If you’re a solopreneur, consultant, or service professional, having a marketing strategy and plan that you can leverage for lead generation and sales while keeping the personal time investment to a minimum is essential. The time that you put in now, at the end of the year, makes marketing for the entirety of next year an easy proposition.  If, on the other hand, you only market when you need to and sell when you have to … Well, you already know how that feels if you’ve been in that position—and you don’t want to go anywhere near that if you never have.

You’ll find a long list of resources at the end of this post.  On my bookshelf, I have a section that I call my go-to-market books because they are the resources that I re-read (or at least reference heavily) each year when I plan out my marketing. These are the same resources that we lean on for other professional service firms when looking for ideas or third-party data to back up our recommendations. You can’t go wrong with any one of these resources.

There are myriad tools, ideas and tactics that you could apply to your unique situation. That said, taking on a few marketing tasks and executing them well and consistently will help you to gain traction in the marketplace and sustain your marketing effort as your business grows. We’ll start with your website itself.

A Simple Blog-enabled Website
For a bit of effort and about $20/year (domain name +hosting fee), you can have a professional-looking website to house your articles and other related content. In addition to posting articles on the website, you’ll need to develop a value proposition and a summary of the services you offer as well as put a contact form on the site. In Inbound Marketing, by Halligan & Shaw, they discuss the value of a blog and how to make the most of a blog-driven website for business development. They are certainly not the first the explain this concept, but they put the blog-driven “hub website” in perspective that is uniquely suited to the professional service firm. (If you’re looking to really make your blog sing, I recommend Darren Rouse’s 31 Days to Better Blogging.)

Article Marketing
Articles have a whole host of benefits for consultants and professionals. Let me put it this way: If you’re not writing articles regularly for posting on industry blogs and websites or to submit to local papers, industry journals or association publications, then you’re shortchanging your marketing and sales efforts. You will have a tough time really reaching the pinnacle of your field. Articles beget more articles, media attention, authority, and credibility; invitations to speak at industry conferences; and a dozen other benefits that consultants and professionals derive from publishing.In the Thought Leadership Marketing diagnostic test, a key to becoming a thought leader in your industry is to have an effective publishing strategy that you execute on regularly. Finally, in order to drive traffic to the site, posting articles on your new websites monthly will help to drive traffic from parties interested in your work.

Journal Articles
Make connections with journals and association publications in your industry, download their editorial calendars, and start working with the editors to see how you could add value and plug in your article to their publication.

Conference Speeches
Create a calendar of all industry events for the next 18 months, and start developing speech materials to present at upcoming conferences.  Submit proposals, network with organizers, and position yourself as an expert that they need to have at their next conference. Better yet, co-present with a client.

Social Media
The goal here is to increase the size and potency of your network. There is leverage that we can apply through LinkedIn, as well as the possibility of using other channels. This does not mean that everyone needs to be on Facebook, Twitter, and all other social media channels. If your tribe hangs out there, then so be it. Go for it. If not, don’t waste your time.  There are other reasons (learning, engaging, connecting with peers) that you might want to participate in social media, but remember, as the CEO of “You” or your firm, especially if you’re a solopreneur, your mission is not become a successful business owner, not just become famous on Twitter.

Target 25, 50 and 75 Account List & Outreach Strategy
Creating a targeted list of accounts that have a high likelihood to need your services and then pursuing those accounts with a proactive and aggressive marketing campaign could yield some significant early business wins. Always know who should know about you, and regularly ask the question: Do all of the members of my tribe know that I exist and understand what I do?

Press Releases
Using traditional means like pitching trade publications can bring in traffic and results while adding on submissions to sites like PitchEngine.com can also help to increase overall awareness within your tribe. You many not be in a very media-worthy business, but if you can actually help a reporter with a useful story that will add value to the readers of their publication (amazing how many people forget that bit about adding value and being useful and interesting), then a series of quarterly press releases might be in the cards.

Create and Execute a Campaign
This is something that can yield significant benefits and can eat up one quarter’s worth of marketing time if you do it right. Not that you want to eat up time, but there’s nothing like a well-executed campaign to pull in leads an opportunities. In order pull off a successful campaign, it’s often best to use your top account list from above and put together a targeted program that includes things like a series of articles, direct mail to decision makers, regular blog posts of interest to the target, LinkedIn connections to all of the decision makers, follow-up or cold calls, and a speech, seminar or conference presentation.

Sales Strategy & Process
What? I’m a small firm? Why do I need a sales strategy? Because, you need to have a process for how you handle yourself when you get in front of people. Calling a meeting with a prospect is a mutual waste of time if you can’t offer them value in your visit. You MUST be thinking about “how you can be useful to them”, almost to the point of “your sales call being worth paying for” in order to be consistently successful in your in-person prospect meetings.  I recommend using things like your own set of intelligent open-ended questions and coming to the meeting armed with a resource such as an article, e-book, or whitepaper that you’ve written or even a deck from a recent industry conference that you spoke at.

12-Month Marketing Plan
Pursuing a host of marketing and sales tactics will certainly help to grow your business, but to see consistent, long-term results, you’ll need to start working from at least a six-month marketing plan (12 is better) to ensure that you’re spending your time and money wisely.  Get it on paper, even if just a couple of pages broken out by month, and you’ll be further ahead than everyone else.,

OK, so what if you don’t have a year? Well, here’s a 90-day plan that will get you through spring.

90-Day Jumpstart Plan
Consider completing these activities in the next 90 days as a way of jumpstarting your business development efforts:

• Put up a complete website with a blog. Now.
• Let everyone in your email database and all of your past contacts know that your new website is up, what you’re doing new in 2011, and that you’re available for projects.
• Work on getting booked as a speaker at an upcoming industry conference.
• Write an article to be published in an industry journal.
• Adapt an article for multiple publications.
• Attend a professional conference in your field in the next 12 months.
• Use one of your best articles from the past or your best new article as a direct mail item to send to your most likely prospective customers.
• Connect with potential decision-makers from your top account list on LinkedIn. (Make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to 100%.)
• Use your learning’s from a recent client engagement as the basis for an article, series of articles or conference speaking proposal.

This, of course, is not meant to be an exhaustive list of things that you should be doing. Rather, it’s meant as a table stakes sort of article. You should be doing at least all of these.  Look daunting at first? It can, but that’s why we put it into a plan and work on it throughout the year.  All of these things are doable in the span of a year’s time.

For Your Reading Pleasure

As I mentioned earlier, there are a wide range of books that you can read on building your consulting or professional service business.  The other thing about these books is that each one of them has produced results by employing at least one idea from the text.  These are the go-to resources on my bookshelf as I head in to 2011:

Get Slightly Famous by Steven Van Yoder—This is one of my favorite books of all time. It forms the blueprint for any personal branding plans that we put together. It’s a must read and a resource that gets reused every single year.

Get Clients Now! by C.J. Hayden—I like C.J.’s book because it works in “checklist” form to make sure that we’re looking at as many options as possible. If you really need a step-by-step plan, following her 28 day marketing program is a good start.

Rain Making by Ford Harding—This is an indispensible resource, especially the part on sales process and how to handle sales meetings and lead follow-up. While these are not always sexy topics, the advice contained in Rain Making is solid and worth a thorough read.

Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss—Alan’s book is almost a bible for developing business for consultants. I enjoy it as much for the ideas that he puts forth as for the “mindset shift” that Alan advocates for consultants to adopt in order to reach the next level in their practice.

Book Yourself Solid byMichael Port—Another great resource with some solid ideas and a workbook to go along with it. If you take even an idea or two from the book and execute, you’re further ahead than most.

Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants by Jay Conrad Levinson & Michael McLaughlin—This is another must-read resource that is full of great tips and ideas that you can apply immediately.

How to Drive Your Competition Crazy by Guy Kawasaki—This book was one that I’ve always been hesitant to recommend because it’s got some many great ideas that I was afraid someone might use them against me. Get it. Read it. Use it.

Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field by Bob Bly—I love everything Bob writes, and this book is not exemption. If thought leadership is in your planning, they you need this resource. Do whatever Bob tells you to do …

The Whitepaper Marketing Handbook by Bob Bly—Again, another resource from Bly. If whitepapers are in your plan, you need this resource to make them effective.

What else would you do?  How are you planning to market your firm in 2011? Are there any books that you’d recommend?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Happy Marketing in 2011!

This poses a challenge for businesses who want to enhance their Internet presence on a local basis. If you’re a pizzeria, for example, you want anyone in your city searching for pizza to find you first.

Though many customers may still find you via the phone book, the times are rapidly changing. Google reports 34,000 searches are conducted per second. Fortunately, the ever-expanding digital universe gives you plenty of ways to make customers aware of your location. Here are a few of the best ways to get found locally:

1. Start with your website.

Consider your website to be the foundation of your search engine optimization efforts. Make sure that key strategic parts of the site are optimized for local search. You’ll want to add your address to every page, and be sure to include city names in the navigation. The pizzeria above might opt for “Milwaukee Pizza” in its title bar, for example.

You can also do some keyword research to determine if there are particular searches being done in your local area, and then begin using those key phrases in your content.

2. Register with local search engines.

You can register all your contact information with local search engines—for free. Google looks for what are called “citations,” or mentions of your address and phone number. Local citations are like links and can help increase your visibility in Google Maps/local search.

Include as much information as possible in each local profile. The more you input, the easier it is for them to provide a match when people are searching.

For starters, register with:

• Google Places
• Yelp
• Yahoo Local
• Bing

3. Don’t overlook local Yellow Pages and online Yellow Page listings.

The local yellow pages aren’t only found in paper format. They’re also online and include a variety of technology enhancements to help you get found. Yellow Pages sites like Superpages are heavily-trafficked sites and can help build citations and links for search engines. Beware of companies asking you to pay. We have rarely found these paid listings leading to any measurable results.

4. Get out and meet your neighbors with social media.

Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are great sources of word-of-mouth marketing. Simply by creating and maintaining a presence in several of these sites, you’ll make it extremely easy for people to find your business and tell their friends about it.

When you create your site, be sure to include plenty of local information in your profile so people know exactly where to find you. Social media sites are also great places to post pictures and videos of customers. Making your customers “slightly famous” often encourages them to spread the word about your business to their friends and families.

5. Encourage your customers to submit ratings and reviews.

Between 60% and 82% of Internet reviews are positive. Are you getting your fair share? Encourage your customers to post reviews of your business on sites like Google Local, Yelp, Insider Pages, Citysearch and so forth. Do a Google search right now to see if there are already some reviews of your business out there!

6. Use online advertising.

Though most of the options listed here are free, you can also use Google’s Pay-Per-Click or Facebook ads to target specific local customers. These ads only reach the geographic area you specify and can tie-in with your website or social media sites. Use them interactively to build your audience and drive awareness.

7. Don’t forget tactics.

No matter what digital avenue you pursue, be sure to use tactics that drive interest and get you found locally.

• Always include your name and address anyplace you post information.
• Use photos and videos of customer experiences in social media.
• Share useful and usable information for your customers.
• Network online locally. Reach out on LinkedIn and to the local bloggers and social media users and interact with them

There are a myriad of options available to help your neighbors find you online. With a solid strategy and a persistent, ongoing effort, you’ll find a way to make it easy for customers to find your business.

How can you as a local retailer engage shoppers using social media to drive revenue this holiday season? Let’s start with several low-cost and creative ideas that you can put in place this week to start off the holiday shopping season with a social media kick.

1. Start now with social media. Building a following on Facebook and Twitter, or through some simple product videos or blog posts can pay dividends as we near the holiday season, especially when last-minute shoppers are seeking local options.
2. Get reviewed online. Like signage in a retail store, customer reviews on Google and Facebook draw attention and help differentiate between similar retailers. More than 70 percent of consumers trust recommendations from reviewers and recent studies show 83 percent of all holiday shoppers this year will be influenced by customer reviews.
3. Be helpful with your holiday messaging. Social media is really about sharing useful content with your audience. Make their gift-finding easier by offering helpful ideas and information, and you’ll be rewarded with increased loyalty, recognition, store traffic and online “word of mouth.” Think about the gift-giving challenges of your customers, and speak to those needs with your Facebook posts or Twitter tweets.
4. Use social media with traditional marketing. If you distribute flyers, postcards or do any form of advertising, include your social-media links everywhere your customers see your name. Don’t forget the in-store applications, where something as simple as sticking a printed “Follow us on Facebook” card in each shopping bag can help boost followers and online word-of-mouth marketing.
5. Use pictures and videos where possible. Whether you sell hand soap, jewelry or pheasant hunting trips, research shows that people respond to posts with photos and video much more favorably than to simple text postings. Remember, you’re trying to tell your story, and any imagery you can use to help tell that story will bring in more holiday business.
6. Work with local social media celebrities. There are more than 3,000 people on Twitter in our area of Wisconsin—think of how many are your area! Many of them have thousands of followers for whom they serve as taste-makers every day while influencing dozens of others. Use Twellow.com to find the influencers (most popular) and learn their tastes to find possible partnerships for your business.
7. Advertise on Facebook. Facebook ads can be a targeted and relatively inexpensive way to reach a precise audience in our area. In fact, there are 120,880 people on Facebook within 25 miles of home over the age of 20. Do your own search to see how many you could reach in your area.  Placing some targeted ads based on keywords and interest can get you in front of the right people, in the right place and at the right time.

Moving into social media now will help you compete and win in this holiday season and for many seasons to come. Sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option for local retailers. Start your social media efforts now to benefit from the cumulative effects that only get better with time and increase the return on your investment each and every month.

All that having been said, it shows, as Geoff Livingston pointed out in The End of the Social Media Adoption Road and Jeremy Victor backed up with data in Has social media for business hit the mainstream?. We’re approaching the ‘end of the adoption curve’, so to speak in the world of social media.

The Adoption Curve and Social Media

The adoption curve is a concept derived from the Diffusion of Innovations – a theory of how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. The concept was popularized by the textbook by Everett Rogers (1962), Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers 1962). He defines diffusion as “the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.”

The aforementioned work by Jeremy of B2Bblogger.com shows that social media, in its current state within the business world, fits almost perfectly into the Rogers adoption curve.

According to Jeremy:

1. In our poll, the 22% are the laggards (compared with 16% in Rogers’ curve). This group of people in the adoption curve prefer the tried-and-true methods, are critical of new ideas and are only willing to consider them when they have become mainstream.
2. Our majority of 67% (compared to 64% in Rogers’ curve), have accepted the change social media represents and adopted social media in some form.
3. Finally, the 11%, our early adopters (compared with 13.5% in Rogers’ curve), are leading the way and transforming themselves into social businesses working to find ways to use social technologies in all aspects of their business.

What Now?

Well, that’s what I asked. Geoff and Jeremy do a great job of pointing to some of the logical conclusions that we should draw from recent data (and they’re important conclusions to be sure!), but the model is a challenging one for practicing managers as it’s an ever-moving target. In fact, we need to first recognize that:

“technologies are not static. There is continual innovation in order to attract new adopters all along the S-curve. The S-curve does not just ‘happen’. Instead, the s-curve can be seen as being made up of a series of ‘bell curves’ of different sections of a population adopting different versions of a generic innovation.”

That’s the real rub in all of this. We’re taking a snapshot. As a picture of the current state, this means that we’re nearing full adoption of the concept of social media within business but

Today’s Early Adopter is Tomorrow’s Early Majority

The clues for what ‘what’s next’ are in the data from Jeremy. He talks about organizations that are leading the way and transforming themselves into social businesses working to find ways to use social technologies in all aspects of their business. This, in my mind, is the next frontier. (There’s always a frontier out there somewhere!) The social enterprise, where social media permeates the entire organization is where the early adopters of social media are headed next.

We’re All Early Adopters (at some point)

The beauty of this model is in the nuances. Namely, that we can all early adopters in some way at some point. Some of us lag and some of lead and various points in time. We’re seeing organizations today that have sat on the social media sidelines for several years and have moved from zero to social media enterprise in a few months. They were considered laggards in social media, per se, but are early adopters and even innovators in adopting social media as an augmentation of their business model. If you were to see these businesses in action, this wouldn’t surprise you at all, as they’ve always been innovators (early adopters) of emerging business models.

How Do We Get Our Laggards On Board?

Some of you are still working with a Late Majority or Laggard organization, I get that. Here are a few final ideas for working with them to move them along the social media adoption curve.

How to work with your late majority organization:

1. Get them to focus on the “social norms” of social media in the enterprise rather than just product benefits of what you can “do” with social media. They NEED to hear that other conservative folks like them
   think it’s normal or indispensable. (Think: Case Studies)
2. Keep it simple. Illustrate how this can fit into the workflow of the organization and how it’s a ‘shift’ rather than an ‘addition’ or outright overhaul.
3. Illustrate and emphasize the risks of being left behind in social media. (Think: Competitive Assessment Presentation)
4. Respond to criticisms from laggards. You will have determined detractors. You need to have your ducks in a row to address their concerns and squelch them as quickly as possible as they have a timely opportunity to poison the well here. (You likely already know who these folks are!)

How to work with your social media laggards:

1. They need control. Make social media as easy as possible for them.
2. Put them toward the end of an implementation. Get the other departments or teams who are early adopters or in the majority on board first and leverage the positive peer influence to paint a clear picture for the laggards.
3. Buddy them up with a late majority person who’s almost as skeptical as they are (and who can relate) but who’s seen the immense benefits of social media and who can connect on a level that you can’t.
4. Build trust over time. Work to understand their concerns and do a little something every day/week/month to maximize their familiarity with social media behavior. Let them see other laggards successfully adopting it.

Your Turn

What do you think? Where’s your organization at? How are you getting your late majority and laggards on board?

An expectation, according to Wikipedia, is the thing that “is considered the most likely to happen in the case of uncertainty.” It’s a belief that we hold for the future which may or may not be realistic or correct, but we hold it none the less. If everything around us happened as expected, in most cases, that would be great. If marketers did everything as expected, perhaps that too would be OK. But that’s not OK for thought leaders. Those who chose to leverage their intellectual capital and share knowledge and wisdom with their customers are not about meeting expectations, they’re about violating expectations.
Violating may sound like a harsh word. In fact, its original meaning, that is “to break or disregard” is so often overshadowed by the more malicious definitions that we often see it associated with. (see, expectations at work right there. Think of the first thing that came to mind when you way the word “violate” in the title–I bet it wasn’t pretty.) However, when thought leaders violate expectations, they simply break the mold and deliver an unexpected insight, action idea, nugget of information or the all important “Aha! moment” that resets your thinking to their frequency and puts you on a different plane.
You see, our minds are always seeking to generalize based on specific experiences and form expectations or opinions that we apply to the future. We go on in our businesses with so many assumptions about the challenges we face that we don’t often stop to think of better solutions to current problems.
The job of the thought leader is to violate those expectations you hold for the future and deliver something unexpected in the way of an idea, solution, a new way of questioning, an innovation that you didn’t know existed or something of that ilk.
Think of the interactions that you’ve had with brands in the past few weeks. Have any of them, particularly in the context of your business, violated your expectations and showed you a new path?

And before you ask, the ironic link between McKinsey and Company (one of the best at plying the trade of though leadership marketing) and thought leadership marketing isn’t lost on me. In fact, one could argue that for McKinsey, as well as for Tom Peters and Bob Waterman, this book was an outstanding piece of thought leadership in and of itself. In fact, it’s just one in a long line of thought leading missives penned by current and former McKinseyites.
The deep similarities that exist between thought leaders and the leading companies (of their time) profiled in In Search of Excellence should not be overlooked either. Detractors of thought leadership marketing point to its buzzword compliant status as a reason to invalidate it (though you’ll find its mentions in Google to be a mere fraction of how often the words “social media” are found). They miss the point, which is that thought leadership marketing is a competence based marketing approach (from an academic perspective) and requires the thought leading company to “live” their message, much the same way that the companies in In Search of Excellence embody the eight basic principles. Thought leadership goes well beyond the tactical channels that we often see, such as speaking, articles and books.
There are a few new things that current or would-be thought leaders can glean from the lessons distilled from In Search of Excellence. Let’s look at what the eight basic principles mean for thought leaders.

1. A bias for action: First and foremost, thought leaders are idea generators and excel at sharing those ideas with the customers from whom they’ve derived the problems to think about. Thought leaders are also “doers.” Superior thought leadership stems from tangible activity in the market and with live customers.
2. Close to the customer: Thought leaders are inherently customer centric. This is best illustrated throughout In Search of Excellence when the authors detail the meetings, studies, presentations and conversations had with hundreds of people at dozens of companies. Thought leaders are what I like to call “embedded innovators” and “embedded marketers.” They live in the marketplace that they serve and their thought leading is borne of the questions and issues from the marketplace.
3. Autonomy & entrepreneurship: Thought leading companies expand the role of thought leadership well beyond the corner office holders to the staff and line professionals charged with actually solving the customer problems. Admittedly, this has become easier with the advent of social media, but it’s the corporate ethos that’s one of inclusion and empowerment that really makes this possible. You’ll notice that the best thought leading companies publish content from throughout the organization, and those small companies that are thought leaders go well beyond their four walls to engage luminaries throughout the industry.
4. Productivity through people: This principle was best captured by Mark Shepherd of Texas Instruments when he said every worker should be “seen as a source of ideas, not just acting as a pair of hands.” Thought leaders allow their people to leverage their intellectual capital to make a difference in the company and in the industry while getting slightly famous in the process.
5. Hands-on, value driven: Thought leaders are doers, not just thinkers. The best thought leading organizations are the best practitioners and have the most practical experience to bring to bear on a client situation.
6. Stick to the knitting: Just as excellent companies stay reasonably close to the businesses they know, expemplary thought leaders work on issues that they have intimate knowledge of, deep experience in and for which they’ve developed a point of view. This doesn’t mean that they can’t pursue “prediction opportunities” where they help point other toward actionable ideas for change, it does mean that a company that works in metal plating isn’t likely to produce thought leadership material related to lampshade manufacturing.
7. Simple form, lean staff: High leverage is a hallmark of excellent companies where it’s commonplace to find a handful of people running a multi-million dollar business. Thought leading companies don’t fill their ranks with hoards of researchers, but rather they hire and cultivate a handful of luminaries that can carry the intellectual weight of a thought leader in the industry.
8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties: Excellent companies have often been classified as “barely organized chaos surrounding its product champions.” Companies that embody a thought leadership marketing approach, especially those that “social media enable” their employees are no different in that they’re fanatical about their values, philosophy and core competency while simultaneously affording automony at the line level allowing their thought leaders and employees to engage customers in a meaningful dialogue without violating any company values.

If 1982 phoned in today, it would tell us that there are still many relevant lessons that can be applied to today’s organizations.The simple fact is that before a company can seek to attain the status of a thought leader, it needs to be a highly-functional and effective organization with extraordinary competence in their market. That’s why following the eight basic principles from In Search of Excellence and further adapting them to their thought leadership initiatives is so critical. Choosing this approach will ensure that any would-be thought leading company will be on the right path.
Thoughts?

According to the Wall Street Journal article, the profit was “aided by cost cuts.” (Starbucks Swings to Profit, Aided by Cost Cuts – WSJ, 7/22/09) Well, I submit that the article my be more aptly phrased as “Aided by Marketing.” Marketing appears to have played a significant role in helping Starbucks hold their own against an economy that’s running from even the smallest luxuries en masse, competitors that are offering cheaper “me too” products in the specialty coffee department and the general ‘cocooning’ behavior that’s keeping Americans at home and out of their favorite ‘third places.’

Mr. Schultz said the company has benefited from its own marketing campaign, which has included print ads and communication with consumers using social media Web sites. Last week Starbucks became the most popular brand page on Facebook with more than 3.5 million fans.

In fact, I would argue their are four elements in the marketing equation that have contributed to their “resurgence” in the last year:

1. Starbucks’ crowd sourcing of consumer ideas via their My Starbucks Idea site – With thousands of ideas submitted, thousands more votes on this ideas that followed, and a few actual innovations that have made it into stores that have provided genuine benefit to Starbucks consumers, this is one of the things that has kept me personally loyal to the brand
2. Their intelligent use of data through the Starbucks cards and the vast email database – While Starbucks didn’t really have much of a “loyalty” program to speak or until the Gold Card (yes, I have one), they’ve built a great email database that they’ve used as recently as this week with the “free pasty with a drink purchase and this email” campaign. One only had to look at the sheer volume of empty pastry containers and the large stack of emails at my local Starbucks to see the email is a steady staple in their marketing plan that’s working for them.
3. Starbucks made waves with social media - They currently have the largest Facebook group (3.5 million users) of any of their competitors.
4. Finally, Starbucks has stuck to their knitting using traditional marketing - Using vehicles like print ads and (seemingly) more prolific and effective in-store marketing, while integrating them into the overall digital strategy to reach customers at all ends of the spectrum, Starbucks has truly “met people in their medium” to ensure that no customer is left behind.

More to the point, even competition has helped Starbucks to carve out a stronger position in the coffee market.

In recent months, Starbucks has faced increased competition from rivals including McDonald’s Corp. and 7-Eleven. McDonald’s recently launched a national marketing campaign behind its McCafe specialty coffee drinks.
Rather than hurt Starbucks, Mr. Schultz said the added attention has helped his chain. “It appears that the various marketing campaigns, and all the media coverage about coffee, has created unprecedented awareness for the coffee category overall, and has actually had a positive result on Starbucks business,” he told analysts.

While I admit, this is a complete outsider’s view of the situation, I submit that as a daily customer, who better to see the effects of their marketing that us! I further submit that Starbucks’ marketing efforts have done as much for them, maybe more, than any of the cost-cutting and operational efficiency plays that they’ve made over the past year.
This story illustrates what marketers all over the country know and Schultz said it himself in the article when he said “No company can save themselves to prosperity.” Exactly! Prosperity comes from being competitive, engaging in smart marketing, crafting a holistic strategy and a driving that strategy to execution. Me, I’ll take marketing over cost cutting any day!

Nevertheless, the conversation went a bit more smoothly as we talked through the nuance of what it really takes for an organization to not only position itself as a credible, thought leading trusted advisor but to further act on and sustain that position.
The latter two components are where the real challenge lies! The real issue, in my mind, is that like so many other strategies or ’stratics’ (tactical tools that marketers parade out as strategies), thought leadership and social media are simply bolted on to an existing, and remarkably incompatible marketing strategy and then tears are shed when things don’t go as planned. If you dig just a little deeper, I’d argue that thought leadership marketing is more about a wholesale organizational culture shift than it is about marketing, but that’s for another post.
So, what does “thought leadership is not enough” really mean? Well, in short, there are really three components that make up the thought leadership marketing go to market strategy. Thought Leadership, Insurgent/Underdog Marketing and Social Media Marketing. This is cliched ‘three legged stool’ that holds up the concept of thought leadership marketing. In short, being a thought leader will not be ‘enough’ in the near future. In fact, I’d argue that it never has been, but we’ll save that for another argument. Let’s look at each of the three components:

Thought Leadership turns organizational activity (a.k.a. your content development and deployment strategy) into intellectual capital that supports relevant advocacy positions, tacit domain expertise and point-of-view platforms to shape and influence market perceptions and establish your organization as a thought leader, knowledge resource, subject matter expert and ultimately, a trusted client advisor. Being a thought leader requires that you have actual leading thinkers in an organization. That said, thought leadership on its own, that is, the actual ‘thought leading product’ that an organization can take to market is hamstrung without a catalyst. In this case, the catalyst lies in the concept of insurgent marketing. More specifically, effective thought leaders possess an insurgent mindset.

From MarketingSavant Mind Maps

Insurgent marketing principles are those used extensively by political candidates. Namely, insurgent marketers are committed to changing the market dialogue, defining the future (for their target markets), embracing the market conversation, working from the inside-out and always ‘playing offense’ in your marketing. Insurgent marketing can deliver immediate and measurable lead and prospect opportunity improvements and drive demand generation by focusing on delivering wins and competing on higher ideals, not lower prices, in the age of the empowered buyer. Insurgency is not size defendant. There are scores of very large companies that may lead their industry which have never given up their insurgent mindset. Insurgency generally favors the small, agile competitor (which, coincidentally, is why we find thought leadership marketing working particularly well for startups), but it’s not always so.

From MarketingSavant Mind Maps

Social media and digital marketing combined with trusted thought leading content and an insurgent mindset form a foundation for sharing and relevant dialogue with clients and markets that builds market capital and provides the insights, access, and influence required to create demand generation. Social media is the channel or vessel that allows marketers gather great insights from the market through an ongoing dialogue and then leverage all of the great insights in a client-driven medium that allows for the most free-flowing exchange of ideas even employed by marketers. Of course, traditional thought leadership was not delivered through social media, but we’re not talking about traditional thought leadership marketing. The next generation of thought leaders must be conversant (and conversing) in social media.
With all of the above having been said, I have a few questions for would be thought leadership marketers.
1. Where does your thought leadership marketing strategy sit in your organization? If it’s only in marketing, it needs to go up a level or two.
2. How do you rank yourself as you work through the elements of insurgent marketing (see the mind map below)?
3. If you’re contemplating pursuing thought leadership, are you prepared to shift your culture to share your intellectual capital, embrace the insurgent mindset and engage in the world of social media?

First, few companies have the discipline and commitment to fully execute and sustain and thought leadership marketing strategy. In a recent conversation with an organization seeking to employ thought leadership, it was evident that they had many of the makings of a thought leader, but they were inconsistent in their application of thought leadership principles and hadn’t realized the full benefits of seeking to occupy the thought leader position in their industry. However, with just a few tweaks, they could occupy the spot of the thought leader. How? Let’s look at the first elements that you should look for if you’re seeking to be a thought leader in your industry.

Let’s explore these concepts of Assets, Attitude, Acceptance, and Alignment further.
Assets
Admittedly, I believe that Assets are not the most important part of the equation here. That said it’s the first thing that most organizations need to look at when exploring thought leadership marketing. You must have a sufficient base of assets or be able to develop these assets in order to be a thought leader. This is not an exhaustive list, but here are a few important assets.
Do you have the required assets to leverage as a thought leader?

• Intellectual capital
• Innovation & intellectual property creation
• Unique insight and expertise
• Cases & results on your products & services

Attitude
The most important aspect that we find in the making of a successful thought leader is their attitude. I know, it’s a bit of a soft factor, but if you don’t have a value-first mentality and a proclivity for educating your market and customers, all of the greatest assets in the world will never see the light of day. These are but a few of the attitudinal elements that make up the thought leading organization.
What are the attitudinal markers of a thought leader?

• Desire to educate clients; the market
• Willingness to share real value (this makes it easier to use social media as well)
• Ability to control your “urge to sell”
• Long-term mindset on contributing to the industry dialogue

Acceptance
You could also call this the ‘market research’ portion of thought leadership. Having a raft of assets and a sharing attitude are nothing if it will fall on deaf ears. Not every industry is right for thought leadership marketing, but there are few things you can look at to determine a fit. Studies by ITSMA, The Economist Intelligence Unit and MarketingSherpa have all pointed to the efficacy of thought leadership content in gaining the attention of and persuading buyers.
How will our thought leadership be accepted?

• Are clients persuaded by thought leadership?
• The industry is in need of fresh perspective
• We’re credible, or at least neutral in our industry

Alignment
Alignment could very well be the glue that holds this all together. If your CEO is not on board (nothing is worse than coming up with a great marketing strategy only to have your CEO on a different planet) or if your front line teams are not on board, thought leadership marketing is not a viable strategy. Being a thought leader takes an entire company’s support to succeed.
What does the thought leadership aligned organization look like?

• Clients embrace ideas & engage in dialogue
• Front-line teams embrace and leverage thought leadership
• Thought leadership is aligned with industry challenges & conversations
• The point of view, channels and tools work together to deliver results

The so-called “Four A’s” of thought leadership marketing are just the beginning, but being such, they are a great place to start as a self diagnostic to determine how well your organization could do by pursuing a thought leadership position in your market. If you have the required assets and attitude to start down the road of being a thought leader gaining acceptance and alignment within the marketplace, you’re on the way!
The following is a sample of a radar diagram of how an organization might look if they assess their thought leadership ability on a 4 A scale. You can see that the organization has almost everything but the right attitude to get started.

Thought leadership is based on your organizational competence: Thought leadership marketing is based on nearly equal parts organizational competence and customer & industry depth of understanding. If your organization’s competence is truly differentiated (and if it isn’t, why are you still in business?) and you have the deep, nuanced understanding of your customers and markets that your thought leading content claims that you do, then your competitors are virtually eliminated from view in the eyes of the customer who seeks your unique competence. The marginal value of directly copying a competitor’s thought leadership position, and thus usurping their competence and plagiarizing their work in understanding customers and markets is antithetical to a sound strategy and an easily defensible position from the thought leader’s perch.
Thought leadership and customer education inspires trust: So what, who cares about trust and why teach my customers any more than they need to know? Actually, trust is one of the most coveted of all aspects in a supplier-customer relationship and is becoming an increasingly important element in the value proposition that customer derive from their supplier relationships. A recent study published in the MIT Sloan Management Review illustrates the long term value to educating customers through thought leadership content in the financial services industry. Customers that are made knowledgeable through the efforts of the organization exhibit higher loyalty scores, place greater value on the organizations’ complete suite of services and ultimately value the shared wisdom of the supplier as part of the overall value equation.
Trusted advisers & thought leaders are more likely to get the sale: According to Brian Carroll in his book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, a 2002 research report found that salespeople that had reached the status of “trusted adviser” were 70% more likely to come away with a sale. Thought leadership marketing help organizations position their business development and sales personnel in the position of trusted adviser throughout the lead nurturing process by:

• Making your potential buyers more familiar with who you are, what you do and how you add value.
• Delivering the impression that you are leaders and experts in your respective field.
• Illustrating that your company, and thus, your salespeople, understand and can specifically address the unique needs of the prospect.
• Allowing buyers ample time to ‘get to know you’ and self-select into your ‘customer tribe’ (or, opting out if they’re not a qualified prospect!)

Thought leadership reaches prospects earlier in the decision cycle: Thought leadership or knowledge leadership in marketing offers value that outpaces the impact of any advertising that a business-to-business might pay for. According to Joyce Renney, Associate Director at Lighthouse consultants, “Successful thought leadership is about creating exceptional content that provides insight into business issues. That’s what makes executive buyers choose one firm over another.” In case after case of thought leadership from organizations ranging from Cisco to Crest to your local thought leading ad agency, by the time your competitors have come around to your way of thinking, your prospects (who may even be their current customers) are much further along in their decision to do business with you.
Thought leadership ‘pulls’ or attracts a different type of client: In the RainToday.com publication, How to Become a Thought Leader, several of the interviewees attest to benefiting from the ‘pull’ marketing that thought leadership contributes to. Their marketing expenses dropped, their recognition in the industry increased and they were increasingly sought after by companies that wanted to do business with their organizations because of their ideas, willingness to share and transparency. Additionally, those same companies sought out thought leaders regardless of their fee structure, which is often higher than the rest of the industry.
All that said, thought leadership marketing is not for every company. A commitment to your customers, your market and raising the bar on your industry are must-haves, and not every organization has the passion and tenacity to pursue such a strategy. However, the awards of increased profitability, industry acclaim and being able to do more cost effective ‘pull’ marketing vs. spending money on advertising and ‘push’ marketing await those willing to walk the path of the thought leader.
….

In 2007, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published the “12 Megatrends in B2B Marketing [PDF download]” and showcased the trend of “the shift to 360 degree thought leadership” as their #1 trend of the 12 for 2007 (and beyond). While they did not specifically ask “are you doing more thought leadership marketing”, their question focused on the value of various marketing activities, all of which happen to fall in the realm of thought leadership marketing, and thus pointed to the trend that we see manifesting today in B2B marketing. According to The Economist:

Today B2B providers view a broad array of sponsored programmes, such as conferences and white papers, as a valuable means of capturing attention and persuading decision makers.
This is not to say that traditional advertising has lost its appeal. Instead, the conclusion is that organizations seeking to promote their businesses are increasingly relying on a range of channels, including print.
Specifically, these cross-channel programmes engage, inform and motivate target markets across a broad range of both active (meetings, webcasts, user communities) and passive (print) promotional channels.
The way forward is clearly a heavier reliance on creating a programme of thought leadership that takes advantage of multiple-entry-point messaging.

The EIU came back again in 2008 with their report, “10 Megatrends in B2B Marketing 2008” [PDF download]. Once again, they touted thought leadership marketing by again placing #1 with the bold headline “Thought leadership becomes a top priority.” According to the researches at the EIU:

Thought leadership is fast becoming the most widely used B2B marketing practice. In last year’s B2B provider surveys, thought leadership was viewed as one of many important marketing techniques. However, in this year’s survey, thought leadership leaps ahead, ranking second only to building new business as a key B2B marketing objective. It overtakes many other traditional marketing objectives, such as building awareness of products and services or networking with senior executives.

Not only that, but this time they asked some very specific questions about the topic of thought leadership and backed it up with the following results:

As you can see, thought leadership and other elements that feed thought leadership lit up the top of the results board. But that’s not the end of it! When they asked actual clients (always a good thing to do, right…) or end users the question “What will be the best way for providers of B2B services to market to you in the next 3 to 5 years?” they got some very telling answers.
Even as recently as this past week in the UK at the IAB conference, Hanne Tuomisto-Inch, online communications director at Banner Corporation, was discussing the importance of positioning your brand as a thought leader …. something that Tuomisto-Inch feels is more important now than ever before.

According to Tuomisto-Inch, “It’s not about saying stuff louder and more often. This is the old marketing model. Old formulas don’t work in the digital world. What was missing was interaction, content and community. These are things we have to put into the B2B marketing models in 2009.”

Finally, the most recent research pointing to the shift toward thought leadership marketing in B2B comes from a newly released research report compiled by Go-To-Market Strategies stating that thought leadership trails just behind email as the area of most significant focus for B2B marketers in 2009.

At the end of the movie, the message is this. If you’re a B2B marketer, there’s never been a better time to pursue thought leadership (and social media, for that matter) as a valuable addition to your existing go-to-market strategy. No, not everyone will, can or wants to attempt to be a thought leader, but the rewards are significant for those that pursue this strategy.

That said, not every brand can be a premium or high-road brand. For those brands seeking that status, however, I submit that pursuing a thought leadership marketing strategy is one path toward premium status. Let’s have a look at some of the characteristics of premium brands and how they correlate with thought leadership marketing.

What is a premium brand?
Premium brands are those that typically lead their category through innovation, innovation and more innovation. They also tend to earn more than 20% ROS (according to a Harvard Business Review article from 1997) while non-premium brands earn as little as 5% return on sales. Clearly there are financial advantages to being a premium brand. The consumers of premium brands also tend to be very loyal, willing to pay the premium price and continue to seek innovation (or tradition – the other side of the innovation coin in premium brands). While you may jump to BMW’s and Tumi luggage when you think of premium brands, let’s set our sights a bit lower. Kraft Macaroni and cheese is a great example of a ‘premium’ brand that has consistently outperformed competitors and store brands alike through constant innovation. Premium brands come in all shapes and sizes.
Characteristics of premium brands
When brands reach premium status, they typically exhibit a series of common characteristics:

Certainly there are other attributes that we could use to describe premium brands. However, these give us a reliable proxy for understanding what a premium service or product brand should look like.
Where does thought leadership fit in?
Thought leaders offer their market a unique and authentic value based on a differentiated point of view. Thought leaders are unique in their market position in that they are often the companies with the most profitable ongoing relationships with their clients and the industry that they serve. If we take a cross section of brands that practice thought leadership marketing, we’ll soon find that they have many of the same characteristics that are often attributed to premium brands. McKinsey consulting commands a premium for its services, Cisco extracts a higher return on sales than is peers in part due to its thought leadership in the computer networking market and everyone from vegetable distributors to startup internet companies command impressive returns by delivering tangible use value by producing thought leading content for their market than their downmarket peers.
Thought leaders, like premium brands, cannot go to market without something unique, innovative, authentic and valuable to offer. Moreover, just like premium brands have shown us the way on how define the best in a category, thought leaders use their passion and penchant for market stewardship and education to show us ‘how it’s really done’ by their industry leading standard.
Exploring the characteristics of premium thought leaders
You’ll see that we can begin to establish premium brand status for our organization by applying the same criteria from premium brands to our thought leadership marketing go-to-market strategy:

If premium brand status is your destination. There are a few tried and true paths to get there. However, I submit that for business-to-business marketers, professional service firms, non-profits and nascent startups they path of the thought leader is the way to go en route to premium brand land.

Price segmentation is the practice of offering different prices to different customer segments with an eye on maximizing the profitability of each segment. For most businesses, it is highly lucrative, though it can take some effort and planning to get started. Price segmentation works better when you have real customer need-based segments that you can effectively isolate from one another, but those are not prerequisites to success.
Pricing is a powerful marketing tool. Use it wisely. Let’s say that you have a product that sells for $5, but some customers will pay up to $8 for it, while others value it at $3. Through effective price segmentation, you can create opportunities for each customer to purchase your product at the price that is most relevant to them and most profitable for you.
Price segmentation happens every day, perhaps you’ve experienced some of these examples:

• Time based, as in hotels or attractions that are more or less expensive on weekdays or weekends.
• Location based, where you find or consume the product will affect its pricing, such as buying at a supermarket vs. a gas station.
• Control brands, such as private label products vs. national brands
• Solution sales, when a company packages a solution to a problem instead of a single product.
• Customer segments, such as member vs. non-member prices for products and services.

Getting started with segmented pricing is doable for most organizations by working through the most important aspects of price segmentation.

• Define your customer segments by benefit. What benefits do they derive from doing business with you? You can price differently based on convenience, level of service, time of service and loyalty.
• Look at your distribution channels. This is an easy way that many companies use to segment their pricing
• Use price segmentation as an opportunity to innovate or bundle products and services to create completely new offerings that offer more value that you price accordingly.
• Consider offering programs for your customers that allow them to pay upfront from pricing discounts later. Starbucks Gold Card program costs $25 upfront, but offers 10% off on all drinks. This helps them retain their most loyal customers who often spend upwards of $100 per month. They have the added benefit of customers self-segmenting into a category that Starbucks can market to for even greater return.

Price segmentation isn’t a marketing tactic for every business, but if you can work through the process above and align your customer segments with specific pricing, you’ll no longer be leaving money on the table.

Back in 2004, I created the mind map you see below (of course, it’s been updated slightly since then, but the principles remain). I’m a big fan of mind mapping for laying out ideas, and in the case, processes. I’ve used this process (or some derivation thereof) since then to much success. Will it cover all of your needs? No, and your mileage may vary. However, it is decidedly comprehensive.

You’ll notice that the map is split into 3 color sections, red, blue and green. Each one of them represent a different phase of the blog implementation cycle. Specifically, I call the phases 1) Investigation, 2) Creation, 3) Activation. Why these phases? Well, they actually come from a well regarded innovation guru, Gerald Haman at Solution People in Chicago. His creative brainstorming tool, the KnowBrainer (which I highly recommend and use often) is split into four phases: investigate, create, evaluate, activate.
So, let’s take on the first phase of blog implementation. Which, by the way, can be a template / metaphor / roadmap for other technomarketing tools beyond blogs. Marketers fond of process will find some of the detail refreshing, while those that like to pursue projects unencumbered by the rigor of process or burden of thought, might find this unnerving.
Blog Implementation Process: Investigation Phase
Time to Complete: 3 days to 3 weeks, your mileage may vary
1. Determine Goals for Your Corporate Blog
Everyone tells you to define goals and objectives. Do you? By defining the goals and objectives for your blog initiative you will have a vivid picture of what success looks like. Do you want “more buzz”, memes that spread throughout the industry, interviews with your favorite podcasters, fodder for weekly emails and whitepapers or whatever. If you’re a Seven Habits fan, this is considered “beginning with the end in mind.”
2. Assess Your Market for Blog Viability
Face it, some organizations have markets that they serve who could and will care less about blogs. Just because your CEO thinks it’s cool, doesn’t mean you should do it. If you can’t at least do all of the following, there might not be much of a conversation going in your industry to tap into. That said, there’s always the first-mover advantage working in your favor if no one’s talking and you get the conversation moving. Try these steps in assessing the viability of blogging.
- Read and subscribe to other blogs in your industry, about your industry or the products/class of products/services you sell.
2. Competitive assessment – are your competitors (and you) being mentioned in blogs. Use Google Alerts, Technorati and search on posts (RSS feed driven in Bloglines) to check the ‘volume’ of what’s going on.
3. Customer requirements – what are your customers asking for? More communication? Great! A blog might help. Don’t know what they want? ASK them – great way to start a dialog, by the way…with questions.
3. Map to Overall Marketing/Communications Strategy
This is the easy part (sort of). Simply put, does blogging fit within your communication plans and can you build it into the rest of your integrated mix. What I typically do it look at an organization’s communication plan and media mix, their editorial calender for whatever they’re publishing and their marketing objectives and just start drawing lines on the whiteboard to where blogging can have a positive impact. It’s best to get your marketing team involved in this and let the ideas flow. You’ll be surprised how deeply blogging can ‘penetrate’ your communications plan and potentially provide ideas an content for other areas.
4. Risk Profile Assessment
This can’t be overlooked. Ask yourself these questions (at a minimum):
- Have you ever personally used social media and what’s your comfort level?
- What is your company’s tolerance for risk (e.g., initiating new or untested marketing tactics, launching bold corporate initiatives, etc.)?
- How does your company normally react to negative commentary from the media?
- How uncomfortable would your company be advertising in a publication or on a web site that often contained editorial content critical of you, your company or your industry?
- Can your corporate culture sustain the ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’ that’s often required when you blog as a company?
Once you’ve gone through this investigation phase, you should have a well-grounded perspective on how your organization might proceed into the blogosphere, or any other social media related space that requires the mindset shift that blogging sometimes does.
Well, that’s about enough for now. Tune in to the next article, next week, when we’ll look at the next phase of blog implementation, Creation.

Not exactly. In a recent post, Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations explained his theory about “Microsharing”, or, as word-of-mouth marketers would have it, pass-along. Certainly, this is not new. There have been numerous studies that discuss pass-along in viral marketing, including this excellent piece of work from a paper published in the Journal of Advertising Research in December 2004[PDF]. The report revealed four email profiles used to identify those more likely to pass-along emails. Advertisers tend to focus on reaching and connecting with viral mavens, but some infrequent senders who received few but forwarded were found to represent another potentially overlooked but valuable conduit for marketing messages.

The importance of this work to marketers is something that I’m always asked in social media seminars and in any event discussing ‘non-traditional’ marketing means. The questions usually go like this: “You mean there’s only 1% of people taking part in this? How do we know who our 1% are? If there’s only 1%, or even 10%, why should we care about who’s creating content?
As Rohit points out, and as the data lead us to believe, there’s a “juice middle” of the market where people are sharing, passing along and all out ‘moving your message along’ in ways that aren’t often tracked.
So, what do we do about everyone in the middle? It’s simple. Virally-enable ALL of your content! Put DIGG and Sphere links, add social bookmarking chiclets and everything else that helps people spread the message. (according to MarketingSherpa, only 50% of websites have a ’send-to-a-friend’ feature…we need to work on that!)
This was best summed up by one of my clients, who after I explained the virtues of social bookmarking and ‘microsharing’, turned to his marketing team and said “this is an absolute no-brainier, is there any reason we shouldn’t do this on our websites?” He’s right on. There is no reason not to give your customers, whether their the 1% creators or that 50% in the middle that some have called ‘content curators’, the tools they need to microshare your content.
[Update] Bill Flitter of Pheedo has an interesting take on microsharing that I found after writing this piece.

The Wall Street Journal caught up with Ram and captured his thoughts on what he feels is a need for the “reinvention of sales.” I beg to differ. This is a brief point/counterpoint on Ram’s view of sales and the reality of the sales departments for the vast majority of MarketingProfs readers. At the end of the day, Ram’s view on sales takes some pretty low shots at the past couple of decades worth of advances in the sales realm.
Ram’s point: “I found many companies had focused on the back end of the business: operations, accounting, finance, overhead. But the sales force had been neglected. I got horrified.”
Counterpoint: Sales being neglected? Seriously. One only has to delve into the first chapter of Marketing Champions to realize that it’s marketing that’s often in need of some TLC and attention. Further, according to a survey and report from the Economist Intelligence Unit sponsored by UK Trade & Investment on the corporate priorities for 2007 and beyond, sales (and marketing) were the areas that most were voted as the areas that CEOs could commit the most incremental resources to in 2007!
Ram’s point: “…salespeople should not sell the product any more. They should find out what the customer needs, which will be a combination of products and services and thought leadership.”
Counterpoint: As a small business owner over 15 years ago (I owned a bicycle shop in rural Wisconsin), all of the books that I read on sales (thanks Tom Hopkins!) told me that I needed to ask my customer questions and provide a unique solution to their problem. Don’t just sell them a bicycle, offer then a complete fitness solution to help meet their health goals. I was in high school then, and no one ever left my store with “just a bicycle”. We moved out of the era of “product as marketing” decades ago.
Ram’s point: “The old salesperson: gregarious personality, very sociable. Plays golf. Goes to ballgames. Quick to link with people. Highly motivated. Long hours. Very perceptive in reading other people. The more successful ones know how to close the deal. It’s still useful.
Going forward, the salesperson must build trust with the customers’ people that’s deeper than before and sustained over time. You cannot design a solution without information from the customer. And if the customer does not trust you, he or she will not give you information.”
Counterpoint: The three martini lunch went of style in the 80’s. By the time I got my first sales job selling capital goods in 1999, there were no ballgames, no golf and little socializing. Sales was (and is, even more so now) built on trust, partnerships, understanding each other’s business (it’s not just a one-way street!) and selling solutions not widgets.
I could go on, but let’s not. At the end of the day, and likely at the end of the book (I’ve not read it, but after this WSJ article, I can’t say that I intend to either) you’ll be right back in the sales department of the 1970’s. Other prominent sales authors like Neil Rackham have advanced the thinking on solution and relationship based sales that Charan’s account of the “broken” sales department is little more than a bad reminder of times gone by.
My real concern in all of this, however, is that Ram’s next target might be marketing. Let’s just hope that he teams up with a good co-author if he decides to set his sights on the “broken marketing process”!