The demo went well. The media executive seemed impressed and  interested in the premise, and your platform is superior to competitors in critical ways.

Then they decide to take a pass, or  partner with a different company.

So what went wrong?

The good news is that the data can probably tell you what happened and how to circumvent these surprises in the future.

A study of  marketing technology purchasers (Walker Sands), shows that turn downs typically come from one of these three factors: Budget, difficult of implementation and internal resistance. 

Let’s take these one at a time, and show you how to use marketing materials that give your sales representatives the best chance of success.

Budget

Every sales rep worth their salt understands how to make a case for ROI. Sometimes it is just a fact that the culture of the purchasing company is not to exceed a mid-year budget no matter what the return, and there is nothing to do about it.

However, the sales person may not even talk to the internal executive most concerned about budgets.  If they have a case study from a real client on hand that proves ROI, however, their contact can pass it along to other influencers.  The same goes for competing against lower-priced but lower ROI options.

One last tip on budget is to include key data that may affect size of opportunity. Case studies should  impress the accountant, or c-level responsible for turning in a bottom line number.

Ease of implementation 

The old adage that a platform has to be at least seven times better than the existing one for a company to make a change holds true.

Not only does the ROI have to be great enough for a purchaser to take on a new expense, but also the implementation  cannot adversely effect other important company operations. Where difficulty of implementation is an issue, we recommend developing client  case studies, or minimally references,  of how speedy and simple implementations have been, as well as positive feedback from stakeholders.

Again, better to have a  ‘pass along’ than a verbal explanation alone. You may never know who within the company is overwhelmed by the idea of being responsible for ‘making it work´or lose internal trust from an unpopular initiative.

Internal resistance 

This is a related issue, and clearly the toughest of the three obstacles to overcome. Your sales reps can explain the ROI,  deliver client case studies and prove ease of  implementation, but just may not be able to overcome internal cultural biases.

The data shows that executives are not only sensitive to the opinions of  colleague and peers, but also the opinions of non-C level employees  (MarketingCharts).   Few managers want a battle to implement a platform, or stakeholders reluctant to participate in its success. So unless a top executives insists, unpopular changes, even if high value,  tend to die on the vine.

To make things more difficult, the influence of  sales reps is negligible while the actual decision  is being made. The purchasing company goes internal at this stage, talking amongst themselves.

The best way to overcome internal resistance is to include as many people as possible in the demo.

Use your client case studies, and encourage each participant to voice  concerns.  You can even prompt the issue, by asking for the top three concerns of the group at the beginning of the demo, so you can make sure they are addressed, and share the right case studies to reassure the na-sayers.

Marketing materials can actually  ‘brag about the objection’ by showing case studies and references that turn common obstacles into strengths. We can help you craft materials that ‘bake in’ the right messages.

Marketing materials can actually  ‘brag about the objection’ by showing case studies and references that turn common obstacles into strengths. We can help you craft materials that ‘bake in’ the right messages.

The role of the sales VP may seem obvious: To land big sales.

But what do tech purchasers want from sellers, whomever is doing the selling, and when do they want it? We can answer the second question right away:  They want it now.

To inspire you, we’ve pictured a few buyer personas above (guess which two are real executives responsible millions in revenues at large newspaper chains) .

Here’s what the overall data on tech purchasing tells us about what buyers want from sellers:

First of all, in the pre-search phase, cold calls and emails from sales reps have virtually no impact. Only 5% (Walker Sands) of executives said they wanted to talk to a sales rep to discover new options.

No worries, this just means that your content marketing plan should ´warm up’ the prospect audience, so that they already understand the value proposition, and, hopefully, have heard of your company.

Some of them will have already started some non-human engagement, clicking around articles and websites. These leads are even warmer (fill out the form below and we’ll tell you how we find  and send them to your sales reps).

The good news is that once engaged in research, purchasers are heavily reliant on the sales representative. In fact, they can be quite demanding!

IDG’s 2016 survey of IT Purchasers (both hardware and software)  shows that purchasers are very involved in using sales reps to help them research.  Here is what they want:

• Speedy answers(67%).
• Free trials and test drives  (64%).
• Advice and best practices (52%).
• Case studies (50%)
• Educational assets and references (46%).
• Ask them questions and show ROI (30%).

Another preference is to be in the driver seat, asking for the information. They dislike direct sales pitches.

A great way for marketing to empower sales is have the materials customers are asking for – such as ROI and best practices – at the ready to be speedily delivered by email.

Client case studies are a great start, they serve as a reference for your company,  can be incorporated into demo, sent on demand, and distributed by email to your prospect list.

Incidentally, by  the time the decision is being made, the role of the rep drops off again, as the customer company turns inward, checking references and talking to each other about key concerns.

While the customer  ‘goes dark,’  the data shows case studies are one of the  two top influences, along with the demo,  on the  final decision  (IDG, 2017).

We can help your company create a  content marketing plan that incorporates this data: Develops steady stream of warm leads –  executives who know your premise, your company and have started to research – for your sales reps,  and produces client case studies sales reps will use to close more deals.

Few growing tech companies have  the time and resources  to spin out massive amounts of content when key executives already have limited time to spend.  So what kind of content should your team create that have  the most influence on the final sale?

Should you schedule a webinar? Create a video? Print a brochure? How about sending a press release?

The trick to planning content is to think about it in relation to the purchase cycle: The data shows that press releases, brochures, trade media and conferences are all part of the discovery phase. This is how your company sells its value proposition and gets into the conversation.

Your website, webinars and video are helpful when the customer is researching  the premise.

But when it comes to what they actually buy, there are two and exactly two types of content that are most influential:

Executives are most influenced by Product Demos (52%) and Case Studies/testimonials (47%)  (Walker Sands).

In fact, case studies/testimonials were the most important factor for VP/Directors and Coordinators, followed by the product demos. The reverse was true at the C-level.

Videos (15%) and webinars (14%) are  further down the list of what was most “influential.” They are clearly important in the discovery and research phase, but do not have the same kind of  impact on the final sale.

So how should you incorporate this into your content plan? We recommend creating  two client case-studies per vertical, each focusing on a different client type, such as small or large, or on a key issue, such as ease of implementation or price versus return.

Build these  client case studies into your demos, and webinars.

Pre-planning of your content strategy goes a long way when it comes time for the client to make a decision.  We can help you create a content plan that generates leads and helps close with powerful client case studies.

You know your platform can help customers transform their company and grow revenues.

But. how much do you know about the process your customers go through when they make a decision to purchase a software platform?  And if you don’t know, how can you be good enough at marketing to deliver real leads at scale?

So, note to all the geeks in the room, listen to  the data.

1. Executives don’t want to use a sales rep to  “keep up” on technology options

The role of your sales person barely registers in the discovery stage (5%, Walker Sands).

Print trade magazines were also not used by more than 75% of purchasers (IDG).

And few ( 7% Walker Sands) of B2B buyers say social media influenced them at any stage of the sale and more than half said it had no influence at all, in spite of its use by 72% of tech marketers.

So if they do not want inbound sales emails and calls, or print, or social, just what are they using for discovery?

Decision-makers actually  ‘keep up’ in the pre-search phase with multiple (up to ten) sources (IDG survey of IT purchasers, September, 2016) of information.

Five most used are: 1. Independent news and reviews (66%) 2.  White papers (58)3. Webinars (58%) 4. Newsletters (47%) 5. Technology vendor websites (48%).  If you combine internal and external peer recommendations that makes up 73%.  The good news is that while, independent news and reviews are preferred, executives are heavily using vendor content as well.

Part of the content marketing strategy should be aimed at instigating a search in the discovery phase.

2.  The purchasing process varies  by company size 

This will come as no surprise. In smaller companies the decision-making is typically more centralised, in larger ones it may be more distributed. A 2015 recently-released study from SiriusDecisions divides buyers into three tiers,  Independent, Consensus and Committee.

Mostly the larger the company, the more centralized. Media companies may be a bit of a hold-out:  one owner of  300 newspapers  allows each to make its own decisions on platforms used.

A  corporate VP still leads by finding a couple of BETA markets for important initiatives, which they know others will follow if it is successful.

However,  in general, this is the exception to the rule. What is important is to understand the customer.  But in the aggregate, the data clearly shows that  larger sale, the more people, time, and influences are involved:

• The number influencers grows.  Small companies may have one or two, large corporations may have ten to 35 or more stakeholders weighing in on the plan.
• The sales cycle lengthens. Sales to owner-operated companies can take place in a month. A large corporation can take up to a year
• The more human and non-human content-oriented interactions are  involved. Think of passive interactions as visits to your website or reads of an email. Content plans should be crafted to increase these contacts, and include message important to larger buyers such as time in business, ability to ‘keep up’ long term with new iterations, case studies and ease of implementation.

Best practice is to use create customer personas (start here) to fully understand each type of buyer, and incorporate their motivators and obstacles into your content marketing plan

3. Once engaged in research, purchasers rely heavily on sales people 

IDG’s 2016 survey of IT Purchasers (both hardware and software)  shows that purchasers are very involved in using sales reps to help them research.  So what do they want from reps? A lot!

• Speedy answers(67%).
• Free trials and test drives  (64%).
• Advice and best practices (52%).
• Case studies (50%)
• Educational assets and references (46%).
• Ask them questions and show ROI (30%).

They dislike direct sales pitches. Part of your content marketing plan should be to create the internal materials that your sales people have at the ready, including information in one sheet that is only given verbally, such as side-by-side comparisons with key competitors.  The moral of the story is this: Don´t wait until the customer asks for data Have the information on hand.

4.  Executives are most influenced to make a purchase by  Product Demos (52%) and Case studies/testimonials (47%)  (Walker Sands).

In fact case studies/testimonials were the most important factor for VP/Directors and Coordinators, followed by the product demos. The reverse was true at the C-level.

Videos (15%) and webinars (14%) are  further down the list of what was most “influential.” They are clearly important in the discovery and research phase, but do not have the same kind of final impact on the final sale.

We recommend two client case-studies per vertical, each focusing on a different client type, such as small or large, mature or rapidly growing.  Best practice is also to build client case studies into your demos and webinars.  Demo´s should be  flexible enough to use the right customer type that matches your prospect.

Again, a lot of pre-planning of your content strategy goes a long way when it comes time for the purchase.

5. Price and ease of use were cited as the most important factors in the purchase decision, (Walker Sands).

Interestingly, the CTO´s said ease of use was most important, possibly because they are ultimately responsible for internal customer service issues, while COO´s wanted to know more about price.

One of our customers has a higher price point that is more than justified by the ROI, ease of use and other metrics.  They contacted us after mysteriously losing a sale  to a lower-priced competitor. Today, the actual value is baked into all of their content, demos and webinars and they nave not lost a single customer to a competitive bid.

6. Budgets, difficulty of implementation and internal resistance are  the largest obstacles to purchase

A study of  marketing technology purchasers (Walker Sands), shows that turn downs typically come from one of these three factors.

Opinions of  colleague and peers are important, including the opinions of non-C level employees  ( MarketingCharts).   What difficult about this is that, like the mysterious lost sale mentioned above, your sales VP may never know who or why a prospect ultimately nixed the deal.

As in the pre-search phase, the influence of  sales reps is negligible when the decisions are being made.

The purchasing company  turns inward and talks to itself. Your team may never even know ‘what went wrong,’ but it was probably one of these three factors.

Again, once you know which of these obstacles are most important (include them in your customer persona) to your client types,  incorporate your answers to obstacles into  the case studies, demos, press releases and webinars.  If budget is the issue, focus on a high impact ROI or cost saving number from a real client.

Be specific, such as sales growth of 300% YOY, or savings of two FTE´s. If easy of implementation is an issue, a great testimonial or case study showing days to complete and positive feedback from the internal team should stave off a future ‘We decided to take a pass’ conversion.

If you are having trouble obtaining real client case studies, ask about our awards programs that recognize clients for best practices. For data sources, please scroll past the form.

Information sources

• IDG Survey of IT Purchasers, September 2016 (IDG). This is a directly related study across IT industry including hardware and software.
• Walker Sands study, which  surveyed 313 U.S. corporations in 2016  to find how they made a decision to purchase a  marketing technology platforms.
• Marketing Charts – They provide a variety of surveys on B2B purchasers. (MC)
• 2015,  Regalix survey of  640 senior marketing executives and business leaders about their product marketing practices  from a range of B2B technology companies (software, hardware, cloud computing, and mobile).
• A 2015 recently-released study from SiriusDecisions (Sirius)

TechRefs, the marketing division of LocalMediaInsider, has just released a new tool, The Persona Machine, and invites you to BETA test the service for free.

The tool allows your company to create digital four color, one page customer personas in minutes. In fact, you can create and save as many as you want, share with your team, print, or  edit later.

So what is a customer persona? It is the story of an  imaginary person created to replicate your typical customer, typically an aggregate.

They are  used by top B2B companies to understand new verticals and changing markets,  to train new employees, and to create consistent messaging.

Many companies like Vendasta, whose marketing powered rocket-ship growth of 50% year over year for the last three years, hands them to every new marketing employee.

We made it easy as freemium service for tech companies (ok, media companies can use it, too).   Just sign up and follow the prompts here.  You’ll get your own  customer persons downloaded at the end of a few clicks.

All the information is private. Yep, we don’t see it, we just want to know who may interested in marketing services.

Read up on how customer personas can help your B2B marketing strategy  or just click to start. 

Site Impact announced last week that it has released enhanced automotive data for its email targeting platform. 

An ‘Auto Intender’ feature now provides records of individuals who are actively looking to purchase a new or used vehicle. The data is also searchable by Make/Model, Purchase Type, Class, Fuel Type or year purchased.

Any of these factors can be extrapolated to build a mailing list of car owners of a brand, competitive brands and other preferences based on purchase history.

The upgraded data options will allow local media companies and agencies to sell hyper-targeted email campaigns to the automotive industry, one of the largest but most competitive categories for local advertising sales.

A Ford dealer, for example, would be able to find not only the emails of specific people who bought either Ford vehicles, or cars that are most closely competitive, but also those who own cars within the age range most likely to make them an ideal new car prospect.

Other targeting capacities layered in include specific geographical ranges from the address of the dealer, plus age and income. More than 300 lifestyle interests are also available for filtering families or recreational vehicular use in or out of the target buy.

“You can sell an auto dealership’s ad agency or even the auto dealership themselves an email marketing program covering a specific zip code, gender, income level and interest,” said Brandon Rosen, CEO Site Impact. “It is really remarkable the targeting possibilities within our database. The biggest hurdle for advertisers and marketers to understand is that email is not going anywhere. It is only becoming more refined and evolving with technology.”

For companies interested in partnerships, Rosen listed his direct contact as  561-685-8991 or email brandon@siteimpact.com

LocalMediaInsider has released a report on the technology platforms that power ten top revenue initiatives for local media in 2018.

Included in the list are personalized paywalls, using tracking software from cxense and gigya. Virtual auto shows using Wehaa´s automotive platform. A variety of advertising software that allows media to sell DIY marketing packages to SMB´s.  Site Impact´s email platform for advanced targeting email, and ticketing platforms from TicketSauce and Geotix.

The newest technology is SpokenLayer, a company that provides turnkey podcasting for news media, and software from Phoenix Vision that allows newspapers to create a digital billboard network on their indoor newsracks.

Click through to the full report.

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Have you ever wanted to be quoted by trade press and invited to speak without paying at key association meetings ?

Part of the equation is perception:  Is your company – and its visible expert – perceived by the industry as a vendor, or a strategic partner, for its customers and for transformation within the industry? And if not, how do you get from here to there?

This is not a simple equation, or even a short term fix. There are, however, a few commitments that  keep your company heading in the right direction:

1. Develop client success first. The top factor in getting noticed by conferences is having clients who are successful. You can start with a few case studies at the ready that your company or your clients can share. You can’t skip this step. Even paid presentations often require at least one case study.

2. Look for a “proof of concept” client in an area breaking new ground, with revenue impact. One example is the ground breaking service SpokenLayer provides, turning newspapers into audible editions and podcasts. Their  first newspaper client, SF Chronicle, spoke with them on stage at the 2018 Mega Conference. They could also have used one of their other big name online-one clients such as Huffington Post or Salon, but the first big client in the newspaper vertical goes a long way to convincing others to follow.

3. Attach your story to a mega trend. It helps to have the key statistics from a credible research source. In the case of SpokenLayer, they could show how smart speakers have the fastest growing product sales in history, already passing the growth rate of the Apple phone in its early days. They added statistic on the rise of off-screen listening.

4. Always use a case study: Challenge, strategy, results, roadmap ahead, in addition to the overview of the opportunity.

5. Have metrics ready for prospects that want concrete numbers to see if it will work in their market.

6. Let your client co-present. It is typically easier to work in pairs, in which you discuss the mega trend, opportunity and metrics, while the client walks through their experience.

Even if your company is never invited to speak, customers often will speak on your behalf if the platform is a key game-changer, perceived as a partner.

7. Find and develop your visible expert. Sometimes the visible expert is the CEO, sometimes it is a different VP who is a good speaker. We’ve talked to conference promoters, and their biggest fear in inviting technology partners to speak is that it will turn into a sales pitch or otherwise not provide the valuable information key executives are paying in time and money to hear.

A great way to practice is to take advantage of purchased speaking opportunities, but look for ones that allow you to present a case study rather than simply ´making an introduction.’  If your pitch is remarkable you will be invited back.

If you are interested in working on a visible expert strategy, please contact us below.

Gatehouse Media just released its early performance results from the 2017 roll-out of self-serve platforms, developed by iPublish, in just some of its 300 plus markets.

The results, presented in a webinar by LocalMediaAssociation and a case study by LocalMediaInsider, show both savings of multiple FTE’s,  in addition to roughly $1.25 million in new revenues, including $500,000 from reverse publication of obituary special sections.

In addition to obituaries, the first three verticals deployed include  private party and recruitment classifieds.

The private party platform, iPublish  Marketplace, was primarily a cost-savings as customers placed orders online instead of through the call center.

The recruitment desk  used the platform as an easier “back end” to place orders for a variety of products – with an easier placement of upset – as customers called in. Now the platform also has a DIY option customers can use.

Obituaries had the fasted revenue growth.