Complex, high-ticket B2B solutions have long sales cycles. If you have a qualified lead (they have the need, budget and authority), keep them engaged and nurtured. There are right and wrong ways to do this. I’ve seen clients waste time and money on what they think are ‘nurturing’ activities, only to end up with annoyed, tuned-out prospects.

Here’s my list of Lead Torture vs. Lead Nurture:

Lead Torture – calling leads just to ‘touch base’ (“Are you ready to buy yet? I need to make my quota.”). Lead Nurture – calling leads when you have something to talk about, something that is of interest to that individual. Having a valid business reason to make the call.

Lead Torture - Tweets about mundane or arcane (too techie) matters; salesy, obviously self-serving Answers and Discussions on LinkedIn; invitations to become a fan of your company page on Facebook. Lead Nurture - a thought through, coordinated social media plan that has an objective, is congruent across platforms, and consistently delivers interesting, meaningful and/or entertaining information.

Lead Torture – sending the same, tired brochure (or case study or white paper) over and over again. Lead Nurture – sending new, relevant and useful information on a regular basis (blogs are a great way to accomplish this AND improve your SEO at the same time).

Lead Torture – sending weekly emails, written by whichever technician wasn’t billed out at the time, containing technology feature dumps. Lead Nurture - sending a weekly email that curates news items from the Net; items that are of interest because they’re related to that prospect’s industry, business role, etc.

If you’re going to do it, do it right. Otherwise you’re training your leads to dismiss your messaging and your company.

I agree with Jill. That may seem to be an odd stance for a guy who makes his living developing marketing collateral and sales tools, but it isn’t really.

Today people won’t agree to a meeting with a sales person unless:

1. they feel you have a solution to a business problem they’re experiencing, and
2. they’ve already checked out your website, read your company blog, and researched your executives on LinkedIn.

I’ve been there, so I know that hard copy collateral can be a crutch for sales people… especially young or inexperienced ones. It used to be that the collateral was necessary. Prospects had no other way to learn about complex B2B products and services. Those days are gone. Make sure your website is filled with high quality content that is relevant and useful to your clients and prospects; and keep adding content so people have a reason to return to your site.

Focus on developing relationships when you meet with clients. You’ll close more business. Don’t go in totally naked, though… I recommend you wear a smile.

Here’s Jill’s blog post Naked Selling.

It got me to thinking about how we at acSellerant might help our MSP clients build trust with their prospects. Using Covey’s universal tenets, I’ve come up with the following guidelines:

Talk Straight

Tell the truth. Be transparent. Work hard to communicate clearly so people understand exactly what to expect. Communications can get foggy for many reasons. What I see most are these three:

1. You’re rushed – slow down, make the time, think it through. It’ll save time in the long run.
2. You don’t completely understand the function/process/technology yourself – do your homework. Don’t communicate to the client until you’re confident you understand.
3. You understand a complex function/process/technology very well – be aware that the client may not be as versed in it. Slow down. Don’t use jargon or acronyms.

Right Wrongs

Mistakes happen. When they do, come clean immediately, apologize, and make it right. See what you can do to prevent the mistake from reoccurring.

Get Better

This is one I think most MSPs do well. They have the systems and the metrics in place, and they’re constantly trying to improve service levels. That’s great, but your clients are probably unaware of it. Think about things from their perspective. You know that fewer help desk calls means more profitability for you. The case can be made that fewer help desk calls also means better profitability (or at least productivity) for your clients. If you have stats that show you’ve brought the number of help desk calls down over time, SHARE THEM with your clients, and connect the dots for them re increased productivity.

How many other metrics that you work to improve can be framed as a benefit to your clients?

Listen First

We all know this is important, but most of us don’t practice it as often as we should.

Covey has thirteen tenets, but I think if you put the four I’ve listed above into practice 100% of the time, the rest will take care of itself.

Relevant, useful, interesting… even entertaining copy is no longer enough to hold the interest of harried, starved for time, inundated with information business prospects. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort researching and building a process to develop multimedia storyboards that can deliver a significant amount of information in a short amount of time. The idea is to use sight and sound simultaneously to compress the amount of time, and increase the ease, in which information is communicated.

You’re thinking, “Wow, Bob. Alert the media. Ever hear of television or the movies?”

This process might include video, but it doesn’t have to, and it’s designed to be deliverable at less cost, with less equipment, and less prep time than video. It’s designed to fit the budgets of my clients. It’s untried, though.

So, I’ve been thinking about how to launch it. I first vetted the idea with friends, colleagues and clients over the holidays. Then I submitted discussions to a half dozen groups on LinkedIn. I was surprised at the response. Many smart, talented, creative professionals joined in the discussions. The consensus was, if I can pull it off, it’s a winner.

Then I went to three online custom publishers I have a relationship with. They were positive. They all said the same thing, they can sell it, IF I can pull it off. So now it’s time to develop a proof of concept and get feedback.

I’ve built a prototype with a voice over script, some on screen text, and a story told in cartoon format (with my crude stick figure drawings). I realized I needed a professional cartoonist to do the eight or nine frames necessary to tell the visual part of the story. So I’m using iFreelance and contacting other cartoonists I found on LinkedIn and through graphic designers I know.

So stay tuned. I’m going to blog about the process as I reveal the proof of concept online, try to build buzz via social media, and crowdsource tweaks to the process/product to improve it. By the way, one of the outcomes of the discussions on LinkedIn is a name for the product: acStream.

Should be interesting.

If a new product or service is important enough to build a launch, give the launch the resources it needs to be successful. SWAT team members should include people from Marketing, Product Management, Sales and Service/Support. Expect that these people will be devoting significant time to the launch effort, so make sure that they aren’t encumbered with too many other deliverables in the same time frame. Assume that half of their time will be devoted to the launch for approximately three months.

It’s essential that Sales be involved in every product launch in a meaningful way. That means at least one sales person will have to split time between roles. Reduce their quota for the duration of the launch. If you don’t, they’ll be busy making their number. The launch process will suffer and the ROI of the launch will be compromised.

You’re going to be tempted to put a junior sales person on the team to minimize the revenue loss. Don’t do it. Put the sales exec who’s going to be most affected by the new product on the team. Typically that will be somebody more senior, and somebody who will whole-heartedly contribute to the success of the launch.

Bruce Seidel is a B2B sales coach with a long history of success selling software. He wrote an excellent blog post regarding formal agreements between Marketing and Sales to ensure a successful new product launch. Read it. Copy it. Keep it someplace safe where you can access it when you need it. I did.

My next post will be about using social media (your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) to crowdsource the features, benefits, delivery model – even the name and branding of your new product or service (and to start a whisper campaign about it).

1. traditional, interruptive advertising was no longer effective, and
2. traditional presales activities (educating prospects about your solutions) had been replaced by Google.

Largely due to the efforts of others, like Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett; and to the overwhelming evidence in the market place, my prospects now understand #1 and 2 above. So what’s next?

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

We all agree that to engage prospects we need to produce and publish relevant, useful, interesting and valuable content. You can’t just put it out there anymore, though. There’s too much competition for peoples’ attention.

We need to connect the content to our prospects. That means we have to deliver it to the online places where they hang out. That might be at industry-related websites like MSPmentor, or on special interest groups within Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Once you’ve set your content at the feet of the people it was developed for, if you’ve made the content compelling enough, your prospects connect with you. You’ve piqued their interest and they want to learn more… or they want to voice their opinion. They will comment on a blog post, in your online discussion, or they’ll email you.

Conversation ensues.  When a dialogue is created between you and your prospects, ideas are exchanged. This is the time to listen carefully. It’s a golden opportunity to find out exactly what prospects want. Let them tell you. If they feel they’ve been heard, trust is built.

Once they understand that you truly have their best interest at heart, the conversation will move from online to phone, and then face to face, as the topics move from features and benefits, to pricing, and to terms and conditions. The prospect converts into a customer. You close a profitable deal without selling anything.

Marketing
The 00’ decade began the transition to the mantra “marketing is the enterprise.” In the 10’ decade, marketing will be the most important factor in business success. No offense to sales-driven companies, but marketing is the central nervous system of the enterprise in the new decade. And, the cardiovascular system is communications. The marketing strategy is now all about the experience. Customers live in a digitally connected world at home, in the car, on the bus, at work, even at their kid’s soccer games. Brands who give their customers opportunities to experience their value proposition will win loyalty. Some B2B brands that do this already include Cisco, Indium Corp. and HubSpot. The secret sauce to creating an experience is to experiment with different communications that touch people through more than one sense including sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Yes, even B2B brands can do this.

I’m not so sure about smell, taste and touch; but it’s apparent that multimedia (graphics, images, and sounds along with short bits of text) will increasingly become the lingua franca of the web. As for Marketing’s ascendancy, I think most everybody in the business world realizes that ‘order taker’ salespeople have been disintermediated by the internet. But for complex B2B products and services, sales people are still very much needed. Their roles, though, should be upgraded and focused. ‘Beating the bushes’, ‘cold calling’, ‘hunting’… whatever you call it, is less and less effective. Marketing’s role is growing through the addition of what I call ’sales enablement’ activities. These are primarily online pull tactics (including inbound marketing, content marketing, SEO and social media). The upside for professional B2B sales executives is that they get to focus their time and attention on building relationships and closing profitable deals.

You can read the rest of Bernie’s Predictions here.

Bob Leonard

In the B2B world, it’s going to require what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “simplicity on the other side of complexity”.

What I mean is that marketers are going to have to work hard to distill product and service information (features and benefits, competitive positioning, value propositions, etc.) into easily consumed, and quickly digested morsels. I’m not referring to slogans or tag lines. Marketers have moved beyond sales messages to delivering relevant and useful information. As the sheer volume of this information grows exponentially, marketers must learn to communicate to target prospects not only in a meaningful, concise way; but also using multimedia to engage more of the targets’ senses. To teach and to entertain simultaneously.

I happened to have a prediction ready for Joe because it’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit.

As a content developer, my primary communication vehicle has been the written word. As technology advances, and the amount of information available to people explodes, text on a page or a screen is becoming less and less capable of competing for peoples’ attention. So, I decided to work on something new. I was looking for something I could do largely by myself with just a PC, some software and an internet connection. I’ve found that thing. I call it ‘storyboarding’.

It’s a mashup of PowerPoint, video and podcasting (voice over).

I’ll be evolving this blog to that format within the next few weeks. And will be using it to help clients communicate to their customers and prospects.

Meanwhile take a look at Joe’s 100 Content Marketing and Social Media Predictions for 2010.

He said,  “Our services are virtual. We remotely monitor our customers’ systems and applications, and we fix things before they break. We used to get to play the hero now and then… swooping in when there was trouble and saving the day. How can we communicate that kind of value when we’re invisible?”

I know the answer, and I’ll share it with you in a minute.

On an earlier visit to that same office, I was asked to wait in the reception area for a few minutes until my client (the VP of Sales) was finished with a con call. So I sat and checked my phone, etc. I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation coming through the open door of their Help Desk area. One of the technician’s was busy relating how he had ‘helped’ a recent caller. She had phoned with a question that this technician considered “stupid”. He recounted (to the amusement of his peers) the conversation during which he solved the problem… and humiliated the caller.

At the time, I decided it wasn’t my place to mention this to my client; but his question was the perfect opening.

How do you communicate value in a digital world?

You make damn sure that every customer touch point is pleasant and reassuring. That Help Desk call was an opportunity for the technician to establish rapport, help the woman with her problem, and make her feel important. She is important. Her company is paying that technician’s salary.

I can divide my clients into two categories. Those who realize that so-called ‘soft skills’ are just as important as technical skills, and those who don’t. Guess who’s more successful?

If you’re remote, and your customer touch points are limited to an occasional phone call, an email now and then, and your website; make the phone conversations, emails and website as high quality as you can. Make them the Ritz-Carlton of phone conversations, emails and websites. If they’re the Holiday Inn Express of phone conversations, emails and websites, that’s how your clients will perceive your business, no matter how sophisticated and skilled your people are.

Evaluate your entire business. Look at every customer touch point and make sure that the employee (or digital entity) involved is not only technically competent, but is delivering Ritz-Carlton level service.

When that’s fixed, start (and maintain) a social media campaign. That’s how you develop digital relationships. More on that in future posts.

I remember my boss at Digital Equipment Corp. once awarded me the “bulldog”. It was a bronze casting of a bulldog meant to be proudly displayed on my desktop. It was recognition for sinking my teeth into an unqualified prospect and holding on until the prospect submitted to my will and bought.

That was then. This is now. Today that kind of behavior should be punished, not rewarded. Maybe even back then. We made the sale, but at what cost?

Once I had committed to that deal, I spent tons of time booking appointments, preparing proposals, building presentations, and making customer visits. Very time consuming and expensive. I’ve since decided that this is work that should be done only if there’s a real need and a good chance of winning a profitable deal.

Everything you do to generate leads and close deals is hard work. Don’t waste it. Get to ‘No’.

There’s a substantial difference in your mental attitude when you’re going for a ‘Yes’ versus when you’re going for a ‘No’.

When you go for a ‘Yes’:

• You’re trying to get an appointment.
• You’re trying to get approval for your proposal.
• You’re trying to close the deal or close for the next step.
• Your posture is one of a supplicant.

When you go for a ‘No’:

• You cross prospects off your list faster.
• You never do proposals that have no chance of leading to a sale.
• You’re looking for reasons not to waste time with loser deals.
• Your posture is one of confidence that what you sell is of value.

This doesn’t mean you throw out every lead that isn’t perfect and ready to decide today.

What it does mean is that you prioritize your efforts, and you make prospects show you why they deserve your sales time and sales resources.

It’s so much better to deal only with qualified prospects. Prospects who have pain and are actively seeking help.

Most companies don’t qualify leads well enough. In B2B, prospects are professional buyers, with budgets and business problems to solve. If you can help them, chances are good they’ll buy. You have a right to ask questions to determine if the opportunity is appropriate for your organization.

When you embark on a demand generation program, you need to qualify the leads that come in. Initially, they should be qualified to determine whether they belong in the sales funnel at all. Criteria to determine this:

• the prospect is the decision maker, a strong influencer, or has access to the decision maker or influencer
• the company is doing well and can make money available for the purchase (or, in some cases, is doing poorly and may go to great lengths to get funding for the right project)
• pain has been detected, and your product may solve their pain
• they have expressed interest in your product, and
• they project a purchase within a year.

If they don’t qualify at this point, discard them. On average, you’ll lose about 20% of the leads generated. You’ll save a lot of time and effort by not pursuing leads that will never close.

Then it’s time to qualify for “sales-ready” leads. It’s imperative that Marketing, Sales and the C-suite all agree on the criteria that must be met to qualify a lead as “sales-ready”. Here’s an example of sales-ready lead criteria:

• the prospect is the decision maker, or is a strong influencer and can get you access to the decision maker
• budget is available, or the person can make budget available
• pain has been verified, and your product can genuinely solve their pain
• they have expressed interest in a sales meeting to explore a solution to their need, and
• they project a purchase within three months.

You can loosen or tighten the scoring criteria based on whether you want more or fewer leads to hand to your salesforce. On average, 20% of the leads generated will be qualified as sales-ready. Hand them off to the appropriate sales contacts immediately.

You’ve discarded 20% and handed 20% off to your salesforce. That means you have 60% of the leads generated still in the sales funnel. They’re qualified as leads, but they’re not sales-ready. They need to be nurtured.

The way to build a relationship with these prospects is to let them educate themselves. B2B lead nurturing consists of making informative content (some subset of whitepapers, seminars, case studies, podcasts, webinars, demos, etc.) available to the prospect. The goal is to earn their permission to stay in touch and progressively deepen the relationship so that when the prospect does become sales-ready, they’ll want to engage with your firm. You’re top of mind when they’re ready to buy, and the conversation won’t be centered on price, because you’ve become a trusted advisor.