by Bill Poole | Nov 10, 2020 | EOS, Marketing
Smart companies that use EOS® incorporate values to guide strategy and people decisions. Values also provide a foundation for effective marketing and sales.
1. Allow Your Values To Refine Your Ideal Client Profile
There are 7.8 billion people on the planet. There are hundreds of millions of businesses. Not all of these people and companies are a great fit for your business.
You use your values to choose and evaluate employees. Why not use your values to define your Ideal Client Profile? Will you sell to companies that don’t align with every single one of your values. Practically speaking, the answer is yes. However, when you are deciding who to target, why not target companies that align with your values?
Ultimately your team will be happier serving clients that align with their values. Your clients will be happier as well, leading to long term relationships, less friction, and lower costs.
As we lead our clients through Revenue Growth Planning Workshops we help them define their Ideal Client Profile. Some of this profile is demographic such as company size, industry, or geography. Perhaps the most important part is psychographic. Part of that psychographic profile can include your company values.
2. Integrate Your Values Throughout Your Messaging
Read most corporate messaging and you’ll discover what I like to call business buzzword soup. Here’s an example of buzzword soup from a technology company: “We help companies maximize their efficiency while reducing expenses and strengthening cybersecurity.” Is this statement true? Sure. Does it resonate with clients and prospects? Nope. It’s corporate white noise.
What if you could restate your core message using the language and spirit of your values. For example, let’s say the above company’s values were trust and teamwork. They might say:
- “Trust is the bedrock of business success. When your business is hacked by cybercriminals, you risk losing more than revenue from lost productivity or ransom payments, you risk losing the trust of your customers. That’s why we’re committed to protecting your greatest asset: the trust of your customers.”
- “Teamwork does make the dream work. However, it’s hard to work as a team when you don’t have the tools to communicate. That’s why our clients enjoy the way we empower their teams with technology that empowers teamwork. Then, we back it up with the support of our team.”
The two examples above said exactly the same thing as the corporate buzzword soup. They just presented the message in the context of values.
3. Use Your Values to Refine Your Client Experience
The authors of The Experience Economy make the case that client experience is the most untapped source of value and competitive advantage. What’s it like to be your client? How could you change your client experience to more closely reflect your company values?
At Convergo, one of our core values is “fun”. We believe that as we are working to help our clients grow, the process of business should be enjoyable. This value informs our hiring decisions. It also permeates our team meetings. It also shapes our client experience.
As we continually improve the stages of our Ideal Client Experience, we are asking ourselves, “How could we make this more fun for us and for our clients?” Just asking this question is fun.
As we enhance our client experience, we are doing it in a way that aligns with our core values. In addition to fun, our other core values are learning and transparency. We continue to incorporate learning experiences into the stages of our client experience. Throughout our client experience, we look for ways to demonstrate transparency.
Your company values can define and improve your marketing and sales. As you weave your values into your Ideal Client Profile, message, and Ideal Client Experience, the values come to life for both your team and your clients.
by Bill Poole | Nov 9, 2020 | Marketing
My wife and I were just discussing what we might do for fun next summer. The possibilities are endless! We might go to the mountains, music festivals, mountain biking or the beach to name a few. Figuring out where to spend/allocate/invest time or money is something that people and businesses do every day. Cost is definitely a factor, but where to go for a fun summer vacation is a fun, emotion-based decision. There is an element of emotion behind many business decisions as well, but logic comes into play more than a personal decision to take a summer vacation. Business owners know they need to invest in marketing, but they struggle to bring logic into that particular decision. They know they need to invest in marketing, but usually are asking themselves:
- How do I go about it?
- Where do I invest the money?
- How much should I spend on marketing?
All of these questions will be answered here, but let’s look at the last one in particular. The SBA suggests:
“As a general rule, small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should allocate 7-8 percent of their revenues to marketing…If your margins are lower than this, then you might consider eating more of the costs of doing business by lowering your overall margins and allocating additional spending to marketing.”
All of the questions are really related though. From a logical standpoint, one of the consistent challenges is understanding the return on your marketing investment. The SBA quote above talks about “allocating” money towards marketing. To me, “allocating” money doesn’t really imply any sort of return on your marketing spend. Let’s reframe allocating and spending and call it investing. The concept of investing implies there is some sort of positive return for the business, which should be at least a bit more comforting for business owners. Let’s look at 3 considerations of an investment in marketing:
- What areas of your business does marketing impact?
- How does your investment in marketing impact your sales team?
- Are the marketing metrics that you track tied to your business goals?
What areas of your business does marketing impact?
Typically when contemplating investment in marketing, the main consideration is lead generation. When done properly, marketing moves the needle not only for generating leads for net-new business, but also for expanding your share of wallet with your existing client base. You may be asking, what role does marketing have in selling more to my current client base? Isn’t that what the account management team is for. The primary ingredient in any marketing plan is content. Content can and should be used throughout your entire ideal client life cycle. Looking a bit closer, here is how content impacts the client experience:
- Connect and gain some initial trust from prospects that have problems that you are good at helping to solve
- Reduce friction through your sales cycles and entire client experience by answering the questions that your clients have along the way
- Communicate use cases and success stories of the outcomes that your clients realize through engaging with your business, opening your clients’ eyes as to additional ways that you can help them
You may be thinking that it is very challenging to measure the impact of this. More on that in a bit!
How does your investment in marketing impact your sales team?
Sales and marketing departments are traditionally misaligned. Interestingly, they have the same goals in mind and they work for the same company. Something’s wrong with this picture, right? When sales and marketing teams are working together, the content that marketing creates should be intensely connected with your ideal clients and the efficiency of your sales team in closing business should be dramatically improved. Having spent the initial part of my professional career as a sales rep, I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent creating the perfect email to go to a prospect to convey the message that would most certainly turn them into a client shortly after I pressed send. Imagine your sales reps having content centrally available to support about anything that they would need to communicate with prospects and clients. An eye-opening point is that sales efficiency can be the biggest return that you might receive on your investment in marketing. In addition, the burden of creating this messaging does not fall upon the sales rep which makes them a lot happier! Once again, it is hard to have a vehicle to measure sales efficiency. Let’s look at that next.
Are the marketing metrics that you track tied to your business goals?
We are currently working with a company to develop a revenue growth strategy that came to us with a story that we hear all too often. They were working with a marketing company, but they are not really sure if the marketing company is doing a good job. The marketing company was very active, and was sharing reports that’s substantiated their work, but they were confused and couldn’t tell if it was actually making an effect on their business. The reason we often hear this is that there is typically a chasm between the metrics that a marketing company delivers and the goals of the business. Many times, the metrics that marketing companies deliver are only top-funnel, and are the same for all of their clients. Different businesses have different goals, right? So shouldn’t the metrics be different? A good approach is to:
- Start with the high level goals of the business. Typically, these are around revenue or profitability
- Associate metrics with the different stages of your ideal client experience (New Ideal Clients, Revenue Per Client) that directly impact your high level metrics. So, that is a good place to focus next.
- Finally, coming down a level from there, your sales and marketing metrics should be directly connected to your ideal client experience.
It should be easy to see that the metrics for all clients should not be the same for all businesses! In conclusion, let’s revisit the big question here: How much should I invest in marketing? If your sales and marketing metrics are properly connected with the business goals, and the needle is moving in the right direction, the logical answer to the question should be: MORE!
by Bill Poole | Nov 5, 2020 | EOS, Marketing, Sales
One way to grow your EOSⓇ business faster is to attract and cross-sell ideal clients. These are the types of clients that appreciate what you do and can buy everything that you sell.
Unless you have a limitless marketing budget and massive sales team, trying to sell to everyone is a recipe for failure. Both your message and efforts get diluted, lost in a vast ocean of noise. Plus, you end up wasting a lot of time talking to prospects who really don’t value what you do.
It’s kind of like your garden hose. When you first turn it on, there is a stream of water, but not much pressure. When you add a nozzle to the end, you can focus the stream of water and create pressure. If you want to kick it up a notch, connect your hose to a pressure washer.
The more you focus your stream of water, the more effective you can be. Similarly, the more you focus your marketing and sales efforts around ideal clients, the faster you can grow your business.
In Traction, Gino Wickman talks about building “The List”. We call the companies on this list, “Ideal Clients.”
Let’s explore how to identify ideal clients and focus your efforts to grow faster.
Building The List
In our Revenue Growth Workshops, we lead teams through the process of building their ideal client profile. At the end of the process, they have identified three things:
- Value: The revenue potential of an ideal client over 10 years
- Description: The characteristics of an ideal client
- Data Profile: The data profile of an ideal client
With the description and data profile in mind it is possible to identify “The List” talked about in Traction.
In reality, you should have two lists:
- Ideal Clients: Current clients that fit the profile of being an ideal client.
- Ideal Prospects: Target companies that fit the profile of an ideal client.
With your ideal client profile, it becomes possible to build a list of ideal prospects. These refined lists can be created with the help of data providers who can source information on the specific companies that fit your ideal client profile.
Once you know the companies that fit the profile, you also need data on the key decision makers and influencers in each of these companies.
What To Do With The List
These ideal clients and prospects should be clearly marked in your CRM and marketing automation systems. This makes it possible to track metrics around sales and marketing processes such as:
- Sales
- 100% Management of ideal clients
- 100% Coverage of ideal prospects with prospecting
- Marketing
- Communication cadence with ideal clients
- Outbound marketing to ideal prospects
Processes can be created, trained, and documented in each of these four core areas.
Step one is to get clear about your list. The more focused your Ideal Client Profile, the more you can focus your marketing and sales efforts. This will help you accelerate your growth.
by Bill Poole | Oct 27, 2020 | Marketing
The concept of inbound marketing in its purest form is beautiful! You create relevant content targeted at “personas” and distribute it on digital channels with compelling calls-to-actions hoping your “personas” will find you on. And “Voila!” the leads start flowing in.
That may work great if you have a massive geographic B2C market with millions of people but there are not too many B2B markets like that.
Marketing for B2B Businesses
We have learned many lessons over time (some the hard way) about inbound marketing to a narrow target market. Sure, some leads come in from people who are actively looking for what you offer. However, for every company that is actively looking, there are several dozen ideal prospects that need what you have. You can’t wait for them to hopefully stop by your website. You need a more proactive approach.
Identifying Your Ideal Clients
So, a question for you if you’re wondering if an inbound marketing strategy is right for your B2B business: Do you know who your ideal clients are and are they clearly marked in your marketing automation/CRM databases?
- If the answer is “no,” a follow up question: Why not? As a first step,I would recommend changing that. Define who your ideal client is and ensure those ideal clients are called out in your marketing automation and, depending on how you draw the line between sales and marketing, your CRM. There are many options to acquire and maintain data on your ideal clients.
- If the answer is yes, then why would you wait for your clients to swim by on your website? A more proactive approach should be taken to bring on more of the clients that are the most profitable to your business.
If you know who your ideal clients are, you are well on your way. In our visionary’s book, Revenue Growth Engine, Darrell says that if you are a B2B company that knows who your Ideal Clients and Prospects are: “You don’t need leads, you already know who these people are. What you need is intel and engagement.”
The steps outbound marketing concept does not throw out the concepts of inbound marketing. It builds on them.
Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing process can be summarized in 4 steps:
- Create fantastic content (just like in the inbound methodology)
- Distribute the content (ditto, just like in the inbound methodology)
- Listen to your audience
- Engage with your audience
Listen
Everyone knows the saying about two ears and one mouth, right? Listening is very important. Now that you know who your ideal clients are, you need to listen to what they are saying. How do you do that?:
- Read their website, especially their blog
- Ensure you are listening to what they are communicating on social. Look at the company Pages as well as the pages of each of the key contacts inside of your ideal client organizations.
- Leverage some of the countless tools out there that can notify you when specific things happened
Engage
The big idea here is to create relationships and build your value by providing help. When you see opportunities to help people in your listening process, provide helpful resources for those that you are listening to. You can engage directly on social platforms, email, phone, website chat.
As you work through executing your outbound marketing process, it’s very important to ensure that you are adding value to your marketing automation and CRM by keeping them up-to-date with valuable insight learned from your efforts.
So, while the content part of inbound marketing might apply to your B2B organization, a pure inbound marketing approach is not enough. When you think about it, it’s hard to argue that an outbound marketing strategy would not be right for your inbound business, right?
While the steps are simple, implementing this inside your organization does require a good bit of change. That said, the change is worthwhile as there is no better way to make your business healthy than getting more ideal clients!
by Bill Poole | Sep 28, 2020 | Marketing, Strategy
Harvard Business School professor and the father of modern marketing, Theodore Levitt, asks a powerful question that every business leader, sales representative and marketing manager must answer: What business are you in?
The answer to this question will determine the future of your company. At this critical moment when the needs of your customers are changing, this question needs to be answered correctly.
The reality is that what you sell and what people buy are different. As I say in my book Revenue Growth Engine, “Buyers don’t buy products, they buy the outcomes the products deliver.”
Theodore Levitt would famously walk into his marketing class holding up an electric drill bit. He would tell the class that no one has ever purchased a drill bit, but what they bought was the hole. Some take it a step further and say that they aren’t buying the hole, they are buying the ability to hang a picture on the wall so they can look good to their friends. Others takes it even further, observing that the reason we want a picture on the wall is because of a primitive need to be part of a community, which will help ensure our very survival.
The point is, the buyer only bought the drill bit because they wanted the outcome the drill bit provided: a hole, a picture on the wall, the admiration of their friends, the ability to survive or some combination of the above.
What business are you in? When industries answer this question incorrectly, they set themselves up for failure.
Theodore Levitt also used the railroad industry as a case in point. The companies thought that they were in the railroad business when what customers were really buying was transportation. Had they seen this, they might not have lost business to transport trucks, buses, cars and airplanes. Instead, they would have seen the railroad as a means to deliver the outcomes their buyers wanted: getting conveniently and cost-effectively from point A to point B.
Gasoline stations can also be used as an example. Many think they are in the gasoline business. The reality is that nobody wants to buy gasoline. It is expensive, smelly and damaging to the environment. What they want is the outcome of being able to get to work, drive the kids to soccer practice or go on vacation. Gasoline is just a means to deliver that outcome. As soon as someone comes up with a better way to get the outcome, gasoline stations that don’t adapt are dead.
Dell thought it was in the computer business. As a result, it focused on creating an amazing supply chain that could deliver a cheap computer. Apple realized that it was in the business of helping people create ideas and share them. Computers (and iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TV and the related services) are just a means to deliver the outcome its buyers want. As a result, Dell is struggling while Apple dominates the stock market.
Most businesses think they are in the business of delivering a product or providing a service. For example, if your business sells copiers, you may think that you are in the copy machine business. If you are an accounting firm, you may think that you sell tax preparation services. If you are an IT company, you may think you sell technical service.
The way to get the correct answer to this question is to consider the outcomes that our customers want. If you sell copiers, the outcome your customer wants may be an efficient office and professional documents so they can grow their business. This type of business might ask the question: What else could we deliver to help our customers get these outcomes?
If you sell tax preparation, the outcomes your clients want are to reduce their tax burden, get a faster return and reduce the risk of an audit. Rather than market the tax service, what if the agency’s message led with the outcomes they deliver.
If you sell IT services, your buyers probably don’t understand what you do. The outcomes they are buying are uptime so they don’t face the cost and frustration of downtime stopping their business. They are buying security so they don’t face the cost and embarrassment of a data breach.
What business are you in? What outcomes are your customers actually buying from you?
In the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, these questions will be especially important because the outcomes that your buyers want may have shifted. Recent Gartner research gave insight into the shift in outcomes buyers want. Before the crisis, 2019 research showed that “55% of organizational redesigns were focused on streamlining roles, supply chains and workflows to increase efficiency.” After the crisis, the desired outcomes have shifted to things like agility, flexibility and resilience.
Avoid being short-sighted. Focus on the outcomes your clients want and you have a much greater chance of earning their attention and their business. In the process, the shift of perspective might also allow you to see new ways to deliver the outcomes your clients want, creating new business opportunities.
Originally published on Revenue Growth Engine.
by Bill Poole | Sep 1, 2020 | Marketing, Strategy
The reason to buy a company is to take what you purchased and grow it. Unfortunately, what often happens is that companies let the customers of the companies they acquired slowly get picked off by the competition. Instead of growing the new base of customers, the new base dwindles away.
You can buy a business but you cannot acquire customers. Keeping customers requires trust. After an acquisition, that trust must be built.
When we buy something big, we all experience buyer’s remorse. It’s that moment of time where we are nervous that we made a bad decision. (You may have some buyer’s remorse on the company you bought!) At that moment, the sale is very vulnerable to cancelation.
The same thing happens to customers after an acquisition. The customers of the acquired company get acquisition remorse. They are nervous. The customers of the company you acquired are vulnerable.
Sprint has provided my cellular service for over 10 years. Recently, T-Mobile acquired Sprint. Personally, I identified with the Sprint brand, seeing it as a maverick against the giants, AT&T and Verizon. I enjoyed the benefits of unlimited data and good pricing.
Following the acquisition, I’m nervous about T-Mobile. I don’t know much about their brand. Right or wrong, I see T-Mobile as a discount carrier. I’m concerned about losing my unlimited data and favorable pricing.
Several months into the new relationship, I’m impressed with how T-Mobile is handling the transition. In this article, here are a few things I’ve noticed that we can learn from T-Mobile.
Explain the Main Benefit
The first thing T-Mobile did was explain the benefits of the acquisition. I received several emails and letters explaining that the combined resources of the companies will allow me to not only keep my unlimited data, but also get access to a more robust 5G network. They have backed this up by carpet-bombing TV commercials to reinforce that the new company has more 5G coverage than AT&T and Verizon combined.
I’ll admit, as a customer I was nervous that Sprint was falling behind in the race to the fast internet that I want. The primary message of the acquisition is that we are vaulting ahead of the established players. As a trailblazer, I like this.
What is the main benefit that your acquisition offers your customers? T-Mobile buying Sprint gives me more 5G meaning I get to stay ahead of the tech curve. This helps alleviate my nervousness. What benefit could you offer?
Offer Perks
The week that T-Mobile announced the acquisition to Sprint customers they rolled out T-Mobile Tuesdays. The very first perk was free access to the MLB Network for the rest of the season. Now, as I watch the Blue Jays, I feel goodwill towards T-Mobile. Since then, they have given me magazine subscriptions, 10 cents off gasoline, a T-Mobile face mask, and even a free Whopper. Every Tuesday, I look forward to the notification on my phone that tells me I have a new perk.
Another perk is Scam Protection. This handy app automatically screens out scam calls. I like that!
What perks could you offer to your customers? How could you build goodwill and make the relationship fun?
This may sound like unnecessary fluff. However, when you buy a business, the customers are nervous and afraid. These are negative emotions. If they are not overcome with positive feelings of goodwill, your newly acquired base is at risk of slipping away.
Build the Relationship
I hope you have a consistent cadence of meetings and touch points with your current clients where you stay in tune with their business goals and challenges. (If not, starting to conduct Periodic Business Reviews is a simple, low-hanging fruit process change you should implement right away!) Build the relationship with your new customers. Don’t just send them a letter. Learn about their business goals. Get to know their people. Offer Periodic Business Reviews as one of your perks.
Building relationships into your new customers does two things. First, it protects the accounts. Second, it sets the stage for cross-selling additional products and services into the account. That’s where things get good. Not only do you keep the customers from the acquisition, you grow them!
Make a Plan
Are you planning to acquire a company? If so, I recommend that you make a customer retention plan before you do the acquisition. It is probably a good idea for every company to do this proactively so that when they do make a purchase, the plan is ready to roll.
