Posts by mikevannoy:
- Step back and re-affirm your Ideal Prospect Profile. All good marketing starts there.
- Decide which new channels offer the most promise. Social media may be the new shiny object on the corner, but it will take a focused approach to produce results. Start with channels you know you can be great at that will also be the easiest to perfect.
- Size up your team. The same creative masterminds who developed great branding and organized super cool events for your customers are not the ideal talent to leverage this new digital world. You must have the ability to leverage technology, produce volumes of content to use in marketing programs and then rigorously test and optimize those programs.
- Create video content for prospects in all phases of your buying cycle. Creating a video with a “buy now” sales message will only resonate with a small part of your prospect base – those who are “sales ready”. Most prospects need to engaged and nurtured over time. Rather than creating one video than hammers home your value proposition consider making several smaller content pieces that address the different phases in your buying process. We’ve learned this is critical step in keeping top of mind awareness for our clients.
- Be interesting. You have about six seconds to capture the interest of your viewer. There’s no time for feature dumps or product tutorials. You may have the greatest solution in the world – but if you don’t grab the viewer quickly – your message will never be heard. At Sales Engine, we call this creating a “punch in the nose”.
- You can’t make a “viral video”. The dream of most marketers is to create a video that goes viral. Unfortunately, B2B marketers who set out to create a “viral video” will almost certainly fail. Viral is what happens after the video is created. Although you can take actions to help spread your video – like posting it to You Tube and social networking sites – you cannot guarantee it will go viral.
- Awareness is not generated by the sales rep. The “feet on the street” sales model, where the sales rep is responsible for creating awareness about your product or brand is obsolete.
- The prospect is much more educated when they engage. Using the Internet, the prospect has learned about your products, company and competition without your knowledge. They come to the sales cycle armed with knowledge.
- Buyers control the sales process. This is the most difficult for all of us to accept – but it is true. Since the prospect does not need you or your sales rep to learn about your product – they are in control of the sales process. They are researching and learning and making decisions without you. Your sales reps are needed after they go through this process IF you make the cut.
- Access to decision makers is harder. Technology can be a double-edged sword. Today we have wonderful communication technologies such as Cell phones, blackberries, and email. However prospects have the ability and technology to screen us out and prevent our access.
- We live in a “me too” world. So much of what we say and sell has been commoditized. Prospects are bombarded with sales messages every day on the Internet, on TV and print ads. Standing out and differentiating has never been more difficult.
Achieving ROI: A Unique Challenge for Today’s Marketer
March 20th, 2012Weren’t we supposed to be able to measure everything in this digital world of integrated marketing? If so, we should also be able to continuously optimize our marketing programs, right? Yet 52% of marketers today report their #1 challenge is converting qualified leads into paying customers.
You’ve probably heard John Wanamaker’s famous quote “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” But that was nearly 100 years ago! For sure he was referring to the mass media tools of the day like print and … yea, that’s pretty much it … print.
Mr. Wanamaker didn’t have modern tools like Google analytics, marketing automation, sales force automation, CRM, email campaigns, webinars, email list vendors, sales intelligence aggregators, pay-per-click ads, landing pages, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, eNewsletters, websites, content syndication, SEO, YouTube, Lead Scoring, Droids & iPhones, iPads, SMS, QR codes, and, and, and … Is your head spinning yet?
If you only had one way to reach your buyers, say … banner ads, you’d probably figure out how to be really good at running that type of marketing program. Through rigorous testing, you would eventually find the best places to place your ads, the best creative to generate clicks and the most compelling landing pages to convert the traffic that actually ends up buying from you. But even if you could achieve this, can your business grow and thrive by optimizing only one channel for lead generation? Probably not.
Marketers in the 2.0 era are under a ton of pressure to use all of the new digital tools to reach new buyers and, because it’s all measureable, they’re expected to systematically optimize each marketing program and remove the wasteful spending that troubled John Wanamaker. Ironically, that is what creates the problem. Marketers struggle to do so many new things at once; doing them all well seems impossible.
Today’s head of marketing doesn’t wear a white lab coat while pointing his cherry-wood pipe to teams of researchers that produce intellectually interesting studies on campaign optimization. It’s a bit more simple … spend the marketing dollars wisely to generate qualified leads that close quickly. Or get fired.
But few marketing departments have the skill or bandwidth to leverage all of these new channels and tools in a meaningful way, and each can be it’s own black hole — sucking time, money and energy from a department. Yesterday’s “Marketing Communications” department must reinvent themselves into a team of journalists (think content creation), IT experts (think website & CRM integration) and process-oriented scientists (think A/B testing every element of every campaign in every channel) that have a deep understanding of how to integrate all of the facets of digital marketing into a cohesive demand generation engine. Guess what? That’s really hard to do.
So where do you start? It may well begin with deciding what to stop. While you likely need to be great at more than one channel, trying to be good at all of them may be killing you. Some simple steps to take:
Achieving ROI on marketing programs is more possible than ever in a digital world. Take an honest assessment of your market and of your team and start measuring your success.
Why Outbound Marketing Beats Inbound Marketing
August 16th, 2011Both outbound and inbound marketing play an important role in marketing strategy and execution, but when it comes to knowing where to begin, it’s a classic “chicken or the egg” question in many organizations. The answer is “Outbound”, and here’s why:
There is one really important reason why outbound marketing can actually be more effective than inbound marketing, and that’s lead quality. Even though inbound marketing can certainly generate a lot of leads, it can also generate a lot of unqualified leads.
Inbound leads come from people who are proactively searching the internet, seeking out solutions to business problems. So, they find your company and they are, in fact, interested in you, but for any number of reasons, you might not be interested in them. How often do you receive an inbound lead that is not a good fit due to:
• Industry
• Geography
• Employee Count
• Revenue
• Incompatible Platforms or Systems
So how can outbound marketing impact this dilemma? Very simply, because effective outbound marketing starts with identifying an ideal prospect profile and building a database of prospects that fit that profile.
If you’ve decided to kick-off an outbound email campaign, to initiate a digital conversation with your prospects, you’re only going to send the email to prospects that fit your ideal profile in the first place. From there, it really is a combination of outbound and inbound tactics to create this digital conversation that nurtures the prospect through the process.
For example, if I sent my prospects an email and then some of those people opened the email, I could determine that they have some level of interest in my organization. Then, I could automatically enroll those prospects into a retargeter campaign, through which they would see my banner ads all across the internet. Only those potentially interested and qualified prospects would see my banner ads. If they then clicked through and landed on my website, where they might watch a video or a webinar or download a white paper, and we would respond with thank you emails and further nurture communications, to really create a digital conversation.
The main point? By initiating the digital conversation first by reaching out to the prospects that fit my ideal profile, I can confidently assign an expensive outside or inside sales rep to follow-up with the prospects who respond, because I’ve greatly increased the likelihood that I am interested in them and that they are interested in me.
B2B Content Marketing & Miniskirts. How long should your content be?
July 6th, 2011
So how long should your marketing content be? In their excellent book, Content Rules, C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley made me laugh with their response… “Content is like a miniskirt. Make it long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to keep it interesting.” I love that metaphor… provocative and right on the money.
Exactly how long is enough to cover the essentials?
Well, ironically the answer is less about the topic and more about your audience. If you are producing a video on the pitfalls of marketing automation targeted toward mid-market CEO’s, you’d better get there pretty quick and tie back the impact to their world… maybe one, two minutes max. BUT, if you are educating Marketing Directors at large organizations who would be directly responsible for implementing (and not messing up) a marketing automation solution, then you’ll probably need to dive pretty deep or else the viewer will feel short changed. It’s pretty tough to give a thorough analysis on that topic in less than five minutes. Heck, if the information is truly valuable, you’d have marketers lined up at your door to watch an entire hour-long webinar on the topic. The point here is to know who you’re speaking to before deciding how long it should be.
Another factor is where the prospect is in their buying journey… more specifically, where are they in their relationship with YOU! Just like a real life courtship, start small and work your way up to the deep long talks. I will regularly read 10+ pages of something put out by MarketingSherpa because I learn so much. They make me a better marketer. But, I would likely not commit that much time and energy to reading someone’s content if I have never heard of them before.
How short must you be to be interesting?
Certainly the same rule we just discussed applies here… know your audience first. But to be interesting requires more than brevity. To be interesting you must be provocative and stir up new thinking, which is why this metaphor works so well.
You can be provocative with images (eh hem, mini-skirt pics) to get someone’s attention, but ultimately it will be the content itself that people will judge… did your white paper help the solve a problem? Did your video help them see their problem in a new light? Use your authentic voice and talk about the business challenges your prospects face and forget the jargon and marketing speak.
Last point… just because you have A.D.D. doesn’t mean all of your prospects do and/or just because you actually read every word of every article you download doesn’t mean your prospects will. Be brief?!?! Yeah, that makes sense, but more important… be interesting!
B2B Social Media a fad? Not so much…
May 10th, 2011Using Video to Sell – What every B2B Marketer Must Know
July 13th, 2009According to MarketingSherpa, word of mouth is the most important influencer in buying decisions. The second most important decision influencer? Online video.
This should come as no surprise. Over the past several years, there has been an explosion of video content on the web – and B2B marketers have taken notice. At a time when most budgets are being cut, the marketing spend on web video continues to grow. Why? Web video is simply the most effective method for communicating your sales message to the widest possible audience.
Online video is one of the tools Sales Engine International uses to help create awareness and nurture leads for our clients. Here are a few lessons we have learned:
Online video should play a major role in your marketing strategy. Our clients have learned its effectiveness with prospects in all phases of the buying cycle.
Sales Engine International is a Sales 2.0 marketing and sales performance organization. Clients come to us for innovative solutions to their sales revenue challenges. Thank you for watching this spotlight
Building a Sales Staff of “A” Players
June 16th, 2009In conversations with our prospects and clients, we often are asked our advice on finding, developing and retaining “A Players”. The days of “darkening the skies” with feet on the street is simply not an option in this economy. Therefore the high producing Sales Rep – the A Player – is a precious commodity.
Here are some tips to help you build a Sales Staff of “A” Players:
Tip 1: Focus on the right skill set
Experience and industry knowledge are common skills we all seek. But what other skills are important? In a Sales 2.0 world the critical sales skills have changed. When I started selling, the ability to cold call and prospect were highly valued. Today, in most industries, interest and awareness is not generated by the Sales Rep. Buyers use the Internet to learn about your products, competition and market long before you even know they are looking. Therefore the Rep’s ability to influence the sale process comes much later. The ability to be consultative, manage a sales cycle and close become paramount skills.
Tip 2: Build a strong lead nurture engine
The “A” player has already made the adjustment to the Sales 2.0 way of selling. They want to focus on what they do best: managing the sales process and closing the deal. A strong lead nurture engine allows them to work the “sales ready” leads while prospects not ready to buy are engaged and informed.
Sales Recruiters tell us a strong lead nurture engine is the single biggest factor for attracting top salespeople. Chances are they are successful in their current job and in high demand. To make the leap to a new opportunity they must clearly see marketing support from you.
Tip 3: It’s not all about money
The high performing sales rep is not only concerned with money. Money is important but studies show they are also career focused and seek stability. Your job is to have a realistic and well-designed sales process where the rep can thrive. If less than half your Reps currently are not hitting their targets…you have a problem.
Sales Engine International is a Sales 2.0 marketing and sales performance organization. Clients come to us for innovative solutions to their sales revenue challenges. Thank you for watching this spotlight.
What is Sales 2.0? Sales 2.0 Lead Anatomy
June 16th, 2009Selling Power magazine recently interviewed dozens of industry experts in an effort to define “Sales 2.0″. Here’s what they came up with:
“Sales 2.0 brings together customer-focused methodologies and productivity-enhancing technologies that transform selling from an art to a science. Sales 2.0 relies on a repeatable, collaborative and customer-enabled process that runs through the sales and marketing organization, resulting in improved productivity, predictable ROI and superior performance.”
At a high level, this definition captures the Sales 2.0 concept well. Let’s break it down a little further:
- First you must recognize not all prospects will be sales ready so your messaging and content must address prospects in all phases of your buying cycle.
- Then you need strong technology – CRM and marketing automation for inbound and outbound marketing campaigns.
- Finally: Your sales process must honor the way your prospects want to buy. They will be using the web, search engines, and web sites to learn about you long before you know they are shopping.
For a practical understanding of the Sales 2.0 process, let’s take a look at a real life situation. The following is how we generated a lead for an SEI client.
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The client sold CIO advisory services and technology consulting to a few verticals. Here is the entire Sales 2.0 lead generation cycle.
1. We first became aware of the client when they responded to a thought leadership event. The prospect was then automatically enrolled in a nurturing campaign.
2. Over the next several months, the nurture campaign reached out the prospect a few times with additional thought leadership and value add content. The prospect responded to some of this content and visited the client’s web site.
3. Our marketing automation technology was recognizing the prospect’s digital behavior and creating a lead score. After about 4 months of high level nurturing this prospect reached a trigger point where they were sent our Sales Avatar. This is a 5-6 minute full value proposition web video we produce for clients as part of our campaigns.
4. About 2 weeks later an inside sales rep connected with the prospect on the phone but after a friendly exchange, the prospect still was not ready to see a Rep.
5. The prospect was then enrolled in an additional 1:1 nurture marketing cycle.
6. Two additional months of nurturing was performed with the client still reacting to some of the content.
7. Another follow up call to the prospect by the inside sales rep yielded better results. The prospect was now ready to see an outside sale rep and an appointment was set.
This lead was nurtured over a period of about 7 months. Both inbound and outbound marketing campaigns were used.
Here are the key takeaways:
- The prospect probably would not have known of our clients’ services without the campaigns. The sales cycle could have easily occurred without their knowledge.
- Prospects buy at their own pace. Pounding them with “buy now” messages will only alienate. Your job is to educate and engage until they are ready.
- Lead scoring allows you to recognize and react to digital behavior.
- The value of effective marketing automation is clear. Sales reps had a very difficult time executing this kind of an approach in the old world. Today, we want our reps focused on the “now” deal while this nurturing is done for them.
For the vast majority of B2B sellers, Sales 2.0 is longer an option to be considered. Buyers have adjusted their behavior and we must adjust also. The risk of missed opportunities is simply too great.
5 Fundamental Changes in B2B Selling
May 13th, 2009I ran into a friend who sold Payroll services with me in the early 1990′s. We exchanged war stories about what it was like to be a payroll sales rep in those days… we hit the phones hard and, after sales calls, literally knocked on doors of local businesses. WOW have things changed… Lots of laughs.
On my ride home I began to think how the whole sales process has changed. The way I sold then isn’t the way I would sell now.
Here’s why:
I will always be grateful for my experience but we really used “Stone Age” tactics
Lead Generation vs. Lead Nurturing Webinar
March 12th, 2009According to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, 84 % of all sales leads identified as “qualified” never close. The statistic is startling when you consider the amount of effort and resource required to build your sales pipeline.
Possible reasons for this disconnect include:
- Marketing and Sales are out of alignment over the definition of a lead
- Sales reps tend to focus exclusively on “sales ready” prospects
- Organizations are unable to create and execute effective lead nurturing campaigns for longer term prospects
Companies with best practice lead nurturing programs convert more leads and drive more revenues than those who do not. They recognize tasking Sales Reps with lead generation responsibilities is a challenge because the Reps must balance business development with the management of active sales cycles.
What are some of the lead nurturing secrets of these best practice companies?
- They nurture their entire prospect database with varied content designed to generate interest regardless of where the prospect is in the sales cycle
- They ensure all prospects are touched even when sales reps turn over or drop the ball on biz-dev/prospecting
- They consistently execute a clearly defined strategy and process for lead nurturing
Your greatest risk isn’t coming from your competition. It is in the inability to engage, nurture and follow up on the thousands of prospects unwilling to talk to one of your sales reps.
We will be exploring this topic in more detail in our next web event. I invite you to join us.
