We all have heard and know about the gap between marketing and sales.
Marketing has good intentions by creating awareness and generate leads, whereas sales is blamed not to follow-up on the leads provided.

There is clearly a misunderstanding between either departments or the people of those departments.
- Marketing is paid to create brand awareness and leads.
- Sales are paid to bring in revenue or close deals.

In many cases the leads generated by marketing are not considered serious or valuable enough as sales has had already too many worthless leads from marketing. A waste of time.
Salesmen prefer to get inbound calls or find their own leads.
The gap seems to be ever becoming greater and seems impossible to solve as B2B businesses have been failing on this since almost ever.

Paranormal activity needed ?

It seems that some kind of paranormal activity is needed to bound marketing and sales together as they don’t seem to match up.

The activities of both departments need to be synchronized and adjusted to each other as the current method of working is spilling money, efforts and wasting time.

The real life feedback
For a start marketing people should start their job in sales first in order to learn about the real business and real customers. If someone just stays within the sophisticated well pampered boundaries of Marketing, he will never get confronted with real life: the real struggle of salesmen facing the customers or chasing leads.

The recurrent feedback
Next salesmen should be able to give feedback on the leads generated by marketing and the effectiveness of those generated leads.
How many actually become customer and why and where they exit the funnel?

The interest level feedback
Sales should not only give feedback on the lost leads or customers, but as they are feeling the pulse of the market every day, they should give feedback on changes or trends the encounter or see in the market with their customers and leads.

The feedback on marketing efforts
Marketing can claim great results with their statistics about their successful marketing campaigns; however these are company/market wide statistical data.
Sales should have the opportunity to give feedback on how leads and customers respond to these marketing campaigns. How did they react upon marketing efforts? What was the perception?
As long as Marketing keeps on believing their statistics and analytics, Marketing can retain its’ self-fulfilling prophecy.

Marketing should serve Sales like a customer

In the end Marketing should server its’ customer that is Sales (and the Salesmen) and not the CEO or Board of Directors as they are far away from real life.

No paranormal activity needed between Sales and Marketing, just sales providing the right feedback and Marketing listening and learning from Sales.

How many times have you been able to give feedback to your marketing ?
Was it effective ?

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If you want to score quickly using social media in B2B or B2C, forget about it. It won’t happen!

In social media marketing blogging is the most used channel.
In the past people just started a blog and hoped to get readers and subscribers.
However social media like blogging, micro blogging or even just posting comments is almost like creating a complete product that requires market research, then it needs to be designed, developed, marketed, deployed and “sold”.

The goal:
Before starting anything the goal(s) need to be set and defined.

The market research:
The market research: what do your customers or leads want to read?
What is your market target? Market segment?

The design:
The concept: what are the subjects or topics?
The format: blogging, micro blogging or posting comments

The development:
The packaging: the layout, colors and fonts used
The type of illustrations or images to be used.
The setup of the RSS feed.

The production:
The daily content generation.
This is the real operational work.

The marketing:
Without any marketing the blog or micro blog will not be read.
- You need to submit your RSS-feed to all possible feed websites.
- Advertising
- Emailing
- Commenting on other blogs
- Getting links for your posts from other blogs
- Writing guest blog posts
- Getting other people to write on your blog

The goal is to build a group of followers or a community that follows your blog or micro blog.

The sales:
This is the final goal: generating traffic that brings interest for the advertising on your blog (page views and clicks) or your product (selling).

A blog is not just something you start and hope it becomes successful. As with any other product or service it needs to be designed, conceived and created with the end goal in mind.
Blogging into the wild will not lead to your goal.

How is your blogging going?

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Do you know where your leads and customers are coming from?
How did they find your company or products?
How did they end up contacting your salesmen or sales team?
What was the first contact or who established the first contact?

You should ask your salesmen, sales team and marketing how leads have really found your company or products.
Asking leads and customers directly would even be better.

The CEO prejudice of leads origin
Most CEO’s and managers make many assumptions and take for granted what they believe is the truth. They have a certain prejudice: like they believe leads are generated on trade shows or by print advertising.
The only way to find out is to ask how they found your company or how they became aware of your products.
You need to register the origin of leads.
If you don’t measure you will not know.

Statistic analysis of marketing channels
Not knowing the origin of your leads, means you will be wasting time, money and effort on channels that don’t or hardly bring revenue.
The number of leads and customers a company has is limited, hence it should be feasible to review or ask every single one of them in order to make a statistic.

The ration of the amount of money spent on a marketing channel, events or efforts over the number of leads generated or customers acquired will show the best lead generation method for your company.

The lost leads analysis of your funnel
As a matter of fact the analysis should be taken one step further: why or what was the reason the leads left the funnel? Why did you loose those leads?
Again this should be grouped by lead source of marketing channel in order to find out when and where the biggest churn happens and the marketing channel that is the least successful in the sales process.

What holds you back not investigating in the origin of leads?
And where they left your funnel?

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When product management or company management is convinced they need a “Me too” product or solution, the company is doomed for failure.

In most cases most businesses or companies have one product or solution that generates the most revenue and the most profit.
In order to:
- Expand into other parts of the market or business
- Shield off competitors entering the customers
- Protect a part of the market
Decision makers will decide to resell or develop a “Me too” product or solution.

The “Me too” problems

The problem is multiple:
- Motivation can be or will be low due to lack of inspiration
- Engineering development time will be invested
- Purchase time will be spend on searching vendors
- Support needs to know the product requiring training
- Service needs to serve more products requiring training
- Product management needs to create supporting content
- Marketing spending is needed to promote it
- Sales needs to be trained to sell the product
- Partnerships will have a time to get partners supporting it
- Business development will seek new business opportunities that are likely not interested.
- Administration will have additional overhead costs due to the new product or solution

The management reaction increasing the spending

After one or two years being in business with the “Me too”, company management or the Board of Directors will match or compare the results with the profits realized with the main product or solution. The conclusion will be negative.
Management will urge to sell more of the “Me too” in order to recoup their investments, which will lead to:
- Public Relations will send out press releases that generate no real interest.
- Marketing will set up pointless campaigns to promote the “Me too”
- Lead generation will demand lots of efforts without much response
- Sales people will put much effort in it without much success.
- Partnerships will waste time to convince partners to support the “Me too”
- Business development will engage into conversations with companies for non-existent or non-feasible opportunities.

As capacity is a limited source in any company this is double waste of time and money as all people involved could have been working for the successful product or solution instead.
Focus is what counts in sales, marketing, partnerships and business development. There is no time to waste and competition is fierce even for a market leader.

In only a few cases the “Me too” will serve its’ purpose: keep competitors out of the customers. Even in those cases the ”Me too” will probably not be really profitable itself.

Thus once the company has made the decision to have a “Me too” the result to expect is a death spiral.

Innovate instead

Instead of creating, developing, marketing, lead generating and selling a “Me too” product, a company should try to develop an innovative product that the market really wants and is a leap forward using new technologies or a new approach.
In that case your company has a story to tell to the market.

How many “Me too” have you been through in your career ?
Has any been successful ?

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Initially the main goals of conferences are to learn about new methods and techniques from colleagues and vendors and allowing you to reach out the experts in the matters in one location.

However for anyone in sales the content of the conference can be of a lesser importance as the main purpose of any salesman is selling.

What are the ideal characteristics of a conference for a salesman?
1.   Networking possibilities: the more the better
2.   Enough professional attendees
3.   Not too much people as you will have problems selecting and meeting with all of them
4.   Big tags in order to read company and name allowing selecting people and addressing with appropriate question.
5.   Walking lunch and dinner: sitting at a table is a waste of time as you can only address 3 to 4 people around you.
6.   Enjoyable environment: dark rooms and lobbies will sell less good
7.   Boring speakers can be a benefit as you could have more people to grab in the patio.
8.   Too boring speakers and they all go elsewhere (shopping?)
9.   No Wifi as else people on their portable will not be approcheable for a conversation
10. No Internet access booth in order to have people open for a conversation instead of waiting silently in lines
11. Things to complain about so it is easier to open a conversation
12. Reasonably priced else only a very select number of people will show up
13. Not near by a shopping centre in order to have people stay
14. Rain or freezing cold in order to have the attendance stay
15. Limited number of Vendors – if the number of vendors out number the others there is no lead generation possible.
16. Just long enough coffee breaks (15min) in order to have people stay on the conference or lobby (not hotel room)
17. Frequent coffee breaks (2 in the morning – 1 in the afternoon)
18. No heavy lunch: else people fall asleep in the conference room
19. Limited wine supply during lunch: if tipsy or drunk they don’t remember you or what you were trying to sell
20. Capability of stealing the attendee list before your competitor steals the list.
21. The dinner is a special environment in order to have the complete venue joining this event
22. The less people know each other the better: as salesmen you can talk to all
23. No adjacent trade show as it draws the attention to the trade show boots
24. No major sports event happening as people will watch the sports on TV-sets instead.
25. No major world crisis as it affects everybody and draws the attention to: TV, Internet, newspapers

Do you have any other suggestions or requirements on your conference whish list?

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Outbound marketing decay

With Direct Marketing response rates dropping to a historic low and with success rates in the low single digits, Paul Dunay describes in his blog post the changes that are likely to happen from outbound to inbound marketing.

Many leading indicators are there like:
- The large quantities of spam
- The high number of newsletters received every day
- The attention grabbing email subjects
- The people that don’t read emails anymore.

The shift is likely to happen as people:
- Do search the Internet for solutions
- Do search the Internet for references
- Do try to find an independent opinion on the Internet
- Do read blogs for new ideas
The question is when will this shift happen?

The tipping point

Just like consumers, management will keep using proven systems for a while, even when they are not successful anymore. Then they will swiftly change to a new method dropping the traditional methods.

People still might send out 3 or 4 more email marketing campaigns, but if the response rate is simply to low, then new solutions need to be implemented, tried and tested.
Once a product or a method no longer proves to be successful, it is being dumped almost immediately as the return on investment is no longer there.

The change from Outbound to Inbound Marketing is upon us.
The question is just when it will happen and will it happen on a large scale across industries and geographies?

Shifts can happen quickly and can be disruptive for the market and catastrophic for the vendors involved.

Inbound marketing is here to stay

Paul Dunay is also convinced that given the pervasive nature of the Internet the balance of power has shifted towards the customer or prospect indefinitely – which means we will be in a period of Inbound Marketing for a very long time.
Inbound marketing is here to stay as attitudes and methods of work have definitely changed.
People don’t want to be driven or presented to a solution as nowadays they want to find and explore it themselves.

Is your marketing prepared?
If not consult this: LEADSExplorer.

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IKEA is a company that dares to experiment with Social Media Marketing: they took a walk on the wild side with social media marketing during the autumn of 2009:

Platform used: Facebook
Attributes: pictures – images and pictures help to engage people
Engagement: contest – the first person that tagged the picture won
Their friends noticed the win of their friend and spread the news.
More pictures were demanded.
Pictures spread to thousands of people promoting IKEA.

Of course this is consumer social media marketing for a giant retail store.

Could anything similar be applied to BtoB using one of the typical business social websites like:
LinkedIn (US)
Ecademy (UK)
Viadeo (FR)
Xing (GE)
as a platform using the existing functions?
Engage the members by offering something related to your business services.

At the end of any recession changes will be happening as this is a new start, thus in order to anticipate:
Take a walk on the wild side using social media marketing now!

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Interruptive marketing gets blocked
Technology gets ever better in blocking out content that we don’t want:
- TV recorders jump the commercial breaks
- Spam filters filter out spam messages
- Browsers have plug-ins that filter out ads

People also get better in filtering out messages we don’t want to see:
- People zap commercial breaks
- People scan over or ignore a online advertising
- People don’t click on online advertising
- People don’t open email marketing messages

Thus a large part of advertising money is being spent without any influence or without influencing the target market and the clickers are not belonging to the intended target groups.
The Natural Born Clickers: 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks
All of the clicks for all the ads online come from only 16% of the surfers.

Content marketing: Content nurturing spots instead of fishing nets
This is the change from interruptive marketing into content marketing.
People will look and search for interesting content or content that suits their current need or interest.

Instead of setting out fishing nets as with advertising, content marketing is quite different as you set out many nurturing spots in many places with the hope of attracting the fresh fish that will eventually land into your trap by paying attention to your proposition.
The content marketing has one big advantage in case your content gets duplicated and distributed as if your food at the nurturing spot was distributed freely by the visiting fish.

Social marketing: beyond your controlled environment
Advertising, advertorials and the company website are all controlled environments.
As the prey is now blocking and ignoring your advertising your marketing has to mingle amongst the people in the social marketing – even for BtoB.
This is stepping out of controlled and safe environments that just required money and somewhat creation.
Now you need mainly creativity and inspiration to reach your target customers.
Still social marketing will not solve your marketing problems as it is only a part of the complete picture..

Take advantage when the rules of the game change
People block your advertising, then you need to adapt and change. Else your company will be extinct: the natural selection of Darwin (‘The survival of the fittest’) will be applied.

The rules of the game have changed and companies need to take advantage of this change.
Instead of interruptive marketing, content marketing and social marketing is here to stay.
One of the main problems with content and social marketing is to know who the visitor is as you cannot ask his ID.
Previously with advertising or emailing campaigns more was known about the targeted interested party. This implies and requires new solutions to find out about your visiting fish.

How effective is your advertising lately?
How much of your advertising actually reaches your target market?

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As companies disappear by mergers, acquisitions or by bankruptcy, your CRM becomes a data base with incorrect data.
Additionally people do change jobs and even change companies.
The data in the CRM is aging everyday as everyday changes happen in your market with your customers and potential customers.

Failing email campaigns, direct mailings and telemarketing campaigns

Due to the fact the decision makers have long gone:
- The great email campaign you had planned has many undelivered messages: no results.
- The planned event gathers only a few participants as your direct mailing campaign failed to reach the people.
- The telemarketing campaign returned less than expected results.

Keeping you CRM data base recent is a challenge: an up-to-date customer and prospect data base is a mirage:
- Impossible to achieve
- Aimed at by every one
- Failed to reach by every one as it is far away

The maintenance costs involved for regular updates are hughe and recurrent.

Search Engines and Social Media as source

The sources that are most up-to-date will be the search engines and the social business websites (like LinkedIn, Viadeo, Xing, ecademy, Rize, Social Business Club) as people can have a personal reason or benefit to declare their change in their career. However many will not update their career information if they didn’t find a suiting job.

As always keeping any data base synchronized with the changes in the real world is almost impossible. However every company tries to achieve this with their CRM.
The same applies for external sources providing contact data: they face the massive task to keep their data base correct for more than just your market or customers.

Maybe it is better to rely upon the search engines or social websites that get updated by the persons involved themselves.

How up-to-date is your CRM?
Or did you just stop to keep it recent?

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The main goal for most people to be on LinkedIn is to be findable by a Head Hunter or the Human Resources Director of a company in case:
- A new career opportunity would present itself
- People who are really looking for a new job
Thus job seekers or people open for new jobs and headhunters.
Some people create their page just for their own ego or in order not to be lagging behind.

Whatever reason of registering on LinkedIn, the data base has become a good source for contacts. More and more LinkedIn gets used to find contacts within companies for lead generation and even customer retention as new contacts can be identified. LinkedIn gives even insight in the organizational structure of the company as people post their titles or functions in their company.

LinkedIn gives you fast access to the names of several people in a company with their function and department.

Decision makers and influencers on LinkedIn

As most of the 45 million people on LinkedIn:
- Are male
- Have an above average degree
- Are part of the middle, senior management or are even executives
- Are business decision makers in 50% of the cases
- Are from different industries
  (with a bias to information technology and telecoms)
- People from North America and Western Europe
   Not limited to the US like other contact data base sites.
These demographics make the LinkedIn population extremely interesting for approaching as new contacts within companies.

Using LinkedIn for lead generation

There are several methods to use LinkedIn in the process of lead generation:
- The short cut
- The networking

The short cut method:
You can find names of people in companies by:
- Logging in to LinkedIn and search
- Google a company name
You can use these names found to address them directly by calling or emailing in the hope to create interest.

Although this seems an apparently great solution, there are some problems with it.
Even though you can inquire about the company and estimate the potential interest in the products you are selling, you are not sure about their interest.
Once you have defined the best possible contact within LinkedIn for a certain company, you need to have an interesting proposition to make to them in order to generate interest.

Wouldn’t it be better if you would only address companies that have showed interest in one or more of your products by visiting your website and then try finding the best contact within the company that you can address with the most appropriate proposition?

The networking method:
In order to exploit the possibilities on LinkedIn more effectively for lead generation and contact finding:
- Sign-up and post your profile on LinkedIn
- Find groups and join industry groups on LinkedIn that relate to your business
- Answer questions without having a sales pitch for your products
- Post content in these groups to build credibility
- Ask questions in order to get conversation going with other members
- Invest time and effort
- Build relationships and network

The main challenge is:
To turn the online relationship conversation into a sales conversation without killing the relation.

 
The short cut can work if you know about the needs or interests of the company. If you are not aware about these, then you are shooting in the dark: just like email campaigns or cold calling.

The networking method is probably the best but will consume time and requires patience and creativity for content or to pose interesting questions.
As you have built a relationship, chances are this will last longer than the hit and run approach of the short cut.

How do you use LinkedIn?

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