Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting, together with my friend and colleague Ken Goldberg, to a group of technology entrepreneurs brought together by CRDF and TEC. We talked about establishing alliances with much larger companies – a topic that’s often daunting for new ventures. Its a subject that’s near and dear to our hearts because we’ve spent lots of time on both sides of those relationships. Some do’s and dont’s that Ken and I discussed:
Do
- Have a Plan – Develop an approach, time line and road-map. It will focus your efforts and help you assess progress.
- Be Relevant – Understand what’s in it for the partner and the partner’s customers
- Be Aggressive – Attack top down and bottom up, be creative, be persistent.
- Behave Like a Mature Company – Have policies, approval processes, multi-level teams. Don’t send in your CEO until you have a meeting with a key decision maker.
- Be Unique – Articulate what you can offer that others in your category can’t.
- Think Big Dollars – Demonstrate that you can have a big impact on revenue and help the partner win big deals.
- Prove It – Be ready to show integration, value add, or joint customers.
- Find a Sponsor – Use your network to find an internal cheerleader (or 2)
- Negotiate Smart – Share the risk and get mutual commitments
Don’t
- Bet on one partner -We’ve seen multi-million dollar companies disappear because the one big partner changed course.
- Be vague – Vague, unsupportable claims about your products or capabilities create doubt, not progress.
- Lie – Exaggerating the number of people on your team? Claiming a few extra deployments? Savvy bus dev professionals will notice, and likely drop you from consideration.
- Over-promise – Either you’ll fail and lose the one opportunity at a critical alliance, or you’ll be forced to commit too many resources, distracting from your company’s other important priorities, and risking too much on a single relationship. (see #1)
- Expect or make 1-sided investments – Expect some skin in the game from the partner. It shows you have confidence in the value of your own investment.
- Forget it’s a relationship – Focusing too much on the deal and ignoring that you’re building a long-term relationship is a mistake. Signing the agreement is when the real work starts. Even if you never sign an agreement, the people you worked with may change their minds next year, or next month when they switch jobs.
- Give up – If not today, tomorrow. If not this decision maker, call another one. If not this company, talk to all their competitors.
Have a few of your own? Please share.
When President Kennedy announced the goal of putting Americans on the moon, no one had any idea how to do it. Not even the Russians, who had inspired the race with their ventures into orbit, understood how to get to the moon. Yet Kennedy got us there. He used the sheer confidence of his belief to convince Americans that the moon was an attainable objective. He then dedicated extensive resources to enable the scientists and engineers in the effort to achieve it.
There is a lesson here for sales organizations. Setting big goals at a sales kickoff and barraging reps with information about the newest products just isn’t enough. The top reps will deliver the numbers in any case. The rest will struggle without extensive resources and support.
Sales reps report that the following are especially effective in helping them achieve their targets:
- Case studies, case studies, case studies. Repeatedly and consistently rated as the most useful sales tool. (Post on making case studies more useful)
- In-account deal support from subject-matter, industry, or technology specialists. This is especially critical in larger companies, where account managers must be relationship experts, but cannot possibly know the details of every product, business process, or industry (unless they are vertically-aligned). The very fact of bringing in an expert who is perceived as more senior by the customer is often enough to move a deal forward.
- Business-level messaging and sales tools targeted at the high-level decision makers and budget holders. These should complement detailed product-focused content, which is necessary but insufficient bu itself. Business messaging targets the audience evaluating the investment rather than the people evaluating your product.
- Training & tools that enable sales reps to ask great questions and have intelligent conversations with customers at multiple organizational levels and functional roles. Asking great questions accomplishes three critical things: Positions the sales person as an ally and advisor, demonstrates that they can listen, and provides valuable information about the customers that can guide the rep in structuring the deal.
- Quantitative results achieved for other customers. While compliments (customer testimonials that discuss how easy you are to work with) are good, hard numbers about specific improvements they achieved are always more powerful. Numbers in the elevator pitch get attention and meetings, and numbers in the business case help close the deal.
Share what do your B2B sales reps value most!
We just sent out a summary to the participants of this year’s Industry Specialization by B2B Vendors Benchmark Study. We had a record 120 B2B companies take part in this year’s study.
Companies see that greater customer focus, in the form of industry-specialized sales, marketing, services, and products will enable them to access more senior decision makers and increase deal sizes. Many are also responding to competitive pressures. The good news is that the investment is paying off.
The full report is due out next month, but meanwhile, a sneak peak at a few tidbits:
- 67% of B2B companies that already have some amount of industry specialization said they plan to further increase their focus on key vertical markets.
- It takes two to three years to begin to realize the full benefits of specialization.
- After 2 years, 70% of companies reported notable or significant impact on revenue from their investments in industry-specialized activity
- Industry alliances have a big impact on brand awareness
- Industry-specific case studies and quantitative ROI analysis were reported to be the most valuable industry-specific marketing tactics. Sales and marketing brochures were least effective.
More ideas on cultivating customer contribution and creating opportunities for interaction by turning traditional marketing into Marketing 2.0
6. In-person events – These are expensive to put on, so why spend the entire time lecturing on information that’s already in your collateral? Third party presenters can be more interesting, but any lecture can get dreary fast. Give attendees lots of time to interact with you and with each other, while you listens and takes notes. Consider a workshop rather than presentation format so that the entire event is interactive.
7. Trade Shows – This seems like a highly interactive event, but most booth staffers are so focused on doing the demos and spewing the spiel, that the opportunity to listen is lost. (I adore alliteration.) To change the mindset, make it clear you’re at the show to interact with and listen to customers, not just to be seen and heard. Set objectives of specific information you want to gather from booth visitors or people attending your sessions. Ask a few questions or give a short (5 questions max) survey before handing out the tchachkis, or organize mixers and events that have information gathering as an explicit objective.
If a widely open a conversation seems too much of leap, try these by first letting a small group of customers you know well contribute and participate, then open further when you’re comfortable managing a broader conversation.
Have you tried these or other ways to engage customers in conversations? Share them in your comment!
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Turning Marketing into Conversations – Part 2
Turning Marketing into Conversations – Part 1
by Lilia Shirman on March 3, 2009
in Economy
It was great to be speaking to a room full of entrepreneurs last Thursday at the TechCoire panel, Strategies to Drive Revenue in a Recession. Gopan Madathil masterfully organized the event. The big takeaways form our panelists (Igor Shoifot of Fotki, Rajat Paharia of Bunchball, and Vadim Rosenberg of CA) for generating revenue in this economy:
- Listen more carefully than ever to customer requests and use them to create new revenue-generation initiatives
- Look at the ideas you’ve accumulated but never executed. This might be the time to finally try a few.
- Don’t walk away from customers who like what you’re offering but don’t have the budget. Instead get creative about restructuring the deal – change payment terms, deliver in phases, start with smaller volumes, etc.
- Always be on the lookout to great sales people – those who know how to connect and build rapport with customers.
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: Revenue generation is the top priority for just about any company right now. Resuscitate stalled deals and accelerate the close by showing how you can help customer sell more.
Got more ideas for driving revenue while everyone clutches their wallet ? Comment!
More ideas about how to transform traditional marketing tools into Marketing 2.0 vehicles.
3. Websites – Don’t hide customer feedback and support in a corner of your site. Place feature request and comment links right on product pages, so that customers can respond immediately to the content they see. Asking a question gets the customer more engaged than downloading a white paper. Involve product management and engineering in responding to the queries. It’s a great way to for them to touch the customers they otherwise rarely or never see. Post the most interesting questions and answers or turn them into additional content.
4. Press releases – What if your PR people became your customers’ and partners PR people? Lots of stories would best be told by someone other than a vendor. (And would be more likely to get picked up for coverage.) Build relationships with your customers’ and partners PR departments to understand how and where they want to be seen, and how talking about your relationship can help with that. Have your PR staff assist partners and customer with replying to PR opportunities.
5. Webinars – Yes, by now, this is a “traditional” marketing tool. But many companies tend to make webinars too one-directional. Use all the interactive tools (and the many webinar hosting services that offer them). Polls, chat, and Q&A are the common set. Use surveys both before and after your webinar. And don’t limit the surveys to questions about the webinar like the all too familiar “Did you find this useful?” Instead, ask questions that help you understand customers or that customers will be interested in too. The latter gives you an excuse for a follow-up contact that actually delivers value.
Have you tried these or other ways to engage customers in conversations? Share them in your comment!
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Turn Marketing into Conversations – Part 1
Turn Marketing into Conversations – Part 3
Social networking channels are not the only way to make your marketing efforts more interactive. While you experiment with social media, you can make traditional marketing methods conversational too.
Getting customers to contribute to the substance in your marketing content, events, products will raise the value and trust customers place in them. Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, demonstrates that “labor enhances affection for its results.”
This week I’ll be posting a series of ideas on adding interaction and soliciting active customer engagement and contribution through traditional marketing tools. Here are a few to start off.
- Value proposition and messaging – Starting with the obvious here: when crafting your claims of benefits, value, and ROI, ask your customers what benefits they’ve actually received. Use these results to create your messages about benefits and value. Then go back and ask customers if they “buy” the story you tell about how your product leads to business results. You’ll have messages that really resonate, and your will have created references that back up your story because they ARE the story.
- Collateral and White papers – Create a Wiki instead of static product data sheets, brochures, and white papers. Provide a framework and some base content, then give customers the ability to contribute. You can moderate to ensure accuracy, of course. With customers contributing, you’ll have more complete, relevant, and trustworthy information.
Have you tried these or other ways to engage customers in conversations? Share them in your comment!
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Turn Marketing into Conversations – Part 2
Turn Marketing into Conversations – Part 3
