The Invisible Marketing Blog » accountability

Relationships vs. Markets: 5 differences between sales and marketing

Christie Turner — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:53:38 +0000

At one time, the demarcation between sales and marketing was simpler.

Relationships were what sales needed:

One to one, person to person,
company by target account company,
highly situational, mano a mano.

That’s the world of selling.

Markets are what marketing tried to influence.

Given enough time and money, you could drive statistically measurable movements of trends and beliefs through populations, groups, industries.
As measurement tools & processes got better, revenue was attributed to the process as a whole, but most of the activities tended to lack accountability.

Well, if Marketing is on the hook to help drive this year’s revenue, it’s not quite so tidy as this. The problem is that moving trends and beliefs through populations is expensive to measure and takes a long time. It can’t be tracked very well to this year’s revenue at most companies.

Marketing increasingly gets involved in relationships. We identify prospective customers who may one day enter a buying process. We nurture early relationships with those prospects. We score prospects’ behaviors to determine who’s getting closer to that buying process. We look for ways to influence individual prospect relationships.

These activities do not make marketing more useful or accountable. To sales and marketing alike, this increasing convergence of focus can feel like a fight for data, control, and ownership. It may get harder to assign credit for results.

What makes the difference? Getting marketing people out of their ivory towers. Building internal relationships. And learning how to talk with customers.

Marketers: under pressure for ROI? How to find accountability mentors.

Christie Turner — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:43:55 +0000

Process improvement is a sophisticated science (and art) in the real world where stuff gets moved (logistics), stored (materials management), built (JIT, Six Sigma, Lean, Agile), and so on.

Most marketing people don’t think about what they do in terms of process improvement.

These two disciplines should talk to each other.

If you’re a B2B marketer, especially in technology or other companies that make stuff, find some buddies on the ops side of your shop. (Or at other companies, if you like.) Take ‘em to lunch. They probably think what you do is glamorous and useless. And it may be. But don’t talk about that. Get them to talk about what they do. How they do it. Why they do things the way they do.

What’s useful about this isn’t so much product knowledge (though this couldn’t hurt you). It’s exposure to the operational mindset. To a part of your business that’s probably been accountable for its results a lot longer than yours has.

Why? If the marketing accountability craze hasn’t caught up with you yet, it will. Get a crash course in how to survive in that world from someone who’s already accustomed to the constant demand for visible results.

Here are some questions to get the conversation going:

How much of your week do you (or your team) spend measuring the results of what you do?
What measurement and analysis tools do you use?
What metrics do you follow? What do they tell you? How do you use them?
When a metric is off, what do you do? Do you ever let it ride and see if it gets better on its own? Why or why not?
What are you doing to try & improve your numbers? How well is it working?

The new world of marketing doesn’t spend money on vanity campaigns. It demands NPV and ROI calculations and a general trend of improved results.

If you’re lucky, the new world of marketing also doesn’t get asked as often why the logo is green or how to get extra tickets for the golf benefit.

Toyota should fire their PR team.

Christie Turner — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:10:42 +0000

In house, agency of record, whoever it is hasn’t done their homework in responding to the crisis with facts and data.

Here’s a useful table of US federal data on auto acceleration complaints similar to those from which Toyota is now being smeared in the popular imagination (gathered by National Public Radio (NPR) in the US).

A cursory look at the data reveals that Toyota’s brands aren’t that different from other carmakers’ performance on the same metric.

Example: in 2009, the Prius (which I drive) got 11 complaints per 100,000 Priuses (Prii?) on the road in the US.

Well, so did GM’s Malibu (and you don’t see any firestorms of outrage about this being a US taxpayer financed deathtrap). Volkswagen’s Jetta and Passat got more complaints than that. The Honda Civic racked up 18 complaints per 100,000. So did the Ford Mustang. Jeep Commander & Jeep Grand Cherokee both got 16. Ford Explorer got 34 complaints per 100,000 Explorers driven, and the Ford Freestyle got 24.

Driving involves complex, heavy machinery used in complex, dangerous conditions. I’m not letting anyone off the hook for safety, quality, or leadership issues. I question whether the actual product performance is within normal ranges vs other cars on the road.

If this assessment of the data is accurate, then Toyota should come out swinging. They haven’t done much (that I’ve seen) to explain what they ARE doing to promote quality. To demonstrate industrywide practices of which they are a part. They’re falling into the Tylenol PR fallacy.

Top 3 gaps between marketing leaders

Christie Turner — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:12:34 +0000

In a discussion of brand and marketing on David Friedman’s blog, Kevin Liebl observed the appearance of a generation gap in marketing executives.

Amid seismic shifts in technology and the macro economy, it’s my view that at least 3 other gaps are emerging between marketing leaders.

Accountability gap. Possibly the most important gap among marketers. Marketers increasingly get to test, tinker, and directly associate their work with customer acquisition, revenue, and profitability. Now, I’ve had more than one ad agency veteran tell me it’s not OK for an ad, event, or website to be judged on direct revenue it generates. This thinking is common among marketers. But those who are proficient with metrics, analysis, and accountability for ROI are increasingly prized.

Technology gap. New technologies enable a right-now measurement discipline which was formerly the domain of direct response advertising. Not just social media, but mobile marketing, search engine marketing, internet analytics, marketing automation. Tactical savvy in these technologies can be game changing. A haves and have-nots gap is increasing between those who learn the new tools of the trade and those who don’t.

Mindset gap. Old mindset: do I think I can control the message in a one-way brainwashing effort toward my audience? New mindset: can I engage markets and individuals in 2-way conversations that I influence but cannot control? This also includes the relationship between marketing and sales, not just marketing and the customer. The new mindset doesn’t win in every market, but it’s becoming more important to be flexible in thinking about the role of the marketing messenger.

Marketing has always been about revenue generation. More & more, marketers get to drive activities that actually can be proven to generate revenue. It’s a good place to be.

Lead nature vs lead nurture: which is it?

Christie Turner — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:36:34 +0000

Is lead nature — who the prospect is — that matters in B2B marketing?

Or what I do to keep in touch and build a relationship — lead nurture — that predicts lead value and conversion to sales opportunity?

Well, it’s both.

Most companies fail to define lead Nature in any but the most basic terms, rendering their efforts at connection stilted at best. Without an ability to carry on an intelligent conversation with your prospects through the various media of your outreach, it doesn’t matter how often you call on them. Your buyers will avoid, reject, and resent your intrusion if you talk at them like you don’t know (or listen to) them.

Many of us also do a perfunctory job (at best) in reaching out to these leads — lead nurture. And with nurture, compelling value helps but even simple consistency (just showing up) makes a notable difference.

This means more homework for marketing projects and plans upfront. And more detailed follow through.

4 things that marketing can change in a down economy

Christie Turner — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:11:49 +0000

CMOs, how do we make a difference when the available pool of paying customers has shrunk?

In a B2B company of not-unlimited means, it is easy to spend a lot of money on marketing without seeing value for the spend. Here are 4 spends that are limited, scalable, and accountable. Each can drive overall company growth, short term revenue, or both.

Target Customer analysis > G2. What characteristics, beliefs, business problems, firmographics do our best customers have in common? How predictive are these traits that another company could be a good customer?

Demand generation. Who else might be similar to our target customer(s)? Where might we find & meet them? What offers and approaches will draw their interest?

Relationship nurturing. How do we better get to know the people in our target customer universe — including our existing customers:?

Strategic communication. Who are our stakeholders (including current and potential customers, investors, and employees)? What do our stakeholders want and need to know? How can we become the source of that information?

They won’t remember our ads. They don’t want to learn what we want them to believe about our products, services, company, quality… they want us to tell them how our stuff solves their problem.

Add these distractions to Marketing’s not-to-do list

Christie Turner — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:47:17 +0000

In a world of limited time, finite means, and pressure for results, what not to do?

When marketing is under-resourced, it tends to stop listening to the customer (if it ever did), because listening requires a cessation of action. What happens next? Recycling whatever you said and did in the last campaign. Talking to all customers as if they’re all the same.

Four marketing temptations that are common in a down economy (and ways to avoid them):

Not to do: Try anything once.
Try instead: When results are off (or direct marketing is new to the organization) it can be tempting to churn through new tactics, media, messaging, target industries. Revisit your plan, fine, but spend the energy to first analyze what’s there today. It’s easier, faster, and potentially less risky to incrementally improve an existing program than to chuck everything and start over.

Not to do: Get something out there NOW.
Try instead: Urgency and timeliness are important in marketing. Make the most of them by talking to each of your customers (and prospects) as if their current goals and worries are important to you. Start with the customers you know best and who are most valuable to you. Think about whom you’re trying to reach and what’s important in their world. Just making noise isn’t enough.

Not to do: The Unfunded Mandate.
Try instead: Ruthlessly cut what doesn’t have a budgeted spend, allocated time/project plan, and a revenue stream it’s directly intended to influence. Say no to everything else, regardless of who’s asking. Create a backburner list for nice ideas that need some more time to bake.

Not to do: Abandon everything.
Try instead: Don’t simply stop doing marketing. Establish an ROI objective linked to how your program or tactic will help a salesperson and/or a prospect. Test with a fraction of your sales force and prospects before investing big.

For the concept of the not-to-do list, thanks to @gerhard20 for the post 15 Things Salespeople And Sales Managers Should Put On Their Not-To-Do List.

The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them

Christie Turner — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:38:14 +0000

It’s book review time again. Perhaps you’ve heard that sales people have a rant about marketing people (and others) who don’t understand what sales people do. Today’s book is a nice little vaccine against Complete Sales Ignorance.

The Elevator Summary: Most books about selling are of little use in understanding the psychological world of selling. Sandler is the real deal.

Standout Moments: All of them.

Not so much: Can you learn how to sell from a book? No.

Who should read it: Anyone in sales. Anyone in marketing. Anyone who manages the performance of sales or marketing.

Bottom Line: One of the best, most practical books about buyer behavior at the moment of truth. And a tough, practical book about sales and negotiating. Read this book.

More about the book: The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them

I bet you don’t know your customer this well.

Christie Turner — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:01:40 +0000

The real beauty of Kevin’s article When will CMO heads roll? isn’t the observation that corporate marketing budgets are broken and that change is amazingly slow in coming.

That’s an easy target.

What I like is his description of who is changing.

He describes an actual target market that a marketer can begin to get to know and flush out through sales-related communications as well as corporate positioning.

Why?

It isn’t “people in [Department] with [Job title] at companies with revenue between $[X] and $[Y] million, whose [CMO] is [40] or younger, headquartered in [US].” That is how 90% of business people think of their target markets. In B2B especially, it’s really not true.

Your customer is someone who has a reason to buy from you. That’s not intrinsic to size, location or any other easy demographic or firmographic marker.

Check out Kevin’s article and see what I mean.

How to think like a customer: step #3

Christie Turner — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:02:29 +0000

This is the part where we admit that your customers can’t predict their own behavior.

What people tell you they like or think or want to do is different from what they’re actually going to do.

Especially if your business objective involves parting customers from their money for any reason.

The answer?

Test.

Create a situation where a couple of customers buy and use what you’re selling.

See what they do with it.

Experiment, tweak, and retest on a few other customers. Ask customers to explain why they’re doing what they’re doing (especially if their actions don’t favor you). Don’t take their first answer at face value.

See if the idea finds a workable niche.

This is the spirit of software beta testing, product demos, customer advisory committees, putting movies into limited release or straight to DVD, direct response marketing, and many other tactics.

6 Reasons People Can’t Tell What You Do Even After Reading Your Website

Christie Turner — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:52:37 +0000

Widget makers have it easy. Plaster photos on the website. We.Are.Selling.This.Thing. It.Looks.Like.This. (Do you want it painted in Autumn Glory, Technicolor Stainless, or Urban Soot?)

For those of us who sell things whose souls cannot be captured in a photograph, it’s not quite so literal.

Here are six reasons why your erstwhile customer can’t figure out what on earth you DO, actually. Even after visiting your website.

6. Representative Imagery. Someone let the agency get hip and artsy at the expense of the brand again. So much so that nobody can tell what any of that hip artsy stuff on the website actually means. Creating a whole visual and literary language in which the customer must be educated before they can actually learn something about how your company solves their problem… not cool.

5. Industry Buzzwords. True meaning is completely obscured in a thicket of industry benchmarks, certifications, technical jargon, association relationships, awards, TLAs… The site may be connected to many third party ideas and standards. But what does the company actually do or think to help its customers?

4. Vague Benefits. We do everything. For anyone. Just call us to find out what that actually is.

3. Steaming Piles of Features and Promotions. Do you need a _? How ’bout a _? Do you need a service contract with that? Would you rather buy _ and _ together, at a 1.208598% discount on second Tuesdays? A five year contract will get you an additional 0.00029% discount for the first 34 months!

2. Product Bureaucracy. The website has to explain our entire internal bureaucracy to you before anything else happens. Obviously our bureaucracy is the most salient benefit of working with us. Why else would we lovingly provide you with 16 different numbers to call in each of the 28 countries in which we do business? Heaven forfend that our service teams in any country should ever look like they could talk with you as a global team. I mean, how weird is that?

1. The Very Nature of Intangible Products. If I’m buying a widget, I may actually have an affinity with the look or functionality of the thing itself. If I am a business person, and if I’m buying software or services, what I am really buying is an outcome. I don’t want accounting software. I want my accounting done well enough that the government doesn’t investigate or fine me over SOX compliance. I don’t want consulting, I want more productivity or more revenue or both. I want to keep my job and not be embarrassed by your performance. (Etc.) All the other hoopla is you trying to convince me that your intangibles will provide that outcome.

Why should marketing be invisible?

Christie Turner — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:48:01 +0000

People ask this all the time. (Which is fantastic, by the way!)

“Why Invisible Marketing? Isn’t marketing about getting visibility?”

Well, here’s how I think about it.

I have enjoyed, talked about, and experienced deep emotional connections with super-cool Superbowl ads for products I’ve never bought and companies with whom I won’t do business.

But I earn a living because I’m known and trusted by a really small group of professionals and executives, for whom I treat the cancer they’re struggling to manage.

Do I want someone to say to my client, “My, what a memorable campaign your company ran”?

My goal is to expose something valuable to people who will value it. To facilitate the development particular kinds of relationships, which eventually result in durable revenue generation.

It’s comparatively easy to design marketing that the marketer thinks is effective. But it’s terribly expensive to do that. Such marketing typically takes place in an echo chamber, absent the customer, the sales people trying to reach the customer, and the people who are serving the customer after the sale.

It’s hard to design marketing that does its job, which is to contribute to positive Prospect Lifetime Value.

Here’s a non-advertising example. When developing a website, most people are tempted to start with the graphics and colors. The disciplined and productive place to start, however, is with the business case: what problem am I trying to solve? For whom? What do they want from me? What do I want from them? What should we accomplish together through our conversations?

I promise, the color scheme is much easier to define and matters far less than a clear, shared definition of the business problem the site is solving. From the business case flow the message, the functionality, the design standards, and the common ground for making decisions throughout the process.

In everything I do, I try very hard not to begin with branding or design or pretty words or Fun Marketing Stuff or putting together a webinar by Tuesday. (Though all those things have to get done, too.)

When I work with companies, we begin by asking and answering hard questions. And then we test those answers to find out if they are true. Over and over. Iteratively, over time.

I’m not a designer. But I think there’s a beauty to this process. As the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky said in his landmark book Sculpting in Time, “The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth.”

Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master

Christie Turner — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:58:57 +0000

Book review time.

The Elevator Summary: Thorough, clear reference book explaining how to measure what marketing is supposed to produce. Knowing what the metrics mean doesn’t tell you how to improve them, but this book does tell you what the metrics mean.

Standout Moments: The Customer Profitability chapter. For example, Prospect Lifetime Value = response rate x (initial margin + (Customer Lifetime Value of acquired customers – cost of prospecting efforts)). Metrics like these bring sweet focus to the sales and marketing mind: if we’re delivering negative PLV, then what the hell are we doing about it?

Not so much: Most marketing teams I’ve seen don’t have the historical data or reporting tools to calculate the metrics. This problem may be rooted in fractured ownership, lack of data capture, functional unwillingness to share data, etc. But it also reflects fear and ignorance on the part of the marketing teams. Why not ask for the information we need to determine how we’re doing?

Who should read it: Marketing and sales executives, and their bosses. Every agency which purports to improve the life and times of the marketing or sales exec.

Bottom Line: Definitely not beach reading, but worth it. A little math will make us stronger.

More about the book: Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master

Free advice for business associations who want sponsors in a tough economy

Christie Turner — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 04:00:41 +0000

OK, take this for what it is: a collection of opinions posted in a public forum not custom-tailored for your situation. (And those opinions formed while observing lots of organizations, conferences, events, grassroots movements, etc, which may not be yours.)

But here’s the thing. Most sponsorship benefits aren’t very meaningful to a business.

Really. Let’s be honest. Getting my logo posted at an event is better for my vanity than my bottom line. I cannot tie any revenue generation or clear business value to the quick thank-you-from-the-podium announcements. Banners, ads in the program… sometimes even exhibiting… expensive frippery.

Here’s what savvy companies want when parting with their money to sponsor your organization or event.

1. Connections.

Isn’t making new business connections the primary reason ~80% of attendees show up, sponsoring or not?

Savvy business people want to meet people who want to meet them.

2. Credibility.

This is a corollary to #1, perhaps. But this leads to the highest-value types of participation you can offer me: Presenter. Keynote. Breakout session leader. Discussion facilitator. Emcee. Sitting at the head table with the insiders. Anything that lets us establish relationships and make ourselves visible as [thought] leaders. Let us look influential, smart, approachable, capable, in the know, whatever we think will appeal to whomever we’re trying to meet.

3. Introductions.

This accomplishes #1 and #2 (above) in one shot.

Contrary to conventional wisdom of most sponsors: don’t let me have the member list or the attendee list. We all know I’ll just have to spam the hell out of it, at great expense and waste, to identify two or three or five people who might want to meet me (and whom I actually want to meet).

Save everyone time and annoyance. Get to know your members, and your sponsors, well enough to play a little matchmaker. Build a killer database. Learn everyone’s strengths, problems, and wishes. Capture extensive data through membership applications, competitions, whatever. Offer me a handful of high quality introductions in exchange for money. Guard your database fiercely from all other uses except carrying out the organization’s mission.

You’ll make your organization a lot stronger by figuring out how to connect your members with the people they want to meet, too. Each other. Capital sources. Thought leaders. Mentors. Potential employees. Potential customers. Reseller partners. A vendor who solves a problem they know they have. Whatever.

It’s pretty sustainable to run an organization as a set of self perpetuating activities. And fulfilling a mission takes a lot of activities – fun, exclusivity, advocacy, certification and standards, professional education, networking, problem solving, fundraising, giving back. The occasional rubber chicken luncheon.

But an organization is most sustainable which helps as many people as possible get what they want. If you need sponsors, but view them as an interruption to your mission, maybe it’s time to rethink your mission in a way that doesn’t need their money.

Monetizing relationships…

Christie Turner — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 03:14:35 +0000

One of the paradoxes of marketing and sales is “monetizing relationships.”

We typically hate to be sold. The harder the sell, the more we hate it. However, we typically like to buy. Any person who has had an experience of spending their own money knows this. Many of us have been blessed to be able to buy something from someone we found ourselves liking.

This is no accident.

On the other side of that transaction, the sales person has to build trust, rapport, peer-to-peer credibility, some level of personal connection. An emotional connection. A relationship, if you like. That goes triple for the B2B complex sale, where a company is buying big-ticket, high-risk items from another company. (I believe that it’s also true in many other types of sales where the stakes are much lower.)

We who are selling stuff need buyers who will confide in us with some candor about their problems. Unless they trust us to understand and help them solve those problems, nothing is going to get bought. At least not from us.

Why would a buyer trust me [a marketer, sales person, company PR representative, executive leader, etc]? Because he or she believes at some level I am willing and able to act in their interests as well as, and possibly even counter to my own (at least in the short term). There’s some human vulnerability going on. They tell me what’s really going on, and I tell them what I really can and can’t do to address their situation. Because we have a relationship.

Now, in addition to all of this, the sales person is also on the hook to monetize that relationship.

How can I maintain your trust (which implies vulnerability) and still do things that move you toward buying something from my company (which implies control)?

If you’ve ever wondered why so many startups fail, it’s because selling is a lot harder than it looks. Most startups are not run by people who can sell. And sales (including repeat business from happy customers) are what keep companies in business.

If you ever wondered why great sales people make a lot of money, it’s because the ability to monetize a relationship is worth a lot of money.