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.

Will the next generation of CIOs be more focused on the customer experience than ever before? Starbucks’ new CIO thinks so in this interview with CIO Magazine.  The interview highlights how Stephen Gillett is facing the challenge to take technology and use it to connect with Starbucks’ customers in whole new ways.

Why was the 32 year old hired? “What fascinated the leadership team was Stephen’s knowledge of where and how these consumers lived, and how he was technologically engaged with them. While he did not have the traditional retail IT experience, we wanted someone who was leading edge, who knew where the technology was evolving.” said Starbucks’ management team recruiter.

As retailers becoming increasingly focused on netting customers and keeping them faithful, can we expect to see the retail CIO out there supporting the marketers?

If recent experience is anything to go by, maybe we can – real-life examples of this are popping up all over the place. At a large department store in Manchester this week I was asked for detailed information for the first time, which was entered into a brand new terminal branded “CRM” at the top (subtle, but points for trying). Similarly the hotel I stayed at seemed extremely interested in understanding useful preferences and keeping in touch. If you are targeting retailers, take a look at this recent post highlighting their top 5 priorities.

A final point to note – the CIO magazine interview links to Gillett’s LinkedIn profile, where he has more than 500+ contacts listed, as well as groups he’s a member of, places he used to work and a link to his blog. If you’re building an account-based marketing campaign to reach him, you can start with a multitude of information that will give you a much greater chance of success. Not only does he list out his technological musings and leanings, but he’s a serious player of World of WarCraft, likes Seth Godin and his birthday is Jan 20th. How’s that for a starter for 10?

Mycustomer.com quoted Gartner today, saying that “customer relationship management is too strategically important for enterprises to abandon projects in the recession. As the recession deepens, however, enterprises are looking to drive greater efficiency and lower the costs of their CRM projects.

“Gartner estimates that CRM spending in 2009 will not decline as dramatically as it did after 2000, but growth will be more moderate than in previous years. It forecasts that the European CRM software market will reach $3.5 billion (€2.4billion) in 2009, an increase of 4% from 2008.

“When placed in the context of ongoing negative growth in the UK economy, which many predict will last until Q3 2009 or beyond, those are impressive figures.” See the whole mycustomer article here.

Pick a cosy chair, open a bottle of wine and take a look at the B2B and ICT marketing articles and white papers we will mostly be reading in January.

-Richard Holway’s “State of the ICT Nation” PDF download from the excellent TechMarketView, covering where ICT has been and what will happen next. (free and no registration required)

 -The New Power Couple by Peppers & Rogers.  Getting better synergy between sales and marketing – a framework for good strategy and process. Good thinking in here, even though it does lean somewhat to the technology side in places. (registration required, but free)

-McKinsey’s most popular interviews of 2008 - especially the interview with the head of Global Business Services at P&G about how to make the back office a strategic partner and the “Crafting a message that sticks” interview with Chip Heath on the keys to effective communication.

-Marketing Prof’s piece B2B Lead Generation: Marketing ROI & Performance Evaluation Study - why lead quality is critical to improved ROI. Makes a strong case for lead nurturing activity and a closer link between sales and marketing, as argued here. Registration is required but the link above takes you straight to a free, non-registration article that covers the salient points in good detail.

Building lead generation programmes for 2009? We’ve put together our 7 critical success factors – the things we’ve seen the best lead generation programmes have in common.

The 7 factors below are in order chronologically. Approaching them in this order (starting with the data, moving through the development of a reputation, building access at the right level and then a concentration on timing) has the greatest cumulative effect.

Factor 1: The best campaigns have a deep understanding of the data set to be campaigned on. Typically, the data set and a joint go-to-market strategy around it have been developed with the sales team at the outset. Marketers who use the sales teams’ knowledge to help segment and tier target organisations and develop specific programmes for each will have best success.

Factor 2: The internet is rapidly becoming a fantastic source of information. Both to get your data (sources such as LinkedIn and ZoomInfo) and to work out who should be in it (searching Monster for job descriptions similar to those of the people you are targeting, reading end-user blogs (ie Waitrose’s MD kept a blog for the whole of last year). Real-time information helps targeted campaigns strike at the most opportune moment.

Factor 3: It’s not just the data you have – you need to ensure you are positioning to attract the right kind of customers. If you occupy the right position in people’s minds, they will come to you, or at least meet you halfway. In building a compelling set of content using to communicate intelligently with it, you’ll find you are attracting people, and your data set will grow organically as contacts and colleagues add themselves to your database.

Factor 4: In the lead generation space there’s a lot of debate about spend on brand awareness versus lead generation. The best campaigns acknowledge that it’s never about one or the other. Continuous campaigning builds brand through the very process of a longer term communication strategy that adds value, changes opinion, positions… and in doing so, generates leads.

Factor 5: In designing the content of a campaign, first consider the prospect’s next step. In enterprise B2B marketing, the next step is very rarely to click and buy. Think through the journey you want the prospect to go on, and sell the next step more than selling the product or service.

Factor 6: The quality of the content you’re providing is critical. In the spirit of reciprocity, people receiving your campaign will only give once they’ve taken – it’s all about a value exchange. It doesn’t have to be big on spend, but rather big on thought. What do they really need to help them do their jobs better? Become a resource for your target audience  – crack this and you’re streets ahead of a traditional campaign.

Factor 7: Work hard to know when it’s right. Industry statistics suggest that only ¼ of leads generated are ever sales ready at the point of generation. Monitor news and accounts and keep good records of purchasing cycles. Work a mixture of useful information and harder sales messages through your ongoing communications, pushing harder when your intel suggests you should, and taking a softly-softly approach at other times. Factor 2 can help you here as well, intelligence from the research (the web, your sales team etc) can tell you when you approach a company or industry.

At our recent S&M Forum event it became clear to me that the reports of the death of the sales and marketing disconnect have been greatly exaggerated.  

Some of the sales people in attendance said that marketing departments can be ‘intellectually smug’. “They don’t ask what we need” claimed one salesman, “and they make it all far too hard to understand.” One of the main reasons marketing suffers from such a poor reputation in B2B was highlighted by a few more salespeople, who claimed “no-one knows what marketing does.”

Whilst the views from around the table highlighted that marketing now clearly understands it has to support and enable the sales team, in responding, some marketers said they feared they wouldn’t be able to “do their jobs” due to being mired in sales support - something highlighted by Kotler, Rackham & Krishnaswamy in their HBR report on getting sales and marketing working better together. There was also a feeling that sales was selling “the wrong thing.”

During this particular strong exchange of views, it struck me that the benefits of seeing business development as a single, end-to-end process worked on by both the sales and marketing teams will be invaluable this year.

In a December blog post, Paul Dunay says that “marketing is the department a company builds to interact with the market place and the customer base.” But in B2B, how often is this really the case? I can’t think of many companies where the marketing department is closer to the market than the sales team. And therein lies the rub I suspect.

It’s even more important in this environment to get both teams working together to identify profitable segments and clients, as McKinsey’s report, the downturn’s new rules for marketers identifies, as well as a new report by Peppers & Rogers. But too often marketing is generating leads that sales don’t want, can’t close, or both – because it’s simply too far from the coal face.

So how to work more closely, spend more wisely and deliver results?

After much debate, it was agreed that one of the best ways to solve the mismatch was in sales and marketing collaborating over the creation of the go-to-market strategy (GTM). By starting with the business’ strategic plan, and working as a single team to plan the GTM, the S&M Forum delegates believed that marketing could deliver strategic ends whilst supporting the sales process. Thus there was peace on earth – or at least peace in the business development process.

Advice for speakers and delegates alike to those attempting this: 

-Start small, but do start

-Get everyone responsible for BD in a room, declare a truce and thrash out a GTM plan, by customer if necessary. Our account-based marketing tool might be useful here

-Communicate and collaborate along the length of the business development process. Marketers, get out on sales calls with sales colleagues. Sales, take the time to review campaign materials and target lists

-Put in place joint measures and commit to them

-Don’t be tempted to hand over leads too soon, keep leads in the marketing pipeline until properly sales-ready and keep campaigning continuously to pick up all the potential in the market.

-Work hard at the lead handover process – not a spreadsheet or an email, but a phone call between sales and marketing to cover the background and agree next best steps

- Build, share and buy into a data platform. Use it for all decision-making

- Execute small, quickly and use what the market is telling you to further develop and broaden when confident. Use this checklist to make sure it’s all on track.

In enterprise B2B markets, selling the product or service out of the gate is pretty challenging. It might be too complex to get across in the time available. It might be that the prospect simply isn’t ready to buy. It could be that there are multiple logical marketing steps between first contact and first meeting. But many campaigns try to “close” the lead in just one step.

If the proposition itself is not compelling, or too complex to communicate, or if the prospect needs to be taken on a journey or to learn something before they will progress into a lead, you need to make the next step compelling instead.

Your job is to open the door and start a dialogue: entice the person to an event, get a prospect will take a call – not to sell the entire solution in one fell swoop.

Map the journey you need to take people on, and sell the next step. If you really want someone to take a meeting, consider what your proposition for the meeting needs to be. Have you information they would like? If you want them to attend an event, consider what they want to hear, look at what information you could provide that might make their job easier? (see what Egg’s CIO said about why this works.) Then consider what will happen after the event, what will they need to hear or see then to take them to the next step?

Nurture those who are a fit for your solution regardless of their timing to buy. As their knowledge of you and your propositions grows, you build credibility and access. Meaning that when the time is right for them, you are perfectly positioned.

The third and final post in this series will be available shortly, and features a number of ways you can tackle the creation of a compelling theme for your campaign. Get it as soon as it’s published by signing up to this blog’s RSS feed or subscribing to email alerts. Part one of this series on proposition development is here.

Here’s a snapshot of the programmes we predict a major focus on for next year – an insight into what the best marketing departments will be doing in 2009.

4 key strands are emerging – a spotlight on data, gaining access at the right level, enhancing credibility and building programmes that appreciate timing and lead nurturing.

Spotlight on data

1.       Marketing teams will focus on building solid data platforms to increase effectiveness and control spend. The data sets they need to work on will take two forms – intelligence on customers (what they are interested in and how they are responding) and quality of contact data.

2.       Joint planning with sales (from account planning to CRM implementation) – marketing teams will be creating a single go-to-market strategy for key clients and segments with their sales counterparts.

3.       Key account monitoring – in an increasingly unpredictable environment those first to respond to opportunities will have the upper hand. Marketers are increasingly looking to us to monitor activity within key accounts and suggest appropriate actions to capitalise on any changes.

Building access at the right level

1.       Marketers are looking to improve the access they have at the right levels within the target organisations, as research shows that a focus on the C-level alone omits a broad sweep of other decision-makers. From partnering with influential network-owners through to building.

2.       Access is gained through a bargaining process – marketers need to work out how to give value through their communications and positioning, and work out how they want that to be reciprocated by the target. Good programmes will attract the right people and build strong relationships that can be further leveraged through networking.

Enhancing credibility

1.       Companies must position well next year to attract the right opportunities (without wasting money chasing the wrong ones. ) Authoritative comment will be critical to this – in 2009 marcomms ‘copy’ will move up several gears in terms of seniority and knowledge, becoming market comment. If something is perceived as “marketing” by the recipient then it’s probably failed – successful marcomms in this environment will feel like part of a good conversation.

2.       There will be an increasing use of the semantic web to understand and extend networks. People are publishing information about themselves, what they want and what they are interested in more than ever before. Programmes are being built that capitalise on that “interested market” information.

Understanding timing

1.       The emergence of continuous customer contact programmes that tie the three elements of the above together with characterise 2009. These lead generation “engines” will focus spend on enhancing reputation and favourability with only those customers most likely to buy, whilst appreciating that not all will be immediately ready to do so.

2.       Communications will focus on selling the next step, not just the end product. Ongoing comms programmes will drip feed useful information at the right time whilst supporting the joint lead nurturing efforts of sales and marketing.

Here we’ve provided a simple question set which will help guide your proposition development when creating campaigns for complex B2B offerings. This is the first in a three-part post.

What is a proposition? In basic terms, it’s how we communicate what benefits your customer gets for the money they pay you. It normally involves a USP (unique selling point) which is the strongest and most differentiating factor in your favour.  But in campaign design we need to take that one step further. i.e. You might be selling consulting services, but how do we package up and take to market exactly what your end purchaser gets? Not just benefits but what the realisation of those benefits means to the person you’re selling to?

The point about a campaign proposition is that, however great your product/service proposition is, it has no intrinsic right to be read. People are bombarded with promises of ROI – it’s not a simple question of beating every other percentage quoted that week.

The campaign proposition is what earns the right for the real proposition to get a hearing.

In attempting this, what’s important is how these resonate with the end purchaser. Finding the likely emotional resonance for the customer’s purchasing decisions is really important. Even when buying decisions are made for “practical” reasons, it will be the way that the buyer felt (or will feel) about that practicality that was important in the decision-making process. It’s about knowing what’s top of the target’s mind – both in terms of challenges and emotions (Challenge: I need a collections solution that costs less to maintain and has the functionality to help us collect more debts. Emotion: I’m worried about all the risk involved in replacing our legacy system).

And we use this to realise that however much more money we’re promising that our collections solution can help them collect (which will be the proposition they use to make the business case), what we need to get across first is that we can take away to risk of migration.

We use some of the following questions to get to the campaign proposition:
• What does the audience need to think about us before they will listen to our proposition?
• What’s the emotional connection between where they are now and the promise of where the proposition will take them? What persuades people to buy in the real world? (If it doesn’t ring true to you, or interest you, it probably won’t to anyone else either.)
• What’s the single part of what we have to offer that is most instantly relevant to them?
• Or is it about offering a safe pair of hands? Telling the sometimes uncomfortable truth? Delivering consistent innovation?
• The proposition should have defined their needs, but what emotion sits behind these? How are we going to get them emotionally bought into it?
• Are there any fundamental misconceptions about the company, product, service, industry or area that we need to address?
• What do we need them to think about the client before they will consider the proposition?
• Why is it that the client gets repeat business? What does the customer need to see above and beyond a physical solution?
• What do we offer above and beyond a specific solution and the associated benefits? Could be guidance, thought leadership, practicality, understanding of their business…
• What are competitors doing that gives them an edge in the relationship with prospects?
• What are the most challenging bottlenecks between awareness and sale?
• What are the most interesting anecdotes, “factoids” or war stories that have come out during the research and workshops?
• What’s the problem the target audience is grappling with on its way into work each day?

Remember, you are trying to build a position here for the company’s product or service around positive and engaging content. Simpler (although not necessarily shorter) is often better in this environment. Keep boiling down the proposition until you are left with something compelling, interesting and emotive.

Just because we’ve got their attention doesn’t mean they will rush to make contact and become a sales-ready lead. That’s where the next level of proposition comes in – the proposition that persuades them to take the next realistic action on the path to buying. Look out for the next post on ‘Selling the next step’.

McKinsey has just published its “Industry trends in the downturn” snapshot, covering predictions for consumer goods, chemicals, technology and steel industries.

The outlook for consumer goods is mixed, based on the fact that consumers change their habits and priorities in a recession, rather than making general cuts, McKinsey argues. The key is therefore understanding any category’s likely performance.

The report believes that technology will fare broadly better than in 2001 because IT is already managed more effectively and spending is, if anything, behind the 10 year average.

The chemicals prediction is focused on geographic moves; the report highlighting that lower cost Chinese and Middle Eastern players could supplant higher cost, established businesses.

McKinsey predicts that the steel industry is likely to recover, evidencing the infrastructure growth in India, China and the Middle East.

McKinsey requires registration (free) for this article.