Young managers still want to build their career as they have still a long time to go.
Senior managers want to keep their career save as their retirement is nearing (up to 15 years).

Difference in selling due to age

This should reflect in the way you sell to them:
Young managers:
Present the opportunities, possibilities and challenges for your solution.
The risk involved will be balanced against the excitement and possible career growth.
The young manager still wants to prove himself and sees himself still climbing the ladder of hierarchy as nothing will stop him now. Any change can be an opportunity.

Senior managers:
Present the limitation of risk of the solution and trust of your company. The conservatism of your solution could be decisive.
The lesser risk involved in your solution compared to the competitors’ the better as in their view career moves can only be downwards and excitement in work is a memory of the past.
The older manager will avoid all risks as he wants to conserve his current situation as long as possible.
His resistance to change will be big: giving a chance to a youngster with a opportunistic and challenging solution is a danger for his own career.

Set of mind age vs real age

It is not always the real age: some people can obtain the mindset of a  senior manager even before their fortieth birthday (salaries top at 40)and are as conservative as sixty year olds. Whereas others at fifty still have the spirit of someone of thirty-five as they have high hopes for a career over the next 15 years to come. It is all about their set of mind.

Before any cold call or during the initial phase of a sales cycle you should know about the age or the real age of the buyer, decision maker and influencer in order to know how and what part of your proposition will require most focus and interest.
The young manager will want to surpass the senior managers, whereas the senior managers don’t want to give the young managers any opportunity to disrupt their secured career and way of life (into retirement).

How old are your typical buyers or how old is their age mindset?

Marketing is batch processing

Between marketing and the customer there is a wall of data as marketing has the statistics, data about visits, click troughs, email opens, demographics, buyer personae and much more.
Moreover marketing addresses potential customers in a target market segment with generic messages.
There is a time lag between the information received from the market (segment) and the next communication as all the information acquired and aggregated needs to be analyzed first.
Marketing can only guess as they work in isolation building upon data after the events or facts.

Marketing efforts like direct mailing campaigns, email marketing, advertising, Press Releases are all batch processes: create once to distribute to many.

Marketing is still performing batch processing generating generic strategies and messages addressing the generation of ‘Me’ (born in 1970s, 80s or 90s).

Sales is real-time

Salespeople are close to the customer as they communicate, interact directly and meet face-to-face by formulating personalized messages in real-time. So they understand better why people buy the company’s product as they get immediate feedback during the sales process and after the sales – it’s their job.
Salesmen know the customer and the market as they work, live and breathe in this market feeling the pulse.
Sales have always been operating in real-time.

Real-time Marketing is required

What salesmen know marketing can only guess by number crunching and analyzing the data and information aggregated and retrieved.

In this world were all is happening faster than ever before where:
- People are connected to communicate always (‘Always On’)
- Social media generates more messages than ever can be analyzed after wards
- People are used to zap and click away
it is clear marketing is running behind with their systems and methods.
It is about time marketing retrieves, analysis information in real-time in order to respond faster (in near real-time) for keeping up with the rapid changes of markets and people.

As the website has become key in any marketing and sales effort a good start for marketing would be to retrieve specific lead and customer information and intelligence in real-time from the website. Not just analytics and statistical visit data about the website in generic, but actual real-time information and intelligence for every possible company visiting the website.

Marketing is facing the big challenge of change from batch processing generic messages to real-time with personalized messages. Bye-bye statistics.

Will your marketing be able to switch to real-time ?

Common: pay after receiving a service

Most services have a no cure no pay system:
- Advertising: you pay for the ads space or exposure
- Translations: you pay after the text has been translated
- Lunch: you pay after the meal
- Advice/Consulting: you pay after having received an advice or consulting
- Lawyers: even lawyers are paid after their efforts (sometimes partly during)
- Construction: when a predefined project point is reached a payment is made
Software development: long lasting projects have predefined points or predefined parts to be delivered that require a payment.
- …

PR agencies require money upfront

It seems to be common that a PR agency receives a monthly retainer: paying upfront in the hope efforts will be made and those efforts will eventually result in revenue.
Good luck en belief !

Efforts hard to measure
A monthly retainer for services hard to measure:
Moreover measuring their efforts and the results of their efforts a very hard or impossible. Quantifying PR efforts cannot be expressed in hours worked. as one phone call or one accidental meeting with the right person can result in much more brand awareness and sales than hundreds of calls that are ineffective.

Efforts for future results
A monthly retainer for services that only will show results after many months:
The PR agency can impress and influence some influencer, leader or guru. However before this shows up in the revenue months can have passed by as the influencer, leader or guru needs to create his content for messages, distribute the messages, then his audience need to listen and absorb the messages, maybe even spread the messages further in order to result in buying actions.

Spike in interest
A monthly retainer for short lived actions and spike results:
A PR effort can result in a spike of interest. After the spike that even might not result in sales, the interest is back to the level as previously.

Effort quality
A monthly retainer for uncertain quality:
If a service is below the expected or agreed quality, the invoice will not be paid.
How to measure the quality of the efforts of a PR agency ?

No cure no pay PR agency

Just like any other service, a PR agency should work on a No Cure No Pay basis.
Life and business would be harder for PR agencies as they have to carry a certain risk (of not getting paid in case of no results).

Companies would be more interested in hiring a PR agency as the risk of under achieving would be carried by the PR agency.
The problem would be the endless discussions about proving the success of efforts of the PR agency as these results can be spread over a long time.
Just like any other long-term project certain goals could be predefined for allowing partly payments.

What is your deal with your PR agency?
How effective are they?

Brand awareness

In order to boost the awareness of our brand by getting more coverage and links from blogs and media, we have send out a very complete and detailed email explaining our efforts, examples, results and achievements in marketing, media and social media to 25 PR agencies. The PR agencies were a mix of large, medium and small sized that mention to have experience in B2B and are into high tech or Internet.
Additionally we dared to ask for a price indication in order to have an idea of budget.

The PR agency selection

Finding PR agencies
In order to select an PR agency we searched the Internet finding agencies and used some lists to get more agencies.
As it seems to be difficult to find PR agencies online, we started wondering how could they ever advice and help on our findability?

Flash intro website
The companies with a Flash based intro making them slow to open were eliminated immediately.
We can’t believe these companies would do any good to our company.

Websites looking dated
If their website looked dated and hardly professional made then we didn’t address to them as we are not into a back to the future experience.

Vague website content
Instead of clearly stating their services on their website, it seems normal in this industry to vaguely describe the services supplied, the methods used and their ability to deliver.
What, how, when (time) and where they do it is mostly left up to your own imagination.
Additionally you won’t find the price of each of their services on their website. It seems NOT DONE in this business.

Hardly respond on email inquiries
On the 25 PR agencies addressed by email only 7 PR agencies replied.
This indicates that:
- They don’t need business
or
- They don’t like emails with too much information

No content in the reply
Their reply emails were business-like but in the majority of replies they seemed not have read the inquiry email. Hardly any of the reply emails responded to our questions or indicated how they would approach and help solving our issues.
Instead they invited us for a telephone call with one of their important VP’s (making you feel important).

Talk instead of facts
If you are privileged to get a reply, they all want to set-up a telephone call with the very important VP of their company.
Sounds like all their employees are VP’s, except for the one person answering their emails.
Thus instead of replying with facts and figures, they want your time for listening to a sales pitch.

Difficult to get price quotation
You never get a price quotation in the first reply.
Only after asking again they are willing giving you an indication of price. Don’t expect a price list !

Price: monthly retainer
Instead of getting a clear pricing for each of the services that can be provided we got a monthly retainer price which typically starts at $10.000 or $15.000/month. How can one know how much time is spend on your business on this monthly basis ?

Two exceptions:
- In one reply we achieved getting a daily price ($1.500) with any further details of services.
- In another case we received a detailed pricing structure with rather exaggerated prices for efforts we have experience in ourselves.

High monthly price
As their services start at $10,000 or $15,000, one could as well hire a full-time person for your company, who will work everyday at your office.
Again how will you ever know the $10,000 or more will get you at least 20 days of work done for your company?

Public Relation agency: lucrative business

We are convinced running a PR Agency is a lucrative business as it seems a lot of make believe and smoke-and-mirror magic is happening at PR agencies without much engagement and promises of what will exactly be the results.

Public Relation agencies might just fail to earn it.
As a customer you need to trust them (or not) because you don’t know where is the beef and they mainly ask you to show them the money.

Missing proof and trust

Not a single PR Agency proposed for a free trail of their services.
Tom Fishburne writes: PR is called earned media for a reason. You have to earn it. PR Agencies have to earn their customers too.
Instead they want a contract with a monthly fixed fee: a license to print money.

So we decided not to use a PR Agency yet as we missed proof and trust at a much too high price.

What are your experiences with PR Agencies ?
Do you know what you are paying for ?

The Partner Summit Goal

The goal of a Partner Summit is to gather as many partners like distributors, resellers, value added resellers and integrators on one event in order to engage, inform about products and to stimulate sales.
Large efforts and expenses are made to get all partners lodged in the same chic hotel and good food is served to please the partners. Even presents are given at their arrival.

The Partner Summit Agenda – typically

The schedule of a partner meeting day is typically as follows in order to have a flow from vision to execution (being selling aided by marketing):

BREAKFAST
- The introduction by the CEO giving his vision on business
- The CFO telling how good the company is performing and well financed it is.
- The sales pep talk from the VP Sales showing the sales success stories of the company
BREAK
- The CTO giving his vision on technology
- The VP Product Marketing on corporate positioning and product strategy
(The joke: my presentation is the only thing holding you back from lunch)
LUNCH
- The VP Quality or Engineering about production and quality assurance
- The VP Product Management gives overview of the new products
BREAK
- The VP Marketing explains the new marketing plan, program and MDF (Marketing Development Fund)
- The Awards Ceremony for the best partners presented by the CEO and VP Sales.
GALA DINNER: in an exclusive location.

What’s wrong with the typical scheduling ?

The problem with this typical program is that people are already tired of traveling the previous day and the welcome reception (drinks on an empty stomach), the diner at the hotel and the bar of the hotel after dinner. Thus the next morning they start of listening to the more generic and motivational information, then have lunch and more drinks thus by the time the new products are presented in the afternoon the level of attention as slipped to very low – some people will even have fallen asleep.

It is beneficial to propose the vision of the company during the day, but the vision will not generate sales without the products being known. The vision helps to support the products – not visa verso.

The goal agenda

As the new products are probably the most important for the partners to understand, know their positioning or just to remember them because they need to sell these during the coming year. Thus instead of products being presented when conference fatigue is happening in the afternoon, the new product presentation should be presented just after the welcome and introduction by the CEO. When people are still awake and have found a seat in the conference room. Then this presentation would get more attention.

Additionally the marketing presentation at the end of the day should be used to have a repeat of the products liked to their specific marketing efforts and programs in place.

Explaining the new products just after starting the conference day would give the benefit of:
- The partners will still pay attention
- Gives partners ample time to think and to formulate questions during the day to management (feedback)
- Repeat the product overview during the marketing presentation – repeat info stands more chance to be remembered

Repeating items always helps especially if presented by a different person and from a different angle.

Please note: if people take away 3 things of a presentation or even a conference then you are already successful.

When is your next Partner Summit planned?
Is your agenda similar to the typical scheduling ?

Presentation is limiting
In most sales meetings the sales team is expected to give a presentation. This restricts the possible seats on the meeting table for the salesmen as the presenter will need to stand next to the screen and white board and probably needs to manipulate the portable for the presentation.

Windows
Still the game of the windows plays a role:
- taking the seats facing the windows
- occupying the seats with the back to the windows

If you are facing the windows then your opponent can very well see every expression on your face as the light is towards you.
Also, it will be very hard for you to clearly see their faces as you are staring into the light coming from outside.
For the sales team it is best to sit with their back towards the window in order to follow every movement of the body language and emotion of the decision takers, buyers and influencers.

When facing the windows you will get tired quicker and your attention will drop faster as your eyes can start to become itchy.

According to Feng shui you shouldn’t sit with your back to the window unless it’s ‘covered’ by a tall building. But then, since Feng shui originated several 1000 years ago this was probably just to avoid someone shooting an arrow through your heart.

The head of the table
If one of the people in the meeting chooses the head of the table it means he wants to express his power. He is the most important man in the meeting.
As a salesman it is better never to sit at the head of the table as the customer is king.

Face-to-face meetings
If you are alone and meet face-to-face you have three options:
- Facing each other over the table: in case the relationship is very formal
- At the corner with one sitting at the head of the table: the relationship has been build, but decision maker or influencer still wants to show his power
- Side by side: you have a long standing relationship with the customer and exchanging information is much easier.

Where do you sit at the sales meeting?

Business cards and dumb CRM data entry

In business, Sales and Marketing we gather many business cards but we do little with them once received. In the best case after a trade show we send them an email. However in most cases the business card doesn’t become an asset for your company.

Still most companies require you to enter these business cards into the CRM system in order not to lose these contacts acquired on behalf of the company at its’ expenses.
However we all find entering contacts into a CRM a waste of time. We in sales or marketing have something better to do than data entry.
Moreover keeping our contacts to ourselves is a form of job protection.
The more management urges us to enter business cards and contacts into the CRM, the less we will do it. This is probably a natural reaction and protection for survival.
What’s the benefit of entering the email address of a potential customer as he will be spammed during the next email marketing campaign?
We prefer to communicate with him solely when appropriate.

Organizing business card contacts by email

In order to keep track of contacts, the better salesmen send an email to each of them as soon as possible after receiving the business card. This allows them staying in contact with them by sending an appropriate message.
On a next occasion they are able to retrieve the contact by using the search function of their email client.

Organizing automatically with DropBox email

This method can be taken one step further using a drop-box email address of an external system.

Some web service CRM solutions provide a drop-box email address that you use in the ‘BCC:’ when sending an email to your new contact. Automatically the CRM will create a new record for the company and insert the contact linked to the company.
Even the email will get filed in the company folder of the CRM for easy retrieval and knowing the contact history.

The benefits:
- Being organized without effort
- No waste of time for creating the company
- No waste of time for entering the contact detail
- Just sending an email to keep contact
- Contacts are stored by company
- The email details are saved by company
- Easy retrieval of contacts and emails by company

Lacking:
- Only the email details are captured
- Still requiring you to complete the contact information: the address, contact name, title and telephone number.

The biggest benefit is that you organize easily your contacts without the need for dumb data entry.
The salesman loses his protection, but in the end both the salesman and the company will benefit from this simple DropBox system by getting organized without the requirement entering contact data in a CRM.

Do you take the effort to organize your business cards ?

The Internet as virtual trade show

The Internet has become a virtual trade show as buyers and decision makers can find all possible solutions and products.

However the main problem of the website is that the visitors want to remain unknown and incognito on the website of vendors: they are moving around like ghosts.
Knowing who your visitors are is a challenge but feasible.

As people will land on your website using search terms and will look for their points of interest on your website you will be able to determine what products or solutions they are really interested in.
This will allow you to re-target contacts in those visiting companies by sending a relevant email as contacts are provided and their interest is known.

On your website it is rather unlikely they will fill out a form or click to send you an email with a question. Even online chat boxes have very little uptake in B2B although the technology is available and free (open source)

The real virtual expo

The benefit for a decision maker or influencer on a virtual trade show is that products and solutions of an industry are grouped in one place and requires limited amount of search.
The benefit for the exhibitor is to reach out to interested parties that might not be found using the company website.

Real virtual expos require to register before entering the virtual trade show website. Question is if the visitors will give their company address or use a free web mail (hotmail, gmail, aol, yahoo, …) which have little value.

As visitors can wander around from booth to booth, it can be more difficult to identify their needs than on the Internet where they have to make an effort by searching to find your website.

Still you will know the visitors are interested or have a problem to solve as they have taken the effort to register and visit the virtual trade show.
After the show all seemingly interested visitors can be emailed – hopefully with a message relevant to their needs or problems.

Breaking the ice: starting a conversation

The main advantage of a virtual trade show should be that the visitor will pose a question or start a conversation when visiting your virtual booth.
The breaking of the ice and engaging into a conversation should be the main advantage of virtual trade shows.

The conversation might be a greater challenge as not only people do need to click to chat, but your staff needs to be more than a call center operator or an assistant having generic knowledge. Writing down the question to be followed-up is not the idea of a trade show – even a virtual one.

Your experienced staff ‘present’ on the virtual booth needs to consist of employees who are aware and knowledgeable of all solutions presented on the expo. This requires an investment in employees as they need to be available and focused during the entire virtual trade show.
- That can lead to boredom as nothing happens over long periods of time.
- Not just an additional task on top of their normal work as they need to be instantly responding to questions of possible interested visitors.

The virtual trade show is a great concept, but making it successful is quite a challenge and it has to compete with your company website too.

What is your experience of effectiveness of virtual trade shows ?
Did you engage into a conversation ?

The good intention meetings

On trade shows, conventions we have all kinds of positive meetings with possible partners and solution providers about reselling and integration.
Although the meetings are positive and we end the meetings with big or good plans and intentions, and even with actions, three or four months later almost nothing has been realized.
- We have send an email that got replied appropriately.
- We might even have signed an NDA.
However the result in the end in zero in most cases.

Not so good businessmen on trade shows or conferences

- Why do we make all these promises on trade shows and conferences ?
- Why do we waste so much time during these meetings ?
- Why are we seemingly living in a different world far from reality on a conference ?
- Why can’t we be honest a tell already during the meeting there is no interest ?
- Why do we fool ourselves each time ?
- Why do we think the other party will make all the efforts and bring in the sales ?

Is it for ego or status ?
Or just to be busy at trade shows and conventions ?

In most cases we are not good businessmen during trade shows and conventions as we invest time and effort into meetings about projects that probably never will be realized.

How many worthless meetings have you been into on trade shows and conferences ?

The Internet presence and website

Most brick-and-mortar companies consider their website and Internet presence is just an addition to their marketing.
However for most of their possible potential customers the website and Internet presence is primordial as they:
- Find: First they need to find the business
- Solve: Then retrieve information related to their problem that needs to be solved
- Trust: build trust by content provided and general Internet presence
- Convince: Getting persuaded to contact the company or to enter the company on the short list

If your website misses on any of these four, your online presence will be wasted and a large part of your potential customers will never address to you or take your company into consideration for purchase, RFI (Request For Information), or RFP (Request For Pricing).
Less interest or leads generated online means less business than your competitors.

Become an Internet expert

As your website and/or Internet presence needs to achieve these challenges you better be or become an Internet expert as you will need the skills and know-how.

This requires learning, time for learning and exercise for trial and failures.
Take your time to invest well in your knowledge and experience in order to let your business benefit from it as the presence on the Internet and website have become primordial.

How much of an expert on website and Internet presence are you ?