On Rad's Radar? - Marketing Archives

Two Disruptive CEO's

2013-04-09T21:37:50Z

These two guys are the reason that cloud services - UC, SAAS, HPBX - aren't easy to sell. Steve Jobs gave the world the iPhone and nothing has been the same since. Even the most technologically handicapped person loves their iPhone. It was a paradigm shift in not just handsets, but people's connection to the web.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is trying to make the Kindle an extension of Amazon (and doing a darn good job of it), but he made shopping online so stupid easy - 1-click and it's there in 2 days!!!!!! He has made getting in the car to go shopping a pain in the butt.

These are the two reasons that your stuff isn't selling:

It looks like everyone else's stuff.
It's hard to buy. Too many hoops leads to abandonment (shopping cart wise).

You have 2 choices: fix it or settle for the crumbs.

What Happened to Communicating?

2013-04-02T14:22:17Z

What happening to communications? It's falling apart. People just text, tweet, email -- and in have been conditioned to shorten and shorten that message (down to 140 characters) that we are getting brusque. Tone isn't reflected in texts, tweets and emails, so the person receiving your message may not be taking it the way you think. (I am guilty of this. My therapy is to project this onto this blog :)

Even MARCOM (marketing communications) has become about volume not value - just adding to the noise, which makes it even harder to get attention and get your message out. Press releases (about crap no one cares about), tweets, Facebook updates, yadda, yadda.

It has gotten to the point that speakers can't even tell a story. By the way, it isn't just me. This tweet this morning made me laugh.

It also made me remember perhaps the worst speaker I ever saw - a SVP of Small Business at really big hardware company. He showed two commercials during his talk and read his slides to us. Talk about insulting.

The fact is that Attention is expensive. The way to get it is to ask Permission. That permission comes in the form of giving you my email or phone number or buying a ticket to your event. I am trading my time, attention and sometimes dollars to listen.

In exchange, you have to give me some value. Tell me a story. Give me some insight. have a conversation.

See that is getting difficult. Look in any restaurant, people have their cellphones out - talking, texting, updating - everything but just enjoying the face-to-face interaction.

We live in an amazing time but everyone is miserable (ask Louis CK). A lot of it may be due to we talk at people not not with them.

,p>I will be keynoting at FISPA Live in New Orleans on April 30th. I intend to give value first, but if I don't, just tell me.

I will also be speaking at IGNITE Tampa # 3 on April 25. That you do not want to miss!

If you can't catch me live, join this webcast: "Selling Cloud Services An Agent Puts His Head in the Clouds" on Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 11 AM ET

Is the Channel Too Lazy to Sell Cloud?

2013-03-29T12:31:56Z

Talking with channel managers lately in the Hosted UC space, well, has been depressing to be honest. No one is having fun - or knocking it out of the park. Yes, there are pockets of success - mostly from verticals or niches (surprise!).

So one CM made the comment that channel partners are too lazy to sell cloud. "It is much easier to sell network or a box than it is to sell cloud." There is some truth to that.

VAR's and Inter-connects have a similar business model that is centered around selling a box, installation and support. So cash flow comes from selling the box. They receive a chunk of money upfront. I am not certain that any of them survive off can recurring revenue yet.

To remedy this, some master agencies and vendors are looking to pay some of the commissions upfront, but this requires risk and financing, which devalues their own companies (and makes an exit harder).

From what I have seen and heard, most channel partners - agents, VAR's, Inter-connects - sell Hosted PBX as a third option after all else fails -- and typically sell it as cheap VoIP.

To me, this means that the service providers and the CM's have done a poor job of training and communicating who the target customer is, why they should buy UC/HPBX/Cloud, and what the value proposition is. Am I surprised by this? Not in the least. Why?

For one, many cloud companies have too many executives from the CLEC world where it has always been about Arbitrage - "Let me save you money!" And, let's face it, CLECs know nothing about marketing or positioning or branding - and neither do most cloud providers.

The other big problem is that most of these companies are enamored with their technology - as if the market gives a crap about their technology. People have iPhones and tablets and a bazillion apps. You think your tech is cooler than that??

This was a problem that ISP's had too. All techies that just like to be techies. The reason that 8x8 has grown is because some where along the way they switched from being a tech company to being a sales and marketing company. Most cloud providers are not there yet.

It is also very challenging to sell cloud services, especially UC, with its myriad pieces and components. What channel partner is going to remember all the stuff about your UC product and about the other 10-12 services that he also offers???? Um, not very many.

The flip side to this is that most cloud providers don't really sell direct. They dapple in it because it is expensive. However, if you haven't sold it, you don't know how to train or coach others to sell it either. You don't have the sales process and questions in place as tools for the channel partners.

There is another challenge right now: sales sizes are too small to cash flow for the provider or for the channel partner - so that will grind things to a halt sooner rather than later.

My CM pal also mentioned that partners don't want to explain all the features of HPBX/UC, do an ROI or TCO, check the WAN and LAN, etc. It is far quicker to just sell network or a box - and move on.

The reason that UC is stuck is because it is not exactly like what people have now. So there is training and education needed to the customer and her employees (as well as to the channel partners). This could be fixed IF the channel would actually eat the dog food. Not many channel partners actually use cloud services. If you drink the kool-aid how do you sell it to someone else? (Sales is about the transfer of emotion - if the partner isn't excited about your product, why would the customer be?)

There are a number of reasons that UC isn't selling. (Another is too many providers that all look the same.) As my brother tells me, "But, bro, Lync is selling!" Sure as part of Office 365 or to Fortune 100. And mid-sized businesses with more than 250 employees are buying UC, but are they buying it from the channel or from one of the top carriers?

Another trend is that smaller, unknown cloud providers are losing deals to better known companies - like Comcast, EarthLink, etc. WHy? Trust factor. Brand is a trust factor. So it comes back to marketing.

So is the channel too lazy to sell cloud? Or have the cloud providers just done a really poor job of picking partners and/or marketing?

BTW, there are certainly channel partners selling cloud, but they are dedicated to doing so. They drink teh cloud kool-aid.

Is the CMO the Toughest Job?

2013-03-18T03:44:11Z

"It's no news that CMOs are among the most oft-booted execs. And a new survey from recruiter Korn/Ferry reports that most marketing insiders say when CMOs fail, the fault isn't with the individual, but with companies that aren't as open to change as they think they are."This quote from a MediaPost article is probably accurate. Another factor is that the CMO probably didn't have the Authority (and proper backing) to make the changes needed across the organization.

Organizations are made up of silos and fiefdoms. Each head of a silo has his own performance metrics and scorecard that he has to hit to get a bonus or keep his job. How often are those goals opposed to those of another executives? "Some 60% of those responding to the recruiter's questions say the primary reason a CMO gets bounced is that the CMO is brought in to drive change, but the organization was not aligned behind the change agenda. [MediaPost article]

What is Success for a CMO? Most often I hear Revenue. However, the CMO also has responsibility for internal marketing, branding, social media, metrics, website, online marketing, online sales, PPC, SEO, offline marketing, lead generation, PR, media outreach, channel sales support, collateral, video, and on and on. How does 1 person manage all of those moving parts?

Remember how I wrote about the complexities of change? It was before I saw this article.

The CIO and CFO have pretty clear cut jobs. CEOs tend to hold jobs longer than CMOs, but what they all forget is that ultimately it is the CEO's job to make sure CMO is supported it his mission.

AOL eliminated its CMO 5 months after they hired her and are pushing her responsibilities to its online properties and replacing her position with a chief communications officer. Just one example of the shifting sands in the Marketing realm. (True AOL may not have been a great example.)

Forbes is saying that the CMO tenure is no longer 23 months although it does depend on industry.

I think the title is a misnomer. It isn't Chief Marketing Officer because it is a combo of communications officer, marketing and sales (unless the company has a sales officer). And it is internal and external. It is alignment of branding across all worlds: employees, stakeholders, marketplace and customers.

It encompasses every touch of the customer from prospect to post-sales - customer care, billing, ordering, deployment, tech support, provisioning, the way people answer the phone, hold music, phone tree, on-boarding, talent, culture, collections, the technician's look and attitude on install. And let's not forget sales (direct and indirect), which is tougher today than it has ever been.

Arguably the CMO has the toughest job.

And shocker I cannot think of a single CMO name in telecom, although some are ranked as top private CMO's.

IBM has a 2011 survey of CMO's. 52% say they are unprepared for the complexities they will face in 5 years.

Another study by the CMO Council shows that customer relationship building and retention would be a top priority.

" There is a serious need for an iron-clad connection between service and marketing because no matter how amazing the retention campaign is, one slip-up can destroy even the most loyal advocates. Marketing certainly does not need to run these functions, but we better have our ears open for the voice of the customer," writes the CMO Council. It just seems like a lot rides on factors outside the sphere of influence.

Complexities of Change

2013-03-07T18:27:49Z

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Think about how many departments an order has to touch:

From the customer to the agent to the Channel Manager to the Ordering desk to Provisioning to Engineering to Deployment to the install tech to the router config to the LNP and 911.

In many companies - even small ones of 90 employees - these departments are silos. Each silo has a manager, a budget they are fighting over, talent that they are developing, performance metrics, etc.

Working together is required but the biases, personalities, conflicts actually get in the way. Every day.

It is why change is so hard. (Very few people have the responsibility of more than one department, so to effect change it has to happen higher up the ladder - away from where they can actually see the cogs working.)

Even with a culture of winning or wanting the best, there will be hurdles to prevent some changes from happening.

The complexities of a telecom company are amazing even in a flat, small one.

Remember that people are resistant to change from the get-go. Many people are buried in their jobs and roles, just trying to get stuff done and get through the day.

Prioritization of urgent versus important is one way to handle this. Gamification is going mainstream, where everything is gamified to modify behavior.

With all the noise - email, texts, meetings, IM, phone calls, etc. - how do you make change happen across departments? Is it similar to how you market to the channel?

Smaller is Better

2013-02-26T04:46:45Z

As many of you know, I am a Seth Godin fan. Nicholas Bate has similar thoughts. His blog on Jagged Thoughts certainly hits home.

In a me-too industry like telecom (and now cloud), where there are 1000 companies offering VoIP, what is the bare minimum you have to do as a company to survive 2013?

For me, "focus on people, purpose and possibilities." "Fresh ideas are vital." You have to encourage a culture of new ideas, where employees aren't punished for offering new ideas. That punishment can include rejection of the idea; ignoring the idea; or piling on work to the idea generator. Most employees are looking for recognition and a pat on the back.

"Creativity appears in the gaps between busyness." Employees need some quiet (non-busy) time in order to come up with ideas.

Why do you need ideas? "What everybody else is doing is the least of what you might consider doing." Their is a baseline of minimum requirements. After that, you need differentiation. What makes you stand out? Your employees have a unique viewpoint on this, so ask them.

Bates writes, "Chase the edges: it's where interesting things are happening." Chris Anderson wrote the Long Tail. It's about verticals, silos, niches. It's too expensive to race to the middle.

You need to be flexible to.

Comcast needs tens of millions. The RBOCs need tens of millions. Everyone else just needs tens of thousands. (The rule of two thousand like M5). Those are the edges. You can thrive at the edges.

picture credit

Are You in the 5%?

2013-02-12T16:59:02Z

Recently, LinkedIn sent out an email (seemingly to everyone) to welcome in 200 million users and congratulate those with the top 1% and 5%. It was a great marketing gimmick to get lots of social mentions and website visits.

As this blog explains, everyone who received the email - 5% of 200M is 10M people! - would share it onliine. It reminds me of the Shift Happens video - due to the large number, is it really that special?

It's a numbers game. We feel special from recognition and winning and the mini-celebrity of it all. But as I tell my clients at the end of the day that activity better help you achieve a goal.

Social Media Blurbs from ITEXPO

2013-01-31T16:41:16Z

Startup Camp Comms is tonight. John Sculley is keynote. #asksculley is the hashtag on twitter (which is currently down!) for questions to the former CEO of Apple and Pepsi.

Tomorrow at 11 AM is my session on Social Media #itexpoqa

Gary Vanderchuck has a decent interview about social media on HuffPro.

Lastly, Seth Godin on marketing for small businesses. Make something that is easy to sell!!

Follow me on twitter at @radinfo

Is Cold Calling Dead?

2013-01-28T17:33:56Z

"When was the last time someone cold called you at work and actually got you interested in doing business with them?"

Here's the big problem with that question: people don't buy the way you buy!"

"B2B marketers reported cold calling as their third-highest quality lead generation channel." The author, Derek Singleton, continues by saying "the Web has afforded us other ways that make it easier to identify leads without cold calling. For instance, prospects might download your white paper, visit your website, or follow you on Twitter."

The white paper lead gen trick is getting over-played and there are studies that show many people don't read the white paper. The white paper (or e-book) is a marketing tactic; cold calling a sales tactic.

You can certainly improve cold calling techniques by improving your list. If your list consists of companies that can benefit from your offering and you can be specific about that, your results improve.

If you target a vertical and tailor an offering directly to that vertical, your results will improve.

The biggest obstacles to cold calling success are voicemail and no-answers.

The problem with B2B tactics like twitter and white papers is that it is marketing not sales. Certainly, companies that perform marketing campaigns will generate more leads if the marketing is clear, repeated and aimed at the prospective customer.

Cold calling is a must for a company with a very specific customer base, like Caterpillar or Boeing.

Is a good tactic for telecom? It is a requirement, because service providers (for the most part) do not have a brand; do little effective marketing; and lack a unique value proposition. Some of this is due to the nature of telecom, where executives think that everyone is a customer. Being unable to determine who a hot prospect is or who your service offering will best benefit seems to be a symptom of telecommunications companies.

The Secret of Sticky

2013-01-22T04:00:32Z

The secret to sticky customers is the number 3.

Banks as well as the Duopoly understand that customer churn is higher for customers with only 1 or 2 services. At 3 services - the Triple Play - the customer churn is lowest.

Customers don't want a triple play but the bundle is usually cheaper.

The Pivot to Attractiveness

2013-01-17T17:06:51Z

I spoke with Mike Cassidy at SUTUS this week. SUTUS is finally seeing success after years of trying to find its niche in the SMB PBX space. SUTUS had a couple of pivots along the way - and usually a new CEO to go with each pivot.

Now they are on the path to success due to stumbling upon a vertical.

When you are in a hyper-competitive market like SMB phone systems or better yet Hosted PBX, you have two choices: you can chase everyone as a potential customer or you can tell a better story to attract the right customer to you.

Most of the Hosted PBX space spends dollars and days chasing low hanging fruit instead of compiling a database of good clients within one or two verticals.

What is so special about a vertical? At least three things. Less competition, more word-of-mouth, and you learn the inside language to provide valuable, specific benefits to the vertical.

I hate to say that VZ was the first one to take a step in that direction by launching VCE with Google Apps integration but the fact is: it's true.

The Cloud Comm Alliance has a meeting come up in Tampa Bay on Feb. 4. I hope that I will hear a couple of stories about a pivot or two where these service providers have decided to attack a vertical to hack some growth like SUTUS did.

It Starts With On-Boarding

2012-12-29T01:19:10Z

Whether it is a new partner, a new employee or a new customer, the on-boarding is the most important step that you can take.

For an employee, at arrival, there should be a workspace, gear and guidance waiting.

For a customer, on-boarding is the process by which you ensure that the customer not only understands the changes that your services - Hosted PBX, backup, MDM, cloud services - will have on their daily work experience, but has options for learning how to use it - like manuals, videos and more.

I have seen where customers would leave a Hosted PBX vendor due to poor on-boarding - more precisely because the customer didn't get to leverage the service enough to make it worthwhile keeping.

Often channel execs talk about the 80/20 rule when it comes to channel partners. How many have a true on-boarding process for partners though? How many go through value proposition, competitive analysis, benefits versus features and other impactful information with partners? In my experience, not many.

The cost to bring on a new hire, a new partner or even a new customer is high. Why wouldn't on-boarding be a detailed, significant process then?

What You Can Learn From Romney's Campaign

2012-11-20T14:21:27Z

This isn't a political rant. I have been reading many of the summaries of why Romney lost his presidential bid. Channelnomics and ARS examined the IT spending of both campaigns and found that Romney bought from Best Buy's mindShift (an MSP). The one point they got wrong is that the Dems have two online systems for campaigning developed during Obama's first run for office. It is pretty impressive CRM. But it wasn't all IT. That's like saying that CLEC's are failing because they picked the wrong gear.

As I tell my clients, it has nothing to do with the technology that you are so enamored with. I know that techies love the boxes, the blinking lights, etc. However, that isn't why people buy.

Look at auto sales: it is all about a test drive. They want you to test drive the car, because then you can picture owning it. Romney's 47% speech might have given some voters a glimpse of what ownership would look like.

Really, his marketing was awful. I know Obama went negative early and pounded away, but they spent about $3B on the two campaigns, so it is wasn't the budget. It was the messaging.

In sales, especially in telecom, boy, do we talk about saving you money. That gets people's attention, right? So that's one message.

The other message is to talk to the pain points as a solution provider. Romney never gave details of how he was going to solve any problem. In the foreign policy debate, he pretty much just agreed with Obama, so switching providers wasn't getting you anything there.

Truly, the marketing failed to produce a clear, concise message. What was the value proposition? What pain was he going to solve and how?

Living in a swing state, I was inundated with TV ads from both parties and the SuperPACs as well as ads for the Connie Mack IV versus Senator Bill Nelson. Mack/Nelson was negative ads, but Nelson painted a clear picture of what you would get if his opponent won. Painting a picture, telling a story, giving a demo --- these are all ways to provide the prospect (voter or buyer) with concrete ways to understand your positioning (unique sales proposition).

You can have all the tech in the world. You can have the best and brightest staff in the world and it won't matter one bit if you don't talk to the marketplace about the pain you are solving. Period.

People buy for only two reasons: to get rid of pain or for Pleasure. That's it. And both are emotional decisions that are rationalized by the buyer (hence, buyer's remorse).

All This Black Friday Talk

2012-11-20T14:11:57Z

All this Black Friday talk is not going to help the retailers. The early Black Friday buzz and "leaks" are only signaling that retailers are hurting. These current actions by retailers are not going to help the bottom line. Pricing matching Amazon being just one of these actions.

By talking about Black Friday on Halloween, many consumers put buying on hold to see what the sales would be. This is like Groupon - it trains consumers to wait for a coupon or sale before buying. The consumers are learning to price shop (even via smartphone apps) for everything and not pay retail. That is the first step in destruction of the brick-and-mortar pricing structure.

With all the early hype of Black Friday and Christmas shopping, consumers will be burnt out before 12/24. It will take bigger deals to get them to spend, too.

What can you take away from this?

Don't get into a pricing war. Do you see Porsche on sale? How about Nordstrom's?

Explain your value - clearly and concisely.

Have a unique sales proposition.

Design a different bundle.

Solve real business pain. Saving money should be a last resort. With layoffs and scared business owners, all the marketing and sales talk should center around business process improvement, efficiency, productivity and doing more with less. Those outcomes will be the winner.

Rule 1: Respect the Audience

2012-11-06T17:48:35Z

I might be hyper-sensitive when it comes to sessions - or I have sat through too many at this point in my life. Or maybe both.

Rule 1 when presenting: Respect the Audience!

Respect their time, their Attention (which is a precious gift) and their Intelligence.

If you have 20 minutes, end it in 15 minutes so you have time for a question. Don't run over! You disrespect the event, other speakers, the audience and my attention when you run over your time limit.

Practice. At least once. That way you know how long it will take.

Short, sweet and to the point. We live in an ADD world.

If it is supposed to be a case study, present a case study, not a pitch or commercial. If you can't breakdown the sale for a case study - Who, What, Where, When, Why - I have to assume that you have no idea how you won the deal or why they bought. That's great.

Less is always more. Less slides. Less words per slide. Less talking.

There is never a time when less is not better. Ever. If you can't say what you have to in less than the allotted time, you suck. And I say that with love, because if you had prepared and practiced, you would know that (A) your message was off; (B) you were running long; (C) you were not clear and concise.

Get on twitter. Now! It teaches you to speak in 140 characters, so that you can learn to be concise.

I'm not picking on you or saying I am perfect. I will say that I am always on time, prepared, and have 1 crystal clear thought: What does my audience want to know?

It all comes back to Rule # 1: Respect the Audience. And frankly most speakers/presenters/panelists don't.