Should your company have a Facebook Page or a LinkedIn Group? What about apps? Should your company have an app on iPhones, iPads and Android devices? I don’t know, but chances are the answer is no.
The real question is do you need these tools to engage and service your customers, or are you jumping onto a technology bandwagon? Technology bandwagons are deadly. Too many companies are diving into technology projects, because they don’t want to be left behind.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to deliver a presentation titled, “Selling is Dead: The Rise of Brand Relationships”. I was speaking at an event hosted by the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating (CIPH), which is a group of manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers in the industrial valve and plumbing sector. And they are acutely aware of the technology pressures and forces hitting their business.
My message to them was avoid technology bandwagons.
We’re all pressured to change
The pace of technology today is astronomical. The advancements we’ve seen in the Internet, mobile technologies and social media over the past decade are equivalent to the acceleration of transportation between 1900 and 2000.
In 1900 the average travel speed in the United States was eight miles an hour. That’s a little faster than walking. The average person walks around at three miles an hour. Fast forward to 2000, and technology accelerated the rate of human travel to seventy miles an hour. That’s a big jump.
In the span of a century technology accelerated our rate of movement by close to nine times. That’s astonishing. But think about all that’s happened in the world of communications, mobile technologies and the Internet since 2000. In terms of communications we’ve moved from walking to flight in less than a decade.
No wonder companies are feeling pressured to keep up. They see the growth of social media, mobile communications, websites and all the other tools and just feel overwhelmed.
There’s always a flavor of the month
When you feel like you’re being left behind the natural reaction is to catch up. And this is where the technology bandwagon trap resides.
In the 90′s and early 2000′s e-commerce was all the rage. Companies were building complex e-commerce sites, because they thought all their customers would be doing their purchasing online soon. But most of these projects failed, because companies lost site of the tools and forgot complex products and services don’t sell themselves. They require human intervention.
Right now social media is the hot topic. Facebook raised close to $20 billion dollars in its IPO today with $6.8 billion coming back to the company. It generated this much money, because in 2012 social media is a big deal. But it leads to a question, should your company jump onto the social media bandwagon?
Get the data first
Popularity is not a reason to invest in new technologies.
Before you jump onto a technology bandwagon get the data first. Study your customers. Study how they buy, and understand which tools are influencing them.
For example, when you look at your customers’ buying patterns is social media influencing them? If so, how? If not, why? Get the data, then build the strategy.
There used to be a time when selling was a social activity. Sales people tracked their clients’ birthdays and anniversaries, knew their children by name, and fostered deep personal connections. It was a simpler time, it was a happy time. But times have changed. Today relationship sales reps do not hit quota.
Lynette Ryals, a professor at the Cranfield School of Management in the UK, did a study of 800 sales people and found only one in three reps were “consistently effective.” 63% of sales people don’t achieve their sales targets, and the worst performers were the “Socializers.”
Socializers are what we typically think of as relationship sales people. They’re good at initiating the relationship and establishing rapport, but they lack the knowledge and expertise to move the sale forward and close the deal.
Who has time for golf?
I appreciate sales people who take an interest in me and my business, but I need more than that. I need to solve problems, and move my business forward. And I’m not alone.
Time is at a premium. I don’t know any executive or business owner who isn’t concerned about their productivity or their time. They’ve got objectives to hit, and decisions to make. And when they engage a sales person they want someone who is not only pleasant to work with, but understands their business and gives constructive advice and feedback to make sound business decisions.
Sales aren’t made on the golf course, they’re made in the office.
Customers want Experts
Professor Ryals found the most effective sales profiles were “Experts” and “Consultants.” She writes, “Experts make selling seem effortless, keep customers happy, and consistenlty outperform their peers.” She goes on to state, “Consultants listen well and are good problem solvers; they develop solutions that meet their customers’ needs. But they tend to be one-dimensional and to forgo valuable case examples that could boost sales.”
The difference between Experts and Consultants is degrees of expertise. With some mentoring Consultants can integrate more case studies and industry expertise into their sales process. They have the foundation to facilitate the buying process, and as they grow in their job they’ll become Experts.
Experts and Consultants outperform Socializers, because they bring value to their clients. They are facilitators. They help clients contextualize all the information available to them, understand their needs and make sound buying decisions. And if the deal doesn’t make sense, they let the client know quickly so both parties can move on.
Great sales people are made
There’s an old myth that sales people are born not made. That may have been true twenty or thirty years ago, but not today. Extraversion and sociability may help a sales person initiate the sales process, but they’re not enough to bring it home.
Customers want experts: people who know their products and services, understand their applications, understand their place in the market, and can help clients navigate the buying process and make sound decisions.
These are not easy skills to acquire. It takes time, mentoring and lots of on the job training to grow from a Socializer to a Consultant to an Expert. The companies that outperform the competition get this, and work very hard at grooming their sales force into Experts.
What comments or suggestions would you add to this topic?
Countless brands stunt their reach on social media, because all they do is broadcast their own content. Check their Facebook page or Twitter stream, and you’ll see their articles, their firm announcements, their promotions, their stuff. “Me, me, me.”
Pushing your own content is a way to get started in social media, but it will only take you so far. You may get a few hundred followers on Facebook or Twitter, but fairly quickly your growth will plateau.
If you want to achieve real impact on social media you have to lead.
My social media philosophy is governed by a mantra, “An audience will plateau, but a community is boundaryless.” Leading and building communities is the secret sauce for really scaling your brand in social media.
Communities vs. Advertising
Broadcasting content is just another form of advertising. Package a message, whether in the form of a video, an article or even a promotion, and push it as far and wide as you can. The challenge with advertising is it’s limited to your resources. To reach and engage large audiences needs ever increasing budgets. That’s why big brands can engage such large audiences. They have the budgets and resources to get a lot of eyeballs to see their stuff.
Social media communities are different. They shift the resource paradigm, and engage very large audiences organically. Communities scale, because they draw together broad groups of people with shared interests, shared experiences or shared values. Their connections create commonality, and this enables communities to engage a lot of people.
And scale is only one benefit. Communities enable two-way communications, which means you don’t have to be responsible for all the content. Actually a majority of the content can be created by the community. Others asking questions, sharing content, participating in conversations and engaging with each other.
Only 1% choose to lead
Each of us has an opportunity to lead and make a significant impact in social media, because the vast majority of brands are simply broadcasting. I spoke about this in a previous post, “Stop Shouting! Listen. Build Your Brand Listening.”
Jakob Nielsen, an internet researcher, discovered only 1% of people are active creators in social media communities. He called this the 90-9-1 Rule.
90% of social media users are “lurkers.” These are the people listening and following the conversations from the sidelines. I find the term lurkers a little derogatory, so let’s just call these people listeners.
9% of social media users are “curators.” The curators are sharing content. They’re the ones retweeting, forwarding and re-posting other’s content. They’re engaged in the communities, but they’re not actively creating new content or ideas.
1% of social media users are “active.” These are the leaders. These are the people asking questions, engaging in dialogue, creating content and taking a proactive stance to move the community forward.
Be the 1%. Lead!
You have an opportunity to be very influential in social media if you choose to lead. People are searching for ways to get involved and participate in social media. They’re looking for leadership. Take on this role.
Brands who choose to lead create a remarkable competitive advantage. Instead of simply broadcasting content and promotions they are purposefully engaging with people. They’re building relationships, and they’re bringing value to others. Communities thrive, because of the relationships. And brands need relationships to become sticky.
Companies have a choice: get into social media, or get into it later. Either way every company is going to have to embrace social media as a key component of their marketing and communications very soon.
Yesterday I laid out this challenge to the Benefits Alliance Group in a keynote presentation titled, “Grow Your Brand in Social Media”. Right now social media is optional, but it won’t be for long. My suggestion to the group was to start mastering the tools now and get a head start in your industry.
Social media has tipped
In 2008 I wasn’t a big fan of using social media for B2B marketing. It wasn’t there yet. Not enough decision makers were using the tools.
According to Pew Internet Research, in 2008 73% of 18 to 29 year olds were using social media, while only 36% or 30 to 49 years and 16% of 50 to 64 year olds were using social media. In most companies the core decision makers are between 40 to 55, and in 2008 less then half of this demographic was using tools like Twitter and Facebook.
But the growth of social media has been a wave. By 2010 86% of 18 to 29 year olds, 61% of 30 to 49 year olds and 47% of 50 to 64 year olds were using social media. By 2010 social media had arrived and made sense for B2B marketing, because more than half of decision makers were participating in social media to some degree or another.
In less than 5 years social media has moved from the fringes of society to the mainstream, and it is becoming as ubiquitous as email and Google.
Avoid the resistance
Some companies are resisting social media.
“My clients don’t use Facebook and Twitter.” That may be perfectly true, but what about your future clients? Are you ignoring a key part of your prospect base by avoiding social media?
“I don’t have time for social media.” That too may be true, but you have a choice. You can choose to portion out some of your time towards these tools, or you can delegate it. If a company prioritizes these activities they’ll find the time and resources for it.
“I don’t know what to talk about.” Don’t over think it. Focus on the relationships. Look for opportunities to enhance your existing communications. For example, can you use these platforms to communicate more efficiently and effectively with your existing clients? What about your suppliers and partners? Go for the low hanging fruit first, and then consider how it can assist your marketing efforts.
You have a choice
I compare the growth of social media to websites. In 2000 having a website was optional, in 2012 you’re not a business without a website. Today social media is optional, but it won’t be for long.
Don’t play catch up. Get into social media, and start to enhance and extend your relationship building online. It’s amazing what you’ll discover once you get started.
I don’t know what it is, but for some reason when marketers turn to social media they feel compelled to shout. They just start pitching with promotions, calls to action, value proposition, events and retweeting their content. Pitch, pitch, pitch. It’s plain annoying.
But this is the reality of the situation. Businesses look at social media as a lead generation platform, and their immediate reaction is to push their content far and wide.
You can see this happening in your own industry. Do a quick survey of your competitors’ Twitter and Facebook pages, and look at their social streams. Analyze their posts. What percentage of their content is about themselves? I’m willing to bet it’s somewhere between 70% and 100%.
But that’s not how you build your brand with social media. As my grade six teacher, Mrs. Dixon, used to say, “You were born with two ears and one mouth. Use them in that proportion.” This is an applicable guideline for brands marketing on social media.
Breaking a 50 year bad habit
Listening and engaging with people purposefully is not natural for many companies.
Brands have been conditioned to rely on one-way communications for the past 50 years. Prior to 2000, the technology available to engage large audiences was limited to broadcasting. As a result companies crafted messages and broadcast them as far as they could through ads, TV and radio spots, billboards and quotes in articles.
As the Internet has evolved, marketers have tried to apply the same broadcast advertising principles to the Web: banner ads, pop-up ads, quotes, link sharing and even search engine optimization. All techniques to get eyeballs to see their stuff.
But one-way communication strategies are not natural. Broadcasting content may create awareness, but it doesn’t build relationships. You need a two-way dialogue to create engagement.
Don’t shout. Listen
Users are tuning out. Many people avoid following brands on Facebook and Twitter, because they are tired of being spammed out with promotions and self-serving content.
The people who listen are the most powerful people in the room. The same is true for brands.
Instead of doing what everyone else is doing, take a stance. Listen. Pay attention to what others are talking about. Monitor the social networks, and look for opportunities where your brand can contribute value purposefully.
Listening pays off for brands, because it helps form emotional connections with customers. People want to be heard. By listening and engaging purposefully brands will get more customers to like them, trust them and find them credible. Like, trust and credibility are not formed pitching, they’re formed through relationships.
Do you ever feel B2B marketing is just a little too clinical? Or better yet, a little too professional?
I’ve been flipping through trade magazines today, and struck by the number of ads that are plain boring. Transportation and logistics firms marketing themselves with glossy photos of trucks and taglines like, “Providing solutions for your mobile transportation needs.” Or HR providers using stock photography of groups of people wearing suits and smiling with crossed arms looking ‘professional.’
Generic images, generic copy and generic calls to action. They all look the same, and they’re all forgettable.
Why? That’s all I can ask. Why would any company blow $2,500 to $10,000 on a full-page ad when the ad is so abysmally boring? It’s a waste of money.
Jim Henson didn’t hold back. He didn’t pitch the features and benefits of the show. He revealed the satirical whimsy of the characters, and how they could dazzle and delight an audience.
The announcer lets it all hang out in this pitch, “Buy this show, and we’ll be famous. So put it on the air.” He goes so far as saying, “And God will look down on us. And smile on us. And he will say, ‘Let them have a 40 share.’”
From the very introduction, The Muppet Show is differentiated from all other comedies and TV programs. It stands out and is remarkable.
Stop being professional
There’s a sharp difference in Jim Henson’s pitch from all the bland, boring ads listed in trade magazines. Henson doesn’t try to come off as reserved or professional. He presents the show for what it is, and takes a clear stance.
It’s easy to get caught up in what is ‘professional,’ but customers need more then a nice suit and platitudes to choose your products or services. They need to know what makes you different.
Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, “Just the facts ma’am. Just the facts.” Facts might work for detectives, but they don’t differentiate products and services.
How can you share your passions and energy to demonstrate your company is remarkable?
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Posted by Jeremy Miller 
