Generating Sales-Ready Leads is Essential

How do you define "sales ready" leads?

An inquiry does not equal a lead, nor does a suspect or prospect.

An early stage lead is marketing accepted, but needs nurturing before it can be "sales ready".

Business And Basketball Are Similar

Business And Basketball Are Similar

We're well into this year's NBA playoffs.  This got me to thinking about the similarities between leading a basketball team and leading a business.

You need a great coach, manager and architect with the vision to structure the team and design a style of play that integrates cohesive rhythm on offense with intensive continuity on defense through players who work as a seamless unit and execute through teamwork and communication.

Ensure understanding by breaking down the play [not the same as micro-managing] and use candor to translate goals into a set of individual responsibilities and a series of specific steps.

You're always recruiting multidimensional, dexterous, skilled players that fit the same style of play each season.  They must have strong fundamentals: shooting, passing, dribbling, instinctively create balance on the floor, move the ball, move without the ball, exploit mismatches, know when to dish and when to take high percentage shots.

Super stars share the spotlight with complementary role players e.g. defensive stopper.  The right approach to practice optimizes the chances to win through timely hoops at the end of the game.

"Demand Generation" is a Misnomer

Why do marketers call it "demand generation"?

They're not creating demand.  Instead, they should be calling it "lead generation".

Check your microeconomics text to be reminded of the difference between a "change in demand" Vs. a "change in the quantity demanded".

Either of two situations determines demand and the quantity demanded.

1. The environment [social, economic, governmental regulations, technology, and competition] is what drives and enables demand for commodity products for buyers who are employing traditional deductive problem solving techniques e.g. here's the pain caused by my problem and here's the root cause of the pain.  After evaluating potential solutions, they find the best price/performance fit. Marketers influence the quantity demanded based on their pricing and campaign tactics.
2. For those companies who are lucky enough to have a new paradigm e.g. Apple iPad, potential customers can be persuaded to find the funding to purchase them based on inductive reasoning e.g. here's a new idea or product; what can I do with it to improve my current position?  Pricing is probably elastic and producers can associate their capacity with the quantity demanded based on how they price the product.

Demand Generation Crates New Categories

Ideas Become Reality Through Demand Generation Programs

Entrepreneurs introduce their products to innovators and early adopters who find the financial, human and complementary resources to "make it happen".

If their idea catches on, they generate early stage demand for a new category of products.  Then, when it looks like the coast is clear, companies who employ a "category marketing" strategy add their own versions to the category.  This helps the category to grow faster than if innovators try to do it all themselves.

Consider what happened in the early 80's. The Apple II jump started the PC market to reach critical mass and then IBM jumped in with its PC and created a mega-category through its captive corporate market. Tektronix kept its proprietary hi-res graphics "storage tube" technology to itself. Both Apple and Tektronix eventually lost their high introductory stage market share leading position of relatively small categories to "standards" applied by everyone else in the growth stage of their respective mega-categories.

Tablet computing is another example.  After false starts by many tech companies, Apple found the key to success.  As its iPad moved from introduction to growth stage, it open the door to versions from other companies.  It remains to be seen as to whether Apple retains leadership in this new category.

As a category evolves, total demand shifts to the right as "early majority" pragmatists justify their investments on ROI and TCO benefits.

Once a category is created, however, companies hire sales teams to ensure that they are filling up their capacity with orders.  This is when "demand generation becomes a misnomer".

Thanks for reading.

Great Byproducts from Achieving Ambitious Goals

In 1961 when President Kennedy set what most perceived to be an overly ambitious goal of safely landing an American on the moon in less than 10 years, his goal was to pass the USSR in the space race.  No one imagined the thousands of by-products that would impact computer technology, environmental and resource management, health and medicine, industrial productivity, manufacturing technology, public safety, transportation, along with home, recreation and consumer products.

If it weren't for the space program we wouldn't have the iPad, iPod, CDs, DVDs, microcomputers or Wii virtual reality games. We wouldn't have non-invasive medical imaging devices.  Automobile designers wouldn't have been able to benefit from aerodynamic design software.  Air quality monitoring systems that have helped us to significantly improve our environment wouldn't exist.  PV solar systems wouldn't exist.

I also learned that NASA technology has been leveraged to produce enriched baby foods and water purification systems for underdeveloped countries. Scratch resistant lenses and ribbed swimsuits were also invented using space technology - even the DustBuster.

Maybe we're beginning to reach the point of diminishing returns from the space program investment, but I doubt it.  My point is that the investment of time, creativity and money in achieving monster goals will produce significant byproducts if we act with wide peripheral vision.

JFK's 10 year horizon looked impossible to reach, but look what his legacy has delivered almost 60 years later.

Cloud Computing: Nothing really new here

Here's an example of how acquisitions can kill a company's innovation culture.

Back in 1974 Telenet Inc. offered the first cloud based data network.  Customers connected their computers to the cloud.  Their users would dial into the cloud and connect to their host's network address.  This saved customers from having to design, install, maintain, upgrade and manage their own private networks.  It also enabled employees to work remotely and and globally and for customers and vendors to "connect", which created efficiencies and a competitive advantage.

In the early days Telenet's customers were primarily the early adopters who saw the benefits and were willing to "make it happen" for their companies.  As they proved the benefits of cloud computing, the mass market pragmatists jumped on board.  This set the stage for AOL and other Internet communities that hit the scene in the 1980s.

Then, in the late '80s, Telenet continued its innovative product line strategy by offering cloud based email and EDI services to customers who had gained confidence in using its cloud based dial-up network services.

Unfortunately, when it was acquired by Sprint, Telenet's product innovation came to a halt as Sprint milked Telenet as a cash cow and force fitted Telenet into its telecom carrier services culture.

If this acquisition hadn't happened, cloud computing services would have been available many years ago and what we're reading about today wouldn't be such big news.

Most Acquisitions Are Optimized For the Short Term

There's Only so Much that you Can Squeeze out of a Sponge

For clients who have grown by acquisition I've noticed a common short term thread.  While adding revenues [maybe only for a while] from the newly acquired customer base, they also do well at reducing redundant overhead costs.  But this initial low hanging fruit won't produce a sustainable boon to the balance sheet, cash flow or income statement.

Many "acquiring companies" minimize long-term results by following financial or operational paths. They do not assimilate these acquisitions into a unified marketing environment by allowing original sales, marketing and customer service processes to continue as if the newly acquired business was still an independent entity.

Is short term thinking the path of least resistance or does the acquiring company lack a strong marketing culture along with proven sales, marketing, support and business development processes?