The CEO of a client company once told me I shouldn’t do a webinar on the company’s, secret sauce.  They were a professional services company, and he was worried the competition would go to school on them, learn something about their secret sauce, and then use it against them.  I asked him if no one knew about the secret sauce, then what good was it?  I asked him what would happen if that competitor began giving away their knowledge?  How would customers and prospects react?  I promised him I would give the attendees only a taste.  Well, it might have turned out to be an appetizer.

Giving away your secret sauce is a type of thought leadership.  You find forward thinking companies and individuals doing this.  CEOs and bean counters don’t like it because it’s hard to quantify the immediate return.  That’s what makes it hard to instill in a company, and why it has to be top down driven.  But what is thought leadership and why is it important?

Here’s my definition of thought leadership:

It is the ability to share with passion the things that truly advance the art and science of your company’s business, your understanding of customer needs and your marketplace, and to do this with confidence and without thought of risk and immediate return.

The longer term value of thought leadership is that it can help a smaller companies leverage their size, become better known and increase their reach.  This creates larger audiences with more significant clients and reduces the cost of client acquisition.  And like brand, it can add to the valuation of the company.  In addition, from several of my last posts, it can help retain customers and engage them in new products and services.  There is value in thought leadership.

A key characteristic of true thought leadership is sharing; sharing ideas, technology, knowledge, and intellectual property, all without the thought of immediate gain.  It contains elements of passion, generosity and education.  Ultimately, like brand, it is about what others say about you.  You can’t say you are a thought leader or if you do, no one will believe you.  It’s like saying you are the world’s greatest lover.  Though that also has something to do with sharing, recognition comes more with simmering the sauce over a long time.

The combination of sharing without asking for something immediate in return is what makes it so hard for senior management to appreciate thought leadership and get behind it.  Like brand, marketing’s job is to help lead organizations into creating a culture of thought leadership, and to help show that ROI.

While the webinar was going on, I shared a text from a prospect with the CEO.  “This stuff is great.  I am reminded again of why we should try to do business.”

Share

One of the most successful marketing campaigns I’ve been involved with was sending personal thank-you notes to over 1400 customers.  The notes simply said, “Thank you for your business.”  They were hand written by an executive management team, fifty at a time.  The benefits were twofold.  First, the customers were blown away.  Many said that they had never received anything like it from a vendor.  The rewards for renewal of business were in the millions of dollars.  But there was a more subtle reward.  The management team got more vested with the customers.  Their personal signatures made them feel more responsibility for customer satisfaction and loyalty.  They began to think about their customers differently, appreciate and pay attention to their needs.

Thanking customers and clients for their business is “Marketing and Sales 101.” But it’s rare when we do it with sincerity.  Many companies send year-end holiday cards, but I sometimes get the same reaction from this that I get when my bank sends me and email on my birthday.  Sometimes it’s better to send nothing.

One business I know sends Thanksgiving Day cards.  No one expects them, and they don’t get lost in the shuffle of the end of the year holidays.  So they stand out a little more and are appreciated.  There are a hundred ways to say thank you.  So what’s stopping us?

So thanks.  Thanks for reading this. Thanks for the encouragement, and thank you if you’ve passed this blog on to others.

PS: And right up there with thanking your customers is… thanking your employees.

PPS: Marketing, please thank your sales team.

PPPS: Image Attribution

Share

If you’ve looked at many marketing blogs recently, you will notice post titles that have numbers in them.

• “The Top 3 SEO Mistakes”
• “5 Tips for Lead Generation and
•  “6 Ways to Improve Your Handwriting.”

I counted “8” of these on my iGoogle marketing page this morning and got to wondering about this trend.  Admittedly, we don’t have a lot of time, so the idea of three or four quick bullets seems enticing.  These post titles are designed to peak our interest in a business area in which we might have a problem.  They promise or hint at a solution and are geared to get readers or prospects in the top of the lead generation funnel.

But I wonder if the real message they are conveying is: “Japanese food – you will only be slightly satisfied, and then you will need to order more.”  I’m not saying I don’t like Japanese food, or even indulge in using numbers in my blog.  But I wonder at the subliminal message.

Does it say?

1. We’re just trying to entice you*
2. You’re not going to get the full story… you’ll have to ask us for more
3. Your problem may not be so important that it can’t be solved with three quick tips

Are we ever really satisfied with fast food?  Is your issue so trivial that it needs to be solved with three quick portions of a happy meal?  Apparently we are, given the obesity epidemic in this country.  But balancing the enticement against the level of content is a marketer’s challenge now days. 

Maybe we should just give them a full meal.  Or at least generate full content over time so propsects become regular readers and know what to expect.  The “numbers” title is focused on generating “numbers” of hits or eyeballs.  Isn’t the issue really getting sustained and satisfied readers or prospects?  Numbers are fine, but would you rather have 100 prospects and 1 sale, or 10 really good prospects and 5 sales?

*PS: Yes.  I tend toward over-the-top post titles.  But that is part of my brand.  More on this soon.

Share

Most sales processes discuss the buying cycle for complex sales.  Customer Centric Selling  identifies the “Looking” phase of this cycle in Figure 1 below as the 10% to 15 % of the market that may have a problem for which you have a product or service and who are actually looking for a solution to that problem.  That’s not a very big slice of any market.  In many markets today, the slice is even smaller.

Often sales and marketing teams subscribe to the “volume” theory in response to this problem.  Call enough prospects and sooner or later you’ll hit on one who just happens to be looking.  (Whether they’ll engage with you, however, depends on other factors.)

But what is the rest of the population doing?  Some are evaluating your competitor’s offerings.  Some are in negotiation and may need you for column fodder in order to get the best price from their preferred vendor in column A.  Others are implementing, blaming, optimizing or perhaps even unaware.  It’s a waste of time and resources to have expensive sales talent try to find that needle in a hay stack… “The Looking.”  For the most part, they’re not very good at it, and it bores them.  You can have your outbound market development team call, but that’s also a waste of time.  So what do you do?

While this is not new marketing science, it bears repeating.  Remember from my recent blog (Marketing and Sales Stuck in the ’90s) that 80% of customers now claim they find their vendors and not the other way around.  Unless you have a “Net” presence and are making yourself known to your prospects regardless of where they are in their buying cycle, you are also wasting good time and effort.  A very simple way to do this is to engage in an indirect conversation with them, either through email or on your website or blog.  Provide them with information that is relevant, useful and timely throughout the buying cycle.   You can also provide this information tailored to the type of buyer and their needs.  If done correctly, you will either be the vendor making them aware of potential issues, or the vendor they choose to engage when they decide to look.  There are a thousand subtleties to how to do this, but remember Quid pro Nada?  Something for nothing.  If you provide them with valuable information without asking for an immediate return, like in the movie Field of Dreams… “They will come.”  Figure 2 is an example of the type of information that can be shared during a nurturing cycle.

On the average it takes 9 to 12 “touches” before much traction is gained.  Even though it may look like it takes longer, it’s a bit like priming the pump.  You’ll get a few results within a few touches and then the well will start producing and keep on flowing with less effort.  The difference between sales and marketing is that sales wants instantaneous results.  Marketing needs a little time.  This is often a source of friction between the disciplines.  Work it out.  Sometimes it helps to give examples by introducing your sales team and your CEO to others who have done this successfully.  A recent marketing campaign I ran using this process yielded a 20% market penetration and resulted in 30% growth.

There are numerous complexities to running a nurturing campaign, but there are a few essential elements:  Tools, Contacts and Content, of which Content is King.  More on these in upcoming blogs.

Share