Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Wed, Apr 29, 2009 @ 10:05 AM
Poetry may not always be commercially successful, but here's one poem that will help you succeed in commerce. This sage verse caught my eye when first published in 2008 by Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and chief sales officer of the sales training firm of the same name. I share it with you now in honor of National Poetry Month, which rolls around every April.
The Buyer's Lament
By Jill Konrath
Don't waste my time, please go away.
I will not talk with you today.
You call me up, you want to sell.
But all you do is tell, tell, tell.
I do not want to hear your spiel.
I will not play let's make a deal.
So listen up, take my advice.
Discover how you can entice.
If you aspire to earn my trust,
Research is an absolute must.
Know my goals, the issues I face.
Use this to build your business case.
What have you done for firms like mine?
How have you helped their bottom line?
Can you cut my costs or help me grow?
Now that's the info I want to know.
If you can help me solve my plight,
I'm wide open to fresh insight.
I need to find new perspectives
So I can reach my objectives.
Want me to remember your name?
Launch an account entry campaign.
Ten contacts is what it may take,
When there's so much business at stake.
Just think of this next time you phone
And you'll get past my no-entry zone,
Once you get your foot in the door,
I guarantee you'll sell lots more!
NEED HELP?
If your customers know more about the value you provide than you do, marketingFOLIO can help. We'll provide the independent research to verify direct and indirect benefits by market segment, validate buying processes and personas, and produce case studies that will help your sales force deliver the information that serious prospects want to know.
>> Contact us for a FREE consultation.
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Thu, Apr 16, 2009 @ 06:18 PM
There’s no question that these are challenging times.
Doing more with less—or simply doing less—is an economic necessity. You cut what you can, you keep what you must.
Across my network—across global industry—marketing and sales budgets have been slashed to the bone as business volume continues in freefall. The rationales vary. For some, this is a short-term tactic. Others restructure to drastically reduce above the line expenses to keep operating margins at target level—recognizing significant restructuring cost below the line, of course. And, then, there are the fortunate few in the right business at the right time who are capturing new business, yet still trim marketing spend because they [believe that they] can afford to. They’re all banking on the half-life of last year’s marketing effort to carry them through. And, when it comes to sustaining market awareness, it will.
As if that were all that good marketing does.
What’s really expendable?
That, I find, depends on business orientation. If your game is managing the channel (wholesale distributor), you’re a marketing business by definition; customer retention and transactional efficiency are top priority. If you’re in an operating business that make things (manufacturer) or makes things happen (complex services provider), production, supply chain, and customer service will take precedence. In any case, for many engineering-oriented, operation-focused, sales-driven organizations, marketing isn’t strategic, it’s simply sales support.
Thus, the cuts. Leaving the business exposed.
We're talking game-changing risk.
Attending to restructuring and capacity shifts are mission critical. But the big risk is that you focus too much on what’s happening inside your company—and neglect your market. No, this isn’t about promotion, this is about how you will compete in the most dynamic business environment our generation has experienced. Unless you’re strictly a commodity business, your company’s future rests on your ability to deliver more value, more consistently, to more buyers who are like your best customers.
Now is the time to invest in strategic marketing.
Mine that customer data in your CRM. Get your arms around distinct market segment needs, behaviors and trends. Probe the market to get research insight on what and where you need to tweak your offerings. Evaluate your portfolio, investigate expanding it via acquisitions or narrowing it via divestiture. Uncover new revenue streams and growth ideas. Forge new channel relationships and partnerships. In other words, invest in your company’s future.
Call it whatever you want. This is the marketing that industrial B2B needs now.
What's more, do it well and your business development team will cheer.
Over the next several posts, The Industrious Marketer will drill down to what you can do on a tight budget (we’re realists, after all) to get started.
DOWNLOAD OUR LATEST WHITE PAPER
In the meantime, read my recent post about B2B market research and download our B2B Point of View white paper "Ten Tips for B2B Market Research".
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Tue, Apr 14, 2009 @ 02:03 PM
What's your network worth? According to new research on the value of business network connections, the answer is $948 per contact.
This week, IBM Research and MIT's Sloan School of Management announced study findings that indicate that, relatively speaking, the more connected among us tend to be the top producers. No big surprise, right? What makes this insight different is that it's based on the Web-based communications. Using algorithms to correlate professionals' communication patterns with revenue, researchers modeled the value derived from email address books, employee communities and, to some degree, the newer social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter.
Despite the surge of B2B social networking in recent months, web-based social networking is still very much a green field for most industrial managers. Some prefer not to engage, others are simply too busy. An an Operations exec in my network explained his challenge this way:
"Sadly, I just don't make much time to figure out new stuff unless I know it's necessary for my job. And the transportation industry isn't exactly on the technological edge. You know the story."
For industrial B2B, social networking potential is fairly obvious for Marketing and Sales, yet still obscure for everyone else. The table below features four distinct social networking tools. Click on the name to link to their sites.
SOCIAL TOOL | WHAT IT IS | HOW TO USE IT |
| Xobni | Outlook plugin that shows you the networks behind the people and emails in your Inbox--it searches Hoovers, LinkedIn, Facebook and your own archive of emails | Efficient Communications: See your contacts' vital info & their connections to your network, at a glance from your email screen. |
| LinkedIn | Leading professional network tool in the US and Europe | Thought Leadership: Make your profile public or private. Join industry-specific Groups to tap other's knowledge--or share your expertise and shine a light on your company.
|
| Twitter | Micro-blog with limit of 140 characters per post; people with similar interests will find you, follow you and share what you have to say with their networks. Twitter works with your PC and mobile device, and now integrates with Salesforce.com. | Promotions: Announce new products and business news, with links to your website. Business Intell: Monitor what people are saying about your company and your competitors'. Customer Service: Listen and talk to customers in an open channel, to get important info out quickly.
|
| Business Exchange | BusinessWeek's community with direct access to industry specific data, commentaries from leading execs, and opportunity for network exchange with other members | Market Trends Research: It's like attending a top notch executive conference without the cost of registration, travel and time.
|
Certainly, some caution is warranted when launching into social networking; your company's reputation is at stake, as well as your own. Since any of these tools require time investment to maintain, before you start, assess your means to execute and pin down objectives. And, of course, this will help you answer the core question: What's the return on investing in your network?
NEED HELP?
If you're wondering how to integrate social strategies with your everyday business processes, marketingFOLIO can help. We'll provide insight on how your industry is (or is not)
embracing these tools, who's using them, and what strategies you can
use to gain and sustain advantage. Transform your network into a lead generation machine.
>> Contact us for a FREE consultation.
REFERENCE
Interested in B2B social networking trends? Read these:
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Thu, Apr 09, 2009 @ 07:21 AM
Perusing the New York Times last evening, the future hit me over the head like a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica.*
- Micro-blog tool Twitter got front page coverage for its role as a beacon for Moldovan anti-Communist protestors (until the authorities cut off Internet access, routing protestors to older cell phone instant messaging technology)
- Magazines including Time and even Scholastic have defied the American Society of Magazine Editors to blur the lines between ads and articles (horrors!)
- Content arbitrageur Google, disguised as a search engine, defends its use of newspaper headlines and story snippets as the publishers scramble to reinvent their business models —while also defending new digital library of scanned orphan books in a quarrel with university libraries who are the keepers of these out-of-print gems of cultural history
The social media technology revolution is reconfiguring how we work, how we communicate, and increasingly, how we become educated.
Citizen journalists (a.k.a. bloggers) proliferate without limit (or standards). Editorial is increasingly promotional. Knowledge (or at least the raw materials) is be available where you happen to be, on the device you prefer to use. But what does it get you? Can you trust it?
Yet like so many technology shifts throughout history (think telephone systems or transportation networks), the full value won't emerge until the networks reach critical mass. The value IS the network, based on scale, flexibililty and open access. Linear connections (e.g. early party line phone systems, traditional media journalism, and conventional e-learning sites) channelled information exchange but didn't require shared engagement. Wikipedia showed us how even a small group of highly involved contributors sharing knowledge can create something real without formal process and a minimum of rules.
In the new social network models, sharing is the default standard. In fact, one must opt out to avoid the shared environment. My Tweets have the potential to reach everyone unless I choose the direct message option.
There is both upside and downside to this. Shared information enables greater freedom, literal and figurative. But the noise emanating from so many fragmented channels overwhelms our capacity to make sense of it all. Which is the best source of insight on the Darfur situation in Sudan? Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia, or an activist's blog? All or none, depending on the context. This opens the door for new knowledge intermediaries to step in and make things simple again. As is happening with Twitter, whose users migrate to TwitterDeck and other aggregators. If only someone could tell me which posts I must read and those to ignore—to clear the channel for me, customized to my unique way of learning, so that I can (again) relax and read in the evenings.
The history of technology is the story of revolutions.
Innovation, resistance to change, counter-revolution, and, finally, better things emerging from the conflict.
Still, for the present, where "sharing" isn't a norm in an industry (process, resources or assets), resistance to social media trends will persist. Until one day, when the critical mass is achieved. Minds—and business opportunities—will open as social media becomes the new norm. And a huge entree for the information gatekeepers.
All that was old becomes new again.
* One can still buy Encyclopedia Britannica in print form, as well as the newer DVD and online versions. The company has recovered from its disasterous shift to a "media advertising revenue model" (giving content away free online, subsidized by Web-based advertising) and has successfully expanded their subscriber base across old and new technology platforms.
NEED HELP?
If your company is struggling with how social media fits in with your business processes, marketingFOLIO can help. If you've got customers, you need to understand how these networks operate. We'll provide insight on how your industry is (or is not) embracing these tools, who's using them, and what strategies you can use to gain and sustain advantage. Contact us for a consultation.
REFERENCES
If you're interested in these April 2009 New York Times articles referenced, here are the links to NYTimes.com:
Posted by Katherine Canipelli on Tue, Apr 07, 2009 @ 09:35 PM
Launching a blog, I’ve learned, is like trying out for American Idol.
You walk in thinking you’re the next great pop star and then—ephiphany!—you find that your destiny is to be the next great opera diva (a bit like the French soprano’s Natalie Dessay’s story). It takes getting up on stage to find the right voice.
The Power of Authenticity.
This is to say that, after some reflection (and target market feedback), we’re shifting the style a bit. Less dense, more sporty. The Industrious Marketer’s goal is to add some insight on all things B2B marketing, but not necessarily to break new ground with every post. And, for the blogger, a little less pressure and a lot more fun!
More Chapters Yet To Come.
There remains a place for the serious, instructive, analytic, white papery content. Allow me to introduce the new marketingFOLIO B2B Point of View Series. The first article, “Ten Tips for B2B Market Research”, was modified from a 2006 client memo I wrote about the value of targeted research, input to a new strategic market segmentation initiative. (We got the gig, which combined web-based “customer” surveys and in-depth industry executive interviews to capture full spectrum data.)
Readings to Share.
After revamping the piece this week, I was happy to find two good articles that discuss trends in B2B market research. The first came from eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey ("Why Now is Not a Good Time to Slash Your Market Research Budget") citing three recent studies (AdMedia Partners, Duke Univ/AMA, MarketResearchCareers) that suggest that B2B companies may actually use the current economic situation to advantage by investing more in research. The second was a BtoB article ("Online Market Research Takes Off—Internet surveys combined with traditional research methods are becoming the norm") that echo’d my contention that support for B2B research suffers unnecessarily due to fear of small sample sizes.
Other than budget constraints, another pushback against research is “inside information”. Not the SEC kind; I refer to senior executives who strictly rely on personal experience to guide strategy decisions. I’m always a bit shocked to find this, despite years of experience working for engineer-oriented, operations-focused, sales-driven companies that should have inured me to the insularity of it all. Being customer-centric may be a stretch for some businesses, but to be customer deaf is a problem. Especially now, as market norms are shape-shifting as we watch.
As the saying goes, knowledge is power.