Last week I expressed my thoughts about the differences between “loyal” and “satisfied” customers. I give lots of credit to Net Promoter for the role it has played promoting (sorry for pun) the concept of easy to digest relationship marketing metrics. That said – I personally need more than just an advocacy index to create and tune relationship strategy for my company’s customers.

Customer Experience Indexing is how I measure, plan and act on both emotional (loyal) and quantifiable (satisfied) customer feedback. Starting with item 1 below, my next several posts will open discussion about …

1. Optimizing the flow of both loyalty and satisfaction feedback
2. Analysis of feedback and calculation “CEI scores”
3. Using the data for short, mid and long term account plans for retention and growth
4. Using the data to locate new prospects using rule based company profiling and role-based targeting
5. Using the data to plan and deliver action plans aimed at reshaping customer attitudes and opinions

Customer feedback in the consumer marketing world has become an art form. Comparatively, B2B companies seem to lag far behind in having clear, sustainable ways to collect feedback, as well as having formal business process to make sure collected feedback is actionable.

The best way to get started is to make sure your company’s business leaders buy in and get involved. And the best way to make sure this happens is to write up a plan and make sure it gets budgeted. (Warning — Don’t even start a Customer Experience Measurement initiative if you don’t have this support. Without it, you will do more harm than good with your customers — as well as waste a lot of time and effort.)

While there are many variables to this type of planning by company size, type, etc., this blog series will cover quite a few customer feedback channels. The most common of all is the dreaded “annual customer satisfaction survey” (mine come with a few twists), and for a number of reasons it’s the best way to get a Customer Experience Measurement effort successfully off the ground.

To finish off this week’s post here is a checklist for getting your plan started:

1. Subscribe to an inexpensive online survey tool (a valuable thing you’ll find many uses for).
2. Figure $60 per customer as a good budget for getting the first year of your plan started (very large customer bases may need smaller scale plan)
3. Involve everyone with frequent customer facing responsibilities (Account managers, Project managers, etc.), segment your list up and assign “contact ownership” by role, (not just by account).
4. Meet with company stakeholders to craft role-based, multiple choice questions that need to be asked and answered. (We’ll talk about putting the scoring mechanism in place later). There are two basic types of questions to consider:
   • Service fundamentals (quality function, basic expectations
   • Advocacy (value, competitive advantage)
5. Test the questions on at least 2 friendly customers and ask them what questions they think you should ask.
6. Create and review the invitee list with your assigned contact owners. Usually, I like to keep the invitations focused on people you deal with (by role) at accounts that have been active within the past 12-18 months. Make sure email addresses and other contact information are accurate/current and that all contact owners “agree” (important) that inviting them into survey process is viable (formula is alive + working + accessible = invitee).
7. Clarify objectives, rewards and tactics. I’ve run a few of these initiatives so I tend to aim high.
   • Goals/objectives: If the invitee list is agreed to with the assigned contact owners (step 6), shooting for and achieving 90% response rates within 45 days is highly doable.
   • Rewards: Offer invitees a meaningful reward for taking time to complete the survey. There are many ideas here, but $20* Amazon.com e-gift certificates have always worked wonders for me. Offer the same $20* (per response) reward to the assigned contact owners as a way to motivate them to provide all important follow-up throughout the remainder of the 45 campaign.  *Note that we’ve already used 2/3s of the per customer budget.
   • The following tactics have proven highly successful in maximizing response rates:
     -Don’t ask more than 10 questions
     -Keep questions pithy
     -Avoid soliciting open ended responses as much as possible
     -Schedule email invitations/reminders to avoid heavy traffic
     -Leverage companywide email signature lines with reminders/links
     -Leverage all phone customer phone contact with reminders
     -Include a write up about the survey in your customer newsletter
     -Leverage outbound customer mailing (including billing) with reminders
     -Create fun response rate competition amongst the assigned contact owners
     -Get upper management involved with reminder phone calls, personal emails, etc.

To be continued. Please chime in with your own ideas and thoughts.

My Granddad used to say, when times are tough hang on to those that love you. Is the same true for tough economic times and B2B relationship marketing?

Your market is fundamentally made up of three types of targets. Customers you have, those you’ve lost, and potential accounts who – so far – have decided to do business elsewhere.

This is the first of a serial discussion (please join in) about measuring and connecting some specific customer experience management dots for minimizing customer churn, growing key accounts and identifying new revenue opportunities with companies that share common profiles with those with whom you do well.

Over the decades I’ve devised and managed dozens of customer retention programs. As a deliberate marketing proponent I was an enthusiastic Net Promoter adopter because of its implied relationship with corporate growth and its sheer simplicity – something very appealing when trying to achieve internal buy-in for major (sometimes costly) customer experience initiatives.

But in times like these where the outcome of a company’s customer experience strategy can make or break quarterly revenue plans, a one dimensional measurement such as NPS may help to know how many loyal customers there are, but isn’t very good for knowing about problems or –more importantly– how to fix them.

So while I love the idea of NPS as a simple advocacy index (as well as the role it’s had on increasing the importance business owners now place on these types of marketing metrics) I’ve found it to be just one of the many dots that need connecting to drive revenue growth. The most common mistake in the B2B world today is confusing loyal customers with satisfied customers.

The difference between satisfied customers and loyal customers is distinctly a matter of emotion. And while metrics dealing with both are very different and have unique implications – they are interdependent as two halves – quantifiable (satisfied) – and subjective (loyal) of the complete customer relationship picture.

This means customer feedback must be secured, structured, analyzed and acted upon in both concrete and abstract formats. To this end I have developed an arsenal of best practices that can be used for the following:

1. Optimize the flow of information and feedback that captures both quantifiable and emotional responses to “customer experience” surveys.
2. Analytical methodology for connecting and measuring quantifiable and emotional feedback to determine a “CEI,” or Customer Experience Index for each customer on your list.
3. Templates and guides for using CEI scores to craft short, mid and long term account plans for retention, up-selling and cross-selling.
4. Templates and guides for using highest CEI scores to locate new prospects using rule based company profiling and role-based targeting.
5. Templates and guides for using lowest CEI scores to plan and deliver action plans aimed at reshaping customer attitudes and opinions

Over the next few weeks my blog posts will address these subjects one-by-one. Again, I’d really appreciate your feedback as we go.

With economic times the way they are today, it is more important than ever that Marketing and Sales teams be aligned. Together you must decide and figure out what activities make the most impact to the top line of the business. Focus on all types of initiatives
1.    To retain, cross-sell and up sell current customers
2.    New customer acquisition programs
3.    Channel partner marketing opportunities

We recently rolled out an ebook, 10 Tips for Marketing and Sales Alignment, with our partner Marketo. These 10 tips are just a few ideas on how Marketing and Sales can play on the same team to generate qualified leads and drive revenue.

Here’s a few more tips to think about as you are building out your Q4 Marketing and Sales plans.

1.    Marketing and Sales teams should have shared goals

• Bookings and new customer wins are jointly owned by marketing and sales, and marketing bonuses are directly tied to the joint success.
• Revenue alignment and continued success programs for current customers ensure happier customers.  And we all know it’s more expensive to find a new customer than it is to keep your current ones happy.
• Shared goals means shared success -  when sales wins, marketing wins…and when marketing wins, sales wins … and overall the business WINS!

2.    Do Reality Based Planning

• Use TRUE funnel conversion metrics to set marketing lead generation targets.
• Understand and plan based on sales team behavior – how many leads can they work at time, how many calls does it take each sales team member to identify a hot or qualified lead, etc.

3.    Don’t forget those stuck in the funnel

• Deals get stuck in the middle stages of the funnel.  Let marketing help by trying to engage with the prospect through best practice content offers, event invites, or new media outlets.

4.    Don’t forget them when the deal is done

• Engage in current customer marketing programs.  Use a newsletter, blog or customer community to stay front of mind for cross-selling, up-selling and renewal opportunities.
• Case studies and references are powerful sales tools, but marketing needs help with the set up and creation of these.

5.    Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

• Share what’s working and what’s not – closed loop marketing is essential here
• Marketing should be involved in new sales rep training
• Celebrate WINS together

Organizations talk a lot about aligning their marketing and sales teams but many never put plans into action.  By implementing the five steps above and adhering to the plan, Marketing and Sales teams can align for shared success.

I welcome your thoughts and feedback (successes and other tips you want to share).

B2B marketing is all about driving sales, right?  The most effective teams know that alignment of marketing and sales is a requirement for productive lead generation and customer growth.

We’ve had sales pipeline metrics in place forever, I sometimes wonder why we as Marketers got to skate along all this time with no accountability…that’s a post for another day maybe…

With today’s sales force automation and marketing automation solutions, we as Marketers are now able to prove our worth with every campaign or program we launch.

Here’s a few metrics we here at ReachForce track to ensure we are driving valuable sales activity and customer growth.

• # of net new companies from our target market sweet spots are added to the marketing mix each week
• # of net new contacts (right role, not just anyone) from our target market sweet spots are added to the marketing mix each week
• # of contacts being touched with a marketing message each week; net new contacts vs. those in nurture programs (and of course, we track opens and click throughs)
• # of inbound requests
• # of people hitting a landing page, then jumping to corporate site for product/service info.  (we do newsletter and search engine advertising driving people to best practice content accessible via a landing page)
• # of people originating at The B2B Lead (ReachForce blog) and jumping to the ReachForce corporate site (product pages, solution pages)
• # of new sales meetings set from marketing lead generation programs
• # of marketing leads moved to the qualification stage of our sales pipeline
• # of marketing leads moving to a proposal, and of course closing

Once a new customer is onboard I then go back and identify what activities were involved in moving this lead to being a new customer so I can be sure to do more of it.

Now of course there is a list of metrics similar to this for each initiative you take on.  It’s always important to outline goals and expectations of each program so that you are sure to spend your time and resources on the best producing programs.

Do you measure anything not on this list?  If so, please share.

Do you know anyone who is not online? I even know an 87-year-old who uses eBay. The fact of the matter is that everyone is online. The question is – are they talking about you and do you know what they are saying? David Meerman Scott gives some great examples of how different companies responded to negative comments on forums and blogs. I think there are two great lessons to be learned from these examples:

1. You need to know what people, especially your customers, are saying about you
2. You need to respond swiftly and genuinely directly to your audience. Do not do what Sony BMG did and respond to bloggers by going on the radio, respond where your audience is, online.

Hopefully most of you are already using Google Alerts to help you monitor blogs and news stories but it will not catch everything. Here are some other monitoring tools you should check out:

1. search.twitter.com – you can search on any keyword, like your company name, to see who is tweeting about you
2. blogsearch.google.com – again you can search on any keyword and add an RSS feed of it to your Google Reader. Tip: you can exclude your own blog or website by adding -site:yourwebsite.com after the keyword. So if I want to see who is talking about ReachForce I would search: reachforce -site:theb2blead.com.

I have discussed this before on The B2B Lead, but you should also monitor an RSS feed of blogs and forums that are in your space. These are the most likely targets for your customers and prospects. Have someone in your company who can add value to the conversation be involved. This is not always easy, but can have great benefits.

The point is:

• Be involved online and know what people are saying about you
• If you see something negative, don’t go dark, respond to try to make it better and admit when you have done something wrong. Everyone appreciates an apology when it is genuine.
• You can gain credibility by having an in-house expert active on forums and blogs – remember no sales pitches

What have you found to be successful online. We would love to hear any success stories. Know of any good monitoring tools? Please share.

Stay tuned next week when we will be covering chapters 8 & 9 on going viral and content rich websites.

When I first started at ReachForce, we were still in start-up mode and all marketing was focused on acquiring new customers. Because we run on a subscription model, I saw an opportunity for continued customer marketing to help increase our renewals. I developed a fully integrated program which you may have seen on the blog, the ReachForce Book Club. Throughout the year we are sending great Marketing books to our customers. For about 2 months after we send the book, we discuss it here on The B2B Lead.

Here are the steps we take:

• We hand write a short note in each book to help tell them why we chose this book and to make the exchange more personal.
• We also put a little notecard in the book to tell them a little more about the book and direct them to The B2B Lead to join in the conversation.
• I send an email to all of our customers about a week after mailing the books to tell them to expect the book to arrive shortly. This email also links to The B2B Lead where I have posted about the new book and which chapters we will be reading the next week.
• Every week two of us from the marketing department blog about the chapters we are reading.
• I email the author to let them know what we are doing and invite them to join the conversation.  These are often busy people but they are usually happy to help promote their book.

A book club isn’t ideal for every customer base but you should have a current customer program in place, even if your sales model is not subscription based. You of course always want to keep your customers happy for referrals, case studies, as well as cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

When you begin a current customer program, start small. We started with Thanksgiving cards. Be sure to clean up your database to make sure that all of your contacts are still there and that you have correct contact information. According to MarketingSherpa, in house databases go bad at a rate of 2% per month, but who knows which 2%.

So far, we have had a great response from our customers and we hope to continue to grow the program to really create a community for smart marketers.

We started the ReachForce Book Club as a way to continue our relationship with our current customers. In today’s online world there are many more options for B2B Marketers to stay connected to their customers like through social networks and online communities. At ReachForce, we decided to mix a little old school with some new school and start a book club with a twist. Instead of meeting at a local coffee shop to discuss the book, we will be discussing it here on The B2B Lead. If you are a ReachForce customer, you should expect to receive your book soon, if not already. If you are not a customer, click here to buy it online.

Our second book is The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. It promises to teach us “how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly.” Each week, Leigh Anne and I will share our perspectives to get the conversation started but will rely on you to join in to share your thoughts, opinions and ideas. We will begin the conversation next week in order to give everyone a little time to get started. Next week we’ll be reading and chatting about chapters 1, 2 & 3.

Happy reading!

In a previous life when I was VP of Marketing at a high tech software company we had thousands of customers with huge upsell and cross selling opportunities. Since many of these customers were long time customers we decided a live event would not only give us the opportunity to update them on our additional products and services but would also allow us some face time for further relationship building. Our overall goal for the event was to drive more revenue from our current customer base. As we were brainstorming on the event details we wanted to be sure we had a 3-D view on everything we did. We wanted to be sure we were educating our customers, building customer loyalty and get a better understanding how we were going to continue to monetize these relationships. I’ve included a few tips below for each of these components.

Education –

• Make sure your agenda for the event is not biased towards your company and what your company has going on, but instead show interest to solving THEIR business problems and what really impacts them.
• Think about what you want them to take back from this event?
• Consider bringing in industry leaders or analysts to speak on their experiences in the marketplace
• give away an educational book or take home information they could share with others
• Add a panel of happy customers to discuss their experiences and results from working with you

Loyalty –

• Make each customer feel like they are your #1 customer
• Treat them to a nice venue, easy transportation and great food to start.
• Most importantly, make your customers feel they are part of the inner circle and by being at the event they are privy to information others aren’t. For example, show an exclusive demo of new or upcoming product releases.

Monetize –

• Hold your sales team responsible to have the right customers at the event. Ones who bring the most money, ones who have problems, ones that would benefit the most from being there.
• While at the event, set up customer face-to-face meetings with key executives. I had a spreadsheet with everyone I was meeting and knew their problems going into the conversation so I could bring the solutions. This was key.

Even though the event ended on a high note, we would have to wait another year for this type of customer interaction. Today, we wouldn’t have to wait another year to catch up with our customers. Companies like BD Metrics have already started to tackle this obstacle. BD Metrics’ You-Based™ personalization technology for leading tradeshows and associations to help make sure once people leave an event, all is not forgotten. I’m sure there are others out there also helping extend the momentum of live events. What have you seen or used? How are you staying in touch with your customers 365 days a year?

Here’s another continuing customer event idea for you to ponder… ideas

As we are fast approaching mid-year, it is a good time to look back at the investments you have already made this year and look for new ways to leverage these investments.

This is a time to make the invisible visible.

Most B2B Marketers have invested in either search engine optimization, paid search advertising or both this year. My guess is you were probably hoping for more quality leads from these investments. Have you considered these ideas to get more bang for your buck?

• Identify visitors that didn’t announce themselves (the companies they originated from). Your web analytics tools can help with this or check out ReachForce Convert for more segmentation level data and visitor patterns.
• Now that you’ve got the companies identified, do you have the right contacts to reach out to and play offense? Consider reaching out with an offer call to action relevant to the pages they viewed.

How about your current customer marketing? Are you doing everything you can to get more from what you already have?

• Is your customer database up to date and complete? 2% of data goes bad every month. Which 2%? Who knows. Your customer database is a great place to start a data refresh project.
• While you’re refreshing, do you have the right buying contacts for additional products or services? If not consider adding these to the customer records so you are ready when you have new or updated product offers.

Many of you invested in events in the first half of ’08. Have those leads been followed up on? According to SiriusDecisions, only 10% of trade show leads are followed-up by Sales. Are you, as a Marketer, nurturing the other 90%?

• For those leads that are non-responsive, make sure that you have the right contacts in those companies. Think about the role of the person you are targeting? Think about the multiple folks involved in a purchase process at your target and their role. You might need different offers or calls-to-action for each member of the decision making unit.
• Continue to nurture leads not ready for sales – dialog is important, it takes 5 to 7 touches to turn a lead into a prospect.

Webinars seemed to have only increased in popularity in 2008. Although the event happens live, the recorded content can be repurposed.

• Did you record the webinar and post on your website? Are you campaigning around the event even though the live version has already happened?
• Have you considered using services like Insight24 to syndicate your webcast to over 13 million viewers?
• Don’t forget about the podcasters. You can easily turn a webinar into multiple podcasts. Make sure short, bite sized content is available for those always short on time.

Summer is often “down-time” for marketing and a time to plan for the blitz of lead generation post Labor Day. This summer instead of “getting ready for what’s to come”, consider spending a little time repurposing what you’ve already done, in between the down time of course.

In this chapter Guy Kawasaki uses some of his own great experiences (as well as other well known marketing moves made by companies we all know) to outline 11 ideas for driving your competition crazy. I’ve highlighted a few here for you.

1. First Things First: Know Thyself – Ask yourself these questions:

• What business are we really in?
• Where do you see your business in 5, 10, 20 and 50 years?
• If prospects don’t buy from you, from whom do they buy?

It’s important to keep these things in mind as we are building our strategies to drive our competitors crazy. Remember not to lose focus by trying to be everything to everyone.

2. Next Step: Know Thy Customer – A couple of more good questions to ask yourself:

• Who is using your product?
• How are products in your category used by customers?
• Are regulations or societal pressures changing your marketplace?

There are also some recommendations on how to go about getting to know your customers on page 152, check them out.

3. Know Thy Enemy – Ways to Get to Know Them (only sharing a few here, check out the rest on page 153 and 154):

• Become a customer – if possible, this is a great idea. This way you get exposure to how they treat their customers as well as any new product/service information.
• Talk to your competitor’s customers – This can do nothing but help you figure out ways to drive your competitor crazy. When talking to your competitors’ customers always remember you are representing your own company too.
• Attend trade shows and meetings – companies use events to announce new strategic direction, new products and customer wins.

4. Focus on Customers – “The best way to drive your competition crazy is to make your customers happy.” Enough said.

5. Concentrate on a Decisive Point – Find a Niche or Provide Alternatives
More great examples here on pages 156 and 157.

6. Turn Customers in Evangelists –

• Create a cause – Evangelists need something to believe in.
• Find the Right People – Go to the end users of your products not executive management, they’ll help spread your word much faster!
• Don’t Forget Employees – All employees should be Evangelists.

Don’t stop here, go back to your book and check out the remainder of the list. This one was a quick read, great ideas we should all consider when building out our lead generation programs.

Any of Kawasaki’s other ideas stand out for you?

Be sure to check out Kawasaki’s latest project, Alltop. And don’t forget to look for The B2B Lead on marketing.alltop.com!