Posted by Bob Apollo on Fri, Mar 05, 2010
Thought leading companies are able to evangelise a better future for the markets and prospects they address, and to articulate a clear and compelling vision of the role that their organisation intends to play in helping them achieve it. Companies that accomplish this rise to the top of their markets by generating a magnetic attraction that draws potential prospects towards them.
In a world where prospects prefer to conduct their own research before they decide which vendors to approach, companies who acquire a visionary status and develop a reputation for thought leadership emerge with dramatic advantages over their competition.
Small, thoughtful, agile companies are able to “punch above their weight” because the competitive playing field has been levelled to the point where an organisation’s reputation is driven more by the quality of their thinking rather than the quantity of their marketing spend.
Vision - or hallucination?
Evangelism is increasingly important in today’s business environment. Where there is no vision, companies perish – and leads dry up. But it’s also been said with some justification that there is no more than a narrow line between vision and hallucination, and this is every bit as true of corporations as it is of individuals.
The most compelling corporate visions are externally-biased and revolve around the desired future state of the markets that companies have chosen to serve. Conversely, the most ineffective corporate hallucinations are internally-biased, and revolve around the company’s aspirations without regard for their prospect’s priorities.
Your prospects understand this instinctively – and they are a lot less interested in hearing about you than they are in learning what you can do for them.
Crafting the vision...
Compelling visions start with the end in mind. They enable vendors to filter out the noise and concentrate on what’s important to win over their markets. They make it easy to evaluate ideas, make decisions and prioritise actions. They resonate with your most valuable prospects. And they make “what’s important” obvious to employees at every level.
When we work with clients to craft compelling visions, we ask them to start by defining the markets they want to lead, and to imagine what success would look like. We encourage them to describe what they do, and how they do it better, with exceptional clarity. We help them filter out the “me too” phrases and techno-babble that pervades so many weak vision statements.
Living the vision...
Your vision should lie at the heart of everything you say to the marketplace. Establishing a consistent, relevant vision has a tremendous impact on the effectiveness of individual communications, and on your attractiveness to the prospects you are trying to reach. It needs to drive not only your marketing communications, but also your sales conversations.
In fact, whenever any employee or business partner is asked to describe what your company does or what it stands for, the same consistent message should shine through. Having dozens of “elevator pitches”, all different, is no way to create confidence in your company’s ability to help your customers and prospects navigate their way to a better future state.
Consider this...
Is your current corporate vision better classified as a vision or a hallucination? Is it about your company, or is it about the better future you are creating for your markets and prospects? And is it consistently reflected in every communication between your company and its' current and future stakeholders, customers, prospects and partners?
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, Aug 12, 2009
The latest McKinsey Quarterly carries a great article on the consumer decision journey - and shoots holes in the now outdated “sales funnel” metaphor. Whilst the piece focuses primarily on B2C buyer behaviour, our own observations suggest that many of the principles are equally relevant to the process of B2B buying.
The authors explain that the linear process concept implied by the “sales funnel” – although attractively (and deceptively) simple – no longer reflects the complexities of today’s customer decision journeys. It fails to capture the many touch points and two-way interactions that are a consequence of an increasingly well-informed, networked and discerning prospect community.
Ease of access to internet information, and the increasing importance of word of mouth, recommendation and reputation in the B2B buying process has transferred information power into the hands of the prospect. It’s no longer unusual for the group of potential solutions being considered to expand, rather than narrow, at some stage in the decision journey before the choice of what (or if) to buy is made.
Trigger Events
McKinsey highlight the importance of trigger events – something we’ve written about before – that kick-start the customer decision journey in the first place. As we’ve pointed out, in the world of B2B, these trigger events can be internal to the organisation (such changes in staff, responsibilities or circumstances) or external to the market (such as major changes in technology, legislation or the balance of competition).
At first the prospective buyer may either be unaware or unconcerned – but then something happens (the trigger event) to raise their awareness that they have an issue that they need to deal with – and the search for a solution gets underway. McKinsey see the B2C process as a circular, rather than a linear journey, with four potential battlegrounds where marketers can win or lose: initial consideration, active evaluation, closure through purchase, and post-purchase.
These are closely analogous to the four key stages we have identified in the B2B customer decision journey: get connected, get considered, get chosen and get recommended. McKinsey point out that once they have defined an initial vendor consideration set, consumers then tend “shop a category” which may result in additional vendors being included in their evaluation – exactly the behaviour we have observed in B2B, and highlighting the critical importance of being found in the right categories when prospects start searching for solutions.
At each stage in their respective buying processes, both B2C and B2B customers face the choice of continuing, pausing or abandoning their decision-making journey, and adding, continuing with or subtracting vendors from consideration. Prospects of both types seem to have a strong preference for “pulling” the information they need to make these decisions rather than having it pushed at them by vendors, and to place greater trust in third party validation than in vendor messaging.
B2Both
So, although the McKinsey survey focused only on B2C behaviour, we should not be surprised to observe similar things happening in B2C, or to find that McKinsey’s recommendation – that vendors align their marketing efforts with the customer decision journey – are equally relevant to the world of B2B sales and marketing.
We’ll be publishing a series of connected blogs over the coming weeks, but I’m interested in your perspective – what can we as B2B marketers learn from this study? What other parallels have you observed?
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Posted by Bob Apollo on Mon, Jul 06, 2009
How confident are you that you truly, deeply understand who your best prospects are, what really matters to them, and how and why they choose to buy?
It's an increasingly important question, for two reasons: firstly, the latest studies confirm a trend which has been apparent for a number of years - that prospective B2B buyers are using the internet and their circle of connections to do much more research before they are ready to approach potential vendors. The balance of information power has unquestionably shifted in favour of the buyer.
Second, in the current economic climate, we're seeing B2B buyers shy away from anything that might be seen to be a potentially risky decision. If they cannot be convinced otherwise, a growing number are inclined to believe that the safest thing is to "decide to do nothing".
Faced with these two trends, vendors have to focus - on connecting with prospects who have issues they cannot afford not to deal with, and for which they have a demonstrably superior solution - and then they need to ensure that they emerge as the lowest risk of all available options - including that of simply preserving the status quo.
But careful qualification isn't enough - vendors also need to execute impeccably in facilitating the prospect's buying process - and to influence the way the prospect looks at the issue that caused them to start searching for a solution in the first place.
Persuading the prospect to think differently - to embrace a new perspective - is one of the key factors in creating a potentially winning environment. Sales people who successfully pull this off are able to achieve the much sought-after "trusted adviser" status. But timing is critical - they need to shape the prospect's view of the world before they formalise their needs and priorities.
That's where trigger-nometry is so important. The time during which a prospect evolves from being unaware or unconcerned to recognising they have an issue that they need to deal with is a critical stage in the whole process of buying.
Vendors need to understand and anticipate the trigger events that catalyse this transition. These trigger events can be external (things that happen in the market) or internal (things that happen within the prospect's organisation) but they represent the time during which the prospect's perspectives are at their most pliable.
Vendors who only get involved in deals after the prospect has crystallised their view of what they need, and what they should be looking for, start with an obvious disadvantage - whereas vendors who are visible at the time of the trigger event, or who can help create a trigger event, are in pole position to shape the buying agenda.
How can sales and marketing organisations improve their trigger-nometry? By observing the key forces that are shaping their target markets. By tracking key changes within their prospects. And by ensuring they have a relevant and potentially provocative perspective on how the prospect might respond to these issues.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Mon, Mar 30, 2009
Today's buyers are influenced by a wide variety of sources, far beyond the conventional analyst and press community. They look from recommendations from trusted advisors, who can include formal and informal networks, business connections, existing vendors and many other sources - collectively referred to as the BuyerSphere.
Prospects are building these connections, following these pathways of influence and forming opinions long before they decide to take action on an issue, with significant consequences for the “sales process”. By the time they make direct sales contact with a potential new vendor, the balance of information power is clearly in the hands of the prospect.
Even the timing of this contact is increasingly in the hands of the prospect - a recent study concluded that in more than 80% of cases involving major business purchases, the prospect initiated first contact with the vendor, rather than the other way around.
Faced with today’s realities, what is an enlightened vendor to do? Attempts to push messages harder through conventional marketing tactics are proving to be increasingly ineffective, as evidenced by plummeting email open rates, declining exhibition attendance, and low direct marketing response rates.
The BuyerSphere is clearly having an increasingly powerful influence on when, how and why prospects go about searching for solutions, and who they choose to consider. Vendors clearly need to make a systematic attempt to map and navigate the BuyerSphere that surrounds their most promising prospects.
The first place to start is with recent past prospects - but unlike conventional win-loss reports, which tend to focus on the sales process, the most illuminating answers come from exploring what triggered the search for a solution in the first place and the people and institutions they chose to turn to for advice.
Vendors are invariably surprised to discover the routes by which some of their best prospects have come to them. Even a relatively inexpensive qualitative research project can quickly generate invaluable enlightenment - and the process can and should turn into a habit of continually building connections with the key players in the BuyerSphere.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, Dec 31, 2008
There's no doubt that trusted advisers and influencers have a vital
role to play throughout the B2B buying process, but they have a particularly role to play during two key phases in the buyer's journey: firstly when the prospect organisation decides that they need to do something, and again when they decide what to do.
The balance of power has shifted over the years: it's becoming increasingly common for the prospect to initiate the sales conversation with the vendor, rather than the other way around. Vendors cannot rely on finding buyers once they are "in the market"; they have to ensure that they get found by them - or are already connected, directly or through the prospect's trusted network.
We've conducted a number of buyer's journey studies for clients in which we help them understand how and why their prospects choose to buy. We pay particular attention to the trigger events that catalyse the buying process, and how prospects search for potential solutions.
Clients are almost always surprised to find out who their prospects had turned to for advice before chosing to engage with the vendor. They are often unaware of the intermediate connections - so they are unable to do anything to amplify their influence.
Your prospect's
network of influencers needs to be aware of and predisposed to
recommend your solutions before your prospect has their epiphany. So
here's the challenge: most "conventional" marketing approaches are
really poor at building the right sort of connections with the
influencers who really matter.
Conventional PR and advertising activities do little or nothing to help in the B2B world - a world in which reputation is far more important than brand. Fortunately, new techniques are emerging and proving to be highly effective.
We've been working closely with one organisation in particular that is pioneering active influencer marketing: www.influencer50.com. I recommend that anyone with an interest in the subject - and I desire to build better connections with their prospects - to check them out.