(this is a guest post by Jamie Kleinerman, of our sister program, the Sales Executive Council)

At last week’s annual Sales and Marketing Summit, “Inside the Customer’s Purchase Decision,” the keynote address was delivered by Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of the well-known book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Dr. Cialdini’s work on persuasive techniques is always an interesting read for sales professionals, but what made his speech especially timely and relevant for the summit was that it was about persuasion during times of greater information overload and uncertainty.

Faced with more information than ever before, stricter budgets and approval processes, and greater internal consensus requirements, customers are increasingly uncertain about making purchases today.

According to Dr. Cialdini, people exhibit several possible responses when faced with decisional uncertainty:

• Freezing—a reluctance to act or make a choice until the uncertainty is resolved
• Loss Aversion—a tendency to prefer choices designed to prevent losses over choices designed to obtain gains
• Heuristic Choices—when choices are made, they are based on a single, relevant factor rather than a set of relevant factors

It’s no easy feat for sales forces – and marketers crafting commercial strategies – to contend with customers exhibiting these behaviors. Reps can help customers overcome their decisional uncertainty and hesitancy though, by using some key principles of persuasion and influence. Read More »

“Oil companies need holes, not drills” - Old Sales & Marketing Saying

This post was written by former colleague Andrew Kent of the Sales Executive Council. Visit the original here.

The utilities business faces a looming crisis—if not today, then in the decade or two to come. Simply put, the industry’s current business model is set up such that smarter use of its product threatens its profits, and this tension between supplier and customer can’t go on forever.

But utilities companies need not view this as a threat. On the contrary, leading utilities are already capitalizing on one of the biggest megatrends in Sales today: the need to make more money by selling less stuff.

The root of utilities’ problem is this: their ability to grow depends on selling more kilowatt-hours each year, but consumers and society have an urgent need to use less—and are waking up to the fact that they actually can. Peter Fox-Penner writes in the Harvard Business Review (July-August 2009): Read More »

By Whitney Satin

Thinking Caps is a new series on Wide Angle, where we’ll digest an academic study on marketing and give you the top takeaways. Look for it every other Wednesday!

The ups and downs can be hard to stomach (and by that I’m referring to both the economic recovery and Brett Favre’s performance).  But one question plagues marketers regardless of the economic outlook: how do I get customers to focus on more than just price? Read More »

By Whitney Satin

More than 70% of B2B marketers are racing to position their firm as a thought leader, but as our research on Insight Marketing shows, the success rates of these efforts are questionable at best.  Marketers invest a lot of time to arrive at edgy insights that have the potential to reframe how customers view particular business challenges, but these insights often fail to stick.  Why is that? Read More »

First, the facts: according to a survey by the Economist, 58% of B2B Marketers claimed that among their top objectives was to position their firm as a thought leader.  Seventy–seven percent of Marketers consider thought leadership marketing one of the most important tactics for 2010.

But what is thought leadership and why are we so focused on it? Read More »

What are the limits of the Nature vs Nurture debate?  Was I really a St. Louis Cardinals fan at birth?  (of course).  One friend of mine seems predisposed towards the Jersey Shore.  Is it in her nature?  (well, she is from New Jersey).

I’ve even heard echoes of the debate when members refer to their employers:

“It’s our nature to follow very specific processes”

“Our culture hasn’t changed in 85 years”

“Our leadership believes that our go-to-market strategy from 2002 is still relevant”

“Our brand personality mirrors one thing: our company’s history”

In other words, some members claim that Nature trumps Nurture.  That the innate qualities of a firm’s culture, leadership, brand personality and politics (Nature) eclipse the impact of externalities and experiences (Nurture). Read More »

By Erin Lynch-Klarup

(Note: This is Part 2 of a 4-part series on marketing planning. Part 1, “Making the Case for Higher Spend“,  can be found here. Check back here every Wednesday in August for a new installment!)

B2B marketing organizations today are emphasizing the transfer of ideas to customers (just consider the rise of terms like “thought leadership”, “consultative selling” or “solutions”).  This makes sense – done right, an insight-based approach is one of the few ways suppliers can avert pure price-based competition. Additionally, our research shows that insight is valued by customers in the long term.  “Teaching” activities such as offering unique perspectives on the market or helping the customer navigate alternatives strongly predict loyalty.

It follows that marketing plans this year should have a strong insight orientation.  Naturally the marketing plan will align to broader organizational strategy, but the marketing objectives that support company strategy should be grounded in delivering insight that changes customers’ valuation of your offering. Read More »

We just held our inaugural business-to-business meeting looking at our content engagement strategies and what it really means to be a thought leader (and whether that’s even the right goal).

Not surprisingly, when talking about current challenges, we had lots of conversation around the consensus-based sale – these days, you need to convince more people with different interests to agree on any purchase.  But how do you get everyone to agree to a purchase, especially if it’s the slightest bit disruptive?  Clearly, we have a stronger need for advocates inside an organization than ever before.

For Marketing to support that, one thing we need to do is engineer our content to make people want to share it.  But how? Read More »