Business Leads

Every business specialty has its own language. I know this all too well, since I come from an information technology background where you can literally drown in a sea of acronyms, abbreviations, and arcane terms.

The world of B2B marketing isn't much better, especially if you're new to it. Online marketing in particular uses a jumble of cryptic abbreviations that can intimidate outsiders. If you own a small business, however, it's essential that you get a working knowledge of these terms.

I can't run down every example here, but I will get you started with a list of 10 essentials. Better yet, you can use these terms to do additional research and learn even more about the field.

ROI: Return on investment. It means exactly what you think it does: The quantifiable return you can expect to get on any business investment.

CPM: Cost per thousand. This usually refers to the cost of purchasing 1,000 online ad impressions; it's related to CPI (cost per impression). Both of these involve the number of online ad impressions actually served, not the number readers click on.

CPC: Cost per click-through. Also referred to as PPC (pay per click), this is another online advertising model where advertisers only pay the publisher when the ad is clicked on - not just served.

CTR: Click-through rate. This is the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of impressions. Publishers that can guarantee higher click-through rates generally command higher prices for their ad space.

PPL: Pay per lead. This takes us one notch higher on the Internet advertising ladder, where advertisers only pay for lead generation, as defined by some specific action like completing a registration form or a survey.

CPA: Cost per acquisition. This is usually defined even more specifically than PPL - when, for example, a customer actually makes a purchase on the advertiser's site.

PR: Page rank. This usually refers to how Google ranks a website's relevance to a particular search term. In Google's case, ranking in the top 10 is the magic number, since that puts you on the first page of search results.

PV: Page view. A metric that shows the number of times visitors view a particular web page. Note that this is not the same as the number of individuals who view the page.

SEM: Search engine marketing. This is a vital (and extremely lucrative) marketing specialty that emphasizes the role search engines like Google play in driving traffic to a website. Search engine optimization (or SEO) is usually considered an important part of SEM.

SMM: Social media marketing. This is SEM's fast-growing kid brother. It covers everything from marketing a business on Facebook and Twitter to using social content such as blogs and online video to drive lead generation efforts.

Like I said, we're barely scratching the surface here. But if you start your B2B marketing research with these terms, I'm confident that you'll find more than enough useful information to keep you busy.

You've got a credit policy in place, and you know how to enforce it. You check your customer credit scores, and you understand the factors that influence commercial credit risk. When it comes to credit, you like to go strictly by the book.

But sooner or later, you'll consider making an exception to the rule.

Maybe your decision involves a family member or friend. Maybe you're dealing with a long-time business partner whose credit recently took a turn for the worse. Or maybe your gut instincts simply tell you something different than what a customer credit score is telling you.

Here's the thing: Bending the rules isn't always bad. I know that life can be messy and complicated, and even the best customer credit report may not tell the whole story.

Yet that doesn't mean you should simply throw caution to the wind and fly by the seat of your pants. There are times when you can and should make exceptions to the rules. But you should still treat your credit decisions for what they are - risk management exercises.

Here are three specific things to consider when you decide whether it's time to bend your company's credit-granting rules.

1. Look at the customer credit history. A customer that hit a rough patch and then got its act together is a very different case than one that seems to be headed straight off a cliff. The first is a great example of when bending the rules can pay off. The second is, well, a great way to throw away money.

2. Weigh financial risk against the intangibles. Maybe your credit decision could affect an old friendship or even your family ties. Or maybe taking a chance today could lead to tremendous business opportunities in the future. All of these concerns are important, but you have to decide whether they really outweigh your potential exposure to financial risk if a credit decision goes bad.

3. Understand your options. A credit decision doesn't always have to boil down to saying "yes" or "no." Perhaps you could suggest that a customer put up their inventory or future receivables as collateral. Perhaps you could simply offer a lower credit limit or more restrictive terms than your customer suggests. The key here is to look for alternatives that minimize your risk while maximizing your ability to say "yes" when a customer asks you to bend your credit rules.

Finally, no matter what you decide, remember that ignorance is never bliss when it comes to making a credit decision. Always perform a customer credit check, look at their payment histories, and gather as much information as possible before you decide. You won't eliminate your risk, but at least you'll be able to make an informed credit decision.

I recently came across a study that found 82 percent of all companies now use content marketing as part of their B2B marketing strategies. That's more than the number using search engine marketing - and twice as many as the number using print, TV, or radio advertising.

I'm not surprised. You shouldn't be, either.

Content marketing is a simple concept. It's the process of creating original content - blogs, videos, white papers, and other assets - to drive lead generation and promote a company's brand. It also serves to establish a company as a subject-matter expert and a thought leader in its space.

Why is content marketing so popular today? There are a few reasons.

1. It's inexpensive. Or perhaps I should say it's cost effective, since that's just as important. Some of the most effective marketing content you can create - blog posts - cost little or nothing to produce. How much did your last broadcast media campaign cost?

2. You can measure the ROI. In fact, you can measure your content marketing ROI in excruciating detail, using metrics that quantify your lead generation, conversion rates, repeat visitors, and other key indicators.

3. You focus on the customer's needs. Promoting a product or service isn't usually a conversation; it's a monologue. Customers get sick of that fast. Content marketing allows you to serve customers by sharing your knowledge, experience, and thought leadership on topics they care about.

4. It's incredibly flexible. Your ability to conceive, launch, and scale a content marketing strategy is limited only by your imagination - not by your budget. In fact, some experts would argue that the best content marketing takes a deliberately low-budget approach that emphasizes substance over style.

What's the downside to putting content at the center of your B2B marketing strategy? Well, there's a learning curve, but it's really not very steep - especially given the ROI you'll get once you climb it. So get started with content marketing, and discover where it can take your small business!

I don't have to tell most of you that mobile technology is growing at a staggering rate. But if I did, I would point out that smartphones now make up more than half of all U.S. phone sales.

I would tell you that two thirds of mobile users say they use their phones to find a business to make an in-store purchase.

I would note that nearly half of mobile shoppers have downloaded a retail app.

I would certainly tell you that two thirds of consumers plan to make a purchase via mobile this holiday season.

I would point out that the smartphone market is now larger than the PC market -- an extraordinary milestone.

And I would also remind you that these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

10 Ways to Leverage Mobile Marketing

So let's turn to the REALLY important topic here: How will your small business turn the mobile marketing revolution into hard, cold cash?

Here are 10 suggestions that will show you what's possible and what you should be doing to explore the possibilities within your own marketing campaign:

1. Build a mobile-friendly business website. This is no longer an option. If your business is online, it needs to have a mobile-friendly website - period.

2. Consider text-message marketing. Consumers are more than twice as likely to react to a text message as they are to email marketing. Just be sure to work with a reputable provider and avoid spamming.

3. Offer a mobile app. Yes, this can be expensive. But it's also a very effective way to reach customers, drive lead generation, and promote your brand.

4. Appeal to short attention spans. Mobile users are busy, and they're often multi-tasking. Craft your content to reach them with short, highly focused messages.

5. Integrate social marketing. Mobile users love to share information. Give them something to "like" about your content, and turn them into vital allies in your lead generation efforts.

6. Use QR codes. These codes are similar to barcodes; a user can scan them with a mobile device and learn more about your company, products, and services.

7. Extend special offers. Make your mobile users feel special with discounts, reward programs, or other perks designed especially for them.

8. Promote, promote, promote! Whether it's a mobile website or a dedicated app, you need to promote it just as you would any other marketing channel.

9. Respect users' privacy. Location-based services are a powerful marketing tool, but it's also easy to abuse them. Tread carefully and treat your mobile customers with respect.

10. Get ready for mobile commerce! So-called m-commerce systems are still in their infancy, but you need to understand the technology if you want to be ready to exploit it.

This is enough to get you started, but like I said, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Just remember to integrate all of these techniques into your company's overall digital marketing strategy, look for ways to leverage multiple marketing channels, and ensure that your technology always serves your customers -- and not the other way around.

We all know that software-as-a-service (SaaS) has changed the way small businesses think about B2B marketing. But what's the real advantage driving these businesses to adopt SaaS?

Price is part of the answer. Pay-as-you-go pricing is a huge draw for small businesses that no longer have to worry about hardware costs, software licensing, support and maintenance, or any of the other financial baggage that comes along with on-premises software.

B2B Marketing SaaS: The Real Secret to Its Success

But price isn't the whole answer. In fact, there's an even bigger benefit to using SaaS for digital marketing: It allows small businesses to use applications that only very large enterprises could have used in the past.

SaaS-based demand generation tools are actually a perfect example of this evolutionary process. These online applications include an immense array of B2B marketing-related tools and services. A top-tier vendor in this space, such as Eloqua, Marketo, or Market2Lead, will offer a package that might include:

• Email marketing management;
• Multi-channel integration of Web, email, and live-event marketing;
• The ability to create custom landing pages, website forms, and microsites;
• Tools for creating personalized marketing campaigns;
• Event marketing capabilities;
• Contact database management tools;
• Lead scoring, nurturing, and reporting;
• Social media marketing and tracking capabilities.

I'm just scratching the surface here, and I could name a dozen other companies that offer similar SaaS-based online demand generation products. Some are less expensive than others, and some are more suitable than others for very small businesses versus midsized firms. All of them, however, deliver a package of services that typically cost between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand dollars a month.

A B2B marketing organization might find the same features in on-premises software, but they'll have to add a few zeroes to the cost to get it - and they'll have to pay a good chunk of that right up front.

Picking a SaaS Marketing Solution: 3 Things to Consider

So far, so good. You're sold on the concept of SaaS, and you'd love to adopt a digital marketing solution that gives your room to grow at a fair price. If you're ready to take the plunge, here are three tips for evaluating a solution beyond the obvious stuff, like pricing and support options:

Scope. Just about everybody in this market can support Web and email marketing tasks, and most also play well with third-party CRM and SFA solutions. But what if you want to use the same software to manage an integrated direct mail marketing campaign? How about integrating data from conferences and live events?

There are demand-generation tools that can manage multi-channel B2B marketing campaigns, and some of them do it quite well. Just remember that you'll pay more - perhaps a lot more - to get all of this in a single tidy package.

Scale. Small and midsized businesses don't worry much about how these SaaS-based digital marketing solutions will scale. That's only a problem for the big guys, right?

Actually, you might be surprised how quickly scalability becomes an issue even for smaller companies. That's because smaller companies have smaller marketing teams, and those teams often manage multiple campaigns with lots of moving parts. Select a demand-generation solution that can support Web templates, for example, and it'll be much easier to make changes while protecting your brand with a clean, consistent set of shared assets.

Feedback. Metrics are the modern marketer's secret weapon: They allow you to quantify results and demonstrate ROI in a way that you could never do in the past. That's why it's especially important to look at a vendor's analytics tools. Ask how they track things like website activity, campaign response rates, and cost-based marketing metrics.

Is direct mail marketing dead?

It's a common question these days, and we all know why: Email, search, social media, and other forms of digital marketing are all the rage. They're cheaper than direct mail, they're faster, they deliver better feedback, and they ultimately deliver better ROI.

Right?

Actually, I don't think direct mail is dead yet. It might even be getting its second wind.

Direct Mail Still Gets Results

According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), 1.4 percent of U.S. households in 2010 responded to direct-mail pitches. That's down a bit from the 2005 numbers, but that number is still more than double a typical email marketing response rate, according to the DMA.

While those numbers don't directly address B2B direct mail marketing, I think it's safe to say they're comparable -- especially in terms of how they compare to email response rates.

We all know why those email response rates are so low. Bulk email is a saturated marketing channel, and the signal-to-noise ratio is unbelievably low, even for sophisticated online lead generation efforts.

Those numbers don't mean direct mail is a slam-dunk for every small business. They simply mean that direct mail can still have a place in your marketing mix - if you know how to identify, target, and build a trust relationship with the right prospects.

4 Ways to Marry Direct Mail and Digital Marketing

So direct mail definitely is not dead. But technology has transformed the way it works. Here are some specific trends you need to follow in order to use direct mail effectively.

1. On-demand printing. Throw away the cookie cutter: It's now possible to create small, highly customized batches of direct mail with content tailored for specific customer segments or for groups at different points in your marketing pipeline. You'll get higher response rates, and you'll get them at a very reasonable cost.

2. Integrated direct mail/digital marketing campaigns. You can use direct mail to drive prospects to custom website landing pages, social media pages, video demonstrations, whitepaper downloads, or any number of other destinations. This type of thoughtful, carefully-crafted content is essential to identifying qualified leads and setting up your sales team for success.

You can also experiment with new options, such as QR codes, to simplify the process of integrating direct mail marketing and digital campaigns.

3. End-to-end personalization. What do you get when you combine on-demand printing with so many different digital marketing choices? You get the opportunity to deliver a completely personalized marketing experience for every prospect. That's an opportunity that you couldn't buy at any price just a few years ago.

4. Analytics. Now more than ever before, the tools exist to measure the responses to your direct mail marketing campaigns. In fact, it's important that you NOT launch a direct mail campaign until you have a plan in place to track and measure your results.

Like I said, this doesn't mean direct mail is always appropriate for your small-business B2B marketing efforts. But it's important to experiment with direct mail, just as you experiment with social media, video, email, and other activities.

So direct mail isn't dead. And if you know how to use it right, it can give a healthy boost to your small business' bottom line.

Social media marketing can feel like a treadmill where your small business never quite finds its footing. Keep running long enough, and it's easy to lose sight of your true small business marketing goal: consistent, cost-effective lead generation.

Social Media Marketing and Lead Generation Done Right

Here's the good news: Social media, used correctly, is one of the most cost-effective lead generation tools your business can deploy. There's simply nothing else that can deliver this much ROI on a B2B marketing investment.

So what does it mean to use social media the "correct" way? Here are five specific examples:

1. Never quit experimenting. Some social media sites are gaining ground as B2B marketing platforms (YouTube, LinkedIn) while others are in decline (MySpace, StumbleUpon). Behind those broad trends, however, almost every small business marketer discovers a unique mix of social media platforms and content that delivers the best results.

Don't be afraid to try new things, and don't be afraid to fail - there's simply too much to gain here from experimenting and fine-tuning your online lead generation efforts. Tweak your business blog topics, and fine-tune your writing voice. Work with podcasts, video, and other types of social content. Even efforts that fail to generate leads can provide valuable feedback about what works and what doesn't.

2. Don't forget to deliver a call to action. The conventional wisdom holds that a call to action over social media will damage your credibility and hurt your relationship marketing activities. Yet there are limits to this attitude - after all, many of your prospects want to buy and are looking for information about your business.

A well-crafted call to action gives prospects the opportunity to get the information they need while still showing respect - and delivering value - for everybody else. Whether your call to action involves a website, e-book, whitepaper, registration/landing page, newsletter signup form, or some other response, you need to integrate it into every aspect of your social media marketing strategy.

3. Give prospects somewhere to go! It sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many businesses overlook this step. If your individual social media marketing efforts are the spokes in a wheel, then think of your landing page or website as the hub. All roads lead here - so be sure you provide a compelling destination!

4. Robust social media analytics are a must! By "robust" I definitely don't mean analytics that deal only with a single social media tool. Those are useful, but they never give you a coherent view of your marketing strategy.

Instead, I'm talking about the growing crop of social CRM and social media management tools, as well as increasingly sophisticated marketing automation solutions with built-in social media analytics. These products, including those from major vendors like Salesforce.com, Sugar CRM, and Eloqua, provide the hard data you need to drive your social media marketing and lead generation efforts.

(What follows is an excerpt from David Shedd’s book Build a Better B2B Business: Winning Leadership for Your Business-to-Business Company, which is available at Amazon.com)

Most likely, a number of potential new customers are contacting your business today to see if you can help solve their problems: they will walk through your doors; they will call you on the phone; they will contact you by E-Mail; they will connect with you through your Website.

• How will these potential customers be treated? 


• Will your company be easy for these customers to do business with?


• Will your company’s professionalism show through?


• Will their phone calls or E-Mails be returned?


• Will you solve their problem?

We are all aware of how difficult it is, at times, to buy from companies.  In fact, I experienced just this in the last two weeks.

My wife discovered some old style 3.5 inch “floppy” disks with pictures of our children when they were very young.  We wanted to be able to access these photos and keep them in our digital library.  But, we no longer had a drive that could read the disks.  My first stop was the local Audiovisual store which promises to help with “all things audio and all things video.”  The uninformed clerk at the store had no idea what I was talking about.  But, he took my information and promised that the manager would call back as soon as he got back to the store.  I am still waiting for the call.

Now, it was time to buy a 3.5 inch disk reader that could connect to my computer allowing me to transfer the photos myself.  So, I went off to three different electronics chains, two of which specialize in uncommon pieces of electronics.  None of them had it in stock.  And none of them gave me any assistance or suggestions to help me find what I was looking for.  In further research, I found that one of the chains had what I needed at a neighboring store.  And another chain had it on their website.  Alas, this was too late; I had already bought it on Amazon.

Each of these companies had the opportunity to receive my money.  But, they all dropped the ball.  To them, I was a simple inconvenience, not a customer with a problem to be solved.  Yet, they lost something bigger than the $20 I eventually spent; they lost me as a potential customer the next time that I have a similar, somewhat out of the ordinary, request.  And they do not even know that they have lost my potential business.

Most B2B businesses proactively manage the sales funnel to make an unqualified prospect into a potential customer into a completed sale.  But, what about those potential customers which are not on the sales funnel or not on the sales plan?  What about the unknown customers who have already taken the initiative to contact your business?  How many times a day do we drive away these customers because of our lack of responsiveness or inability to even begin to help solve their problem?  And how much does this cost us in terms of lost business and lost growth that is all but invisible? 

Two further anecdotes:

The Good: One $4M a year customer helped lead us into a new growth market.  This customer initially contacted us and a few others with a phone call after the customer had done an Internet search.  We were the only ones that responded promptly and professionally.  Thank goodness.

The Bad: A few years ago, I met a potential customer at a local networking event.  After we got to know one another, he remarked that his company purchased a lot from our local competitor.  I asked him why he had not considered buying from our company, especially as we were well-established in the market.  His response was sobering: “Oh, I tried to buy from you.  First, no one ever returned my call.  Finally, I did manage to speak with someone.  But, he told me that since my request was not a standard product, he did not have the time to help me.  So, I went to your competitor.”

Three takeaways:

• If you can, track all calls that come into your office, even those from new and unexpected customers and ensure that you are doing your best to serve them. 


• Consider following up with these new customers a little while later.  These customers could be fruitful; they already know you exist, and they have already taken the initiative to contact you.  And if you have helped them, they may already think positively of you.


• Even if the customer request is tangential from your business, you can help them down the path of solving their problem.  It rarely takes that much extra effort and, if need be, “you can always say ‘No’ later.”

By Diane M. Hoffmann, ph.d.

For years now, I have been talking and writing about the fact that sales and marketing are not the same.  Some time ago, I came across an article somewhere on the Net about advertising and marketing not being the same.

So, now, I talk and write about sales, marketing and advertising not being the same. Well, we know they are not the same, but we often lump them together as one function of business. In a corporation, the three activities have evolved to be separate departmental functions. But in a small company, they usually are muddled within one functional boundary.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re in an ONline or OFFline business. How will you know to whom you are advertising without having done the marketing research first? How will you sell effectively if you don't know your target market?  Just placing an ad in the paper or on radio is throwing one message to a large audience that is not even looking for your product - usually 90 percent. The equivalent in Internet terms is putting up an untargeted web site – without knowing your niche.

In OFFline business, if you do a direct mail, it's better to do 100 mail-outs in a specific postal area that you or your sales team can follow-up personally within a week, rather than to send out 1,000 or 10,000 just anywhere that you cannot follow-up. Because the sales are always in the follow-ups!

In ONline business, you target specific niche -- people who are looking for x information or z product. Then you advertise or promote within that specific target market by means of keyword-specific PPC ads, web sites and web-pages.

“Marketing” is the activity of studying and researching the product/service markets, the competition (What do they do right and wrong?), the demographics, the prospective target market of your business and products, etc.  It is the crunching of these results into the tools that the sales people use to do effective selling.

"Sales" is the direct activity of selling -- telephone cold callings, face-to-face presentations, personal follow-up, talking or inter-acting with prospects, point-of-sales merchandising... ONline, it is the landing page -- the web copy that leads to the link that leads to the buying, or the e-zine or article copy that speaks to the prospect as if in person. It is the actual selling!

“Advertising” is the newspaper, magazine, postal medium, radio or TV copy that leads to the prospect taking action towards a purchase or sales process. In ONline business it is the Adwords, e-zines and articles that carry the copy communication to the prospect.

So, not only are the sales, marketing and advertising activities not the same, they are three specific and separate functions that work in this order: 1.Marketing, 2.Advertising and 3.Sales, each building up in their own essential ways to the goal of the business which is to sell what it's in business to provide to customers. Remember no Sales, no Business!

Diane M. Hoffmann is president of Hoffmann-Rondeau Communications, which offers ONline and OFFline business services and resources. She is the founder and creator of http://www.build-your-internet-business-now.com and author of several books, e-books and articles, including "Contextual Communication, Organization and Training." Diane has recently shifted her primary focus to helping entrepreneurs start and grow their own Online or OFFline business. Copyright(c)2011 Diane M. Hoffmann. You may reprint this article without any changes, making sure to include this bio

By Reb Risty

Social media can be mean, and there is no avoiding her.  You treat her like a friend—fun, easy going, and someone you look forward to seeing.  Surprise! As in high school, one day people are talking, and everyone knows what you did last weekend. 

It seems most social media talk these days is about the good. But what about the bad? Do you know what to do when an unhappy customer voices his or her complaints on social media?  As the use of social media grows, businesses can’t ignore this very real and growing situation. 

For many B2B organizations there is still hesitation about the value of social media.  The company I work for is no different.  Six months after implementing a social media strategy, we find our customers using it to communicate with us.  By the way, our strategy includes daily monitoring to ensure that we hear what is going on.  We use a couple of tools—HubSpot and Hootsuite. 

During the past six months, our social media interaction has been very casual without much excitement, until last week.  Even though it is accepted that customers are free to voice the good and bad, we really weren’t expecting it. “It,” being an angry customer calling us out on Twitter and YouTube.  An excerpt from the twitter feed is below.  Once I saw the post, I put together a quick powwow with key decision makers regarding this customer.  There were suggestions to just call or email instead of responding via Twitter.  It was even suggested deleting the tweets. Yikes!  Since the customer had chosen Twitter as the medium of communication we had to respect that.  We agreed to respond via Twitter and a phone call.  The customer chose Twitter.  With our first “ugly head” incident brought to light, we needed some internal education on social media as well.

Here’s a quick walk-through our Twitter feed with the customer:

Customer: What will it take to get Vintalk SIP trunks up?  Does anyone at your company have a clue about customer service?

• This is actually a great example of how a customer can get a company’s attention.


• Because of our proactive approach, of monitoring our social media, we were able to catch this comment and respond quickly.


• To add a note, the customer never utilized the customer portal.  Doing so would have opened a trouble-ticket to address the issue within 24 hours with tech support, instead of the marketing department.  In other words, the most well-thought-out customer support process can and will be ignored.  Customers are going to communicate the way they want.  Be prepared.

• It’s best to respond even if you don’t have an answer.  This will help reassure the customer and hopefully stop any more nasty tweets. 


• Also, I wanted to discuss our response with the account manager and the COO.  This is the beauty of working in a smaller organization--people are easier to assemble.   

• Good answer, direct and to the point.  It only took a few minutes with tech support to get these directions.


• The customer did move to working with tech support via the phone after this tweet.

• At-a-boy … score for us!


• Not only is the customer happy, but the company looks like a champ.  Reaffirmation from the customers is the best PR you can get. 

• Know that you do have control and can win the customer back.


• Respond immediately, even if you don’t have the answer or resolution.  The fact that you are listening will help ease the situation.


• Realize there is a whole world of customers and potential customers watching.


• If the conversation should be moved to a private platform, that’s ok.


• If you know an issue is going to arrive, get the message out first.  This will mitigate nasty posts and comments.  It may even help with customer support calls.

Risty, the Vice President of Marketing at Vintalk (www.vintalk.com), is an expert in corporate brand management and online marketing with a focus in SEO, inbound marketing and lead generation.  She is responsible for developing and executing clearly defined marketing and communication strategies to support Vintalk’s growth objectives, while creating and enhancing brand awareness and equity.

• The full scope of organizational, process, and technology changes and investments required to succeed


• Executives' comfort level:   Executives who are unfamiliar with or lack expertise in some aspect of the strategy may be slow to give their support.


• The expected time to profitability or ROI: Determine how much time you have to show revenue growth before the initiative is perceived as a failure and management attention and investment move elsewhere.   


• Impact on key contributors:  Identify the changes to decision-making processes, individuals’ levels of power and input, and daily job responsibilities.


• The relative lobbying power of supportive and opposing internal organizations: Identify people who may oppose the new initiatives and how likely they are to influence others to withdraw support.


• The risk-tolerance of the board of directors.  Some boards pro-actively press for action when revenue growth doesn’t meet expectations.  Create timelines that give the new strategy sufficient time to take hold and succeed.

• Take time to educate the organization about new technologies, processes, markets, and business models. Build understanding ahead of demanding changes in behavior.


• Set expectations early and often. Make sure the executive team and the Board are all on the same page about the timeframes required to penetrate a new market or launch a new solution or product line.  Establish milestones to measure progress and correct course. 


• Identify the places within your own organization where a new revenue growth approach is likely to meet with resistance, or simple apathy.  Meet individually with key stakeholders in Sales, product groups, and the Geo’s to build relationships and to understand their objectives and concerns. Enlist them to find ways to address their concerns or even extend the initiatives to meet their own objectives. 


• Communicate openly about any changes to decision-making processes and why they are necessary.  Be clear about how individual and group participation, input, and day-to-day involvement will change.


• Acceptance by Sales and/or channel partners is key, and its lack is frequently the primary obstacle to the success of marketing-driven initiatives. Judy Ko, then VP of  Product Management and Marketing at Informatica summarized it perfectly: “Half of sales is selling to Sales.” 


• Find low-hanging fruit that can deliver incremental results quickly.  A great way to win over objectors (or their bosses) is to show positive results. 


• Have a plan to promote early successes.  When you put the word out about successes, take extra care to acknowledge everyone’s contribution. It’s difficult to object to a strategy once you’re getting praised for its success.
  Lilia Shirman is the Managing Director of The Shirman Group (www.shirmangroup.com) and can be reached at lilia@shirmangroup.com

By Alice R. Heiman
Are you a better coach or manager?  As a sales manager you are directing, supervising, managing, delegating, appropriating and reporting.  While these are important tasks, they may not lead directly to sales.  In some of my previous articles we discussed how important it is to coach your salespeople and how little time and training you may actually have to do that.  This article will give you some tips on how you can build your coaching skills and spend more time coaching.  Let’s start by defining coach.
Defining Coach
“A coach is someone who tells you what you don't want to hear, who has you see what you don't want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” --  Tom Landry
Coaching is an interactive process that helps individuals and organizations develop more rapidly and produce more satisfying results.
Professional coaches are trained to:

• Listen and observe


• Customize their approach to the individual's needs


• Elicit solutions and strategies from the individual

• Set better goals


• Take more action


• Make better decisions


• More fully use their natural strengths

• Help salespeople set goals and then make a plan to reach those goals.


• Ask salespeople to stretch more than they would have on their own and give them the encouragement to do so.


• Focus salespeople on productivity not activity so that they produce results more quickly.


• Provide salespeople with tools, support and structure to efficient and effective.

• Have each salesperson choose 10 customers with whom they feel they can increase business. 


• Ask them to create a plan for increasing business with each customer. 


• Discuss some of things that will need to be done, like checking on current satisfaction levels, asking questions to learn of needs, educating the customers on ways you can serve them and closing the deal. 


• Then meet with them one-on-one to determine how they will execute their plan and how that will be measured. 


• Check in with them weekly to see how their plans are working and give them coaching if they are stuck. 

Photo by Tim Hipps

By Brian Kardon

What makes a CMO, head of marketing, or any other marketer in a leadership role great?  It’s easy to take a quantitative approach and simply rely on the numbers.  After all, good marketers can help generate a high number of leads for the sales team resulting in revenue growth for their organizations.  But when placed in a leadership role, will these marketers shine bright as compared to their counterparts?  As impressive as good numbers may be, there’s still much more behind the scenes contributing to a marketing leader’s success.  As the CMO of Eloqua, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and working with some truly great marketing leaders.  Over time, I’ve catalogued the qualities that make these marketers such outstanding leaders.  While I’m sure there is an extensive list, below I’ve highlighted six key qualities common to all great marketing leaders.  

Leaders, not managers

The key is effective communication.  Great marketers know how to lead – not just the marketing team – but the whole company, and often, the industry.  They try out new messaging, they tweet, blog, participate in panels, and represent the company’s position in public forums.  Moreover, they know the value of creating conversation vs. purely pushing out self-promotional content. 

Curious and adventurous

There’s no playing it safe.  The standouts try new things – new technologies, channels, messaging, creative approaches – and are curious to see how these new activities perform.  They are OK with “fast” failures – they try, learn, re-do or kill things quickly.  They avoid “slow,” expensive failures at all costs.

Part left brain

The best leaders in marketing have a gift for the analytical – usually attributed to left brain thinking.  If it’s not already being measured, these marketers want to measure it, analyze the data then find a way to make the most of the results.  Marketers are increasingly being held accountable for revenue growth and as a result they’re being asked to prove how marketing campaigns tie directly to revenue.  Anecdotes and qualitative information won’t cut it – marketers now need to show hard numbers and provide real analysis.  Left brain skills are crucial as the marketing department moves further away from the “let’s make it pretty” mentality.

Part right brain

Despite a well developed left brain thought process, the most skilled marketing leaders still find a way to tap into their right brain creativity.  Whether for effective problem solving, imaginative campaigns, or even just to find something new and relevant to measure, the wheels are always turning in the minds of great marketers.

Embrace accountability

The era of the shoot-from-the-hip marketer is gone.  The great leaders are financially literate, command more respect in the C-suite and hold their jobs longer as a result.  They actually get along well with their CFO.  For every action taken, these leaders have data to support their decision, and should anything unexpected occur, they can pinpoint the cause.

Focus on “the business”- not just “marketing”

Good marketers really know the marketing side – database health, campaign effectiveness, open/CTRs, optimizing paid search, etc.  But the great ones are focused on “the business” and are strategic.  Their minds regularly run through questions of growth, price, key vertical industries and revenue. In other words, they think beyond their marketing scope. They have a greater understanding of the overall business goals and therefore know exactly how marketing can help the company reach those goals.

There are many qualities that make up an effective, truly great marketing leader and these are just a few.  What are the qualities you look for in a marketing leader?

Kardon is the Chief Marketing Officer at Eloqua.

1. Ask “so what?” of your products and story. With economic winds blowing in your corporate face it’s a good idea to critically assess whether more than just the economy has moved against you. You may have had clear positioning and differentiation in the past but it’s possible that other factors are at work. Take a fresh look at your products and what you’re telling the market by applying the “so what?” test: stepping into the prospect’s shoes as the question “So what? Why should I listen to you and how are you different from your competition?” is asked. Have competitors usurped your pole position? Have new entrants taken away your uniqueness? Be brutally honest to determine if changes must be made to products, services and your marketing.


2. Add training in weak areas. Good salespeople are always eager to learn how to become great ones. Tough times expose weaknesses, or at least incent most sales execs to determine where they could improve. As their manager, spend extra time helping them assess weaknesses, outline a remedial plan and act on it. Through this process you may even find a new skill or two to teach them! Being willing to spend money on outside training and coaching will reaffirm your faith in them, and will be a boon to morale. If training funds are limited, one low-cost way is call upon internal experts. We know of a firm that did this by starting a "university" and bringing in "professors" (from within the company) to teach sales and industry fundamentals. A combination of recognition and monetary rewards usually motivates budding professors.


3. Take unnecessary tasks off salespeople’s plates. Make sure that salespeople are wholly focused on selling. Time and again we see sales execs spending much of their time – more than what they signed up for – supporting clients, writing marketing copy and doing other non-sales activities that are at odds with their behavior style, comp plans and motivations. Outside resources can provide many of these support functions when there are no funds to hire for these roles. In general, be attuned to removing obstacles to their selling success.


4. Enhance incentives. You may feel that compensation plans are already “rich,” or at least very good, and so management may resist making them richer. But, most good salespeople have a “high utilitarian” value – very driven by money. Additional bonuses, overrides or even temporary hikes in commission rates may motivate sales execs to exert more effort and creativity during hard times.


5. Be a servant to your team. A key requirement of any leader is that they will do whatever it takes to make better the lives of those whom they lead. While this is true in good times or bad, it becomes critical during tough times. Be extra-willing and available to coach, go on calls, strategize and otherwise remove obstacles to a salesperson’s success.

By Dave Haviland

Marketing and Sales leaders:  we need you!

If you’re the head of marketing or sales in a small to mid-size business, we need you to take a leading role in your company’s strategic planning.  After all, business strategy should start with what the market needs.  Having you take a leading role in your strategy process helps your company, your department, and yourself.

Helping the Company

Strategic planning is, at its core, the continuous process of aligning the company’s efforts with the needs of the market.  By having Marketing play a leading role in strategy, the company ensures that it is headed on a path that makes sense in the market.  (Believe me – this doesn’t always happen!)

This is especially important when a company needs to sell into new markets, broaden its reach in its current markets, or deal with an environment of large change (like we have now).

Helping the Marketing/Sales Department

Most Marketing and Sales Departments could use more resources in general, and are especially short on resources for strategic efforts.  So, when you take a leading role in strategy, you’re able to better demonstrate why strategic marketing is important – and you’re better able to create the business case for more strategic marketing efforts.  This creates a virtuous cycle, where more resources allocated to strategic marketing create better business results, which enable more resources to be allocated to marketing.

Helping You

If you’re in a leading position for your company’s strategy process, you’re able to raise your stature in the business, ask great questions when they can have the most impact (before decisions are made), and play a personal role in key business decisions.  You have a bigger impact on the business, and that will be good for you in what you’re able to learn, and what opportunities you’ll be able to access for more growth and responsibility.

The Role Marketing/Sales Should Play in Business Strategy

Throughout the strategy process, Marketing/Sales should be the loudest proponent of customers’ interests and markets’ needs.  In the start-up phase businesses are very in-tune with their customers, but as they grow, they can lose touch, or need to look beyond their existing customers.  Only Marketing/Sales can build the depth of understanding that’s needed to guide the business in these areas.

Even on internal issues, the Head of Marketing/Sales needs to be actively sharing insight about how strategies will meet customer and market needs.

Perhaps most importantly, Marketing should provide analysis about external forces and trends at three levels – broad society/culture, general industry (for example, Automotive or Food), and market-specific (for example, Automotive Engineering or Fast Food).

Looking at these trends changes the dialogue in the company, in the leadership team, and in the strategy meetings.  Often, strategy meetings focus on internal issues.  When the discussion starts with what is happening outside the company – and more importantly, what is changing outside the company – everyone is forced to think about customers and markets first.  That ensures that there is good thinking about the external environment, and puts internal issues in a whole new light.

What Marketing Should Bring to the Strategy Table

As Head of Marketing/Sales, you should provide the following elements in your business strategy meetings:

• Summary of market trends:  there are many, many trends taking place at any time – your job is to highlight 5-8 that are most important to the company.


• Customer needs intelligence:  most people in your organization don’t know customers as well as they need to – your job is to give them key insights about what your customers need, and how well you’re meeting those needs


• New market opportunities:  other people will have ideas for product and service developments – your job is to bring a counter-balancing view of what new markets represent the best opportunities.


• Market landscape description:  there is a lot to be learned from companies operating around you, whether they’re complementary or competitive – your job is to provide a framework for the company to understand how other companies are approaching the market, and to highlight the key lessons to bring into your own strategy.

Dave Haviland is Founder and CEO of Phimation Strategy Group, a management consulting firm for Stage 2 small businesses.  More information about Stage 2 sales and marketing is available in the firm’s book, The Stage 2 Owner’s Manual, and on the firm’s blog.

By Carl Moe

When designed correctly, a Results-Driven Incentive Process can have a profound impact on the revenue performance.

But before we begin, let’s get it out in the open –

THERE’S NO SILVER BULLET FOR INCENTIVES.

That may not be what you wanted to hear, but we’ll walk you through the lessons we’ve learned over the decades that will save you years of agony about incentives.

Let’s review the seven most common mistakes that most businesses make with their incentive programs.

Incentive Mistake #1
All business (new and existing accounts) earns the same incentive.

New account business is ALWAYS worth more than ongoing business with existing accounts because:

1) it’s more difficult business to obtain than continuing business with already established account relationships.

2) it’s the only way your business will generate sustainable growth.

By paying more for new business, you train your salespeople to GROW your company instead of just taking the easy business (low-hanging fruit) that was likely coming your direction anyway. From the Chief Revenue Officer role, it is important to keep your company strong and growing; new business is the best way for you to accomplish this.

Incentive Mistake #2
Putting a cap on a salesperson's earnings.

If senior management sent out a message that they wanted and expected substantial growth in both revenues and profits in the coming year and in the same text announced a maximum cap on those revenues and profits, they’d be viewed as having no business sense.

Yet, we still hear of companies that put caps on their salespeople’s earnings. Essentially, they have just put a cap on the company’s earnings. Management tells the salespeople to sell, sell, sell, but by placing a ceiling on their earning potential, management discourages the salesperson from being anything greater than average. These companies also tend not to attract the best sales talent.

Sure, we’ve heard the justification for capping salespeople’s earnings, "If we didn’t put a limit on a salesperson’s earnings, they might make more than the president." Get over it! If the president has to make the most money, he/she should take on a Hunter/Rainmaker role in sales. Then the president will at least have a more hands-on understanding of what is required to grow revenue and manage a herd of those wily, independent variables called prospects.

If your salespeople bring value and profits to your company, why shouldn’t they be compensated for it? Great salespeople can be worth their weight in gold, and if you don’t recognize that by paying them what they’re worth, they will find someplace else that will.

Incentive Mistake #3
Not creating an incentive based on desired outcomes.

This seems so obvious, but is so easily missed by most companies. Here’s an example of what we mean:

A consulting company offered only five-year consulting arrangements. They felt that by having this longer agreement, they would be more successful with their clients and more profitable. The sales people claimed that it was a hard sell and they’d sell more if the term of the agreement was shortened to three years.

Well, the salespeople got their wish. The company began offering a three-year agreement with one catch: it paid only a fraction of the standard incentive. Guess what, no salesperson ever sold the three-year program that they so desperately needed. The incentive program the company offered drove the business to where they wanted it.

Incentive Mistake #4
Not having a defined sales cycle.

We routinely visit companies that can rattle off a long list of quality control measurements for their production line, the daily efficiency ratios, declining warranty costs, and the failure rate of the newest product. Yet, when asked about the metrics used to measure their sales cycle, we’re met with blank stares and stammers.

Having an understanding of how long a piece of business takes to go from an initial contact (cold call, web inquiry, etc.) to payment for goods/services delivered is critical for both business planning and incentive processes.

Installing a midyear special incentive program for "new business to close this quarter" when in actuality the sales cycle from new prospect to sold business is typically eighteen months will only confirm:

1. Management is not well connected to the business fundamentals.


2. The company will end up paying more commission this quarter for the "new business" that was already over a year into the sales pipeline process and coming in anyway. So the special incentive has no real impact on finding new, closeable business.

When we asked clients why they have Finance design their incentive plan, the most common response was, "To protect the company." We have never been able to figure out how sales success damages a business!

An effective plan is designed to reinforce both the critical behaviors defined in the revenue system and the desired results. For example, Finance typically does not think about new business vs. repeat business, the incentive for closing five new accounts in a quarter, or the incentive for closing the first account in a totally new market segment.

Sales people will respond to what the company wants when the incentive plan is well-defined and integrated into the business model. It’s important that the incentive process supports and rewards a salesperson’s measurable level of contribution.

Incentive Mistake #6
Paying incentives on orders versus customer payment.

Not that your salespeople would ever do this, but we have seen salespeople submit orders, get paid, and then quit only to have some of their last orders cancel or never happen…and they were never going to happen. This does not mean you can only pay incentives upon receipt of payment. It does mean your incentive plan should clarify that incentives are earned only upon timely payment of the complete transaction amount. The company practice can be to advance an incentive payment (full or partial amounts) at the time of order acceptance, shipment, or whenever you decide to recognize the performance, but this approach keeps the incentive at risk until the entire payment transaction is completed, not to mention it can save your company a significant amount of time and money on legal battles.

Incentive Mistake #7
Assigning more sales leads to the reps that are NOT doing well to help them crack the incentive column.

There’s no democracy here. There are reasons why some sales reps are struggling at sales. Sales management needs to address those performance issues and map out a get well plan for the non-performing rep. Always play your strongest players for a better chance at the new business opportunities.

The passage above was excerpted from Carl Moe’s Sales Revenue System 2.0. Moe’s background includes decades of senior executive roles (CEO, President, COO, EVP, and VP Sales/Marketing) in global, growth organizations.  He has conducted business in 14 countries outside North America and holds both engineering and business degrees from the University of Michigan.  He is Managing Director of C.R.O. Success, LLC, a Revenue System engineering firm headquartered in Minneapolis, MN. For more information, visit http://www.crosuccess.com

By Ken Romley

So the national hysteria over online tracking technology has reached a point where the Wall Street Journal offers a breathless May 19 expose’ on how even “liking” a Facebook post reveals data about you.  Color us shocked… that anyone is surprised marketers are using such benign technology. 

Major media and activist groups have busied themselves over the past year with ominous “what they know about you” tales attacking the use of Internet commerce tracking technology.  Journalists create “big brother” scenarios that help sell papers and draw blog hits. Politicos, meanwhile, can hold hearings, express their concern, and propose clumsy, expensive new regulations to “protect consumers.”

Yet those supposedly-violated consumers seem pretty blasé about the whole idea of online tracking.  I’ve yet to hear of any consumers who’ve sued our industry for damages -- and it’s hard to imagine what any “damages” might be.  Web users retain personal anonymity for their browsing habits and private information.  They don’t see more online ads than they would otherwise, and the ads they do see are better tuned to their actual interests. 

Advertisers, meanwhile, get better return on their ad dollars. While they spend more per ad, they send out far fewer of them, ads focused on people who are more likely to be interested in their offerings.  This means less online clutter all around.   Websites get more dollars for their webspace, allowing them to produce better content for their users.  There is less waste, and more productivity, and websites and technology companies are able to hire more people and make more investments in our economy.

Still, there is always some public fear of new technologies, especially those that work silently in the background.  And there are always nanny-state interests which benefit by stirring up fears of online tracking -- and then selling their own ability to prevent “abuses,” whether any such abuses actually occur or not.

Yet there is a deeper level to the online web tracking hysteria that looks unpleasantly familiar to those who know what happens when regulators and free markets clash.  Current Internet tracking software, particularly that which resides on personal computers, is offered by many smaller vendors, and popular with advertisers of all sizes.  However, the biggest tracking companies (some already over $1 billion in revenues) are furiously working on new “packet sniffing” technology.  This can sit on major pipelines in the Internet, and effectively write cookies at the server level.  They never touch individual machines. 

An overreaction to tracking cookies snuggling down on our computers can benefit such big tech firms, who will be selling their new web-based tracking only to big customers anyway. These large tech firms have the budgets, connections and lobbyists to make sure that any laws cracking down on “intrusive” tracking technology will only address the smaller fry, who market economical, machine-based software.  Legislation that hobbles this segment limits what is a very successful, useful technique only to a handful of big companies.  These large companies are in a position to make even bigger margins once they lose the smaller, nimble competitors who had been nipping at their heels.

Entrepreneurs know that such “regulation as a competitive tool” has a long tradition in business history.  But we also know that its use against the online tracking industry will bring the same result it always has -- fewer resources, higher costs, and less innovation.  That seems like a high price just to keep your Facebook “Like” habits private.

Ken Romley, of ,Zift Solutions Inc., has co-founded and run a wide range of technology and Internet-based enterprises over the last two decades. Most recently, as President of SmartPath, Romley helped to establish Enterprise Marketing Management solutions as an important technology for improving marketing effectiveness. He continued to lead innovations in marketing technologies after SmartPath's acquisition by DoubleClick's EMS (Enterprise Marketing Solutions) business unit, a leading provider of digital advertising technology and services. The unit was subsequently acquired by Aprimo. Romley has a BS in Operations Research and an MS in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Zift Solutions combines expertise in marketing automation and channel partner management to provide innovative, easy-to-use channel marketing automation solutions to companies with indirect sales channels.

By Hernan Vera

Organizations are always looking for ways to improve sales force effectiveness and be able to measure it in meaningful ways. Fortunately, there is sales force automation and customer relationship management technology that can be implemented and configured without costly in-house programming or IT support. The technology can be very effective in streamlining processes and providing the metrics needed to better forecast sales and manage the sales team.

As organizations start the journey of changing their sales processes, the tendency is to look at all the challenges they face and tackle them all at once — which is only natural. You’re investing in a new technology that can fix all the problems, so why not just get them all done in one sweep so you can move on and focus back on sales.

However, the result of that approach is a major disruption in sales activity as the sales team focuses on learning new software and many new processes all at once. They are required to turn their energy away from selling so they can figure out how to manage all the change and try to understand how it will affect their lives and livelihoods.

The revolutionary approach is almost always doomed to failure because it tries to accomplish too much too fast with no meaningful metrics in place to measure change. The journey ends almost before it begins and the new technology, which has enabled all the change, becomes yet another problem to be solved.

A journey of small steps

The better approach to sales force effectiveness is to think of it as a long term journey with a series of small steps that lead to the ultimate goal. Sales management needs a long-term vision of where the organization ultimately needs to be and then define the core processes to be changed and the order in which they need to get done. Trying to do too much at once causes friction within the sales team and contaminates the good changes that might be successfully implemented.

But don’t confuse a series of small steps with sales process methodology, which defines every step a sales person is required to complete in a precise order along the sales cycle with the sales person checking off each step completed before moving on to the next. Process methodology is doomed from the start because it over-manages the sales force and is perceived as compliance tool that does not help them be more effective in their jobs. Change needs to enable the sales team, not constrain it.

As with any journey, sales force effectiveness starts with a single step. Pick one or two core processes to change at a high level, put meaningful metrics in place, coach the sales team on what the changes will be and why it will help them and the organization, then work on that for a few months. When it becomes a natural part of everyone’s normal process and the sales team recognizes the value of it, you can move on the next set of changes. It’s a quick win that inspires the team as opposed to a string of failures that demoralizes them.

For example, start by having the sales team forecast revenue from all accounts for the next month. It’s a meaningful metric that will take a salesperson very little time to generate. Coach them on exactly what you’re looking for and then measure for three months. If everyone is doing a good job, then take the next step and delve into more detail (e.g. forecast revenue at the product level), measure for a couple months, succeed and move to the next step.

The only meaningful metric

Measuring success is key to demonstrating that change is being implemented. There are many metrics that an organization can use, but the most meaningful metric for sales force effectiveness is your win ratio (or close ratio). And, the only way to measure win ratio is on revenue, not deal count. 

I’ve seen that many companies try and measure win ratio by excluding deals where the client did not make a decision to change providers. If you deliver a proposal to a client, only two things can happen: you win or lose the business. The reasons are nice to know, but at the end of the day it’s revenue that impacts the company. Revenue is also important because that’s how salespeople are compensated. Revenue — profitable revenue — is the key metric for measuring success and it is what drives the organization. Revenue without the level of profit your firm deserves is a going-out-of-business strategy.

Managing change a step at a time

It is difficult to get organizations— especially complex ones — to change. Sales automation and CRM tools can help, however the key is to focus on the long term goals, implement change gradually, coach the sales team every step of the way, and develop metrics that truly measure results. Sales force effectiveness is a journey of small victories that ultimately leads to significant change.

Vera is Vice President, Marketing & Sales Operations for Pitney Bowes Management Services. He has a proven track record of winning substantial new business and expanding existing client bases. He has a strong understanding of multiple verticals including: marketing, sales, management, operations, business processes, finance, e-commerce and technology.

By Sam Hunter

In 48 BC Cicero wrote in a letter to Brutus that “Eloquence which does not startle, I don’t consider eloquence”

Cicero had real insight; he knew the effect of startling his target, the power of “eloquence.” The quote to me implies Cicero recognised the need to understand his target, he wanted to startle them, he recognised startling them was unachievable without a real understanding of the needs of the target.

What is different today? Nothing at all.

As we seek to engage with our prospects we too often forget that we are first providing a solution they need and only second achieving a sale or a target for our bonus.

I prefer the word remarkable to startle, sorry Cicero.

If achieved the effect of being remarkable on the sale will be solid engagement with the prospect as he or she tries to find out more, and tries to understand why you can make that claim. As soon as the target so engages, the sales opportunity becomes rich.

A Better Way to Think About What You Are Selling.

Great advertising is almost always remarkable. Great advertising lines are also remarkable. Why should, what I call your single shot proposition or SSP not also be remarkable?

Remember these?

Have a Coke® and a Smile!

We try harder.

Let your fingers do the walking.

The first advertising ef­fectiveness model I applied back in the 1980s to make great Coke® ads was the AIDA Model: get Attention, hold Interest, arouse Desire, and then obtain Action.

I find myself wanting to add dimensions. I am not the first to attempt to improve the old model.  The old model needs renovation. To it I would add that mod­ern communication needs to also be Remarkable.  Attention is not enough, communication clutter is at an extreme, being remarkable will ensure consideration which leads to exploration.

Changing the value equation in the target’s mind can be powerfully achieved by communicating a remarkable benefit

To win, our targets have to choose us and look for our solution.

So how does our target choose?

When I was at Coke in charge of making ads my great friend, advertising consultant and mentor Tom Reynolds began teaching me much about consumer choice, these lessons naturally also apply to business to business situations as well. Tom said

“Decision makers choose courses of action (including behaviours such as the purchase of particular solutions) that seem most likely to achieve important outcomes.” And “customers use a means end approach to the understanding of choice. In other words, they chase value.”

If we know the problem, we can present the solution in a way that the benefit is seen as truly remarkable.

Customers get really excited by remarkable value.

By introducing the “remarkable notion” we are influencing the targets judgement of the probability of the outcome being desirable, and also we effect the targets mindful value equation. In other words we change the success and value perceptions. Tom Reynolds has done the hard academic yards he has all the backup you could ever want, but there notion is convincing to me primarily because it makes sense. Why wouldn’t decision makers choose actions that maximize the result? Therefore “remarkable” is an effective tool with which to relevantly differentiate our proposition.

Sam Hunter is the author of First Contact, which can be obtained by visiting his site at www.firstcontact.com.au. B2Bbuzz readers can receive a PDF of the book for free by emailing him at sam@firstcontact.com.au.

By Paul R. Lloyd

What do you do when your customer base disappears and your sales fall through the floor?

Root Causes

Begin by identifying root causes and performing a thorough competitive analysis of industry trends and changes. Find out where the market is going and why you are not keeping customers. Is your market shrinking due to changes in the industry? Or something the competition is doing? Have they introduced a more competitive solution? Have you reduced quality or customer service? Have you increased prices? Or have you kept prices stable while competition has lowered their prices?

Studying the root causes involves taking a hard look at your organization, processes, pricing, and products. What, if anything has changed in the way you sell your products and services?  Talk to your customers. Why are they not buying from you? Products and services have a life cycle. Eventually something comes along to render your best work obsolete.

Revisit your niche and value proposition

Study the niche you serve. Is it still viable? Is the pool of possible customers large enough to support your business? Or has the market shrunk? Be careful with your niche. The tendency is to expand it to reach a wider range of customers.

Most of the time you are better served by narrowing your niche. It’s counter-intuitive, but it usually produces the best result. The more you narrow your niche, the sharper your focus becomes. With a clear, focused message, customers find they can make a quick choice to either select you or move on to someone else.

Confusion is the biggest enemy of effective marketing. With a narrow focus, you minimize the risk of confusing your customers. Confused customers tend to go away, especially if they are visiting your website.

Deliver on your value proposition

How are you doing on delivering what you sell? Check your quality. Test your customer service response. Compare your prices with your competition. Are you promising something you can’t deliver?

Your marketing materials may be implying something that isn’t true. So check your promotional copy for accuracy. Check it again for any implied promises that you are not delivering on. For example, are you unwittingly practicing bait-and-switch tactics with your special offers? What you consider an upsell from a special offer may appear as a rip off to your customers.

In the heat of the competitive bid process, you may make or imply promises that you have no way of delivering on. Make sure your customer has a clear understanding of what they have purchased.

Re-brand and redefine your market

Brands can grow stale, especially in light of bad press, underperformance or other negative issues. Your company has a brand. You can revitalize it through a new corporate image program and marketing campaign. Give your customers a new way of seeing you. Change their focus from your traditional value proposition to a focus on new or different benefits. How are you cheaper, better, or faster than you were before? Emphasize these improvements in your new branding along with the benefits the customer will receive.

Markets change so make sure you are changing with them. Take a hard look at your target market. Describe them in writing. Does your description point you in new directions or suggest prospective customers you may have been overlooking? Who are your customers selling to? And what does that tell you about your customers?

Who are your competitors selling to? Have they found marketplace opportunities in industries you may have overlooked?

Has the industry changed in ways you may have missed? Look at what customers are saying about the way they do business as reported in the trade publications and websites serving their industry.

Are you effectively using online marketing and social networking? The trend for online buying is well established. Business has moved onto the Internet. If you haven’t taken online marketing seriously or if you have been ignoring social networking, you may be losing customers to the new way to do business.

Review these issues to see where you can make changes to better serve your customers. Reach your customers the way they want to be reached – online – or risk losing them.

Often the issue of vanishing customers is a question involving every aspect of your business, not just marketing and sales. It’s a symptom that it’s time to revisit your basic mission and strategy. Instead of being the death knell for your business, it could be the energizing force for leading you in new directions, new opportunities and new revenue streams.

Paul Lloyd is the founder of Zuk-Lloyd Associates, a marketing firm that delivers solutions, develops strategic initiatives and implements them with a flair for the creative. He can be reached at paul@zuklloyd.com