Sales & Marketing Challenges: Commoditization of your products happens in the Prospect’s Mind, Not Yours

We always believe that our B2B product or service is the “greatest thing since sliced bread”. Most of us love to go out and talk to prospects about how wonderful our offerings are, and how quickly they can make our prospects’ lives easier.

It’s amazing how crushed we feel when someone that we want to talk to about our offerings is not as excited as we are about the value of our offerings.

Do you sometimes feel lost in the crowd?

One very big reason that this may be occurring is that many people perceive your product/service offering as not being ‘unique’. They have an opinion (right or wrong) that they might be able to get your product/service from many alternative sources. Sometimes, they may even believe (again, right or wrong) that they can internalize the product/service… this is what I like to refer to as – “self administration’.

It’s not that you don’t offer value. And it’s not necessarily true that these prospects are short-sided. It’s just that our human nature is to categorize and group things in order to manage the overwhelming information that bombards us each day. (It is one of the tactics that keeps most of us sane these days.)

So, immediately after you introduce your ‘unique’ product/service offering, many of your prospects will be trying to categorize the concepts that you are discussing. Very quickly, their brain will attach your concept to concepts that they already know. It is only meant to help them cope with new info. But, what does this mean for you?

What it means for you is – the prospect quickly starts to put your product/service offerings in a mental ‘bucket’ full of other offerings that might be ‘similar’, but are not who you perceive to be competitive products/services.

How can you address this marketing challenge of commoditization?

1. First, acknowledge that we all categorize concepts. It’s not an effort to demean your product/services.
2. Next, step back and try to see the categorization process from your customers’/prospects’ point of view.
3. Be honest and list those ‘alternative solutions’ that your prospect would associate with yours. This may take some time to go back through your sales contact records.
4. If your comfortable with the feedback (which your business health requires), ask your customers and prospects how they position your product/service in their mind.
5. Include several less obvious options in your list — internal solutions that a prospect may consider, etc.
6. Don’t forget the BIGGEST competitor – inertia. How does ‘doing nothing’ factor into the prospects’ mind.

Once you have a list of ‘alternatives’ that will probably pop up in the minds of your prospects and cause them to want to commoditize your products/services, begin to look at real differentiating statements between your products/services and these alternatives. These statements become additional information that can be utilize in your sales and marketing message – both online and offline. But, it is especially helpful to include the concepts in your interactions/dialogues, when you feel that your are becoming aware that your prospect is beginning to categorize your business offerings.

The goal of this exercise is to help build more objective data that can be turned into positive marketing messages during the “Awareness” building phase in order to keep you out of that ‘commodity bucket’, and keep you from getting lost in the crowd.

I would really like to hear what other strategies have worked for business owners and sales managers.

How Apple Is Deciding Our Marketing Decisions

“For the better part of 2011, non-iPad tablets experienced an overwhelming lack of success. HP’s TouchPad was released and then discontinued a month later, RIM’s Blackberry PlayBook has been deeply discounted, and Samsung has faced an onslaught of lawsuits from Apple.”
http://www.padgadget.com/2011/11/22/just-1-2-million-non-ipad-tablets-were-sold-in-2011/

What is striking is how wide the gap is between the sales of Apple iPad’s and other non-Apple tablets. Sales of iPads in the third quarter of the year amounted to over 11 million – versus a million plus non-Apple tablets sold year-to-date.

What does this trend mean for businesses that are actively marketing through the Internet?

For better or worse, you need to factor the iOS into your design decisions. That means ‘no to Flash’… Also, consider app development for mobile optimization, where it makes sense.

Personally, I have not considered myself an Applephile. But, now that I own (and use hourly) an iPad and an iPhone, I am having to rethink my position. Will I someday convert my laptop and desktop to Macs is still to be determined. But, by then the mobile devices may be all that I need – and the decision to convert my computers may be moot.

It tends to force me to see all online communication through the ‘lens’ of my iPad and iPhone. If it looks good there, I might be on the right track.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you seen any different trending?

Not all business prospects are created equal – Use Lead Scoring to prioritize

If you had to choose the most important calls to make from your sales database today to generate new business… could you? If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur, I find that the answer to this question is often ‘no’.

If you can’t call all of your prospects every day (and which of your prospects would want to be called daily?!?), how do you determine who to call to nurture your prospects and create more business opportunities?

The simple answer is — Prioritization. The technique for this is called – “Lead Scoring”. This term has come into the marketing world by way of the metric building capabilities of technology. Some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can do some of this for you. Large inside sales/lead generation shops generally do this.

In general terms, a lead is scored based on a number of variables — interaction levels, defined opportunities, etc. It can sound very complicated… and it can be, if you let it.

But, for small growth businesses, there are ways to do this prioritization process more cost effectively and internally. Here are a couple of easy steps (although time is involved, the payoff is HUGE):

1. Centralize your prospect database. If it is in Outlook, Constant Contact, etc. Pick one location to maintain them, even if it is in an excel spreadsheet.
2. Create a field/flag to identify ‘leads’ from ‘prospects’. Then flag ALL of your prospects to ‘leads’. (‘Leads’ are contacts that you have not interacted with and don’t really know the business potential.)
3. Review the list and change the ‘lead’ flag to ‘prospects’ ONLY when you know that there have been some real interaction (with responses from them). Experience has shown that most company’s lists only include 20-25% real prospects within the large list.
4. Focus on the ‘prospect’ list and rank them based on some simple definitions. This ranking does not have to be complicated. It could be as simple as ‘hot’/'warm’/'cool’. An example might be — A ‘hot’ prospect has told you that they have need for your services/products now or at some point in the future. A ‘warm’ prospect has used your services/products before — either from you or an alternative. A ‘cool’ prospect has not yet told you that they need your services, but through dialogue with them you know that the need exists… and you need to keep educating them to the value of the solution.
5. Begin contacting your prospects in the newly developed priority list. You will want a call back schedule that is more frequent for a ‘hot’ prospect versus a ‘cool’ prospect. The timing is generally based on the sales cycle of your business. And as a prospect ‘heats up’, you will plan to increase the call frequency for that prospect. Be sure that you put clear contact notes and follow up dates into your system, so that you don’t miss that next call cycle for each prospect.

“What about the leads?” — you may ask. Where did they go?

They didn’t go anywhere. They are still in the database, but flagged to be ‘out of sight’ for now.. And in the near future, you can build a ‘demand generation’ strategy to turn them into prospects. (That’s a completely different project.)

But, the lesson for small growth business is this — you have ‘acquired’ leads at some point in time (and at some cost)… and you have turned them into prospects (with a business dialogue). Make sure that they do not fall out of your view… and into a competitor’s new client list. Make sure that you are staying in touch with them – based on their potential for business. And that’s the core value of a lead scoring system.

We would enjoy hearing of lead scoring success stories… or challenges. And let us know if we can help you accomplish this very productive business goal.

Narrow Your Marketing Focus To Gain Greater Success

It seems a bit illogical that you should narrow your marketing focus to gain greater sales success, but the evidence supports this strategy for the following reasons:

1. It is difficult to be the right resource for everyone’s needs… so you should strive to be the best at one (or two) areas
2. Differentiation helps to create a perceived uniqueness in your marketplace
3. By ‘speaking’ to everyone with your marketing message, your marketing message loses its power to ‘speak’ to anyone… in a personal and direct way.

The quickest way for small but growing B2B business to approach their marketing list is to:

1. review your marketing/prospect list for logical segment groups that share common business challenges
2. determine the one (or two) segments that have the most business growth potential for near-term growth (a lot of time can be spent on analyzing this… for now keep it simple)
3. Keep each segment to as small a number as possible (research shows that higher response rates can be gained from smaller groups)
4. Develop a very specific message that speaks to this defined segment
5. Measure your response rates from your communication activity in order to determine if you are getting better/less response.

Even though you may feel that the work load is increased by approaching your marketing in this manner… your sales increases will quickly justify it. And if you are testing messages’ effectiveness with a smaller group, you have more flexibility to test/adjust and test again…

This same ‘narrow’ approach not only benefits your sales strategy, but also your internet optimization strategy… but, I will save that for another post.

I would enjoy your comments. And if we can help you with this exercise, please contact us.

The Value of ‘Un-Conventional’ Wisdom

This blog has touched several times on the perils of following ‘conventional wisdom’.  Just yesterday, we posted a blog about the demise of Borders, and how conventional wisdom may have contributed to this end result for the company and all of its employees.

Nothing is more bias… and close-minded as conventional wisdom.  I use the word ‘close-minded’ here to specifically refer to the lack of options open to discussion in conventional wisdom.

We see it all of the time – in business, in current politics, etc. – where alternatives are not explored because:

1. these alternatives were not available before to test, therefore they have no proven track record, or
2. these alternatives were tried before and they did not work.

What conventional wisdom does not allow for is ‘changing landscapes’… a business or political environment that also includes other variables that are outside of one’s control… and other possible solutions to a problem that were not previously available.

Small Businesses often undervalue ‘research’, because they do not ultimately believe that change occurs.  It’s a human condition that we all suffer from… we don’t like change, so that we ‘will’ things to not change.

How can a small business move forward, grow and succeed without a clear, ‘unbiased’ view of the changing landscape that they are doing business in?

Here are just four ideas to consider:

1. Kill the sacred cows – Encourage the organization to challenge all previously held decisions, policies, and/or processes. Nothing should be considered ‘unchangeable’.
2. Get off of the solution – Too often, a solution is offered before the ‘problem’ has really been understood.  (Imagine your doctor prescribing an operation without tests and due diligence?!?) Ask as many questions as possible about the challenge, and refuse to make assumptions that you know the answer.
3. Work with people who are as comfortable saying ‘no’ as they are saying ‘yes’ – work with people who are comfortable professionally challenging the status quo and who are also comfortable with sharing new or untested ideas – or ‘opening the kimona’, as I can sometimes be heard saying.  It refers to a sense of exposure that some people are not comfortable with. If everyone at the table is not contributing, then there are too many people at the table.
4. Don’t make decisions ‘all or nothing’– Not all new ideas can be proven good or bad, until there is some testing.  Many new ideas need time to grow.  Set up steps for progressively testing and rolling out new ideas, cost-effectively.  If they don’t work as well as planned, you then can go back to the ‘drawing board’ without major brand damage and/or financial damage.  It the new idea works well in initial steps, you just might have a long-term success on your hand.  Further testing will tell.

Everyone has experience will these challenges, and have worked in environments that were not supportive of ‘unconventional wisdom’.  If you experienced another successful way to introduce alternative thinking into an organization, please share it.

Borders is writing the book on how not to interact with your market.

Borders’ business demise is a reminder to all businesses that the marketplace is in constant motion, whether we business owners want to acknowledge it or not.

Businesses can be prone to know their market well, and use that information to market to that group.  But, without real feedback from that marketplace, they may not notice that the market has moved on to another place.

Sounds a bit like the old “Who moved my Cheese’ story line, right?

Market disruptions caused by technology, often causes a fast, seismic shift in buying/shopping habits for a company’s customer base. 

How can other company’s benefit from this business lesson from Borders?  Here’s a couple of ideas that I have –

1.  First, a company should getting constant, honest feedback from their customers on how they want to be served.  Business owners can get comfortable with the knowledge that they have accumulated from the past, as to how customers want to do business.  That ‘conventional wisdom’ can be very blinding to what might be a new landscape.

2. Companies should look at ‘alternative buying methods’ of their customers.  With Borders, they were late in realizing that they were not only competing with other printed book sellers.  Their customers were not ‘book buyers’, they were ‘readers’.  And readers can now read through many different mediums.  What is your customer?

3. Finally, a company needs to adopt an attitude that risk (in some measured form) is a good thing.  They need to encourage staff to bring new ideas to the conversation.  And they need to remember that ‘conventional wisdom’ was valid yesterday… it might have no bearing on today’s business decisions.

What is your take on the Borders bankruptcy/liquidation?

9% More Time Spent in Mobile Apps Than Internet

People are spending more time inside mobile application on average than they are on the web, according to Flurry, a mobile analytics firm. Playing games and social networking absorb 79% of people’s time, according to Flurry. The rest is news, entertainment, and other apps.

measured the time people spend in apps through its own direct analytics. It was able to get the numbers for the web using public data from comScore and Alexa. According to Business Insider, “The analysis is “somewhat imperfect”, but even if you judge it solely on a directional basis you can see mobile apps are consuming more and more time.”

What are you doing to make sure that you can be found easily via desktop or smartphone?

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/18115/9-More-Time-Spent-in-Mobile-Apps-Than-Internet-Data.aspx#ixzz1SVjueDeB

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/18115/9-More-Time-Spent-in-Mobile-Apps-Than-Internet-Data.aspx#ixzz1SVgK4sJy

Is it ‘social media’ or ‘social commerce’?

B2B companies continue to have mixed feelings about the value of… and the subsequent investment in ‘social media’. “I can’t determine what I am getting for my investment,” is an oft quoted statement from b2b company owners.

It has a similar ring to me of the old line that my print ad clients used to repeat to me a decade or so ago… “I know that 50% of my advertising is working, I just don’t know which 50%.”

The way that I would respond to that question in decades past is similar to how I would respond today to the ‘social media’ conundrum — “What are you measuring?”

So much of the ‘social media’ efforts these days are focused on activity — how many visitors does a site get, how many ‘friends’ or ‘fans’ does the company Facebook page have, etc.

Those metrics may (or may not) be worth following. Certainly, they provide a part of the picture… but, it may be an incomplete picture. And that is why the CEO is puzzled over the investment.

There are several items that I would recommend you consider when developing a ‘social media’ strategy:

1. First of all, re-brand it in your team’s mind as ‘social commerce’ — it needs to contribute to the top-line, or at least the bottom-line of the company’s financials.

2. Second, make it accountable — that will probably mean making someone responsible for results. Make sure that person believes in it, and has a strong sales and/or marketing background (sorry techies, it’s nothing personal, but the technical skills are of secondary value to the business development skills/knowledge.)

3. Third, give those that interact with your ‘social media’ a place to go – eventually – to show their support… in the form of a purchase. If not a purchase, give them an opportunity to identify their interest.

Nothing is more frustrating to me than being convinced by someone that they have the best cheesecake in town… and then not telling me where I can go to try it.

Sometimes, social media does a bad job of making that ‘commercial’ connection with its audience. It should not be the first interaction… but, don’t forget to add it to the mix. Otherwise, why ARE you spending the time?

Google+ plans business strand to rival LinkedIn and Facebook | Mail Online

Google plans to roll out a beta test for a new business profiling option on its new Google+ social medial networking site. This feature will compete with Facebook’s company pages feature and LinkedIn.

One of the goals for Google is to create a more immersive experience for its using. And by interweaving it with all of its online products and services, it might be a bit easier for Google to accomplish this than other market players.

Google+ plans business strand to rival LinkedIn and Facebook | Mail Online.

Is the phone still a viable sales tool?

Of course it is!

The phone can sometimes seem like the poor red-headed, step child of business development. Nobody wants to ‘cold call’ anymore.

And I don’t blame them. Cold calling is a dying art, because it is getting harder and harder to actually complete cold calls these days. If you can’t do it, you can’t improve on your skills… right?

So, many people leave the phone out of their sales and marketing mix… relying upon all of the sales 2.0 tools, such as email, blogging and social media. And I am a HUGE believer in these tools.

But, don’t forget the telephone as part of the mix. In today’s sales environment, the phone may not be a tool of choice for step #1 of a sales campaign — unless it is only for the purpose of confirming contact information.

These days, the best time to use the phone is after a dialogue has been established through other channels. Then, the telephone can’t be beat for taking that dialogue to the next level — business relationship. Why is this?

Today, the internet provides all kinds of information resources for your customer prospect. They don’t need you to call them and tell them you are the best at what you do. They can (or believe that they can) determine that for themselves with the information that they can access. That is why it is important to develop your online presence — as a reliable source of valuable information and capabilities.

There are many ways to accomplish this — on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on websites and blogs. Connecting with prospects over the internet gives them the opportunity to learn more about you and your business, and helps them to gauge your value.

Inviting them to dialogue online with free information and resources then gives you the potential for a proactive and direct conversation with them… first online, then on the phone… and hopefully, later on in person.

The phone is not dead as a ‘sales tool’ by any means. It has just been re-positioned in the sales campaign from its traditional role as a ‘conversation starter’. Today, its role is more productive as a ‘relationship building’ tool.