In complex B2B sales, people still buy from people. I don’t want to give the impression that ‘Closing’ has gone away. It’s still extremely important, and the people who are ‘Closers’ are extremely valuable. More about this later.

Sales 2.0 merges Sales and Marketing to target prospects more effectively, using online technologies in innovative ways, to bring in more business at a significantly lower cost of sales. Information is available free (or close to it) today that you couldn’t buy for any amount of money five years ago.

Now we can find highly specific target prospects much more easily, AND we don’t have to interrupt them while they’re trying to do something else. Outbound sales messages, when they’re done via phone or even in person, are analogous to interruptive advertising. An Alterian poll determined that in 2009, 95% of advertising was ignored or disbelieved by its target audience. The old saw was that 50% of advertising didn’t work… you just didn’t know which 50%. Today, you can rest assured that 95% of advertising spend is wasted.

How do you build trust when your prospects won’t engage with you? Today’s B2B buyers want to engage in conversation where and when it’s convenient for them. That means social media. It’s not expensive, but it’s not free. It takes time and effort, knowledge and finesse. Increasingly, Sales and Marketing people are going to have to immerse themselves in social media (or hire a trusted resource) to do demand generation, lead nurturing and to build relationships… albeit digital relationships.

Now we get back to the ‘Closers’ I mentioned earlier. In B2B they’re essential, and they’re expensive. You don’t want them (and they wouldn’t do it anyway) spending time writing blogs, Tweeting, and trolling Discussion Groups on LinkedIn. The good news is they don’t have to. Once a digital relationship is established with a prospect, and the lead is qualified, whoever is handling social media for you should turn the realtionship/lead over to one of your closers. (You have at least one, or you wouldn’t be in business.) When the prospect is nearing a buy decision, they will want to speak with a sales person.

If the Sales 2.0/Marketing operation has done its job correctly, that face to face conversation won’t be focused exclusively on price. Your closer can spend their time and energy developing a personal relationship… and closing a profitable deal.

This is the first post in a series about B2B Sales 2.0. The next one will be titled ‘Sales 2.0 is Sales Enablement’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Brand communicates the ‘personality’ of the company and its products and services. Some people mistakenly believe that brand must be communicated through advertising and other promotional activities. Not!

The C suite should define and communicate what a company is about, so employees understand and transmit the brand message. ‘Brand’ is communicated through all customer and prospect touch points.

I define Marketing as “anything that helps Sales close profitable deals”. Branding is a part of that, but only a part. It’s an input to the process of Marketing.

Marketing can be used as a tool to help management develop market strategies (for each product/service) – which are built upon detailed descriptions of target prospects. Once we know exactly who will buy each product and service, and why, we can determine the best

• messaging (benefit statements, value propositions, etc.)
• offers (what will make them take action?)
• vehicles (the most effective ways, online or off, to reach them).

Marketing can inject discipline into the Sales process. It can force the development of a strategy, plan and budget that eliminate one-off, shoot from the hip promotional efforts that do nothing to increase profitable business.

Marketing is a process that is composed of many parts. When conceived and executed properly, the return on investment is significant. Marketing is the planting of a seed, and the nurturing of that seed over time. Just as a farmer must water, weed and feed for months before reaping the benefits, Marketing takes time.

Marketing exists because Sales, by nature and due to compensation plans that reward short-term results, is unable or unwilling to perform that nurturing process. They just don’t have the time. Optimal results are achieved when Sales and Marketing work together. When each:

• understands what the other is doing and why,
• agrees on who is responsible for what, and
• can clearly articulate a mutual definition of a ‘qualified lead’.

Marketing performs demand generation activities, and hands off warm, engaged leads to Sales when the time is right. Sales can then spend its time nurturing relationships with current customers to deliver upsells and repeat business; and developing and closing profitable deals with qualified leads.

Over time, I’ve devised a methodology for developing and executing effective ‘Marketing’ for my clients. The basic format is: ‘Strategy. Content. Design. Tools/Vehicles. Test/Optimize.’ More in upcoming posts.