This month, a marketing professor weighed in on an online debate I was following, over how aligned sales and marketing should be. He claimed that marketing should actually own sales, based on the fact that sales is simply the personal arm of the “promotion” P of the marketing mix.

To me, this debate goes right to the heart of the fact that there’s a fundamental misconception about whether lead nurturing in the high-value sales environment is something that marketing can do without sales involvement.

So many people talk about needing to align sales and marketing. Market what you’re selling. Sell what you’re marketing. Work together to define ‘leads’. Develop a proposition with sales…

Which is why it’s strange that marketing is so frightened ofhanding an ‘unready’ lead to sales. You can understand where the fear comes from: years of sales complaining (and then ignoring) as unqualified leads are tossed over the fence. So it may be a natural response that marketing shouldn’t be allowed to mention a lead to sales until the prospect has identified a budget and timescale for the decision.

What the smart companies are doing (at least, when it comes to complex high-value sales) is to realise that the answer isn’t either of these. Yes, lead nurturing is the future. But lead nurturing isn’t just about emails, webinars, phone calls, whitepapers, events. Sometimes, a meeting with a salesperson is actually the best nurturing tactic. We need to be careful to use the tactic sparingly, but once you say it, it sounds obvious: sometimes the best way to make a prospect ‘sales-ready’ is to actually have a salesperson meet them. Marketing can still own the relationship with the prospect if there’s no immediate action out of the meeting, but 9 times out of 10 an initial meeting will drive the relationship forward and the prospect further down the sales funnel.

When we use this idea of an initial meeting as a call to action in a campaign (usually as a follow-up to other campaigns we’ve contacted a prospect with), it tends to be one of the most successful things we can do. The trick is to be very careful to show the value of the meeting, explain why it won’t be a ‘sales meeting’, and even to visualise the agenda we’ll be discussing in the session. When you put this alongside a personal approach to the right prospect and a carefully thought-through ‘provocation proposition’, that’s when the magic happens…

John Quelch’s article for Harvard Business Review this month (How to Market in a Downturn) features his research into patterns of consumer and corporate behaviour in a recession; focusing strategies that either propel or undermine performance.

Quelch argues that in a recession, traditional segmentation approaches can be dangerous, and that you should segement psychologically based on consumers’ likely emotional reactions to your offer(s) in the current climate. He goes on to outline how you should consciously emphasise different aspects of your proposition depending on those reactions.

He frequently emphasises that marketers should frequently examine their core customers’ changing needs in a recession, calling on marketers to “put customer needs under a microscope”. He also stresses that your core, loyal customers are “the primary, enduring source of cashflow and organic growth” saying that marketing to these isn’t optional – it’s a “good cost”. Many B2B marketers feel the same way, and this is certainly a major factor in the increase in account-based and industry-focused marketing programmes that we are currently undertaking on behalf of our clients. 

I believe there are some very strong parallels bewteen Quelch’s 4 psychological segments for consumers and similar segments in B2B based on company, heritage and industry, (taking into account the psychology of the decision-making unit too.) He outlines 4 consumer segments which I think it’s useful for B2B marketers to consider in their own strategic planning, so have repurposed for B2B below:

-Slam-on-the-brakes: your most vulnerable and hardest-financially-hit customers

-Pained-but-Patient: customers who are resilient in the long term but are pessimistic about short-term prospects for recovery and are therefore “making do and mending” and keeping their purse strings tight (the largest group)

-Comfortably-well-off: secure about their ability to ride out the recession, now and in the future, perhaps counter-cyclical industries

-Live-for-today: carry on as usual, probably more inexperienced or younger companies with fewer responsibilities, or those challengers in conter-cyclical industries vying for market share.

Once your customers have been segmented, you can take a look at your offers. Quelch suggests (despite which segment customers fall into) all of them mentally sort products into 4 main categories: essentials, treats, postponables and expendables. Again, it’s my belief that B2B marketers could get a great deal of strategic value from examining their own products in this way, and then adjusting the propositions to target each segment in the most appropriate way. i.e. a company exhibiting “slam on the brakes” behaviour will not respond well to an “expendable” offer. However, a “pained-but-patient” company may well buy certain products or services as a more affordable alternative to replacing something more expensive.

A final few points to emphasise – Quelch maintains throughout the piece that it’s a focus on existing customers that will see companies through the downturn. He stresses frequently that you need to research them, speak to them, understand their future needs, and how the downturn will ultimately change their behaviour, in order to maintain good cashflow, market share and ultimately organic growth. Before reaching for the marketing cost sledgehammer, instead consider a scalpel. In this environment, marketers must spend to reach their client base, bolster trust, reinforce core values and influence choices. Get it right, and you’ll protect the business through the downturn, and have great market intelligence and client relationships to be ahead of the crowd in the recovery.

I’m delighted to be able to give readers of this blog first sight of the topic and speakers for our next Sales & Marketing Forum event.

Peep Show: Your Marketing from the Buyer’s Point of View will feature real, live IT buyers speaking about what it’s like being targeted by technology and services companies.

Our panel for this S&M Forum includes Claire Myerson, Information Technology Solutions Director from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and Keith Mitchell, former Global Head of Shared Infrastructure, Reuters. Both will be discussing the following…

If you would like to receive a formal invitation to the event, please go to the S&M Forum website and register your interest. The event is free but only open to qualifying individuals: senior marketers and salespeople in major IT, Consulting and Outsourcing organisations.

In one of this week’s TechMarketView updates, IT analyst Richard Holway predicted that we have hit the low-point in a ‘U’-shaped economy – but that we’re in for a long bottom and that when we return to growth (sometime in 2010), the market will be very different.  According to Holway, “Just surviving through to the 2010 up-tick is not enough.”  Holway has stressed the importance of preparing for the upswing and not crippling the business by adopting cost-cutting strategies that might weaken the IT department.

A recent research note from the Hackett Group underscores the importance of making long-term strategic investments during the downturn, while balancing them with short-term cost-efficiencies:

Given that most companies have sharply cut costs, there is an immediate need to realign the IT investment portfolio, understand how to define IT investment categories… and set goals for allocation by investment category.  Achieving these goals will require the development of an IT portfolio management capability comprising the processes, skill and supporting tools.

Hackett recommends allocating 60% of IT budgets to innovation and improvement, but Michael Krigsman of IT Project Failures, thinks organisations should not adopt a “cookie cutter” approach – instead, portfolios should be optimised on a company-by-company basis as a function of business strategy, technical requirements, investment capability and the features of the competitive landscape.

So, what can IT suppliers be doing now?  As the downturn has become a recession over the past 18 months, CIO.com has posted more and more articles to help CIOs demonstrate their value to the business, culminating in their article last August, ‘7 Tips to Make Your Business More Competitive’, which highlights streamlining costs without sacrificing long-term capability.

As CIOs begin to plan for the impending upturn, you can position yourself as an advisor and guide through the economic bottom and eventual upturn.  In my post, “CIO SOS: Help me influence the business“, I point out the benefits of working with a CIO, rather than just selling to them – for every IT supplier bypassing IT and trying to build a case with the business, there’s an IT department that wants to do exactly the same thing.

Another thing to try is provocation selling – identify a high-impact issue, develop an original point of view, lodge your provocation, prove your point.  CIOs are focusing on defending their value to the business, so take the time to understand what’s getting under your prospect’s skin.  (You can read what one CIO looks for in marketing direct at him in my interview with Tom Ilube.)

I wanted to share some interesting stats from a set of campaigns we are running for an IT company. This is a very focused industry campaign, and as such was targeted at the same data set over a period of months. The campaign had a very clear journey along which it drove the recipient, (a mixture of offering value and sales messages) and whilst each had different creative treatments, the messages built into a cohesive picture and were followed up by our in-house inside sales team.

Of 100% of leads we handed over to our client:

• 40% required two campaigns to develop into a lead
• 35% required three campaigns to develop into a lead
• 22% required four campaigns to develop into a lead

This just goes to show that a longer-term, nurturing approach bears a good deal of lead generation fruit. This is especially true when you are taking complex propositions into complex organisations. It can take time to introduce yourself, educate people, and get them to take the next step.

By running one campaign and moving on you’re certainly missing out on further opportunities. Instead, focus on working the data, and building a longer-term set of campaigns that have the ability to learn from telemarketing input about what resonates and develop the recipients’ perception as they are delivered. This method of campaigning also has the added benefit of allowing you to add contacts you are passed onto during the first phase of calling into the wider campaign approach.

In a few weeks’ time, I’ll be interviewing one of the UK’s leading ICT analysts, Richard Holway. Known by the FT as the “wise grey owl” of tech, and previously Group Marketing Director of Hoskyns (now Capgemini), I’ll be asking Richard about his views on the future of the enterprise tech industry, and what that means for how marketers should be adapting their strategies and plans.

It promises to be a fascinating set of insights. If you have a question you’d like me to put to Richard, please write it in the comments field of this post.

As I’ve argued in previous posts, when one of the first places people look for information these days is the web you simply can’t ignore it. There are innumerable articles on SEO, but for me it all boils down to this – if someone is out there, Googling for a product or service, or even just some advice, in an area you can help in, they should be able to find you and want to click to read more.

Advice from author and consultant Verne Harnish got me thinking about this again. He was recently quoted as saying ”control the ink in your industry… own a word or two in your industry and then get about controlling the ink around that word – books, articles, blogs, wikis, etc. And how do you know if you’re making progress? Google your word(s) and see where you rank.”

In his email update this week, Verne shares an email from Adam Robinson, President of Illuma LLC, ”I wanted to share with you a major impact you’ve made to my business. I listened as you told us, ‘if you’re not blogging about your business or your industry, you’re losing out on an amazing opportunity. Try it for 6 months, and see what happens.’ So, I did. My company is in the business of helping companies find and select talent and since August of 2008 I’ve been blogging at http://BetterHiringToday.com. What started off as a ‘let’s see if I can do this’ side project has turned into a catalyst for a whole new way of looking at the world.
A few key results:
• the VP of Sales at a Fortune 50 company read my 4-part series on “How to Hire Salespeople” and sent me an email hiring us on the spot.
• Publishers have republished my articles, and paid me to license content that I was happy to post for free. Unbelievable!
• Web traffic to my business website is up over 300%, with inbound web leads up over 600%. Several of my posts are on Page 1 on Google for organic results (i.e. “recruiting templates”, “30 60 90 Day Plans”)
• Since I’m always looking for new things to write about, I’m out talking with more customers, and in more meaningful ways, about things that they care about. I then write about what we discussed, and send them a note telling them so. Loyalty has skyrocketed.”

Need I say more? Clearly for large firms with strong SEO programmes some of these issues are in hand, but how often do they get applied to campaign-based content? (often the very content your customers are mst interested in reading). I’m not advoating everyone should emulate Mr Robinson and start a blog, but if you can support your campaigns with compelling online content that brings the interested market to your door, then it simply has to be an essential part of today’s campaigning approach.

April 2nd’s New York Times reported the then-growing rumour that IBM was to buy Sun Microsystems for $7bn. The deal could easily increase IBM’s hold on some key hardware and software markets, especially as regards datacentres. However, reports out late yesterday suggested that the deal had collapsed after Sun’s board ”balked” at reduced offer and IBM withdrew it.

We’ve been tracking for a few weeks now the growing opportunity for propositions related to e-commerce.

The last time there was such a flurry of interest in online retailing was probably nearly ten years ago. The pace of change in e-commerce adoption seems to have been accelerated by the recession, with new research showing that 65% of UK spenders are planning on increasing the amount they spend online in order to save money.

Here are a few choice articles… highlighting e-commerce growth at many large and high profile retailers:

CIO Magazine says French Connection is losing money but the e-commerce side of the busines is growing

M&S’s results highlight an online rise in sales in their recent, better than expected, results

John Lewis to launch designer fashion web store in response to sales increase of more than 24% at John Lewis Direct

Dominos Pizza sees 74% increase in web revenue in 2008

Tesco looks to web to revive sales

…and it isn’t only e-commerce: the trouble for retailers is creating outsourcing opportunities too.

Iceland signs outsourcing services deal

Research carried out by The Marketing Practice shows that IT companies are overlooking, and in some cases wasting, sales opportunities with the very companies they are closest to – their existing customers.

The 110 UK IT decision-makers we interviewed said that “information from existing suppliers” was their preferred way of finding out about new IT products and services. They rated this information source as highly as they rated their own networks (and above analysts and consultants). 

But at the same time, nearly half of all those surveyed said, “Current suppliers are quite poor in their account marketing and management”  and a similar percentage agreed that, “IT suppliers do not really understand how to communicate information about their products and services to me”, highlighting a huge missed opportunity.

So, your existing customers don’t just highly rate you as a source of information, they expect you to market to them. But as these verbatim quotes from the research show, there are a number of considerations in getting it right…

1. A joined up approach to sales and marketing communications (that finishes what it starts)… “Too often we are contacted several times by different people in different divisions of the same supplier who don’t seem to talk to each other and there is usually no follow up process. There are no solutions, only proposals.” Senior IT Manager in a Financial Services Organisation

2. And end to the “one hit wonder” marketing communications campaigning approach (by promoting once, and moving on, you’re mising a number of opportunities)… “Sometimes you get an Account Manager who starts to wine and dine you as they think they may get new orders out of you. When they realize there are no more orders the communication stops again.” Head of Application Development in a Media Company.

And…“If [a supplier] phones me today, it  might not be relevant to me at the moment but if they phone me in three months time, I might be interested in that topic.” Head of IT in a Financial Services Organisation

3. A clear account plan that’s shared with the customer (with a marketing plan that sits alongside it)… “They have to approach us at the right time with the right solutions; existing  suppliers have a better opportunity of interacting with us compared to new ones.” Head of Engineering and Infrastructure in a Finance Company.

And… “Existing suppliers are in a very privileged position in that, if they are communicating with their customers as well as they should be, they will know what solutions customers are looking for at any time.  What good marketing looks like from existing suppliers is a call, e-mail or letter offering a solution just when you are looking for it.” Head of IT in a Government Department

Whilst it’s understandable to focus on lead generation in the current climate, don’t let it blindside your strategy. Paradoxically, it’s the very campaigns that take the long view and look to build relationships that uncover the sales opportunities that others don’t even make the shortlist for.

You can download a free copy of the research findings here.