Because this is election season, and because I am an advocate of 1:1 marketing, I masochistically thought I would sign up for the campaigns of both parties to see how they are using email marketing to reach their constituents.   I now receive over forty emails a day asking for money.  How stupid of me.  I suppose I also now know that Obama is a Muslim talking the country down a socialist radical agenda, and that Romney is a Mormon and likely to attack Iran with nuclear arms.

The tragedy of political emails in the age of 1:1 Marketing is that they are so not 1:1.  There appears to be no feedback loop or evaluation of any interaction with the email.  It is entirely batch and blast.

Wouldn’t it make sense if I opened an email on an environmental issue that my next email might not be on the Keystone pipeline? (I’m making this up.)  Or if I contributed just this morning, that another solicitation at noon doesn’t really work, and merely pisses me off? (I’m not making this up.)

The second tragedy is that it seems they’ve sold or donated my email address and broken my trust.  There is a subtle proliferation of email senders in each party.   Not just the names of the sender, but the organizations.  Just because I responded to your immigration email, doesn’t automatically mean I want to receive emails from the NRA.

But surprise!  I did receive an email the other day that said… “Thank you for your contribution last month of $19.29.  We used that money to run a campaign for the left-handed speckled grebe.  It was a successful campaign and we figure we saved twelve grebes.  Now, we know things are tight, but we wanted to ask if you could help us with the right-handed grebe?  Etc.”

How much more effective could these campaigns be if they followed the basic principles of good email marketing?  Then again, as they say, maybe we would only encourage the bastards.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

http://www.ratepublic.com

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I just put up two different websites using two different vendors.  One was relatively complicated, while the other was straightforward.  They both took the same amount of time: three months.  I decided I would formulate a new law of website development.  Every website takes three months.

Then I thought about other vendor projects that I’d contracted.  They all required three months.  Three months to get set up before launching.  Three months to get the new messaging.  Three months to work out the databases.  Maybe I was onto something.

But why?  Everything shouldn’t have to take three months.

Maybe it’s because, no project is any one person’s focus.  Every one is doing multiple projects, and as a result, everyone’s schedule is busy.  Once a project is launched, it takes a week to schedule the next meeting.  There are approval and review steps. And so on.  Pretty soon, three months have lapsed.   This is corporate marketing and control at it’s worst.

Time is the new currency.  It doesn’t have to be like this.

Agile Marketing provides a new mechanism for dealing with the three-month law.  Its core tenant is “Do, Learn, Adapt,” and it leverages small teams focused on completing one thing rather than ten.  To get an idea, you can check out my new e-book, The Problem With Marketing.

But here’s an extension.  If you are a vendor to corporate America, why can’t you use Agile techniques to drive your clients projects to completion in 30 days instead of three months?   Focus, meet everyday, and deliver.  I understand that there is a risk and cost to dedicated resources.  But this can be offset by variable and part time staffing.

I think agencies and organizations that help their clients do things faster will gain more customers, will have more satisfied clients, and will grow faster.

I’m looking for vendors like this.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Slow:  unhurried, lazy
Synonyms: apathetic, crawling, creeping, dawdling, delaying, deliberate, dilatory, disinclined, dreamy, drowsy, easy, gradual, heavy, idle, imperceptible, inactive, indolent, inert, lackadaisical, laggard, lagging, leaden, leisurely, lethargic, listless, loitering, measured, moderate, negligent, passive, phlegmatic, plodding, ponderous, postponing, procrastinating, quiet, reluctant, remiss, slack, sleepy, slothful, slow-moving, sluggish, snaillike, stagnant, supine, tardy, torpid, tortoiselike

Fast: speedy
Synonyms: PDQ, accelerated, active, agile, blue streak, breakneck, brisk, chop-chop, dashing, double-time, electric, expeditious, flashing, fleet, fleeting, flying, hasty, hot, hurried, hypersonic, in a jiffy, in nothing flat, lickety split, like a bat out of hell, like all get out, nimble, on the double, posthaste, presto, pronto, quick, racing, rapid, ready, screamin’, snappy, speedball, supersonic, swift, velocious, winged

As children, we are told the story of the tortoise and the hare and how the hare wins the race by ‘slow and steady.’   In today’s business environment, no one would agree that slow and safe is better, but I see it all the time.

I have a client that told me he wanted to produce a newsletter for a group of prospects at the request of a sales person.  So he sat down and wrote one in thirty minutes.  He used material already published by his company.  Then he made the mistake of showing it to his Marcom people, and they showed it to their legal department.  You know the rest of the story.  Several months later there was still no newsletter.

Maybe it’s the size of the organization.  Large companies reward people for maintaining the status quo and avoiding risk.  But I think it’s a personal issue.  Are we afraid to make mistakes?

Of course, direction to action is important, otherwise all you have is speed.  You wind up like a 22 caliber bullet shot inside a grain elevator.   That’s why Agile Marketing is going to be really important to your organization.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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In Cost, Quality, and Value – The Buyer’s Side, I defined value as quality divided by cost.  And quality was loosely defined as the degree to which customer or prospects needs are met.  But that’s not the end of the story.

The problem with this definition is… what happens when the prospect doesn’t know what they need?

In sales we are taught to ask questions in order to understand what the prospect needs are.  This is often an excruciating process.   The buyer has to trust that you will add some value after he answers all your questions.  But it’s boring and sometimes a waste of time for the buyer to do this.

So what happens instead, if you tell them what they need?

It depends on how you do this.  If you’re too direct, you come across as bossy or aggressive.  No buyer likes to hear, “Let me tell you what you need to do.”  They hear it as, “All you need to do is buy my product or service.”  It’s a sales kiss of death.

But often what prospects want is for sales (or marketing) to make them think in a new way about their business.  In order to do this, you often have to challenge their current thinking.  They are busy, and they want to know things that will help them in their business.

How do you do this?  By educating them.  Providing them with useful information.  By pushing them out of their comfort zone.  That’s the basis of Quid Pro Nada.  And Quid Pro Nada is owned by both sales and marketing.

So to really add value, can you challenge your buyers to think about their businesses and issues in new ways?  Quality is not just understanding their needs but understanding their businesses better than the prospect.  Can you help them by providing them with useful information?  Or are you simply going to agree with them.  If you simply agree with them and copy down their needs, then everything reduces to the lowest common denominator… cost.

Some of the best sales people I know, make me uncomfortable.  So grow some cajones.  Talk back to your prospects.  Respectfully.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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My Grandson

In a recent post, People Don’t Read…What Are You Going to Do About It? I advocated the use of video to get your messages across.  But by extension, if no one watches your video, you’re still stuck.

I’ve tried a few videos.  They’re OK.  Not great, but I got a good number comments on them.  I tired to keep them less than two minutes in order to keep people’s attention.  But I wasn’t satisfied.  Something was missing.  Then recently it clicked when I asked my four year-old grandson to tell me a story.

This is his story.   “There was a elephant. His name was Ralph, and he had big teeth. (Not the same elephant that got stuck in the room.) Then he went to the store.  He chased all the people out.  So then they called the POLICE.  But he ate all the food.  Then he pooped. Ha, ha.  When the police came, he got on a fire engine and drove away.  THE END.”  I asked him what happened next, and he continued the story for another two minutes.

So what do George Lucas and my grandson have in common that can teach us something about your marketing video?

The most important aspect for marketing videos is that you have to tell a story.

The first thing is that every story needs is a “hook” or a reason to continue listening.  For example; an elephant with “big teeth” (why big teeth?), or “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.”  This engages us in “The Story.”  It helps us suspend disbelief and allows us to listen and focus on what comes next.

Once you are engaged in the story, you need some conflict or drama such as calling the police, or a rebellion in a galaxy against the emperor.

Then the next key element is to keep us engaged.  Two of the most important words you can use are “and then.”  And then… what happened next?  My grandson, without thinking, naturally used “then” three times in his story.  But here is where the genius of George Lucas comes into play.  His version of “and then” was the “two-second” scene change.  What’s that?

We are evolved to look at motion.  We can’t help it.  From an evolutionary standpoint, sensitivity to motion protects us from the predators in the bushes.  By changing the scene rapidly, Lucas keeps us hooked into the action of Star Wars and raises our adrenaline levels.  We are forced to pay attention because we are looking to see what happens next.  Look at any commercial on TV today and you will see this phenomenon.  No scene lasts more than two seconds.

So how does this relate to creating a white board video?  In my video, I try to tell a story.  It begins with “a great idea.”  We all identify with the creation of a great idea; it’s a classic business narrative.  Conflict is created by failure to sell that idea.  Motion is created by drawing.  This is the equivalent of Lucas’s fast scene changes.  The viewer wants to see what is being drawn next, and this creates the “and then.”  Next there is a little humor to open our minds.  Finally, there is the resolution.  The elephant drives away on the fire engine, Darth Vader is thwarted, and a solution to a marketing problem is presented.

It’s not perfect.  It’s longer than I wanted, but I am surprised at how fast it moves.  It was created for less than $100.  And I want to know what you think.  Did it capture your attention?  Does it hit the mark?  What would you do differently?  Leave a comment below.

So if your video turns out to be an elephant, put him on a fire engine.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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I was talking with the COO of a small professional services firm the other day that had experienced 100% growth over the last year.  When I asked him how he managed that spectacular growth, he said he’d hired thirty-one people during the year.  He might have interviewed three or four times that many.

How did he do it?  His answer was succinct and direct.  He couldn’t always interview for specific skills or experience.  Others in his company could help him with that.  Instead, he said, he interviewed for the right values.  If he could find people with the right values, then he could worry about putting the right butts in the right seats.

The interesting thing was that the values for his company were written on a large sign in the lobby where his employees and guests could see them.  The list of five began with, “Always Add Value,” and ended with “Do the Right Thing.”

Values are different than business goals.  A goal is what you want to achieve.  Values are guidelines that we use for how we will behave and make decisions, especially when there is a conflict.

It seems to me that corporations don’t have values in themselves, but rather the people in them do.  When you put them on the wall, you are saying… this is how we expect you to make your decisions and conduct yourselves.  It helps hold others to the same code.

The test comes of course when really tough decisions have to be made or there’s some conflict between values.  In that case, you’d better have tested your own values beforehand.  Many companies simply put them up as they would office decoration.  Or they put up their business goals.  The real difference is can you live your values?

This is a time when positive impressions of business in America are at an all time low.  It’s easy to be cynical about corporate values when the company doesn’t live them or live up to them.  When this happens, it’s a huge demotivator and saps productivity and trust, both with employees and with customers.  However, this COO understood the value of values in creating a company that could grow at 100%.  Good values lead to good growth.  Values precede business goals.

Marketing and sales also own a big piece of the values for their organizations because they have the principle responsibility for communicating with clients, customers and prospects.   So what are you values?  Do you interview for them?  And how do you do that?

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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In Web Tactics versus Web Strategy, I emphasized that your web strategy and business strategy may need to become one in the same.  But what is it you should try to accomplish in your web search strategy?

When it comes to organic search, there are a number of objectives on which you should focus.  These are all part of my overcoming resistance theme.

First, of course, is getting found or being discovered by search engine crawlers so you can show up in indexed results.

The second is having a site architecture that is crawler friendly.  You can be discovered, but present unintentional barriers to indexing and ranking your pages.

Once the page is found and accessible, your content needs to be available or extractable.  For example, the image of the webinar blurb you inserted in your sidebar may not help.

With these first three items, it seems like we are responding to search engines rather than people.  So the fourth item becomes the first and most important item.  You need to make the information on your page useful to people you are targeting and easy to read.  One way to do this is to provide Quid pro Nada.  But it’s also important to make content that can be scanned as well as read.  I often see word dense content littered with SEO terms.  (A sin I commit too often.)  My reaction is to flee quickly.  Life is short.  About three seconds short.

One little tool to check out for readability is The Readability Test Tool.

If you’ve done the first four steps, your last step is getting your visitors to take action or convert.

In the end, you are optimizing your page for people, not search engines, because people decide if they want to convert, and they decide whether to become clients or customers.  Create compelling content.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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How many times have you had a sales person ask, “What’s our Value Proposition?”

The question I always ask next is, “Why do you ask?”  This is sort of a snotty response, and it doesn’t endear me to the sales team, but it has a purpose.

In my experience, too many sales people simply take the value proposition given by marketing and restate it to the prospect.  This is the worst use of a value proposition.  If you are in Marketing and you enable your sales team this way, then you are not helping.

A value proposition is a list of reasons why a prospect might benefit from buying your product or service, and it usually contains a number of elements.  The first is identifying a need, the second is some sort of differentiation, and the third is some sort of proof.

For example, “If you want fine flavor, then the smooth taste of Camel cigarettes is what nine out of ten doctors recommend.”   Parsed, the need is fine flavor and health, the differentiation is smooth taste, and the proof is that doctors recommend them.

While value propositions are good for internal dialogue and evaluation, as you know, simply stating the reasons why you should buy a product or service is bad sales form.  It’s also lazy.

When a prospect asks you, “What’s your value proposition?”  They are simply saying, “I don’t have time for this… just give me the Cliff’s Notes version, and I will decide.”

But the process they are going through is: 1) Do I really have this need? 2) Is this really any better? And 3) Do I really believe this, or do I trust you?  There is no way that a single “Statement” or “Value Proposition” will ever do justice to a prospect in answering these questions.  But if you fail to answer any of these, your sales and marketing efforts will falter.

So instead, slow down, and go back to basics.  Take your Value Proposition and turn it into a set of questions to determine whether the prospect has the need you believe your product or service can fill.  Then determine the prospect’s perception of the value to satisfying that need.  If it’s worth solving, then look at what their current vision is for solving that need.  Only then can you begin to explore an alternate vision and differentiation.  Your differentiation may be simply that you are not spouting a value proposition, but guiding the prospect through a process of discovery and helping them see things differently.  Proof doesn’t come until the prospect has a vision of capabilities they might need.

But please don’t just give your value proposition.  You might as well sit back, light up that Camel, and wait for good health to flow your way.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Yesterday, I had a colleague send me a link to a site that offers to write your blog for you.  The price was very reasonable, an introductory offer of $68.75 per blog!  He asked for my reaction.

My reaction was, “Really?”  And not in a good way.

Think about it.  Do you really want to phone it in?  If you are truly passionate about your business, how can you simply hire out the content and voice of your business’s soul?

I believe that marketers and business bloggers need to provide thought leadership, push the envelope, and not just offer rehashed stuff.  Because when you do rehashed stuff, your readers won’t tell their friends about your posts.  It will be boring.  Your readers will drift away from your blog.  Your posts will wind up like my insurance agent’s newsletter.  I will never read his stock subject, “Summertime Grill Safety.”  I might look at “Five Ways Not To Blow Yourself Up.”  But no newsletter or blog service will ever come up with that title.

Like every other industry, the marketing business can also follow the path of mass production.  Figure out how to produce more at a lower cost, offer it for a lower price, and then spend the money you make “marketing or advertising” your service to the masses.  You may sell something.  So will a hundred other organizations.  They will all be the same.

Yes, occasionally there is a technical discontinuity that happens in the marketing business.  For example, the creation of websites becomes more automated and doesn’t require experienced html programmers.  This can lead to lower costs for putting up a site, and suddenly there are website companies springing up from South Dakota to Manila.  This doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of improvements in technology or marketing.

We are told that blogging helps generate leads, and social media helps leverage your content.  I believe this to be generally true.  But you need to do the hard work.  Thank you to those that do it.

So if you are contemplating blogging and want to generate leads, I would advise against using a blog mill.   You might just as well lock yourself up with everyone else… or blow yourself up.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales With Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

PS: For those of you who want to stop the other kind of mill you can visit this site.

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How long do you think you have to make a good first impression?  Yes, the number may depress a few of the less confident out there.  Various studies say the number ranges from three seconds to thirty seconds.  These impressions then often guide other’s opinions of us regardless of how hard we work to change them.  As “they” say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Why?  The answer is simply that this is the way our brains are wired.  We make snap judgments because it has somehow helped us survive, pick a better mate, avoid a harmful conflict, or negotiate a better position.

Even in the digital world, many inbound and outbound marketers forget the axiom about first impressions.  It’s especially true when encountering trigger events, such as registering for a newsletter or webinar.  However, unlike your hunchback, there are things you can do to make a good first digital impression.  Here are five steps.

Step 1.   Be responsive

Marketing Sherpa data says that immediate response to a trigger event will get you double the response rate compared with waiting twenty-four hours.   Fall-off continues with more time.   If you are batch and blasting or filtering trigger events, you are losing traction and should consider an automated response.   Simple thank-you emails with a little personal touch (hope you enjoy the webinar, or let us know if you have specific questions) go a along way toward establishing trust.

Step 2.   Deliver value

Nothing pleases prospects more than getting something of value they didn’t expect. Sure they registered for a webinar, but what if you gave them a complementary whitepaper or assessment in your response?

Step 3.   Be explicit about your communications

Let them know how frequently you will communicate, what you will communicate, and how you will protect their information.

Step 4.   Open the door

It’s also important to make sure they’ll receive your communication.  A step to ask them to white-list you or test your communications guarantees that your email will get through.

Step 5.  Keep your communications short, sweet and relevant

Really.  Respect your prospects.  Just because you have their email doesn’t mean they want to see the latest photo of your new CEO.  Underscore relevant.

Do these things and soon you’ll have enough clients and customers to have that hump removed before face-to-face meetings.  What hump?

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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