Air China vs. Kennedy Ground

Learn more about Customer Voice Selling at www.walkerlimited.com

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All too often I hear the “hire more sales people!” battle cry when sales are flat or declining, especially from CEOs who’ve come up through the sales ranks.   Before you go off and hire more sales people, ask yourself these three questions:

1)   Are your sales people really your primary lead source?

Every CEO likes to think his/her sales team is pounding the pavement every day, networking, cold-calling, prospecting when pipelines are soft.  In certain industries, this is, in fact, the case.  In most hi-ticket item sales environments, however, it’s not.  In these environments, sales reps are usually best at navigating the complex sales process and closing deals; most are not prospecting animals, as much as you’d like them to be.

2)   Are you winning a high percentage of the few deals that do get into your pipeline?

If you’re winning a high percentage of the at-bats you do get, all indications are you already have a competent sales team.  Adding more competent sales people, and carving up territories, is only going to create discord and turnover among your existing, competent, sales team.

3)   What is the volume of and what are the response rates associated with the pipeline development programs you are running?

If you’re happy with the sheer volume of targeted marketing programs being run each month, but your response rates to these programs are low, chances are you’re either missing the mark with your messaging or the marketing programs themselves are not compelling enough.  You had better be nailing your buyer’s urgent need AND serving up a compelling offer.

The bottom line?  Hiring more sales people when sales are flat or declining can be the right answer in certain cases.  In more cases than not, however, marketing is the area that needs scrutiny and additional investment.  Ironically, marketing is the area that gets cut when declining sales put a squeeze on the budget.

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Just as customer voice selling suggests that we ask our customers about their challenges, incorporate that info into how we market ourselves, and then measure how that new approach resonates — we must apply this same discipline to vetting customer references.     If possible, have a third party ask your customers specific questions about what they intend to say and make sure they understand how they can specifically help/hurt a sale. Then measure how these calls impact sales through win/loss analysis.

We do hundreds of customer calls on behalf of our clients. Here is a snapshot of a customer “frenemy” that should never take a reference call.

“I tell people interested in the product that I’m an expert in the field of x and that there wouldn’t be a product if it weren’t for me. The reason I selected them as a vendor is because they understood my vision for creating the product. Also, unlike other companies, they were a low cost resource. In fact, I don’t think they charge enough for their services or the product. Additionally, other customers are in luck because they won’t have to pay much for the product because I financed its creation, it’s done, and all you have to do is turn it on at your organization.”

The client was unaware of the content of the reference calls because they weren’t getting the real story.  Three guesses why the deals this customer touched stalled in the pipe?

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Better SM execution is very important, but driving adoption through CEO’s office is also critical.
Marketing pros are doing great job of selling one another and driving SM adoption in their domain, but there is much work to be done in selling the CEO.
As reported in Computerworld (http://ow.ly/tkoL)- 54% of organizations block social media use at workplace. As also reported, Facebook and Twitter adoption have slowed dramatically in last several months.
For company adoption, this is partially driven by productivity and security fears (some well founded) and CEOs not understanding or relating to the critical benefits. CEO calls IT, IT says employees spending an average of 1.5 hours a day on Facebook, CEO says turn it off now.

We hear a lot about ‘CEOs not getting it.’ Marketing pros can drive this in the right direction if they stop selling each other and start selling CEOs. Know your audience — we work with CEOs every day and a simple argument works well – it’s all about SALES.

SM = authentic conversations with customers = increased SALES and customer retention.

No SM = elimination of customer conversations = ignored sales opportunity and customer attrition risk.

Another argument that sticks — social media forces companies into a customer voice selling culture.  Listen to your customers, talk WITH them about what THEY want to talk about, and integrate that feedback into everything you do. All CEOs strive every day to stay close to the customer, and SM is tremendous way of enabling that.

Thoughts?

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Customer Voice Selling – Webinar Slides

Let me know what you think.

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Having completed yet another of these exercises for a client recently, I’m reminded of the basic messaging and web content pitfalls that plague so many organizations.

Below are five of the most common and costly:

1) Lack of a simple, clear positioning statement

Imagine a prospective customer visiting your home page for the first time. In all likelihood, they don’t have nearly the depth of industry knowledge you have, and they certainly don’t have deep knowledge of your company, products and services.

To this uninitiated buyer, does your home page clearly articulate what your company does, in the most basic of terms? Does it achieve this objective within seven seconds? Most home pages don’t.

So many companies jump right into industry jargon, technical speak and product capabilities that they confuse buyers before they even get started. Don’t suffer this same fate. Get off to a good start with a simple, clear positioning statement: “We deliver x product or y service that helps companies do z.”

2) Feature centric vs. benefits centric

Many companies delve too deeply into product features and detailed services capabilities while failing to link each of these capabilities to their related benefits. This is classic “inside out” marketing; in other words it’s focusing on what your company cares about (“all the great capabilities we’re so proud of”) rather than what your customers care about (solutions to their problems, a.k.a. benefits). Product features and services capabilities are simply a mechanism, a means to an end. Benefits are the real value.

When I see corporate messaging replete with features, and light on benefits, I immediately assume they haven’t done the hard work of truly understanding their customers. To know your customers is to know their pains. Only when you truly know your customer pains can you effectively link benefits to capabilities.

3) Lack of focus

All too often we see companies that purport to be everything to everyone. This is true of companies that list a dozen industries of “focus” on their website, as well as those that advertise impossibly broad product or services footprints.

My esteemed colleague, Seth Lucash, has a wonderful saying that applies here: focus brings market traction. No one can be great at everything. By saying that you are, you’re only confusing your potential customers and diluting the potency of your message.

4) No differentiation

What do you do better than any of your competitors that genuinely matters to a customer? So few companies nail this crucial messaging element; it’s the reason so many sales cycles devolve into a price battle.

Many of the companies we assess either lack differentiation statements altogether, or they list too many. Pick the two (maximum three) things you know you do better than anyone else, as validated by your customers to be mission critical, and work these into your core messaging early and often.

5) Verbosity

Most of the websites we see are far too text heavy. A crisp two minute flash video presentation or a simple graphic is far more effective at illustrating a concept than text.

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It would take 1 to 2 years to hear back from England regarding a proposed ruling. Goods shipped from Europe traveled on average 144 days before they could be purchased. The main mode of commerce: water.

Today, it’s the speed of light vs. the speed of a scooner. I gained an even deeper appreciation of the immediate and global availability of information and customer interaction by stepping back 300+ years for 3 days.

It made me realize what a great opportunity we have in incorporating customers’ voice into company voice to improve sales…without getting seasick along the way!

Let me know if you have any stories about how commerce was conducted long ago or any comments in general.

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Look familiar to anybody?

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The other day, my daughter, now a pre-teen, was telling a story and my wife interrupted to ask her a question.  My daughter said, “Can I please finish my sentence?  Mom, may I remind you to listen when someone speaks and not talk over them?”

Very true for sales and marketing as well.  Sometimes, we get so excited about what our product or service can do we forget to listen to our prospective customers and ask what’s important to them.

Companies can dramatically improve sales by incorporating their customers’ voice into their company’s voice.  In other words, ask your customers the right questions, incorporate what you’ve learned about their urgent needs and priorities into all market-facing activities and materials, and measure the results.

What do you think?

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For anyone selling a product or service, word-of-mouth marketing, on a grand scale, is the panacea.  Marketers have some control over effectuating a word-of-mouth movement, but by and large, it’s the product or service’s ability to exceed customer expectations after the purchase that drives this type of buzz.  In keeping with the movie analogy, that’s why movies like Slumdog Millionaire, with limited initial promotional budgets, rise to the top.  They are simply too good to ignore.

May we all be so lucky, at one time or another, to be associated with a product or service that effectively sells itself.  Unfortunately, most products and services don’t operate this way.  They require strong up-front and ongoing promotion to get off the ground and take hold.  In the movie business, this usually equates to a fantastic trailer and big advertising dollars to play it early and often.

We’ve all seen world class trailers that makes us want to buy an advance ticket for a movie on Fandango.com.  What, then, are the elements of a great trailer, and how can organizations apply these lessons to their own marketing efforts?

1)      Engaging – Great movie trailers always grab the viewer’s attention.  There’s strong imagery, compelling music, and rising tension.

Obviously, it’s much easier for a movie trailer to quickly pull a viewer in than for a B-to-B company representing a product or service to quickly engage a potential buyer.   That said, organizations selling even the most mundane products or services must draw the buyer in, quickly.

2)      Inspirational – The best movie trailers inspire us.  Many showcase an individual or group of people rising up to overcome a significant challenge in an exceptional way.

Marketers should also seek to inspire.  We must paint a compelling picture of what the world could be like with our product or service.

3)      Cogent – Within the span of two-and-a-half minutes, movie trailers accomplish a great deal.  They present the challenge, introduce the characters, show complications and hint to the resolution.  Even trailers for movies with the most complicated of plots achieve this cogency.

Organizations should aspire to represent their capabilities with the same brevity and clarity.  Product-centric organizations almost always drop the ball here.  They want to show every bell and whistle, and in the process they confuse the buyer.  Organizations that embrace Customer Voice Selling, on the other hand, are very skilled at positioning their products and services with an economy of words and images.

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