Marketing Interactions

Improve content by talking about what you sell

When you ask marketers what their company sells, often times the response is all about the product. But that's not what you're selling. Nope. Not really.

What you're selling is the value as perceived by the customer. Most times, that has nothing to do with your product.

Consider these answers to the question - "What do you sell?" followed by some suggestions for what that might actually be from the customer perspective:

• Social Media Software Platforms - Try conversations and connections

• Hotel Meeting Space - Collaboration, Facilitation of Business Decisions (or ideas), Inspiring Exchanges


• SEO Services - Getting found by the right people


• Search Technology - instant access to the information you need/want


• Desktop Management - escape from computing chaos and reactionary operations

Those are only a few examples, but you get the gist.

Here's what's key: You need to determine what these values are in relation to each market segment or niche BEFORE you draft your content for the next campaign.

Your content will have a much better chance of connecting with your prospects, commanding their attention and building engagement if it's focused on value and not products.

Seriously.

A recent campaign for one of my clients has taken them from a handful of leads who become qualified sales opportunities to an average of 58 per month - after month, after month.

In all fairness, that's not just because the content was focused on them, but that shift has played a large part in setting up the context for the conversations my client has been able to engage in. Not to mention their sales outcome improvements this year.

I'm betting all of you can benefit from producing valid sales opportunities instead of just leads who could be interested, at some point, in purchasing at some time in the future.

Right?

Think about it. The better able you are to position your content to your lead's perspective, the higher the response rate. Give it a shot and let me know what happens.

Sales SheBang: What to Say When They Just Don't Get It

Anne Miller gave a workshop yesterday about how to build engagement by using visual comparisons that help people relate easily to the value your products and solutions deliver. More importantly, using words effectively not only gets you into a conversation, but makes that exchange memorable. Through both written communications and verbal conversations.

Those of you who know Anne - and you should - know she's the Mistress of Metaphors. And, before you groan about grammar, stay with me. A metaphor is simply a comparison that enables people to visualize what you're telling them. Think of them as the silver bullets of understanding.

For example: Joe is a pig.

Yes, the eloquent Anne actually said that. But, it gives you an instant picture of Joe. In fact, if you had an extra ticket for the opera, you'd immediately know that Joe is not the one you want to invite to go with you.

For a business application of metaphors, let's say you're talking to an IT systems admin. If you say, "Managing complex computing environments is like running a continuous fire drill." They'd know you understand what they're likely dealing with.

Plus, that metaphor captures the emotional component of their experience. It includes the stress and risk that IT system admins deal with every day.

For some reason, B2B marketing and salespeople seem to rely on logical facts and statistics to help them make their point. Problem is that those are hard to personalize. They don't apply to people directly, but in an aggregate form. Facts and statistics are like the 30,000 foot view. You need to meet them on the ground and metaphors can help you get there.

Anne refers to the two sides of the brain as Joe Friday and Robin Williams. I'll leave it to your brilliance to determine which is logical and which is emotional. But the point Anne makes is that selling effectively requires showing not telling.

For those of you who'd like to learn more about metaphors and the power they wield in creating conversations, building relevance and personalizing your communications - written or verbal - check out Anne's book, Metaphorically Selling. You can also visit her website. Oh, and sign up for her newsletter. I get a new idea every month.

Anne's wisdom will help you make sure they GET it.

Sales SheBang: Sell More Work Less

According to Stanford University research, 85% of all customers buy after 5+ meetings. Problem is that 95% of salespeople give up after four. This nugget of valuable insight was presented by Colleen Francis of Engage Selling in her workshop at the Sales SheBang, yesterday afternoon.

Colleen shared a wealth of information that shows where the sales process falters and how to begin thinking about shifting it to higher effectiveness.

For example; When initiated by a cold call, a salesperson must contact 75 leads to close 1 sale. Compare that to referral leads with a close ratio of 1 in 4.

Considering that people are relying more on "people like them" for recommendations and insights about purchasing, developing a solid referral network is a great addition to any sales strategy.

Although I'd love to recount everything Colleen had to share, you'll have to settle for a few great tips and insights as I have to prepare for the workshop I'm giving about how to Flip Your Focus to customers this morning, so I'm short on time.

Think about the following: (source: Yahoo)

• 87% of buyers believe customer reviews and customer stories (use them prominently)
• 50% of buyers spend less than 8 seconds on your website (ouch)
• 60% leave because of lack of relevance (even worse)

Colleen also recommends that you use a one-sentence testimonial in the signature line of your emails. I love this idea. Much better than your company's logo and tagline. Go find one that will blow people away!

One last thing. When you leave a voicemail, make a promise to the recipient. When you follow-up, remind them of the promise and deliver on it. This strategy should help you build engagement. It's about creating great impressions by delivering value. (as perceived by your lead, prospect or customer - not just you. So think about this carefully.)

Colleen Francis also offers a subscription coaching program that is a bargain, given the insights and immediately actionable information she provides. Go check out Engage Selling Solutions. At the very least you'll want to sign up for her newsletter and get her 10-day intensive Sales Secrets eCourse.

For you marketers out there, getting the flavor of how sales sells can be invaluable for creating sales tools that sales will actually use, saving them all that reinvention time and keeping those feet on the street.

The Expansion of Seasoned Interest

Wow! What a summit!

I'm in Minneapolis for the Sale SheBang professional development event and we had a special summit yesterday just for speakers and select sales professionals. Twelve of us presented workshops to the group about our expertise. And, boy, are these women good!

It was a wonderful experience to spend a day with colleagues and learn about how they've found success, the mistakes they've made and their plans for the future as their markets shift. It just doesn't get any better than this. I learned more today than I can remember from any other event I've attended in quite some time.

I spoke about blogging and how to never be at a loss for words in writing communications that engage prospects.

Others spoke about:

• coaching programs
• consultative selling
• referral and partner programs
• podcasting
• negotiating
• creating multiple revenue streams
• developing audio educational programs
• and much more

I received valuable takeaways from each of these generous women.

Nothing was held back and no questions were brushed aside. The interest we all had for what our colleagues spoke about was seasoned with enthusiasm for the unique insights each each of us brought to the discussion. It made for a long day, but an extremely energizing one.

Today we ramp up for the first day of conference. I have a day to relax and absorb more wisdom since I don't speak again until tomorrow morning. Although I'm looking forward to hosting a table discussion about customer-focused messaging at lunch. Yep - all of us are available and involved with the attendees throughout the event. I'm looking forward to it.

I'll be blogging about the sessions I attend, so stay tuned!

The takeaway for event managers is to consider having an experts day that allows the speakers to share and learn from each other—instead of just presenting themselves to the audience and then quietly disappearing. We get a lot out of the exchange. Not to mention having the speakers be approachable and available to the attendees. There's a benefit for both sides.

Face-to-face is powerful. And, with many events struggling for attendance, adding that extra oomph might just make your in-person event more appealing to those considering whether or not to make the trip.

The Sales SheBang is off to a roaring start.

Search Determines Context and Credibility

It could be said that search is the great contextual equalizer. Over 80% of people who begin researching a new purchase begin with a search engine. I'm betting that most of you have also entered the names of people into search engines to learn more about them. Or even that you monitor the results for a search on your own name. [If you don't, start.]

Search creates the context for how we view a lot brands, products and ideas just by how the search results show up. If your company comes back in the top rankings for a search term, an association will form in the person's mind between the two.

The other results on the page will also influence the way the person thinks about your company or products. For example, if your company shows up and a few negative reviews display right beneath it (or heaven forbid above) that says a lot about your company. Likewise, if your company is surrounded by good reviews, related media coverage, complementary blog posts, etc. a better overall judgment is formed.

This means it's critically important to understand how prospects think about and search for solutions to their priority issues. You need to thoroughly understand your prospect's perspective to select the appropriate keywords so you're content is found at the opportune time by your prospects.

When you consider how your prospects will search for solutions or education about the problems or challenges they're dealing with, it doesn't matter one wit what you think they'll look for. It matters which word associations and phrases make sense to them.

At the beginning stages they'll be concerned about becoming educated about the issues and discovering their options.

In the mid-stage they've probably decided what types of solutions/products they'd like to evaluate.

In the later stages they'll be interested in proof points and company reputation and service levels.

As they transition to each of these stages in their buying process, the terms they use to search will also shift along with their thinking perspective.

In order to build credibility it helps if your content shows up well ranked at each stage of the buying process. Designing content is not just about the value it delivers anymore. It's about having it display at a prospect's fingertips upon a related search. As well as working to influence the context of the search results that appear along with your content.

Keyword assessment tools like Google's Keyword Tool can help you learn about the volume of searches in relation to keywords. However, what they can't tell you is who is searching on those terms.

What you can learn is if the terms and phrases you're using have overwhelming or minimal volume. As in anything else, extremes aren't necessarily good unless you own that space. You can aspire to own it, but for shorter-term results focus on going after the medium volume terms your prospects use.

Picking high volume words and phrases is fine - if you'll be found. But showing up on page 32 is not likely to be of help. Who ever makes it that far?

Just remember when you think about search, it's not just about showing up first, it's also about the context your content will be surrounded with on that search results page. That context can influence your credibility level with your prospects.

Interpretation vs. Perspective to Marketing Communications

Do the responses to your communications, content and messaging vary widely?

I've always found it interesting that you can present the same information to a group of similar people and get back a variety of interpretations. I just had this experience and it left me intrigued. Three people in the same industry with similar job roles and related background experience all read something I wrote and responded differently.

I had asked for feedback, so I expected responses. I wanted a read on impact. But, here's what's funny. Each of them commented on something different. The piece struck a chord with all three, which was good, but in entirely different ways.

Therefore, their feedback about improvement came back in relation to three totally unrelated areas of the piece. This had me start thinking about personas and profiles and how far off the mark we can get if we don't have good insights and evaluate the intelligence we have appropriately.

This is because, although they appear the same demographically, psychographically these three people vary quite a bit. And personal perspective will influence interpretation.

When trying to align interpretation and perspective consider:

• Word choice - don't get too tricky. Simpler is better, if you have a choice. It's interesting to consider that most people who scan information don't do well with it above about a 6th grade level of difficulty. Note - we all scan these days. It's the only way to keep up.


• Sentence structure - Assess every sentence for that dreaded "and" and commas that allow you to continue a sentence too long. Get rid of as many of them as you can. Remember the attention span thing. Don't put more than three items with commas. Three is the number of things most people process easily.


• Tone - don't preach, talk down or use sarcasm. With written words, it hardly ever comes off the way you intend, unless you're really good or your audience expects it from you.

A word about jargon. Jargon can be good or bad. Too much and your writing becomes incomprehensible. Too little and your audience may think you don't understand them. Well placed terms, used sparingly, can be helpful in making a solid connection and in raising your credibility level regarding the topic at hand.

Finally, segmentation is not a nasty word. It's an imperative for getting the interpretation you want to align with the perspective applied to your communications. The more narrow you can "niche" your marketing segments, the closer your pieces will be to generating the response you intend.

Try adding keyword, phrase and perspective insights to your segment personas. If you haven't already.

And, for those of you shuddering about writing 6 different articles for 6 different segments, this may not be necessary if you write the piece well in the first place. For each segment, refer to your keyword, phrase and perspective notes and adjust your content accordingly to match the intended segment.

Read the content out loud to see how it sounds. If it doesn't roll right off your tongue, go back and look at your word choice, sentence structure and tone again. Read it to several different people (or have them read it).

• Ask for their response and feedback.
• Ask them why they responded in a particular fashion.
• Ask them what resonated and what didn't.

Consider how you might apply their interpretations to the piece. Or, if you should. Will applying their feedback be helpful in increasing relevance for your intended audience?

As you progress with your content nurturing program compare the content that generates the best reponses to the content that doesn't. Can you isolate the differences in style? If you've been sending one message to the entire list, is there a definitive segment that's responding best to that communication?

Just remember that people don't leave their personal perspective at home when they go to the office.

B2B Websites Need to Focus on the Long Term

Most B2B websites are created with only customer acquisition in mind. It's all about exposing what the company does and who they do it for. Customers are included by way of customer stories and testimonials, maybe a client page. But there's nothing there for customers who already know the "new customer" stuff.

Maybe your company provides a customer portal that's specialized for your customers. If so, kudos to you. If not, consider the additional sales opportunities passing you by as well as the lack of focus on retaining existing customers and extending loyalty.

I just read about a study DHL did with their sales processes where they learned that defecting customers hadn't been contacted for 90 days prior to their defection. Despite the fact that we know landing a new customer is much more costly than keeping the ones we have, how much of our energy is focused on doing that?

This has the potential for becoming one of those finger-pointing issues. The sales rep was supposed to maintain the relationship. No, wait, it's customer service's responsibility. Or marketing thinks that a quarterly newsletter that promotes the company's new products and accolades is doing the job.

Not that all of these aren't valid (well, except for the focus and timing of that newsletter) but it's not enough.

When you acquired the customer in the first place, they were focused on solving a problem. Do you think that's the only problem they have? That there will be no recurrences or shifts in how the solution is impacted by shifts in market demands and business objectives...or growth.

If you've acquired the customer under the right set of circumstances - as a trusted advisor - then left them on their own after helping them get that one problem solved, who's missing out? Them or you (your company)?

Just as there are buying cycle stages, there are customer lifecycle stages. Your customers will change over time, just like your buyers do. Only, with lack of attention paid, it usually goes in reverse. Where buyers go from curious to interested and engaged, it's quite possible your customers are moving from engaged to semi-interested to disenchanted.

But consider what the impact might be if you have a content strategy dedicated to expanding your customer's involvement with your company and your brand. And, imagine it's exposed on your corporate website so your prospective customers can see how dedicated you are to your existing customers.

What an impression that would make.

Now, this doesn't have to mean a ton of additional work. If you're already developing and using thought leadership content in your marketing strategies, consider creating expanded versions focused on your customer's interests. Think of it as a v2 for your content.

What a new customer needs to know is not as detailed as what an existing customer may want to know, for example. Existing customer thought leadership could be an expansion of that content to include more specific applications of your product to emerging challenges and industry trends. A level of detail you that won't be as compelling to new prospects who are still grappling with how to solve the original problem.

However, once enrolled, they can see that you're a resource they can trust. That your company continues to focus on sharing expertise they'll need throughout their relationship with you. They'll see that you're not just in the conversation to get the sale, but that you're interested in helping them be successful over the longer term.

And that's impressive.

B2B websites need to reach farther than ever to differentiate themselves and to retain customers who are no longer shy or reticent about defecting to the competitor that tempts them with something that sounds good in that moment. Creating longevity in relationships is necessary to those companies who want to grow and develop for the long term.

Keeping your customers loyal and happy depends on how far you're willing to reach. Leveraging thought leadership content in new ways can help you develop a strategy for customer retention with legs to stand on. Sharing your passion for your customers will also help you increase your customer acquisition rates.

Isn't it worth looking into something with the potential for such great returns?

Who do your prospects trust?

The answer found by the 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer is "People like me." Which is especially interesting when you consider that, in past years, the answers included business leaders, medical professionals and government officials. My how we've changed!

So, what does that mean for marketing and sales communications? It means you need to get to know your prospects, customers and deal influencers intimately. In essence, you need:

• to know enough about them to take a "peer" stance with your messaging and content strategies.
• to know what their priority issues are and reach out to help them find solutions.
• to take incremental steps that prove you can be relied upon with each interaction.
• to have the restraint not to push them faster than they're ready to go
• to encourage dialog by becoming a resource they find credible
• to show more interest in them than you do in yourself

This "people like me" response validates how critical generating and leveraging profile intelligence actually is to building dialog that results in relationships based on trust. And, you need to develop strategies for using this information to craft communications that instill confidence with your audience that you can be relied upon to deliver what you promise. Your credibility will grow when the value you deliver is recognized by that audience.

Ultimately, it means that every single interaction, outreach and exchange is focused on what's best for them...not you. But, beyond focusing on them, it means you need to actually have something valuable to provide. This would be your expertise in relation to that problem they're trying to solve. Along with your willingness to freely share it.

How to LOSE more than the deal

I was representing a client yesterday in a prospective vendor conversation. The vendor was our top choice for design work and conversations about the project had been moving forward nicely.

Until I put the project lead on the conference call with them and the vendor's CEO let his ego overcome his sensibilities. It was the biggest disintegration of a budding relationship I've ever seen.

• We provided a video of the product in action. [A very complex computing product.]
  
  The vendor said they'd watched it and didn't need to discuss it further. When asked to explain what they got from the video, their description indicated they'd missed a big part of the product's value. But it took 5 minutes to get them to actually pull up the video and look at it with us. [Yes, we should have stopped the call right here. But I think we were so shocked that we persevered, trying to get the call back on track.]


• We wanted to discuss some design changes from their concept sketches.
  
  The vendor began telling us why we couldn't have them. Then, when our project lead pushed, He threw out some ridiculously high numbers in an effort to dissuade us from pursuing our ideas. He didn't even want to talk them through. The call was quickly deteriorating into what we couldn't have instead of how to get us closer to what we wanted.


• The vendor insisted they knew what was best for the project and was determined that we take their advice with no questions asked. They wanted to be the expert.
  
  Problem was, they got obnoxious about it before they earned "expert" status with us. Not that obnoxious is ever good, but it's especially bad behavior when they haven't earned the right for their views to carry that much weight.


• When they couldn't have their way, they abruptly hung up on the conference call.
  
  Yep - I've never seen anything like it in my life. This vendor got so caught up in his own ego that he couldn't entertain a discussion that differed from his beliefs. To the point that he didn't let anyone else on the team have a chance to speak. Not that they'd have crossed him. But, he just couldn't stop himself.

This vendor may very well be sitting there smugly thinking, "I showed them! I'm not about to do work that's not all about me. So there." And, isn't it grand to be able to walk away from a high-visibility, cutting-edge project?

Seriously, there are times when it's best to walk away. We've all done it. But it's in how you do it that makes a difference.

Here are a few "gifts" this vendor may not be conscious of giving themselves:

• The project lead had been so excited about the firm that their URL had been forwarded to everyone on the project - both internally and to external consultants and vendors.


• There were 3 team members on that call who are talking about the vendor's bad behavior to their networks.


• The vendor hung up on the call before he found out the true value of the project - which was about 3X the amount that was on the table by the time we gave them additional work beyond the initial scope. This could have significantly impacted what they thought they could do, but they weren't open enough to see the call through.


• In the team call the next morning, the situation was talked about thoroughly with 15 people on the call - including both internal and external resources to the client company.


• The vendor has lost any opportunity they might have had for future work from a variety of sources that do jobs appropriate for them all the time.

Letting ego and gracelessness into any conversation with a potential client is a BIG mistake. The cost is a lot more than one lost project.

Heck, I'm still talking about how obnoxious they were. They should be grateful they're not named here. Others involved may not be so nice.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, we moved on to another vendor who is absolutely terrific, gets the concept and is bending over backwards to make our project sing. So, actually I'm thankful for that vendor's lack of grace. He did us a HUGE favor.

Get the focus off price

There's a lot of talk about how to get higher prices for your products and services. Most of it revolves around matching buyer needs to products and services, becoming more consultative, solution selling and building better brand awareness. All of which will have varying degrees of success depending on the underlying foundation driving them.

In a B2B complex sale, I'd stipulate that it's a matter of providing expertise that helps buyers solve their highest-priority needs by helping them think strategically about how to realistically achieve the outcomes they want.

Consider the following:

• Buyers are busier than ever. Most executives currently have more work on their desks than they can complete in the next week - even if nothing else was added to the pile. [Take a look at yours...]


• Problems are becoming more complex as are the environments and ecosystems where they exist. This makes solving them more challenging.


• People don't have time to think strategically. They're running too fast handling their primary job responsibilities.


• Change is scary. Status quo has political benefits that are hard to overcome.


• What people don't know they don't know can cause all kinds of chaos as they're asked to solve problems outside their core expertise areas.

And finally, almost all products are commodities - yours is not their only choice. This is what causes people to think price is the driving factor and assign that reason to why they lose deals. Sometimes this is true, but more often I've seen price have impact when value is underplayed. That's what puts companies in a commodity position.

People will pay for value that has meaning for them.

This means that you have to know your customers really, really well. You need to know about their high priority issues. Not just what they are but which parts are important to the buyer - from their perspective, not yours.

You need to help them think about the issue. Point out considerations, unforseen pitfalls and futures they may not have thought through. You also need to take the fear out of the journey. Show them how they'll get the outcome they want. Up their comfort zone.

Basically it means attaining trusted advisor status. These are the folks buyers pay to work with. Their focus is primarily on the expertise, secondarily on the product. It's definitely about the relationship. And that requires personalized relevance.

I know, easier said than done. But is is definitely doable. And, yes. It makes a big difference in how the deal gets done without the focus on price.