a sales manager's guide: how to get more from...

HOW TO GET MORE FROM MARKETING

A Sales Manager's Guide:

by Paul Greenberg

T

| 2

INTRODUCTION 3

THE COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION 4

- Impact on the Customer 5

- Impact on the Buying Cycle 8

- How Has Marketing Changed? 13

- How Has Sales Changed? 15

- Sales and Marketing Alignment: Why Should Sales Care? 17

Summary 20

About 21

TABLEOF

CONTENTS

Back to Table of Contents | 3

INTRODUCTION

Businesses have to begin to think of marketing, sales and the interrelationship between the two in a very different way than they did in the last century.

Paul Greenberg, The 56 Group

There is no question, if you’ve managed to get through the 20th century and are now involved actively in this century, that you’ve probably noticed that sales and marketing have dramatically changed and thus, what used to pass for mar-keting and sales has a lot more limited value than it did “back in the day.” A new way of looking at marketing and sales is now de rigueur and I’m not saying that in a flippant manner.

In order to understand what that means both strategically and practically, it’s important to understand the context for the changes that have gone on.

THUS, THE GAME PLAN FOR THIS GUIDE INCLUDES:

l A look at the overall transformation of business that we’ve seen in the last decade and its impact on customers and their expectations.

l A review of the best practices on how to work with marketing on a day to day basis.

l A set of lessons to help attune us to the new economic and business reality Let’s start with what we’ve seen the last decade when it comes to transformation.

Note I didn’t say business transformation. You’ll see why in a just a short time.


THE COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION

Every single

individual and institution on this planet are either

directly or indirectly impacted by this explosive communications

revolution and have started to adapt accordingly.

In the last decade, we have seen a significant transformation going on—one that is irrevocable and fundamental—but it is not a business revolution. It is a communications revolution and it has transformed with what we communicate, when we are able to communicate, how we communicate and what the results of the communications are. It has transformed the nature of who and how we trust. It has transformed how we create, distribute and consume information.

That’s already a lot to absorb, but it goes further than that. Every single individual and institution on this planet are either directly or indirectly impacted by this explosive communica-tions revolution and have started to adapt accordingly.

One very telling statistic that goes to the heart of the power of this communications revolution is that while there are 7 billion mobile devices and 21 percent of those are smart devices, which generate 88 percent of all mobile data traffic. In 2013, smart devices accounted for 77 percent of all the growth of mobile devices in the 12 months following 2012. So the trend is clear. How we communicate and what we do with the communica-tions (consume and even create and distribute information is one group of those things) is becoming ubiquitous.

What does that mean?


Who and What Is the Digital/Empowered/Entitled Customer?For the purposes of this document and for your purposes, we are going to focus on B2B and, in particular, sales, marketing and customers. To under-stand what a salesperson has to do with marketing then is to take this com-munications revolution and see what it means in the lives of our prospects and customers and then in our lives as salespeople and/or marketing folks interacting with one and all. We’ve seen a dramatic transformation of what customers expect of com-panies, as they grow increasingly empowered by peer communications. The options for communications via phone, email, text, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, in person, in communities and user forums are endless.

What this means is that customers and prospects have access to:

l Standard information about the brand – put out there by the companies that own the brand, under control of the brand.

l Opinions about and reviews of the brand – good or bad – not under control of the brand but under control of the customer and external subject matter experts.

l Conversations about the brand – good or bad – not under control of the brand but under control of the customer.

We are going to focus on

B2B in particular,

sales, marketing and customers.

Impact on the Customer


What makes the second two interesting is what underlies the seriousness with which the customers pay attention to those opinions and conversations. They trust them — to a degree unprecedented in the annals of business. How do we know this?

Since 2000, the Edelman Trust Barometer has been the best known survey to track the most trusted sources. Back in 2005, for the first time, The Edelman Trust Barometer found that a measurable number of people thought that they trust a “person like me” as their most trusted source. That went from 23 percent that year, to 51 percent the next year and, in 2014, it sits at 82 percent as the type of person who is most trusted by their peers.

The implications of this are vast and far-reaching when it comes to business. First, it means that the most trusted source for all information regarding a brand is not the brand, but the customers or at least watchers/followers of that brand. The numbers are repeatedly overwhelming.

I could continue in this vein with several more studies just like this, but you get the picture. Customers trust their peers far more than they trust the brand itself. But there is more than just that.

EdelmanTrust Barometer

found that a measurable number of people

thought that they trust a “person like me” as their

most trusted source.

2005 23%2006 23%2007 51%

201482%

Trust a “person like me” as their

most trusted source

70% of US online adults trust brand or

product recommendations from friends and family

10% trust ads on websites

78% trust peer recommendations

for products

14% trust ads

2013Forrester Research

90% trust peer recommendations

56% trust advertising

2013Social Commerce Today

2013Nielsen


Remember what the second aspect of the communications rev-olution is — how we create, distribute and consume informa-tion has changed. Right along side peer trust, is user-generat-ed content – information in various media that is created by those very same trusted peers. That means product reviews, ex-pert advice, brand feedback and comparisons. It means videos, podcasts, community conversations, tweets, Facebook comments, messages and timeline entries. It means reading, hearing and see-ing the information via smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops. It means getting it on the go or at a station somewhere. But it means being able to have information that previously would have been un-available to you at your beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in the way that you want to consume it.

So we know that peer trust is dominant and that the information we need to make informed decisions is not only more often than not generated by those peers but that we can create, distribute or con-sume it 24/7 in any way we want.

But there is one more thing that impacts businesses that comes from these empowered customers and that is choice. Customers have far more choices when it comes to acquiring products or services than ever before and the means to seek out and identify those choices, long before the choices come to them.

How does all this impact the buying cycle, especially in the B2B world?

We can CREATE, DISTRIBUTE CONSUME

24/7

Right alongside peer trust, is user-generated content...• product reviews• expert advice• brand feedback• comparisons


There is a truly notable change in the buying cycle — one which makes, as we will see, sales’ relationship to marketing more important than ever.

The buyer’s sales lifecycle is close to complete by the time they speak to a vendor.

There is repeated proof, the latest being the Acquity Group’s 2014 Procurement Study, that buyers are already through 80 percent of a traditional B2B sales cycle by the time they contact a vendor. That means they have already researched the company. They haven’t used just the traditional sources that the company provides — e.g. marketing collateral that identifies the products in a feature-function sort of way or case studies that the company provides online — but also via a wide array of sources that weren’t previously easily available but are now ubiquitous.

THAT MIGHT INCLUDE:

Impact on the Buying Cycle

1 COMMUNITIES OF INTERESTwhere the brand is being discussed

2 SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTSwho know the products, or at least the product types and the brands and their competitors

3 ONLINE RESEARCH that finds competitive intelligence, conver-sations about the products and the brand, not available easily in the past

Acquity Group’s 2014 Procurement Study

80%of a traditional B2B sales cycle is COMPLETE by the time

they contact a vendor


But equally interesting if not more so, is that the digital footprint of companies is so easily identifiable, the research available so easy to find that more and more buyers are buying online, willing at some level to opt out of human contact, at least for smaller B2B purchases. In the same Acquity Group study, they found that 45 percent of baby boomers and 89 percent of millennials make business purchases on-line. One of the most significant online purchasing sources is Ama-zon Supply, Amazon’s 2.2 million product wholesale B2B behemoth that no one talks about yet, but everyone is willing to order from. In fact, 31 percent of the boomers and 63 percent of the millennials have ordered from there.

The big lesson here is that it reproduces Amazon’s consumer-like buying experience very well. 71 percent of Acquity Group’s respon-dents said they would be more online if the experience at the supplier site was easier.

What all this points out is that we are now in a world where the buy-ing experience is now in the hands of the customer. It is a world that the customer controls the conversation going on about the brand and this has increased the trust of the customer in others like them to give them the “truth” about the brand that they are considering. It is an era defined by the digital customer.

45% of Baby Boomers

89% of Millennials

make business purchases online

We are now in a world where the

buying experience is now in the hands of the customer


Why Is Modern Marketing about Fighting for the Customer’s Attention, Rather than just Against Competitors?

This digital customer and the tools and channels available to that customer have changed what marketing needs to be thinking about too. If you look at the past, marketing was focused on being bet-ter than and different than the competitors. Those competitors were typically companies in your own market that were providing prod-ucts and service of like variety. So what was important back in the “old days” was what Marketing 101 deemed the Four Ps. Product, price, promotion and place as the core principles of how to market. Know your product inside and out; have a variable pricing strategy; advertise in various media and channels; and find out the best place to engage customers.

While there is nothing wrong with anything there at all, given the requirements and demands of entitled, empowered customers, there is no room for the 4Ps as foundation for marketing above all oth-ers because of one unique factor. At the true “top of the funnel” the companies are no longer battling it out for competitive advantage but more ominously, they are now battling with other companies for attention.

Companies are no longer

battling it out for competitive advantage

but ... are now battling with other

companies for ATTENTION


What that means is simple. Each of us is using multiple channels organically and daily is receiving brand messages and other mes-sages via those channels every day. We are not just receiving the messages but we are consuming media at unprecedented rates. On the one hand, the frequency of the brand messages has in-creased because the ease of producing the messages and the cost of producing those messages has decreased year over year and the number of regularly used available channels has increased — espe-cially digital channels. Additionally, even when it’s not in the form of a message, just media consumption alone, e.g. watching TV, read-ing something on our iPhones, playing branded computer games is reaching staggering levels — and levels that obfuscate your brand message to an individual.

BRANDMEASSAGES

CONSUMINGMEDIA

By 2015 Americans will consume media for greater than

1.7 trillion hours, an average of

15.5 hours per person per day.

UNPRECEDENTEDRATES


What am I talking about? In 2013, a huge study done by the Institute for Communication Technology Management (CTM) called “How Much Mass Media: A 2013 Report on American Consumers,” found:

1 By 2015, the data indicate that Americans will consume me-dia for more than 1.7 trillion hours, an average of approximately 15.5 hours per person per day. This means that the amount of media delivered all told will exceed 8.75 zettabytes annually, or 74 gigabytes of data sent to the average consumer per day.

2 In 2008, viewing video was less than 3 hours per month per indi-vidual; by 2012, viewing time had become nearly 6 hours a month, a year over year growth rate of 21 percent. By 2015, the report es-timates that Americans will be watching video for almost 11 hours a month, a compound annual growth rate of 24 percent a year.

3 From 2008 to 2015, total annual hours for users of Facebook and YouTube will grow from 6.3 billion hours to 35.2 billion hours, a year over year growth rate of 28 percent, leading to 6.5 times what it was in 2008.

How accurate are the numbers? I don’t know. They are projections. But what they indicate is a media consumption volume that is phenomenal and that level of consump-tion and noise is only increasing, making it all the more difficult to compete for the attention of customers and prospects, which in turn is forcing changes in how marketers market.

Total Annual Hours Will Grow from

6 to 35 Billion Hours

2008-2015Facebook & YouTube


First, it’s gone from pushing competitive messages at customers in an effort to influence behavior to, at least when done well in theory, providing highly personalized content to capture the attention of the customer or prospect. In other words, marketing has become and is the first line of engagement.

That means that the 4Ps as the foundation for marketing, while still relevant concepts, are no longer enough for marketers to succeed in contemporary markets. There is a fifth P that matters even more for capturing the attention of the prospect out there — and that is per-sonalization.

Think of it this way. We are dealing with a digital customer who is driven by self-interest. Self-inter-est in the case of marketing is simply that the cus-tomer or prospect wants to be appealed to as the individual they are. I don’t want to be a New York Yankees fan over 60 who makes an income of….not telling. I want to be Paul Greenberg, and not the Paul Greenbergs who aren’t me. So your job as a contemporary marketer is to find out who I am, what I’m like and to anticipate future behavior ac-cordingly.

How Has Marketing Changed?

Personalization

Self-Interst


Not easy. But even harder, when you realize that marketing has to do this regardless of the amount of data you have on me as an individ-ual. What you are actually attempting to do when you are anticipat-ing behavior is not just figure out what I’m going to buy, but why I’m thinking about buying it.

Even thinking that way is a sea change for marketing. Marketing has often been focused on the product or service being sold by the com-pany (buy this thing) and the merits of the product. But contemporary marketing has to concern itself with the self-interest of the customer and focus in on that. Rather than its historic product bias i.e. feature-function, marketing has to concentrate on outcomes — what is it that we provide that makes your job or your life work a little better, or be a bit easier for you. 21st century “modern” marketing appeals to the self-interest of the buyer by giving that buyer a sense of not what you offer per se, but what you do for them - how you help them accom-plish something that they are looking to do. Personalization.

Yes, marketing is the first line of engagement, but when the handoff of a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) occurs marketing has provided sales with someone who feels (to some extent) valued by the com-pany they barely know. With this approach, marketing can remain in the mix to help with more personalized insights — refinement of mes-sage, more personalized campaigns, and whatever else is needed to keep the customers, present and future, engaged.

Contemporary marketing has to concern itself with the self-interest

of the customer and focus in on that


I think we are all in agreement; business and customers are not what they once were. Customers require more, demand more and have more options to choose from and information available to them. No one feels this change more acutely than sales does. Customers no longer see them as the guys selling stuff but now they are seen as service representatives for the company (in B2B environments). That means that salespeople have to be a point of contact for the custom-er — someone who can handle problems as well as close “the deal.”

But even more so, they are being seen as subject matter experts — a source that the customers and prospects can draw on when need-ed. Theoretically, of course, all salespeople should be subject mat-ter experts — given they have to know the domains they sell in and the kind of people they sell to. But this domain expertise, because it isn’t a measurable capability hasn’t been in the salesperson playbook until recently.

The benefit of this is immediate. In “The Mind of the B2B Buyer” from DemandGen & Genius.com (2010), the respondents were overwhelming in their support of the benefits of the salesperson as an SME. They found that 95 percent of B2B buyers chose a solu-tion provider who provided them with content needed to help get through each stage of buying process. You can’t get a whole lot more tangible than that.

How Has Sales Changed?

95%

of B2B buyers chose a solution provider who

provided them with content needed to help get

through each stage of buying process.

“The Mind of the B2B Buyer” from DemandGen & Genius.com

(2010)


There are a lot of general approaches to what has often been called “social selling” (though it could use a better name). For example, since 2008 Caterpillar has used Facebook, Twitter and blog communities to transmit their subject matter expertise. Their first blog in 2008 was on electric power generation. This led to a 3-day symposium in 2011 on generator set enclosures, which, due to their establishment in this realm as thought leaders, brought 2000 attendees to the event. The event generated leads for sales such as (real lead) “We are looking for 740 dump trucks in Europe for rent.” This approach is supported by research done by IDC and others. In 2011, IDC found in their Buyer Experience survey, that vendor blogs and communities are second to only independent blogs and com-munities as trusted sources for content. So we have marketing as the first line of engagement and we have sales as the subsequent overarching point of contact for a customer’s con-tinued engagement.

What does this mean, in real terms?

How does this impact a company’s operations; its interactions with the customer?

How would a changed relationship between the two disparate departments whose ultimate goal is built around engaging customers benefit each of them?

IDC 2011

Buyer Experience Surveyfound that vendor blogs

and communities are second to only independent blogs and

communities as trusted sources for content


Sales and Marketing Alignment: Why Should Sales Care?When Peppers and Rogers issued their report in 2008, sales and mar-keting alignment was just a blip on the radar. Today, it is a topic of conversation at companies all over the world, but the execution has not been as good as conversation. Forrester found in its B2B study that only 8 percent of the companies surveyed felt that their market-ing and sales departments were tightly aligned.

As things stand now, there are still complaints of:

l The disconnection of objectivesl Misalignment of measurement l Lack of common definitions and understandingl Misalignment of messagingl Lack of cadencel Separate use of technologies and disparate,

non-integrated databases.

All problems that can be overcome with alignment.

Not only can problems be solved, but there are positive benefits too.


In a report done by Aberdeen Group in 2011, weirdly enough also called the same thing as Peppers and Rogers did three years before, “Sales and Marketing Alignment: The New Power Couple”, they found that companies who were best-in-class aligned found 40 per-cent of the sales forecasted pipeline is generated by marketing and that there was 31.6 percent year over year growth in revenue where in companies that this wasn’t the case so much in average companies (22 percent) and laggards (18.2 percent).

So, the value of alignment couldn’t be any clearer when it comes to tan-gible results. But there are the intangible results too. Sales and market-ing working together as a team aimed at a measurable outcome with a balanced view of the opportunities and an ongoing interest in each other’s results are far more powerful than siloed departments working independent of and even at loggerheads with each other.

Think about technology that is jointly used, integrated databases that get us closer and closer to the coveted 360° view of the customer; marketing collateral that isn’t rewritten to meet sales needs because it doesn’t have to be. Also, think about common definitions and protocols that identify what a marketing-qualified lead is and when the handoff to sales will occur and a sales-qualified lead — all leads definitions that are commonly held. Life becomes simpler and results better.

ALIGNMENTSales and Marketing


Again, quoting from Aberdeen on what happens when you get best-in-class results for that alignment between sales and marketing:With alignment comes more involvement of the marketing team in the sales process and vice versa. As we all know, the B2B buy-ing cycle is long and involved and can get complex with a lot of back and forth, uncertainty on the buyers side, anxiety over the unfinished state of business on the sales side and a dance go-ing on seemingly interminably between the buyer and the seller. With tight alignment, marketing can be involved in nurturing the potential buyers — able to provide intelligence and content of value to the hoped buyer-to-be and to be able to keep the salesperson(s) alert to things going on at the company of the buyer or in the marketplace that are of value to the salesperson(s) in making decisions about the next best actions that they have to take as the opportunity progresses. Alignment, whether with the tangible, obvious results or the in-tangible benefits should be a no-brainer. There are issues to deal with — understanding who “owns” the alignment (if anyone), clarifying the differences between the two functions so that they don’t impinge on each other while cooperating, etc. but bringing sales and marketing into conjunction in an era where the custom-er is demanding more personalized attention to even get their attention is such an obvious benefit, that you should start working on it as soon as you finish reading this document.

91% of the best-in-class companies, market-ers had a thorough

understanding of sales goals.

73% of the salespeople

had a thorough understanding of

the marketing goals.

67% There is a better

probability that mar-keting-generated

leads will close.

209% There is “stronger” (Aberdeen’s words)

contribution to revenue from

MQLs.


SUMMARYThat wraps this up, sales leader. We are dealing with what is increasingly becoming a radical new landscape with empow-ered, nearly entitled customers, a world that communicates differently, creates, distributes and consumes information dif-ferently and trusts very differently. This has created a unique set of problems, issues and opportunities for business, many of which revolve around another big change — the increas-ing need for sales and marketing to start working together to solve these issues. I assume you get this or you wouldn’t have made it down to the very end of this document. So, read up, and get to our best practices outlined in Part 2 of this series. The customers aren’t waiting. Nor should you. Marketing and sales, unite. You have everything to gain.

P


LatticeLattice is pioneering the predictive applications market for marketing and sales. Lattice helps companies grow revenue across the entire customer lifecycle with data-driven marketing and sales applications that make complex data science easy to use. By combining thousands of buying signals with advanced predictive analytics in a suite of secure cloud applications, Lattice helps companies of all sizes including Citrix, DocuSign, Inc., HireVue and SunTrust Bank to increase conversion rates by more than three times. Lattice is backed by NEA and Sequoia Capital with headquarters in San Mateo, CA.

Paul Greenberg

In addition to being the author of the best-selling CRM at The Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC, an enterprise applications consulting services firm, fo-cused on CRM strategic services and a founding partner of the CRM training company, BPT Partners, LLC, a training venture composed of a number of CRM luminaries.

His book, CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, now in its third edition, is in 8 languages and been called "the bible of the CRM industry." It is used by more than 60 universities as a primary text. It was named "the Number 1 CRM book" by SearchCRM.com in 2002 and is one of two books recommended by CRMGuru. The Asian edition of CIO Magazine named it one of the 12 most important books an Asian CEO will ever read. Paul has also authored two other books including E-Government for Public Officials (Thompson Publish-ing, 2003).

ABOUT

a sales manager's guide: how to get more from...

Documents