But you would think that one of the easier parts of running a commercial organization would be knowing who owns what tasks. You put Employee #1 in charge of voice of the customer, Employee #2 in charge of sales support, Employee #3 in charge of customer portfolio management, and you take care of commercial strategy. Sounds simple enough, right?

Actually, no. The results from MLC’s Commercial Integration Diagnostic show that:

• 67% of companies don’t know who is in charge of Voice of the Customer
• 63% don’t know who is in charge of Commercial Strategy
• 64% don’t know who is in charge of Customer Portfolio Management
• 54% don’t know who is in charge of Customer Segmentation
• 50% don’t know who is in charge of Customer Experience Management.

The only attribute where everyone agrees on ownership? Sales productivity.

As you would expect, if you don’t know who is in charge of an activity, it becomes very hard to succeed at it. When we divided the survey population into two groups – those who knew who owned an attribute and those who didn’t, there was a clear correlation between clarity of ownership and effectiveness at the given activity. Indeed, even if the group agreed that an attribute was very important, the organization found it hard to succeed with that attribute unless they also knew who owned it.

That relationship makes our last finding even scarier: there is a close relationship between how important an attribute is to the success of the organization and whether there is clarity of ownership, and it isn’t what you’d hope. The more important an attribute is, the MORE likely it is that the organization is unsure who is in charge.

Let’s look at the graph above again.  The top five attributes with lack of clarity around ownership are voice of the customer, commercial strategy, customer portfolio management and customer segmentation (we exclude channel management because many participants did not deal with channel partners). The bottom five are sales productivity, customer-focused sales process, role design, brand development, and coaching. Excluding brand development, the top five were universally agreed to be more important than the bottom five. Would you rather have clarity of ownership around commercial strategy or role design?

The problem here isn’t necessarily that companies haven’t assigned ownership, it’s that they’re not communicating that ownership effectively to the organization as a whole. Many of the CMOs we spoke to could immediately identify who they had put in charge of each attribute, but they hadn’t communicated those ownership decisions to their teams.

Of course, in the hurly burly whirl of implementing a plan, things can change, and ownership of attributes may transition over time as the needs of various projects change. But making sure that you are clearly communicating ownership decisions, and making one person accountable for each attribute (so the organization at least knows who is generally in charge) can go a long way towards resolving ownership uncertainty in your organization.

MLC members, contact your account manager to take the Commercial Integration Diagnostic and find out what ownership looks like in your company.

American Idol

B2B marketers pay close attention to how customers consume the content they produce, often engineering a learning journey so customers gradually internalize how the supplier’s unique benefits solve major customer pain points.  This journey includes the sales conversation between reps and customers, which we’ve found should follow a specific sequence that builds emotional commitment to the supplier’s vision and solution.  The following three principles should serve as the backbone to any sales pitch that Marketing creates:

1. Provoke: Reframe the customer’s initial assumptions or expose areas of underappreciated risk.
2. Expose: Break down the underlying problems behind this previously unknown or underappreciated issue and show how they impact the customer’s business objectives.
3. Resolve: Build back the customer’s confidence with an eye to how your products and services solve the exposed issue.

Of course, Marketing doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and the effectiveness of the pitch rests squarely on the shoulders of the reps who actually have to deliver it … but not all reps are created equal.  The ability to deliver the same pitch while setting the appropriate tone will likely vary from rep to rep, and Marketing needs to look for ways to hardwire certain delivery cadences into the pitch.

Enter American Idol. The team at Neopost (global supplier of mailing systems, postage scales, logistics services) came up with a clever way to socialize to the broader sales force what elements of a well-executed pitch actually look like.  Marketing provides reps with a standardized set of raw materials to go off and create their best version of a pitch that reframes and challenges customer assumptions.  Neopost then hosts its very own “Neo-Idol”: a multi-round competition in which reps submit a short video of their very best pitch for online display.

Each rep views more than 30 peer pitches, voting on which one should progress to the following rounds (in a slight departure from American Idol format, there is no live debate/mockery based on a rep’s performance … sorry all you Simon fans out there).  By exposing reps to a variety of pitches throughout the competition, Marketing “engineers” message agility since reps have now seen a number of compelling ways to present Neopost insights.  And while Neo-Idol may not result in a record contract, it does produce a rep-vetted pitch that allows for customization within the guardrails of what reps themselves have expressed as the makings of a successful sales interaction.

MLC members: access a number of tools and templates to help you build a more effective sales pitch; or, learn more about Neo-Idol and other ways to deliver insight at one of our upcoming executive networking sessions.

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?

It turns out two Wharton professors already looked at what makes people share, with an investigation of what makes people share New York Times articles.  Independent readers described articles using a number of adjectives, and then the professors looked at how likely the articles were to be in the list of top shared articles.

Short answer?  The most shared articles are those that inspire awe.

(In case you’re interested — number two: things that inspire anger, three: practical utility, four: emotionality, tied for five: anxiety and surprise, bringing in the rear: positivity.  Things that inspire sadness are much less likely to be shared.  You can find much more in the – ironically – widely shared New York Times article about the paper here)

What does it mean to be awe-inspiring?  In the New York Times, this generally meant it was a complicated, intellectual article about science, including ones with headlines like “The Promise and Power of RNA.”  As one of the authors says, “You’d see articles shooting up the list that were about the optics of deer vision.”

At the highest level, here’s how the authors defined awe-inspiring: “Its scale is large, and it requires “mental accommodation” by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way.”

From a practical, B2B marketing perspective, what does this mean?  More points for commercial teaching as a strategy.  What ‘awe-inspiring’ means in a consumer context is that they’ve learned something new and fascinating about their world.

What that means in a business context is they need to learn something new and fascinating about their business.  This requires a careful cocktail of surprising rational information about issues customers care about delivered with an emotional punch to grab attention.

If you do this, your customers will tell each other about your insights.

MLC members, check out one of our upcoming sessions to learn more about how to build an insight-driven content engagement strategy.

A necessary function of content that can convert the buying center is establishing the supplier’s credibility.  This is key since decision influencers must feel comfortable sharing content with their peers.  Previously a close supplier-customer relationship might have built the needed credibility – now, marketers achieve it through content.

One approach is using social proof.  This concept in organizational theory suggests that when we are uncertain about a decision, we are strongly influenced by choices we see peers make.  A supplier can tap into social proof by showing prospective customers peers who are in similar situations and choosing the supplier’s services.  This could be done with tactics like online communities, case studies or word-of-mouth initiatives.

One of my favorite examples comes from Qwest Communications.  Qwest shares interview videos of current customers with prospects.  To keep the customer interviewees easy to relate to, Qwest stays away from the slick commercial-like style you’ll find in a lot of testimonials.  Interview videos are unscripted, minimally edited, and include responses to questions like “What could Qwest do better?”.

Another approach to establishing credibility is providing customized content – that demonstrates your understanding of the customer’s business and the value you can create for them.  A custom implementation plan, benchmarked diagnostic or value calculator might fall into this category.

A good example here comes from the FedEx ValuePoint calculator.  This tool allows customers to create custom savings predictions for multiple scenarios, and suggests case studies from companies with similar profiles.  The fact that the tool uses a company’s own data builds some initial credibility, but a lot also depends on the way FedEx created the tool itself.  There are plenty of value calculators simply based on convenient supplier assumptions, but FedEx used empirical data to inform weightings used in the calculator.  These weightings are completely visible to the prospect and can be adjusted.  With this tool prospects are able to run multiple scenarios using a variety of assumptions, which builds confidence in the value.

We typically see three modes of content delivery:

1) Self-Directed –Customers spend significant time absorbing content online or connecting with peers before they ever contact the company directly.  This heightens the importance of deliberately designing interactions that make it easy for customers to digest insight and want to deepen the commercial relationship without someone physically present to make these connections explicit.   Downloading a white paper is too passive – it too easily turns into a one-off interaction where a customer absorbs content but feels no pull to move forward in the buying process.  Marketing needs to engineer self-directed insight consumption with an eye towards progressing customers along the purchase funnel.

2) Automated – Customers are clearly doing a lot of information gathering their own, but there’s still a role to play as far as what content you push through online promotions, newsletters, etc.  The problem is that most B2B marketers send the same content to everyone, but buyers now expect to get personalized offers that correspond to where they are in the buying process in real time.  The net result: a lot of clutter.   Fortunately, the rise of marketing automation technologies have made it a lot easier for suppliers to sequence content such that they hit the right people with the right content at the right time.  Content should take into account the groups you need to influence within the buying center and the stages they go through in the buying process, mapping content accordingly.

3) In-Person– One of the most potent ways to deliver teaching is in a face-to-face interaction, but it’s also the most “expensive” of the consumption options given limited time and resources from both the customer and sales rep perspectives .  There’s a very deliberate sequence to how a sales conversation should unfold to make the most of whatever face time reps manage to get.  It begins by provoking the customer, either by reframing initial assumptions or exposing areas of underappreciated risk. Then, break down the underlying problems behind this previously unknown or underappreciated issue.  Finally, build back the customer’s confidence with an eye to how your products and services solve the exposed issue.  Creating this emotional progression helps reps “choreograph” a conversation that delivers insight with greatest impact.

MLC members, learn more about engaging customers with marketing content at one of our upcoming executive networking sessions.

They found some very clear conclusions for what managers should be doing differently – certainly differently than most do today.

The top line from the research?

First, 2010 is all about growth.  That’s not news, as we all know it’s not OK not to grow this year.  But changing customer behavior has made growth a real challenge.  For the sales function, managers are the vital linchpin for driving a return to growth in 2010.

And while coaching is absolutely crucial to sales manager success, it turns out that when it comes to growth, there is a whole other category of manager activity even more important than coaching.

What is that category of manager activity that most drives growth?  The SEC calls it ‘sales innovation.’

Now, ‘innovation’ is a loaded term that can mean many things to many people, but here it refers to managers collaborating with reps to understand as deeply as possible what’s holding up a deal—why and where a deal is running into trouble at the customer, and then finding innovative ways to move it forward.

Importantly, innovation in this context is not about creating a new value proposition, or inventing a new set of capabilities or product features.

This is about creatively connecting the supplier’s existing capabilities to each customer’s unique environment, and presenting those capabilities through the specific lens of whatever customer obstacle is keeping that deal from closing.

Sales Innovation is what makes the best managers great, and the SEC has lots of support for encouraging it in your sales organization.  For more, start with one of SEC’s blog posts on the topic.

So what does this mean for marketing?

1. Marketing can (and should) take the innovation happening at the deal level and help formalize it so others can benefit.  If reps are finding new, resonant ways of selling your solutions, marketing can help identify whether there are other segments of customers where those ideas would work.

2. Often the innovative ideas managers and reps have at the deal level can help surface unmet customer needs or even bigger opportunities for innovation in products and services.  Marketing can be the hub for collecting and evaluating these ideas.

3. Most of all, the importance of sales innovation implies a greater focus on sharing of ideas across the commercial organization – after all, creativity is best when lots of different minds have a chance to help out.

You can design systems to help encourage sharing. 

MLC members, check out how NBC Universal designed its CRM system to build connections between sales and marketing and created mini facebook-like communities to talk about what’s working by segment.

What do you think?  Does your sales organization encourage or discourage manager innovation?

#1 Ever More Customer Stakeholders Are Involved in Deals

This key change in customer buying behavior (noted in this Sales Executive Council post) makes an advocate’s job much more challenging.  Coming out of the downturn, businesses are keeping a tight fist on the moneybags by increasing the number of folks needed to sign off on a purchase or bringing in outside consultants to audit deals.  These moves severely limit an advocate’s capacity to influence broadly and deeply enough.

#2 Insight-Led Sales Require More Work from Advocates

We’ve found in previous years of research that customer loyalty is built by delivering insight.  In an increasingly commoditized world, insight-led marketing and sales (reframing the way the customer assigns value to things you excel in) is critical in driving an understanding of differentiators.  So an insight-based conversation is the best… but also requires the most peripheral knowledge from the advocate.  Convincing advocates to invest the time to understand insights to a point where they can teach others inside their organization is a tall order.

#3 Even Enthusiastic Advocates May Not Be Up To the Challenge

Insight-led sales and marketing engagement are very different from old world product/feature selling.  A marketing insight approach requires broad conversation and a willingness to challenge customer beliefs and assumptions.  Many sales reps struggle with this style.  Even loyal advocates may not be able to have this kind of challenge-oriented dialogue with internal counterparts.

So what’s next?

As the returns on investing in advocates become more questionable, we see an increased need for the value of a company’s solution to speak for itself.  This means that marketing content should be:

#1 Self-Evident

Simplicity and brevity have never been more important.  Whether it’s a value calculator, diagnostic questionnaire or customer reference video, it should only take 30-seconds for a prospect to grasp the salience of an idea.

#2 Highly Credible

Content that embeds social proof or incorporates the customer’s own information and data is the best way to go.

#3 Memorable

As the length of many purchase cycles extends, the value you provide needs to stay fresh in the customer’s mind.  One way to increase recall is by providing concrete solution steps.  Another is with (appropriately self-evident) case examples that bring underappreciated customer problems to light in a tangible way.

Interested in learning more?  Register to attend one of our upcoming executive meetings about reshaping customer decision criteria to your advantage.

The magic of branding and emotional connection, so powerful yet so mysterious that—remember now—it was only fairly recently that GAAP rules were amended to account for brand value in financial statements; official acknowledgment of the reality and potential of such intangibles.

Within the past decade especially, this promise of brand-based competition spilled over into the B2B space in a big way—but the applications and function of branding in B2B have proven fairly different.  As we’ve outlined in our past research, B2B brands primarily serve to “open the door” for sales reps, efficiently communicate capabilities and benefits (on a good day), and to reduce perceived risk for buyers who have greater confidence in partnering with known brands.  These are great things, and as the Caterpillars and IBMs of the world know—it’s great to have a great brand.  But for the majority of companies that would need to build one from virtually scratch, branding in the more traditional sense is simply not a viable near-term option for competing.

However, differentiation—by establishing a deeper connection with the buyer and amplifying the perceived benefits of a product (a function performed by a well-manicured brand in the B2C space) is still quite possible in B2B, but it’s probably not a function of the brand per se.  It’s more directly affected by particular types of deliberate marketing and selling tactics across the purchase experience.  Those that do this best typically take what we’ve come to call an “insight-led” approach:  they start engaging potential customers by sharing perspective and insight with them and, through the course of several interactions, create a deep connection to customer issues and accentuate the supplier’s unique capabilities in helping resolve those issues.

With big, diverse buying centers and complex multi-component offers, branding itself will never be enough to drive a purchase decision.  But those B2B companies who are combining reputable brands with an insight-led approach are the companies, a decade from now, B2C marketers will be envious of.

The rep interaction undoubtedly plays a crucial role in many purchase decisions; in fact our sister program, the Sales Executive Council, has put plenty of time into understanding the specific rep skills and manager characteristics that make this teaching effort most effective.

But we can’t assume that this face-to-face scenario is the only place to deliver commercial teaching.  The proliferation and democratization of information puts business insights at our customers’ fingertips and, more critically, moves control over the time and place of delivering those insights from the supplier to the customer. 

Suddenly, assuming that the rep is the sole channel for insight exchange seems naïve at best.  Yes, blowing the customer’s mind in that conversation leaves a huge impression and scores lots of loyalty brownie points, but we need to consider the range of scenarios during which commercial teaching can be delivered.  Web sites, merchandisers, the tradeshow circuit … all fair game as far as commercial teaching outlets go.

As marketers, we can’t control the paths through which customers consume the content that’s out there.  But we sure can control the message they consume.  Everything should be geared toward delivering insight.  If customers under-appreciate the costs associated with truck-driver attrition and we can help contain that cost, as was the case for Volvo trucks, then this should be the message championed across the range of touchpoints in the customer buying process.  At a minimum this reinforces the message that our reps deliver, but more critically this ensures that customers “get” our insight without having to commit to a sales call.

Marketers can obviously coordinate teaching messages across the touchpoints it owns, but we’re seeing a few companies starting their teaching efforts in touchpoints that aren’t even owned by the organization.  Touchpoints like blogs, peer-to-peer online communities, and other social platforms.  The idea here is to seek out those naturally occurring customer watering holes and start planting the seeds of your insight.  Sprinkling insight before customers even enter the buying funnel essentially draws highly qualified prospects in … and potentially accelerates the sales cycle.

MLC members: join your marketing peers at one of our executive sessions to learn about Marketing’s role in an insight-led organization. We’ll share best-in-class approaches to) designing portfolios of insight-led content, 2) tapping into and “redirecting” market and customer conversations, and 3) collaborating with Sales to generate customer momentum through the buying process.

One conversation that stood out for us, though, was a conversation we had with the marcomm team at TELUS last year (TELUS is one of Canada’s top telecom service providers).  We were discussing their “Who Knew” marketing communications campaign (a submission from last year’s B2B MarComm Campaign Awards), which was an initiative that targeted influencers and decision-makers at medium and large businesses in Ontario.

Following best practice, TELUS mapped their marcomm touchpoints to the target’s “typical day.”  Touchpoints included elevator wraps in prospects’ buildings, billboards in very specific locations in Toronto’s business district and key travel locations (e.g., Toronto Island Airports) and SMS messages to reach customers on the commute.

However, where TELUS really stood out here was HOW they identified the best touchpoints for their mix.  TELUS capitalized on the knowledge of their local sales-forces, who were able to point out the specific elevator shafts in the specific buildings where an ad would have the greatest potential to be seen by a set of prospects or customers in the target market.  So what is great here is how efficient the media spend was as a result of being able to capitalize on internal intelligence.

As a bonus, by taking this approach when selecting their mix, TELUS ensured that the campaign was fully integrated with one of its other key communication channels – namely the sales force – who capitalized on the campaign extensively as they felt both enfranchised and knowledgeable about the communications effort.

Do you have your own example of B2B MarComm success from the past year and a half?  Submit your entry into our 2010 B2B MarComm Campaign Awards by June 30^th, and receive an extra ticket to our October Summit in Las Vegas.