tactics, vol 5, issue 5 sept/oct 2015

Impact

Trending with Ray Makela

The social media conundrum

INSIDE

Engaging Marketing Minds Vol. 5, Issue 5, September/October 2015

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promotional items and more.

T he idea that a given market is considered “buyer friendly” versus “seller friendly” is prevalent these days. If a market is saturated with supply, it is believed that buyers have all the leverage. In turn, many businesses invite competition, and then feel the pressure to lower prices.Certainly, it’s easy to color a market toward the buyer, but that mindset is not healthy for the business overall.

Data may tell us that pricing is low and that the number of substitute products and services is high, but giving way to those variables distracts us from connecting with clients on a differentiated level.

Our contention is that if we simply defer to the metrics of a business environment, we are not creating value. More specifically, value is created through a deep level of understanding of a community and by entrenching yourself and your company within it.

We are not saying that you throw the baby out with the bathwater and disregard the pricing within a market. We believe that over the long term, sustainability is rooted in your brand’s relationship to your clients. Just be-cause you may have to sell certain products at lower levels, doesn’t mean you toss aside the opportunities that may not be explicitly clear right now.

When you have a deeper relationship with your clients, you become a trusted voice in their world. The sale of a lower priced product without a focus on building trust defines your brand at a level that can prove to be un-recoverable. Consequently, the sale of a lower priced product, coupled with trust, sets you up for an impactful future.

Our cover story, “Back in the Saddle,” examines why it’s important to embrace the lessons learned from the missteps that happen along the way and what future disciplines they can help you make.

Our second feature, “Impact,” takes a hard look at the art of going deeper than data and exploring the benefits of a more intimate engagement with your market.

We hope that some of the lessons inside can help you strengthen the relationships and commitments you are building with your customers.

Enjoy this issue,

Michael PelusoPresident, Shawmut Communications Group

Bathwater

CONTENTS

We are not saying that you throw the baby out with the bathwater and disregard the pricing within a market. We believe that over the long term, sustainability is rooted in your brand’s relationship to your clients.

03 04 06Publisher’s Letter

Bathwater The Inbox Back in the Saddle

Tolerating failure and winning against all odds

10 14 15Impact

Going deeper than dataTrending with...

Sales thought leader Ray Makela

The social media conundrum

ROI: The biggest challenge for marketers

Brought to you by: Shawmut Communications Group

Shawmut Communications Group is proud to bring you Tactics, a bi-monthly industry publication created by and for marketing minds.

Founded in 1951—and now in its third generation of family ownership—Shawmut Communications Group provides an array of marketing, print, mail and fulfillment services to meet the needs of clients across all industries. With decades of experience, the Shawmut team is committed to helping clients market with relevance and communicate with excellence. Visit www.shawmutdelivers.com or call 978-762-7500 to learn more.

3Shawmut – tactics • September/October 2015

Inbox

Click me mobile

Don’t look now, but mobile clicks account for almost 40 percent of all email clicks, according

to analysis by Yesmail Interactive. Because mobile devices are becoming indispensable, marketers are starting to effectively adjust by incorporating responsive design in their emails, building adaptive landing pages or optimizing the mobile path-to-purchase. Just how prevalent is the trend? Mobile conversion rates (purchases resulting from an email click) grew by 70 percent, while desktop conversion rates declined by 4 percent, the survey found.

September/October 2015 • tactics – Shawmut4

Better and Faster: The Proven Path to Unstoppable Ideas By Jeremy Gutsche

Have any great ideas that are just within your grasp? Come on, we all do. In a world of chaos and change, there has to be something you’re overlooking. If you knew the answer, you’d be a better innovator, better manager and better investor.

In his book, Better and Faster: The Proven Path to Unstop-pable Ideas, Jeremy Gutsche offers insights into overcoming the neurological traps blocking your success. It shows you the six patterns of opportunity, including Convergence, Divergence, Cyclicality, Redirection, Reduction and Acceleration.

Each pattern is a repeatable shortcut that has created fortunes for ex-criminals, reclusive billionaires, disruptive CEOs and ordinary people who unexpectedly made it big. In his research, Gutsche, founder and CEO of TrendHunter.com, unveils what actually causes opportunity and offers tactics that will help you out-innovate, outsmart and outmaneuver your competitors.

Better and Faster promises to help put your company on the fast track for innovation and opportunity.

You have to wrap yourself around the customer journey. Customers do their homework. They expect you to do yours: What do you know about me?”

– GE SVP & CMO Beth Comstock on the importance of customer centricity

Understanding today’s consumer behaviorAsk any marketer, and he will tell you that having a deep understanding of the dynamic consumer is essential to unlocking the potential of marketing in an increasingly connected world. According to Millward Brown Digital’s “Getting Digital Right” study, which polled 400 U.S. marketers spanning brands, media companies and agencies, it is essential that marketers adopt behavioral research advancements as pillars of their insights toolkit. Here’s a look at which research tools they are using to influence their marketing decisions:

[67%]Consumer behavior insights

[61%]Audience measurement

[39%]Brand tracking

[30%]Marketing mix modeling

[29%]Creative testing


It happens. But not to you, right? Not now. Not here. Not with everybody looking and waiting and depend-ing on every move, every step you take. This part of

the process wasn’t in the plans. It wasn’t what you, your team or your customers had in mind when the first dis-cussions about the whole deal went down.

But guess what? It did happen. It was you. It is now. Here. And there isn’t a person in the room who isn’t looking at you for the next move.

Failure is simultaneously our biggest fear and our greatest teacher. And contrary to popular opinion, failure is not the opposite of success – it is a milestone on the journey to success. It is a steppingstone that points the way forward. More specifically, failure signals that we are out of our comfort zone and learning as a result of it.

Mistakes are the portal of discovery.– James Joyce


Back in the saddle

Grace Daly knows about failure. As the host of ShopTalk 360, a popular podcast, and author of a leadership book series, she extols the virtues of learning from the trials and tribu-lations that occur in our daily lives.

“Tolerating failure is an essential key to success,” Daly says. “The only way to achieve our ultimate desired result in any endeavor is through trial and error. Failure is simply a trial and error process with varying degrees of risks and results. People who are afraid of failure will always stay in what they feel is their ‘safe’ zone. There, they will never be able to em-brace the possibility or actuality of how suc-cess can be achieved.”

You know the drill by now. The great-est lesson you can learn is not to repeat the same mistake twice. You’ve heard it over and over again. You’re only human. You’re going to make mistakes from time to time. To err is human, and all the rest.

But as Daly, and the scores of other experts say, it’s not enough to just memo-rize these leadership proverbs; you actually have to act upon them. “Overcoming busi-ness failure is all based on your bounce-back stamina. What’s yours? At the end of the day, remember; it’s just business. Learn from it, grow from it and continue to be fiscally responsible. If you are fortunate enough to have your health and your loved ones, infinite possibilities and growth exist for everything else.”

If you’re looking for an “I-just-made-a-mistake-and-I-cannot-get-up” refresher course, Daly offers these simple steps. Start by changing your per-ception of the whole “failure” mindset by thinking of it as a live experiment. This will help encourage creativity and open up untapped resources.

Next, remember that every-body has to work through these trial-and-error processes – busi-ness and personal. It is a part of life and, honestly, there are no shortcuts. We only hear about the success stories, not the stumbles along the way.

It’s a cultural thingTell me if you’ve seen this be-fore. Your employee comes into your office with a look that says

everything behind him has gone up in flames, and that you missed the fire. Things happen that fast.

Your only course of action when failure occurs is to assess the situation, develop a game plan that can extinguish the flames, and then work to find where the system broke down.

The moral to the whole story – and your real takeaway – is to build a culture where mistakes are embraced as opportunities, where people can openly talk about where they can improve and avoid a lasting negative impression. That’s what Maxine Attong preaches on every mountaintop.

“I am big on providing safe environments in which these discussions can occur,” says Attong, author of “Lead Your Team to Win: Achieve Op-timal Performance By Providing A Safe Space For Employees.” “When humans feel unsafe, we fight, take flight or freeze. When we feel safe, we slow down, listen and understand.”

Attong believes the motive for the discussion must be clearly stated, so that the employees know it is not a time for blame-and-shame sessions, but to seek improvements in their ability to deal with future situations. “Leaders need to be consistent in our treatment of failure, regardless of the size of the problem and who is at fault. Build a healthy culture around failure, where failure is seen as a learning op-portunity for everyone. This increases the level of honesty about failures and promotes individual responsibility.”

The new toy in your leadership

toolbox is to be tolerant of failure and not

to tolerate negative attitudes around failure.


The new toy in your leadership toolbox is to be tolerant of failure and not to tolerate negative attitudes around failure. “I have to mentally prepare myself to deal with people who lament, ‘Why me?’ or deny their role in the event or pass the buck when things fail,” Attong says. “I am immediately ready to work with the individual who accepts personal re-sponsibility for the misstep and is willing to work to make amends.”

If you want to write down your new mantra, Attong offers this: There are three lessons every person should take away from tolerating failure:

• I am not a failure. I have the ability to overcome this.

• I will take personal responsibility for my role in this and make amends.

• There is a lot to learn from failure. It could make me a winner.

“I only consider a situation too big to over-come when, at an individual level, there is no learning from the situation, no change in think-ing or belief systems,” Attong says. “If there were no lessons learned, then regardless of the success trajectory, the person has failed.”

1. The environment You must create a safe, flourishing work envi-ronment that promotes creativity and healthy risk. Reward and celebrate your team for their suggestions and efforts – not only their successes. Try to limit the use of the word “failure.” It implies a complete, dead stop. Nobody wants to be associated with that, so why create that negative energy? Instead, try to use the terminology “trial and error.”

2. Listen and learn Make time to listen to your team. Very often, I’ve seen busi-ness owners or senior management completely outsource to consultants for a new set of eyes, instead of tapping the resources within – those who intimately know the company culture and what clients need.

3. Track your progress Have a formal process to track ideas and pro-grams. Have fun with it by making it into a con-test where you discuss progress as often as you like (monthly, quarterly, etc.). It’s important to follow through and take action, so that your team knows any viable sugges-tions will be tested and engaged with.

4. Avoid he said, she said Taking a 20,000-foot assessment of what went wrong in any situation should not be a blame-and-shame session. Seek input on how to deal with the issue(s) moving for-ward and look for ways to avoid the proverbial “same mistake twice.”

5. Be consistent If you’re going to meet the prospects of failure head on, be consistent in how you treat it, regard-less of the size of the problem and who is at fault. The key is to build a healthy culture around failure – one where mis-steps are seen as learning opportunities for everyone. This increases and pro-motes individual responsi-bility around failure.

“I am big on providing safe environments in

which these discussions can occur. When

humans feel unsafe, we fight, take flight

or freeze. When we feel safe, we slow down, listen and understand.”

– Maxine Attong, Author, “Lead Your Team to Win”

Sources: Grace Daly, host of ShopTalk 360, and Maxine Attong, author, “Lead Your Team to Win”


W ith a few clicks, the right data-software

combo can readily tell you who your

best customer is and what products

or services he has bought from you in the past.

A couple of more clicks, and you can predict

with great accuracy

what they’re likely to

buy from you in the

future, how much and

how often. With a few

more strategic clicks,

you can capture and

analyze data that then

helps you create a tailored, automated marketing

plan that provides your customer with engaging

messaging that’s personalized for increased

relevance and effectiveness.

You don’t even have to pick up a phone and call him.

Going deeper than dataBy Lorrie Bryan


But you can click-click-click until your fingers ache; search the expansive internet heavens; gaze intently into your super-duper, 32-inch, professional-grade, ultra-high-defini-tion monitor; crank up the latest Voice of the Customer program; dive into social media; and still not understand your customers sufficiently.

If you really want to know what keeps your best customers up at night, what’s on their wish lists, and what you can do to help their businesses succeed and their dreams come true, try an old-fashioned, pre-informa-tion-age practice. It’s called conversing, personal interac-tion and visiting – and it can make a deep impact.

Vis-à-vis visitsAs Dimitri Kapelianis, an associate marketing pro-fessor at the University of New Mexico, points out, B2B marketing almost is a misnomer. “Businesses don’t have relationships with businesses – people have relationships with people. If your product is not a commodity, you need to have dedicated account man-agers working with your best customers, actively nurturing the relationships, looking for unique opportunities to create value and making certain that these customers are exceedingly satisfied.”

Kapelianis says that it’s not enough to know your industry and your company. You must know the key people personally and visit with them on a regular basis. You must be able to anticipate their problems and offer unique solutions. Be proactive, rather than reactive.

If all you are doing is waiting for an invi-tation to bid, it’s almost too late. “You’re then just a commodity, and if that is the case, then you better have the lowest price,” says Kape-lianis, who teaches graduate-level marketing strategy classes.

But building an authentic relationship takes time, and disingenuous schmoozing ac-tually can hamper the process. Increasingly, Gen Xers are moving into decision-making roles, and they are especially skeptical of mar-keting speak. They prefer a more direct ap-proach to communication.

“Gen Xers don’t like canned, overly packaged corporate messaging and appre-ciate the facts relative to the bottom line,”

says Anna Liotta, author of “Unlocking Gen-erational Codes.” “Provide them with infor-mation to do their own research and product comparisons. Don’t waste time schmoozing and trying to develop a relationship initially. Be direct and cut to the chase – show them where the value lies.”

“Nobody is going to buy from you solely because they like you,” Kapelianis says. “You have to demonstrate how you can add value.”

Board gamesMany companies are finding that develop-ing a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) pro-gram is a great way to foster relationships and make an impact with top customers. A CAB also can yield tremendous insights for both the host company and the participat-ing customers. Sometimes referred to as an executive advisory council, customer summit or best customer panel, a CAB essentially is a strategy-level focus group.

“It’s an opportunity for a CEO and execu-tive staff to meet with a dozen key leaders and decision makers representing some of their best customers to talk about trends and drivers shaping their customers’ busi-nesses, and how the host company can help these customers achieve their busi-ness goals,” says Mike Gospe, who has facilitated and assisted more than 100 businesses with CABs since 2002. “There are many names for a Customer Advisory Board, but they all share the same objec-tive – to forge a tighter bond with a set of strategic customers and invite them to help shape your company’s vision and strategic direction.”

Limited to primarily Fortune 500 com-panies a decade ago, CABs have grown in popularity in recent years. “Now, large and

“ We go directly to our customers and see their actual situation and needs first-hand. Then we can propose changes and solutions that more than satisfy them.”

– David Stevens, Senior VP, American Mitsuba Corp.

“ Businesses don’t have relationships with businesses – people have relationships with people.”

– Dimitri Kapelianis, Associate Marketing Professor, University of New Mexico


smaller B2B companies are investing in a CAB program,” says Gospe, founder of KickStart Alliance, a team of senior marketing and sales consultants.

And here’s the best part. A CAB is not just a marketing tool or special marketing project. “The implications of what is learned will need to cascade through marketing, sales, operations, engi-neering, customer support, etc.,” Gospe says. “A commitment to a CAB must be companywide, ongoing and linked directly to a com-pany’s annual planning process.”

San-gen-shugi: The Three Realities PrincipalBuilding deep relationships with key customers is inherently a companywide endeavor for many successful companies. David Stevens, senior VP of American Mitsuba Corp., says that Mitsuba builds authentic customer relationships and loyalty by practicing ancient Japanese business principles that promote direct observa-tion and contact.

“When a customer requests anything, we take it seriously,” Stevens says. “Usually we meet face to face with the customer for any significant request. We frequently have customers visit us in our plants, so they can bet-ter understand what makes us tick and see how good we are.”

Mitsuba and other Japanese-American companies (Toshiba, Takata, Honda) practice San-gen-shugi in many elements of their business management. “San” means three, “gen” means what you actually see in front of you and “shugi” means principles.

Stevens says that San-Gen-Shugi has three elements. This means you go to the actual site (genba), see the actual thing or condition (genbutsu) with your own eyes, to understand and re-spond to the actual situation (genjitsu).”

This is the most valid method to conduct situation analysis and respond appropriately, instead of depending on reports and comments from other people. “We go directly to our customers and see their actual situation and needs first hand,” Stevens says. “Then we can propose changes and solutions that more than satisfy them.”

Eye to eye, heart to heartEye contact has a fundamental role in human social interaction. When you make eye contact while conversing, heartbeat rates ac-tually increase revealing a physiological connection between you and the person you’re having a conversation with.

Can the impact of a quickening heart be replicated with click-thru? Not likely. So why not make plans to actually sit down and visit with your best customers?

Building an authentic

relationship takes

time, and disingenuous schmoozing actually can hamper the

process.

Create a Customer Advisory Board and invite your best customers to join

Look for opportunities to visit with your best customer at his place of business

Invite your best customers to visit your facility and show them how you operate

Provide your best customers with valuable content on an ongoing basis

Customize your products or services to add unique value for your best customers

Be responsive and readily available to your best customers

Offer remarkable customer service that exceeds their expectations

Anticipate their needs and be solution oriented rather than product oriented

Know their industries, know their companies and understand what is important to them personally

Be authentic, take a genuine interest in your customers, and facilitate their success


Interview with Ray MakelaQ&A:

Ray Makela knows sales. With more than 20 years of management, consulting and sales experience, the managing director of the Sales Readiness Group (SRG) has an up-close-and-personal look at how the process works from all sides. Today, Makela is an industry

thought leader who frequently writes on best practices for coaching and developing sales teams. As SRG’s sales leader, he serves as a senior facilitator on sales management, coaching, negotiation and sales training workshops. Here are his thoughts on how to keep your sales and marketing teams on top of their games.

Trending with ...Sales thought leader Ray Makela on winning the sales & marketing relationship

What is the new mantra for today’s sales process?It’s really all about the customer today. Be-cause so much of the buyers’ journeys have been completed before you talk to a salesper-son, you must work harder to connect with your customers, understand their unique needs, differentiate yourself and position your solutions as the best option. That means doing a better job of pre-call research, ask-ing relevant questions, offering content and insights relevant to your customers and, ulti-mately, giving them a reason to move forward in the relationship.

What is the best way to motivate your sales team?Sales professionals are motivated by different things – what motivates one person may not be valuable to another. Some are motivated by doing a great job, while others thrive on recognition. Some love being part of a great team, while others value autonomy. The key is to understand the motivators for each member of your team, and then tailor your communica-tions and feedback accordingly.

How is the relationship between sales and marketing today?I love that they are becoming better aligned. I’m a big fan of the new “Smarketing” move-ment. This suggests that marketing and sales are collaborating and analyzing the customer together. We’ve all heard the complaints that sales doesn’t follow up on the leads that marketing gives, and that marketing provides bad or dead leads. Working together helps

remove some of the finger pointing. There should only be one view of what good cus-tomers look like – and that should be from the company perspective.

What is the best way to fortify this relationship?There are a couple of ways. They can collabo-rate on the content provided through video, blogs, white papers, etc. Because sales is be-coming more engaged in the content market-ing aspect of the buyers’ journey, they must understand what content is available and

where it comes into play during the sales cycle. You can’t just send links to generic resources. At the end of the day, the sales rep who adds insights and engages more with the customer will typically win the deal.

Another way is by leveraging the technol-ogy that allows both groups to see the same view of the customer. Sales should see how the lead was scored and what their interactions were like before they became a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). And marketing should understand which leads are converting to actual propos-als and customers, so that they can validate their assumptions and improve the marketing engine. The days of “dumping” leads into the funnel and letting sales figure out what to do with them is over. It’s about having a common view of the customers’ journeys at each stage.

What are the biggest takeaways for which every marketing/sales team should strive?There are no magic bullets here, but sales and marketing can work much more closely and effectively together if they understand the op-portunity and make it a priority.

First, they must engage in open commu-nication and collaboration through recurring meetings to discuss what’s working, what needs to be improved and how they can work better to achieve the organizational objectives.

Next, they should share customer feed-back. Both parties should keep a close ear out for the voice of the customer. By listening to the customer and working together, you will get to the right answer.

Finally, they must strive for continuous im-provement. Today’s customers are changing. The sales process is becoming more complex, and new technology and tools threaten to dis-rupt our industry at every turn. Successful orga-nizations will be those that are nimble enough to listen, adapt and continuously evolve as the environment changes. Doing otherwise will en-sure a slow, painful slip into irrelevance.

There are no magic bullets here, but sales

and marketing can work much more closely and

effectively together, if they understand the opportunity

and make it a priority.


Before YouGo

No matter how hard they try, marketers still say measuring ROI is the biggest challenge they face with their social media efforts, according to Simply Measured’s “2015 Social Media Marketing Trends.” The survey, which polled 600 marketers from across the country, asked for them to

name the three most challenging aspects of their social campaigns.

Here’s a look at some of the biggest obstacles they cited:

The social media

conundrum ROI: The biggest challenge for marketers

60%Measuring ROI

48%Developing a social media

strategy

50%Tying social activities to

business outcomes

40%Securing enough internal resources

32%Tracking results in a centralized

dashboard


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tactics, vol 5, issue 5 sept/oct 2015

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