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We fight the same fight for relevance and acceptance in a corporate setting by trying to blend the right message or narrative with the right piece of “engaging” content, wrapping it in a creative execution that entices people to act. An overly complex (by design?) cadre of strategies powered by tactics, bolstered by words and images and measured — for better or worse — by how our actions correlate to revenue.

At the end of the day, we will succeed or fail based on our answers to two simple questions: “Does what you do every day help sales teams close deals?” and  “Can you prove it?”

AN ENABLER BY ANY OTHER NAME
Perhaps, in an effort to not be judged so harshly or more directly tie our roles to $, someone, presumably in marketing, coined the term “sales enablement.” This term, by the way, used to make me feel a little like a bespeckled dweeb (see inset photo) who writes the quarterback’s term paper to avoid getting beat up.

I come from a land and time that was no friend to enablers. They were the parents who replaced discipline with a candy bar to avoid the meltdown in a supermarket. They were the boss who kept  his under-performing nephew on board as a favor to his single-parent sister. They were the spouse who didn’t put his or her foot down after the other spent one too many nights out on the town.

The enablers I know rewarded laziness or just plain bad behavior. This may come across like I’m picking a fight over a word. Maybe I am. But from where I sit as a marketer, words are everything.

Maybe Geoffrey Moore’s power words like Engagement and/or Empowerment are more palatable to me personally, but regardless of the sheen we put on it as marketers, we all need to deliver something that can be directly tied to someone else’s ability to sell something. Or else.

SALES ENABLEMENT/EMPOWERMENT/ENGAGEMENT =  PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE
In the digital age of ubiquitous personal publishing and sharing — as well as the rapid proliferation of devices to consume and distribute this fire hose of knowledge that is always on — my view on enabling, or more specifically, sales enablement has softened a bit. Now it’s less an indictment of a person’s bad habits and more of a realization that helping people find what they need, streamlined by proven processes and fine-tuned by purpose-led technology may be our saving grace.

Whether you are in competitive intelligence, marketing communications, public relations, product or solution marketing or are responsible for driving the global marketing strategy for your company, you need to be a curator and distributor of actionable knowledge. Those who take the role lightly by sending sales reps one-size-fits-all newsletters or alerts, and content not aligned with the buyer’s journey are at risk of being viewed as expendable instead of indispensable.

With modern software applications it is now possible to arm sales and account people with the critical information they need at the point of prospect or customer engagement. Regardless of the type of information or where it lives, be it product information, hyper-relevant web news, customer order details, help desk activity and more can personalized and delivered in the the context of a prospect or customer record. Welcome to the age of automating the Troglodytic manual tasks of hunter, gather and filterer to simply deliver personally relevant knowledge that contributes to revenue.

HOW ATTENSA CAN HELP
A brief commercial, yet completely factual, interlude: For me personally, the Attensa StreamServer simplifies and speeds up my most time-consuming tasks by finding, filtering and delivering immediately valuable information to me that gets more targeted to my preferences, and therefore more immediately actionable, with every use.

For you, the sales enabling marketer, the Attensa StreamServer can do the same by making your marketing department the knowledge epicenter for your organization responsible for connecting people in your own department, in sales and throughout the company with the knowledge that drives business results and better relationships. What’s more, you’ll have the data to prove it.

To see how all of this works, take a look at the Attensa Solution Overview, or download our latest white paper A Framework for Reducing Information Overload in the Enterprise. Reach out to me directly if you want to learn more.

Until I interrupt you again, Viva La Enablement!

Mark

@MarkAEvertz

This post was enhanced from a previous Attensa post on May 23, 2011 ^ME

Here’s a “Director’s Cut” for a post of mine born on Feb. 16, 2011 at nonboxpdx. Viva la verbosity! -ME

Want to know what your company has in common with cultural powerhouses with iconic products  like Nike, Apple, Virgin Atlantic, Legos and Porsche?

As it turns out, not much.

That was my key takeaway from the latest book trumpeting design and deep customer analysis as the way to the promiseland of sustained revenue and consistently unleashing products that people crave.

Thankfully, former Business Week Seattle bureau chief Jay Greene uses Design is How it Works, as a platform for showing the uninspired that creating a product or a company that taps into the Id of people is as simple as embracing failure and financial losses, changing organizational processes to bring Design Thinking into every discipline in a company from the C-suite through R&D and on down through the ranks,  and doing deep ethnographic and psychographic research on probable users of your product before embarking on your next build.

Sound a bit daunting?

It is. which is why IDEO’s Tim Brown notes in the book, that when people tell him of their aspirations to be like Nike or Apple, he counters “You don’t have the nerve.” That is the greatest part of Greene’s book for me. The corporate moguls and design luminaries he interviews call a spade a spade. You can’t be Nike. You aren’t Steve Jobs or Jonathan Ive. You haven’t got the discipline, the reputation or, frankly, the balls.

The headline of this post is inspired by every client or boss who has uttered phrases like “We want to be known as the Apple of the (insert industry segment here).” Or…”Our products are best-of-breed innovations and we need to create the same experience and culture Nike does to drive demand and loyalty to their products”

Never mind that the industry segment is sewage treatment technology or the product is road salt. Make it pop, sucka! How many of you design professionals can relate to John Barratt, president and CEO of Teague in Seattle:

“I can’t tell you how many how many product briefs we get saying we want a product that’s as good or better than the iPhone,” he says. “That’s a five-alarm brief for me..those folks just don’t get it. An iPhone is not a product. It’s a manifestation of a culture.”

It’s that kind of no-bullshit take on the power of design to transform a company and an economy that makes Greene’s book so endearing, refreshing, and such a swift read.
For those of you who still think you’ve got what it takes to check your egos at the door, throw caution to the wind in the face of financial pressure, and actually find out what your customers want instead of what you can give them, here’s something you should know. Good design isn’t what you think it is.

• It’s not an emotive image with pithy text and a dope beat from a band named Mooseknuckle.
• It’s not a box made of hemp fiber in the shape of condor’s nest that was — be honest – an afterthought to hold your clever “Must-have” eco product.
• It’s not even the promise of a new piece of software that reports it will solve world hunger with a user interface you’re sure is so easy even a chimp can use it.

It’s how a product works in the hands of your customers. It may be easy to use or pleasing to look at, but if it doesn’t solve a pain it’s a waste of time and money. “If there’s no pet peeve, there’s no product,” says Alex Lee, president of OXO.

Thus, the title of the book absconds with the Steve Jobs quote: “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Whether that’s the tried-(or trite?)and-true of form following function, an evolution of tired phrases like “out of the box thinking”or new fangled concepts like Design Thinking permeating all disciplines to foster organizational creativity — the bottom line is you need to know your customers better than they know themselves. The only way to do that is to get your hands dirty and actually engage with them where they will put your product to use. The book gives some great examples of how and where to do that in the profiles on OXO, REI, Nike and Lego.

So, for me, the book is a call to get your head out of the freaking clouds or at least out of your own building.  It’s time to stop aspiring and start perspiring. There’s plenty of work to be done learning about what your customers need to cure their pet peeves. Build those products and they will come.

And, instead of leaving you with a cheesy movie line platitude, here’s a more actionable treat from Jay  Greene himself when I swapped a note asking for him to clarify design thinking and discuss ways all companies can infuse their operations with the principles of design thinking:

“Like industrial designers, design thinkers use creativity and empathy to help them craft something that has an emotional connection with customers. They prototype concepts and collaborate with colleagues to test theories and come up with novel approaches to new products. The difference is that design thinkers apply those concepts to businesses, such as software-as-a-service, that people don’t typically think of as being design-focused. They use anthropology, sociology and psychology to study customers in order to understand their unstated and unmet needs. They prototype strategies and experiences much the same way that companies model early versions of physical products. So if you’re looking for strategies for companies to implement to create iconic products, design thinking would be a great place to start.”

Here, here!

The Marlboro Man Prequel (mouse up to the top of the page after clickthrough for the full obituary)

Jack Norman Evertz (March 8, 1927 – July 27, 2009)

The words “They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore” come to mind when I think about my gramps. Part redneck, part roughneck and all man in an increasingly domesticated man’s world, Grampa Jack was quick with opinions and head-shaking dismay despite his lack of a high school diploma to back him up. Common sense ruled — in the shop, around the card table, on the porch and anywhere else he chose to plant his Size 12 Tony Lama boots. A simple wisdom left permanent marks, like these gems:

Grampa Jack on Stress:
“I just never could understand why you and your dad always worried to high hell about everything. More than half the time, it never turns out that way and the rest of the time it’s not nearly as bad as you think. And if it is ever that bad you’re too damn worn out from worrying to do anything about it.”

Grampa Jack on Women:
“Nothing’s harder on a man than an angry woman.”

Grampa Jack on Manhood:
“The world doesn’t owe you anything and it will knock you on your ass every chance it gets. Your job is to keep gettin’ up.” His favorite movie was Cool Hand Luke if that tells you anything.

He laughed at the pussification of the American male and would routinely harken back to his Golden Era of the’50s and ’60s where smokin’, drinkin’ and raisin’ hell were a man’s God-given right –  and anybody who said otherwise could go straight to hell.

Some of that tenacity and toughness no doubt makes you strong on the battlefield or in the bar room, but I had the hardest time convincing Grampa Jack that his Advanced Coursework in Manhood for his only grandson was losing the battle in the boardroom. “There’s ego, politics, turf wars, and hurt feelings that come into play. You have to be nice,” I told him.

“What the hell does nice have to do with business?” he asked. “And, did you say hurt feelings?”

Never did give him any good  answers on why brains had rapidly replaced balls for dominance in the American West, except to throw another cliche at him that got him to come around half way. “You get more bees with honey, Grampa.”

Well, with him cashing in his chips at the end of July to spend the rest of eternity with my Gramma Grace (a tough cookie in her own right), here are 5 things Grampa Jack taught me that make me a better man and a better marketer.

1. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.

2. Shut up. You just might learn something. (Still working on this one)

3. If you make a mistake, own up to it. Then work like hell to fix it.

4. If you believe in what you’re doing, don’t back down.

5. A man is only as good as his word.

T-5. Outwork your co-workers. Outsmart your enemies.

R.I.P. Gramps. You were a helluva lot smarter than you gave yourself credit for.

A prelude to an actual point
Before I figure out where I’m going, I’d like to take a peek back to where I was the last time we crossed paths in this here wordslinger’s outpost OK…Done. Hmmm…All I can think of is: Who the hell pissed God off in June?

Michael Jackson - R.I.P.
Farrah Fawcett – R.I.P.
Ed McMahan - R.I.P.
Billy Mays – R.I.P.
Karl Malden – R.I.P.
My Job – R.I.P.

And July’s off to a grim start with Steve McNair and Arturo Gatti. All I can say is: Hang in there Patrick Swayze!

This recent foray into obitu-tainment and an air of professional vulnerability at the moment have made me take stock in a few things — as death and loss have a tendency to do.

Family – Seeing my kid swim for the first time and hanging out with my wife at a movie on a Tuesday afternoon were life-affirming ( Go See Public Enemies!) .

Remembering the world through the eyes of a child – Just watching my kid react to something and then ask “Why?” has re-educated me on the importance of not taking anything at face value. And the whole wonderment thing he’s got going  for the seemingly inconsequential…I want more of that, for sure! Check out this dispatch from Braden Kelly (www.twitter.com/innovate for you Tweeps) Innovation Through the Eyes of a Child. Get your inner child back via this recap with vids featuring Gever Tulley @ the TED Conference on Tinkering School. And for a longer leap into this idea, Watch Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture — Achieving Your Childhood Dreams video (76 min. of pure gold). Still blown away by the personal and professional lessons in his presentation/book.

Connections with people of like mind — I can’t believe how many people want to help me or need help themselves when it comes to marketing, social media strategy, sales lead generation, Green business communications or health care research. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the kindness and opportunities.

A strict,  bullshit-free diet — Seriously, just tell me what you have, what you want and why you think you need it. If I can help I will. With brevity, sincerity and transparency, people will likely be willing to join your parade by being followers, evangelists or customers.

The last life lesson re: avoiding b.s. is hard to do in an uberconnected, socially explosive and largely self-serving world. I don’t spend a lot of time on social psychology but one name that always sticks out is Abraham Maslow and his Theory of Human Motivation, aka Hierarchy of Needs. Sales guys and gals grinding it out day-to-day know this theory all too well. Marketers are trained these days to call them pain points and my guess is that sales reps have adopted the language out of sheer acquiescence borne from too many deer-in-the-headlights interactions with doe-eyed corporate do-gooders.

Putting the pain point out of its misery
Maybe in these dark times filled with grief, fear and  financial uncertainty  we should pick a new rallying point for how we engage people who don’t know us very well and probably don’t care. The video on David Meerman Scott’s recent blog post Times Change. B2B Fundamentals Do Not says it all (worth the 2 minutes, but basically…Who are you? What do you want and why should I care in both  GrumpyVision and BusyVision). Be concise. Be relevant. Be helpful. Or Be Gone. This isn’t about you convincing people you understand their pain with limp phrases like In this tough economy… or a  data point from a well-paid analyst that says 80 percent of their peers fear losing their jobs and are eating  Xanax by the handful.

Trust me, your prospects know money is tight, that  their job is harder than it was a year ago and that their bosses are way too interested in  showing  hotshot summer interns the ropes in marketing and sales departments all across the country.

Enough with trying to sympathize. Do something or sell something that assuages fear or boosts confidence.

The Maslow Mashup
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy lives in the textbooks of many a marketing student but slowly leaks out of the brain over time due to stress, forced servitude and/or organizational compliance under the heading of “We’ve always done it this way so you will too.”

If your sales pitch to prospects doesn’t somehow tell a good story using at least one of these 5 needs, you need to talk to someone in your marketing department. If you’re in the marketing department and you have no idea what I’m writing about, then we need talk, tweet or telepathically connect.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Take note of the fact that if your product helps people breathe, eat, drink, have sex, sleep, stay chilled out, or poop you are likely going to make a very good first impression. Good for you!

If not, then you need to: Be Concise. Be Relevant. Or Be Helpful.

So let’s put the pain point to bed and try to be a little more reaffirming, huh? I vote for PuppyPoint: Warm fuzzy ways to trick the heart into buying something you know you’re going to have to clean up after, but just can’t resist.

I’ve been part of the problem for about 15 years now, but moving forward I’ll try to market and sell products, services, causes (myself!?!?) in  ways that help people keep their jobs, feed and spend more time with  their families, save or make money and have more sex. Before you think I’m on the road to door-to-door perversity, remember that even if your product isn’t Viagra or some jaw-dropping gadget, it is likely to have the capacity to help someone in some way to afford a new car, buy a nice place to sleep or grab just the right body spray to get the girl or boy. If you can make that connection with a level of relevance and sincerity in any industry from Agriculture to Zoology, then you’ve done your job.

Let me know what you’re doing out there to make a difference. And if you’re in sales or marketing and want to tell me “DUH!” then feel free to do that below. If you need me, though, I’m ready to help.

Cheers,

Mark

T.C.P.

This Post Inspired By I’ve Seen All Good People — Yes.

You and your sales colleagues call them leads. Some call them prospects. Others suspects. Whatever you call those who you believe absolutely need what you sell—take a breath.

Think for a minute before you go headlong into strategies, tactics and buying cycle position assessments. These are people.

Just like you and me. We all hold the same fears of making bad decisions, losing respect or getting fired. The same needs for validation. Similar desires for adulation.

With that empathy in mind, now take a look at your current sales funnel. Some people are waving a big red flag saying “Help me right now” by phone call, e-mail or Web site visit. Others were kind enough to respond to your BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) profile questions on a microsite after you reached out to them via direct mail, e-mail or online.

Tire-kicking isn’t a crime
All others who showed interest in your message but didn’t meet your sales teams’ BANT criteria have been relegated to the tire-kicker position—doomed to languish into perpetuity in your CRM database.

This decision just cost your company big money. Research indicates that 80-90 percent of those “tire-kickers” will buy a product similar to yours in the next 12 months. It’s likely that product won’t be yours unless you keep your company top of mind. Turn your info seekers into buyers by becoming a genuine business decision collaborator.

Prospect-to-lead tip: Restraint
But…wait! Back away from the phone or keyboard for a minute. Before offering more brochureware or demos, put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. What would you want? If you are actually having an internal dialogue right now, you’re likely saying “Something relevant. Something actionable. Something that helps me take one step forward—not retreat in fear from a full-frontal marketing assault on my senses.”

Here are four steps.

First: Be relevant
Your marketing materials in all media formats sent out via every communication vehicle at your disposal is not relevance. It’s carpet bombing. Find thought leaders outside your company to talk about solutions to broader industry challenges. A simple, timely, “Did you see this?” with a one-sentence description, a link to the article, and a one-sentence explanation of why this is relevant to previous interactions with your company will suffice.

Second: Be timely but considerate
Again, put yourself in the shoes of the person you are engaging with. How many times would you want to be contacted in this manner or another mode of communication and what makes it less intrusive? Once a week? Once a month? Once a quarter? Don’t know? Ask.

Here’s a great article forwarded to me recently by a colleague that has two industry leaders answering questions on B2B best practices, reading “Digital Body Language” and nurturing prospects to become leads: When Is It Nurturing, When Is It “Big Brother”?

Third: Set expectations
On that first communication with your new acquaintance, set the ground rules for any outreach going forward. Tell them you are contacting them based on their expressed interest in the subject matter and that you intend to send news and information that could help them stay abreast of key issues and solutions in the industry. Set a delivery expectation timeframe and enable them to say “No.”

Fourth: Request feedback
Set up a feedback loop for prospects to either ask questions or update their current interest or buying status related to your products. The key is patience. Help them arrive at decisions based on knowledge.

Lead cultivation resources
Marketing Sherpa has a library of strategic documents on proven approaches that gingerly move people through buying decisions. Lead Nurturing Best Practices: New Data, Charts, Tips to Put More Punch in Your Cultivation Tactics provides great guidance.

Ann Handley from MarketingProfs is another marketing/buying behavior guru worth checking out. She can be followed on Twitter here.

Good luck and stay positive.

Mark

This post inspired by The Fleet Foxes — Ragged Wood.

Being in the marketing department during a budget crisis is like being a cornered fox in a foxhunt. All eyes are on your next move. If you’re not faster and smarter, the dogs are going to get you.

Any time I’ve been the cornered fox (lots), the only way I’ve ever survived is by feeding the dogs something other than me. Only actionable leads will get them off your tail and help you be viewed as an indispensable revenue partner.

How you ask? 4 Steps: Assess. Target. Connect. Execute.

Assess
Reflect on your current situation. Assume you’re being watched. The leaders in the C-Suite and the sales team are waiting to see which way you’ll go. Innovative contributor or continued drain on the company? Don’t be tentative. Take control of your fate with campaigns that turn leads into sales.

Target
A quick look at your competition will reveal companies and people who are dissatisfied with their current level of service or quality of product. Go to Twitter Search and put the name of your competitor in the search bar to see who’s unhappy, why they’re unhappy and any bad news the company’s trying to hide.

You should also consider getting a Twitter account for yourself to enter some online discussions that center around your company or industry to build a stronger sense of the business challenges your prospects are facing. Bloglines is a great way to aggregate Web chatter and build a library of bloggers or people espousing opinions and influencing decisions in the blogging community.

And…don’t forget to mine your own network on LinkedIn!

Connect
When you have built out messages targeted by job role, perceived business challenge or industry vertical—or really any criteria that fits your research—then you can begin thinking about the most effective means of reaching your audience.

Recent work with Fortune 1000 clients, guidance from really smart co-workers and copious amounts of research all tell me that an integrated approach yields leads that turn into sales. As an example, my current employer deploys tactics that acquire, profile, convert or cultivate leads. We do this by tying together these outreach tactics through message and a singular call to action.

Execute
The components of a successful connected strategy that I’ve witnessed and participated in are below. The most important takeaway for you is don’t get mired in the tactics themselves. Just make sure they all work together and support each other in a logical, impactful way. A logical order example might be:

First touch: Direct mail—Despite its reputation for being a bit old-school in a Web-driven world, printed, tangible pieces that scream out from the mail stack still lead the day in terms of lead performance.

Second-Touch Follow up: Email
At my current company, some of our highest performing e-mails are links to breaking news or industry reports that are available for download.

Concurrent: Digital/social media cultivation
Go where the eyeballs are! In some venues, like virtual tradeshows or third-party publisher webinars, you can get guaranteed leads out of the experience.

Concurrent: Link-tracked microsite
This is the hub of all outbound, lead generation efforts. DM, EM and digital actions are fed into this media-rich, hyper-relevant knowledge center with a front-end that captures prospect data and a backend that tracks clicks so you know who’s acting and what they’re acting on.

Final interaction prior to sales hand-off: Telemarketing follow-up
Take the time to write a quick follow-up script to help your biz dev team further qualify the leads that will be immediately actionable by sales. Then hit the phones. Forget this step at your own peril. A bad lead delivered to sales will hurt you more than no lead at all.

The bottom line is, downturn or not, people need to buy products and services that help them do their jobs better, smarter and more efficiently, so they too can avoid a nerve-rattling visit from the CFO. If you can position yourself as their savior, you can feed your sales dogs the leads they need and live to see another foxhunt.

Here are a few more resources to keep you ahead:

Inspiration & Good ideas –Terry Starbucker’s Ramblings from a Glass Half Full & MarketingProfs, respectively

Articles
5 Tips: Lead generation lift-off – DM News

Tips for b-to-b lead acquisition – Multichannel Merchant

B2B Marketing 2.0: How to Engage Social Buyers and Break Marketing/Sales Gridlock – CustomerThink