Monthly Archives: June 2013

Homicidal Salesmen

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Great leads keep sales people from poisoning your morning coffee. A set of recent surveys show that marketing folks are split in their lead generation intensions and how they measure campaign success. Approximately 50% of aggregated respondents use lead quality and quantity to gauge campaign effectiveness while 70% claim their content marketing efforts are all about generating a large quantity of leads. In other words, their actions and their measurement means are not aligned. This exposes an enduring truth about marketing and the divide between them and potential sales assassins. Some marketers think their job is to send as many leads to the sales team as possible, then let salesmen sort out the good from the bad from the oh so very ugly. This is way some sales people are two steps away from becoming serial killers, because they are overworked in the sorting processes and earning less per unit … Continue reading →

Stop Researching

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“Researching to 100% assuredness is 100% stupid,” surmised a wise old marketer. Marketing research is essential, but so is action. Perfect knowledge is impossible in the same way as constantly moving one half of the remaining distance toward an object. At some point you have to stop researching because diminishing rates of risk reduction make no since given the cost of research and the costs of delay. But like many alcoholics, knowing when enough-is-enough is clouded by your direct participation. One way to triangulate when to quit researching is to pair the costs of too much research verses too little. We all do this informally, but two problems evolve from hipshot restraint. First is that everybody has a different perception of risk based on their perspective. Start-up entrepreneurs are likely to short research in order to get to market quickly – to obtain first mover advantage. They will override the … Continue reading →

Apple Worms

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Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also the cheapest form of revenue. Apple has devolved from being a generator of disruptive innovations to instigator of imitations. This week’s iOS 7 preview is meeting with weird-not-rave reviews noting that the mobile operating system borrows design elements from Microsoft Vista and Google’s Android. The big hype is that the UI design is completely overhauled, meaning that Apple is now copying Microsoft’s mode of destroying what people have become accustomed to using, and by jettisoning that investment may also jettison customers. One commenter rudely said: “Say what you want about Apple products, but at least they always had their own vibe. The new update eliminates that. Now, iPhones and iPads will look like more expensive versions of their Android cousins. That green felt and wood aesthetic that Apple was so excited to discard at least allowed Apple to … Continue reading →

Sales Quality

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A sales manager asked me to suspend marketing for a couple of months because he could not keep-up with in-bound leads, ones which were achieving an 80% win/loss rate. Peter Drucker must have been smiling from above, for I had fulfilled his mandate, that “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.” Salesmen/women want to sell. When marketing strategy is well developed, it generates highly-qualified leads and biases prospects before they start researching alternatives. Give a salesman an unqualified lead and I’ll show you a salesman who will never buy you a beer. Give a salesman a lead so well qualified that the customer sells himself, and that same salesman will ask you to be his kid’s godparent. Much of the legendary marketing/sales friction comes from marketing abandoning quality for quantity. Some marketers want to generate a large volume of leads (which makes them look effective) and have salespeople … Continue reading →