in some way unique versus your competition. Beyond products and services, real alignment with your customers extends to all facets of your operations: your hours of business, payment terms, return or cancellation policies, customer service and technical support options, even the verbiage and tone of your communications.

So what’s stopping so many companies from being in alignment with their customers? Absolutely nothing. Other than the willingness to ask the right questions, and the willingness to truly hear the customers’ answers. Most customers are delighted to provide you with honest feedback, provided they feel you are sincere in your interest. Repeated “customer satisfaction surveys” that seem to change nothing will dampen any customers enthusiasm for communicating with you. But if you approach them with a sincere desire to learn more about them and how you can serve them better, you’ll be amazed at what they’ll tell you and what you can learn!

The hardest part is to truly HEAR what the customer is saying. We all tend to “hear what we want to hear” and that can be a real problem when asking for customer feedback. Sometimes, they’ll tell you things that you absolutely do NOT WANT to hear – and that is usually the most important feedback of all.

We all enjoy hearing how wonderful our product is and how nice our customer service reps are, but what do you do when you learn that something you’ve based a big part of your business strategy on – is wrong?!?

For instance, you spent the better part of the past decade becoming ISO9001 certified, and you lead with this clear proof of your high quality standards in all your marketing, only to learn that it’s actually fast delivery, a wide range of products, and flexible payment terms that are your customers’ top three buying criteria, with quality a distant fourth? This is not an easy thing to learn, but you’d better learn it sooner rather than later, or you’ll eventually be out of business.

So ask customers what they truly care about, what issues are making their lives a pain, how you could help them better, and how you could be of more service. Then be prepared to truly listen, and most important, be prepared to ACT upon what you hear. Figure out how you can align your business more fully with the needs of your customers and you’re on the way to accelerating growth and greater profitability.

You’ll also truly then “have something good to say” and you’ll be ready for the second building block of effective marketing, which is “saying it well”, the topic of my next post.

2006-10-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

The Three Classic Marketing Challenges Faced By Small Businesses

The other day I met with a client who was complaining that his marketing wasn’t doing a thing for his business. So I asked him three simple questions.
1. Do you have something good to say?
2. Do you say it well?
3. Do you say it often?

At my first question, “Do you have something good to say?” his eye-brows went up and he gave me a surprised and wary look. I think he was trying to figure out if he should feel insulted. Eventually he gave me a tepid answer that was far from confidence inspiring.

I then asked him “Do you say it well?” At this point, he started drumming his fingers impatiently on the table, clearly not comfortable with my line of questioning. “Of course we do!” was his eventual response and to prove his point he showed me some of their marketing collateral, and one or two ads they had run in trade journals. As I expected, their communications was the usual mix of unfocused copy-cat platitudes that so often plague small business marketing.

With my third and final question, “Do you say it often?” he became down-right angry. “Of course we don’t! It hasn’t done us any good so why the heck should we throw good money after bad!? I ran an ad two months ago in our trade journal and got only two calls. Last year we sent out a mailer to 2,200 companies and hardly got any response at all!”

This exchange typifies three of the main reasons small businesses struggle to earn a great return on their marketing investment:

First, they don’t have a clear understanding of the real needs and buying criteria of their target markets, and they don’t make the effort to ensure that their offering (value proposition, USP, whatever you want to call it) is 100% aligned with these buyer needs and decision criteria. Only by doing these two things can you truly “have something good to say”.

Secondly, even companies that do have something good (or even great) to say, often then fail to communicate their message with any passion, creativity or clarity. It’s the equivalent of the finest sushi shop in the city advertising “Cold Dead Fish Sold Here”…

And lastly, even those small businesses with a great business offering, articulated in a compelling fashion, often still fail to succeed in marketing simply due to a lack of commitment and “stick-to-it-iveness”.

In future posts, we’ll look at each of these three challenges and how exactly small businesses can overcome them.

2006-10-04T09:44:00.000-05:00

Local Search Continuing To Gain Steam

comScore Networks, a leader in measuring the digital age, recently released the results of an analysis revealing the size and growth of the U.S. local search market.

According to the study, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005.

Two out of five local searchers (41 percent) were looking for information on a local service in their home area, including car rental office, dry cleaner or lawyer.

The comScore study also found that performing a local search drives consumers to take action. During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline.

What does this mean to you? If you're running a small business and never worried about the Web before because you only sell locally, you need to think again. At a minimum, you need an informative and compelling Website that is search optimized for your sales region.

2006-10-02T09:33:00.000-05:00

Still wondering if search engines really matter in YOUR business?

A recent study by Internet research firms Marketing Sherpa and Enquiro called, "The Role of Search in Business to Business Buying Decisions" strongly demonstrated that search engines are now the dominant force driving most business buying decisions. A key finding indicated that 93.2% of respondents based their buying decisions according to their online research.

Right now, go to Google. Search for your product or service, but not by using your company or first name. Instead, use common words and phrases your customers might use when searching for your Web site. (For example, a tile worker from Denver might search for custom tile work and custom tile work Colorado.) Try it!

Did your business come up in the results? If so, great! But if you did not show up, or are invisible beneath a list of your competitors, you need to improve your online findability.

2006-09-30T17:59:00.000-05:00

Cold Calling - Fish or Fowl?

In my last post, I talked about how marketing should be used to create leads, NOT sales reps. But what about cold calling you ask? Cold calling is a sales rep role and responsibility yet it creates leads, right? Wrong. Cold calling is actually a form of Marketing NOT sales, since it creates leads not customers.

Unfortunately, cold calling is the most expensive and least efficient method of creating leads that exists. That is because cold calling uses an extremely expensive asset – a human being – to do something that is 95-99% of the time of absolutely zero added value.

Dialing the phone, waiting for it to ring into voice-mail, leaving voice-mails with strangers that will never respond, getting stonewalled by gate-keepers, and repeating the entire process ad infinitum fails to utilize any of the capabilities that define us as humans – our intelligence, our creativity, our ability to develop understanding and relationships. All capabilities that are crucial to sales, but virtually wasted by cold calling.

(Like any good rule, there are exceptions. For example, writing unsolicited proposals is definitely a sales task, yet it’s designed to turn a suspect or prospect into a lead. This is one exception, but I can’t think of many others.)

So why do so many companies rely on cold calling as their primary form of lead generation? Because it’s easy, visible and familiar. “There’s Joe. Look at him pound those phones! My, Joe’s doing a great job.” Of course, you’re paying Joe $3,000 or $4,000 per month (or more!), and he hasn’t really brought in much business yet, but he’s such a nice guy and he’s working so hard, you’re sure he will…

Whereas the $500/month you’re spending on search engine optimization – what’s happening with that?!? Of course, traffic to your Website does seem to be rising as each month passes, the number of leads coming off the Web is definitely increasing, your online sales are on the upswing, and the phone does seem to be ringing more than before – but just WHAT is that SEO firm doing for you anyway?! And of course the same could be said about your PR efforts, direct mail campaign etc.

The bottom line is that as human beings we like what we can see, touch and smell. A bank of cold callers with headsets gets an A+ on that score. Unfortunately, it also gets an F in terms of long term effectiveness and efficiency. A major indicator of the sophistication of any company’s understanding of and approach to marketing is the ratio of its investment in cold calling versus all other forms of demand generation marketing. What’s your firm’s ratio and what score would you give yourself on this question?

2006-09-30T17:53:00.000-05:00

Sales and Marketing - Ying and Yang, or Oil and Water?

Have any two areas of business ever been more mixed up and misunderstood than sales and marketing? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to clients who have complained about their marketing when it was really a sales problem; OR gone on about their no-good lazy sales reps when what they really had was a marketing failure!

So let me first bring clarity to the question: what is the definition of sales and marketing and how are they related?

Marketing is the process, investments and activities that create leads, whereby leads are people who have expressed some level of interest in your company’s products or services. Marketing involves identifying a universe of suspects (your target market), communicating your existence to that universe, converting suspects into prospects, and then nurturing those prospects through ongoing education and communication until they are ready to become leads.

Sales is the process and activities related to communicating with leads one-on-one and converting them into customers. This process includes qualifying them (the time honored “money, authority, need and timeframe” or MANT), understanding their real wants and needs, presenting a solution, overcoming objections and closing the sale.

Now that we’ve separated and defined sales and marketing, let’s do something much more important – put them back together!

One of the eternal truths of business is that marketing and sales are co-dependant on each other in order to be truly effective. Marketing must effectively communicate its strategy, key messages (i.e. unique selling proposition), and target markets in order for sales to support and continue the marketing initiative.

In addition, marketing must create the right kind of leads that have high potential for sales reps to convert into happy long term customers. Sales, on the other hand, must support the marketing strategy, follow up on leads in a timely manner, and communicate back to marketing in a closed-loop fashion what’s working and what’s not “where the rubber meets the road”.

When both sides of the house recognize their co-dependence and work together as a team, the synergy can be simply breathtaking. Conversely, when sales and marketing ignore each other – or even worse, work against each other – the business impact can be devastating.

2006-09-13T16:34:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Marketing – The importance of the “easy sale”

In our previous post, we discussed the concept of the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) two-step, and ended by introducing the concept of the “easy sale”.

What’s the easy sale? That’s the offer on your Website that allows your prospect to sign up for an e-newsletter / request a whitepaper / complete a scorecard – anything that allows them to learn more about your company without the risk of having to speak to a live human being – or worse – the dreaded “Sales Representative”. In return, you capture their contact info (email address minimum) which now allows you to continue marketing to this prospect on an ongoing basis and puts you in control of the sales cycle.

For products or services that are fairly complex or sophisticated (quite common in B2B), the easy sale is key. People don’t buy what you sell on first contact. Rather, it’s the beginning of a communications and sales cycle that could last weeks or months. But if you don’t get their contact info when they visit your site, the conversation is usually over forever the moment they click away from your site.

For simpler products and services (think B2C), the concept of the easy sales still applies. It just happens to be the same as the REAL sale. But your Website still needs to make the visitor’s purchase of your product or service, easy, intuitive, low risk and pain free.

At this time, Search Engine Marketing is probably the single best marketing investment most SMBs can make. It’s relatively low cost, delivers a high ROI, and is easy to measure.

So to summarize:

Step #1: Use Search Engine Marketing to get found by those looking for what you sell.

Step #2: Use the easy sale to convert visitors into identified prospects.

In future posts we’ll look at the components of Search Engine Marketing in more detail, and discuss the Do’s and Don’ts of effective Search Engine Marketing for SMBs.

2006-09-04T17:26:00.000-05:00

Search Engine Marketing – A primer for the busy executive

One of the hottest topics in marketing today is Search Engine Marketing or SEM for short. What is SEM and why is it so hot? The purpose of this post is to give the busy SMB owner a quick high level guide to the key things he/she needs to understand about SEM.

So what is SEM? Think of SEM as a two-step dance. Step #1 is all about getting found by the people who are searching online for the products or services that you sell. Step #2 is all about converting those people who have found you online into prospects or customers.

Step #1 – Getting Found

So many companies spend their marketing budgets searching for customers – or worse – trying to CREATE customers (think evangelism). It’s a bit like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

SEM turns this problem on its head. At any point in time, SOMEBODY is out there looking to buy what you’re selling! It may be one out 10 or one out of 100, but they’re out there!

And guess where they’re searching? On the Web of course! (Google didn’t morph into a verb – “to google, googling” – by accident!) Over 85% of people now start their search for something – anything – on the Web regardless of whether it’s B2B or B2C, product or service, global or local.

Effective SEM ensures that those people FIND YOU – and ideally find you first – without you actually having to do a whole lot (other than a pretty modest investment SEM of course).

Step #2 – Converting Visitors Into Prospects and/or Customers

Now that you’ve got people visiting your Website because they found you first in their online search, what do you do with them? Sell to them of course!

Sounds trite, but 90% of SMB Websites actually fail to do this. They provide lots and lots of information on the company, its history, the 344 products it sells, the founders childhood development, etc., BUT they don’t make it easy to contact them (think toll-free phone number in big font on the homepage), and they don’t make the “easy sale”.

In our next post, we’ll look more closely at the “easy sale” and why it’s such an integral part of the SEM equation.

2006-08-17T10:10:00.000-05:00

Inaugral Post. Blog overview - purpose, target audience, topics

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the official Blog of Marketing Leads Inc. - post numero uno! The goal of this blog is to help you - the owner of a small to medium sized business (SMB) - grow faster through better marketing. Marketing that is integrated, cost-effective, and lead generation driven.

Marketing is poorly understood and poorly leveraged in many SMBs. We'll look at why that is and what do to about it. We'll talk about the kind of marketing that works for SMBs, and the kinds that don't. We'll look at case studies that show how marketing became the secret growth accelerator for many SMBs.

We'll examine and advise on the latest trends and tactics in marketing, while not forgetting about some of the time tested tactics that never fail to deliver results. We'll talk about the difference between strategy and tactical execution, and why one without the other is a losing approach. We'll talk about how to evaluate marketing campaigns, and why the integration of marketing and sales is critical. And we'll deliver simple, easy-to-implement ideas on how you can grow your business through better marketing.

We'll keep these posts short - rarely more than 500 words - interesting and actionable! Our target will be weekly, but we won't be bound strictly to that. If we've got something important to say, we'll say it, and if we need to take a pause we'll do that to.

I hope you'll visit frequently, and I thank you in advance for your interest and your feedback!

Rich Gaasenbeek
President
Marketing Leads Inc.
www.marketingleads.ca