Hire Jonathan Kranz and Stamp Out Passive Voice

November 22, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Here is a bit of a grammar lesson and a bit of insight into my personality.  I hate passive voice. After writing research reports at Forrester for 9 years, I think I’ve become a bit fanatic about spotting passive writing and correcting it. For example, a notice posted on the door to my doctor’s office this week said, “Our office will be closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday of this week.” I crossed out “will be closed” and wrote “will close” above it. When I call my son’s cell phone, prior to connection I get a message that says, “Please enjoy the music while your party is reached.” I want to scream “while we reach your party.”  You get the picture?

I thought my colleagues at Forrester used passive voice a lot until I came to Xerox and read some of the documentation, collateral, and marketing communications written here. Passive language is unfortunate, but typical, in many high technology companies – firms that use a specialized vocabulary and lean on jargon to communicate. So I decided to get some help upgrading writing skills in the North American services marketing team. After scanning the Web, and talking with other marketers about their experiences with copy writing training, I came across Jonathan Kranz. 

Besides training marketers to be better copywriters, Jon is a freelance writer who develops advertising, direct marketing, and public relations materials for consumer and B2B clients in financial services, banking, insurance, high-tech, healthcare, and education. He is also the author of Writing Copy for Dummies. Talking with him on the phone, I liked his straightforward approach and passion for teaching others how to write to a specific, target audience and engage them with simple, clear prose. He also works with many high technology clients, so he understands the unique challenge marketers face when trying to convey the value in technically sophisticated products.

On November 16, we hired Jonathan to deliver a full day, onsite writing workshop.  Wow, am I glad we did. Using engaging lesson material and hands-on exercises, Jonathan helped our team boost its collective writing acumen and — my favorite — stamp out passive voice and jargon. Without giving away his entire syllabus, here are some highlights from the course Jon customized for our team:

1) Be a Mirror, not a Window: Write Copy to Reflect Your Customer’s Concerns — Much marketing writing focuses on the company and its products or services, not the customer. It’s inward-facing. Jonathan starts out with an exercise to help writers learn to how to acknowledge their target audience in writing and focus on them (not you) by demonstrating empathy with their priorities and by providing answers/solutions to their problems.

2) Use 3D Storytelling.  Next, Jonathan showed us how to use “3-Ds” to create an emotional connection to buyers using a memorable message and a logical flow to arguments. The “3-Ds” stand for Desire (what does your audience want?), Danger (what obstacle, challenge, or problem stands in the way?) and Drama (how can you help – what is it about your product/service/solution — that overcomes the obstacle and achieves the desired outcome?) You heighten drama when you provide proof to demonstrate that you can achieve what you promise.

3) Don’t “Let it Be” – Use Active Verbs: Review your copy (read it out loud to yourself or ask a colleague to read it for you) to find those places where you can transform passive into active construction. Don’t be afraid to use the word “you” in your writing and to think in terms of giving directions or advice, rather than indirect suggestions.

4) Search and Destroy: Jargon, Clichés, and Imprecise Language. Is your language exhausted, overused, and so broadly applied that it no longer has any tangible meaning to your audience?  Then change it by including specificity (numbers, measures, exact names, tangible details), statistics (data, facts, time periods, sources), direct quotes, news, and language that appeals to the senses.

The best part about Jonathan’s workshop was his energy, enthusiasm, and ability to think on his feet.  He kept a group of 30 marketers engaged throughout the day. If you would like to learn more, visit Jon’s Web site and let him know that you read about him on my blog.

Besides these few examples I shared today, what are some writing challenges you struggle with as a marketer?  Or that you would want your team to improve upon? I would be curious to know. Regardless, I think Jonathan could help you, so check him out on Twitter and Facebook.

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ITSMA Marketing Conference: A “Must Do” for B2B Services Marketers

November 9, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Last week I had the good fortune to attend the 17th annual marketing conference sponsored by ITSMA. I have blogged about this organization previously and continue to believe that events hosted by this association are a “must attend” for B2B services marketers. My highlights of the two-day conference included:

“The Future of Work: How Marketers Will Need to Transform to Succeed” — Malcolm Frank, Senior Vice President of Strategy & Marketing, at Cognizant Technology delivered an interesting look at how global trends in the economy, workforce size/age by country, and social behavior will change how work gets done. Malcolm described how marketing to millennials– and hiring them in your organization — will bring about fundamental changes in how marketers engage clients and buyers. Having met Malcolm previously at Forrester, it was great to catch up with him at the conference.

Jeff Summers, Chief Innovation Officer at SAVO, talked about “Marketing as a Catalyst for Field Sales“ and how to maximize the impact of sales conversations.  Jeff contends that sales enablement should focus more on how to help sales have meaningful conversations with prospects, and not simply on creating content. He also presented 5 common sales performance weaknesses and how marketing can help sales overcome them. Check out the Twitter stream at #ITSMA10 to find out more!

Jane Hiscock of Farland Group shared the stage with IBM and talked about their partnership in building online advisory groups and customer communities. Key lesson: ensure you will not “sell” to the community and never attribute community conversations/shared information to a specific member.

Julie Meyers, Vice President, Strategy, Marketing & Client Experience, Xerox Global Services NA (disclosure: my boss!) took the stage on the second day to present “It’s All About the Strategy—How to Elevate Marketing’s Role Through Alignment and Execution.“  Julie is a marketing and strategy wiz, and a primary reason why I’m here at Xerox.  Among best practices shared, Julie showed why marketers must understand sales’ motivations and metrics to truly partner with them and enable client acquisition, pipeline progression, customer retention, loyalty, and growth.

“Taking Thought Leadership to the Next Level” was a fantastic presentation by Bret Barczak, Chief Marketing Officer, Services & Solutions, GE Healthcare Technologies. Bret shared some shocking statistics about the US healthcare system, including tht facts that — while healthcare accounts for over 16% of the US GDP — most hospitals run at 3-4% margins, 50% lose money, and 64% are underutilized. To lead a conversation about how to alter these trends (before government prescribes unwanted changes), GE Healthcare developed “Next Level”, its thought-leadership centerpiece, which you can see at http://nextlevel.gehealthcare.com/ . GE won a Marketing Excellence Award for their work on this site during the conference. 

Over two years ago, TELUS began a transformation to move their marketing from simple lead volume generation to demand prequalification, scoring, and handoff. A good part of the strategy, uses social media to build interest and educate buyers at www.telustalksbusiness.com . TELUS used a version of the Forrester Groundswell framework to set social strategy. To learn more about this framework, see my prior blog post at: http://bit.ly/1ith6y .

This is just a small sample of the truly useful, practical agenda offered during the conference.  If you are a marketing professional in the services space (high tech or otherwise), I recommend you check out this event next year. To learn more read the Twitter stream by searching on #ITSMA10 or visiting the ITSMA site.

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SocialTech 2010: Building A Social Media Marketing Discipline At A Major Brand

October 30, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Earlier this week, I had the good fortune to attend and participate in the first social media conference geared to B2B marketers. MarketingProfs sponsored an excellent event. I believe the 200+ who attended in person, and the 400 or so who listened in virtually, would agree. For a round-up of conference activities, here is a list of the best posts and articles I found on the event:

1) Ann Handley’s coverage of the event: http://www.mpdailyfix.com/the-state-of-the-b2b-marketer-in-social-media-3-trends-from-socialtech-2010/

2) Aaron Pearson from Weber Shandwick wrote a great post: http://www.b2bvoices.com/

3) #mptech daily read: http://paper.li/tag/mptech  (Search the #mptech tag on Twitter for more.)

For me, the price of admission was listening to Brian Ellefritz, Senior Director of Global Social Media Marketing, talk about his plans for creating a new social media marketing discipline at SAP. While “SAP” and “discipline” are synonymous to many, one might think that SAP’s top-down culture may struggle with the unruliness of social media a bit. To move SAP along, Brian adopted the “Social Engagement Journey” — a view of the stages large brands progress through when establishing social media marketing practices. Brian credits Sean O’Driscoll, and the team from Ant’s Eye View, with the concepts and framework he’s bringing to SAP.

According to Brian’s talk, the four stages along the Social Engagement Journey include:

Stage 1: Grass roots – characterized by lots of activity but little focus; lots of variation but little conformity. Individual teams pursue social media opportunities bottoms up. Charismatic personalities, who want to grab the spotlight as early adopters, tend to drive this stage where overarching strategy and leadership has yet to form.

To move along from Stage 1 to Stage 2, Brian offered the following observations and guidelines:

1) Find leadership – corporate entities like Legal and Marcom calm their social media concerns when adult supervision enters the room.

2) Don’t discourage the experimentation with too many rules or too much oversight.

3) Begin informal education – workshops – to form consensus around what needs to happen and how.

4) Increase and improve listening. In turn, better listening will improve content proficiency and efficiency.

5) Let standard tools and governance emerge. Grass roots teams find they need operational models, process, and a common tool platform to progress further.

Stage 2: Silos form – independent efforts start to coalesce around functional areas and some leadership, whether by design or accidental, starts to emerge. Co-opetition among silos can happen in this stage and can be disconcerting. Teams experiment with more tools, but a lack of focus on business objectives means processes have yet to align. Content generation continues to happen through enthusiasm and personal initiative more than strategy.

To mature Stage 2 activity, Brian suggested:

1) Don’t get caught up in inter-team competition. Those who stay true to good social principles – who walk the social talk – will rise to the top and others will adopt their ideas.

2) Progress tool strategies from ad hoc to formal vendor relationships and benefit from all the attendant training, support, etc.

3) Pay more attention to metrics. With tenures of 18 months or more, social media teams now need to answer tougher questions about investment returns and justification.

4) Focus on creating conversational content. Most marketers gear their writing around messages, lead generation, and holding prospects hostage to sales. Social marketing writers must get to know customers better and learn how to deliver content customers value.

5) Formalize roles. Social initiatives can no longer afford to run off of employee enthusiasm and activities executed during nights and weekends.

Stage 3: Operationalize – in this stage, the silos of activity merge, leaderships becomes clear, and the activity starts to feel more like marketing and less like chaos. Firms in this stage truly understand how their customers/prospects use social channels and engage with them in those channels. These firms also invest more in education and communication since practitioners now come from all areas of the business. Listening informs both tactics and strategy.

To evolve in this stage, companies should:

1) Focus training on roles and objectives, not just the tools. Instead of holding a “Twitter class”, sponsor “how to build a social conversation with <audience>” workshop.

2) Reset your listening strategy. Invest in tools like Visible or Radian 6 to learn more about where customer conversations happen, what your competitors are doing, and how strong your share of voice is. Use the data to determine where the market will take you next.

3) Advertise the heck out of successes, and invest in them further. Resist the temptation to focus on the laggards. Competition and public visibility will give them ample motivation to keep from being left behind.

4) Push silos of activity together. Create virtual teams of bloggers for example. Combine conventional email aliases and meetings with a community platform where practitioners can share successes, policies, and practices.

5) Don’t wait too long for governance to happen. Actively create discipline around strategy, ownership, priorities, and metrics.

Stage 4: Lifestyle – the ultimate stage is one where few firms reside today. Zappos may be the lone example of a company where social activity is part of it’s core structure and culture. Business units earn more autonomy to act socially based on business objectives, positive outcomes, and a common understanding of success examples. More rigor in metrics helps to keep employees engaged and competent in social discourse. In this stage, tools are optimized, systems are integrated, everyone buys in, and angels sing. (Well, the last won’t happen, but I wanted to see if you were still with me.)

A successful journey from social chaos to social engagement depends on many factors besides those outlined: your company culture, momentum, environment, funding, and the extent to which your audience is willing to engage with you socially. Yet, I think this model offers a good place for companies to assess their progress and to think about what they need to do strategically to move from one stage to the next.

Thanks for the enlightening talk, Brian, I really appreciated it!

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Join Me at SocialTech 2010: Oct. 27 at the Doubletree in San Jose

October 25, 2010 — Laura Ramos

As a former Forrester analyst, I’ve had a long-standing relationship with the wonderful folks at MarketingProfs.  I’ve come to value greatly the resources — both online and in-person – this organization provides to marketers who, frankly, can’t afford the big-ticket price of a marketing consultant or industry analyst firm. This Tuesday, MarketingProfs will host SocialTech 2010, their inaugural social media conference for B2B marketers in the high technology space.

After a rocky start caused by the slow economy, and postponement of the event from March until October, SocialTech 2010 promises to bring together the visionaries and experts who have used the power of social media to transform the way B2B technology companies market their products and services. At 3 pm on Tuesday afternoon, I will speak on a panel featuring:

In this session, Michael and René will present highlights from recent research — conducted by IDC and Palo Alto Networks separately and respectively — to benchmark the use of social media for B2B high-tech marketing. Michael will explain why traditional corporate culture remains the largest barrier to successful social media initiatives today. He’ll discuss the different operational challenges organizations face to effectively deploy and manage social media initiatives. René will then provide highlights on the adoption and usage of social media in his experience at Palo Alto Networks and (probably) Serena Software, where he worked previously. 

After Michael and René speak, Gurmeet and I will react to the research and share some things we are seeing and doing within our own organizations. Hopefully we can provide advice on how you can encourage social media use within your own organization while demonstrating its value to the business.

Prior to my panel, at 2 pm that same afternoon, my colleague Jeannine Rossignol will join Chris Koch from ITSMA to talk about “The Role of Social Media in the Buying Process“  and how Xerox has used social media to enable internal salespeople to have more informed discussions with customers. While I only touch on it in my panel presentation, Jeannine will talk more about “Competipedia”—a secure, interactive, wiki-based resource for the Xerox Global Services sales force to find the latest competitive information. Chris will share how CSC did also leveraged wiki technology when they launched the first B2B social networking site for the insurance industry, called WikonnecT. Wikis and service companies — anyone seeing a trend here?

The SocialTech agenda promises both forward-looking views from Jeremiah Owyang, Guy Kawasaki, and Robert Scoble – visionaries that no conference on social media should be without. I also hope you will find a lot of practical, real-world advice that you can put into action after you leave the conference.  Will I see you there?  I hope so!

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ITSMA: 5 Ways Services Marketers Can Enable Sales

September 21, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Selling high-involvement products through a direct sales force is hard.  Selling high-involvement services through a direct sales force is even harder. The job requires more focus on relationship creation, management, and maintenance in services than other industries — activities that good salespeople accomplish almost naturally and good marketers struggle to leverage across different audiences.  Those of us in high technology/IT services marketing are lucky, however, because we have ITSMA to help.

I love that there is an association exclusively for IT Services Marketing professionals – one that attracts true peers from other large, high technology companies who exchange experiences and learn from each other readily. ITSMA does a great job of providing thoughtful research and best practices focused specifically on those who must work with sales and delivery across a wide range of target markets, industries, geographies, and offerings.  The folks at ITMSA help to start — and keep — those conversations going.

For example, today I attended ITSMA’s Briefing on The Next Generation of Sales Enablement here in Santa Clara, CA. This is an important topic among services marketers because the culture in many professional services organizations revolves around sales and delivery. It can be common in this sector, when compared to others, to see executive sales management relegate marketing to the “Make me some pretty slides” department. This is a fate good sales enablement can help to avoid.

How Do Services Sales Spend Their Time?

ITSMA Study: How Do Services Sales Spend Their Time?

While I can’t share the entire presentation with you, I found one slide particularly informative. In an August survey of the membership, ITSMA found that almost 1/4 of salespeople’s time, on average, is spent on indirect selling activities like lead generation, lead tracking, account planning, account strategy, creating presentations, and customer research, among other things.

Wow, doesn’t that sound like many of the activities marketing should do — and could do more consistently and less expensively — to target prospects, educate them ahead of the sales process, and increase sales productivity? I think industry marketers must work harder to understand the typically long, extensive sales processes — that include assessments, proposal responses, oral presentations of the proposed contract terms, and negotiations — and determine “how can marketing help to find this business earlier, nurture it, and help move it through the pipeline?”  This requires more than a direct marketing approach because services firms must demonstrate a commitment to the client’s business that goes beyond messaging and presentations.

Using ITSMA’s framework, successful sales enablement in the services world requires close attention to 5 critical areas:

1) Marketing and sales alignment: do you share the same goals and objectives for 2011 as well as this quarter? Do you agree on what it is you have to sell, who you want to sell it to, and what’s needed to make that happen?

2) Sales processes: fundamentally how do you sell and what makes your best salespeople outdistance their peers? Even if marketing does not share this responsibility, they should know how the sales and negotiation process works to know how they can help accelerate deals in the pipeline.

3) Lead generation: to my mind this is most important for sales enablement.  If marketing can’t demonstrate a direct link between marketing activity and sales results, it’s time to get into another line of work.

4) Sales tools: knowing “how” salespeople sell helps determine which tools they need at each stage in the process. Where you have the most fall out from one step to the next is where marketing should focus the sales tool effort. Don’t fall in the trap of asking sales “what do you need?” Rather, find look at how they spend their time and ask, “how can we help you do that faster, better, more efficiently?”

5) Account/territory planning:  this one is huge in services firms because account assignment requires long term commitment, both at the account level and at the broader segment level.  Service marketers in particular want to chase “industry marketing” and proffer industry solutions.  That’s fine, but targeting fewer industries more deeply works better in the long run that spreading those precious, few field resources across a jumble of different segments.

To learn more, I invite you to check out the ITSMA website or to look into their annual conference in early November. I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming ITSMA event!

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Increasing The Life Expectancy Of CMOs

August 16, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Early in my new adventure here at Xerox, I met Susan Kelly, VP of Enterprise Marketing Services and found a kindred spirit.  Susan is a forward-looking direct marketer and came to Xerox from K/P Corporation, a marketing services provider that develops integrated data-driven marketing solutions, where she was president and CEO. She’s also spent time as an executive at RR Donnelley and RRD Direct.

Today, she runs the services division within Xerox focused on helping marketers make the transition from analogue systems to digital marketing while automating relationship management. Like me, she wants to encourage marketers to embrace marketing automation as a means of gaining the transparency and control we need to better connect with customers, support sales activity, and deliver top-line growth. So naturally, I was thrilled when she invited me to contribute a few thoughts as a foreword to her new whitepaper.   Here’s what I wrote:

During the past four years, I had the privilege of studying and writing about business-to-business (B2B) marketing best practices at Forrester Research. I surveyed and spoke with thousands of B2B marketers about their processes and best practices. Through this work, it became clear to me that marketing’s influence is declining as business buyers go online to research purchase decisions using peer insights and independentexperts. Years of being the department with hard-to-quantify outcomes make it difficult for marketing to specifically and concisely demonstrate its true impact on the business. New campaigns, clever advertising, and delving into social media mask over problems and won’t spur the profound changes required to avoid what may seem like an inevitable slide toward obsolescence.

To remain viable, marketers must invest in technical capability that lets them work smarter and run leaner. Specifically, top marketers I know set up marketing-specific data management systems to improve insight, automate lead development and cultivation,integrate digital and traditional channels, embrace social media, and continuously measure and quantify the results.

However, technology investment without the proper skills, planning, change management and execution rarely succeeds. Most marketers must also rely on key marketing services partners to advise – and outsource – the needed process change. I hope, as you read the following white paper, you will come to share my view that marketing stands on the verge of a major transformation. But that needed change comes through rigorous, data-driven assessments, expertise in new process design, workflow optimization inside and outside the firm, modern marketing automation capabilities, marketing logistical management and customized tracking tools that validate marketing’s forward progress.

In this paper, Susan outlines some of the key challenges she sees CMOs face today and how marketing automation provides a clear way forward. Key among her insights are the “Four Cs” of marketing automation:

  • Collection: Cataloging, cleaning, and centralizing the management of customer data and digital assets is the first step. This work and investment, while difficult, wil pay off later as it provides a solid foundation for business intelligence that can benefit marketing, sales, and the entire enterprise.
  • Collaboration: Getting your assets and data in order makes it easier to collaborate with agencies, marketing automation vendors, database marketing services providers, and other internal marketing groups.
  • Convergence: Is really about the integration of traditional and online channels that allow marketers to target , connect, and dialogue with customers and prospects wherever they may be.
  • Connectivity: Combining creative development and demand management with shared access to data and digital assets, marketes can now integrate marketing on an enterprise-wide basis. This access lets you not only improve customer acquisition and lead management but also develop more effective customer retention and loyalty programs.

To read the full whitepaper, and learn more about Susan and her perspectives on the landscape, future, and opportunities for marketers, visit her Thought Leadership site.  And I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on the paper — feel free to post a comment to let us know what you think.

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Concluding Our Conversation: Loopfuse CEO Chat, Part III

April 18, 2010 — Laura Ramos

To finish up on the conversation I started with Sean Dwyer in February, I’d like to share a few final thoughts about the ways I’ve seen top marketers implement lead management automation successfully.  In this final installment of our Q&A series, Sean and I explore who are the core stakeholders to involve in lead management automation, what are the key success factors, and the ultimate prize — how lead management automation helps deliver healthier sales pipelines. 

Part III: Implementation and Key Success Factors

Q7: Who should be involved in the implementation of the Lead Management Automation platform?

Lead management automation should include marketing and sales as equal partners in the requirements gathering, selection, and implementation process. IT will be involved, too, but they will play a more minor if the company chooses an on-demand solution. IT must make sure that integration with existing customer support, database, and sales automation systems goes according to plan and that the new system doesn’t introduce any security or unforeseen technical problems into the current environment. Marketing and sales folks shouldn’t have to take on the burden of understanding the existing technical infrastructure to make marketing automation work.

I emphasize that marketing and sales must share joint responsibility – an idea that many marketing folks may bristle over. But, let’s face it, unlike other marketing automation decisions; lead management automation delivers direct tangible benefits to quota-carrying salespeople like greater visibility into the type of leads coming down the pipeline. It can also expose which specific characteristics, profiles, search history, marketing interactions, online behavior, and such differentiate higher scoring leads from those with lower scores.

Many lead management vendors include what I call “sales enablement” features in their offerings today – tools that help track a prospect’s digital footprints and summarize their presales buying behavior. For most reps, these features create a window into the customer’s psyche formerly hidden from view. Sales management and key account managers need to understand how lead management automation benefits the sales rank-and-file, so involving them in early discussions about “What is a well-qualified lead? How can automation help our firm generate more qualified demand? And what do we need this system to do to get there?” will improve sales’ willingness to work with the new technology, make it part of the sales process, and give marketing the feedback needed to improve customer acquisition and insight processes.

I think it is important to include all customer-facing functions to the implementation and training process, even if only for an introductory look at what the platform can do. Customer service, technical support, professional services, and even human resources can benefit from the purchase insights lead management automation delivers.

Q8: What are the most important factors for successfully implementing a Lead Management Automation platform?

I know the following may sound simplistic, but – through dozens of interviews and conversations with marketers who have used lead management successfully for more than a year – I’ve found that the keys to success include:

1) Gear up for process change; don’t rely simply on technology. Looking to pump up lackluster sales pipelines, many marketers turn to technology and overlook the systematic process, people, and internal behavioral change successful automation requires. Most veteran marketers said focusing on process, and not technology, was the factor that most affected their success with lead management.

2) Stock up on the content. Surprisingly, many marketers under-estimate the amount of content they need to have on-hand or produce to keep the lead management engine running. Because marketers think classically in terms of white papers, brochures, and datasheet – all which require high production investment – they quickly feel overwhelmed by the prospect of feeding a constant flow of content into a lead nurturing program. The trick is to focus on quantity –take long white papers and break them into several smaller parts, cut up data sheets into tables and bulleted lists, enlist subject matter experts in developing blog posts, videos or podcasts, or syndicate partner content – without sacrificing relevance.

3) Market the marketing automation. Don’t expect everyone in marketing and sales to embrace the lead management automation platform with gusto. We all have tendencies to resist change to a greater or lesser degree. Embrace the enthusiasts, elevate their early successes to management, and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. Treat the rollout of the lead management system like a product launch; announce it, train on it, and certify sales and marketing on their proficiency with the platform. Ask “Have they got the message? Do they repeat it reliably? Do they practice what they preach?” When you can say “yes” to these questions, then you know you’re on your way to success.

Q9: How should Sales and Marketing leverage the Lead Management Automation platform to help drive the pipeline?

Lead management automation is all about driving the pipeline. It’s like a DVR or a mobile phone, once you own one you can’t understand how you lived without it. But getting things to run smoothly at first can be challenging. Stick with it because the payoffs are significant and tangible. Consistently, marketers who use this technology over an extended period of time report measurable increases in lead quality, opportunity-to-pipeline conversion, and deal velocity—all factors that directly impact sales pipeline health and revenues. It’s not uncommon to hear stories about how marketers improved inbound demo requests, early stage pipeline dollar-values, and appointment-to-opportunity conversion by factors of 2 or more.

Achieving this level of success requires focusing on the four key areas: scoring/profiling, routing leads to sales, nurturing leads not yet ready to buy, and monitoring lead progress (i.e. closing the loop with sales). If you make sure the lead management platform delivers on all four of those process stages, then your ability to drive pipeline heath and execute more effective campaigns will improve.

If you would like to learn more about this topic, please check out a whitepaper that Silverpop offers titled“How Managing Leads Pays Off In A Stronger, More Qualified Pipeline. ” In this report commissioned by Silverpop, Forrester (meaning yours truly, when I worked there prior to Xerox) surveyed 15 senior-level marketers to gauge their experiences in using lead management automation.  Yes, Silverpop is somewhat of a competitor to Loopfuse. However, if you look beyond this to see that we are all trying to raise awareness and educate marketers about the value of this technology, I think you will find some of the insights shared in this report both insightful and useful.

I wanted to thank Sean for offering me this opportunity to share our conversation with all of you.  Let me know what other questions you might like to see asked and answered in the future.

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Welcome to Xerox!

April 9, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Just closed out my first week heading up Industry Marketing lead for Xerox Global Services in North America, and my biggest accomplishment was getting my computer and network connections to function properly.  Wow, do I have a lot to learn!  But I am thrilled by the opportunity to help build a more vibrant, industry-specific story around what Xerox — and Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) — offers high technology companies who need help reducing office infrastructure costs, simplifying IT operations, outsourcing business process, optimizing print and publications, or improving communication-related business processes.

Most of all, I am very excited — and honored — to lead a great group of dedicated industry marketers who plan and execute marketing programs that drive business in existing global, major, and house accounts as well as new business opportunities in Education, Energy, Financial Services, Government, High-Technology/Telecom, Manufacturing, and Retail. You can meet the team online:

1) Nancy Richardson writes for the Xerox Healthcare Pulse Blog and tracks a wide range of issues ranging from the recent Healthcare Reform legislation and its impact on electronic medical records and healthcare communication to how the combination of Xerox and ACS can create smarter clinical, operational, and financial data, document, and process management, that enables Healthcare to provide an optimal patient experience and more cost-effective medical outcomes.

2) Karen McDermott explores the impact of technology — like mobile banking, social media, paperless banking, and sustainability– on the principled, regulated, and conservative world of financial services in Xerox’s Financial Services Blog.

3) If manufacturing sector issues like accelerating globalization, documentation innovation in product lifecycle management, and product safety are of concern, then check out Bettina Engelmann’s blog at Xerox’s the Manufacturing Industry.

4) Liz Vega manages industry marketing for the Public Sector, in which Xerox and ACS both have deep roots. Liz is also an expert on the critical success factors behind Account-Based Marketing where she has published and spoken jointly with ITSMA about case studies related to Xerox best practices.

5) Rounding out the team is relative newcomer to the high tech industry, but long time Xerox employee, Sharon Varalli who focuses on the High Tech, Telecommunications, and Media indstries in North America and supports Xerox’s efforts to provide publishing and business process services to some of our largest tech-centric accounts.

I look forward to learning more about the trends and concerns facing decision makers in these important industry sectors. If you would like to participate and contribute to getting me “up to speed”, feel free to contact me by commenting on this blog — or reaching out to me at laura.ramos@xerox.com — and letting all of us know what issues are top of mind for you as a participant and practioner in these key industry areas.

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Get Organized For B2B Community Marketing

February 8, 2010 — Laura Ramos

After testing the social media waters through much of 2009, I see B2B marketers waking up to the fact that successful social execution requires more than setting up group pages on LinkedIn, opening a corporate Twitter account, or posting videos to YouTube. To have the greatest impact, marketers will need to focus social media marketing efforts at the tail end of the customer acquisition and selling process — at creating long-term, vibrant customer relationships — not on building brand or generating leads. To turn social opportunity into marketing advantage requires marketers to adopt a community (in contrast to broadcast, direct, or one-t0-one) marketing mindset. It also requires new organizational structure, roles, processes, and incentives to help your company “get smart” about how it interacts with prospects and customers online.

Unfortunately, B2B marketers treat social like yet another media channel, not as a fundamental change to how business gets done. 

Source: Forrester Report "Organizing For B2B Tech Community Marketing" February 3, 2010

In research I published last week, I explore recent Forrester survey results where we asked over 300 B2B marketers how they are gearing up for social interactions with customers. Most say that their social organizational structure and governance is ad hoc or managed by different business units with little oversight (see the figure).  

While decentralized and ad hoc are good adjectives to use when describing any approach to social activity, the lack of oversight and governance creates (real or potential) risk for those blazing new trails in the social landscape.

To execute social strategy in ways that build deeper customer relationships and foster more transparent communications — without panicking executives or legal overseers — requires firms to create more flexible, decentralized ways of engaging with buyers that shake up traditional reporting structures but give employees the tools they need to be successful. To help marketers think through these changes, in the research report, I advise:

1) Organize for flexibility, not bureaucracy. Getting organized means creating some form of central governing body chartered with establishing shared resources and fostering communication. It also means distributing social execution responsibility — and accountability for results — widely in business units or regions. Rather than commanding and controlling, the central team guides activity, spreads best practices, and monitors progress continuously while giving product teams and customer-facing functions leeway to manage social activity in a local, transparent, and relevant manner.

2) Align social objectives with business goals. To mature social processes from ad hoc activity to consistent disciplines, marketers must specify what they expect to result from engaging with customers socially, and then make the functional areas involved responsible for achieving those goals.  Easier said than done, but picking the right objective is a core tenant to the POST methodology I’ve use to help many client get social media marketing right. To make progress quickly, start with social plans where you can limit the impact to one or two functional areas. This keeps internal competition on external social channels to a minimum and compels departments to collaborate as they experiment with social activity in a coordinated manner.

3) Run initial social forays like a corporate program, not a campaign. Social transformation requires dedicated budget, change management, and cross-functional coordination on a scale similar to other major programs, like sustainability or outsourcing. Some firms need temporary executive assignments and staff to hit major social milestones, such as establishing a listening process, creating a thought-leadership agenda, or inviting customers to engage in new community activity. This core team should also validate the business case for each social ”program” undertaken.

4) Open boundaries to facilitate internal collaboration and external outreach. Social requires employees to step outside their functional comfort zones and work with outside partners and influencers. Rather than opening borders completely, top firms progressively allow more access to resources, opportunities to interact, and incentives to do so by establishing a community hub. The community hub (aka community portal, social networking site, forum, etc.) creates structure, but offers enough flexibility, to allow social interactions to evolve. Encourage employees to collaborate with each other first because this will foster the skills, norms, and creative thinking needed to make the transition to external interactions go faster and remain permanent. To see how one marketer is wrestling with this today, take a look at Paul Dunay’s blog post titled “Fire Your Director of Social Media!”

What does all of this mean?  That B2B marketers should advocate for a social core team, under their leadership, to foster new process, structure and — ultimately — culture that supports online interaction where it matters most — at the touchpoints that customers choose to use daily.  Take a look at the research and let me know what you think.

(P.S. I am backdating this post to more closely correspond with the publication date of the research. Hope you don’t mind!)

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Pump Up Your Pipeline With Lead Management Automation

January 29, 2010 — Laura Ramos

 Will 2010 be the year the lead management automation market takes off? Early indications show that the automation market ended on a high note in Q4 2009 as marketers turned to technology to help generate and manage demand more effectively. While technology alone does not guarantee healthy pipelines, automation can help most firms hand better qualified leads over to sales. So when Silverpop engaged Forrester last year to research the top issues marketers face when generating demand and which approaches deliver the best results, I quickly agreed to take the lead on this project.

Lead Management Automation Helps To Plug Leaky Funnels

In the spirit of full disclosure, let me give a little background about the project. Silverpop hired Forrester to conduct research and write a whitepaper independently on the results. Forrester follows strict guidelines to ensure objectivity as a neutral third-party advisor. As a matter of policy, we don’t write whitepapers for hire, and the few we do must meet specific requirements, include primary research, and educate the market on a topic of broad  interest — regardless of the sponsor’s intent.  For example, we interviewed 15 Directors, VPs, or SVPs of marketing in midmarket firms of 100 to 5000 employees for the report. Some were Silverpop customers but the majority were not and Forrester made the call about who to include to achieve a full range of perspectives.  However, my company does not employ a team of consultants separate from the analyst ranks and, when a project like this comes along, analysts who cover the market or technology play a major role conducting the surveys and writing the report.

So what did we learn?  Well there are several ways you can find out. First, you can go to Silverpop’s Web site and register for a copy.  On January 26, Silverpop CEO, Bill Nussey, invited me to join him on a webinar to talk about the report findings and to offer a few case studies illustrating the tangible benefits of lead management automation. In addition, Amanda Ferrante, with DemandGen Report, wrote a very thorough and thoughtful review of the paper earlier this week and details many of the findings.

In summary, here’s what we found:

1) Mature lead management pays off in measurable impact on pipelines, marketing efficiency, and accountability. On average, one-half or more of the marketers we spoke with cite healthier pipelines, increased marketing proficiency, and more efficient resource/budget use as key outcomes when investing in lead management process and technology change.

2) Process development and sales collaboration are essential first steps. More than selecting the most innovative or feature-rich technology, top firms succeed when they approach lead management as a process change that requires close and continuous interaction with sales.

3) Four practices shorten the time from implementation to value. Lead management experts focus on customer profiling, lead scoring, content design, and nurturing to accelerate investment returns.

4) Successful lead management improves marketing’s standing and stature. Marketers that follow lead management best practices increase marketing execution efficiency, help sales optimize deal-closing activity, and turn customer relationships into valuable corporate assets.

5) Ability to share and instill best practices is key to selecting the right technology partner. Long term success depends on trading off flashy features, promised ease of use, and low price tags for proven expertise, a track-record of successful implementations, and a growing, vibrant community of like-minded users.

Bottomline: Lead management automation works and helps markters to close up leaky marketing funnels, put better qualified opportunities in front of sales, and help drive stronger topline revenue.  If you have had similar success, or suffered a few failures, with marketing automation, feel free to chime in her with your experiences.

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