Dont push products, solve problems... dont talk, listen...

The days of Paid, Owned and Earned are upon us... Understand customers’ challenges to maximize our opportunity to lead the discussion...

People Are the New Channel

by Mark Bonchek and Cara France  |  11:00 AM April 15, 2013

In the past, channels delivered messages to audiences. You either owned the pipe or paid to use someone else's. You controlled the message all the way through that pipe.

In a digital and social age, pipes are less important. People are the channel. You don't own or rent them. You can't control them. You can only serve and support them.

This new world is disorienting because pipes and people work very differently as channels. Pipes flow out; people flow in. Content is pushed out through pipes, but pulled in through people.

This reversal is shifting the balance of power. Individuals have access to information, tools, and resources once reserved for institutions. Externally, this means a shift in the relationship between customers and brands. Internally, this means breaking down the silos that once divided functions and departments. What used to be a hierarchy with the company at the top is now a network with the customer at the center.

For marketers, this of course changes everything. As part of an awards program that one of us (Cara) created and the other (Mark) helped judge, we had the opportunity to see how hundreds of top marketers in Silicon Valley are engaging customers and growing revenue in this new era. The two most important principles that emerged are that customers make the best brand advocates, and entire organizations make for the best marketing teams.

• Externally, empower your customers to be brand advocates. Laura Messerschmidt, Vice President of Marketing at Outright (a GoDaddy company), discovered through extensive customer research a new tax law that would significantly affect millions of customers and prospects. Instead of creating a campaign, Laura created a movement. She developed compelling content to educate customers, prospects, advocates, and influencers on the new law. She organized a roadshow meeting with local small business groups in ten cities. She reached out to 5,000 top customer advocates and invited them to share the content on social networks. The results? Monthly sign up rates went up over 225% in just two months and the cost to acquire customers decreased by over 40%.
• Internally, treat your entire organization as your marketing team. Chris Borr, former Vice President of Marketing at McKesson, was responsible for launching a major new campaign for one of McKesson's divisions. On the belief that everyone in the division would need to support the campaign to make it successful, he spent as much energy cultivating internal ownership as external engagement. Focusing on the division's 7,500 employees, from the night shift workers to the executives, he looked at every customer touchpoint and ensured everyone understood their new role as it pertained to the brand. The results? $600 million in new business the first year the program launched.
Some key skills and strategies accelerate the shift from pipes to people:
1) Don't talk, listen. Brent Remai, CMO at FireEye, was hired into a small, venture- funded company with several years of moderate results. His first task was to spend significant time with dozens of customers to understand their problems and the language they use to talk about the issues. He used this information to formulate a marketing strategy that spoke to the customers in a language they understood. He then tested his strategy repeatedly with customers until it truly resonated. The result? In 2012, they were ranked as the 4th fastest-growing tech company by Technology Fast 500.
2) Don't push products, solve problems. Laura Fay, Vice President Integrated Campaigns and Strategy at Cisco, has helped the global marketing organization rethink the way it approaches marketing. For years, the company had been focused on product launches to create splash, buzz, and engagement. Instead, she implemented an integrated planning process that started with the top customer issue and then created an integrated solution that crossed business divisions. The results? The integrated campaign resulted in Cisco's share of voice for Cloud computing going from No. 5 to No. 1.
3) Don't stop at 1-to-1, think many-to-many. Antonio Lucio, Chief Brand Officer at Visa, created a customer engagement strategy for the 2012 Olympics. Instead of pushing out messages, the company used social media to connect fans with each other and with the athletes they were cheering for. In exchange, fans got exclusive behind-the-scenes stories. The results? The most successful campaign in the company's 26 year history of Olympic sponsorship, resulting in significant brand equity lifts, 13% claimed product usage and 470 million earned impressions in 26 markets.
Ironically, the shift from pipes to people is made possible by intensive use of technology and data — not only to automate but to analyze, personalize, and socialize. Technology brings speed and scale to what previously was impractical or unaffordable. Many of the most innovative marketers cited how social media monitoring enables them to listen and respond on a global scale. In addition, customer and employee communities enable them to identify real problems in real-time. Finally, relationship and content management tools enable them to make connections and capture user-generated content achieving both reach and relevance.

Counterbalancing this use of technology and data is a shared mindset that emphasizes reciprocity in the relationship between a brand and its customers. Top marketers know that they can't put one over on the customer, nor can they control the message or their customer's behavior. It takes humility, appreciation, and an orientation towards openness and inclusion.

So what's the recipe for results in marketing today? Choose people over pipes, and mix one part technology with an equal part humanity.
http://blogs.hbr.org/

The (New) Skills You Need to Succeed…

If there is one thing for certain… change happens. What we sell today and how differs greatly even from a few short years ago. Yes.. . Sales & Sales Management Fundamentals stay the same but the requirements of the market and the challenges sales managers and professional sales people face have changed… clients are more demanding, product offerings may be  more complex , and there are more choices in the marketplace… we have to constantly improve our skill sets just to keep up let alone achieve sustained success.

On top of that… research has shown that traditional sales methods are increasingly unproductive. In fact, aggressive sales styles and product only  (one product at a time ) focused selling are now so outdated that some customers are simply refusing to buy from or even meet with salespeople using these techniques.

In fact, there is plenty of evidence that high-performing sales people are those who listen and respond, who are flexible, and who think in terms of developing a solution to an emerging customer problem in the real world of ever-increasing customer expectations and more emphasis on return on investment and value.

Harvard University conducted a study with thought leaders in sales and sales management internationally. These included top sales leaders in major corporations, leading academics who have published in the sales field, and senior practitioners within sales associations or research-oriented sales consultancies.

What they found was that today’s Professional Sales People and Sales Managers need a distinct set of skills and abilities.

Business Acumen and Customer Insight - specifically, beyond what the customer has articulated.  In complex relational sales, customers expect sales people to act as Business Consultants and demonstrate a broad strategic understanding of their business and how our solutions will Impact Bottom Line.

Relational Skills - across all the research in sales and key account management, Trust is repeatedly cited by customers as important in their selection of a supplier.

Managerial & People Management Skills - ethical standards and integrity, adaptability, & openness to change, and strong influencing skills.

Cognitive Skills - innovative problem solving; mental toughness, resilience and the ability to work under pressure and Identify Sales Opportunities with both Existing Customers, as well as with New Business.

Sales Managers and Leaders face the same challenges… to win in today’s market, they need to: improve & drive performance in others; develop and maintain relationships with key customers; rapidly grow sales from existing customers and develop new business opportunities; manage high-level sales calls; develop & implement new product offerings in both print & online and, with their team, successfully negotiate and close deals. All this with increased pace & urgency in the face of stiff competition… no small task.
Our recently researched and developed SM series has been designed to provide Sales Managers with the skills, processes and motivation to drive individual, team and business performance to face today’s challenges.
With a focus on learning from both each other and thought leaders in sales and sales management, these sessions concentrate on improving skills through a combination of highly practical exercises, work based activities and group discussions. Designed to develop skills in managing oneself, managing and motivating others and, ultimately, managing the business as a whole, managers will leave with a specific action plan in relation to their own individual and team development, as well as the confidence to really maximize performance. The SM series is structured to ensure that each session is built upon in the next, thereby providing a comprehensive, highly interactive, motivational and practical experience.

SM021 - The Art of Sales Management Friday, May 31, 9:30 am – 1 pm, VPC,

SM022 – Coaching Salespeople Friday, August 16, 9:30 am – 1 pm, VPC

SM023 – Managing Sales Behavior & Motivating Sales Success Friday, October 11, 9:30 am – 1 pm, VPC     

For more information on how our SM series and how to join our Sales & Sales Management discussion email me at bcrawley@metroland.com.           

 

If You Could Solve One Challenge in the Advertising Business, What Would It Be?

Marketing today is about content - Paid (Traditional Advertising as we know it) - Owned (Websites, catalogs, brochures, Facebook, custom content, loyalty programs, direct mail & outbound calling) &  -  Earned (Social media and traditionally earned PR).

For businesses it is also about finding trusted, respected partners with in depth of business knowledge and cross-platform skills and abilities that deliver measurable results by telling their brand story in an effective cost (Investment) efficient way…

Who is better positioned today to deliver on this complex set of needs and requirements with innovative & creative cross platform ideas for our clients brand than local media… it’s hard wired in our DNA to develop partnerships that yield mutual success for our clients… answering the toughest challenges the experts identify in the advertising & marketing today… 

Harvard Business Review Blog Network

HBR Blog Network

We Asked, Marketing Execs Answered: If You Could Solve One Challenge in the Advertising Business, What Would It Be?

by Maureen Hoch  |   9:00 AM March 18, 2013

The creation of a successful advertising or marketing campaign requires a tricky formula. In a multi-platform world, it includes inventiveness, risk-taking, and luck. And the decision-makers often face a myriad of choices, as we've been exploring in the Future of Advertising Insight Center.

To shed a little light on what it takes to manage this process, we asked a group of top CMOs and advertising executives — from Xerox, Leo Burnett USA, Cleveland Clinic, Adobe, and Nike — a question: If you could solve one challenge in the advertising business, what would it be?

Read on for their answers:


Christa Carone - Chief Marketing Officer, Xerox Corporation
The challenge we're seeing is that "paid" is no longer the hero in the marketing mix. "Earned and owned" are playing more prominent roles than ever before. To really engage in conversations with stakeholders, brands are developing and curating quality content that cuts through the clutter. The spots and dots only work if they're tightly woven into a consistent and ongoing narrative from and about the brand.
No doubt, advertising agencies can produce the smartest creative, but their businesses were not built to deliver within the speed and cost parameters required for "always-on" content marketing. Brands like ours need highly creative content — lots of it. Advertising agencies have highly creative people — lots of them. But does the Madison Avenue business model survive their clients' demands for content at scale delivered in much more nimble and efficient ways?

Susan Credle - Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett USA
Let's reverse the trend of advertising agencies becoming vendors and get back to the business of being trusted, respected partners. We give away brilliant thinking because it does not come with hard costs. How do you put a price on a set of words that defines a company or a brand? Creative ideas often appear cheap, even free, and yet, the best ones are priceless. Therein lies the tension.
Unlike a lawyer who charges by the minute, or the FTE (a tragic acronym for full-time employee that has crept into our business), a great idea can happen in a flash. Time spent solving a problem does not define the value of the solution.
Project-based assignments force agencies into the vendor business. But a valued partnership embraces long-term growth and thinking. A partnership doesn't come down to math. A partnership is not just a transaction between two companies. A partnership is about mutual support and success. The global economy, not just advertising, would be far better off if we would get back to truly embracing partnerships for mutual success.

Paul Matsen - Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Cleveland Clinic
The business of advertising is fundamentally changing as digital and mobile platforms become the primary way of connecting with consumers. Content marketing expressed through social media, apps, search, and e-mail marketing must be integrated with mature platforms such as print media, television, and digital display advertising. The challenge facing the advertising business and marketers is how to effectively and efficiently organize for this new, nimble era of content creation.

Traditional agency models often lack the depth of business knowledge and cross-platform skills to address this need. Internal marketing and communications departments are also poorly equipped to move with the speed and teamwork required. To be successful in the digital, content marketing era, marketers and agency teams are going to need team members who can create and shape a narrative and be part of an agile, multi-platform team that executes in real time. While this may sound like a huge challenge to overcome, we witnessed during the Super Bowl how smart marketers are responding to events in real-time to build their brands.

Ann Lewnes, Chief Marketing Officer, Adobe

Advertising has long had an accountability issue. There's that old adage: "I know half my advertising works, I just don't know which half." This cliché is obsolete...or at least it should be. The answer is digital. As more advertising has moved to digital, and with the tools and technology we've got at our disposal, advertisers are well positioned to tackle this challenge. We now have critical data and insights about how our campaigns are performing and we know more about our customers than ever before.

This will only happen if marketers accelerate the shift to digital. Gartner estimates that today most marketers are spending, on average, 25% of their budgets on digital. We spend 74% at Adobe. And we invest heavily in digital marketing technology. This has enabled us to determine the budget we need to hit our revenue goals as well as model the ideal media mix. Throughout a campaign, we measure the impact of every element of the mix and optimize the campaign based on what we learn. There are no excuses anymore for not knowing how your advertising is working.

Davide Grasso, Vice President of Global Brand Marketing, Nike

Brand storytelling is both an art and a science. As marketers, we need to make things simpler and remember to romance the story along the way.

When communicating a brand's story, it's important not to complicate the storytelling by adding friction through unnecessary layers. To avoid this, it's critical to ask the following: What's the best way to unleash strong ideas and engage consumers in your story with a relevant and authentic experience? And why should they care? If you've satisfied these answers honestly, your story can end up being the one people love and, more importantly, remember.

Just Call Someone Already - Dan Pallotta - Harvard Business Review

Just Call Someone Already - Dan Pallotta - Harvard Business Review

The most misused tool to overcome our fear of selling... email... what many deem efficiency really is enabling us in avoiding authentic or persuasive communication… ironically the key to consultative selling…

When is it okay to ask for help?

Sustaining superior performance…

Whether you have been selling for two months or twenty years we all remember our first sale or the first objection we had to overcome. We also remember the times we struggled to sustain our level of performance and effectiveness, trying to rise above a plateau or break through to an even higher level of success.

I remember when I first started; trying to learn everything I could about media & advertising, striving to understand my products strengths & weaknesses and more importantly those of my competition. I was prepared, confident in my products ability to produce a return for my advertiser’s investment. With a briefcase full of layouts I was eager to show my accounts everything that my newspaper could do for their businesses. Looking back I now realize the most important asset I had was my first ad manager… right there with me making calls. Dennis was a long time newspaperman who told me once I got ink in my blood I would be hooked… I guess he was right. He was old (he must have been in his late forties… gee how time flies), spoke with a thick Scottish accent, (which somehow added to his air of confidence), and seemed to know everything about advertising. He explained that confidence comes from experience and experience comes from time… “You can’t rush it but you can learn something every day from your interactions with your accounts”.

Our sales calls together were coaching calls, although I didn’t know to call them that at the time. I did know enough to recognize that this was an opportunity not to be missed. The simple lessons learned from his “experience” are still with me today.

Experts tell us superior performance occurs because when we are committed to doing our very best. As sales professionals our willingness to be coached, or mentored, increases our effectiveness by allowing us to see our actions through someone else’s objective perspective. Giving us the feedback we need to continue learning and improving.

Coaching consists of two main components - Responding to Needs and Initiating Alternatives.

Responding to needs - Counseling, mentoring, and tutoring are coaching conversations that respond to needs…  help with a current project or task, clarification about conflicting priorities, or help with a personal work issue. Needs may also address career or developmental goals or long-term learning projects. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance. Remember, the person you may ask for help, regardless how successful they may be, once faced the same challenges you now face. You have the opportunity to gain perspective and learn from their “experience”. That is the true definition of a Mentor… an experienced and trusted counsel or teacher.

Initiating alternatives - Your manager may perceive that you are ready to move on to more difficult challenges and take the initiative to present you with such a possibility. Or they may see that you need assistance and discuss the situation with you in order to “coach” you through your challenges. You may also identify a challenge or an area for improvement and choose to discuss it with your manager or coach.

Coaching establishes the major factors that lead to success: it clarifies and prioritizes; it helps us understand what is important and what is not; it invites us to demonstrate influence over our own performance and career by improving the knowledge skills and abilities we need to do our best. Coaching helps us to focus our energy, exercise self-control, and commit to excelling in our performance.

It takes a confident sales person to know when they can use the assistance of their manager and be open to assistance when it is being offered. Being open to being coached not only helps us improve our performance; it also assists in challenging us to reach for even higher goals.

I’ve learned a lot from all the great coaching managers and sales staff I have been fortunate enough to work with over the years and from Dennis’s coaching I remember to… strive to learn from my experiences every day.

Seek out your coach or mentor… whether your current manager or someone else where you work. Their experience will assist you in reaching your true potential. Then, when the opportunity presents itself you too can share your experience with others to create a never ending system of support for sustaining superior performance for yourself and your team.

Lessons in communication from...  

Curious George… 

I was watching the Curious George Christmas show “A very Monkey Christmas” with my two year old daughter when I realized the lesson about effective communication that it held and how it related to communication in business today.  My daughter loves George… the mischievous little monkey who uses non-verbal communication, pointing at objects and making monkey sounds, which is somehow very appealing to young children who enjoy following his antics.

George and The Man with The Yellow Hat are having a very merry time counting down the days until Christmas. There’s only one problem: neither of them can figure out what to give the other for a present. As they get more and more distraught over what to get one another for Christmas they begin following each other around trying to ascertain or “Guess” what the other really wants… getting more & more confused. Only when the Man in the Yellow Hat truly tries’ to understand (in context) the picture George drew him of what he wanted does it come to him… (albeit in a dream).

I couldn’t help think that this was somewhat of a metaphor for business communication today. We are all really busy… inundated with information “guessing” what everyone is trying to say… yet we write cryptic emails and leave incomplete voicemails that do not tell the person we are communicating with what they need to know and understand in a simple clear concise manner.  Unlike George we are blessed with the capability to communicate in many rich ways.   

Communication is a process of effectively exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions through speech, signals, writing, or behavior. In the communication process, the sender (encoder) composes a message and then uses a medium or channel to send it to the receiver (decoder) who interprets the message processes the information and responds appropriately. Simple, but yet complex when we as sender do not assume the responsibility of ensuring our communication is concise and clear. Even saying the text book “encoder” and “decoder” makes it seem more complex. Do we really want to communicate in “code” that the other person has to try and interpret like Georges’ drawing of what he wanted for Christmas?

When we talk to others, we assume that others understand what we are saying because “we” know what we are saying. But this is not the case. Usually people bring their own attitude, perception, emotions and thoughts about the topic and hence create barriers in delivering the right meaning. We have all said… “That is not what I said – or that is not what meant”. But did we communicate clearly? In other words… it is our responsibility to ensure the person we are communicating with “understands” or “gets” our message.

People communicate with each other in a number of ways that depend upon the message and the context in which it is being sent. Choice of communication channel and your style of communicating also affect communication.

So in order to deliver the right message, you must put yourself on the other side of the table and think from your receiver’s point of view. Will they understand the message? How it will sound to them? Only then are we are thinking of context in the eyes of the receiver.

Through attempting to truly understand George’s communication the Man in the Yellow Hat realized just how important he and George are to one another. In the process, he “decodes” George’s message and figures out the perfect gift, and, clever monkey that he is, George also thinks of a gift that will mean more to the Man in the Yellow Hat than anything else in the world. What could be better than a holiday story about truly understanding each other and the joy of giving?

Merry Christmas everyone…. May all your communications this holiday season be rich and rewarding.

For more conversation on how to improve your Sales Skills check out our webinars on www.mymetroland.com or register for 2013 courses, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.

High Value Questions in Negotiations….Invaluable.

I came across a great article by Pat Tinney on asking High Value questions in negotiations that I thought I would share…

 “Curiosity is the basis of education and if you tell me curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly”- Arnold Edinborough

Curiosity in negotiations saves money. It’s as simple as that, so be the cat!

The way we channel our negotiation curiosity is to ask “High Value Questions”. High Value Questions are questions that cannot be answered with a “yes” or a “no”.

Examples of High Value Questions on negotiation training are as follows;

1) When and Why was negotiation training introduced to your team?

2) What was the big difference in your team after negotiation training?

3) Where do you think you will gain the most from negotiation training?

4) Who on your team needs negotiation training?

5) How much revenue is your company hoping to capture with negotiation training?

The person who curiously enquired with the above High Value Questions would certainly have gained a lot of information on;

1) Timing

2) Corporate Culture

3) Response Expectations

4) Goals

5) Personnel

6) Budget information

High Value Questions sometimes called “open ended” questions are essential to collecting the kind of information from the other side that allows us to avoid making assumptions and costly mistakes in negotiations.

To put this in context, if a business negotiation were a military exercise can you imagine leading a team on to the battle field without having asked piercing questions to build reconnaissance on the opposing side? Not likely!

An astute negotiator will have a list of High Value Questions in her pocket before she enters every client negotiation meeting. These High Value Questions will be ranked by importance of revenue or objectives.

If the High Value Questions are delivered in a non threatening manner and the other side starts to answer at length four important things should happen.

1) The person on our team that asked the questions should then assume the role of interviewer and gently encourage the other side to continue with their line of response so the interviewer can ask deeper questions.

2) If our side is on a four legged call with the client, the person not asking questions should be taking detailed notes.

3) After the meeting these notes are then dissected and matched against our ranked list of High Value Questions and objectives.

4) Finally, a new set of High Value Questions is created for the next meeting in the negotiation.

The outcome of the meeting may not be as important as the information gathered through well conceived High Value Questions.

High Value Questions in Negotiations? …..Invaluable!  “Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat”!

Pat is Managing Partner at Centroid Marketing & Negotiation Training and has an extensive background in Consultative Sales & Business Negotiation. He has represented many of Canada’s largest daily newspapers over a 30+ year career on both a corporate and local sales basis and has been placed in a position to close some of Canada’s largest print media buying deals. For more articles by Pat on business negotiation check out www.centroidmarketing.com.

For more conversation on how to improve your Negotiation Skills check out our webinar on www.metrolandhr.com or register for our next Negotiating Skills course on Tuesday December 4th (9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.).at the Vaughan Press Center, - 1 Century Place, Woodbridge ON L4L 8R2. To register, email Melanie Facchini at mfacchini@metroland.com.