Archives for category: Planning
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Joined Up Marketing

July 17, 2015 //
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Joined up marketing is what you really want to do in B2B, but it’s actually quite hard to do. It needs a lot of deep thought before you start executing.

The temptation – especially when you have monthly demand generation and pipeline targets to hit – is to take a scattergun approach and puts loads of stuff out there and see what sticks. You can get into a cycle, or perhaps it’s a rut, where you have to get content out there and rather than pause for a week or two and get your strategy tightened down you fire ahead and keep pumping out material.

Notice that I’m not talking about closed loop marketing, though that’s a pretty good approach too.

What I mean by joined up marketing is that your messages appear joined up to your customers. They understand how the messages fit together because you zero in on a certain aspect or message, and then zoom out to show how each aspect fits into the overall picture. You give your customers context, and they understand the buttons they need to push to get the impacts they need to solve the problems you have helped them identify.

To do this right, you have to get your big picture sorted, as well as the component parts that make up your big picture. It’s worth it in the long run though, because with a joined up approach each element reinforces your overall positioning, your stance on the world, the difference that the market acknowledges you make.

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Planning, Strategy

Why Go To A Consultant

July 15, 2015 //
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Question: Why go to a consultant rather than someone in your company to get something important done?

There are myriad reasons, but the 3 I like and the 3 where I feel people like me can add value are these:

1) Specialised experience. You pay for experience in the field where you need help, because a consultant’s experience allows them to know which corners you can cut to execute quickly and save time.

2) Hard-nosed practicality. Consultants know what works and what doesn’t work. The practical, workable solution gets the job done.

3) Laser-like responsiveness. A good consultant knows that you went with them because they are free from any internal company politics or distractions and because they can deliver.

These 3 reasons are the ones we stand behind at M4 Marketing, which is my consulting practice. Together, they add up to what I think is a compelling offering, namely accelerating a company’s time to market for any important project.

Answer: You should go to a consultant because you want to get something important done.

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy, Technology

The Rear View Mirror in Demand Generation Plans

July 3, 2015 //
0

We’re always encouraged to look forward, to plan for the future. I remember trying to get an interview for a job a long time ago. ‘Do you want a copy of my CV? I asked. ‘No,’ said the guy, I’m more interested in what you’re planning to do, not what you’ve done.’

I admit it’s unusual for a recruiter to say that, and I should temper his comment by saying that it turns out he was head of a multi-level marketing company, but my point is that people take the approach that since you can’t change the past should focus on doing something about the future. Past performance is not a guide to future performance, the financial ads are fond of telling us.

The past can inform, however. That’s why we learn the importance of the rear view mirror when we start driving. Nowhere is this more important than in monthly or quarterly demand generation plans, or in fact any kind of plan. It’s all too tempting to sweep the last indifferent plan under the rug and start again with a fresh- forward-looking plan. If you do that every period, you’re not accountable, because you’re not learning or improving with experience. You have no reference point and you’re simply presenting yourself as a moving target for people whose aim will eventually catch up with you.

So before you build your next demand generation plan, measure and analyse what worked the last time, and what the conversion rates were at each stage, so that you can plan the next period with some knowledge. You should then be able to improve your targeting and forecasting with each subsequent period, having done the closed loop thing on the previous period.

Practice makes permanent if you never look back, but it makes perfect if you look back and learn.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Planning

How Long is Your Runway?

July 1, 2015 //
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When you’re executing a project, it helps to think about runway. For example, when you’re looking to generate leads for sales people to follow up on, there is a lead time between starting the project and leads coming in from the project you’ve executed. You need to plan for this runway, or else you’ll be trying to do vertical take off, and unfortunately business operates like an aeroplane rather than a helicopter or a jump jet.

The smaller your project, the smaller the runway you need. The larger the project, the larger the runway. You can get a light aircraft off the ground in 200 metres. You need at least ten times that for a jumbo jet. Same thing with business projects.

Make sure you’ve allowed enough runway, or you won’t get off the ground.

Equally important, the larger the project, the more runway you need to bring it home, complete it and assess its performance.

Make sure you’ve allowed enough runway, or you won’t land to fly another day.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Sales, Strategy

The Successful Sales Manager’s Magic Word

May 25, 2015 //
0

What’s the successful sales manager’s magic word?

Buffer.

Building buffer buys benefits for the sales manager.

I mean buffer in a money sense, not a time sense. Building a buffer into deadlines is always wise, regardless of your profession, to insure against the inevitable slips, trips and falls on the journey.

You should always have a buffer between your team target and the total of your people’s individual targets, because not everyone is going to hit target every month. Even in well-performing companies you might see a third-third-third split between those above target, those around target and those below target.

For example, to keep the maths easy, let’s assume you have 5 sales people on your team, each with a sales quota of $1,000,000 per year. Industry variances aside, your team target should be in the region of $4,000,000. Similarly, your sales director, if they have 3 managers with the same team target reporting into them, should have a sales organisation target of around $10,000,000. And so on, through the roll-up to the top person.

You want your people to hit target, and your Director wants you to hit target. That’s how successful companies retain successful sales professionals, rather than creating a constant need to replace churning staff.

Notice that I’m not talking about forecast buffer here. Building padding into your forecast makes it really difficult for the company to do meaningful measurement and planning.

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Categories Communication, Planning, Sales, Strategy

How to Sell vs How to Use

May 18, 2015 //
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There is a big difference between demonstrating how to use something, and selling that thing itself. Yet it’s amazing how many salespeople confuse the two. Either they show everything the thing does in the hope that something will catch the buyer’s eye, or they will say ‘this bit does this, and this button does that, and oh, watch this, it’s quite cool.’

Who cares? When you’re not sure what to show people, it means you haven’t figured out what problem they’re trying to solve. When you’re not sure how to show it to people, then you need to figure out the correct scenario that will best show off how you fix a specific problem better than anyone or anything else.

When you’re selling something, don’t show them how to use it. You will bore, frighten or otherwise deter them. Instead, show them how that something will make them money, save them money, save them time, or help them comply with something that must be done.

Of course, you need to know enough about your something to be able to demonstrate how you help your buyer, so learn the handful or two of user scenarios or ‘use cases’ that your buyers have, and learn how to demonstrate how your something addresses each scenario elegantly and efficiently.

You don’t need to be a power user of what you sell, with a deep understanding of every nook and cranny. You need to know it well enough to show how it solves a range of problems or capitalises on an opportunity.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Planning, Sales

Go Map Yourself

May 15, 2015 //
0

Do you want to be more successful at B2B sales and marketing? Then you need to do three things.

First, figure out how your customers want to buy from you. What do they want to do, when, in what order? If you don’t know, ask them. If they don’t know, consult with them and help them.

Second, map your roles, processes and systems to how they want to buy, so you can deliver that perfect buying journey for them. Then, adapt your roles, processes and systems accordingly.

Third, involve your people in steps one and two so they understand why it’s in everyone’s interest to adapt and come up with some great suggestions for how they can best get there.

Go map yourself. You’ll be glad you did. But not as glad as your customers. In some cases they may not buy what you have very often, and so you have to listen to what they’re trying to do and guide them through the steps they need to get there.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Planning, Strategy

The Knife Edge of Change Management

May 13, 2015 //
0

Change is hard. We all know that, as individuals and companies. People naturally resist any changes that break their routine, especially if they don’t understand or buy into the reasons.

At the same time, you can’t simply draw a line in the sand and expect people to change the way they do things overnight. It’s not in their nature, and it’s not in the interests of their business.

That’s because they have a job to do, objectives to meet, targets to hit, or a business to run. The clock doesn’t stop running while we try something different.

Successfully changing the way people do things is a very delicate balance between small, consumable exposures to the new ways and getting the day job done. That way you can effect a smooth, gradual, and above all measured transition that has a strong chance of being successful. You give people the chance to help shape the new ways and the time to ease into the process. Then the knife edge of change management is cutting for you, not into you.

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Categories Communication, General, Planning, Strategy

Before You Start, Measure

May 11, 2015 //
0

When you’ve decided to make a change or kick off a project, it’s easy to want to dive straight in and get started. After all, looking ahead is the right way to approach things; you can’t change the past.

I used to work with a company that used to make quarterly marketing plans and against each campaign they’d put the target number of leads, opportunities and revenues. They would do this every quarter, but they would never look back to the previous quarter to see how they actually performed against target. They would sweep things under the carpet and move forwards.

Before you start, you need to measure where you’re starting from. Sounds super obvious, doesn’t it? Yet, not enough companies do it. Sometimes they can’t measure the key things, other times they can’t be bothered.

Knowing where you’re starting from allows you to review and measure how far you’ve come at a later date. Instead of drawing up a plan every quarter, figure out how successful the last quarter really was. Then you have the information you need to learn from it and make a better plan next time.

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Categories Communication, General, Planning, Strategy

Analysis Catalysis

May 1, 2015 //
0

You used to hear the phrase ‘analysis paralysis’ all the time in business. The inability to make a decision in favour of hiding behind a surfeit of analysis was a common attribute of poor operational business.

You tend not to hear the aphorism that much these days, at least not in the last 5 years or so. Now we’re all about big data. We have more data, but we have better analysis since we can corral computing power, sometimes from global networks and forces, to crunch a monumental amount of inputs and come up with meaningful, helpful outputs.

Now we’re all about analysis catalysis. Since we’re only as good as our data, our ability to maintain a high quality of it and interrogate it in the right ways is the catalyst for solid, informed decisions. Sure, we can still rely on our gut from time to time, but now we can test repeatedly and get extremely fast feedback on our hunches.

Analysis used to cause inertia. Now it causes energy.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Strategy
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