These questions were at the heart of our recent Sales & Marketing Forum, where we heard from IT buyers about their attitudes and experiences of marketing. We’re now running debriefing sessions for people who weren’t able to make the evening (request a session), but we’ve also collated online the presentations from three speakers:

• Keith Mitchell, former Global Head of Shared Infrastructure, Reuters
• Claire Myerson, Information Technology Solutions Director, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals
• Chris Cottam, former European Marketing Manager, HP

The presentation can be downloaded at http://www.themarketingpractice.com/documents/S&M_PeepShow.ppt – but it might be best read alongside some of the following thoughts (a short summary of my impressions, I hasten to add, not necessarily those of the speakers)…

Breaking in as a new supplier

The speakers had mixed views on specific channels to use to approach a buyer. Unanimously, social media and online channels (like webinars – as long as they last less than an hour and start at a time that is clear to a UK audience) are growing in importance. Keith’s point around web 2.0 was important to bear in mind when planning new social media initiatives: while he uses it for research and to bring insights/experiences into his team, you shouldn’t expect him to reciprocate or actively contribute.

The general message with other channels (direct mail, email, events…) was that the content needs to be either incredibly targeted or impactful (whether in a creative or business sense) for there to be any results. Claire emphasised that business buyers are also consumers and that inventive approaches or creative impact can have their place. But she was clear that nothing resonates more from a new supplier than stories of having done similar work for someone else in her industry.

Part of the issues suppliers face is to make sure that they are working where the money is. The example Chris used was the desire of almost all IT suppliers to become a ‘trusted advisor’ and the danger that such a strategy can significantly damage transactional revenue streams (which can be up to 75% of IT budgets) and leave the door open for the competition at a more practical level.

In the battle to reach the CIO or IT Director, don’t underestimate the role of the PA. Keith made the point that his PA would know what was on his agenda, would often be as interested in the content as he was, and would be able to open doors to other key people in the department. The overall message is that you should treat the PA as if they were themselves the CIO.

What do buyers want from existing suppliers?

We found in our own research that existing suppliers were seen as the most important source of information for buyers. This was confirmed by the forum speakers – particularly against sources like analysts, who received mixed reviews (some useful industry-specific analysts exists, but the big names seem increasingly irrelevant, especially compared with user-generated content online).

The speakers described how, in their best relationships, suppliers work alongside customers to plan out priorities for the year. It means that suppliers can share ideas, understand what they can expect, and avoid trying to sell anything inappropriate. It’s good to have shared formal account plans written down – although Chris did make the point that suppliers need to evaluate exactly how much effort to put into individual accounts depending on the business value they are likely to deliver. He used the example of people following the account-based marketing bandwagon without properly understanding the consequences both for the focus accounts and for the others that are left behind.

Keith wanted suppliers to be constantly sharing information – not only about industry or product trends, but also about them and their own activities. His worry was that suppliers would only communicate when they had something to sell, but at a time like this that can mean not being well positioned when spending does come back online. Having said that, his advice was also that, when you are in productive conversations, not to be too cautious about pushing the deal to a close. If there is a clear interest on his part it is frustrating if there is too much procrastination.

What can marketing do to help?

All the speakers had examples of marketing working well with sales and the customer – as well as examples of where things did not seem joined up. Claire’s advice was for marketers to work hard to ensure their offers reflect what sales already know about a businesses’ priorities.

At the same time, marketing has a lot to offer that sales cannot. For example, marketing can be a great vehicle for bringing in inspiration (sharing examples of other clients in the same industry) or strengthening ties with a supplier (through activities like industry forums or conferences).

Some specific ideas from the panel included:

• Working to celebrate success – for example, creating a video to celebrate a project going live (can strengthen the relationship with the customer and lead to future opportunities).
• Focusing on activities that give real value to individual customer contacts. One example given was a programme of MBA modules run by one supplier, where marketing had identified some key learning requirements and were supporting those.
• Using the opportunity of the recession to double-down on client references – increasingly important to be able to prove that you offer the low-risk alternative.
• Getting more personal in communications – not only in understanding customer issues, but also simply in the style of communication. For instance, Keith pointed out that graphics and formatting in emails are lost by the time they reach his Blackberry – and they also instantly make the message less personal.
• Staying honest and pragmatic – whereas hospitality is becoming increasingly difficult for customers to accept, the offer of a charitable donation (especially to a corporate charity) can persuade a customer to give up their time.

Whatever the reason, sometimes a lead generation campaign needs to work extra hard, which is where these approaches can come in useful. None of them are easy to deliver – they all demand careful messaging and execution, and they’re all about creating content of interest above and beyond any solution proposition.

1. Let your customers do the talking
   Client references are like gold dust – but it needs more than an A4 case study to inspire an audience. So what are the other options for applying client references to lead generation?

   Consider hosting an event on a client site (it can be a good promotional boost for your client, and it is certainly more appealing for prospects). Or think about what prospects would really want to hear – not necessarily the standard challenges, solution, benefits structure, but a more ‘warts and all’ overview of the project.

2. Complete personalisation
   Not just merging a name or two, but getting under the skin of the target and creating something that they can relate to 100%. With digital printing, the idea of personalising a mailer is becoming more common, but creating a campaign from the ground up around the prospects is another thing entirely.

   Examples include the ‘future case study’ (written from the perspective of a prospect, explaining what the future looks like if they choose your solution). But as with all of these ideas, it’s the business message and creative execution that are key to success.

3. The mystery shopper
   What intelligence can you offer a prospect that will help them see the need for your solution, or (even better) help them do their job more effectively. Can you find out what their customers think, or prove that they are struggling with issues that you could solve?
4. Sell the next step
   More of an ethos for the three above than a technique in its own right, perhaps (hence 3, not 4 in the title). This one is all about taking a step back from the core proposition that the campaign is generating leads for, and thinking more about the kind of leads that are required.

   Need a first meeting with a prospect? Sell the meeting: what have you got that is worth an hour of their time? What value can you offer? How can we pitch a first meeting so that it doesn’t sound like a hard sell?

So what do they have in common? They are all hard work – relatively speaking, it is easy to create a website, or email, or mailer, or event that promotes the benefits of a solution. These ideas are all about added value, wider content, campaigns that start well before the communication piece is sent out.

* Given great messaging, pinpoint targeting and flawless execution. Your home may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments on a mortgage or other loan secured on it.

He went on to quote a scientific study which showed that medical students communicated better when they entered medical school than when they left it.

The commentator said that whilst the students showed empathy and common sense at the beginning of medical school, at the end they based judgements purely on their skills and disease knowledge.

I wondered whether the same sometimes happens to us B2B marketers.

I think we sometimes become so wrapped up in the language and the process of marketing that we forget about what really matters – the living, breathing person we are trying to influence. The person that’s right now sitting in their office, creating a presentation, rushing to catch the train, searching for information on the web.  And above all, the person looking for ways to achieve their goals.

Whilst the “B” in B2B is important, we can get all too focused on industries and accounts. Too often we forget that empathy individuals is what creates marketing that actually works.

1. Does your campaign align completely with the business’ strategy?

2. Is it thoroughly researched, does it use market and audience understanding as its starting point?

3. Does it have contact strategies for both the buyers and the influencers? Do you understand the specific types of people you are hitting and have you built communications to influence them as people?

4. Does your campaign take a holistic approach to demand generation, considering the end to end sales process?

5. Is it targeted and pragmatically creative, and does it focus on demand generation as the goal. Not every contact should be designed to generate leads, but whole programmes should be focused around moving prospects through the sales funnel.

6. Does your campaign have an integrated contact strategy? Does it maximize the recipient’s familiarity with your organization, whilst building consistency and credibility through multiple channels?

7. Does it have a ccontinuous campaigning strategy at its heart; are communications focused on building a long term relationship (lots of bites of the cherry), not sending out a one hit wonder?

8. Is it closed loop? Does it focus on lead nurturing and sales support along the length of the pipeline? Does it have a sensible and effective marketing data management process?

9. Have you set goals at the beginning of the programme that you will critically measure against at the end?

10. Will the campaign move your organisation’s understanding of its market forward at every stage?

In response to this email, another colleague responded, “The chap makes it easy to digest – it doesn’t feel like work. That’s critical for longer content pieces particularly, and where most white papers and case studies let themselves down in our industry. How many people can claim to have actually read an entire Gartner or Forrester white paper?”

By introducing an element of personal story this vehicle is extremely successful at delivering its messages. We want to know what happened, we want to understand the mistakes that were made, we can empathise with the writer.

Food for thought in developing new vehicles for delivering lengthy B2B content.

Or not, as the case may be.

For too many very complex reasons, Chris (who works with me and has a physics degree) can confidently predict we’ll still be here at 10:30 (and if we’re not, shoot me. Or better still, shoot Chris).

What I’ve been thinking about this week, though, is how such a complex and potentially esoteric science experiment, three decades in the making, has captured the public’s imagination. The entire world has a film crew in there and Google returns more than 12m pages on LHC alone.

The answer lies in the first couple of lines of this post – it’s all about the story. The idea that the LHC might evaporate the planet in a single star-trek-esque moment has, understandably, got legs.

But it’s the facts and figures about the LHC that also grab attention. It’s so big it spans two European countries, just 1/8th of it qualifies as the world’s largest fridge, it will generate temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun and it houses the world’s most powerful supercomputer.

The really important stuff – like the fact that it will recreate the moments after the Big Bang, and that it may reveal where the universe is headed, that science and advancement as vital for us as people – are filtering through on the back of the statistics and “will it, won’t it” drama. The ultimate message is getting across, but the vehicle for the ultimate message is a handful of stories with the common touch.

We are compelled to find out more, and in doing so we learn a bit about what LHC is actually for.

I am in wholehearted agreement with FutureLab’s recent blog post on the power of the story in marketing. Stories and anecdotes stand out in our minds: we remember presentations that are heavily anecdote-based, we gravitate towards people who can spin a good yarn. Companies who have a good story to tell engage us – those who involve us in their stories keep us loyal.

The problem comes for B2B marketers when we try to create viral campaigns or marketing creative to take our message out in the marketplace, rather than trying harder to understand what the story is – what’s genuinely interesting about us and what will actually travel.

And you don’t have to threaten to blow up the world to do it. Take Rackspace – a B2B company. It’s spun great stories around the way it delivers something that other companies take for granted – customer service. It’s given it a name “Fanatical Support”, it’s involved customers (and very importantly staff) in delivering its pledge. Customers feel a vested interest – they are part of the story as they are experiencing and can talk about the great support they get. Rackspace has realised that the message (our servers are up all the time) isn’t what buyers really want, (and isn’t even something they believe to be true.) Buyers want Rackspace to jump to it when something does go wrong, because they know something eventually will. And that simple message, backed up by a super service organisation, has really travelled.

What travels helps people tell stories, helps them do their jobs better, helps make them interesting to have a beer with. The key is finding something that travels for all the right reasons.

So we can learn all something from LHC. And, of course, if I’m proved wrong about tomorrow, at least I won’t know about it…