Why don’t you pay your VP of Marketing or CMO the same as your VP of Sales?

This may seem like a radical concept. But as CEOs and business leaders, our success is often in how we hire, and how we motivate our team.

The classic answer to the question is that the VP of Sales is more important. They bring in the revenue. Power in a company is directly proportional to proximity to the revenue stream. Marketing is behind the lines. Therefore they should be paid less.

But in today’s environment, buyers say they find their vendors 80% of the time rather than the other way around. When they do find you, they are much further down the sales funnel than they used to be. They no longer rely as much on sales people to provide information, or help them understand how your products and services help them solve a problem. When the prospect doesn’t buy from you, 80% buy a similar product or service within 18 to 24 months. Sales doesn’t nurture prospects for that amount of time. Their attention span is too short. You don’t want sales doing these things, because they also aren’t very good at it, and you want them selling. <see How Many Sales People Does It Take To Screw In A Forecast?>

Who does these valuable things? Marketing.

Our prejudice is to believe Marketing offers less value. That the return is harder to measure. But whose fault is this? While there is a lot of crappy marketing going on out there, a big portion of it is our fault.

For what other function would you lower your expectations, and therefore pay less? When you set low expectations, you get crappy results. This doesn’t mean you should pay for crappy results. But what if you changed your expectations?

There’s a new wave of brilliant marketers out there, using sophisticated new tools to bring prospects through your funnel. They are going to work for the people who “get” marketing and who challenge them. They are going to add tens and hundreds of millions of dollars to their company’s revenues. But maybe not yours.

At minimum, they are going to want the same goals as sales if not similar incentives. Because when Sales and Marketing don’t have the same goals and rewards, they piss at each other, and your company suffers.

You get what you pay for. Raise your expectations… and your pay.

Do Great Things!

L. Hobart Stocking
Founder
Prairie Sky Group
651-357-0110 (C)

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NASA has released a video of The Earth at Night, which is stunningly beautiful.

Click on Image to See Video

I have a desktop screen saver on my Mac that I like of the famous Blue Marble photo of earth taken in daylight.  It reminds me that the earth is both bigger and smaller than we can imagine.  But the earth at night sequence has been haunting me because of one main difference.  In the daytime photo, we can see deserts, and oceans and clouds, but the earth looks devoid of life.  In the Earth at Night, we can see lights.  And I imagine the billions of people who live on earth who use these lights.  And even those that don’t.  We are well-populated planet.

What has this got to do with business, marketing, and sales?

I think it has to do with perspective.  We all tend to have the limited perspective of the current clients or prospects we serve.  We live in our current businesses just like we live in houses, or apartments, or neighborhoods and cities that we know.  And while we know there is a whole world out there, in some corner of our minds, the world ends at our front door, our neighborhood, or our current set of clients and prospects.  But there are 7 billion of us on the planet.

We are all connected now… by the Internet, and by the limits of the planet.  We are connected by our need for food, water, air, light, and our common humanity, as well as by our differences.  Our limited perspective often amplifies these differences.  Our imaginations end at our neighborhoods, both literal and metaphoric.

If we are going to be great entrepreneurs, business people, marketers and sales people, we are going to need to broaden our perspectives.  Because there is huge potential in meeting the needs of 7 billion people.  I also believe we don’t have much of a choice.

When I look at The Earth at Night I can’t help but think.  All those lights.  All those people.  They must consume a lot of power.  Today most of that power comes from fossil fuels that exhaust into our atmosphere and are warming our earth.  That thin glow at the edge of the earth is our atmosphere… the thickness of a coat of shellac on a basketball.  Maybe the sky doesn’t go on forever?  The problems of climate, food, water, and power represent challenges that require a change in perspective.  They will require imagination.  They will require business to change perspective.

Peace on earth begins with a broadened perspective.  Have a successful and prosperous new year.

Do Great Things!

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

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I recently had a meeting with the CEO of a small $3M company.  He wanted to increase sales.  When I asked him what was keeping him from increasing his sales he mentioned that he was limited by his inventory, or rather matching the right inventory to the right customer.  I asked him how much he thought he could increase his sales if he wasn’t restricted.  He said he thought he could add $250-300K easily.

I didn’t really know much about his business, but since I wasn’t restricted in my thinking by his experience, I was able to give him a simple solution, and it didn’t cost him a thing. His business was regionally based.  So I asked him if he knew his competitors in the surrounding states.  He did.  I then asked him if he’d ever gone to a car dealer that didn’t have the model or color he wanted.  He said yes.  What did they do for him?  They called a neighboring dealer and ordered the model in the color he wanted.  I suggested he could do the same by setting up a cooperative inventory-sharing program with competitors outside of his area.  They would have similar inventory issues and could even buy from him.

Why couldn’t he think of this?  It’s hard to say.  We all get tunnel vision.  We get busy doing the linear things that keep the business afloat.  Or maybe we don’t have a process for identifying and solving issues.  So they just continue to get in our way.

That’s the reason it’s valuable to network and expose yourself to outside thinking. Make it a habit to get an outside opinion.

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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The tagline for Agile Marketing is the phrase “Do, Learn, Adapt.”  It allows for speed because it relies on getting customer feedback quickly, learning from that feedback, and then adapting so you aren’t wasting time or effort on things that are not important to the customer.  Like many new business approaches it can be implemented poorly.

One common mistake is to believe that simply implementing something quickly is Agile Marketing.  It depends.

Implementing the wrong thing doesn’t help anyone.  There’s a great body of marketing knowledge on what works and what doesn’t for each particular situation.  Many CEOs fall into the trap of implementing the wrong thing quickly.   This is because their conception of marketing may be naively  “Advertising or PR,” and they want results.  So for example, if you are a small B2B company, advertising isn’t usually productive, and it doesn’t matter how fast you implement an advertising campaign.  All you will wind up with is an expensive bill.

So the modification to Agile Marketing is “Ask, Do, Learn, Adapt.”  First get some idea whether you are even in the ballpark.   Ask others what works in similar situations (see next post).  The Do, Learn, Adapt motto is better as a refinement for proven techniques such as inbound marketing.   Because motion without purpose or direction isn’t progress, it’s just a waste of energy.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell24x7)

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In case you missed it, Microsoft recently changed their corporate logo.  I thought I would wait until the excitement died down before commenting.  You can almost always tell a company is in trouble when they change their logo.

Of course it’s easy to jump on the Microsoft bashing bandwagon, and they have been in trouble for quite a while.  I’m simply using them as an example.  From the other end of the size spectrum, I could use either of my son-in-law’s two businesses.  Both are under $1M in sales.  Both have recently redone their logos.

Redoing your logo or identity for even a small company will cost you both time and money.   In my son-in-law’s businesses, over $5K when you add up signage, website, literature, business cards, ad infinitum.   It rarely improves the top line or brings in new business.  I have to ask why?

I imagine it’s because one’s ego and business identity get confused.  In small entrepreneurial companies, the owner is often “the company.”  As a result, his or her ego is also “the company.”  Therefore the identity is connected to the owner’s ego.  The other reason is that it’s often easier to address something visible like identity than working on tougher problems.

If the focus was on your brand, or your brand promise or brand loyalty it would make more sense.  But because it has become easy to create a new identity, because it’s visible, because we believe it reflects on us, we wind up tinkering with the identity.  Don’t.  It’s a waste of time for 98% of small and medium businesses.  We’ll remember you for the brand you develop by working on the hard stuff.  When you get to the size of Microsoft then you can tinker.

Success is about relentlessly implementing a great plan, not about the binder the plan is kept in.  So when your VP of Sales and Marketing comes to you and says he thinks you need to change the logo… you need to make another decision.

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

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A long time a go, in a galaxy far, far away, I ran a team that developed a photo-retouching and pagination system that broke the $100K barrier.  We were competing with a $1M system.  Today you can perform similar tasks for less than $1000.

You can also:
•    Send emails for $15/month
•    Set up your own sales force automation for $15/month
•    Put up your own website for $75
•    Run your own social media campaigns for nothing
•    Communicate with clients over Skype and Webex

I recently had someone living in Mexico put up a website using Brazilian resources.  My son-in-law uses a resource in the Philippines to load images to his site.

You can also:
•    Have people in the UK write your blog for $25 a blog post.  I guess they are unemployed ‘English’ majors.
•    Run a design competition for your logo that will have designers from around the world provide you with a design for $150.
•    Have someone from India cold call for you.  Yes really.

These two trends, the democratization of marketing tools, and the ability of really smart people to do business from anywhere, regardless of accent, have changed marketing.

What they haven’t changed yet, is your ability to understand your customers and clients.  They haven’t yet provided you with the messaging needed from that understanding.  And they haven’t provided you with your core plan.  Or the inspiration for your new idea and the courage to implement it.

This left over stuff, is the big stuff.  It requires creativity, hard work, risk taking and even a little luck.   The other stuff is easy now.  So marketers, do the hard work.

Do Great Things!

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

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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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I was on a website and had just downloaded a whitepaper when I got a call from the company sponsoring the paper. I hadn’t even exited the site.

The eager inside sales person wanted to know if I had any questions. I replied that he was creeping me out, that I hadn’t even had a chance to read the whitepaper, but as long as he was on the phone, I had one question; “What made him think it was a good idea to call me within 60 seconds of the download?”

He apologized and said he just wanted to make sure I got what I needed. We then had a discussion about the appropriate length of time and approach for responding.

There is a 2007 study by James Oldroyd, PhD Professor Sloan School of Management at MIT and David Elkington of InsideSales.com that I think is worth looking at.

In this study, they found a ten-fold drop off rate in odds of calling and connecting with a prospect after the first hour of delayed response to an inquiry. The odds of calling to qualify a lead drop six-fold after an hour, and after twenty hours, calling may actually hurt your chances.

What really isn’t clear is what is the event that triggers the call. If a prospect actively sends a question, or requests contact, then I believe response time is critical. Prospects tend to want what they want when they want it. And their attention drifts if you can’t give it to them. That’s why bounce rates are important to websites.

But what is your response to a sales clerk in a store who immediately asks if they can help you? Most people say, “Just looking,” which is code for don’t bother me. So the key is not response time, but understanding what the prospect is looking for.

For anything but a direct request, it’s best to log a download or event into your lead scoring system and treat is as a developing lead. It’s a best practice to automate your response so they get a thank you. Then you may even suggest another subject in which they might be interested. The logic and architecture of your campaigns becomes very important at this point and should be A/B tested.

But please don’t creep out your prospects and kill your speed to lead. Delight them by providing them with what they need or may need when they need it.

Do Great Things!

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

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