Launch Clinic

The Cranky Sales Engineer and responsiveness from Marketing

I just finished reading the third installment of blog posts by the Cranky Sales Engineer who is guest blogging at the Cranky Product Manager. He’s written three posts that I recommend you read. Having spent time in the SE ranks I can relate to what the CSE is saying.

In the CSE’s most recent post - Guest Post: The Cranky Sales Engineer on how to get R-E-S-P-E-C-T – I can relate to what it feels like to attempt to get answers from Marketing or Product Management, only to find I couldn’t get an answer.  The prospect wants it today. If you’re in the field you know that it’s incredibly important to get fast turnaround when you’re trying to win the business.

I’m a big proponent of an approach where Marketing and Product Management should equip sales channels to close deals with markets of buyers.  They shouldn’t be helping individual sales guys work individual deals.  Stop and think about that for a moment. Some of you will jump for joy. Some of you will shriek. The phrase “everyone is in Sales” is a load of crap. We’re all in the revenue game and we each have a contribution in achieving revenue goals, but we’re not in Sales.

Marketing managers and product marketing managers the rest of this post is for you. If you are spending more than 20% of your time responding to deal-specific requests from Sales you have a problem. Put another way, 20% is equal to 1 day per week. When you are helping individual salespeople work deals you are doing sales support, not marketing.

There are three primary causes for this:

1. Your organization doesn’t have sales engineers and you’re left filling the gap. Sales engineers perform a vital function in the sales process and their role in the revenue game is often misunderstood. When Marketing fills the sales engineer gap that helps close a deal, do they get credit? Rarely.
   
2. You haven’t done an adequate job in sales readiness. Requests for information is caused when there are gaps in the sales engineer’s knowledge that shows up in the reality of the field. Pay attention to this and fill the gaps quickly. Assume everyone has the same question and make sure you answer it for everyone once. Make it easy for the field to find answers and they’ll do it on their own.  BTW a sales presentation, a product demo, a brochure and a web page is not sales readiness.
   
3. Your organization doesn’t have a culture of accountability. Even when you do a great job of sales readiness and are responsive to legitimate field requests, and you still get the same stupid questions over and over again you might have an accountability problem. The answers are available if the field would take the time to look, but they don’t. Push back. Be firm. Say no and point them to the resources.

Some of these causes you can fix.  If your organization doesn’t have sales engineers you could track the amount of time you’re providing for sales support (and not marketing) and make a case for sales engineers. If you’re not doing a good job of sales readiness, shame on you. You’re digging your own grave. That’s completely your control and no one in the organization should impede your sales readiness efforts. If your organization doesn’t have a culture of accountability you may have a bigger challenge.  Start by pushing back.  Don’t be an enabler of bad behavior.

Technorati Tags: sales readiness,sales engineer,accountability,sales support

Trade show budgets decline 17% in 2009

According to the Trade Show Exhibitors Association in their newly released “2009 Exhibit Marketing Survey”. It’s the result of “interviews of nearly 300 professionals who use exhibits, events or face-to-face marketing to promote and sell their products”.

It looks like a reduction in the number of trade shows attended will be down by 17% year over year.

Highlights:

• Exhibitors attended an average of 30 trade shows in 2008 and expect to attend 25 in 2009
• Trade shows will account for one third of an organization’s overall marketing budget in 2009
• Budgets for exhibiting will decrease from an average $459,100 in 2008 to $381,000 in 2009
• Corporate private event spending will decrease 30% from 2008 to 2009
• Spending for medical/healthcare/pharmaceutical industry events will increase 5% in 2009, but spending for technology shows will decrease 46%

This should come as no surprise to most of us. I expected the decline to be more severe.

The fact is that we have a trade show that runs 24 x 7 and it’s called the world wide web. It’s a trade show where potential buyers are looking for solutions to problems and they could be anywhere in the world. You could potentially reach 5,000 people at a physical trade show or 5,000,000 online.

I acknowledge for some of you trade shows are essential, but for others they are more of a tradition that would be difficult to justify on their own merit in today’s economic environment.

If you think about your website as a proxy for a trade show, what would you do differently? Are you doing the work to make sure that buyers can find you? Are you providing information buyers need to make a decision to go to the next step in the buying process?

Technorati Tags: marketing,trade show,tradeshow,product launch

A launch lesson – Nokia U.S. 5800 XpressMusic Phones

Not to pick on Nokia but there is a lesson for all of us to learn from Nokia’s efforts at launching the 5800 XpressMusic phones in the USA.  The phone was a huge hit in Europe but bombed in the U.S. due to communication glitches with consumers that use carrier AT&T.

The 5800 works on GSM networks (AT&T and T-Mobile in the US) and Nokia sold it unlocked, direct to consumers. GSM is the predominant wireless communication technology in the world, dwarfing the competing technology CDMA. The 5800 was such a huge success in Europe, my guess is Nokia expected it to work just as well in the U.S.  After all, GSM is GSM right? Unfortunately that didn’t happen and Nokia must now regroup.

In bypassing carriers, Nokia could sell direct to consumers and in theory get to market faster, improving sales velocity.

Ouch. This was a big deal for Nokia.  No doubt they’ll recover but it’s a tough lesson to learn.

Priya Ganapati at Wired.com covered this story in more detail here.

 

Technorati Tags: product launch

The four R’s of selling more stuff

Technology companies are seeing their R&D budgets slashed as a result of current economic conditions. It’s a natural reaction to a slowdown in purchases of existing products. We get so enamored with new products we forget about the products that carried the company. With the next new thing on hold, it’s time to focus on products in the portfolio and make them relevant to buyers.

Products sell when they satisfy a need in the market that is urgent, pervasive and buyers are willing to pay. In good economic times this rule is relaxed because companies are flush with cash.  In tough economic times the rule is absolute.

Your challenge is a direct result of a change in the buying environment.  It has changed violently and you must respond to regain a position of relevance.

1. Reacquaint yourself with your buyers and their problems. Don’t fool yourself.  Your buyer’s problems and priorities have changed. Get out into the market and find out.  Talk with people.  Don’t rely exclusively on industry reports and hearsay. If you were guessing at the problems you solve for buyers and who the buyers really are, now is the time to get back on track.

2. Revisit your product portfolio. Hopefully some of the products can solve problems that are urgent, pervasive and customers are will to pay for in today’s market. Focus on the products that have the most promise. Be prepared that this may shake the foundations of your core product beliefs.

3. Realign the products in the portfolio within your new understanding of your buyer’s problems. Re-position the products that can solve those urgent, pervasive problems that buyers are willing to pay for. Add incremental features to support the new positioning, if necessary. The goal isn’t to re-engineer the product.  The goal is to repurpose it based on prevailing market conditions, and do it quickly.

4. Relaunch the repositioned products emphasizing buyer problems and how you solve them, not the features.  Present a fresh perspective to your buyers and regain a position of relevance that well enable you to sell more stuff.

Instead of fretting over at you can’t do, focus on what you can. I’m not suggesting you put lipstick on a pig.  That’s too transparent. There is value in your portfolio you can mine and repurpose to gain new revenue. It’s up to you to find the value and share it with your buyers.

Technorati Tags: product launch,positioning,product portfolio,buyer persona profile,market problems

B2B marketing budgets down; pipeline acceleration programs are up

A SiriusDecisions study of B2B companies revealed that 44% of companies report a drop in budget, but  many are doubling their pipeline acceleration programs.  Worst hit are advertising and events.

“ When breaking down proposed marketing spend, SiriusDecisions found that companies with $101-$500 million in revenue are making cuts. Organizations with at least $1 billion in revenue are cutting back as well… “ 

Technorati Tags: marketing,budget,product launch

CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is “Broken”

Today while reading Marketing Vox, one of the many RSS feeds I like to read each day, an article caught my attention – CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is “Broken”.

The article is a result of a survey conducted by Verse Group and Jupiter Research.  There are 5 priorities identified from interviews with 101 CMO/VP Marketing executives in B2B and B2C companies.

Before reading further you need understand my position on branding. At the core of any company is a brand.  That brand is bestowed on a company by their customers based on the ability to deliver value. The trappings of the brand – logos, fonts, colors, images – are the dressing of the brand. Too often marketing executives equate “brand” with how it looks, not the value the company delivers to its customers. No amount of branding can overcome a fundamentally flawed product or business model.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

#	CMO Priority	Translation
1	Achieve measurable ROI on marketing efforts	Marketing is the only group in the company that isn’t measured on outcomes that matter and the jig is up
2	Developing marketing programs that integrate online and traditional media	I still don’t know crap about this online marketing thing.  Skittles anyone?
3	Translating brand experience across different touch points	Congressional earmarks
4	Cutting marketing budgets without cutting performance	See #1 above.  This accountability thing is really going to suck.
5	Optimizing portfolio of brands	Something to say to confuse the board into demonstrating the CMO is really smart

Here’s a quote from the article…

“If companies such as GM, Dell and Sony are to regain their competitiveness, they have to retool their approach to marketing, not just their products,” said Randal Ringer, co-founder of Verse Group. “They need a compelling narrative to engage the hearts and minds of customers.”

Apparently Randal is referring to the little “m” of marketing, as in t-shirts, coffee mugs, lunches and logos. Brand is earned.  We can influence the buyers perception of the brand but only as long as the promise is delivered.

Back to the quote. GM has been on a downward spiral since the 1970’s.  Retooling marketing isn’t going to fix GM’s competitiveness. Management at GM have known for years what’s wrong and they didn’t fix it. Sony invented the portable music phenomenon with the Walkman and now Apple is king. Maybe a better narrative can help Sony.

Here’s a branding initiative you can take to the bank: If you want a better brand focus on delivering value to your customers.

Technorati Tags: marketing,ROI,branding,product launch

April Dunford on Competition

I’m a big fan of April’s blog. She posted a story about competition that I really like. It reminds of what my face must say when someone tells me they have no competition. My wife tells me it’s the “are you really that stupid or is someone helping you” look.

Technorati Tags: competition,competitors,competitive analysis

Happy square root day!

For those of you who don’t know today is the square root of ‘09.  03/03/09 

Yeah, I know it’s kind of bizarre but that’s the way I roll.

The product management dance

My friend Jon Gatrell over at Spatially Relevant created an awesome presentation called the Product Management Dance.  Check it out and put a smile on your face.

Technorati Tags: product management,product manager