Hey Tech Marketers, How About Helping Your Customers Solve Problems
“Nobody Cares About Your Products (Except You),” is one of the core rules that author and marketing thought-leader David Meerman Scott espouses in his latest book, World Wide Rave, and throughout his other works and blogs.
The most zealous anti-smokers that I know are former smokers. The fact that in hindsight, I can see that I was guilty of being a bit too proud of the features and functions of my own products as a technology marketer makes me just a bit maniacal about David’s product rule as a user and consumer of tech products today. Unfortunately, it seems like there are still quite a few technology marketers out there that did not get the memo.
My Mini-Technology Odyssey:
For the past few weeks, I’ve been in search of a solution that will allow me to better serve my customers and grow my business. My opportunity is to extend my service offerings by providing e-learning services/courses to subscribers to specific audiences. Based on the feedback that I’ve received in teaching or supplementing my MBA programs with on-line offerings and given the time and cost challenges that so many professionals are facing, I’m convinced that it is time to expand into subscription-based e-learning.
What I thought would be a simple search has turned into a quest worthy of Homer. While it is quite possible that I’m seeking fulfillment for a problem that has not yet been solved—a service that will allow independents and small firms to offer e-learning via a hosted platform with e-commerce and participant management functions, I don’t think this is the issue. There are plenty of firms that purport to offer all, most of or parts of this solution. I think.
Here are the Marketing Lessons I’ve Discovered Thus Far:
-Value-chain and systems thinking are foreign topics. There are a myriad of pieces and parts providers that might sell more pieces and parts if they were able to connect people like me with other providers and partners in the value chain.
Instead of focusing on where their offering fits, these firms view the world through the eyes of their products, not the needs of their customers. Remember the old saying that no one buys a drill, they are buying the hole? It’s true.
In one memorable discussion with a rep for a flash authoring tool, he seemed taken aback that I might ask about platforms or other service providers where I could use the output of his company’s offerings. A review of their web site left you thinking that this very substantial organization viewed themselves as the center of the e-learning universe, yet in reality they are just one component provider. Marketing myopia, anyone?
-Feature lists do not equal answers to business problems. Most of the service providers that sound like they might just solve my problem forced me to wade through long lists of discrete, acronym filled feature lists and jargon, only to leave me wondering whether they truly have what I need. What do you do? Who do you serve? How are your offerings solving problems? None of those questions are tackled head-on.
-Once you get a live human on the phone, you want to throw him/her back. Not once have I encountered a rep on the phone that is capable of indicating whether their offerings meet my needs. They either are clueless or they are so obviously incented to sell what they have, that they engage in something that reeks of used car sales tactics.
-Speaking of used car sales: What will it take for you to drive this product home today? I love the vendors that require you to walk on hot coals to gain access to pricing. Most often, they require a demo before sharing pricing with you. Sorry, but life is too short. I don’t care about YOUR SELLING PROCESS! I want a solution to my business challenge.
Tough Love for Marketers:
1. Revisit your website and ask your customers and targeted buyers to tell you whether your messaging and presentation are helping them understand how you might solve their problems. Build content to match your buyers and ensure that it speaks to solutions, not features.
2. Develop a systems-thinking mentality if you are selling pieces and parts. More than likely, no one needs your piece and part in isolation. The better you can relate and link your offerings to other good offerings in the value-chain, the more your prospective buyers will be comfortable in purchasing your offerings.
3. Stop with the offensive, insulting and invasive selling tactics and pricing shell games! You are just pissing us off.
4. Educate your reps. Teach them how to ask questions and help clients solve problems.
The Bottom-line for Now:
Enough with the myopic thinking and feature-focused, jargon-filled gobbledygook that passes for marketing messaging. Help someone solve a problem and you will sell more. Guaranteed.
Mind Your Knowledge Gap: Why Social Media is Essential to Your Career
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Crisis Leadership, Marketing, Marketing Yourself, Professional Growth
This is a wake-up call to my mid to late 30 to 40 something (and older) contemporaries. It’s time to figure out what all the noise is about social media and how to leverage it for yourself, your career and your organization.
It’s not going away. It may change and morph, but there’s a whole new world of conversations and interactions going on and if you are not plugged in, you are tuned out and wandering aimlessly.
Do You Tweet?
If I had $100 for every conversation that included something like (with a tone of disdain), “Twitter sounds ridiculous. Why do I want to know that someone is taking a shower or what they ate for breakfast,” I would be well on my way to recovering a few losses in my 401K.
I’m two months new to Twitter and amazed at the quality of the conversations and the number of great professionals that I’ve met. I’m also flabbergasted to think about the conversations, resources and talented professionals that I was missing out on prior to joining.
Are You LinkedIn?
Or another exchange that I had with a brilliant and talented and dear friend the other day, “I only signed up for LinkedIn because I was looking for someone. I hope this isn’t a mistake.”
Sigh. Instead of a mistake, in the right hands, this is a remarkably powerful research tool and the most efficient way to-date to connect with and maintain a dialogue with former and current colleagues. The only mistake is not to take advantage of it.
Thought About Marketing Lately?
I chat with many experienced marketing professionals that still view their jobs and their profession through the eyes of individuals that grew up and never left the teaching and prevailing wisdom of the 80’s.
Meanwhile, Seth Godin (Tribes) and Guy Kawaskai (Reality Check) and David Meerman Scott (World Wide Rave) and others are serving up powerful arguments that the processes of reaching people, building visibility, building brands and establishing credibility are all different.
The Younger Generation, Blogging and On-Line Learning:
As the MySpace/Facebook generation asserts itself in the workforce (see my post: In Hopeful Praise of the Millennials), the relevance of old approaches of working, leading and promoting will fade into history.
In my own case, a mere two years ago, I wasn’t certain about blogging and the prospective value from the time it would take in my daily schedule. Now, I’m a raving advocate for the medium as a means of establishing a dialogue with sharp people and for building your brand. The time commitment is down to less than one hour several times per week. I’m also curious about what’s next.
I am an education junkie (and passionate about great universities and great educators) and love the chance to bring a heavy dose of pragmatism into my MBA classrooms. I was slightly cynical about the potential of on-line education and wondered what all of the noise was about. In following the old adage, “if you want to learn something, sign up to teach it,” I did. Three times.
Once you rethink and acclimate to the communication dynamics, the potential to integrate on-line and live education is remarkable. In my hybrid class (one week face to face the next on-line) in Project Management this past winter, the on-line portion provided the ability to research and share perspectives much broader and deeper than any I’ve ever witnessed in a straight classroom setting.
The Bottom-Line For Now:
I’ll be back on this topic sometime soon.
My advice to you or for your doubting colleagues is to show them the networking and research power of social media. Highlight examples of brand-building and thought leadership development that cost nothing but time. Showcase the savings from eliminating many interruption-marketing techniques in favor of the new approaches. Invite them to Twitter and show them how to filter out the noise and focus on connecting with the many, many sharp people.
There are no silver bullets in life or business, but there are sure-fire ways to fail. One of the best is to start acting like some of our parents and avoid what we don’t understand.
Hey, by the way, join me on Twitter or connect with me on LinkedIn. The conversations are great.
Now, if I could just figure out what all of the fuss is about Facebook. I just don’t get it…
Darn It, I Cannot Resist New Year’s Resolutions
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Decision-Making, Marketing Yourself
While I stand behind my post on Personal Quality Programs as the best way to make improvements in your life, I am a goal-oriented person and resolutions are like a challenge just daring me to achieve. I confess that I cannot move through the New Year holiday without organizing my ambitions into a neat little list.
I’m also a big fan of making your goals public. They seem to stick better when you’ve shared them with a few hundred of your friends.
In case you are interested, here are my goals for the upcoming year.
- Complete and publish 1 e-book per quarter. I’ve pussy-footed around this one long enough. I love writing, I love publishing and I love the promotional opportunity with e-books. I’m also a fan of the work and principles that David Meerman Scott espouses in the New Rules of Marketing & PR and his blog, Web Ink Now, and he’s convinced me of my need to publish in this format.
- Read one book every two weeks cover to cover. In this time-compressed, Tweet-driven (join me on Twitter) sound-bite world that we live in, I find myself reading the introduction, the first and second chapters and the conclusion. Unfortunately, too many business books feed this formula by putting all the meaty content at the beginning and the end.
- Launch my first on-line webinar/workshop modules. Much like e-books, I’ve danced with this topic and not executed.
- Increase work efficiency and manufacture more time for family. Back to the Personal Quality program again. Simple things, like saving minutes per hour by not monitoring e-mail in real time. Ignoring blog stats and focus on content creation can help increase efficiency. More efficient workouts at the gym can trim half an hour. Getting up at 5 instead of 5:30 every morning is more time created. With a bit of work, I can manufacture 2 additional hours per day to give back to work and family.
- Make the tough decisions. I preach about this in a business setting and yet I’ve held off on some key personal/professional decisions about my practice and career. I’ve been staring at the cliff on pursuing a Ph.D. and have not jumped or stepped back. It’s time to decide and keep moving.
- Find more new professional experiences and conquer them. I’ve long wanted to teach in Grad school and last year it became a permanent part of my life. I have a few more to knock out.
And last and not least, do a better job remembering how precious our time here is and to try and make every encounter in class, in workshops, in consulting engagements and in life, a good one. Happy New Year. Whether you are a goal-driven freak like me and have your own list, or you are satisfied to meander through your days, may you be happy and healthy.
Tuning In to Leadership (and much more) With A Great New Book
One of the highlights of the past few months has been the opportunity to gain some early insight into the forthcoming new book, Tuned In, by Phil Myers, Craig Stull and David Meerman Scott.
I'm excited about this book on a number of levels. In a pre-release article about the book, Phil, Craig and David make a promise to readers that they will show us an approach to finding "overlooked marketplace problems that, if solved, bring in customers who willingly buy your products and services without being coerced."
From my discussions with Phil and from reading the article and advance materials, I am confident that this promise will be more than kept, offering some much needed guidance for executives and marketers looking to create offerings that resonate with buyers. After 22 years leading high tech marketing teams, I couldn't help but ask myself, "Where was this book was all those years when I needed it?" Well, it's here now, or at least almost here, and marketers everywhere will be well served to read and apply the well-researched and well-developed ideas and approaches in this fascinating and practical new book.
Tuned In presents a six-step process for creating a resonator: "a product or service that so perfectly solves problems for buyers that it sells itself." The examples, approaches and ideas for realizing resonators and for supporting the creation of an organizational culture that institutionalizes the requisite thinking and processes are the heart of the work. The steps: find unresolved problems, understand buyer personas, quantify the impact, create breakthrough experiences, articulate powerful ideas and establish authentic connections offer powerful and practical guidance for marketers and executives everywhere.
Valuable Guidance for Leaders in Tuned In:
We all read and relate to ideas through the filters of our own experiences, and as I've immersed myself in writing, speaking, training and teaching on all things leadership during the past few years, I've started to view the world through the eyes of how great leaders at all levels transform organizations. The Tuned In tagline reads: "Uncover the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs," The breakthrough for me personally from this book is the perhaps unintended but powerful framework that emerges for creating and sustaining the leadership culture necessary to realize a Tuned In organization.
During the research for my book, Practical Lessons in Leadership, my co-author, Rich Petro, and I came away from hundreds of hours of interviews with the perspective that most leaders do not operate with a holistic view of what leadership is supposed to deliver to an organization. Tuned In helps solve that problem by offering clear context for the role and priorities of leaders at all levels as they pursue creating breakthrough experiences for their customers.
The Top Priorities of a Tuned In Leader:
- Creating the environment (atmosphere) necessary for individuals and teams to be comfortable and confident to take the risks and pursue the actions needed to identify and realize offerings that resonate.
- Bringing together individuals and teams with the talents, skills attitudes and sense of adventure needed to succeed as a business that is constantly searching for unresolved problems and applying the discipline needed to turn those into resonators.
- Ensuring that expectations and performance are defined, communicated and measured against customer and market standards, not just internal or competitor standards. Inherent in this activity is establishing a new way of measuring performance that aligns with the Tuned In Process.
- Developing his or her leadership credibility by ensuring that words and actions match and ensuring that associates receive the mentoring, feedback and developmental opportunities needed to grow and to pursue new and greater tasks.
- Constantly searching for, identifying and supporting the development of formal and informal leaders.
- Fostering an environment that encourages action-focused debate at all levels, across all functions up and down the leadership chain.
Armed with these priorities, Tuned In leaders, from the CEO to the front-line managers have a clear view of how they should invest their time and focus their energy. These items define the job descriptions of leaders at all levels and help guide the development of To-Do lists across the organization. There is no wiggle room for misalignment on these activities as an organization seeks to create offerings that resonate and surprise and delight buyers with great experiences.
The Bottom Line for Now:
Phil, Craig and David in Tuned In offer a pragmatic and effective approach for creating and sustaining success, regardless of the size or style of organization. Building on their framework, a Tuned In approach to leadership will help institutionalize the approaches and practices that they advocate.
You can and should read the book for the practical and actionable framework on creating value, but the richest veins of gold here for me are the ideas that the authors prompt for reshaping and invigorating our leadership habits.
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Join me for a webinar on Tuned In Leadership this Friday, June 13th at 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. PDT
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