Category Archives: Marketing

Value Propositions Must Evolve With the Buyer

May 13, 2013 – 5:21 PM

I read an interesting article the other day, called “How to Write Your Value Proposition.”value

This is good foundation information, but the buyer environment has undergone radical changes over the past 5 or 6 years.

The advent of the ‘hidden sales cycle’ (the stages of the buying process that buyers are conducting on their own, without sales people) have made the value of the  age-old value proposition formula become less and less effective.  Buyers are engaging with sales later and later in the process, getting to a short list of vendors before ever speaking to any one of them.  The pithy one sentence value proposition that is product or service focused does not work as well in that environment.

Rather than just delivering a description of the value your company brings to the buyer, we need to communicate the value the buyer seeks in achieving their goals or solving their challenge – in their language.   Buyer-centric, not product- or service-centric.  To engage the buyer in the hidden sales cycle, we must rely more and more on effective content marketing because the sales process is happening there without the sellers.  This results in an evolved value proposition creation process that fully feeds all the content needs.

We have been working with customers on developing their own value proposition playbook to deliver a messaging platform that feeds the content needs of buyers.   The game has changed – and the value proposition development process needs to move with it.

— Lisa Dennis

By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Sales | Tagged | Comments (0)

Making the Choice: Marketing and Sales Alignment or Buyer Alignment

March 25, 2013 – 1:22 PM

Two Hour Workshop by Lisa Dennis, President, Knowledgence Associates, and co-author of 360 Degrees of the Customer:  Strategies & Tactics for Marketing, Sales and Service

AMA Marketing Workshop

In the quest for new and repeat customers, the marketing and sales professionals in your organization have been in a push-me, pull-me struggle to align their processes, tools, approach and philosophies to get better revenue traction.   This ongoing challenge is gaining in urgency given the increasing propensity of buyers to take over the early sales process and leave us out of it.  There is an alignment choice to be made here, but it isn’t really about aligning marketing and sales with each other.  The increasing demands of prospects and customers alike all point to the critical necessity of alignment with the buyer.  The real choice for marketing and sales is about whether to align from the inside-out, or from the outside-in.  The highest performing organizations align from the buyer-in and keep the focus on engagement.

This workshop will walk you through how to build a buyer relationship framework to drive alignment within your marketing and sales teams. This modular and customizable approach will provide the road map and steps to integrating marketing and sales across all the key areas that drive new business.

Topics include:

  • Charting the Buyer Journey in your Key Markets
  • Building the Relationship Framework & Stages
  • Redefining the Buying Cycle & Pipeline Process
  • Identifying & Delivering  Tools that Drive Internal Engagement
  • Charting the Buyer Alignment Course Forward
By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Business, Sales | Tagged | Comments (0)

Business Tip: Don’t Annoy Your Customers!

February 13, 2013 – 12:06 PM

angry businessmanI recently read an interesting article called 10 Surefire Ways To Annoy Your Customers.

As I reviewed each of the 10 ways, I was easily able to identify a company or two that fell into at least one category.  Some pretty prominent ones, too.

In the rush to get campaigns out there, and execute, execute, execute, these blunders get skipped, or not planned for.  Check them out – is YOUR organization inadvertently making your customers and prospects annoyed?

If so, cut it out!  Correct these errors now!  Don’t wait until you notice customer defections!

 

— Lisa Dennis

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Most Effective Testing Methods for Value Propositions

October 9, 2012 – 1:41 PM

Marketing Sherpa just republished a chart that outlined some research on how organizations test this key marketing asset.

One area that they overlooked entirely is testing by conducting live interviews with your existing customers about the value proposition.  This kind of conversation with customers can provide important information on what resonates, what is missing, what proof points are needed, how it is perceived comparatively with your competition, among other vital attributes. While online testing via landing pages, email, and other electronic options provides good data - nothing replaces live customer feedback.  In crafting messaging that brings the value proposition to life, a customer voice is essential.

Here’s the whole article.  What do you think?

 

— Lisa Dennis

By knowledgence associates | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The Value of Your Value Proposition

September 13, 2012 – 11:52 AM

In a recent article I wrote called Time for a Value Proposition Reality Check, I discussed the three most common types of value propositions, including the most common, and least effective, type, which I designated as the “Me, Me, Me” version.  You know the kind…one that only talks about your own company and products.  Sadly enough, this is employed by businesses in the vast majority of cases. Why is it used so often, then?  Because it’s the easiest one to construct, which may not be the best reason for the choice.

So here we are.  You need to buy a product (or service), and I am trying to get you to buy mine.  You have choices.  You can buy my product, or you can buy my competitor’s product.  I want you to buy mine, so in order to get you to do so, I am going to tell you all the wonderful things I can think of about my product, and my company, and the outstanding people that I employ in order to create this great product that I want you to buy.

Now, how could you NOT want to buy my product?  You now know how great it is, because I told you so.  We can’t imagine anyone else having nearly as great a product, because they don’t have this great a company, and they can’t have the best people because I told you, WE have the best people.  So, how many of our products do you want, hmmm? While this may seem a bit sarcastic – the reality is that many value propositions do, in fact, include this type of pitch.

Obviously, the problem here is that it does not take into consideration any of the prospective customers’ needs, feelings, experiences, or knowledge.  We are not selling in the abstract here,  nor are we selling to Generic Customers.  We are selling to individuals, each as different as each of the “great people” we’ve employed.  Therefore, talking only about ourselves is not going to sell the product unless we related that greatness to what the prospective customer is seeking.  And in order to know what that is, we have to get to know the prospective customer, and see the world through his/her eyes.

The “Me, Me, Me” value proposition sees the world through the business’ eyes.  That works for a Friday afternoon internal company pep rally, but does very little to entice an educated customer.  This customer wants to know, given specific needs and particular circumstances, why this product is the right choice.  Everything else, frankly, is irrelevant.

— Lisa Dennis

By knowledgence associates | Tagged | Comments (1)

Hey, Get off of My Property!

July 27, 2012 – 11:04 AM

I am amazed at some of the shenanigans that businesses that should know better try to pull.

Today, I received an email from Don Draper.  You know, the studly advertising exec on AMC’s TV hit, Mad Men.  But the email didn’t originate from AMC.  It came from MarketingProfs, an otherwise great resource for marketing and social media content and information.  It was somewhat clever, in that Mr. Draper, who is known as an old-school ad man grappling with the changes in the world occurring in the early to mid-1960′s, stating his reasons for NOT attending MarketingProf’s B2B Forum 2012.  You know, because this forum will be touting new ideas for marketing, and Don is a dyed-in-the-wool (or grey flannel) old school marketer.  Get it?

But to me, this kind of thing does HUGE damage to MarketingProf’s reputation!  I mean, is this what we’re supposed to do now?  Just help ourselves to other business’ intellectual property, because the fame of another business’ creation might somehow boost our own sales?

You know, it’s one thing if a small, bootstrapping organization does something like this out of ignorant exuberance.  But when a business that makes its money by providing marketing advice and services does it, it just blows my mind.  I am no intellectual property expert, but I did spend a good portion of my career in a business that provided IP research to law firms and businesses interested in protecting their IP rights.  There is the concept of Public Domain, where creative works are open to use after a certain period following the death of the work’s creator.  But Don Draper is a current – and hugely popular – work of fiction, and it seems to me that use of his name and persona should be the exclusive right of the business that created him, and made him so popular.  I would have been a lot more comfortable with this zippy little email if it had “The character Don Draper is owned by AMC, Inc. and is used with permission” written at the bottom, even in the tiniest type.

— Chuck Dennis

By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Business | Comments (2)

Devil in the Details

July 25, 2012 – 12:29 PM

This morning, I received an automated business email from an organization that a colleague had once referred me to, as a source of a potential project.  After reaching out to the CEO – a good friend of my colleague’s –  several times about this opportunity and never hearing back from him, I simply dismissed the whole thing as something that was just not meant to be.  No harm, no foul.

However, I had been placed on the company’s mailing list, but since I get roughly 8 zillion emails a day, I didn’t bother to remove myself from it.  Who knows, maybe the project opportunity I was seeking might rear its head again.

So this morning, I noticed the email from this company.  They recently modified their business name, and started utilizing a spiffy new email application to communicate with their audience.  Since email marketing is one of the services I provide, I opened the email to see what how they were doing with it.

Now, the whole reason that email marketing applications like Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc. have a process for “personalizing” the email greeting is that, on a psychological level, recipients feel a little more comfortable receiving and reading an email when it is addressed to them by name.  It gives the impression, or illusion, that there is a relationship of sorts between the emailer and the emailee.

However, this warm & fuzzy illusion is completely blown, right from the get-go, when your email begins “Dear Dennis, Chuck,”.  My name is not Dennis, Chuck.  No one calls me Dennis, Chuck – at least not anyone who knows me.  Certainly, our mutual friend does not refer to me as Dennis, Chuck.  If this sounds like I am just being grumpy about having my name messed up, that misses the point.  I really don’t care about that.  But as a businessperson who has chosen to utilize electronic communications to engage his customers and prospects, this CEO should care a lot about this.  And you should, too.

Too many businesses shoot themselves in the foot by overlooking or dismissing details like this.  Your mailing list is one of your business’ most precious assets; it warrants your attention to detail.  It should be reviewed for accuracy and formatting.  If it is not, it sends the message, loud and clear, that your business does not care OR it is simply incompetent when it comes to communicating with its intended audience.  Neither impression inspires customer confidence.

— Chuck Dennis

By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Business, Social Media | Comments (0)

Relationship with Innovators

July 24, 2012 – 11:05 AM

Looking at customer lifetime value is an important metric in applying and measuring the success of relationship marketing efforts for a key account.  Vetting those accounts to see which perform better than others when relationship marketing is applied can help you hone your strategies and tactics.

Taking it one step further – if you look at the highest stage of a relationship, one that I will call “Innovator,” you should consider applying the same life-time value principle with a twist.  When a relationship is at the Innovator stage, that means they are literally co-creating with your organization and building each other into each respective company’s strategy.   Check out this blog post by Braden Kelley of Innovation Excellence: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/07/22/innovator-lifetime-value/

Being able to measure the performance of innovator-lifetime-value makes sense so you can gauge and manage these crucial high-end customers and give them the right kind of attention so you can keep and deepen that relationship your company worked so hard to gain.

— Lisa Dennis

By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Business | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Three challenges facing today’s Chief Marketing and Sales officers – Forbes

June 11, 2012 – 3:58 PM

See on Scoop.it – Knowledgence: Marketing and Sales

Three challenges facing today’s Chief Marketing and Sales officersForbesFor all this opportunity, however, your strategy is more important than ever but I’m surprised how often a company’s social media strategy is really just a collection of tactics.

See on www.forbes.com

By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Business, Sales | Comments (1)

Marketers and Data Scientists: A Love Story – Business 2 Community

June 10, 2012 – 11:34 PM

See on Scoop.it – Knowledgence: Marketing and Sales

Marketers and Data Scientists: A Love StoryBusiness 2 CommunityBy Lisa Arthur, Published June 10, 2012 While it may never light up the silver screen or show up in the pages of a dime store novel, there is a burgeoning romance between smart…

See on www.business2community.com

By knowledgence associates | Also posted in Business | Comments (1)
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