Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Glitzitis refers to companies that produce gorgeous ads and collateral pieces that fall flat because they aren’t based on solid analysis.

When we conduct focus groups for clients to test messages with their target buyers, we always test their competitors’ key messages or positioning as well. I used to assume that companies spending millions of dollars on advertising and expensive collateral vet the relevance of their proposed messaging with their target audience. It was a shock to see how off the mark many of these messages are.

Mark Twain said it best: “It ain’t what you don’t know that will hurt you. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Sales trainers use a research study conducted years ago by Xerox to remind salespeople that their effectiveness declines after roughly 18 months. The reason is that as salespeople become more confident of their assessment of the prospects’ needs they spend much less time questioning and listening to their prospects.

The corollary for marketing professionals is this: The effectiveness of marketing professionals declines as their confidence increases if they don’t take the time to properly test their gut instincts.

A “trust but verify” attitude can also protect Marketing from Sales. In big-ticket item companies, salespeople can over-influence messaging. Their instincts are just as fallible as those of experienced marketers. A discipline of testing before investing will help prevent wasting marketing funds on the wrong messages.

SYMPTOMS

No exterior symptoms. Occurs with unexpected frequency in B2B companies with fabulous looking Web sites and collateral.

SUSPECTED CAUSE

Relying on the following sources for messaging without verification of relevance to larger target audience:

• A close customer contact
• An analyst
• Salespeople
• Company executives

TREATMENT

The only reliable means of correction is to test candidate key messages anonymously with the target audience or devise tests using interactive marketing techniques.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities