Is Your B2B Sales and Marketing More Than a Great Dog and Pony Show?

Marketing is a very tricky business. I’ve spent my entire career and adult life working in marketing and I’m still learning. One of the things I’ve seen is marketing from some companies doing TOO good of a job of showing you how great life will be with their product or service, only to discover that their marketing is completely divorced from the reality of their business.

I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences. Take for example, working with a home remodeler. Sure, it’s an old joke, like from the movie The Money Pit about how a contractor always tells you one completion date and it’s always long after that. But, I’m talking about more than just being overly optimistic about dates. I’m talking about setting up expectations and making promises and then promptly breaking every one of them.

Promises about quality. Promises about how the job will proceed and how clean they’ll keep your house. Specific promises about what will be done no later than the end of the week.

All of the broken promises leave us gun shy and scarred. And, we kick ourselves from being taken in by the great presentation that we initially saw.

With that in mind, are your sales and marketing more than a great presentation? It better be. In today’s market, and with the lightning speed of social media, if you’re not following up on your promises, the whole world is going to be reading about it on Twitter and talking about it on Facebook.

When we talk about integrating marketing in a B2B sales program, we’re not just talking about making it a part of every step of the sales process. We’re talking about making sure it represents the reality of how you do business. The worst possible mistake you can make is to over promise or misrepresent your product or service. If you promise that your product can be installed in three easy steps, there better be just three steps and they better be easy. If you say it will take six week for you to complete the job, you better be done in six weeks or less.

It’s always tempting to paint a rosy picture about all of the sweetness and light that your product or service will bring to a customer, but what your prospects and customer really want is the truth. That’s especially clear in business-to-business sales. Consumers don’t typically have their own marketing departments, but most businesses do. When you’re selling to them, they understand how marketing works because they’re marketing to someone else. Most have a healthily cynicism about marketing, so your marketing better not oversell and over promise.

The best possible way for that to be done is to tell stories about your customers. Tell real stories about real customers, and when possible, let the customers speak for themselves about what you did for them.

Then go beyond… over deliver. Surprise your customers by doing more than you promised. Then do one more thing: Make it easy for them to spread the word about you. Make is simple for them to send Tweets praising you. Make it easy for them to Like you on Facebook and become a fan. Invite them to write a letter for you to post on your blog. That’s real integration. That’s the type of B2B marketing that works today.

Are you keeping the promises that your marketing makes? Are you integrating the latest tools into your sales and marketing efforts? Give me a call or drop me a line. I’d love to talk with you about some of the ways we’ve helped our customers do exactly this type of integration, and maybe you can recommend a reliable contractor while you’re at it.

Back to School and Your B2B Marketing Homework Assignment

It’s that time of year again. My two kids are finally back in school. They had a great summer, including a beach vacation just ahead of the hurricanes, but now it’s time to hit the books again. As much as they liked the summer vacation, the excitement of starting a new school year is clear.

I remember what it was like, although when I think back to my childhood summers they seem to be more like reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show”, set in an endless, carefree Mayberry summer, running around on bikes and playing outside until the street lights came on. My kids seem to live high tech, fast paced lives, even during their vacations, but they do manage to relax and forget about their studies in their own ways.

But even now, grown up and gray hair showing, I think of this time of year and I’m back to school myself. Here we are in September with just four months left in the calendar year. That’s enough time for most businesses to still have a positive impact in their sales with some solid marketing work, and it’s not too early to start planning for the next year.

To do either of those things, you have to go back to school. The market today is changing too fast to simply roll out the same old efforts like you did the last few years. You’ve got to study what’s working, what’s not, and find new and effective ways to connect with your customer and prospects.

I can’t tell you what those are for your business right off the top of my head, but I can give you some homework to find out. It’s not a difficult assignment, and it might help you improve your marketing grades.

Today, this afternoon, make a few calls to your best customers. It’s always a good idea to thank them for being your customer, but today, you’ll ask them what they’re paying attention to. Talk with them. This isn’t a survey.  Ask them how they’re dealing with email. Find out if they’re using Twitter and Facebook. Ask them which websites they read on a regular basis and if they still read any print magazines. Also, be sure to find out what has really captured their attention lately (other than the Old Spice Guy).

Now ask yourself these questions: Are there any common themes between what you do and your customers? Are you and your customers changing the way you respond to marketing?

And then ask the big question: What are you going to do differently?

Are you ready to go back to school? I’d be happy to help with your homework! Give me a call or drop me a line.