Getting lead generation right with trade shows

I admit it. I am not a big fan of trade shows and the like, especially those whose topics are broad - eg CeBIT (for IT).

My experience is that trade shows yield little in the way of quality leads. Most people, no matter how excited they are at the event tend to turn into 'tyre kickers' post event - or that's what the sales team says. So what is happening?

According to Brian Carroll only 5-15% of leads taken at trade shows are sales funnel ready. The rest need to be nurtured. More over at Brian B2B lead generation blog: 'Generating real sales leads from tradeshows/conferences'

The problem with loyalty... or lack there of

Simon Caulkin in yesterday's Observer business ection looks at the loyalty problem affecting mobile phone companies. But this problem is not unique to mobile phone companies.

Customer Loyalty is important for all businesses. But mobile phone companies seem to be getting on top of the problem.

Trouble with mobile phone users is, they get around

Gates & Murdoch on the future of the media

I think anyone in marketing also has some interest in the media. Afterall, so much of our content is published in media in one form or another. We go hand in hand.

So it was with great interest that I read the following articles published last Monday in the UK's Independent newspaper. Firstly, Bill Gates talks about his vision for the media 'gadget' of the future. And then excerpts from Rupert Murdoch's recent speech to the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers in which Murdoch says that good journalism will mean that the news media will not die.

The difference between good customers and loyal customers

I am reading Ben McConnell's and Jackie Huba's "Creating Customer Evangelists" at the moment.

They talk about creating customers who are passionate about your product. This is more than just loyalty. Because loyalty can be for a number of reasons, not necessarily that the customer likes your product.

For example, here in the UK I have subscribed to a well known cable TV provider. I didn't want to go with them but unfortunately I couldn't get the satellite service because there are trees in the way and they are not on the property.

The reason I didn't want to go with the cable TV provider was because of the stories of poor customer service. And it has come true for me. I went through four set top boxes in the first month. Recently, without warning, the company did an upgrade on their equipment in my suburb. Resulting technical problems caused me to be with TV service for almost four days.

I haven't received an kind of apology. I can request a credit for the days that they didn't service me, but it wont make much of a difference to the service (but that another story altogether). I am stuck with them as they are the only provider for my area - unless I want to go to another provider with an even worse reputation for customer service.

So yes, I am a loyal customer, but no, I am not a good customer. I tell friends to stay away from this company, lest they suffer the same poor service.

We need giant bulleseyes and homing beacons!

Earlier this month Seth Godin produced a very accurate piece on marketers being like hunters. Instead of 'farming' and then 'harvesting' leads we are blundering about with rocks trying to find the well hidden prospects.

Why can't good prospects walk around with giant bulleyes painted on their chest? That would make things easier. or maybe homing beacons, so we could just dial up a webpage type in a search for the kind of prospect we are after and voila! A pretty map with prospects! Whoa! What an idea!

But seriously, Seth's comments have more to them than first meets the eye. We need to look at ways to develop relations (nurture and grow) and then harvet the prospects for our sales teams when they are ripe for the picking. That's great marketing and it happens every day. But not everywhere and certainly by not enough people.

Good Customer Relationship Partners are important

I subscribe to three magazines at the moment. One is a marketing magazine from here in the UK, one is from Australia and one is from the US.

However, lately, only my UK magazine has been turning up. I have had problems before with magazines not turning up and you get the same comments everytime from the publisher - "that would be a postal problem. Check with the postal service."

It is frustrating. I was subscribed to the US mag when I moved house earlier this year, but I was subscribed to the other two magazines. Both acknowledged my change of address but only one seems to have got it right. But then again, it could be the post.

Which brings me to the to my key point. You need to have good partners who you can rely on to complete the customer service loop. There is no point in making the customer feel warm and fuzzy about handing over the cash for your product if you are simply going to make them dread the follow up.

Your partners need to be aiming for the same goals as your organisation. They must have the same customer service ideals or better. And the hand off - the passing of the customer, the sale, etc must be smooth. You need to get that right as well.

Are you providing your partners the information they need to do their job effectively for you?

If your partners don't have the tools or information needed to be effective then their poor form is going to be reflected on you.

Sometimes organisations go into partnerships thinking that a bit of training and a signed agreement will get the partnership going and that is all that is needed. NOT TRUE!

Partnerships take time and you really need to look hard at who you want to partner with. Then you need to work hard so that everyone involved in the partnership is working together for a single goal with all the tools and information required to get the job done. Even then, it is not a guaranteed success, but you will have a much greater chance.

Blogged out?

One of the reasons there has been so little activity on here for a while was that I simply got blogged out!

I started a new job in July and that has kept me pretty busy. Partly because I was tired after a day's work but also because of the amount of time reading and writing done around my blog I just simply got tired. My efforts on my personal blog also stagnated.

Has anyone else suffered from a similar ailment?

Maybe it is like many things, when something new comes along we get very excited and then the excitement wears off and it becomes the norm until it is no longer interesting. That describes a fad nicely, doesn't it. But you could also look at it as similar to "crossing the chasm". You have the initial excitement with a new product, the early adopters who jump on board. But then comes the hard part - making the leap from early adopters to early majority and building on the momentum.

The Blogging Enterprise reading material

Last month saw a conference on the Blogging Enterprise. There is some very useful follow up reading available at the Virtual Handshake website, including some post conference reading.

There is alot of useful info from the Virtual Handshake, including how to appropriately use social networking sites such as LinkedIn (are you on it?). Well worth a visit.

Happy Christmas!

To all my readers,

Thank you for your support since the start earlier this year. May 2006 be bigger and better for us all.

Best wishes for the festive season!

Peter Vasey

Good data is important

I had a moment yesterday, which simply reinforced the need to make sure your data is accurate and up to date before you start any campaign. The worst part, the organisation messing up was a marketing publication, supposedly offering insights into best practice.

The woman on the other end of the call was cheery enough. She explained that she was calling from this magazine and asked if I had heard of it. "Yes, I'm a subscriber," I say. Oh, OK.

Would I like to subscribe to the email updates, was the next question. "You mean the e-disptaches?" I ask. "I am already subscribed to them". Oh OK.

The point is, I should never have received this phone call. I now question the competence of the magazine and the people writing for it.

I remember being told by someone earlier this year that good data was very important. You can have a poor message, but if you have great data you will get a result. That's not to say, don't worry about your message. You should aim to get it right but make sure your data is great and you are on your way to better results for your direct marketing.

Marketing and Sales, Working Together

So many organisations miss out on the great things that come out of sales and marketing working together. hey are two sides of the same coin.

Brian Carroll talks about how sales and marketing can work successfully together and why this needs to happen.

B2B Lead Generation: Better Sales & Marketing Integration

Google's tough job

Google's release of it's instant messenging tool last week was greeted by a mixed reaction. For alot of general press this was exciting news. Google's broad appeal, its virtual omnipresence, has meant that with a little bit of buzz surrounding a new release the story very quickly snowballs.

But while the general press was busy explaining yet again how Google is changing the world, the IT press started asking the real questions about Google's new product. How is it better? How does it compete against the existing competition? Google Talk doesn't, not at this stage. It is in beta, but it is very much a 'me too' product at this time. That is, it exhibits a number of features that other products already have. So what are the benefits?

And this is where the problem lies. Google has set the bar very high for itself. Any product release, beta or otherwise, from Google are met with very high expectations. People expect Google to deliver something to make their lives better, compared to the competition. Google Talk doesn't do that yet. For Google's sake, I hope this is a case of the best is yet to come. For if this is the start of Google simply matching its competitors' features lists it can still lose the war.

Something to ponder - Do marketers count?

I recently heard an interview with one of the guys who wrote the book 'Freakonomics'.

One of the questions was, would it really matter if economists didn't exist?

And it got me pondering, what if marketers didn't exist? How different would the world be? Would it really matter if all us marketers just vanished off the earth tomorrow?

Any thoughts?

Customer Audio Testimonials

They say a picture says a thousand words. But the words of a person in a respected position when they speak are worth a great deal.

Customers testamonials can be so lame. As a buyer sometimes you cringe when you read them. They sound like the marketing department of your supplier wrote them. They are just words on a page. Wouldn't it be great to hear what this customer really had to say?

MarketingSherpa provides this interesting case study on providing customer testamonials via audio files on your website. How to Create & Use an Audio Testimonial Library to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

Books worth revisiting

I know I promised this a while ago, but here it is, some titles that are worth revisiting when you have the chance. These books have been around for some time but their still hold alot of truth in them, unlike some of their contemporaries.

• Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore.
  Making that step from early adopter to early mainstream looks easy on paper. So why do so many companies fall over at this point or 'get stuck in the chasm'?
  
• SPIN Selling, by Neil Rackham
  Understand the mind of the buyer when the sales person makes their call allows us as marketers to supply more useful collateral to help build the case for the sales person.
  

Please share with some sales and marketing books you have found important that are worth revisiting.

How NOT to handle customer complaints

This is from Wired News' Furthermore section, which is dedicated to the more unusual news stories.

You're Overdue
09:37 AM Aug. 18, 2005 PT

If you were being generous, you could look at it as a refreshing break from the usual corporate sterility. But LaChaina Govan was not feeling generous. She'd been having lot of trouble with Comcast and she knew when she received her August bill from the cable company, addressed to "Bitch Dog," no whimsy was intended. Govan's bill arrived after she called at least a dozen times to complain about lousy service. After being transferred all over the place and being treated rudely on a routine basis, she complained about that. Then the bill came. Comcast finally stepped in, tracking down and firing the perps, making an official apology and offering Govan a couple of months on the house. She declined the offer. -- Tony Long

Setting the right expectations

Real estate agents aren't the only ones with this problem but recent experience has highlighted it to me.

My wife and I are looking for a new place to rent and we have been talking to agents around London.

We have given them our budget, preferred location, required specs, etc. "Oh yes," they say. "We have properties that meet your needs." So then we spend time discussing various properties, going off to view them and arranging times to see other properties. Problem is, the agents have set expectations that what they will show us will fit our needs. However, the reality doesn't match what they have said.

But worst off all is when the agents set the expectations that they should be able to negotiate a with the landlord to come to a price close to offer. But again, the reality is not very close. Most can't get halfway.

The end result is that any agents who mess us around are immediately 'dropped' from our list of people to deal with. There are plenty more to fill their place. And that's the strange thing. Competition is high so you would think that makes customer service an obvious way to create a point of difference. But they choose to ignore customer service in turn trying to keep you in their grasp long enough to find you something that will fit your needs.

No wonder more landlords, vendors, tenants and buyers are turning to the private market!

But, as I said at the beginning, real estate agents are not the only ones guilty of setting expectations and then failing to deliver. Look at your marketing - your call centre, your website, brochures, etc. What messages are you delivering to your market? And are you able to back them up? If not, how are you going to deliver on those messages? Remember, here's your chance to create an advantage, a unique selling point.

Data everywhere but customer service is missing

A few months back I posted information on an interesting article from Simon Caulkin in the UK's Observer newspaper.

Simon's latest piece on customer service highlights the wonderful irony that while today's companies have more information on their customers than ever before, service standards are slipping as most organisations have little understanding of what to do with it and how to make sensible use of it.

Dial 1 ... to take your custom elsewhere

Back into Marketing

Hello everyone.

After a break from it all things will start to pick up around here over the coming weeks.

There is lots of marketing to be done between now and the end of the year.

I look forward to sharing more thoughts with you and getting your feedback on what is important to you, in marketing terms, between now and December.

Cheers,

Peter

Summer Holidays

I'm on holidays for the next couple of weeks.

More content soon.

There have been technical problems with the latest edition of the podcast, but that will be back when I get back.