As a student of Geoffrey Moore’s best-selling books Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend a VIP reception with Moore at the TEXCHANGE June meeting. I was particularly excited by the topic of Moore’s presentation “Provocation-Based Selling” because of my long history of launching tech startups.

Moore has made the study of disruptive technologies the focus of his books and research. His insights on marketing and selling breakthrough products have shaped my strategies for so many companies and I’m sure his new insights on selling disruptive products in a down economy will be no different.

Moore set the stage for his presentation by making the important point that when you are selling disruptive technologies there is no budget allocation for your product. Prospective customers may love your product, but when there is no money available for discretionary spending, you have to help the buyer create budget before you can sell them.

He advocates a combination of referral marketing and provocation-based selling to help startups break into markets that are structured to favor incumbents. You have to use referral marketing to get the meeting with the Line of business (LOB) executive who has the authority to move budget around. And, then, use provocation-based selling to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about the impact of “not doing” something about it.

On the Referral marketing front, Moore advises companies to directly target the company, learn about the LOB executive, then seek out a common connection to get referred for a meeting. For me, services such as ReachForce have helped me map out the LOB execs in an organization, but I augmented it with products like LinkedIn and Facebook to find common connections.

Often, your business partners will be the key to getting a referral. Building out a referral program for these partners has always been an excellent way to motivate them to make the introduction or even take you along on a sales call. Of course, it’s always helpful if you can provide those business partners with a compelling reason to put you in front of their buyers. For example, maybe you could offer training or educational materials on a topic that helps them sell more products as well.

Once you’ve nailed that all important meeting, Moore advises that you sell them on the fact that they have a serious problem and determine what type of buyer they are:

• conservatives: convince them you can save them money
• pragmatics: give them the symptoms you believe they might have in their company of a serious problem your product solves
• visionary: show how your product will set them apart and open up tremendous new opportunities to pursue

Then, ask them to make a commitment that if you show them that your solution can benefit them, they will take the action to make budget available. Press them for a commitment. If you’re not convinced, then disqualify them.

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I recently received an invite to a conference via email, quite common these days. The problem was, wait no, I should say the problems were:

1. It was addressed to someone who has not worked for my company for over a year
2. It was sent to sales@reachforce.com
3. It was addressed to the former CTO

This is an announcement to all sales people: if you want me to spend money with you, know that the person you are selling to still works there. A quick trip to our website would solve that. And do you really think that the CTO receives anything from sales@blank.com? Never send a marketing message to sales@blank.com or jobs@blank.com or contactus@blank.com, it will be deleted immediately.

Find the right decision maker to sell/market to and deliver you message directly to them. Sending your message to sales@blank.com just shows me you are lazy, and I will never buy from someone who is lazy.

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During my short tenure in the marketing world, I have noticed several styles of marketing to drive leads into the sales pipeline. The most successful, by far, are multi-touch, multi-message email and direct mail campaigns that are complemented along the way by sales calls. The keyword here is COMPLEMENTED. I have spoken with several “marketers” who do no marketing programs….they simply buy lists and give them to the sales team.

Let me preface my next statement with this: I think all sales people should not rely solely on marketing for leads….they need to cold call and prospect on their own. With that being said….HOW DO SOME OF YOU HAVE A JOB??? If all you do is buy lists…not even role-based, highly targeted lists like I sell…but generic, crappy lists to hand over to sales for them to drive business, how do you have a job? Why couldn’t a 7th grader come over during recess and do the same thing for an ice cream cone? Forget wasted budgets, let’s talk about wasted salaries and benefits to employees who do nothing but spit out a lot of fluff at meetings and then go buy lists to give directly to sales. How is this marketing?

Do some webinars….drive traffic to events you will attend….send out white papers….do email and direct mail campaigns with altered messaging depending on the measured results of each touch….find out criteria about your current customers that you can use to identify “warmer” company targets….and lastly, send all marcom “stuff” to role-based contacts! Without the last step, everything, EVERYTHING, is wasted.

In conclusion, your sales guys need to be driving their own business through cold calls….but marketers need to incorporate multi-touch, nurture programs with measured results and calculated changes in order to not be a complete waste of a salary.

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Submitted by Ron Levine, CEO at Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.

Sales professionals depend on knowing how to ask the right questions to discover the real needs of our clients. Often our clients tell us what they would like us to do, such as, “I need a solution on change management,” but without telling us the ultimate result they want to achieve.

To be truly effective we must be able to help our clients articulate the cause of the problem and to be able to identify what would be different if the solution is successful. Armed with this additional information we can then design the most effective solution for the problem at hand.

So what are some examples of questions and statements you can use to open up the prospect to discussing their problems.

Help me understand. How do you measure your key performance indicators?

I’d like to learn a little more about. What do you do when that happens?

Where do you find are the bottlenecks?

How high is the absentee rate?

What are the biggest challenges you are currently facing?

What are your top priorities over the next three months?

Tell me more about that.

Give me an idea how you currently process that specific type of data?

Please describe how you use spreadsheets?

What do you do when your system goes down?

Please explain your funding process?

Compare for me how your test scores went down last year and up this year?

In what way do you measure your production?

To what extent has this been a problem?

Go through the steps when your production line goes down?

What happens when a system outage occurs?

These questions are designed to root out the problems, needs or challenges your prospect is incurring right now. The next question is one you need to ask yourself. Can you fix the problem with your solution?

If the answer is yes or even a partial yes then you have the basis for closing for an appointment. If the answer is no, you’re better off letting the prospect know up front rather than wasting their valuable time or yours.

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I’ve just begun working on Part II of the Funnelnomics book I co-wrote with ReachForce CEO, Suaad Sait. The new section is on B2B market micro-segmentation. Specifically, I want to detail the possibilities and a process for using automated pipeline analysis to slice your target market into smaller and smaller markets with common interests/needs. Then use marketing automation to deliver more relevant messages to those markets to drive Marketing ROI. Sort of like Chris Anderson’s Long Tail (http://www.longtail.com/) for B2B Marketing. (Still not totally sure this analogy applies, but you get the point, I hope.)

In a recent post on The B2B Lead (Get Real-time Insight into Your Marketing and Sales Funnel) I wrote about how I am using ReachForce’s new salesforce.com add-on to get real-time insight into my funnel or pipeline. Initially, I used it to spot our top vertical markets and then identify other companies that met our target market criteria. Now, I’m experimenting with using it to conduct some experiments in micro-segmentation. So, I want to see how I can use it to…

1. See which campaigns are producing high velocity leads—those leads that move through the funnel fastest and invest more marketing dollars in those campaigns.
2. Drill into the pipeline to identify trends in certain geographies and then identify additional opportunities within those geographies.
3. Identify bottlenecks—stages of the funnel where leads from a particular campaign are stuck so that I can move those leads along with tailored communications or timed offers.
4. And, last—perhaps—but not least, I recently realized that I can now spot gaps or “problem spots” in the funnel so I can actually tell Sales reps in a particular territory that they don’t have enough leads to meet their revenue number. Imagine that! Marketing telling Sales that they don’t have enough leads.

I’m absolutely fascinated by the possibilities of using automation to deliver more targeted/relevant campaigns to smaller and smaller markets. This would improve your response rates since the message and the offer would be more relevant to the market. It should also enable you to dramatically improve the efficiency and velocity of the funnel (ie. my funnelnomics). You could conceivably manage your funnel almost like a manufacturing process squeezing out inefficiencies as they became obvious. Plus, the reduced costs required to deliver more targeted messages—instead of spraying them to a broad audience—should ensure Marketing ROI will be higher.

So, these immediate rewards are pretty obvious. But what about the longer term effects of smarter, more relevant Marketing techniques on the practice of Marketing as a whole? Is it possible that this approach will take some of the heat off of today’s B2B Marketers who are criticized for being self-important Spammers who spray their messages out to target markets without bothering to understand what is appropriate for the buyer? I mean this video (B2B Marketing WTF: The Breakup) says it all, doesn’t it?

It remains to be seen if taking this type of approach can help Marketers penetrate the Teflon-like resistance of most buyers toward traditional marketing efforts. But Facebook, for one, is already unveiling its own version. Should be a good barometer to watch to see how actual users are reacting to this newly introduct ad targeting concept http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/22/facebook-experiments-with-ads-targeting-peoples-interests/.

It seems to me that if the content B2B Marketers deliver is truly relevant, it could become welcome content. However, if the ad platform enforces a sort of intimacy—yet the “content” still resembles advertising—it puts everyone in a very uncomfortable position.
Esther Dyson made a great point about this at the Defrag conference when she proposed that Marketers give users disclosure messages that are personalized http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6892 . She said that she wasn’t sure about personal rights, just that individuals have the right to demand to be made happy by whatever service they use.

Will micro-targeting make users happy? Will Facebook’s ad platform actually add value? Those are the real questions for Marketers to figure out. But I, for one, am excited by the possibilities. Stay tuned for more developments on the subject. Or, better yet, share your 2 cents.

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OK readers of The B2B Lead, we know you all have one of these stories so send ‘em my way. There’s nothing we enjoy more than a good laugh at bad Marketing ideas submitted by Sales. Just to be fair, we’d also like to hear how Marketers have derailed Sales Deals with poorly timed promotions.

This just in from a colleague: Brace yourself–I got an email from Sales asking for a campaign to promote the “visibility” our product using get this: if you aren’t using Product X you’re “legally blind.” Maybe we could include a pair of dark sunglasses? WTF!!?!!!

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Submitted by Ron S. La Vine
President of Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.

DO match and mirror the speed, tone and volume of the other person’s voice.
DON’T speak in a monotone.

DO call for a specific reason such as to provide some information of value.
DON’T call just to check in.

DO go the prospect’s web site first to see if they fit your ideal prospect profile.
DON’T randomly send out expensive (your time, material costs and postage) literature.

DO tell the truth even if you do not have the answer to a question at that moment.
DON’T try to fake like you know the answer to a question you don’t.

DO ask for the business.
DON’T assume you have it until the paperwork is signed.

DO use good manners.
DON’T assume an air of familiarity.

DO speak clearly and slowly when leaving a message.
DON’T mumble your message.

DO leave your name, company name, area code and phone number twice in a row.
DON’T leave your name and phone number only once.

DO get the person’s name right before speaking with them or leaving a voice mail.
DON’T mispronounce their name.

DO use direct questions or statements such as “Maybe you can help me.”
DON’T use wishy-washy phrases such as “Might you possibly please tell me some information?”

DO write down an assistant’s name if they provide it to you.
DON’T ask for their name and put them on the defensive since they might think you are going to get them in trouble.

DO develop different forms of marketing materials such as a one page Key Benefits fax cover sheet.
DON’T rely solely upon printed literature.

DO leave a voice mail for of “What’s In It for Them” compelling benefits.
DON’T leave a voice mail to see “if they might be interested in what you have.”

DO listen to and concentrate on what’s being said.
DON’T let your mind wander.

DO identify all the buyers and influencers.
DON’T rely solely upon one person who may leave for another job.

DO be polite yet respectfully persistent.
DON’T give up after one or two calls.

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• Consider what your prospect or customer wants to hear, not what you want to tell them.
• Don’t beat around the bush – get to the point in 100 words or less
• Make sure call to action is above the fold (and in the preview pane)
• Be sure your offer or call to action are related to the content
• Get to the point – use 1 idea per sentence and make sentences punchy and easy to scan
• Do not use catch phrases, clichés – use real data to make key points
• Ask yourself – So what? – this will help you get to the real message

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Today’s The B2B Lead blog tip is “know thy customer.” Sounds painfully obvious, right? Certainly you should understand your customer’s role in the organization, their needs and pain points, their preferred communication style, how they buy, and then target your messages and delivery mechanisms to meet those needs.

Yet, today, 50% of B2B Marketers rely on Sales to drive the customer interaction. Could this be why B2B Marketers continue to rely on the old spray and pray approach to lead generation?

If you’d like to improve your Marketing Campaign metrics, try taking a Deliberate Marketing approach: build and leverage in-depth customer insight to convert leads into qualified buyers and drive greater revenue. This is the single most effective way to optimize your Funnelnomics. Here are six deliberate marketing tactics to consider. You can read about these in detail in Funnelnomics - Accelerate Your Marketing & Sales Funnel to Drive Growth & Profitability (http://www.reachforce.com/funnelnomics/)

• Are you creating attention or buyer intention?
• Are you targeting prospect based on their title or their role in the decision making unit?
• Are you creating leads or sales ready qualified buyers?
• Are you executing typical spray and pray initiatives or predictable marketing programs?
• Are you capturing leads or nurturing buyers through the sales pipeline?
• Are you measuring responses or ROI?

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This tip for The B2B Lead blog focuses on getting your Marketing and Sales pipeline in order with a couple of powerful concepts called Funnelnomics and Deliberate Marketing. You can download a free copy of the ebook titled Funnelnomics - Accelerate Your Marketing & Sales Funnel to Drive Growth & Profitability (http://www.reachforce.com/funnelnomics/) and get a step-by-step guide for improving the velocity of your funnel by using Deliberate Marketing techniques.

What exactly is Funnelnomics? It’s essentially the revenue generated by Marketing and Sales activities divided by the Marketing and Sales expenditures required to generate and develop leads into customers. It’s a strange word but a very powerful concept for B2B Marketers, because using this model will enable you to squeeze the most value out of the leads in your funnel thereby boosting Marketing ROI. It is about moving all leads through the funnel from awareness to purchase in the fastest, most cost-effective way possible. By understanding and carefully managing your Funnelnomics, you can:

• speed the process of turning leads into customers
• execute more high ROI programs
• eliminate lost revenue due to leaks in the funnel
• extract the maximum value from each contact in the funnel

In our next The B2B Lead blog Sales and Marketing tip, we’ll cover the principles of Deliberate Marketing. But if you’d like to get a jump on those ideas, download your ebook now (http://www.reachforce.com/funnelnomics/)

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