Marketing Interactions

eBook: Why Marketing Stories Have Catch

Use stories with Catch Factors to transform buyer attention into engagement and consistently tip purchase decisions in your favor. Learn what a marketing "story" is, why stories

have more impact than other marketing content, how they escalate buyer momentum and why stories build trust that speeds customer conversions. Use the quick guide to create your own stories.

Download the eBook

Is Sales Irrelevant?

At the CLOSE Invention Summit on Monday we embarked on a discussion about the changing needs of buyers in today's purchase environment. It became clear that since buyers are now taking control of their buying process, it's more important than ever for marketing to ensure your company gets found. Right place, right time.

Nurturing is no longer a nice to have, but a must have—especially for a complex B2B sale. Buyers are now choosing to stay anonymous longer into their research. To get them to raise their hands for a sales conversation, they will need to have a lot of knowledge transferred about how to solve their problems...and how your products fit into that solution.

Because marketing is being charged with producing highly qualified leads, they now need to do more of the front-end lifting than they may have ever done in the past.

As we discussed what this means for marketing teams that are much smaller than many sales teams and are already dealing with a long list of deliverables, some of them asked if the cycles and responsibilities were shifting to the point that sales were becoming glorified order takers.

But that's a short-sighted view. And it's also one of the key reasons that marketing and sales must reach for closer alignment and collaboration on the end-to-end buying process.

When leads or inquiries were received, it used to be marketing's job to make sure they got to sales. Now, those leads and inquiries want education, high-value information and strategic insights before they decide to talk to sales. And, if they can't get that information from you, they'll go elsewhere - without a second thought.

But, lest marketing fret that sales is getting a breeze of a deal, their jobs have also gotten more difficult. Not only does sales have to be agile enough to step into a conversation in mid-stream without losing a beat, they have to reach way beyond product features and benefits to actually apply expertise in structuring solutions that get buyers where they want to go. It's not just about the product sale, it's about achieving a trusted-advisor partnership that becomes a long-term, loyal relationship—on both sides.

And that means that outcomes have to be spot on.

Therefore, it seems to me that both sides have grown in complexity. Marketing has to stretch their content and interaction strategies farther out and sales has to reach deeper into each and every situation to deliver high-enough value to get the deal.

Quite frankly, if both sides don't learn to help each other, pretty soon growth will stall and the disconnect in the buyer's process will be a noticeable bump in the road that will cause buyers to veer off in search of a better experience.

Here's why: The buying process is when your company is auditioning for the customer. If the experience that buyer has with you doesn't give them the feeling of satisfaction along with the visibility to envision the outcomes they want, then that buyer won't be willing to sign.

But, in answer to the question, sales is not irrelevant. They are very much needed, in fact, more so now than ever before. Same goes for marketing. Although roles may be shifting.

Getting Marketing and Sales to Align

The status quo for marketing and sales is that neither seems to find the other valuable. The common refrains heard are:

• marketing doesn't give sales good leads
• sales doesn't work the leads marketing give them - or use marketing-produced collateral

The problem, as it occurs to me after attending the CLOSE Invention Summit on Monday at Stanford is that there's not a lot of trust or effective communication between the two specialties.

It would have been nice to have sales represented, but with a room full of marketers we proceeded to spend the day in teams trying to arrive at what it would take to align sales and marketing.

My take after the summit is that marketers need to consider sales as a segment of their customers. I mean, if marketing can convince people that aren't their customers to engage and seriously consider becoming their company's customers, surely they can win over salespeople.

But, it seems to be a given from the marketing side that sales should be more accepting and appreciative of marketing's efforts. Which could be true, but then back up and ask yourself why they aren't?

One of the things discussed was ROA - Return on Attention from the customer perspective. Well, what kind of ROA does sales get? If the return was high, they'd be giving marketing a lot more of their attention.

One other thing - trust is earned. What has marketing done to not only earn the trust of salespeople, but to sustain it?

Some issues I heard marketers voice in the summit were:

• We ask sales what they want and we give it to them, but they don't do anything with the leads they asked for.
  
  • How are you differentiating marketing leads to make them attractive to sales people?
  • Have you told them exactly why each lead you hand off is qualified and sales ready?
  • Are you really giving them what they asked for? Or are you giving sales your interpretation of what they asked for?


• Sales keeps asking for more volume because they're measured on the number of leads they have in the pipeline.
  • Okay - this is a fundamental flaw (IMO) that says numbers drive success. In a B2B complex sale, if I had 20 opportunities with a high probability to close versus 250 leads, I'd be a happy, focused camper.
  • Is volume really the reason? Or is sales clamoring for more because the the leads you're giving them are easily disqualified, or not ready, and they burn through them searching for valid buyers who want to engage with them?

The persistent question that remains for me is, Why doesn't marketing market to sales?

Another thing I heard a lot was that there had to be a push from above to make this alignment happen. Really? Why can't marketing go after incremental wins that get attention because they generate opportunities that become customer conversions?

Are you telling me that if marketing initiated a sales campaign that provided sales with an "opportunity kit" for each sales-ready lead they hand off and salespeople start closing deals that the two departments couldn't generate trust toward reaching alignment? Not to mention buy-in and support from the upper tier.

Maybe marketers are looking too BIG. Maybe what they need to focus on is smaller, more controllable, more personalized and more in depth prospective buyer hand offs. Maybe what they need to do is cull the 10 most interested leads from a campaign and flesh out the information that sales needs to provide added value to impact the conversation...and the deal.

Yes, it takes work and manpower. But in a B2B complex sale, if marketing can become known as a provider of opportunities, then sales will stop spending their time generating their own leads and start relying on marketing opportunities—because they close.

And, if marketing consistently gives sales 10 opportunities every week or month, pretty soon sales has a pipeline that makes a difference to revenue outcomes. What it comes down to is incremental change vetted and tuned at each step with successes that can become a victory parade for the partnership between sales and marketing.

So why aren't marketers marketing to sales?

Finally, I'm not meaning to put this all on marketing at the ignorance of issues or resistance from the sales side, but if you think about what marketing does externally, it only seems rational that they could do it internally, as well.

Or we could just have a stand-off like we've had going for quite some time and keep doing the same thing we've been doing and expecting different results. Which is pretty much like shooting yourself in the foot. Repeatedly.

Somebody needs to brave the first step.

Trade Show engagement is critical for marketers

Is your trade show participation reaping a gold mine of qualified leads or only a dumping ground for contact information from people who wanted the giveaway you used as enticement to get their business cards?

Trade Shows are a major component of the B2B marketing mix. In a recent report by Forrester Research, the top 3 tactics marketers rely on were email(87%), PR(77%) and trade shows(74%).  This result is interesting when you consider that two of those are traditional, although PR is shifting more to online strategies.

And, trade show spending is slated to increase. B2B marketers told Forrester Research that they spend 13% of their budget on attending or hosting a booth at large trade shows—more than they spend on any other marketing tactic. Industry research also shows that over 80% of companies who participate in trade shows are struggling to prove a quantifiable ROI from their efforts.

In fact, Forrester cautions, “B2B marketers who fail to build interactive campaigns that preview show-specific offers, invite attendees to on-site executive briefings, and continue booth conversations via email should look to spend their money elsewhere.”

What marketing has with trade shows, is the opportunity to glean tremendous insights to potential customers. Online interactions are one thing, face time is priceless. When’s the last time you approached a trade show with a strategy that reaches beyond the usual goals of collecting contact information and showing your product to as many people as you can pull into the booth?

Think about these event-industry statistics from the Red Bank 2007 Trend report for a minute:

• 82% of attendees have the power to recommend or make the purchase decision
• 55% of attendees plan to buy within the next year

Since you’re spending an average of $159 on every person you pull into your booth, you need a planned approach for engagement. Maximizing the 1-to-1 interactions you have with these attendees can deliver some great outcomes. The first is a more qualified lead, the second is insights for tuning your personas and marketing programs.

But, to do this, you need to have a strategy for how to get this information and create the level of engagement that drives a dramatic lift in lead-to-opportunity conversions.

How many times have you heard salespeople say that marketing isn’t effective because they just don’t understand the customer? Well, if you’re attending and participating in trade shows, the opportunity for you to get closer to buyers and discover what’s valuable to them is standing right in front of you.

If you’re searching for a way to return from these shows with results that impact your marketing effectiveness, I’d like to introduce you to Joyce McKee and her new venture, Let’s Talk Trade Shows. Her training methods can get you up close and personal with event attendees and help you create a repeatable event process that makes trade show participation a lucrative choice.

Joyce has over 25 years of experience in the exhibition industry and her clients include Microsoft, Apple and Xerox. She’s released her latest report, The Secret to Achieving Brilliant Returns at Your Next Event, along with 5 bonuses and a 30-day trial membership in the Let’s Talk Trade Shows Training community. This online resource includes videos, webinars, podcasts, an ROI tool, and other training information that will help you get the results you want from event participation. Go check it out.

New eBook: Why Marketing Stories Have Catch

Use stories with Catch Factors to transform buyer attention into engagement and consistently tip purchase decisions in your favor. Learn what a marketing "story" is, why stories

have more impact than other marketing content, how they escalate buyer momentum and why stories build trust that speeds customer conversions.

Download the eBook

Stories are what we tell ourselves to make sense of the world around us.

Marketing is charged with producing quantifiable results in the quality of lead generation and activity management. In order to give sales qualified opportunities, instead of leads, marketing has got to get more effective. And they need to do it fast. Stories are a key to not only creating and extending engagement, but to building trust.

Weave in Catch Factors with your stories and you've entered a whole new realm of effectiveness. The reason stories work is because they force us to focus on the person we're telling the story to, or they don't make sense. Lots of buzz is happening around the idea of personalized and targeted marketing which means embracing the niche. Stories, used wisely, can take you to a whole new level of marketing competence.

Since you can't control the conversation any more, it's time to leverage the options that empower you to guide the subjective experience of your buyers. Marketing stories do that by increasing the personal impact they have on your audience, creating a pull response from your buyers that escalates their purchase momentum and by solidifying your credibilty as someone they want to do business with.

Marketing is like a trial run. It’s the ultimate free demo of what it will be like to become a customer of your company. 

Why Marketing Stories Have Catch, the second ebook in the Catch Factors series, explores all of these ideas and includes a quick guide at the end to help you get started in leveraging marketing stories of your own. If you missed the first eBook: Catch Me, If You Can, you can download it here.

I'm also giving a series of workshops for Business Experts Webinars that expand on the use of marketing stories within content strategies and sales transitional tools. I hope you'll register today to learn more about how to transform your content strategy into a downstream revenue catalyst.

The Opt In is NOT The End of it

In a new report from eMarketing, people are reporting that they're making purchases based on email communications they receive from companies they've given permission to contact them.

But, they're also un-subscribing just as fast if the communication isn't relevant, or the company  evidences bad email practices. In fact, one third of those surveyed said they had opted OUT of at least one relationship due to their poor communications.

This goes back to the idea of marketing as the facility for acquiring names for sales to call. That's not the goal here. Not for B2B companies with complex sales. In Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin defines a permission asset as, "the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant ads [information] to the people who want to get [it]."

He's right. Buyers who have opted in are an asset, no question. Now, whether you choose to invest in developing your asset or waste it is something you have control over based on how you decide to use it. If you consider your lead database to be your investment portfolio, you can either see your stocks[buyers] go up [transition to sales readiness] or you can see the value of your investment decline [inertia or opt out].

At the end of the year, what kind of movement is your "buyer index" going to show?

Do you have an email marketing campaign strategy - or are you just shooting out whatever seems timely when the send date comes around? It makes a huge difference in a B2B complex sale. Just as you might select a "drip" investment method for your mutual funds that helps to pay off with added dividends, so should your marketing communications show progression in the increasing value of your buyer portfolio.

Take a look at your email analytics. Do you see an upward trend in the number of clicks and the amount of time spent with your content?

Assess the progression from one email to the next. What story are you telling your potential buyers about your company?