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  • Innovation – Does Your Management Style and Culture Foster or Hinder It?

    Innovation – Does Your Management Style and Culture Foster or Hinder It?

    Organizational culture is getting a lot of attention recently, as economic growth is tougher to come by and company profits even harder to generate. Where efficiency, productivity, and process used to get the attention of management gurus, the general impression is that those things aren’t sexy anymore, and that if you can create the “right culture” at your organization, it will be able to grow by leaps and bounds, leap tall buildings and take the market by storm, etc.

    Culture’s definition is often a bit diffuse, but for the sake of argument we’ll use this: The atmospheric environment within an organization created by the Senior executive and mirrored down the ladder to the rank and file, reflective of a set of values and preferences, and a vision conferred onto individual staff interactions that bleeds into their products and services and suffuses the brand. True, that still leaves much room for interpretation, but it gives you an idea of what the majority of workers are going for.

    But culture goes deeper in some cases than others. In almost all cases, it really starts at the top, with a communicated vision for what that senior executive wants that company to be, day in and day out. That vision is reflected in many aspects of daily life within the organization, from the physical plant layout, furnishings and decor, down to the paint on the walls in some cases, to the tone of the Employee Manual (or if there even IS one), memos and e-mails, the recording on the voice mail at the front desk, to how customer services treats customers,  and in nearly every other aspect of life in that hive every day. What holidays they celebrate and how many, how vacation time is viewed, how the management structure is coached, trained and their performance assessed are key to defining that corporation’s culture.

    But how does that culture affect the organization’s ability to innovate?

    I think it has the most to do with a sense of freedom borne of respect for the employees’ ability to work together for a common goal. That ability is derived through common and communal trust and a sense of obligation to the mission and to their co-workers. If you are trusted by your peers, and managers, and you trust your subordinates and direct reports to do the best they can all the time, to strive for continual improvement, and to work as hard as necessary to adhere to the goals and needs of the company as a whole, the table has been properly set to drive innovation around the current product or service offering, as part of that constant curiosity and need to improve the status quo.

    On the flip side, if management is constantly looking over the shoulder of direct reports, codifying each action and driving their efforts down a narrowly defined group of managed behaviors, that trust in and growth of their abilities doesn’t have much “elbow room” alongside the rest of the required actions, and innovation rarely occurs – they’re having too much trouble just getting through the day.

    Innovation comes from many quarters and from many unexpected directions, but somewhere down the line, it really stems from the freedom to be curious, to be able to find answers to the question “What if . . .?” If the answers to that question are never sought because there’s no value to exposing the answer, innovation will have a hard time taking hold and the organization won’t be able to nurture that spark into a meaningful flame of business brilliance.

    Don’t let your need for profitability smother creativity and innovation – five hours “wasted” finding out about a certain idea could be the best investment you ever make.

  • Win With A Member-Focused Value Proposition

    Win With A Member-Focused Value Proposition

    Readers – Melynn and Carol have really laid it out for us so well I felt no need to add anything beyond “kudos” – we’ve been telling our association clients to research their members’ needs and desires to drive creation of effective benefits, and generate a reasonable value proposition for acquisition and retention for years – clearly these two marketers “get it” –  let me know what you think.

    By: Melynn Sight and Carol Weinrich Helse

    Summary: Develop a strategy based on your members’ wants and needs, and your association will deliver the most relevant suite of products and services to them, leading to higher membership numbers and greater engagement.

    While most association board members think they know what association members want, there tends to be an unintentional disconnect between what the board members believe they know and what association members actually want. Volunteer leaders and executives tend to focus on membership benefits, not the value proposition. In doing so, the association loses an important opportunity to articulate what is really important to members and what will ensure that those dues checks keep coming.

    Thinking about value from the outside in—starting with what members worry most about—will help leaders begin to think, plan for, talk about, deliver, and promote the most relevant portfolio of services.

    What is a Value Proposition?

    10 Steps to Develop and Launch a Value Proposition
    1. Gain approval. When leadership considers this a strategic initiative, it will fuel the process from development through implementation.2. Determine if you’ll do the project yourself or if you’ll hire a third party.3. Do your research. Assemble a diverse task force of members to help plan with “the voice of the member” in mind.

    4. Identify up to three important member audiences.

    5. Determine the biggest concerns and needs of these three member audiences.

    6. Create a draft of your value proposition based on how your association currently answers the biggest needs of these three segments.

    7. Present drafts (or recommendations) to your board for approval. Finalize the value proposition and proof points that support it.

    8. Develop a communications and launch plan for your value proposition. Use the value proposition in association marketing materials, on the website, and in your CEO’s talking points. In other words, make it visible.

    9. Execute on your value proposition. Consider how to incorporate the value proposition into strategic planning, committee work, and staff operations.

    10. Survey and ask members for feedback to determine if you are making progress. Report measurements back to the board along the way.

    A value proposition offers members a clear, sound rationale for joining, belonging, contributing, and taking advantage of what your association offers them—starting with what they think is valuable. It differentiates why a member chooses to belong to your organization, a competing organization, or none at all.

    Developing a value proposition is a multi-step process that will aide in organizational planning and membership growth and loyalty. The outcome is a clear, direct claim that is relevant to your important audiences and represents what your association does well today. The written proposition is a statement that helps tell your story of relevance in a concise messaging platform that becomes the basis for all your association’s communications.

    What’s Your Problem?

    Early in the process, be clear about the reason why you need a value proposition in the first place. Some associations say they need one to unify their staff; others know how much they offer members but need a clear, simple way to articulate it. With the specific motivation for your work, you can keep your focus on the goal throughout the process.

    Leaders are increasingly seeing value propositions as the most meaningful step toward building and sustaining association membership. A well-researched and crafted proposition guides strategic planning, staff communications, and gives a purposeful approach to committee work.

    Recognizing your members’ needs first and then purposefully feeding those needs into your association’s strategic work can be a radical shift in thinking. This change in perspective can help organizations rethink how they plan, organize, and set goals.

    Invest in the Process

    A value-proposition project is not a simple one. Ideally it includes a task force composed of a diverse group of members who will devote a significant amount of time to the process. Task force members must clearly understand their role as well as the definition of a value proposition. The association’s executive director should be involved in facilitating board awareness before, during, and after the project.

    The most relevant value proposition projects begin with a member survey to uncover issues members worry most about, what members value, and how satisfied they are about the areas that are most important to them. Satisfaction with the wrong offerings is an unproductive way to run an association.

    The value proposition process requires investment. Whether you do it yourself or outsource it, you must invest manpower, energy, and money to develop the proposition and collateral to communicate it. Then it takes energy and focus to communicate and sustain your claims if you want to affect change.

    A Change in View

    A clear, concise value proposition will change the way your association approaches its business. A credible value proposition forces you to evaluate your services and communications with members with a benchmark that is set by them. It also pushes you to make internal decisions from the members’ point of view. This is a significant shift for many organizations and one that can create some meaningful dialog about current and new services. Are the services and activities that you offer today clearly ones that mean the most to your members? This can create conflict with programs that are sacred cows. Embrace the new view and overcome the conflict, and your value proposition will lead to stronger programs, more effective committee outcomes, and higher member satisfaction.

    Now is the time to begin this process so that you’ll have more members writing next year’s membership checks.

  • How Marketers Can Use Customer Advisory Boards to Engage Customers, Engender Brand Loyalty, and Much More

    How Marketers Can Use Customer Advisory Boards to Engage Customers, Engender Brand Loyalty, and Much More

    Guest Blogger Rob Jensen provides some great insights about how you can get reliable customer insights to improve your engagement and profitability.

    Marketers are giving a lot of attention of late to the topic of customer experience. Indeed, ensuring that companies optimize interactions with their top clients, obtain the highest level of value and maximize ROI from their precious customers seems to be a universal desire the significance of which is of little debate. The more challenging aspect of achieving these outcomes seems to be HOW marketers are supposed to do so. It is our experience that customer advisory boards (CABs) are the most effective and impactful way to engage with key customer executives and achieving these desired results.

    For those who are unaware, customer advisory boards (also known as a customer advisory councils) are forums to review industry trends, address mutual challenges or opportunities, and offer unvarnished insights and guidance. For vendors, these councils are ideal for validating corporate strategies, gathering input on product development, and deepening relationships with key customers. In turn, there is just as much to be gained by the participating customers.
    Indeed, while engaging customers, gathering their feedback and input to your strategic plans and product roadmap helps engender brand loyalty, the benefits of CABs go much deeper than that. Here then are the top 5 benefits your company can get from a well-run customer advisory board program.

    1. Insight into Business Strategy: Your customers—the consumers of your products or services – are the best (and surprisingly most often overlooked) resource to provide input to your company’s overall direction and business strategies. Such customers should be able to advise you on the products and services they desire, what they would pay for them and how they want them delivered. After all, everything you do is designed to appeal to their needs, so there really is no one more qualified to counsel you on how to best target, approach and serve your client base. Your council can provide invaluable direction regarding which markets to pursue, how to capitalize on market trends, what customer pain points to address, which companies to partner with or acquire, how to best exploit competitors’ weak points, and how to position your company for optimal advantage.

    2. Feedback to the Product Roadmap: A customer advisory board is ideal for providing feedback and desired direction on the host company’s offerings. Your advisory council can offer an insider’s view of what your target buyer needs and wants from your products and/or services. A council also serves as a great platform for securing beta testers of your new offerings, helping you introduce your solutions and providing immediate validation before you go to market.

    3. Increased Revenue: The often unspoken (yet highly desired) benefit from your council is the positive impact you will see in incremental sales revenue. Your members’ organizations will likely increase their overall spend with your business over time. This is due in large part to the fact that they are privy to your growth strategy, are early testers of your solutions and feel closer and more faithful and dedicated to you and your offerings. In fact, Ignite’s experience shows that B2B companies that have active and successful customer advisory boards enjoy a 9% increase in new business among advisory members starting after year one of advisory programs above non-advisory council customers.

    4. Customer Approval and Brand Champions: An additional benefit to running an advisory council is that you are building a close-knit group of company advisors and brand champions. By bringing members into your company’s “inner circle” as trusted advisors, you are also transforming them into even bigger raving fans of your company. In our experience, this almost always happens with council members. As they take on the responsibility of helping to guide your business, they inherently become professionally and emotionally invested in your success, and their enthusiasm and passion tends to permeate their immediate team and sometimes beyond. The result is a group of highly loyal customers who have a vested interest in your success – and not defecting to your competition. Furthermore, your members will likely refer other prospects to you as they talk about you with peers at conferences, events, and throughout their day-to-day operations.

    5. Marketing Campaigns and Messaging: Another often less-recognized area of value a client advisory council delivers is feedback to how your company markets itself. You will gain the rich insight necessary to understand how to position (or re-position) the company against the competition. Your advisory board will advise you as to what makes your business unique and what differentiators you should highlight. Just as important, the council can guide you on which mediums are the most viable in terms of reaching your desired audience. Members can also serve as wonderful client references for testimonials and case studies. Likewise they may also be willing to develop and publish joint articles or white papers with you. This lends industry validation and credibility to your advisory board program, your own organization, and serves as a means of promoting the member and bolstering his/her own company and career.

    While engaging with customers and engendering brand loyalty may be all the rage with marketers these days, in our experience, customer advisory boards are the best method to deliver this – and much more. A well-run customer advisory council will undoubtedly provide your organization with significant input that will put your company on a better, more targeted and profitable course for years to come.

    Rob Jensen is VP of Marketing for Ignite Advisory Group (www.igniteag.com), a consultancy that helps B2B companies manage their customer and partner advisory board programs.  http://www.igniteag.com

     

    If you found this valuable or enlightening, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • E-Mail Brilliance In Bite-Sized Chunks

    E-Mail Brilliance In Bite-Sized Chunks

    5 Elements of Effective E-mail Messaging

    1)      Carry the Brand – if you send an e-mail to a new or known constituency, no matter what’s in the body of the e-mail, if it doesn’t get opened it’s a waste of time, and if you don’t have your brand prominently displayed, your chances of an “open” are decreased by 70%. Security concerns are at such a level that if you don’t recognize the sender, it will NOT get opened. Make sure your “from” address is the one the recipient will recognize. If you’re sending through a third party e-mail service, which most will be for lists of any size, be sure they have created an outgoing box your audience will recognize.

    2)      Make the Subject Compelling – in the inbox or in preview, even on mobile devices, the subject may be the only thing your recipients will see. If you get it wrong, it’s irrelevant, looks promotional or like a scam or come-on, it won’t get opened. Give the receiver a reason to read further, make it relevant and within your brand characteristic list. Then it reflects accurately and well upon your effort.

    3)      Make it Personal – Modern e-mail technology allows for multiple personalization of e-mail messages – use it. Sending e-mail that looks like a static ad says to the recipient “you don’t know me”. You do know them a little so show that you not only know but have something you think they would find of value. Call them by their name, use their company name, pitch it to their gender, include a neighborhood fact – all this comes from just the address block on a mailing list! Make the technology work for you.

    4)      Get it Up Front – Structure the message like a press release – put the most relevant information in the first few sentences, front load the offer, use a coherent and attention getting headline and subhead. Pique the reader’s interest, get him to read further, and draw them in with relevancy. Most people, if they open your message at all, will only read the top 10% of the message before deleting. You only have a few seconds to get your point across, so make it short and sweet.

    5)      Make it Easy to Respond – One of e-mail’s main advantages are the links to web content you can include. Whether it’s to drive web traffic, drive donation, registration for events, make it a simple single click to get them the relevant information you wish to convey. Multiple links should be part of the body of the message, as well as at the bottom where the response mechanism is likely to land. Converted links are fine so that the message makes sense even when printed, and avoids long URL addresses that interrupt the flow of the message. Provide links in multiple formats, both full length and blind as part of the call to action, so that if it gets printed and passed along on paper, you can at least type the URL into the browser and reach the response page. Devise a specific landing page, so that the link takes them to the specific response you want, and they don’t get lost among multiple pages of your site.

     

    List Hygiene – Essential elements for high deliverability

    Keeping your e-mail list clean and functioning has many advantages, both reputational and economic.  There are many parallels between snail-mail mailing lists and electronic mailing lists. The ISPs function in the Post Office role, and they have their rules of conduct just like their paper corollary.

    Several rules will help you keep the list clean and effective, now and into the future.

    1)      Respect Your Recipients – when bouncebacks and requests to unsubscribe should be respected and acted upon immediately. All “Unsubscribes” should be scrubbed prior to the next mailing. Bouncebacks should be examined to determine the reason and a decision made whether to repeat them or drop them immediately. Remove any duplicates – they may not you’re your message once, they sure don’t need it twice.

    2)      Respect the System – ISPs are duty bound by their customers and enrollees to police their bandwidth and protect their customers. Repeatedly mailing to bad addresses will alert the ISPs and your mail may be considered SPAM. Set up feedback loops with the ISPs to have them alert you to requests to stop mail and other dead ends in your list. Take your bounceback that are bad links and use them as the seed of a suppression list for future mailings.

    3)      Check it on the way in and the way back – use data checkers in your data entry screens to keep out obvious errors and fat-finger mistakes – simple things like seeing the “!” in place of the “@” can raise your deliverability. Check the bouncebacks for simple errors and correct them immediately, especially errors in the domain name, which can be done with a find/replace algorithm.

    4)      Take out the obvious offenders –  remove all addresses that have the word “SPAM” in them, and distribution addresses – sales@domain.com or info@domain.org – those folks didn’t give you permission to reach their entire sales department, and will view your mail as spam and report it to the ISPs as such. SPAM addresses are likely traps added by the ISP and will land you in trouble quickly.

    5)      Routinely Revive your Opt-in – once you have permission via opt-in from a recipient to send something to them, don’t count on them remembering that they granted it. For regular e-mailers, those with periodicals and times messages, refresh your opt-in message and take the opportunity to show any value-adds that make it worth it to grant permission.

    If your lists are large, some mechanical assistance might be in order. LeadSpend recently introduced a new email validation service that correctly verifies over 97% of all email addresses. Check it out here http://www.leadspend.com/validation . Companies like FreshAddress and others can do some of the hygiene for you and keep your reputation clean with the ISPs.

    Mechanical Considerations

     

    1)      Make sure your HTML and other formats are readable by ALL formats of e-mail reader, including Outlook and others. If using a service they will likely ask for three versions of the e-mail, one for each of the two major formats and a plain text version.

    2)      Don’t count on an image to tell the story, use text as well. Some mail programs are programmed to strip out the images, or deny your message entry as a result of containing the image, so the recipient never sees them. Some very strict firewalls will deny any e-mail with any images in them at all.

    3)      Give your audience a chance to unsubscribe – always. If your content is relevant, they won’t take advantage of it, and if it’s not, you won’t waste money on sending to them in the future.

    4)      Provide a phone number – some people still aren’t comfortable spending via the web, but will gladly give out their credit card number over the phone, thinking its safer.

    5)      Make sure the links and phone numbers are current and functional – enough said.

    6)      Test color – some colors read strangely on different monitors and different graphics cards.

    7)      Keep fancy backgrounds and images sizes to a minimum and still maintain quality – if the e-mail is a huge file it might get filtered out of many firewalls based on size.

    8)      Make the headline tell the tale – some readers don’t get past the top three inches of the screen.

    9)      Format for mobile – most don’t do that yet, and you’ll gain an advantage over them if yours is readable on a Blackberry or iPhone.

    10)   Learn from your mistakes and READ your  metrics report from the ISPs and your service provider – there is a lot of valuable information that can be gleaned from open rates, dwell times and other stats, ready to be used when you design the next campaign for this same audience.

    If you found this information valuable and would like more, be sure and pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Selling Is Not About Relationships

    Selling Is Not About Relationships

    Reposted courtesy of HBR, copyright 2011
    Matthew Dixon is Managing Director of the Corporate Executive Board’s Sales and Service Practice. Brent Adamson is Senior Director of the Sales Executive Council, a division of the Sales and Service Practice. Their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, is forthcoming November 10, 2011 from Portfolio/Penguin.

    This post, the first of a four-part series, is also part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line.

    Ask any sales leader how selling has changed in the past decade, and you’ll hear a lot of answers but only one recurring theme: It’s a lot harder. Yet even in these difficult times, every sales organization has a few stellar performers. Who are these people? How can we bottle their magic?

    To understand what sets apart this special group of sales reps, the Sales Executive Council launched a global study of sales rep productivity three years ago involving more than 6,000 reps across nearly 100 companies in multiple industries.

    We now have an answer, which we’ve captured in the following three insights:

     

    1. Every sales professional falls into one of five distinct profiles.

    Quantitatively speaking, just about every B2B sales rep in the world is one of the following types, characterized by a specific set of skills and behaviors that defines the rep’s primary mode of interacting with customers:

    • Relationship Builders focus on developing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization. They are generous with their time, strive to meet customers’ every need, and work hard to resolve tensions in the commercial relationship.
    • Hard Workers show up early, stay late, and always go the extra mile. They’ll make more calls in an hour and conduct more visits in a week than just about anyone else on the team.
    • Lone Wolves are the deeply self-confident, the rule-breaking cowboys of the sales force who do things their way or not at all.
    • Reactive Problem Solvers are, from the customers’ standpoint, highly reliable and detail-oriented. They focus on post-sales follow-up, ensuring that service issues related to implementation and execution are addressed quickly and thoroughly.
    • Challengers use their deep understanding of their customers’ business to push their thinking and take control of the sales conversation. They’re not afraid to share even potentially controversial views and are assertive — with both their customers and bosses.

     

    2. Challengers dramatically outperform the other profiles, particularly Relationship Builders.

    When we look at average reps, we find a fairly even distribution across all five of these profiles. But while there may be five ways to be average, there’s only one way to be a star. We found that Challenger reps dominate the high-performer population, making up close to 40% of star reps in our study.

    What makes the Challenger approach different?

    The data tell us that these reps are defined by three key capabilities:

    • Challengers teach their customers. They focus the sales conversation not on features and benefits but on insight, bringing a unique (and typically provocative) perspective on the customer’s business. They come to the table with new ideas for their customers that can make money or save money — often opportunities the customer hadn’t realized even existed.

     

    • Challengers tailor their sales message to the customer They have a finely tuned sense of individual customer objectives and value drivers and use this knowledge to effectively position their sales pitch to different types of customer stakeholders within the organization.

     

    • Challengers take control of the sale. While not aggressive, they are certainly assertive. They are comfortable with tension and are unlikely to acquiesce to every customer demand. When necessary, they can press customers a bit — not just in terms of their thinking but around things like price.

     

    We’ll discuss each of these capabilities in more depth in our upcoming posts, but just as surprising as it is that Challengers win, it’s almost more eye-opening who loses. In our study, Relationship Builders come in dead last, accounting for only 7% of all high performers.

    Why is this? It’s certainly not because relationships no longer matter in B2B sales–that would be a naïve conclusion. Rather, what the data tell us is that it is the nature of the relationships that matter. Challengers win by pushing customers to think differently, using insight to create constructive tension in the sale. Relationship Builders, on the other hand, focus on relieving tension by giving in to the customer’s every demand. Where Challengers push customers outside their comfort zone, Relationship Builders are focused on being accepted into it. They focus on building strong personal relationships across the customer organization, being likable and generous with their time. The Relationship Builder adopts a service mentality. While the Challenger is focused on customer value, the Relationship Builder is more concerned with convenience. At the end of the day, a conversation with a Relationship Builder is probably professional, even enjoyable, but it isn’t as effective because it doesn’t ultimately help customers make progress against their goals.

    This finding — that Challengers win and Relationship Builders lose — is one that sales leaders often find deeply troubling, because their organizations have placed by far their biggest bet on recruiting, developing, and rewarding Relationship Builders, the profile least likely to win.

    Here’s how one of our members in the hospitality industry put it when he saw these results: “You know, this is really hard to look at. For the past 10 years, it’s been our explicit strategy to hire effective Relationship Builders. After all, we’re in the hospitality business. And, for a while, that approach worked well. But ever since the economy crashed, my Relationship Builders are completely lost. They can’t sell a thing. And as I look at this, now I know why.”

     

    3. Challengers dominate the world of complex “solution-selling”

    Given the first two findings, it might be reasonable to conclude that Challengers are the down-economy reps and that when things return to normal, Relationship Builders will once again prevail. But our data suggest that this is wishful thinking.

    When we cut the data by complexity of sale — that is, separating out transactional, product-selling reps from complex, solution-selling reps — we find that Challengers absolutely dominate as selling gets more complex. Fully 54% of all star reps in a solution-selling environment are Challengers. At the same time, Relationship Builders fall off the map almost entirely, representing only 4% of high-performing reps in complex environments.

    Put differently, Challengers win because they’ve mastered the complex sale, not because they’ve mastered a complex economy. Your very best sales reps — the ones who carried you through the downturn — aren’t just the top performers of today but the top performers of tomorrow, as they are far better able to drive sales and deliver customer value in any kind of economic environment. For any company on a journey from selling products to selling solutions — which is a migration that more than 75% of the companies I work with say they are pursuing — the Challenger selling approach represents a dramatically improved recipe for driving top-line growth.

    If you found this valuable, you can have more like this delivered to your inbox weekly – FREE, just by subscribing to this blog above. And, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • July 4th, 2014

    July 4th, 2014

    Have A Memorable, Respectful,

    Restful, and Thoughtful Holiday

    As You Wish Our Nation

    A Happy Birthday!

  • Exhibitions and Trade Shows – A Thing of the Past?

    Exhibitions and Trade Shows – A Thing of the Past?

    Guest blog

    Posted by garethcase ⋅ August 30, 2011 ⋅ 5 Comments

    It’s a subject that comes up every year. There is always an Account Manager who wants to do an exhibition because it’s closely aligned to their vertical market, but is there still real value in these events?

    The internet’s exponential growth over the last decade has meant that we have access to pretty much any information we want, no matter where we are or what device we are viewing it on. Research in general, for that latest gadget, your next holiday or even which e-marketing platform you are going to deploy is at our finger tips 24 hours a day.

    Before these technological advances, research was the reason I used to attend trade shows, but over the last 10 years, I have noticed a dramatic decline in both the size of events and the number of attendees.

    There are many reasons company’s choose to exhibit at trade shows. For example, it’s a good forum to launch your brand into a new market or geography. It’s also good to have brand presence at an event well subscribed to by your customers. The other main driver is lead generation. How many of you can honestly hold your hands up and say you have had a really good ROI from events and exhibitions overall? I hope I hear about some great successes but in my experience the ROI does not stack up. Yes there have been shows where we have converted some great opportunities, bit If I compare it £ to £ against over marketing activities it probably comes out bottom of the list. When working out the ROI, don’t forget to include the investment of time from your employees, a trade show with 4 of your sales team not only means you’re paying them to be there, but also missing out on them selling elsewhere during that time.

    If you are going to do trade shows and exhibitions then my advice is to pick niche events aligned to specific vertical markets you want to attack, rather that generic shows that cover your solution/product set. The key is to develop a proposition that really helps your target market overcome a ‘common challenge’. This way you will quickly gain engagement and been seen as a value add rather than a box shifter.

    Surely it’s better to be the only company at an event that offers your products and solutions than being one of 150 all offering something similar?

    My Response:

    Gareth – I, too, have sat on both sides of this fence, organizing some of the largest industrial events in the country (US) and attending and exhibiting in hundreds of shows for a variety of clients. I, too, have seen reductions in attendance and square feet sold, likely a factor of a combination of better information sources (the internet and elsewhere) and the current economy. However, if applied to the marketing plan in a focused strategic way, there is still a huge value in live trade events. NOTHING can replace the face-to-face interaction, the energy, the insight gathered at a live event. True, hard data research can be gained electronically, but the “Who” portion of the show is just as important as the “What” that you get electronically – seeing your competitors approach, viewing new entrants into the market for possible partnership, gauging the health and direction of an industry at large, are invaluable to the well-rounded executive.

    True, lead generation is one of the principal reasons to exhibit, and many shows don’t support this activity aggressively enough, though they should. But on the corporate side, 8 out of 10 viable leads are NEVER followed up with – after spending all that time, money and energy to exhibit, craft a display, man the exhibit with top, expensive sales staff, the leads lie fallow, reducing the ROI by a huge percentage. Shame on the sales manager who lets this practice continue . . .

    There are indeed numerous branding tactics associated with a tradeshow outside your individual exhibit, but some of the guerrilla tactics mentioned here in other poster’s comments would do more than “irritate the organizers” – they can get them thrown out of the venue, ostracized within the industry, their brand destroyed or reduced to a cartoonish bottom-feeding lout. If you work closely with the organizer, such tactics can be negotiated and usually an accommodation made so that these activities are viable and above-board, and a win for everyone.

    The branding aspect cannot be overstated – you’re given an opportunity to put your best foot forward in the most prominent arena your company has – a room full of customers and potential customers! Can’t ask for more than that in ANY business. When all this is factored in to the ROI equation, a well-selected show that gives you a forum to launch a new product, do primary customer research, show off a rebranding, put on a good face for the industry, and eyeball all your competitors in one room is an unbeatable opportunity. The rumors of the tradeshow’s death are greatly exaggerated and superbly premature . . .

  • Who Do You Seek Advice From?

    Who Do You Seek Advice From?

    Before all you English majors go off on me, I know the title is making use of poor grammar -but “From Whom Do You Seek Advice?” doesn’t really “sing” when used as a headline. Nuff’ said.

    The real question is, how do you select, solicit and filter advice on the topics in your life and work that matter? Most folks have an informal network of influencers and advisers, people they turn to when they have a question, want to validate a choice or point of view. Some have a small circle, some have a very large network of various family members with a range of levels of expertise. Sometimes its just that you want to hear another opinion, from someone who thinks like you do, who will dilute and sugar-coat their stance and feed your own back to you, just as a feel good.

    But sometimes, picking the right expert really matters. Sometimes its a case of hiring a professional who you happen to know under other circumstances. Selecting a realtor, picking a doctor or dentist, finding a tax preparer or accountant, an attorney for non-criminal work. Most of those selections are based on referrals or references from our known network of advisers. Sometimes the professional themselves is part of the network! But how do you really make the choice? Is it emotional, is it pragmatic, is it price sensitive, is it strictly relationship based?

    Studies have shown that reaching those influencers is the most powerful way to prompt word-of-mouth transference of brand and product information. But how do you find them and reach them? Most of the advisers who are non-family are close friends from various stages of our lives. College roommates, fraternity brothers or sorority sisters, high school buddies, team members from sports activities, vendors of various services we use routinely – familiar faces. To find these people and gather them as a list for someone else is virtually impossible – until now. Social media does exactly that and more. Those influencers and advisers are now called “friends”.

    That’s the real power of social media – reaching the influencers of your target audience. If you wanted to build the killer marketing app, it would be one that selects all the Facebook pages from people that fall into your target demographic based on data presented on the pages, and selects the five most prolific friend commentators that appear next to a question mark. You’ve asked the audience for help with a question, and those top advisers answer it. Select them and market to them socially, and they will bleed that influence into the key purchaser. We can only dream . . . so far.

    For now, we’ll have to settle for joining the online conversation in a corporate but personal way, and hope that those influencers see us, hear us, and most importantly, believe us, so that they pass along the attributes we offer to their list of “friends”.

    Keep at it, the tech geniuses will eventually create the key that unlocks the real monetary power of social media, and when they do, look out . . .

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  • Be An Agent For Change

    Be An Agent For Change

    At it’s root, marketing is about change. Changing perceptions, changing appearance, changing buying behavior. But if marketers are to conquer the C-level chambers and earn a real seat at the management table, they have to be an agent for change in the business. Simply executing within the frame isn’t good enough any longer.

    It’s up to us as marketers to lead the charge into the future, to examine and adjust business models, to question the status quo and come up with workable solutions, without reservations, obstacles, roadblocks, and excuses. Lots of platitudes surround this type of behavior, but the ones that i prefer are “Better to ask forgiveness than permission” and “If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward, there is no standing still”. Food for thought . . .

    CMOs have it within their power to revolutionize their businesses, they just have to give themselves permission to do it. Use the powerful imagination you were blessed with and put it in gear to create the next step in the logical growth path of your business, or better yet, leapfrog the next step and go ahead by two! The competition will never catch up!

    Change effected is usually change managed. Making changes for change’s sake is a short-lived phenomenon, one that shakes things up, but doesn’t move the needle for long. To affect long-lasting change, the path must be plotted before it can be blazed. Note the spelling, Plotted, not Plodded. You don’t have to take a year to plan the next two – change can be made quickly and still be lasting. Better to try five or six different things now than plan one thing perfectly.

    Go forth bravely, boldly, and be a change agent – you’ll be surprised what just the change in mindset will bring . . .!

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  • Self Promotion Is Not a Crime

    Self Promotion Is Not a Crime

    A lot of business start-up executives I encounter in my practice have an odd feeling about marketing. They seem to think that promoting themselves is somehow unseemly or impolite, simply not done. I can only thank my stars that this isn’t the case, or I’d be out of a job! Self-promotion of your business is vital to it’s growth and continued viability. So where did the guilt come from?

    I think it comes from the image of a blowhard, always talking about themselves and exaggerating their prowess and bragging about how they are the biggest, best, whatever they do. We’ve seen them, we know of them, and we try to avoid them. But there is a distinct difference between promoting your business endeavor and bragging about it’s success. Done properly, self-promotion allows you to get the word out often enough, and generate enough business that your satisfied clients will do the bragging for you, so you don’t have to.

    Small or especially start-up businesses need to promote their existence rather heavily, and it comes more naturally to some entrepreneurs than others. Most we’ve met are extremely passionate about their business and very proud of their accomplishments, and rightly so. For those to whom this is a natural occurrence, they not only make it look easy, but have come to a point where it can be very subtle and low key and still be effective. That’s the mark of a master, and admittedly, few reach that level. Fortunately, some come to the realization early that this is not their forte, and they hire someone to do it for them – they’re called clients at that point, and bless them all!

    To be a small business owner, one thing it’s difficult to be and still be successful is shy. You gotta get it out there and let the public know you’re there, and by doing it a few at a time, you might not ever reach critical mass needed to make it a viable business. So a strong marketing strategy, including some form of outreach promotion and advertising is usually in order. Often it’s something simple, a small ad, even a classified ad is a start. Maybe a postcard to the local area, or a short letter to the neighboring zip codes. Maybe it’s a little league soccer or baseball sponsorship. But at the heart of it, it’s the business owner’s personality coming through all of it, selling hard and showing that passion for their business that makes it all work.

    If you’ve started a business in the wake of a layoff or change of life status due to the recent recession, you’re in good company. SBA is reporting a record number of applications for funding and loans, and services that support small business start-ups like insurance, permits, licensing and other things are having a good year. You’re off and running, congratulations!

    Now it’s time to turn to marketing to make that little kernel of an idea grow and flourish. If you haven’t done so already, decide how much you want to spend, and start saving now to fill that budget line. There is no hard and fast rule for how much to set aside. Some businesses spend over 20% of their gross income on marketing expenses, some as little as .5% – it depends on how you spend it, and what your goals are. The important thing is to get started, do something, make it happen, so the results can start working for you!

    Don’t be shy about self promotion, it’s not a crime, but if you just can’t bring yourself to tell everyone about your new endeavor, hire someone to do it for you – it’s the best money you’ll ever spend.

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