This just-released interview in Sales & Marketing magazine between the EVP of Miller Heiman and Brian Carroll (author of the book “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale” ) makes for good reading for marketers facing the “not enough leads” scenario.

When asked what the common pitfalls are in getting sales and marketing working effectively together, Brian points out that high level consulting and reoganisation is no substitute for a joint go-to-market strategy and getting on with it. “Companies sensing the need for cooperation and teamwork sometimes believe they can perform miracles by reorganizing the sales and marketing departments. But, really what matters most is having everyone on the same page, integrated and viewing each other as pro forma customers.”

He goes on to suggest that it’s often not lead generation that’s the issue, it’s the handover of too many “non-ready” leads which stop salespeople from focusing on the really good ones.

“Ask most executives what salespeople need to help them sell and they will say, “More leads.” I’d say your salespeople don’t want more leads. They want more effective selling time. In my experience, the average sales force spends around 20% of their time actually doing productive selling (up to 40% if you’re great). Don’t get me wrong, lead generation is still extremely important to salespeople. But we need to realize that the extreme time pressure salespeople face—especially those with a complex sale—requires them to ignore “early,” “is not immediately relevant,” and [focus on] ”highly likely” to produce revenue.”

We call this the “knee jerk” effect – short termist campaigning built without a long term, continous approach and no central (and jointly agreed with sales) data or content assets. it produces a quick flow of poor-quality or unready leads. By investing in lead generation for the long term you get a more controllable flow of sales-ready leads, and sales people with more time to spend on selling.

It’s not a quick fix… but the investment in the data, content and joint working approach will bear fruit in the long term whilst driving down marketing costs and increasing reputation and awareness.

A point to note: Miller Heiman’s industry reports, based on their 2008 Sales Best Practices Study, are worth the (free) registration to download. Opportunities to Achieve Revenue Growth in the Technology Industry and Business Services Sales Organisations: Catalpulting off Previous Successes are especially relevant for readers of this blog and feature some interesting sales best practices that marketers can align with.

Just spotted this in Holway’s TechMarketView bulletin, “In our just-released MarketViews report, we forecast that the UK BPO market will grow 8% this year, the fastest growing segment in the UK software and IT services marketplace.”

It makes sense, based on our own observations in the article “Outsourcing thriving in recession“ which highlights what’s happening with revenue announcements from the big outsourcing players. As the main UK vertical markets start to streamline, outsourcing is well placed to take up the slack.  Good news if you’re an outsourcer. And if you’re not, it’s worth reflecting on what this means for where your next big sales might come from…

We were delighted to get a glowing mention by the UK’s leading IT analyst Richard Holway on his Techmarketview site yesterday. He posted a link to The Marketing Practice’s write up of a debate on the future of global IT services between him and Richard Christou, of Fujitsu. You can read Richard’s comments here, and our own write up of the debate and tips for marketers here.

If you don’t already subscribe to Techmarketview’s daily email service, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Daily news and great insight into the tech market with brilliant commentary. All that, and it’s free! You can sign up here, using the blue box on the homepage.

IT companies “lack customer focus” says new research published by B2B Marketing and Tiger Lily Vanson Bourne. The survey found that “IT suppliers failed to meet 40 per cent of IT decision makers’ satisfaction levels whilst another 60 per cent commented that they had not been asked questions that mattered the most to them.”

The study claims that a focus on customer satisfaction research is the solution to these problems, but it looks to us as though what the decision makers were really frustrated about was the lack of understanding at a more fundamental level.

The lack of in-depth understanding of customers is something that has been endemic in IT B2B marketing for quite some time. It spans lead generation, key account/account-based marketing through to ongoing “regular” communication. This was echoed by Egg’s CIO Tom Ilube when we interviewed him late last year. Tom said, “I was most interested to receive updates from suppliers on things that were genuinely relevant. Almost all the material I got was too generic. I would think, “these guys could have done a bit more, they could have tried to understand Egg rather than banking in general.” It wouldn’t have been hard to do – just a bit of research for example – before targeting me.”

In the downturn, the pace of change is accelerated, and what once held true for entire industries (ie. retail, financial services) is now being splintered at a company by company level. Woolworths went under while Asda recruited thousands of people to cope with demand, Northern Rock is staging a strong comeback to the mortgage market whilst RBS will focus on retail and commercial banking. This makes industry-based and “pain point” marketing much more challenging – as marketers we need to be asking a  lot more questions before we take campaigns out that feature  explicit solutions to the specific challenges of companies we’re targeting.

It’s this very phenomenon that’s causing the drive towards more focused, narrow-cast campaigns and account-based marketing that we are increasingly seeing. For many ICT and professional services companies, treating existing accounts as markets in their own right is bearing a lot more fruit. If you’re looking to implement a narrow-cast or account-based programme then our continuous opportunity generation programmes start with the data and key account monitoring to get the comms and lead gen working in harmony. Get in touch with our Marketing Director to find out more.

CIO Magazine’s top 3 initiatives for CIOs make interesting reading. It suggests that 2009 is a great year to look to outsourcing for economic, efficiency and innovation advantages. Its top 3 suggestions for CIOs looking at their outsourcing arrangements are focused on structure of deal, cost of deal and rationalisation. Which on the face of it makes pretty gloomy reading for outsourcing providers.  Look deeper however, and there are rays of light in the article, and possible angles for lead gen campaigns.

1. The article suggests reviewing the structure of agreements to make them based on demand/consumption rather than people/T&M. Such agreements require better alignment between supplier and customer - surely a major factor in generating useful leads, proposing a solution and winning the bid
2. Portfolio rationalisation for application outsourcing – the article also suggests an optimum mix of outsourcing suppliers depending on the size of the CIO’s organisation. A bigger share of the pie will be up for grabs for suppliers willing to invest in getting it.
3. Cost-cutting: keeping costs down was always going to be one of the three. However, the article says that CIOs can also save money by spending it - if you can get to market faster, make quality improvements or improve productivity versus what’s already being delivered then you’re in a good position.

If CIOs are looking at these three priorities now, it’s a great opportunity for marketers to work with sales and take propositions to companies based around one, two or all three of these priorities.

It’s worth noting the many comments that that have been posted in response to this article. The backlash against offshoring is clearly gathering momentum, especially in the wake of the money earmarked for IT projects in the economic stimulus package.

Geoffrey Moore of Crossing the Chasm fame has just contributed to this superb article for the Harvard Business Review, called “In a Downturn, Provoke your Customers”(free but registration required). 

Its premise is that, in today’s challenging sales environment, where discretionary spend is being cut, you need to provoke the customer into buying. And that to do this requires you to go beyond solution selling. (and thus, we would argue, beyond what has traditionally been seen as ’lead generation’.)

Citing an example from Sybase, the article says, “The vendor identified a process that was critical for customers in the current business environment, developed a compelling point of view on how it was broken and what that meant in terms of cost, and then connected the problem to a solution that the vendor was offering… Instead of aligning with a company’s prevailing outlook, it provides a new angle on the situation… Whereas solution-selling salespeople listen for “pain points” that the customer can clearly articulate, provocation works best when it outlines a problem that the customer is experiencing but has not yet put a name to.”

The article suggests the following process:

-Identify a high-impact issue, develop original point of view, lodge your provocation, prove your point.

Whilst you could argue that this is simply solution selling with knobs on, when looking at the process in detail is requires a phenomenal level of research and a highly co-ordinated business development team to generate such an opportunity.

Not least, the level of intelligence on each customer that’s required to support these sales tactics has big ramifications for marketers. The article suggests that you need to put your best people on such a “provocation” and that you need to pick your fights carefully based on the biggest opportunities.

Doing this require a more account- and intelligence-driven approach to lead generation. And if you are going to set up meetings to “provoke” the customer about an issue, you’d better make sure you’re right!

So where can you get the level of information needed to be near-psychic? Sources of such information cited by Moore et al are securities analysts, assuming that the issues they highlight will be high on the CEO’s agenda because of shareholder pressure. Intelligence gathered from the sales/account team and good profiling will really help too. Marketing is good at getting the best from large volumes of data, and can coral the output into useable intel.

Above all, I’d say that the message surrounding the provocation is a big area where marketing can support. This kind of attack needs to be very finely balanced to provoke but not insult.

I recently read this interview with a PA on what it’s like to be on the receiving end of marketing efforts. Whilst the interview is somewhat forthright in its tone, it reminded me of the importance of having a strategy and a comms plan for the gatekeeper, especially the more senior you go.

When looking at chopping up campaign data into chunks you can target, spare a thought for the PAs, assistants and secretaries. At best they are entirely overlooked, and worst, campaigns (both content and tactic) are deliberately designed to “get past the gatekeeper”. This has always seemed an odd approach to me.

PAs are paid to do a job, they know their bosses better than you ever will and they have access to a host of privileged information. They have unparalleled access to diaries and meeting agendas. Often they are specifically briefed on what their boss or the team wants to receive or know more about. Why not use them? If what you have to say is relevant and compelling they won’t just let it through, they’ll ensure it gets there.

Some pointers…do your research and customise any communications heavily before sending them. Think about their specific circumstances, the hassle factor of their roles and how what you’re offering could help. A traditional and formal approach can work wonders. Remember, this is the pinnacle of selling the next step - you’re using your communication to them lay out your stall for the ultimate recipient.

Just published by the McKinsey Quarterly, its views on the 5 trends that will shape technology for business in 2009.

The article suggests that this year will see IT and corporate finance converge (CFOs using IT assets to leverage cash); tension around IT budgets increases (CIOs with newly limited budgets will need to be honest brokers between different departments demanding IT resource and spend); the “last” IT project (companies are shutting down discretionary spend); regulators demand more from IT (IT systems will need to gather more and better data to manage risks); offshoring and outsourcing landscape shift (vendors are in for big change, there’s a need for CIOs to manage their vendors carefully).

Last night saw the Prince’s Trust Technology Leadership group’s Big Debate on Supplying Global IT Services & Technology in the Next Decade, between the President of Fujitsu’s Global Business Group, Richard Christou and IT analyst and guru Richard Holway. First, a summary of the debaters’ respective positions:

Richard Holway

• The IT industry will never again see such staggering growth as it did during the 90s. We will roughly track GDP from now on (as a broad IT industry trend)
• Within this broad trend there will be significant winners and losers; the hardware industry is already being dented by the downturn whereas applications services and outsourcing will remain stronger
• At present, BRICs countries do not have strong enough economies within themselves to support strong IT growth, they are still heavily reliant on servicing the western world, either directly, or servicing local companies who themselves service the west
• Cloud will be THE driving force in IT for the next decade. Thomas Watson’s famous quote that there will only be a market for 5 computers worldwide may still come true in a sense – as people and companies increasing don’t want to own and service IT, they just want to use it. Perhaps the big 5 ‘computers’ will be cloud owners like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, the US government etc 
• Challenges for the next decade: changing to a service/SaaS approach may ruin many companies’ revenue model, it will be an expensive and disruptive time (cashflow and revenue models), the downturn has accelerated change in our industry and the leader is now the most threatened.

Richard Christou

• Not sure it’s quite so bad as RH makes out. Agree that BRICs countries won’t replace revenues for now. Downturns throw up discontinuities – you can plot new entrants against downturns in the market. Plus downturns provide the opportunity to look at what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. A period to invest.
• The new technology always takes longer to come through than expected. Supplier models such as SaaS can be seen as us coming full circle (ie. back to bureau model of old). Netbook/cloud can be seen as mainframe/dumb terminal. Revenue models for SaaS are highly relevant – who’s going to pay for the next generation of IT development if such businesses are so hard to run profitably?
• Cloud’s impact on business as opposed to consumers isn’t entirely as clear. There will be clouds, many owned by large real estate companies. Google/Amazon etc exploit the IT infrastructure that makes up the cloud but that leaves an opportunity for outsourcers to manage the them.
• Christou draws a distinction between Google/Amazon and enterprise needs. There are data ownership, confidentiality and cross-border information flow issues. There will be a cloud within the enterprise and IT companies will get a  lot of business here, as you will interface through many devices to your corporate cloud
• Managing a company supplying global IT services and technology will need close attention to local cultural alignment from a sales perspective. For example, outsourcing not really undertaken beyond US and fringes of Europe. Vision for the global IT company has to be locally strong operations which operate to standards/best practice but have ability to operate in local cultures highly effectively
• Managed services and outsourcing is not a bad place to be right now

Useful points made from the floor, and in response by the debaters:

• If IT becomes more of a utility, then in the future there will only be room for a few very large players. Similarly to Apple iPhone and its downloadable apps, will this happen in enterprise IT? Huge vendors becoming the channel for mini “widget” vendors?
• IT as a term is becoming a hindrance – we are an industry supplying business support and organisational outsourcing that is technology enabled
• Focus on investing in applications and outsourcing. No-one can do without IT these days – companies cannot manage without it, even in the downturn banks, travel companies, airlines, are all still spending
• Our mindset in IT should be about change, not recovery – it will never be the way it was. We will not go back to the industry we left, but the future is exciting and full of opportunity.

My top 3 summary for IT marketers is:

1) it’s going to be easy to jump on cloud/SaaS/virtualised bandwagons but much harder to carve out a decent and defendable position.

2) as IT expands from “IT” to “business support” you’ll need to understand your key accounts and segments better than ever to keep relevant. If you’re not looking to rearrange your marketing along these lines, then get started.

3) If you’re not one of the IT giants then keep an eye on them and get aligned. There was a strong feeling that the really big companies will become even more critical as a channel to market for everyone else.

The entire management team of The Marketing Practice attended the event. To see all of their conclusions on it, take a look at the comments fields of this post.

Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing for BearingPoint was recently interviewed by Britton Manasco. He gives some very useful tips for marketers wanting to further the reach of their thought leadership content and use it more effectively to drive people  into your lead nurturing process. He recommends the creation (or outsourcing) of a “content factory” to kick start this.

Paul says, “don’t hand me just the white paper.  Hand me the white paper, hand me the landing page, hand me the blog content, hand me the key words, hand me the email post and then I can get that to the interactive team.  The interactive team can just begin to formulate it and distribute it in places it needs to be distributed. I can post it to our RSS feed, post it to the blog, maybe do a podcast around it. The team can make that very systematic. I think this is going to be key for us because the day of thought leadership being just the white paper is over.”

I’ve attached a slide highlighting our own approach to the ”next generation” content factory. It is designed to maximise impact and reach of thought-leadership content by helping B2B marketers blend traditional and new publishing techniques. Download it here.

(Note additionally the potential for making the very creation of the content a more collaborative process – for example, ask your readers for hot topics to cover or questions they want the answer to, through the social media tools at your disposal.)