Alberta Business Marketing

Reading Andrew Brown's post about the implications of cloud computing on marketing inspired me to write a post about the implications of cloud computing on B2B communication interspersed with some general thoughts on cloud computing, with video conferencing being used as an illustrative example.

The recent announcement by LifeSize® of the upcoming release of a cloud-based video conferencing package later this year is a good example of how cloud based alternatives to more traditional client-server software packages are becoming available, but what does this mean for businesses? Flexibility, Lower Price and Mobility.

Cloud computing, by definition, removes the need for installation of software and hardware, and increases the range of platforms through which programs and files are accessible. Cloud computing also breaks down price barriers for businesses who are not interested in purchasing high-end telepresence and desktop video conferencing endpoints. Specifically, for video conferencing, the need for pricey hardware purchases is eliminated through cloud solutions that are centrally managed and hosted. The possibility of participating in a video conference while on the go, for example, is an attractive one. A program, file or application which can be accessed by a user from traditional platforms like desktop computers and laptops, as well as more modern ones such as mobile phones and tablets, offers a great deal of flexibility in terms of how, where and when these can be accessed. As well as the inherent benefits explored above, cloud computing also has the potential to save businesses time and money through other means, which are not immediately obvious.

Perhaps the most relevant benefit in the current environmentally-aware business climate is the reduction of CO2 emissions that comes with the increase in use of video conferencing software. Attendees at meetings are able to be present without actually being there in person, cutting out the need for travel, which also translates to savings for business in terms of travel costs.

Perhaps what is most intriguing about the rise of cloud computing is the benefits that aren’t immediately obvious. As time moves on and more cloud-based alternatives become available to current software, I think more of these benefits will become apparent. Future considerations for cloud based technologies include data storage, applications, and even entire operating systems – but opinions on these matters are best reserved for another post.

Christopher Lee

Tags: technology
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While companies have always needed to sustain a strong and positive reputation to succeed, today, every business leader also needs to manage their own personal brand. Given that information is so widely and quickly shared online, it's easy for even the most brand-savvy executive to find themselves being portrayed in ways that are either inaccurate, or worse, potentially damaging.

The good news is that leaders can adopt a proven strategy that builds a relevant and dynamic reputation that is right for them and their company. That strategy, which is rooted in product management, begins with the recognition that every person is more than a brand -- i.e. the way that you are thought of or spoken about by others -- they are, in fact, a product. This alters the way you should market yourself.

For example, if you were simply marketing a brand online, you would focus on shaping key messages (e.g. Steve Jobs is known as an innovator who is obsessed with perfection). You would limit yourself to being concerned with the language used to describe you, where that conversation takes place, and who you are associated with. But, marketing yourself as a product, means you address what it is you actually do -- your features and functionality -- along with how this brings value to your clients, your colleagues, your profession or your community (e.g. Steve Jobs leads one the world's most inventive companies which consistently yields better-than-expected dividends).

According to Simon Brightman, a much sought-after product management expert, "Successful senior executives have embraced a product management approach because it is based on results, profitability and the ability to adapt."

To present yourself successfully as a product means following a proven five phase process:

Phase I: Idea Generation. In this phase conduct some initial research. Also, contact relevant associations and identify those people who are thought of as highly successful. With these findings in hand, identify your own strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats. Finally, develop possible visions of you as a product -- i.e. what are some of the things that you will do and how that fills a particular market's need.

Phase 2: Assessment and Prioritization. Based on the ideas that you develop in the first phase, get some feedback. Also use friends and colleagues to help you determine if what you plan to do is actually in-line with who you are. "This is one of the most critical phases when defining yourself as a product", according to Jeff Hendler of Toronto-based professionals, The Product Accelerators. He continues, "To effectively transform yourself into a successful product means knowing your true capabilities and how you approach problems."

Phase 3: Product Development. Once you know what it is you are planning to do, start pulling together the resources required to build you as a marketable product. That means adding new skills, pursuing specialized accreditations and identifying those people or organizations that will play a role in marketing you. For example, reach out to colleagues and have them write strong recommendations for you on your LinkedIn profile. It's at this stage that you should also be developing and testing the kinds of messages that you want to emphasize when promoting yourself.

Phase 4: Launch. Now that you are a well-defined and tested product, it's time for you to systematically introduce yourself to the market that will benefit most by what it is that do. Gather initial feedback to see how you are being perceived. Determine if you are being embraced by your target markets.

Phase 5: Refine. Based on the results from the launch phase, look to refine your core offering. "Refinement and adjustment are the keys to the longevity of a product. People forget that today's iPod has gone through nearly a dozen iterations. The same is true when defining yourself as a product", says Brightman. "Collecting feedback and a commitment to constantly improve has turned the iPod into a game changing product."

Going through these steps will help you to present yourself as a product, leading to even more potential to succeed.

Andrew Brown

Tags: Branding, social media, Strategy
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In this post, we examine the causes and implications (both negative and positive) of shorter sales cycles and identify opportunities for b-to-b organizations to capitalize on this potential shift.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the respondents to our ongoing sales forecast and pipeline survey stated that their companies’ sales cycle length is either stable or decreasing. This data suggests that the long documented trend of steadily increasing sales cycle length is finally coming to an end. While this change may be driven in part by the gradual improvement in the economy, our research indicates a fundamental shift in buying behavior is also occurring.

Many buyers are now better at self-educating, having learned how to search, source and filter the information available on the Internet. Consequently, sales is engaging with more informed and proficient buyers who already understand core features and comparisons of alternatives; what they want to know is how a product/service being evaluated will perform in their unique environment. They engage sales reps much later in their active buying process, which leads to shorter sales cycles.

Buyers are also becoming more efficient at managing the collaboration of multiple internal buying roles. While the finance team may dictate the process for requesting and allocating funds, business units drive the needs assessment and justification to support the investment. Processes for establishing priorities, gaining necessary approvals and meeting requirements for return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) are unique to every organization and initiative. As buyers engage in a purchase decision every couple of years or so, depending on the product or service, they slowly but steadily improve their ability to execute the buying process efficiently.

While shorter sales cycles are good news when they are driven by better sales processes and favorable economic trends, they can backfire when they are driven by more mature buyers who are less dependent on sales reps for knowledge and guidance. If sales reps have a narrower timeframe and fewer interactions to influence buying decisions, the selling organization’s leverage over these outcomes will be reduced unless it takes effective countermeasures.

Bad News Equals Opportunity
By adapting aggressively to the requirements of mature buyers, b-to-b organizations can turn the potential bad news of shorter sales cycles into competitive opportunity. Below are three strategies that organizations should consider:

1. Bad news: Buyers are able to source information freely from multiple independent sources before engaging with sales.
Opportunity: Progressive marketing teams must construct dynamic web experiences to guide and inform the buyer, stimulate inquiries and identify buyers entering into an active buying cycle. Marketing should inform sales about the buyer’s previous behaviors and activities when passing marketing qualified leads to sales, analyze and educate reps about competitors’ and third-party Web resources, and share what sales should expect the buyer to know. Sales and marketing should build and link common value messages based on a buyer’s online experience, giving the salesperson an advantage over poorly integrated competitive sales and marketing functions.

2. Bad news: Shorter sales cycles result in fewer interactions for the sales rep to influence the decision.
Opportunity: Sales organizations should track sales cycle length by sales stage to identify when, where and how buyers engage with sales. It should then refine sales processes to ensure the right set of selling activities are in place to synchronize with buyers’ needs and increase the impact of the reduced number of interactions. Messaging or targeted playbooks based on buyer profiles should be developed to provide the sales rep with the information needed to maintain his or her knowledge advantage when selling to a more mature buyer.

3. Bad news: While sales cycles are shorter, sales capacity (the number of deals that the sales force actively manages) hasn’t increased.
Opportunity: As informed buyers engage with sales later in the buying process, sales can defer to marketing to take more responsibility for educating future prospects and passing the results to sales when these prospects enter into an active buying phase. Sales can then fine-tune its qualification criteria to focus on deals that are already active and more likely to close, reducing the amount of time spent chasing “no decisions” and increasing the number of active deals in the pipeline.

Due to today’s increasingly knowledgeable and prepared buyer, the long-established trend of expanding sales cycles may be stabilizing or reversing. Shorter sales cycles for mature buying organizations are in fact the result of these companies’ effective use of technology and consistent buying processes to drive better, more efficient decisionmaking. B-to-b organizations must likewise exploit technology and optimize their sales and marketing processes to meet the needs of empowered buyers and increase rather than decrease their leverage over buying decisions.

Ally Motz

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For the complete article on the CMA web site, please click here B2B Marketing and Sales: Think Lean

Introduction

“The reconstruction of the organization to create demand, rather than to manage it.”

“A significant reallocation of marketing attention and spending from branding and advertising to field marketing and sales enablement.”

“A reality that prospects find you when they’re ready – inbound marketing needs a bigger slice of most plans.”

“A push by the executive suite to drive greater synergies between sales and marketing.”

Each of the above statements is an example of a significant shift that has occurred within the b2b environment over the past five years. The question is, in what state have these changes – and others like them - left sales and marketing?

A new approach

During the early 1950s, the Japanese developed a new manufacturing approach based on just-in- time delivery, lower inventory, continuous improvement and customer value. Considered radical at the time, the concept of “lean manufacturing” (the term describing this system) is now widely accepted, with lean companies successfully enhancing quality while at the same time reducing cost.

Based on the findings of SiriusDecisions’ most recent study of b2b sales and marketing leaders’ pipeline and forecast practices, top-performing companies are replacing the traditional “more is more” sales pipeline approach with an emphasis on higher-quality leads and more accurate forecasting.

The study findings, based on responses from b2b sales and marketing leaders from diverse global industries, revealed that it may be time to revisit traditional approaches to pipeline management and consider the value of lean principles:

- Companies mandating tighter pipelines had a better close rate. Companies that manage pipeline-to-quota ratios of three or less had a close rate that was 32 percent better than their peers managing pipelines of four or more. “Less” improves pipeline quality.

- Companies mandating tighter pipelines had significantly more reps at plan. Approximately 57 percent of the companies with pipeline-to-quota ratios of three or less reported that they had at least 60 percent of their reps at plan or better, compared to only 37 percent of the “four or more” respondents. “Less” improves sales productivity.

- Companies mandating tighter pipelines had more accurate pipelines/forecasts. When asked to specify their greatest forecasting issue, respondents with pipeline-to-quota ratios of four or more said “lack of predictability and accuracy” more than twice as often as the group with lower ratios. “Less” improves forecasting accuracy.
In this article, we take a broader look at how marketing and sales organizations can adopt lean principles to create greater alignment as well as improve overall efficiency and effectiveness.

Fundamental lean principles

Lean thinking is based on four core concepts:
1. Value is in the eyes of the customer.
2. Examine the entire marketing and sales process.
3. Eliminate or minimize waste.
4. Continuously improve and empower employees.

Marketing and sales waste

Lean thinking runs counter to the traditional marketing/sales assumption that more is always better. The following types of waste should be identified and eliminated:

A. Overproduction
B. Inventory
C. Unnecessary processing
D. Time and motion
E. Employee skills/communication

Conclusion

Before embarking on a journey to lean nirvana, there are two important things to consider.

First, the Japanese concept of “kaizen” (or continuous improvement) is in important part of the lean philosophy. It calls for an unending quest toward perfection. Second is a lesson from the past: many of the North American manufacturers that initially attempted to deploy lean processes failed in spectacular fashion. They failed to apply the concept across the entire process; instead, they made changes in just a few functional groups. This will not work because productivity gains in one area can be sabotaged by lack of productivity in another.

In today’s highly competitive and complex b2b marketplace, growth doesn’t come from excelling in one functional area; it comes from the integration of functions and a commitment to process and discipline within those functions. Going lean is a holistic proposition.

Ally Motz

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Ingredient branding is an old concept – one of the first instances occurred in the 1940’s when Dow Chemical promoted “Styron” (polystyrol) to end consumers; this chemical became the basis for Styrofoam products.

Teflon (also known as polytetrafluroethylene) was invented at the Dupont research centre in 1938 by a researcher working with refrigerants who discovered a compound that was inert to almost all chemicals. The first Teflon pan was created in 1954 and the rest is history:

• Ingredient branding didn’t become a mainstream concept until the 1990’s when it became synonymous with Intel – the ultimate ingredient brand: making zero sales to end consumers having created an incredibly strong consumer demand pull for its chips.
• The publication of Kotler and Pfoertsch’s book: "Ingredient Branding: Making the Invisible Visible" (2010) is creating a renewed interest in ingredient branding.
• The B2B connection – ingredient branding has been described as a "B2B branding strategy in which an ingredient/component of a finished product has its own brand which is promoted to the end consumer...it represents a symbiotic relationship between the component manufacturer, the manufacturer of the finished product and the supply chain".
• Ingredient branding is typically recognized as a successful B2B brand strategy – industrial trade names evolve to become consumer brands over time.

  "Ingredient branding hurts the top-end players just as often as it helps the bottom-end players” (David Aaker) – never has this brand strategy come under such scrutiny.

• Ingredient branding is now recognized as more of a trade-off than a sure bet – with both benefits and risks.
• Some recognize Intel’s branding campaign as a great success story but others have severe reservations: that IBM may not have benefited from the alliance with Intel; smaller PC brands with inferior products were legitimized; at one point IBM even felt threatened by the strength of Intel.

The Intel story - prior to the Intel Inside campaign its computer chips were a generally unknown component of PCs: most customers don’t see chips, many don’t understand and many don’t care about this commodity. When Intel was unable to trademark its “386” chip the company launched the Intel Inside campaign to create a consumer brand – PC manufacturers were convinced to place the Intel Inside logo in their advertising and marketing materials. The advertising results were stunning: brand name recognition soared from 25% to 80% to 94% (Intel regularly makes it on Interbrand’s list of top global brands.

The Pink Panther – the most under-rated ingredient brand – for the past 25 years Owens Corning and MGM have had a licensing agreement to use the iconic Pink Panther as a mascot for Corning’s home and commercial construction materials (especially its pink insulation products); in 1987 Owens Corning became the first company to trademark a colour, in this case, pink.

Other ingredient brands you might not have thought of – Techron (the additive in Chevron gasoline that is associated with better, cleaner gas); Geek Squad (computer support company acquired by Best Buy to reinforce its service credentials); Kevlar (better known as the Kevlar vest); Gore-Tex (which lists 85 partners on its web site including Adidas).

Ruth Lukaweski

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