Game Changing Alert: Sales Enablement Playbooks - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #238
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009This past week I was fortunate enough to join a couple hundred of the smartest marketers at the annual SiriusDecisions event in Scottsdale, AZ. This is the second one I’ve been to and both times I come back feeling revived and optimistic of the new changes I plan to roll out based on what I learned. For those of you who weren’t able to attend, no worries, in my next couple of posts I’ll share with you the highlights.
This year I went hoping for something to help our marketing team better align with and drive more productive sales activity. I feel like we’re working harder than we ever have but maybe not as smart as we should be.
Here’s my first golden nugget from this year’s event– sales enablement strategies, sales playbooks to be more specific. Do you have them? If so, are they working for you? I’m not talking about your sales portal with every piece of collateral, PR and case study you’ve ever written. Instead, I’m talking about situation based scenarios that your sales team has run into before and won. How did they do it? What supportive materials did they need? Were there pieces missing?
Here’s 3 steps to help you started on your Sales playbooks, compliments of Alden Cushman, Research Director at SiriusDecisions. Remember, you’re not creating these alone. Get product marketing, field marketing and sales involved.
- Identify Situational Elements –things like Organization Size and Structure, Vertical/Sub-Vertical Industries, Geographic Characteristics, Individual Roles and Responsibilities
- Collect and Position Content, Knowledge
- Products/Solutions - Features, advantages, benefits
- Pricing - Competitive info, volume discount
- Partners - Channel Positioning OEMs, VARs
- Market Forces - Complete market landscape and trends
- Objection Handling - Sticking points and best responses
- Run a Controlled Pilot – here is Alden’s example
- Situational elements
- CIO in a hierarchical insurance company, in education phase, with budget and need for an easy to use but sophisticated business intelligence offering
- Relevant available content and knowledge
- Phase-based BI implementation case study (education, active buying and closing)
- Archived Webcast of the return on and merits of BI solutions
- Web-based demo of new SaaS-based BI solution
- SaaS-based BI product features and function spec sheet
- Order of potentially appropriate sales plays
- Email industry white paper
- Three days later, send phase-based case study (tailored to CXO audience)
- One day later, call to discover unique pain points, invite to upcoming Webcast
- Email after Webcast and set up call for Web-based demo with SME
- Set up face-to-face meeting, bring positioning and value literature
- Ask for RFP, respond with detailed proposal
I plan on getting started on our sales playbook really soon. I know this will be a big project that will take a lot of thought and a lot of support from our sales team and product marketing team but the end result will change our business. As we get started on this journey, I welcome any ideas or feedback you may have. Please share what you learned putting these together and don’t leave out the parts that didn’t work.
Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #234
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Ever wonder what your prospects or customers are talking about on Twitter? Or are you looking for a way to build your Twitter following with people that have similar interests? Well, here’s a few places to get out there and ask some questions.
First, a shout out - Thanks again to Mashable for finding and compiling these kinds of lists, 5 Ways to Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter by Stan Schroeder. Its great information and we want to be sure our B2B Lead readers know this stuff is out there.
- IKnowTweet.com - This simple site searches Twitter for phrases such as “does anyone know?” and “why does?” and collects them all at one place.
- ToAnswer - By far the most elegant of the sites listed here, ToAnswer lets you ask questions on Twitter by simply prefixing them with @toask. The answers are displayed in a nice Twitter-like interface, and questions are asked through a lightbox-style window that opens with your Twitter account. Looks like this site is down right now but they’ve put up a funny video until they get more server space.
- TwttrStrm - TwttrStrm is an interesting and slightly more complex service that combines Twitter with Squidoo and its “lens” approach to answering questions. Basically, you ask a question on Twitter, but instead of merely getting short answers, Squidoo will create a brand new Lens with a bunch of information on the topic you’ve asked about.
- Twtpoll - There are many ways to ask a question; a poll is one of them, and twtpoll lets you create polls on Twitter. You ask a poll question, add some answer options (you can choose if it’s a one answer or multiple answers type of poll) and you’re done. You can share the poll via Twitter, email or Facebook.
- twitQA - twitQA is a very new site that lets you ask questions in different categories such as sports, travel, health, business & finance, cars and the like. Instead of using hashtags, twitQA recognizes questions and fetches them directly from the Twitter feed, which makes populating the question database easier.
You’ll definitely want to check out Stan’s thoughts on each of these. Once you try them out, come back and let us know what you think.
P.S. B2B Lead readers – if you don’t have Mashable in your Google Reader, add it today.
6 options for searching Twitter - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #230
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009After a couple of days out of the office I’m finally catching up on my Google Reader. Mashable, one of my favorite sites, always comes through with great social media tips. Twitter is definitely getting its fair share of airtime these days so for the Twitter obsessed, here’s a couple of options for searching Twitter to find what you need or want.
6 options for searching Twitter –
- TwitterSearch – this one seems to be the most common as it is hosted by Twitter. Results show the sender’s avatar, a link to the original tweet, and a link to Twitter.com to reply…
- Twazzup - this is Twitter Search on steroids. For any given query string, you can see results down the left column that are updated in real-time.
- Tweetzi - Perhaps the best element it has that neither of the above applications do, is the ability for real-time playing and pausing. See the blue “Play” button? If you click it, you can watch your trending topic gather steam; and you can hit Pause whenever you want.
- Tweefind - If you want a basic search utility, Tweefind is it.
- Twitterseach/Zeitbase – looking for something really simple, this is it!
- Flaptor – the key difference here is an RSS link, one click and you can get an RSS link of your results.
Of course you can find screen shots and more details of each of these on Mashable. Thank you Mashable for the keeping us up-to-date and in the know on our ever changing world of social media!
Are you using any of these to help with your lead generation efforts? If so, please share.
Targeting Someone Other Than the Cs and VPs - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #229
Monday, April 27th, 2009By now you know that there is more than one person involved in a B2B buying decision. The DMU (decision making unit) typically consists of the end user, key influencers, management, a financial buyer and others that have their hands in the decision to buy or not to buy.
It’s pretty easy to find the management decision makers with just a little research, but what about the others? Here’s a few tips to help you identify and build out lead generation programs for those other than the Cs and VPs.
- Where have you been winning? This is always a good place to start. Hopefully your sales team helped you out a little here and included notes about everyone they talked to in the buying process. If so, are you able to define their roles? If not, don’t despair, you’re not alone and this is not the end of the road for you.
- Profile your best customers – talk to your best customer implementation team, talk to the sales person that sold the deal and if possible interview a few customers to better understand who all was involved in the decision to buy.
- Once you have your roles defined, do you have these people in your leads database? Remember you are matching roles, not just titles. If so, tag them with a role identity. If you’re missing roles, call ReachForce, we can help you fill in the gaps. (Sorry for the shameless promotion…sometimes it just happens…)
- You’re finally ready to start marketing to these people. You are now able to build out very targeted programs focusing on key influencer and end user issues. Here’s an example –
- Nurture – not all buyers are ready to buy at the same time so be sure you are nurturing all of your prospects as well as those involved in a sales cycle. Here’s a few ideas for offers for your nurturing programs -
- Email analyst reports supporting the pain and possible solutions
- Email customer case studies
- Invite to webcasts
- Be sure to share any new content you roll out (whitepapers, eBooks, etc.)
For best results, I recommend you engage with your sales team before launching your newly segmented programs and ensure they are onboard to provide guidance and feedback throughout the process. To execute a healthy, ROI generating program it’s important to map out each step of the building process taking into consideration budget, timing and appropriate follow up. Here’s a template if you need help.
Connecting with Buyers on Twitter - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #228
Friday, April 24th, 2009I was catching up on some reading and came across a new article in BtoB from Rich Karpinski, B-to-b followers flock to Twitter. It is a great article especially if you are new to Twitter or wanting to know more about how businesses are using Twitter to connect with prospects and customers.
Since we are all about tips on The B2B Lead, here is some practical advice from the article for marketers getting started on Twitter:
- In your Twitter bio, clearly spell out what business you are in, who is posting to the account and even what you hope to get out of it. That creates transparency and the underpinnings of trust.
- Find people to follow. They’ll likely follow you back, broadening and enriching your conversation.
- To start, sit back and watch conversations unfold. As your comfort level grows, be proactive by participating in and starting conversations related to your business.
- Be generous: Offer more than you get back and always try to be responsive to peers and customers.
Finding the right people to follow can be challenging. Karpinski offers this advice:
Locating other b-to-b marketers and companies that “tweet” has become easier, too. Ad network Federated Media late last month launched (with Microsoft Corp. as sponsor) ExecTweets.com, an aggregation of executives using Twitter, and the Social Brand Index offers an index of Twitter accounts organized by category. One also can find lists of b-to-b marketing-focused Twitter users with a Google search.
I was happy to see one of the smartest B2B marketers I know, Jon Miller from Marketo, quoted in the article:
“B-to-b buyers are still people, and in the end, they buy from people and not companies,” said Jon Miller (@jonmiller2), VP-marketing at b-to-b software vendor Marketo (@marketo), who uses Twitter personally and as part of his company’s marketing strategy. “If you can build a relationship with a prospective buyer using Twitter before they are actively looking, you built your brand more effectively than you could with much more expensive options. The trick is to know who to follow and who to focus on for that relationship-building.”
But Miller doesn’t think Twitter is the be-all and end-all. “Tweets don’t yet show up in Google search results, and links can’t influence your SEO rankings,” he said, adding, “I think other tools like blogs still work better as the content publishing mechanism, versus [using Twitter more as] a content promotion tool.”
How are you engaging with customers and prospects on Twitter? Want to connect with us on Twitter? Check us out at:
@ReachForce
@suaadsait
@ahawthorne
@lawallace
RSS Feed for LinkedIn Answers - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #223
Monday, April 13th, 2009
LinkedIn Answers can be a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and connect with colleagues and prospects. I try to create RSS feeds for almost everything I monitor online; it is more likely I will get to it that way. The other day I realized I can get an RSS feed of LinkedIn Answers. Unfortunately, it is not very customizable. You can only get a feed of an entire topic, not just based on a certain keyword like search.twitter.com.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to LinkedIn.com
- Click on Answers (it’s at the top)
- In the right sidebar, under Browse, click on the topic that relates to your industry
- In the right sidebar look for the orange RSS logo, click the link to add new questions on this topic to your feed reader
*Note you can also subscribe to sub topics. Keep in mind that many questions are asked each day so the more specific you can be the better.
What is the benefit of being active on LinkedIn Answers? I know someone who was asked to speak at an industry conference based solely on answering a question on LinkedIn. We currently have two deals in the pipe that originated on LinkedIn Answers. I know my sales reps don’t always have the time to keep up with LinkedIn Answers so whenever someone asks a question looking for a solution like ours I pass it along to the appropriate sales rep to follow-up.
I still recommend going in at least once a week to search your company and products’ names since those are conversations you defintely want to be aware of. Still unsure of what to do? Check out How to Use LinkedIn Answers in Marketing.
Aligning Sales & Marketing Objectives – It’s NOT just March Madness - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #220
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009Yesterday on The B2B Lead, we talked about how marketing’s job has changed over the last couple of years from generating general awareness to tracking leads from cold to close. Gone are the days of dumping lists of random names into the top of the funnel for sales to sort out. Well, guess what, it turns out they weren’t sorting them out.
According to SiriusDecisions, 79% of leads generated by marketing are not followed up on by sales teams. Of the remaining 21%, 70% are disqualified by sales because of lack of budget, timing, or other reasons. Furthermore, 70% of those disqualified leads go on to purchase the product or service from another vendor.
There’s a lot of talk about leaky funnels and marketing’s role in driving more leads to close but is this really possible if leads aren’t truly leaking out, they’re being rejected and kicked out by sales?
This makes me wonder. Can better targeted lead generation programs be the answer to everyone’s woes?
I think so.
Here’s a few tips to think about before launching that next great program:
- Before you kick off the next quarter, make sure marketing and sales TOGETHER define what a lead is. Marketing leads are different than sales leads. Be certain everyone on both teams understands this and how you’re handling the 2 groups.
- Ask the sales team what is working for them. Where are they winning? Who are the critical decision makers inside of these companies? Make sure you are targeting the right companies and the right buyers inside.
- What programs deliver the best leads? And not just the best leads but leads that convert to customers. Does this align with what sales says?
- Don’t forget to take a look at who is already visiting you. This can be a goldmine. Target your outreach efforts back at those visiting, don’t just sit and wait for them to come back and announce themselves.
- For those that are disqualified by sales for BANT reasons, make sure sales is able to pass those leads back for more nurturing. Budgets and project timelines change all the time. Because they don’t need you now doesn’t mean they won’t ever (just make sure you have the right buyer engaged, marketing to the right company with the wrong buyer won’t get you very far).
At ReachForce, marketing and sales are 1 team. We know one can’t be successful without the other.
The Springboard Effect of Marketing - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #219
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009B2B Marketers have been going through big changes the last couple of years. With marketing automation tools/platforms coming on strong, so are the questions of ROI and the effect marketing really has on the top line.
Our jobs have changed, we are no longer responsible for just general awareness and filling the top of the sales funnel. Instead, we are tasked with moving leads from cold to close and building a closed loop feedback system with Sales along the way.
Eloqua, one of our partners, has a new whitepaper, The Springboard Effect, that does a great job of describing how our roles have changed and what is now expected of a best-in-class B2B Marketer.
Here’s a few interesting bites from The Springboard Effect:
- Jaap Favier, Vice President and Research Director for Forrester Research, emphasized that intelligence will be a key differentiator in the way companies survive a downturn. “The name of the new marketing game: targeting.”
We love hearing this, it’s what we’re all about here at ReachForce.
- Aberdeen Group says that “companies with best-in-class lead prioritization and scoring systems have a 192% higher average lead qualification rate than those that do not.”
- According to SiriusDecisions, 79% of leads generated by marketing are not followed up on by sales teams. Of the remaining, 70% of leads are disqualified by sales because of lack of budget, timing, or other reasons.
Ok – here’s the MOST INTERESTING part – SiriusDecisions goes on to say that 70% of those disqualified leads go on to purchase the product or service from another vendor.
WOW – look at all of the opportunity lost!
Interesting stuff here, be sure to check out the rest for yourself.
Paying for Twitter features? Would you?
Monday, March 30th, 2009While Twitter is still trying to figure out a revenue generating model (which will include Pro Accounts) for their hugely popular free service, some people claim they are willing to pay for certain upgraded features. Dan Frommer took a look at comments on his most recent blog post about Twitter and put together a list of what Twitter users say they would be willing to pay for.
Amazing what people will “say” they’ll pay for…
- Slightly longer messages: 160 characters instead of 140.
- Unlimited or prioritized access to API. (Twitter limits how many requests an account can make per hour.)
- Auto-deleting deadbeat followers who haven’t logged in within a month.
- More reliable service. (Can’t really charge on a per-user basis for this though, unless there’s a separate Twitter that’s more reliable, right?)
- Link-click analytics. (Free already if you use bit.ly, though some limitations.)
- Guaranteeing that their old tweets (all of them) are available forever, and easier to sift through.
Would you pay for twitter fearures?
Choosing Social Networks to Drive More Leads - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #218
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009It seems like everyday I hear about a new social networking tool and read another article about how to increase my Twitter following or maximize my Facebook presence. You can’t be everywhere but how in the world do you go about choosing the right networks to participate in? I have found there are 3 questions to ask myself when choosing where to spend my efforts online:
- What are these networks already talking about? - Most every social network has some sort of search tool. Plug in your keywords to see if your industry is already being talked about. Sign up immediately and join the conversation if they are. Don’t forget to include your Company name in the search. Someone else may have already started the conversation about you.
- Where are your competitors? - If your competitors have a presence there, you should too. To find out where they are, go to their website or blog and look for links like “follow us on Twitter” or “join our LinkedIn Group”. You should also head to some of the post popular social networking sites and see if your competitors have created profiles/accounts/pages. Be sure to check for activity in groups and discussion boards like in Facebook groups and in LinkedIn Answers.
- Where are your customers? - I think the best place to start is with your customers. Their activities should most closely mimic those of your prospects. You can find out where they are by a quick survey to your customers. Do you have a customer advisory board? Use them to help you get started. And there is always the hard way (not really all that hard but rather time consuming) which is to go out to different networks and search to see if your customers are already there.
Keep in mind that social networking is not right for every industry. You definitely want to do your homework up front so you can be stategic in your social networking lead gneration. If you feel like you are a little ahead of your time for your industry, I would start with something like LinkedIn. It is the most professional of the networks out there and is kind of the gateway drug to other social networks.
