Big Thinkers, Wine, Lithium and the Perils of Social Change

Posted by Christine on January 17, 2012 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

The catalyst was a book launch of Lithium’s  chief scientist Dr. Michael Wu.   The location was the Prospect Restaurant in San Francisco’s trendy south of Market.  Invited was a veritable ‘whos who’ of social media bloggers and big thinkers.

Walking to dinner after flying in from Austin, TX and being up since 2am, I thought this could be a great experience or one very long night if the room was full of people talking about social marketing tactics. I was hoping for the former as I wanted to share my experiences around the Buyers’ Journey with others.

Meeting Michael Wu was a real treat because he is super smart and super nice.  The private dining room was packed with 40 other social Big Thinkers:  Deloitte, Ant’s Eye View, Altimeter Group, Alcatel-Lucent, Paul Greenberg, Edelman Digital, Tom Foremski, Gartner, to name a few because I can’t remember the rest.  See Pics here.  It was a dinner of social leaders; who carries business cards when you only need to remember everyone’s Twitter handle?  Fortunately Lithium created a Twitter list because after the wine the memory of all the Twitter handles faded rapidly.

What hasn’t faded is the memory of the astonishing conversations.  What’s been on my mind for the past several months is the growing hype around transforming into a social business.  Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of becoming social. I hear CEOs and CMOs talk about ‘going social’ and having a relationship with their customers to serve them better.  Yet when I dig into those claims, the investments being made don’t match up.   To many the mindset of ‘going social’ is to add a few social media channels (the infamous three), start a community and have customer service/support respond to Tweets about product issues.   That view is one of social being an ‘add-on’ to existing daily workloads versus an ‘instead-of’.

My conversations around the cultural and business model changes that social transformation forces on companies was met with silence.  I had been quietly thinking I had 3 heads and 2 were on fire and people were just being polite about it, afraid to point out the oddity.  It was puzzling how companies could possibly imagine their operating model and principles unchanged by the effects of social technology.  With the buyer in control of everything from how they buy to the terms of the ‘customer relationship’ and a brand’s reputation, how could business models not change.   Why was the need for social change management, I call it “Social Change”, apparent only to me?

Or so I thought until the Lithium Big Thinkers dinner.   Every discussion, all night long, was around Social Change.    The need for business leaders to embrace the far-reaching changes that social will trigger was on everyone’s mind.  And it had this room of luminaries worried for they saw the same resistance as I do; an enamourment with the technology and a deaf ear to the accompanying change it naturally forces in culture, values, collaboration, communication, business processes and models.  I was thrilled to meet consultants and bloggers who specialized in social culture, social business change management, and redefining customer engagement.  In the midst of all these ideas and methods, the Buyers’ Journey was at home and fit nicely into the broader puzzle of transformation.

It was reassuring to hear others share the concern around Social Change. I can’t say we solved the problem on how to quickly enlighten business leaders on what lies ahead of them.  There is , thankfully, a growing chorus of credible voices drawing attention to the fact that – social business is a transformation that will touch every molecule in your organization.   Be wise and be prepared.  Or said another way, if you thought SOX compliance was transformative, “honey you ain’t seen nothin’ yet”.

BTW, the book is titled “The Science of Social” and a must read.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Posted by Christine on January 6, 2012 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

The Buyers’ Journey methodology we developed and help companies implement was born from my days as a serial CMO.   There just had to be a better way to drive Marketing ROI and pipeline.  The principles of customer centric marketing, integrated marketing and so on do little to dramatically ‘move the needle’ on understanding how B2B buyers purchase in the social era.

These marketing principles are much like sales training, another artifact of yesteryear.  Do more of what ‘appears’ to work without really understanding the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’.  The Buyers’ Journey came out of trying to understand, from the prospects’ and customers’ perspective, how their approach to buying a piece of software, equipment or technology service had changed and why.

The ‘ah-ha’ came when it became apparent that what vendors thought was the beginning of a sales cycle was actually, from the buyers’ perspective, the middle-end of the buy cycle. And that the buy cycle from the buyer’s perspective was actually not a discrete step but part of a larger open-loop experience.  The expectations, definitions and mental models held by vendors and buyers couldn’t be further apart.  No wonder, lead scoring and various marketing approaches don’t significantly move the needle. A mindset change within a company about how they should engage, enable and relate to buyers will do more than any amount of technology.   That’s not to discount technology but let’s clarify it’s role – it makes the new mindset, processes, and approaches sticky.

As with anything new, understanding the ‘how’ of the Buyers’ Journey methodology takes education.  What sounds obvious and simple on the surface isn’t when someone tries to do it alone.  There a several companies that can attest to that.  To realize the promise of the Buyers’ Journey – faster revenue cycles, lower cost of sales, less churn – marketers and sales teams need to understand the methodology.

To that end, I’m doing a number of webinars to help people understand how to implement the Buyers’ Journey.  Come join me.

January 10, 2012 - ”Capitalizing on Digital Body Language”, BrightTalk Demand Generation Virtual Conference.  This session is at 8am Pacific Time. (Registration at: http://www.brighttalk.com/r/tHP)

January 17, 2012 -“How to align your marketing mix to your Buyers Journey: Solution Search Stage”, Optify ON24 webinar. This webcast will give you the how-to’s to balance your marketing mix through one of the most important parts of the buyers journey.  This session is at 10am PST. (Registration at: http://event.on24.com/r.htme=390492&s=1&k=06326016A9DAA294DCA3A1627C413667&partnerref=NB)

Speaking about Buyers Journey at NAWBO Silicon Valley

Posted by Christine on October 6, 2011 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

Come join me on November 15th for dinner and a talk at 6pm to the NAWBO Expo about the Buyers Journey.

Location is at the Biltmore Hotel & Suites, 2151 Laurelwood Road, Santa Clara, CA 95054.

Growth in this economic rebound has a different set of rules: Markets are transparent, buying is social, products and services must be sticky, buyers place more importance on the lifetime experience than on the purchase, and they expect to realize value long before they purchase your solution.

To grow in this new economy demands that companies adjust not only how they market and sell but drive faster revenue cycles.

During this speech, learn:

• How to rev up your revenue engine by aligning marketing and sales to the Buyer’s Journey.
• Why lead generation is more important than sales capacity.
• Three key metrics for managing your lead-to-revenue cycle
• Why Service/Support has a new strategic seat at the table.

Salesforce.com CEO Calls for a Business ‘Arab Spring’

Posted by Christine on September 3, 2011 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Salesforce.com’s DreamForce conference lived up to its reputation. It was bigger, better, and the place to be this week. This wasn’t a conference, it was a cult convention.

The atmosphere in the convention center before each morning’s keynote reminds me of the energy you feel before a rock concert or a San Francisco Giants game. Pre-show entertainment included roving interviews with customers like Autodesk, Nissan, NBC Universal, and celebrities like Neil Young against a backdrop of heavy bass music from a DJ mix. You know the music; the kind you hear at a baseball or football game. Folks lined up hours early to get a seat in front to be that much closer to Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO and Chairman. The pre-game tailgate party was donuts and coffee in the brisk fog of San Francisco. The energy was palpable. Bloggers in the ‘Pound’ flexed their fingers warming up in order to tweet and blog as fast as they could in order to be the first one with the quote, announcement or insight.

It’s well known that Marc Benioff’s role model is Steve Jobs and his goal is to create a cult following – for him and the company. With 45,000 record-breaking attendees, over 300 partners exhibiting, and 475 breakout sessions this event is evidence that he’s achieved that. Salesforce’s success is impressive with $2.1 billion in revenue and over 100,000 customers processing over 36 billion transactions per quarter. This is the poster child in the SaaS industry as the company to model.

The keynote hall throbbed with anticipation and every attendee’s secret hope was that Benioff would stop and shake their hand as he customarily does during his roving keynotes. Finally the room goes black and the crowd erupts into a roar; the King is coming.

This year the message was the Social Enterprise and the need for a social revolution.

Read the rest of this post on Forbes at http://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecrandell/2011/09/03/salesforce-com-ceo-calls-for-a-business-arab-spring/

Join me for a Free Webinar on Alignment

Posted by Christine on August 15, 2011 under Uncategorized | Read the First Comment

BrightTalk has invited me to shared best practices, real life case examples and a road map for how to align Sales and Marketing.  This free webinar will be held on October 19th at 10:00am pacific time. 

From the prospect to up-sell stages, organizations have a great opportunity to accelerate their revenue cycles by enabling marketing and sales to function as a unified team.  Aligned Sales and Marketing teams are more efficient, close more sales and have happier customers. Attend this webinar to find out the seven steps you can take to accomplish this, complete with supporting case studies. 

 Topics Covered:

·         Understanding why aligning to the Buyers Journey drives faster revenue

·         Determining the stage of Alignment your company is in

.         Deriving best practices from case study examples

.         Starting the Alignment discussion with Sales and Marketing

This is a free webinar – I hope you and your colleagues will participate.  To register just click on the BrightTalk link below. 

Tipping Business (and our Economy) toward Growth

Posted by Christine on August 10, 2011 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

Tipping Point

The market’s response to the S&P downgrade of American debt was panic.  The ‘Great American Downgrade’ is what I’m hearing it being referred to.  While the pundits argue over whether it was a ‘crash’ or a ‘correction’, the Senate, ironically, debates opening an investigation into S&P’s “irresponsible” act.  The looming question of whether this will trigger a double dip recession depends on how we look at the future.

A glass can be either half full or half empty; it all depends on your perspective.  In the frenetic world of 7×24 news, social media, always-connected jobs and maxi-multi-tasking lives we often lose perspective.   It is as if we’re racing through a forest as fast as we can, seeing only the blur of the trees and believing we’re on the right trail.

Our economic situation is a sum total of all the activities and perspectives of businesses, citizens, investors, and governments.   What plagues our economy is the same thing that hampers growth in our companies – doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results.   Marshal Goldsmith said it well in his quote “What got you to here won’t get you there” and it is rather appropriate for our current situation.  It would do us, and the economy, well if we gained some perspective for we are at a tipping point.

The USA economy can tip into a pattern that resembles Japanese style stagnation or it can redefine and reinvent itself.  The same goes for businesses; they can hunker down and experience limited growth in their traditional markets with current products or they can re-evaluate and redefine their value in light of global trends and offshore markets that are growing.  We all need to look at growth from a different perspective; one that is rooted in thinking outside the box about how to deliver meaningful value.

For most companies that means tackling the lack of confidence in their Sales and Marketing organizations.  We all know Sales and Marketing are broken and it’s time to publicly admit it.  The ‘broken-ness’ is evidenced by B2B Marketing struggling to demonstrate its value in terms it has historically never had to.  B2B Sales is increasingly becoming marginalized and struggling to meet revenue targets in a world where no one “really” wants to talk to them.   One reason we’re in the current situation is because companies (and governments) have been inwardly focused for too long.  The quest for great efficiency, effectiveness and productivity has been sought within and between departments; not at the organization’s boundaries between it and its markets and constituents.  Protracted inward alignment results in myopia and the general drinking of one’s own whiskey.

Fixing Sales and Marketing begins with dropping the classic definitions of what Sales and Marketing are suppose to do along with the internal tug-of-war associated the zero-sum game mentality. Replace that with a culture and roles obsessed with aligning to the expectations of your prospects, lost accounts, current customers, and target markets. In other words, align to your Buyer.

Begin the alignment process by intimately understanding where Buyers go and what they do on their purchase journey.  It takes some elbow grease and tenacity but every company can achieve understand the Journey by  interviewing the economic buyer, influencers, evaluators and users of every won and lost account to understand the ‘who, what, where, how and why’ of their Buyers Journey.  While the B2B Buyers Journey has three overall stages comprised of ten steps, each role (or persona) follows a slightly different journey path.   To align to your Buyer, organizations need to know all the various paths and the destinations along the way, in detail.  A high level or generic view of the Buyer’s Journey obscures the actionable information; the data that enables you to deliver a valuable experience made up of meaningful content presented to the right persona at key junctures on their buying paths.

Next align organizational roles to enable, engage and deliver value to the Buyer.  The experience a Buyer wants as a customer is often more important in the purchase decision than the actual product they are buying.  Structure your organization’s roles into value chains (instead of departments and organization charts) from initial market sensing, Buyer experience crafting, and product development/manufacturing through to market listening, Customer/Buyer success and service.  Measure how the Buyer rates their experience along the Journey and set role-based metrics.

The key to growth is two-fold: Accelerate revenue cycles by delivering the experience buyers value and have a company culture focused on continually earn your customers’ business every single day.  The bottom-line is we need a fresh perspective on how to do business differently if our economy is to ‘tip’ in the right direction.

Time to Pull Up Our Socks

Posted by Christine on July 17, 2011 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments to Read

Like most people, I have one eye on the debt ceiling and unemployment debate.  Sorting reality from spin and the juvenile drama reminds me of decades ago university student government meetings.  It’s also reminiscent of some management team meetings where one spends enormous energy sorting the facts from all the hooey.

What strikes me as troublesome is the colossal disconnect between the perspectives of government, companies and the general public. Their focus is telling of the disconnect: The next election cycle, next financial earnings report, and when the next set of bills are due.  The lack of common ground or shared goals between these three perspectives is undermining our future.

Admittedly I’m not an economist, and am wise enough to not play one on TV, but nowhere in all these discussions is an acknowledgement that the collective “we” are in new territory.   Old rules don’t apply – this is not Paul Volker’s 1980s crisis nor is it like post-Great Recession.  While the raging debate about Keynes vs. Friedman is always interesting; it doesn’t apply.

Instead of trying to hold on to the ‘normal’ of yesteryear while singing,  teary eyed, Barbara Streisand’s  ’The Way We Were’, we should let go and embrace what can be.  That doesn’t mean I’m advocating not increasing the debt ceiling.  The potential I see, and am focused on, is a unique opportunity we have to shape a new global economy that leverages our collective strengths in new ways.

The strengths as I see them are:

1. A highly skilled workforce with fresh thinking on how to deliver value.  The generation entering the workforce hold radically different ideas on what defines value and the relationship businesses should have with the environment and society. Partner these workers with baby boomers who are not retiring and you have a marriage of fresh thinking with wisdom.
2. Entrepreneurial employment models.  The model of hiring scores of full-time employees has proven to hamper company agility and growth. The examples are everywhere – Nokia, RIM, HP.  It is like putting blinders on a prize race horse that knows how to run one course – a loop. Companies that hire only key employees in strategic core competencies and employ teams of contract, part-time, consultants, contingent workers for other roles and activities find they are better able to be market-responsive, nimble, and stay on top of emerging trends; the blinders come off.
3. Building value based on the community level needs.  Whether its social entrepreneur-ism, green energy, water management, new models of agribusiness, travel or healthcare there is tremendous opportunity (and profit) in meeting the needs of the global community.  Granted these aren’t easy problems to solve but neither was the invention of the light bulb or the telephone; therein lies the opportunity to innovate and invent the next economic cycle.
4. Global communities and tribes.   We are as intricately interwoven in the economies of other countries as they are interwoven with us.  Customers with needs are everywhere and it doesn’t matter whether they are in Brazil, Russia or in Des Moines.  Social media has made the world smaller, more intimate, and customers more accessible.  Understand the global customer and deliver meaningful value by serving them with the best resources, regardless of where they are located.  There is a lot of opportunity for growth in markets around the world, if we just look at them through different lens.
5. Renaissance of leadership and self actualization.   The Dark Ages of leadership has led to a Renaissance of the Aware Leader.  The rise in coaching – both leadership and life – points to the realization that emotional intelligence and compassionate leadership results in stronger, more profitable companies. Employees, be they permanent and contingent, who are following their bliss are more productive, innovative and efficient.  And a new level of leadership is a core requirement to creatively building companies that leverage new business models rooted in new forms of value delivery.

The opportunity I see to drive economic growth is tremendous.  Granted it’s scary but the alternative is even more frightful.  As my dad used to say, “time to pull up your socks and get moving.”

When Sales Misses Their Number

Posted by Christine on December 19, 2010 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

It’s that time of year for most companies – quarter- and year-end.  I call it the ‘twitchen time’.  The time when sales becomes hyper focused on closing deals, bringing stragglers into this quarter, keeping score of Club eligibility, worrying about making ‘the number’, and if they are on the wrong side of the quota-attainment scale, coming up with a credible CYA story.

In all companies the worry about meeting revenue goals is shared by sales and marketing alike. For aligned and unaligned companies alike missing ‘the number’ often impacts the company’s ability to achieve key growth objectives in the following year.  Missing the number means more than missed bonuses, it can translate into having to rethink next year’s plans, up and down, and dealing with the consequences.

How the miss is handled separates aligned and unaligned companies.

We’ve all seen how it manifests in the unaligned company. Sales begins to ‘signal’ that it’ll miss the quarter and subtle (or not) hints are dropped that marketing or products  is to blame.  If that finger pointing isn’t nipped in the bud by leadership, the vicious cycle of blame begins.   What gets lost in the ‘blame game’ are the answers to key questions, starting with ‘why the miss’?  It’s never just sales’ fault or always marketing’s fault; it’s a combination of factors that are often cross-organizational and reach beyond sales and marketing.  The real reason for what went wrong, and went right, never comes to the surface as marketing and sales square off in their respective corners of the boxing ring.  In unaligned companies, the CEO often plays the semi-interested bystander who’s holding a potentially losing ticket with a big bookie price.  S/he knows the dance – beat on sales for the miss, cut budgets, realign more headcount to sales,  and throw marketing under the bus at the board meeting.  Or replace sales and/or marketing leadership.  Again, the real key questions never get asked or answered.

In aligned companies, both sales and marketing know well in advance of a potential ‘miss’ because they jointly own the pipeline.  Their early warning system is a set of leading indicators including the cadence of qualified leads, time and percentage of qualified leads that transition into the pipeline, size of marketing generated leads, and velocity through the pipeline.  When the trend line changes the first question asked is ‘why’.  Jointly exploring and understanding the root cause of the impending miss (or overachievement) gives leadership the power to know what levers to change.   Knowing ‘why’, helps everyone answer the next question, ‘what needs to change’ and ‘how’.   Ultimately, the CEO asks ‘why’ in a collaborative, coaching mode.  While sales and marketing knows what happened in their shared world, it’s the CEO who understands the bigger picture and can see causal relationships in other functions.  

Don’t interpret what I just said as Marketing or Sales Operations is the magical key to insights into revenue misses.  Yes, these are key enabling functions but automation does not automatically result in sales/marketing alignment.  If the leading indicators are not defined correctly or the only time sales and marketing is motivated to ’talk’ is when a miss is impending – the ‘what’ and ‘how’ will be incorrect.  Alignment is as much about culture and leadership maturity as it is about process.

Chances are marketing knows well ahead of sales of an impending miss.  Take the initiative and start to dig into the root cause.  Come to the table with facts, Marketing’s ‘what’ and ‘how’, and some recommendations on what Sales can do.   Don’t wait for the CEO.

The Smoking Gun of Alignment

Posted by Christine on March 20, 2010 under Uncategorized | 9 Comments to Read

There used to be a time, before the tech-bubble bust in early 2000, when the route to CEO was through the CMO’s office.  The belief was Marketing touched and coordinated all aspects of the business, knew how to build market share and understood how to read the tea leaves of emerging trends.  Post tech-bubble, the tables turned and the path to the CEO seat was through sales.  Board of directors and venture capitalists believed that Sales touched all aspects of the business, knew the numbers, how to drive revenue, and were on the frontlines of emerging trends.   Interestingly, both paths to CEO-ship have not proven to be sure-fire successes.  Tech company failures litter roadsides during both downturns unable to get their value proposition, go-to-market strategy and product roadmaps right, in the eyes of the buying customer. What does this have to do with aligning sales and marketing? It could just be the root cause - the smoking gun, so to speak.

I’ve been interviewing a growing number of Board members, CEOs, heads of sales and CMOs of large and small technology companies about sales and marketing alignment.  I’m looking for the smoking gun as to why it is so hard to keep these teams aligned.  There has to be a reason beyond “different cultures, time horizons, and skills”.   While my interviews are not done, some patterns are emerging.

1. No one knows how to measure marketing.

Boards and CEO, regardless of their domain expertise, are puzzled as to how to measure marketing.  When asked what metrics they use the most frequent response is leads.  Yet when probed, it’s not really leads, it’s inquiries.   Both groups then lament on how marketing cannot produce quality “leads” and when asked how they fix the situation, the most frequent response is to replace the CMO. The response was the same for those CEOs that rose through sales as well as marketing ranks.

2.   SMB tech company marketers aren’t measuring the right things.

There is a big gap between large and small company marketers when it comes to understanding, measuring and managing marketing’s impact on pipeline, business and strategy.  Large company CMOs typically have a metrics-based operating mindset.  Each one knew, to the minute, what was happening to the pipeline, the funnel and how various marketing activities impact current and future revenue.  There were no differences between B2B and B2C large tech companies.   The same can’t be said for SMB tech marketers.

3.   Marketing doesn’t really have a seat at the Board table

Regardless of whether the company was large or small, CMOs have little to no exposure to Boards and are often left out of key strategic discussions.  Board members, on the other, drew a blank on what key questions to ask CMOs to evaluate marketing’s value add and contribution.   When pressed, marketing was described as a ‘black box’ and something companies are ‘suppose to have’. Which explains the zero sum marketing/sales budgeting situation prevalent in so many companies.

4.  Sales knows they are king of the hill.

In just about every case, the CEO and the board decides in favor of Sales.  Whether it’s taking funds from marketing to add more sales people, supporting some ‘creative’ sales models, letting sales dictate marketing programs, or letting sales get away with dysfunctional and organizationally destructive behavior – the CEO is betting his job, and bonus, on the sales leader.  No wonder alignment is hard to institutionalize.  In companies where there was alignment, it was the result of a partnership between sales and marketing leadership and grass roots adoption.

5.  Boards and CEOs could not define “sales and marketing alignment”

Everyone wanted it, felt they had some degree of it but darn if they could articulate what it meant. And that meant they could not quantify what lack of alignment was costing them in lost revenue, market share, customer dissatisfaction and bottom-line profit.

I’m not sure if I found the smoking gun but the powder burns are there and something is smoldering.   Bottom-line is that if companies are going to benefit from alignment, CEOs and Boards need to get with the program. They can no longer hide behind Sales, they have to educate themselves on how to measure marketing.