Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Thu, Feb 19, 2009 @ 10:01 AM
The more we champion new tools that make marketing and business development more efficient and effective, the more resistance we encounter.
Is this human nature at work or humans not working to get strategic alignment?
In the last month, senior B2B managers in my network have related their challenges in convincing C-level execs that it's time for a change in marketing and sales process.
Lest you think this is just an "early adopter" social media marketing issue, it's not.
- A basic CRM implementation that still isn't catching fire a year after launch because the five sales guys won't share info and the CEO won't press the issue.
- A well conceived CRM set up that manages the pipeline just fine (for Sales Management) but which Marketing can't rely on for direct marketing or lead nurturing programs due to a huge bad data problem. Sales points at Marketing for support; Marketing points back for better input; collaboration is at a stand still.
- A company with a Web-centric integrated marketing strategy whose CEO concedes that prospects do, in fact, use the Internet as the first step to finding solutions, but won't acknowledge the qualified leads now originating from that channel (despite documentation).
- An industrial services marketing team whose proposed web-oriented marketing plan (email, SEM, inbound marketing) was dismissed by the new CEO as unnecessary--because his former company didn't do such things.
Finding the buried treasure isn't as simple as reading the map.
What's the root cause here? In operations-focused, sales-driven industrial companies, the comfort level with Marketing and Strategy is often low to nil. And we Marketers can be our own worst enemies if we fail to lay the ground work to secure top exec buy-in before introducing new methods and job-changing process improvements. This is "show me the money" kind of spade work.
Last month, the B2B Social Marketing group on LinkedIn engaged in a lively discussion of these issues (Join the group and search for the discussion thread: "Why do you think social media is a hard sell for B2B?") and Chris Brogan provocatively prodded for comments (and got dozens) about: "The B2B vs. B2C Thing"
What are your stories of treasure sought, fought for, and won or lost?
I invite you to add your comments and tales from experience. In 2009 marketingFOLIO will address these issues on a regular basis and blog about case studies that exude success.
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Tue, Feb 17, 2009 @ 09:44 AM
Technology changes everything: at home, at work, in our communities. Take this new tidbit: 1 Billion Internet users. Back in 1995, 1 million people were using the Internet worldwide (per MIT, based on hosted computers or IP addresses). Now, according to comScore world Metrix, the world bumped past the 1 Billion user milestone last December (2008). And this stat doesn't include scores of mobile users who connect primarily via iPhones, PDAs, practically every new phone sold, or the local Internet cafe.
Information is the Antidote to Commoditization
Emerging technology is transforming many markets and businesses. According to a recent The McKinsey Quarterly article on business tech trends to watch, "Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value; companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business." The leading activities cited for transformation are managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways. I couldn't agree more.
As with any network model, the more people that use it, the more value it offers. Thus, as social networking extends rapidly (e.g. LinkedIn and Plaxo) and as more business processes shift to SaaS platforms, the Internet is destined to be the ultimate business utility at home, at work and everywhere in between.
Business Process Innovation isn't Limited to Operations
It's those inbetween areas where new value lurks for the industrial B2B sector. As example, executives in my network tell me that their Internet use is greatest during business travel--primarily on mobile devices--when they're not occupied with leading people.
Although industrial business has embraced web-based technology to support core operations, B2B execs often overlook--or ignore--how they might leverage their commercial development with new web-based communications technologies. This isn't to suggest that we throw out the old, tried-n'-true approaches; it's time to explore how the new tools fit in and where they have greatest impact.
Three Steps You Need to Take Now
Industrial B2B marketers and product managers should champion new tools to spur awareness, demand and sales leads--working smarter with some time invested but no significant capital outlay:
- Rethink market communications with web-centric strategies: expand promotions reach at low cost (effectiveness), increase control of your leads pipeline (efficiency), and facilitate a two-way information flow that will set you apart from the competition (innovation)
- Be where your targeted decision makers are: add mobile device support to your market-facing and customer-facing websites--especially for data/transactions that feed their KPIs (excellence)
- Get comfortable with how social networking and social communities work for your business context: test them first with your employees and channel partners for knowledge exchange (alignment), then develop customer oriented "social" contexts that reinforce your value (EVA)
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Mon, Feb 16, 2009 @ 09:23 AM
"Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from
whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an
individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other
organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of
that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring.... I
have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful,
is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its
relation to man's power of selection." Charles Darwin
Origin of the Species, Chapter III
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Having just marked the 150th anniversary of publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species, I was struck by this line in John Mariotti's latest comments in his e-newsletter "The Enterprise":
"Innovation is the only true path to profitable growth."
Origin of Innovation
A former manufacturing industry executive and author of The Complexity Crisis (2008), John offers tough love for businesses struggling with the dismal economy. Companies, he says, are trapped by complexity: too many products, too many layers of management, too many markets. And complexity steals attention from what's really important: a laser focus on understanding markets and producing what customers value. As he points out, if you really analyze profitability by product and account, most of the economic value comes from the top quartile--while the bottom 25% is "almost all losers,
destroying value and consuming valuable resources."
To survive this recessionary challenge, John says, you must dump the bottom, refocus and innovate. Don't forget, he chides, "profitability is the goal, not just
sales for growth sake." In other words, Natural Selection, business style:
- do the math and dump your marginal sales
- reduce complexity and free up your time to innovate
- rethink what you offer and where the real value lurks--and consider new technology factors
- get help, if you need it!
Manage Your Own Selection
Whether you're a large enterprise or a small business, here are three things you can get started quickly to adapt to the new opportunities:
Analyze your profitability by account and by offering. If you haven't done this already, do it now. Get enough insight to take action. You can iterate later.
Know your value to your customers. Not your margin--dig into the economic value they derive, directly and indirectly. Expore it, quantify it, verify it and share it externally (sales presentations, case studies) and internally.
Build a simple segmentation model, a visual map of your ideal customer by offering. Pick segmentation variables that will help you assess competitive market opportunity: Is it real? Is it worth it? Can we win?