Telling–better yet–showing your story.

Communicating visually—in stories, not abstract diagrams—provides at least three benefits for you:

1. Visuals connect fast with readers: pictures convey more information faster than words can. A well-designed and engaging picture will convey your point in seconds. Check out this case study on our site to see how we replaced a client’s abstract process diagram with a story in picture form.
2. Visuals improve your odds: Because pictures convey meaning quickly, they increase your chances of getting your point across. Your viewer may not agree with you. But if you can make your case in a few seconds, your viewer can decide to give you another increment of attention. And with another increment of the viewer’s time, you have increased your odds of winning them over.
3. Visuals help get buy-in from viewers: Pictures engage viewers to create their own mental version of your story. Visuals work like a framework, begging to be filled in and embellished. A viewer can’t help but fill in the gaps. Studies of electric activity in people’s brains show that stories create many more times the brain activity as do strictly factual presentations. So by presenting stories—with visuals being a near-instant way of conveying stories—you excite involvement. And through involvement, your prospects have ‘bought in’ to your point of view, at least somewhat. And that change in perspective is exactly the point of communication.

When we say ‘telling your story’ we really mean telling your customer’s story. Especially in business-to-business marketing, the most effective messages are about your customers and seldom about you or your company.

Using the Web to get in front of prospects.

With your story told, next you will want to get your message out there where potential customers can find it. Nothing is more efficient for that then the Internet. So this month we discussed web marketing, or taking steps beyond simply having a website and ensuring that potential customers will find your website.

Like dating, the marketing process is one of gaining increasing degrees of permission from your prospects. Marketing must garner plenty of permission before it makes any sense to send in Sales to ask for a commitment. Asking for the sale before you and your prospect have gotten acquainted is like a bad date in high school (and I’ll stop there). So never send in Sales to do Marketing’s job. Your marketing messages and on-line tools can engage prospects who are in the early phases of getting to know you. Sending in Sales too early before Marketing has established a rapport is overbearing and a waste of time for Sales.

Marketing is much more cost-effective per-contact than a sales person could ever be. For instance, if there are 10,000 potential customers in your industry, do you really want your salesman keeping in touch with all of them, or would you rather that he spend his time closing sales with prospects who are ready to buy something? Using the Internet and other means of engagement, Marketing can identify real prospects and hand those over to Sales. Then Sales can spend its time closing opportunities rather than prospecting aimlessly.

But after Marketing has done its job generating leads—finding the few prospects ready to discuss something specific—it’s time for Sales to step in. In future postings we will explore effective channel-sales and direct-selling processes.

By ‘channel sales’ we mean that if you sell something that enables larger companies to get more business from their existing customers, you may do better to sell through them than selling directly to end customers. But you have to make it super-easy for your channel-sales partners to sell your products and services, which gets back to having an effective story. We like to say that ‘selling your product has to be easier for your partners than rolling out of bed and hitting the floor.’

If you have good reason to sell direct—perhaps you need just need two or three big deals this year—then tightly coupling your marketing message to a solution-selling program may be the most efficient approach.

With more capacity comes more opportunity for improvement.

As bottlenecks move from Operations to Sales, so too must your focus for improvement. Customers have told us that they want help in Sales just as much as they do in Operations. So over the past month we have explored what to do after you have released capacity from your operations. Please get in touch with your comments. And we will address them in future newsletters.

Dan
Bizmanualz, Inc.

Establish credibility

Lead-generation marketing efficiently touches your prospects, creating awareness, establishing credibility and you or your company as a thought-leader. Make your own luck.

Let lead-generation strategic marketing do the prospecting for you.

Strategic marketing helps increase sales when it delivers the right message to prospects at the right time. A strategic marketing service can contact thousands of prospects as easily as one. That leaves your valuable sales team free to work with better leads and spend more time closing sales.  Leave it to marketing tactics to keep in touch with prospects, educate them and prepare them for your sales team. Don’t waste time with locked doors.

Click on the graphic to learn about lead-generation marketing

Thought-leadership on tough business issues

In recent articles, we explored how to complement your sales efforts by keeping in touch with prospects with valuable, relevant information. Check out the introduction to our Sales & Marketing Manual, and learn how to grow sales without adding sales staff. Learn how a content and communications service can keep your company top-of-mind with buyers and increase the speed and number of deals.  Or call our sales and marketing group, at tel. (314) 863-5079 x23.

If you are new to our site, please sign up to get the next issue of our newsletter and receive your next update free!

For a deeper understanding of process improvement programs for your organization, attend the next Implementing Lean Thinking or How to Align a System of People and Processes for Results class. If you are eager to learn more about creating more order out of the chaos you are feeling at work, then the How to Create Well-Defined Processes class is right for you.

One way that business people find goods and services is to search the web. It’s up to you to optimize your site to make it easy for search engines to serve up your site when prospects go searching.

Think you can get people to contact you by just writing about your new technology, great ideas, or by giving away white papers? If what you do is new, what makes you think prospects are searching for it? Rather, consider what prospects are thinking, and typing, when they are in a frame of mind to care about what you offer. You need a strategy. Otherwise, your site will become just one more dark corner on the Internet.

Search engine optimization: Your competitors aren’t doing this!

Now that you’ve got a website with great marketing content, how is anyone going to find it? What exactly are your prospects searching for? How can you get search engines to show links to your website in the first few results pages? Find out how you can get ahead of your competitors in search results.

Search engine optimization is part of a managed lead-generation program.

Getting noticed on the web takes know-how, and work. The fifty-cent term for it is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Your competitors may not be using SEO, which presents you with an opportunity for competitive advantage. This article gives you a few tips to help your site be found before competitors’, the first step if your web site is going to generate sales leads.

Learn more about search engine optimization as part of a lead-generation program

You need execution. Structuring pages and documents correctly, eliminating common mistakes and getting links on related sites is all part of a managed lead-generation program that includes search engine optimization.

Contact us if you want to learn more

Want leads from your web site? Learn how to get noticed!

Each of your pages has an opportunity to attract prospects. To assign relevance and give your pages top position, search engines look for frequent keywords and phrases, textual patterns, how much competition there is for keywords, length of copy, links from similar sites, among other factors. Here are a couple ways to optimize your web site:

Develop relationships with organizations relating to what you do. Ask them to add links pointing to your site. This is called off-page search engine optimization.

Find out what words and phrases your prospects are searching for, and use them liberally throughout your site. Keep in mind that the name or description of your product may be unknown to prospects. So do some research to find out what prospects are thinking before they know about you. This is called on-page search engine optimization.

Meta Tags
Not nearly as important as they once were, search engines still examine these index terms associated with your pages.

Page Titles
Most search engines assign extra weight to page titles, which can help your pages land on top.

Navigation
Good navigation helps the search engine find the information you placed in the site, and efficiently pass it to searchers.

Effective use of search engine optimization can greatly enhance the performance of your sales and marketing process, and provide you a competitive advantage. Better lead generation, in turn, also means an improved sales and marketing pipeline.

For a deeper understanding of process improvement programs for your organization, attend the next Implementing Lean Thinking or How to Align a System of People and Processes for Results class. If you are eager to learn more about creating more order out of the chaos you are feeling at work, then the How to Create Well-Defined Processes class is right for you.

Show People How You Can Help Them

What happens when an engineering approach is applied to business communications? An engineering approach might call for deconstructing complex ideas into symbols, then reassembling the elements. Incongruously, technologists often take the same approach when explaining what they do for customers. Have you ever received a chart jammed with squares, circles, globes, arrows, all kinds of shapes connected by lines and arrows?

If so, an engineer was attempting to reduce what he does to its essence in the hope that you—ostensibly the receiving engineer—would reconstitute the message from the symbols. Here is a recent example of what we encountered and how we used a simple visual story instead.

Before there was a flow chart there was a story. Click the above graphic to download the one-pager that shows how we helped one engineering team get back to their story.

Get Away From the Abstract

Getting across the time relationships or relative importance between events assumes that your audience understands your symbolic language. But symbols, like letters of some strange new alphabet, have no intrinsic meaning.

Listen to the Story

Before a technologist could construct the boxes, circles, arrows and lines, he had to assemble a narrative about how, when and why things happened. In short, he created a story first. So, listen for the story.

Everyone Speaks in Stories

Regardless of the technical training of the listener, we all understand and enjoy stories. No need to jump into abstract symbols. Show interaction among characters. Include objects that have intrinsic meaning for your audience. Show benefits being delivered, albeit metaphorically. Organize your story in time or space, and you can show people what you do.

For a deeper understanding of process improvement programs for your organization, attend the next Implementing Lean Thinking or How to Align a System of People and Processes for Results class. If you are eager to learn more about creating more order out of the chaos you are feeling at work, then the How to Create Well-Defined Processes class is right for you.

You can attract the prospects most interested in the benefits that you offer by crafting marketing messages from your customer’s perspective, and leveraging the reach of the Internet. Does your sales and marketing process help craft messages from your customer’s perspective?

Connect with your Prospects

Consider what keywords your prospects are thinking, and using, at the time when they are in a frame of mind to care. Otherwise, your website may become just one more lonely corner on the Internet. Only much later will it be time to differentiate your product from all the others. Remember; connect first. Show-and-tell later, much later, maybe never. There are better ways to connect.

First prospects have to know that you have been listening to them, that you understand their concerns, their needs and wants. That’s why great marketing content is never about you. It’s about them. But that’s hard to write. Right?

Great Content is Often Missing from
Lead-Generation Programs.

We have previously talked about internet marketing techniques for getting people to your site, known as search engine optimization. When you get them there, site visitors need a reason to care, and a reason to click around. For that to happen, your content needs to click with them.

In the art of copywriting for the Web, you must dole out content in spoonfuls, leading visitors one click at a time until your goal for their visit has been achieved; for example, when they have volunteered their identity to you and agreed to receive your marketing messages.

Despite the reach of on-line marketing, most sales still originate off-line because very few companies effectively relate to their audience on-line. Most organizations write about themselves, which presents a competitive advantage for those who know better.

Next week we will talk about using visuals to grab prospects’ attention.

Best wishes for a very happy New Year 2008.

The highlight of this month was the formal launch of our newest procedure manual – the Sales and Marketing Policies, Procedures and Forms. For the past several weeks, we have talked about using the process approach to manage your sales and marketing activities. The new Sales and Marketing Procedures Manual lets you do just that.

Marketing Tactics – The Medium or the Message

While crafting a message is important, focusing too much on the message can cause you to lose sight of priorities. A lot of expense and creative effort are put into crafting eye-catching visuals accompanied by just the right phrase or slogan. But does it really matter how great your message is if it doesn’t reach the right people?

Read more about marketing tactics;

The Key[word] to Internet Marketing

Internet marketing can be divided into two very distinct areas, and any business that is serious about success should be making efforts to effectively employ both of them. Essentially, one is a natural or unpaid campaign, while the other is a paid one. Although there will be a significant amount of overlap between the two, how you apply keywords in Internet marketing for the two approaches will be different.

Read more about Internet marketing;

The New Sales and Marketing Procedures Manual

The Sales & Marketing Procedures Manual addresses strategic sales and marketing issues through a process approach. It not only provides an operational and planning framework for the organization’s sales and marketing functions – it also allows those two key departments to coordinate better to leverage each other’s strengths and manage the sales and marketing pipeline.

Read more about the new Sales and Marketing Procedures Manual;

You may notice a recurring theme in the above discussions. It is the concept of making a plan, executing the plan while measuring key performance indicators, then reflecting on what the measurements mean and using them to find ways to improve. This is the continuous process improvement philosophy that Bizmanualz uses as a lynch pin for all of its business improvement line of products. The new Sales and Marketing Procedures Manual is no exception!

On That Note

Answer to this month’s question:

Surprise, surprise! The answer is – you need to balance both! If your goal is purely brand recall and name buzz, then the message may seem more important. But what good is the message if it doesn’t reach the right audience? Similarly, if your goal is to reach a specific demographic group, then the medium may be more important. But, then again, what good is the medium if the message is not crafted right? So, ultimately, you have to create the right mix. If your target demographic is college students, then the Internet may be a more effective medium for you. So, no matter how good your message is, if you use the evening news, then you are not going to reach your college students.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments. Also, please let us know if you’d like any specific topic addressed in our future articles.

In modern history, advertising and marketing have been economically slanted.  A big audience meant spending big bucks, whether you employed TV, radio, or periodicals.  In a way the Internet has changed all that.  With the right approach, you can have an international audience of millions without spending millions.

Its Not Your Grand Father’s Marketing Method

It is said that broadcasting and publishing are really just modern day medicine shows.   Most of you are probably familiar with these legends of the past; travelers who went from town to town to put on a small show that could include music, magic acts, comedy skits, or even a freak show, all with the purpose of gathering a crowd in order to hawk something to them.  (Yes, frequently it was some kind of elixir, but not always.)  Television, radio, magazines, and even newspapers serve that role in the modern era.  Attract an audience by whatever means possible, and then try to sell them something.

While Internet pop-up ads still follow that model, Internet marketing is a completely different paradigm.  Millions of people use the Internet everyday, and not just to be entertained, they use it to get information. They search for information about products and services they want and need; products and services that you can provide.  When they search the Internet are they going to find you or your competitor?

The Internet, in fact, presents a great opportunity for small and medium size businesses.   Instead of having to continually cast a wide net in hopes of catching the attention of a few fishes, now you can throw out a small hook and wait for the fish to swim to you.  The Internet gives you opportunity to market narrowly to those who are not only interested, but who are already actively looking.  To make sure people and businesses searching on the internet will find you takes an intelligent and reflective approach.  Instead of using demographic breakdowns to find target audiences, Internet marketing is all about the effective use of keywords and phrases.

The Two Aspects of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing can be divided into two very distinct areas, and any business that is serious about success should be making efforts to effectively employ both of them.  Let’s call one approach organic Internet marketing and the other inorganic Internet marketing.  Essentially, one is a natural or unpaid campaign, while the other is a paid one. Although there will be a significant amount of overlap between the two, how you apply keywords in Internet marketing for the two approaches will be different.

Inorganic Marketing involves the concept of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.  Most well-known search engines and directories allow companies to bid on words and phrases.  When Internet users type these terms into a search engine or directory, your business name and a brief ad will appear.  (On most search engines, paid listings are displayed in a separate frame or area than the organic or unpaid listings).  But effectively employing PPC is not just a matter of buying up some keywords and letting the money roll in.

Getting the most value out of your PPC budget means creating a coherent, intelligent plan based on research, history, and even a little intuition.  How effectively you monitor and improve your on-going Internet PPC plan, however, should not be left to chance. Effectively using PPC means constantly monitoring metrics and results, reflecting on what the results mean, and them making improvements based on what you have learned, and then once again measuring results.  Most PPC services will provide you keyword data such as impressions and clicks, and you should be using web logs and analytic software to tell you what happens from there with leads and sales.

Organic Internet marketing is about integrating keywords and phrases into your in order to make your web page appear at or near the top of the search engine results list when users search for certain things. Equally important here is the collection of inbound links that link external sites (like referrals) into your website. Unlike PPC, where budget constraints can affect what “keyword property” you own along the information highway, conducting organic Internet marketing doesn’t really cost anything above your already existing Internet overhead (such as computer equipment, Internet service provider, and web programmer).  The only costs are your efforts to create an effective plan, monitor results (where do you appear when you conduct searches using certain terms?), and enact improvements.

Sales and Marketing is a Business Process

You may notice a recurring theme in the above discussion.  It is the concept of making a plan, executing the plan while measuring key performance indicators, then reflecting on what the measurements mean and using them to find ways to improve.  This is the continuous process improvement philosophy that Bizmanualz uses as a lynch pin for all of its business improvement line of products.

This approach is also applied to topics such as Marketing Planning, Marketing Tactics, and Sales in the recently released Bizmanualz Sales and Marketing Polices, Procedures & Forms manual.  The Sales & Marketing manual also includes a special supplement on Internet Marketing that covers key topics such as organic and inorganic Internet marketing, lead generation, website design, and security concerns.  For the most bang for your buck, the Bizmanualz CEO Management Series of Policies, Procedures and Forms,  now includes the Sales & Marketing Manual.

In our next article we will discuss the importance of planning and measurement in the sales process.

While crafting a message is important, focusing too much on the message can cause you to lose sight of priorities.  A lot of expense and creative effort are put into crafting eye-catching visuals accompanied by just the right phrase or slogan.  But does it really matter how great your message is if it doesn’t reach the right people?

Whether to think of marketing as an art or a science has been a recurring theme in our recent articles.  Though semiotic scholars may disagree, there is an indefinable artistic slant to creating great content, as there is to the intuitive feel of knowing what works and what doesn’t.  Even a marketing veteran, however, can have trouble predicting what message will be effective.  Should selecting and employing the methods to convey the message be left to chance as well?

Set the Right Priorities

Consider the marketing tactic of a direct mail campaign.  What is the most important component of your direct mail effort?  Is it the list used, how creative the enclosed content is, or the offer that is made?  Many small to medium businesses lacking direct mail expertise or experience use a backward approach.  They spend lots of time, effort, and money on creating attractive content like a colorful letter and a glossy brochure.  Then they spend little resources in obtaining the right list or crafting an offer that appeals to the audience.  They have their priorities confused.

There is an old rule of thumb used by experienced direct mail professionals known as 60-30-10.  Sixty percent of direct mail response is a result of using the right list.  Thirty percent of responses are because of the offer.  Only ten percent of responses are due to the creative content in the package.  That is not to suggest you can send out sloppy, unprofessional content, but frequently an inordinate amount of effort is put into crafting creative and appealing content, which matters very little if you’re not mailing it to the right people.

Select the Best Tactic

Recently one of our consultants was working with a client on improving their sales cycle process.   The client was about to start a direct mail campaign to drum up some business.  This direct mail effort, as well as participating in a few trade shows, was going to use up most of their marketing budget.  As the consultant interviewed the client, asking pertinent sales and marketing questions, it became clear that using direct mail campaigns made little sense for them.

The client operated a niche business that sells “build to specification” specialty equipment, so buying a good list of prospects was very difficult, especially a list of thousands that are typically needed to achieve the numbers required for a direct mail campaign.  Plus, the client described an expected 5% response rate in order to achieve their goals for cost per lead and cost per sale.  Not realistic numbers by most direct mail standards.

Even more interestingly, when asked where most of their current leads came from, the client responded “from the Internet.”   While the company had a decent web page, they put almost no effort into actively using the Internet to generate leads or increase sales.

For a niche business like theirs, where prospects can be hard to find, putting more effort into Internet marketing made much more sense than a direct mail campaign.  In our current environment, the Internet is frequently used by consumers and businesses to find specialty products and services.   In this instance, the client really should be using a substantial part of their marketing budget to ensure potential customers find them easily on the Internet by employing organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns.

The company recognized the good advice, and they are now in the process of shifting tactics in order to get more value from their marketing budget.

Be Reflective in Creating and Monitoring Your Plan

No matter which marketing tactic makes sense for you to employ, the same principles apply.  Create a clear and reflective plan that includes setting realistic goals that align with the overall business goals and strategies.  Be aware of the impact on the marketing budget, and pay attention to the important ratios such as cost per lead and cost per sale.  Plus, understand where the priorities are and then apply the money and effort accordingly, as we learned in the 60-30-10 rule.  The most creative radio spot ever made will not be effective if it is not heard by the right audience.

Do some research and reflect on how theory and recognized best practices can be applied through tactics that make the most sense for your business.  Use the Plan-Do-Check-Act process approach to create a coherent plan, measure the results, then analyze the results to understand what they mean and make the appropriate corrections.

Bizmanualz has just released a Sales & Marketing Procedures Manual that applies the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to several aspects of marketing, including Marketing Planning,  Marketing Tactics, as well as to Sales Operations, and Sales and Marketing Administration.  In our next article, we will talk more specifically about using the Internet as a marketing tool.

Sales and marketing is more than just a magical black box. It is a business process that is fundamental to the success of your company. Therefore, it should be well-defined, under control, and aligned with the overall business strategy.

Your Sales and Marketing Process

While it may not be clear whether sales and marketing is an art or a science, one thing is certain. Like any other business process, sales and marketing can be understood, controlled, and continually improved through effective process management/improvement tools.

Read more about the sales and marketing process;

The Sales and Marketing Pipeline

The sales and marketing pipeline demonstrates the idea of capturing the attention of those in the marketplace interested in your product and service. The pipeline then moves as many prospects as possible to the next stage – leads – eventually closing the sale.
Read more about the sales and marketing pipeline;

Managing Your Sales and Marketing Process

Unaligned and disconnected marketing and sales efforts mean lost leads, the uncaptured voice of the customer, and wasted sales opportunities. Your primary goal should be to understand, plan, and improve the sales and marketing process and not leave success or failure to chance.

Read more about managing your sales and marketing process;

Using the process approach, marketing activities should be methodically designed to have clear inputs, outputs, execution steps and measurements that help identify areas that need corrective or preventive actions in order to meet targets. The soon-to-be ready Sales and Marketing Policies and Procedures Manual presents best practices and sound advice from experts in one well organized, easy-to-use, and readily customizable volume.

On That Note

Answer to this month’s question:

Sales and marketing may appear to include a great deal of subjective factors, but they are not unlike any other business processes. Sales and marketing processes can be planned so that they are aligned with the overall business strategy and with each other. In today’s quantitative nature of marketing, a relentless, yet reflective, pursuit of numbers is a given. Applying a disciplined process approach to sales and marketing means that making the numbers is not left to chance; it is a well thought-out strategy that is continually monitored, controlled, and improved.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments. Also, please let us know if you’d like any specific topic addressed in our future articles.

Unaligned and disconnected Marketing and Sales efforts mean lost leads, the uncaptured voice of the customer, and wasted opportunities. The goal is to understand, plan, and improve the sales & marketing process, and not leave its success or failure to chance.

Managers Initiate Structure through Well-Defined Processes

Sales and Marketing efforts, however, will not magically align and unite. Cooperation begins at the highest levels of sales & marketing management, as well as at the executive level. The concept of a reflectively developed and documented process can apply to exercising management responsibilities as well as to executing the daily business functions.

Constructing and employing clear, well thought out policies and procedures that follow the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) format can be used to create vision and mission, and to define “big picture” strategies, goals, and objectives.  A culture of communication, teamwork, measurement, and improvement that well-defined processes can bring to the top levels of an organization will inevitably have a positive effect on downstream business processes.

A Process Approach to Synchronize Disparate Operations

The same concept also applies to product management functions. Many of us know from experience how important a good plan and clear, coordinated communication are to activities like product development and product launch.  Using a business process approach, these activities are methodically designed to have clear inputs and outputs, execution steps, and measurements that help identify areas that need corrective or preventive action in order to meet targets. Plus, as we discussed previously, the flow of important information is built into a well designed process.  Not only can problems be identified and corrected during the execution stage, but the information captured and analyzed can be used to make the next product launch even more successful.

At Bizmanualz, our mission is to help organizations employ a philosophy of continually improving their processes in order to achieve greater success and higher levels of customer satisfaction. We have a wide range of off-the-shelf policy and procedure manuals covering an array of business topics such as Accounting, Human Resources, ISO 9001, even Disaster Recovery. Plus, orders are now being accepted for the new Bizmanualz Sales & Marketing Policies, Procedures and Forms Manual that will be shipping soon, and which includes sections covering administration and management.

Bizmanualz also offers training and consulting to help businesses reduce waste and enhance value through defining and aligning processes, and through implementing & auditing quality management systems (ISO 9000) and defect reduction philosophies (Six Sigma).

In our next article, we will discuss specific sales & marketing tactics, and examine the drastic changes that the internet and e-commerce are bringing to the field.