Sales & Marketing Articles

Outsourcing Your Marketing - Should You Hire Outside Marketing Help Now?

Ina D — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:57:00 GMT

Eric Gruber | Article Marketing Experts

After huddling in our bunkers for much of the past 18 months we look forward to restoring growth and prosperity to our companies. Many firms will find, however, that they are unable to harness the early breezes of expansion due to resource constraints that are a direct result of recent knee-jerk staff reductions.

Peter Cappelli, Wharton management professor and director of the school's Center for Human Resources observed that the recent economic crisis forced many managers to focus only on the short-term. Slaves to quarterly performance expectations, departments cut employees with little concern for the long-term impact of layoffs. In many cases they were forced to sacrifice core competencies resulting in a devastating brain drain.

As an expert on post-recession employment recovery Cappelli knows that it will be some time before hiring begins again in earnest. “Companies will always wait to see that the demand is there because the fixed cost of hiring isn’t trivial.” Instead companies will use contract/temporary workers to hedge their bets on hiring, rather than committing to paying wages and benefits to permanent, full-time workers.

The use of contract labor to augment one’s staff isn’t a new concept. In fact prior to the recession it was fairly commonplace in IT, Finance and even Human Resources. Many firms outsourced whole projects or departments to large staffing firms. But this practice was less prevalent in marketing.

Top 5 Reasons to Hire Outside Marketing Expertise Now

If you find yourself short on talent necessary to grow your business consider these benefits of augmenting your existing staff with temporary marketers:

1. No long-term commitment. You can generally hire full- or part-time marketing resources by the hour, week or month without committing to long-term employment. This allows you to cover temporary holes (i.e. maternity leave) or limited workload surges (i.e. a new product launch) without affecting headcount.

2. Scale up or down at will. Flexibility is the biggest benefit of contract marketers. As your needs change so can your temporary workforce whether it be the overall number of contactors you use or the individual skill levels you choose to access.

3. New ideas. New marketers bring a fresh perspective and new ideas. By augmenting your current staff with marketers from other backgrounds and industries you bring new ways of approaching old problems to your organization.

4. Rent-to-Buy Option. In a resource constrained environment hiring the wrong person can be catastrophic. In many cases, hiring a marketer on a short-term contract allows you to test drive them before committing to permanent employment.

5. Saves Time and Money. HR experts say it costs a company a year’s salary just to hire a new employee. Depending on the level of the position it can take 2-6 months to land the right candidate. In the meantime, work is falling through the cracks. Contract marketers are generally available to start making contributions within 48 hours with little or no upfront costs.

The final chapters of The Great Recession will be written in the next 12-18 months. Those who boldly embrace the nascent recovery will gain share and thrive in the years to come. Those who continue to cower and wait for better days may be irreparably harmed. But seizing the initiative will take resources, specifically the arms and legs necessary to keep your marketing initiatives on track. Perhaps now is the time to take a new look at securing temporary marketing talent.

If so, check out my new checklist: “How to Choose Interim Marketing Resources That Won’t Waste Your Time and Money.” Get it now for free at: http://www.imperativesllc.com/newsite/learningcenter/publications.html.

About the Author

Pioneering Marketing Consultant and author of Strategy Activation: How to Turn Your Vision into Marketplace Success Scott Glatstein drives profitable growth by filling clients’ existing resource gaps with talented contract marketers. Now check out his free checklist that will help you choose an outside marketing firm that will enable you to achieve higher profits. Get it now at: http://www.imperativesllc.com/newsite/learningcenter/publications.html.

Traffic Building Strategies: 10 Ways to Get Other People to Send You FREE Traffic

Shailiza Manandhar — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:43:00 GMT

Eric Gruber | Article Marketing Experts

If you’re doing tasks such as search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising so you can build a steady stream of traffic on your own, you’re in for a long, hard uphill climb.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way to get loads of traffic very quickly – and for free. All you have to do is leverage other people’s traffic and resources.

Here’s how…

1. Be a Guest Blogger — Some bloggers solicit guest articles, in which case you can create a blog post and submit it for consideration. For example, my articles can be found on blogs like Cathy Goodwin’s Copy-Cat- Copywriting Blog. A great resource that will help you find bloggers who want content is: BloggerLinkUp.com

2. Submit your articles to the top, targeted websites and ezines. For example, I get traffic every day from my articles that are being found on sites like About.com, Microsoft Community Dynamics, Fast Company, Bank of America Small Business, MarketingProfs, SiteProNews and thousands more. You can get a complete, customized database of websites and ezines that you should submit articles to at: ArticleSubmissionSiteDatabase.com

3. Trade Newsletter Articles — If you like the idea of trading content, then consider trading newsletter articles with other people in your niche. Here’s a great tip for you: Look for those who also post their newsletter issues on their blogs, as you’ll get the benefit of a backlink and ongoing traffic!

4. Invite people to become your affiliate. Then provide your affiliates with articles and videos that they can use on their websites, on their blogs and in their newsletters. If you’re in front of your affiliates face all the time with new content for their readers,they’ll be more willing to promote you – and send you ongoing traffic.

5. Compile your articles and create viral, re-brandable special reports. Using a tool like ViralPDF.com, you can create a report that allows others to change the affiliate links in a report to their affiliate links. This way anyone who distributes the report has the opportunity to make money on the backend. The more money they make, the more they’ll distribute the free report, which means more free traffic for you.

6. Turn your articles into videos and promote them on sites like YouTube. You can use services like Traffic Geyser to get your videos broadcasted on hundreds of sites that your audience goes to. Now, not only do you have articles bringing you free traffic, but you also have videos working for you as well.

7. Host a teleseminar. Ask an expert in your industry to come onto your very own teleseminar. You can host as many teleseminars as you’d like for little money with services like Instant Teleseminars. Ask the experts to promote the call to their list and have everyone sign up on your own squeeze page. This way, you capture everyone’s name and email. Make sure you gettranscripts, and then turn them into articles that you can submit and get more website traffic.

8. Become a teleseminar guest. On the teleseminars, promote a squeeze page where you offer a free special report or special incentive. For example, I often promote: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com/ where you can get 3 free article templates. From there, I have an autoresponder series, which further educates prospects on article writing and articlemarketing. And, of course, I promote the complete article template product that you can get at: StartWritingArticlesFaster.com

9. Provide thought leadership content and share information that no one else is providing. This way, others will want to Tweet and retweet about your content. They’ll share it on their Facebook pages. And, email their list.

10. Promote other people’s products in your own articles and special reports. One of my new article marketing coaching clients has a walking shoe reviews site. The first thing that came to mind was to create a special report “The 2010 Top 10 Best Walking Shoes For Your Health!” Inside this report, he’ll reveal the best walking shoe brands and why. He’ll show you how to buy the shoes online (through his partnership link so he can get money!)And, more importantly, he’ll write articles that promote the special report as well as a press release so he drives traffic to his site. He’ll also write a press release for the shoe companies to submit as well for even more exposure and website traffic.

Now, if you like implement these ideas, you will begin to get more website traffic now without spending lots of time and energy.

If you like the information I just provided then check out my new article marketing coaching program where I will personally guide you toward writing your way to profits.Go to http://www.getarticlemarketingcoaching.com/

About the Author

Article marketing expert Eric Gruber creates online marketplace opportunities for small business owners who want more website traffic, prospects and profits. Now you can learn how to write your way to profits wit Eric’s new article writing and article marketing coaching program. Try it risk-free at: http://www.getarticlemarketingcoaching.com/

Sales Coaching Tips To Minimize Distractions & Boost Results

Shailiza Manandhar — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:27:00 GMT

By Coach Jeremy J. Ulmer

As a sales professional, sales leader or business owner, distractions can often be the main obstacle for achieving great success.

If you have too many distractions, you will never achieve your full potential.

It is important to continue to evaluate what sales activities will be most important to reach your goals. Then, you must focus on those activities first, and make a commitment to complete them each and every day without failure.

You must remove and minimize your distractions. You will then have the time to focus on what you have determined is most important.

Here are some tips on how to minimize common distractions:

Limit your number of social networks. Determine which social networking sites are most valuable to you. You may be a member of multiple forums, on line groups, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and will be invited to join other networks as well. Pick a couple that are most helpful for you and drop the rest.

Do not log into social networking sites while you are working. Save social networking for times when you are not at work.

Block time to check your email. When you are working on a task, focus on the task. Emails constantly flying into your inbox can be a constant distraction. Schedule specific times during the day to read and send emails.

Send fewer, shorter emails. Also, don’t become dependent on emailing versus picking up the phone. There is value in the personal touch.

Shut off notifications. Are you constantly getting pinged with an email, or tweet, or text or IM? When are you actually focused and present in the moment? Don’t forget that the most important time you have is right now. Consider at times completely shutting off your computer or turning off your smartphone.

Clear off your desk. Only keep what you truly need on it. Keep it neat and tidy. Do the same for your computer desktop.

Do one thing at a time. Multitasking can be totally counterproductive.

Do the tough stuff first.

Have a cut off time. Make sure you have set times to complete your activities as well as set times to stop working. Have you ever planned a trip where you left work early at 12:00 noon? Remember how much you got done before 12:00 noon because you knew you had to leave early that day? Exactly.

The next step is to put these items into action and start minimizing your distractions today. Also, consider making a list of all other distractions you may have.

By minimizing my own distractions, I was able to be a #1 sales performer within multiple fortune 500 organizations. Now, as a sales coach, I help support my sales coaching clients achieve similar success by providing specific solutions to challenges that are holding them back from extraordinary results.

About the Author

Sales Coaching & Business Coaching Expert, Jeremy J. Ulmer, has helped hundreds of sales professionals, sales leaders, businesses and entrepreneurs overcome sales and business challenges to achieve breakthrough results. Jeremy has been ranked a #1 sales performer in the U.S. for 4 years at two Global Fortune 500 Companies, is the former Director of Sales at the #1 Outsourced Sales Company in the U.S., and is a Featured Presenter on Sales Skills and Entrepreneurship at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. If you are ready to dramatically increase your sales or business results then subscribe for your Free Tips or request a Free Coaching Consultation at: http://www.coachwithjeremy.com/

5 Tips for Warming Up Cold Prospects

Shailiza Manandhar — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:53:00 GMT

Erica Stritch, General Manager, RainToday.com

I often speak with leaders of professional services firms about their business development efforts and hear a common lament:

"Put me in front of 10 prospects, and I'll close 80% of them...all I need is more new leads."

My typical response:

"Wow, that's great. You must be doing very well. Do you mind if I ask how many of these prospects are incoming leads or warm prospects—leads coming to you from a referral, your network, or web search where the prospect initiates the conversation—and which are outbound leads or cold prospects—leads you approach directly about your services?"
More often than not, the 80% close rate refers to incoming leads—prospects initiating the conversation with the service provider around a specific need. Such conversations may start like this:

Prospect: John Doe and I were talking, and he told me about the operational efficiency project you've been working on with him at his company and the impact it's had on his cost structure. He recommended I give you a call, as we are facing many of the same challenges as John, and I'd like to hear more about this and see if there is a way we can work together.

Service provider: Absolutely. But first, why don't you tell me a little bit more about the specific challenges you're facing, and then we can see if I might be able to help.

This warm lead is coming to you because the prospect already has an explicit need. And while sometimes someone may call you for their own personal fishing expedition, they usually have a budget or authority to allocate funds.

Those incoming prospects are the best type of leads, but relying on them allows your firm to grow only so much and so fast. To take your firm to the next level, you must reach out to the market to find new opportunities.

With this type of outbound marketing and proactive lead generation, you initiate the conversation with a "cold" prospect who does not already know you. You often don't know:

If there is a need
What the need is
Who is involved in the decision-making process
What the company's priorities are
How your services can help them achieve their goals

When you call cold prospects to initiate a conversation, they are likely to be guarded about sharing that type of information. It is up to you to turn it around and get them talking.

The 5 Commandments of Turning Cold Prospects into Warm Leads

Outbound marketing to cold prospects does indeed lead to new clients. However, this type of marketing and outreach requires a different approach. You can turn up the heat on your cold prospects by following these five commandments.

I. Thou Shall Not Be Impatient with Thy Prospect
Don't expect the prospect to go from a first conversation to a new client in 30 days. It rarely happens that quickly. Remember, this is a "cold" prospect; he's never heard of you before, and you are initiating the conversation.
Have patience with these prospects, and be prepared to shepherd them through a long buying cycle. Trust, credibility, and expertise are essential elements to a professional services sale and do not happen overnight. Be prepared to invest time in the relationship to help it grow.

II. Thou Shall Not Let Thy Prospect Fall through the Cracks
Nurturing and planned follow-up is required. Refer to commandment I—it is a long buying cycle and a relationship-building effort. Develop a touch plan where you reach out to the prospect monthly through direct mail, phone, and email. Stay top of mind, and when the prospect's elusive time of need does arise, you'll be the first person they think of.

III. Thou Shall Provide Value in Every Contact with Thy Prospect
With every touch provide some piece of value. Following up just to "see how it's going" will not enhance the relationship. Instead, answer questions and send articles—have a reason to reach out. Provide case studies and stories—examples of how you helped similar companies.
If it is a first conversation, have questions that start a dialogue and uncover needs related to your services. Then share some best practices based on your experience working with companies in similar situations. Know what your next step is; perhaps send them a white paper or walk them through industry research you've conducted.
Those types of value touches help build the credibility and trust necessary to win an initial engagement with any prospect.

IV. Thou Shall Speak Only with Prospects Who Are a Good Fit
Your first task when initiating a conversation with a cold prospect is to determine if they are a good fit. This involves knowing your ideal client profile, including industry, revenue size, and level/title of individuals within the company.
Beyond that, it also requires determining the prospect's BANT—budget, authority, need, and timeline. Focus first and foremost on the authority and need. If you can uncover a need with a decision maker and move it up his priority list, that person can usually find or make a budget and develop a timeline.

V. Thou Shall Not Speak to Thy Cold Prospect the Same Way Thou Speaks to Thy Warm Prospect
The goal with the any prospect is to start a relationship, and all relationships start with a first conversation. The key is to have a compelling and succinct value proposition. Demonstrate how you are different from the thousands of other accountants, lawyers, or consultants out there.
With these five commandments—and patience—you'll eventually see the temperature of those cold prospects rise, along with your revenue.

About the Author

Erica Stritch is Manager of RainToday.com and a much-sought-after expert in online marketing for professional service. You can read more articles on marketing and selling professional services at RainToday.com.

Do You Feel the Love?

Shailiza Manandhar — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:59:00 GMT

Virginia Weinstein and Michelle Glennie | The Partner Channel Magazine

A couple of years ago, my sister showed me a Web site called Facebook. She was explaining a story of a former boyfriend and how she couldn’t see his pictures because he was no longer her “friend” on Facebook. I thought to myself, “That is just another new tool for college students.” Adding social webpages while on campus just wasn’t the norm when I attended college. Today it seems that everyone – from my mother, who is 56, to industry professionals – has a Facebook page. Next time you log into your Facebook account, think of this: according to a March 2009 article in The New York Times, Facebook is signing up one million new members per day. But what really surprised me about the social media phenomena is a recent article in The New York Times about the U.S. government asking Twitter for help in Iran. “Are you kidding?” I thought. A State Department official asked Twitter to postpone scheduled downtime to keep a channel open for Iranians protesting the country’s contested election. I had associated Twitter with Ashton Kutcher and other celebrities, NOT government and business. The Nielsen Company reports that unique monthly visitors to Twitter grew nearly 1,400% from February 2008 to February 2009. So I started thinking, “How many people are using social media for business marketing?” Yes, we blog and we reconnect on Facebook with high school friends – but who is actually using social media for business and closing deals from it?

According to a July 2009 report by Nucleus Research, nearly half of office employees access Facebook during work. Nucleus found companies effectively lose an average of 1.5% of total office productivity when employees can access Facebook during the work day.

The report went on to say that:

77% of workers have a Facebook account.
Of those workers with Facebook accounts, nearly two-thirds access Facebook during working hours.
Those who access Facebook at work do so for an average of 15 minutes each day.
87% of those who access Facebook at work couldn’t define a clear business reason for doing so.
Of those who do access Facebook at work, 6% never access Facebook anywhere else — meaning one in every 33 workers built his/her entire Facebook profile during work hours.

The Partner Marketing Group took a purely unscientific poll of Microsoft Dynamics® Partners, asking them what types of social media formats they use to benefit their businesses. Our results may surprise or inspire you … or even make you laugh.

Social Media	Their Pitch	Pros	Cons
Facebook	Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.	It is an easy way to stay connected and learn more about your Partner contacts on a personal level. We use this as more of a “keep-in-touch” relationship building tool. It has helped us connect with newer Partners without meeting direct face-to-face at events. – Giuseppe Ianni, Azox	Facebook is a joke. I signed up for Facebook, and people from high school suddenly appeared and wanted to connect with me. Some friends connecting was nice, but then people I’ve never heard of tried to be my friend. I found the time and energy to keep up with Facebook to exceed its value. For professional contacts, I prefer LinkedIn. I purposely avoid befriending colleagues in my professional life with Facebook. – Mark Rockwell, Rockton Software
Twitter	Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: what are you doing?	I use this as a means to direct people to our vertical Web site. It’s just another easy way to reach people. – Jennifer Imes LuPiba, AccuNet We reply to Tweets from Microsoft Dynamics®NAV users asking basic questions or expressing frustration. I have gotten some thanks back for answering questions from people in the US and abroad (mostly abroad). I have seen several people requesting suggestions for companies that have implementation experience with a particular ERP. Clearly prospective purchasers are not limiting their due diligence to reference sites furnished by the vendor and are trying to find “real” users to talk to. – David Thikoll, Silverware	In my opinion, this is the most useless form of technology to come out in years. I see no business value; it’s far too informal and way too trendy.– Todd Bowlsby, ISM Please! Not another partially clothed person who wants to follow my Microsoft Dynamics® marketing updates on Twitter! Fortunately you can BLOCK those strange people. – Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
LinkedIn	Relationships matter. Your professional network of trusted contacts gives you an advantage in your career and is one of your most valuable assets. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return. LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.	LinkedIn has driven more traffic to our Web site and has helped with referral leads. Most of our employees are on LinkedIn, and we have set up a company profile. Employees are linked to some of our customers. It is great how it notifies you when someone changes jobs. That could be a potential lead for us. – Ann Haucke, The Resource Group	100% of the Partners surveyed by The Partner Marketing Group are using LinkedIn to connect to customers, groups within the channel, and associations. Tip: Is your company profile set up? If not, make sure someone within your organization does this soon. This is just another way to increase traffic back to your Web site.
Blog	A blog is a type of Web site that is usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Micro-blogging, another type of blogging and features very short posts.	Most definitely, through www.erpsoftwareblog.com. We plan to place blogs on our Web site as well and link to the ERP software blog site. It’s very effective for SEO (search engine optimization), and it has raised our rankings. Google Alerts has returned #1 rankings for Microsoft Dynamics® GP for a couple of our blogs. – Judy Van Der Linden, InterDyn – Artis	The Partners surveyed agreed that blogs are a good tool for business, but not all of the Partners have started one yet. For Partners that enjoy reading blogs, and for those that have started their own blogs, the consistent theme is that if you do a blog, you need to keep the content fresh for your viewers. It all comes down to how much time you have to devote to it.
Tweako	Tweako.com is a user-powered community Web site, and social network, specializing in all aspects of computing, technology, and the Internet. Users submit hand-written articles, or links to outside Web sites, which are guides, tutorials, service reviews, new software, general information, how-to’s, and much more. Tweako.com is a place to learn and share information and knowledge about every computer and technology topic out there. Tweako.com hopes to create a Web site where users can find information and help for all their computing needs, from programming to cleaning spyware.		The most common reaction from Partners was “huh?” Not a single Partner confessed to using this site. Maybe this is a new opportunity to get ahead of the networking curve?
Digg	Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by its users. You won’t find editors at Digg — the site provides a place where people can collectively determine the value of content. Digg claims it is changing the way people consume information online.		Most Partners have never heard of this, and of the Partners we surveyed, only one is currently using this site and another is preparing to start. Comments ranged from, “I have no idea what this is,” and “I haven’t had the time to research this yet,” to “Is Digg some gardening site?”
MySpace	MySpace is an online community that lets you meet your friends’ friends. Create a private community on MySpace, and you can share photos, journals, and interests with your growing network of mutual friends. See who knows who or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon.		Again, this is a site that Partners view as a social site with little to no business value. As one Partner stated, “It seems like this is for teenagers and hip hop stars.”

The hands-down winner of socal media use in our market space is LinkedIn. And while sending an e-newsletter is not one of the new forms of social media, it is tied for second place with Facebook with the Partners we interviewed. We first interviewed Partners in July. We then went back in October and asked them to update us with any changes they may have had since their initial responses. We found that usage of three social media sites increased among the Partners surveyed: LinkedIn moved from 94% usage to 100%, Blogging increased from 39% to 56%, and Twitter increased from 39% to 44%. Partners see social media as a continual touch or “nurture” that needs to be done with prospects and customers. Other types of marketing mediums that Partners are using are Google Alerts, association memberships, and webinars.

Using LinkedIn	100%
Sending a Newsletter	61%
Using Facebook	61%
Using a Blog	56%
Using Twitter	44%
Using Digg	5%
Using MySpace	0%
Using Tweako	0%

As the social media “frenzy” continues to carry on, we can be certain that new sites will come (and go). Some Partners have found these resources to be great tools in their success, which shows us there is a fit for our organizations if we have the time (and extra time can be very hard to come by). In the end though, one Partner summed up the madness for us with this insightful comment: “How about the phone? That’s a tool that still works quite well to communicate. I can not only use my phone to talk to people, I use it for e-mail and text messaging.” Jim Traynor, Intelligent InSites

Michelle Glennie contributed to this article.

Virginia Weinstein is with The Partner Marketing Group and has more than 10 years experience in the Microsoft Dynamics channel. She has recently started the e-newsletter program at The Partner Marketing Group. Her experience includes technical consulting, training, marketing, operations, and sales within the Microsoft Dynamics channel. To contact Virginia, e-mail her at Virginia@thepartnermarketinggroup.com.

Michelle Glennie is with The Partner Marketing Group and has more than nine years of experience in the Microsoft Dynamics channel. Her experience includes leadership in business development, operations, marketing, and human resource management. She can be reached at Michelle@thepartnermarketinggroup.com.

B2B and Professional Services Marketing

Shailiza Manandhar — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:01:00 GMT

John Varcoe, Everything, first published Unlimited magazine titled ‘Getting Down to Business’

The importance of good branding when marketing to consumers is widely recognised, but not so much in the business-to-business sphere. It should be.

Think of them like a pair of sisters. One’s sophisticated and glamorous, the other not quite so. But just because everyone looks the way of the glamour puss, it doesn’t mean her sister isn’t equally worthy of attention.

In the marketing world, business-to-consumer (B2C) seems to hog much of the limelight; it’s so slick and well established, consumers instantly recognise B2C brands — they know what they do and how they work. Yet business-to-business (B2B) marketing, like the plain sister, seems to languish in the background, starved of the attention it desperately deserves.

There’s a conventional wisdom that consumers buy with their hearts and businesses buy with their heads. And their heads are interested in one thing: price. But is this actually true?

Research into the buying processes and habits of those involved in B2B transactions reveals it’s not necessarily the case. After all, the business people making purchasing decisions on behalf of their companies are consumers (and human!), too. And if you take a look at the best brands — the likes of Nike, Apple and Harley Davidson — you’ll see they actually combine the best of head and heart appeal.

A survey carried out by consultancy Uffindellwest revealed that business bosses valued trust and relationships so highly they were prepared to pay a premium to get what they wanted. An overwhelming 83% believed cost was unimportant when compared with quality and consistency.

And in an analysis of what consumers consider to be their most important drivers, ‘consistently good service’ came out on top, while ‘cheapest price’ languished near the bottom of the list, at 16th.

So rather than keeping an unflinching eye on the bottom line, it seems businesses want similar things to consumers when dealing with companies: quality, consistency, trust, long-term relationships, to be engaged. They want the human touch; people like to deal with people.

But here’s the rub: when those same business leaders were asked to rank certain brands in terms of trust and honesty, business consultancies, and professional and financial services firms consistently ranked lowest. That’s bad news because not only are such firms key business-to-business service providers, their services are built particularly around trust and relationships rather than products. In our post-Enron times, it seems now more than ever those service brands could certainly do with a boost.

Another problem? The survey’s respondents appeared to misunderstand the role branding plays in B2B marketing and the benefits good brand management can bring. And that’s despite the fact they turned to strong brands themselves when looking for suppliers!

When asked what features of their own company influenced the perceptions of others, ranking highest were ‘the way the company engages’ and ‘the personal touch’ (chosen by 55% and 45% respectively). Brand was near the bottom, chosen by only 11%.

But what is brand management all about? It’s about exactly those things: the way the company interacts, its reputation and its people.

It’s of fundamental importance. Brands can play a crucial role in B2B marketing in three ways. Firstly, they build trust. Those purchasing on behalf of businesses may not necessarily be after the cheapest deal, but neither do they want to spend money unwisely. If a brand is considered reliable and trustworthy, it reduces that risk.

Secondly, brands can add value, allowing companies to maintain premium prices and not enter the downward pull of price wars. Ingredient brands are good examples of this.

And thirdly, brands build loyalty. That means stronger customer relationships and reducing the expense of continually finding new customers, which has to be a good thing.

There’s no doubt business to business has it harder than business to consumer. In B2B it’s not about shifting products off shelves, but more about shifting people’s perceptions, building relationships and gaining trust. But there’s certainly a lot B2B can learn from its more glamorous B2C sibling: how to seriously build a brand, to take a closer look at others’ perceptions, develop more engaging brand experiences and build emotional rapport. Do those things well and B2B might find she starts to garner a greater share of the attention.

About the Author

John Varcoe work for “Everything” – a graphic design company based in Auckland, New Zealand with a no nonsense approach to brand strategy and brand identity design, brand guidelines, brochures, websites, marketing communications, vehicle liveries, destination branding, exhibition design, signage, clothing and uniforms, advertising campaigns, marketing suites, annual reports, logos, information graphics, e-newsletters, posters, direct mail, furniture, bikes, packaging, games, etc.

The State of Modern Marketing – Houston, we have a problem

Shailiza Manandhar — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:25:00 GMT

John Varcoe, Everything, first published in "New Zealand Marketing magazine"

Recent research published in the prestigious Journal of Marketing investigated the actual impact that senior marketing managers have on company performance. Folks, it wasn’t a rave review.
Researchers Pravin Nath and Vijay Mahajan’s research sought to identify the factors associated with the likely presence of a chief marketing officer (CMO) in a company’s top management team; and what are the consequences of the CMO presence for firm performance. The study was a multi-industry sample of 167 firms over a five-year period. The results are not anywhere near as clear-cut as marketers would prefer.

In summary, Nath and Mahajan have shown firms are more likely to have a CMO in the top management team when they have relatively high levels of innovation and differentiation; when they follow a corporate brand strategy; when the CEO lacks marketing experience; and when there is a relatively high level of marketing experience in the top management team. On the other hand, they found that CMOs are less likely to be in the top management team as small firms diversify (although more likely if the firm diversifying is relatively large). But their really telling findings were these:

1. The presence of a chief marketing officer in the top management team had no impact on firm performance; and

2. Firms with a chief marketing officer in the top management team did not perform any better or worse than those without.

It’s further evidence that marketing shows every sign of being a discipline in distress, searching for legitimacy and credibility. It’s going to be hard to be seen to be accountable if we’re not actually doing anything that adds real value.

No surprise then Professor Nigel Piercy’s comment in June 2008 as to the state of modern marketing, “Worst of all, marketing as an academic discipline has lost intellectual leadership in its field, and this is what is reflected in its teaching.

“The need is clear‘, says Piercy, “The need is for bigger ideas. The challenge to the marketing discipline is to engage with the big ideas that are shaping the future of organizations and markets.‘ If Piercy’s correct, and I believe he is, then we’re going to really struggle as a profession for some time to come. We need to change our spots.

We now find ourselves in a recession–we daren’t use the D-word—and a rapidly increasing number of cost-cutting CEOs and CFOs are taking a close look at company marketing budgets with a glint in their eye. Some would say it’s D-Day for the marketing profession—time to shape up or ship out.

So, what can we do about it? It’s worth taking a look at some of the operational challenges confronting the profession day to day.

1. Accrual accounting
Most chief executives and CFOs find it hard to see the company’s brand as an asset. No surprise then that brand investments are typically expensed and not capitalised. Pedro Laboy from Tocquigny provides the following example to illustrate this point:

Under Laboy’s Scenario 1 the effect of purchasing a machine on the profit and loss statement for one year is only $10,000. Under Scenario 2, revenue has decreased by $50,000 and, as a result, investment in branding is cut by $40,000 while the machinery investment is left alone. However, as outlined in Scenario 3, the true implications of these investments can be seen only if looked at from a cash basis perspective. When both machinery and marketing are capitalised over only one year, the effect of both investments on cash is the same. Yet in reality, the useful life of the brand is likely to outlive that of the machine.

As Laboy observes, “Capitalisation accounting principles are the main reason why marketing budgets are the first to be slashed when corporations are looking to trim costs. Accrued earnings do not deliver shareholder value; cash does. It is myopic to make investment decisions based solely on short-term accrual accounting implications.”

2. Financial literacy status
(or at least a marketer’s ability to speak the same language as CEOs and CFOs). I’d not be the first to say that many marketers are mass marketing generalists who lack the knowledge and skills required to contribute at a strategic level in a way that will deliver shareholder value. On top of that, their day jobs are often dominated by the cut and thrust of tactical executions—ads, brochures, websites and trade fair promotions. Those relatively few marketers who do take the time to gain financial qualifications tend to move out of marketing roles as soon as they can and they don’t come back. They’re a big loss to the profession, particularly in its attempt to gain more widespread recognition and senior management credibility.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that only a handful of marketing graduates from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, INSEAD or from any of the other well-known international business schools (ie the pick of the global marketing crop)—have ever been employed by what authors Collins and Porras labelled the world’s “built to last‘ companies famous for the outstanding quality of their long-term management performance. Or that since the eighties a number of respected authors have identified the influence of marketing at the corporate strategy level has decreased. A 2004 ANA/Booz Allen Hamilton study, for example, estimated only 47% of the Fortune 1000 companies had a marketing manager in the top management team (which many commentators consider a good indicator of the status of marketing and the commitment to the marketing concept within the host company).

3. Conventional wisdom
One of the great weaknesses of the marketing profession is that it’s largely based on intuition and anecdote. Rules of thumb, the tried and true prevail (again and again) perhaps at the expense of innovation and change.

Consider Armstrong and Schultz’s 1992 paper Principles Involving Marketing Policies: An Empirical Assessment. Like most people they assumed marketing contains many fundamental principles, and so they used an extensive procedure based on pre-specified criteria to search for those principles in basic marketing textbooks. They identified 566 normative statements from nine texts published over six decades. However, these marketing statements were presented in the texts without any empirical support. Of the 566 statements, four raters agreed on only twenty as representing marketing principles. When twenty marketing professors rated whether those twenty meaningful principles were correct, supported by empirical evidence, useful, or surprising, none met all the criteria. Nine of the principles were judged to be nearly as correct when their wording was reversed! The authors were unable to find any useful principles about pricing, product, promotion, or place in basic marketing textbooks.

In a similar vein, take a closer look at Ries and Trout’s so-called 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, a book that when I last looked had received 100+ highly positive/rave reviews on Amazon, many from tertiary-qualified marketers. Yet most of the “Laws‘ Ries and Trout present are merely speculative positions, they lack quantification and aren’t based on a systematic collection of evidence (they’re simply anecdotes). Some of their “laws‘ are even contradictory, while others are simply platitudes (Law 17, “Things are unpredictable‘ or Law 20, “Things are often different to how they appear in the press‘, for example) of little if any practical value.

If we’re introducing that kind of thinking in our discussions at the board or management table then perhaps the profession deserves to be where it finds itself today.

4. Marketing research is of variable quality
As a profession we give too much credence to industry-generated anecdotal evidence (almost inevitably only good news stories) or flawed or compromised research. Too little notice is given by marketers to sound academic research based on scientific method, while not enough effort is made by marketing academics to make their research more accessible and relevant to the wider marketing profession. This is a fundamental failing, the chasm between the marketing Fantasyland and reality needs to be bridged—either by academics writing in more accessible language (have you read the Journal of Consumer Research recently?) and publishing plain English summaries in the marketing media, or by marketing practitioners with the necessary skills and desire to do that job for them.

Consider the current round of industry articles and comments reminding us all that we’re in a recession and now’s the time to ramp up marketing budgets and advertise more. Enhance your share of voice (SOV) and you’ll gain market share the story goes—but guess who’s telling us that? The advertising agencies—the very ones whose livelihood depends on marketers buying more advertising. I bet your CEO and CFO aren’t singing that particular tune—they’re much more likely to be requiring you to cut your marketing budget, demanding accountability for every dollar spent and a clear demonstration of marketing’s ROI. And they want it today!

There are a number of studies that claim to demonstrate that spending more on advertising in a recession pays off because it will deliver a greater SOV. Most of these studies however are either funded by vested interests, they use cross-sectional data, or they inappropriately attribute causality to ad spend. It’s difficult to accept the claims made by such studies as credible given those fundamental concerns, not to mention the lack of independent academic research that supports their case.

One study worth further consideration however is the paper published by Frankenberger and Graham titled “Should firms increase advertising expenditures during recessions‘. They were able to demonstrate that firms (note the study was not conducted at brand level) that increased advertising spends during a recession do slightly better than firms that increased advertising spend in other times, although this was not the case for firms in the service industry. More importantly (and it’s a point conveniently overlooked by the ad industry and many marketing consultants) it also showed there was no long-term effect of cutting advertising during the recession. I bet your ad agency’s not told you that little part of the story!

In a recent Marketing News article the well regarded, and wonderfully outspoken Prof Don Schultz also pointed out the questionable value of pursuing SOV, which is at the heart of the advertise-more debate. He highlighted the lack of any relationship between SOV and market share in the US auto industry before concluding, “Clearly, wrapping oneself in the concept of share of voice to maintain or increase advertising spending seems like an obvious case of the Emperor’s new clothes to me.”

The reality is firms shouldn’t make marketing decisions based on an opportunity to gain SOV at a lower than normal cost. Some companies will simply need to cut marketing costs to survive. Others can do very well by maintaining a business as usual approach. And, if your company has something to say that is particularly relevant in the current environment, then yes it may well be more efficient to say it now than to say it in better times. It needs to be horses for courses and if you do have something important to say you don’t always have to say it through advertising. There may be more much cost-effective channels and tactics.

5. Ineffective spend
During a recession there’s a strong tendency to cut costs, and the marketing budget is often one of the first costs CFOs look at. And why shouldn’t they—just because you’ve always spent 10% of revenue on marketing is not necessarily a good reason for continuing to do so. And just because your major competitors are spending 10% on their brands, doesn’t mean they have optimised their return either.

It’s common sense—while it might be fun to be courted, wined and dined by an ad agency, or to see your brand in the glossiest mag or screen in peak time viewing, put your own ego aside—most ads simply aren’t noticed and of those that are, most aren’t attributed to your brand. In some cases, advertising may not even be worthwhile.

Let’s look at two areas where you might be able to make your budget work harder. First consider an FMCG like wine, where products have to compete in a highly cluttered and competitive category. Recent Australian research indicates most consumers have no preferred wine in mind when they enter a retail outlet to make their purchase. Instead they make a spur-of-the-moment assessment of a wine’s quality for its intended situation of use (that is, if it’s suitable for a barbecue or a special celebration and so on). It’s largely about lowering the perceived risk of purchase in what is a fairly complex decision-making process.

Most wine buyers are far from expert and so rely on extrinsic cues (such as price, label, brand name and shelf position) to assess a wine’s quality. Multiple research studies have highlighted the critical importance of the information available at point of sale and the label in particular. The consumer’s purchase decision is one that’s largely driven by design and appearance on shelf, those extrinsic cues as to a wine’s quality and suitability. Not advertising or promotional spend.

And then there’s the option of paying a premium for advertising placements in a media context targeting relevant audiences. Recent research by Wang and Calder published in the Journal of Consumer Research has shown it’s likely audiences will like a product less if the act of processing an ad for the product intrudes on their media transportation experience (ie their absorption in the narrative of the flow of a story or event). Such advertisers it seems are actually paying a lot more for a lot less.

6. Measurement
There’s increasing pressure on marketers to measure their performance against a range of KPIs, and MROI in particular. The problem with such an approach is that unlike operational investments, the effectiveness of your marketing spend is dependent on two dimensions—the short-term monetary gain and the longer-term psychological response of consumers. It also assumes the required return is a financial one, when clearly that is not always the case in the public sector or for other not for profit organisations. Immigration New Zealand’s Settlement Kit is a good case in point. It was designed to facilitate positive settlement outcomes and its effectiveness (in particular the way it communicated key information to migrants who may not have English as their first language and its perceived value as a future reference) was the key measure of its success. Independent research was able to demonstrate just how successful the design was in terms of those communication and retention objectives.

Most of the MROI tools in existence today handle the monetary return dimension well, but they have no way of really dealing with the cumulative affect that marketing has on moving previously disinterested consumers to a state of mind where they will purchase. As a consequence the ROI on an ad campaign for example that doesn’t quite get additional consumers to that point will be $0, yet if the very next campaign does stimulate additional consumers to purchase it will be considered a success by the bean counters—even though without benefiting from the cumulative effect of the previous campaign(s) it too would otherwise have been unsuccessful in ROI terms.

Some authors have argued that scientifically measuring consumer strength of preference is a way for marketers to incorporate the psychological dimension in their investment planning. The problem is however, while that’s probably a good option for scenario comparisons and selection, in reality I suspect it’s of much less use post event for demonstrating an actual ROI, particularly in an environment of dramatic change, such as a recession. Consumers have a tendency to say one thing and do another, even minutes after the event. In a similar vein, it’s been shown that participants in experiments whose explicit and implicit preferences regarding generic food products and well-known food brands for example were incongruent. They were more likely to choose the implicitly preferred brand over the explicitly preferred one when choices were made under time pressure, yet the opposite was the case when they had ample time to make their choice. Measuring consumer preferences then appears to me, for the moment at least, to be a somewhat unreliable indicator of marketing performance.

It seems that a meaningful MROI, one that can reliably handle the complexity and subtleties of the consumer marketplace and the mix of short and long-term consumer behaviours, is still a long way off.

7. Untapped potential
I feel obliged to disclose a vested interest in making this next point. I am a director of a graphic design company (Everything Design) and we’re actively looking for clients that are interested in using design ROI methods.

So with that declaration on the table I can, with a clear conscience, say that many marketers completely undervalue the potential of graphic design. Why is that the case?

The thing that differentiates design from art is that it has a purpose. Design is utilitarian in a way that art is not— it is the how of a thing: how to order the parts, how to serve the client’s interests, how to convey or find the information. At the heart of design excellence therefore is effective communication—the delivery of information, the creation of emotion, the satisfaction of the client’s interests.

It’s a marketing opportunity going begging—the commercial value of design is possibly one of the most cost-effective opportunities for marketers to create value.

Consider the opportunity for good design in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector—particularly given the very low cost of design compared to advertising—almost 100% of current and potential CPG consumers see a product’s packaging design, compared with only around 7% who see an ad before experiencing the product on shelf. With up to 70% of CPG brands in high-turn selling environments being purchased on impulse, design is the last and the most critical opportunity to influence the sale.

Through the use of design ROI methods it has been demonstrated there is an average ROI of more than $500 of incremental sales for each dollar invested in brand identity and packaging design projects. Authors Schultz and Walters for example, in their book Measuring Brand Communications ROI¹², presented a range of case studies where there was no supporting advertising and the only variable that changed was an enhanced brand identity expressed through a revitalised package design. Every dollar spent on brand identity/package design in those case studies generated more than $400 of incremental profit.

More than four hundred to one. Given the very high cost of advertising compared to design, there’s no way a typical CPG ad campaign can deliver anywhere near that kind of return. The ROI for the design-only investment was in fact shown to be 50 times higher than for an integrated project that involved both design and advertising (the ROI for an integrated project was $7, which means the ROI on the advertising investment was very low indeed).

As Prof Bryron Sharp, writing for the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, notes—”the chances are you don’t need more marketing budget, you can always do better with the money you have”¹³. For most firms, he says, it’s a fair assumption that less than 20% of their ad budget does any good; the trick is to know what works best. The simple fact, says Sharp, is most ads aren’t noticed and, of those that are, most aren’t actually attributed to your brand. As Schultz and Walters have shown, design doesn’t suffer from that problem. Good design sells. Yet too many marketers leave design to their PR company or ad agency and don’t have a direct relationship with a good design company. It’s time they thought again—the best designers almost invariably work for the best design companies. They’re generally not found working in ad agencies or freelancing to PR shops.

8. Churn
The marketing profession is known for its high rate of churn. The 2008 Gaulter Russell Salary Survey produced in association with Research International and NZ Marketing Magazine14 for example showed 50% of marketing managers were considering a job change in the following 12 months. Being known for such a rate of churn is not doing anything to help the profession gain credibility. It represents a significant cost to companies, in terms of recruitment and induction, and the loss of valuable brand and institutional know-how. This job-hopping can also create a wrecking ball effect, where new marketing managers (often with little experience in their new industry) tip out existing suppliers who were performing well only to replace them with people they had enjoyed working with elsewhere. That can result in the loss of considerable industry and product-know how or the use of suppliers in areas outside their core competencies, while incurring a significant cost to bring the new suppliers up to speed. It may take months if not years to return to the level of understanding and experience that had been so readily swept aside.

Some survey analysts argue the high turnover within the marketing profession might reflect an unsatisfied demand for people with marketing skills. Cynics on the other hand suggest it’s partly driven by the marketer’s fear of being held accountable—of not wanting to be around when the marketing chickens come home to roost. It will be interesting to watch what happens in the year ahead as the recession bites and job-hopping opportunities become much harder to find. Will marketers continue to bail out early in their pursuit of higher salary cheques and a variety of experiences, or will a thicker skin and job security become more the order of the day?

9. Market research—a broken crutch
Most of us know through intuition and personal experience the market research process is flawed – “Does this toilet paper brand make you feel happy or sad on a scale one to five, where one is very happy and five is very unhappy…”. Any adult living in a house with a phone knows what I mean. It’s no surprise either that, on average, only about half of the people interviewed by market researchers ever give the same answer to the same question across two interviews. And this instability occurs even if people are re-interviewed only 15 minutes later. So just how reliable is market research? The answer would seem to be not very. Nowhere near it.

Consider a 2004 study by Horsky, Nelson and Posavac14. They compared the relative attractiveness of performance, dependability, comfort, prestige and exterior styling attributes reported in market research studies (ie what people say) with the same five attributes derived from the actual buying public (ie what people do). There was a dramatic difference—a finding that is particularly troubling because of the heavy reliance of marketing practitioners on research data pertaining to attitudes, purchase intentions, and attribute importance rankings. If predictions based on stated preferences are markedly different from reality, then traditional market research can’t be trusted – simply because consumers are either not willing, or they are unable, to describe their own future state of mind, emotions and, specifically, behaviour. As authors Wright and Klyn15 note in their 1998 study of behaviour correlations in 21 countries, using attitudes to predict future behaviour has shown very poor results. Averages across the studies they investigated show attitudes typically explain less than 10% of variation in later behaviour. Only ten percent!

Market research, despite the claims of the research houses, simply does not generate true customer insight. Market research tools are often used because they’re relatively easy to apply and are available at low cost, or they provide a convenient reason to delay a project until the results are in or market conditions improve. And not because of the quality and value of the so-called consumer insight they claim to deliver. Rather, the evidence suggests market research is based on behaviourist psychological concepts that simply have little, if any, validity. As a result, most marketing organisations actually know little or nothing about their customers—even those that have invested heavily in market research. Put bluntly, marketing managers can’t trust traditional market research. Why is it then that so many of us do?

Where to from here
The ANA/Booz Allen Hamilton study offered six keys to success for senior marketers, which still seem valid today:

1.Know which of three potential CMO roles you will be expected to fulfill—Marketing Service Provider, Marketing Advisor, or Driver of Growth.
2.Agree on the contract with the CEO from the beginning, and continually check your progress against it.
3.Develop organisational linkages, at both the corporate and business unit levels.
4.Drive the marketing capability agenda.
5.Quickly making progress on areas such as innovation and ROI marketing that are key to the CEO agenda will be critical to the ultimate success of the CMO.
6.Take some risks—come up with the big ideas…You can’t have a fundamental impact on a company’s direction without taking a risk.

I’d choose to stress the importance of the latter point and the under-utilised value of graphic design in particular. However, that’s only part of the story. You can’t be an expert in everything. Get the best advice you can, put your personal likes and dislikes aside (you’re not the target audience), team with the best suppliers you can find, and then be brave. Now is the hour.

Hot off the press
The March 2009 edition of the AMA’s highly influential Journal of Marketing includes research by Peters Verhoef and Leeflang on the influence of marketing departments within firms. They sought to identify and explain the level and determinants of the marketing department’s influence, and to gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between that influence and market orientation, and its effect on firm performance. The results are somewhat challenging for the profession. They show a weakened position of marketing departments in the firms studied. More worryingly, their results do not clearly suggest firms need strong marketing departments—because they could find no clear link between the marketing department’s influence and company performance. Nor does Verhoef and Leeflang’s research demonstrate a marketing department’s ability to translate customer needs into customer solutions (and/or products or services) is an important determinant of its influence.

Verhoef and Leeflang however advocate that marketing departments should still work hard to gain influence within firms—they believe a strong marketing department is beneficial because more market oriented firms do perform better. They also offer guidance to marketers about how to go about gaining that level of influence, “Marketing departments should become more accountable for the link between marketing actions and policies and financial results”, they say, and “become more innovative by increasing their share in new product/service concepts, which implies a greater contribution of marketing to organic growth.” They also call for financial behavioural change within marketing departments and suggest the inclusion of a financial section in marketing plans that highlights the financial consequences of marketing actions and a greater use of testing (ROI and other performance metrics).

References
Available on request.

About the Author

Filtering Through Marketing Jargon

Shailiza Manandhar — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:14:00 GMT

Jason Carter, The Partner Channel Magazine

“99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger”

What’s that? It’s the HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filtration standard. I’ve learned this because we just found out our son has allergies to pets and to mold, and we’re looking at purchasing an air purifier and a new vacuum. The experience highlights for me that the marketing practice of misusing industry jargon is a universal one. As I’ve now been told, you can put a HEPA filter on a chicken coop.

That last line might need some explanation. I’ll get back to that.

I wouldn’t exactly say that buying a new vacuum is like buying a new ERP system. Of course there is the obligatory cheap joke in there that for the customer, it sucks (you can smile at that if you want; nobody is looking). The comparison of an ERP selection process to a root canal is another I’ve heard, and it’s much more accurate. If you’re going to do it, you want to do it right and not have to repeat the whole process in a year or two because you made a bad choice. You can be led to a bad choice if you are too influenced by all the jargon vendors throw at you.

Wanting the best for our child, my wife and I started a little research project to learn about vacuums. My part was to focus on filtration and air quality issues. That’s when I came across this HEPA air filtration standard, the removal of 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger. That level pretty much takes care of mold and pet allergens. Sounds great. Where do I get one?

Apparently, anywhere and everywhere. If you put a HEPA bag in any vacuum, the vacuum marketing people will claim you’re getting HEPA-level filtration. The problem is that most vacuums leak air like crazy and blow dust right back into the air. Besides the filter itself, a critical issue here is if the vacuum cleaner is sealed well enough to force the air through the filter and get that HEPA-level filtration. Now we’re getting to what’s real and what’s marketing hogwash. Take the $100 vacuum off the shelf at Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, or wherever and put a HEPA filter in it if you want; you’re not getting 99.97% of the particles 0.3 microns and larger out of the air.

So what does it take to get that level of filtration? Based on my research, something north of $1,000. One of the top of the line vacuum brands has a $1,500 model that includes seven filters (including the HEPA bag) inside a fully sealed and leak-proof chamber. That vacuum filters to HEPA standards because there is no escaping air. It is all forced through that filter. The same company has a $700 model that is not sealed quite as tightly. It has a HEPA filter but because there is some air leakage, the vacuum (when tested) could only be claimed to remove 97% of the particles 0.5 microns and larger.

I get the feeling that when you get down to the $100 vacuum, the HEPA bag provides very little value other than a tool for the marketing folks. The friendly gentleman from the company that sells the $1,500 unit scoffed at the idea that putting a HEPA bag in the cheapo model gives you anything remotely approaching HEPA level filtration. You can put a HEPA filter on a chicken coop, he told me. I understood what he was trying to say, but jeez … I hope he’s not on his company’s marketing team.

Hopefully you’re understanding why I bothered to write an article about my vacuum cleaner selection project. “HEPA” is a great buzzword, and before investing some time on this, I was a little too impressed with that term. It gets misused on all kinds of products that don’t do what you think they ought to based on the fact they use a HEPA filter.

SOA, Web Services, .NET, web 2.0, social networking, and so on. How many of your prospects are putting too much stock in a buzzword because the competitor has convinced them that it is important, without ever fully explaining what it means and what benefits it provides? That’s a dangerous path to go down … making a decision based on misunderstood industry jargon. You’re likely to wind up with a product that doesn’t do what you need it do to. Instead it just simply sucks.

The Partner Channel provides sales, marketing, and leadership-focused publications and events for Microsoft Dynamics Partners.
Since its inception in May 2003, The Partner Channel has produced 59 monthly e-Newsletters, 22 quarterly magazines, 17 versions of The List: Magazine, 7 annual Partner events, 3 versions of The List: Handbook, 3 editions of The Partner Channel Virtual Expo, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Marketing in a Recession

Shailiza Manandhar — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:35:00 GMT

John Varcoe, Everything, first published in "Brand New Marketing"

Last year I sat in on a media planning presentation for a wine brand I’d helped reposition some months earlier. The planner outlined their recommendations for a proposed ad campaign and the client asked me what I thought. I said the research seemed thorough and the conclusions well thought through. No problems there.

But then I drew a deep breath and suggested that rather than present a media plan the client should have been advised the campaign should not proceed: one, because there was insufficient budget to create any change in brand awareness or understanding let alone impact sales; and two, research has demonstrated that a very significant majority of wine buyers in this part of the world have no specific predetermined purchase in mind when they enter retail premises—they make their actual purchase decision on the spur of the moment at the point of sale. The available budget therefore would be better directed into improving on-shelf presence and other point of sale promotion. Stunned silence. Oh dear.

It’s always seemed strange to me that when marketers go to an ad agency or media broker for advice they don’t seem at all surprised the advice almost inevitably includes a recommendation somewhere along the line to buy more media.

As the economy’s worsened I’ve noticed commentators frequently advising companies to advertise and promote themselves more. Clients are often told if you have X% of the market, to grow your share you need to spend more than X% of the total category dollars. In tough times they say you should increase your marketing spend because competitors will be forced or will decide to reduce their advertising. Your ads will be more visible in a less cluttered marketplace and your market share will increase.

While the “advertise more” line’s got an intuitive feel to it, is it actually true? The whole thing’s based on three assumptions: that more advertising is always better; that you should at least maintain but preferably increase “your share of voice” (SOV); and that advertising spend is directly related to market share, sales, ROI or some other seemingly desirable metric.

SOV is the number of times the audience sees or hears a brand’s message, in relation to all competitive messages. It probably first evolved in a retailing context—department stores routinely allocate 4% of sales to advertising. And guess what, if you were to correlate the relationship between SOV and the market share of each department store, the correlation would be perfect—but even with the most rudimentary understanding of statistics you’ll understand why that’s no evidence at all of causation.

Prof Don Schultz at Northwestern University in Evanston is perhaps an even stronger cynic than I am. In a recent Marketing News article he cites the 2007 US automobile industry to help illustrate his concerns about SOV:

Company	Market share	SOV
General Motors	23.6%	15.2%
Ford	23.8%	21.4%
Nissan	8.9%	17%
Honda	12.8%	15.1%

As Schultz points out, “the auto category share of market and share of voice calculations are all over the lot… Clearly, wrapping oneself in the concept of share of voice to maintain or increase advertising spending seems like an obvious case of the emperor’s new clothes to me.”

I agree with Schultz’s rhetorical question, why should ads that didn’t work when times were good be able to work like magic when times are bad, simply because they appear more often! And let’s revel in a bit more cynicism—most of us understand that as marketing budgets are scaled back or put on hold, agency and media incomes will also decline. It’s not hard therefore to imagine why the “advertise more” strategy appeals to the agencies and their media industry colleagues in times like these.

I do accept however research does suggest firms that increase advertising spend during a recession may do slightly better than firms who increased advertising spend during other times. However, that same research also demonstrated there was no effect from cutting advertising during recession. This is important because for some firms cutting advertising (and other expenses) may be necessary to survive—a much more important issue than simply increasing market share over the period. Bet you don’t hear ad agencies telling clients that very often!

As is often the case, the real answer can be found where common sense resides. Just because you’ve always spent 10% of revenue on marketing is not necessarily a good reason for continuing to do so. And just because your major competitors are spending 10% on their brands, doesn’t mean they have optimised their return either.

As Prof Bryron Sharp, writing for the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, notes—the chances are you don’t need more marketing budget, you can always do better with the money you have. For most firms, he says, it’s a fair assumption that less than 20% of their ad budget does any good, the trick is to know what works best. While it might be fun to be courted, wined and dined by an ad agency, or to see your brand in the glossiest mag or screen in peak time viewing, put your own ego aside—most ads simply aren’t noticed and of those that are, most aren’t attributed to your brand.

If your budget is halved, you can normally fix it by doubling the effectiveness of the ads or by finding better ways of connecting with your target audience. Effective communication is at the very heart of design excellence. If you need something designed to communicate effectively—a press ad, a brand identity, a website, packaging or print collateral for example, you’d be well advised to use the best graphic designer you can find. And guess where the best designers are usually found? In a design company, not at your ad agency or your PR company. Something else you don’t hear agencies tell their clients very often!

About the Author

6 Keys to a Terrible Professional Services Marketing Strategy (Part II)

Shailiza Manandhar — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:22:00 GMT

Mike Schultz, Publisher, RainToday.com

"There must be a secret primer out there on how to build terrible marketing strategies for professional services firms...After much research to find the source, the secret codex still eludes me. So, I am compelled to seize this moment for posterity and codify the process of building terrible marketing strategies," the first half of this article begins before presenting keys 1, 2, and 3 to a terrible marketing strategy :

1. Build the Strategy from the Top Down

2. Don't Consult with Expert Tacticians

3. Look Only at Your Industry and Competition

Here goes the rest:

4. Don't Create an Environment of Fervent Execution

Even if you allow your leaders to craft the company and practice area growth plans and you have the tactical expertise to get things done, by fostering a culture where marketing and business development are "second fiddle" you will stay in the land of terrible marketing.

A great way to get started here is to set action steps and goals and not hold people accountable to them. Professional services cultures are often great at "making nice" and not wanting to stir things up when someone isn't pulling their marketing and business development weight.

You might think this is a tactical versus a strategic issue. It's not. Company strategists and leadership must make sure the environmental factors are not in place: Don't set clear expectations or give feedback, don't make tools and resources available, and don't put incentives and consequences in place to guide people's behavior. (Or, dear CIA disinformation operative in training, set incentives that will guide the wrong behaviors. See what that does.)

To end up with the terrible strategy, it's also requisite that leadership insure the people tasked with executing do not have the skills and knowledge, are not motivated to perform, and are not, indeed, the right people for the job.
Execution must not be made a strategic priority by leadership – if it's not a priority, your marketing strategy has a chance to be not only terrible, but tragic. It's a fantastically terrible and devious marketing strategy that has everything in place that could allow it to succeed and then just fails because no one gets it done. Brilliant!

5. Don't Plan for Behavioral or Organizational Change

Professional services firms are products of the collective behaviors of the people within the firm. That's a mouthful, but in essence it simply means we are what we do. Marketing strategies are most powerful when they are bold, venture into uncharted territory, are creative and new, and require lots of energy and enthusiasm to implement well.

Thus, almost without exception, a marketing strategy's success is contingent on some level of change, be it evolutionary or revolutionary.

Regardless of what you set forth in your plan, if the strategists and leaders aren't bent on making behavioral and organizational change happen, you'll end up with the same thing you had last year and the year before. Doing nothing different than you have done in the past is sometimes, all by itself, a terrible marketing strategy.

6. Form a Marketing Committee, Then Take Them to Abilene

A family in Coleman, Texas, was having a nice afternoon playing dominoes outside. The father-in-law suggests, "Let's take a trip to Abilene for dinner." No one really wants to go, but they don't want to seem disagreeable so they hop in the non-air-conditioned car and make the two-hour trip to Abilene.

Five hours later the family gets back. They're tired, sticky, cramped from the drive, and recovering from the underwhelming cafeteria meal they had in Abilene. "Wasn't that a great trip," one of them dishonestly remarked. Mother-in-law then says, "Actually, I didn't really want to go, but you all seemed to. I didn't want to spoil everyone's fun, so I didn't say anything." Turns out no one wanted to go, even father-in-law who suggested the trip, but they all hopped in the car and went to Abilene anyway.¹

Service firms tend to employ smart people. Most like to involve themselves and weigh in on important decisions, such as marketing strategy. Marketing committees form. When these lovely decision-making bodies get nice and big, two things happen.

Innovative and interesting ideas get squashed before they can gain momentum. With anything new or visionary, it's difficult to get everyone to agree and easy for people to say no and poke holes in ideas. The tired, less exciting ideas remain on the table.

It's kind of like getting 20 people to agree on the same dinner to eat. So many interesting possibilities get excluded for this reason or that. Everyone ends up with macaroni and cheese and a side of iceberg lettuce posing as a salad.
People begin to agree with watered-down and uninspiring ideas because they think other smart people agree with them so they must be OK, they're sick of the ongoing committee discussion, and actions eventually need to be taken. They also know better ideas won't make it very far, so they publicly swallow the pill and declare, "I agree. Let's go!" Privately they think, "This is a terrible idea, but I guess it's where everyone wants to go."

In other words, the committee decision body decides to go to Abilene and doesn't look back, sometimes until they've spent a year and a half on the trip.

What you're hoping for here, if you want your terrible marketing strategy to come out in full force, is to encourage pluralistic ignorance, that lovely phenomena that occurs when several people in a group disagree with the norm of the group but don't say anything because they think everyone else agrees. Since no one says anything even when they disagree, even if everyonehas second thoughts, the room stays silent and the trips to Abilene get spot numero uno on the priority list.

* * *

Even marketing strategies that could be good can become terrible marketing strategies if you set your mind to it. If you're willing to do what you must to keep innovative ideas off the table, let other companies exploit opportunities in the market faster than you do, and structure your organization to stifle frank discussion, commitment, and execution, you'll be able to come up with the best terrible marketing strategies on the block.

¹ Inspired by The Abilene Paradox and other Meditations on Management, by Jerry Harvey.

About the Author

Mike Schultz is Publisher of RainToday.com, President of Wellesley Hills Group, and author of Professional Services Marketing. You can read more articles on marketing and selling professional services at RainToday.com.

Harness the Power of Referral Marketing: Use Your Existing Network to Build More Business

Ina D — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:05:00 GMT

Jennifer Culbertson | The Partner Channel

Let’s face it, in today’s tough business climate, people are realizing that it’s vital to cultivate new business without spending a lot of money doing it. One of the most effective yet underutilized ways to develop new business is through the power of referrals.

The Importance of Referrals

Let’s first examine the importance of referrals and why they are key to driving business:

• The act of being referred lends instant value and credibility to your organization.
• The potential customer being referred has essentially already been “pre-sold” on your company. For the most part, this means that your referral source has already educated the prospect on your products, services/solutions, and capabilities to do the job.
• Referrals typically have a high return on investment and are very cost effective. You spend much less marketing to referrals than you would typically in your other marketing efforts.
• Referrals are often more credible right from the start, fit your customer profile, and generate strong revenue as well as long-term business.

What Inhibits Us From Getting Referrals?

If it’s so effective and doesn’t cost us much money, why don’t we do more of it or have a system in place to drive more referrals? Let’s take a look at what really inhibits us from getting more business this way:

Referral sources may question your ability to deliver on the project because they are not educated on your products/services and your overall expertise.
Referral sources may think you are too busy to take on any new business. Be careful what you say to potential referral sources and how you position your organization. Giving them the impression that you’re too busy may deter them from sending you a lead because they think you won’t be able to deliver.
Referral sources may be unsure of what he/she will get out of it. Many folks may refer you business without expecting anything in return, and some will want to know what they might get in return such as a referral to their business and even a financial incentive.
The most common reason we don’t get more business from referrals is that we don’t actively seek out and communicate with referral sources on a regular basis.

What Makes Up a Good Referral Source?

In most cases, the best referral sources are businesses like yours that sell products and services to the same markets. Take a moment to think about the referrals you’ve received in the past and how they came to you. For many Partners, typical referral sources could include existing customers and their contacts, vendors that support your business, other Microsoft Partners or ISVs that don’t compete with you, community, business, or industry association contacts, and even those that might influence or recommend technology solutions to their clients such as CPAs and consultants.

Getting Started

Increasing your customer base with referrals is a simple process, yet it is amazing how few companies realize the upside potential and miss out on a significant new source of business and profits. One of the keys to making referrals work for you is to actively work on seeking and communicating with referral sources. The best way to do this is to develop a formalized referral program for your company. I recommend starting small and building the program as you go along.

The easiest way to get started is to think about who your top referral sources are and could be. What type of company, business, or individual would be a good referral source for you? Zero in on the people who are already frequently recommending prospects to you. Almost always, you’ll have better results by developing stronger relationships with a smaller number of good referral sources rather than shallow relationships with lots of sources. Then develop a list of your top 10 contacts you feel would make your best referral sources. You want to pick those folks that could bring the most business potential to your organization.

Once you’ve developed your list, start outlining a plan as to how you want to communicate with them, what type of information they would be interested in receiving, and how often. Your marketing efforts should include ways to attract, educate, and motivate your referral sources … just as you market to the end user of your product or service.

Your plan doesn’t need to elaborate but should be one that you can manage based on your available resources and time. You should consider the following as you develop the plan:

Frequency – How often do you want to formally communicate with referrals? Quarterly? Bi-monthly?
Type of communication – How do you want to communicate with referrals? E-mail, phone, direct mail – all of the above?
Message – What do you want to communicate? What type of information would be beneficial to a referral source? Maybe it’s a one-page sheet describing more about your business and what types of customers you like to work with. It could also be a white paper/report or even an article reprint on a particular topic that can help them in their business.
Offer/Incentive – You may want to offer a small incentive for sending referrals to you and some additional perk if the referral actually turns into business. It could either be a financial incentive such as a gift card or even a gift basket. Be creative!

Track Your Progress

Once your program is in place, you will need to ensure that you track and monitor its progress and effectiveness. For instance, you will want to keep track of the number of referrals received and given by each referral source in addition to the type of referral. Let’s say you received three referrals from a referral source, and you reciprocated back with two referrals. Of the three leads that you received, two of them actually turned into business for your ERP practice, driving $100,000 in additional revenue. That could be $100,000 in additional revenue that you might not have received if you didn’t have the referral program and plan in place!

The key to making this work is to start small, develop a plan for reaching out to your referral sources, and then follow up. It sounds simple enough, right? I think you will see that a little bit of effort can go a long way. Developing a formalized yet manageable process will not only allow you to create and build stronger relationships, but also bring you continuous new business and financial rewards without breaking the bank.

About the author: Jennifer Culbertson is an independent marketing consultant and works with Microsoft Dynamics Partners across North America to help them build and execute marketing strategies that drive results. To learn how to maximize your marketing efforts and take them to the next level, contact Jennifer at Jennifer@lookingglassmarketing.com or call 614-453-5927.

Honesty: What Goes Around Comes Around

Ina D — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:17:00 GMT

Patrick Collins | ThePartnerChannel Magazine

Trust me, I believe in the power of marketing. I have faith in the power of conveying the right message to the right audience at the right time.

I also believe that without a sturdy foundation of trust, even the most brilliant marketing campaigns, backed by the most brilliant of marketing strategies, will shine about as brightly as water-logged plywood. If your customers don’t trust you, I don’t think there’s any amount of social networking technology that’s going to keep the sign in your doorway turned to the “OPEN” position.

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’re in the technology business in one capacity or another. While the story I’m going to share has nothing to do with technology, please, continue reading. The subject of this piece may be cars, but the theme is trust. And trust, I believe, is universal. In fact, I think it’s industry agnostic.

I am not interested in cars. They are vehicles that get me from where I am to where I want to be. My current car is a 1991 model with about 80,000 miles. I bought it from a friend for $1,000 in early 2003 because my office moved to a location that would have taken me nearly two hours to reach on my bike. I know very little about how my car works or how it doesn’t work. At the office one day, a group of us was hanging out in the parking lot, and we decided, for reasons I cannot recall, to check the oil in my car. What a novel idea! A colleague asked me if it was four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive. I had no idea then, and I have, somehow, less of one now. My car is gray, has two doors, five forward gears, and nowhere to store a spare tire, which concerns me.

My car falls into the same category as my toaster: I don’t pay much attention to either of them until they don’t work. Then, and only then, I project every molecule of panic I can muster onto them, and they project right back.

So imagine the dread I experienced when my car kept stalling a block, then two, then three blocks from my house every morning. This is going to cost a fortune, I thought. This is going to involve sales people, and financing people, and warranties, and tricky maintenance agreements. I’ll probably lose my job due to attendance issues because this is going to take lots of time. I’ll probably have to call my parents and beg for money. I’ll probably end up living in someone’s basement. This is going to ruin me, I thought. I’ll bet some of your clients have had similar thoughts when they receive a server error alert. At those moments, fear of the unknown becomes so much more than a cliché.

The waiting room at the car shop was furnished simply: a bright blue couch covered with shiny plastic and a lopsided bookshelf heaped with magazines. I read an article on the particulars of shipping soybeans in large quantities. The raindrops oozed down the tiny square windowpanes as I took cautious sips from a plastic foam cup filled with coffee that tasted like cigar ash. The minutes clicked past slowly on the noisy clock in the corner, interrupted only by the loud bursts of hydraulic power coming from the garage. This was taking longer than I thought it should, which couldn’t be good news in the making.

The owner of the shop came into the waiting room and shut the door behind him slowly. He wore a blue baseball cap that said TIGERS across the front in orange lettering. His face was blank, which scared me. “It’s a warm up problem,” he said, folding his arms gravely across his chest. I’ve seen that move in the doctor’s office before test results are revealed, and I don’t care for it. “The engine isn’t getting warmed up properly.” And what, I asked him, bracing for the worst, would that require? “Three minutes,” he said. “Maybe four.”

And here’s the moral of the story: honesty with your customers goes a long, long way. I am so mechanically ignorant that when I walk into a repair shop, it would be perfectly fair for everyone working there to not see a human being but rather an open checkbook. That mechanic – Tiger is his name, I’ve learned, not his team affiliation – could have told me anything that day many years ago. Instead he told me that I needed to let my car warm up for a few minutes before driving on cold mornings.

That’s not only the most metaphor-rich advice I’ve ever been offered, it’s also a great example of how proving yourself trustworthy by making honesty your best policy can drive business – literally, sometimes – to your front door. Tiger wouldn’t take any money from me that morning, and he still won’t let me pay him, not even for tune ups or oil changes. That’s his way of thanking me for my big mouth, because whenever someone I know is having car problems, guess who I recommend?

Turning Price Negotiations into Trust-creating Service

Ina D — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:40:00 GMT

Charles Green | ThePartnerChannel

When the customer says, “I don’t know, that sounds kind of high to me…” what do you do? How does Trust-based Selling™ handle customers’ concerns regarding price?

First, note the sales jargon for this situation: it gets called “objection handling.” The wording is revealing. It suggests we have a conflict with our customer, an oppositional situation – their side is objecting to our side. And our job is to “handle” it. Kind of like a counter-move in wrestling.

But what if you’re trying to create a trust-based relationship with a customer? In that case, this isn’t about “objections,” much less “handling” them. Instead, it’s about a mutual inquiry as to whether joint value can be created – or not. Price is – at bare minimum – a simple and necessary part of the discussion.

But much more importantly, when we hear price comments as “objections,” we immediately jump to a place of high self-orientation – the trust-destroying denominator in the trust equation. “Omigosh, they’re pushing back against me; I’ve got to counter-attack!”

Thought one in responding from trust: it’s not about you. In fact, it’s never about you. It’s always about the customer. What looks like a threatening price objection is actually a great opportunity to learn something important about a customer and a chance to add value right in the sales process itself. Here’s why.

Most price “objections” are simply expressions of dismay or concern – feelings – on the part of the customer. Most fall into five categories. Helping the customer identify these feelings and these categories is a positive process in and of itself. The actual words spoken can be identical: “…that sounds kind of high to me.” But they mask very different meanings:

The categories are:

1. Naïve. Uh oh, that’s way bigger than I thought. Subtext: “I feel ashamed; I didn’t understand what was involved in buying this product/service before talking to this person.”

2. Out of Date. That’s more than we can afford. Subtext: “I feel embarrassed; I led this person to thinking we could do it in this year’s budget. Now I see that won’t work.”

3. Engineer. Wait a minute, I don’t see why it should be that much. Subtext: “That doesn’t make sense; they must be quoting me the fully-loaded version. Let’s reverse engineer it.”

4. Comparison Shopper. Hey wait—how do I know you’re not screwing me? Subtext: “I want to get a good deal, maybe not the best, but in the top half, so I need to know the real prices.”

5. Bazaar Lover. Aha, the game is on! Subtext: “I don’t care what you quote me, I’m going to get 20% off! I love this part of the buying process!”

Each of these subtexts requires a very different response. The good news is that the responses are obvious. All we have to do as the seller is to ask! Ask the buyers what’s behind their words; what kind of concern are they expressing when they say, “I don’t know, sounds a little high to me.” What are they feeling?

Our job is simply to explain that all reasons are valid, and that we simply need to know which is operative here. Simply by stating them for what they are, buyers one and two feel relieved of their shame and embarrassment. And while this transaction won’t happen, you just vastly increased the odds of them buying from you in the future.

Number three becomes a simple job of itemizing features and costs, as long as you are not attached to the margin on every little feature. An easy sale.

Number four is solved by the willingness to be transparent, within the bounds of what’s legal. Another easy sale, as long as your price is fair.

Number five just wants to have fun. So build in a little upside in the design, quality, or features that the customers can then remove, or otherwise alter, thus allowing some room for the customers to positively affect the product-price package you have presented, since it appears that’s what they really want: to affect the offering. So let them.

This is not about “handling objections.” It is about using curiosity and customer focus to build relationships. The profits follow, as long as we remember we’re supposed to be on the same side of the table as our customer, and in a relationship that is the sum of multiple transactions.

Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates; read more about Charlie at trustedadvisor.com/cgreen or follow him on Twitter @CharlesHGreen.

Cookie-Cutter Marketing Strategies Don't Work: 3 Vital Questions You Need to Craft Your Own

Ina D — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:49:00 GMT

Erica Stritch, General Manager, RainToday.com

A colleague of mine was recently on a sales call with a prospect who wanted a marketing strategy on the fast track. After two conversations, they wanted to know which tactics they should be employing, how they should position their firm to the marketplace, how much they should be spending, areas they should target first, and more.

My colleague explained that this is not exactly how it works. Successful marketing strategies are built based on your growth goals and desires, the market you are going after, the culture of marketing and business development at your firm, what you've done in the past that has worked and hasn't worked, what you are willing to invest in regards to money and time, and the resources you have available.

The prospect's response, "I thought you were supposed to be an expert and that you have experience with firm's like mine. Isn't there some sort of cookie cutter template you use?"

The truth of the matter is no two clients are ever the same. Even if the firm's revenues, services, number of employees, profitability, client base, and other factors are all the same, a firm's culture makes it distinctly unique. What works for one firm will not work for another. There is no cookie cutter marketing strategy that you can hand your marketing coordinator to implement.
How do you come up with a strategy to grow your service business? You must first do some digging and answer these questions:

• Where are we now and how much do we want to grow?

This is the most important question you should ask. Before coming up with any strategy, you need to look at where you are now and where you want to be over a certain period of time. It is not enough simply to say, "We want to double in size." The strategy a $1 million firm uses to grow to $2 million in one year is very different than a firm who wants to grow from $5 million to $10 million–even though they are both "doubling in size."

The answer to this question will drive the rest of your strategy. Without knowing where you are going, how can you develop a path to get you there?

• Are we serious about growing this quickly?

Who wouldn't want to double in revenue next year (assuming you are not running a lifestyle business)? While many firms say they are serious about investing in growth, very few firms put their money where their mouth is. Serious growth requires serious investment in both money and time. And even with this investment, growth does not happen overnight. It requires patience and persistence to see your marketing through.

• Is this realistic?

If historically your firm has allotted only 3% of its budget to marketing and plans on allocating 3% again this year, yet has vastly different expectations for growth, you best squash those expectations right away. When it comes to budgeting and setting expectations, look at your growth goals and build backwards.

Say you want to grow an additional $5 million next year. Ask yourself:

1. How many additional sales do we need?
2. Which services will produce these sales?
3. Given our marketing mix, exactly where will each of these sales come from?

Track each sale back to a specific marketing tactic. For example, if you know you spoke at three conferences last year and got three new clients resulting in $300,000, what would happen if you spoke at six conferences next year? What sort of investment would you need to make for this to happen? Then ask yourself, is this realistic?

Those questions may seem pretty obvious, and they are. Yet I see too many firms approach their marketing strategy without knowing the answers to those questions. They take a top-down approach to allocating 3% to marketing without looking at overall revenue growth goals. They say they want to reach a certain revenue goal, yet they do not invest the necessary resources to get there. They take a copy cat approach and assume that because their closest competitor advertisers in the local business journal that they need to as well (even though historically they haven't gotten a single new client from these ads).

If you really want to double in growth, a cookie cutter strategy will not get you there. Know where you're starting and where you're headed, and develop benchmarks to get you there along the way.

About the Author

6 Keys to a Terrible Professional Services Marketing Strategy (Part I)

Ina D — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:05:00 GMT

Mike Schultz, Publisher, RainToday.com

There must be a secret primer out there on how to build terrible marketing strategies for professional services firms. Over the past two decades I've come across so many marketing strategies that have failed for similar reasons that I figure everyone must be in the know and I have simply been left out of the loop.

After much research to find the source, the secret codex still eludes me. So, I am compelled to seize this moment for posterity and codify the process of building terrible marketing strategies. Here goes:

1. Build the Strategy from the Top Down

Q. In a ham and eggs breakfast, what's the difference between the pig and the chicken?

A. The chicken was compliant, but the pig was committed.

Nothing turns off partners, division leaders, and other leadership types more than being handed a strategy and told to "make it happen." Force feed the strategies from on high and you're likely to get compliance and not commitment. Practice leaders may take the strategy and run with it, perhaps even put a bit of effort and sweat into it, yet they can and frequently do walk away at the first sign of trouble.

Without going through the process of crafting the strategies and tactics–brainstorming possibilities, performing "what if" analyses, researching best practices, and backtracking when suggested actions don't seem like they'll pan out–the team's dedication to implementation will be weak.

Once the tactics feel burdensome to implement, or at the first sign senior management isn't going to hold the team's feet to the fire, implementation grinds to a standstill. Nothing makes a terrible strategy more terrible than one doomed to be ignored or, at best, tolerated by the team members responsible for making it a success.

2. Don't Consult with Expert Tacticians

Equally as devastating as a top-down strategy is a strategy built without input from experts familiar with the underlying marketing and business development tactics. When you identify your specific tactics–even if the tactics are largely decent choices for a successful marketing strategy–without talking with people who have deep, relevant experience, the actual outcome will likely differ from the one you envision.

For example, you might conduct a seminar or webinar and want to fill the room with decision makers, but in reality you generate little or no attendance. Or, you manage to generate some attendance, but then you do a poor job of delivering content that will help you connect with potential clients. (Try a hard-sell approach; most decision makers really despise that.) Then you can ruin your follow-up by not doing it, doing it too late, or doing it poorly.

Maybe you set out to support lead generation and client communication with a website, but end up with a website that no one can find, no one can use, is hard on the eyes, provides no value, is not client focused, and generally reflects poorly on your company. You might then employ direct mail for lead generation and generate no response–with no idea why and no way to find out what didn't work!

Leave out the tactical expertise and the terrible marketing outcomes you can achieve are endless.

3. Look Only at Your Own Industry and Competition

If you want your marketing strategy to never reach beyond average, make sure you look only at your industry and competition.

Let's say your company is an accounting firm. Make sure you look only at what other accounting firms are doing for growth. Ignore law, management consulting, technology, and consumer products companies. This is a great way to miss out on all the newest marketing trends, technologies, and possibilities. Plus, if you look only at your own industry for inspiration, you'll never be a leader. Being late to the game is a great component to a terrible marketing strategy.

Make sure that when you study the competition to see what they're doing, you look only at your direct competitors. Following the accounting example, let's say you're in a 50-person accounting firm outside of New York City. Focus only on other mid-size accounting firms. Don't even think about considering what KPMG or PWC are doing, and don't worry much about what the 200-person firm might be up to. They're too big for you to care about, and you don't want to get too many inspirations from companies that have grown well or are larger than you.

About the Author

Microsoft Goes Social -- ThePartnerChannel Magazine Winter 2009-2010 Issue

Ina D — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:33:00 GMT

The Partner Marketing Group

Coupling social media with traditional marketing is beginning to build new marketing muscle. With social media monster sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Diggit, and Delicious, your business can reap broader exposure than ever, increase traffic to your Web sites, establish new partnerships, improve your search engine rankings, add new sales opportunities, and reduce marketing and sales costs. You have to know there’s a real business opportunity here.

However, for Microsoft® Partners looking for hyper-relevant connections among themselves and with customers and prospects, it would be a digital crime to overlook the veritable explosion of social media opportunities being brought to you by the world leader in software solutions. Don’t get us wrong – any thorough social media strategy should include the leading broad-based players in the field, but take a look at what Microsoft brings to the party just for you, and make sure you take advantage of the best of what they offer. Here are seven premier sites – and a handful of event venues – that you should seriously investigate for your business advantage.

1. Where to Begin? The Microsoft Partner Network: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40073318

Collected here on this Partner-specific site, you’ll find a wealth of guides and playbooks on how to incorporate social media into your Microsoft Dynamics® business. For example, you can enroll in Microsoft’s Social Media Marketing online course, access tutorials on how to effectively use major sites (such as Facebook) as a Partner, link to a great LinkedIn setup tutorial, and much more. If you’re just starting out, make the Microsoft Partner Network your first stop on the road to social media greatness.

2. Partner Solution Profiler – The First Stop to Biz Visibility: https://partner.microsoft.com/40020720

Microsoft Solution Profiler is the first online tool any Partner should visit to profile his/her solutions. Your profile will populate a wide range of relevant Microsoft.com Web sites worldwide, making you available to more than 170,000 customers looking for technology Partners every month. A solution is a unique offering that solves a particular customer need: hardware; hosting; Microsoft volume licensing sales and services; your own specialized services; software, including software delivered as an online service; or training.

When you profile your organization’s solutions and skills, you are placing your offering in front of thousands of customers and Microsoft Partners worldwide through the directories throughout the Microsoft.com site. In addition, Microsoft Partners search for partnering and networking opportunities via the online Partner community, Partner Channel Builder. (More detail on this in #5 below.) Begin generating leads today! Learn more and begin to profile (or check and update) your company’s solutions at https://partner.microsoft.com/40020720. Microsoft has simplified the profile writing process for you with writing templates to fit different organization models, giving you no more excuses to delay – begin driving greater awareness about your company today!

3. Microsoft PinPoint™—Get Discovered, Become a Star: http://pinpoint.microsoft.com

If Microsoft’s Partner Solution Profiler is the hub, Microsoft PinPoint is an important spoke to know about. Among Microsoft’s more than 200 public-facing sites designed to help potential customers connect with qualified Microsoft Partners, PinPoint is one of those networking sites – an online marketplace – with a special feature that can help you shine! Here, you’ll find a comprehensive directory, powerful search features, an easy-to-use interface, and a ratings and review feature. We especially like the Ratings & Reviews feature, where your customers can rate your company up to five stars. (It might be a good idea to entice your best customers with a box of doughnuts to write a nice review about you!)

Go to http://pinpoint.microsoft.com and search for your own company. Your PinPoint profile will combine information from your Solution Profile and your Partner Profile in the Partner Membership Center (PMC). If you like what you find, that’s great! If not, it is important to take the time to update your profile so it is truly relevant to your target customer.

If you can’t find your company, visit Microsoft PinPoint at http://www.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/GetListed to get started. There you can view sample profiles, download the writing guidelines, and download a customer review e-mail template. Microsoft will review your profile before publishing it – a process that normally takes one week.

TIP: We highly recommend the webcast called “Generating Leads in a Tough Economy – Leveraging Microsoft PinPoint.” Go to the Partner Learning Center (https://training.partner.microsoft.com) and search on the word “PinPoint” to find it.

4. Microsoft Dynamics® Community – Rich Content, Plus a Great Showcase Opportunity: http://community.dynamics.com

One of the newer networking resources that some Partners may not know about is the Microsoft Dynamics Community page. You might be asking, “Sure, I’ve been to that site, but why you would call it a networking opportunity?”

In fact, the Microsoft Dynamics Community is a growing educational resource for prospects, customers, and Partners. You can read blogs about sales, marketing, and products. You can visit forums, offer product suggestions, and learn what the Microsoft executive team has to say. This site received 1,017,611 views in FY09, with 119,000 visitors in September 2009 alone (the last full month before we filed this story).

If you have access to PartnerSource, sign into the Community with the same Windows Live ID as you use to log in to PartnerSource. You’ll then be able to click on the “Organization” tab on the horizontal navigation bar. Similar to LinkedIn and other social media sites, you can set up a personal profile and an organizational profile (see sample below), and link them together. (In fact, have everyone on your team set up a profile and link it to your organization.) Not only can you post your personal and company information, but you can also use the “Networking > Capture Leads” tab to create your customized lead capture page! With the easy-to-use wizard, it takes little time at all to customize your lead capture page with your company information, select the fields you want added to your lead form, choose a background color, and even upload a company photo. For detailed instructions on how to set up an organizational profile and lead capture page, visit https://community.dynamics.com/content/organizationhowtodoc.aspx.

By the way, if I were an ISV, I would make it a point to get my organization listed on this site as soon as possible, along with some key product messages. Whether you sell through a channel or not, this is a slick way to generate visibility among customers and prospects, as well as with Partners that may be interested in promoting your product to enhance the solutions they offer.

Sample of the business organization page on the Microsoft Dynamics Community at https://thepartnermarketinggroup.leads.dynamicssite.com/marketingservices.aspx.

5. Partner Channel Builder – Make 1 + 1 = 3: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40015789

The value proposition of the Partner Channel Builder site is powerful. Use this resource to connect and create partnerships with other solution providers that will allow you to offer more complete or compelling solutions to your prospects and customers. Simple as that!
Partner Channel Builder allows you to explore for strategic alliances with other Partners by industry, geography, and competency. For example, you can respond to Partners around the globe that may need the functionality of the ISV solution you offer, or you may be looking for consulting or implementation resources to backfill the big project you just closed. Offering real give and take among the Partner community, it allows for easy searching and straightforward posting for opportunities. Once you’ve taken the first step, you can advance your connections online or face-to-face.

6. Partner Learning Center (PLC) – Microsoft Offers Some Real Social Training: https://partner.microsoft.com/40056112

Social media marketing might not be the first or even the second thing that comes to mind when you think of the Partner Learning Center (PLC). For instance, with 810 class offerings for Microsoft Dynamics products alone, it seems that the PLC has other priorities.

But Microsoft wants you to think differently, because they’re devoting more and more educational resources to this important new marketing dimension. For instance, in August 2009 Microsoft ran a pair of on-demand classes introducing Partners to the opportunities available through social media. Other courses include “What’s the Buzz About Web 2.0?” and “Using Twitter as a Strategic Relationship Tool.” So, if you’re uncertain how all this fits with the serious business of business solutions, you just might have a thing or two to learn.

7. Microsoft Local Engagement Team – Get Personal: http://www.mslocalpartner.com

Did you know that you have an assigned local engagement resource from Microsoft to help you market, sell, and network? No, it’s not your PAM (Partner account manager), or tele-PAM , although they offer key support for your business strategy.

We’re talking about the local engagement team (LET), comprised of 10 locally-based business development managers, whose main goal is to help Partners successfully drive marketing and sales efforts, including Web site content, business expos, seminars, radio programs, social marketing, and more. They are also available to those that are looking to connect with complementary businesses and organizations in their area such as local learning centers, the SBA, and others in the business community. From the LET page, you can pop over to the Small Business Center (http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/local/default.aspx#Welcome) to find local events, get free trial software, and much more.

If you haven’t done so already, make contact. Simply click on the map provided on the site to find your local engagement manager!

8. Join the Microsoft Dynamics Partner Community Conversation

The Microsoft Dynamics Partner Community Team is no slouch when it comes to “getting social” with Partners. Between LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and the Partner Community site, you will find opportunities to learn, contribute, and network with other business professionals. It doesn’t take long to bookmark the following sites and your investment in the online conversation will increase your visibility with other Partners. (ISVs – take note.)

• Watch On YouTube
• Follow On Twitter
• Build Your Network On LinkedIn
• Tap Into Learning

9. Make Face-to-Face Connections with Other Partners

Online may be just fine when it comes to day-to-day social networking, but ultimately there’s no replacement for face time. You may be completely dialed in, or should we say logged-on, to the best online sites. However, real success in building relationships with other Microsoft Partners comes from getting together. For example, conversations held during the networking portion of live events often provides the opportunity to find other Microsoft Partners with complementary solutions that could be offered to customers. Events you should prioritize (in addition to Worldwide Partner Conference and Convergence):

Quarterly Microsoft Partner Connection Briefings: During these sessions, Microsoft will share with you the resources, programs, and investments available to help you capitalize on opportunities and grow your business. The best part of these events is the networking! To learn more about recurring events near you, check out the Community resources (especially for your area and region) at https://partner.microsoft.com/US/communitysection.

International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners (IAMCP): IAMCP represents Microsoft’s “best of breed” Partners from around the globe. The IAMCP organization was formed in 1994 and now has 35 chapters throughout the continental United States. Visit www.iamcp-us.org to find a chapter in your area.

The Partner Event: This event provides Partners with three educational tracks focused on leadership, sales, and marketing. The education is not only contained in the sessions, but you will also have many opportunities to network, learn, and share ideas with your peers throughout the event. For more details on this event, go to http://www.thepartnerevent.com.

Small Business Association (SBA): There are a plethora of resources available at http://www.sba.org to find other businesses that will complement your strengths and extend your portfolio.

We may have only scratched the surface when it comes to Microsoft’s plentiful assets designed to help Partners drive new success in the digital universe. But take full advantage of these sites and resources, and you can propel your business in novel ways, making some surprising new connections.

The Partner Marketing Group is a team of marketing strategists, planners, and program managers that specializes in helping Microsoft Partner organizations and Microsoft Corporation develop and execute fresh, innovative, cost-effective marketing strategies. Learn more at www.thepartnermarketinggroup.com.

6 Quick Tips for Using Social Media to Be Earliest to the Sale

Ina D — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:02:00 GMT

By Joe Mechlinski

It’s a brutal fight. 365 days a year, 7 days a week, and 24 hours a day. Your competition is thinking about how to steal your current clients and, more importantly, your future clients, too. As the economy has slowed down, the logic is simple. People are still spending money – just not at the rate they used to. In the highly competitive world of solution selling for Microsoft ® Partners, if you show up when the customer is finally ready to buy, you will already be too late.

However, when you initiate the sales cycle far ahead of time, long before the customer is even thinking of making a purchase, you have a much better chance to ultimately win the business. You can beat the early bird to the worm. Or, to use the phrase of Chris Brogan, a 10-year veteran of using social media and technology to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals, you can “Be there before the sale.”

In his book “Trust Agents”, Brogan advises, “Be human. Be helpful. Talk about things other than your clients and their products. Don’t just talk to people when you need something from them.” In other words, the key to successfully using social media is to treat your online relationships as you would any other relationships.

Relationships Still Matter

As recently as 10 years ago, the old rules of “being there” still applied. Unless you had a local presence, it was very difficult to be Joe Mechlinski there and stay connected to your prospects and customers. Being there physically allowed you to place extra emphasis on building the relationship.

Now, thanks to social media and the Internet, you can be there without being there. You can stay connected authentically – and profitably, as most businesses have discovered – by using the social web and the tools of Web 2.0 such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The adoption of social media has been pretty amazing. Here are some statements that should grab the attention of any Microsoft Partner considering whether to invest in social media strategies:

“Your competitors are already there (on social media). Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.” — BusinessWeek¹

Tech decision makers give user-generated sites equal importance to traditional media sources when considering tech purchases.
Decision makers consider their personal experiences first (58%) when shortlisting tech vendors, followed by word-of-mouth and industry analyst reports, tied at 51%.
Advertising (17%) and direct marketing (21%) were listed as the least important information sources when short-listing possible vendors. (Study: “Tech Decision Maker,” Hill & Knowlton, January 2009)

But it’s not anonymous “decision makers” who rely on social media. It’s real people.
Consider:

Friends still play an important role in influencing buyers. 83% of online buyers said they are interested in sharing information about their decisions with people they know, while 74% are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product/service in the first place. (“Manage Smarter”, September 2009)

People are not likely to go back to their previous buying habits. In fact:

85% of social media users believe that a company should go further than just having a presence on social sites and should also interact with its customers. (Cone Business in Social Media Study²)
81% of marketers surveyed say that their social media spending will meet or exceed their traditional advertising spending within the next five years. (TWI Surveys/Society for New Communications Research, November 2007)
By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing’s primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing. (1to1 Media survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel, April 2008)

Despite all this change, it is important to keep this in mind: the only thing that has really changed is proximity. Proximity has expanded exponentially. You no longer need to live in the same zip code as your prospects, Partners, and clients in order to operate in the same community.

This article shows you how to take advantage of the opportunity with six quick tips for using social media to “be there” most effectively.

Quick Tip #1: Say It, Don't Spray It

A good friend and master social networker, Greg Cangiolsi, founder and CEO of Baltimore-based Blue Sky Factory, recently shared some interesting information. In his effort to deliver a better customer experience via social media, Greg recently spoke to and heard from leaders of several brands including Ford, Dunkin’ Donuts, Southwest Air, Comcast, and others about the greatest challenges they were having with building their presence online.

What Greg learned from the community managers of these Fortune 500 companies was that the biggest mistake companies make is lacking authenticity, or using these tools solely for a marketing/distribution platform and not an engagement platform.

What does this say to Microsoft Partners? Same goes for you. If you just flood the social web with information about your company, without bothering to engage your customer, you will turn people off.

Quick Tip #2: Think Before You Speak

Second, Greg found that there was an enormous challenge in not being consistent while building and nurturing a community. For example, there have come stories of individual employees sending inappropriate and untimely tweets. Last summer, a Ketchum staffer that was visiting agency client FedEx in its hometown of Memphis, Tennessee tweeted an unfavorable comment about the city. (Ketchum is a public relations and marketing agency). This prompted an angry memo from FedEx that reached the executives of both companies and beyond. Though the employee was not fired, Ketchum had to do a lot of damage control.

The lesson here for Microsoft Partners is simply to think before you speak. Most companies are promoting someone within the organization to spearhead these efforts and to act as the one steady voice for all things social. This brings up the challenge of scale in larger organizations, and there we see teams being built to handle the organization’s participation within the social web. But smaller companies can participate as well by designating a community manager to maintain the company’s clear, consistent message while staying on-point. This will help avoid big, embarrassing blunders.

Conversely, Greg told us what large companies were doing right.

Quick Tip #3: Go Where Your Audience Goes

Each of the industry giants stated that they were committing to the new channels, dedicating resources, changing the face of their customer service, being transparent, and building trust to a larger community. Probably the biggest motivator for all companies, large and small, is the realization that the customer is already engaged in social media. As such, the customer is in a position to voice opinions that impact the brand. They can say what they like and what they don’t like – and because they are speaking to their communities of trusted friends, their message carries far greater weight than any impersonal ad campaign can muster.

Quick Tip #4: Be Real

Whether your company is large or small, whether your audiences are far-flung or local, being earliest to the sale depends upon your investment in your communities.

Social media can aptly be described as many communities of many humans. And like any group of humans, certain attitudes and behaviors will gain you acceptance, and some will get you ostracized. Being smart, socially, will differentiate the effective communicators from the rest on social media.

Studies suggest there are three basic requirements when communicating online or otherwise:

1. Authenticity
2. Transparency
3. Emotional Intelligence

Authenticity is just being who you say you are and staying consistent. It’s all about strengthening your brand by the lasting memory you create and the promise you deliver.

Transparency is full disclosure. There is no reason to fool your audiences online. It won’t work; they’ll smell trickery a mile away.

Emotional Intelligence (or EQ) has always been the secret ingredient in “how to win friends and influence people.” It’s just as important in social media, where your brand personality is open to the scrutiny of hundreds or thousands or millions of viewers. EQ is your self-awareness plus social awareness.

In his book, “A Whole New Mind”, Daniel H. Pink discusses the correlation between “right-brained thinking” and EQ and postulates that having a high EQ is the primary differentiator for companies facing off-shore competition. “We must think and master aptitudes that are high concept and high touch,” he writes, “that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper …” Not only does our emotional intelligence determine our acceptance into communities, but it may be the difference between survival and extinction of our companies.

To understand the concept of self-aware versus socially aware, imagine your company as one of the characters from “The Wizard of Oz”. Which one should it be?

Scarecrow – is socially aware but not self-aware. He’s a strawman, a fringe character. He’s close to the action but not paying much attention to what his use of social media might reveal about him. As a result, he is an extreme “life streamer” – posting too often about too little. “Crows are evil!” for example, or “Bored with my field.” If he only had a brain!
Cowardly Lion – he’s very self-aware and very much interested in his own self-interest but is not socially aware. He doesn’t understand the value of the “social” in social media. Afraid of his own shadow, he stays away.
Tinman – let’s say the Tinman is not self-aware or socially aware. (Sorry, Tinman, you’re the bad guy in this analogy.) He just doesn’t get what makes himself, or other people, tick. So he gets a little oiled up and starts chopping randomly in social settings – potentially inflicting great harm to the company’s image.
Wizard of Oz – the great and powerful Oz gets it! He knows you can’t get on social
media without a strategy. He knows how to listen, participate, and engage in a way that fully respects the laws of human behavior. The Wizard, front and center of all the action, makes an excellent community manager - and proves that the company is transparent by coming out from behind the curtain in the end.

Quick Tip #5: It's Never Too Early to Build Trust

People do business with people they trust. This time-honored adage applies to the Web as well. After all, we are all human. We love to be in groups, cliques, tribes. Social media is our way of staying connected. And when it comes to making purchasing decisions, social media is one way to gather information. Who do our friends recommend? I see it on Facebook almost every day: “Does someone have a roofer they can recommend?” “I need a plumber – willing to pay for quality.” “I need a CRM Partner that actually cares! Please ReTweet!”

In the current economy – and especially these days – what is more important than trust? In the last two years, people have seen their home values and 401(k)s cut drastically. While financial portfolios are starting to improve again, there is not one person working today who has not been affected by greed and mistrust. Trust is any company’s most valuable asset. Social media provides an excellent platform for companies to establish themselves as trustworthy.

Quick Tip #6: Let Social Media Lead You to Leads

What everyone ultimately wants to know is, will social media add to my bottom line? can tell you from experience: absolutely. Lead generation and new business are byproducts
of participation in social media. You can’t forecast it. It’s an organic outcome; it “just happens.”

This doesn’t mean you have to sit idly by and wait. Microsoft Partners can – and should – put their companies in position for it to happen. Once you’ve established trust, utilize social media to be there before the sale, as we’ve discussed. As you build your community, develop genuine relationships, and engage people, good things start to happen. Trust develops. As a result, when they or someone they know need your services, you’re already there.

Ultimately, though, smart Partner companies use social media tools not to sell or obtain the lead, but to participate in various communities, to add value to those communities, to be active, to make connections, and to stay in that constant feedback loop.

The Value of Being Early

Where your business goes as a result of its investment in social media is really up to you, the leader. I recently had an opportunity to hear Gary Vaynerchuk, the author of “Crush It!” speak. He said, “Saying you don’t have time for social media is like saying you don’t have time to listen to what your prospective customers are thinking, saying, and hearing.”

The biggest challenge for Microsoft Partners and other business people is to understand that, despite the technology and the feeling of being removed from human contact, social media is a conversation. It’s intimate and immediate, and there is a wealth of opportunities to give as well as to get value. But you have to be there. And you’d better be early.

Joe and his team at EntreQuest help Partners define and reach sales goals. For more information, contact Joe Mechlinski at jmechlinski@entrequest.com or visit the team online at www.entrequest.com.

1 “Debunking Six Social Media Myths,” B.L. Ochman, BusinessWeek, February 19, 2009 — www.businessweek.com/technology/content /feb2009/tc20090218_335887.htm

2 The 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study presented the findings of an online survey conducted September 11-12, 2008 by Opinion Research Corporation among 1,092 adults comprising 525 men and 567 women 18 years of age and older. The margin of error associated with a sample of this size is ± 3%. http://tinyurl.com/ydnbbls

23 Questions You Should Ask When Building Your Marketing Strategy

Ina D — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:32:00 GMT

Mike Schultz, Publisher, RainToday.com

Ask 10 professional service firms to see their marketing strategies and you will get an interesting mix of answers. You might get a 50-page document that would get an "A" in any business school class. Some firms might give you a few pages on the tactics they plan to implement by month or quarter. Many firms would say, "Marketing strategy? We're working on getting it down on paper this year."

Regardless of the length, when I look at a marketing strategy for a service firm, I always ask myself five questions:

• Does this plan make good business sense?
• Do I know where you are spending time and money, and why you have chosen various components?
• Is there enough information to guide actions and implementation?
• Are all of the contents useful or are the pages just filled with off-target and misleading information?
• What's missing?

Unfortunately, I am not always happy with what I see. Most of all, I'm disappointed that these service firms have spent valuable time, whether it's a day or a year, on a marketing strategy that is not yielding them all it can and should be.
If you, as a service firm leader or marketer, are about to build your marketing plan (or if you've just built it), ask yourself the following high-level questions to help craft the best plan for your business.

1. What are our revenue goals?
2. How and when do we plan to achieve them?
3. What is our realistic potential for improvement in our current marketing and sales process?
4. Where does all of our current business come from? Where did it originally come from?
5. How should we go about improving our marketing and sales results?
6. How much should (or must) we invest to reach or exceed our expected results?
7. Which tactical activities are likely to provide the best results?
8. What has and has not worked for us in the past?
9. What are our competitors doing? What has and has not worked for them in the past?
10. What are companies outside of our specific service industry doing for marketing and sales, and what has and has not worked for them?
11. What is the best mix of tactics for our firm to use specifically for lead generation? For lead nurturing? For branding? For client retention?
12. How do the tactics in our marketing mix each contribute to us reaching our revenue goals?
13. What kind of tactics and campaigns should we engage first, and what tactics should we test over a period of time?
14. With the tactics we choose, how do we make sure we implement them as well as we can? What implementation pitfalls must we avoid?
15. How do we set up a process to make sure we nurture demand within our target markets so we gain the most effectiveness over the long term for our investments in marketing and sales?
16. Which marketing and sales tactics should we avoid altogether because they are unlikely to produce results?
17. How long might it take for results to materialize based on what assumptions?
18. How will we measure and improve results continually over time?
19. Are our marketing and sales (or business development…or rainmaking) processes working together to produce the best results?
20. How do we get the most out of our internal staff regarding sales – tapping their energy and potential and helping them to be successful for themselves and for the firm?
21. Is there any low-hanging fruit that we should immediately address to either fix glaring problems or get fast results?
22. If we achieve our revenue goals, how will it affect our business operations and ability to deliver at or above our current quality levels?
23. Finally, and possibly most important, "Does everyone agree that we are headed to our revenue goal, and do we have commitment (vs. either compliance or lip-service agreement) from the team to do whatever they can to help us get there?"

These are not the only questions you should ask when building a marketing strategy. Indeed, by asking each question, you and your colleagues will come up with more. If you first ask the questions, and then do the research you need to get the answers, you'll have a compelling, implementable, and well-researched marketing strategy.

About the Author

Should the Print Newsletter Die – And Let Ezines Takeover?

Ina D — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:09:00 GMT

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Mark Twain said that back in 1897.

Print newsletters have been saying it for the past ten years.

Why? Because many business owners feel…

1. With the internet, all they have to do is post content online; everyone will flock to their site to read it. Plus it’s FREE!

2. Email is king! Just send an ezine. It’s FREE!

3. Postage keeps going up along with printing costs… but email is FREE!

There’s no question about it. Print newsletters should have died a long time ago.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. The print newsletter suddenly became Lazarus and a resurrection took place.

5 Reasons Why Print Newsletters Are Still Around

1. Printed mail gets delivered – It’s never blocked or caught in spam filters.

2. It is proven that the majority of people prefer to hold, touch and feel what they are reading.

3. Studies show online readers retain much less of what they read compared to those reading printed material. So, if you have an offer with a call to action, wouldn’t it be nice if it was remembered for more than 30 seconds?

4. Print newsletters have more perceived value. Think about it. How many companies are willing to do this? Your customers realize you’re spending money to do it.

5. Print newsletters are sticky. They have great ‘hang-time’. People keep print newsletters for further or future reading. Not only are they likely to be read from start to finish, they usually get passed around.

Email Newsletter Marketing Has Major Downsides

(By the way – for the record – I love the internet and I love my email. I can’t imagine life without it or remember life before it)

With that being said, email is NOT the ‘be all and end all’ of modern marketing.
Yes…email is fast, easy and cheap. But who cares about that if it’s not effective?

Here’s the ugly truth: The vast majority of email lies unopened and untouched in the dark nothingness of cyberspace. Emails are routinely wiped out by the dozen in one fell swoop with the simple push of the delete key.

Even if your name is recognized, you still risk being deleted. Maybe your email got caught in a large chunk of junk mail. Or… maybe they’re just having a bad day.

See, today everyone is bombarded by email overload. Spam accounts for about 90% of it. That means 9 out of every 10 emails in your in box is junk. Do you REALLY think your ezine is being read?

And, if your newsletter gets read, how much attention do you think it gets? A Nielsen Norman Group Report revealed the typical email newsletter gets 51 seconds of your reader’s time. That was four years ago. Today, many say its less than 30 seconds.

So, Which One Should You Do: A Print Newsletter or an Ezine?

Now, I’m not suggesting that you stop your email marketing and newsletters.

You may want to do both. Send an email newsletter on a weekly basis. But, send a monthly print newsletter, too.

There is a gold standard to determine which one is best for you.

Simply ask your clients. Survey them to see which one THEY prefer. After all… isn’t it all about what our customer wants?

About the Author

When Print Newsletter Expert David Gruttadaurio discovered the power of consistently writing and distributing print newsletters to attract and retain clients, he instantly tripled the sales of his business. Now he reveals his bullet-proof plan to thrive in the new, emerging economy at his Profit Exploding Newsletter Secrets Website: http://www.NewslettersMadeForYou.com. Go there to claim your 3 FREE Real Gifts NOW!

Managing the Transition - Why Most Businesses Fail in Today’s Economy & How to Avoid Business Doom

Ina D — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:02:00 GMT

The number one reason why most businesses (small and large) are failing today is:

They did not recognize the need for a transition nor did they manage the transition effectively.

See, business leaders are told all the time that they need to change but it goes in one ear and out the other. And, if by some chance the advice soaks in, most business leaders do not know where to get started and how to make the changes that will ultimately impact their bottom line revenue growth.

Why You as a Business Leader Must Embrace & Manage Transitions

If only the business environment were stable. It’s not and that is the reality of being in business today. The reasons change with every downturn in the business cycle, but the consequences stay the same. A business must adjust and adapt to survive – no matter the economy. This means, you must know how to manage the transition effectively.

They need to understand and be responsive to changes in the marketplace. This requires strong leadership, a strategic plan and good information about the marketplace.

While leadership, strategic planning and good market based information are important, they are only a component of business success. We have known companies with charismatic leaders who had a detailed strategic plan supported by very good market information – yet they failed. And, they failed because they thought…

• Change is about having a plan
• Change is about saying you are going to change
• Change is about collecting information.
• Change is about one leader looking to make a difference.

Well, we have news for you. That’s not what change is about!

What Change Should Mean to Your Organization

Real change is about doing something about it. It’s not the failure to identify change that hurts organizations. It’s the failure to implement change that hurts organizations. And implementing change is a transition.

The difference between change and transition is like the difference between reducing inventory and having a well-managed supply chain process. Reducing inventory will free cash and improve the balance sheet (inventory reduction represents a change). Keeping the inventory low through an effective supply chain process (the transition) will result in sustained benefits to the organization. It is much more difficult to transition than it is to change.

An Example of a Poorly Managed Transition – And What You Should Do Instead

A hospital executive team in the southeast was struggling with implementing its strategic vision. They did an excellent job in identifying the vision, communicating it to the hospital staff and getting Board support. The executive team was committed to the vision. A year after the vision was rolled-out, little progress had been made and the Board expressed serious concern.

Why?

Because, making pronouncements about the need to change and how changes will create results did nothing for this health care organization. There was no follow-through! The hospital in the southeast’s executive team went back to their daily activities shortly after the plan was announced.

There is a saying that goes like this: “When you get tired of talking to your staff about what needs to be done in the organization, saying the same thing over and over again until you can’t stand saying it anymore, that’s when the staff begins to hear you and take you seriously.”

This is a classic example of a transition. We had one client who said to us that he did not do what his boss asked him to do until he was asked at least three times. Then he knew the boss was probably serious.

Silly?

Not really.

An isolated example?

Hardly.

We don’t resist change as much as we are uncertain about what’s going to happen during the transition. Every employee, and we truly mean every employee, wants to know “what’s in it for me” if we change. Plans don’t answer that question. Most employees don’t care about shareholder value. Most don’t even understand it. They care about themselves and what’s going to happen to them.

More Proof Demonstrating the Need for Business Leaders to Go Beyond Business Strategy

A midsize publicly traded information technology consulting company was adversely affected by the downturn in the technology market. The new President assembled the senior management team and after a three day planning session, he rolled out a new strategic direction for the company. The plan was to migrate away from a reliance on information technology consulting and move to re-engineering, supply chain process improvement and financial services such as accounts receivable reduction. Everyone left the room agreeing with the new direction for the company. Yet, nothing and we mean nothing happened after the meeting. The senior managers went back to their offices and continued to manage the technology business. There was no transition plan.

Remember: Strategy Points Your Organization in a Direction -- Managing the Transition Gets You and Your Organization There

It’s important to look beyond strategy when you are dealing with a business downturn or a new opportunity. Strategy will help you identify the direction you should move in. But, if you want to move your organization in that direction then you must deal with employee concerns and uncertainties. You must adjust as you move along the process. This all involves managing the transition.

About the Authors:

Management Consultants and Business Performance Improvement Specialists Tony Kubica and Sara Laforest have 50+ years of combined experience in helping small and large businesses and nonprofit organizations accelerate their business growth in record times. Now, they unveil the common, subtle and self-destructive actions that will hurt your business performance. Get their free special report: “Self-Sabotage in Business” now at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php.

Cold Calling Scripts that Work: 3 Proven Introductions that Break Into and Close New Clients

NickHoban — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:44:00 GMT

By Erica Stritch, General Manager, RainToday.com

Recently Colleen Francis shared three stories of unsavory business development tactics in her article, Lying to Get Past the Gatekeeper: 3 True Tales of Deception Your Firm should Learn From. She did a great job presenting the wrong way to do things.

I spoke with a few teammates here at Wellesley Hills Group who work on telephone business development for our clients to get their thoughts on the article...and the right way to make cold calls.

The deceptive tactics used in Francis's article are, indeed, employed by less-reputable companies and lead generation firms and give the rest of the industry a bad name. As Francis points out, outright lying in your cold calling script does not provide the foundation to build a strong a relationship; it destroys it.

Does that mean that it is impossible to build a trusting relationship with prospects through a cold call? Absolutely not. In my experience, and that of the business developers I've worked with, cold calling (when used correctly) is a key way to break into corporate accounts and begin a relationship.

What, then, can you do and say for cold calling success? Here are three proven cold calling scripts that have helped service businesses break into new clients.

(Please note: While the actual names of the companies and short descriptions of the businesses have been removed, and some details have been changed, these are introductions actually used by business developers to engage new corporate relationships.)

Script #1
My name is John Smith, and I am with Smith, Smith & Smith. We're a <insert type of firm>.

We've been scheduling brief phone calls to introduce ourselves and share best practice information. We'd like to tell you how other <industry> companies are...

• Protecting their global shipping operations and ensuring continuous cash flow
• Achieving the best possible efficiencies by connecting all <blank> disciplines
• Using <our client's special expertise> to create competitive differentiation and capture market share

The information will give you a framework for assessing your situation at <company name>. I'm wondering if you'd like to talk with me and one of the partners here at Smith, Smith, & Smith on March 23.

Script #2
My name is Jane Smith, and I am with Smith, Smith, & Smith. We're a <insert type of firm>. As a part of that work, we have just completed a benchmark study where <industry> firms rate over 350 major suppliers in those areas critical in deciding who they will do business with.

What we've been doing as a way of introducing ourselves is to share with some select suppliers survey details specific to you:

• How (company name) rates on six critical success factors
• Where your competition stands in relation to you
• What areas you can focus on that will have the greatest impact on increasing your share of wallet

That's it. Even if you decide not to pursue this any further than this first meeting, at least you'll have valuable intelligence as a result.

What does your calendar look like next Wednesday or Thursday?

Script #3
My name is Jane Smith, and I'm calling from Smith, Smith & Smith. We are a <insert type of firm>.

The reason I am calling is to schedule a brief telephone meeting to review the findings of the work we have been doing on what makes the biggest difference in <topic area> for leaders who are looking to <do something specific that benefits the company>. It is fascinating stuff, especially since in the next 10 years there will be <an important industry dynamic that you need to attend to>.

If you're interested, we'll even make some recommendations as to what areas to focus on that will make the biggest difference in your particular situation.

It's fascinating intelligence, and I was hoping you might have some time on the morning of Thursday, June 6 or anytime in the afternoon during the week of June 22. What would work for you?

The Essentials of Effective Scripts and Cold Calls

What's similar in these three examples?

1. The business developer introduces himself and provides a brief overview of his firm (one sentence, not a 20-second elevator pitch).

2. They immediately move to the WIIFM ("What’s in it for me?") and pitch a value-based offer. This is not "an introductory meeting" where you go in and pitch a sales presentation on your clients, services, and successes. It is presentation where you are sharing your expertise and insights and applying it to the prospect's situation.

3. There is a simple, non-threatening call to action. You are not going to sell your services on the first call, but you might schedule a 10-, 20-, or 30-minute teleconference in which you share your valuable insights. This will also help position you as an expert and thought leader in your field.

4. The business developer closes with asking the prospect to look at a specific time on his calendar. This turns the question from being one of yes/no to being one of when.

5. In the introductory meeting, the service company actually delivers the best practices, the benchmark research, and the findings that they promise in the cold call. The pitch is not a sales presentation in disguise, but a conversation where actual challenges and advice is shared.

It is important to note that these scripts are never read word-for-word—prospects can smell this kind of rookie mistake from a mile away. The script is a starting point, and the best business developers internalize these scripts and make them their own.

Before making the call, you must be ready to have a peer-to-peer conversation around business issues facing your prospect. These conversations appear as though they'll end in two minutes with a yes or a no, but often times they can go for 30 minutes or more. If you can't be conversational without a script in front of you, you shouldn't be making the calls.

An extraordinary script and value proposition with a mediocre business developer will get you nowhere. An extraordinary business developer, adjusting their value-based pitch along the way from direct prospect feedback, will get you introductions with top prospects—without having to resort to deceptive tactics.

About the Author

Erica Stritch is Manager of RainToday.com and a much-sought-after expert in online marketing for professional service.You can read more articles on marketing and selling professional services at RainToday.com.

Why I Won't Follow You

Tracey Cummings — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:00:00 GMT

By Adrianne Machina

Having been around the Microsoft Dynamics® channel for nearly 10 years now, I count many among you as friends, colleagues, and confidants. I feel privileged to join your circles on Facebook and LinkedIn. I enjoy reading your blogs and following your online updates. Many of you are my online “friends” even though I don’t know you at all in person.

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There are lots of reasons I won’t follow someone on Twitter (my teeth are white enough, thank you very much), or accept a friend request on LinkedIn or Facebook (stalkers and spammers, please go bother someone else), but there are a few specific social media mistakes I see being made repeatedly in the Microsoft Dynamics Community.

While I’m encouraged to see so many Microsoft Dynamics Partners embarking on their social media journey, I see a few people shooting themselves in the foot. For people who are just getting started, remember that “social” comes before “marketing” in “social media marketing” for a reason. You won’t win friends or influence people if you are using old-school push-marketing techniques in this new marketing media age. There are seven social media sins that might prevent me from following you.

Are you making any of these mistakes?

»» You haven’t filled out your profile. It’s hard to get to know you when you are using the default avatar and have nothing in your profile. Create a keyword-rich, intriguing bio for your company and each of your company’s social media participants.

»» Your people don’t have a face. Remember people do business with people. Whether your employees are online as company representatives or as individuals, I encourage you to clearly communicate your expectations about acceptable work-related posts. Set some standards on what types of posts and updates are acceptable, and then let your people do their part in evangelizing your company’s message. Companies who want to get multiple team members involved in spreading the brand message may want to follow the model of the SEO software company HubSpot. HubSpot employees seem to maintain the delicate balance of personal and professional particularly well on Twitter. They even have a page on their Web site dedicated to telling you who’s who.

»» Your updates are consistently too sales-oriented. Pitching product and services is where many people start out when they first dip their toes into the social media waters. I myself am guilty as charged. When I first got into social media, I felt that I was way too busy to find people and engage with them – perhaps it would be better to just tell people what I did. After all, everyone needs marketing, right? The problem is that this approach just doesn’t work. When you use social media like traditional media – broadcasting your message again and again without really engaging anyone – you’ll face the exact same challenge that you have in traditional media. People will change the channel, tune you out, and you’ll be left alone, talking to yourself, wasting a monumental amount of time on a strategy that just won’t work.

»» Your updates are boring. You don’t have to be pithy and enlightening 24/7, but rather than answering the question, “What are you doing right now?” I encourage you to answer the question, “What do you find interesting right now?” Tell us why you find this subject fascinating. Create a little curiosity, and it’ll go a long way to getting people visiting your Web site or blog for the rest of the story.

»» Your updates aren’t adding value. A new product release can be great news, but remind me, “What’s in it for me? Why do I care?” Remember to keep your writing focused on the needs of your readers. Keep your blog posts and status updates problem- and benefit-oriented.

»» Your status updates go “out of bounds.” Remember that politics and religion are touchy subjects. And yes, Packers fever might count as a religion. You may feel passionate about your beliefs, but unless you are willing to exclude people from your customer base who disagree with you, you are better off keeping some of your thoughts to yourself.

»» You’re talking at me, not to me. Engage your followers. Ask questions. Be interested in their lives, careers, family, friends, and needs. Take a moment to wish someone a happy birthday. Offer to help with a problem. Comment on their comments. Find things you have in common. Look for opportunities to create genuine connections so that people can come to know, like, and trust you. It’ll speed up the sales process.

If you want people to follow you online or off, you have to lead them. Give people a reason to follow you. Seek to be funny, engaging, educational, or inspiring – but more than anything else, be yourself. Social media can provide tremendous return on your investment – when you follow the rules.

To learn more about Tweets, status updates, and profiles that get results, contact Adrianne Machina at Amachina@tornadomktg.com

About the Author

Adrianne Machina is the chief velocity officer of Tornado Marketing Inc. (http://tornadomktg.com) and an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach. A huge Web 2.0 advocate, Adrianne's marketing strategies and copywriting service help clients leverage the Web to bring in more leads and most importantly--more sales! Having worked in the Microsoft Dynamics channel since 2000, Adrianne provides valuable insight into how to market complex solutions. Her clients appreciate her practical advice and business value-driven approach to marketing.

Working Backwards from the Client Experience

Tracey Cummings — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:29:00 GMT

by Joe Mechlinski

Whether facing an environment of economic decline or recovery, Partner companies must constantly reinvent. As the leader of your organization, you must continually find new ways to differentiate your company from the competition.

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After all, when you get right down to it, what separates you from the next Microsoft Partner? You all sell services. You all sell software. You all have a “customer-centric” approach to growing your business. What’s the difference?

According to the most successful sales organizations, it all comes down to your approach to the client. Having a customercentric approach is one thing. Having a “client-experience” approach is quite another. Know the difference, and you will be in a position to lead your team to greater levels of sales achievement.

Client-Experience Versus Customer-Centric

The difference between client-experience and customer-centric is simple. The client-experience approach requires that you design the engagement with the ultimate outcome in mind, and then work backward to achieve it.

By contrast, the customer-centric approach is about working forward toward a goal of surrounding your customer with attention. Ironically, the customer-centric approach is not actually about the customer. It’s about the salesperson and what the salesperson needs to do to surround the customer.

To reach growth goals, Partners must adopt the client-experience approach.

A New Way of Thinking

To understand this key point, let me tell you a story of a mountain climb.

A few years back, I had the opportunity to join an expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Now, Kilimanjaro is not the tallest peak in the world. It’s the seventh tallest. Nor is it what is termed a “technical” climb. However, it is an extremely challenging climb for a city kid who had never even camped before. For me, the expedition pushed my physical, mental, and emotional limits like nothing I’d ever known before.

Working Backward

To keep me and the other climbers mentally focused, our guide encouraged us to use our imagination to picture the ultimate experience as though we’d already accomplished it. With that picture in our mind, we were encouraged to “work backward” from the goal.

“Imagine you’ve climbed and reached the summit,” he told us during the climb. “Imagine what that experience will look like and feel like. Can you picture the view, the exhilaration you will feel? Can you feel the wind in your face and the sun in your eyes? Can you taste the sweetness of the thin mountain air?”

I was there, in my mind. I could picture it. I could feel it. I could taste it.

The instructor went on, “You’re feeling the experience of success. Now work back from it. What do you need to do at this moment that will lead you to the experience you are imagining?”

Peak Sales Performance

Delivering a remarkable experience for your clients can be a lot like climbing a mountain.

As with sales, climbing a mountain requires a plan. It takes hard work. It takes strength of personality and courage and teamwork. But it also takes something unusual, even extraordinary. It takes a special kind of mental attitude about the experience.

We call this the experience mindset. Rather than allowing us to focus on our exhaustion, fear, and doubt, our guide put us in the state of having already reached the summit mentally, well before we ever got there physically. He had us looking back, so to speak, on our current actions from the perspective of already having achieved our goals – before we ever actually did.

It worked. During the climb, I kept thinking, “Since I can imagine that I’ve already made it to the top, I can imagine what it looks like, feels like, smells like, and sounds like. Everything I am doing now will help me enjoy the experience that I know is waiting for me.” And I did it. I reached the top. I achieved my goal.

Be Different: Be a Peak Performer

The same holds true when taking your company’s sales performance to the peak. Effective selling can be thought of as an activity – or series of activities – that leads to the best possible experience for your client, one that is exhilarating for both of you.

This means thinking from the client’s point of view, not the seller’s. It means envisioning the successful outcome – the peak – and working backward from there.

Creating a Client-Experience Sales Organization

To develop a client-experience approach, start by asking yourself:

»» How do we design a sales process that centers upon the client’s buying experience?

»» How can we move our prospects and clients through the sales process without making them feel like they are being “sold”?

»» How can we stay connected to our prospects and clients in a meaningful way?

As with any new adventure, the answers bring up more questions. Many Partners, for example, are very comfortable with the traditional “solution selling” method of sales. How does the client- experience approach mesh with the solution selling method?

The Problem with Solution Selling

Solution selling is a highly effective methodology, in most cases, because it focuses on the buyer’s pain. The problem is that it is centered on the seller who tries to move the buyer through a series of steps that are seller-centric.

What about a client’s experience? How do you want the client to feel about the experience? What view do you want him/her to have? How will the air taste to him/her?

For some Partners, this point of view requires a radical shift. If we stop thinking about the surrounding the client, they ask, how do we sell to him/her?

Working Backward From the Sale

There are specific steps to creating the client experience during the sales process. As with the mountain climb, envision the end game, the experience you want the client to have, and work backward to understand what you need to do to reach that outcome, based on where the client is on the mountain.

We have reduced the solution selling process to its core components and converted it into a client-experience process. These steps will help your sales team to maintain a client-experience perspective to the point where, ideally, the client has no awareness of the process.

The simplified client-experience sales process looks like this:

Stages of the Client-Experience Sales Process

Suspect

• Targeted lead generation / marketing campaigns

• Reach out to companies we suspect could become clients

Raw Prospect

• Start of the sales pipeline

• Prospect has expressed interest in exploring your offering

Smart Prospect

• Prospect is SMART about your offering, scope, value and pricing

• Prospect also feels you are SMART on them, too

Proposal Prospect

• Prospect has everything they need to say “yes”

Client

• Prospect has accepted the proposal, signed the contract, and made the first payment

Repeat Client

• Client has a REMARKABLE experience and wants MORE

Stages of the Client-Experience

SUSPECT. Every Partner suspects there is more business out there that we are not capturing. Start with the end in mind and work backward. There are companies with pain that you can solve. Looking at it from the client experience, envision what it will look like and how they will feel when their pain is resolved. Holding this image, conduct an analysis of your current accounts to determine who your ideal SUSPECT audience is. Then design a thoughtful lead generation program to attract the clients to the experience you are picturing.

RAW PROSPECT. The experience begins when we have a RAW prospect. A RAW prospect is defined as a decision-maker who is interested and has a timeframe. Define them as “RAW” prospects because – from their perspective – they are new to the experience and are highly sensitive. They don’t know where they are in the experience with you. But you know. You’re holding the vision. Soon, they will, too.

SMART PROSPECT. A buyer is SMART when they feel we understand their ultimate or “end” goals. So many times, salespeople can comprehend the “means” needs – as in the means to the end – but not the big picture. Once your salespeople have a decision-maker who is interested, they can start to connect with that person’s ultimate mission or vision. Does it line up with our ultimate vision for the client experience? It’s okay if the answer is no. Not every prospect will become a client. To find those who will convert, have your salespeople ask questions that uncover the buyer’s goal in terms that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Recorded (meaning, you write them down), and within a Timeframe. When the buyer can “hold a vision of the solution” (in the words of Mike Bosworth’s Solution Selling process), and that vision is a match to your vision for the client experience, there is a much higher likelihood that the vision will come true.

PROPOSAL PROSPECT. The buyer feels he/she is ready for a proposal when the salesperson has listened and can describe back to the buyer the experience that the buyer wants. Working backward, the salesperson designs the steps that lead to that experience, in the form of a proposal or statement of work.

CLIENT. The client becomes a client when the next logical step for achieving the experience they want is to give you a signature and a payment. Now, it’s up to you to deliver on the promise.

REPEAT CLIENT. When a client gives us repeat business, this is proof that our clients and our company have a shared vision of the ideal client experience. Anything less and they would not repeat the experience. So celebrate your repeat clients. Focus your team on how they can continue to overservice the client from his/her point of view, and always remember who the experience is designed to please: the client.

Onward, to the Summit

Similar to climbing a mountain or tackling any significant challenge, the key to having a client-experience approach is doing it. You have to be willing to devote the resources, time, and energy it takes to serve the client. If you are committed to the client experience, it is inevitable that you will lead your team – and the client – to the zenith of their success.

About the Author

Joe Mechlinski has specialized in working with high growth companies and their sales teams throughout the country for more than 10 years. With a proven track record for scaling companies, Joe teaches teams how to use emotional intelligence (EQ) vs. intellectual intelligence (IQ) to grow their sales. In addition, he helps companies harness current social and economic trends, creating successful sales structures and developing winning environments to attract and retain top talent.

Dead on Arrival: 5 Deadly Sales Call Sins

Tracey Cummings — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:02:00 GMT

By Erica Stritch, General Manager, RainToday.com

People with kids tell me that sometimes you have to let them fail, even when you could have jumped in to save them, so they will learn. Painful to sit by and watch, but necessary for growth. After being on the receiving end of an awful sales call last week, now I know the feeling.

Poor kid (he could have been 60 for all I know, but he seemed like a kid), started sinking from the get-go. Since I couldn't dive and save him, the future parent in me is dying to share the learning with someone. So here goes.

While I will protect the name of the innocent, I have summarized my favorite (if I can call them that) 5 deadly sins that pulled him down like a pair of concrete shoes in the Mystic River.

1. Deception: "I'd like to discuss partnership and advertising opportunities." I was first contacted by this individual via an email with the subject line "Advertising Inquiry." My reaction: "Someone interested in advertising on our site, let's see who they are trying to reach and if we are a good fit." I respond and schedule the sales call.

Within the first few minutes of the call, I learn that advertising on our site was not what this person had in mind. Instead, he began talking about his business and how great exposure to their list and clients would be for RainToday.com.

Sneaky, and not appreciated...

2. Lack of Research: "RainToday.com...what is it that you do?" Not only did he pull a quick one on me and turn the tables to try and sell to me, he showed a complete lack of knowledge of RainToday.

Nothing g'naws at me more than to be called by a sales rep and, when I ask them, "Have you visited our website?" to hear, "No." We are a website business - .com is in our name. If you haven't visited my site you have no reason to speak with me.

3. Me, Me, Me: The first 10 minutes of the call consisted of him telling me all about their services – exactly what they do and how it all works, detail by boring detail. What does it have to do with me and why do I care about how the underlying technology of your setup works? When he did (finally) ask me a question about us, he cut me off! He was just too excited to tell me, that based on my 2 word response, we were the perfect fit for him. Oh, please.

4. Aimlessness: I let this go on for about 15 minutes. I still had no idea what he wanted from this call or how his services would benefit me at all. Trying to figure it out, I asked him, "In the ideal world, if I could wave a magic wand and you could say, 'This is what I'd like you to do,' what would that be?"

In response he began talking about the profile of his other clients and how his company has worked them, but that services are customized to individual clients' needs. At this point, I had been told what a great fit we would be and how his services work, but I still had no idea what he wanted from me or what I would get out of this relationship. I didn't even know what needs of mine he would be fulfilling, so how can he come up with a custom service package for me?

5. Inappropriate Next Steps: This call was headed nowhere fast, when all of a sudden for the first time in the conversation there was silence. Curiosity kept me on this far, but it was a good time for me to end the call.

"Well, thank you for reaching out and introducing me to your service. At this time I don't think this is a path we are looking to head down," I said in my "being nice" voice.

"Ok, I'll follow up with you next week then," he responded.

Did he not hear me or understand what I said? What is there to follow up on?

Much of this is obvious and you may think exaggerated. Of course you'd never do this, right? There are professionals and business developers of all sorts committing these sins every day. Maybe they aren't committing every sin in every call or to this extent, but it only takes one to kill an opportunity.

Even if you don't admit it to anyone else, I ask you to think back to a sales call that might not have gone the way you would have liked, did you commit any of these sins?

About the Author

Sales Coaching Tips: How To Shorten Your Sales Cycle So You Can Win More Clients, Faster

NickHoban — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:14:00 GMT

By Coach Jeremy J. Ulmer

As a sales professional, entrepreneur or business owner, being able to effectively establish new client partnerships and increase sales results quickly is vitally important. When sales are going great it can be very exciting! When you have a great month you are filled with sales motivation!

But, after a while, things slow down and you hit a wall. You find yourself chasing after prospects and wondering why it is taking so long to convert prospects into clients.

You’re stumped!

You start exploring different techniques and try to find a solution. But, no matter what you try, the results are the same and the sales cycle is a much longer process than what you would like.

So where do you turn when you are stuck in sales quicksand and can’t get your prospects to move forward?

Here’s How You Can Shorten The Sales Cycle and Win More Clients, Increase Sales and Profits with 2 Simple Strategies:

1. Determine, Uncover & Clarify Challenges
If a prospect is not clear about their challenges and the impact of these challenges, this will greatly slow down the entire sales cycle. This is because the client does not yet believe their challenge is significant enough to take action, and guess what, because of this, they won’t take action! It is a waste of time for you to give information before understanding their needs, goals, challenges and problems. You are presenting a “solution” to someone who doesn’t believe they have a “problem.”

So, what do you do about this? Ask a lot of questions! Ask open ended questions. Get curious and don’t assume you understand their problem or challenge no matter how long you have been in the industry. Dig in and really find out what is going on, and ask follow up questions that focus in on the greater impact of their challenges. Uncover the impact of the current challenges on both the organization and the individuals or groups you are selling to. Your questions will help them understand and verbalize that they have a challenge or problem. Now you have the information you need to explain how you can help solve their challenge.

If you find yourself talking more than 20% of the time during your sales meetings with prospects, stop yourself, and ask a question!

2. Always Set A Clear Next Step
Have you ever heard this before? “Thanks for your time today, your product looks great and we will get back to you soon.” Yet, you never hear back, and end up having to chase, follow up, and make multiple calls, send multiple emails to no avail. That is not fun for you, nor is it fun for the prospective client.

How do you solve this?

Well, if you are a great salesperson or great sales minded business owner, you don’t need to chase. You don’t need to pressure. You don’t need to persuade. Really. You need to set up a clear next step, and if your prospect is not ready to take the next step, they will tell you, and you will determine if they are a serious prospect or not, on the spot.

Remember, give your prospects an option to say, “No.” When you do this, all the pressure is taken off of you, and more importantly off of your prospect. That way, they do not feel like they are being “sold,” nor do they feel any pressure from you. Many of the sales coaching programs and sales coaches still are teaching the same old techniques developed decades ago that involve pressure and persuading. You do not need to do that anymore and it does not work.

Simply set up the next step at the end of your meetings. The next step could be a follow-up face to face meeting or a scheduled phone call for example. However, make sure the next step is moving the sales cycle forward and has a scheduled date, time, and location.

Map out your sales cycle and know what steps need to take place. Here is an example of a 5 step sales cycle: 1. Initial appointment, qualification, discovery, 2. Agreement to conduct an in-depth analysis, 3. Demonstration of service or product, 4. Contract review meeting, 5. Signed agreement.

At the end of each meeting, you should be setting up the next meeting and next actions. Explain the next steps you both will need to take to start working together. Map it out for them and provide them with a simple document that explains the next steps with clear time lines. Ask them to commit to the next steps along the way. Guess what happens if you do this effectively? You don’t need to “close” or persuade, the sale will be made, faster, naturally, and more effectively.

These 2 steps will help you shorten your sales cycle and experience dramatically improved sales results. Don’t wait to make these changes, take action now, and make a commitment to yourself.

About the Author