The sales technology revolution is being driven from the ground up

December 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Warning:  I am breaking my own rules and “pontification” blogging.   I love breaking my own rules especially when I am contradicting my last post…

Sales technology is hot as “all-get-up” right now.  I outlined a number of reasons why I believe this is true in a post for SocialSellingU.  The point I’d like to pontificate on is the “consumerization of sales technology” and it’s role in the rise of sales technology.  Bottom line: You can buy most sales technology solutions with a credit card.

1.  The BYOD revolution has hit sales and marketing technology — I got this quote from my buddy Miles Austin who can talk for hours on the topic: “Years ago, CIOs said there was no way they would support IPhones and IPads and now look.  It’s the same thing in sales,  smart sales people don’t ask – If they think a sales tool help them sell better, they plop down their credit card and buy it.”   In other words, this is a true revolution by the people and for the people.  Executives can’t hope to stop it, they can only jump on board.  My buddy and business partner Lars Nilsson implemented tons of sales technology solutions at ArcSight which was bought by HP.  It seems like he would have to spend his time researching technology to keep up, but he always talks about how the majority of  solutions they implemented were initially brought to him by individuals in his organization.

2.  Sales people are officially technologically self-empowered –. If you are a sales rep who still says: “My organization gives us no support, we don’t even have…”, then fix it because you can.  An individual rep can buy their own CRM, create email and nurturing programs,  buy their own lists, gather their own sales intelligence, automate contracts and quotes, etc, etc.   Today’s products are so easy to use, you can get up and running yourself.   Per-user costs are so reasonable, you aren’t breaking the bank.

As a marketer in the sales technology space, you have a real opportunity to triangulate on your target accounts. When you sell and market to sales, anyone on the team is an influencer.  Your new lead definition is: “they are in sales”.   If you can get a couple people in the organization using and getting value from your product, then you can take that use-case and success metrics to decision makers for a bigger deal.   And that ladies and gentleman, is a good thing for everyone.

Oh and I forget to add, sales technology is fun.  There are so many amazing things happening in the space.  I have just been having a ball preparing for my webinar Thursday with Koka Sexton, Matt Heinz, Miles Austin, Nancy Nardin, and Brian Vellmure entitled: 31 Must-Have Sales Tools in 2013. When you start to look into all the different options, you want to start going on them immediately.

XOXO

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Sales, Business Musings, CRM, Inside Sales and Tele-selling, sales, Social Selling, SocialCRM

S**t the Funnelholic says: Five things I said this week

March 7, 2012 by 3 Comments

I say a bunch of things, some are quoted and others are forgotten.  I figured I would jot them down and see if we can learn anything from them…musings from Craig Rosenberg, like it or not:

1.  Content won’t solve the problem, but you probably can’t solve the problem without content — I am completely bought into the content marketing game.  However, if you need more deals/pipeline, the answer is not “more content” although content should be included as part of the plan.  I talked to a couple startup marketers who  told me the first thing they need to go do is create content.  Let me get this straight, you are just starting to figure out how to make money and you want to create content first?  Actually….

2.  Don’t be a sissy, call people — I am sorry, you want to start a business? You want to launch a new product?  The first thing you do is get on the phone. You will learn more from that than anything else.  And don’t tell them you are doing market research, just sell…it’s ok.  If you ask someone: “If I came to you and said you could do X what would you say”.  If they know it will do no harm, they will say “yes”.  If you ask someone, can i send you a proposal for X.  You will know what they really think. Then you can create content.  Buyer personas? Same thing…just make sure you know one thing:

3.  You can’t create buyer personas without talking to them — Please don’t make buyer personas without talking to these people.  I suggest you start with your theory and go test it live.  Then create content, it will be better.  By the way, have you noticed:

4.  We have a bunch of people in the workforce who have never been spanked –  I am telling you…I brought this up to a colleague and she said: “No kidding, can I ask that on a job description? Along with: Where you on a losing team and didn’t get a trophy? Do you call your parents’ friends mr. and mrs?”  I remember seeing a tweet from @damphoux: “Please keep working hard #thingsIneverhadtobetold” Funny, sometimes I have whipped this one out:

5.  There is a bus strapped with a bomb that can’t go less than 55 miles per hour or it will blow up. You are Keanu Reeves, please act accordingly – Net-net, look at the clock man and get urgent.  I don’t want you to make bad decisions by rushing, but I want you to know a bunch of people on this bus are counting on you and f-ing up and saying “my bad” isn’t going to do anyone any good.

PS If you read this as bitterness, you don’t know me.  I wrote this smiling and having fun.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Business Musings, Management, Startups

14 Easy Social Selling “To-Dos” You Can Implement Right Now

July 25, 2011 by 5 Comments

July 25 through July 29 is Social Business week on Focus.com. If you’ve read my blog, you know that I’m a fan of the Social CRM movement, but I am not an expert – so I’m leaving that to the pros. I am sticking to my expertise, hosting a couple of events about social and sales and marketing. I am hosting a webinar with the master of content/inbound/social media marketing, Mike Volpe, on Friday, July 29, at 1 pm PT. Before that, I am hosting a social selling roundtable at 11 am PT with Nigel Edelshain, Miles Austin and Koka Sexton. It’s fun trading ideas for using social for a lot of things. Sales is definitely a favorite of mine.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from folks is not having enough time for social endeavors. I usually tell people I wouldn’t recommend it if it’s a time-suck. So I’ve compiled a list of easy things that salespeople can do, none of which seems too scary or daunting – and it can all be done right away. Let me know what you would add to the following list.

  1. Create a LinkedIn profile.
  2. Fill it out completely, including a picture.
  3. Upgrade your account.
  4. Watch every day from your upgraded LinkedIn account to see who clicked on your profile.
  5. Connect with as many of your business and personal contacts as you can.
  6. Move beyond business cards – get in the habit of connecting with people immediately after you meet them.
  7. Spend some time seeing if your prospects are connected to any of your contacts and ask for a referral.
  8. Join LinkedIn groups relevant to your industry. Not just so you can see the conversations happening in your space, but so you can join the same “clubs” that your prospects are in.
  9. Figure out where your prospects are on the Internet (with only a few cases, everyone is). Is it Twitter, LinkedIn, focus.com, etc.? It could even be a message board somewhere.
  10. Watch them. Remember the title of this post is “easy.” Don’t worry about doing much; you can just watch. You will gain insight into your prospects that you’ve never had before.
  11. Recognize their good works. If they write an insightful blog post or answer a question really well, send them a note.
  12. Find the top influencers in your space (they will be on Twitter or Google if they are influencers) and follow them.
  13. Create a social relationship with the influencers. This is akin to being friends with the cool kids at school.
  14. Before a sales call, look up your prospect’s or customer’s recent social “works” – posts, tweets, Q&A. Mention it to them; they will love it.

There – was that hard? Let’s just start with that. There’s more…but you gotta start somewhere.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, b2b Sales, Business Musings, CRM, Lead Development, Lead management, sales, Social Networking, Social Selling, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Current State of Marketing Automation (Infographic)

June 21, 2011 by 4 Comments

My first very important announcement is: Focus.com, my employer, created the infographic below.

My second very important announcement is: I like it and I hope you do too. Mad props to Carlos Hidalgo, who helped curate the information. For me, following the marketing automation space has been the first time I have been able to watch a market from start to finish and really understand it. Yes, I have been alive in Silicon Valley during the rise of all the other technologies du jour, but this one I know. I love being a fan.

I hope you find the infographic interesting — we’ll have to see how much it changes next year!

Filed Under: Business Musings, Marketing Automation, sales, Thought Leadership, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Being a B2B Buyer Sucks – Let’s Change That

April 19, 2011 by 4 Comments

I am currently trying to buy a couple pieces of technology (true story). I won’t tell you what kind of technology (to protect the innocent). But I will tell you that I am learning how much it sucks to be a b2b buyer. I wrote a little about my experiences and recommendations on the Savvy b2b marketing blog.

It’s really eye-opening to go through the process of trying to buy something in a comparable industry. As I live through my pain, I will chronicle our experiences. (I am including my partner-in-crime Lori Janjigian as she helps me in the buying process and is supplying me with her observations, aka complaints, about the process.)

Here are some important points:

  • “The biggest innovation Marc Benioff made was to allow b2b buyers to buy complex software with a credit card.” (via Scott Albro) I have a couple of witty quotes from Scott on the issue of “ease of purchase.” This is so true ‑ think about how hard it was to buy enterprise software before the Salesforce.com/SaaS cloud revolution. It was big and complicated, and still is for many companies. Now, many “smart” companies make their pricing transparent; you can order without a salesperson or if you do, it’s easy. Here’s one: I just talked to my buddy who works at at a major software vendor where he sells business applications. He told me that he has to wait for legal to approve his contracts and it can take 30 to 60 days. Not exactly “easy to buy”
  • Create “buyer-helpful” content, but don’t forget people also need to be able to actually buy your product. I am the biggest advocate for content that buyers want ‑ particularly third-party content. If you have read this blog in the past, you should know this. On the other hand, the goal here is sell people stuff (sorry, it is). A tip that you can act on right now is to ask yourself one thing: “If someone wants to buy from us, what do they have to do?” I know everyone is going to say “but b2b is so complex.” Sure, but most products are going the other way. Google Apps costs something like $50 per year per user. Pretty complex? I don’t think so. Guess what, there are times when we want to talk to the sales rep and we want to know that this part of the process will not be painful.
  • “A perfect example of a complex product made simple is automobiles.” (via Scott Albro) Scott likes to say, “There is more technology in cars than a data storage box.” He’s right. Consumer marketing is so refined that it’s both marketed and packaged so you and I can understand what it is we are going to buy. Consumer sales is such that I can walk in and walk out with a car in a couple hours, even though it is a gigantic piece of technology and engineering.
  • Oh, and the “contact us” box sucks. I see that, and I just think black hole. The dropdown you provide doesn’t make me feel like I am going to go in the right direction. When you walk into a good store, someone asks, “How can I help you today?” How about taking that methodology to the “front door” of your buying process? As you consider what it’s like to buy, “How do I get started?” is a good question to answer.

Let’s call this my take-away: If someone wants to buy your product, what must they do? Remember that this is not a question about downloading content and so forth, this is about buying. Is it frictionless, easy to understand, easy to find, easy to figure out? That is the question. More on this in upcoming posts.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, b2b Sales, Business Musings, Internet, sales, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , , , , ,

HubSpot and the Phone: A Recap of My Weekly Adventures

April 14, 2011 by 3 Comments

I just moderated the Focus Roundtable: How Important is the Phone to Growing Revenues, and it was off the hook. Lori Richardson put it together, and what was really cool is she brought people together from two camps: the “calling” camp (herself and Trish Bertuzzi), and the “content” camp (Ardath Albee and Kirsten Knipp). You should listen to the MP3 file when you get the chance; meanwhile, here are my top take-away messages:

HubSpot generated 40,000 inbound leads last month (via Kirsten Knipp). What the hell? Dude, when I heard that I fell to the floor. That is the definition of “eating your own dog food.” Here is your Funnelholic tip of the day: Copy them. Period. Whenever people ask me for advice, the one thing I always suggest is to find someone else (a competitor) who is performing exceptionally and copy them. For some reason, that concept is really hard for b2b folks. The b2c guys do it all the time. They copy landing pages, whatever. Why wouldn’t you? Oh and BTW, HubSpot tells you how they do it. Their content is their playbook. They want you to copy them. Those lead numbers are absurd.

The Phone is not dead ‑ it’s more effective than ever. Speaking of HubSpot, they call people to sell them s#!*. That’s right. We had another Roundtable, Inside Sales Tune Up, with Chad Levitt. Mike Damphousse was the moderator and the big point is: To convert prospects from lead to opportunity and from opportunity to sale, you have to call them. Inbound marketing is not defined as “sales that fall in your lap.” They are leads that require the leveraging of outbound sales skills to convert.

Phone Pt. II: It’s never been easier to reach prospects over the phone (via Trish Bertuzzi). There is a hidden benefit to the inbound marketing craze: The phone has been freed up. Trish believes because organizations are “sitting back” and waiting for people to come to them, that it has never been easier to get people on the phone. It’s a great quote, but more importantly, what a great opportunity! This doesn’t mean to call stupidly. Make sure you are relevant (which takes research) and professional (which takes training). There is a great conversation on Focus.com on the topic.

Net-net: you want inbound leads,  copy Hubspot because you can. And if you want to turn leads into revenue — call them.  It’s it and that’s that.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Business Musings, Inside Sales and Tele-selling, Lead management, Lead/Inquiry Generation, sales, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , , , ,

The Power of the “Tweetable Moment”

March 8, 2011 by 3 Comments

Background: I just did my annual “You Bought a List, Now What?” webinar with Netprospex. Literally, spur of the moment, I made up a phrase: the “tweetable moment.” More background: Part of the presentation includes ways to create remarkable content. At Focus, we ask our writers include “aha!” moments when creating content. Well, I’m changing that to “tweetable moment.” PS, that got tweeted. I used it again tonight in my preso at the Sales 2.0 Conference, and then Lisa Gschwandtner brought up the term “tweetable moment” a couple times afterward. I realized: It’s on. Write that down.

Webinars, PDFs, blog posts, social media, guest posts, videos, slide share presos – the overall content itself can be shareable, but are you creating “tweetable moments”? Definition: Sound bites that are begging to be re-quoted in 140 characters or less – memorable and consumable. Frankly, I don’t think about and devise sound bites, and I am not sure the true master of the tweetable moment does either; truly tweetable moments come out naturally. At any rate, a “tweetable moment” is like adding a dash of Tapatío Hot Sauce to your content. Shake well and season to taste.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Business Musings, Internet, Random-ness, Social Media, Social Networking, SocialCRM, Thought Leadership, webinar Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Mechanics of the Outbound B2B Campaign

March 1, 2011 by 4 Comments

I present a webinar with Mark Feldman of Netprospex titled “You Bought a List, Now What?” that over the years has been one of the more popular presentations we have done together, as 1000s of people typically sign up. We are doing it again on Wednesday, March 2 and Thursday, March 3 at 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET).  I have made some updates to the webinar and have new rantings on the topic (thus prompting me to write this post).

First, allow me to get on my soapbox. What we are talking about is outbound vs. inbound, or push vs. pull. The vast majority of chatter in the marketing blogosphere is about content marketing, earned media, inbound marketing, and so forth; in other words, everyone is advocating for pull. One of my good friends Adam Needles basically called outbound email “stupid s#!*” in our Focus Roundtable together. I am a gigantic advocate for pull marketing as well. I believe in the tenets of inbound marketing. Hey, who doesn’t want someone to walk into their store? But it’s just not realistic all the time. Sometimes you need to put out the sandwich board and entice people to come into the store, and if it works, why wouldn’t you do it all the time?

Random thoughts on why the Outbound b2b campaign lives on:

  1. You have to go outbound for targeted prospects. If you are trying to reach a particular buying persona, you have to push/outbound. If you want to wait for content to get you the leads you need to feed the beast, you will be sitting on the unemployment line. This does not mean you don’t create remarkable content and develop long-term trusted content relationships with prospects. It means you figure out whom you want to talk to and reach out to them via phone, email, and so forth so you can get to them today instead of tomorrow.
  2. You don’t have time. A blog post or even months of blog posts won’t yield the number of conversations you need to fill the pipeline. I get bummed when I hear the startup VP of Marketing talk about his/her plan for content marketing over the next nine months, and it doesn’t include generating leads now. It’s not their fault; they read the blog posts and are doing the right thing.  The problem is, if you don’t have a plan for near-term pipeline, you’re in trouble.
  3. Sales reps are doing it right now instead of waiting for you. I asked one of my favorite sales experts Tibor Shanto what topics resonate most with sales folks and he said “prospecting.” In other words, sales needs leads. Actually, I did a webinar awhile back with Jill Konrath, and she said the same thing: “What sales needs right now is leads.” So, marketing: Is our answer to write some more blog posts and get more tweets? No, it’s to drive pipeline, and that necessitates action.
  4. You can do both (push/pull). Until the content marketing machine can drive the numbers you need from the right people, you have to do something. In most cases, that means outbound or paid media.  But do both; the long-term win of having a content marketing/nurturing strategy is the right thing to do.

In my preso, I try to break the essentials for successful outbound activity into simple components:

  • Planning: It sounds simple, but people just buy names and don’t flesh out what they want to do next.
  • Persona building: Determine “who” you want to target, understand what makes them tick, and then the message works for them.
  • Content/offers: Content marketing is a big deal in the outbound campaigns. What you offer people is extremely important. This should be driven by buyer personas (for examples, an executive may want one thing whereas managers may want another).
  • Multi-channel targeting: Successful outbound requires a mix of different ways to reach out to the prospect. The most common and most successful is a combination of phone and email. This also includes nurturing and social media.
  • Metrics and optimization: This should be standard operating procedure in this day and age, but it isn’t, so I have to remind you.  Figure out what you need to know and make your programs better.

If you have time, join us here for “You Bought a List, Now What?” on Wednesday and Thursday of this week 11 a.m. PT (2 pm ET).

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Business Musings, Direct Marketing, Funnels, Great campaigns, Lead Development, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Confession: I Am a Marketing Automation Fanboy

February 23, 2011 by 3 Comments

OK, after all that mid-life crisis talk about moving beyond marketing, here I am with a marketing automation post. Oh well. David Raab gave me a sneak peek at his new marketing automation study and subsequent tool. Initially, I was hesitant to write about what David shared with me since I don’t pimp, and I just made a big, melodramatic case for The Funnelholic to move beyond marketing. But I decided, what the hell? I am who I am, so bring the marketing automation tool on!

Truth be told, I am an unabashed fanboy of marketing automation. I am also an unabashed fanboy of the word “fanboy.” I primarily use it as an insult, so note my self-deprecating sense of humor remains intact. I love the concept of marketing automation. Marketing automation is the bomb. (For all my older readers, that is a good thing.)

We just asked a question on the benefits of marketing automation on Focus. There is great stuff there, but for me it’s pretty simple: Every part of the organization has an automated platform to run on and to optimize their business. Finance, sales, supply chain, HR – everyone but marketing. Frankly it was embarrassing. Yes, there are flaws with marketing automation, but there are flaws with ERP and CRM systems. This is about having a platform to manage, organize and measure. You may think this is backward, but failed marketing automation implementations are good for the business. It has spawned guys like Carlos Hidalgo, who is focused on helping marketing organizations lay the groundwork for a process that happens to be managed by marketing automation. That is good for the marketing department.

In my job leading the Focus Experts Network, I am meeting a lot of independent analysts. Technology guys like Michael Krigsman, Richard Stiennon, Bob Egan are go-to thought leaders for end users and vendors who need to understand their respective technology landscapes. Marketing automation doesn’t have many of these folks, but David Raab is one of them. David, along with Adam Needles and Carlos Hidalgo, wrote the awesome Focus Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation, and when we needed an Expert to talk about making the marketing automation decision in an upcoming webinar, we chose David. Most marketers I talk to know they need something if they don’t have it. The next step will be to figure out the right fit for their organization, as there are a lot of vendors. And for that, I think David’s vendor selection application is a must-have for buyers in the consideration phase, and the price makes it a no-brainer.

Because, yes, I want you to buy marketing automation. Full disclosure: It does nothing for me. Seriously, I own no stock, nor am I an analyst, nor does Focus benefit at all. I want this for you, not for me. That, my friends, is what fanboys do. Viva marketing automation!

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: Business Musings, Lead Development, Lead management, Management, Marketing Automation, Random-ness, Thought Leadership Tagged With: ,

Enemy Mine: Why Everyone Needs a Rival

February 14, 2011 by 5 Comments

When we were starting Tippit (soon to be Focus), a gentleman named John Luongo was an observer in our board meetings. He had a storied career at Oracle and then was the CEO of Vantive. He had lots of advice for us, but one thing in particular that he said has always stuck with me: “You really need to pick an enemy.” I actually mentioned this concept in an earlier post on the marketing automation market.

Here is what John meant: Management should declare an enemy and rally everyone in the company around beating this enemy. Sales will want to outsell the enemy, product will want to produce a better product than the enemy and so forth. John described how, in his early days, Oracle obsessed about beating Informix (which Oracle did handily). Sure, you could simply say, “Pick a goal to strive for” — but that doesn’t play on primal, competitive instincts. I love this concept, and I see at least five distinctive benefits:

1.      It helps everyone focus: Having a rallying cry gives teams a reason to come to work each day. It also can help you make decisions on where to put your energy.

2.      It motivates: See above.

3.       It serves as a scoreboard: Scoreboards work.

4.       It fosters our natural mean streak: That’s always a good thing.

5.       It can provide a ‘measuring stick’: Take a reference point like a competitor’s product and say, “We will beat their functionality (or even their website).”

No, obsession is not healthy, but having an enemy makes so much sense.

There are some great examples of this, but by far my favorite is University of Colorado football. In 1982, Bill McCartney took over as head coach of the Colorado football program; at the time, the team couldn’t win a thing (in 1980 the team was 1-10; in 1981 the team was 3-8 — you get the picture). One of the first things McCartney did was name Nebraska as Colorado’s primary rival. Nebraska was a perennial powerhouse, had defeated Colorado 14 times in a row, and could care less about Colorado. Honestly, anybody following college football at the time would tell you McCartney was crazy. That’s why this is the perfect example: McCartney made the best team he could their measuring stick for success. His “enemy” was perfect for the team to aspire to, and it set a bold, “hairy” goal for his program to achieve.

Here is what happened next:

  • Four years later (1986) Colorado beat No. 3-ranked Nebraska 20-10.
  • In 1990, Colorado won the national championship.
  • In all, McCartney created a national powerhouse of a program.

You might ask me if this is the first article in the “business-aholic” stage of my life. Maybe, but the decision to declare an enemy is something even department and organizational heads can do. In other words, this concept is still very “Funnelholic.” As a marketer, I love to have an enemy. If I had to decide on my marketing plan, I would use my enemy as my measuring stick. I would want to create a better website, blog, social media presence, content, advertise where they are and so forth. All of this makes my program better and, for me at least, makes it more fun — I get to keep score and compete.

Choose an enemy, you’ll be better for it.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: Business Musings, Funnels, Management, Thought Leadership Tagged With: , , , ,
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