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technology

You can’t put the cloud in a box

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I was rummaging through a box in my basement and it was like a trip down technology lane: a Palm PDA, modems, PCMCIA cards, and just about every kind of serial, parallel and obsolete cable you can imagine. All that cutting edge technology (at the time). In a box.

Technology continues to evolve and create uncertainty for those of us that are tasked with deploying it. One consolation is that the increasingly dominant part of the investment, the apps, now live, evolve and get better…on the cloud.

Thinking about custom apps for productivity and salesforce enablement? More and more your tools can adapt and grow with you. More and more they live on the cloud. And more and more you can’t put them in a box.

How to pay for a technology project (1st in a series of 3)

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One of the problems with new technology projects (no matter how obvious or compelling) is that we didn’t anticipate or budget for it, so we can either put it into next year’s budget (by which time our needs will have evolved) or find funds in our current budget. If we’re serious about doing a project, here’s how to free up funding this year:

Stop printing literature

Expect some halfhearted protests, but when we don’t even offer paper, customers and salespeople find the .pdf and their print button. We’re not just doing away with paper, we’re replacing it with better tools: hardware and software that allow us to communicate more effectively. If we make it clear that our company is consciously choosing a high-tech approach over an outdated one, customers and salespeople will understand and embrace the switch (and appreciate our progressive stance).

Note that if we have only partially transitioned away from paper, we will likely pay more this year for printing than last. That’s because the economics of printing make it much more costly to print several short runs than one big one – the actual number of copies we print is almost irrelevant. Not to mention the resources that go into inventorying, managing, handling, requesting, entering orders, overnighting, etc… We can start a project today by making a decisive switch away from printed material and applying those funds to new mobile and online tools.

You and your competitors have already conditioned customers not to expect a stack of glossy brochures at each visit…and most prefer it that way. Different from your competitors, however, you can use the savings to pay for technology projects that modernize the way you communicate and sell.

Innovation is spoken here

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Let’s confess: We B2B marketers are all guilty of overusing the word ‘innovation.’ Innovative products, innovative people, innovative innovation. Let’s take a break from that word and focus on, well, innovation.

No matter what you’re offering, telling your story using mobile technology makes it modern, interesting, and worth a look. Maybe not forever, but today? This quarter? Next year? Definitely. It’s innovative.

Innovation should be evident in our products, services and in how we approach every conversation. Even if we never utter the word again

Technology giveth, technology taketh away

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Call me a masochist, but I enjoy the challenge of cold-calling. I’m struck, however, by how technology often prevents meaningful conversation:

  • Email is systematically ignored now matter how personal and polished our prose
  • Voicemail is unsatisfying whether we hang up before the beep or ramble until disconnected

Technology distances us from our prospects in some cases, but also presents opportunities…if we know where to look:

  • Obscure corners of websites contain details useful for prospecting (e.g. press releases announcing organizational changes, plus the name of a contact whose job it is to be available)
  • A prospect’s self-description on LinkedIn provides clues about which topics will resonate with them
  • Blogs and tweets, although typically a one-way exchange in B2B settings, contain less corporate-speak and offer a window into company priorities

Just as technology taketh away, so does technology giveth.

Your phone is now waterproof

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Smalltalk at the MIM office last week included the story that Apple’s iOS7 update would make iPhones waterproof. And while many people figured it was a hoax, other folks actually believed it. Really.

But maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds. The metal and glass rectangles in our pockets perform little miracles day in and day out. There’s the miracle of being connected to every other human being worldwide. And the one of being able to access nearly every information resource that ever existed within 2 seconds. Why shouldn’t we expect to be able to dip our phones in a fish tank after a software upgrade?

A handful of folks may have had to replace water-damaged phones, but they’re also the ones that are more likely to believe all of the other little miracles. And maybe they’re putting them to use to win business away from us. Suddenly I don’t feel so smart. Suddenly I’m feeling optimistic about the next software upgrade making my phone waterproof.

Sales enablement enables what?

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In my 20 years in sales and marketing, I can’t think of another time when hardware and software have been evolving so quickly and offered so much promise. So let’s explore the category of sales enablement. Who wouldn’t want to empower our salespeople to do more?

What we want our sales team to do, however, should define the tools we build, not the other way around. If our people in the field are supposed to spend as much time as possible in front of customers, many sales enablement projects actually detract from their mission:

  • Time-consuming CRM data entry that is never converted into insight that the salesperson can use
  • Lead management systems that trap salespeople on the phone to qualify long lists of prospects
  • Literature fulfillment processes that are cumbersome and unreliable
  • Content libraries that require hours of manipulation to produce a presentation suitable for a customer

By definition, sales enablement tools can help our salespeople do more, so focus on the handful of critical things things we’re counting on them to do and resist the urge to add new tasks simply because the tools now exist.

The blurry line between inside and outside sales

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Outside salespeople now spend as much as half of their time doing inside (or remote) sales. A typical day: One or two in-person meetings around which phone calls, emails and web conferences are scheduled, interrupted by the occasional routine emergency.

When our people engage customers remotely, new challenges arise:

  • Presentation materials exist, but are not available quickly enough to display or discuss over a phone/web conference
  • Mismatches between the materials that are presented remotely vs. what a salesperson presents in person
  • Web conferences are cancelled because of ‘technical difficulties’ and we become hesitant to schedule others

Clearly all of the above do not reflect favorably on us and result in delays and missed opportunities. Easy-to-use mobile devices and apps that allow us to present from anywhere to anywhere can accommodate a shifting in-person vs. remote sales mix without delaying or diminishing the strength of the story we’re trying to tell. If we choose technologies that are reliable and flexible, we can actually benefit from the blurry line between inside and outside sales.

It’s a terrible time to tackle mobile

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Three reasons not to use mobile tools for selling:

  • They didn’t exist before (not in the budget)
  • We’re unique in our industry (not clear where to start)
  • We have many legacy tools (we’re getting by just fine)

Three reasons to embrace mobile tools for selling:

  • They didn’t exist before (we can’t afford not to develop new capabilities)
  • We’re unique in our industry (mobile can adapt to us)
  • We have many legacy tools (let’s make them accessible with mobile)

It’s a terrible time to tackle mobile.

And…there’s no better time to do it.

40 years and 14 cents

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I found a book titled “Modern Industrial Marketing” on Amazon. Published in 1972. Price: 14 cents. Clearly not in very high demand. I bought a copy.

After skimming it, here’s what has changed in 40 years of industrial marketing:

Then: “We have a factory. We make widgets. Let’s work hard at marketing the widgets we’ve chosen to make.”

Now: “We have a factory (or can find one). Let’s only sell widgets that we know customers want and find ways to get smarter about the type of widgets we sell.”

Technology continues to compress the time and effort needed to get smarter about what we sell today and should sell tomorrow. Use the web, mobile tools, CRM, big data and the resulting business intelligence to develop only the widgets that customers want. Widgets that don’t harness these insights are destined to sit on a shelf and sell for less. Like for 40 years and 14 cents.

Never empty-handed

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If you’ve spent any part of your career in B2B sales and marketing, you know that the most unsettling thing you can hear back from the field is…silence.

Tell us we’re spot on. Tell us we’re off base. Even if the news is bad, it’s progress…at least we have the obstacles in focus.

  • “We lost the bid? Take this short survey about what we can do better next time.”
  • “The decision is on hold because the ROI is not clear? Let’s apply this selection tool and calculate the exact benefit.”

Alternatively…

  • “You’re awarding us the project? Let me shoot a video of you explaining why.”
  • “You’re a repeat customer? Let’s quantify your actual savings to date.”

Mobile technology simplifies collection of feedback from the field and turns anecdotes into action. Provide tools to your sales team and they will never come back empty-handed again.