Reason #4 on my list of Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even if You Are the Best is:  Your message is stale.

Maybe you are the leading authority in your market space. Over time, it’s possible that your message to market has become wordy or pompous or old-fashioned. You run the risk that an inferior upstart will capture a new tagline or a new promise and appeal to your market.

A message gets wordy when you try to capture all the history of your product/service.  It gets pompous when you use a lot of big words to prove you’re the best.  And it gets old-fashioned when the market needs or interests or even buzz-words have changed and you’re not keeping up with the dialog.

The recent Old Spice campaign is a great example of rebranding a stale message.  This is a product that’s been around since about 1934, purchased by Proctor and Gamble in 1990.  It’s a totally fresh approach, linking “how you look” to “how you smell” and particularly appealing to women to buy the product for the man in their life.  The products are now called “man fresheners”  rather than “deodorants” or “after shave.”

With well-known sexy (and funny) spokesmen they introduced a campaign to interact directly with customers on the air in 2010.  Their August 2011 YouTube video has had almost 2 million views in less than 60 days and the Old Spice YouTube channel records more than 28 million with 289,000 subscribers. They’ve kept the connection with seafaring but the captains are much younger and sexier than in the past.  One of the products is now named “Old Spice Swagger.”  The campaign “I’m on a Horse” was one of the most viral campaigns in ad agency history.

It’s not only the message that was stale; so was the advertising approach.  The social media approach to the new Old Spice appeals to a much broader and younger audience and is an integral part of the new message.

So if they can take a stodgy old brand like Old Spice and remake it for today’s buyers, what could you do with your stale message?

This post was originally published at BlogWorld

Many large companies have rigid policies prohibiting employees from any business-related social media activity. If that’s your practice, I recommend you reconsider.

The Whale Hunters business is helping  B2B companies accelerate their growth by selling bigger deals to bigger customers. Most of our clients have some kind of a complex sale, such as a software solution, a technology, a marketing plan or a training program, for a few examples. When they are selling into a large company, they find that many people are involved in the decision of what to buy and from whom or whether to buy or do it themselves in house.

One or two people will make the final decision but many more will influence that decision. Whoever ultimately decides will not choose a solution or a service provider that is not widely accepted among other internal influencers. The price of change is too high; the price of internal conflict is too painful.

The other influencers will make their recommendation based on their confidence in the capability and likeability of the people from your company with whom they would be interacting. So, they want to get to know these people. They want to check out the credentials of members of your project management team or your trainers or your customer service staff or your IT department or your graphic designers or whomever. They want to know their peers in your company.

Now here’s where social media comes in: they will look for your employees on LinkedIn and on Facebook and possibly on Twitter or JigSaw and they will check to see which employees contribute to your company’s blog or Facebook page or LinkedIn discussions. They will want to see a profile, work history, where people went to school, what kind of credentials they have. Especially on LinkedIn, they will explore whether your employees have received recommendations from past or current customers, supervisors, or co-workers. They will be interested to learn whether your employees are thought leaders; for example, do they comment on relevant industry blog posts, do they ask and/or answer questions on LinkedIn, and do they participate in special interest groups online. They’ll look to see how your employees are connected, to them and to others. They may ask to connect with members of your team.

If your employees are invisible online, or if their only presence is a personal presence, you will be at a distinct disadvantage in comparison to other competitors whose employees are visible and active online.

Of course you need policies and procedures, mostly guided by common sense. If you have a marketing team, someone there can draft policies and provide some training. If you’re smaller than that, find a blogger or a savvy GenY employee to take a lead. To start in a small, safe way, encourage your employees to create a LinkedIn profile. Teach them what a good one looks like, and help them get a professional headshot photo. Ask them to request recommendations. Show them how LinkedIn works, how to find groups, and how to participate appropriately. Make your expectations clear, and be explicit about how much time during business hours would be acceptable for professional social media activity. Even a limit of 10 minutes a day on LinkedIn will enable them to become well-connected (and LinkedIn won’t require a daily check-in).

The more your team “connects” with others, the more powerful your company will become in business development opportunities-more sales, bigger deals.

This post was originally published at BlogWorld on May 25th.

To be successful in B2B sales today AND tomorrow, you need to actively build your social media presence.  I assume since you are reading this blog that you already know that, or at least you are interested in knowing more.  But it frightens me how many small to midsize companies behave like ostriches when it comes to a serious evaluation of their social media strategy.

Here are five serious ways that you will be left behind:

1. Thought Leadership.  You are not actively engaged in developing a point of view about your industry on behalf of your company.  You and/or your employees are not publishing articles and white papers, or participating in online discussions, or asking and answering questions in the leading social media sites for your industry and/or your state and locale.  Therefore you will not become known as an industry leader and will increasingly be perceived as irrelevant.
2. Website.  It’s a marketing piece all about you.  It is not interactive, inviting visitors to participate in any way.  It doesn’t offer any links to unbiased information or free white papers or eBooks or any little way to promote extra value.  It just sits there, doing nothing for you.  Therefore, you are by definition losing ground to competitors who are upgrading their interactivity.
3. LinkedIn.  You have a minimal presence or none at all.  Only one or two of your employees are engaged here.  There is a lack of personal photos, complete profiles, and connections to other professionals.  You are not members of relevant industry groups.  If groups don’t exist, you haven’t taken leadership to create them and invite others.  Therefore, interested prospects will not find you, nor will you find them.
4. Google Alerts. You have not set “Google alerts” (they are free) to help you monitor what is being said about you personally, your company, your industry, and your key executives on the Internet.  You do not have any system to monitor the flow of industry information and where you may, or may not, fit into it.  Therefore you have no basis for an improved marketing strategy.
5. Opt-In e-mail List.  You are not actively building your list of friends, current customers, and prospects, so you have no reliable and inexpensive way to reach them with news, special offers, or simply thanks for their business.  Therefore you run the risk that your competitors have a much better list and the capacity to reach your customers and prospects regularly.

You may not need a Facebook page.  You may not need a Twitter account.  Those channels depend highly on the nature of your business and where your audience is engaging online.  But even if you think today that your market is offline, I challenge you to think again and to investigate or ask your youngest, newest employee to investigate on your behalf.

Today’s communication channels will change, as did the mail, telegraph, telephone, cell phone, etc.  They will continue to evolve.  But the basic premise that you need to be connected will not change. If you’re not sufficiently connected, the steps you take today will pay you back many times over!

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Here’s the new part of this post.  The Whale Hunters offers you many examples of how to put your social media presence into practice.

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The Whale Hunters LinkedIn Group

I mentioned earlier that my husband and I are buying a house.  Since we bought a new house with an unfinished back yard, we also went shopping for a swimming pool.

Now if you have followed the housing market at all, you may know that Arizona is still the second hardest-hit market in the country (behind Nevada)  as measured by existing homes that are “under water” on their mortgages.  To say that home sales over the past few years have been slow is a grave understatement.  So it’s got to be true that pool sales have been stagnant and that pool-building companies have been hurting for business.

We talked to four pool builders, each recommended by our builder or a friend.  We met with each of them before we read any online reviews so we could keep an open mind.  In each case we told them that we were comparison shopping for bids (which I’m sure a pool builder would expect given the size of the investment). 

Two of the four had invested in “Pool Studio” software, which enables the salesperson to design your pool digitally within the exact dimensions of your own back yard.  They had a great advantage in that within the day we had multiple views of a draft design and complete pricing information.  That was the first differentiator.  Second was how quickly they set an appointment for us to come back and willingness to work with us on design options.  We’ve never bought a pool before so we appreciated a lot of help from the salesperson.  Finally, there was a sense of trust communicated by everyone we met from the company that we actually chose.  It’s a second-generation family business operated by two brothers.  For our second appointment, the owners came out to greet us and chat.  They have invested in an immaculate showroom with two outdoor pools illustrating differences between and geometric and freeform pool design, so they can show you how things look “for real” as well as in the design.

Our salesman had already been to our house (we have not moved in yet) to inspect the yard and offer more suggestions.  He spent three more hours making improvements to the design without really raising the cost.  Before he would accept a down payment, he wanted to meet us at the house to show us how much space the pool would take up and make sure we were satisfied with our decision.  He told us which decisions could wait and which finishing touches could be delayed if necessary.  The walk-through (by the way on a weekend) led us to make a couple more changes, and we received new design pictures before Monday morning.

We are going to close on the house August 30th, and the company we chose intends to be ready to begin building our pool on September 1!

Once we made our decision (within a week from our first visit to a pool builder) we notifed the others that we had signed a contract and thanked them for their assistance.

We received one gracious follow-up note thanking us for the opportunity to be considered and wishing us well.  But we received two very inappropriate responses, as follows:

“I must say I’m disappointed because I really didn’t show you what we have to offer. I measured the property and gave you a tour of our facility. I guess I was not aware of your timeframe which is totally my fault for not asking. You obviously have your reasons as to why you made your decision before I could provide a design and price. I’m anxious to see who you’re building with so I will keep a close eye on the permit report.”

Aside from that being mildly threatening, this owner is clueless about how his competition is operating.  They asked our timeframe in the first interview and delivered accordingly.  Our salesman did not let any time lapse between meeting us and delivering us a draft pool design and a price.

The second surprising response was from a salesman who, on the day we visited, said it was too hot to be outdoors so invited us to explore the sample pools by ourselves, without any kind of guided tour!  When thanking him for his assistance, we said price was a differentiator.  Here’s the response we got:

“I know I was a day late in getting the pool price to you, but likewise I did design your pool and get it to you on the same day.  You had the opportunity to meet me so you know from my age that I am not a neophyte in the pool industry. In fact I have successfully sold over 35 million dollars in pool sales in the past 14 years, and never has anyone beat my price  for the same pool.   I will send you a $200.00 gift certificate that you can use or purchase of chemicals or other items of your choice if you will forward me a copy of the itemized breakdown for your pool.”

Once again it’s all about him and nothing about us.  No “thank you,” no “I appreciate the chance to bid,” just an insulting insinuation that we are too stupid to know what we are buying and an inappropriate request that we give him a competitor’s detailed pricing.  He went on to complain that we didn’t give him a chance to improve his bid, which is the same argument we got from a Honda salesman last year–after we bought a Toyota!

So, these sales people think there are no consequences for how they handle rejection of their offer.  But the internet is full of review sites–Yahoo reviews, Yelp, etc.–and like other buyers, we consulted those sites before we made our final decision.  Everyone can post reviews about companies we chose NOT to do business with as well.

I think how you handle yourself when you lose a sale is just as important as when you win.  A gracious, professional stance builds your reputation; a grudging whine confirms that we were right not to choose you.

How do you handle rejection in your sales process?

Just finished reading a great blog post by Paul McCord, “Your Call is Very Important to Us and Other Lies.”  I highly recommend it–very good advice.  The gist is that big companies may get away with lousy customer service because we’ve come to expect it, but small companies cannot.  Paul’s observations about customer service brought to mind a long list of unsatisfactory interactions I’ve had with companies lately–and unfortunately most of these have been small companies, local companies, owner-operated companies.

My husband and I are in the process of buying a house.  I won’t bore you with the nightmare of getting a mortgage these days–everyone expects the big banks to be a hassle.  But over the weekend, I was browsing the Internet for patio furniture.  After spending time on overstock.com and amazon.com, I decided I’d prefer to buy furniture from a local showroom so I could be sure of what I was getting.  I was interested in learning whether I could do that at comparable prices.

So I visited the website of a local store that specializes in patio furniture.  Immediately a customer service representative popped up inviting me to chat.  I didn’t want to chat yet, just look around, so I closed the chat window.  But another rep popped in, and another, and yet another.  By then it was getting to be annoying.

I decided on a line of furniture that interested me, but this website does not list any prices.  Rather, it has a phrase, “This vendor does not allow us to show our guaranteed lowest price.”  In order to get a price, you have to talk to customer service.  Usually I just leave a website like that, but I had spent a long time looking for the kind of furniture I had in mind.  So I opened a chat with one of the reps.  I asked one question:  “I’m interested in the XXX line of furniture, but I don’t have any idea if it fits my budget.  Can you give me a ballpark price on this particular chair?”  Now of course I have to start answering questions.

My name.  My email and phone number “in case we get disconnected.”  What am I shopping for?  When will I need the furniture?  Have I done business with them before?  Have I been in their store?   Then the kicker:  “One of our sales representatives will be calling you tomorrow.”  I typed back, “How about the price of that chair?”  She replied, “Would you like me to email it to you?”  Well, yes I would.  Then she responded,  “You will be hearing from one of our representatives.”

Before I could finish typing my angry response to this lousy chat, she closed it out!

Now like most people, I am willing to exchange some personal data in exchange for information or intellectual property.  I found this company’s expectations to be excessive, yet I responded to all their questions.  To do that and then not get the information I requested made me very angry!

My advice to them:  don’t feature live chat on your web site if you won’t allow the reps to communicate information.  And don’t make the live chat so intrusive that it’s like a smarmy salesman following you around while you’re trying to browse.  The sad thing is they probably don’t even know how often it backfires!

We’ve found that even when the price is *FREE* — like our monthly Expert Series call — customers expect a very high level of service.  Some of our callers want it to be a webinar instead of a teleconference.  Others don’t like one of the topics.  Sometimes customers didn’t get what they expected, even if their expectations were totally misaligned with our promotion.  My point is, every interaction with a customer or prospective customer is fragile and significant, even in a B2B environment like mine.  After all, the business buyer is a person, not a corporation.

Test out your own methods.  Ask people about their experience.  Take them seriously.  Do whatever you can to satisfy them or at least explain promptly and patiently why you can’t or won’t.

Do you have a customer experience #Fail to share?

How do you overcome this kind of failure in your company?

Chris Baggott, CEO, Compendium

We had a great interview this week with Chris Baggott, co-founder and CEO of Compendium and co-founder of ExactTarget, both internet marketing companies. We talked about strategies to grow a start up company and Chris’s ideas about “discoverability” as the key to growth.

The best part for me was his discussion about the difference between relating to existing customers and attracting new customers.  The interview was full of wonderful, practical examples of how to use your outbound email to ask for customer stories and how to use those stories in your blog to attract new customers.

You’ll also be interested in Chris’s recent business trip to Kenya and observations about how advanced they are in using mobile applications since they don’t have to deal with the baggage of legacy systems.

Chris also predicted, “websites are obsolete.”

Whatever your business, I highly recommend this interview with an extremely savvy marketer and entrepreneur.  Listen here to “The Key to Fast Growth is Discoverability.”

You’ll need to register as a member of The Whale Hunters Pier9 Library and Community–absolutely no charge and no obligation.

I wrote this post originally for BlogWorld’s blog on April 13 2011.

Isn’t thought leader just old biz jargon?  After all, the term’s been knocking around for years, like “headhunter” and “game changer” and “team player.”

But no, for a B2B company today, being known as a thought leader demands your attention.  And fortunately, through social media, becoming a thought leader gets easier for small and midsize companies than ever before.

Here’s how elise.com defined the phrase in 2003:  “What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company, is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.”

Why does that matter?

We’re in an economy where customers try to know everything before they buy.  Customers want to know who you are, what you stand for, whether they like you, whether you are telling the truth, will you deliver, are you trustworthy.  And customers want to know what other customers think about working with you and the quality of your products and services.  And customers want to know if you really know your industry, and whether you can help them make a wise buying decision (even if it’s not to buy from you). And whether you will help them make the transaction transparent or whether you will want to leave them in the dark.

And you know what?  Customers will buy from those companies that are the easiest to know.

How do you become that kind of company?

I presented a webinar to a prospective customer last week, a webinar on what frightens buyers about doing business with small companies.  Since I was presenting to one company, I used abundant examples from their industry.  The CEO said at the end, “You took the time to learn about my company.  Your competitor didn’t do that.”  That’s one way to do it—when you have the opportunity to interact with customers, take the time to understand their business.  Train everyone on your team to do that, all of the time.

But aside from when you’re talking to your customers and prospects directly, how can you earn their attention to you by behaving like a thought leader?

One simple way is to offer industry information on your website—make your site a place to which customers and prospects return for up-to-date knowledge.  Here’s one B2B company that does it well:  Walker Information , offering their online “Knowledge Center” about customer loyalty.  They have five blogs, each written by a company expert.  Their library of eBooks, videos discussions, case studies, and white papers is constantly growing.  The Walker site illustrates the high value of producing content.  Walker expects and empowers employees to be thought leaders, and the company continually produces new content of its own based on deep industry expertise.

Another small company doing a good job of thought leadership on their website is Driving Ambition, in the trucking industry.  They offer a newsletter subscription and an “industry resources” page.  Here’s what they say:  “Driving Ambition is committed to helping our customers stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends. Bookmark this page, and you’ll have easy access to the latest transportation news and information,” followed by a list of associations, websites, industry standards, and other information made more valuable because they have posted it in one place.  Their blog features timely, relevant posts about events, industry news, speakers, reports, issues, and so forth.  Driving Ambition differs from Walker in that most of their informative web material consists of link, announcements and references rather than new content production.

The distinction between these two approaches is important; it illustrates that you can demonstrate thought leadership by creating new industry knowledge but also by aggregating and filtering industry information for your customers and prospects.

How you do it depends on choosing a strategy that you can manage, that you can afford, and that will be meaningful to your audience.  Developing a “thought leader” website and embedding a blog that invites interaction is a sensible place to start.

What is your company doing to educate and inform your customers?  We’d love your comments!

Lears more about this topic from Chris Baggott, CEO of Compendium, when I interview him on Wednesday, July 20, at 12 noon Eastern time (9 Pacific, 10 Mountain, 11 Central).  Chris is one of the world’s foremost marketing experts focused on social media.  Register here for this free teleconference in our monthly Expert Series.

Hello and good morning to our awesome community of whale hunters! Today I want to do something different. We’ve had such overwhelming feedback and responses to our June blog posts, I wanted to recap the favorites for you. We really do appreciate the growing number of comments and Twitter action. These five posts got people talking and sharing their experiences/perspectives with us! All good stuff! So, here they are! The Top 5 June (which is more or less over) blog posts (in case you missed them). Enjoy!

5. Sales Should Not Be a Dirty Word by Lindsay Bayuk

There’s a friction in the land of sales between “old school” sales and current sales thought leaders. I’ve had many conversations lately about common perceptions about sales; I figured I’d write about it. There’s this perception out there that sales is a dirty word, a dirty profession. Are you picturing a used car salesman? I thought so. Read on…

4. Whale Hunting Before I Knew What It Was by Chad Root

When I started in “sales”, I didn’t want the word sales in my title.  In 1993, I graduated from Architecture school and took a job as “Sales Engineer” for a custom returnable packaging company.  Yes – I was responsible for selling, but I never really saw myself as a salesperson.  I saw myself more as a “figure out a way to solve customer problems in a way that my company could make money” person.  This became especially true as I grew in responsibility to become a business manager and owner of my own businesses. Read on…

3. Five Proven Ways to Generate B2B Leads with Social Media by Barbara Weaver Smith

Generating high-quality leads that fit your Target Filter requires strategic efforts.  If you randomly “market” your company, you may create leads, but they typically won’t be the kind you want.  Today’s post is about Tactic #3 from my article Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media:  Learn how to use social media to generate high quality leads. Read on…

2. People Buy from People They Like by Lindsay Bayuk

We believe that this old adage is for the most part true, but not quite so simple. Really, is anything ever that so simple? The more I thought about this saying, the more I realized that it fits quite nicely with what we teach to small businesses. Read more on what’s most important to establishing successful relationships.

1. Five Key Elements of an Initial Sales Call by Barbara Weaver Smith

Here are five key points to consider in preparation to make your initial call on a prospective customer.   No, they’re not about putting brochures in a folder or loading up the power point! Read on…

What was your favorite and why? We’d love to hear from you!

Today’s post is brought to you by our friend, the very rad, Dave Cooke. Enjoy!

There is nothing more enjoyable than being in comfortable surroundings.  In the show Cheers, I am quite certain it wasn’t the just beer that brought Norm to the bar—though it was a nice bonus.  Rather, it was the comfort and comradery that he felt at the bar.  Norm could be himself and not really give a care.  If you remember, the entire group in that bar was extremely open, frank, and much braver within the group than outside of it.

The same can be said of most of us.  When we’re surrounded by people we trust and who trust us, we’re more willing to take risks and experiment.  With any action we take or decision we make, there is always an element of risk.  However, that risk seems to be somewhat diminished some in the face of the support, advice and guidance of people with which we have mutual trust.  Nothing can replace the comfort and security of people we know, respect, and have confidence in each other’s experiences, abilities and perspectives.

The difference between being in a comfortable environment and an unknown environment is significant.  When dealing with the unknown, the first thing people look for is a safe haven—a warm smile, a pleasant “hello”, or a welcoming wave.  Until we learn who is in the room, what they are like, and how they are “wired,” we are quite likely to avoid any risk or take any chances at all.  Until we get comfortable, there is no chance we are going to really act, think, or behave in a natural manner.

Once we discover our comfort zone, the rules and the game changes.  We get more confident, more at ease, more open and we allow ourselves to explore ideas, thoughts, and conversations that we would not have even considered until we were comfortable.

There is a great sales lesson here.  People often talk about the fact that they will only do business with people they know, like, and trust.  Though I am not always sure that is the only criteria, for there are plenty of purchasing agents who make buying without ever bringing relationship value into play; there are a multitude of business decisions that are made when the people making the decisions have developed a high degree of trust and comfort in the people around them.  And, there are plenty of decisions that are never made because the comfort level in the people in the room is way too low.

Most people are naturally risk adverse.  No one wants to make a mistake or a bad decision.  Few people want to do something that turns out to be stupid or misguided.  Their confidence level goes up as the comfort level with those in the room increases.  When people you trust and respect are encouraging you to make a decision, take a chance, or try this out, your bravery is based on your comfort level with them.

Think about this in the sales arena.  While it is possible to convert a potential customer to a buying customer without having sufficiently established trust, credibility and rapport, it is likely that your sales process would be much more efficient if you discovered the power of being a trusted and respected advisor.  This is something that is earned by developing an influential relationship with them.  It is something that can be accomplished by building trust and being trustworthy.  When your prospects become comfortable with you as a valued advisor, their tolerance for risk goes down.  This occurs because they have discovered through your behaviors, conversations, and support a safe and reliable haven for information, ideas, and solutions.  They have been able, over time, to develop an understanding or how you think, what you value, and what your credibility level is.  And, through this process, the two of you have developed a comfortable, trusting relationship that mitigates the fear of failure and the willingness to explore the potential of opportunities without merely focusing on the risk.

Next time you are working on “getting a sale”, “making a deal” or “overcoming objections” to close the deal ask yourself – what have I done to create and develop a mutually beneficial, trusting relationship?  If you are working on “getting a sale”, “making a deal”, or “overcoming objections” you haven’t really earned their trust yet.  If you haven’t earned it, invest the time in doing it right and help make everybody comfortable with your trusted and valued perspectives. Then, when a prospective customer talks with you about making a business decision to work with your organization, your professionalism and trust will earn you the opportunity to do business with them.

Dave Cooke is CEO of Strategic Resource Group, LLC.  Dave leverages over 25 years sales and marketing experience to provide businesses with sustainable growth strategies and effective relationship building behaviors.  Dave has developed the Sustainable Revenue Formula (SuRF) which provides an organizational program for increasing and stabilizing revenues.  Dave is also part of a dynamic duo with Chris Conrey in producing the podcast series, Don’t Sell Me Bro.

Today’s post is brought to us by Ron Wille of Black Tab Group in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Ron below. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today, Ron!

Whether you are a die hard whale hunter or follow some other sales methodology, success in sales really comes down to following a defined sales process.  I am not going to get into the specifics about any one process, but I would like to talk about the value in pairing your process with the right technology. I look at technology as a tool and not an end in and of itself.  Like any tool, when it is used correctly, it can help you do great things.

I am going to keep this high-level for now but I might spin this into a series if I get positive feedback on what I am about to say. So here goes….
After documenting a solid sales process, I think the #1 tool that should be in place is a properly implemented CRM solution.  I talk with hundreds of sales organizations each year and I am still shocked at how poorly technology is being used to drive sales.  Either they have no solution in place or they have one but it is a glorified Rolodex.

An organization that is serious about driving new business should be able to use their CRM solution for doing, measuring, learning, coaching and driving a return on their sales investments.

For Doing – Most organizations that use a CRM use it for activity management. What are my reps doing every day kinds of stuff.  If they have good reps, the reps are using activities to keep track of next actions to ensure that they are keep promises and keeping things moving.

This is great but you need to be mindful that sales managers and sales reps do not fall into the trap of believing that sales activities = sales.  Activities are not the end, they are not the goal.  Organizations buying from you is the goal.

Organizations that have moved beyond tracking activities are using CRM to build complete customer and prospect profiles or as used in The Whale Hunters Process, Scouting Dossiers. This helps drive future target filters as well as have a more complete picture of a target organization so that you can watch for buying signals or in general ask them better questions in the sales process.

For Measuring – A well implemented CRM solution will help you measure what is working, what might need an adjustment and where your organization is against plan.

An organization serious about sales growth should be able to answer the following, and it should be a simple as running a report or viewing a dashboard. To name just a few of the important things….

• Sales Per Rep
• Sales Per Service / Product
• Sales Against Plan
• Win / Loss Ratios
• Pipeline

For Learning – Sales organizations that have moved beyond activity tracking are using their CRM for learning.

• What is your win ratio and why?
• What is does your pipeline look like? And is it shrinking or growing?
• What is the dollar value of deals sitting in each stage of your sales process?
• Where do your leads coming from?
• What is really your average size deal?
• How long is your sales cycle really?
• How accurate are your forecasts?

Just to name a few of the important learnings.

For Coaching – When I talk about coaching people automatically focus on coaching the sales reps.  But an organization serious about driving new business should be able to use their CRM solution to also coach their sales managers, their sales reps or the entire organization.  This coaching is often over looked.

CEO’s are hiring me to help their Sales Executives and Manager to better understand and use their CRM solution to manager their sales teams more effectively.  If your sales team is not performing is it a sales rep issue, a sales manager issue and an organizational one. Who really needs the coaching?

For Taking Action – Weather it is using your CRM to measure where you are against plan or to learn how long your sales cycle real is, it is really helping you to take further action.  Should you coach Jimmy the sales rep some more or let him go?  Do you need to drive more marketing because your pipeline is shrinking? Which lead generation activities are driving the highest return?

Sales is fluid and you need to move with it. Waiting until the end of the year to see how you are doing or what you should change is too late.  You need accurate and timely info a well implemented CRM can help.

For Driving Return – Organizations will spend thousands of dollars on training, seminars, marketing, defining new sales processes and on the most expensive resources…people. But they do not look to spend on their technology in support of these initiatives.  What is hard to believe is that everyone I speak with agrees that technology is a tool that will create leverage in their sales departments. That CRM is important. That technology will help their sales managers to be more affective, their sales reps to be more efficient, that it will help their organization to learn and take action. But so few are willing to invest what is really needed to give your organization the right technology, the right tools.

Websters defines a tool as “something necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession.” A well implemented CRM solution is not a nice to have, it is a necessity in our sales profession.

Ron Wille is a Certified Partner with The Whale Hunters. He has been helping organizations better leverage their technology to achieve superior performance for almost 20 years. Prior to founding BlackTab, Ron was the coCEO of NimbleUser.

Recently all of you out in the blogosphere have been finding us via the search term “business development tactics.” Curiosity hasn’t killed this cat yet, so I did my own search to see how we stack up against the competition.

I’m happy to report, you have a lot of good options out there. Surprisingly relevant information. One blog post by Larry Bodine (who focuses on biz dev for law firms) gives you this list of ranked activities from a survey:

1. 1. Visiting clients – 61%
2. Organizational involvement – 12%
3. Other – 10%
4. Firm-sponsored seminars – 9%
5. Speeches – 3%
6. Newsletter – 3%
7. Website – 2%
8. Bylined articles – 0%

Peter Darling ranks highest today for the search term “business development tactics” and he’s got a great post on white boarding. No, not water boarding your prospects. White boarding (i.e. high school algebra classroom). This visual demonstration takes the conversation from “selling” to problem solving.

Anne Scarlett writes about a topic very familiar to whale hunters… a content strategy! The article gives great step-by-step instructions on engaging technical people in writing content to drive business development. Our Founder, Barbara Weaver Smith has written on this topic quite a bit lately. I’d encourage you to also review her articles here.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find our very own Loretta Love Huff ranking for the same term. An avid blogger, we’re proud that Loretta’s blog show cases such great info for small business owners. Check out her articles on business development.

That’s more or less a summary of the good stuff on page one of Google. We’re in there, too, of course, for Barbara’s post on 5 Business Development Tactics That Don’t Change.

Thanks to all of those experts sharing their knowledge with the world! For those of you like me who are always looking for new ideas and research on sales strategy… search on my friends!

At the start each consulting engagement, the first piece of our process covered with clients is called the Brand Promise Audit. The goal of the exercise is to determine what parts of your brand promise are truly unique. We often find that the majority of brand promises fall into average or above average categories.

We’ve realized over time that this exercise builds the connection between marketing and sales. Basically, what you’re projected out into the market is the first step to your sales process. Now, we understand friction exists in most organizations between sales and marketing. For more on that, check out Barbara’s recent blog post, Why Sales and Marketing Can’t Get Along.

I’m a huge fan of TED Talks. This talk given by Seth Godin about what it means to be truly remarkable is no exception. It speaks to the heart of the brand audit discussion we have so often with our clients. So, plug in those headphones and take a listen! Think about how the first steps to your whale hunt are affected by the messages you put into market. Does your company have a purple cow?

A special thanks to @tcspears for sharing it with me.

Today’s guest is Gini Dietrich,  founder and chief executive officer of Spin Sucks Pro,  an easy way to further your professional development while learning from the best PR and marketing minds. She also is founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, Inc., the client service side of the business, and is the author of Spin Sucks, an AdAge top 40 blog. Thanks, Gini, for joining us today!

Hell has frozen over!

Oh wait. The Cubs haven’t won the World Series yet. Never mind.

But it does seem that way, doesn’t it, with all the changes in technology? You run a business. You don’t have time to keep up. Does it feel like, somedays, you’re being left behind?

You’ve always been responsible for payroll and HR and legal issues and tax laws and retention customer service and innovation and managing debt. Now you also have to be responsible for Twitter and Facebook andYouTube and Yelp and Flickr and Quora and
blogging and Foursquare.

Where does it begin? Better, where does it end?

I’m a big believer in using the web for business growth ONLY where your customers and prospects are participating. If they’re on Twitter, you should be on Twitter. If they’re heavy blog readers, you should have a blog. If they consume videos, you should be on YouTube. But for crying out loud! You don’t have to use every single tool and be good at all of them. 

This is not the Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come. So, before you determine how and if you should include the social web in your communication, marketing, advertising, HR, customer service, and sales strategies, first figure out where it makes sense to do so.

Following are the five steps we recommend you use in determining if and where you should be participating online.

1. Listen. The number one thing every business leader should have is Google alerts. If you don’t already have them set up to search the web for your name, the company name, the industry, any competitors, any key clients, and key employees or stakeholders, this is a must have. Stop reading now and set them up. Go on. I’ll wait. This one is non-negotiable. If you want to delegate it, do so, but do not delegate the alerts set up for your name and the company name. If someone says something negative online about you or the company, you don’t want to wait to hear it. You want those alerts as soon as Google sends them. As you begin to grow on the web, you’ll eventually want to pay a monitoring service, such as Spiral16, Radian6, or Sysomos. 
2. Assess. From there, you begin to assess where people are participating online and where it makes sense for you to do the same. The tools we recommend here are Flowtown, Gist, and Xobni. Each have their own particular advantages, but we like Flowtown for your existing customer relationship database (even if it’s not sophisticated and just sitting in Excel). You import the database and it shows you, by percentage, where your customers and prospects have social accounts. For instance, ours shows us that 21 percent of our customers use Twitter. Which means it makes total sense for us to have a presence on Twitter.
3. Engage. Jay Baer explains this process the best. He shows that you begin by harvesting customer stories. Storytelling humanizes the company. Humanization encourages kinship. And kinship encourages sales. Because, after all, we buy from people we like and trust. And more sales equals more stories to be able to tell so you are able to repeat the process. Your customers want to know the people who work within your proverbial four walls so tell stories in order to engage them.
4. Measure. There is a lot of discussion around the ROI with the social web. We recommend not trying to figure out how to monetize your Twitter followers or Facebook fans. Rather, determine what you want to accomplish by using the web. Is it increased awareness? Is it thought leadership? Is it a higher percentage of qualified leads? Is it helping your sales team convert those leads? It is more traffic to your website or blog? Whatever it is, the social web can help you with all of those things. What it can’t do is guarantee that if you have 20,000 Twitter followers, you’ll be making a gazillion dollars. 
5. Improve. This last step really is to take time, every 60 to 90 days, to review what’s working and what isn’t working so you can refine and improve. Gone are the days of planning every year. Now you must plan, refine, and improve every couple of months.

The last thing to consider: This is not a sprint. It is a marathon. It may be easy to look around and see all of the assuming overnight successes from using the web, but I’m here to tell you, those people have been refining their process online way before Twitter or Facebook were even ideas in their founder’s heads. 

Choose one tool, implement it into your overall business strategy, get good at using it, refine its use, and move on to the next one. And be patient. It does take time. After all, you’re building relationships online. Online or off, relationships don’t happen overnight.

My post today was first published 4/13/11 at the Blog World Expo blog.

Isn’t thought leader just old biz jargon?  After all, the term’s been knocking around for years, like “headhunter” and “game changer” and “team player.”

But no, for a B2B company today, being known as a thought leader demands your attention.  And fortunately, through social media, becoming a thought leader gets easier for small and midsize companies than ever before.

Here’s how elise.com defined the phrase in 2003:  “What differentiates a thought leader from any other knowledgeable company, is the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.”

Why does that matter?

We’re in an economy where customers try to know everything before they buy.  Customers want to know who you are, what you stand for, whether they like you, whether you are telling the truth, will you deliver, are you trustworthy.  And customers want to know what other customers think about working with you and the quality of your products and services.  And customers want to know if you really know your industry, and whether you can help them make a wise buying decision (even if it’s not to buy from you). And whether you will help them make the transaction transparent or whether you will want to leave them in the dark.

And you know what?  Customers will buy from those companies that are the easiest to know.

How do you become that kind of company?

I presented a webinar to a prospective customer last week, a webinar on what frightens buyers about doing business with small companies.  Since I was presenting to one company, I used abundant examples from their industry.  The CEO said at the end, “You took the time to learn about my company.  Your competitor didn’t do that.”  That’s one way to do it—when you have the opportunity to interact with customers, take the time to understand their business.  Train everyone on your team to do that, all of the time.

But aside from when you’re talking to your customers and prospects directly, how can you earn their attention to you by behaving like a thought leader?

One simple way is to offer industry information on your website—make your site a place to which customers and prospects return for up-to-date knowledge.  Here’s one B2B company that does it well:  Walker Information, offering their online “Knowledge Center” about customer loyalty.  They have five blogs, each written by a company expert.  Their library of eBooks, videos discussions, case studies, and white papers is constantly growing.  The Walker site illustrates the high value of producing content.  Walker expects and empowers employees to be thought leaders, and the company continually produces new content of its own based on deep industry expertise.

Another small company doing a good job of thought leadership on their website is Driving Ambition, in the trucking industry.  They offer a newsletter subscription and an “industry resources” page.  Here’s what they say:  “Driving Ambition is committed to helping our customers stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends. Bookmark this page, and you’ll have easy access to the latest transportation news and information,” followed by a list of associations, websites, industry standards, and other information made more valuable because they have posted it in one place.  Their blog features timely, relevant posts about events, industry news, speakers, reports, issues, and so forth. 

Driving Ambition differs from Walker in that most of their informative web material consists of link, announcements and references rather than new content production. 

The distinction between these two approaches is important; it illustrates that you can demonstrate thought leadership by creating new industry knowledge but also by aggregating and filtering industry information for your customers and prospects.

How you do it depends on choosing a strategy that you can manage, that you can afford, and that will be meaningful to your audience.  Developing a “thought leader” website and embedding a blog that invites interaction is a sensible place to start.

I’ve been writing about each tactic from my Blog World post Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media

Today it’s Tactic #5:  Request and publicize referrals and recommendations through social media.

Business buyers, like consumers, want to know who likes you, who thinks you do good work.  And they want to know who thinks your employees are good, and who recommends them.

Social media are great for seeking and publicizing recommendations.  Start with LinkedIn.  Ask your key employees to request Linked In recommendations from current and past customers, for example, and suddenly you’ll have 10 or 20 or 50 points of view about the quality and capabilities of your team.  In addition to having recommendations on each LinkedIn profile, you can cut and paste them for your website or team bios.

If you don’t have a company Facebook page, it’s probably time to create one.  As customers find you and “like” you,  you have the opportunity for dialogue, to find our what they like (and also what they don’t like that you can fix!)  (P.S. Go to your customers’ and prospects’ Facebook pages and click on that “like” thumbs up button at the top of their page).  Polls and surveys may provide industry information that supports your claims of excellence.

A corporate Twitter account is a good way to get referrals.  As you follow other people and companies, selectively of course, and you get to know your followers, you have a community from whom you can ask for a referral, a recommendation, or an introduction.  Your Twitter followers will also say complimentary thigs about you, which other Twitter followers will read.  My corporate account is @thewhalehunters and our Director of Business Development, Lindsay Bayuk, is @biggercustomers.

LinkedIn provides a great referral service, through which you can request an introduction from someone you know to someone you don’t know.  LinkedIn people tend to be very generous about making introductions as long as your company’s online behavior is professional.

All of the social media tools work best when you devote some company time to building your communities.  Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn will not give you much value until your company (one or more employees) becomes active and attracts followers.  There are many clever ways to attract people to your company sites initially–contests, give-aways, and other kinds of campaigns–but only your strong presence, useful content, and recommendations of other resources will keep them coming. Once you  have a strong presence, these community groups become priceless.  For some good examples of how to promote followers in a humorous and non-salesly way, subscribe to @ginidietrich’s blog Spin Sucks and visit this post announcing contest winners! 

Yes, someone has to work on your social media strategy.  But for today’s B2B companies, especially the smaller ones, strategic efforts will really pay off.

Social media platforms and spaces foster conversations among companies and their customers in unprecedented ways.  In the B2B space, we’re just starting to figure out why do we want to have conversations, what’s their value,  how to conduct them, and how to how to nurture them over time.  How can your company talk to your customers online to add value to their experience with you?

That’s Tactic #4 from my article Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media:  Talk with your customers online.

Social media platforms make it easy to conduct surveys, to ask questions, and to comment on your customers’ observations in real time.  Our friend Nancy Myrland is a master (mistress?) of the conversation.  So is Gini Dietrich.  And Chris Brogan.

But if you’re not a marketing guru in a niche market, what does it mean to you for growing your business?  I recommend three key questions to pose to your customers:

1. What do you like?  That is, what is it about our company, products, services, customer service, etc., that makes you happy to do business with us?  Because we would like to do MORE of that!  Do we make your life easier in specific ways?  Do we save you money?  Do we make things less complicated?  Are there ways that we are already delivering top-notch service but you have ideas for the cherry on top?
2. What gets in your way?  What is it about our company, products, services, customer service, website, help desk, etc. that frustrates you, that makes you wish you were doing business with someone else rather than us?  Because we want to FIX it!  Or, if you are doing business with our competitors, what do you wish they would fix?  Help us create a new model of comprehensive service based on your needs.
3. What do you want?  What do you want to learn, what can we help you understand, how can our industry knowledge be helpful to you?  What are the products or services that you think we could provide, that we are currently NOT providing, that would be of value to you?  How can we help? 

Now, how do you use social media platforms to ask these questions?

• post them on your blog and specifically ask for answers
• conduct a poll or survey embedded in your e-newsletter
• embed a survey or poll in your website
• announce your survey or poll through social media sites and point to your poll location
• embed the poll or link to it from LinkedIn and Facebook

Talking with customers starts with asking questions–discovery.  It pays big business development dividends to companies who embark on this strategy.

Have you used a survey or poll to interact with customers?  How did it work?  WSe’d love to hear from you.

Generating high-quality leads that fit your Target Filter requires strategic efforts.  If you randomly “market” your company, you may create leads, but they typically won’t be the kind you want.  Today’s post is about Tactic #3 from my article Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media:  Learn how to use social media to generate high quality leads.

You might think social media activities are simply random, and you may wonder if you can really acquire B2B leads through social media sites.  But here are five proven ways to use social media to create leads in a B2B market:

1. Publicize Events.  Host a virtual or face-to-face event  on a topic that is important to your prospective customers.  It can be a seminar, a webinar,  a teleconference–many formats will work.  Your event can be free or paid.  If participants pay for the event, you will have smaller numbers, but they may be more highly targeted prospects.  Free events will generate greater response, and you will still have some great leads among your participants if you’ve chosen the right kind of topic.  Once you’ve planned your event, use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote it.  Proof?  Jill Konrath orchestrated the Sales Productivity Summit with five other participants and attracted over 9500 registrations for two, 2-hour webinars.  Countless more will download the archive.
2. Join LinkedIn Groups.  I’m sure you have a LinkedIn profile (if not, you need to create one today!) and that you regularly connect with new business associates.  But there’s real lead generation power when you join groups whose members are, or may be, among your targeted prospects.  For example, I belong to sales groups, entrepreneur groups, small business groups, RFP group, women in business groups, regional groups.  These are great places to keep informed, meet prospective customers, and announce your events (and books, white papers, blog posts, etc.) that will be of interest to the group. If you haven’t joined The Whale Hunters LinkedIn group, do that today!
3. Comment on Blogs and Discussion Boards.  Build your reputation as a thought leader by amplifying, agreeing with, disagreeing with, or otherwise commenting on blogs and discussion boards hosted by others in your field or industry.  These are places where prospective clients are searching for knowledgeable information.
4. Blog.  Host a blog of your own or organize a company blog in which several employees contribute.  The key to this tactic is to add new content frequently.  Your blog will help you be found by prospective customers, and over time they will subscribe to your blog and even post their own comments.  If you need help in creating a corporate blog strategy with multiple authors (and other content publication tools), I highly recommend you contact my friends at Compendium.
   
5. Host a Community.  Many social media “do-it-yourself” options make it easy to convene prospects, allies, even competitors in a virtual conversation, dialog space.  Forming your own LinkedIn group is an easy way to start.  You can create community within and around your blog if you encourage comments and interact with readers.  WordPress is a great free platform to use for a blog (and easy to upgrade as you get popular!);  Ning will help you create a total community space with lots of options.

Here’s the thing.  How this works is that all these tactics will bring prospective customers into your sphere of influence.  Then it’s what you do NEXT that matters.  Call them.  Send an email.  Thank them for coming or commenting or asking.  Ask them how you can help.  All of the tactics you would use for cold calling you can suddenly do with a warm intro, since you reached out into social media space and met someone there.

I’ve  been blogging about  Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media  here and at Blog World and New Media Expo blog.

Let’s look at Tactic #2:  Develop a content strategy to add value to the customer experience.  Why would you need a content strategy, and what could it do for your sales?

Here’s an example of a small company that’s done a great job with their content strategy:  Roundpeg.  Founded by Lorraine Ball, Roundpeg is a small marketing agency in Indianapolis that specifically serves small business clients.  Marketing is a cluttered field with lots of competition at every level of size and complexity.  So how is a small (7-10 employees) regionally-focused firm going to get and keep the attention of prospective new customers?  For Roundpeg, the answer is to give away valuable ideas, information, and tools to their website visitors.  Lorraine believes that if she gives good stuff away, people will remember Roundpeg when they are ready to buy marketing services.

Visit her site and you’ll find all of these things:

• a blog, updated daily with practical marketing advice for small companies
• a free “customer value” worksheet to download
• a link to “free stuff” like a business plan outline and a marketing calendar
• links to two upcoming podcasts about business planning

You are likely to stick around on the site for a few minutes, take advantage of some free ideas and tools, and think well of Roundpeg and its team.

Here’s another example.  Kyle Lacy is a principal with MindFrame.  His small company (6-7 employees) is a social media marketing firm.  Visit MindFrame’s new website and you won’t find any free content–no blog link, no downloadable articles or tools–strictly a marketing message about what MindFrame can do for you if you are a business or a nonprofit or a candidate.

But that’s not the whole story.  Kyle is an active blogger whose blog isn’t integrated with his company website.  People find Kyle on Twitter (@kyleplacy).  He has almost 20,000 followers with the tally growing daily.  Two books on social media marketing are making him very well known in his overcrowded field. 

Two companies–same town, same business, similar sphere of influence–with very different content strategies for building their reputation and their client base.

But wait–you say.  These are marketing companies.  Social media is their business!  Me, I build things.  I make stuff.  What does this have to do with my company?

Take a look at EV Studio, a small architecture, engineering and planning firm with three western US locations.  Although they do some residential projects, most of their work appears to be commercial in the B2B space.  Here’s a small company in an industry that has been pummeled during the recession.  So how do they differentiate? 

Their blog is presented as an online magazine.  It’s really a collection of blogs on various topics, including architecture, commercial, engineering, LEED, and more.  To illustrate their progress and persistence, I can report that in May 2008 they produced 6 articles, but last month–March 2011– they produced 48 articles!  On their page about the authors, here’s what they say:

“We are all working full time as architects, engineers and planners. We are also dedicated to the creation of a great online resource for clients, contractors, architects, engineers, students and anyone else interested in learning.

Most of the material comes out of our daily experiences in the office, what we are designing, the questions people are asking and what our clients are working with us on. As a result the subjects are wide ranging and always changing. In addition, our team is fairly involved with the community and we try to publicize those events.”

Then they invite comments and questions.

Their social media presence (Facebook, Flikr) invites people to the blog, which is integrated with the company’s website.  People who find them also find an amazing array of up-to-date industry knowledge produced by their talent pool of employees.

So let’s contrast this approach with that of what I’m assuming could be a competitor of EV Studio, a small company (6-7 emoloyees) called McGlamery Structural in Denver.  McGlamery has a high quality, professional website that represents them well.  Their site is particularly impressive in its gallery of completed projects.  But from a social media standpoint, there is nothing on that website to start a conversation or build a relationship.  When you need the kind of services these companies provide, who will you remember?  Who will you call?

Your content strategy is no longer optional.  Small companies have terrific opportunities to level the playing field against larger competitors through social media.  No matter what your business, your prospective B2B customers expect you to provide information, knowledge, guidance,insights, tools, materials etc. that will help them accomplish their own goals and also help them make informed choices about the products and services that you produce.  It’s a smart sales investment.

You could try putting your company’s message in a bottle and tossing it out to sea, but unless you’re stranded on a deserted beach with no bandwidth, you have much better alternatives these days.

I’ve just become a regular blogger for Blog World and New Media Expo blog on the topic of B2B Sales and Social Media.  You can find me there every other Wednesday.  For my first post, I wrote Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media.  It’s an outline of specific tactics that I’ll be blogging on.

In some of my up coming posts for Whale Hunters Wisdom, I’ll be addressing those Ten Tactics in more detail.  The first tactic is to use social media to position your company as a thought leader.

It’s hard to become a thought leadership company without empowering members of your team to become known as experts in social media settings.  How to do that?

• Start with policy guidelines.  Be explicit about your expectations of  how employees represent you through social media.  There are obvious rules, such as avoiding swear words, not bad-mouthing your company, telling the truth, and being polite to followers.  Other guidelines may be less obvious.  How should your employees deal with or respond to critical comments from readers?  Do they have permission to re-purpose marketing content or should all of their participation be original?  Do you expect them to clear their area(s) of expertise with you from the outset and stick to certain topics?  Does each blog post require editing and approval before it’s posted?  Decide on your policies before you initiate this kind of program.
• Develop your distribution strategies.  Do you want to focus on LinkedIn groups?  Would you like to try adding some new employees to the mix of those who produce your blog–or if you don’t have a blog, consider starting one?  Will your customers prefer formal white papers or a Facebook page?
• Decide the range of content that you’d like to have employees contribute.  They might produce newsletters, blog posts, white papers, discussion board posts, slide decks,  videos, podcasts.  Maybe you want to try Facebook updates or Twitter accounts.  Start small and limited, and grow your presence over time.
• Give them training, tools, and support.  Offer your social media participants training in content development and provide editing support.  Set standards for the length of a blog post vs. a newsletter article, for example.  Help them understand the difference between a white paper and a marketing piece.  If they want to contribute to discussion boards–such as on LinkedIn–be sure they know the group’s standards for welcome content vs. spam.
• Within the reasonable limits, guidelines, and training–let them go!  Undoubtedly you have subject matter experts who can develop your brand promise in unique and valuable ways.  Social media content can support and encourage your current customers and attract new customers to you.  Your company can appear bigger, wiser, and savvier than perhaps you thought you were. 

So, if you haven’t yet engaged your team in producing content to position your company as a thought leader, I highly recommend you do!  Just follow some reasonable rules and safety factors, and you may be amazed at what they can produce.

We would love to know the tools and techniques your company is using to engage employees in producing social media content as thought leaders.  Please post your comments!

Today I was reading the blog post by Sam Richter on Jill Konrath’s blog about sales intelligence.  I’ve been asked many times lately how I prepare for a call, so I thought it would be helpful to document some of the searching that can help you get your foot in the door, too. Sometimes getting that first contact is the hardest part! See some of my advice on researching prospects below. The goal is simple– high impact outreach.

• Ask for an introduction on Linkedin – If you have a mutual contact or are a 3^rd connection with someone on Linkedin, ask for the intro! Just go for it. We teach our clients to do a 6-Degrees of Separation search with all team members (assuming they are all on Linkedin) to find any pre-existing relationships.
• It’s Personal – Don’t ever do outreach to a prospect without searching for them on Linkedin, Google, Jigsaw, and even Facebook. You never know what you may find. Maybe you went to the same school or started out your careers at the same big firm. Maybe you both like hockey.
• Hot Off the Presses – When researching a prospect, don’t just read their company homepage. Take the time to read through the entire website and dig up the most recent press releases.  Awards, new hires, and product releases may all impact your pitch.  Most of the time, you’ll find much more relevant information about what’s really going on within the company.
• In the Public Eye – This may seem obvious, but if you’re preparing to call on a public company, make sure to look up the ticker symbol and all the publicly available reports. You can gain a lot by reading through SEC filings and 10k reports. Use Google Finance to track the competition and trends in a particular industry.
• Short Format – Today, some executives of big firms have established accounts on Twitter. This is a great way to figure out what they care about or what they are announcing. Make sure to follow all of the employees tweeting for a particular company AND respond! Over time listening to what they are saying pays off. Many owners and executives also write a company blog. Read it! You will get a sense of their personality and understanding of their business.

Now that you’re armed with all this intelligence, don’t blow it by sending a novel. Keep it short. Don’t try to tell them sell them, either. Make sure to keep your first email to a few jam-packed sentences totally focused on THEM! Also consider that most busy executives are getting your message on their phone. Your task is to grab their attention and make it immediately relevant. You’ll not only get your foot in the door, but show that you genuinely care about doing business with that company. It’s well worth it!

Looking for a pre-defined format to organize all of your research? We have what we call a “scouting” dossier for whale hunting companies available for free.

What else do you use to research prospects? We’d love to hear from you!

Hi Whale Hunters.  Each Sunday I am posting a podcast for a little inspiration for the coming week.  This week it’s about ravens.  In the Whale Hunting lore, the raven is a friend to the shaman (sales manager/VP)–someone who is very interested in your getting the deal that you are currently proposing.

A raven may be internal to the prospect company–an internal champion who clearly wants you to win the business.  Or the raven may be an influencer of key decision makers within the prospect company.  Still another kind of raven is a current or past customer who is willing to be an advocate and key reference for you.

Whatever the relationship, ravens are priceless.  As you may know, The Whale Hunters do NOT believe in cold calling.  Rather, we believe in systematically deploying a network of contacts to find a warm introduction.  The best introduction comes from a raven.

Listen to my podcast about The Care and Feeding of Ravens , and please let me know what you think.  Have a great week!

After my last post about a content strategy, Merlin U Ward [Twitter @merlinuward] asked me, “What about media aggregators?”  An “aggregator” is someone (or in most cases today a set of software tools) that gathers content produced by others and makes it available to people who want easy access to good filtered content on that topic.  How media aggregation relates to sales and business development is this:  If your friends, prospects, and customers turn to you for content recommendations (which is why you have a content strategy!), you don’t have to produce all the content yourself.  You can be a “media aggregator.”  Ah, but what kind of time does that take?  A whole lot.

Enter the media aggregator tools and services!  I’ll give you a simple, practical example that I’ve been trying out.  It’s called paper.li (in its alpha version).  It organizes content from Facebook and Twitter into a daily online “newspaper” with an attractive format.  It comes in a free version.  You create a Twitter list or Facebook list of people or companies that you want to follow OR that you think will interest your customers.  Paper.li automates the process of aggregating that content on a daily basis, produces it daily at a time you specify, emails you that it’s online, and posts an announcement to your Twitter feed and/or Facebook wall.  I created one called the “Grow-Your-Company” Daily. It’s composed of tweets (plus the links that they feature–i.e. blog content) from 11 people that consistently have good ideas for small business development, sales, and marketing.  I like it for the convenience of my own daily reading, and other people have clicked through to it and in some cases subscribed.

Be aware that some critics of the media aggregator think it’s just another form of spam.  I’m sensitive to that, so I haven’t done any real marketing of this Daily news aggregation other than a daily Twitter post.  And I see more and more people in my Twitter stream creating versions of their own.  Time will tell if a simple version like paper.li will fulfill a real need. 

There’s also the issue of whether other people whose content you are aggregating like that idea or find it offensive.  I put a lot of free content out into social media spaces, and if people that I reach directly make my content available to others, that increases my reach–therefore I appreciate it [in the form of "aggregation" where the content is clearly attributed to me; not plagiarized].  It’s also an encouragement to create good, well-written content that people consider relevant to their needs.  But I’m sure others would disagree, depending on their own strategy and goals.

Sam Decker announced in December that with partners he is founding of Mass Relevance, a company that will be devoted to “aggregating” content from a slew of sources.  Sam wrote, 

“The number one thing that I learned at Bazaarvoice is that people pay attention to content from others, and they will tune in to brands that facilitate this content as part of the experiences they create. However, given the overwhelming number of conversations coming in from all directions all at once, it’s often impossible to focus a lens on the ones that are most relevant for a given time, place, audience, and outcome. There is a tremendous opportunity to bring the most relevant content from the masses, to the masses – in real-time, wherever they spend their time.”

As I understand it, Mass Relevance will focus on helping big-company marketing and sales teams to define what their audience will consider “relevant content from the masses.”  If someone, or some program, is filtering information on your behalf, you want to have a high degree of confidence that what they include is extremely relevant and that what they exclude is for the most part irrelevant to you.  Think of how amazon.com “knows” your buying preferences and sends suggestions to your inbox.  That’s how it starts–with knowledge about your customers’ preferences, learned through social media interactions with them.

A lot if ideas, demands, observations and tools are converging on this “content strategy” topic.  I’d like to hear from you!  Is the topic of interest?  Do you want me to continue working with this topic with an emphasis on the basics for small business growth?  Please post your comments!

Recently Gini Dietrich predicted “All companies will become media companies.”  If you’re in the marketing/PR business or if you’re a keen social media afficionado and follower, maybe you already know this.  But I’ll bet for most of us, as small biz entrepreneurs and salespeople, that’s still news.

What that means–becoming a “media company”– is that once your company decides to include social media in your sales and marketing mix, you will discover that you need to generate content–and disseminate content produced by your followers–that will be appealing and attractive to your customers and prospects.

And I don’t mean “marketing copy” or “brochure-ware.”  Instead, customers expect that you will produce and/or aggregate content that will help them make good decisions, inform them about things that interest them or that they need to know, and generally establish you and your team as thought leaders in your industry.  It’s a tall order!

If you’re participating on LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, etc. you are producing content.  You, or someone else in your company, is writing things up, or podcasting, or creating videos or slide presentations.  Perhaps you are creating webinars.  At the same time, you may be offering white papers or research reports on your website.  Does your company have a blog?  How do you decide who should create blog posts and what the topics should be and how to manage replies to comments?  Likewise, a newsletter?  These are things that your team needs to figure out.

I’ve been managing The Whale Hunters content strategy for seven years.  It’s only recently that I’ve learned it is called “a content strategy.”  But it always was, even before I knew that term!  Let me tell you today how that strategy started, and in another post I’ll write about how it’s evolved.  And then more about what I’ve learned about the content strategy.  I hope we can get some conversation going on this topic!

Here was our content strategy–Phase 1:

1.  Create and distribute an eNewsletter.

• Each newsletter features an article about sales/business development for small business leaders
• We published biweekly on a predictable day and time
• we continue to build an opt-in subscriber list through our website
• We include marketing announcements but we never send just a pitch–always feature content

2.  Collect newsletter articles into books, eBooks, podcasts and audio CDs

• We discovered themes in the articles, and collected 10 or more around a theme
• We published those collections in multiple formats, adding introductory material and, in many cases, worksheets and other tools
• We recorded the articles as individual podcasts and CD collections
• As the collection grows, we publish new books and eBooks on emerging themes.

3.  Build content into our services–training, coaching, and consulting

• As we develop new content, much of it derived from our experiences with clients, we plug it back into our content offerings, enriching them in the process.
• We supplement online training with additional resources that have been developed through the social media/content strategy.
• We mine information from all of our sources–webinars, Expert Series Calls, blog, newsletter, client and follower comments–for new reports, White Papers, and article topics.

That’s it for today.  A simple, evolutionary strategy that emerged from certain practice decisions.  In my next post I’ll write about more evolutions, but mostly I’d like to hear from you about your content production.  Is it a strategy?  A practice?  A wish list?  Where are you in this content quest?

Today it’s Trend # 5 from Top Ten Small Business Trends from Small Business Development Labs.

Trend #5:  Social Media Moves to the Small Business Mainstream:  “Despite the hype, the vast majority of small businesses haven’t used social media on a regular basis for business purposes.”

I don’t see this transformation happening in 2011.  The authors are right that most small businesess haven’t had any business strategy related to social media.  The ones that do are typically solo-preneurs or small firms in the social media space–web designers, marketing, advertising and pr firms, and social media consultants.  If your small company hasn’t made any headway in considering how social media needs to fit within your business development strategy, it’s not likely that you will master it in 2011, nor will most of your peers.  That said, the implication for whale hunting companies is profound.

I interviewed Gini Dietrich, Founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, about the social media trends she sees for 2011 and recommendations for small business owners.  She highlighted the role that content will play in getting the attention of customers, and told us a lot about how she has built her brand around content delivered through social media channels.  Gini also talks about her methods for generating content (because she produces most of it herself).  You can listen to the interview here (Premium membership to Pier9 required) or read Gini’s article about 8 mega trends that are important for small business owners to understand.

For whale hunters, it’s critically important to approach your company’s social media involvement strategically.  Here are a few key questions:

1. What do you want to accomplish?  Do you want to attract new customers?  Establish your company as a leading authority? Use your social media engagement as a research process for learning about whales?  All of the above?  Be careful that your strategy is designed to serve your whale-hunting needs, not just to attract minnows.
2. Who or what will be “the face” of your company?  Will it be a person or people?  Will it be your logo with an anonymous, “corporate” voice?  These are real decisions for your involvement in Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook for example.  There is no single right answer; it depends on your goals.
3. Who will manage your social media presence and how much time will they devote?  The social media channels are currently free to use, which makes them so attractive to small business.  But there is a very significant cost in yours and/or your employees’ time spent in making contributions to social sites.
4. What kind of policies will guide your team’s participation?  Your social media presence creates a brand image and a brand promise.  Do you want to be a friendly, “let’s get to know each other” presence, an authoritative voice, or a customer service center?   Be clear about your expectations with guidelines for use.
5. Will you do it yourself or outsource?  Many small companies don’t have the internal resources and/or expertise to develop and implement a social media strategy focused on business development.  Other small companies are growing by becoming social media experts.  You can even outsource content development, such as engaging a blog ghost writer.  Just don’t avoid having a strategy only because you don’t have the current internal capacity.

This is a trend to watch, and if you’re not actively considering where it fits in your bigger picture, it’s time that you do.

Do you have a social media strategy?  How did you craft it?

Today we bring you a guest post from The Whale Hunters Certified Partner, Loretta Love Huff, headquartered in Phoenix.  Enjoy!

Whale hunting is a process that takes a while to perfect.  People mistakenly believe they can decide to land big deals one day and start prospecting the next. Having worked with several companies in their quest for “The Big Ones”, here’s what I’ve learned about the mindset and behaviors of successful Whale Hunters.

1. They think big

It’s comfortable to continue prospecting and servicing just-slightly-larger accounts.  But dramatic growth will not happen in this manner.  One whale-hunting law firm made a conscious choice to go up against the “Big Boy” law firms and pitch a deal they would never have previously attempted.

Not only do Whale Hunters envision working with big companies on big projects, they see the potential in their own company to grow and mature. They commit to developing capabilities in existing staff members and potentially, hiring new ones.  They recognize they need to ‘ramp up’ and streamline their production processes.  They understand that larger projects will fundamentally change the way they deliver their services and they seek to anticipate potential breakdowns before they happen. 

2.  They engage a broad spectrum of the staff in the process

Whale hunting is not something the CEO or Sales Executive can do alone.  Truly transforming a firm takes the collective brain power of all of the key players and the expansion of who is considered to be a key player.  Previously ‘hidden away’ service delivery experts must be brought in early, prior to when an agreement is reached with the prospect.  Ideally, these experts would be consulted still earlier as the company is mapping out how to design new whale-sized service offerings and how to reposition existing ones so that they appeal to larger prospects. A consulting firm is now considering how to reposition themselves with their current whales to take on even larger projects that would involve the engagement of multiple consultants rather than the single consultant projects they are currently known for in the Whale World.

3.  They conduct an image makeover for the firm

Whales are afraid of working with small firms.  They worry that small companies won’t be able to handle the volume nor maintain quality of service on a large contract.  It is critical then to manage the Aperture of Perception prior to approaching the whale so that their ‘small fry’ alarms don’t go off before you even get in the door.   This may require overhauling your website or collateral materials or striking collaborative relationships with other firms whose staff could complement and supplement yours.  One realtor assembled a team of specialists all serving a particular niche market to handle every aspect of her prospects’ anticipated needs. This positioned her new ‘firm’ as the go-to expert in that arena.  Her clients can have ‘One-stop shopping’ when they hire her.

Taking each of these steps helps the Whale Hunter build confidence, leverage internal resource capabilities and reposition the firm’s image.  They are better prepared for the hunt and are perceived as worthy hunters.  

About the author

Loretta Love Huff, a Certified Whale Hunter Partner is an award-winning business consultant and coach. She has a BS in Psychology from Howard University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago. Visit her at http://www.facebook.com/EmeraldHarvestLove.