The primer sales handbook written by Joseph H. Crane, the brother-in-law of John Henry Patterson of NCR, describes the sales process in 4 steps:
- Approach: helping the businessman for increasing the profits
- Proposition: describing the product and the benefits
- Demonstration: actually demonstrating the product
- Close: a number of closing techniques were presented

The approach:
Content marketing might just have replaced the salesman in this part of the sales cycle.
The salesman can still try to help the customer but most of the answers will have been answered already.

The proposition:
Long before the salesman has a meeting with the prospect, the influencers and decision makers have visited the website and know all about the product and solution.
Instead of the salesman proposing the product, the probable buyers will query the salesman on issues and matters about the proposed solution. With a bit of bad luck the inquirers will know more about a specific product than the poor salesman with many products to sell.

The demonstration:
A lot of B2B products are very hard to demonstrate as the set-up or installation is far to complex and costly.
A video or screen cast can replace the demonstration, but again the salesman is not required.

The closing:
Although during all the previous the salesman is hardly involved or required, but for the closing the salesman is irreplaceable as he brings a part of trust. He needs to take away the risks involved in the purchase. Let’s just hope he didn’t screw it in the proposition stage by knowing less about the proposed solution than his inquirers.

Measuring trade show effectiveness using CRM

Measuring the effectiveness of a trade show is more difficult than you would expect.
With all the CRM technology available, it is possible to follow-up and tracing the contacts encountered at the trade show with the goal of trying tracking if the company ever becomes a customer.

However, the days are over when the Founder/CEO came to the trade show and after visiting a few booths and watching a few demos he made his decision. The B2b sales cycle has become much longer and complex.

Still in a few cases the influencer or decision maker for a certain project will be at the trade show. In most cases however the person spoken on the trade show needs to pass on the information and give the contact details of the influencers and decision makers making your lead generating journey less certain.

The true source of leads

It is possible the source of your lead at this company is not related to the trade show encounter as your company will advertise, send out email campaigns, employees will visit the company website and any salesman can cold call upon this company for any good reason not related to the trade show.
The problem lies in the fact the trade show is not the sole effort towards the target market group as the companies in this industry segment will be exposed to several different marketing and sales efforts.
The longer your sales cycle and the more marketing and sales efforts are executed over time, the less clear the source of the lead and customer will be: trade show or not.

Fooling management with a dinosaur

As the trade fair project has been created in the CRM, the salesmen will (should) add on the new contacts from different sources as required by company management. In the end it appears as if the trade show was the origin of the customer as they all fall under the trade show project.

The sales people will know, marketing might know, but management will have no clue and still think the trade show was the source of the leads and thus effective.

In the end it might turn out the trade show is not that effective at all and rather expensive (if not the most expensive) per lead generated or customer acquired.

Could it be that trade shows are dinosaurs of the past that are still kept alive because of tradition ?

Does your company participate at trade shows ?
Any idea how effective trade fairs are ?

Most consultants, advisers and bloggers discuss and point out that marketing and sales don’t cooperate well. The question is what is the role of marketing? What is the task of marketing? What is the goal of marketing?

Marketing classification

1. Long term Marketing
Marketing looks into the future and tries to discover and define new trends and needs in the market.
In this case marketing has nothing to do with day-by-day operations.

2. Brand marketing
Instead of proposing products or solutions to the market, marketing is solely interested in bringing and generating brand awareness.
In this case marketing is not involved in day-to-day operations.

3. Attention marketing
Marketing tries to attract the attention of potential customers by advertising, content marketing, social media and blogging.
In this case marketing is not involved in day-to-day operations but in order to prove it’s success and usefulness marketing will probably try to capture the leads and hand them over to sales – then marketing becomes involved in day-to-day operations.

4. Nurturing marketing
Marketing tries to build-up a relationship or keep the attention from suspects and leads by sending interesting information by a newsletter or emails.
Although it will require patience for generating any success, this nurturing is pretty close to day-by-day operations as any time the suspect or lead can become a prospect and marketing will get involved into the sales cycle before handing over the prospect to the sales team.

5. Lead generation marketing
Marketing engages to generate leads by marketing campaigns and qualify leads that then are passed on to Sales. Sales only needs to execute and follow-up in order to get the deal closed.
In this case marketing is involved in day-by-day operations.

Future vision vs day-by-day myopia

As soon as marketing gets involved into day-by-day operations their long term view and long term goals will become neglected because the lead generation or lead acquisition is too much related to sales and thus to the immediate benefit for the company.

Short term vision and goals for marketing will have a negative impact on the business of the company in the long run as the long term view and trend spotting are to be overlooked by the day-by-day operations causing myopia (short-sightedness) for the management and the entire company.

The day-by-day operations like advertising, content marketing and lead generation should be executed by the sales team as these are directly related to their goals.
Marketing has more important goals without short terms operational issues standing in its’ way.

Will the real marketing without myopia please stand up ?
There is a lot of important work to do for marketing without the need for lead generation and no requirement for marketing and sales to cooperate seamlessly as they both should work on a different time horizon.

What kind of marketing your company has ?

After having gone through the entire sales cycle and making the first price quotation, your possible customer will start asking questions and discussing all possible matters when it comes to this price quotation. All reasons and means are good in order to get a discount, a supplementary discount or a lower price as they will claim to have less requirements or require a special treatment because they are important, relevant for the market or short on budget.

The salesman needs to endure all of this and needs to come up with the suiting answers that will explain and convince the probable customer and at the same time not to upset him.

People can ask a zillion questions regarding items and matters that relate to pricing with the sole goal to obtain a lower price.
For each question posed the salesman needs to answer appropriately for which in many cases he needs the help from the sales engineer, support, development or even R&D as people will spin around items and matters in order to formulate the questions. They will even pose the same question differently several times.
And apparently the possible customers don’t understand it.

This is what salesmen endure in each complex sales cycle in B2B before getting the deal closed.
Poor salesmen.

In order to solve this pricing questioning:
- Have a very complex pricing structure they will not understand and thus no questions can be formulated.
- Have a very simple pricing model where the potential customer knows or decides upon all parameters.

How difficult are your customers when it comes to pricing ?

The idea behind OEM is that:
- A producer or developer of a solution can reach an unreachable sales geography or market
- A vendor can quickly supply the market with a new product or complete his offering

In reality things are a bit different.
For the vendor:
If there is really a need or demand then developing the solution would be a better option as:
- The supplier can get acquired by a larger competitor who will stop the contract immediately.
- The supplier can move into the geography after the vendor has established enough customers to prove there is a market.
- By putting the own logo on the product the liability shifts

For the producer:
Relying on a third party to sell your products under OEM:
- How to be sure sufficient marketing and sales effort are being done by them?
- Can it be the OEM is just to complete the offering but not to sell it actually?
- The buyer can easily change suppliers
- In case of acquisition the OEM contracts can be a hurdle for the acquirer

Setting-up or growing your business as an OEM is not an easy business.

Did you ever sold OEM products ?
Encountered any problems

Companies try to lure the consumer into buying with special deals apparently beneficial for the buyer.

- Zero interest for a credit
- Smart phones for the price of entry level phones with (expensive) contracts
- Bargains available for a limited amount of time
- Loyalty cards that don’t really bring a real benefit (like most air mile systems)

Are these type of methods to make consumers buy also feasible for businessmen, founders and CxO’s? In the end these people are also consumers and if they see a real benefit for their company (or themselves) they might just buy.
The only hurdle is the requirement to produce the order and get the purchase order send out.

Is this why in larger companies purchase procedures exist that require to ask for prices from different vendors?

The commission bonus system is intended to drive salesmen sell more. This puts pressure upon sales reps in order to close as many or as big deals possible. More sales = more money. And who wouldn’t want to earn more money?

Pressure results in stress and stress can have a negative effect on behavior and work.
The pressure to score by closing deals implies the salesman will try to close any deal: both good or bad for the company. In the long run this can even have a negative effect as a bad sales will linger through the market and the customer is less likely to deal with the company again.

Moreover as the salesman is only interested in the commission he will care little about after sales issues.

Maybe a commission bonus system increases the sales level, but in the long run it can result in decreasing sales due to unhappy customers.

Would you sell less if you weren’t on a commission bonus system?

When people start an online search they can have different intentions with different implications for your website:

1. Craving information
These people are searching for information to solve a problem or to learn about certain solutions or products.

In this case your website should provide interesting information and try to establish you or your company as knowledgeable on the matter.

2. Accidental
People search on the Internet for all kinds of reasons. During these searches different kinds of results show up, not always in line with the intentions of the search.

Still the information provided should be interesting enough or sparkle a second thought in order to make your product remember as the time is not ripe for purchase but the branding is all important.

3. Competitor comparison
People like to compare solutions before they buy in order to ensure they will take the right decision and won’t regret it later on.

In this case your web page needs to present compelling information and if possible references that will make the visitor wonder if they have selected the best solution.

4. Direct
The surfer is looking for a specific product or company and as such uses the brand name in the search.
Somehow your marketing has succeeded in having enough brand recognition to have your brand name used as direct search for more or specific information on the product or solution you provide.

Instead of generic information on the matter or problem the web page shown should present detailed and useful information for the visitor in order to stimulate his buying intentions or to engage into a conversation.
These pages should convince that you provide the best or most suited solution for the price to be paid.

5. Transactional
At the end of the buying cycle people have made their decision and want to buy.

If they need a sales contact then your contact page should be easily accessible presenting multiple ways to contact your sales team: telephone, email, online chat and even a fax number.

If you have an online web shop then this needs to be functional and easy to use.
The required product should be selected without any hassle and the payment should flow without any hurdle or surprise.

For each type of search a different web page should be presented in the Search Engine Result Pages. The problem is you are not in the position to know which page will pop-up in what search. You can tweak and tune it by using different keywords (like from your competitor) and SEO but still nothing is predictable.

Best you can do is study the keywords used to reach each individual page and try to imagine which kind of searcher is reading your page. But be careful when tweaking too much because it could have an impact on the page’s position in the search engine results!

Marketing campaign promoting the booth

As exhibiting at a trade show is very expensive and has a high cost per lead, your VP Marketing will want and needs to proof the event is a success.
In order to make a participation at a trade show successful, typically the VP Marketing will set up a marketing campaign:
- Sending out an email campaign
- Post printed postcards
- Outbound calling suspect, prospects and customers
- Mention the exhibition on their social media websites (blog, Facebook, LinkedIn calendar)
- Display the event on the website
- Advertise in trade publications
- Even offer free entrance tickets after registration (handling will drive up the cost)
- Press release of new product(s)

This will increase the marketing expenses and the total cost of the trade show, making the cost per real lead acquired on the booth even higher.

Promoting for your competitors ?

These activities will surely drive more visitors to the company booth on the trade show but also to the booths of the competitors. So in the end your VP Marketing has been promoting your competitors and is spending money for more or less giving away prospects and customers to the competitors.

The reason for participating at a trade show is to encounter new people from non-customer companies, get their contact details in order to nurture for setting an appointment later.
It should be the task of the trade show organization to attract the targeted audience, not of the exhibitors to attract interested parties.

From all the pre-promoting trade show activities:
- The press release of the new product(s)
- The mentioning on the website and social media
are to be retained as they can generate interest from yet to be found suspects and are not costly.

Your company is already spending large amounts of money on any trade show, why then spend even more for promoting it and allowing your competitors to reach out to your prospects ?

Would you ever set-up an add that syas: “Look at our competitors here ?”
Probably not – still your VP marketing is doing it for any trade show.

B2B Viral video

Having the video about a B2B product go viral is the dream of all marketers and CEO’s.
Time and money are being spend on the video that will make the product know to all.

Your video will need something catchy or remarkable in order to stand out from the crowd as the competition for attention is huge and your company is relatively unknown in this world.
People share video’s that go viral amongst friends, not specifically with colleagues or peers. It are just those peers in other companies you need in order to spread beyond company walls.

Missing target audience

Viral means the video link is being forwarded massively. Massive participation means you are addressing a large part of the Internet population which is not exactly your target audience for a video promoting a B2B product.

Even if your video goes viral for one reason or another, it might not reach your target audience.
Going viral is probably limited to B2C in most cases.

have you ever experienced a viral B2B video lately ?