Demand Generation Machine

Now if there is one thing peculiar to technology sales and marketing within the B2B space is that some technology can be complicated to explain. Trying to explain or pitch a solution that can scan and analyze living tissues while transferring data gathered in real time can be a mean task. So can explaining a tracking system which uses radio frequency technology to locate your company’s fixed assets and value the net worth of your capital investment. Whether you use emails, talk to a prospect over the phone or do a sales presentation of your technology for the first example you are most likely going to explain to them how your analysis algorithms enable rapid and objective quantitation of tissue samples and while this message may really contain the core benefit of your technology and value proposition it’s only relevant if your message is going to a technical decision maker who understands your technology and its benefits. Now a research head at a biotechnology lab may see the value powerful analysis algorithms but if you were talking to an investor who has privately funded this lab and you want to win his vote with that you are better off sticking to explaining him how your solution can save lives by delivering reports quicker than conventional systems and give your lab an edge over the others.

Technical details are important but provided they are reaching the right ears or eyes. While getting a message out to non technical decision makers simplify your message and offering. Now many will argue “how can we do that, our product or offering is technical in nature” or “there is no easy way to explain this to someone who does not understand technology”. Thats not entirely true and you know it. Technology is used to simplify things. The means to the end maybe hard to explain in a simple way but the end itself is always to simplify something or do something better using technology. In this particular example it was simply to provide a quick way of scanning and analyzing tissue samples quicker so patients health problems can be diagnosed quicker and more lives can be saved.

Having worked with technology companies who deal with some very specific requirements and having to pitch those products to both technical and non technical decision makers we know that technology can be complicated and not everyone may understand technical terms but if you start looking at what it helps you do rather than what it is, you will find it a lot simpler. A good technology sales person need not be the one who can pitch a complex product to the CIO or Director of Technology but one who can do that and just as easily explain it to his/her ten year old, the person behind the drive in counter at McDonalds or the guy walking his dog across the street. Complicated? Just simplify it!

Well going by by the image, thats one corporate hierarchy that you don’t want to be going through to reach the top Selling into large organizations that have a deeper hierarchy can be a navigational nightmare for sales teams but lets face the facts. CIO’s, CTO’s and other C-Level or Vice President level are not the easiest guys to connect with especially in larger companies. There are the voice mailboxes, the spam filters and and the Knights-in-Armor also known as assistant to the VP to shield them from sales pitches and they do a good job at it. A C-Level decision maker maybe the only one who can give you the final nod for your product or service but may not always be the best person to talk to at length when you need to do your groundwork, understand the company’s requirements and discuss the base level aspects of how you can help them which can really take up time he or she doesn’t have much to spare in the first place. The route through influencers and working your sales through the hierarchy is sometimes the best way through depending on what you are selling. If you know even a part of the decision making hierarchy it makes navigating and striking conversations with the right people so much easier. Then why doesn’t everyone pull out an mini organization chart with 2 or 3 levels of contacts and then approach the company?

Well its not as easy as that. Its not very difficult to locate C-Level decision makers at larger companies but when it comes to deeper contacts at a more functional level it becomes harder to locate them. Determining who they report to or the roles within the department can be even more tedious and time consuming so for a sales person its simpler to locate a high level contact and then take your chances hoping you will connect. We have helped companies dig into key accounts they are focusing on to help locate and structure such mini charts around a specific role and although it is tedious, having a choice of contacts to connect within an organization can be a great asset. It’s worth the effort. The next time you have a key account you want to sell into, see if you can work out who are the contacts involved in the buying process, build out your chart and grow your options of how you are going to work your way to that final decision maker. Sell smart!

The picture above is part of a personalized landing page and email campaign we are doing for www.ReadyContacts.com which delivers a great list building service on demand to marketers who need a target list of decision makers on demand. The campaign consists of an email reach out to those who would benefit from ReadyContacts and takes them to a landing page which simply highlights one of the benefits that the service could provide in a simple light hearted message which sales and marketing folks like us can relate to through personal experiences. In this case its dead business contacts which we find in abundance when it comes to customer data that has been lying unattended in the company CRM for ages and are in bad shape just when you want to run that email campaign or connect with them again.

Have your data cleansed and updated before using it to run campaigns especially if its been around for a while. Bounced emails and dead ends while calling into companies can be frustrating and extremely unproductive if you’re working with a bad list using a service like ReadyContacts can help produce more fruitful results without having to spend your internal support bandwidth. So if your CRM is one of these graveyards, then you will want to try this.

This is the first of a series of landing pages “The CRM Graveyard” that will be up for this campaign. Stay tuned for more of these!

Marketers and salespeople are not always the easiest people in the world to sell to. You know that when you are pitching a product or a service to someone in your own space its more likely they know what you are thinking and they know what you are doing. You would think that they would always be extra cautious, not get sweet talked and end up buying only what they need and yet…thats not always true. How many times have you spent some part of your demand generation budget on something that you don’t really need or something that wasn’t nearly as useful as you thought it would be?

Last week we evaluated a number of products which were lead sources for a company and each of the 3 products they had narrowed down on was outstanding in their own right. Technically they were all strong, they promised great value, great support and in the end it came down to the volumes of leads and contact data they could provide. One had a thousands, the next had over a million and the last had several million companies and several million contacts. A clear winner. Just one small problem. The company evaluating this lead source has a niche product. Very few of those million companies may be good potential targets when it comes to selling. The product is so specific that the decision makers and contacts who would be able to discuss such a product are people deep inside the organizations so the high level contacts provided by the lead sources may not be very helpful. If it were up to us, we would save that part of the budget and direct it towards actually locating leads within the more focussed set of companies where we know there is potential to sell. The point is when you allocate budget towards lead generation read through all the impressive features and numbers and ask yourself ‘what can I get from this?’ Does it fit in with my plan and requirements? Will it help me generate the kind of leads I’m looking for? If you can find good answers to these, you’re spending your budget wisely. Live up to the “Marketer” and “Salesperson” title! If we end up being sold something we didn’t need… then heaven help those other poor souls in other departments!

No I didn’t come up with that statement, this is what the research firm Gartner has to say. “No matter how much money and effort go into a CRM solution it will only be as good as the data that feeds it”. I just completely agree with them. You will often see large budgets put aside to deploy the latest CRM technology, kept aside to pay the license fee, have administrative staff to manage the solution and maybe some more staff to look into the analytics and reporting for those weekly and monthly presentations. When those presentation figures don’t look so good you start to wonder “Well I’ve been spending so much on this CRM which is supposed to wonders to our sales so why isn’t it working for us?”

Its simple. The results are not about the fancy reports. A well managed CRM can improve your process and efficiency of selling but the end result or output can only be as good as the data that goes into that process. Pricewaterhouse Coopers carried out a survey on poor results and reported that 75% of those surveyed reported significant problems due to defective data. Where you source your CRM data should be just as important as which are the latest CRM add ons you should invest in or how many more report formats can we get, if not more. Add the right target company information, add the right contact information, add the right account intelligence, feed it with precisely what you need, keep the data updated regularly and you can make that CRM work for you!