Q: Todd, what’s the best business book you have read recently?
A: Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. It’s an easy read, it will only take an hour or two. But man oh man, is it profound.
I’ve been a fan of GapingVoid.com, Hugh’s blog, for quite some time. Hugh makes you think about marketing in a whole new light. For me, he makes marketing fun. I’m actually inspired after I spend time with his material.
As for the book, it makes you appreciate the need and the value of creativity. As a natural follow-up, the person I told this to asked: “What does creativity have to do with my line of work?
Your front-line employees have a tremendous amount of influence over the experience a customer has with your company. The simple mistake many managers make is that they simply expect the employee to do the right thing. The question is, what is the right thing? Without expressing to your employees how you want them to act, they’ll act according to their own impression of how they think they should act.
This gets right into the next comment – don’t skimp on training. Once you start building the customer-centric culture and measuring the experience, you need make sure all your employees understand how you (as the manager or business owner) want them to act. Is the number #1 priority making sure the customer is happy, no matter what? Is it something else? Whatever it is, your employees need to understand it.
Communicate is key here – employees must have a clear understanding of how they are expected to act. A big part of that is simply defining what you would define as good behavior. Once that’s done, you can work on measuring it and incenting it. Let’s look at an example in a call center.
If the desired behavior is for the call center agents to solve the caller’s issue on the first call, then you should track first call resolution numbers. But, make sure then you incent on that – don’t incent on call time. It doesn’t do much good to say we want to solve problems on the first call and then incent people on how quickly they get customers off the line. It is inconsistencies like this that can cause a customer experience initiative to fail.
How a customer uses your product or service is only part of the experience. How your employees interact with customers goes a long way toward how a customer views the experience with your company. You can influence those interactions – just remember to communicate to your employees how you want them to act. Then back that up with training, measuring and incenting to ensure the behavior you want is actually occurring.
Next, we’ll look at everyone’s favorite word, Innovate.
GrowthANSWERS and Plexus Marketing Group, Inc. recently completed a qualitative survey of Georgia manufacturers which focused on which marketing strategies and tactics they used and found most successful, and which “Growth Gaps” were the most compelling for their companies.
Several key themes were identified relative to the marketing strategies employed by the 38 manufacturers surveyed: (a) the importance of niche marketing (especially among manufacturers with revenues of $10 million or less per year); (b) the importance of “word of mouth” and “referral” marketing; and (c ) the relatively high degree of variability regarding how the economy was affecting the various types of manufacturers surveyed (which appeared to be affected not only by the particular industry segment they were in, but also by the marketing and selling strategies and tactics used).
The most frequently mentioned marketing tactics used were: (a) websites, search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing; (b) direct mail and catalog marketing; (c) tradeshows, (d) print and trade media advertising, and (e) personal selling (as a marketing tactic).
Two “Growth Gap” areas were of key interest to the respondents: the “Prospect Gap”, which is related to a company’s ability to attract more qualified prospects, and the “Margin Gap”, which relates to a company’s ability to get paid more for their products.
GrowthANSWERS’ whitepaper on the survey results will be available in early December 2008. It not only provides more detail on the above findings, but also presents several recommendations on how small to mid sized manufacturers can address the Growth Gaps they find the most compelling.
For example, one of the reasons that niche oriented manufacturers find the “Prospect Gap” of key interest is because they have a limited pool of current and prospective customers. However, the “Customer Gap” and “Expansion Gap” should be of equal interest in these situations because these address how to better create customers from this limited pool of prospects, and how to develop new product and service offerings that result in deeper and longer term relationships with these customers (which also reinforce the company’s position in its market niche).
eMERGE! - The Journal of GrowthANSWERS by adminga on September 10th, 2008 Closing the Customer Gap
I learned an important lesson from one of our members, Mark Walker early last year when I took his course on Intregrity Selling®.
High Velocity Radio, Born September 22, 2008 by editorga on September 25th, 2008 What in the world of electronic communication is High Velocity Radio? Nope, it's not a new genre of rock music nor is it a higher frequency of radio waves managed and regulated by the FCC.
You have your main message selected, product features/benefits and questions/objections pages written. You’ve purchased a thoroughly researched list of suspects you hope to move to the prospect stage. So, what’s left to do but get on the phone and talk to people?
If that’s as far as you’ve gone, the demand generation project you’ve sunk so much time and money into may not create the results you had hoped. A consultive call guide can be your best ally when trying to engage a busy executive or decision maker.
But, writing a consultive call guide is not for amateurs. With only a few seconds to create interest, you quickly want your suspect to become part of the conversation. That means you have to ask open ended questions that pull your contact’s focus away from all the other stuff on their desk and get their full attention.
But, when you finally hear the voice of the contact you’ve been trying to reach for days on the other end of the line, it’s tempting to try to use those first couple of minutes to present your offering and its key features and benefits. This approach, however, is likely to elicit a “no, we’re not interested” response from the contact person that you’ve waited so long to reach.
Instead, be prepared make a short, credibility-building introduction of your company, then be ready to ask questions and consult – which gives you the opportunity to listen as well as talk.
Making this simple change will save valuable time and expense, because you will find out more by asking the right questions and listening to your contact – and earn the opportunity to engage in a longer discussion.
So, before you start your next demand generation project, consider enlisting the help of a professional call guide writer to help you develop a highly-effective script or call guide.
eMERGE! - The Journal of GrowthANSWERS by adminga on September 10th, 2008 Closing the Customer Gap
I learned an important lesson from one of our members, Mark Walker early last year when I took his course on Intregrity Selling®.
High Velocity Radio, Born September 22, 2008 by editorga on September 25th, 2008 What in the world of electronic communication is High Velocity Radio? Nope, it's not a new genre of rock music nor is it a higher frequency of radio waves managed and regulated by the FCC.
What in the world of electronic communication is High Velocity Radio? Nope, it’s not a new genre of rock music nor is it a higher frequency of radio waves managed and regulated by the FCC. It is high value content generated by expert dialog accessible live by the internet, captured forever and distributed anywhere via MP3 files.
High Velocity Radio is the name-sake of a business radio program hosted by Stone Payton and Lee Kantor. Its strategic intent is to celebrate top performers producing better results in less time and ask them to “Return The Learning.” If you know Stone, you know he stands for S.P.E.E.D…a leadership formula that hard-wires business success. Don’t know Stone Payton? www.marketmate.org.
About 6 weeks ago, I connected Stone and Lee for the first time. Within that time, the first High Velocity Radio show was produced and the virgin voyage was history. I was proud to be Stone’s first guest and in a small way, served as a catalyst to this venture, but quickly got out of his way. This weekly radio show is really a credit to the personal beliefs and practices Stone published in his book, Never Fry Bacon in the Nude. He has a knack for taking an idea, setting vision, structure and adding his secret sauce (S.P.E.E.D.).
Perhaps this Don Rigby interview will become a collector’s item much like Elvis Presley’s first recordings That’s Alright Momma and Heartbreak Hotel. Just in case, save this on your hard drive, share it with your friends and contemporaries. Or click the player below to listen to the interview.
If a few learning moments on the Power of Process, GrowthANSWERS and Get Objectivity resonate with you, take a lesson from Stone and put SPEED to work at www.integratedmarcom.com.
eMERGE! - The Journal of GrowthANSWERS by editorga on August 13th, 2008 The Prospect Gap
While there is no doubt taking care of existing customers needs to a major priority, new business is the lifeblood of any growth-oriented organization.
A heartfelt ‘thank you’ to all of the attendees to my ‘Meet the Expert” presentation of 9/17/08 on B2B Demand Generation.As a follow-up to that session, I’d like to address two questions from Laura Hollenstein of Premier Marketing Resources, who attended my presentation:
1. What have you found to be the most effective approach in reaching the decision makers when selling your services?Sometimes that “firewall” can be pretty difficult to break through.
This is an excellent question, since marketing professional services (which includes ‘marketing services’) is typically more challenging than other B2B products and services.While there is no one approach that fits all professional services companies, here are a few suggestions (that Plexus Marketing Group, Inc. also uses) which might make the challenge easier:
(a)Enlist the Help of Gatekeepers –the “firewall” can indeed be difficult to break through, but most ‘gatekeepers’ (e.g. personal assistants and marketing coordinators/analysts) are reasonably informed about the overall direction and ‘pain points’ of a company.Invest a few minutes of time talking with them and share your ‘elevator speech’, paying particular attention to specifically how your services have benefited companies like theirs.Next, indicate how answers to 2 or 3 key questions (that you intend to ask the decision maker who you’re trying to reach) could help determine if there is a potential match between your firm and theirs, and enlist their help in getting the answers to those questions.Finally, offer to send a Capabilities PDF or whitepaper to them that explains your company’s benefits and ask them to share it with the decision maker.Indicate that you would like their help in determining how best to proceed and that you are interested in starting a relationship building process with their company, then arrange a time to follow-up – remembering to thank the gatekeeper for their assistance.My marketing team has used this approach successfully, and I believe it will work for you (at least in a significant number of cases where it is used).
(b)Cultivate a Business Development ‘Apprentice’ Skilled in Consultative Selling of Your Firm’s Services — while I spent the first 7 years of my career at a Fortune 100 company (including experience as an outside sales representative), it was not until I started a consulting practice that I felt that I really learned the art of the complex sale and how to be truly consultative when selling.I am convinced that my day-to-day participation in consulting service delivery was one of the key reasons for my improved lead generation and close rates during that part of my career.Since those early days of Plexus Marketing Group, Inc., I have been committed to the ‘apprentice approach’ to developing business development talent within my firm.For example, I am strongly committed to a ‘team selling’ approach, where other members of our marketing and business development team can acquire consultative selling skills and be exposed to ‘best practices’ first-hand.There are certain parts of the business development process – such as lead generation and marketing event support – where less experienced team members can be a part of the process and gain early successes without having to do the actual consultative selling.Also, by involving these business development ‘apprentices’ in portions of your company’s service delivery (even if just for one or two projects), they will more quickly become experts on your company’s professional service delivery processes and will be able to speak with more authority during their business development calls.
(c ) Consider Leveraging Your Key Business Development Executives’ Time and Expertise through Web Videos — my firm is a TechLINKS sponsor (see www.techlinks.net) and we recently attended one of their special events where they gave participants the opportunity to make a 4 minute presentation on their services to a group of C-level executives, which was then digitally recorded and posted on our company listing at the TechLINKS site.This marketing tool not only allowed me to leverage my time and expertise in a way that my business development team could then use on its prospecting calls, but it also has generated new business leads from prospects using TechLINKS to locate potential service providers.Web videos are especially effective tools for professional services companies because they allow the consultants, doctors, attorneys, or other professional service providers to showcase their expertise and let prospects evaluate the potential fit with the provider companies prior to talking with one of the company’s representatives (who then, because of the video, does not have to be one of the key professionals or executives).Roger Stix of Atlanta Business Video (www.atlantabusinessvideo.com) – who is a client and friend of mine – has related case studies of how professionals such as doctors, attorneys, and B2B professionals have significantly improved their business acquisition metrics through the use of website videos for a modest investment of less than $3000.
2. How effective or is it ever effective to leave a voice mail for the decision maker regarding the products and services you are selling? I’m referring to a cold call voice mail.
I think that voice mail messages can be effective in building awareness for your company’s products and services, providing that you have targeted your market segment and audience well and adhere to a few key guidelines:(a) keep it brief (30 seconds or less is preferred); (b) describe your services and include an attention-grabbing ‘factoid’ that highlights one of the benefits your firm offers companies like theirs; and (c ) include your web address and contact number.Then, follow up with a key gatekeeper at their company (using the techniques described above) to build upon the ‘beachhead’ that your voice message has established.And, of course, keep at it … it may take a number of attempts and a variety of approaches to finally reach a particularly busy executive.
I learned an important lesson from one of our members, Mark Walker early last year when I took his course on Intregrity Selling®. The sales process has distinct steps that must be followed for a successful outcome. But more importantly, that the “Close” is not really a step that happens in isolation. You don’t go through the whole sales call and then “Close”. You “Close” all throughout the interaction with the prospect.
Once you’ve asked the right questions, demonstrated that your solution does indeed solve their problem and overcome any objections (including price), the “Close” should almost automatically happen. That’s because of during the sales call, you’ve been building creditability and above all, value.
Contrary to the typical gym membership sales process, closing the Customer Gap is about providing value throughout the sales call - not the hard “Close”.
In our first article, Mark Walker explains how to build trust and demonstrate the value of your solution to a prospect. Steven Winokur highlights how a political campaign mirrors the sales process. Don Rigby uses a case study to discuss the power of innovation and systems. And finally, we have an article from an Associate Member, Michael Harper, that introduces the concept of viral video marketing using the Internet.
If you’re interested in receiving our newsletter in your mailbox each month, please subscribe here.
High Velocity Radio, Born September 22, 2008 by editorga on September 25th, 2008 What in the world of electronic communication is High Velocity Radio? Nope, it's not a new genre of rock music nor is it a higher frequency of radio waves managed and regulated by the FCC.
Save to Browser Favorites
Ask
backflip
blinklist
BlogBookmark
Bloglines
BlogMarks
Blogsvine
BUMPzee!
CiteULike
co.mments
Connotea
del.icio.us
DotNetKicks
Digg
diigo
dropjack.com
dzone
Facebook
Fark
Faves
Feed Me Links
Friendsite
folkd.com
Furl
Google
Hugg
Jeqq
Kaboodle
linkaGoGo
LinksMarker
Ma.gnolia
Mister Wong
Mixx
MySpace
MyWeb
Netvouz
Newsvine
PlugIM
popcurrent
Propeller
Reddit
Rojo
Segnalo
Shoutwire
Simpy
sk*rt
Slashdot
Sphere
Sphinn
Spurl.net
Squidoo
StumbleUpon
Technorati
ThisNext
Webride
Windows Live
Yahoo!
Email This to a Friend
If you like this then please subscribe to the 