Through these special blog postings, our goal is to offer advice and insights from top B2B marketers. It is my pleasure to introduce you to Malcolm Friedberg, principal at Left Brain Marketing. He has more than 20 years of marketing, sales and business development experience in a broad range of B2B industries.

Malcolm has built several national brands and staffed marketing departments from the ground up. His marketing consulting firm specializes in designing and implementing customized marketing automation solutions for B2B companies. We thank Malcolm for taking time out of his busy schedule to respond to our questions. From his responses, you'll learn what he thinks is the best strategy for connecting sales and marketing plus much more. Enjoy!

1.) Are you a left or right brainer?

We have a test on our website that allows people to get a sense of which brain hemisphere dominates. According to the test, I lean to the left, which means that I am more analytical than intuitive. This view accords with my wife's perspective that my male intuition, or lack thereof, makes me horrible at understanding what makes her happy.

And do you determine which your client is before working with them?
No, we don't have a litmus test for clients. I was a CMO before I became a consultant, and I know that most of us marketers are right-brained. Branding, events, traditional advertising tend to be more creative and right-brain focused. A big reason why I got into marketing automation is that I know most marketers need assistance in this area.

And how does it affect the way you build a campaign?
The way in which my analytical skills manifest in our client engagements is in building business processes. Marketing generally doesn't have a lot of business processes, and so the exercise of creating a well-conceived process is new. However, marketing automation requires that you map out steps to various workflows. As an example, the ability to route leads to sales and then get the untouched ones back for nurturing forces you to think through a variety of issues: what's the criteria for moving leads, how long should they sit, what triggers a transfer, which technology you use, etc. If you've never worked through these issues, creating an effective business process can be challenging.

2.) What strategy have you seen work the best for connecting sales and marketing teams?

There are both historical and structural reasons for the disconnect that exists between marketing and sales organizations. The historical component largely has to do with quality of leads and sales' perception that it could do as well if not better (a broad generalization, but one that I believe is accurate). The structural element is that they often exist in different business silos, independently reporting to a CEO. These are significant hurdles to overcome. One of the things I particularly like about marketing automation is that it provides a legitimate opportunity for marketing to reach out to sales and begin a dialogue about how it can better support sales. The "I'm here to help, but I need your involvement" approach seems to be the best way to make headway.

3.) What metrics have you seen work best for tracking and measuring the ROI of lead-management programs?

In my mind, this is another way of asking, "How does a CMO/VP Marketing sell his or her CEO on the investment?" The simplest way to do this is to calculate your cost per lead (e.g. acquisition through sale) and then illustrate how marketing automation can improve on that by reducing costs (e.g. less spend on traditional advertising, better conversion based on targeting, etc.). At the beginning of the process, you're going to be making assumptions, so your best bet is to grab some industry metrics. Once you're up and running you'll be able to focus more specifically on the metrics that you either have or that are most meaningful in the context of your specific business.

4.) If you were going to do only one thing, what part of a B2B lead-management program would you implement (demand generation, lead scoring, lead nurturing, ROI measurement)?

I don't think that you can focus on just one area, because you need all the parts to build a quality marketing program. It would be like fielding a baseball team with only a good pitcher, but lousy fielders. But assuming we're not all the Yankees (for you non-baseball fans, they have the biggest payroll in baseball), the biggest bang for the buck is nurturing. Chances are that you have a good number of leads coming to your site (if not, obviously demand gen would be your focus), and a few good nurturing programs will drastically help your conversion efforts.

5.) Which business practices are working best in B2B lead generation today, and which would you like to disappear?

One B2B practice that is critical to success is segmentation, because that's the foundation to relevant communication with your audience. The days of sending the same message to everyone without taking into account a buyer's product interest, role, knowledge, etc. are gone. If you're still doing that, it's time to evolve because that's the one practice that, in my humble opinion, should disappear.

6.) What's your advice to marketers working with execs who view marketing as a discretionary budget item during a recession?

Get a new job was my first thought, but that's usually not an option. The question describes a very challenging situation that is a reality for a huge number of marketers. I think that, as a whole, marketing is in transition. The need for marketing to be accountable is more real now than ever. Consequently, I think that marketers need to demonstrate their contribution to revenue (e.g. tracking the closed deals that originated with marketing). Using data to support additional investment in marketing is the way to go.

Posted by at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I published a piece on my personal blog, Propelling Brands, that tackled an important area of inquiry: It's clear that B2B marketing is rapidly evolving; more recently, the dialogue has shifted to re-framing this evolution around what is a changing nature of the B2B buyer. This is a given. "But where is the hard data that this evolution is really occurring?" I asked. "We're changing how we go to market -- and there is plenty of data pointing to shifting spending by marketers -- but how do we know that our shifted spending will better align with B2B buyers' shifting needs and preferences?"

The Propelling Brands piece thus presented a 'bread basket' of proof points from recent data and research findings by firms including Enquiro, Forrester, MarketingSherpa and SiriusDecisions and really supported the thesis of how B2B marketing is changing. The major points of synthesis are that B2B buyers:

> Are increasingly turning to online sources, earlier in their process, to research purchases before ever calling a 'live' sales rep

> Are increasingly leveraging social media -- especially peer communication, such as Twitter, blogs, etc. -- in the information collection phase of the buying process

> Are pursuing their buying process more 'massively multi-channel' than ever before; however, channel weightings and their sequence vary by the phase of the buying process

> Manifest themselves more than ever as a complex, savvy 'buying unit,' rather than simply as a single decision-maker

But what are the implications for B2B marketers of this changing environment?

My post today will dig into implications and leverage insights from a leading analyst who has been closely following the changing B2B marketing dynamic.

So What?

If you are a regular reader of the Demand Generation blog here, you know this dialogue thread has been the focus of several of my past blog posts. Most recently, I've talked about implications for managing your marketing content, improving the continuity of buyer dialogue and aligning sales and marketing. And in my piece on managing marketing content, I tackled the issue of emerging gaps in how B2B sales and marketing organizations align with buyers today.

But what we have not tackled is a re-framing of the underlying way B2B sales and marketing teams view how they manage their work: The sales funnel. And the need to re-examine the sales funnel became very apparent as I was reviewing some research from SiriusDecisions, "So Long, Sales Cycle." This brief asks a critical question: "If today's customers want salespeople to collaborate with them, why is the foundation of most sales activities still designed to sell at them?" Great question.

So I had a call yesterday with Megan Heuer, Research Director with SiriusDecisions (who, as a note, I'm excited to say will be joining us this Fall for B2B Marketing University) to get her deeper perspectives into how we must re-conceptualize the sales funnel.


A New Sales Funnel

Heuer believes in the death of the traditional sales funnel ... or at least she believes B2B sales and marketing professionals should realize why this artificial construct does not lead to improved engagement with a B2B buyer. "It's an upside-down buying process," she asserts.

She advocates for a concept of a new sales funnel that is focused around the buyer's processes: "[I]f you are not understanding how your buyer buys, your sales funnel will always be out of sync," explains Heuer. "The sales funnel is what the buyer wants it to be [not how B2B sales or marketing teams operationally conceptualize it]. Within a given space, you're going to see some commonalities and preferences, but if you're not doing your work to put yourself in your buyer's shoes your sales and marketing will be out of sync. It will be based on no information."


It's Not a Funnel; It's a Buying Cycle!

Heuer believes that this idea of focusing on the buyer stands in contrast to how we often think about the sales funnel today. Our current view tends to be defined by a linear flow of leads that assume a constant movement of pushing a prospect until he/she converts, coupled with constant engagement with a given B2B vendor's sales team ... even though that increasingly is not reality.

Customers are increasingly empowered to engage on their own terms and to dis-enage/re-engage with a B2B vendor when it is most convenient. "Following a buying cycle means a buyer can pop in and out whenever they want," says Heuer. "It's moving from a focus on what I need from you, to what you need from me, and by the way, you'll tell me when you're good and ready."

That's why Heuer and her team at SiriusDecisions have re-framed the funnel in terms of aligning sales and marketing processes to the buying cycle, and they advocate for planning and strategy to be built around supporting buyers' needs depending on which stage they are at in the cycle and being responsive, rather than thinking in terms of the traditional funnel. The chart below from the "So Long, Sales Cycle" brief (used with permission) is their conceptualization of this emerging buying cycle:

There are Many Buyers

Another major insight from Heuer -- which aligns with my Propelling Brands blog piece and the data presented there -- is this idea that the information-empowered buyer also is shifting towards an ever-increasingly 'complex, savvy 'buying unit,' rather than simply as a single decision-maker.' There's not one buyer' there's an integrated team that is evaluating a B2B purchase, and their approach, information and integration are becoming more sophisticated than ever before.

"[Y]ou must understand all of the roles in the process," explains Heuer. "It's not just about one person. A lot of people can help or hurt your case. [If you don't know who they are and where they fit in] you can't play that role."

She also points to "[t]he huge role that word of mouth plays [within buying organizations]. If you don't have enough feelers out to know who your advocates and detractors are, then there's a whole list of problems you'll have and you won't know what hit you, and they're not going to tell you. And your sales person won't know." This is an interesting insight when you consider that so much dialogue within the marketplace is often focused on 'inter-organization' word of mouth, versus the type of 'intra-organization' word of mouth Heuer is highlighting.


Repositioning B2B Marketing -- Managing Buyer Dialogue

So if we believe the nature of the B2B buyer is changing and we think in terms of aligning to the buyer's cycle, rather than driving a sales funnel, what are the implications for B2B marketing organizations?

Heuer believes there are strong implications and opportunities for marketing to help focus the process. "Marketing may actually be in that position to take that bigger picture view," she says. And that comes down to helping B2B vendor companies better understand and engage with B2B buyers, while ensuring continuity of this engagement at all stages of the buying process.

She particularly believes B2B marketers must be positioned further and further upstream than ever before -- engaging with B2B buyers as they begin to move through their evaluation process. "At this early stage, it's really, how do I become part of the dialogue?" explains Heuer. And this is different than the traditional view of 'lead generation.'

"Let's look at stages 1 to 3 [in the chart above]. If you said how can we more effectively plan? We need to understand where our buyers go to be informed, and the general problems that seem to be prevalent," explains Heuer. "The status quo of what's the world that they live in. What are their trusted sources and advisors? "

"Buyers are still very much in control in looking at a variety of sources," explains Heuer. A critical upstream activity is engaging with buyers -- on their terms -- so that you are "... part of the universe of knowledgeable advisors they know and trust, and knowing how to get into that game."

"There is too much independent information available in framing the problem, framing the solution and framing the possible options. Marketing has the greatest influence in making sure that you're part of helping [buyers] understand there is a problem."

Once a marketer has better helped his/her company better engage with a buyer, it's then incumbent on the B2B marketer to make sure there is continuity downstream and that the sales team is fully informed and fully ready to pick up at the point when a buyer chooses to engage in a direct conversation around purchasing a solution.


Repositioning B2B Sales -- Translating Buyer Dialogue Intro a Saleable Solution

B2B buyers are engaging sales teams later and later in the process. "The sales function doesn't get involved until they're further along in the sales process," explains Heuer. What does that mean for sales? Well, if conceptualized around the buying process model as presented above, it has clear implications for next steps and engagement by the sales team.

"At the beginning it's just making sure you're in the conversation," says Heuer. "When sales take over it's can I solve their individual problem."

Marketing has to engage in the dialogue, frame the problem and make sure you're part of the consideration set. "Once they've gotten to the short list, that is where the selling solution comes into play."

And it's more critical than ever before for sales teams to be highly-prepared going into a discussion around a potential solution. This is where marketing must make sure that the sales team is well-supplied with insights from the upstream dialogue and sales must be ready to translate that dialogue into a saleable solution.

Sales professionals have a very tight window to get it right in this new environment. "It is definitely the fact that buyers are reluctant to take that step," says Heuer. So a sales team member must be ready to hit a home run with less margin of error than ever before when they finally engage with the buyer.


What are your reactions to responding to the changing nature of the B2B buyer? How is your organization adapting the sales funnel to respond to the shift from seller to buyer power? How can we better align sales and marketing against the buying cycle in the current 'brave new world' of B2B marketing?

Posted by Adam Needles at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was thrilled to see in the recent UK Internet Advertising Bureau's survey that email continues to be the leading choice in terms of usage and success within B2B marketing tactics. For those who understand the power of email, this is no surprise. Emailing is extremely cost effective, and done with an appropriate level of strategy, can provide highly relevant messaging. In fact, 45% of the research respondents felt email was the most suitable tactic for achieving their marketing objectives. The dynamically generated, triggered and targeted messaging available today can greatly help to engage prospective customers in meaningful dialogs, both pre and post-sale (fulfilling the old mantra of the right message to the right person at the right time). However, what I think the results from the IAB's research also highlights is in the world of digital marketing, email marketing expertise alone is not enough.

Marketer's tactics and channels are but a mirror to the various ways buyers are researching, educating, and selecting our brands and our products. Search continues to be the most popular starting point for any considered purchase. In the U.K., online continues to replace the traditional channels of print and DM. Accordingly, almost 40% of respondents from the IAB survey said they are planning to invest an even greater percentage of their budgets into digital for the coming year. However, as the other digital channels grow in popularity, we as marketers must continue to listen, respond, and coordinate these various digital dialogs. As my colleague Adam Needles writes, engaging in the 'buyer dialog,' especially across the digital channels, pays big dividends in terms of delivering qualified leads and sales opportunities.

As in other regions of the world, UK Marketers are fairly enamored with the growth in social media. The IAB survey found 60% of respondents are either using or planning to leverage social in their digital strategies. To make the most of social media, however, marketers need to consider the content strategy as much or more than the channel. As Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing for the fast growing inbound marketing provider Hubspot was quoted in a recent Britton Manasco post in Sandhill.com, "marketers today need to think a lot less like advertisers and more like publishers."

As expected, the research also indicates that B2B marketers are leveraging digital channels primarily for lead generation and lead management, especially in this sales-starved economy. However, making the most of a "digital dialog" takes a strong internal process, as highlighted in a recent Demand Gen US study in which 79% of respondents who use marketing automation solutions for lead management say they it would have been more helpful is they had worked to "better prepare their organizations by building proper processes and content offers to feed the automated system."

Help is on the way, however, as leading marketing consultants like Carlos Hidalgo, provide lead management audits to find the process leaks and provide best practice guidance.

The next step in the evolution of online B2B marketing will be the powerful opportunity for developing not just short-term leads, but in cost-effectively building sustainable brands through these online channels. James Farmer from B2B Magazine states that there "is still a great deal of learning with regards to brand building online," and accordingly, his organization continues to promote various educational events around the U.K., helping B2B marketers understand and apply new online techniques.

Posted by Will Schnabel at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our focus on this blog is typically on best practices for B2B marketing and on thought leadership around the major opportunities and challenges facing B2B marketers today. So it's not often we do a blog piece directly focused on our marketing automation platform, per se. But I was recently asked to contribute a guest blog piece to the ReachForce blog, "The B2B Lead," on our platform and how it is different from other leading marketing automation platforms. The piece is titled, "What is Silverpop Engage B2B? -- Marketing Automation Who's Who," and it was published yesterday.

Putting together this post was a great thought exercise. In approaching it, I tried to not focus so much on features and functions -- as these are constantly changing -- and instead focused on how I think Silverpop approaches the market differently with its Engage B2B platform.

After all, the point of marketing automation is to really to help marketers improve how they market; thus, evaluating which marketing automation platform is best for a given marketing organization requires understanding their specific challenges and opportunities. In the B2B marketing arena, much of the challenge (and opportunity) is related to seismic changes around the B2B buyer -- what the SiriusDecisions team calls 'Buyer 2.0' -- which is a good starting place.

So I thought I would share an excerpt of this post with you and invite your feedback on my thinking.

Here is an excerpt:

There are many challenges facing B2B marketers today, but they are almost all traceable to one inflection point -- a fundamental, Internet-age shift in power that has taken place. Today, the B2B 'buying unit' has immense information-based resources at its disposal. Couple this with a corporate accountability and transparency mindset, and the result is a B2B buyer that is now calling the shots ... not the B2B vendor.

The implication is a new B2B marketing dynamic that demands responding to customer 'pull' over a traditional marketing 'push' mentality. MarketingSherpa has published data indicating that for every sales-ready lead that comes into a B2B vendor, there are 5-6X more leads that are longer-term and must be patiently nurtured until they are ready to purchase.

Buyers increasingly set the ground rules on when and where they will engage. Buyers also increasingly turn to trusted third parties for education, not sales people ... whom they engage as an almost final stage in their process. This means B2B marketers must focus heavily on 'getting found,' nurturing prospects and managing pre-sales buyer dialogue.

And yet the impetus for B2B marketers to proactively generate leads, drive sales and support customer lifetime value has never been stronger. Enter marketing automation.

How We're Different

The drivers above explain the rapid growth in the marketing automation marketplace. But what makes one vendor different from another?

At Silverpop, we believe assessing how one marketing automation vendor is different from another comes down to understanding their approach to helping marketers address this 'brave new world' of B2B marketing as described above.

Our approach is simple.

> Total Focus on B2B marketing. First, we have a marketing automation solution built, from the ground up, around the unique needs and issues of B2B marketers. This is our focus, and it's how we rationalize everything we do to extend, expand and innovate its features and capabilities.

> Orchestrating buyer-centric marketing; powering sales and marketing collaboration. Second, our products and services are designed to address the major external and internal issues facing B2B marketers today. What are these issues? At an external/marketplace level, it is being more buyer-centric than ever before (given the environment described above). At an internal/organizational level, it is better aligning and collaborating with the sales organization.

This is the approach that underpins and drives our Silverpop Engage B2B marketing automation platform.

Click here to view the entire post on the ReachForce blog.

Posted by Adam Needles at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I gave a presentation last week at CRM Magazine's annual CRM Evolution summit in New York City on 'strategic' marketing automation. What was I trying to get at with this spin on the topic? Well, it's easy to show -- technically -- what automation does, but I thought it was more compelling to focus on a strategic view of what we are really trying to accomplish. What is underlying and driving the need for B2B marketing organizations to adopt marketing automation?

It comes down to the simple context of managing buyer dialogue -- a concept I touched on in another recent blog piece on sales/marketing alignment. You want to manage a one-on-one, upstream (i.e., pre-sales) dialogue with a B2B buyer that builds purchase momentum and that consequently hands off a high-quality Marketing Qualified Lead to your sales colleague (who should then pick up the dialogue from where you left off). Yet in order to close a sufficient volume of downstream sales, you must manage quite a large volume of these upstream 'one-on-one' conversations ... and on a massive scale. SiriusDecisions reported at their May annual Summit that in 2009 the average B2B marketing organization started 1,000 of these conversations for every 2.31 deals closed.

What does this have to do with the relevance of content and campaigns?

I think most marketers would acknowledge the buyer dialogue context when speaking strategically about CRM and marketing automation. And data shows that taking the buyer-centered approach in marketing pays off. "Campaigns that are [buyer] event-triggered have a five-times better success rate," noted a recent article on destinationCRM.com," and highly-targeted ... campaigns, whereby the customer finds you, have shown 10 times the success rate over those that are intrusive."

Yet -- too often as marketers -- we completely forget the dialogue context as we develop content and campaigns and put together our lead management strategy. Should we use a white paper to generate leads? What should we say in a follow-up e-mail from a tradeshow? How should our search engine optimization and lead nurturing integrate in our overall marketing strategy?

These somehow become questions we struggle to answer because we think about the tactics in a vacuum, versus placing them in context. As a result, we lose 'relevance' -- a concept my colleague Loren McDonald explains is about 'the right message' at 'the right time' and which is critical to effective marketing.

I believe that in B2B marketing the strongest approach to rationalizing content and campaigns -- and improving net relevance -- is to leverage the buyer dialogue context.

Where does a given piece of content or step in a campaign lie in the typical dialogue with a buyer in the midst of his/her decision-making process? That is the question that should govern the subsequent content copy or campaign flow developed.

How do we get our heads wrapped around the buyer's decision-making process?

Okay, let me admit that this can be complicated and will vary by industry, company and customer. It's admittedly no easy task to analyze -- in detail -- your buyer's process and the mediums/messages that are most relevant at various stages of evaluation. You may never have the perfect model of this critical dialogue path, but that's no excuse for not trying to get your head wrapped around this. The good news is that none of us are the first B2B marketers (or sales people) to ask this question.

There is a wealth of research and numerous business books over the past few decades that have tackled the topic of understanding the B2B buyer. One particularly-insightful book (which I think of as a modern-day sales classic) is Customer Centered Selling, published in 1998 by Robert L. Jolles. Jolles is a former training consultant for XEROX -- the folks who literally invented modern B2B selling techniques -- and he has great insights into the buying process. He believes that there is a repeatable process that every buyer goes through -- beginning and ending with 'satisfaction.'





I won't go into a complete explanation. But Jolles' insights are very instructive in understanding what motivates a buyer to move from one stage to the next, and he has great data on the steps where we spend a lot of time and energy. For instance, he reports data showing that buyers spend 79% of their time at the 'acknowledgement' phase -- where they know they need to buy something but are still 'on the fence' about the purchase.

So what should a B2B marketer do to drive this process (and dialogue)?

Jolles comments early on in his book that "[t]he key concept of Customer Centered Selling is to learn to analyze where your customers are in their decision cycle and assist in moving them through to a decision. In doing so, you must learn what tactics are appropriate for which part of the decision cycle." He obviously wrote the book to help sales professionals analyze their prospects and figure out how to move them along; moreover, at the time when he wrote this book, the conventional wisdom was that a seasoned B2B sales professional could actually manage this entire process.

The problem lies in the Internet and its influence on the modern B2B buying process. Buyers are increasingly self-propelled as they go through this process -- consuming Internet-based information, including consulting other buyers and experts. As a result, they are engaging a sales professional later and later in the process. In fact, sales professionals are increasingly relegated to interacting with B2B buyers at the investigation stage or later (noted by the yellow stars below). This means that at this stage the buyer has already formed many of his/her opinions -- leaving less room for the sales professional to influence the process and creating a problem for the vendor company.





Enter the B2B marketer -- armed with this insight. By looking at the buying process in these terms and understanding where sales is engaged in the dialogue, it becomes increasingly clear where the B2B marketing team has an opportunity to close the gap and manage the upstream dialogue -- moving the buyer through the 'acknowledgement,' 'decision,' 'criteria' and 'measurement' stages (noted by the orange stars above). And marketing can do this through content and targeted communication, eventually handing off a Marketing Qualified Lead somewhere around the 'investigation' stage.

This gap analysis helps to rationalize marketing's role, but it also helps to focus our efforts as B2B marketers.

What does this mean for keeping campaigns and content relevant?

The next step is to understand the nature of the dialogue and the mediums leveraged at different steps in the process. For instance, understanding how B2B buyers leverage social media, thought leadership (such as Webinars and white papers) and traditional media to get off the 'fence' and decide to make a purchase helps to identify opportunities for tactics and content that will serve a compelling role in this stage of the process. Similarly, understanding the role e-mail nurturing can play in bridging the gap between acknowledgement phase and shifting into a more-formal purchase evaluation helps to rationalize your nurturing campaigns.

Below are some examples of mediums and content types that often play a role in key stages of the B2B buying process.





The key take-away is that buyer dialogue is always happening, and today it's a process that is less and less easy to control. So understanding the process and knowing the gaps you need to close as a B2B marketer helps to rationalize and inform the focus of your content and campaigns. It also points to the strategic role that marketing automation increasingly must play in managing a volume of micro-conversations and converting them into Marketing Qualified Leads. The key is to keep the buyer -- and your dialogue with that buyer -- at the center of your marketing strategy. And the result will be greater relevance and also greater sales conversions.

What do you think about this buyer dialogue context? What are your thoughts on how marketers can better leverage customer-centered strategies to improve the relevance of content and campaigns?

Posted by Adam Needles at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)