A Common Marketing Language (part 1)
First let’s discuss some marketing basics so we are speaking the same language (and feel free to call me on anything you do not agree with). Marketing is such a huge area and means so many things to so many different people. At the end of the day, I would like to walk away with a consensus that provides the “groupthink” perspective on the various subjects we want to explore. Also, feel free to comment on any additional commonly misunderstood marketing topics you have come across.
1. A Definition of Marketing
At the most basic level I believe marketing is “anything and everything you can do to help your sales team sell”. This includes: making their selling easier (market awareness, sales tools/kits/collateral, training, certifications), selling faster (door openers, more qualified sales engagements, compelling product positioning, competitive differentiation) and helping them sell more (lead nurturing, better processes, enablement to present the right product message in the right place, at the right time, to the right person. (BANT qualified leads).
2. Marketing Terms and Definition
BANT Qualified Lead
A BANT qualified lead suggests the prospect you are talking to has:
Budget (There is a project with a designated budget),
Authority (they are a decision maker or at least an influencer on the project),
Need (they actually need or are looking for what your rep sells)
Timeframe (planned timeframe in which the project will be started)
Basically this is a “real” sales opportunity. If a lead is BANT qualified you have put your sales rep in the right place, at the right time, talking to the right person, about the right thing.
Closed Loop Sales and Marketing
Monitoring the life of a lead in all its possible outcomes and acting optimally throughout its lifecycle. I.e. Lead entered in CRM by marketing, followed up by sales rep, determined “not ready to buy”, nurtured by marketing until ready to buy, followed up again by sales rep, sales lost, reason for lost sale determined and reported, information flows back to marketing where where it can create better campaigns based on updated data.
On the marketing side we focus on launching and executing the activity that will hopefully lead to interest and orders. We compile research, customer data, demographics, results, BANT criteria resulting opportunities and whom they were funneled out to. On the sales side they see some of your information (the more the better) and have time to digest some of it. They track the stage of the opportunity (new, assess, design propose, closed won, closed lost, or call back later). They track the opportunity dollar amount by estimating in the early stages and looking at the proposal amount or closed order amount in later stages.
A closed loop system allows information to flow between your Marketing system and your CRM system so marketing can evaluate its effectiveness, adjust where needed and provide more value. Marketing can take deals that did not buy today and continue to maintain a relationship (lead nurturing) so the prospect will buy from your rep when they are finally ready. Marketing typically has various investors and interested parties looking for ROI for their investment and chasing down that information can become a full time job in itself. On the sales side there is a requirement to obtain the most useful ongoing touches and as much useful information as possible when going back into the account to follow-up.
Many marketing and sales systems do not provide the 360-degree view needed for the sales and marketing teams to work together to most effectively turn prospects into customers and report that success to necessary constituents.
Consultative Selling
Is focused on:
· Working with the customer to understand their goals, objectives, and challenges.
· Taking that information back to an expert team to determine the optimum solution.
· Explaining the solution in a manner that addresses each of the key influencers in their own language.
There are many formulas, acronyms and methods to help sales reps learn and remember all the steps in a consultative sales engagement, but these are the main three areas in which consultative sales reps are typically trained.
Demand Generation a.k.a. "Demand Gen"
Conducted to bring awareness and interest of your companiy’s offering. A good demand generation effort from the prospect’s side matches the propsect’s need to an offering that fullfills their requirements. An ideal demand generation effort for your sales rep perspective is one that puts them in front of the right person at the right time with the right offering to provide a service that pays them.
Commonly used in business to business, business to government, or longer sales cycle business to consumer sales cycles, demand generation involves multiple areas of marketing and is really the marriage of marketing programs coupled with a structured sales process.
FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt
Where you are selling fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) you are trying to play on your propsect’s FUD to “scare” them into buying your product or service. Many reps are good at twisting a prospect’s perception of a situation to convince the propsect that whatever they are selling will save their carreer, life, sex appeal or marriage. The more knowledgeable your propsect is about their situation, the less sucessful this method will be. Companies selling tasers during riots may do well with this method, but if you paint an inaccurate “doom and gloom” scenario to someone who knows better, you loose all credability as a marketing or sales rep.
There is a difference between apprising a propsect of the facts that will help them avoid danger that they may not have otherwise been aware of (education = good) and painting a worst-case scenario to manipulate them into buying (FUD = questionable).
Lead Nurturing
Maintaining contact with a prospect that is not buying from you today, but which you believe may have a need for you in the future. Marketing can put processes in place that continue to follow up in a meaningful way until the prospect is ready to talk with the sales rep. There is a BIG difference between spamming and nurturing an opportunity. The more customized your subsequent follow-ups are, the more well received your efforts will be and the more likely your communication effort will put your reps at the right place, with the right message, at the right time to close the deal.
Sometimes marketing just gets there too early or sometimes the rep can see that the prospect will be ready at a later date. When there is a closed loop process in place marketing can take this activity on for the sales rep. When there is no process in place the rep must constantly remember to continue to follow up with the prospect until they are ready. Most sales reps do not have the time to do this and are not able to provide the most polished and relevant information on a regular basis.
Speeds and Feeds
In a technical sale this is a case of the sales rep trying to focus on product features and benefits to impress the prospect. The words “technobabble” and “geek speak” come to mind. When this is done with little regard for the needs and interests of the person in front of you it falls into the “spray and pray” or “field of dreams” marketing categories. This technical barrage of facts and figures about your offering is meant to impress the prospect with “how fast” your product cycles or “how much pipe it can push.” Since competitive products typically leapfrog over one another every six months, counting on speeds and feed can work against you as competitors come out with new features and benefits. A better approach is to find out what your prospect needs (even at levels deeper than they do themselves) and match them to the offering that best solves their problem.
An onslaught of technical facts about your offering probably will not impress the “C” level person you are in the room with anyway unless they happen to be the CTO or CIO. Trying to establish a competitive advantage based on “speeds and feeds” shows you know a lot about your product, but probably is your way of filling the void left from not knowing your prospect. As stated earlier competitive advantage based only on today’s processing speed of low cost of disk space leaves you with nothing to say every six months when the competition comes out with their faster model, however focusing on the customer’s issues and solving their business problems never becomes a dated and limiting approach. This is the difference between selling “speeds and feeds” and a more consultative approach.
Additionally we all know that you want to meet with decision makers as high up the food chain as possible (where the approvers and check signers live). When you speak to a decision maker who does not understand or care about what you are saying, they will invariably push you off to the person in their company you sound the most like (especially if they have no idea what you are talking about). If you do not wish to be herded off to a lower level engineer to argue “feeds and speeds” or to try to convince a worker bee that your application is better than the one they are using, then to try to climb you way back to the decision maker at a later date, you need to focus on solving the problems that interest the person you are meeting with. How do you determine what that is? Listen to them and study them. Typically a “C” or “VP” level individual is much more interested in addressing their: KPIs, ROI, bottom line, top line, profitability, cost control, compliance, competition, or their board of directors. Bottom line…you should be speaking their language
“Spray and Pray”
The closer you get to the decisionmaker within a company the less time or patience they have for this type of marketing or selling. It is the opposite consultative selling.
Spray and pray, from a marketing perspective, is conducting a campaign to the masses in hopes of having a small number of them care enough about what you are selling to contact you to hear more. This is the opposite of targeted marketing, in which you are sending information to the select group you believe will care or benefit from your message.
This is not an ideal lead generating scenario for a consultitave sales rep unless you somehow collect information from the “spamee.” The reps do not have the time to research, qualify and then explain to a large number of prospects information and relevance that (had your campaign been conducted correctly) should have been handled by marketing in the first place. The more targeted your audience is, the better you explain your offering, and the better you qualify in advance for the consultative rep, the more meaningful the engagement will be for both parties.
Spray and pray marketing is fine for younger reps searching for any contact with a potential prospect to practice their pitch. It is, however, a complete waste of time for more senior consultative sales reps.
From a sales perspective “spray and pray” happens when a rep has not taken the time to determine exactly what aspects of thier offering would be most valuable to the prospect and proceeds with a “canned” sales pitch or script that they hope will have some relevance to the propsect. Unless your company is offering the fountain of youth in a can, it is rare that every company is an ideal candidate or that every person you talk to in that company will respond to the same features and benefits of your offering. We have all been on the receiving end of an eager sales rep trying to drone on about their product before finding out if you need, want or care about what they are selling.
Future Topics:
A Common Marketing Language (part 2)
Business terms sales and marketing should be familiar with...
- Bottom line
- Compliance
- Cost control
- KPIs - Key Performance Indicators
- Profitability
- Top line
Consultative Marketing
Enablement
“Field of Dreams” Marketing or engineering
ROI – Return on Investment
Sales Cycle
Viral Marketing
