The 5 “Ss” Marketers Want from Vendors

We’ve tried surveys, but they say one thing and then do another. One on one sessions, yep, tried those as well. How do we really know what our clients want?  Over the last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with close to fifty marketers, friends, clients and former colleagues. I didn’t have an agenda or a pitch, just a conversation about their career path and how they decided on their professions.

The conversation eventually made its way into a discussion of relationships they had with various consultants, advisors, and agencies.  Just for kicks, I built a word cloud from my notes and saw five themes emerged around what they wanted from a vendor — I call it the five “S’s”.

  1. Smarts – this was a common theme — “I don’t want to have to explain my business to the vendors that I work with. They need to do their homework.” Almost every conversation had an element of the client wanting vendors to be up to speed when the engagement started. Time is money and clients don’t have the time (especially on their dime) to get you up to speed. And, for big consulting firms and agencies, don’t get comfortable with thinking you have a lock on all the brightest folks. They use plenty of very smart individual contractors. Many of them, just came from your world.
  2. Skills – similar to the above comment, clients want to work with agencies and consultants that have the skill sets that they can’t find, hire or retain. This was especially important when it came to digital talent. They have made investments in MarTech but are having a hard time finding the talent to optimize, or even operate, the technology…and it is becoming more difficult.
  3. Speed – “I need the vendors I hire to operate at the speed of my business,” said the CMO of a Fortune 50 hi-tech firm and others echoed her comment. There were also comments related to responsiveness. If you’re standard policy is to respond to a clients’ email within 48 hours, you’re about 40 hours off on their expectations. Being more responsive can buy you time on deliverables. Clients want to know, or at least feel, like you’re making progress on their effort. Gaps in communication create the risk of your client feeling like they are not getting the attention they deserve or pay for…and they know when you’re stretched too thin.
  4. Simple – combine Smarts with Speed and you get Simple or at least that is what the client would love. They want to be able to understand your recommendations so they know exactly what decisions, or action, to immediately execute. Consultants — they are tired of the upsell, where one problem suddenly surfaces another problem, especially when they haven’t received the output of the first project. Agencies — the more complexity you add to a campaign the longer clients believe it will take to execute. Smart, valued vendors take complex problems and make them simple to understand and resolve. They know they have other issues they just need to address the problem in front of them.
  5. Spirit – this one surprised me and took some time to understand. The core of this theme was rooted in marketers stating that they wanted to work with vendors who were “enthusiastic” about their business, or “passionate” about their own jobs/role. They want a partner who brings some fun and/or passion that may be lacking in their organization. If you are pitching an idea an important part of the “sell” job is how you deliver it. If you’re not excited about it, they won’t be either. The last thing you want is a client who doesn’t want to talk to you because they know it won’t be enjoyable…they have plenty of those meetings internally. Be their break in the day, the good news, the breath of fresh air they so desperately need…especially at the end of the day or week.

Surprisingly, I didn’t hear cheaper. Don’t misunderstand, they want value and recognize that to get it they have to make the investment. Now that you know what they really want that shouldn’t be a problem to deliver, be the bright spot in their day.

Jeff Bezos’ Secret Message for Marketers

Marketers, channeling their inner Maverick (Tom Cruise’s character in ‘Top Gun’) often find themselves thinking “I feel the need, the need for speed” but are plagued by internal speed bumps and stop signs. Little do they know that buried in Jeff Bezos’ annual shareholder letter is an approach for helping them accelerate marketing efforts, and navigate past internal road blocks.

Working with hi-tech clients, I learned the necessity for quick execution. Pipelines must be filled, leads progressed and converted, and quotas achieved. IBM had two “mantras” when it came to accelerating marketing execution. The first was the rule of “70%” and the second was “Fail Fast.” Once you had roughly 70% of what you needed (information, insight, etc.) to execute you then got into the market, letting the results refine your program and thus quickly course correcting. Built on the idea of the yield curve, the greatest gains in progress were made during the first 70% of effort, refining the remaining 30% being too costly and time consuming.

“Failing fast” was built on the idea of quickly testing “concepts” or theories. If IBM wanted to experiment with something new or different it would construct tests to quickly measure results to either scale or kill the program. These two guide points have influenced my thinking over the many years.

So it was interesting to see Jeff Bezos picking up on these same principals in his annual shareholder letter. Except he added his own twist. In his letter he warns of becoming a “Day 2” company. He defines Day 1 companies as obsessed with customers, skeptical of proxies, eager to adopt new external trends, and perhaps most importantly, their ability to make high velocity decisions. For him, Day 2 companies become static, quickly becoming irrelevant and out of business eventually. The key to staying in “Day 1” is the ability to move quickly, experiment patiently, accept failures, and “double down when you see customers delight.”

Bezos believes that there is no “one-size-fits-all” to decision making but rather “two-way doors” where decision can be reversed. Those decisions in his words use a “lightweight” process. It starts with what he phases as “disagree and commit.” Given the growing number of stakeholders in the decision-making process, could this be the secret marketers have been searching for to eliminate speed bumps?

As Bezos describes it, “If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, ‘Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?’ By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.”

Giving the success of Amazon, this is a piece of advice we should all heed. For marketers, the key to making this approach work is “conviction.” It means doing your homework, having the facts to support your point of view, and the courage to take a risk. Going fast brings with it the risk of failure, but as Bezos states “being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.”

And Mr. Bezos knows a thing or two about flying fast. On the day he released his annual shareholder letter, Amazon stock closed over $900, up 50% over the year. Need any more proof that this “maverick” got it right?

How Endpoint Computing Could Dehumanize Communication

Where does the signal to pull your hand away from heat originate? If your answer is the brain, you’ve already been burned. Instinctively, we pull our hand back without conscious thought, because the response to the stimulus takes a short cut and originates in the spinal cord because of the need for quick action.

According to venture capitalist Peter Levine the need for this same type of short cut may be happening soon with computing. Mr. Levine said that he saw a shift in computing coming from the cloud (centralized) to the return of edge computing (decentralized) because the wave of innovations from IoT, and AI, are driving the need to have decisions made in milliseconds.

As Mr. Levine points out, a connected car is basically a data center on wheels “it has 200 plus central processing units…doing all of its computations at the endpoint and only pass back to the cloud.” Just like you hand doesn’t have time to send a signal to the brain, autonomous vehicles need to react instantaneously to the situation.

Data, insight, and now action, will be moving to the point of engagement in this future view. Now think about the potential challenges that present marketers in staying on brand, and controlling the message with thousands, or even millions, of touchpoints acting independently. Today, the best messaging and value proposition work can (and usually does) go off the track the moment it makes its way to sales and service reps.

Marketers live with the daily issue of cross channel attribution, add cross channel communication to the mix and we better have really good tracking tools! Sure, we can pre-set the messages, designed algorithms to present them at the right moment in the buying cycle, but controlling and tracking the delivery of each message in the context of an overall brand story will be the challenge.

And keep in mind, machines aren’t the only things that learn. As research has shown, the buying process is a highly emotional roller coaster. With machines entering the process we risk driving efficiency at the expense of dehumanizing the experience. As machines learn, we also begin to sense whether we are dealing with a human or a machine.

For example, do you really get the “warm fuzzies” from all those “HBD” messages on Facebook, or the “Congrats on the New Job” on LinkedIn? Machines have been great at helping us be more informed, but they have also have made it easy to turn highly personalized interactions into transactional tasks, void of any emotional connection.

The first wave of machine learning has been about improved efficiencies, productivity, and predictability. As Jeff Bezos stated in his brilliant letter to shareholders,  “Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deal recommendations…much of the impact of learning will be of this type – quietly, but meaningfully, improving core operation.”

As the next wave approaches, we should be cautious on how it is applied to the buying process. The focus should be on making humans more human, becoming more instinctive, so potential customers don’t get burned.

Emotional Experience Mapping

Imagine this; you’ve booked a three-day trip to Miami. Would it make a difference in how you pack, the airline or hotel you select, even your mindset, based on whether the trip was for a vacation or a business meeting? Of course it does, and any reasonable person would start with the purpose of the trip and then plan from there.

With the intense focus on developing personas and mapping the buyers’ journey, many marketers are skipping that first piece of the journey, or the “purpose.” Marketers may know the buyer and their purchase behaviors – but they don’t fully understand their “why” or what motivates them to choose their organization.

Based on research from a group of clients representing hi-tech, financial and information services with more than $1B in revenue, I’ve pulled together four common buyer groups. This is not intended to be “statistically significant,” but rather a framework for considering the uniqueness of buyer motivations. Try matching your customers to the segments (below). They should be easily identifiable and you may find a similar distribution.

Buyer Segments

Here is a short description of each group.

  • The Lucky (10-15%) – prospects that your outbound sales and marketing efforts have reached with the right message at a time when they were open to discussing how you could solve a specific problem or need – a new acquisition.
  • The Looker (15-20%) – buyers who are actively searching for information/solution that can help them with a need or problem. They find you and decide to engage in the sales process – a new acquisition.
  • The Loyalists (25-30%) – your “champions” that have used your products or services in the past and faithfully bring you with them wherever their career takes them.
  • The Legacies – (30-35%) they inherit the existing relationship and may, or may not, be familiar with your products and services.

Each group ventures through the journey and engages with sales and marketing channels with a different mindset and set of motivators. It impacts how they interact with the decision-making group and perhaps, most importantly, their willingness to advocate for your brand and/or product. Hence, why you need to consider their emotional involvement in the process. Why? Because emotions fuel the wheels of motivation; they can drive them forward or put them in reverse.

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Mapping emotional involvement by segment from strongest to weakest will help you develop an engagement strategy. “The Loyalist” group is motivated to advocate for your brand because they feel an emotional connection. It may have been formed by a past experience, or how it makes them feel about themselves and/or their role. CEB calls this “Identity Value.”

Your communication should reinforce their decision to work with you. Any awards or recognition received should be passed along immediately thanking them for their contribution. Any bad news should be quickly communicated and explained via a call, not digitally. Know this group thoroughly, understand their social engagement and make sure to track their career progress. The relationship is personal, so recognize and reward it.

On the opposite end is the “The Legacy” group. Although they inherited the relationship, they may not be motivated to keep it. The potential issue, according to Sirius Decisions 2016 B2B Customer Experience Study, is that “80% of B2B purchasing decisions are influenced by past customer relationships” and that experience, most likely, was not with your organization.

Assume low emotional involvement and do your homework on this audience. Here are some helpful hints on engaging them. We know from our research on the emotions executives experience in their careers that four emotions are always present, 1) excitement, 2) anxiety, 3) confidence, and 4) pride.

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The “word cloud” is taken from research on the emotions experienced when an executive moves into a new role. Take advantage of a “Legacy” person being new to the role and leverage the excitement they feel by communicating how your product or service can benefit them professionally, and personally. Additionally, emphasize how your products and/or services may reduce their anxiety or apprehension that comes with the new responsibilities.

“The Looker” is motivated but may not yet be emotionally engaged with your organization. The thrill of discovery quickly fuels emotions. Continue to feed it by understanding their behaviors and journey. Give them reasons to personally connect to your solution or brand. Use insights to teach them something new about their business, needs, and/or their customers.

The “Lucky” become aware much later, and may never really become emotionally involved. For them this may be purely a transactional relationship. Focus on reducing risk that they may associate with making a bad decision. Use industry-specific case studies and customer testimonials to build their confidence in your capabilities.

If you’ve ever said, “I don’t feel like doing it” you get how emotions impact motivation. Your task now is to understand why your customers take the “journey.” Pushing an organization forward to a purchase decision is a struggle. Your advocate will become fatigued along the way. To win, you have to understand the emotions involved at key moments to motivate them to keep moving because at some point, they won’t feel like doing it either.

3 Hidden Reasons Why B2B Companies Have Hard Time Being Authentic

Screen Shot 2015-06-24 at 5.11.57 PMJohn Grant, author of The New Marketing Manifesto, states that, “Authenticity is the benchmark against which all brands are now judged.” If being authentic is that important, why has it been done so poorly by so many? If honesty and trust are foundation elements for building authentic brands, shouldn’t it be easy?

Business marketers often site issues relating to creating a consistent experience and message across the organization and/or across channels, staying true to the organization’s origins, and/or delivering on brand/product promises. All valid reasons, but perhaps there is another challenge at the core that goes unnoticed, something that inhibits the organizations ability tobe “real.” Aproblem simple in form, but difficult to detect and correct.

Yes, it is the senior executives, marketers, sales folks and service people themselves. The employees, who as humans, are uniquely influenced, and some may say flawed, by their own perceptions, bias, and motivations. Here are a few flaws that inhibit an organizations ability to be authentic:

  1. Biased views – research has found that executives, for better or worse, create “business personas” and view the world with that “business hat” on. In some ways, we play a “role” at work that fits a title, area of responsibility, or how others view you, that may not be realistic. Are we being fake? Maybe, maybe not, but if we say one thing, and believe something else that may be at odds with our “persona,” we just might be. It’s phenomenon researchers have observed with consumers their actions don’t necessarily match their words. In the business world, we act in a similar manner and may not realize that we are not being completely honest with ourselves, or with our customers…but they know.
  2. Refusing to recognize or accept change – customer preferences shift, markets fluctuate, competitors enter and exit, and companies evolve. One of the few certainties in business is that change is a constant. The problem is that many organizations are slow to recognize and react to a change. Even worse they flat out ignore it. As a result, companies continue to live in the past, or recognize the need for change and try to shift overnight. Authenticity involves an emotional connection with an audience and that connection is forged over years through consistency. Consistency builds trust and integrity. Ignoring the reality of your audiences’ world, trying to be something you’re not, or telling customers what you think they want to hear, quickly deteriorates trust and erodes integrity. “Keeping it real” involves keeping your head out of the sand and on the lookout for change, for better or worse. It also involves accepting reality as it is, no matter how painful it might be.
  3. The need for control – trust is a foundation element, and when we feel like it is lacking it sets off a basic human reaction to seek control over a situation. Inversely, when we trust, a handshake, for example, will often do look at the rise of shared economy companies like Uber, Airbnb. For established companies, take a look at the ever-expanding legal language in contracts and evaluate the impact it might be having on eroding trust with customers. In the business-to-business world, there are some situations where people have to trust each other to be successful and/or make progress. If we make it too complicated, we invite doubt and/or skepticism into the conversation making it difficult to create the foundation for a long-term relationship. Additionally, if we have an established relationship with a customer keep an eye on  contracting, service agreements, product delivery language, etc.

I’ve only a listed a few of the “flaws” that challenge companies, many more exist, but multiply these by the number of humans (employees) at your company, and the number of channels an audience has to interact with your brand, and you begin to get a sense of the complexity of business marketing.

How do successful companies do it? How do they create and maintain an authentic message, perception, and/or brand, by building and preserving a strong corporate culture, but allowing for flexibility. As Bill Breen writes in Fast Company “To maintain its integrity, a brand must remain true to its values. And yet, to be relevant—or cool—a brand must be as dynamic as change itself.” Or as Shakespeare might say: “To thine own self be true.”