B2B Social Media - It's Different

When Midas Touch reaches out to the small and medium companies in the technology space that seem to form the staple customer for us a question we often encounter is how can B2B businesses like them leverage social media? A less polite version of that question is also put to us that B2B brands cannot really leverage social media and it's utility is limited to some amorphous "branding" push. Like every other pre-conceived notion this is based on a germ of truth - that being that the social media strategies we are so used to seeing in our day to day lives are heavily B2C focused. Applying them willy-nilly to the B2B context will only lead to failure. Once the realization sets in that B2B Social Media is different the next Q is how is it different specifically?  

To B2B Or Not To B2B?

In this article that I had written for Social Samosa I have tried to outline some very specific points of divergence between B2C and B2B social media objectives, strategies and plans. The article has got decent airplay - I would welcome you also to read and comment on what you think makes B2B social media different from B2C?

http://www.socialsamosa.com/2014/03/social-media-b2b/

All Together Now - An Integrated Approach To Lead Generation

No one claimed Lead Generation was easy - especially when you are in the B2B space. There are so many moving parts that a key problem becomes how to get them all pulling in the same direction. You may have one or more of the following teams contributing to demand generation:

Let's Go Right - No Left - No...

1. Research team keeping track of market developments

2. Contact discovery or database research team building the lists

3. Content creation team responsible for collateral, campaign drafts etc.

4. Social Media team

5. Inside Sales and / or Telemarketing Team

6. Pre-Sales and / or Sales Tea,

You may be getting a sense of the possible complexities just looking at this list. Pretty much every organisation I have spoken to over the last 3 - 4 years has people doing some of these activities. The problem I have usually found is that they all work within their own individual silos. The activity levels are always high and each individual team is usually capable but the result when they come together is generally somewhat underwhelming. My own view is this happens because there is usually no "big picture" view being taken. If you get all these groups working towards a common goal chances are the synergies will lead to much better results. 

Let's consider the example of an organisation that has services to offer to companies in the Cloud space and how an integrated approach would work for them.

1. The team keeping an eye on the market could come up with a finding that of

As an example...

late cloud file storage companies seem to be attracting funding.

2. This could be the trigger for the content generation team to start putting together collateral that would be of relevance to this sector - say a white paper about a technology trend and it's applicability or a user case study of a success story in the same or a comparable space

3. The next step for the content team would be to start working on reasonably customized crafted emails targeted to sub-segments within the larger Cloud File Storage segment.

4. While this is going on the Contact Discovery team could be hard at work building a database of companies and individual decision makers within those organisations who could be receptive to the message.

5.   On getting sufficient content ready the next step is to make it available on the specific social media platforms the target customers are likely to gather on to inform themselves. In the context of the example this may be Cloud focused LinkedIn groups as an illustration.

6. There is also a case for tracking specific influencers in the Cloud Storage space - say the CTOs of the target Cloud Storage organisations. The objective would be to build a map of their social media life - their Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, their blog and so on. Sharing what they have to say in a great way to learn from their experience as also to get on their radar. This is a longer term strategic activity - the objective is to connect with them and engage with them at their own terms on ground they feel comfortable on.

7. Now it's time to launch the outreach campaigns - first email and then telemarketing, assuming that is right for the business. The chance that someone will respond to the outreach is proportionately greater if they have encountered the company or some useful content in the digital or social world previously.

8. Key is integrating the outreach program into the sales process - not only to ensure that any leads that get generated receive the prompt attention they demand but also to be able to build any feedback received at any stage back into the appropriate point of the process.

9. Rinse and Repeat !

My personal view is that if the end objective is that more people should respond positively to your outreach efforts then it's pretty much mandatory that an integrated approach be followed. Chances are otherwise the results will more often than not be lower than the quality of the team and the visible activity level would suggest.         

Back to Basics - What Is Strategic Marketing ?

There's a clear and present danger in all that we do as marketers - the danger that our day-to-day tasks will suck us so deep into frequent "rinse-repeat" cycles of activities that we will lose sight of the end objective. Tactics often overwhelm Strategy with volume - sometimes to get a better view of the end goal you need to take a step back to where it all started. Let's call this post an attempt to focus some attention back to those first principles.

The Writing On The Wall..

So you have built the proverbial better mousetrap. You have also pored through all the available information in market research reports and on the web on the way the universe of buyers that need mousetraps is broken up into groups based on the homogeneity in their specific needs, their criteria for making purchase decisions, the way they make their purchases and so on. Incidentally that is as good a definition of Segmentation as any. What do you do now ?

The next step is Targeting. Based on what you now know about the size, attractiveness and accessibility of each segment you need to carefully consider the specific segment that makes the most sense for you to try to sell your mousetrap to ? Each segment has different problems they want solved and different things they value and you want to find the one that is most likely to value the specific capabilities of your mousetrap. Incidentally marketing experts will tell you that you need to first find what the market wants and then put a product / service offering together for the segment you pick - but given that you have already built your better mousetrap we don't have that option any longer do we ?     
     

The modern marketer then calls for the police sketch artist - figuratively. The trend these days is to try to define a Buyer Persona. A kind of research based identikit portrait of a specific person representative of the wider buyer community. As an example for your mousetrap one persona could be Jill, a single mom with a 2 year old son who lives in a quiet suburban community. This persona helps marketing and sales in latter stages of the marketing / sales cycle concentrate the messaging and other activities - anything Jill is unlikely to respond to is probably not a great approach to take for all those buyers like her.   

Next up is Positioning - an attempt to define your mousetrap in terms that clearly identifies it's specific place in the market especially with respect to all the other solutions out there designed to help Jill address her rodent problem. The final objective is to create a unique place for your mousetrap in the mind of buyers like Jill. Closely tied into this stage is the Messaging you use. The definitions, language, descriptions and terms that you use for your mousetrap has to  be consistent with the positioning you have chosen and the buyer persona that you are communicating with. If Jill is believed to be technically inclined then she may value knowing the tensile strength and the gauge of steel wire used in the trap and in this case the product brochure should mention that - otherwise not. 

in my mind this is a good place to draw the line between Strategic Marketing and tactics. I believe that a lot of what marketers do after the messaging is defined is more tactical in nature - what content do you create to convey the messaging - today blogs, articles, whitepapers, video and many more types of content options are available each with it's own place. What channels do you use to propagate this content is another tactical selection from among social media, ads - digital and real world, PR and so on. This principle holds true for the website, collateral, social media, emails and all other communication mechanisms you use as well. Consistent messaging is critical to prevent confusion and hence distraction but that apart many of the specific choices are dictated more by day-to-day considerations that a broad over-all strategic imperative. What do you think - is this the place where strategy morphs into tactics ? Or do you perhaps believe making such a distinction is unnecessary ?        

   

Prospecting For Contact Gold

An ancient Chinese saying goes that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. While it is unlikely that Lau Tzu was thinking of Lead Generation when he said that in the best traditions of timeless wisdom it leaves us free to draw from it what we will. I look at this to mean that in the long sales process a considered first step is of critical importance to ensure success. Especially in B2B sales that first step being the creation of a prospect list of-course. Whether you call it a contact list, a prospect base or a database it's quality will ultimately determine how effective your contact efforts are. You want a database populated with names, contact and all other relevant information of decision makers and other influencers from your target organisations and here are a few rich seams that can be mined for these nuggets of information.

Look Here..

1. Company Website : Once you have identified the organisation you wish to target the first port of call is it's website - obvious I know but you would be surprised how many "contact discovery" efforts ignore this basic first step. The "Management" tab on the website offers up a complete list of the officers for you to pick those most likely to be receptive to your specific message.

2. LinkedIn - The inevitable next place to look in this age of social selling. There's been enough and more written about the search capabilities within LinkedIn - I will just add that I have found LinkedIn most valuable in seeking information about middle level contacts and perhaps not always so when looking for the "C" level contacts. These mid-level managers are the people not usually represented on the company website or other such sources. The well known capabilities of LinkedIn to search for an extended network of connections allows an almost organic growth in the contact list once the first few contacts are unearthed.

3. I have personally found events a great source to mine for contacts and information. The list of "speakers" has double value - not only can you get information about the speaker (name, title, role in the organisation) but also their specific area of expertise. 

4. Company Publications : This is a great place to look for people in your target companies with very specific areas of interest. Given the emphasis on Content Marketing most companies have an abundance of publications in the public domain like Papers, articles, technical papers & filings, blogs and the like and these will almost always be credited to specific individuals. If their area of expertise coincides with yours then an obvious match-making opportunity exists with a ready-made opening line to go with it.

5.  Other social media channels : In building a contact list LinkedIn is no. 1 to no. 10 in the top 10 social networks to consider but there are other channels also that can be useful on occasion most notably Twitter. Looking down the list of people who follow your target company's official Twitter handle or are listed as contributors to the Twitter feed could throw up some names worth researching and adding to the contact database.

6. Something I have found useful sometimes is "News" from your target companies especially about things like product releases. Such news is often accompanied by quotes from the officers directly connected to the product line - useful from the point of view of being able to pin down a name as well as a likely area of interest. 

While these are great places to look for names of decision makers in your target companies that's just the first step (there's that first step again) - there is a lot of good practice associated with keeping the database accurate, fresh, updated and, well alive but let's leave that for another day. For now let me end by asking what do you think of this list ? Are there any other sources not listed here that you have mined productively while building a prospect list ?

             

‘Tis The Season To Be Campaigning

Selling into the US and International market from India the festival season starts in early November and carries on in fits and starts through till the middle of January - over a career in sales I was often conflicted by how to approach the holiday season. While this was a time of great personal joy I used to struggle with ideas to keep the sales effort going. Conventional wisdom is that no one takes any decisions then anyway and given the number of days off even when people were at work it would be challenge to get any meaningful “face time” from any prospect. It is, of-course, not possible to “give up” on this period given that many organizations finalize budgets for the upcoming year. The end of the year often coincides with the end of the Financial Year bringing with it all the attendant pressures of sales targets to meet.

Colours Of The Holiday Season

Here are some ideas for campaigns that I have personally found to have a fair chance of working over this season:

1.       By far the most effective campaign that I believe could be run is to reach out to your own network. In most cases the true extent of one’s network is larger than one imagines – what is needed is a systematic approach to reach out to them with a well-designed, targeted message. The fact that most people shy away from campaigns at this time works in favour of this tactic because it reduces the “noise”. The campaign objectives should, of-course, be well calibrated to reflect the limitations of the period – don’t expect too many “hot” leads but aim to get in front of people and set yourself up for the busier period coming up.

2.       This may also be a good time to try and revive dormant contacts – people you have been in touch with in the past where the discussions have stalled. Reaching out to such contacts to catch-up, offer some new information or an update on where you and your company may be just the thing. This may not necessarily serve to revive specific sales opportunities but can definitely help revive relationships. In the long run these could prove more profitable than a single sale.   

3.       There’s perhaps some cosmic significance to the holiday season in the US starting with Thanksgiving – I would suggest this is pointing us towards a campaign to give thanks. There’s no time better than this to thank all the stakeholders – current and past customers, partners and associates and also employees. A simple, heart-felt message to give thanks to them for their support and reminding them that this support is extremely valued goes a long way to cement the relationship.

4.       One email campaign that I recommend to everyone is an end of the year campaign focused around “Seasons Greetings”. This is a wonderful platform to recap the significant achievements of your company over the year that has gone in a subtle, non-salesy manner – who could ask for more ? Companies, their range of offerings and capabilities grow with time and sometimes this is not visible to everyone – current customers are more fixated on the immediate needs being serviced and old customers may still hold an image of you as you were “back in the day”. An end of the year email outlining the most recent events of importance could provide substantial evidence of this growth and help change this impression.

That’s the list of things that usually make it onto my own “To do” list for the holiday season – sometimes with good results. What do you think ? How do you fill the time over the holiday season and what results do you get from these efforts ? Oh and before you leave – please accept my best wishes for the holiday season wherever in the world you are !   

Your Price is Too High - This Q May Be the Answer

As a sales guy one of the things that you are almost inevitably going to encounter is the price objection. This is always a tough one - not least because it usually crops up at the fag end of what is often an exhausting sales cycle. After months of effort in getting the prospect on board, understanding their specific business issue, building consensus around the solution you are providing and ensuring all technical and logistical objections are addressed it is sometimes deflating to hear something along the lines of "We like what you are offering but your price is too high.". In most cases this prompts a rush back to HQ with a frantic "We need to drop our price if we want to get the business." I have been guilty of such panic attacks as much as any other sales person but somewhere along the way I learnt to ask a Question that I believe dramatically improves the chances of success of any follow-up action. The next time just when you are expecting to close a sale if a prospect tells you "Your price is too high." ask them "Compared to what ?" The answer to that Q will give you a crucial guide to what your response should be.

Look Closer To See More

1. The obvious one is you are more expensive compared to a similar solution from a close competitor. To an extent this is a solved problem - there is enough material out there on what to do in such a  situation to prove your solution better or yourself more deserving than your competitor or failing that a calibrated discount. 

2. It could be that your price exceeds the available budget - this is a tougher one to solve. Assuming that not much room is available for dropping your price or for stretching the budget you would have to look for creative solutions - maybe break your offering or the billing across multiple budget allocation periods or make a distinction in the offering between Capital & Ongoing Maintenance or services that can be budgeted for under separate heads.  

3. Another possibility is the price is higher than what the prospect was assuming he would have to pay - this is usually the result of an expectation mismatch. This situation is better avoided than addressed in that it's far easier to ensure early on in the sales cycle the prospect gets a reasonable understanding of what this is likely to cost him than to try to convince them otherwise once the objection is raised.

4. In some cases the price offered may be more than what the prospect is willing to pay to solve the problem he is facing - basically just not worth the money. There's really no solving this - this is a case of improper qualification at a much earlier stage of the sales cycle.

5. A variation of the previous theme is the prospect may not agree that the solution should cost so much. I had heard an old story about a space agency using a pencil instead of developing a pen that wrote in zero gravity. That being said the agency may have been willing to spend hundreds of thousands of $s to develop the pen but it is unlikely they would spend the same kind of cash for the pencil even though it solved the problem. This is human tendency - we ascribe intrinsic value to things so we feel something simple should cost less. Like a magician keeping the mechanics of his trick under wraps maybe the best way is to retain some of the mystery if you want to avoid falling into this particular trap.

Assuming you have done most of the earlier steps in the sales cycle right the answer your prospect gives you to this particular "loaded" Q and your subsequent reaction may prove the difference between a futile last ditch discount that may or may not work and a carefully calibrated response that provides a very specific solution to a genuine objection. After-all don't you need to know what is the Question is before you Answer it ?          

Random email tips that have worked for me !

In a previous post I wrote about some general email campaign do's & don'ts - in this one I thought of sharing some tactics that have shown good results in campaigns that I have run. A word to the wise though - these are not prescriptions so use carefully only when the situation is appropriate.

1. Many people use mail clients like Outlook & view the mail box in split screen - a list of mails with basic info. & often a preview of the first line on one side & an actual preview of the mail on the other half of the screen. This suggests a couple of tactics - for starters I try to keep the actual mail short enough to get all the "meat" as close to the top of the mail & hence appearing in the portion that would fit into the half screen preview with the sign-off & the signature going "below the fold".

2.  Now almost all mails are addressed to the recipient by first name but I also try to name the target segment they belong to in the first sentence to reinforce that the mail is topical - so something like "I thought it would interest you to know how other Medical Insurance leaders have addressed customer support challenges...". This also helps get this reference into the preview that comes up on the mailbox list - seeing something interesting there may mean the difference between the mail getting opened or canned.

3.  A few personal rules about the content of the mail - I try to keep my claims realistic & as obviously sincere as possible so no hyperbole like "perfect", "raving customers" & the like !    

4. As far as possible I look to include no more than 1 hyperlink in the mail. Ideally that link should be to a specific section in the site that holds some very relevant information to the target segment. As a general rule I try not to direct people to a home page or something as generic as that. In those cases we are depending on the prospect making the effort to look for something more appealing & then clicking through. Chances are that is not likely to happen.

5. It sounds obvious but the mail should be tailored to invite the desired CTA - if that is to click through a link then the mail should specifically drive towards that, if the mail in intended to convince the recipient to give time for a demo or a meeting then one tactic I have found useful is to provide just enough information to pique interest but not enough to tempt the prospect to think they have all the information  they need to take a decision on their own.

6. I also try to anticipate the most common "objection" & deal with it in my closing - so something like "Many organisations with existing vendor relationships in this area have still found value in talking to us because of our unique combination of skill sets."

7. Perhaps most counter-intuitive but I have had some success with emails that include an error or an obvious mistake in the title or the early text - people often feel compelled to read through or even to write back & point the mistake out. This is a high risk-strategy though - mistakes can reflect on your brand so I sometimes hedge by including a reference to the mistake towards the end of the mail & make it clear that it was deliberate. 

So there you have it folks - some personal tips that I have found useful. I would be interested to hear from others if there are things they have tried that have worked for them - no doubt we can all use all the help that we can get ! 

  
(Image Courtesy - Wikimedia Commons)