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Buyer Personas are the foundation of great B2B marketing. Without personas, you simply cannot be great at demand generation. Personas are needed to tell you where to launch your campaigns, what topics to cover, what content you need, etc. To understand why personas are so important and to see a sample, refer to my earlier blog post, Personas are Critical, Mr/Mrs CEO. But I ask business leaders for “personas” in my day to day dealings with them, t … Read More

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One of my passions is helping B2B marketers leverage the power of great story-telling.

I posted a blog article entitled “5 Lessons for a B2B Marketer from “Breaking Bad.”

The post was very popular but controversial. Everyone except one person  said it was outstanding.  The one naysayer said the story telling was cheap and deceptive.

Here’s what he said:

“You’ve taken an epic TV show that has changed the face of television and trivialized it into a two-bit pitch to sell your B2B business. What company in their right mind would find your approach appealing or something they could trust or entertain. You’re virtually trying to convince companies to learn how to distort the truth, embellish the facts and concoct personnel falsehoods all in an attempt to keep prospective customers on the hook – when the bottom line is basically smoke and mirrors and a ‘carnie’ scheme to get them to buy your service and/or product? Pathetic try. No cigar… that is, unless your line of business is drugs!!!”

I wish to respond to the negative comment by sharing the insights of an expert. I don’t sell drugs, distort truth, embellish the facts or concoct personal falsehoods. Let’s turn to an independent expert.

I stand by my contention that businesses need to learn to tell great stories.

Michael Margolis published a document entitled “Believe Me – a Story-Telling Manifesto.”  Michael says “To change the world, change your story. ” What does he mean?

If you are to be successful in B2B marketing and drive sales leads, you simply must be believed. Story-telling in business is not “Once upon a time.” But anthropologists have learned the 70% of knowledge is learned from stories.

In business, to get your products and services considered, you need to change someone’s mind. But to challenge and question their beliefs, they get defensive. Michael believes this is the existing “story-line.” To get your message believed, you need a great story.

“The value of narrative exists far beyond just an investor pitch, illustrative vignette, or inspired speech. The stories we choose literally make our world. Our identities, our beliefs, and our values all live and breathe in the matrix of stories. It’s the prima materia of how we each perceive reality—our culture’s collective agreements. A search for answers begins to show how the dots are connected. It is hard not to see the huge implications of storytelling in an increasingly brand-driven, and experience-based economy. It’s all about the stories.”

People don’t buy a product or service, they buy the story attached to it.

Another story telling expert, Annette Simmons shares her thoughts:

To learn more about business story-telling, I suggest you download and read Believe Me.

What do you think? Do you agree with the man who flamed me, or do you agree on the importance of the narrative — the story, if you will.  We love comments.  We love Twitter followers. And we love our Facebook fans (okay “Likes)

Did you miss yesterday’s post on the “6 Keys to B2B Marketing Today?” Check it out if you did.

Case studies – results clients get from the use of your company’s products and services – is one of the most useful tools in the salesperson’s arsenal.  But how do you create a great case study?

You need  a formal process.

Case Study Worksheet

This is one of the many free tools offered at Find New Customers.

What do you think? We LOVE comments and reply to every one. You can also share this via the buttons below.

Download a free PDF of this by visiting Find New Customers.

With fewer than 1/2 of all salespeople making quota (CSO Insights) and almost 8 out of 10 saying they don’t have enough high quality leads (MarketingSherpa), it’s painfully obvious that times have changed and companies need to adapt. How can more salespeople make quota, CMOs get more job security and shareholders prosper?

What should you do? In my quest to improve the world of B2B marketing using business to business lead generation, I distill it down to 6 things. Do these 6 and your business will prosper.

1. Simplify
   The data shows people only read 28% of the words on a website. Cut it down drastically. Less is more today.
   Check the home page at Find New Customers. Look how simple it is. Check out VisibleGains for another incredibly simple site.
   Use graphics like this Infographic from Content Marketing Today.
2. Entertain
   Do you ever go to a trade show and watch the attendees? They scan your booth and instantly size you up – barely even slowing as they walk past. They do that online too. You have seconds.
   So stop the boredom.  Make it fun.
   For examples, look at HubSpot and Kinaxis. HubSpot does a campy TV show every Friday afternoon and Kinaxis produced the hilarious SuiteMates series.
3. Educate
   David Meerman Scott says “No one cares about your products and services except you. “ David’s right. But most websites tell what we do and what services we provide. Instead, focus on buyer problems and answers. Teach them a better way to serve THEIR customers.
4. Serve
   Content is king, queen and prince today.  Not only do you need content, but you need to craft it in a story-telling, problem to solution format.  You need to offer it in many different media and in many different places and not just on your Resources page. In essence, you need the ability to deliver the right content at the right moment to the right person.  Avitage has a great explanation on their Content Strategy and Execution site.  Patiently serve buyers over time, by gently nurturing them.
5. Listen
   8 out of 10 buyer say they found the seller.  If buyers are talking, listening becomes critical. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. are all places where you can listen and communicate.  You need to be there.  Look into social media listening platforms like Radian6 and Visible Technologies.
6. Share
   Give away great stuff.
   Make it easy.  No long registration forms.  Don’t be a jerk.

That’s it.  My 6 keys to B2B Marketing success today.

What do you think? Do you have others?

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is a lead generation company in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 150 to 5,000 employees and complex products) deliver low cost lead generation developing and implementing marketing lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in b2b lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

To contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers, please use the form below.

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Over the month of May and early June, I had a chance to interview some of the sharpest minds in business to business and business to consumer marketing and sales. Before we share the list of experts, let’s examine some key conclusions — the marketing take-ways, if you will.

1. Planning is imperative.  Need a deep understanding of value, targets and personas. Too many CEOs expect instant results. Results come from careful planning and research. This takes time.
2. Data is critical. Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer of Eloqua, said “In God We Trust. All others bring data.” This was borne out when e-mail marketing experts like Joel Book of ExactTarget, John Rizzi of e-Dialog and Ben Rothman of Acxiom all talked about reacting to what people do online and personalizing your communications.  This rifle-focus approach takes data.
3. A service mentality — the best companies help buyers do their jobs and improve their lives. Scott’s Miracle Grow shares specific personalized lawn tips. American Airlines shares interesting travel destinations. What are they not doing? They are not selling!

These luminaries included:

• Kevin Temple of Enterprise-Selling
• Trish Bertuzzi, the Bridge Group
• Sharon Drew Morgen, expert in Buying Facilitation
• Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology
• Jon Miller, VP Marketing and Co-Founder, Marketo
• Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer, Eloqua
• John Rizzi, Chief Executive Officer, e-Dialog
• Ben Rothfeld, Jedi Knight of email, Acxiom
• Joel Book,Principal, Marketing Research & Education Group, ExactTarget
• Eric Goldman, Managing Partner of Gossamar, Inbound Marketing Expert
• Blake Cahill, SVP, Marketing at Visible Technologies
• Craig Rosenberg, The Funnelholic

We’d like to thank each and every one of those men and women for sharing their expertise with us.  Much appreciated!

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(We’re proud that Marketo featured our highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers, on their Marketing Resources page. Thank you.)

Take our Linkedin poll. What do you think of Marketing Automation?

Every expert in sales and marketing today says the same thing. You simply must integrate sales and marketing in your business.  Leads need to flow back and forth. Sounds logical to me.

But how? How can we ensure it happens? Why do so many fail? In my estimation, 9 out 10 who try to integrate actually fail at it.

The goal of this post is to keep YOU from failing, where so many others have crashed and burned.

Is the only way to effect change a major disaster?

A good way to find root causes is to take lessons from other companies. It’s not easy to fix these issues.  To illustrate the challenge, look at this comment:

“We have to get the priorities right. And Job 1 is to get these things that have happened, get them fixed and get them sorted out. We don’t just sort them out on the surface. We fix them deeply.” He’s talking about making safety a priority after an accident.

How do you make change happen? They did the usual things.  Chances are, it’s the way you get things done in your company.

• Put someone in charge
• Put money behind it.

Did it work? You tell me.

Those words and actions were from the new CEO of BP – four years ago – to fix safety problems.  (recounted in NY Times, Business Section, 6/19/2010, page 1) Despite executive pronouncements, there was a little safety problem in the Gulf of Mexico recently. (Yep, that oil spill that’s been headline news around the world.) The old way of doing business was deeply ingrained in their culture, so the desired changes never happened.

What was clear was that a new person in charge and money – did not change the culture of the company.  Does that happen in your business?  Do you hire a consultant, pay him or her a lot of money, and then go back to the way you always did things? Perhaps 9 out of 10 companies do that.

Let’s examine another company who did it differently.  Exxon Mobil has not had a serious accident in the 21 years since the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Exxon used that disaster to transform their culture.

After the disaster, Exxon formed a team of some of its most respected executives and gave them a mission – figure out how to embed safety into the culture. Note that Exxon Mobil used a much different process than simply throwing words, money and people at the problem.

• The team visited sites and listened. They learned the existing culture.
• The team had the full and public support of top leaders.
• Processes were put in place to be followed at any location.
• Redundancies were put in.
• Workers were encouraged to bring safety issues to their bosses.

As a result, the company became so safety-crazed, today they test the temperature of the lettuce in the cafeteria on a regular basis.

What take-aways are there for the CEO of a business to business seller? How can we truly integrate sales and marketing, without first incurring a major disaster? Here are 5 tips:

1. Put your most respected executives on it along with outside help like Find New Customers.
2. Give them the full and vocal support of top leadership.
3. Provide them with time to uncover existing processes and challenges.
4. Support them to implement new processes.
5. Measure and test.  Make sure the culture really changed.

What do you think? How hard is it to change culture? We love comments, Retweets and “Likes” on our Facebook Fan Page.

At Find New Customers, our specialty is resolving the tough People Issues you face.

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This was a fabulous post and very popular. For good reason.

Have you heard of AMC's critically acclaimed series "Breaking Bad?" If you're a business to business marketer, you ought to check it out. I consider it an Owners Manual for B2B marketing today. Perhaps you've never seen "Breaking Bad." If not, let's get you up to speed. Here's how they describe it: Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher who lives in New Mexico with his wife (Anna Gunn) and teenage son … Read More

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