What Content Marketers Can Learn from French Cooking

Research shows that producing enough content is now the greatest challenge facing B2B content marketers. (B2B Content Marketing:  2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends - North America) More than producing engaging content. More than lack of budget.

The volume of content that's required to fuel effective marketing programs is growing exponentially for several reasons, including:

• The need to make content relevant for individual buyers at every stage of the buying process
• The short lifespan of content resources (particularly social media content)
• The need to publish content on a frequent basis

To create enough content on a timely basis, you need an approach to content development that will  maximize the results you get from your content creation efforts. Believe it or not, B2B content marketers can boost the efficiency of content development by taking a lesson from French cooking.

In classic French cuisine, there are five mother sauces - Béchamel, Veloute, Espagnole, Hollandaise, and Tomate (tomato). These five mother sauces provide the foundation for virtually all the sauces used in traditional French cooking. To create other sauces, you simply add the appropriate ingredients to one of the mother sauces. For example, you make Mornay sauce by adding Gruyere and Parmesan cheese to a Béchamel sauce, and you make Bearnaise sauce by adding white wine, shallots, tarragon, and peppercorns to a Hollandaise sauce.

The same concept can be used to manage B2B content development. Here's how the "mother sauce" approach to content development works.

Identify Value Propositions

As with most important marketing issues, the process starts with identifying the value propositions that are essential to your company's go-to-market strategy. Value propositions describe how your products or services create value for customers, and they provide the foundation for your content marketing efforts. Most of the content resources you develop should be based on the value propositions you offer. If you work for a small or mid-size company, you should be able to identify four to eight value propositions that encompass the significant ways that your solutions create value.

Develop the "Mother" Resources

Once you have identified your critical go-to-market value propositions, the next step is to develop one or two substantial content resources for each value proposition. These core resources are the content equivalent of the mother sauces. They will usually be longer-form resources such as white papers or e-books, and they will provide a thorough description of each critical value proposition. In some cases, these mother resources may be more like "working papers" than finished content assets. For example, you may decide to create versions of your mother resources for specific industries or buyer personas, and if you do, you may never actually publish the mother resources in their original form.

Make Each Mother Resource the Matriarch of a Large Content Family

Each mother resource should provide a fertile source for many "child" content assets. For example, with a little creativity, you should be able to use a mother white paper or e-book as the basis for:

• A full-length webinar or 2 to 3 shorter webcasts or videos
• 2 to 3 (or more) articles for online or offline publications
• 3 to 6 (or more) posts for your blog
• A dozen or more social media updates (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)

This approach won't eliminate all of the work relating to content development. It doesn't constitute an "Easy" button. However, it will focus your work and enable you to get the biggest possible "bang" from your content development efforts.

Image By:  Dinner Series (www.flickr.com)

What To Do With A “No” During B2B Lead Generation

We have to admit that facing rejections, directly or indirectly, can be troublesome for any B2B lead generation campaign. With the way the business world moves these days, knowing how to compel business prospects to buy from you can be a bit of a challenge. It takes a little convincing and persistence on your part to turn these prospective sales leads into actual business deals. And what if your prospects say no? You have to trust your creativity and resourcefulness in this regards. I know, this is not easy, but if you have a general idea on what to say, then you will know how to proceed on this. Take these as examples:

  

   1.   “Send us some information” – you should quickly comply when your prospect asks you that. Additionally, ask him about what attracted his attention the most. There might be something about your offer that caught his interest. Just do it in the most natural method.

     2.    “We have no ready funds for that” – either this is just an excuse or they really could not afford your offer’s price tag. When that happens, try changing tact. See if, price no longer a factor, they would still seal the deal with you. Maybe a little rearrangement of payment terms will do the trick.

     3.    “That is not my priority at the moment” – you may not be able to make a sale with them, but they can give you useful business data for use at a later date. Ask them about their current priorities. Sometimes, no B2B leads generated now can be turned into more B2B leads later.

     4.   “We already use (competitor’s product)” – now, this is the case where you really are least likely to make a sale, but at least you can ask them about their reasons for choosing your competitor. Who knows what you might learn during your conversation that can help you later on.

      5.    “It just costs too much” – do not feel too bad. Actually this is a sign that they are interested. The only reason they are not signing up yet is the price tag. It may just be simple too expensive or the features and benefits not enough to justify the price. You have to ask so that your telemarketing team can adapt.

      6. “Call me back in (period of time)” – do not worry, this might not be a ‘no’. In most cases, they just simply do not have the time at the moment to deal with you. Just clarify with them why they wish to postpone your meeting. This will give your B2B appointment setting team more time to prepare.

      7.   “Someone else makes the buying decision” – when you hear that, either the person you are talking to is the gate keeper or a lower-level executive who does not have the final say. Just earn their trust and cooperation, then. They might be able to help you connect faster to the real decision-makers.

It is not that bad, if you think about it. Just follow these tips to help turn the flow in your B2B lead generation campaign

The Big Gamechanger for Differentiation

Last week at big.bright.minds, hosted by Filene at Princeton University, we learned about the facets of behavioral economics and how to be good choice architects for our members and customers.  One of the topics that the presenters covered was hassle factors and how even a small hassle, like having to click to another page on a website, can be enough of a hassle to lose someone in the sales process or keep them from doing something they actually want to do because it is too much of a hassle to proceed with the process.

Why?  Because we are all so busy that we don’t have time to do even the things that are really important to us!

The printer in my home office is a great example.  For some reason the other morning, it decided to stop working immediately after I’d printed a single page document.  I had sent two more to it immediately afterward and yet it sat idle for the rest of the day with the documents in the queue.   I was busy with other projects and deadlines so getting out my manual or consulting the help website for HP was too much of a hassle, so I dealt with not having a printer for an entire day because of this hassle factor. 

This hassle factor changed the way I would normally do things that one day because having to do without was more important to me than spending the time to figure out how to fix it.

Get Honest

What hassle factors are your members or customers facing in doing business with you?  Is your loan application process too cumbersome, or does it take too long to get through the call center to talk to a real person?  Unless you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and remember that most people can’t afford any extra time caused by hassles, you may be losing actual loans, new accounts, and chances to help people who truly want to be helped but can’t be bothered with anything unexpected. 

I challenge you to take an honest look at your organization from inside out.  Ask your staff members what hassles (big or small) are keeping them from doing their jobs or being more efficient.  Honestly assess what things you can do for your customers or members to make their lives easier. 

At the end of the day, we all want more time.  That would make life easier.  More time to spend with those we love and do our favorite activities, or enjoy an extra few minutes of quiet.  If you can do the work to eliminate hassle factors by streamlining your processes, products, and interactions, you can give people the thing that means most to them…time.  

Amanda

We bring these philosophies to credit unions and community banks all over the country to help them with their strategic planning, marketing, and branding initiatives.  Contact me to learn more about how MarketMatch can help your financial institution define its "why" and achieve sustainable growth in the future.  Don't forget to ask about our ROI Guarantee - the only guarantee of its kind in the entire financial industry!

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Rethinking the Value of BANT (It's Not as Outdated as Some Suggest)

Last fall, I published a post here titled Why BANT No Longer Works for Qualifying Leads. In that post, I argued rather strongly that BANT (the acronym for Budget-Authority-Need-Timeframe) is no longer an effective way to qualify sales leads because of changes in how B2B buyers make purchase decisions.

My post was neither the first nor the last discussion of BANT to appear in the blogosphere. Here are a few of the blog articles that have been published this year.

• Why BANT is Bunk for Today's B2B Buyer by Ardath Albee
• Banning BANT:  Redefining Quality Lead Criteria and Handling Moot Objections by Allison Tetreault
• All Real Salespeople Love Sales Leads (but there is a tiny caveat) by James Obermayer
• BANT is Dead - Find the Authority by Mike Damphousse
• Lead Scoring:  Don't BANT On It by Sarah Hums
• BANT Isn't Enough Anymore:  A New Framework for Qualifying Prospects by Pete Caputa

As you can tell from these titles, the weight of opinion in the blogosphere is clearly anti-BANT.

While I stand by what I wrote last fall, I also now believe that my criticisms of BANT were probably too broad and that the BANT criteria are still relevant and useful for evaluating sales leads if they're used at the right times to answer the right questions. In the typical demand generation process, there are three major points at which you need to evaluate the quality of a sales lead.

Qualification of New Leads

The first is when you initially acquire a lead, and the issue is whether the lead should be added to your nurturing program. BANT criteria have little role to play in this decision. At this stage, the only information about the lead that you're likely to have is a name, a company affiliation, and a job title. Company affiliation and job title may allow you to infer something about potential need, financial ability to purchase, and buying authority, but that's it. For this decision, the primary criteria should be that the lead is affiliated with an organization that fits your company's target market and has a job title that indicates a reasonable connection with the products or services you sell.

Identification of Sales-Ready Leads

The next point at which you need to evaluate lead quality is when you are deciding whether a lead is ready to engage with a sales rep. A modified version of BANT should be part of the criteria you use to make this decision. For example:

• Need - A sales-ready lead will have acknowledged the existence of a need that your product or service can address.
• Authority - A sales-ready lead will be a member of the buying group that will make the purchase decision. The lead doesn't need to be the classic "economic buyer" or have sole buying authority, but he or she should be a member of the decision-making group.
• Timeframe - A sales-ready lead will be actively evaluating possible solutions for the recognized need. Your lead may not have a firm schedule for making a purchase decision, but he or she should have acknowledged that addressing the need has become a priority for his or her organization.
• Budget - A lead doesn't need to have an established budget to be considered sales ready. As I wrote in my earlier post, research by DemandGen Report has shown that between 70% and 80% of business buyers evaluate potential solutions, build a business case for immediate adoption, and then obtain spending approval. However, you should be fairly confident that the prospect organization has the financial wherewithal to purchase your product or service.

Identification of Sales Opportunities

The third point at which you need to evaluate lead quality is when you are determining whether you have a legitimate sales opportunity. By sales opportunity, I mean a potential deal that has progressed far enough to be included in your revenue forecast. For this decision, the focus of lead qualification is on the prospect organization rather than on an individual "lead" within the organization, and the BANT criteria are particularly relevant. For example:

• Need - To qualify as a sales opportunity, your sales rep should have confirmed that the prospect has a need that your product or service can address and that all members of the buying group have acknowledged the need.
• Authority - Your sales rep should have identified and established relationships will all members of the buying group. In addition, you sales rep must understand what process will be used to make the buying decision and what role each "buyer" plays in that process.
• Timeframe - To qualify as a sales opportunity, the buying process must have progressed to the point that the prospect is committed to making a purchase decision within a defined period of time.
• Budget - While it is not essential to have a specific budget line item for the proposed purchase, your sales rep should have confirmed that the prospect's buying group has access to sufficient funds to make the purchase and the ability to commit those funds when the purchase decision is made.

BANT should never be the only criteria used to qualify sales leads. As noted earlier, BANT is not appropriate for qualifying early-stage leads, and it provides only some of the criteria for identifying when a lead is sales ready. However, BANT is not nearly as useless or outdated as some of us may have thought.

No Tech Skills? That Is No Problem With Lead Generation

The thing about B2B lead generation , especially if you are targeting the IT industry, is that most marketers and entrepreneurs find it hard to actually interact with B2B leads prospects that are found there. It basically boils down to the lack of technical knowledge or skills that the other party knows about. Despite this kind of handicap, this should not be taken as a weakness for your B2B appointment setting campaigns. You see, there are ways for you to prepare, to get some working knowledge about the businesses you want to communicate with.

There are plenty of things that you can do, but the most important ones can be found below:

First of all, understand what really bothers the potential that you are in contact with.Sometimes, the problem that needed to be solved may not actually something technical at all. For example, if you are distribution and retail company wanting to sell the latest customized mobile applications being offered by another firm, then all they need from you is your sales and marketing knowledge. There is actually no need for you to know anything technical about your business prospect. You just have to offer them something they need (not to mention different) on the meeting table. That is your strongest draw.

Second, try talking to everyone, especially if you have a really good business idea in mind. If you just keep it to yourself, then you might miss out on a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of people who can give you feedback and advice about your ideas. Be it in how to properly perform a campaign on IT prospects, or in the things that the IT market needs at the moment, you will only know that if you ask. Besides, this could be very useful in opening up business networks that you can tap on at a later time.

Lastly, try thinkingoutside the box.Even if you are not that much of a technical person, it does not mean that you cannot contribute on a different aspect of your business. You might be the type of person that is pretty good at conceptualizing business or marketing ideas, or you might be someone who is good at getting skilled people on-board and helping you create some of the most popular business solutions that you can offer. Yes, you may not be able to write programs or code websites, but the other skills you have are equally important for the success of your B2B lead generation campaign as well.

By the way, while you might find these tips very useful, you might be inclined to follow the practice of some companies, and that is to outsource their sales operations to professional More likely than not, these people are more knowledgeable about the industries you wish to enter. As a business investment, you might want to consider this option. You have nothing to lose if you give this a try, just work with the right firms.

Bringing the Zappos Culture to Your Branches

If you're going to learn, learn from the best!  

Zappos went from a struggling start-up in 2000 to being acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.  And the driver to their success?  An unmatched dedication to customer service fueled by a relentless focus on a positive corporate culture.

"If we get the culture right, then everything else, including 

the customer service, will fall into place."

Tony Hsieh, 

CEO, Zappos

Hsieh is a genius.  It works for Disney, it works for Ritz-Carlton and it will work for you!  Focus on the culture.  Your competition can copy products and beat your price.  They can build more branches or out-tech you.  But if your culture rocks, they cannot take that.

We need more retail strategy in banking and the bank or credit union in your market that differentiates on culture will win the market share.  Here's how the best in the biz has done it:

ZAPPOS FAMILY CORE VALUES
1. Deliver WOW through service: To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means doing something a little unconventional and innovative. You must do something that's above and beyond what's expected. And whatever you do must have an emotional impact on the receiver.
2. Embrace and drive change: If you are not prepared to deal with constant change, then you probably are not a good fit for the company.
3. Create fun and a little weirdness: We don't want to become one of those big companies that feels corporate and boring. We want to be able to laugh at ourselves. We look for both fun and humor in our daily work.
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded: Over time, we want everyone to develop his/her gut about business decisions. We want people to develop and improve their decision-making skills. We encourage people to make mistakes as long as they learn from them.
5. Pursue growth and learning: We believe that inside every employee is more potential than even the employee himself/herself realizes. Our goal is to help employees unlock that potential. 
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication: Strong, positive relationships that are open and honest are a big part of what differentiates Zappos from most other companies. Strong relationships allow us to accomplish much more than we would be able to otherwise.
7. Build a positive team and family spirit: The best leaders are those who lead by example and are both team followers as well as team leaders. We believe that, in general, the best ideas and decisions are made from the bottom up.
8. Do more with less: While we may be casual in our interactions with each other, we are focused and serious about the operations of our business. We believe in working hard and putting in the extra effort to get things done.
9. Be passionate and determined: We value passion, determination, perseverance, and the sense of urgency.
10. Be humble: We believe that no matter what happens we should always be respectful of everyone.

Think of the power and freedom of these values.  Every single employee understands what is expected of them, every day - in customer and internal interactions.  In recruiting and hiring, candidates and employers know if Zappos is the right fit.  If you want to wear a suit and tie, fill out TPS reports all day and disappear into the woodwork to pick up a weekly check ... Zappos is not for you.  


So it's easy, right?  Just add these 10 values to your employee manual and voilà, your world will change overnight.

No so much.  What makes the Zappos brand and culture so powerful is that you CAN NOT simply slap anyone's logo on it and make it work.  Are you prepared to shave the heads of your employees?  Are you ready to have a record-long 10 hour service phone call to get it right for the customer?  Will you hire a corporate life coach?  Will your culture support a daily photo game where staff match employee photos to names so they get to better know each other?  Zappos did!  The Family Core Values are not just words on paper, but demonstrated every single day.

When you sit down to define who you are, make sure that it is unique to you.  Something that defines who you are and aspirationaly what you want to be.  And above all, it needs to be centered around the people who walk into your doors, click your website and call you every day.


Folks, this stuff works!

Zappos list of awards:

• J.D. Powers Customer Service Champion, 2011
• WGSN Global Fashion Awards - Outstanding Customer Service, 2010
• CMG Vision Award, 2010
• Innovation All-Star, Fast Company, 2010
• NRF Innovator of the Year, 2009 & 2010

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.

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Problem-Solving Strategies In Effective Lead Generation

Customer complaints will always be part of your business campaign, and it is up to marketers like you to deal with them and keep them from getting out of hand. Otherwise, you might have some difficulties in your future B2B lead generation campaigns. This is one thing that you have to do right, since social media can be a real downer to your B2B leadscampaign if your prospects check and see that your customers are saying negative things about you. Now that would be a realwrecker for your marketers. This is an issue that you need to take care of. At least there are only three things you need to consider before you go out solving a customer’s problem.

First of all, you need to know just how big the return on your investments will be. 

You see, it is all right to solve a customer’s problem. Indeed, you have to solve it, how else will you be able stay in business, then? The problem here is that some customers are just so hard to please. Dealing with such people not only steals a lot of your time, it also keeps you from your appointment setting tasks at hand. In cases like these, it is best to just solve it to the best of your abilities – and leave it at that. It will not help you to fret over it too much. If it is broken, fix it right. If it is still broken, and fixing it will not get you anything good in return, then you might as well leave it.

Second, are your people properly informed of the customer’s problem? 

With multi-tasking being the norm in a lot of businesses, where a single employee might act both as telemarketing representative and secretary, then you need to make sure that they are aware of what your customers expect from them and how you will address that need. People need to know why they are being made to do things. Setting expectations about their work will help them work better and provide meaning in what they are doing. But you do have to inform them about it. This calls for all your skills in communication to get your message across them.

Lastly, you have to make sure that you are ready for the consequence.

This is especially true if you fail to solve the problem of your customers. If that failure is what prospective sales leads ask you about, then you should have a reply at the ready. Sometimes, explaining things can be a real pain, especially if that failure is a sour point in your business operations, but brushing it aside will not get you anywhere near your goals. Be ready to defend your business, andyour products, in case that happens. It is a necessary part of your overall marketing process.

Trouble with customers and B2B leads is normal. It is how you deal with that that makes all the difference in your lead generation campaign.