Paul Greenberg is a wicked smart guy and does an awesome job laying out the definition and rules of engagement for the "social customer." He does a great job of articulating what we are working on with Nearstream and our "buyer-centric" demand capture approach.
Paul breaks down the two types of systems every business needs in a customer engagement world:
System of Engagement – this is all about interaction and communication the way that the customer/prospect wants it. Most existing technologies fail here as they are designed to scale personalization vs. provide a mechanism for meaningful engagement.
System of Record – this is the well defined, known, and entrenched area of CRM systems, billing systems, etc. They are seller centric and represent the companies record of you. Systems of Engagement do not replace Systems of Record but without the former the latter becomes less and less relevant.
I made the early morning trek to San Francisco today where I will be having a few meetings, dropping by AdTech, and giving a presentation at the Sales 2.0 Conference entitled: Social Signals – Capturing Demand Instead of Simply Generating Leads.
Here are my slides if you care to flip through them or share them (hope you will!)
"Content" has always been an important part of the marketing playbook but in a world defined by search engine optimization, influence, and sharing it has become a critical component of the modern marketing plan.
Creation of content is hard enough but an effective content strategy includes both creation as well as distribution.
The work doesn't stop once the blog post is written or the video created, so you must be manically focused on getting it distributed and consumed by your target audience. The long tail of search results certainly works in your favor but understanding how to get your content into the limited attention span of your target audience is now an essential marketing skill.
So for Distribution record a screencast but make it short (less than 2 minutes), make it creative but not stupid, post it to your blog via an embed so others can share it, Stumble the post, then tweet it, then post it to your personal Facebook page and company page, drop it on LinkedIn, get everyone in your company to push it out via their personal social channels but be aware that they won't share often or stuff they think sucks then link to it in your signature block of your email then send an email blast to your house list featuring it exclusively or highlighting it as a recent blog post. Figure out where your target audience gets their information and post it there but don't shamelessly pitch your company or participate out of context in the comments. Be sure to vote it up and have others do the same. Rinse repeat…often.
Distribution can be even more exhausting than creation but don't create anything new without thinking through how you are going to distribute it.
I spent the past couple days in San Francisco as part of an 8 day road trip that took me to Atlanta to meet with the LoopFuse gang, St. Simons Island for a bit of golf watching at the McGladrey Classic with my brother and Dad then to San Francisco to be part of the Sales 2.0 event.
It has been a great trip and I had the opportunity to speak at the event on Sales & Marketing alignment. Not a new concept but the tools and technologies to drive it continue to evolve – none of which is effective without a shared set of expectations and pervasive selling mindset.
I was excited to catch up with Nancy Nardin of Smart Selling Tools, chat with Anneke Seley of Phoneworks and meet Jim Keenan for the first time in person. Like most events the conversations between sessions and in the hallway proved the most valuable.
It was also great to catch up with Meetul Shah of LookAcross and meet Michael Leeds of IntroRocket in person. Meetul has just moved to Sunnyvale to be part of the most recent 500 Startups crop and rounding out the Seattle contingent I had the great pleasure of meeting JP Werlin from PipelineDeals. Easy to use, on-demand sales pipeline management (no, you don’t need Salesforce.com for this).
All of these folks are looking at ways to innovate and rethink sales based on new levels of connectivity, information availability, and speed – I’ll collectively call it sales & marketing hacks. I did, however, think this group was underrepresented in the panels and keynotes. The Sales 2.0 gang is definitely looking forward but many of the vendors present are stuck in the past just getting better at bad things.
A “live prospecting demo” brought this home clearly which included one of the most memorable live demos but also one of the most uncomfortable ones I’ve ever witnessed. If you were there, you know what I am talking about. If you were not, let’s just say listening to someone cold call their way through a company directory and receptionists screams all that is wrong with current accepted approaches to prospecting and selling (ping me and I’ll tell you the company if you are curious).
I’m looking forward to doing a full session at the November Sales 2.0 event in Santa Monica. I’ll be sharing more details about Nearstream and how we are taking a different approach to lead generation by starting with the buyer – a simple but overlooked concept. Stay tuned for more on that!
We were very fortunate to have Seth Godin visit Seattle on Friday and share his thinking with an intimate crowd downtown. The tickets went fast and, if you were lucky enough to get one, the gathering definitely did not disappoint. Starting with the song at the beginning (not Seth) to the quick and witty answers to questions from the crowd, Seth provided perspective and insight into how our connected world is changing how we work, think, and communicate.
While he didn’t come right out and say it, much of what he was talking about fit the new workstyle theme that we believe is defining the future of work. From thinking about the difference between a job and work to knowing that whatever it is you are working on will get “blown up” due to innovation and ease of connection. Jobs come and go but work combining both skills and passion transfers from project to project as you go through life.
I definitely recommend adding Seth’s blog to your daily reading (if it is not already there). Also, he posted pictures from the event here. Be sure to check them out!
A good friend's company just completed their first customer case study and he pinged me on what to do now that it is published. Content creation is definitely important (and challenging) but how you distribute it these days makes all the difference in the world. I shared the following with him via email and thought it good content to share with everyone on this question:
Congratulations, you have a customer saying how awesome your product or service is. Now what?
Send an email blast showcasing it – you do have a house email list, right? Use a product like MailChimp to get the word out via email.
Put it on your website and then add it to the signature block in all of your emails as a hyperlink so that every email you send is an opportunity to showcase the customer as well as drive traffic to your site.
Put it into a few Powerpoint slides then upload it to Slideshare. Send that link instead of an attachment next time. Put your standard pitch presentation on the same branded account so that your content is easily consumed and shared.
Create a summary of video of the situation/challenge/solution including ROI metrics. Upload it to your company's Youtube page. You can also add this to the email blast and signature block as noted above. Keep it to about a minute and half as we live in an increasingly short attention span society. Use this video (and others) to help people understand what you do and the value you deliver.
Pitch it to press/bloggers that cover your space to demonstrate how much you rock (you do have a press/influencer list, don't you?). If you don't have one, create it. Anybody can publish these days so there is no excuse to not get coverage…regardless of the publication.
Push it through your own personal social channels (Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc) in addition to any work ones. We all have social graphs that we can spread our good news to – just don't over do it as people will tune you out. A little good news every now and then about your work life is worth sharing…and reading.
Get the profiled customer to push it through their communication channels like any upcoming executive presentations where the data or innovative approach would be relevant and/or differentiating.If you are a small company and they are a large one, they will have many more opportunities to pitch the success. Target being part of their standard pitch…or at least ones related to the solution area you play in.
There are definitely additional ways to get the word out but this list is my quick thoughts on it. What would you add?
I have been doing considerable thinking about the current state of B2B sales and marketing and what is possible given new levels of social interaction, widespread publishing (blogs, Twitter, etc.), and connectedness. One thing I continue to come back to deals with "demand signaling." I have seen this referred to as a "personal RFP" or "broadcast shopping" as I have done more reading on the the topic but see very little being done to capture or consider it in any company's day to day operations. I even wrote a post a while ago about how "we" are the missing piece of social selling.
B2B lead generation is all about getting contact information of prospective buyers that signal some kind of intent then dropping them into a process of nurture and follow up with an eye on converting them to a paying customer at some point. The problem with this approach is that the "intent" is usually related to downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, or merely visiting a website – all of which demonstrate some type of interest but only in rare situations someone ready to make a purchase (see "leads are weak" clip from Glengarry GlenRoss). People that want to buy from you contact you directly.
So why are millions of dollars, countless hours, and a significant chunk of a marketing team's energy devoted to putting up huge numbers of "leads" that salespeople often struggle with to move through the sales process because they weren't really qualified in the first place? Good question.
Here's a two step framework to begin to put this into practice for all of us that sell (we all sell something):
Qualify yourself in (or out) – just do a little bit of research before you send that next email and see if the person on the other end is really in need of your product or service. The bar is not high here and I am continually amazed at how most people will not even do a simple web search on me or my company before sending a pitch. That is one of the key values of a product like Gist. It does this for you, just use it! At a minimum, visit the company's home page and read the most recent news.
Qualify me in (or out) – Am I asking for what you sell? Did I blog about it, tweet about it, etc.? These are really easy indicators to see for anyone who has a public social profile and will make the timing and appeal of your pitch so much better.
I even decided to set up a Facebook Page to rally around this topic and share examples of doing this poorly. Check out the "I Am Not A Sales Lead" page, post your stories, and help me spread the word!
I have been working to summarize and consolidate the experiences I had building the user acquisition funnel at Gist with a specific focus on programs, tactics, and actual costs. My goal (not reached) was to drive the cost of acquisition down to $1 per user – something unheard of in traditional lead/demand generation circles and aggressive even in a web-application world.
The deck below is sort of a version one and not necessarily optimized for visual appeal so apologies for being a bit text heavy. It is pretty meaty and I have shared it with a few folks in one-on-one sessions so wanted to share this version broadly. Enjoy!
I just received this email from someone wanting to sell me email marketing lists. Let's assume they are of quality as they got my email address from somewhere, would you do business with these folks?
I won't get hung up on the fact that I am not looking for marketing lists (read my post on buyer signaling) but come on, this thing is ugly, has way too many words, and is the type of thing you send someone when they ask…not to start the conversation.
This is a follow up to my Sales = Support post about how the delivery and consumption of web-based products is changing the way we need to think about aligning around the end-user.
Like many of my blog posts, this was inspired by a conversation (an email exchange in this case) about whether to focus on adding features or focus on the user experience given limited resources.
I had been meaning to write this for some time so decided to post here what I shared with a friend:
Do one thing and make it really simple (to start). There are always features to add and complexity to consider but people use products and unless they have to use it (do x to get paid/keep your job, etc.) they choose to use products based on value delivered.
I definitely believe that product = experience in an on-demand world. You want people to find, try, use and love your thing with limited to no involvement on your part. This makes it all about experience. You get involved when they have a question or observation: sales = support. The product = experience blog post is coming soon:)
That said, if you are not quite to the point where the one thing you are doing really well doesn't solve someone's problem yet, then focus on that.
Consider a product like Dropbox. They get a lot of buzz but one of the things that stands out to me is not their fame but how dead simple the product is to use and works itself into my existing knowledge. I didn't have to learn how to use it, it works like a file finder/manager – looks the same, even integrated into that view.
They are not the first (or last) company to do cloud-based file backup but they made it work for me with limited brain cycles to learn it. Most people are not curious enough to figure it out so the focus has to be on quick time to value.
Venture Vice 