Matt on Marketing

When you're selling, your first challenge is always to connect with the prospect - build rapport and a basis for why they should care about you and what you have to offer. But too often, selling companies approach this conversation in a seller-centric way - fronting with what the company has to sell vs. what the customer needs.

Turning this around to focus more on customer-centric sales - especially at the front of the process - can be relatively easy. Below are five initial ways to pivot quickly to a customer-centric selling approach.

· Use "you" instead of "I": Many sales people and marketers default their writing and speaking to the first-person, and focus their messages on what you (the seller) have and want. The next time you write a call script or sales letter, use "you" at least twice as often as you use "I". Make statements that address the customer and their situation & needs directly. It makes for a far more customer-centric approach that will attract and engage your readers more effectively.

· Treat the first sales call like an interview: Even if you've already qualified the prospect, your first call should still be about them. Even if you only have a few minutes in person or on the phone, ask smart questions to not only better understand the prospect's situation, but also get them to directly admit the challenges and pain currently faced by life without your solution. In your first call, ask a handful of smart questions and spend at least 75% of the time listening. With the right questions, many prospects will walk right into the sale.

· Align yourself with existing customer priorities: Too many sales professionals waste hours of time trying to sell something their prospects don't need. And even if they would benefit from it, you must align your solution with an existing problem or initiative in the organization. Your prospects are too busy to start juggling yet another priority not already on their plate. But by aligning your solution with something they're already trying to address and solve, you have a much better chance of being heard.

· Respect their time: Assume your customers are at least as busy as you are. Just because they're interested in what you have doesn’t mean they have an hour to hear you talk about it. Be brief, ask up front each time if they have a few minutes, and think of ways to condense your information into less. Send less but more important collateral to review. Condense the hour-long Webinar to a 1-2 page executive summary. Find ways to get information to your prospects without taking up much time. They'll appreciate you for it.

· Let your current customers sell for you: Case studies and success stories should be your most prominent and effective selling tool. Help your prospects envision what success with your product looks like a few days, weeks or months after they've bought it. Put those customer success stories in a variety of format - print, audio, video, Web - and make it easy for prospects at various stages of the sales process to engage with them. Even if you're the best salesperson at the company, your customers have more credibility and will sell better than you. Get them in front of your prospects more often.

That's essentially what Intuit did with its latest edition of QuickBooks.  According to a recent Business Week article, Intuit has created a community of its most active and rabid fans to support other QuickBooks users.  It's not too different from a variety of product forums across the Web, except in this case the forum is run by the company, not individual customers.

The result?  Intuit claims that 70 percent of customer service questions are now answered by other QuickBooks customers.  These are customers volunteering to answer questions Intuit used to pay employees to answer.

There's a lesson and opportunity here for your business as well.  How are you harnessing the power and passion of your best customers to help not just your business directly, but other customers as well?  It'll help your brand, increase satisfaction, likely impact retention, and will save you money.

Let's say you own or manage a professional baseball team.  Your costs for the year are relatively established at this point, but every day you play another game.  And every day, there are seats that are both empty and unsold.

This means that every time you fill that seat with a paying customer, you make money - and most of those dollars at this point go right to the bottom line.

Given this, what could a baseball team do to get more aggressive in filling those seats?

Below are some ideas.  And remember, as opposed to the opera or a play, for a ball club the revenue opportunity is as much about at-game revenue (concessions and souvenirs) as it is about the ticket.  So you can get creative about both ticket prices and cost of acquisition.  For example:

• Want to sell more premium seats?  Get others to buy premium tickets for returning military as a “thank you” for service.  Or, get others to buy premium tickets for families of those still deployed.  It's a great PR move, could be tax-deductible, and fills your most expensive and visible seats
• What if premium seat buyers could go onto the field after the game?  Would you let them throw a few pitches from the bullpen?  Have the team photographer take pictures of them in the dugout?  High perceived value in these low-cost incentives.
• How many teams have established and coordinated relationships with hotels, car services, restaurants and concierges?  Couldn't these travel-related services be more actively recommending a trip to the ballpark for both business and pleasure travelers?
• How could you turn part of the ballpark into a singles bar?  Perhaps it’s a section or “terrace” that has plenty of good drinks but is also a gathering place for the town's young, single and looking crowd.  Make the ballpark a place to see and be seen.
• What about youth baseball teams and summer day camp groups?  Could you offer them a short on-field basebal clinic after the game?
• For particular sections that don’t sell well on a regular basis, how can you get them filled more often, even with really low priced seats, so those visitors are also buying concessions and other game-day elements to drive incremental revenue?  Things like:
• Get in free for your birthday:  Get a free upper-deck ticket for a home game during your birthday month (will get friends/family to come too)
• Students - $1 tickets day of game w/ ID (do you think you'd make it up with college students buying a few $6 dollar beers?)
• Active military – free ticket when the rest of the family comes too

The opportunities go on and on.  What would you recommend?

In late May, the popular humor site ICanHazCheezburger announced that it wanted to bring its fans together for a Seattle Mariners baseball game.  Last night, more than 1,200 fans of Cheezburger’s family of sites crammed into three entire upper-deck sections of Safeco Field, with some traveling from across the country to hang out with other fans.

Think about this from both sides.  The team at ICanHazCheesburger just got their fans to pay to attend an event together, an event that generated a ton of buzz for the brand and is sure to garner significant post-event PR and pass-along from those who attended.

The Mariners, on the other hand, just sold three sections worth of upper deck tickets that may have gone empty otherwise (let alone revenue from concessions, souvenirs, etc).

Sounds like a win for both sides.

Your business likely tends to look like one or the other – either you have a business with fans or customers, or you have a venue (a sports arena, restaurant, hotel, conference center, whatever) that isn’t always full. 

How could you court the other business to make a win-win?  The opportunities seem endless…

I briefly followed a Twitter conversation yesterday afternoon that attempted to define what a real entrepreneur is.  It stemmed from one individual’s frustration that some small company employees considered themselves entrepreneurs, even though they did not own or start the company.

I wonder if it matters.  Furthermore, I love the idea of employees – at big companies and small – thinking of themselves like entrepreneurs. 

Forget about the technical requirements of an entrepreneur for a minute.  What constitutes a set of entrepreneurial attributes that employees could emulate?

-          Customer-Centric Thinking:  Successful entrepreneurs are obsessed with their customers – what they want, how they want it, and their reaction/feedback to everything big and small.  Successful entrepreneurs talk to customers every day to get feedback, build relationships, and help the customers themselves help evolve and grow the business.

-          No Unnecessary Spending:  Entrepreneurial employees treat every dime as if it were their own.  Do we really need those extra printouts for the trade show?  Is that marketing channel really working?  Is it generating not just leads but sales? 

-          Creative Problem-Solving:  For entrepreneurs, there is no box, and nothing is off the table.  Entrepreneurs are attempting to do something no one has done before, which requires a new way of thinking and doing.  It also requires bucking the norm, the creative “control”, and often going against what is known and understood.  That takes guts and discipline to do day in and day out.

-          Tolerance (or Immunity) To Fear:  Fear, as I’ve said before, gets in the way of growth and innovation.  Successful entrepreneurs know little to no fear, and certainly don’t allow any element of fear to cloud their judgment, creativity or courage to achieve what they know is right.

-          Acceptance of Constructive Failure:  Smart people actually fail a LOT, in part because they try a lot of things that aren’t yet proven.  Not only do they try and fail often, they learn from that failure and get better – and never let that failure keep them from focusing on the ultimate goal.

If I had a company full of people who acted like this, they can call themselves entrepreneurs all day long.

LinkedIn’s relevance not only as a professional networking tool but as an active social media marketing tool is increasing at a rapid rate.  Among the various ways to network and reach customers on LinkedIn, the Groups feature offers significant, measurable opportunity for smart companies.

In a nutshell, LinkedIn Groups are opt-in set of individuals who share a common interest.  There’s an extremely long tail of groups on LinkedIn, covering a wide variety of subject matter.  Chances are, whatever market you’re in or product/service you’re selling, there’s at least a handful of groups on LinkedIn focused on it.

They may not all have thousands of members, but these individuals each represent not only a prospective customer, but an influencer who can reach others in their own networks – beyond the confines of the specific online group.

Using these groups to grow your own business won’t work immediately.  This isn’t direct marketing with immediate response and revenue, at least not likely.  To benefit from these groups, to provide value to other members and earn their confidence, respect and business, you need to take the time to become a respected, valued member of the community.

But with time and focus, LinkedIn Groups can deliver thought leadership, new customers and even new brand ambassadors for your business.  Here are a few recommended steps to get started.

-          Join relevant groups:  Do several wide searches in the Groups section to see what’s available and relevant to you, and your business.  Don’t think like a marketer or salesperson, think like a customer (and you’re the customer).  Where can you provide value?  For which groups do you have something constructive to add (not just a sales pitch)?  Those are the groups where organic participation will be easier and more effective from you.

-          Post articles of interest:  Start building a presence for yourself in the group by posting articles of interest.  Do not post articles from your own site or blog, at least not initially.  Build credibility with the group and for yourself by offering purely educational and value-added content from across the Web that other members will appreciate.  These articles will not only appear on the group home page, but also in email digests sent to the majority of members.

-          Participate in discussions:  Look for questions you can answer, or questions worth introducing to the discussion board.  Be educational, and do not sell.  Recommend ideas, solutions, other services or products beyond what you directly offer. 

-          Reach out to individual members:  Once a member of a group, LinkedIn gives you the ability to send and receive direct messages from other members without either party revealing their direct contact information.  If you see comments in the discussion board that could use a direct vs. group response, use this feature to contact the individual member.  This is a great way to start building an individual relationship with a member who may be a good sales prospect, but do so based on providing value and earning trust.

-          Invite your customers to participate:  The best way to start introducing your product or service into these groups is not through you directly, but through your customers.  Invite a handful of your customers to join the LinkedIn Group with you.  Their engagement with other members on a variety of topics will give them the credibility to – when the time and context is right – introduce and recommend your product. 

Earlier today the team at Marketo offered a great overview and comparison of Nurture Marketing and Closed Loop Marketing.  Both are strong & viable strategies for more effectively managing different types of B2B leads through a sales funnel through to close.  And Marketo’s right, nurture marketing is great but closed loop marketing is better, and typically generates better results by more directly matching sales touchpoints and messages to specific prospect intent and behavior.

But achieving lead follow-up nirvana is a long ways from reality for many organizations.  A survey earlier this year indicated that a mere 10% of companies were actively using lead nurture strategies as part of their demand generation and pipeline management marketing.  Even for those 10% of companies, implementing a more complex closed loop system may feel intimidating and out of reach.

But for the other 90% of organizations, going from whatever they’re currently doing (likely a variation of treating all leads equally) to executing a complex lead management strategy doesn’t have to happen in one giant step.  For these organizations, achieving a strong nurture marketing strategy (let alone the next step to closed loop) should be seen as a multi-step process.  Below are a few recommendations to start migrating to a better way of triaging and working leads, which should result in more opportunities and more sales over time without changing lead generation tactics or budget.

·         Define an ideal lead, and treat them differently:  Create a relatively simple definition of an ideal prospect, and start with two buckets – do they qualify or do they not?  For example, does an ideal prospect need to come from a company of a partiuclar size?  From a particular titled contact?  From a particular industry?  Set just 2-3 criteria, and start triaging leads accordingly.  Even this simple first step can ensure your sales team is working with the best leads more aggressively (and treating lower-priority leads as such)

·         Start a single nurture campaign for all leads:  Sure, it would be great to have different nurture segments by industry, expected close date, reason the deal may be delayed, etc.  But if you’re just starting out nurturing leads, start with a single nurture campaign for all leads.  A monthly newsletter, or a regular Webinar offer, or even an occasional free white paper offer can keep you top of mind with prospects not yet ready to buy.  Get complicated later, but get something going to those latent prospects right away.

·         Establish qualification questions to segment leads into status buckets:  Are you talking to a decision-maker?  Does budget exist?  Is there an internal compelling event to make a decision soon?  These are questions you can ask in a lead registration form, a follow-up survey, or even in a call script your sales team uses.  In any case, there are likely a handful of similar questions (no more than 4-5) that can be asked of prospects up front, recorded in your CRM system, and be used to triage leads further.  If nothing else, your sales team will love having this data to manage predictability of their short-term pipeline.

·         Be honest about expected close dates, and set sales team follow-up expectations accordingly:  As new leads get contacted and qualified, get your sales team in the habit of establishing an expected close date.  Your leads could fall into three buckets- immediate oppportunities, medium-term opportunities, and nebulous “future” opportunities.  Understanding how quickly your prospect may make a decision can help determine the strength and frequency of your follow-up communication.

Most business books take an entire 200-300 pages to make a single point.  Oftentimes, the book’s length helps make the point with examples, case studies, explorations of different components of the primary point, etc.  But sometimes, what you really needed was something short – just 2-3 pages perhaps to get the gist.

That might be why I liked David Meerman Scott’s new book World Wide Rave so much.  It’s a relatively short book, with a focus on how to get our customers – your fans – to spread your ideas and share your stories with those they know.  It’s an excellent treatise on how to create and drive word-of-mouth for your business or brand.

And what makes it even better is that you don’t have to read it.

Pick up the book and flip to a random page.  You’re likely to landing on the start of a new, short topic that will spark your creativity.  This book is full of short but powerful ideas, examples and inspirations related to spreading the word about your products and services virally.

When I first picked up a copy, I didn’t have time to dig in and read it right away.  And thank goodness.  Over the next couple days, I literally would pick it up every once in awhile and just flip to a page.  Tons of great content and ideas in a short, easy to follow, quick-hit format.

For marketers especially, I highly recommend this book.  Just don’t read it (at least not like that).

Just heard a radio ad for an online university that offered a white paper to listeners as a lead generation tool.  The content of the white paper, given the ad’s intent and intended audience, was pretty good.  The fact that they called it a white paper, however, was off the mark.

The concept of white papers is more often seen in B2B marketing, but the idea of giving consumer product customers access to free, educational information isn’t exactly new.  It’s just that smart marketers never refer to those offers using industry lingo.  Instead, you’ll more often hear things like “special report”, “free money-saving tips”, and the like. 

Even with some B2B buyers, the term “white paper” isn’t exactly going to resonate.  For some audiences, IT buyers for example, an explicit white paper offer might work.  For retail managers or small business owners, probably not.

Reminds me of a Subway radio ad a few years ago that literally referred to its customers as “consumers.”  For internal planning, fine.  For creative, never.

This post from Matt at SmallBizBee was humbling.

But my first reaction after reading it was actually, "Gee, my handwriting really is awful!" , followed by a re-read of how he had both interpreted and shared our communication exchange from earlier in the week.

Everything we do, say and write can come back to help us or to haunt us.  Every element of our communication reflects and shapes who we are, and how others perceive us.  This goes for communication outside your company - to customers, prospects, vendors and partners - as well as those you work with inside your organization.

It speaks to the importance of consistency and respect as much as anything.

Jim Collins has written extensively about who you should take into battle with you each day in your organization. He's written mostly about finding the right people, but his rules equally apply to ejecting the wrong people.

Take his list of criteria for the right people below, for instance. Think about the people in your organization right now who exhibit the exact opposite characteristics. Can you afford to keep them around? Isn't their drain on the organization exacerbated in this economy?

• The right people fit the company's core values
• The right people don't need to be tightly managed
• The right people understand that they do not have "jobs" - they have responsibilities
• The right people fulfill their commitments
• The right people are passionate about the company and its work
• The right people display window-and-mirror maturity (i.e. they give credit when credit's due, and take responsibility when things go awry)

Going the extra mile for customers is a hallmark of great brands worldwide.  The Ritz Carlton has become famous for it.  More recently, so has Zappos.com.

Last week, Hyatt Hotels announced they'd really like to be known for doing extraordinary things for their customers as well.  CEO Mark Hoplamazian announced a program called "random acts of generosity", in which the hotel chain will randomly pick up the tab for various amenities and services during your stay.

The concept is good, but Hyatt's trying a bit too hard.  And it probably won't work.

Why is the Ritz Carlton known worldwide for exceptional, above-and-beyond service?  Because it's core to their brand DNA, it's something they practice daily with every single employee, and it's something they've been doing for years.

Zappos.com has less of a history, but is equally committed to an organization-wide customer focus.  Read anything from their CEO (or even their employees) and it's clear this is not a random or new initiative.  It's just how they do business.

These are enviable positions, but they didn't come easy.  They were earned.

Hyatt's not there.  This program, ironically, could work the opposite of how they intended.  Say you're sitting at a Hyatt bar, and the guy next to you has his tab picked up by the hotel as part of the program.  You, however, are still paying.  How does that make you feel?  What are you going to tell your friends?

Even the guy who had his tab picked up can't guarantee his friends the same service when they next visit a Hyatt.

Stay at the Ritz, or buy shoes from Zappos, and the same high bar for customer service applies to everyone.

Don’t worry about press releases, media lists, blogs, PR firms, any of that. At least not up front.

Building a PR strategy doesn’t start with tactics, it starts with business fundamentals. To write a PR plan, start with these questions:

• Who is your audience?
• What is your overall business objective/strategy with them?
• What role do you need PR to play? What objective should it drive towards?
• What message do you need PR to deliver? What action do you want your target audience to take?
• What are the PR/communication channels available to reach the audience, and communicate that message?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you have the tools to start thinking about tactics.

Special thanks to Christine Haskell of social venture labs on Start Up Nation, who recently wrote a nice profile of Heinz Marketing and our “reason for being.” Check it out here.