Summary of my “eBook” – A Social Marketing Approach That Works – UGC Contests, Sweepstakes, Promotions!

Summary “eBook” – A Social Marketing Approach That Works – UGC Contests, Sweepstakes, Promotions!

A friend recently told me he enjoyed my “eBook”, Eight Secrets To Getting Off To A Great Start With Social Media Promotions!, and he used concepts from the “eBook” as his guide for creating a contest for a nutritional beverage he recently introduced. He said the information was useful but my “eBook” was a little long.

OK! I get it! So here is the summary I wrote for my “eBook” post, http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/a-social-media-marketing-approach-that-works/. If you like more details please relax, grab a nutritional beverage and read the post. You’ll only need about 10 minutes! Oh, by the way, UGC stand for User Generated Content.

I’ll refer to contest, sweepstakes, and promotions as promotions or online promotions going forward.

If you’re involved with brand marketing or B2B partner rewards, I’d urge you to read the “eBook”. Online promotions can produce outstanding brand awareness; active relevant engagement between you, your target audience, and your brand; produce two-way communications with your target audience; and produce sales conversions. B2C and B2B online promotions are fun to execute can be very cost effective to deliver, and offer solid returns on your investments of time and money.

Here’s my “eBook” summary:

1. Plan your online promotion: Just as you plan other marketing, activities plan your online promotion. What are your goals for the program? Who is your target audience? What channels or mix of social channels and tools best support your program? What’s the best method for creating active engagements, two-way communications, sales…? Is my goal to increase sales? Am I possibly interested in building a brand specific social commerce network? What media will I need? Decide how to structure your program to achieve your goals. Much of this has to do with your activation idea. You’re only limited by your imagination and budget. Brainstorm your ideas and plans with your social media promotions partner.  A good social media promotions partner can help with all aspects of your program. They can help with the activation idea, the goal setting, the rules that will help protect your brand, with user security, with fraud detection, moderation… All of these aspects are important to consider and will help to assure a good experience for you, your brand, and your promotion participants. Your partner will help you bring these elements into clear focus. And remember; where possible integrate your promotion with your marketing calendar. You’ll extend the value of all of your programs. Take a look at, http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/integrate-social-media-across-all-marketing-initiatives/.

2.  Develop a fun program activation idea:  The activation idea is the driving creative engine behind your promotion. Make it fun, engaging, and thoroughly relevant to your target audience. Actually, the activation idea is one of the most important elements of a successful social media promotion. The activation idea and goals of the program will lead to the prize you’ll be offering.
3.  Prize – relevant and desirable for your target audience:  Your prize need not be extravagant, but it must be relevant and desirable. If you have celebrity relationships, perhaps a day with a celebrity. If you produce sporting events, perhaps offer a guest reporting, tweeting, and blogging position for a high-profile event. If you are a consumer brand perhaps reward the winner with a six month or annual supply. If you produce athletic gear, suit them up! If you are a brand that’s interested in friends and family – select a prize for the family to enjoy.
4. Simple entry – easy to invite participation: Entering and participating with your promotion must be easy and simple. Entry can be at your website, your brand site, a web ad, Facebook… But no matter where entry is made it should only require a few clicks for users to register and invite their friends and family to participate. Uploading photos, videos, text… must be simple. Your contest rules let participant know the lengths and formats required.
5. 30-90 days is about right:  Most programs run for about 60 days. This seems to be enough time to create urgency and get the buzz out. Keep the site active after the winner is selected to capture and participate in conversations with users.
6. Analytics?:  Of course! Measure the number of participants and from where they began their participation with you, number of entries, where contest notifications (ads) were placed and their effectiveness, did Twitter work?, did email work?, was mobile access useful?, did your YouTube postings gain interest and did they generate comments and program participation. It’s important that you establish analytics before your program begins so the frequency and impact of your touches are captured. Review your analytics and plan your next program to produce an even better result! Review your objectives and see where you netted out. What did your brand learn? What program elements would you include in your next program? What program elements would you eliminate? What worked especially well? Did some element fail to perform as expected? Was your social media promotions partner on it! Did their platform perform as promised? Was their creative environment flexible or was it cookie-cutter and incomplete after-all.
7. Online promotions have flexibility: If you have selected a contest partner who has developed their software using a platform, making course corrections should not be a major problem. You should be able make tweaks to your promotion and the supporting tools you use – Twitter, Facebook…
8. Promote the winner:  When you announce the winner please remember to inform the participants of their future progress. If a contestant wins a chance to be a brand spokesperson, let the participants know what happened and that person’s experience in their own words. Let them know what continues to happen with their career. Keep your participants involved with you and your brand. Remember, it’s about the people.
9. Promote your program!: It’s absolutely critical to promote your program! If you make media buys include mentions of your online promotion where it’s reasonable to do so. Promote the fun of participating in your promotion and discuss the rewards. Promoting your program is essential. Know how you will do this before your program launches. Just building it is no guarantee they will come and participate. Many brands have email lists of consumers who purchase with them. This is a great place to begin promoting your program.

I’ve worked with brands that were skeptical when they delivered their first online promotion. After a review of the post promotion analytics, they became true converts and evangelists! In several cases these skeptics are delivering one promotion per quarter and are in the process of developing digital communities for specific brands.

Please don’t say this summary is too long!

Selling Software as a Service (SaaS) – A Start-up or Early Stage Company Perspective

I’m very excited to see the proliferation of business and personal productivity software applications that are being made available online using subscription services! Large and small businesses and individuals can take advantage of a wide range of applications without huge investments in technology and time. We are rapidly approaching the time when our tablet computers and smart phones will be the appliances used to access all of our applications and data online – using a variety of SaaS services.

Even complex IT applications are moving to a SaaS model. Intricate platforms designed to monitor applications, performance trending, fault-detection across cloud providers, single sign-on across cloud platforms, and web-based libraries for application sharing and development have proven SaaS providers.

But what if you’re one of these SaaS providers and you’re a start-ups or early stage company? And what if you’re trying to build awareness of your platform and attract large numbers of subscribers? I’m certain you’ve asked, “Are there sales and marketing strategies we can use that will give us rapid and consistent adoption?  Do you ask, “Where our marketing and sales effort should be focused?”

If you’ve read previous Sales Reminder posts, you are probably aware that I see a real blurring of the lines between marketing, sales, and business development when it comes to technology driven start-ups and early stage companies. In the early stages, one or two people probably have direct responsibility for sales, marketing, and business development and this is a good thing if their plans and strategies are well-integrated and coordinated.

So Where To Begin?

Some SaaS application can be sold completely online while others will probably require face-to-face interactions with prospective clients – especially in some B2B scenarios. Your management team needs to determine the selling methods that are best for assuring the adoption of your platform. Salesforce.com for instance started its selling primarily using an online strategy. Today they employ a team of experienced senior sales professionals that focus on major accounts and complex custom deployments.

Let’s assume your product can be sold primarily online and is B2B oriented. I’d focus my marketing and selling efforts online until you’re certain you need to develop outside sales, consulting, and integration teams. When you think you need a sales professional to help drive your efforts beyond online selling, please check this link for clues as to who to look for in your first VP of Sales candidate: http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/hiring-a-vice-president-of-sales-for-your-early-stage-company/.

Suggestions For Getting Off To A Solid Start

1. Create An Exquisite Website – The majority of your prospective customers search for ways to solve their pressing business issues online.  I’m guessing that many of the leads for your SaaS platform will be generated from online inquiries or from other online channels leading to your website. To help increase awareness of your enterprise it’s important to:

- Create a website that’s clean looking and appealing to your target audience. If your target happens to be retailers, assure your imagery and calls to action are relevant for retailers. If you have a broader business demographic, be attentive to imagery and content and calls to action that align with your target audience.

- Clearly state what your solution delivers – graphically where possible

- Clearly state your pricing – show the value of a multi-year contract and ease of adding additional users and ease of upgrading to the enterprise level usage

- Clearly state what’s needed to get started with you – what’s the process and time required to begin – This is your call to action that sets you apart from all other solutions– If your SaaS platform requires a complex implementation plan for this! You’ll make your life much easier if you plan in advance of making a sale. Check this post for tips on planning a smoother implementation: http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/implementing-the-solution-sales-reminder-10/.

- Never hide your contact information – include a 1-800 number, email contact, live chat, if your budget allows. Include your social media contact information – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter…

- Discuss training issues if instruction is required

- State your support methods – perhaps tiered – how simply support is accessed and hours of availability

- Discuss trials and how they are best conducted

2. Generate Buzz and Demand: If possible, collect information on all visitors to your site and offer ways for visitors to register for conversations with your tech presenter, for demos, presentations, and trials… Online advertising is an inexpensive way to have ads placed where your target demographic visits. SEO/SEM is not expensive and will payback over time.

3. Never Settle for “Me-too” Status: Strive to become the leader in your space even if there are bigger players or multiple players. Be the thought leader and driver in your space even if you are a party of two! Write opinion pieces (or have them written), create frequent blogs posts, ask visitors to opt-in for informative emails, newsletters and other communications, produce webinars featuring industry experts, and have weekly demo days displayed on your website where people will know in advance when they can learn about specific aspects of your platform. Realize you are an early stage company and your case studies, and success stories are not there yet. You are in the process of building your success library of webinars, blogs, and clients testimonials. Begin saving this information from day one and always let your clients know, they will at some point be asked for a testimonial. Get their agreement on this as part of your sales process.

Most startups and early stage companies have Board members who have broad networks of contacts and can provide warm introductions. Use them! Use your Board and those they know to “sell” the idea of your enterprise. Ask them to have their connections set aside some time for you to present and demo your solution. Even if it is not a perfect fit, the experience gained will be invaluable to all levels of your company.

4. Do Your Homework: I recently attended a business networking/business building seminar and the facilitator asked some very seasoned CEO’s and business owners, who were their best sales targets. I was astounded by the answers I heard! I’ll not say more! It’s imperative to know who you are selling to! Know your target audience. Do they belong to an association? Are their online destinations they congregate? Do they produce newsletters? Do they go to trade shows? Who do they compete against? In general, why is my product or service valuable to this target? What is the best mix of media I can use to reach and engage my targets? Do they use social media?

5. Create Traction: I’ve already mentioned online advertising, seminars, and demos as ways to generate demand and buzz. For some enterprises, the use of social tools can be an excellent way to attract new potential clients. Video campaigns and user-generated contests are inexpensive ways to create viral programs that engage and attract. If you sell using partner networks, joint selling and advertising can really support the growth of your enterprise.

6. Learn As You Go: There are several SaaS stories you can draw from. Research SaaS successes to learn about hurdles others faced and how those hurdles were jumped! As you have interaction with prospective clients learn more about their objections to your platform and their buying behaviors. Invest early in a sales CRM application and place all you learn there. Put all of your prospects there and all of your notes. Update this tool daily! This habit will payoff quickly.

7. Rapid follow-up: When people inquire about your product reply by email or phone and do so “quickly”. I once consulted for a very large software company that had nearly 280 web inquiries that sat unanswered for several weeks! The company was nowhere near their revenue goals. A low-end sale for them was in the $100k range but a large sale was in the millions. If only 20 of these were real opportunities on the low-end, we’re talking about several million dollars of lost revenue due to a lack of follow-up. There’s absolutely no excuse for this type of performance. This company’s marketing department was producing good results but the leads were rarely touched in a timely manner by sales.

8. Qualify: Teach the person that follows-up to do some basic lead qualification. Take a look at http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/qualifying-checklist-sales-reminder2/ for a few clues. Learn if a demo is necessary to their evaluation and if so, how will your SaaS solution be evaluated, their timeframe for making a decision,… Ask if a guided free trial would useful? A guided trial because often during a free trial nothing much happens unless your prospect is guided to take specific actions and complete the trial.

9. Have Fun: Really! Have fun! Building a new business can be mentally and physically demanding. No doubt about it. But never forget about the energies that got you started in the first place. Keep that spirit! Be disciplined about your actions but keep the fun.

Sales Reminder – SaaS sales as a startup or early stage enterprise. Keep the creativity flowing!

Hiring A Vice President of Sales for Your Early Stage Company

I truly enjoy playing a sales role with tech start-ups and keeping abreast of innovation, new ideas, participating in the disruption of nonproductive business practices, and adding good twists on old themes.  When opportunities present themselves for me to have discussions with early stage entrepreneurs, often the conversation turns to the important question, when’s the best time to hire a Vice President of Sales – that person who, within a few days of being on-board,  will instantly take their company to the next level financially. Words like “magic” and a “sales rock star” start to creep into our conversation and eyes light-up with excitement and anticipation. I can almost see their thoughts – visions of signed contracts, so many they’ll need new office space within a couple of weeks!

My first reaction during these conversations is to try and remove the words “magic” and “rock star” from their thinking, job postings, vocabulary, mental images, and their evaluation criteria of the sales talent.

It’s only my opinion, but neither of these descriptions of a sales professional, nor similar terms, fit what a good VP of Sales delivers. If images of “magic” and “rock stars” form the basis for making a hiring decision, it’s very likely the best candidate will be missed completely: that candidate who would help an early stage company grow its business quickly and consistently. Unfortunately, I’ve seen great sales talent literally forced out of a company by managers with these mental images. Stop it!

Of course all of us want excellent and consistent sales performance, but these old images of sales professionals bring up stereotypes of sales as a slick profession where the buyer is often coerced into making a quick purchase that’s not necessarily in the buyer’s best interest. In today’s world of rapid social communications, burned buyers often get the last laugh! A good sales process can seem magical but I can assure you it takes knowledge, hard work, planning, and persistence to consistently create that “magic”. If a magic “sales wand” existed, every business owner would have one or two.

I’ve successfully worked as VP of Sales and Business Development for early stage tech enterprises in Silicon Valley and for companies in the $300mm range. As a start-up VP of Sales, I’ve sold enterprise, SaaS, and PaaS, solutions to Fortune 50 clients so I come at this issue with a practical and experienced point of view.

A Few Insights

First, I think it’s important for the CEO (founders) of the company to have made, or have seriously attempted to make, a few sales before their new VP of Sales is hired. Those having gone through a significant sales effort typically remove the terms “magic” and “rock star” from their vocabularies and expectations. Selling by the founders needs to go beyond the warm introductions made by Board members or sales to their friends and family. In my opinion, the founders need to dive into what they might see as the murky and turbulent waters of new business development and win or lose a deal or two. A loss is not a disaster!

Second, the founders need to understand the model they used – whether they were successful or not. The point is not for them to create a sales process that’s etched in stone but rather to gain insights about how potential buyers react to them and their proposition. What objections did they encounter? Where is the buying hesitation? Will they actually buy my product within my lifetime? It might not be elegant, or pretty, or perfect, but this knowledge is valuable. This knowledge might even shape the future selling systems and processes used by the sales team. Oh, I suggest the founders not select their best potential or “must win” clients to practice their early selling!

Third, usually after winning or losing a few opportunities, the founders and the initial team of hunters come to the conclusion they would prefer to do their own jobs and hire a professional to drive sales. This is often the point when hiring a VP of Sales really begins to take shape.

So What Do You Look For In Your Vice President of Sales?

One note of caution before we continue. From a compensation stand point, be certain your product or service is complete enough for your new VP to achieve their on-target goals. Since much of the compensation for a Sales VP is typically tied to sales performance, and incomplete products typically sell for less money, it’s important for you and your new VP to understand the financial implications. If you find a great candidate and they’re willing to take the risk with you then you probably have a good fit. Also, if your funding is not completely in place, be upfront about it. Many experienced VP’s will work for a salary if they are given an equity stake or a lucrative bonus structure. It’s worth considering making these offers to an excellent candidate. They will more than repay your investments and will be very motivated to deliver.

Different Kinds Of VP’s?

There are different kinds of Vice President’s of Sales. Some of my VP of Sales friends work at very large companies and others for early stage ventures. Some VP’s of Sales at large companies have very few face-to-face customer interactions. Most are very numbers driven and are deeply concerned with margin variance, territory analytics, and the profitability of forecasts. Some work with sales CRM systems and then export data into spreadsheets the size of Texas!

I’m not saying analytical skills are not needed! I’m just saying, if you’re the CEO of an early stage company please be aware of the specific needs for your enterprise. Just because a VP comes from a large well respected company, or is well known, doesn’t mean that person is the perfect fit for your venture. For startups, the VP of Sales is often the only sales professional and needs to be able to deliver the entire sales cycle.

From creating a sales process, defining the sales targets, prospecting, pipeline building, qualifying, presenting, dealing with prospect objections, input on the creation of sales collateral materials, getting signed contracts, and forecasting, your first sales VP needs to demonstrate sales and process management skills and solid cross corporate communications.

The Experience Factor

Often times there’s a debate between hiring a VP of Sales with deep industry background or a younger candidate. My experience is, especially for early stage companies, people wear many professional hats. A VP of  Sales  for a startup tech company for instance, needs to understand how to collaborate with marketing, communicate with project/product management teams, understand market research, leverage marketing efforts, communicate with engineers, understand legal and contracts, participated in pricing strategies, communicate with the Board of Advisors and Directors as needed, be aware of business development opportunities, implement a sales CRM system, communicate with finance on deal structures, motivate salespeople if they have them, create a vision for the team, create sales plans, perhaps participate in fund raising activities, and many other responsibilities.

They may also be the sole sales person in place until they can grow their sales organization. For startups I’m more inclined to towards experience when it comes to the first VP of Sales hire – someone with broad business experience and insights, who loves a rapid pace, and isn’t easily dissuaded by uncertainty and the occasional calamity. And since there are usually very limited human resources to support administrative functions, the VP of Sales needs to be self-reliant on a variety of fronts.

Ideally your first VP of Sales should have solid sales experience. During an interview situation they should be reasonably able to reply to you regarding your selling proposition. They should also be able to present you with couple of twists that you may not have considered when it comes to selling your product or service. I’d very strongly urge you to consider candidates who have had formal sales training from a recognized sales training organization. Have them explain their personal selling system and why it will work for your company. An experienced VP of Sales should be able to create a very simple go forward “sales plan” after their initial interview.

MBA Imperative?

If you require an MBA that’s fine but I’ll tell you, the most successful VP’s of Sales I’ve ever met had bachelor’s degrees, several formal sales training courses, years of sales experience, and progressively challenging management roles. These are Fortune 1000 and startup VP’s. I’m not aware of any MBA program that offers salesmanship training that’s as detailed and focused as the training offered by the most reputable sales training organizations.

That’s my two cents worth! I hope this edition of SalesReminder helps you grow your venture!

 

Integrate Social Media Across All Marketing Initiatives

Integrate Social Media Across All Marketing Programs

Just as integrating TV, Radio, Print, On-premise, Off-premise, In store, Direct Response, and Online marketing is an excellent strategy to extend the reach and effectiveness of all the programs, adding Social Media Marketing to this marketing mix is vitally important. To maximize the effectiveness and reach of Social Media programs it’s important to integrate these programs across your Advertising, Marketing, PR, Research, and Consumer Insight channels. When properly executed your brand can gain deep insights into consumer behaviors, interests, and preferences, and create a two-way dialogue with your audience. Actually, three-way conversations are possible if you permit dialog between your users, another huge insight potential.

Nothing Mystical Here!

If you’ve been selling and marketing for a while, you already sense that the foundations of Social Media are not new, mysterious, or mystical.  Connecting with interested groups of consumers and distribution partners has been the goal of marketers since the advertising giants began to emerge during the late 1940’s! It’s all about tailored engagement s and developing long-lasting relationships. We now have the social web and excellent technologies to assist us. These new and evolving technologies help brands to provide unique customer-centric experiences, meaningful social interactions, real-time research opportunities, viral and word-of-mouth marketing, advocacy, loyalty, and fuel for customer relationship management on multiple levels.

Community and Social Networking – Users With A Similar Interest

There are many ways to build active user engagement. Strategic use of Twitter, blogs, intelligent ad units, targeted user-generated contests, polls, surveys… can be excellent ways to develop ongoing engagements that lead to brand specific social networks. One goal of social media marketing is to create a unique destination for like-minded users and your brand to interact with each other.  These interactions offer solid social commerce potential.

Have Fun While Collecting Insights And Feedback

Enabling dialogue between your brand and your users and between users is among the best real-time research opportunities.  There are few methods better for soliciting feedback and opinions on your products and services. Your own 24-hour research/focus group engine! 

Outcomes?

Tailored Social Media Marketing programs can increase brand awareness and loyalty through interactive experiences with your brand. The outcome?  A rise in consumer awareness, increased mind share, and social commerce opportunities. The most important outcome for brands?  The conversion of casual visitors and users of web content into advocates, and shoppers into new customers!

Make It Easy To Create Buzz! Viral Is Good!

Provide easy to use tools that allow your advocates to share knowledge about your brand. Make it easy for users to create and distribute their own user-generated content. Branded widgets allow integration and syndication of functionality and content into your users’ social network profiles and blogs.

Rewards, Loyalty, And CRM

I’m a fan of user-generated contests. User participation analytics are collected and tracked. Since most user-generated contests have durations of 30-60-90 days, a variety of rewards can be implemented. Grand prize winners can be selected, concurrent sweepstakes, random drawings can be used to reward participants. A rewards-based points system and member-leveling/reputation system, in which points can be exchanged for rewards (such as product samples, better deals for distribution partners, access to premium content for a specified  time period,  VIP access to events, gift cards…), thus strengthening the consumer’s relationship with your brand. This system can be also integrated into your existing loyalty/CRM programs for deeper integration and future marketing, customer, and support executions.

Take advantage of the opportunities presented by the social web! It can be fun for you and your users.  And remember; integrate your social web initiatives with your other media executions.

Tailor Your Social Media Programs Or Miss Your Target

One Size Fits All?

Several years ago, I was a sales and marketing executive for an integrated marketing firm.  One of our new financial services clients was concerned about their lack of sales performance west of the Mississippi.  Their field sales teams were experienced and professional, and their sales performance in many regions of the country was well above projections.

Our client wondered why a smaller upstart company was winning in almost every sales category where they competed head-to-head, especially on the west coast.  It wasn’t price or the strength of services being offered that seem to make sales difference. Regardless of their marketing and sales efforts, nothing was leading our client to a greater market share out west.

Before our firm proposed anything to help tackle the sales performance issue, we conducted a field investigation to help figure out our client’s quandary.  Our field investigation soon revealed an important issue.  An issue many marketers have probably encountered.

One Theme For All!

The issue? Our client used the same advertising themes, media, creative imagery, sales approach, and communications strategies in every market they tried to penetrate. Their “general” approach worked fine in several markets but returned less than stellar results in others. Key cities and regions west of the Mississippi had different consumer and business demographics than seen in the Midwest, Northeast, Southeast… Areas of the west coast to be very multicultural, and in some cases, respond differently to marketing and sales messages. Actually, during our field investigations, we found the a great majority of people and business owners we interviewed never recalled seeing my client’s logo or name despite huge west coast media buys that included TV, magazines, newspapers, and radio.  We used the services of language translators to help in a couple of cities where we conducted consumer and business owner interviews. We found our client’s media buys missed the media being consumed by the very market segments they were trying to reach.

Tailor!

I’m saying all of this to make a point, one size fits all marketing programs are probably less effective than ever. Even Social Media Marketing programs also need to be driven by relevant, engaging, and tailored activation ideas. Delivering programs that broadly target without being directly tailored to engage consumers interested in your brand is probably a waste of time and money. You can provide your customers, potential customers, and your brand with a much better experience!

 

Premium Content Subscription, Ergonomic Delivery, and Social Media Marketing

A Brand’s Dilemma  Or A Thinking Shift?

Many brands are facing online marketing crossroads. For years, and across a variety of industries, marketers have created premium website content and have then given it away for free to consumers.  Of course, the purpose of this give away is to engage consumers with their brand(s), create a loyal following, and encourage frequent purchases on the backend.

 Recently I’ve spoken with several marketers who’ve expressed concern about the expenses associated with the “give away premium content model”.  Creating attractive and informative content, producing frequent content updates, and website maintenance, are continuous processes and each item has its associated expenses.

The REAL Question

The real question really seems to be this, once consumers have been given free content for years, can you foresee a business model that brands can adopt where consumers are willing to pay for premium content?   This could be a simple subscription or pay-as-you-go service that delivers the content consumers need and when they need it. My answer is yes, but it’s critical the content is unique and premium, and, if possible, has an ergonomic delivery method. And of course, the pay-as-you go or subscription fees must be kept low.  One more thing: within this environment, appropriate, complimentary, and non-competitive ads can be delivered to users, adding another potential revenue source for brands.

Consider these possibilities

What if brands created premium content that consumers truly want, were presented in easily accessible online formats that, were nonlinear and ergonomically pleasing, and not just photos and written instructions?  What if this content could be organized into categories important to the consumer? What if consumers could augment your premium content with their own insights and twists for their own “my content” files?

 And what if this brave new world had a strong social web aspect that has been shown to deeply engage consumers with brands and all of this is delivered on a single configurable software platform? Are you intrigued? Would you at least invest a little time to learn about this novel approach? I did and I’m very impressed!

Some Subscription Models That Work

We all know of the sales strategy used by many software companies where they provide a basic level of application functionality for free; but for more extensive feature sets, escalating levels of subscription fees are charged. You pay for what you need.

A Working Model

I worked for a Silicon Valley technology startup that had a software subscription model that was adopted by several companies. These companies were facing the dilemma of providing free premium content to their customers outside of regular support agreements.

Essentially, these companies published detailed technical briefs and notes to encourage customer self-support. Their customers liked the availability of the briefs and notes, and the expense of producing and publishing the information was not huge. The problem was many of their customers wanted even more detailed tech notes, videos, “tricks”, vetted email threads, memos, expert insights, and the availability of subject matter experts. Of course, support fees could have been raised to accommodate this need, but this was not the option our client companies wanted to pursue with their customers.

The company I worked for provided a novel approach to this issue. Using a variety of proprietary techniques, our technology found vetted technical communications typically not made available to customers, videos, subject matter experts, and other resources, and elegantly published this content to a number of instantly deployed self service eSupport portals.

Our clients’ customers would simply request specific types of content and access to subject matter experts, and all would be delivered to them via an eSupport portal. Even the subject matter expert could be scheduled within the portal. A fee schedule was posted and the customer could pay-as-they-went or issue a purchase order covering access to specified data sets and experts.  We even offered the option to localize the content into other languages. Everybody won!

So, Can A Similar Model Work For Consumer Oriented Brands?

My answer to this question is YES!  Here’s my example. I’m not an eager do-it-yourselfer. But I know if I had access to the content I needed, and at my finger tips, namely a video screen, multiple options for completing my task, the ability to compare more than one approach, see user ratings of plans, I would pay for this!  Wouldn’t you do this for your favorite projects like creating a the perfect get together with friends and family, organic gardening specific to your growing zones, sun availability and soil types, electronic integration (music, computers, safety alarms, cameras…) throughout your apartment or house, preparing a the perfect meal for one or twenty-one…? Think about it. Having what you need in the ergonomic format you want it! And imagine being able to use a mobile device when you’re shopping and be able to purchase everything you need to complete your project, task, or perfect meal.

And remember, it’s social! If you opt in, manufactures of your favorite items can email, Text or Tweet you with special offers, and invite you to participate in user generated contests, sweepstakes, promotions, and reward you with items you really want. You can communicate directly with the manufacturer and other members of your interest group if they grant permission.

Are You Willing To Investigate?

The brand dilemma or crossroads may be more of a shift in thinking and strategy about content publishing.  I’ve seen this future and I’m extremely impressed with the convergence of technology, social media marketing, consumer engagement, and revenue generation!

Capturing The Voice Of Your Consumers Using Social Media Marketing

The Voice Of The Consumer Is Powerful!

With the advent of the social web, consumers have a much greater voice than ever in influencing brand marketing approaches and decisions. This consumer voice is heard both online and offline. Consumers who rate or comment on hotels, restaurants, food products, entertainment venues, wines, grocery stores, airlines, computers, recipes, clothes, car dealerships, cookbooks, and any product or service can sometime affect a brand’s bottom-line results.  And now, with the ever growing influence of the social web, consumers are more empowered than ever to voice their experience with brands and state their preferences.

Am I A Publisher – Really?

As  mentioned in a previous post, A Social Media Marketing Approach That Works, (http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/a-social-media-marketing-approach-that-works/),   I’m finding social media marketing programs (intertwined contests, promotions, and sweepstakes) coupled with consumer relevant/premium content to be an excellent environment for authentic engagement and dialoging with the voice of the consumer. Authentic and relevant are the key words.

Online marketers are really publishers of content designed to engage users. It doesn’t matter if you’re producing online content for consumer products, food, eBooks, premium wines, music, electronics, furniture, cars, clothing…you are a publisher with the goal of creating a meaningful dialog and engagement with your audience, capturing the voice of the consumer, and ultimately, influencing behavior at the point of purchase! You are probably debating this in your mind so please make a comment about this publisher idea.

Capturing the voice of the consumer can be a very rewarding aspect of you marketing programs. In near real-time, a marketer can collect authentic insights from huge numbers of consumers. But as with any business initiative, marketing or otherwise, planning is essential.

How To Begin?

So now that you know you are really a publisher, what do you do next? How do you assure your social media marketing programs are on target and geared towards aligning with and capturing the voice of the consumer?

User-generated contests are proving to be an excellent way to engage with and capture the voice of consumers. These are contests where consumers upload videos, photos, music, and blogs… with the hope of winning  relevant rewards. Consumers create profiles, vote on entries, rate entries, make comments, post videos on other social sites, invite their friends and family to participate, and actively participate at the site, sometimes even when the contest is finished. Your activation idea for the program should reflect what you already know attracts consumers to your brand(s). This is an authentic, genuine way to capture the voice of your specific consumer audience.

Social Media Marketing Programs Work!

-  Plan your social media program as you do with other marketing programs

-  Create a genuine activation idea that captures the voice of your specific consumer audience

-  Promote your program across all of your marketing programs – online and offline

-  Make it easy for consumers to invite and inform others about the program

-  Allow consumers to make comments – make it a social experience

-  Monitor user generated content to assure a positive experience for your consumers and your brand

-  Reward with a desirable prize

-  Collect user data and use if for additional user engagements

I hope my point of view is useful for your social marketing programs! These programs really do produce excellent results and provide genuine ways for capturing the voice of your consumers.

Eight Secrets To Getting Off To A Great Start With Social Media Promotions!

An eBook by Leonard Scales

Social Media Marketing – Online Engagement

I’ve been asked by brand marketers, what are you finding to be the most effective online tools and channels for engaging customers, potential customers, and partners? Their questions range from the use of intelligent ad units, to email campaigns, widget strategies, customer referral programs, e-commerce extensions, viral strategies, social network creation, social media promotions, social collaboration tools, SEO, user generated (UGC) online promotions, eLoyalty programs, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), the use of Twitter and Text messaging for brand building, reaching the Facebook crowd and users of other social sites… Obviously there’s no one answer that addresses all of these questions, and one size fits all marketing and partner programs are probably not the best way to invest your marketing dollars.

For the past several years, I’ve worked hands-on with large and not so large brands to develop go-to-market social media marketing programs. In this summary, I share some key insights about what I’ve learned. I’ll discuss one social media marketing approach that actually works to engage users online and, and at the same time, has genuine revenue building elements.  Hopefully, these insights will support your decision-making about implementing social media marketing programs for your brand.

There’s a good starting point for social media marketing programs, and this approach fits both B2C and B2B. Believe me, there are social media marketing programs that can deliver measurable ROI’s. Really! Not perfect measures in all cases but good enough for marketers I know to return again and again to these programs and add them to their marketing calendars!

Marketing Basics – A Simple Reminder

Before we dig-in, let’s review a few marketing and sales fundamentals. It’s important to keep these concepts in mind for any marketing program that’s designed to produce positive sales results. Remember, engaging consumers and business partners with your brand and sales conversions are the very reasons marketing investments are made in the first place. When consumers feel a bond with a brand, they’re more likely to make repeated purchases and tell their family and friends. Loyal consumers will sometimes vigorously defend a brand when adversity strikes. And, with all things being equal, distribution partners who feel a close bond with a brand will often prepare themselves to more vigorously sell that brand as opposed to competitive offering in their portfolio.

 

Six Spokes Of Marketing

Marketers know about the “Six Spokes of Marketing”: Market Research, Advertising, Promotions, Public Relations, Sales, and Customer Service. Social media provides very broad “channels” for enabling online engagement with users around all Six Spokes of the marketing wheel. It’s not surprising to me that many PR firms are becoming very active with social media marketing programs on behalf of their client brands.

So What’s Working?

Here are my observations about a type of user engagement program that actually works to produce excellent buzz and returns for brands. This type of engagement, when properly executed, will support just about all Six Spokes of the marketing wheel. There are other methods, but here is an excellent starting point.

So what is working? I’ve found user-generated promotions, i.e., video, photo, essays, music, blog… contests, sweepstakes, and promotions to be a creative and effective engagement method online. User-generated promotions (includes contests and sweepstakes) can produce a two-way engagement between users and brands, not just a push of messages and sales pitches to users by brands. Using promotions can actually be an organic way to build a viable and highly interactive long-term brand specific social commerce network.

In this “eBook”  I’ll explore Eight Secrets for getting off to a great start with social media promotions. I’ll share promotion planning ideas and some essential elements needed to help assure a positive experience for users and brands. From my experience, having a genuine and relevant call to action, coupled with a solid promotion deployment plan, will very likely deliver outstanding results!

IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE

If you deliver an online promotion where someone wins an opportunity to produce a television commercial or some other high value prize, let people know what happened to the winner well after the promotion is over. Allow the promotion’s participants to continue interacting with the program,  the winner’s progress, and your brand. Actually I suggest creating a new online promotion per quarter. It’s fun, creative, cost-effective, and can be designed to deliver measurable sales results.

Keep the people aspect of your program as the central focus. I was listening to NPR recently and the interviewer was speaking to two women about their thoughts concerning a very popular social network they’ve grown-up with. They both commented that the site once feature people, now it features products and ads and things that were not as relevant to them

Besides a two-way dialog and active engagement with your users, social media promotions offer real-time research opportunities. In real-time you can learn user demographics, how users feel about your brand, their buying preferences, what’s important to them, collect webographics, and sometimes, how they feel about each other! What marketer wouldn’t want real-time research information about a user’s buying preferences and interest in their brand, and perhaps, competitive brands? And to top all of this off, social media promotions can be very affordable, even for small brands and small business owners.

One guiding principle! Be certain your promotion isn’t a sales pitch! The look and feel of your promotion must be as impressive as the look and feel of your brand. And please, be certain the prize or prizes awarded to winners are things they really want. For instance, the winner of a video promotion could have their video featured in your new advertising campaign and on your website. This prize could include airline tickets to your corporate headquarters and accommodations. The winner of a financial services essay promotion could win a $1000.00 scholarship and so on. There are many approaches that will attract the users you want! Your only limits are your imagination and budget!

Here are per-launch strategies that will help keep you on track.  Just like your advertising and campaigns, social media promotions  require planning.

Eight Secrets To Getting Off To A Great Start!!

Plan Your Social Media Promotion

1.  Identify Business Objectives – Any marketing program, including a social media promotion, needs clear objectives for what’s to be achieved. In-store promotions, for instance, may have a coupon redemption rate objective. TV broadcast advertising often has a number of eyeballs they want to reach during the ad campaign. Promotions for new movie releases have the goal of butts in seats. Social media promotions are no different. A vague notion of “reaching the Facebook crowd” could be an objective, but be certain you define the purpose for doing this, how you’ll achieve this goal, and why you think this goal is important for your brand.

I suggest brands have an internal promotion owner or a “team”.  This person or team needs to have visibility to overall brand strategies. If it is a large brand with many moving parts, the owner needs access to the advertising calendar, interactive strategies, brand programs, PR initiatives, and access to creative assets.  Integrating social media with other aspects of the marketing calendar can strengthen all of the programs.  Additional reasons for integrating your social media programs with all of your marketing and selling initiatives can be found at, http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/integrate-social-media-across-all-marketing-initiatives/.

Defining your objectives needs to be specific and the creative aspects of your program are only limited by your imagination! Here are some real life examples:

• Increase consumer awareness and purchases during specific periods like “Back to School”, or Christmas, or School Vacations…
• Increase consumer awareness in the North East USA for a beverage launch there – a regional focus only
• Create new menu items for a restaurant chain – nation, regional or local
• Increase floor traffic in car dealerships – region by region and for a specific model
• Find our next 30 second Super Bowl or NASCAR commercial
• Find our next “talk show” host – audition tape promotion – regional/national
• Find our next celebrity spokesperson
• Tell why you need a vacation! – hospitality promotion
• Tell why our staff is the best! – internal hospitality promotion across all properties
• Find my next co-author – short form eBook creation
• Reward our loyal customers – a coupon package based on user preference
• Create video promotion for my distribution partners where the winner gets a special incentive, corporate recognition, and a celebration of a lifetime. Yes, social media marketing can be very important for the B2B marketplace
• Provide opt in data collection promotion with user rewards
• Increase participation at a cultural event – national appeal for local event
• Introduce new creative talent in music, the arts, fashion…
• Win a vehicle – create new tagline and brand lifestyle appeal
• Using your CPG brands as a focal point for finding baby/child/adult models
• Twitter promotion where participants have minutes to respond to be entered to win sweepstake prizes
• Blog promotion where the winner brings insights into behind the scenes action to fans such as up and coming talent interviews (video), sponsor interviews, veteran participant interviews… This can include moment by moment branded Tweets to huge numbers of followers.
•  …

Thinking of your brand(s) I’m certain you have dozens of creative ideas about engaging users – all relevant, all engaging!

Other considerations about your user-generated promotion:

• Is selling critical to my program?
• Is building brand awareness an important goal?
• Is integration with my marketing calendar important? This might dictate the timing of your social media promotions.
• Is this a rewards program for consumers or my business partners?
• Is research important? If so, what information is critical to gather?
• How will I promote this program? Just creating a promotion is no guarantee users will come! Just putting it on Facebook will not necessarily attract a single participant
• Can promoting the program be integrated with my other marketing activities?
• How will we monitor user-generated content in a way that ensures a positive experience for my brand and users?
• Who will create and enforce promotion rules?
• How will user information remain confidential?
• What are the viral components? How can I maximize viral uplift?
• How do I encourage outrageous word of mouth spread?!
• What will I invest to promote the program?
• Is this a local, regional, national, or international program?
• Do I need to deliver my promotion in multiple languages?
• Are the cultural queues used valid and appropriate?
• Do I have access to the creative assets needed?

I’ve probably only scratched the surface of your brand specific considerations!

 2.  A Solid Promotion – The Activation Idea - Develop a unique and compelling promotional theme that’s relevant to your brand and users. Excite your users to interacting with your brand. Be creative! It’s not just about pushing sales messages and information to your target audience. You are actually inviting users to participate. Their participation can lead to a significant selling opportunity. It’s all about active engagement, relevance,  and a two-way and perhaps three-way dialogs. Yes! If monitored allowing promotion participants to communicate with each other can produce useful insights.

You will not lose control! A well conceived promotion will included administrative tools for monitoring all user-generated content. You are not obliged to instantly upload any content. Your promotion rules can state, “user generated content will appear in about 24-72 hours.”  But a warning here! Monitoring and removing all negative comments can be viewed as inauthentic by your users. Strike a balance. Assure a positive experience for your brand and users.

Using this strategy will allow your brand to learn more about its target users and how they perceive your brand. A brand can gain valuable insights about what matters to their target audience when they are actively engaged. Again, the activation idea should be compelling – designed to encourage participation and viral spread.

The wonderful thing about online promotions is how quickly they can become viral! Providing easily shared widgets with friends, family, and colleagues using email accounts is vital.  This must be accomplished in just a couple of clicks.

Creating a Facebook application or promoting your program on your Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo, Myspace, your website, your blog and other blogs, and other social sites can be a powerful tool! If it’s possible to integrate the promotion with other marketing activities such as FSIs, online and off-line ads, coupons, in-store displays, emails, website, and signage, on and off premise programs… all the better! One restaurant chain had special napkins printed featuring their online promotion.

 

3.  Target Your Users Where They Are – It’s vitally important to promote your social media promotion. I will parrot, “Building it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll come!” Using opt-in email databases you already have, and other user contact resources can be an excellent way to kick-off interest in your promotion and begin the word-of-mouth spread. Promoting programs can also include online and offline media buys that are a part of your regular media buying cycles. There are services available that will guarantee a per-agreed upon number of users with the demographic and psycho-graphic profiles you want to engage. If you do not already have a database of contacts to help your launch your promotion, this type of service could be a good starting point.

Once the methods for promoting your program to your target audience are defined, i.e., email blasts, online ads, offline ads, radio mentions, your website, your Facebook page, your blogs, your Tweets, napkins, etc., here is another important consideration. Since most program awareness building will likely be done online, it’s important to reach users where they travel online, and to do so in unobtrusive ways. When presented with information about your program, while visiting their favorite online destinations, be certain the user’s experience regarding your promotion is easy, fun, and non obtrusive.

“Intelligent ad units”, allow users to interact with your promotion without disrupting their browsing experience.  Often the user can register, view entries, and upload their promotion entry all within the ad unit. If the user is at their favorite site, they remain there while getting involved in your program. Create a non disruptive, permissive experience with your brand. “Intelligent ad units” can help with this. “Intelligent ad units” are portable promotions, allowing your audience to interact with your promotion anywhere the units are encountered online.

4. Reward All Stakeholders – Reward all participants in your social media marketing promotion, not just winners and runners-up. Give everyone a reason to interact with your promotion regularly, not just the contestants. Give those who vote and make comments an opportunity to be rewarded. Ensure prizes are deemed as high value and relevant. It’s not about the price of the reward.

Rewarding all participants increases the general activity, engagement, and viralness of your program. Having a concurrent “sweepstakes” where several users are randomly selected on an hourly, daily or weekly basis, or including trivia quizzes helps to maintain interest and frequent participation. Connecting to users via Twitter can really push interactions with your promotion! Send Tweets as calls to action and give the responders a chance to win a prize!

Most promotions run for about 30-90 days. 60 days seems just about right. I’ve seen photo promotions with two week duration but the viral spread was not huge. If it is a video promotion, the video length is usually less than a minute. I’ve seen three minute limits on videos where the final product was extremely high quality. Actually the trend seems to be towards higher quality video content.

Be certain to announce your promotion’s winner on the promotion site! Be zealous with this announcement. Use your web site, blog, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, to announce the winner (s). This is a great PR opportunity for your brand and will extend the life and value of your promotion well beyond the closing date.

Hopefully, you’ve been tracking where users placed widgets and promoted your promotion. If possible, announce the winner(s) on these social sites. When you discuss the winner, really feature the winner. Discuss your brand and why the winner was selected. Genuine communications here will drive interest in the winner and your brand.

5. Measure, Analyze, And Share Results -– The social web offers awesome opportunities for measuring users’ online activities. Your social media promotion can serve as an excellent market research tool. The number of registrations, number of votes, who votes, age variables, zip codes, who participates in trivia quizzes, comments made about your brand, Twitter activities, Facebook posts, total number of participants, and other variables can often be collected. Actually, insights gained from social media marketing programs can serve as justification for creating a brand specific social network. After all, having executed a few social media marketing programs, you will have a substantial opt-in user base, a user base interested in active engagement with you and your brand.

As with the other components of your marketing programs, nothing is done just for the fun of it. You know the hard work and analysis required to successfully run an ad campaign or promotion. And with every marketing program, there needs to be milestones and measures in place to determine the impact of your efforts and investment. For instance, the number of videos entered, widgets dispersed, click-thrus, total traffic, registrations, opt-in future contact list, number of participants, Twitter followers, and sales. Good providers of promotion platforms include program analysis tools that administrators can use to summarize program effectiveness.

6. Online Promotion Technology – Whether you use your own resources or an outsourced promotion software platform, it is important to use proven applications. Good technology integrates the entire promotion feature set we’ve been discussing. Good software will allow for:

• A flexible look and feel – not cookie cutter
• Ability to tailor to specific promotion requirements
• Promotion branding using your creative treatments – attention to branding
• Flexible implementation of the Activation Idea
• An Instructional area for contestants. You can include an instructional video and samples of acceptable content and quality expectations. The creation of a simple environment where users will learn what’s expected. For instance, a sample of a commercial quality video that shows the quality and creative expectations you want for a 30 second Super Bowl spot.
• Inclusion of Promotion Rules
• Photo, video, blog, text, music,…uploads
• Attractive, user-friendly c landing page
• Capacity to handle high volumes of interactions simultaneously
• Allow for the brand to communicate with all users on the site or with individuals using opt-in methods, or promotion real estate reserved for brand communications
• Security for users
• Fraud detection for unusual voting patterns
• Safety – moderation queue for content, photo, and video review before posting
• Capture of all usage data to be owned by the brand – future opportunities for encouraging purchases, couponing, sampling, special events, special member or bundles…
• Perhaps preserve real estate for ads to be served if required. Ads could be of your brands or noncompetitive complementary ads being served from elsewhere
• Flexible voting methods – majority votes, judging panel…
• Engagement tools:
• Viral widgets for word-of-mouth spread of the promotion by users (strongly recommended)
• Intelligent advertising units for promoting the program where targeted users go online without disrupting their experience (optional but recommended)
• Concurrent “sweepstakes” designed to reward all users (strongly suggested)
• Trivia Quizzes designed to drive deeper user engagement (strongly suggested)
• Online audience voting, commenting (mandatory)

Of course, with a user-generated promotion, people vote for winners. You may also want to have a panel of judges who will make the final determination. Voting on the winners keeps your audience actively engaged with you and each other. I suggest you keep your promotion active for at least 30 days after winners are selected. No voting is permitted but comments will continue to be permitted. Valuable insights can be mined from these comments. You can even participate with this chatter if you want.

7. Some Additional Promotion Ideas

• Video promotion for aspiring film makers – winner funding for a short film
• Back to School video promotion – winner get to spend a day with a cherished celebrity
• Sports blog – winner gets to be official blogger for a champion series (any sporting event fits)
• Photo promotion – winner gets a valuable prize
• Essay promotion – winner gets school books paid for
• Artist sketches – winner get to be Co-Creative Director intern for ad campaign
• 30 second commercial – few entries but very high quality for TV and web ads
• New business idea – winner gets seed funding and startup consultation and PR
• Cause related marketing idea – winner creates program and gets corporate backing for social cause
• I want this new menu item! – for a restaurant
• … Brainstorm and write down your ideas!

 8.  Social Media Promotion Checklist

 Features

- Be certain promotion registration is simple but also remember this is a research opportunity – ask for some of the information you want at promotion entry. You will at least need name and email. If a person is competing to win you will need their mailing address, perhaps birth date, and phone number. Offer them the option to complete a full profile that can be made public or kept private

- Be certain to create air-tight promotion rules and eligibility requirements. If you are creating the rules, be certain to have a legal review. There are professional “contesters” who are looking for any edge!

-  Allow for easy uploads content that drives your promotion – photos, videos, blog content, music, votes, comments… Be certain this content is easily viewed and there is plenty of bandwidth

-  Assure you make posting to You Tube and other social sites seamless

-  Assure you support embedded photo and video embeds (You Tube, MySpace…)

-  Brand the promotion and landing page

-  Provide flexible voting formats ( most votes by users, scale of 1-5, thumbs up or down, judging panel, combined options)

Social Media Marketing Aspects Of Your Promotion

-  Allow for video, photo, blog browsing

-  User generated content

-  Users can create and customizable their profile

-  Allow users to quickly invite friends, family, and associates to participate (easy to import contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook…)

-  Allow users to comment on other user profiles and entries

- Allow users to categorize their connections, friends, favorites, top competitors…

-  Allow users to quickly browse entries and user profiles

-  Simple search capabilities

-  Moderation of your community and user generating content assuring a positive brand and user experience.

Viral Distribution For Promotion Uplift

-  Branded promotion widgets for distribution to other social sites

-  Program registration within the widget if possible

-  If budget allows, include “intelligent ad units”. These specialized ad units will allow users who encounter them to enter, vote, and make comments within the unit without leaving their browsing experience

-  Widgets to be easily shared with friend, family, and associates

-  RSS feeds for viewing new entries on an opt in basis – small view

-  Custom email, Twitter capability to send to users – “Two weeks remaining”, “Remember to invite your friends”. “All of today’s participants will be entered into a sweepstakes”…

Administrative Tools

-  Tools available that assist in the validation of entries before posting to promotion (content moderation)

-  Fraud tracking and entry elimination – (detection of frequent votes coming from the same location at or very near the same time)

-  Provision for announcing winners and verifying their eligibility

 Analytics

-  Ability to number registrants

- Ability to number contestants and valid entries

-  Unique visitors to the promotion

-  Number of promotion followers

-  Incorporate Google analytics

-  Count number of votes, comments

- If possible, track widget and link distribution

-  Collection of user data and webographics

OK! This “eBook” summary should give you a good start. Remember, you can develop a full-blown social network by using promotion participation. Really have fun with this. Promotions run twice a year or quarterly can be an extremely effective tool for building online engagements!

Lady Gaga And Einstein = Perfect Sales Focus – What?

Sales Focus!

Paying attention to all sales process details is more critical now than ever.  The worldwide economic slump challenges sales organization on many levels. Please take a look at my eleven previous Sales Reminder posts for ideas designed to remind sales professionals of strategies and tactics for producing more consistent and predictable results. This Sales Reminder post, “Lady Gaga & Einstein = Perfect Sales Focus” discusses the mental side of selling. What!!!??? I know Gaga and Einstein is a odd couple but please check my logic.

I recently responded to a creative LinkedIn, Future Trends group question, posted by Joshua Boxer, where he asks, “What do you and Lady Gaga have in common?”  (Please search for Lady Gaga if you’ve not heard of her.)  I knew it wasn’t my hair! I can’t sing and nobody is interested in looking at my legs! I smiled when I read his comments and knew where the discussion might be headed.

I’ve seen Lady Gaga interviews and she’s not at all what I expected!  When I’ve listened to her speak  I was struck by her sense of belief in her art, and the vision she has for her art. Her belief and vision guide her in ways that have allowed her to explode on the music scene.  At 23, she’s accomplished musical feats no other music artist has ever accomplished.

Regardless of what other people said about her, and to her, or behaved toward her, she found her way; she persisted with her beliefs and vision. Now I’m about to make a big leap-so please stay with me!  I remember reading an article about Albert Einstein. One of his grade school teachers was very frustrated by Einstein’s lack of progress in school and told his parents something we might consider astonishing. His parents were told, regardless of the profession he (Albert Einstein) selected; it really wouldn’t matter because young Einstein would never amount to much anyway.  Einstein must have been driven by his beliefs and visions even when others didn’t believe or understand him or even when he was criticized by people very important to him.

So what do Lady Gaga and Albert Einstein have to do with selling? More than you might think. When their world appeared ‘down’, they remained ‘up’ mentally and driven. Their positive belief and sustained focus yielded success for both. This is the foundation of selling: a positive mental attitude with a sustained focus!!! This has everything to do with the mental side of selling.

Developing a positive selling mental state is absolutely essential for selling success. This is even more important than the product you’re selling and your sales process. Deeply held views of failing, or a bad attitude, or lack of confidence, or a lack of ego-drive, or a lack of resilience, even when accompanied with good products and a good sales process, will eventually yield failure. If I were Einstein I would create a formula,

(BA=bad attitude, NC=no confidence, GP=good sales process, NR=no resilience, CF=colossal failure)

Ok, enough science! I’m joking with this formula. Please, don’t try to figure it out!

Developing and maintaining positive beliefs and visions about ones selling is a vital investment for a sales person to make. Just like Lady Gaga and Einstein, your thoughts, visions, and beliefs determine almost every aspect of your life including your sales success. I’m not a psychiatrist or behavioral specialist but here is some of what I’ve learned. There’s much more to it but here it is at a high level.

Even if you’ve had the worst sales experiences and have the worst sales attitude in the history of selling, you can change your beliefs and vision about your performance. Do you believe this is true?  Well it is! These are some of the steps I use to keep my beliefs and sales vision positive, progressive, ethical, and consistently successful. Maybe these insights will help your performance.

First, simply make the decision and say to yourself, “I am an excellent sales person” and “My sales activities always work out for me”. This alone will not make the permanent change you want, but it will help! There’s an important ingredient that makes these statements and other positive affirmations stick. Its STRONG EMOTION! Say either out loud or in your mind, using STRONG EMOTION, “I am an excellent sales person!!!!” “My sales activities always work out for me”. Say it 3 or 4 times with STRONG EMOTION. How do you feel? Your subconscious is being impressed by your strong emotional affirmations and begins to help you move in that direction. You’ll notice you have an immediate feeling about actions to take, turning these positive affirmations into reality. Try it again. Can you sense what is happening in you? Are ideas coming to mind about how to make these statements a reality?

There’s much more to this but you have the general idea. Think of other positive affirmations and eliminate the words like, “never”, “can’t”, and other negative words. Avoid affirmations like: “I can’t fail” or “I never fail to prepare properly for a sales call”. Try this, “I thoroughly prepare for my sales calls”, or “My selling process yields predictable and excellent results”. Negative words actually cause the subconscious to focus on the opposite outcome. A statement like “I can’t fail” can become “I must fail and will fail”!!

I know there are events in life that attack our belief and vision. Stinging criticism, and attacks by people we respect and admire can cause beliefs and vision to erode, but always remember, these are their opinions only!  Remember, their opinions have nothing to do with me! Sales management styles that constantly attack, criticize, berate, our use what I call passive aggressive techniques, can be challenging for sales people! In my opinion, sales management should be about coaching people to be successful. Coaching can be tough but its goal should be to produce specific outcomes and consistent performance. Many sports coaches are masters at doing this!

Some self coaching programs (Audio Tape/CD/DVD/MP3) can be helpful in developing a positive selling “self image”. They work! They can’t fail to work if the content is well developed and delivered.

I’m very fortunate to have met and had discussions with the creators/developers of a couple of “sales performance” and “peak performance” programs. I know without a doubt, sales vision and belief can be changed, improved, and permanently shaped in a positive direction.  Even if you have the worst sales self-image in the history of the universe, you can completely change your sales performance.

I hope you see the connection between belief and vision and why the Lady Gaga and Einstein comments are on target for spectacular sales performance!

Final Installment In This Sales Reminder Series#11

Summary of the Complex Sale Cycle

OK!  The Sales Reminder series is not your thirty second blog read. Get a cup of coffee and spend a few minutes with Sales Reminder.  I’m hopeful you’ll agree,  this series of eleven sales reminders (eleven to date) will help you navigate sales opportunities. Sometimes, a reminder is all that’s needed to energize sales professionals.

As I’ve mentioned in previous Sales Reminder posts, a complex sale is a sale where more than one person is involved in the buying decision. Sales Reminder presents insights based on my years of selling complex technology, marketing, SaaS, social media marketing, and web based solutions. 

With complex sales, there’s often an evaluation team involved in making the buying decision. The evaluation includes taking a look at the economic impact of deploying your solution, the technical impact of your solution on their organization, the impact on users of your product or service, return on investment calculations, impact on sales and revenue, implications for marketing, and a myriad of other criteria.

Every product or service being sold has a sales cycle, or steps required to complete the sale. I’ve not listed overcoming objection as a separate sales stage here because objections occur throughout the sales cycle!  (For more on this please see “Sales Obstacles – Ideas for Overcoming – Sales Reminder#8, http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/sales-obstacles-ideas-for-overcoming-sales-reminder8/)

The steps in a complex sales cycle are, in many respects,  the same for hardware sales, software, medical products, financial services, consulting services, outsourcing, insurance, social media marketing, manufacturing equipment, and just about every industry. Remember, some sales cycles are rapid, and all steps in the sales process take place in just one or a few contacts with a prospect. This is high transaction selling. Other sales cycles can require multiple sales calls, multiple resources, and many months to complete. The key to all of this is your industry and the buyer’s willingness to make a decision in your favor.  Even the most complex solution can be completed quickly if the buyer is willing to purchase immediately!

Here is the Sales Reminder summary for the initial ten posts

Before Your Sales Call or Follow-up Activity, Give a Thought to This

Sales reminders before contact:

1. What outcome am I seeking with this sales activity?
2. Is the person I need to meet with available? Are there others at the account with whom I can have a productive conversation?
3. Do I understand how buying decisions are made for a product like mine?
4. Do I have the attention of the decision maker? Can the people I have discussions with make the buying decision?
5. Do I have good background information about this company as it relates to my solution? What do I really know about their business environment? Are there clues I can gather just from an onsite visit about areas I can emphasize relative to my solution?
6. Do my products and services map well to this prospect’s needs?
7. Is a door knock or cold call OK? Do I need to confirm a meeting by phone or email before I visit?
8. Are there “hot button” issues I can raise that will be of special interest to the prospect?
9. Do I need internal or external resources to support me on this call?
10. What will the sales environment be – friendly, hostile, receptive, skeptical, neutral…?
11. Are there any objections I can anticipate even before the sales contact? For instance, “I don’t trust web based solutions”; “My colleague tried something just like this and was shocked by the expense”;  “I really don’t think I need this now”; “I just had three people contact me about this type of product this week”…
12. What should be my sales approach – direct, consultative, educational, evangelical, reference selling…?

Before your sales call, at least thinking about these questions and others specific to your organization and situation, can help assure you remain on track with your sales call goals. Practice your sales pitch!

The Sales Call

What’s the best way to contact your prospect?  Is a phone call OK? Is an in person visit better? Is an unexpected cold call acceptable and effective? Are there specific days when cold calls are expected and readily accepted? Do they prefer email communications?  Are written communications using traditional mail best? No doubt sales metrics have been collected and analyzed that reveal the best method for sales calls in your organization. In some cases, in person calls are an essential part of the sales cycle. In other sales situations, a phone call might suffice.

In Person Sales Call

You’ve heard it before. You can’t retrieve a first impression.  Many experts say the first two to five minutes of a sales call can determine the course and ultimate success of your sale.  Even with conscientious pre-sales planning, an initial sales call can flow in multiple directions! A prospect or client can immediately express interest, disinterest, receptivity to buy, impatience…..  You know this. Your goal is to:

1. Immediately and clearly state why you are there and get alignment with your agenda for the call.
2. Tell them a little about yourself and your company (build credibility).
3. Establish your credibility.
4. Create a relaxed selling environment.
5. Present your solution in a manner that generates an emotional interest.
6. Build trust in your statements, i.e. use reference accounts, conservative ROI results, ease of implementation, local presence, thorough project planning, staff training, subject expertise…
7. Show how your process will ease their concerns and help them make an informed buying decision.
8. Be conversational and relaxed.
9. Practice your approach!

Alignment and Rapport

After initial rapport building conversation and aligning with your customer or prospect, ask questions (Qualify) and determine if there is a genuine sales opportunity. Remember, you want to know if your solution will satisfy their requirements:  will they purchase from me, will they purchase within and expected time frame? For more details on Qualifying, please see “Qualifying Checklist – Sales Reminder#2” (http://leonardscales.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/qualifying-checklist-sales-reminder2/).

Here are a few sales reminders:

1. Is there a pressing reason for them to act?
2. Does the prospect perceive any urgency to act?
3. Are they dissatisfied with their current situation but are reluctant to change?
4. Are there business process issues you can address and show an excellent ROI if they invest in your solution?
5. Are there regulatory compliance issues you can help them with?
6. Are there recognized and highly regarded standards your solution adheres to such as HIPPA, Sarbanes Oxley, that will support the prospect…?
7. Is the prospect or client currently investigating solutions like yours?
8. Are there must have features? Nice to have features?
9. Have you identified the economic buyer, the technical buyer, user buyer, and others who will influence the decision to purchase your solution?
10. Do you know if they have allotted a budget for the purchase? If not, can I provide an ROI analysis to support their decision to purchase my product?
11. Is there a business critical aspect of their requirements your solution will solve?
12. Do you know enough about their requirements to even suggest a product demonstration or a solution presentation?
13. Do they appreciate the uniqueness of my solution? If there is a competitor, is the comparison with your solution really an apples to apples comparison? Are there features included with my solution that offer substantial process improvements that save both time and money?
14. Am I certain they have the budget, talent, and time to implement my solution?

Go or No Go?

While you are deciding whether to pursue a sales opportunity, your prospect is deciding whether to continue with you. It’s a two-way street. Let’s assume you and the prospect decides to continue.  Both of you will have questions about what are good evaluation steps:

1. What are the specific requirements that need to be addressed?
2. Is there urgency for them to act?
3. Have they stated they will purchase? Have they expressed a preference for your solution?
4. Do you understand the impact of their problems on their business processes and bottom-line? Can these things be quantified?
5. Are there user buyers and technical buyers who might be suffering in silence?
6. Is the economic buyer aware of their business process disconnects? I’m not saying it is always advisable to disclose these disconnects to the economic buyer!
7. Is the decision maker an adopter of change or a supporter of the status quo?

Positioning Your Solution

The presentation of your solution can take several forms. Software will often have a targeted product demonstration, and hardware will often include graphical depictions of configurations. Marketing collateral, videos, password protected web site access for the prospect to view the solution, a web based “sand box”, or a formal presentation are other methods.  None should be done until the prospect is qualified and has expressed interest in buying your solution.

Return on Investment Calculations

In many cases, even if prospect loves your solution, they will not make a buying decision in your favor until they understand their return on investment.  Sometimes your own sales organization or marketing group can produce an ROI calculator that can be used to help justify the purchase of your product.  The assumptions included in the ROI calculator should be conservative and easily allow the prospect to enter their own values. Before sharing a ROI calculator with a prospect, be certain to explain the underlying assumptions.

In other cases, a prospect might request Pay for Performance. In these arrangements there is usually an initial good faith payment with the balance being paid when the service is successfully delivered.

The Proposal

Keep your proposal to what is required! Many CRM systems allow for the integration of a Proposal Generator. If properly implemented, these proposal generators are elegant and produce consistency.  Having used a couple of these systems, I am a big fan! They are easy to use and can produce an excellent document within a few minutes. These proposals can include a customizable cover letter, product and cost summaries, service agreements, project plans, training plans, and detailed contracts.

Get the Business

Getting a commitment from a prospect to buy consists of a series of smaller commitments gained throughout the entire sales process.  The final decision, the Close, is getting definite decision to purchase your solution.

Stay Connected

Even if the sale is Closed, and the implementation team is involved with deploying the solution, sales must remain involved and engaged. This is a time when a client could feel a little remorse and be vulnerable to a competitor who is “throwing dirt” on your deployment. Stay connected! Sales continues to own the client relationship.

Ask for Referrals

Your client knows others in her or his industry, or other industries, who might be interested in your solution. Ask them for referrals. These leads can be among the best you will ever receive.

The Final Summary

This is the final post for the Sales Reminder series. Hopefully I’ve reminded you of concepts you already knew or caused to you think about these concepts in a new way. And of course, I’m hopeful it has led to sales!

Next?

 Social Media Marketing and programs that actually work! I’ll discuss approaches I’ve use to help brands to achieve excellent results