The Invisible Marketing Blog » complex sale

The one big problem that kills lead scoring programs

Christie Turner — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:21:29 +0000

I love lead scoring. When done right, it lets you think like a customer.

The problem is that it’s just too easy for marketers to think inside the box, instead of like customers.

Lead scoring programs are rather complex to set up. Certainly more so than a garden-variety email campaign. They require weighted averages, multiple decision criteria, campaign tools of some sophistication.

None of that is a reason not to do lead scoring.

But here’s the killer.

The predictive value of your scoring criteria.

Do you really, in fact, know why customers buy from you?

Or do you just think you know?

A lead scoring problem is an expensive, time consuming way to find out that what you really need to do is go find some customers and listen to them for a while and figure out how to have an intelligent conversation with them.

Here’s the dirty little secret. Many marketers want to score leads based on publicly available data which can be bought in bulk. Industry. Company size, revenue, # of employees. Public/private ownership status. Etc.

Then I add in a few other fill-in-the-blank data points like “how many widgets do you already own?” or “what brand of product/service X are you using today?”

Once I buy enough lists and add a couple of data points like this (the belief goes), I can score my leads, and voila! Qualified Leads, ready for eager consumption by my sales team.

Except that they’re not.

What IS a qualified lead is a much more complex and nuanced conversation than can be had with objective criteria like this. My job title may make me an interesting contact, but it doesn’t make me a warm lead or interested prospect.

Worthwhile lead scoring requires more. Until I understand how or why my buyer decides to buy, or at least what prompts them to look for a solution, I have no idea how to influence that buying decision or overcome buyer resistance. This knowledge is prerequisite for a credible lead scoring program.

For the swipe file: impressive B2B tech ad in social media

Christie Turner — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:59:49 +0000

SAP may be an old-line vendor in the technology space, but along the way to the top of the stack they figured out how to talk to their customers.

This SAP ad on Youtube does NOT talk about bits and bytes. It talks about what the tech can do for the biz AND for the buyer personally. And it diagrams juuust enough tech that a biz buyer can feel smart about it.

If you’ve ever been part of an enterprise SAP implementation, of course, you have a potentially rather jaded perspective on the ad and its promises. But that’s a different conversation. This is a very classy example of how to open the conversation for complex, multimillion dollar enterprise sales of complicated, high risk technology packages.

And look. Over 10,000 hits. The hits keep coming after 3-4 months online. I’d love to know what this ad is doing for the top of their sales funnel. Maybe it’s just cool and nifty brand fluff because every big company CIO already knows SAP and has an opinion about it. But my hunch is that this video is opening conversations somewhere for SAP.

B2B complex sale = influencing a community.

Christie Turner — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:18:47 +0000

To get anything done in a B2B complex sale, you’re not just Selling to The Senior Executive Wo/Man.

That’s why it’s complex.

It’s tempting, especially for salespeople, to depend on just a single contact, champion, or coach inside the client company. Giving in to this temptation? Watch for l-o-n-n-n-g sales cycles, clients who won’t make decisions, endless RFPs, and surprise announcements that you won’t be getting the business.

What do you need when your business depends on successfully influencing communities?

In addition to great sales people and great sales infrastructure, marketing processes that are…

Patient. Sales isn’t supposed to be patient — there’s a qualified deal on the table. Marketing has to find potential and study it, monitor it, listen for cues, compare what’s happening in this deal with others. Its processes (and the technology infrastructure behind them) need to enforce and support patience.
Iterative. Does your team do something more than once? On purpose? That’s the mentality necessary to learn. If you’re trying to influence a complex ecosystem (multiple people, teams, business units), then launch a program or tactic assuming that you’re going to learn something new, which will necessitate additional change to the program. Which brings us to…
Listening. Only the customer really knows what influence them. Not always can (or will) they tell you. Marketing processes in a complex sale enforce and support the effort to listen for customer cues.

If your marketing processes (and by extension your technology infrastructure) don’t support test-listen-measure-repeat, then let’s not kid ourselves — you won’t do it. You don’t have time.

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

5 Reasons your customers and prospects don’t listen to you

Christie Turner — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:28:24 +0000

Which of these is true for your company? How are you going to fix it?

Your customers are focused on their own issues — and don’t see you as relevant to those concerns. Are you talking to the wrong people or companies? Are you trying to sell too broadly? Do you simply need to better explain the relevance of your work to customers’ problems?
Your company talks about itself, forcing customers to navigate your bureaucracy, jargon, products. How can you put aside your internal bureaucracy and help customers solve their own problems? Can you organize around customers and their problems?
Your company talks about solutions without correctly defining your customers’ problems. Ask existing customers, target customers, and your sales and marketing people what the customers’ problems are. Where are the common threads? Where are the disconnects?
When your company talks, it sounds like a bunch of other companies. What’s the difference?
Your company talks in language they don’t trust. Too tidy. Too pat. Too good to be true. Find out how your customers talk about their problems. And don’t overpromise what you can do about the problem. Respect your audience’s intelligence.
Your company doesn’t admit what it doesn’t do. Draw a line: Here’s what we do well — that is, where a customer gets the most economic value from us. Here’s everything we don’t do so well — can we send customers elsewhere for those things?

Getting customer attention is already hard. Why make it harder?

Book Review: Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way

Christie Turner — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:52:24 +0000

Book report time again.

The Elevator Summary: The book isn’t santimonious about Six Sigma or process design. It makes rigorous tools and structured thinking readable, and relevant to complex B2B selling and marketing. He’s also clear that process is not a goal.

Standout Moments: These processes began in manufacturing. What the book does brilliantly is give the process tools a context for use in relationship management. Snippets: “Six Sigma selling focuses on helping customers achieve the business results they seek when they buy a product or service.” “When you bring Six Sigma to customers in this way, they’re not even aware of it. They’re only aware that they are working with people who have their act together.” “Finding good prospects, learning their needs, establishing trust, delivering value, and leading them to the next step are all difficult. However, this approach is easier and more effective than slapdash, unmeasurable, badly designed, push-them-through-the-funnel sales methods.”

Not so much: OK, no book has it all. Key areas to supplement from other sources: iteratively developing and testing these processes, how to bring customer voices into the dialogue, facilitation and change management. You’ll also need to translate the insights into messaging and tactics for your unique situation.

Who should read it: Marketing and sales executives, and their bosses. Executives responsible to deliver service after the sale would also benefit.

Bottom Line: One of my favorite business books.

More about the book: Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way

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.

How does this save me money?

Christie Turner — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:20:16 +0000

As Seth Godin recently observed, Value = benefit/price.

Even if the customer’s question is “How does this save me money?” that doesn’t mean the answer is “I’m cheaper than my competitor” or “Because I’ll discount my price.”

Look closely. Both answers appeals to a benchmark entirely outside the customer’s business situation. Neither answer addresses the customer’s question.

Value is TCO (total cost of ownership). It’s eliminating waste, creating revenue, finding productivity.

Value is a lot of emotional, irrational things, too.

Practical value is also found in a long term relationship between two entities. If I cut the price, maybe I’m helping a good customer with a strong balance sheet who’s having a rough year, keeping us both in business until the business cycle recovers. Maybe I give up a few sample widgets during the customer’s design phase so that I can get engineered into a very large production run. Maybe I’m getting a client started within this year’s budget with the understanding that next year they budget for (and buy) my full solution. These all position my value vs my competitors, too.

If I simply cut the price of the whizbang itself, I am saying that the whizbang isn’t worth very much. But the real problem is that I don’t know my customer well enough to actually save them money.

Someone sent me a Seth Godin post, so I will blog about it now.

Christie Turner — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:11:49 +0000

The post:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/first-ten-.html

The B2B sale is a relationship sale. What Seth describes is selling into referrals. This is the way most businesses actually grow. Better than 70% of sales come from or through existing customers in many companies and industries.

To scale up in that sales environment, it makes sense to apply a process mentality to figure out what activities further those relationships. What activities can we control that speed the buying decision? What are we doing that unintentionally lengthens the sales cycle? Identify problems. Try to discover root causes. Test ways to improve.

Relationships are relationships – can’t standardize them. But human nature is human nature, too. This allows some activities (and not-doing certain activities) to be adopted as standard practices. See also: behavioral finance.

Dumping a lot of volume into a leaky process just creates a bunch of work and chasing after the wind. So, like Seth says, start with small investments. Look for things to try that you can afford to repeat if they work and won’t kill you if they don’t. Pull back fast from activities that don’t give sustainable results – either tweak them and try again, or move on. Find a few small things that seem to help. Do more of those. As repeatable results become evident, begin to add volume to the process inputs.