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Hans’ Blog: Modern Industrial Marketing

Hans’ Blog: Modern Industrial Marketing

Thankful for the salesperson

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Customers no longer need you to point out their problems.  They barely need you to identify a solution.  With all of the information you’ve posted about your products and services online, your phone may never ring again with a call from a new customer.

What they do need is for you to show them what they don’t already know: The disruptive trend not yet fully in focus.  The new technology that is both a threat and an opportunity.  Are your salespeople equipped to explain the risks of not acting and to tell the story of how together you can be pioneers instead of laggards?

Your customers should be thankful to see your salespeople.  Prospects want sales interactions to be efficient and for your people to clearly explain the issues and the options.  Are your sales tools and stories making your customer thankful that you visited?

I’m not ready for the punchline

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Any joke, story, or marketing angle ultimately arrives at a punchline. The ‘aha’ moment at the end when it all becomes clear and we laugh, or cry, or buy.

But telling the punchline before our story has been fully grasped has little impact. In some long sales cycles, our punchline won’t create that ‘aha’ moment for years even though we repeat it over and over.

So take a fresh look at your marketing strategy, materials, and tools. Are they built around telling stories?  Or built around telling punchlines?

How credible are you?

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Your offering is rock solid. You’ve done a really nice job of designing and executing your product or service. Seriously. Well done.

Once I establish that you’re in the running for my business, on what other criteria do I make my decision? To some degree I make it on the credibility of the salesperson sitting across the table and the company she represents. Is she able to persuade me that she knows what she’s talking about? Do I agree that her company stands behind everything said so far?

We’d like to think that our product accounts for the majority of our credibility, but if our sales force turns over often or if we’re headquartered in the east and selling in the west, there may be many non-product obstacles making us less credible.

Picture your newest, most remote salesperson. Is he equipped with the right stories and mobile tools to build credibility?

Death by a thousand bullets

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Think about the last sales presentation you saw. What was the most memorable bullet on, say, slide ten? On any of those slides? Even if there was a stellar idea among them, it was lost in a pile of bullets.

Some customers (and salespeople) are visual learners, some are auditory, others respond to hands-on. And since we rarely get compliments on the effectiveness of our bullets, why do we pump out slide after slide as if we’re trying to hit some sort of bullet quota?

Use mobile technology to sell with pictures, video, sound, and interactivity. Let your customers experience what sets you apart by seeing, hearing and putting their hands on what makes you and your offering special. Then, maybe we can stop killing our presentations with all of those bullets.

Stop collaborating

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There’s a time and place for collaboration, meeting halfway, and rounding off the edges. Collective wisdom often prevails and the result is greater than the sum of its parts.

 

But the things that set us apart from our competitors can not, must not, be compromised, negotiated or otherwise diluted.  Does the industry’s thought leader work for you? Is lightning-quick responsiveness in your company’s DNA? Do you offer a complex business case that no one else can touch?

Our differentiation is subtle and as we convey it, we can’t afford to let one iota of our message get lost in translation. So make your stories strong and pointed, make them engaging, and use technology to make them easy to tell and spread.

Ready, fire, aim

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Sometimes we aim our second shot based on where our first one hit. Until we actually pull the trigger, we don’t really know if all of our preparation, practice and aiming will result in improved accuracy.

When trying to hit the moving target of mobile technologies for our salespeople and customers, consider firing a test shot or two. If we instead wait for the perfect shot, we may regret that we spent too much time aiming and not enough time shooting (and yes, perhaps missing).

Let’s start small and narrow and cheap. Let’s experiment with a limited audience. Let’s test our assumptions and see how close we can get to the results we wanted. It can only serve to improve our aim for the next shot.

Content needs innovation too

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It’s ironic that much of the discussion about marketing using technology circles back to the importance of content. Now that our information is available to anyone, anytime, anywhere, our customers expect to feel like they’re the only ones that matter at the exact moment they choose to engage.

The good news is that content does and always will matter.  The bad news is that broad-brush approaches designed for all occasions are no longer sufficient.

As we embrace technology and optimize tools for our specific objectives, we can’t stop there.  Our customers will give us high marks for being progressive, but only if the stories we tell are at least as innovative as the tools we use to tell them.

Our mission: To meet or exceed

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The difference between meeting expectations and exceeding them is huge. Meeting them is easy…we’ve already conditioned our customers on what to expect: Status quo = mission accomplished.

What do our customers expect when our salespeople call on them? A recitation of the same old features and benefits? Maybe a few new bullets added to the list?

Exceeding customer expectations means telling stories that show how deeply we understand their industry and their problems. Exceeding expectations means listening.  Exceeding expectations means being the first to show up with modern tools that illustrate and educate and engage.

What do your customers expect from you? Make it your mission to meet andexceed.

Selling ice to Eskimos and your return policy

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It’s a familiar compliment, but it benefits no one. The Eskimo ends up with buyer’s remorse and we get our ice back while earning a bad reputation among Eskimos.

If the first step is determining if there’s a fit, let’s figure it out as quickly as possible. Why take three conversations when it can be done in one? If it’s not a good match, we can move on to more promising opportunities and our customer will be more inclined to see us the next time we call.

Most of our tools are designed to help our salespeople sell, but consider adding some that first assess fit. Simple checklists, case study comparisons, and interactive surveys can qualify a prospect and inform both parties about how to best work together.

Spend a little more time assessing fit and you’ll spend less time explaining your return policy.

It’s on the website

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Jim, a client, told me that it’s a running joke in his company: ‘If you want something to disappear forever, put it on our website.’

We let ourselves get away with it and we shouldn’t. Simply posting something to a website is not good enough. Do we really expect our customers to find our content among more than 150 billion web pages?

A customer that knows exactly what to search for can find what they need, but if they’re uncertain or are not yet aware that their industry is about to be disrupted, putting our solution on the web is a longshot at best.

Reaching customers will forever be a challenge, but if you have salespeople that call on prospects, mobile tools can provide a proactive way to use your content to consult and collaborate.

Unless we like odds of 150 billion to one, it’s not enough that it’s on the website.