I read an interesting piece
by John Aiello of The SAVO Group yesterday. Citing a
study by the American Marketing Association (AMA) and the CMO Council, John
mentioned that salespeople spend approximately 40 percent of their time
preparing customer facing materials while leveraging less than 50 percent of the
materials created for them by their marketing brethren. Further, a study by Booz
Allen Hamilton (BAH)
finds that 85 percent of a company's brand image is determined by the direct
interaction between the sales team and its target buyers.
John took this and other information
and weaved it into a discussion of sales-enablement applications and solutions.
I'd like to take a slightly different tack and declare that (traditional)
Marketing Is Dead! The BAH statistic points directly to a clear conclusion – the
Customer Experience is King! People buy from people. Given their 'druthers most
people buy from someone they trust. Trust is not established through
pre-packaged support materials, but rather through personal and personalized interactions.
The best salespeople know
that long-term relationships are worth more than short-term gain. These
salespeople audition clients, trying to find the right match between client needs and what their company can deliver. If there's a better fit
elsewhere they're not afraid to say so and move on – knowing that the customer
will respect their honesty. This approach demonstrates commitment, and can even
lead to customers altering their requirements because of the trust that
commitment generates.
Traditional marketing has
long been focused on analyzing markets, then creating and distributing content
showing the value of the company's offering. The traditional approach is all
about mass production and mass consumption –overwhelming the intended
recipients with a barrage of value-laden content to move them to buy. The
problem with this approach is that it's based on interrupting the customer with
the message, and doesn't incorporate any feedback mechanisms allowing the
customer to filter what they want to read/hear/see,
The BAH statistics suggests
that most sales people find relatively little value in the sales-support
content generated by their marketing peers. In other words, the people closest
to and most able to influence the sale don't see value in what should be
"sales-aiding" content. The salespeople are, in effect, becoming the customer
information filter in self-defense.
In a separate study the CMO found
most companies don't systematically engage customers in new product/service
development efforts. In
other words, most companies build stuff, then try to find people to buy it.
This can work for a while, but eventually you'll come up with a dud – and the
salesperson on the front line will be stuck trying to repair the damage this
new product or service caused to the relationship.
The best marketing comes from
actively soliciting customer feedback and using real-life customer experiences
to refine and develop the brand message. When a company can show through its
actions that it is an engaged partner with its customers, then those customers
will reward that company with loyalty, and higher profits. Look at Amica
Insurance, Costco, Google, Ritz Carlton, Southwest Airlines, TESCO or USAA.
These are all organizations that have differentiated themselves by listening to
customers, and then providing a superior customer experience.
We've moved
from an industrial to a post-industrial world, from broadcast to narrowcast
communications, and where customization, personalization, niche marketing, customer feedback and
truly being engaged with the customer in a trusted partnership are the keys to
success, Companies that enshrine these values don't need to spend huge sums on
demand generation efforts, instead, their customers become their free marketing
arm. And their salespeople's job (read "their employees and their customers") get a lot
easier.
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