Don’t Drop Your Drawers on the Web – by John Leavy 3 Jun 2010
The title “Don’t Drop Your Drawers on the Web�. […]

Bridge the Gap in B2B Marketing and Sales by Christopher Ryan 24 May 2010

Thank you.
Christopher Ryan

Conventional wisdom also says that you can guarantee success by following the rules and statistics of marketing. However, things change very quickly in today’s marketplace so you must be careful to ensure the rules you follow are not based on yesterday’s environment. And if there is one thing more dangerous than a rule, it is a statistic. As Mark Twain said, “There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Relying solely on rules and statistics is guaranteed to make your marketing boring, and boring does not sell.

These are just two examples where conventional wisdom should be ignored or challenged. I am sure you can find many more.

Thinking about the potential death of a loved one is a tough way to make the point, but the fact is, Schefren is correct. We do have a much better chance of achieving what we focus on, especially if we get rid of the many distractions that deter us from our path. So what’s the message for marketers? Simply this: Spend all the time necessary to pick your go-to-market strategy. But once you do so, do not give up on your strategy easily. Focus and persistence will win the day more often than brilliance. Stay the course my friends, stay the course.

1. Helps you establish priorities in your marketing activities. This is very important in the interactive marketing era since there are an increasing number of methods and media that you can use to share your promotional message.
2. Provides you with a timetable for implementing each activity.
3. Provides specific targets to aim for in the form of marketing objectives.
4. Serves as a barometer for measuring your progress or lack of progress.
5. Helps the organization discover the most cost-effective marketing activities.
6. Gives the marketing team a blueprint for action and the responsibilities of each person.

So my advice is to develop a marketing plan, but don’t become overreliant on the plan. And don’t let the time spent on market planning paralyze you from taking action. As General George S. Patton said, “A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.”

Happy Memorial Day.

The key is the ‘friendly’ half of the friendly persistence formula because it relates to the manner in which you make contact with your prospect base. For instance, while you should make compelling offers and market aggressively you should be careful about practicing hard-sell techniques. While such tactics may win occasional short-term increases in business, they will scuttle your primary mission of building long-term customer relationships. One way to keep it friendly is to blend in ‘informational communications’ with your other promotions to show your prospects that you are an expert in your industry and enjoy sharing this expertise to help others.

1. Everyone is a definite winner. At the least, you get 10% off your bill. This will attract the attention of those (like me) who appreciate a bargain.
2. The offer appeals to the curious among us. Some people just have to know what is in the sealed entry form.
3. The offer motivates action – you have to go back to the restaurant to see if you won. This creates add-on business for CPK.
4. It’s relatively inexpensive. CPK probably gives the vast majority of people the 10% discount, not a costly promotion compared to what many other restaurants are doing.
5. The contest form was offered as a ‘thank you’ which is always a nice touch.

If your marketing and sales results are lethargic, consider spicing them up with a strong offer or two.

What is the lesson to be learned from this experience? Simply this – it is better to make it easy for your prospects to find the information they are seeking, even if it does not put you in a good light. If this very simple question had been answered on the Website, I would not have had to deal with Ellen, nor she with me. And I would not have been subject to the disappointment of not receiving the promised information. Who knows, perhaps Carbonite is making this information hard to find because the system can’t automatically backup desktop files and they don’t want to lose customers? But if I had signed up for the service and discovered the product limitation later, I would have been a disappointed (and short-time) customer. And now, I am someone who not only did not become a customer, but who has a negative feeling toward Carbonite.

Your prospects are just as busy as you are. They want accurate information quickly. Give it to them and they will either buy from you or at least go away with a positive perception. Hide the information and they will leave with a negative impression, and perhaps write about you on their blog.

So what does this have to do with marketing? Simply this. You will usually benefit more from a consistent and persistent message than in continually reinventing yourself and trying to be something new. We as marketers get tired of our messaging much faster than our prospects and customers. After all, we live with it every day. This of course doesn’t apply if you have a crappy message or are not differentiated from your competitors. Then by all means take a whack at coming up with revamped positioning, new value proposition, etc. But make sure you are doing it for the right reason, not just because you are personally tired your message or aren’t executing aainst it correctly. And please don’t create a new message before your prospects really know your existing message. That’s called wasteful and wasteful marketing is bad marketing.

Carpe Ocasio

In order to be successful, you must align your marketing and sales model to meet one or more of these three objectives. If you can increase all three metrics, you will soon have a world-class operation. And while there are many possible ways to achieve a revenue objective, many organizations (perhaps yours) are not using the best strategy. Each of the possible sales models has its plusses and minuses, and the best choice for you is not always the obvious choice. This decision shouldn’t be based on what your competitors are doing but rather on your unique assets and weaknesses. In fact, you can often beat your competitors by offering similar functionality or services in a different way – for example my company offers Software as a Service instead of an on-premises software installation. For business managers who want to avoid dealing with IT, this is a significant differentiation.

Here is the main point. If you are finding marketing and selling to be a struggle, even in better economic times, it may have more to do with your sales model than your messaging, lead generation or other factors.