Image by glennharper via Flickr

Do relationships matter more than marketing or advertising for B2B?

There is some truth in this but it is often over-stated.

Many web experts talk about the glorious ‘free’ things that come to them  just because of their relationship and web presence – but we believe that without a proven track record in the area of expertise – this is all wishful thinking.

Srini Rao wrote a nicely titled post about how relationship marketing helped him to land a dream client – read it because it sounds awesome.  The plot line goes something like this – you hang out in a surf bar and drink a beer / shoot the breeze  and at the end of the night the owner hires you to promote his surf travel brand.

Wow – the good life just arrived.

How did he make it happen?

I have no doubt that this really happened.  Sometimes serendipity is just there for you and good things happen.

But there were several pre-conditions needed for this beautifully desirable outcome:

1. Track record expertise in marketing brands
2. A clear understanding of the surf marketplace (and involvement as a consumer)
3. The client was ready to buy
4. Give away some free advice over a couple of beers to demonstrate expertise / build the relationship
5. Right place, right time, friendly fellow, made friends and KAPOW – new client.

Except for the last, every other one of these is a deal enabler.

Missing any one of them, it would have been virtually impossible for Srini to close this deal.  Take our expertise in the rowing marketplace.  We now have three clients who sell into the space and proposals out to two more.  The last proposal happened because we were at a regatta and got chatting… in fact, read steps 1 through 5 above – that’s EXACTLY what happened.  Now we’re waiting for the client to decide to hire us.

Why did this new client relationship happen?

Because of the four points listed above.

So take your business development plan and check out the steps in our biz dev methodology

1 – state your business

4 – profile raising

5 – relationship development

Each will help you position yourself appropriately to be in the right place for those relationships to blossom and hopefully you’ll also land your ‘dream’ client!  Well done Srini, we applaud you.

Bookmark It

Peter Bregman writes on the HBR blog about the importance of correct interpretation of communications – the message versus the “package” [or medium IMV].

Helpfully he gives four steps to follow which will help you to make the best of poor communication situations:

1. Notice. Anytime you feel a negative emotion about something said or written to you, it’s a warning sign that you might get distracted by the package. Anger, sadness, frustration, disgust, and disbelief are all good prompts to go to step 2.

2. Pause. Take a deep breath. Then recognize you’re vulnerable to reacting emotionally to how something was communicated. And remind yourself that communication is hard and often done poorly. Cut yourself, and everyone else, some slack. Don’t assume malicious intent. Don’t take it personally. Resist the urge to be offended.

3. Interpret. Now reread what was written, or think about what was said, and unscramble it. Think about what the person was trying to convey. Search for value. Strive for understanding.

4. Respond. A good rule of thumb is to use a different medium than elicited your emotional response. If a text upset you, don’t text back. If an email set you off, pick up the phone. And when you do reply, ignore the package and focus on the message.

I  add a sub-step between 3 and 4.

Time.

Leave some time (overnight is good) for you to reflect on the anger the message created in you and whether your reply will communicate the right message in the manner you intend.

When you read the article, reflect on the male : female responses to the same message.  They matter a lot in business and if you’re a woman working in a male environment, you may find you get a better outcome if you use male messaging mores.

The same rules apply when pitching for new business – when you receive a message back from your prospect, can you correctly interpret what they mean?

Related articles

• Don’t Let the Package Distract You from the Message (blogs.hbr.org)

Bookmark It

  The Clutrain Manifesto was a significant moment in future-gazing for a world that is now very clearly with us.

The authors have re-published the book with some additional chapters by themselves and another luminary, JP .  Which will be great and some added thought-provoking chapters to digest.

What was so great about Cluetrain?  It first foresaw and articulated the concept of the market as a conversation. That is thesis number one.

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

That corporations are made up of people who (shock horror) may disagree.

How do you speak in a human voice? First, you get a life. And corporations just can't do that. Corporations are like Pinocchio. Or Frankenstein. Their noses grow longer at the oddest moments, or they start breaking things for no good reason. They want to be human, but gosh, they're not.  Christopher Locke

and thesis 15 stands out for me today – have we arrived at the point of 'a few more years'?

In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

For me what happens next is the really interesting part.  Here's what I think….

1. the rise of the power of the consumer to inform, bargain, leverage and enthuse
2. corporate honesty is tested and changes many organisations
3. Reversal of the advertising-led world of marketing and sales to networked conversations
4. The end of corporate databases and centralised record-keeping.  Only record-verification needs to be centralised
5. B2B engagement and prospect research is easier and cheaper and the opportunities to find good new business partners and clients quickly and cheaply grow massively
6. Shifting budgets from OTL to direct and social media
7. The up-skilling of call centres from help-desks to teams of helpful folk who can get things done, sell more product and work withing the network to facilitate the coompany goals

thanks to David Cushman for the link.

Bookmark It

I was invited down to Maidenhead to meet Melanie Vala and the Quickbooks marketing team following my rant and their subsequent work on improved customer communications.

Melanie is a marketing manager in charge of acquiring new customers.

She explained how the company is very US-centric with a lot of personal taxation management products which are market leaders in their segment.  They have started sharing knowledge between the US and UK teams in order to create a global knowledge-base of best practice for social media marketing.  They also do customer research with a "follow me home" where they observe customers using their products in their own offices / homes.

It appears that the marketing programme is very PR oriented working on customer acquisition and strong messaging to upsell to new products and mainly being product marketing focused. 

There is some channel marketing work with resellers.  Interestingly the closest market alignment to the UK is Canada – they think the same way as us.

The database is UK and Canada sharing with the US on a different platform creating some silo issues.

Customers are differentiated by value in their current segmentation but not by needs at all.  And so I thought to give back soe value to Melanie and thank her for her time meeting me, I'd ask the community to get involved.

Any suggestion about how Melanie might create a customer differentiation model for Quickbooks customers?  I'll put down my own ideas of what the relevant issues and metrics might be to make up an algorithm?

• company size and type i.e. products vs services
• company complexity e.g. do you use multiple currencies / bank accounts
• book keeper or accountant
• attitude to learning – do you discover for yourself or want to be taught
• response to problems – do you research online or want to speak to a person
• interest in community – participant, reader, lurker or no interest

I think we need a few more…. suggestions please.

Bookmark It

Image by Carlo Nicora via Flickr

Building on traditional views of Britain as a country that grinds inexorably to a halt when any adverse or strange weather event occurs (snow, leaves falling) I want to reflect on yesterday.  In our village it was gloriously chilly and we had a good East Anglian snowfall straight from the Ural Mountains.  

But I wasn't interrupted – I still had to do my accounts (first Monday in the month – hate it!) and I did a bit of work revising the pricing strategy for a client's products (that are sadly US$ denominated which suffers an adverse exchange rate at present) and a friend dropped by and we ran out of milk… mundane and very normal things for my life.

But what gets me are the small anecdotes of determination and demonstrations of creativity that make this wonderful nation of Brits unique.

1. Catherine who waited two hours at Southfields BR station hoping for a train to work.  [many came but did not stop]
2. Steve who got up early in Marlow to drive to London for foreign clients [he got there fine]

And the creativity

1. Whoever started the hashtag #uksnow – it quickly topped the hashtag chart beating out all others
2. Ben Marsh's map showing postcode locations of #uksnow plus a marks-out-of-ten volume/quality rating
3. Thanks to @Euan the Little Page of Transport Chaos and I love the 'definitions' of what consitutes each level or dis-order

Quickly designed, live and simple to use.  Great take-up demonstrating the British sense of humour, creativity and lively intelligences.  

I enjoyed yesterday.

And my reflections for biz dev are – use surveys and quick-response questions.  Seems if you can grab the interest of your audience in a small, quick way that asks for a short response, many will reply at once.  Doing something creative with that information that they can use is your payback to them.

I'll be doing one myself later.

Bookmark It

Nice sub-title on the ICA website promoting Clay Shirky'sspeech on4 February

 The use of camera phones and recording equipment during talks and events in the Feedback series is encouraged. Snap it, video it, blog it and then share it wit h us.

I like the use of a specific email address feedback@ica.org.uk to collect everything from users who may not yet be familiar with Flickr, blogs or YouTube – they do the running, you provide the content.  As Don Peppers says, make it easy for the customer!

If you can't go or don't want to, have a read of David Cushman's interview with Clay on his last visit to the UK.

Here's my review of his book "Here comes Every Body"

 And the nice bit where David asks my question in his interview with Clay

Take a look at David Cushman's recent interview with Clay.  The whole interview is on video here.  I held back linking to it until I'd had a chance to read the book myself!

I replied to a Tweet
from David asking what questions he should be asking Clay.  I was
delighted he picked one of mine to ask.  "How do educational
establishments examine and test collaboration between students".  And
here is the part of the interview where Clay answers my question .  He says "That is THE hardest question.  And no I don't have the prescription."

Bookmark It

a nice little interview summary from #Amp08

Three questions

1: What’s good about the event today?

2: What’s bad or the downside about this event?

3: What would you like to see happening in the future?

 Nicely put together by Penny Jackson

Thanks to Carl Jeffrey for letting me know they were up!

Bookmark It

Was browsing around the Jiglu website and decided to actually read the terms and conditions of service docuemtns.

What a surprisse.  Written in normal language with careful explanations about how they will and won't serve you and use your information. 

Here's an extract.

We are very conscious that most people are asked to click on terms of service without ever being given a clear idea of what it is that they are allowed to do, or not, unless they have practiced law for some significant period of time.

This strikes as a little unfair, and so what we intend to do here is to set out what you can and can't do with our service, and what we are allowed to do.

Don't get this wrong, just because this is written in friendly language doesn't mean that we are going to allow you to do anything at all with the service. In fact, quite the opposite. We are rather proud of it, and don't want anyone trashing it, thank you very much.
Ok, so here goes.

A breath of fresh air.

Speak the language your customers understand.  Good life lesson there!

Bookmark It

One of my clients just got their very first email newsletter from a supplier. 

Oh my goodness, it is so DULL.  Here's the opening paragraphs

Welcome to the first edition of XYZ's Connections e-Newsletter, designed to provide timely information and tools to help your business run more efficiently.

The cornerstone of our first issue is exciting news about the global alignment of our organisation and the development of our powerful international processing platform, designed to help your business efficiently accommodate industry regulations and technological advancements.

 I have changed their name to protect the innocent and deadly communications advisor who must be surely about to lose his job for sending out such twaffle. 

Apart from being rather far behind the curve for newsletters (albeit sending it by email is vaguely 21st Century) This communication sucks. 

It's full of corproate-speak, management consultant catchphrases and has a TOTAL LACK of orientation around the customer.

Why would my client be interested in the "global alignment" of their organisation.  WIIFM? 

PS here's the text from the rest just to make you cringe further. The first sentence reminds me of a ghastly corporate mission statement written by Peter Jenner for Erdman Lewis while I worked there "Anticipating the needs our our clients, we bla bla bla…."

As we continue to add value to your business, we will provide you with industry-leading support and service. That is why each issue of Connections will connect you with valuable information about security, compliance and innovative solutions to help maximise your operational and financial efficiencies. We hope Connections helps you stay connected to your payments processing operations and the robust solutions XYZ offers.

Bookmark It

Many thanks to Mireira Fontbernat from Qik who has uploaded video of the three speakers this morning (and a little bit of me doing introductions).

Bloggers reactions: FreshNetworks' Helen Trim 

Charlie Robertson of Red Spider 

Quentin Boyes of Honeycomb Software  

Sadly the one of Andrew Howells of Zype didn't come out…. darn phone reception. 

Bookmark It