Target Marketing
Reviving the Nobility of Sales
May 10, 2010
-By Mat Zucker
Gallup regularly ranks the most trusted professions and, year after year, near the bottom — below advertising practitioner — is the beleaguered car salesman. Admittedly, neither of us is as virtuous as nurses or police officers, but is this how we see what we do?
Sales, like advertising, is an easy profession to lampoon, but it’s a shame, especially now. Customers are overwhelmed with choices and brands need to do a better job guiding. A significant part of this is persuasion through the craft of sales. New tools and platforms are making it better for customers and salespeople alike to consider and connect over products. Social networks make it easier for peers to endorse a brand, databases can find patterns and tailor messages more intimately, ubiquitous and interactive video even updates the classic infomercial.
But for many of us in marketing who are supposed to be selling, there seems to be a reluctance to actually sell. It doesn’t sit well in our bellies, as if we’re doing something wrong. We as professionals — especially in direct marketing — must own up to what we actually do. And defend it.
Our agency founder, David Ogilvy, started as a salesman. He went door to door selling kitchen stoves, working on commission. “No sale, no commission. No commission, no eat,” he said. “That made an impression on me.” His relentless focus on sales was his crusade for us as an agency. “We sell, or else” is still our motto today.
Ogilvy had plenty of advice on selling. “You can’t bore people into buying your product,” he warned. “You can only interest them in buying it.” He also advocated the quality of one’s skill over the quantity of calls, and utter respect for the consumer. (”The customer is not a moron,” he said. “She is your wife.”). The principles of this wisdom are still true.
I believe we are all persuaders, wired to sell from the beginning. Growing up, we learn how to get a few minutes of someone’s attention, how to do our homework to find facts, how to turn no’s to maybe’s. We’re taught the value of a firm handshake, the politeness of maintaining eye contact and, hopefully, how to respect other people’s time and build a relationship that unlocks value over the years. Some people, of course, are far better than the rest of us. What do they know that we don’t? What does good salesmanship look like?
We certainly don’t know all the answers, but from our own experience and talks with experts, some guidance is emerging. Good salespeople know what makes their products special, but they start by listening. They focus on their customers’ successes — and how they can help them reach them. They prioritize creating value together rather than a quick yes. Sure, they try to make it easy for us to buy now, but they know better than anyone else that the most profitable and meaningful relationships are long term.
These are good lessons for us in marketing. There is much to learn from those who do it very well and much to celebrate about the value of good salesmanship together. If Gallup talked to customers of these great salespeople, I bet their ranking would be quite different. Ours too.
Mat Zucker, executive creative director at OgilvyOne Worldwide New York, is currently helping run the agency’s Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson. He can be reached at mat.zucker@ogilvy.com and you can follow him at @matzucker.
Don’t Ever Offer Great Service, Great Value Or A Great Product!
By: Barry A. DensaNot too long ago a mortgage broker in Texas asked if I’d write a lead generation package for his company-actually he just wanted me to write a letter.
I guess he didn’t need an envelope. More about that in a moment. So my first question was: who is your target market? Tell me a little about the clients you’re looking to attract.
“Anyone that needs to refinance an adjustable mortgage” he laughed.
Anyone? Now that’s a tightly defined demographic if I ever heard one.
So I politely educated this young grasshopper about why he needs to narrow his base of opportunities-just so he doesn’t mail 50 million letters to all homeowners in America with an adjustable rate mortgage.
I suggested, therefore, that he target a defined geographic area, and maybe homeowners with a house valued at over $300,000 and who refinanced or purchased their home more than two years ago.
“Sure, sure,” he said.
“Great. So what’s your offer?” I asked.
“You mean, how much I can pay you?”
“No,” I said, “what are you offering your prospects so they’ll immediately rush to the phone and call you?”
I heard then what I have heard SO many times before…
An impassioned trashing of the competition:
…They’ re only in it for the money; they don’t care about their customers; they don’t understand the products out there and how to use them, they got their license and immediately began selling-and then most of them are out of business in a year or two… So on and so forth. And then I heard the obligatory self-praise
oratory: That is… how much he cares about his clients; how many years he’s been in business; how much continuing-ed training he’s had; how much value he brings to the table; how much great service he provides. So on and so forth.
“Great, so what are you offering your prospects so they’ll immediately rush to the phone and call you?” I repeated.
“…What do you mean?”
“Well,” I asked, “why should Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner call you and not the other mortgage broker who is saying the exact same thing? After all, they all DO say the same thing-how much great service they provide; how much they care about their clients-don’t they?”
“Yeah but…” So he then repeated, with even more fervor, how much more he cares, how much better service, etc., etc.
“Let me ask you this,” I said, “How is your prospect to know that you’re better, that you’re the good guy and not the bad guy? Telling them that it’s so, won’t make them believe it-now will it? Somehow you’ve got to PROVE it.”
Then I told him about the importance of testimonials, third-party endorsements, accreditation, etc., etc.
“And all of that will help you prove to your prospects that you are who you say you are. But that’s still not enough. Because if the broker down the street has any marketing savvy, he can and will prove it too-quoting his track record, his honesty, his competence, blah, blah-in all of his marketing promotions.
“So you need a unique selling proposition, don’t you,” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’ve got to find something that’s unique about you; about the way you conduct business, how you reward your clients for their loyalty-how you will do something specific, measurable and desirable-so that these prospects will want to pick up the phone and call you.”
“Like what?”
“Offer them something that your competition doesn’t”
“Like what?”
“Well, certainly not good service, great value and a low interest rate. But it could be a guarantee of some sort, a gift related to home ownership, or a free report, like ‘The TOP 10 Mistakes Homeowners Make When Refinancing a Mortgage-that Always Costs Them THOUSANDS of DOLLARS!’”
“Something no other broker is offering-or saying-something that the prospect will find useful and of value.
“And, you must provide urgency or scarcity, or both. For example, make it a time or quantity limited offer, but explain why! And not only must it be believable-it must also be true!
“Finally, deliver your package in a way that will guarantee that it will be opened and read.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I can provide you with the best lead generation package ever written, with the best offer ever imagined-but if the envelope doesn’t get opened, what good will it do you?”
“So how can we guarantee that the envelope will be opened?”
“Now,” I said, “you’re thinking like a marketer!”
And so I gave him some ideas, of course. And I’ll tell you what they were… in a future post.
Till then… own your market.
About the Author:
Barry A. Densa is one of America”’s top freelance direct response copywriters. Visit www.WritingWithPersonality.com and see how Barry easily and quickly converts prospects into buyers using salesmanship in print”. And while there, sign up for his highly regarded FREE ezine: Marketing Wit & Wisdom!
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5 Basics of Lead Scoring
March 23rd, 2010 | By Barbra Gago: Barbra Gago (@barbragago) is the Inbound & Social Marketing Manager for Genius.com.” Lead scoring can be a very complex process, consider this article an introduction to some of the basic concepts of lead scoring, and how it is used to manage your prospective customers as they move through the funnel and their level of interest in the solutions to their problems that your company provides changes.
The main objective of lead scoring is to rank prospective customers numerically based on their level of interest in order to empower the sales department with better actionable information about theprospective customers they are, or plan to engage with.
1. What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is a process that enables sales to identify more sales ready leads faster. It’s a qualification process of assigning a numeric value (or score) to leads to qualify or rank them according to their level of interest. Lead scoring allows sales to quickly identify promising prospects by simply checking their lead score.
2. What do I need before I start lead scoring?
It’s important that you have a universal “lead” definition that both Sales and Marketing agree on. There’s no sense in Marketing scoring leads to identify quality, if Marketing and Sales aren’t on the same page about what “quality” actually means.
3. Why should I score leads?
Assuming leads move through the funnel step-by-step, or even if they don’t you want to be able to track and adjust their lead quality as their behavior or interactions with your website and other content changes over time. With lead scoring, each action a lead takes can be counted differently, and ultimately add or subtract from their lead quality score, making them more or less promising as a prospect.
For example, when a prospect clicks through from a tweet to your blog do you want to assign them the same weight as a prospect that signs up for a recent webinar? Maybe do, maybe you don’t but either way, lead scoring will keep track of this behavior and keep score automatically.
4. What should I know?
Lead scoring is comprised of two parts: “explicit” and “implicit” information. While both types of data are equally important, implicit data tends to be more telling and thus may be worth more to the lead scorer. Explicit data is more of the “fit” of the prospect to your product, including attributes like; company, size, industry segment, job title, location, budget, authority and timing.
Implicit data on the other had is evident in the prospects digital body language; specific web pages visited, number of pages, recency of response, email activity, social media activity, or downloads of resources such as white papers or webinars.
5. What’s process like?
As each lead takes an action, their score changes (score will also change if lead is inactive). Marketing Automation can help here because it enables automatic re-scoring triggered by every action the prospect takes (that you’ve assigned a score to) otherwise you would have to do this manually.
For example, if A, B, or C defines “fit” with your buyer personas and 1, 2, 3, or 4 defines “engagement“, or digital body language, a combined score of A1 would be a prospect that has an ideal fit, and a maximum level of engagement. A prospect with a score of A4 might be the right fit, but has minimum engagement, and would be a good opportunity to funnel into a nurturing program until they have a higher engagement score. Prospects with scores more like C1 or D1 show very high engagement, but very low fit, this may be a prospect that is researching for a more senior decision maker, and worth your while to follow up with.
In the end, lead scoring can be highly effective at delivering sales with better qualified leads, but remember, if Marketing and Sales have not agreed on a “universal lead definition” true success is at risk. This process is highly effective when both Sales and Marketing have worked together to develop the definition of a qualified lead. So your first step is to start there. Find your sales counterpart, reach agreement, write it down, and begin your lead scoring project.” read more
The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business, From Vertical Response
The 2010 New Year Checklist for Your Business
Every year here at VerticalResponse I make it a point to come up with a list of 10 things you need to be thinking about in the new year. They may be related to marketing, or running your business overall, and they’re usually something I relate to things I have to do in my own business.
1. Use “Cause Marketing” – This is the year that you should identify your business with a worthy cause and either donate a percentage of profits to it or contribute to it in some way. And if profits or hard cash don’t fit, consider donating employee time. Then in your email marketing campaigns, your marketing materials and sales pitches you should talk about what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. Your prospects and customers increasingly want to do business with a business that cares and has moral obligations, and they’re looking for you to let them know how you fit the bill.
2. Use Social Media with Email Marketing – Finally get your act together with social media this year. Start with Twitter and Facebook, it’s easy. Then set your goals on how many Twitter followers your business will get or how many Facebook fans you’ll attract. Make sure you tell your email marketing recipients to follow you when you send out a campaign. And don’t forget to post your links to your email campaigns in your Twitter account and Facebook pages and ask people to join your email list. All of these marketing vehicles work really well together and feed off of each other.
3. Nail Your Email Marketing – Your customers are your lifeblood in these economic times so make sure you put as much care as possible into how you communicate to them. One small yet important thing we all tend to overlook is the subject line, which is the most important part of your email. Whether you think about your subject line as the first order of business, or you write your email then come up with the subject line, take a moment and make sure it’s the right one. Here’s an idea the day before you send your campaign, take a small number of email recipients and split the list in two. Then send two different subject lines. If there is a clear winner, meaning one that has more clicks and opens, choose that one to roll out to your entire list the next day. If there isn’t a clear winner, then choose what your gut tells you to choose.
Test a different format or a different day to send your email campaign. Squeezing an extra few opens, clicks and sales can make a huge difference for your business all throughout the year.
Send regular surveys to your customers to find out how they rate your product, your company and customer service. Find out what you can be doing better, then tell your customers how you’re changing your ways in your next email newsletter because you’ve heard their message.
4. Make This the Year of Customer Service - People talk about companies that listen to them and that treat them well so you’ll want to go above and beyond with customer service this year. This is especially true since companies like Facebook and Twitter are taking off and becoming a platform for people to tell the world how they feel…about you. This might be the year you get your customer data all in one place so it’s easy to find a customer when they call. Then log all of their issues so you have it for next time. Try BigContacts, Zoho, ACT!, and Salesforce for low-priced options. Provide Support has an option for one operator for less than $10/month for a year. Also manage your incoming and outgoing customer service emails. Palo Alto Software has a great product called Email Center Pro where you can manage your incoming and outgoing emails from one central web location and it’s free for 2 users.
5. Cut Costs – Keep cutting costs because we’re still in the economic weeds. Look at your top spending categories and see if there’s money to be saved. Is your rent too high? If you’ve got a number of years left on it you might call your landlord and ask if you can renegotiate “stepped” payments. Ask for a discount this year and tell them in the future years you’re willing to pay at bit more per square foot. If you’re spending too much on shipping, start calling other providers to see if they’re competitive. Doing things like this in January will add up for the rest of the year and help you to profitability.
6. Listen to Your Customers - Listen and watch what your customers are saying about you. Sign up for Google Alerts with your company name as a keyword, but also with your competitor’s names so you can see what is being published about them as well. Sign up for a free TweetDeck account and do the same. You’ll see what people on Twitter are saying about your company, your competition and even your industry, up-to-the minute for an unlimited number of keywords. Then chime in to the conversation and address the issue or try to get a new customer. Word to the wise: make sure you’re transparent with who you are, you don’t want to “hide” as someone else, tell them you’re with your company and you want to help out or answer any questions.
7. Find New Customers, Inexpensively - Google is where people go these days to find businesses they’re looking for. So set up or build on your Google Adwords pay-per-click efforts. If you don’t know where to start with Google try Google Basics. Get started simple, choose keywords that make sense for your business and build on it from there. To find how many searches are happening on your keywords check out the Keyword Selector Tool to find out how many searches occur for your keywords. Note: although Google is the clear market leader, other search engines like Bing are gaining a bit of market share and can be less expensive. Word to the wise: take a deep breath and be patient, success doesn’t happen overnight but when you start to gain traction you’ll see that it does work and you can build on your success from there.
8. Build Your Email List - I’ve put together this blog post called 29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business. Live it, learn it, love it.
9. Hire People Who Care – If you’re lucky enough to be hiring for your business, this should be the year where you have an ample choice of people who need to work to choose from, so it’s your pick. Make sure you select people who have the same passion as you do, and people that fit into your business culture like a glove. Make sure you ask the questions that count; you want someone who can handle situations, someone who can communicate and someone who you trust. Don’t settle for second best, your customers will notice.
10. Embrace Word of Mouth – At VerticalResponse over 50% of the people who sign up for our service select “Word of Mouth” as the source for where they heard about our company. In 2010 you’ll really need to take a good look at what you’re doing to spur word of mouth. As noted here, customer service is important, the quality of your product or service is important and the entire customer experience is important in order for word of mouth to start. But there are other remarkable things you can do for your customers that can start them talking about you.There are some great ideas on the VerticalResponse Blog as well as Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing Blog to get you started.
2010 is poised to be a great year for growing your small business. Comment with your ideas for what you’ll do to get your growth on. Read Full Article Here
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10 Most Popular BtoB Technology Marketing Stories From 2009
From Cisco’s ‘Thrive’ campaign to Building24, these were the most popular stories featured in the Inside Technology Marketing newsletter.Cisco builds ‘Thrive’ site campaign in eight weeks
Last fall, Cisco Systems’ salespeople began reporting how customers were struggling in the difficult U.S. economy. In response, Cisco’s marketing team rapidly created a program..
Cisco’s marketing chief sits down with ITM
Marilyn Mersereau, senior VP-corporate marketing at Cisco Systems, recently spoke with Inside Technology Marketing about the changing role of sales and marketing within the technology company..
Carter on IBM’s social media push
Sandy Carter, VP-IBM Software Group Channels, recently spoke to ITM about social media and how it fits into the company’s overall marketing strategy.
What is building43—and should you want one?
If social media is about starting conversations, why not hire the best conversation starter you can find?
Pursuing government tech spending in 2009
This year, technology sales as a whole may be flat—CIOs plan increases of just 0.16%, according to a recent survey by Gartner Executive Programs.
EMC’s ‘uber-integration’ database marketing
Storage vendor EMC Corp. has 3 million leads in its database. While that’s an impressive number, it can be a burden—especially because that database contains leads from several companies EMC acquired.
Novell ‘hashes’ out new campaign
One of the challenges of social media marketing is that it really shouldn’t look like marketing at all.
SAP cultivates customer communities
As the software industry has consolidated and diversified, successful companies have increasingly been those that build an ecosystem of customers and partners who support each other and share customized programs.
Community marketing with an offbeat twist
Marti Konstant’s years in technology marketing have made one thing abundantly clear to her: Engineers aren’t like the rest of us.
Why Phoenix Integration outsourced its marketing
Phoenix Integration, a maker of process integration and design optimization software, is realizing efficiencies in the down economy by outsourcing almost its entire marketing function.
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Tips For Effective Lead Management
For many sales people that sell general B2B equipment and services, cold calling on general businesses is where the whole sales process starts. If this is you, then you could be much more succesful by implementing a few simple lead generation rules.The fastest and easiest way to boost sales is typically in prospect identification. In other words, what aspects or “behavior” would an ideal business prospect possess?
This behavior could mean past purchasing history, their current use of products and services, or maybe their inclusion in certain niche media sources etc.. What is important is that you and your sales team are using a consistent set of rules to determine who deserves your valuable time. After all time is money, and if that’s true, which it is.. then spend a little time reading this blog post by Brian Carroll Lead Generation Check List
This Year Ends With More Sales | Section 179 Makes This The Worst Time To Stop Prospecting
As most smart equipment sales people know Section 179 (what is it) will expire at the end of this year. The Section 179 (for leases) Tax Deduction allows businesses to save huge on their taxes. It is also is a great opportunity to get some quick sales from educated buyers. Businesses will upgrade their equipment early in the next two weeks in order to take advantage of Section 179 (ease of election). It is a huge money saver when a company gets to write-off the entire equipment price at the end of this year.Most sales people give up at the end of the year, only focusing on the prospects that are already in their funnel. This is a huge mistake, and savvy sellers know this. The smartest sales people will target large prospects (sometimes ones they have never even approached before).
They target prospects that have leases on equipment that are 50-57 months old, because these business prospects have the highest probability of entering into a new equipment lease in the next two weeks. As great sales people know, timing is everything, and there really is no better time than now to approach large accounts that will upgrade their equipment to take advantage of section 179 (show them the free calculator). Even with a complicated sale that would typically take months, great sales people can land large accounts in days, at least with proven prospects that will buy now to save thousands.
World Leasing News Features Article by Founder of ProvenProspects.com
Growth Opportunities Found With Equipment Niche TargetingSince the economy turned, many equipment leasing companies have changed marketing strategies. But most companies are still trying to figure out what’s best. If you are one of these equipment leasing companies, there may be great opportunities in niche targeting. Read Full Article
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B2B Email Marketing Lists Comparative Analysis
An unbiased comparative analysis of BtoB email marketing list providers.- Volume- How many good contacts can I retrieve from this system?
- Completeness – can I get every field I want?
- Accuracy – is the contact information correct?).
“…This case study asked 10 well known BtoB data vendors to report how many contacts they had within 10 chosen industries (by SIC). They also asked whether they code firms with NAICS. Finally, it asked the vendors to report the number of complete contacts, “complete” meaning that the record included the full name, address, title, phone, fax and email. Download Email Marketing List Vendor Comparison
Qualifying Prospects With Questions
“Remove Objections With a Question:…The removal question efficiently ‘removes’ the issue at hand and asks the client her thoughts based on that scenario. Suppose a prospect says, “It’s really great, but it’s just not in our budget.” You reply:
“Fair enough, Brandi. Let me ask, if budget was not an issue, would you proceed with the proposal as outlined?”
If Brandi says yes, then you can negotiate or come up with terms or arrange financing because her objection is not a smokescreen but the real thing. If she says, “Well, ya, but I am also a little concerned about the maintenance program,” you’ve discovered that it’s not a budgetary issue or that budget is only part of a number of issues.
Suppose the client says, “Well, I have to go to the buying group on this one.” You say, “I understand. Steve, suppose there wasn’t a buying group, what would be your decision?” By removing the objection, you can determine if Steve’s on board or not. Either way, you are well on the way to handling the client’s issue. read full article
