Simple Interactive Marketing Tactics For 2010

2010. A new decade. A fresh start. A good time to start implementing some simple interactive marketing tactics!

If you've been following this blog (and thank you if you have), then you know about my passion for interactive marketing and aligning your sales & marketing teams to the realities of a Web 2.0 world. Though the sales and marketing concepts used back when I was a college student selling restaurant cleaning equipment by mailing prospects a VHS tape are still relevant today, the execution of those ideas has forever changed.

The sales and lead generation tools at your disposal on January 1, 2010, are a far cry from what you had to work with on January 1, 2000. The decade that began with worries about Y2K has ended with discussions on leveraging User Generated Content (UGC) to drive interest in your brand on social media sites like Facebook, You Tube, and LinkedIn.

Transitioning your lead generation and marketing tactics to embrace this new reality is no longer a matter of "if" but a count down to "when". Even for mid-sized companies. Even for B2B organizations selling industrial or technical products and services. Even for your business.

Get Going.

Viewing your marketing and sales tactics through the interactive prism may be a difficult transition for some on your team. They may have spent years building a career on becoming subject experts on off-line marketing tactics - marketing tactics that are now supplanted by interactive tools with which they may have little comfort level. Do not let this slow you down. Your team needs to embrace the new reality or move onto a new opportunity elsewhere.

You may also find that you do not possess the interactive skill level in house - this still relatively recent stuff after all. If that is the case, then I encourage you to seek out an interactive agency that has a track record of helping companies such as yours. If you are a strong B2B company, for example, then seek out an agency that has done work in that arena.

Here are some simple interactive marketing tactics you should consider for 2010.

1. Make A Game Plan. You need to know where you want to go before starting on the trip. Define your goals, set reasonable expectations, then measure the results and make changes accordingly. The great thing about interactive marketing is the ability to measure and react. Some ideas will work, some won't. By defining your goals, setting reasonable expectations up front, and measuring your results, you will be able to make the changes to your plans that will better maximize your dollars.



2. Re-Think Your Web Site. Your web site, which is usually how many mid-sized companies define interactive marketing, is your brand's face to prospects and customers. Chances are that the site was not developed with SEO, SEM, or lead conversion in mind. All roads eventually lead to the site, start here as you rethink your interactive approach.



3. Search Engine Optimization. The best way to increase your position on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) is through organic search using simple tactics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are numerous tactics that can be used on your web site to increase SEO, as you re-think your web site ask your designer how to improve the site's SEO. If you haven't done so already, begin compiling your relevant key words.



4. Search Engine Marketing. SEM is made up of paid placements with the goal of increasing brand visibility on Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) for major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Buyers who click on search ads tend to be at a pivotal point in their decision making process, making search marketing a great direct response and lead conversion tool.



5. Display Ads. Display Advertising through banner ads is excellent for branding or direct response. This allows you to place your brand on sites that your buyers find relevant. When using display ads for a direct response campaign, you may look at using pay-per-click (PPC) - paying only when a buyer clicks on your ad and is driven to your landing page or relevant page on your web site. For branding campaigns, you may want to consider looking at cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) because you want as many eyeballs looking at the display ad as possible. Display ads campaigns are also useful when paired with more traditional off-line marketing like print.



6. Email Marketing. Email marketing leans heavily towards direct marketing - using the same concept as direct mail but in a new medium. There are a number of factors that will drive a successful email campaign, but it all starts with the list you are using. Your best results will come from an opt-in list of current, past, or potential customers as they have invited you to communicate with them and have at least a passing awareness of your brand.



7. Social Media Marketing. Social Media Marketing refers to advertising placed on websites that feature user-generated content and user-supported profile pages. These include blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter among others. This is an effective channel to engage your customers in real time and to have an honest interaction with them. Social media is also a good means to begin the conversation about your brand.

Though I have given you a good overview of the simple tactics available, the most important thing is that you get started with your interactive marketing. Make a plan, look at your site, and call in some help if you need. Above all, start.

Five Steps To Developing Key Words

They have become the building blocks for your on-line and off-line marketing efforts. Key Words. Those little nuggets that tell the world who you are and why they should care.

Key words are what Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing use to display relevant websites on their Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) when a prospect is searching for information about your products or services. These words are also the first thing your prospect sees when deciding whether or not to click through to your site.

The right key words increase your chances of snagging a prospect and converting them into a lead as they move through the information gathering phase of their buying process. Better that you are front and center with that customer than your competition.

But not only are these key words used in your web site for better Search Engine Optimization (SEO), they should also be used throughout your other on-line and off line marketing programs as well. These are the words that will add consistency and focus to your on-line display ads, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), social media, print, brochures, and sales presentations.

In today's marketing, we live in a key word centric world.

Get Going.

Even though web 2.0 strategies have been in use for several years, many mid-sized companies - particularly those B2B companies selling industrial or technical products - have been slower to embrace the basics of on-line and interactive marketing. Many still view on-line marketing as "the web site" which more than likely was not developed with SEO or lead conversion in mind.

If you find your company in that situation, then start your quest for better interactive marketing by developing your Key Word Bible using this five step process.

1. Get Into The Mind Of The Customer. Getting into the mind of the customer is the first step in key word research. Your potential customers are the ones that will be typing their relevant search words into Google, so what words are they using to describe your products or services? Remember, they may not have the depth of product understanding that you do, yet they control the search.



2. Brainstorm Key Word Categories. Sit down with your marketing, sales, and customer service teams to brainstorm key word categories that your customers may be using to search for products like yours. Compile every body's thoughts into an initial list. By this point you should have at least 30 to 50 words that could potentially be used.



3. Search For Other Phrases. With your list in hand, it is time to hit the web. Search your competitors' web sites, download their sales materials, find relevant blogs and look at the labels or topics they talk about, review the on-line versions of your industry publications or trade association to see what phrases they use to describe your product or services. Do all of this to find other words and phrases that your prospects may use to search for your product on a search engine. The list should be growing longer, and may now be approaching 100 or more potential words.



4. Quantify Your Key Word Popularity. Using an analytic software such as Google Analytics, submit your list of key words and see how popular they are. This will be an eye opening experience as you'll find out how many searches were done on the words you want. As a practical matter, there may be a good chance that your marketing team may not have a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) specialist on staff with expertise in Google Analytics or other analytic software. If that is the case, then talk with an interactive agency - they may very well do the analysis for free or little cost if they feel that they may have a shot at developing your on-line marketing.



5. Analyze The Data And Make Your Final Selection. Based on the results from the analytics, your review of what your competition is doing on their sites, understanding the current and future content of your web site, and determining which customer segments you want to target for lead conversion, you will have the information you need to develop your Key Word Bible - those words and phrases that will be used throughout your on-line and off line marketing mix.

With your Key Word Bible in hand, you can then start the discussion about how to integrate these words into your on-line marketing and sales strategies.

What You Can Learn From Ed Whitacre

It is always interesting when the new sheriff arrives in town. Look at GM. "You are accountable and responsible," said Ed Whitacre, the company's new chief executive, during a recent interview with Bill Vlasic of the New York Times. "The success of the company depends on you, and the things you do. Now go out and do it."

He continued, "I want to make sure people understand that the responsibility for this company to be successful is not just with the C.E.O. It's them. My style is really just to say, 'let's get going.' Let's do something, let's move, and let's not be constrained by something that has happened in the past. Nobody is going to be fired for trying something new around here."

Time will tell if Whitacre, who had a successful career at AT&T before being brought into GM earlier this year, will be able to truly shake up the historically bureaucratic culture of General Motors, but his words ring just as true for a multi-billion dollar corporation as they do for companies at $50 to $500 million in revenue.

Everybody shares in the success or failure of a company - from the worker on the line to the senior management staff. That idea tends to get lost in translation, though, particularly in entrepreneurial companies that have grown up. These organizations were usually built around a strong founder who, by necessity, made or influenced all key decisions in the early days. As these companies grow and expand into new markets, products, and profit centers, though, there may still be a tendency to keep deferring the decision making up the ladder. Many times the leadership team demands it.

Doing so saps the company's employees of responsibility and accountability. Doing so saps the company of innovation and responsiveness to market changes.

I suggest you think about Ed Whitacre's call to action at GM and then take a few minutes to think about your organization. How responsible and accountable are you. How responsible and accountable are the members of your team? If you think there is room for improvement, then try this:

1. Align with corporate strategic goals. Know the goal and know your role. Are the activities that you and your team are doing aligning with the key strategic goals of the company? If not, why are you spending time and resources on them?


2. Make an action plan. What steps can you take to improve performance, what projects can you or your team take on that will drive towards meeting the company's overall objectives? As Whitacre implores, "The success of this company depends on you, and the things you do. Now go out and do it."


3. Create buy in. More than likely what you and your team will want to accomplish will need the support of other parts of the organization. Go out and get buy-in for the big ideas. This is an acid test to see if your team is allowed to, as Whitacre says, "Let's do something, let's move, and let's not be constrained by something that has happened in the past."


4. Set a time-line and deadline. Talk and plans are cheap, setting a time-line and deadline to get things done starts to move you from talking to doing. This also acts as a reality check to see your actions are doable in the time allowed. If not, rework the plan.


5. Quantify your progress. You must be able to quantify what you or your teams actions are bringing or will bring to the table. This creates a benchmark to evaluate your progress against. If your organization truly wants people to be accountable and responsible, then also heed Whitacre's advice, "Nobody is going to be fired for trying something new around here."


6. Follow up. By creating the time line and deadlines, you are designing toll gates to evaluate the progress of the action plans. Follow up is key. This shows that the actions are important and that people will be truly responsible and accountable for they have committed to.

Accountability and responsibility of your team members is crucial in developing a successful and winning company. Get going and get started by taking the first step - aligning your team to the company's strategic goals.

It Takes A Company To Sell A Customer

It could have been a disaster. But instead it turned into an opportunity to allow our company to shine, and showed the importance of teamwork in developing new business.

First, a little background. My organization is in the process of on-boarding a very large customer who has been incumbent with our competitors for the past 10 years. This is the kind of customer you want, the kind that challenges your organization to do better, to stretch, to push beyond how you've done things in the past. On top of that, they represent ongoing business (even through the recession) and have other business units that can use the products and services we provide.

On a typically cold Midwestern morning a few weeks ago, my team and theirs got our wires crossed on the timing of a visit and face to face meeting. Our customer team showed up two hours earlier than we expected - literally as we were all driving into the parking lot first thing in the morning. Nothing prepared, nothing ready to go, and nothing we could do about it.

But here's the remarkable thing. Our receptionist, though completely caught off guard first thing in the morning, understood the importance this new customer and poured on the charm while getting the word out to members of the team. Though scattered across multiple buildings at our location, all of our team members assembled quickly, got focused, and got their thoughts and materials ready to go.

The conference room was opened. Coffee, properly branded drinks, and food suddenly appeared. And we used the opportunity to show our flexibility, adaptability, and commitment to the account. One topic turned into another, opening the door to more potential business. What could have been a black eye for our company turned into a shining moment. Keep in mind that the key to setting the tone was the first interaction by the first person our customers met that morning, set up by her understanding of the importance of this customer to the company.

It is usually not the lone sales person who brings in new business, but the efforts by a mix of people at all levels and functions in the organization.

The important step in all of this is getting your company aligned to your sales goals - not just a top line revenue number but also who you are targeting and what they could mean to everybody. With the level of layoffs, closures, and reductions that have occurred in the past few years, the folks who are left standing in your organization should have a real sense of the importance of customer sales to securing their paychecks.

Get Going.

So, is your company aligned to your sales goals and your customer goals? If your not confident that they are, here's some thoughts:

• Walk Around and Ask. Take a stroll today and ask various folks about who they think your major customers are, who your company is pursuing, and what they think the company's sales goal is. Be broad and open ended in your questions - what you want is a gauge of how well this has been communicated so you know where the organization stands.


• Know The Goal. Know Your Role. Everybody shares in the bottom line goal of the company...and in the top line. The key is translating a P&L number into the daily actions of your company's people. This goes beyond the management team into employees at all levels of your organization. Can your team translate what they are doing into the effect on the top or bottom line? Do they seem to have a common sense of purpose? Ask the questions to find out.


• Take The Next Step. The first two steps may be eye opening for you. But what you find doesn't add up to much if you don't take action. Follow through with your team and have them define three steps that they will take (along with their completion date) to support your company's sales goals. Get specifics - what are you going to do to support the goals?

Take the time to take three steps to position your entire company to shine with customers, not just your sales team.

Segmentation - Getting To No

Sales is all about getting to "yes". Marketing is all about getting to "no".

As counter intuitive as that sounds, think about it. Sales people are charged with turning prospects into customers by getting them to say "yes" to your products and services. With marketing the goal is to get qualified leads (prospects) into the sales channel.

To do that, your marketing team needs to sort through the sea of potential customers to identify, target, and qualify only those market segments that ultimately may want and have the resources to purchase your wares.

In other words, disqualifying large portions of the available market to qualify your most likely prospects. Your marketing team needs to say "no" to certain segments so your sales teams can get to "yes" with the rest.

I first saw this put into practice years ago as a young marketing manager overseeing my company's lawn care marketing. After a careful analysis of our customer database, we discovered specific segments that consistently purchased and repurchased our products - regardless of geography.

Using this information and the marketing tools we had at the time, I launched a lead generation direct mail campaign into a target city in Florida, aiming at zip codes and neighborhoods that best matched our existing customers.

Not being familiar with the metro area I did not know how many of our current buyers actually lived in the targeted zip codes. Turns out, we inadvertently hit uncharted territory.

I can still recall the local branch manager's absolute surprise at the new leads they were receiving from neighborhoods that his sales team had never before penetrated. The marketing team brought the leads in and the sales team turned them into revenue producing customers. From that day forward, I was sold on the power of segmentation.

The interactive marketing tools available today are a far cry from the direct mail campaigns of the 1990's, thank goodness. Immensely measurable, simple to change, and quick to create, tools such as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), pay-per-click advertising, or web site display ads allow you stretch your marketing dollars and hone in on those segments that may say "yes" to your products, converting them into a lead.

Given the economic fall out of the past couple of years, mid-sized companies are really pressed to deploy their limited sales and marketing dollars into segments that should be their most profitable or hold the best potential for growth. How are you doing with segmentation at your company?

Get Going.

Before the week is out, take the time to do some simple analytical work on your current customer base. Think about how you can segment those customers that are or should be buying from you:

• How can you segment or break down both your customers or your sales channels into different groups?
  
• Specifically, how is each different from one another? Is it they way they buy, the reasons they buy, how often they buy, or how much they buy?
  
• Which segment gives you the best margins?
  
• What motivates each segment to make a decision on a product like yours?
  
• Given that, what makes your specific product or service stand out versus your competitor - what is it that your company brings to this market segment?
  
• What key words or adjectives describe how your company, product, or service stands outs to these segments? How are you working those key words into your on-line and off-line marketing tools?
  
• What assumptions about these market segments, as they relate to your product categories, may have changed over the last two years since the start of the Great Recession? Has the recession created a potentially new segment for your company?

And finally, based on questions above what three changes could you make this week to allocate your marketing funding to focus on saying "yes" to profitable segments and getting to "no" with the others?

Does Your Marketing Staff Match Your On-line Strategy?

Structure follows strategy. It is one of the basic tenants of organizational management. The question is, does your marketing structure match your on-line strategy?

There have been so many changes with interactive marketing in the last few years that the skill level and focus of your marketing staff may no longer be effective. Think about all that has happened since the middle of the decade - a company's basic on-line strategy has evolved from a single web site to search marketing to display ads to social media. The way you interact with your customers and prospects has evolved from simple emails to email marketing to social media and twitter. If your marketing team is still structured around "the web site" as your only on-line marketing element, then it is time to reevaluate your staff's skills and your team's structure.

Don't get me wrong, there is a healthy mix between on-line and off-line marketing. Each may have their place as an element your product's marketing mix. But as a leader you need to make sure your tactics and team are evolving with the times.

Companies between $50 to $500 million have quite the range of marketing sophistication and staffing - from a one person show to a specialized team of over 20. Though the tactics used to market products and services have evolved since my early days as a Marketing Analyst with a freshly minted MBA, we are still trying to accomplish the same goals - build brand awareness within target segments, convert a prospect into a lead or sale, and reinforce the buying decision so a customer comes back to buy again. You need the right team structure and talent to achieve these goals in the rapidly evolving reality of interactive marketing.

I suggest that you take a step back and look at your group. Ask yourself these questions to see how well your structure is matching your interactive strategy.

• Are you still staffed and structured to the off-line world of print brochures and catalogs, old media advertising, or direct mail?


• How deep of a role does interactive marketing play in your current marketing mix and in your future marketing plans?


• Do you have the talent, skill level, and structure to explore and implement the range of interactive marketing tactics such as Search (SEO & SEM), Display Advertising, E-mail Marketing, Social Media, or Mobile Marketing?


• What three steps can you take this week to begin aligning your team's skill level and structure to your interactive strategy?

Marketing is evolving at a rapid pace, make sure your team is keeping up or your company will be left behind.

Why Branding Matters

It conjures up images of John Wayne leading a cattle drive across the Red River and into Oklahoma. Branding.

But whereas brands in old westerns would help sort out the cattle once the Duke got to Dodge City, your company and product branding tells customers and prospects who you are on both a rational and emotional level.

What I have found over the years however is that many mid-sized companies, especially those B2B companies selling industrial or technical products, fail in establishing their brand identity. They get enamored with their product and features, but not with their brand.

Branding is the starting point for thousands of marketing decisions that go into creating an integrated marketing strategy. While the ultimate goal of marketing is to drive qualified leads to the sales channel, the first step in doing so is establishing the company or product brand in the mind of a prospect. Before you can get into the mind of a prospect, you must have already created your brand personality.

You may be thinking, "we sell technical products by the part number, there is no brand personality to what we do." Actually, there is a personality to your product brand and you are allowing your customers and competition to define it. Taking a page from PR 101, if you are not out telling people who you are, somebody else will.

As you consider your brand personality, consider the following:

• Branding tells the world who you are. The market is cluttered, but here's the chance to stake your claim to key ideas. What specific adjectives would you use to describe your company or product line? What do you want a prospect to think when they see or hear your brand? What sets you apart from competitor A, B, and C?


• Branding forces your company or product to define what they are. If you don't think that there is an emotional element to branding, bring in board with new company logos to your next executive staff meeting and watch the reaction. Creating a brand personality forces choices as to what your product or company stands for in the eyes of a buyer. I have seen simple branding definition exercises become the spark that ignites a larger strategic discussion about what the company or product line is trying to accomplish.


• Branding should be consistent across your on-line and off-line marketing. The colors, tone, words, or images that are used to define your brand should be consistent from your web site and interactive marketing to your sales channel support materials and training to your traditional advertising and PR. No matter how a prospect interacts with your brand the message should be the same, with each marketing element reinforcing the other.


• Branding is too valuable, don't be shy to call in the pros. I will repeat again, branding is the starting point for thousands of marketing decisions that go into creating an integrated marketing strategy. It may be worth the few thousand dollars you'll pay a professional marketing / branding / advertising firm to work with you on creating your brand. Ask to see their work for other clients first including tone boards, the process they went through to define the brand, and how the final product was used across both on-line and off-line marketing elements.

Take the time to define your brand. You may not drive cattle to market, but you may drive new customers to your product.

Five Things To Ask About Your Web Site

Your web site is the cornerstone of your company's Internet presence, but have you taken a serious look at it recently?

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of great sites out there, usually created for Fortune 1,000 companies or for well funded not-for-profit organizations. But one thing I have noticed about the web sites of mid-sized companies, particularly those in the manufacturing arena where I've spent the bulk of my career, is how their sites have not really evolved beyond the "catalog on-line" mindset.

That mindset may have gotten the job done in years past, but today a company's web site is more than an easy to access product catalog, it is the face of the company - sometimes the only face - to millions of perspective buyers, investors, and partners. The problem is that as buyers, investors, and partners expectations of their web experience have grown over the years, many sites for companies from $50 million to $500 million have not.

If your organization is like many medium sized companies, then you have ample opportunity to not only enhance the experience of your web site's users, but to also increase key conversions from your site such as leads, quotes, request for information, e-newsletter sign ups, transactions, and on and on.

When evaluating your current site or planning a new web site, there are five base questions you need to ask. Implement the answers to these questions into your site design, and you may very well best your competitors' web site - their face to your mutual perspective customers.

1. Who is the audience for your web site? You must understand who you want to attract to the site, and the days of "everybody" are long gone. Understanding who the target audience is will drive site design, content, key word placement, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and the conversions you hope to drive.


2. What do you want them to do on the site? Once you bring your target audience onto your site, what is it that you want to accomplish? Is it to increase awareness of your brand, introduce a product or service, convert them into a lead, sell them your product through a shopping cart, gather information about them? The possibilities are endless and only you can define what want to accomplish. These decisions will help your web designers understand the main goal of the site.


3. What does your audience want to do on the site? Now put yourself in front of your user's key board or mobile key pad - what experience are you looking for? Why have you come to the site and what do you want do you want to get out of being there? Understanding what motivates your audience will help guide your web designer with how a user interfaces and experiences your site.


4. What is your definition of web site success? Define what success means up front. For example, if your key conversion is leads, then how many leads per week or month are expected? Being clear with your web designer about expectations before the first line of code is written is important. Doing so may also uncover a budget constraint to meeting your expectation, which could lead you down a different path altogether.


5. How will you measure the key conversions that define success? The web is immensely measurable - with the analytic tools readily available you can easily get a good read on what is working and what is not on both your web site and your interactive marketing programs. Before the design work is started make sure you have all agreed to the analytics that will be used to evaluate the site.

So, take 20 minutes to take a serious look at your current web site and see how well you can answer these five questions. Then, take 10 minutes and look at your top competitor's site and ask yourself the same thing. A half hour's worth of work may uncover a good opportunity for your marketing and your company.

The Right Person For The Job

It may be one of the oldest corporate bromides around - people are our most important asset. But talent really does make the difference between winning and losing in the marketplace.

Especially in medium sized companies where resources were constrained even before the Great Recession took its toll on the bottom line, you no longer have the luxury of fielding a team of mediocre players.

"If you are not working with "A" list talent, then you are not getting grade "A" results. "

As many industries begin to stabilize, albeit at much lower levels than a few years ago, now is an excellent time to evaluate the talent that remains in your organization to see if your current team can truly bring outstanding future results. With so many talented people to choose from in the job market, after being cast off due to downsizing, retrenchment, or corporate bankruptcy, mid-sized companies should not be shy about taking a hard look at the skill level of those that remain on the payroll.

If your organization can get more talented employees, then it is time to upgrade the staff.

Get Going.

This week take a step back, look at the members of your executive or department team, and ask yourself three questions:

1. Do I have the right person?
2. In the right job?
3. Doing the right things?

Many times you may have a very talented individual who can bring in great results, but you have placed him or her in the wrong job - in which they are either struggling or are not being challenged. Other times, you may have the right person in the best position to match his or her talent, but they are not focused on the right actions. You both need to sit down together and gain a clearer understanding of expectations and goals.

Of course, there will be those who are not a good fit for the position and, realistically, will be hard pressed to ever bring in the results that are required. In those cases, I suggest that you quickly move that person out and upgrade with a better suited individual.

Now is the time for companies to fish in a very large and deep talent pool, upgrade their teams, and position themselves with the right players today who will lead their growth tomorrow.

It's Your Call

In a business communication culture of texts, email, social media, and twitter there is still one decidedly old school method that your sales team should not forget.

The phone call.

Think about it. When was the last time you actually talked to one of your customers? Not communicated, but talked. With your voice. Your outside voice.

I know that I can fall into the electronic trap - emails and texts make it so bloody easy to communicate, reach, and stay in touch with customers. They are quick, efficient, and a great communication tool (I'll save the virtues of email marketing campaigns for another day).

But what electronic communication gains in speed, efficiency, and reach, it loses in intimacy. With the simplicity of electronic communication these days, it almost seems as if you earn phone calling status with a customer...that you are worthy enough to merit a real conversation. Which makes the old fashion phone call such a powerful way to communicate one-on-one with your customers.

A phone call can break you out of the Joe Friday "Just the facts, ma'am" mode with a customer. With a call, you've got the opportunity to literally hear the voice of the customer...and their tone. Let's face it, the 160 character limitation of a text can make it difficult to dig deep.

So try this before the week is out, call one of your key customers and talk to them. You may need to use email or a text to let them know you'll be calling, but nonetheless fire up the Blackberry and push the call button. Ask about something non work related - their family, holiday plans, their favorite college team. Take just a minute to make a personal connection before you get down to business.

Don't worry, you can always follow up with an email summarizing the call!

What You Can Learn From Your Sales Team

One of the most readily available sources of information about your company's products, position, and competition is your sales team. Yet many fail to tap this resource.

Sure, we may ask on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis about what deals are working, how the numbers are lining up, and or how many customers in a key segment the sales team is seeing. But do we also take the time to ask the sales team about how our products could be enhanced, how our customer service can be improved, or how our response time could be shortened?

A common response to this question I've gotten over the years is usually something like, "Ask our sales team, why would we do that? All they are going to do is complain about our [fill in the blank]". Yet, outside of speaking directly with your customers, your sales team has day to day first hand knowledge of what is happening in the market. Especially in resource constrained companies, the sales team is a quick and inexpensive source of market knowledge.

Consider innovation and product development. Every day your sales team talks to customers about the perceived benefits of your products and handles objections about your products' perceived deficiencies. This is why in product innovation teams I lead, talking with the sales team to get their view of the world is one of the key actions at the front end of the development process. An added benefit is that they are a part of the process for products they will be asked to sell.

Get Going.

I suggest bringing a group of sales people together if possible. As they warm up they will begin to interact, build, and even feed off of each other. Like a classic brainstorming session, one idea begets another and so on and so on. If feasible, have your current product available for the group to touch, feel, and comment about.

• Look for trends in comments: I like to say that one comment is an incident, two are a coincident, three are a pattern, and four are a trend. In qualitative research like this, look for recurring themes and issues, particularly if they come from different geographic parts of your market.

• What benefits do they sell: What are the top benefits of your product that each sells? Though specific product features will be discussed, the benefits are important. This helps break the developers out being focused on product features and instead focus on what the product does for the customer.

• What do you have to defend: Though this creates the slippery slope for the session to devolve into non-product issues, try to keep the group focused on the product itself. The goal is to find the vulnerable areas of the product that customers or the competition bring up.

• Understand the bias of the participants: Many times, the most recent deals that were lost or won may cloud the comments. As a facilitator, probe beyond the initial comments. You may ask, "who else is running into this issue?" or "how often do you see that?"

• Be ready to talk about non-product issues: This is nearly inevitable. Comments on quality, lead time, turnaround time, support, and more will come up whether you want them to or not. Plan for it. Depending on the group dynamics, set aside time either before or after the product session to discuss the non-product improvements. You may be surprised at the opportunities that are uncovered.

• What price means: Price may not always bubble up, but if it does you need to be ready. As you probe, the issue will not be price, the issue will be the perceived value of your product & service offering versus the perceived value of your competition. There may be legitimate issues that are product driven, but there may also be an opportunity for sales training as well.

As a next step, take a look at where your company's next products are in the product innovation process. Have you tapped your sales team's knowledge? If not, how do you bring them into the innovation cycle?

What You Can Learn From Your Customers

While you have been playing by the rules that made your company successful, your competition has rewritten the rule book.

While you have been resting on your laurels, your competition has been moving forward.

While you have been explaining or defending your company's actions to your customers, your competition has been asking them "How do we improve?"

"How quickly we forget how swiftly the competitive landscape can change."

I was reminded of this recently. We had been viewing a key customer through the prism of what had made us successful in the past, failing to recognize that our competition had been deliberately and methodically chipping away at our position. While we played by the old set of rules, a new rule book had been written.

The silver lining is that this has served as a wake up call, an opportunity to reflect and challenge some long held beliefs. I am reminded of the book "Who Moved My Cheese?". We had forgotten to smell the cheese to see if it had gotten stale.

The good news is that your top customers are a tremendous source of information about changes in the competive landscape. They know you, they know your competition, and they can provide a snapshot of how you, your team, and your company stack up. By engaging your top customers as a litmus test of your company's performance, in addition to a source of revenue, you will gain an ongoing understanding of issues that will eventually affect your revenue.

There are six performance areas to consider probing with your top customers. These also happen to align closely with the broader strategic pillars your company may be using:

1. Quality - how does your product and service quality compare to others that they purchase?
2. Innovation - how innovative have you been in developing and bringing forth new product or service improvements? What issues does your customer have that you may be able to solve... and that could be offered to others?
3. Responsiveness - how well are your responding to the needs of this customer compared to the other companies they use?
4. Ease of Doing Business - you may think that your company is easy to work with, what does your customer say when compared to your competition? If they had a choice, who would they prefer and why?
5. After Sales Support - how are you doing versus your competition in supporting your customer after the purchase with service, warranty, parts, training, or whatever else is important to them? Is this an opportunity to create separation from the competition?
6. Understanding Your Customer - Does your customer perceive that you understand what is important to them, where they are going and how you can help them get there? How do you compare to their other suppliers?

These are simple questions that we can quickly forget to ask. And then quickly find that our competitive landscape has changed.

Innovation Evangelists - 5 Common Traits

Innovation has become more important than ever as companies look to separate themselves in a business environment that has changed dramatically over the past 18 months.

Customer buying habits have changed, expansion plans may have turned to retrenchment, struggling competitors compete by slashing prices, and suppliers may be spending more time in front of a bankruptcy judge than your purchasing team.

As I have stated before, innovation is a key strategic pillar to any successful organization, albeit product development, R&D, process improvement, or fostering an innovation mindset in the corporate culture. For innovation to take root, particularly in mid-sized companies, Innovation Evangelists are needed.

These Innovation Evangelists may come from different areas of the organization, but they all share five common traits:

1. Passion: Innovation Evangelists have an absolute passion about the need to change, to challenge the status quo, and to move the organization forward


2. Big Picture Perspective: Innovation Evangelists can see the larger game board of the industry and can pinpoint significant changes that will affect the company's position in the market


3. Street Level Execution: Innovation Evangelists not only see the big picture, but understand how to bring those changes into specific projects that will lead to change. They have the ability to connect the dots of various projects and see how they collectively affect the larger strategic goal


4. Corporate Persuasion: Innovation Evangelists have the position and persuasion in the organization to bring together a coalition of players to get things done. They are respected, people want to follow them, and they can therefore turn their passion into corporate action


5. Action Oriented: Innovation Evangelists ultimately get things done. They drive the need to move a company forward, the identification of key projects that will meet this goal, and the allocation of the resources to make these projects successful

Who are the passionate Innovation Evangelists in your organization? How well is your organization looking at the larger industry game board and developing the projects to move forward? And what actions are being taken to achieve your company's larger strategic goals?

Marketing & Engineering: Two Creative Sides Of The Coin

You'd think that they'd mix like oil and water.

One very rational and left brained. One working with emotions, feelings and their right brain. One analyzing black and white data. One working with perceptions. An engineer and a marketer, couldn't be more different, huh?

Actually I found that engineers and marketing professionals are very similar in one critical area: creativity. Though each may come at the problem from a very different starting point, both can look outside of conventional thinking and come up with creative, mold breaking ideas.

One of the many fun things about working for mid-sized companies is the nearly forced collaboration among various parts of the organization. Most mid-sized companies are not yet so expansive that the potential functional silos/haystacks/castles/fortresses (well you get the idea) have not completely taken root. This allows an environment for cross functional teams to work together and thrive.

There is nothing like a passionate marketing product manager working with a passionate design engineer on a new product or line extension. Each will come at the initiative from a completely different angle. Put both the rational and emotional, data based and perception based, left and right brains of engineering and marketing together, and the collective results can be a truly innovative new product for your company. I have personally seen this work on everything from software to storage systems.

So how is your organization doing? Do your engineers and marketing folks collaborate on new products? If not, what would be the product line they could address and what are the first three steps to getting the project rolling?

The Iron Triangle: Sales, Marketing, Product Development

Innovation is one of the key strategic pillars in any organization. To keep moving forward, companies must have a stream of new and improved product offerings for their existing and future customers.

The danger is when product development begins to take on a Field of Dreams vibe, "if we build it they will buy." The wrong product is created, the market rejects it, countless hours and dollars are wasted, and the organization is left without much to show for all their hard work.

This is particularly tough in companies with revenue from $50 to $500 million because they have the resources to place only a few solid bets. Having been around new product development all of my career - even the summer between my first and second year of graduate school was spent developing and launching a new piece of cleaning equipment for a small manufacturer in Oklahoma - I suggest that you can increase your chance of success by using the iron triangle of a Marketing, Sales, and Product Development alliance.

"Yeah, we already ask Sales what they want and then when we're all done we give the new thing to the Marketing folks so they can make it look good," you may be thinking. This is not what I am talking about.

Having spent time in all three camps, there is absolute value to bringing together key players of the Sales, Marketing, and Product Development groups to work together on your next big thing. They should all be on the same page in terms of goals and milestones, then dedicate resources from their respective areas to ensure success of the product development, testing, and launch process.

I value the collaborative nature of a cross functional team in terms of the perspective each member brings to the conference table. Why just today, during a team discussion about improving a product, an engineer asked a technical question that ultimately led the sales and marketing folks down a path of positioning the product differently with an important customer niche. Now that's collaboration!

Think about the value each brings. Sales should have a good idea where you are missing the boat with the market or with a product. Marketing should have a good idea of what will trip the trigger of target customers and how to do that. The engineers in Product Development should have a good idea about what is feasible to create under a given set of constraints.

Consider your organization. How is product development handled? Do you have a stream of new products in the pipeline? Do you even have a pipeline? As a starter, might I suggest taking a few minutes to sit down with the heads of your Marketing, Sales, and Product Development teams and ask the group a simple question: "In 12 months, what should we be introducing into our market, and what three steps should we take to get the ball rolling?"

A few minutes may turn into hours of discussion.

Sales & Marketing - A Beautiful Friendship

There is a scene at the very end of Casablanca in which Rick (Humphrey Bogart) looks to his former adversary Louis (Claude Rains) and says, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" as they walk into the night fog.

Rick and Louis, though at loggerheads during most of the movie, find that in the end they have the same shared sense of purpose. Much like Sales and Marketing teams have the same shared sense of purpose - drive top line revenue.

The problem is that both groups tend to have very different views as to the best way of achieving this goal, leading to behavior that is potentially non-productive to down right destructive. Sales feels that the folks in Marketing don't understand what actually happens in the real day-to-day world with customers, while Marketing feels Sales doesn't understand their work or properly use the tools they've developed.

I have seen this dynamic play out in every organization I've worked with. One of my first experiences was during a sales management course at Emory where two earnest twenty something MBA students, one having worked in sales at P&G and the other in P&G's brand management, got into a very heated discussion about who was better equipped to market and sell toilet paper!

It does not have to be this way. Marketing and Sales are two sides of the same coin and to be effective each must respect and work with the other. In most mid-sized companies, the staffing and resources are constrained so there simply isn't room for friction between the two groups.

Don't get me wrong, healthy discussion and disagreement are part of the deal. But if both groups agree on the ultimate goals, then the discussion will be about how we get there, not where we are going.

I'll never forget a comment by the newly hired VP of Operations at a former company who observed how I, then a Marketing Manager, and our National Sales Manager interacted. He was trying to play us off each other and finally said, "What are you two doing getting along? I thought sales and marketing people aren't suppose to like each other!"

Save yourself unneeded heartburn. Before the week is out, sit down with your counter part in sales or marketing and go over both your priority lists. Are the two of you on the same page? Is marketing providing the leads and support that sales needs? Is sales providing the customer feedback and market intelligence that marketing needs to make better decisions? Do you both have mutual plans being executed that will lead to more revenue?

Use this dicussion as an opportunity for the beginning of a beautiful business friendship.

What Your Marketing Team Should Be Doing

Most of the mid-sized companies I have worked with have been on the B2B side of things, and I am always curious as to the reasons why the management team feels that they need to amp up their marketing effort.

Common responses I hear are: we need a better web site, we need to start sending out email newsletters to customers, we need to do a better job at PR, our sales collateral is really not that good, we need to do a better job at advertising, we need to do a better job telling people who we are, our competition does a good job marketing and we don't.

"What's interesting is that the reasons dance around the ultimate purpose of a company's marketing team: drive qualified leads to the sales channel."

What!? What about the web site and the email marketing and the advertising and the branding and the sales brochures and the trade shows and the PR? All of those initiatives are just different ways of ultimately getting a qulaified lead into the sales channel - be it distributors, direct, dealers, or an online shopping cart. Some initiatives may be the right approach for a target market and customer, some may not.

Marketing primarily focuses on the front end of the selling process and has four key goals:

1. Establish the company or product brand in the mind of a prospect
2. Help the prospect learn more about the brand
3. Convert a prospect into a qualified lead for sales to pursue
4. Reinforce the buying decision so a customer becomes a prospect for a repeat sale

There are many layers under each of these four marketing goals, that's what makes marketing so interesting and ever changing. All of the elements in a company's marketing mix should be integrated to work towards accomplishing these four goals. Ultimately though, a marketing team should be delivering qualified leads to the sales team - be they potential new customers or repeat customers.

If you are currently on a marketing team then ask yourself how you're doing against these goals. Review your project list and ask yourself how each project will ultimately lead to a lead. If you struggle with the answer, then maybe you could focus on something else that will ultimately convert a prospect into a revenue generating customer.

If you are the management team, ask yourself how your marketing group is performing versus these four goals. Are they focused on the right area, is there more they could be doing, are they doing well and should be given the resources to expand their efforts?

Resources are limited, make sure they are focused on the right goals.

What Would Woody Do?

I enjoy the humor of Woody Allen, always have. Though as a kid I could not understand how Annie Hall beat Star Wars for best picture in 1977.

One of the best quotes attributed to Woody Allen is also one that every successful sales person should take to heart:

"80% Of Success Is Showing Up"

Think about it, if you are not showing up and talking with your customers then who is? Who is finding out if their buying needs have changed in the last three months? Who is getting to know the buyer and connecting on a personal level, establishing trust and credibility? Who is getting into your pocket and taking your commission?

Your competition, that's who.

This sounds simple enough, but when the economy went into the tank at the start of the Great Recession, many managers at mid-sized companies made the mistake of cutting back on their travel budgets. Times are lean...customers aren't buying any way...email, conference calls, and webinars will work just as well. These are nice but short sighted thoughts. As a sales trainer colleague of mine is fond of saying, "Sales is a contact sport." How true.

Email, conference calls, and webinars do not take the place of looking a buyer in the eye on their turf. Recently I was planning a trip to see a major buyer and had the customer say to me, "Bob, we are not going to buy anything this year. I guess you'll won't be coming out to see us." On the contrary! They have been a cornerstone of our business in the past and will be in the future. I'll let my competition save their travel pennies now so I can pick up the sales dollars later.

If you've not been out to see your customers, then get up and go! With the recovery starting and business beginning to thaw, you must be meeting your customers face to face and positioning you and your company as the right partner for their future growth.

Before the week is out, look over your core customers that were purchasing in 2006 and 2007 - over the past 18 months have any players changed or left the account, how have their purchases been for 2008 and 2009 compared to the previous two years, what are their buying plans for 2010 and 2011...are these the same plans they had just three months ago? What has changed at your company that you can tell them about in terms of your products, personnel, organization, or markets?

Stop reading and take action. You can either choose to sit behind your desk or you can stand up, get out, and show up.

Status Of The Status Quo

"That's just how we do it."

Yep, a great killer to innovative thinking - hiding behind the status quo as if the way we do business was handed down from a burning bush on the side of a mountain. Volumes have been written on this subject, but I am still surprised that this thought along with the ever popular "the system made us do it!" are still allowed to kill creative thinking. Especially in mid-sized companies that should still be nimble enough to know better.

I have found that when faced with offering an alternative to the status quo, just keep it basic and use three simple steps: Analyze, Identify, and Overcome.

1. Analyze the idea or concept - are there facts, figures, and information that may paint a different story than the tribal knowledge of the status quo
2. Identify potential solutions and their barriers - how else can we approach this issue and what stands in the way of implementing our new approach
3. Overcome the barrier and move forward - try it and see if it works. If not, switch gears and try something else

As you try different approaches keep in mind that if you are going to fail, then fail fast. This eliminates solutions that won't work in practice, and allows an even better approach to be pursued.

Here's an real world example with the issue being parts consolidation:

"We can't eliminate published options because we get orders for them. If we didn't, then they would not be on our Price Sheets."

Analyze the concept - we seem to have 15 options that all accomplish the same thing. Do customers really want 15 options our would 2 work better? Looking at hard sales numbers, 12 options account for only 2.5% of our volume over the past 5 years.

Identify potential solutions - we can eliminate all 12 options and push customers into the remaining 3, thus eliminating 80% of the option codes (and parts carrying costs) in this category. Sales may not be happy with this approach, though, and Order Entry will have to rework the pricing sheets, while IT may have to do some work on the ordering system to update the changes.

Overcome the barriers - after talking with key players in Sales, Order entry and IT, they are good with making the change because fewer options means fewer opportunities to make front end errors - a little work now will pay off with less work down the road.

Fail Fast - we soon learned that 2 of the options we eliminated are tied to either a specific customer or a different product line, so we will add them back into the mix.

Final tally: consolidation of 15 part numbers into 5. Seems we can eliminate published options after all.

Won't You Gimme Three Steps

We've all been there. Sitting around a conference table. Talking about an issue that needs to be resolved. Feeling good about how the problem has been identified. Kicking around possible solutions. Spending an hour (or several) of our work day focused on the topic.

And nothing happens.

Sound familiar? I have found that management teams are very good at identifying problems or opportunities in their organizations. The challenge is not the problem identification or coming up with solutions, but rather the problem lies in the implementation of the solution. This is one of the most basic skills sets that a project manager must bring to his or her team - getting folks to get things done.

Here's a suggestion.

"With all due respect to Lynyrd Skynyrd, at your next meeting before everybody walks toward the door and back to their jobs, list three steps that you or the team will take in the next 48 hours to move the team's idea forward. "

Just gimme three steps that move the needle from talking to doing. Put a reminder for two days later on in your Blackberry or on your calendar. Then, follow up so you hold both yourself and your team accountable for the three steps you've committed to.

You'll be surprised what will get accomplished.

Nothing Kills Success Like Success

What tends to kill innovation and success in most mid-sized companies? Success.

While there are superstars out there who can lead their organizations to year over year innovation and performance, for most small and mid-sized companies, having the gumption to actually change what is currently working is, in the minds of most management teams, risky.

This leads to very real management discussions along the lines of, "If everything is going along well and we are leading our industry, then why on earth should we innovate or change?" Sadly, I have seen this scenario played out numerous times in companies. Leaders in their perspective markets who were slow to see their markets, customers, suppliers, or competitors changing, having been enamoured by their own success.

"Eventually their "current success" turns to "past success" and organizations are forced into change, having squandered their position of strength."

If the Great Recession has taught us anything it is that the business environment we navigate can and will change rapidly. There is hardly an industry that was not affected by the downturn and that now faces a brave new world of opportunities and risk. Management teams, once comfortable in their company's performance, have been forced into the unfamiliar territory rethinking their business, channel, or product models given their new business landscape. Surveying the Recession's aftermath, many good companies have lived to fight another day, many have not.

Look at your company's current position then ask yourself, what assumptions that guided how you approached your industry's market 18 months ago may no longer be real? What advancements over the past 18 months in how you may approach your customers - such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter - could now be used to your competitive advantage? Given the current competitive landscape, is what made your company successful two years ago still valid today? What talent is out there, ready to be plucked, who could help fuel your organization's growth during the recovery?

And as I ask, what three steps will you take this week to put your thoughts into action?