B2B Content Marketing

A major benefit for undertaking an account, content and sales information portal (SIP) initiative is to reduce the cost of sales.  Sales investments should always contribute directly to key corporate sales goals and tied to measurable outcomes.  Here a few items to help justify an account, content and SIP project:

• Establish metrics on the number of meetings per marketing initiative, and did it lead to securing a meeting with the right level within the target company?
• After an initial meeting, measure how many salespeople understand and can articulate your prospects business issue. Identify now if subject matter experts are required and  inventory what knowledge is required and create, modify and archive.
• Create a vision for the client and establish a procedure to articulate it to prospects.  Client’s and prospects will need to  understand how your product or service will solve their particular business issue.
• Develop an ROI-  the salesperson must be able to have a conversation with the client about his or her business issues and your unique differention.  This is where most sales people need the help,  in  understanding and articulating a clear vision of your business value and unique differentiation

Three steps to control sales support spending:

1. Inventory random acts of sales support

2. Audit spending on sales support across SG&A

3. Discontinue programs that don’t drive sales.

Control sales costs

According to Sirius Decisions, “ Unrelenting expense pressures are forcing sales leaders to rethink the affordability and disposition of all their sales support resources.”  The evolution of sales to content marketing provides a sales information portal that allows the sales person to become a subject matter expert.  A recent Forrester study cites up to 19% of SG&A expense is tied up in the hidden cost to support sales, the report continues, “Few are aware of this enormous amount because costs are hidden- tucked away in many different budgets dispersed throughout the organization.”

We realize selling is often a cross functional activity,  this initiative will lead to better coordinated resources across SG&A and equip client-facing employees with a process  and the necessary tools to meet your sales goals and reduce sales costs.

A major benefit for undertaking sales alignment and content marketing initiatives is to reduce the cost of sales.  According to Sirius Decisions, “ Unrelenting expense pressures are forcing sales leaders to rethink the affordability and disposition of all their sales support resources.”  The evolution of sales to content marketing provides sales a platform that allows the sales person to become a subject matter expert.  A recent Forrester study cites up to 19% of SG&A expense is tied up in the hidden cost to support sales, so the RIO numbers are huge.

From Sirius Decision’s perspective, they describe the development of microsites augmented with rich media that allows salespeople to access content or people resources to differentiate their goods and services from their competitors. Not only does sales information portals and content marketing allow you to find, care and feed website visitors but reduces the cost of the sales process too.

Are you one to believe in conspiracy theories?  One of my favorites is the one about the new world order.  Looking at twitter these days, at least in the people I am following with few exceptions, we are all starting to sound alike, comment alike, pitch alike, sell  and market alike,  in other words we are turning into ZOMBIES.   Even our websites are starting to look alike!  Watch any zombie movie, they all act the same, like lame ducks inching to its prey. The point is, its not about the technology.  Our new microsite is nothing fancy, the URL cost 6.95, Wordpress is open source, I do use Thesis and I abhor other peoples advertising so  developed my own player. That is of course unless I need the perfect piece of  and it belongs to someone else:

I think you can look alike to be a zombie marketer, but you better show up and have what people want. Does anyone care to dance?

Account-based marketing is a strategic approach to business marketing where messages and communications are targeted to individual accounts. We use the term “account” to signify personal service; sales are specifically driven toward each account, based on each account’s specific needs and the unique solution we provide for that account.  This is not about a template-driven, “cookie cutter” approach to merely giving lip service to creativity, contents or the accounts themselves. Nor is it about merely “tweaking” a more traditional form of broadcast-marketing you may have had success with in recent years. This is about understanding what each account needs and giving it to them through content delivered specifically to, and for them.

I recently had a conversation with Chris Brogan, co-author of Trust Agents.  Below is Chris’s thoughts on the future of sales and marketing:

Talk about how you see a direct sales force fitting in to the trust equation and how that directs sales force can leverage the trust equation that the marketing communication folks come up with..

Obviously Chris there is a lot of animosity between them so how do we get sales trusting marketing to sit down at the same table so that they can go out there in March to the same tune

CB this is a second golden age for sales I think . I believe the social tools gives sales a better set of tools than they ever had before for reaching out and being really connected with the people that really matter to them and sales people for ever known that it’s all based on relationships.

What waters this down a little bit is that we all have quotas, we all have a certain number to hit, so sometimes we get crazy, we get a little cutthroat and we want to get hit the sale and move on. This is now a world where there is a memory of this, a digital footprint that leads from that experience and people will remember that about you, so you do have to throttle back a little bit and understand that there is a lengthier relationship process.

Marketing has veered away a little from their golden experience, I mean Dave Ogilvie said a long time ago: “that this is all in the support of the sale, “ we moved away from this, marketing became, how do I shock you out of your boring day to get your attention and then I am going to do something with it. Well after awhile we got that you were screaming, we got that there were monkeys and balloons, but it was not in service of a sale but in was in service of screaming attention and then the salesperson would try to rush in and make something happen. There were lies on one side that a salesperson would have to deliver against, you know sell the dream implement the nightmare, on the other side salespeople with a forced quota were being told get the sale no matter what, and I think in both instances this is a moment of trust, this is an opportunity where marketing can say, “I can better equip you with a better story than you can tell and this is going to help you serve your brand, this is going to help you get better sales
Meanwhile please help me in representing this it in a way that we are talking about it. And I think there is a better chance for dialog now, where sales can connect back and forth. Three things to consider in this would be as a salesperson you are now forever in amber, you are trapped in amber like bugs in the ice age because everything you do online leaves a footprint and we see it , so if you are scummy, if you are using inappropriate methods, then it shows up and everyone has a voice now so we all talk amongst ourselves as customers. As a marketer you know have to trust that your sales people has the relationship like they always had and augment them and serve them. Marketing is no longer about winning an award, it is in the short term, if you think about it, but its not going to get you further because really, I am seeing more and more companies, very much on the larger scale companies saying “I don’t get this, it’s to frilly, I need sales, make sales happen,” so you need your salespeople more then you every have, and you need to go back to what is going to equip a sale versus what is going to get more awareness. It’s not an awareness game any more, it’s awareness that turns to attention that turns to reputation that becomes trust.

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Brogan, about his upcoming book, Trust Agents.

Chris talked talked to me about three keys to establishing trust at the brand level:

• Reliability
• Consistency
• Ability to grow with us or stay constant

Listen to this excerpt of the interview here.  It’s less than two minutes long and will you give you insights and examples on brand level trust.

Stay tuned for future excepts from this interview, I think you’ll relate to and learn from them. I know I did.

Seamus: what are the three things you can do to invoke or earn trust?

At the brand level trust hinges on a few things, one it hinges on is some level of reliability. We trust LL.Beane as a brand because we know they are reliable and they have built the same set of products where in which they stand behind them the whole way, Reliability is always important, we trust with some level of consistency whether or not you are a fan of McDonald’s you know when you walk into a McDonalds anywhere in world, you will get relatively the same experience with a few variations. So reliability matters as well as consistency

The other thing we rely on with a brand is somewhat an amorphous thing it has to grow with us or stay classic, for example: soda pop has not changed a lot over a hundred years so it stays classic, cars have to grow with in that our desire for the Cadillac of today is a little different than what we wanted in a vehicle of the 197o’s. So to me, there is sort of a relationship aspect that is required and these thing bring on trust, and if you listen a little closer to what I said, it also sounds like a human relationship and to me the same things are true of a brand, with reliability, consistency and the ability to grow and be with us are three things that garner trust on the brand level.