tJP

Sales and marketing is sometimes deemed “Part Art, Part Science”. There seems to be little science - particulalry in the sales and marketing processes, and they have not kept up with processes in other parts of a business.

Imagine a car company - they make cars on a production line, same way each time. Or look at the way a jet engine is made - each step mapped out, checked, validated and measured. These environments have long and mature tool-sets like Six Sigma and Lean to help them monitor and improve processes.

Take a look at the sales and marketing processes of those same companies and you’ll find limited processes, limited measurement, little validation and a new way to do something for each campaign. Why?

Why is marketing’s lead generation, lead development and handover to sales not a better, more repeatable and predicatble process? I think we need to take a look at how we can create a steady stream of leads to sales, that takes advantage of modern automation and the 1:1 relationship skills of sales.

Comments most welcome.

It seems that the Australian Federal Government will enact a ‘do not call register for business’ after the Senate Committee recommended that the new law be passed.

I fully understand the reason why the law is needed - I once spent a month in an out-bound cold calling call centre. One of those who’s role is to sell you a loyalty card for a hotel chain, or something similar. They are absolutely a pain as they are trained to close the sale there and then. The centre was broken down to those who had spent years there and the newbies that had just been trained - who might last a week or two at most. A business does not want to receive these calls! Hence the drive for a register.

However, in its current form the register will damage business. One client already washes the residential do not call register against the calls to be made - to ensure that they comply - as many small businesses work out of a home office. This has already reduced their capabilities to make customer calls. In my opinion they have over reacted to the privacy laws and the current do not call register - as they(think) they would be hammered in the press if they did not.

Things are likely to get very grey in this area. For example,  imagine Company A has a product that will reduce the cost of building a widget by 50%.

Company A knows that Company B builds widgets and would get benefit from it. But company A cannot contact company B as they are on the DNCR. If the Production manager at Company B hears about the product and wants to know more - but leaves a switchboard number and not his mobile number - his call may not be returned as they are on the DNCR.

Consequences - Company B goes out of business? Or does Company A risk the law and push ahead and make contact?

Industries that may struggle with this include phone, banks, insurance, IT - and not the Optus, Westpac, QBE’s but the thousands of brokers/resellers who distribute their products to other small businesses.

We would all like to get off the call list of hotel loyalty cards, but we don’t want to lose our business because of it!

In Australia its deep into Q3 and Q4 is just around the corner. So is time to focus - really focus on what opportunities in your pipeline are going to close( and generate money).

I know this is your job but in my experience your pipeline is made up of the following categories of opportunities:

1. Real opportunities - the ones you have a >50% chance of winning and will bring $ this year
2. Backup opportunities - longer odds but provide you ‘coverage’ 
3. Qualified leads - but they are 6 months away before a concerted sales campaign can be exerted
4. False leads - these are the leads that you ‘accepted’ from marketing.

 I find false leads in many client pipelines, they are often called other things, like nurture list. In reality they are there for a number of reasons but should no longer be there. For example marketing badgered you into accepting before you were ready, the marketing director ( who is a friend) needed to improve their ‘accepted leads’ ratio or the ’system’ in its infinite wisdom gives you only 2 weeks before it red flags you for not making your mind up - so you accept them as its’ the route of least resistance.

 Well now its’ time to really clear out the pipeline and give them back to marketing. There are two key reasons, firstly you are thrashing around with a long list and that’s taking your eye off the main game, the few deals that will come in. Secondly, its a sunk cost, marketing made their KPI and they would be happy to work on some ‘warm and friendly’ leads going forward.

So how do you do it? Easy, look at each opportunity in the pipeline and spend 2 minutes reviewing it. Assign a number 1-4 to each and every opportunity. If you have a channel model, sit there with the partner. Even if you have a 100 opportunities and spend 200 minutes on the pipeline you will in half a day identified your focus for the next 6 months. As an output you will have two lists, those with 1 and 2 assigned stay with sales, those with 3 and 4 go back to marketing.

The key benefit is that your opportunity pipeline is clear, real, concise and focussed. Marketing can spend some time and effort on ‘real’ nurturing without treadin on toes.

Note: If you run a calendar year, do the same activity and look at real deals that will close.

“Yellow Pages Books used by 4.6m each week” according to @SteveatSensis via Twitter.

That is a really big number, we would all like 4.6m customers using our services weekly, or that much free cash in the bank(AUS dollars please).

But its  a false number - it means that around half the nations households use the book once every week. Still a good number but balanced by data such as “75% of people have not used Yellow Pages in last 12 months” ( often quoted by Tim Pethick from other sources).

So when a copy of the Yellow Pages arrived on my doorstep this week, I just recycled it(all 3 volumes that came). I use Google search and other search before I think about Yellow Pages. I only use Yellow Pages for people and businesses that do not yet have a website - tradespeople as an example.

Maybe the only people advertising in the Yellow Pages are tradespeople without a website? But there’s online Yellow Pages, so why bother printing it, because it cannot be:

• Economical to print based on usage
• Environmentally sound

So there’s the need to provide a service to people without computers which is valid, but just as likely that the trades-person who pays for his listing wants to see something tangible - and that is the printed form.

This recently happened to MapData Sciences when Google Maps rocked their world( but legitimised the market), so what did they do and did they thrive?

MapData seems to have done two key things:

• Get Specialised
• Get Vertical

In the specialised application of mapping they have driven into areas such as customer service. Applications include a better dealer locator  in this Toro example, and then a health application for cancer customers.

In the Vertical space they have moved into Transport with truck route optimisation, with a neat Government angle too where compliance is a side benefit. Both are good examples of where a ’small company’ can go to add value and defend a niche.  

A similar question may be asked of what Amazon will do with Kindle now the Apple iPad Gorilla descended.

When marketing and selling to business a common belief is that only problems get investment. Managers will likely spend much more time and effort fixing problems than developing new ideas. So the key is ‘Make and cultivate problems’.

Its not the same case in consumer marketing, on first view. Reviewing a few of the hot current applications, products I think that some truly hot products do fix some problems:

Twitter - as SMS and IM traffic increased, its becomes harder to keep multiple conversations going, especially if moving from PC to mobile -  so Twitter is useful as you can broadcast yet keep direct communications with key people. I also find it useful as a source of interesting subjects to read.

Chomp - a brand new iPhone application that helps to evaluate, rank and rate other iPhone applications - the problem is the 100,000 apps on the market and working out the good, the bad and the ugly. Co-founder is Ben Keighran of BluePulse.

FourSquare - is application that lets you tell people where you are, from your phone. As we communicate while mobile, want to share our location. Funnily enough, this was where BluePulse was 5 years ago - maybe the time was not right, because the problem wasn’t there?

Kindle - makes buying, carrying and reading a selection of books really easy.

Google Search - other Search engines( Yahoo!, Alta Vista) were not providing us the information we wanted.

MS Office - while Word and WordPerfect competed, as did Excel and Lotus 123, Office had the field open to it. The problem was a new set of non technical users who wanted a common set of commands and menus.

These are examples of successful products( Chomp is to new ) and they do seem to fix a problem.

In addition, they are NOT “better mousetrap” products eg Bing vs Google, which will be long drawn out battle.

So, if you have a new product for market, and want it to be a success, keep on innovating and work out the key problem it fixes.

Have any examples, please add them.

I spent many years working as a Windows product manager for Microsoft. To be even asking this question seems strange.

So I have spend a few weeks looking at replacing my Notebook and Smart-phone and here’s the points I have looked at:

1. Current SW- MS Office, Firefox, Tweetdeck, MindManager, GTD Add-on for Outlook
2. What my customers run - mainly Windows but some have Mac’s.
3. How I work -spent lots of time in Office and Outlook in particular. Added GTD Add-in to manage tasks and projects. This syncs to a very old Palm Tungsten E. Means I have everything in one place on the road or in the office. Unfortunately phone is separate.

In making a decision point 3 became the key driver. The Office Apps run well on both platforms, email is available on both and a blue cable is standard.

So the decision came down to handling GTD Tasks on the notebook and the phone. ( As an aside I believe David Allen still runs his mobile office on a Palm Treo - last I asked). From a phone perspective, this knocks out the Nokia platform as Symbian just does not handle Outlook tasks well, same for iPhone as iTunes does not sync with Outlook tasks.

Looked at a purely online set of solutions, GoogleMail and taks, GTD for Firefox, Remember the Milk and a variety of other solutions. Main thing is a trusted system and to handle lots of things - with over 100 @Next Actions. Most of the solutions seemed OK, but did not a) do the GTD thing tightly b) seem to be able to quickly process large volumes of tasks with quick push-button simplicity.

So, the decision? - well the decision was to stay with Outlook and the GTD Add-in. This resulted in a decision to go Windows 7. Lots of people have told me that the MacBook will run windows apps, but my inner geek is not interested in running a VM instance. Some have asked if I have ever used a Mac, the answer is yes for a couple of years, but a long time ago. It was pretty dreadful but no worse than Vista.

The phone, well in my perfect world it would be a Palm Pre, but as they have not yet arrived in Australia, I think it will be a Blackberry or maybe a HTC based Windows mobile as both handle tasks well.

I know a lot of people moving to MacBook’s and the decision was not easy, but at the end of the day, is it 9 times better than a PC running Windows 7? Its not and this post looks at why innovations fail and switching is so hard. The 9 times better Effect.

As the old marketing theory goes its always harder and more expensive to switch a customer from a competitor than it is to keep a customer. Here is a diagram from the Harvard Business Review on why.

Why your solution must be 9 times better for a product switch to occur. So the seller over rates their widget by a factor of three and the buyers(happy in their own little world) think that what they have is three times better than it is.

The following diagram shows that if you can minimise behaviour change, from a significant product change( switch) then you might well have a great product. If you are looking to switch, make the barriers really low to change, less ‘retraining’ the better eg MS Excel had exact same keystrokes as Lotus 123.

 Hence my decision on buying a new Notebook.

“Twitter is dying” prompted me to look at what the issues for Twitter. They are typical of a fast growing company in technology. In particular Twitter is a disruptive technology and it can learn from the success of Facebook on what to do next.

According to comScore the Australian audience of Internet users was 12.3m in June 09. Looking at the use of Social media with these audiences, you find that Facebook is used by 49% of this audience, Twitter by 6.4% and Digg 3.5%.

This is important data when considering what type of people are currently using these tools. Using the diffusion of innovation curve below and looking at the penetration rates - then its clear that Facebook is now entering the Late Majority stage of its adoption curve - where the overwhelming pressure from peers is influencing usage.

Both Digg and Twitter are in the Early Adopter phase. This is usually characterised by opinion formers and ‘role models’ driving adoption. The next phase for both of these companies is to grow into the Early Majority phase - this is one where the pace slackens, users are more deliberate and users are willing to adopt only after peers have adopted. Unfortunately the opinion leaders in the early phases have no influence on this next phase.

This original work by Everett Rogers was then extended by Geoffrey Moore to look specifically at high technology products from start-up. Commonly known as “Crossing the Chasm” , Moore’s book looks at the different stages and how there is a chasm between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority. The key lessons for Twitter and for Digg is that they need to focus on changing their strategies to be successful.

Currently Twitter is targeting the rare breed of people who have the insight to match an emerging technology to a strategic opportunity - prepared to take on a high-visibility, high risk project.

Their successors in Early Majority detest risk, waste of money and time. The quality of the product is key and will tend to communicate more with others from within their own social group of industry - rather than look outside. The way to success in this segment and ultimately for the whole market is to focus on a niche, to dominate that niche and to build a reference base in the pragmatists within that niche. Then to grow the niche and then develop another niche and grow from there.

In a previous post I discussed why Twitter activity in corporate was good, but not really fixing the problem. Being fast and flexible over Twitter to offer a ‘better’ customer service experience is in many instances just ‘papering over the cracks’ over a series of business processes and departments that are not yet designed for the online world - with its heightened expectations.

In particular I noted that companies with distribution channels or retail outlets such as banks, supermarkets and phone companies were the least able to really make a difference. For example is your local supermarket is out of your favourite bread then you might well be able to tweet it, but the ability of the store to do something about it was limited.

I discussed with with some people who understand Twitter much better than I do and essentially there are ways and means, but it requires both sides to be ’switched on’ to the situation.

So if I have a complaint rather than Tweet “Coles in Mosman out of sourdough” a much better tweet would be “#Coles #Mosman out of sourdough #outofstock”. The use of the #hashtag allows better searching.

Now assume that each store does have a PC! And in this case the Coles supermarket manager in Mosman has setup his searches for #Coles #Mosman then he will be able to see the issue and then take some action. Similarly the supply chain manager in central supply somewhere can track what is out of stock and she can identify trends.

Seems like a neat solution? Not perfect as it needs to raise the users awareness of the tool and it would be super-neat if it was done automatically.

There may be better ways of fixing this sort of issue, but its a start. Better ways to do it - then please comment.