Sell the Problem, Then the Solution
As always, marketing guru Seth Godin shared some interesting food for thought on his blog yesterday: Sell problems first, then solutions.
In order to sell someone a solution (e.g., your product), that person must first believe that there is a problem in need of solving. If your prospect doesn’t think they have a problem, then they’re not going to take kindly to you peddling your solution, no matter how personable and skilled at sales you might be. But does that mean you should give up and only target cranky prospects who openly complain? Of course not. Godin points out that the fundamental trick of marketing is to be able to convince prospects that they’ve got a problem. Then–voilà!–you can (miraculously) follow up with a helpful solution. It’s a far more effective strategy than cold calling skeptics to sell them what they’re likely to dismiss as snake oil.
A brilliant example of the problem-centric marketing strategy that Godin talks about are those home security system ads on TV. These commercials present average people at home doing average things, like making an afternoon snack for their kid or getting ready for a first date. Everything seems safe and serene–until an unwanted intruder breaks in to the sound of shattering glass and their victim’s terrified shrieks, all undercut by the wailing alarm. Who would’ve ever thought that throwing a whimsical candle-studded get-together with some friends could lead to immediate post-party stalking by that pushy guy A.J. (who you thought was an awesome catch but is really just mentally unstable)? OK, so we know we’ve got a problem (A.J.), but what’s the solution? When you see that victim pick up a ringing phone to hear the reassuring voice of her call center protector promising to send help right away, the solution becomes clear: Gotta have that alarm system!
This commercial is compelling because it makes me aware of a problem I didn’t even know I had (Yipes! I’m really at risk for a home invasion and didn’t even know it!) and then gets me scared enough to pay attention to what an informed consumer should do about it (Better get an alarm system installed, pronto!). The truth is that the odds are probably million to one that somebody’s actually going to break into my house while I’m on the treadmill rocking out to my ipod, but…better safe than sorry, right? Fear is a powerful motivator that often overrides logic, and these commercials are effective precisely because they are so alarmist (pun somewhat intended).
B2B marketers can adapt this same model to suit their own purposes, ála Godin’s suggestion. Surprise a prospect by showing them how much money they’re losing each month, and then demonstrate how your product can help them streamline budgets and boost efficiency. Start off by telling another prospect how many potential leads are slipping through the cracks undetected every day, and then persuade them that your lead generation tool will close this loophole for once and for all. If you have case studies or hard statistics to back up your argument (rather than manufactured fear), you’ll present an even more powerful and convincing case.
Godin closes with an observation that’s worded so flawlessly that I have to quote it directly:
When a prospect comes to the table and says, ‘we have a problem,’ then you’re both on the same side of the table when it comes time to solve it. On the other hand, if they’re at the table because you’re persistent or charming, the only problem they have is, ‘how do I get out of here.’
If your prospect isn’t aware of the problem you’re trying to solve, point out how they might be affected, and then show them your solution. Here’s your problem, and here’s how we can help you solve it. Brilliant.
6 Ways to Make a Sale Without Being Sales-y
- Share an article. Passing along helpful information is beneficial on two fronts: it empowers your prospect, and it makes you seem knowledgeable. When you share a relevant informational article, your prospect is that much more likely to turn to you, their well-informed friend, when they’re ready to make a buying decision.
- Send a gift. There’s nothing that will make a prospect’s day more than getting a little “just because” token. Gifts shouldn’t come off as bribes-in-disguise, so make sure they’re relevant. If you know they’re an avid coffee drinker, send them a Starbucks gift card. After a promising demo, supplement it by mailing them a copy of an informative book about your industry or field. Offering free trials or webinars are also ways to shower prospects with perks that will likely influence their buying decision in your favor.
- Be a good listener. Sales and marketing folks are used to doing all or most of the talking. Sales reps use scripts and rehearsed spiels, while marketing people are fluent in keywords and branding-speak. But your prospects don’t want to be talked at. They want to be able to communicate with you on a basic level and in a two-way exchange. Keep it conversational and make sure you’re doing at least as much listening as talking.
- Anticipate needs. This is one of the most valuable lessons I learned during my short stint in the restaurant business: Providing excellent service depends on anticipating your customer’s needs and responding accordingly. You can create opportunities where none existed by anticipating a need that the prospect didn’t even know they had.
- Solve problems. Solving problems goes hand in hand with anticipating needs (above). When you know a prospect’s pain points or anticipate their needs, be ready with a solution. Nobody wants to focus solely on problems and complaints. Try presenting solutions in your prospect communications, and you’ll likely be surprised with how responsive your audience becomes.
- Give advice. Sound advice dispensed freely by an industry expert can really win over skeptical prospects. Be that expert and offer up your honest professional advice to fence-sitters. The worst that can happen is that you don’t close the sale in the end, although you could have arrived at that outcome anyway. Not only will you maintain your integrity, but you’ll also greatly improve the chances that the prospect will turn to you for solutions in the future. The far more likely scenario is that giving out advice will boost your credibility and build trust with prospects, which will ultimately translate to more closed sales at the end of the day.
How B2B Marketers Use Social Media
Your prospects are social, are you? Using social data and sources like Twitter is one way to get involved in the social media revolution. Another way is to make your company and your marketing campaigns more social-friendly.
A recent study featured on eMarketer gives some insight into how marketers are using – and planning to use – social media as part of their marketing initiatives, specifically email marketing. The top way to integrate social and email? Adding sign-up forms to social media profiles like Facebook. This is a great way to make sure you’re keeping in touch with customers and prospects who are already engaged with your brand. Coming in at a close second were broadcasting blog posts to subscribers via email and using “follow me” functionality within email campaigns to recruit new social followers.
Social Capital: Enhancing Lead Nurturing with Social Media
There’s endless buzz these days about social media and how it’s going to change the course of marketing as we know it. B2B marketers are scrambling to keep up with this trend by mastering the intricacies of social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. There’s no question that these applications can be powerful tools for marketers who want to spread their message to potential customers. But consider social media from a different perspective. What sort of value can marketers get from these tools when using them to craft relevant messaging that will optimize their lead nurturing efforts?
As it turns out, social media outlets offer a wealth of valuable prospect data that’s there for the taking. Social media profiles typically contain obvious items that you might already have in your prospect records, such as job title and company name. Oftentimes you can see past distinctions, employment history, and other information that marketers typically find helpful. But don’t dismiss the rest of that profile data as unimportant. You can still get plenty of value out of it! Knowing more about your prospects can only make things easier for your marketing and sales teams. Small tidbits such as knowing a prospect’s alma mater, favorite sports team, or weekend hobbies can help establish and build the kind of friendly rapport and ongoing relationships that lead nurturing requires in today’s extended sales cycle.
Since you’re making use of what is essentially freely available public information, you shouldn’t feel like a virtual stalker for collecting prospect data in this way. But there is a very fine line between tailoring your message to appeal to prospects and making them feel like you’re some creepy marketer watching their every move. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Even though they’ve made this information public, it would still intimidating for your prospects to be contacted by some eerily omniscient salesperson with a zenlike ability to somehow sense their every like and dislike. So make sure that your team knows how to use this valuable information appropriately.
Here are some examples of how a salesperson might use, and abuse, prospect data collected through social media channels.
Prospect X is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, as evidenced by the virtual shrine on his Facebook page.
- Appropriate – While engaging in the usual sales call banter, your sales rep might casually work in something like, “Yeah, I’m dragging a little bit today…stayed out too late at the Springsteen show last night.” If the prospect doesn’t bite and keeps quiet about their love for The Boss, the rep can assume that they’ll probably need to make a stronger connection with this prospect in order to be effective.
- Inappropriate – Sending Prospect X an unsolicited copy of the latest Bruce Springsteen album comes off as overly personal, which can backfire: “Hey! Did you get that Springsteen CD I sent you out of the blue? You’re a big fan, right? How do I know that? Well, uhh…doesn’t everyone love The Boss?”
Prospect Y has been tweeting increasingly often about her dissatisfaction with your competitor.
- Appropriate – Knowing full well that Prospect Y is unhappy with the competitor’s product, your salesperson could ask casually, “So…is your current solution meeting your needs?” If Prospect Y responds as expected, it is an open invitation to explain what you have to offer and highlight why your product is more suitable.
- Inappropriate – The salesperson cuts right to the chase with something like, “I see on Twitter that you’re using our competitor. Clearly you need a change.” This will not only weird out the prospect, but the sales rep’s presumptuous tone will likely be a big turnoff.
Prospect Z’s LinkedIn profile lists an undergraduate degree obtained at ABC University.
- Appropriate – Once they’ve gotten Prospect Z talking about college football, your salesperson can mention, “My favorite team is the ABC University Sharks.” An engaged prospect should perk up and mention that they went to school there, thereby establishing that all-important connection your sales rep is looking for.
- Inappropriate - The salesperson makes a clumsy attempt at forging a connection, saying “You went to school at ABC University, didn’t you? I’m not sure, but I think my cousin went there.” Attempts like this will only fall flat with your prospect, perhaps even raising the red flag that someone’s been doing a little too much snooping on LinkedIn.
Twitter for B2B Marketing and Sales
Everyone is abuzz (atweet?) with talk of the best way to use social media, whether it be to promote your brand, promote yourself or engage your customers. For today’s B2B marketer, there are a many ways to benefit from social media interaction and the information it provides. One site that provides an immediate business value is Twitter, where users provide short messages and status updates to their network. A feature that distinguishes Twitter from many other social networks is that most users allow their updates to be publicly viewed, unlike networks such as Facebook that revolve around a more exclusive social group.
Using Twitter for Marketing
Twitter can be a useful venue for promoting your brand, especially through the use creative or value-added techniques such as contests, discounts or free content like a webinar or ebook. It is also a great way to share your recent blog posts, announce exciting new features and highlight company accomplishments. Just remember not to toot your own horn too loudly without providing something of value, or you may start to lose followers.
Tracking social media interaction can be tricky, but using distinct URL structure to promote content on Twitter can help you track interactions. Marketing automation tools can help you pull in statistics from Google Analytics tracking links and tie the source to individual prospects. Some systems also provide a URL shortener that can provide in depth statistics on clicks.
Using Twitter for Sales
If the marketer is out there using Twitter to “talk” to potential customers, the sales guy should be out there listening. When you’re about to make a sales call, it can be helpful to check out a prospect’s latest Twitter updates. Sometimes this gives you valuable insight into their research process, even revealing what other competitors may be involved in the deal. In other cases it may just give you a few talking points.
Using Google Alerts or programs like Tweet Deck to track what people are saying about your competitors and key industry terms can also help you scout out new leads that you may not have otherwise discovered. This is an opportunity to engage with someone when you know they are actively looking to make a purchase.
3 Ways Marketing Automation Frees Marketers From IT Hassles
For those on the marketing side of the house, one of the biggest benefits of marketing automation is that it frees you from depending on the IT department to launch marketing initiatives. Many times, especially in a smaller organization, the IT team can be stretched thin, and making sure the network is running smoothly and the office has its needs taken care of tends to be higher priority than uploading that new logo or creating a new landing page. The same struggles can take place when marketing tasks are outsourced to an agency, who likely will bill you for any small changes that need to be made to your digital marketing materials. In walks marketing automation, putting the power back in the hands of the marketing department.
Here are three ways a marketing automation solution can free you from IT hassles:
- Easy Email Campaigns
Marketing automation tools help simplify email creation – from start to send – while integrating the emails with the rest of your marketing efforts. Usually you have the option to use templates for guidance, create emails with a visual editor or, for the HTML whiz kids, drop in your own content. Besides easy email creation, you can generate lists, set up sending rules, link emails to forms and prospects actions and view your email statistics all within the same interface. Marketing automation tools will also manage your opt outs and sync up the information with your CRM system automatically. - Custom Landing Pages
Similar to the email features described above, with a marketing automation tool you can generate landing pages from templates or create your own branding with a visual editor. These pages are hosted within the marketing automation system and can have custom, branded URLs that are created within the system, so no more requests to IT for a new landing page from within your content management system. - Form Hosting
You can also easily create sophisticated, hosted forms from within the marketing automation system. Drag-and-drop builders and easy-to-create custom fields make launching a new form a snap. You can create custom before and after content for your forms, set up your autorepsonder emails and put in redirect information all within a simple, wizard environment. These forms can be used on a hosted landing page, or you can insert them on your website using an iframe (ok, you may need IT help here, but just think how grateful they will be that you’re bugging them much less often than you used to!).
An added benefit of marketing automation – which actually comes in handy for all three of the items discussed above – is the ability to host content in the system. You can upload all the graphics you need, plus key collateral items like white papers and case studies, within the marketing automation system. This puts all of the resources you need to create a well-rounded campaign right at your fingertips.
Optimizing for All Search Types
Though many marketers still rely on outbound efforts, such as email campaigns, to bring in new leads, an increasing amount of leads is coming directly from search engines. This is good news because it means people are seeking out your product or service. It also means you have to make sure you, not your competitors, are the one getting found.
In an article on Search Engine Land, three different types of searches are described.
Ad-Hoc Search is the most common search type. This is when you’re doing a very broad search, usually for some type of research. Example: digital cameras, digital camera reviews
Known-Item Search is when someone knows what they are looking for – usually because they’ve been there before or heard about it from someone – but they aren’t sure how to find it. This is a slightly more specific search. Example: official Star Trek site
Named Page Search is an even more specific search. The person knows exactly where they want to go but maybe they can’t remember the address and don’t want to search through the site to find it. This type of search is probably less common for small and medium sized businesses, as typically they have less complex websites. It could still apply, though, if someone is searching out a pricing page, a free trial or a customer log-in page. Example: google adwords keyword research tool.
Because prospects search in different ways, you want to make sure you’re putting yourself in their shoes and optimizing for different types of searches. Using key words and phrases can help you optimize both your corporate site and your landing pages. Marketing automation tools provide a way for you to start understanding how people reach your website through search reporting. You can tell not only which searches are the most popular, but also start to see pattens in which searches lead to qualified prospects and meaningful interactions.
