Marketing Interactions

Salespeople guilty until proven innocent

The Contrarian Effect, a new book by Michael Port and Elizabeth Marshall is hot off the presses. The premise of the book is that it pays (BIG) to do the opposite of typical sales advice. The shift in the marketplace to conversational, customer-focused communications makes this book a timely discussion for sales professionals. In fact, in an AMA webinar today, research was disclosed that says only 7% of people actually believe advertising. And, in a world where 81% of people go online to research what they buy prior to doing so, salespeople have a tougher-

than-ever challenge to connect with potential customers.

The book begins with a history of selling processes including those developed by John Patterson of NCR. "Patterson believed that, 'to succeed in business, it is necesary to make others see things as you see them.'" NCR was found guilty of violating anti-trust laws in 1913. But the foundation of deceptive sales practices was set.

Surprisingly, according to the authors, many sales techniques are still premised on the practices developed by NCR - hence the guilty until proven innocent mindset salespeople encounter more frequently today. However, these tactice don't work anymore, and there are 8 reasons why not. These include:

• customers find you and initiate the buying process


• customers control how you communicate with them


• choice and information access are unlimited


• customers look for you in new ways


• they want personalized relevant and valuable offers


• customers decide when they want to buy--not salespeople


• customers demand respect


• customers don't trust until you prove worthy

Your customers are exposed to "over 5,000 ads, sales pitches and marketing messages each day." Because of this overload their attention spans are diminished, and their filters have become finely tuned. This also means that things shift with increasing speed and "what was relevant last month (or last week) is not necessarily relevant today."

In order to combat this shift in prospect perceptions and attitudes, the authors suggest that salespeople embrace "contrarian strategies." A couple of them are:

• adopting a keep-in-touch (nurturing) strategy rather than always trying to close the sale.


• building longer term relationships by adding value and building a referral base - instead of going for the short-term, sales-by-numbers approach.

The book includes a lot of real world examples of how the old ways of selling are not working, as well as how the new ways are. And, as everyone in sales knows, changing the status quo is difficult. So salespeople who still have some successful outcomes still cling to the old ways instead of taking advantage of the improved results made possible by shifting to meet the needs of potential customers.

The authors further explore the nature of personalization and the "public of one" and the need to focus on obtaining more of your ideal customers, not just any customer. They explore a variety of concepts that I agree are very important for salespeople who recognize the need to embrace the shifts occuring in the selling environment.

Although the principles the authors embrace are not original, the ways they discuss them and the examples they use to show them in action are worth a read to help wrap your mind about what they look like in action. Did I say change is tough, already?

By reading this book, you will also gain some insight about the levels of success you can achieve by applying contrarian stratagies to your sales efforts and eliminating the stigma of the old ways of selling. You can download chapter one on The Contrarian Effect website.

Triggering Event Assumptions - Risky or Relevant?

Triggering events are shifts in your prospects' business environment that necessitate change in the status quo. We all know that change is hard, so knowing what's driving specific needs for change is a boon for marketers and salespeople.

Or, it should be.

How well you integrate triggering events into your communication strategy will depend a lot on how on-target your assumptions are about your prospects' concerns. Mistaken assumptions can cause your prospects to utilize that delete button and ignore you if they think you just don't get it.

For example, let's "assume" that a regulatory change has occurred that says your prospects have to change the way they process information. You decide that their biggest concern will be the level of difficulty in redefining their information handling processes. All your communications are focused on "information processing made easy."

But, you're not seeing your prospects rush to engage with you. Why not?

Maybe it's because the processing isn't the BIG issue. The hot button for them is the retraining issue. You missed the boat and your prospects have gone down the street to your competitor who's addressing the more relevant concern.

So what do you do? Before you create communications to leverage a triggering event:

• Talk to existing customers and find out what they're thinking about this new change.


• Ask them both what worries them and what they see as a beneficial outcome once they've shifted to address that triggering event.


• Create a feedback (Q&A) guide for salespeople involved in new conversations and get a "facetime" read on related concerns.


• Look carefully at your personas and make some adjustments based on what you learn, if necessary.


• Make sure you're not using messaging for one industry segment across your entire database. Not unless you've verified the perspective is similar.


• Be careful that the vocabulary you're using is the same as how your prospects talk about the issue.


• Determine how influencers will be involved in evaluating how the trigger is addressed - and then match up your communications to influence everyone involved in the decision.

You've worked hard to ensure your communications are relevant. Triggering events often mean you need to re-assess and not jump to assumption too fast, just because it seems logical. Since when has addressing problems (buying) been logical?

It's a good rule of thumb to consider all the angles, not just the ones that make sense to you. Almost always, solving one problem will overlap another situation that then must be handled. Determining which issue has the highest "concern factor" will keep your communications focused and relevant.

On top of that, once you've done this successfully, you'll have a template for how to effectively assimilate triggering events into your communications strategy in the future. Repeatable consistency is a good thing.

Marketing Content Salespeople Actually Use

Marketers spend a lot of time creating content, messaging and resources to catch the attention of prospective customers. Research shows that salespeople spend an inordinate amount of time recreating that collateral in ways that work for them.

What a colossal waste of time that salespeople could be spending face-to-face with those buyers.

I was thinking about this today as I worked on planning a site map for a client's new website. I want to keep the content as flat as possible, limiting the clicks, so I kept turning the context around and around to determine the best way to do this for my client's complex product.

Finally, I stopped and reassessed. With a new product, one of the biggest considerations is intuitive context and relevance. Immediate recognition of what the website is about and why they should care.

Which brings me to sales tools. Salespeople are becoming the ultimate experts in consultative conversations - at least for complex sales. This transition is critical because it's likely that the value they bring is what differentiates your company and product from all the other options available to that buyer.

This same principle should apply to your online website content, digital nurturing and email communications. Your customers likely don't think - "Gee, I need a Whiz Bang 5000." From their perspective, the equivalent of a Whiz Bang 5000 is probably closer to "What do I need to solve THIS problem and get THIS outcome?"

Marketing content is usually designed for the front end of the sales cycle. In other words, it's designed to catch attention, generate interest and engage your prospects to reach the conclusion that your company provides a viable option for the issue they're looking to address.

Sales has to start from that point and convince the prospect that what they've been lead to believe is true and that selecting your solution is the best possible choice. Salespeople have the task of exposing the journey the buyer will take to get to the outcome and of validating that their company can actually deliver as promised.

This means that if marketing wants sales to use the collateral they create, they need to think beyond sales-ready leads and develop content that helps sales get the buyer to make the transition to customer.

Because each buyer is different, it's imperative that marketing doesn't focus on one-size-fits-all content, but develops content that addresses the various problems, challenges and issues their customers face. This also means that marketing has to know customers...intimately. They need to know them by role, industry and top-of-mind priorities. They need to know how each of those factors impacts the problem/solution scenarios their products address.

And they need to think small pieces that sales can combine seamlessly into any array they need to personalize the collateral for a specific customer.

Some examples are:

• Solution Story Slides - consider creating mini-decks that have 5-7 slides that address a specific problem/solution scenario. If your product has a lot of features, create a slide for each one so salespeople can select only the information that's pertinent to a specific opportunity. Less can definitely be more.


• Validation Slides - create them by industry, customer size or however your customer segments break down. People want to know how other companies solve similar problems and see the successful outcomes.


• Thought Leadership Articles - a variety of education and expertise articles that can be included in sales collateral. Make sure you have quote snips and key points that can be extracted easily for use on slides or in email messaging. Aim for a 500 word article, two or three key points, and several email scripts that are easily personalized. And maker sure they're written from the customer's perspective.

One of the reasons I used slides in the above examples is that it's easy to copy and paste slide material into a Word doc, or even select from a slide library and then create a PDF. Not to mention creating a relevant meeting presentation deck.

The key to all of this is collaborating with your salespeople. For each sale, look at the collateral they used to close the sale. Learn what they would've liked to have, but didn't, that might have enabled them to shorten the sales cycle.

Yes, the answers will vary widely based on the individual salesperson's style, industry and product focus. That's why I promote the use of small pieces. They can be combined in a number of ways, attention spans are shorter than ever and no two sales will be exactly the same.

By creating a sales tools library in this manner, you can lessen the time salespeople spend on collateral creation and keep your brand message on track. This outcome won't happen in a vacuum. Sales and marketing will need to actually talk to each other. However, the time savings is worth it. So are shortened sales cycles and more engaged customers.

Email marketing tips...brief, bold and germane

You've tried all kinds of configurations and formats, but your email communications still aren't generating the leads and activity levels you'd like to see. Well, guess what? Brief, bold and germane are three factors that play to generating initial attention.

What's your goal? Chances are, it's to get your audience to click to learn more. Trying to do anything more than that in an email message is overkill. Why? Because your audience loses focus.

There are tons of articles about limited attention and information overflow. For some reason, that seems to have spawned the idea that you need to justify—extensively—why your audience should actually take the action you want them to.

Have you considered that you're trying too hard? That perhaps your focus is still so clearly about your company and products that you've lost sight of what's important to your audience. It's kind of like celebrating that your company comes in at number 1 in the search results for a keyword—only none of your potential customers search for that term/phrase.

Let's take a look at the three factors to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Brief: Get to the point and do it quickly. Your prospects have no time to waste and no patience for digging through a bunch of stuff to find the point themselves. In fact, they won't. This factor is all about conciseness and word selection. Believe it, or not, it's harder to write brief messaging than it is to write longer copy. Every word needs to count.

Bold: Give them something outside their normal thinking. Don't make it up, but consider your subject matter and put a twist in how you approach it. Give them an unexpected statistic or impact that may change their evaluation of the problem or challenge at hand.

Germane: Just another way of saying relevance. Whatever you're telling them needs to be associated with something top of mind that your audience must deal with. If the subject is not on their current To Do list, you've misread your audience.

Put all three together and you'll have an email message that drives action. Just remember to focus on the audience's perspective. They don't care one whit about your company or products. They care about knocking that growing list of priorities down. And they care about doing it the best way they can.

Here's an example:

Ex 1: Our company is the leading provider of technology solutions for customer loyalty. We can help you connect with your customers and keep them engaged throughout their lifecycle with your company. Our fifth generation software has been tried and tested by thousands of customers who've reaped better customer relationships over the last 12 years. Blah, blah, blah...

Ex 2: You're charged with reducing customer churn. Our expertise enables you to not only reduce it, but to reverse the trend. Click here for ideas on how you can begin increasing your customers' satisfaction today.

Example 1 is focused on the company. Example 2 is focused on the customer and offers a bold statement about not only stopping, but reversing, customer churn. Then it invites the reader to get some ideas about how they make that happen. And it indicates the change can begin immediately.

Brief, Bold and Germane. All in 3 sentences. All of them focused on something critically important to the audience, given their responsibility for a strategic priority that delivers business results.