Puffery Will Derail Your Brand

Self-Promoting Content Turns Off Your Audience

Much of the promotional content that we see, hear and read is an unproven self-testimonial to the marketer's products and services.  Anyone can say "we're the leader in the field of ..."  This image positioning puffery will disable a branding strategy.  Character expression is a more sustainable approach.

Character Expression enables your target audience to understand what motivates you to do what you do for them while Image Positioning puffs up an exaggerated image. Why jump into the pool of sameness as everyone else who is creating self-testimonials?  No one believes these subjective reviews anyway.

The challenge is not to create puffery, but to create raving fans who put you on stage.

Image Positioning Strains Credibility	Character Expression Builds Trust
Focus on company and its competitors	Focus on customers and employees
Exaggerates minor differences	Reveals significant differences
Fabricated evidence supports claims	Authentic experiences create differences
Goal to preserve image	Raving fans prove reality
Applies faddish style	Integrates long lasting design
Company-sponsored marcom	Media and referral driven marcom
Separates marcom from product and service delivery	Integrates marcom with delivery of products and services
Inconsistent brand messages	Brands express company values

Interrupt Marketing: A Provocative B2B Methodology That Makes A Compelling First Impression

Field Marketing Specialists Earn Their Stripes By Nurturing Leads To Sales Ready Status

I recently presented marketing assisted selling as an effective way to optimize the ROI from a B2B company's sales assets. Interrupt marketing, a component of marketing assisted selling, is a necessary, but challenging lead generation methodology.  It requires discrete, knowledge-based persistence.  It meshes with a prospect's buying cycle and can initiate your selling cycle.  It is best implemented as part of the field marketing process - not by field sales reps.

Begin a campaign by "approaching" a well defined targeted suspect list. Use sequentially scripted 1to1 "approach" emails that are generated through the CRM system based on campaign criteria and timed according to workflow rules - let's say every three-to-five work days. The goal is to gain permission from contacts who want to receive timely and concise information about your campaign subject.  A bonus occurs if they become an early stage lead ready for nurturing.  For those suspects who don't reply by the third email, the field marketing specialist will make a scripted telephone call after reviewing LinkedIn and other sources and updating the CRM record.  The goal is for them to opt-in or opt-out and for you to move on accordingly.

Email marketing tools provide a more aesthetically pleasing [compared to CRM generated emails] means for staying in touch with those who opt-in.  They offer the versatility to embed surveys and manage event marketing campaigns.

Through sign up forms on websites, social networks and email signatures, new subscribers may specify their areas of interest for receiving timely, concise information.  Use the field marketing process to approach these new subscribers and to correctly categorize them in the CRM system for future campaigns.

Marketing-Assisted-Selling For B2B Companies

Apply Marketing Assisted Selling To Boost Your Sales Process To The Next Level

To me, a B2B sales professional is a high value company asset who leads and executes a tailored selling process while also being an adept marketer and customer experience expert.  Their primary accountability includes:

1. Closing profitable sales opportunities
2. Managing a healthy sales funnel enables continuous goal attainment
3. Creating golden spike sales opportunities
4. Converting customers to clients
5. Facilitating company-to-company and peer-to-peer relationships
6. Feedback to company leaders contributes to effective decision making

Marketing Assisted Selling Enables Optimal ROI From Your Sales Assets

1. Help customers determine if they have a problem worth solving.
2. Success stories about challenges, solutions and results are a wonderful resource for situations where risk reduction is more important than price reduction.
3. Pricing tools show the value of each trade-off during negotiations.
4. Complementary vendors who have relationships with people that can benefit from your company's solutions are a great lead source.  These relationships enable "whole product" solutions.
5. Self-service content and assessments for each stage of the buying process must be intuitive for general awareness and more in-depth for educated buyers.
6. The field marketing (FM) process is involved in each stage of the buying cycle:

• Awareness Stage: approach suspects to gain permission to send relevant, timely and expected information.  For each account that appears in the CRM database, FM reps search for additional contacts where cross-selling makes sense.  FM reps schedule sales interviews for sales reps and are a consistent backup when sales reps are unavailable.

• Pre-Purchase Stage: Nurture early stage leads. FM reps assign sales ready leads and work with sales reps to ensure that leads are reviewed and acted upon in a timely manner.  FM Associates stay in touch by distributing relevant articles, company information and videos and conducting theme webinars.
• Purchase Stage: FM reps assist in presentations, proposals, site visits, etc.
• Post-Purchase Stage: Sales reps and FM reps co-author programs to retain, cross-sell and up-sell second-tier customers (STCs) and develop STCs into key accounts. A welcome package for new customers teaches them how to do business with your company and creates a positive first impression.

Complementary Partners Are Essential To Your Business

It's important to understand if yours is a real partner program or just an affiliate program in search of leads and transactions.

An important first step is to develop a partner rating process that enables consistent terminology for your staff and also enables your business development team to prioritize how it spends its time and resources.

Most Growable Partners (MGPs) are the core of your business.  The strategy is to nurture them and convert them to MVPs.  Their characteristics include:

• They opt-in to receive your communications and meet with you periodically [online and in person]
• They allow you to speak with others in their firm
• They consistently refer and/or close a minimum number of sales opportunities for your products and services
• They make you visibile in their facilities [online and offline]

Most Valuable Partners (MVPs) are elite members of your partner community.  The goal should be for 20% of your partners to be MVPs. The strategy is high level partnering through recognition, customized solutions, programs and learning relationships. They possess all of the MGP characteristics plus:

• They tell you what you need to do to be successful – no guesswork
• They provide suggestions for improving your business
• They consistently refer or close a high number of sales opportunities for your products and services
• They refer you to new potential MGPs

Second Tier Partners (STPs) are partners whose commitment level and results would not be affected by your 1to1 time investment. They do not present the opportunity to become MGPs. You retain them and attract new ones through your BizD process.  Their characteristics include:

• They opt-in to receive your communications and will speak with you on the phone and online
• They sporadically refer or close new sales opportunities for your products and services

Below Zero Partners (BZs) will never justify the time required to partner with them.  The strategy is to eliminate their misperceptions or to subtly encourage them to become someone else’s partner. Their characteristics include:

1. They are not willing to speak or meet with you and do not opt-in to receive your communications
2. They are not willing to allow you to build rapport with others in their firm
3. They do not dedicate basic resources to refer or close new sales opportunities for your products and services

Targets are those with whom you'd like to establish a 1to1 relationship because they suggest future MGP potential.

Make sure that your partner team is not only oriented towards recruitment and managing STPs, but that you also have the calibre of staff to develop MGPs and MVPs?  Otherwise, top partners will lose interest and leave for a better opportunity.

Before contacting a partner, make sure that you know about their company and the person with whom you'll be speaking relative to their history with your firm.  Don't make the conversation only about what they're doing to help your company.  Why not send an email asking to set up a convenient time and agenda rather than expecting them to be ready to talk with you at that moment you call.

Complementary Partners Required For "Whole Product" Solutions

Except for early adopters and true innovators, most people are pragmatic when it comes to making their buying decisions.  They don't want to spend time or money finding or creating the ancillary components associated with the product or service that they buy from you.  Instead, they prefer buying from a company who not only provides an excellent product or service, but who also connects them with the right complementary partners who can fill in the gaps necessary for a "whole product solution". Most likely a partner has chosen you because your products and services fit into the total solution that they offer to their customers.

If you are a "market maker", you create an umbrella under which some of your partners will develop their total business.  In other situations, partners who have a mainstream business can differentiate themselves by offering their customers your products and services as a complement to theirs.  In either situation, a win/win bi-directional relationship is essential for success.  Discover and apply the keys to success unique to your partner program.

Another Reason Why Business Schools Should Teach History

Self Fulfilling Prophesies Work Both Ways

If you expect a positive outcome, you are on the right track. If you expect a negative outcome, you'll be subconsciously influencing that result as well.

Today's high school and college students have yet to experience a healthy economy.  They're used to hearing about fiscal cliffs, high unemployment, a tough job market, belt tightening, outsourcing, etc.  Has this become their self-fulfilling prophecy because that's what they've come to expect?  Let's hope it's not engrained in their muscle memory.

I believe that a holistic business curriculum can foster their positive self fulfilling prophecy? If we teach business students about the history of the cycles our economy has traversed, they'll be better equipped to believe that they can influence future good times.

If we can create positive self-fulfilling prophecies in these future leaders, they will be wanting to innovate, undertake risk, invest, etc.  They will have a positive, enthusiastic attitude and will enjoy their careers.  And they'll get our economy back on track for the long term.

Here's an intersting article on Self-fulfilling prophecy by Carolyn Kaufman, Psy.D. in Psychology for Writers

Business Students Should Study History

Business schools should cull relevant history into snippets that form the basis of a course on strategies and leadership.  This history can be applied in business situations where there's a need to leverage an opportunity or confront a threat.

A great example is the strategy that Teddy Roosevelt used to influence the building of a 50 mile canal that would cross the Colombian isthmus of Panama and unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  The 13,000 mile New York to San Francisco journey took months as ships navigated around the treacherous Cape Horn. A canal would save hundreds of miles and man-hours.  Even President Ulysses Grant had sent seven expeditions to study its feasibility.

Roosevelt tried to negotiate with Columbia, but Colombia eventually lost interest. Then, Roosevelt and Panamanian business leaders collaborated on a revolution. The Battle for Panama lasted less than a day as Colombian soldiers were bribed $50 each to lay down their arms and the U.S.S. Nashville cruised off the Panamanian coast in a show of support.  On November 3, 1903, the nation of Panama was born.  The rest is history. This is an example of an indirect approach to achieve a goal.

An indirect strategy might be the best approach in certain opportunity management, market penetration, market development and product development situations.  Holden International teaches about indirect strategy in managing sales opportunities in its book, Power Base Selling.