Reputation to Revenue

Thought leadership IS business development, or at least it can be

In a down economy, investments in thought leadership -- developing and demonstrating unique insights on critical market issues -- tend to fall by the wayside. The focus on the marketing side shifts more heavily toward short-term lead generation and direct sales support. Conventional wisdom suggests that thought leadership and other reputation-building investments generate only a longer term payoff in business development.

Done right, however, thought leadership can actually be one of the most powerful business development initiatives that a B2B company has at its disposal. This is not just a plea for understanding that publishing compelling thought leadership content can inspire incoming leads from prospects that sales folks don't even have on their radar -- although that should indeed happen.

Rather, the very process of developing thought leadership can itself generate new opportunities. Here's how:

First, true thought leadership emerges only from deep collaboration with clients and prospects. Developing a unique and compelling point of view on an important market issue can only come from serious research in the marketplace, from studying and learning from clients in the field and then analyzing findings to discover new and emerging patterns that individual clients themselves often don't see.

Second, engaging your clients in a serious, non-sales discussion about trends in the market, challenges in the business, and priority initiatives to address those challenges is actually the best way to gain insight into what's working, what's not, and what's new.

Consider, then, a simple project designed to create a new point of view and new thought leadership content on, for example, strengthening customer loyalty in the management consulting industry. A typical research approach could include:

• Conducting an online survey with several hundred existing customers and prospects
• Conducting deeper telephone or face-to-face interviews with several dozen of those same customers and prospects
• Convening one or several roundtable discussions with one or more small groups of customers and prospects

Having conducted such research, you're now in good shape to begin your analysis and put together a new point of view based on real insight from the field. The normal course would then be to produce a report, issue a press release, arrange some events and speaking engagements, perhaps highlight the new ideas on your blogs, produce a few podcasts, etc.

All well and good, but now consider the business development opportunity along the way: 

• The research project provides a great, non-sales reason to talk with some of your best clients and prospects
• The conversations provide deep insight into their current thinking and priorities
• The study findings provide a perfect reason to organize a follow-on conversation to review the results

As a result, these conversations can be some of the most productive business development conversations you can have. Precisely because you are not trying to sell anything, but rather to share ideas and collaborate in defining useful new directions, you're providing real value and building trust -- which is the essential condition for any successful discussion of an actual solution you might provide. Seen in this light, thought leadership is not a precursor or alternative to business development, it is part and parcel of an integrated approach to generate high quality opportunities with some of your most important clients and prospects.

Do you agree?  

Photo credit: D'Arcy Norman

But will they come? Supply-side economics for social media

Almost four years ago, AdAge's Bob Garfield wrote a brilliant article on "the marketing industry's coming disaster." Garfield's "chaos scenario" suggested that the digital revolution was surely upon us, but would wreak havoc for years as the old order collapsed, companies made the transition, and agencies struggled to keep up with the demand for new talent and solutions to implement the emerging digital approaches.

Much of this has indeed come to pass, but I now wonder if we're seeing a bit of the opposite problem: too much "talent" and too many "solutions" chasing too few accounts. I'm not questioning the importance of the revolution, or its inevitability. And I know that all sorts of great companies, large and small, are doing cool and successful things with social media. But we're now years into the hype cycle for blogging, podcasting, social networks, Twitter, and the like, and progress is still relatively slow -- with the same business examples constantly trotted out to "prove" the value, and way too many in-group conversations and "research studies" where would-be social media experts are just talking with each other. 

Where are all the clients?

Catherine Taylor noted this almost in passing in her recent report on the OMMA Social conference Monday in San Francisco:

Among clients, social media is lukewarm. Many attendees were surprised, as was I, when my quickie poll from the podium about what kinds of people were in the audience yielded only three or four clients in a room of roughly 300. Agency people made up the vast majority of attendees. Even if my poll allows for some clients not raising their hands -- so as not to be attacked by agencies who want their business all day -- it makes you wonder if agencies have drunk the Kool-Aid, while marketers may not even know it's being served.

I wasn't at that event, but have had the same experience and reaction to all sorts of other events on social media and marketing during the last few years. Supply side economics was all the rage back in the 1980s with the Reagan Administration; build it and they will come. It worked pretty well for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, but not so well in real life.

Maybe it will be different this time?

Photo credit: St A Sh

Marketing, sales, and "digital body language"

Several years back, I put some energy into "solving" the age-old conflict between marketing and sales. Or, at least trying to help clients and member companies in the B2B technology world (I was at ITSMA at the time) think anew about how best to align the two functions and get them working together more effectively. 

The gist of the argument is that global competition and online transparency give buyers the ability to control the buying process far more than ever before. As such, sales is less able to go it alone, and relies more than ever on strong marketing to gain deep market and customer insight, build reputation, provide focused thought leadership content to fuel useful conversation, and build relationships of tangible value. 

We've seen some useful progress across the industry in recent years with marketing and sales playing together more nicely. Account-based marketing is one of the more promising initiatives in this regard, bringing together marketing and sales teams to create a marketing-driven approach to building business with strategic accounts.

But it may be all for naught if companies keep reacting to the current crisis the way they have reacted to downturns in the past: namely, to slash spending on marketing and put all hopes on beefing up sales. 

Marketing blogs and journals are of course filled with warnings about the folly of cutbacks and the historical successes of those companies that stayed the marketing course even amid declining sales. But the marketing cuts keep coming, and I wonder how companies expect to maintain or even increase sales while hacking away at the increasingly essential support systems that make those sales possible.

Steve Woods from Eloqua hit right on this critical point in an interview with Chris Herbert about his new book, Digital Body Language:  

If you look back prior to the information resources of the Internet, people needed to connect with a salesperson to get their information on a product or service. As the salesperson was that conduit, they had an opportunity to read that prospect's body language - crossed arms, smiles, frowns - and understand what messages resonated, and where they were in their decision-making process.

Now that prospective buyers get their information online, they no longer need the salesperson as information conduit. This means that the challenge of reading body language now is on the marketer, who must read their Digital Body Language - what messages they respond to, what information they find interesting - and use that to better guide any communications with them.

The point here is not that companies should cut sales instead of marketing. Rather, it's that they need to keep up the effort to integrate the two in a more collaborative approach that provides real value to potential customers. Now is the time to accelerate the change, not fall back into the old ways that won't work any more.

Taking the time to get it right

The need for speed in the market is little doubted. Businesses are constantly trying to accelerate the pace of innovation, bring products and services to market faster, and, of course, hasten the entire sales cycle.

As in journalism, though, getting it right is just as important as getting it first.

Jeff Kaplan posted a great story on his always interesting THINK IT Services blog yesterday about a large software company preparing a new offering in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market -- about which Jeff is one of the leading experts. 

Bringing major new offers to market is a complicated operation with lots of moving parts, and it is all too common that companies race in with significant shortcomings in one or more of the fundamentals: the customer base is poorly thought through, the value proposition is weak, the launch lacks credibility, the sales force is not ready, etc.

Jeff was rightly impressed in this case both because the company brought him in a full 9-10 months before launch to help educate the sales team, and because they were truly open with the sales folks about the realities of moving in a new direction:

"I was joined in these sessions by company executives who provided candid insights about their SaaS goals, objectives, and even uncertainties. They readily admitted that they are making a 'big bet' on SaaS and still have plenty of piece parts to put in place regarding how the new offerings will be packaged, priced, and positioned.

Their candor was refreshing and rewarded with an enthusiastic response from the sales team which recognizes that times are changing, and they have an opportunity to offer their customers new game-changing SaaS solutions and greater options to meet their corporate objectives."

Executives candid with the sales team? Sales people excited about the new approach? Company working almost a year ahead of launch to get it right? I don't know the details on this one, but I like their chances.

Photo credit: John-Morgan

MIT and the new physics of marketing

Today's New York Times had a fascinating article about changes in teaching introductory physics...which got me thinking about the changes we're working through in marketing.

Like most universities, M.I.T. has traditionally taught introductory physics in large lecture halls. Professors worked for years to hone their lectures like the finest stage performers.

"But now," Sara Rimer explains, "with physicists across the country pushing for universities to do a better job of teaching science, M.I.T. has made a striking change."

"The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning..... Already attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.

M.I.T. is not alone. Other universities are changing their ways, among them Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina State University, the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Harvard. In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning."

So what's the marketing connection?

Marketing, especially for high value business solutions, is becoming more educational than promotional. This is not exactly a news flash; the best business marketers have been working for years to shift from pitching prospective customers on the merits of their products and services to providing insightful and useful information about the business challenges their customers and prospects are facing -- and thereby generating interest and credibility around the solutions they might provide.

To do this well, however, marketing can't just exchange their old-fashioned promotional approach for an old-fashioned lecturing-at-students educational approach. Business buyers today do want to learn about issues, challenges and potential solutions from their would-be suppliers and partners. But they don't just want to listen to you pontificating up on stage. They want to roll up their sleeves, work with their peers, and figure it out together.

So the challenge for marketing, at least in the B2B solutions world, is to take a page from M.I.T.'s book: less large lecture halls, more small seminars; less talking at, more working with. Online and social media tools and channels, of course, make this easier to do. Without a core commitment to "interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning," though, business marketers could be left on stage with declining attendance and an increasing rate of failure.

Photo credit: Nicholasf