• Emotion. Culture, relationships and expectations are extremely high during the holiday season. Buying is an emotional process. Before a purchase is made, there is an emotional motivation. Tapping into and aligning with your buyer’s emotion is critical for connecting your product or service.
• Timing. Certain offers are relevant when the timing is right. If you offer a 50% transmission discount when my car’s gears breakdown, you are extremely relevant. Before this, it is noise. Helping me have a relevant answer to gift giving, tax deductions or employee recognition is a timely offer.
• Creativity. We are bored with the mundane. We buy this throughout the rest of the year. If you can position your offering in a new light that shows creativity and context, it catches attention. Tell a story. Sell the story. Help your buyer imagine a new context. Creativity and imagination can transform otherwise mundane offerings into desirable products.
• Customization. Something that is specific for a business or a person is much more desirable than a product for the masses. It meets a specific need that feels personal. It’s why seeing your name on a mug or having a product that works specifically for your business is perceived as higher value than the generic version.

As buyers spike in their consumption, be positioned with your value proposition. There is a cyclic window which you can tune into that reaps great rewards for those that understand why people buy.

How can you reposition your offering to connect with buyers?

It is all too frequent to witness companies who are caught up in the frenzy of the social bubble. Seth warns about this in his article on social media noise. It’s a good read to hopefully focus people on the substance of connecting and delivering value rather than driving metrics that have nothing to do with revenue.

We preach the gospel of marketing process and systems and our customers that understand this realize that there are not shortcuts. They often learn this after trying all kinds of marketing schemes. Likes, connects, and tweets may be high, but sales are not. It’s a typical story. The problem lies in the fact that marketers miss what buyers actually want and do. It’s about them, not about the buyer, and therein lies the blind spot.

Instead of jumping into the next social fad, consider building something that produces a predictable and repeatable result:

• Understand your funnel. We do not like being sold. We do buy, however. And when we buy, we walk through a process. If you can understand the distinct steps of a buyer’s process, then you can identify the process of your marketing funnel.
• Provide value at each step. As a buyer takes a step, ensure there is appropriate value. Make it about them, not you. The right value packaged at the right time enables your process to create a memorable and trust-building experience with prospects.
• Identify conversion points. There is a right time for selling to begin. Your system should measure and deliver actions for your sales team at the right time. By doing so, a relevant conversation ensues with the buyer.
• Continually refine. You can manage and change what you can measure. As your process works to service your leads, refine it to increase conversions and deliver increased value.

Outcome thinking is disjointed and without focus. Process thinking is about building something that is personal, relevant and timely. It is harder work, and thus, perhaps why so few pay the brain bill to make it work. If there were a shortcut, everyone would be taking it. The truth is that a good sound process will always deliver above the latest marketing hype.

What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment below.

In our marketing consulting, we are typically faced with one of two problems:

1. There are not enough inbound leads
2. There are too many inbound leads

Each of these requires a different marketing system.  For organizations which are inundated with many leads, there is a problem focused around the sales process.  Salespeople are not like marketing automation systems.  They have these constraints:

• They can only work sequentially one call/email at a time.
• They can only connect with a finite amount of people a day.
• They are limited in how they can organize their call lists.
• Their talent is finely tuned for closing the sale.

A marketing automation system can do the opposite:

• It can deliver custom communications simultaneously to thousands of people.
• It is limitless in the number of people that can be contacted.
• It can be programmed to filter lists.
• Its talent is tuned for nurturing the lead to a sale.

The differences are much like a factory worker and a factory robot; speed and predictability are greatly increased with the latter. However, in sales, human touch is highly relevant and important. Thus, working with automation does not mean exclusiveness.  It is complementary. One of the areas that can greatly augment a salesperson’s tasks is lead scoring. Lead scoring is the underlying automation rules which applies quantitative scores for the behaviors of a buyer online.

If your salesperson is limited in their time and finite in their personal engagements, why not prioritize their list for them using lead scoring.  Here are some areas where marketing automation can surface the highest priority leads for your sales force:

• Strategic Landing Pages.  A landing page which is visited and reviewed can appoint a high lead score to signify interest and targeted prospecting for who to talk with.
• Decision Maker roles.  If a lead form with a role or title field is filled out for an executive position, you are likely dealing with a decision maker.  This should be a prioritized score to raise the priority of this lead.
• Content Downloads.  If you have people that read your content and consume value offering pieces, they are engaged.  Create different layers of content and for those visitors that seek higher levels of content in your buying process, score them high.  They are sales ready.

There are several other ways to use lead scoring to help your sales team in addition to these ideas.  As they are working through their call lists, the lists can prioritize based on such key criteria that surface the hottest leads.

In your world, how could lead scoring help your sales process be more effective?

If there is not a process for nurturing unready Leads, then you may miss opportunities to engage when the timing is right.  Here is how you can manage your Salesforce.com Leads more effectively:

• Segment By Ratings.  Lead Rating is a native field.  Customize this to have meaning from the generic “Hot,” “Warm,” and “Cold”.  The readiness of your Lead may be by time (i.e., 60 days, 90 days, etc.) or fit (i.e., Needs Product, Cannot Use, etc.).  This segmentation will be valuable for various marketing buckets.
• Prepare filtered marketing campaign lists.  This entails creating Campaigns in Salesforce.com for segmentation as well as filtered lists.
• Integrate a marketing automation system.  This is a system which will sync based on your segmentation.  Triggered email communications over a period of time can be used to nurture Leads and monitor their activities.
• Send timely and personal communications.  Based on your segmentation criteria, develop regular email marketing that speaks to the concerns and interests of the prospect.  Some may need to be slowly educated.  Others may need to see continual success before they jump.
• Monitor responsiveness.  If your Leads are engaged with opening emails, visiting your site and consuming your digital content, then create a follow-up task list in Salesforce.com to take appropriate action.

With this kind of strategy to augment your tactical sales process, your team can work with Leads based on nurturing and marketing activities that prepare buyers for the sales conversation.

How can this help your sales process?  Feel free to comment below.

More details of how to use the mass email leads function can be found here.  Assuming you know the mechanics, here is how to drive productivity in your sales process:

• Create a value content offering.  Your email template should be personalized with the proper merge fields.  Segment your leads based on their Lead Status and for those that are not converted and are seeking more information, send a special pdf document attached to your email template.  This will stir the pot in your lead funnel.
• Monitor a report of mass email opens.  From your segmented mass email effort, look for those leads that are opening the email multiple times.  Prioritize the list.  These are people telling you they are interested and are engaging the content.
• Mass email a higher value offering.  Within a day or two, identify the list of interested leads and follow up with another segmented mass email.  Invite them to something that is a natural next step such as a special webinar, download or consultation.  Ensure the value is high and worthwhile for them to raise their hand.  Ensure the email feels personal, not mass.
• Use digital body language as call lists.  With your mass email lists, you can extend on your process.  Those leads that are interacting with your value may warrant a phone call.  Use your list as a call list for an added touchpoint in the sales cycle.

The key is to personalize your message just as you would send a personal email to someone and ensure that the value you are offering is helping, not selling.  Helping means that you are in tune with where the lead is at in the sales process and engaging accordingly.

Setting up this process using Salesforce.com Mass Email Leads function can act as a repeatable process that can be fine tuned as your salespeople gather more information from the front lines.  Save time and engage the highest priority leads.

How can this help your sales process?

The question at the outset poses a big assumption and problem, the assumption that what you’ve built is worthy of attention and therefore traffic. The question more appropriately asked should be, “How can I earn more traffic?”

Getting traffic is easy, getting attention from the right person requires talent and continually reinventing. This causes every business owner to stay awake at night because what was remarkable yesterday can become boring tomorrow. Status quo is obsolete and never to return. If you are boring it is easier for your customer to move on to the next vendor with as little as a click of a button.

So how do you get more traffic? Build something that attracts people to want to see it.  It is continual work which builds upon your value to the world.  If you are clear and you are valuable consistently, then the world finds its way to your door.  Here are some areas to focus on if you are willing to pay the price:

• Know who gets you.  Get clear on who will resonate with your value and your message.  What is their title, demographic, cares and preferences?  You can’t please everyone and you are not fit for everyone.
• Focus on helping.  We put up our guard when we feel like we are being sold.  We all still have problems.  How do you help?  Get clear on this goal.  It is the one that matters most to the buyer.  Communicate in a way that talks about helping.
• Remove roadblocks.  Make it easy to do business with you.  Think through all the conveniences that someone who wants to do business with you or tell others might need.  Remove the obstacles.  We are all busy and don’t like to expend extra effort.
• Be referrable.  Ensure your content can easily be shared on social networks and email.  We live in a highly connected world.  One person is connected virtually to many.  Traffic comes from this one to many relationship.

There is an audience out there awaiting for you.  They are waiting for you to lead and connect in a way that is highly relevant.  Get clear and provide value consistently.  You will be building a brand and a system for inbound marketing.

What areas can you focus on?

Beth Zimmerman, the Founder and Executive Director of Pets For Patriots took some time to reflect on our work with her organization in Salesforce.com.  Here was the interview:

Salesforce Success Interview With Beth Zimmerman

About Beth Zimmerman, Founder, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Pets For Patriots, New York City

Pets for Patriots, Inc. is the inspiration of Beth Zimmerman. Growing up, her family adopted dogs from local animal shelters, and she experienced firsthand the transformative love of a companion pet. Her parents instilled in all their children a deep sense of patriotism and an abiding respect for those who serve it.

Beth developed a keen business sense through more than 25 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, including her current responsibilities as a small business owner. In founding Pets for Patriots, Beth is committed to give the most vulnerable shelter pets a second chance at life while enhancing the lives of our veterans and service personnel.

In addition to her roles at Pets for Patriots, Beth is principal of Cerebellas LLC, a strategy consulting practice she founded in 2003. Although Beth is not permitted to have dogs in her residence and is allergic to cats, she remains fiercely dedicated to saving their lives.

However, if your process is not contingent on a large flow of inbound marketing prospects, then you may want to structure your Salesforce.com system to capture Opportunities immediately to work.  This would be the case for a situation where there is a long sales cycle, few prospects and a high dollar transaction.

Let’s take a look at the opposite situation: short sales cycles, many prospects and lower dollar transactions.

Salesforce.com Lead Management

If you sell something like software subscriptions, online training modules or a digital product, you can easily generate prospects from a trial offer or giving something of value first.  Your site visitors would exchange contact information for your value offering.  Ideally, you might have a marketing automation system to help further nurture and qualify the best prospects.  In conjunction with this system, the tracking of prospects would be primarily around the Lead Status picklist field in Salesforce.com.

The values in the Lead Status field should be set up much like Opportunity Stages.  You might have a sales qualification team that works with pre-qualified Leads.  Their job is as follows:

1. Follow up on Leads that have not been contacted.
2. Assess their buying criteria based on specific qualification criteria:
   1. Their budget
   2. Their authority
   3. Their need
   4. Their timeframe
3. Assign the Lead Status based on the qualification criteria scorecard
4. Set the next step:
   1. A follow-up Activity date
   2. Lead Unqualified status
   3. Convert the Lead to an Opportunity for senior sales members

Your sales process depends on clear definition of the Lead qualification criteria and management by your team.  A marketing automation system can set the Lead Status criteria and trigger Tasks for your pre-qualification team when the prospect is ready to be contacted as well.

As each of the Lead Status values are set, a report a filtered view of all Active Leads should be generated to monitor real-time information of the Lead pipeline.  This gives you effective management control of your front end sales process.

Team selling becomes much more effective with a qualification process that is managed well in Salesforce.com.  The process and strategy for driving this result pays large dividends as you segment your inbound marketing leads and focus them specifically for the ensuring sales conversation.

How do you manage your lead qualification?

Marketing automation works.  Engaging and nurturing leads with a real-time, personal process keeps attention, builds trust and wins business.  Our team has built many successful marketing automation systems and campaigns.  It becomes a vital asset to the business of our customers.

But, not all marketing automation works.  Typically, a company hears about the promises that marketing automation brings and then proceeds to try and make it work.  Here are a few reasons why failure happens and how you can avoid them:

1. Lack of Talent

If you only have traditional marketing people on your team that are adept at advertising or PR campaigns, then this is the number one reason for failure.  Marketing automation is hard, not easy.  It requires a combination of skills including IT, developers, copywriters, analysts, copyeditors, project managers, graphic designers, web developers, video editors and creative strategists.

It is an expensive payroll to bring all these roles together.  It is hard to find this all in one person.  Choosing self-service rather than full-service may already doom your project to failure if you don’t have the right talent.

2. Poor Marketing Strategy

We approach our marketing automation projects with strategy first.  A marketing automation campaign roadmap needs to be well established to define what the buying process looks like.

Putting a bunch of forms together that do a bit of lead scoring is like driving a race car at 35 to the grocery store every day.  It was designed for so much more.

3. Fear Of Failure

The likelihood that your marketing automation campaign will immediately convert leads to customers is rare.  We are dealing with human beings and seeking to get to their motivations and decisions.  The goal is not to launch something perfect.  The goal is to launch something that is measurable and connects.  In so doing, you can continue optimizing and refining.

If we see a major drop in a lead process for downloading content, then we address that step with both art and science to drive the next step.  Marketing automation teaches you what works and connects.  It is an iterative process which requires commitment.

4. Silos Of Marketing And Sales

When the salesperson engages and with what message is a critical component.  If there has been a tradition of marketing and sales working separately – the former creating demand and the latter closing deals – then this has to be quickly overcome in the project scope and implementation.

Sales team members need to be brought into the project for launching a campaign and understand the experience prospective buyers are undergoing before they call for a meeting.  They have to be able to read their digital footprints in the team CRM system, not just the analog outbound sales activities.

5. Leadership Gap

Give me a leader over a marketer any day.  This is a critical component to making marketing automation work.  There is a team of talent that has to be managed, business processes to be defined and systems that need engineering.  A creative, technical, business leader will drive success.

We have seen too many junior people try and take the reigns and they are the root cause of failure.  The vision, strategy and execution all have to come together for success.

Beyond Features And Benefits

Note that there was not commentary on the features and benefits of individual marketing automation software systems.  Marketers like to look at those because it takes the lens off of ourselves.  After all, technology cannot fight back.

We can interchange marketing automation campaigns between systems easily and make them work.  The systems today are remarkable and are far above the thresholds for effective strategy for results.  It is unlikely the features will be exhausted in the array of different software available today.

It comes down to whether you can drive any of these systems, connect with the buyer and create a buying experience which is personal, relevant and timely.  Avoid the failure points and ensure your team, whether in-house or via partnership, can take this powerful instrument and make music rather than noise.

Feel free to comment below.

In our Salesforce consulting work, many of our customers are seeking advice on whether to choose Salesforce.com or another CRM.  The truth is that there are several systems which will work based on clear requirements around your business process.  Typically, a Salesforce roadmap will help clarify this issue as well.  Multiple software choices can enable the business process which comes from the roadmap.

It is easy to get into a feature comparison between systems.  However, from our work and perspective, the features are abundant.  CRM companies have to be rich in features just to be in the game today.  It is a mature market and the barrier to entry forces vendors to be competitive.

Furthermore, most companies do not utilize the full array of features.  Much like users of Microsoft Word, they use a small subset of what is available.  They use what they need to get things done.  In fact, too many features can be distracting and impede productivity, collaboration and selling.

Where technical analysis is required, we encourage this.  Let’s assume there is parity in features between today’s CRM systems.  Here are three business considerations we would offer:

1. Salesforce.com is the leader.  The leadership position of a technology is important.  It provides a common platform which has many additional business benefits.  There is not a competitive second option to Facebook.  It is the platform where the world connects socially with friends and fans.  Likewise, Salesforce.com’s scale and user base creates commonality on the journey for business success.  The community around the technology affords a wealth of thought leadership, best practices and consultative advice.  From the user groups around the country to Dreamforce, you have extended support from the community.
2. The ecosystem to grow with.  When you start, there will be some preliminary requirements which help to structure the system to work the way you need it.  As you and your team use Salesforce.com, there are inevitably new requirements.  You will want new functionality.  The AppExchange contains thousands of third-party applications.  Instead of the old days of custom development of software which was costly and timely, you can access what you need from a marketplace and plug and play.  This is highly strategic for growth.  Apps are available to help you automate more of your business as you use the system.
3. The platform for development.  As you continue down the growth and adoption path, you may want to integrate with other business systems or websites.  With Salesforce.com Enterprise edition, scripts can be developed which work with the API (application programming interface) to automate your business processes.  This affords you to use Salesforce.com as a platform for integrating your entire business over time.  The opportunity to do this allows you to further leverage mission critical systems in your business to work with your CRM to support multiple processes.  Information can be shared across your business seamlessly this way.

These are some high-level reasons which can help frame your decision for a CRM system in terms of business strategy.  While you might entertain a cheaper option, the hidden costs can surface later as you seek to grow your use of the system without the inherent ecosystem and platform options that Salesforce.com has established as the leader.

We have implemented multiple CRM systems.  The technology is highly similar.  The business factors may be something which has added weight in your decision making.

What are some considerations you have for choosing a CRM system?  Feel free to comment below.