To supplement its recent white paper on the evolving role of the CIO, IBM has just launched a series of downloadable CIO interviews as PDFs. As it’s a feature of  their UK site all these interviews are with UK based CIOs; certainly in my experience, it’s fairly rare to get UK information this freely available, as many previous CIO series are largely US-based.

Interviews are, among others, with the CIOs/CTOs of Waitrose, Wincanton, Network Rail, Dundee City Council, O2 and HSBC. They are downloadable as separate PDFs and provide good insight into the challenges in each of these accounts. We’ll be commenting on the umbrella “Evolving Role of the CIO” report in our next post.

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.

Benchmark spending research from Sirius Decisions out this month claims that B2B marketers are doubling their spend on pipeline acceleration programmes.

“After initial knee-jerk budget cuts, data from numerous business-to-business benchmarks conducted since October 2008 reveal that leading companies are wisely repositioning their marketing strategies and tactics — rejecting a ‘defensive posture’ by still working to close deals or at least lay groundwork for future business despite buyer anxiety and retrenchment,” says Alden Cushman, SiriusDecisions’ research director.

The research found that marketers are changing the make-up of their programs to be closer to field activity, shifting the focus more on clients and current deals. As a result, the mix of lead generation, pipeline acceleration and client retention programs has shifted significantly.

“From discussions with clients we’ve benchmarked, we estimate B2B companies are doubling their number of pipeline acceleration programs,” says Mr. Cushman. “Instead of focusing on generating new leads, these programs represent a more effective way for marketing to impact the extended sales cycle by helping to move deals that have stalled in the pipeline. Without question, the economy is driving this trend, as the program numbers we’re seeing are now more in balance with specific sales requirements.”

Traditional marketing programes have struggled to support the lead throughout the funnel from “lead gen” to “close”. New thinking around account-based (ABM) and narrow-cast marketing is making this a thing of the past. By designing campaigns around the customer journey, and focusing on issues on a client-by-client basis, lead drop-out rates can be reduced and win rates increased. Download our ABM planning tool here, or get in touch with us for a free ABM session which will detail how you can practically approach ABM.

CIO’s list of the top 100 IT spenders in the UK is now available here http://www.cio.co.uk/cio100/companies/.

Some of the more detailed company profiles have useful intel on their operations and infrastructure (hardware, software, Database, BI etc), plus good soundbites from CIOs. Brilliant stuff for key account planning and account based marketing.

We’ve been doing an increasing amount of bid support and win-based marketing work for clients in recent months.

With their strong understanding of positioning and presentation, B2B marketing departments complement the sales team’s skills are well placed to make a real impact on the outcome of a bid.

There’s a range of win-based activity you can undertake to support sales. We’ve a free powerpoint outlining the best of these - available from The Marketing Practice’s main site here.

What makes a successful account-based marketing (ABM) programme? Great execution is essential (as is a planning framework like this one), but here we wanted to highlight three elements of programme management that we think mark out ABM that really delivers results.

Having run account-based marketing (ABM) programmes for our clients over the last 2 years (treating their key individual customers as markets of one or, at least, a few), we’ve identified these areas as essential to keep in mind.

They’re important to ensure an ABM programme stays within its original budget and doesn’t demand more management than originally expected; keeps the faith and interest of the sales or account team; and delivers the promised results.

1. Turn theory into practice: we’ve seen a few situations where ABM becomes all about the planning, and ignores the detail in execution that can make or break the programme. For example, marketing might take on the role of profiling a target account, understanding its current priorities, and handing this analysis back to the sales team with a list of propositions to target the account with. For an effective programme, this should only be the first phase (and should be done with sales, not in isolation). For marketing’s involvement to stop there means that the most effective potential actions are never taken (whether it’s creating sessions to run for new contacts in the target account, or putting more effort into engaging them with corporate materials and events, or even targeted lead generation to help the stretched account team break into a new area of the business). Equally, there will always be some personalisation – or even unique material – needed at the account level. If it was as simple as just targeting the right existing activities at an account, then everyone would be doing it.

2. Keep focus: there are instances where we’re asked to support 9 or 10 different propositions being taken into 5 or 6 areas of a customer account. While this is achievable over a year, it can’t all be done at once. The key is to pick the most important 3 propositions and find where in the account they are most suited, craft the specific story and work with the sales team to take them in (supporting by building data, or creating campaigns, doing research or preparing sales materials). This way, the sales or account team will really feel the benefit and stay engaged, without the danger that your work will either be watered down or you will be asking for more time than the sales team has to give.

3. Avoid overcomplicating: in some cases, an ABM programme is really no different from any other marketing programme, just targeted at existing customers. Yes, it needs more intelligence upfront to avoid stepping on toes or saying the wrong thing – as well as more consistent interaction with sales or account teams. But that shouldn’t stop us being able to quickly and effectively get returns from existing customers: now more than ever, they are the best sources of potential new business.

Bearing all this in mind, we can deliver the three or four key activities that will make a real difference in a single quarter.

Just in the last month, we’ve seen examples of the results: two instances where our clients have uncovered workshops in their customers that they wouldn’t have known were happening – and which they can now use to start scoping a new project. All this aside from many other meetings with fresh contacts to discuss new propositions, opportunities entered into the pipeline, bid support on major deals, and the intelligence on customer plans that we have built.

All of which ties in to our ABM planning diagram (available to view here) – a useful tool for outlining the stages and scope of any ABM programme.