Archive for June, 2007
There’s always been a struggle between selling and marketing. It’s the pushmi-pullyu , rock-paper-scissors, chicken or the egg thing.
Now, with email spam, ads over saturating our senses, and the Web 2.0, it seems selling and marketing are in a World Wrestling Federation death match.
- Which one is more important, sales or marketing?
- Which one will produce more qualified prospects, favorable bids, and secured contracts?
- Which one should you bet the farm on?
There’s not one answer, but a combination. The same was true before YOU were named Time magazine’s Person of the Year .
But instead of trying to sort out how sales and marketing were supposed to work back in the day, I thought it’d be interesting to list a few positives (+) and negatives (-) about their use today.
SELLING
Selling as a push-strategy:
(+) The only way 1-to-1 personal relationships can be developed
(+) Enables unique info to be collected specific to a single customer
(+) Emotionally influences customers who later justify decisions with logic
(+) The only way to finalize the sale of a facility service contract
(+) Can be the fastest path to secure a contract
(-) Cold calls are an imposition to customers who have no need
(-) Cold calling is inefficient, lot’s of wasted time, effort & money
(-) Sales tactics of poorly trained salespeople damage a contractor’s reputation
(-) Managing salespeople can be as frustrating as herding cats
(-) Can’t easily, quickly, or cost-effectively do all the (+)s of Marketing
MARKETING
Marketing as a pull-strategy:
(+) Can easily reach many customers in a market
(+) Can establish a contractor’s brand and raise customers’ awareness
(+) Can efficiently move customers through buying stages
(+) Can deliver customers who are ready to buy & have a preference for a contractor
(+) Can break through customers’ info overload through permission marketing
(-) Can’t do all the (+)s of Selling
(-) Can be expensive: ads, direct mail, tradeshows, promotions, PR
(-) Can be difficult to tell if it worked
(-) Can take time to motivate customers into action
(-) Brand messages & positioning are often “me-too”, lack uniqueness
This is, of course, not an all-inclusive list. What would you add?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: branding, marketing, selling
June 28th, 2007
Learning more about communication is helpful in business. Doesn’t matter where you learn it.
Try marriage. I learned it doesn’t matter what I want to tell my wife if she isn’t listening. Even if “what” I’m saying is right, 100% true, accurate and correct. Doesn’t matter. Unless she can hear it.
Seems obvious I know, but marriage is a great teacher. Here’s another example:
Business Books that Connect
There are a million of them out there (Carnegie
, Ziglar, Gitomer) and they’re all saying very much the same thing.
The difference is they each say it in their distinct voice, style and personality (at least the good ones). And you either connect with it, or don’t.
Remember the last business book that inspired you? When you took those ideas into work and tried them?
That book, that author, connected with you. You were looking for an answer, and were open to receiving one. And you got it. It was meaningul, powerful and motivated you to take action.
Same is true for business communication.
Getting It
Business communication is the sending and receiving of messages. Sender - receiver - message.
Contractors communicate their message in proposals, brochures, and web sites.
The problem is most effort is spent on the message - that’s important too. But it’s only half the equation, only as important as the receiving.
If the receiver isn’t ready for, or open to the message, that message was worthless. You might as well as not have said it. Or, wrote it, or presented it, or advertised it.
Willingness to Receive
The sales goal is to facilitate customers’ willingness and acceptance of our messages.
That’s done by knowing what a particular customer (or market) wants. Almost all sales effort should be spent figuring out exactly what a customer is trying to solve.
The remaining sales effort should be spent creating solutions, and then communicating it in a manner that the customer can receive.
Your communication should tell the customer that:
A) You understand they’re trying to solve “x,y,z” -and-
B) Here’s a potential solution (your customized service offering)
For facility contractors, the solution is communicated in your responses to Request for Proposals (RFP), Quotes, Qualifications, etc.
Ideally, if you can work this ahead of the procurement curve, you can help customers avoid the RFP process altogether. Saves them time, money and headaches.
The Bottom Line of Communication
It’s about the receiving of messages by individual customers, messages that are important to them.
Figuring out how they receive information they’re open to. Information they’re more willing to accept and do something about. Like sign a contract, return your call, accept your appointment.
This means the presentation and timing of that message is AS important as the message itself.
Great message + mediocre presentation = zero (no reception by the recipient, no change, no action)
Great message + good presentation + bad timing = same zero
Great message + good presentation + good timing = returned call, appointment, contract
How are your business communications received?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: buying, messaging, RFPs
June 21st, 2007
Facility contractors try to differentiate themselves to customers by presenting new programs in proposals. It doesn’t end there. Contractors also try to change their own companies for better, faster, cheaper.
Proposing something new for customers or employees to adopt is called, surprisingly, the Adoption Curve.
That’s not its formal name. It’s really called the Technology Adoption Life Cycle . Which first began by tracking how farmers bought hybrid seed corn. Not very high-tech. But six years later the model was flushed out by Everett Rogers in his book, Diffusions of Innovation.
Wikipedia sums it all up with:
“Rogers stated that adopters of any new innovation or idea could be categorized as innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%), based on a bell curve. Each adopter’s willingness and ability to adopt an innovation would depend on their awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption.
Some of the characteristics of each category of adopter include:
- Innovators - venturesome, educated, multiple info sources, greater propensity to take risk
- Early adopters - social leaders, popular, educated
- Early majority - deliberate, many informal social contacts
- Late majority - skeptical, traditional, lower socio-economic status
- Laggards -neighbours and friends are main info sources, fear of debt
Rogers also proposed a five stage model for the diffusion of innovation:
- Knowledge - learning about the existence and function of the innovation
- Persuasion - becoming convinced of the value of the innovation
- Decision - committing to the adoption of the innovation
- Implementation - putting it to use
- Confirmation- the ultimate acceptance (or rejection) of the innovation”
The Adoption Curve looks like this:
Adoption for Customers & Employees
Swap “service program” with “innovation” and we’re talking about facility contractors. Whether to get customers to adopt (select) contractors, or get employees to do something differently.
It’s the Adoption Curve, and it can be used as a guide for selling and marketing change - both inside and out.
It also shows us the relative population of any group, whether it’s customers’ decision-making teams, or our own employees. Those percentages provide a rough ballpark.
How To Increase Adoption (Incomplete Version)
Of course this is a short list. It’s a little more complicated and you’ll have to flesh out your own specifics. Read Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, although its for technology products, it can help.
Here’s a short take for facility services:
1) Identify your key customers (for a proposal it’s the decision making team, for employees it’s your key leaders)
2) Decide (guess) if they are innovator, early adopter, early majority, etc.
3) Identify where they get their info from. For example, innovators get info from blogs, white papers, and articles - the early majority rely heavily on references.
4) Create your messaging to appeal to their type:
- Innovator: “there are no proof points yet, speak to first-on-the-block, industry-changing, visionary aspects”
- Early Adopters: “point to innovators who have adopted, bring up risk-reward, & inevitability of coming change”
- Early Majority: “seek beachheads by pointing to reputable early adopters, speak to dangers of non-action”
- Late Majority: “point to proven track record, provide guarantees against failure”
- Laggards: “do you really want these?”
5) Get your adopter-specific message to your adopters in the manner they like (steps 3 & 4 above).
What are you doing to help your customers & employees adopt your changes?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: change, proposals, buying
June 14th, 2007
Humans have organized into silos since cavemen hunted in groups. Henry Ford’s assembly line standardized work, then squeezed out inefficiencies. Voila! Higher productivity at lower cost.
That’s why businesses organize in silos. They specialize work (finance, operations, etc.), increase accountability and crank up production.
So what’s the problem?
Silo Agendas
It’s a huge challenge for service contractors to sell to a team of decision-makers from different silos (aka cross-functional, decision-making teams).
Cross-functional decision-making teams are common on large contract bids. And they bring conflicting agendas.
For example, a finance analyst, a buyer, an HR rep, and a plant manager sit down to review your proposal. What do they each want in a contractor?
As contractors, are we to believe these decision-makers magically remove their silo-based agendas and attempt to choose a contractor for the good of their company? I don’t think so, not entirely anyway.
Individual Agendas
There is always a customer-manager, our contact person, who is responsible for the service once the decision is made.
However, in large contracts there are other spoons stirring the decision. And it’s these varying agendas that make selling contract services complex.
They all want something different. Their bonuses are calculated differently. Their job security comes from achieving different goals.
We’ve all heard about personal agendas being played out. About the decision-makers who try and make a name for themselves by raising unrealistic questions or concerns during a selection process.
And we’re all familiar with decision-makers who try to improve their organization using outsourced partners. Those who understand and are capable of team building and creating a shared vision, even including contractors.
Sales Goal for Agendas
Our sales goal is to fully understand as many of the business agendas as possible, such as:
- Customer’s company agenda
- Decision-makers’ departmental agendas
- Agendas of the decision-makers themselves
By understanding these various agendas we can be more creative in the design of our service solution. We can configure our service delivery to serve multiple agendas.
And when our customized solution helps multiple decision-makers get what they want, they’ll select us.
It’s All About Preparation
Preparing for a large contract bid begins long before the RFP comes out. Because once it’s out, the cone of silence descends on the decision-making team, imposed by procurement.
So the time to prepare is weeks and months before the RFP is expected. Here are some things to try and find out:
- Who will be the members of the decision-making team & their titles?
- What departments do they represent?
- What internal initiatives are in progress, completed, or planned? How successful were they?
- What is the internal political climate - whose star is rising & whose is falling?
How successful are you addressing multiple customer agendas?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: buying, RFPs, proposals, agendas
June 6th, 2007
Ever hear of customers’ customers? Sure you have. Once they were called “employees”, or “tenants”, or “students”. Now everyone’s a “customer”.
The customers’ customer model provides facility contractors an opportunity to increase their value to existing customers. It also makes it less likely customers will switch to another contractor. But first…
Who’s the Customer?
Typically, the facility service customer, our contact, is a manager of a function or structure (security director, plant manager, campus administrator, etc.)
They include contracted services as part of a safe, secure, clean and productive workplace.
They serve the facility needs of their customers, i.e. employees, tenants, etc. - these are our customers’ customers.
Customers’ Customers Choose to Participate -or- Not
There are facility programs where our customers’ customers choose to participate, or not.
Obviously this isn’t true all the time. Some policies and procedures are not optional. Either the benefits or penalties are too big to ignore, and so they’re followed.
But for some facility programs,there are areas where customers determine their participation.
2 Examples: Recycling Programs & Security Practices
Recycling program success is directly dependent on enlisting customers’ participation. They have to change their behavior, do things differently, for programs to work.
Contract security services can’t be everywhere all the time. Protecting the workplace is largely dependent on customers following security practices. Think about confidential information on laptops. Or, after-hours in a parking garage.
Our Customers Seek Their Customers Buy-In
Forcing customers to do things they don’t want to do just doesn’t work. A Stalag 17 mentality creates more escape tunnels than Swiss cheese.
When you no longer can demand, you must enlist. Our customers are now faced with gaining their customers’ participation in doing things the “right way”. And this requires our customers to market their programs.
Contractors’ Opportunities
Contractors can help with the burden of marketing to our customers’ customers.
Who knows more than service providers about the value of recycling? Or importance of security? Or whatever? That’d be you - the contractor!
By working closely with customers, contractors can first understand, then design, and potentially implement efforts to increase participation in facility programs.
Here’s how contractors might help:
1) Provide information such as case studies & success stories highlighting benefits of participation
2) Develop communication plans with creative ways of raising customers’ customers awareness
3) Produce awareness-raising promotional items -costs may be shared, or picked up by contractors or customers
4) Promote participation - contractors personnel doing the marketing work, i.e. “meet & greets”, group emails, seminars, etc.
Success Requirements
Obviously, contractors can’t try to enlist participation on their own. Here are several needs:
1) Customers must allow contractors to help - obvious, yes
2) Customers will allow greater participation if trust & integrity are present with their contractors
3) Contractors must invest the time & effort to understand customers’ programs, culture, goals & limitations
4) All contractors’ promotion efforts must be authorized - again, obvious
Contractors’ Benefit Loop
This is a great self-perpetuating loop to get into with customers. By marketing to your customers’ customers, contractors gain:
1) Greater integration with customers -> increases your value to them, less likely to switch
2) Increased understanding of customers - leverage to create new, customized service offerings
3) Offer new customized services -> increased revenue & profit -> leads back to #1
What Programs Do You Market to Customers’ Customers?
~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President, Service Performance
Technorati: marketing, janitorial, security
June 1st, 2007
