by Bill Poole | Jan 4, 2021 | Strategy
The Convergo Approach Series
Part 1: The Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency
Part 2: A Strategic Approach
Part 3: The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience
Part 4: Sales and Marketing Integration
Part 5: Sales and Marketing Processes
There’s no better way to secure a long-lasting working relationship than by pursuing common goals. A good example of that concept in motion is a recent decision that I had to make my home look better. I previously contracted with someone to mow my lawn. I don’t particularly enjoy mowing lawns so I was initially happy with the fact that I didn’t have to. But over time, I became frustrated that my home did not look as good as it could.
In an effort to fix that, I decided to take a look at this decision a bit closer and realized that my goal was not just to have my lawn mowed, but to have a home that looked great on the outside without my having to worry about it.
In the end, I decided on a service provider that shared my goal of making my home look great. Sure it was more money, but they do a lot more and the results are much better!
At Convergo, it is not our goal to provide marketing services for you. It is our goal to help you reach your revenue goals. So, our engagements start with a Revenue Growth Plan that looks something like this:
- We align with your revenue goals and business/scorecard metrics.
- We define or refine your Ideal Client Profile.
- We map out your Ideal Client Experience- The experience that your Ideal Client has as they navigate with your business from the time they have a problem that you can help with to the time they are enjoying everything you can do for them.
- We develop a high-level roadmap around your Ideal Client Experience to achieve your goals.
Everything we do is centered on shared goals and metrics that ultimately impact your overall business revenue goals.
by Bill Poole | Dec 17, 2020 | Strategy
Marketing agencies help you execute a plan. Or, in the absence of a plan, they create pretty things for you like websites, videos, and brochures. Most of the time, this doesn’t have much to do with your sales team or your company goals.
Convergo helps you create the plan that integrates marketing and sales to drive revenue growth. Then, we coach your team to execute it inside your EOS meeting cadence.
It’s kind of like the last time that I made a decision to join a gym. I knew I had to make a decision because my gym membership at the time was expiring and working out is a key part of my life.
There were many different options to consider. Some gyms have more cardio equipment, others have more classes or free weights. Some are closer to me than others. Although there are a lot of differentiators, comparing traditional gyms is basically an apples-to-apples comparison.
Another option that surfaced was to join a Comprehensive Health Club. In addition to having all of the different amenities that the different gyms offered, health consulting was also included. In addition to weights and cardio equipment, the Comprehensive Health Club offered wellness counseling which included things like nutrition and holistic health. When I compared it to the other gyms, this was clearly NOT an apples-to-apples comparison.
Many businesses in the B2B space contemplate their investment in marketing similarly to the initial road I went down to join a gym for one of two primary reasons:
- They know they need to make some sort of investment in marketing. Many times, they don’t know who or what they want, but they know they need to invest.
- They are frustrated with their current marketing agency because they are not providing them with enough leads. They struggle to justify their investment in the agency given the complicated metrics that the agency provides for them because they are not tied to the goals of the company.
The decision to invest in a marketing agency is similar to my initial decision to join a gym. What I want is to live a long, healthy, enjoyable life. Similarly, the end goal with making an investment in marketing is to have healthy and sustainable revenue growth.
When they get to know what we do at Convergo in contrast to a marketing agency, they quickly realize that they are looking at an apples-to-oranges decision. At Convergo, we approach things very differently than marketing agencies do. Four primary differences in our approach are:
- A Strategic Approach: We are metric-driven and start with the revenue goals of the organization
- The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience: We look at the entire client experience, not just the top of the funnel.
- Sales Integration: We believe marketing and sales should be aligned and working together.
- Sales and Marketing Processes: We implement documented sales and marketing processes, creating infrastructure inside your business to support long-term revenue growth.
We detail each of these 4 differentiators in this blog series.
Part 1: The Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency
Part 2: A Strategic Approach
Part 3: The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience
Part 4: Sales and Marketing Integration
Part 5: Sales and Marketing Processes
by Lisa Dalton | Nov 25, 2020 | Strategy
You may be asking yourself why you should stop and align with your team before you get going on quarterly projects. This is a great question! Your people are the heart and soul of your organization and projects. When starting any new project or initiating any change, your team will have questions like:
- Why the organization is undertaking a Revenue Growth Plan and how does it relate to them?
- What is the objective of the project?
- What is my role?
- What is going to change for me and my other teammates?
- What do I need to do?
- How much time will it take?
If your team doesn’t have answers to these questions, the projects in the quarterly sprints won’t be as effective, smooth or timely. Additionally, without understanding their role within the process, your team may not fully adopt the change being made
We want to make sure whatever changes are made fit into your organization. To meet the overall objective of growing revenue and aligning sales and marketing, we need to understand how changes will affect people, process, tools and messaging so we can grow.
by Bill Poole | Oct 13, 2020 | Strategy
We are in the business of helping EOS® companies grow revenue. Over half of the businesses that come to us with that goal in mind are wanting to do so by generating more leads.
As we work with clients to develop an initial Revenue Growth Plan, it typically becomes clear that the quickest way to move the needle on revenue growth is by focusing on their clients, not on generating new leads.
Compare this to the process of dating. There are two primary outcomes for a single person to date:
- Long term: To find a long-term partner to share their life with
- Short term: Sharing time with different people that may have different interests and perspectives, but without needing to share the same long-term goal
Having spent my adult life on both sides of this coin, I see that both have their merits. I enjoyed the process of dating itself, and I am now happily married. If you’re looking for a long-term partner in life, it is important to find someone with that same goal in mind and it’s even more important to find someone that shares the same vision as to what a long-term partner in life really is. This is not as important for those that are just looking to enjoy dating.
In the interest of self-awareness, it is valuable for the dater to begin with the end in mind and know which one of these outcomes they are pursuing when they are dating.
So how does dating relate to revenue growth? The leads are like dates. Are you looking for leads for the sake of dating, or are you looking for leads that share your vision of what a long-term relationship with a client is like? If you’re trying to build a sustainable business, the long-term approach makes a lot more sense; it’s a lot less expensive and a lot more fun. According to Bain & Company, a 5% increase in retention results in a 25-95% increase in profitability.
In our Revenue Growth Workshops, we help our clients look at the entire experience that a prospect or client has with their business — from the time the prospect knows they have a problem to the time that they become a client and are enjoying all of the services and solutions that our clients have to offer them. Businesses that initially think they need more leads typically realize that:
- The most efficient way to grow revenue is to look at increasing their value to their current client base
- The experience that they are introducing leads into is not optimized to win, retain, and scale efficiently.
Prioritizing what to do first is a very important decision. If you decide that you want to start bringing in more leads before you optimize the whole experience that they will go through, it can be very expensive and frustrating in the long run.
More often than not, we end up helping clients improve the experience that their current customers have with their business before looking to generate more top-of-funnel leads. Once the client experience is improved and optimized, not only can you generate more business from those current clients, but you’re also ready to close and retain the leads that you bring in.
Back to the dating analogy, if you are pursuing a long term partner, but don’t have a good vision as to what life looks like in that scenario, it might be difficult to find the right partner, and even more challenging to achieve long-term happiness.
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.
