Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Social Selling without Situational and Contextual Content is like Partying with Robots

Whitepaper from TBK Consult

Author Hans Peter Bech, M.Sc. (econ) TBK-WIPA-027

Š Hans Peter Bech, 2016 Unless otherwise indicated, Hans Peter Bech holds the copyrights to all materials on these pages. All rights reserved. No part of these pages, either text or image may be used for any purpose other than personal use. Therefore, reproduction, modification, storage in a retrieval system or retransmission, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, for reasons other than personal use, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission.

Published by TBK PublishingÂŽ (a division of TBK Consult Holding ApS) Strandvejen 724 2930 Klampenborg Denmark CVR: DK31935741 www.tbkpublishing.com ISBN: 978-87-93116-20-7 TBK-WIPA-027

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Table of contents: Target audience

5

Abstract

5

Partying with robots

6 6

Social selling

6

Content marketing

7

The three types of content

8

Propaganda

8

Generic Need/Pain Content

8

Situational and Contextual Content

9

The challenge

9

The buyers' journey

10

From my own world

10

The value proposition and target audience

12

Sales

13

Inbound leads

13

Outbound leads

14

Social selling

www.tbkconsult.com

5

Author

Social Selling and content marketing

3

15

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

15 15 16 16 17

www.tbkconsult.com

Not everyone is active on social media

4

17

Search

17

Social selling may not be the holy grail

18

About the author

19

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Targeted audience

Abstract

The target audience for this whitepaper is anyone engaged with revenue generation activities in the information technology industry.

The whitepaper primarily deals with the complex situation where several people are involved with deciding the purchase of information technology based products and services and where the operation of the final solution is mission critical for the buying company.

Over the last ten years, terms such as “social selling” and “content marketing” have entered the revenue generation vocabulary. Some argue that they have changed the disciplines of marketing and sales fundamentally, to which I don’t agree.

The Internet has certainly brought us new communication channels and learning how to use and navigate these channels are obviously very important in the strive for improving the productivity of our marketing and sales activities.

The whitepaper defines the three types of content and explains how you decide when to provide your potential customers which each type.

It then introduces the concept of marketing and sales as the facilitation of the buyer’s journey and explains that the nature of your business model determines to which degree you can take advantage of social media.

The whitepaper recommends how to build the basic foundation for using social media for sales purposes and concludes that it must be an integrated and managed part of your marketing mix and should not be left entirely to the individual sales person’s own initiative.

Author

Hans Peter Bech, M.Sc. (Econ.)

Acknowledgements

Design and lay-out: Sordako OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia, info@kompot.ee

www.tbkconsult.com

Proof reading: Emma Crabtree, ecr@tbkconsult.com

5

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Partying with robots

This whitepaper is about the relationship between marketing/sales communication and revenue generation. It is inspired by the sales messages that I receive regularly pushing products and services notoriously without any insight into or interest for my business or my current situation. Receiving such messages and calls is like being at a party with robots. They look human, but they are unable to ask situational questions, listen, analyze or provide a contextual response, so all they do is replay programmed propaganda messages irrespective of what you ask or tell them. It is a party with a lot of noise, but it is awfully boring and never leaves lasting impressions.

Social Selling and Content marketing

Let me emphasize that I don't like the term "social selling" and that I don't like the term "content marketing" either. Check out this post

by Samuel Scott1 to understand my disapproval: Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong.

Social selling

"Social selling" is supposed to be the label for communicating with your potential named customers through social media. In this context it is just one of many ways to interact with an individual that you have identified as a potential customer and thus it is a sub segment of the arsenal of activities in your big sales toolbox.

Please don't use the term "social selling" indicating that the discipline of sales has changed, just because we have a new set of channels available for communicating with our potential customers. The discipline of sales has not changed, but you need to learn how to navigate the new social media communication channels if you want to use them effectively for your sales purposes.

www.tbkconsult.com

Sales was, is and will always will be the facilitation of “the last mile” of the customer's journey.

1

6

Samuel Scott, Marcom Director at Logz.io, Techcrunch, April 12, 2016

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Content marketing

The term "content marketing" likewise raises my blood pressure.

Is your web site Is your LinkedIn profile Is a brochure describing your product Is your annual report describing your company and your recent accomplishments in rosy terms and pictures Is a whitepaper describing how to deal with a typical challenge that your customers' face Is a display ad in the New York Post Is a sponsored tweet Is a pre-roll on YouTube Is a billboard poster along the highway Is a personal email to a potential client Is a banner ad Is Google AdWords Is a mention of your company or products in the news Is a blog post

content

?

Is a comment on LinkedIn Is your phone call to a potential client

www.tbkconsult.com

Yes, it is all content. However, you must tailor the content to the communication channel that you use and the objective you wish to serve. And this is where most companies fail.

Marketing and sales without content is like spaghetti Bolognese without pasta and meat. You can write a sentence about it, but it doesn’t make any sense in the real world and will look meager on your plate.

7

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

The three types of content2

Let me for the sake of simplicity divide "content" into three categories:

࿼࿼ Propaganda ࿼࿼ Generic Need/Pain Content ࿼࿼ Situational and Contextual Content

Propaganda3

Generic Need/ Pain Content

Everything you produce that talks about your products/services, your company and your clients falls into this category. Companies simply cannot help painting an overly rosy picture when they tell their own stories.

We all know this and we are all very skeptical when exposed to other's propaganda. Brochures, fact sheets, display advertising, annual reports, commercials, press releases, sales presentations, web sites, demos and all direct marketing are primarily propaganda.

Everything you produce that is focused on the needs and pains of your potential customers falls into this category. Discussing how to deal with these needs and pains without pushing your specific products and services belongs here. White papers, eBooks, blogposts, keynote presentations and tutorial videos are typically the formats used for this type of content.

2

There is no direct relationship between format and content. Any type of format (print, web pages, video, presentations, pdfs, physical meetings, phone calls etc.) can be used for any type of content. However, it seems as the more control a company has over the format the more propaganda-like the content becomes.

www.tbkconsult.com

3

See Winch, Jonathan, Michael Best, and David Hoskins. 2011. The Death of Propaganda: B2B buyer behavior has changed - now it's your turn (Eye for Image: Copenhagen).

8

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Situational and Contextual Content

The challenge

Not in active buying mode

Anytime you engage in communicating or discussing with a specific named audience you should produce situational and contextual content. Comments to other people’s blog posts and contacting individuals through mail, phone or social media all require the production of situational and contextual content. Proposals and contracts are typically both situational and contextual.

Let’s assume that your customers stay with you for an average of 5 years and let’s say that the average sales cycle for your product/service is six months. If you take a global view of your potential market, then how many of your potential customers will be in the market for what you have to offer within the next six months?

In active buying mode

THE TOTAL AVAILABLE MARKET

The answer is 10%.

When you get in touch with 1,000 potential customers then only 100 will be in buying mode just now and most of them will already have a fairly good idea of which vendors they will consider. Let’s assume that 85%4 will prefer to buy from someone they already know and that they don’t know you. That leaves you with 15 leads out of every 1,000 contacts.

Let’s assume that 50% of the leads you identify will actually make a purchase decision.

You are now left with 7.5 potential deals per 1,000 successful contacts.

How many people do you have to contact and how many contact attempts are required to actually have just one meaningful conversation with someone involved in buying a product or service like yours?

When you do get through and find someone who is prepared to talk to you and consider you as a vendor, then how do you orchestrate the conversation?

And when you get to the time for the final decision then how many of the potential deals will go your way?

www.tbkconsult.com

4

The 15% corresponds to the early market portion of the total market as defined in the law of diffusion of innovation: Moore, Geoffrey A. 2014. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Harper Business, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers: New York, NY).

9

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

We are all buyers and we are all on a number of buying journeys all the time, but we are never buying everything all the time. When the time comes to buy something most of us prefer to buy from someone we already know and trust. These are the main reasons why a revenue generation approach based solely on sales people getting in touch with potential customers when they are in buying mode and then serving them standard propaganda messages will always fail.

If you sell something inexpensive and unimportant to the customers, then the approach is too expensive and if you sell stuff with a high price tag that is really important to the customer then you will always be too late.

The buyers' journey

The famous Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said:

“…. if real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there.5 “ Selling mission critical information technology solutions to companies is never a hit and run type of business. It is the art of helping people and their companies increase productivity and/or take advantage of new business opportunities.

Then how do you use the various types of content and channels to generate as much revenue as possible? When do you use which type of content and what happens when you get it wrong?

You cannot answer these questions without a thorough understanding of your customers' buying journey including the various personas involved in the purchase decision.

From my own world

Let me give you some examples from my own world.

There is a huge difference between making a decision to buy my latest book (€13.56), signing up for one of my workshops (€1,510 plus travel and accommodation), asking me to deliver a keynote (€4,500 and up) and engaging me as a business advisor (€2,150 and up).

www.tbkconsult.com

5

10

Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals, 1854

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Buying one of my books is a "simple purchase" meaning that it can be made by any single individual irrespective of her position in the organization and it doesn't require any major budget considerations.

Signing up for my workshops and engaging me for a keynote or as a business advisor are mostly6 "complex purchases" meaning that more than one individual needs to agree and that there must be budget coverage for the purchase.

The workshop is a well-defined service that is easy to understand, but how to translate the outcome of the workshop into value for the attendees is a very individual consideration. Each individual will have to consider that for herself and the price tag of the workshop doesn’t allow me to engage in situational sales activities.

Engaging me as a keynote speaker with one of my current presentations is easy, but having me deliver a customized keynote requires more work on the customer's behalf and subsequently for me too.

Engaging me as a business advisor is a highly individual endeavor.

Predicting exactly what the client will get out of having me (or any other business advisor) working with them is impossible unless we spend time defining the objectives and agreeing on how to measure progress.

The buyer's journey for each of my "products" is completely different and thus the communication vehicles that I need in place to engage with my target audience and move them ahead in my pipeline are very different too.

You can get to my "products" in many different ways and only one (the product page on our web site) is propaganda. The other routes are through need/pain content and contextual content mainly on social media. Only very rarely do I produce situational content and when I do there must be a very high probability that it will pay off for me as well as for my client.

I am not saying this is the best way for everybody, but it works very well with the type of "products" that my target audience buys from me.

www.tbkconsult.com

6

Executives and managers with their own budgets make the decision to attend themselves while people without a budget need approval from their manager.

11

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

The value proposition and target audience

Designing scalable revenue generation models, which I assume any business owner and executive ultimately wants, requires that you stop hammering out propaganda on all channels. You need to get back to the drawing board and consider a few basic concepts of which the most important is the relationship between your customer value proposition and your target audience7.

The objective of this exercise is to identify the segments in the market where your value proposition is extremely attractive and competitive, deeply understand the value you provide and the switching pain that your potential customers have to go through to acquire a solution based on your products and services.

www.tbkconsult.com

When you have done that then you identify which persons will typically be involved in a project where you could become the vendor and you then map the issues they will be concerned about.

7 The analysis and definition of value proposition and the target customer segments is an integrated part of the business model framework. My experience is that these two building blocks are the most difficult to nail, but also by far the most important to get right. See Osterwalder, Alexander, Yves Pigneur, and Tim Clark. 2010. Business model generation: A handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. (Wiley: Hoboken, NJ). and Osterwalder, Alexander, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, and Alan Smith. 2014. Value proposition design: How to create products and services customers want. (Wiley: Hoboken, NJ.

12

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

I know them

I follow them

I trust them

I may buy from them

I engage with them

I buy from them

I evaluate them

I buy more from them

I recommend them And finally you draw a map of the journey each of these persons travels over the life cycle of your type of solution and identify the potential touch points where you can engage in a way that is relevant to the other party.

Now you have the blue print for designing your communication strategy, developing the vehicles and deciding how to use them to engage with your target audience.

Sales

Let me jump to the stage in the funnel where we engage with named individuals. I call this the sales stage and it can initially be divided into two main categories:

࿼࿼ They contact you (inbound leads) ࿼࿼ You contact them (outbound leads)

www.tbkconsult.com

Inbound leads

13

All my business comes from inbound leads, but I realize that not all sales people are that fortunate. Getting inbound leads is great as you can ask questions to understand where they are on the buyer’s journey and how they should be served moving forward.

Some are very early in the buying stage and need more contextual need/pain related content to better understand their own situation, some need propaganda to understand what you have to offer and some need situational content to meet their specific requirements (e.g. a phone call, a meeting, a demonstration or a proposal).

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Outbound leads

There are many companies (most?) that do not get enough inbound leads to satisfy their need for revenue growth. They need sales development people to contact8 potential customers, and this is where things go wrong. Getting in touch with individual potential customers to test and then activate their needs requires a number of steps.

Going back to Kierkegaard your approach should always be to learn and help, but how early can you engage and how much can you afford to invest in one-on-one situational conversations?

When I was a salesman selling business management solutions to the newspaper industry I personally facilitated the entire customer journey and took care of all contacts with the buying personas myself. We invested in trade shows such as WAN/IFRA (Europe) and NEXPO (North America) where the buying personas came to us, but otherwise it was I who made contact with them.

The purchase processes were extremely complex and correspondingly very long, the switching cost was enormous and the average project had double-digit million-dollar price tags.

Investing heavily in building relationships with all the potential customers in most corners of the world made sense because the market was global and there were only a limited number of purchase projects open in any year. If we were not considered as a potential vendor before the project went into the RFP-stage9 then we had no chance of winning the business. The deals were front-loaded providing cash up front and payments tied to milestones and final delivery. After successful implementation we could charge for maintenance, support and add-on functionality.

A market with few but very high priced deals requires that you continuously build individual relationships and nurture these for years preparing for the day where the customer enters the active project stage. The price tags and payment format justifies the investment in sales resources and activities.

www.tbkconsult.com

8

Contact can be made in many ways such as meeting them at a conference, sending a Tweet, calling on the phone, sending an email, sending an InMail or inviting to connect on LinkedIn. 9

14

RFP: Request For Proposal

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

A market with many deals and small price tags calls for a different approach relying more on one-to-many marketing activities and automated nurturing. When the delivery format is associated with payments related to consumption of the solution, then recouping the sales cost becomes a huge challenge and you need to enter the individual sales stage either shortly before closing time or in formats that are less costly to maintain.

Social selling

So how can you use social media as a low cost engagement activity in your selling efforts and what are the guidelines for doing it effectively?

Work on your profiles first

It starts with your own social media profiles. There is no reason to drive potential customers to your profiles if you leave them confused and offer no value.

Do your social media profiles clearly convey your value proposition for your key target audience? Is it clear for any visitor what insight and domain competencies that you possess and offer? Is it clear that you could be a valuable resource to have in the visitor’s network?

The vast majority of sales people have social media profiles designed to get another job and not another customer.

Your social media profile is a piece of propaganda, but you should use it to convey domain insight and skills that are important to your potential customers rather than to your potential employers10.

Turn up the volume

Are your social media profiles dead?

A Twitter account with no tweets and no followers? A LinkedIn profile with no updates and activities related to your profession? A Facebook profile showing you in a funny costume and drunk at a stag party? You claim that you are a professional or maybe even a thought leader, but you don't walk your talk!

How can you be a trusted capacity for your potential customers, when you never share anything professional on social media?

www.tbkconsult.com

10

I will even argue that your next employer may recognize this as an important skill and differentiator to other candidates.

15

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

The best you can do is produce your own content showing your insight and experience with the challenges and opportunities that your customers are facing.

The next best is sharing quality content produced by others, but still closely related to the challenges and opportunities that your customers are facing.

Making connections

Now you can start making connections and with the content that you produce or share on a regular basis you are now a potential valuable source of domain insight relevant to your target audience.

You can easily answer the question:

Why should I connect with you? – “Because I work with the same challenges and opportunities as you do and I post professional content on social media that may be of value to you”.

This is the nucleus of the sales discipline where you are always offering something with a higher value than what you expect in return.

As opposed to the traditional approach:

“Hey, I want to connect because I have something that I want to sell to you,” which I can confirm isn’t perceived well by most people.

Make yourself familiar with the plumbing Focus on the social media platforms that are most widely used by your target audience and then learn how the plumbing works. You must know about hashtags, DMs and retweets if you use Twitter. You must understand the fundamentals11 of LinkedIn if this is where you engage with your audience. There are books, webinars, whitepapers and blog posts available on how to use any social media platform. Google what you need and get familiar with the fundamentals.

www.tbkconsult.com

11

Believe me, most sales people do not understand the fundamentals of LinkedIn.

16

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

Keep up the volume

As a sales person you need to manage your pipeline and be selective as to where you invest your resources. Regular posting of professional material and making comments to other’s postings are required to maintain your presence and visibility with your target audience.

As potential customers move into buying mode you need to monitor their social media behavior to see what they are currently busy with and you need to respond correspondingly with situational and contextual content.

Not everyone is active on social media Bear in mind that many of your key connections are not active on and do not visit the social media platforms on a regular basis. The rule of thumb is that the higher in the organization they sit the less they post and the less often they visit the social media platforms, but social media activity is in general very individual.

Maybe your potential market is so big that you don’t need to worry about the portion not active on social media, but if that is not the case then you may have to engage with them and push information to them through other more conventional channels.

Also remember that not everyone enjoys reading. Some prefer videos and others podcasts that they consume while driving or flying.

Repackage your content so you reach a much larger portion of your key audience.

www.tbkconsult.com

Search

17

Whatever you post on social media is indexed by the search engines. As you build your repository of posts and engage in the online activities the probability that you will be found by people searching for what you do will increase.

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

You should definitely pay attention to the key words and phrases used in your industry and make sure your content includes those that are relevant.

Each sales person cannot be a search engine optimization expert, but you need to be familiar with the basics and you should expect that the assets provided by your marketing department are optimized for the search engines.

This is actually much easier than it sounds because you cannot engage effectively in the discussions of your customers’ challenges and opportunities unless you speak their language.

Social selling may not be the holy grail

Even though most of my own business comes though social media I cannot recommend that you rely entirely on these channels unless you have carefully done your homework first.

How, how much and for what you should use social media in your sales effort comes down to an individual assessment of your business model, your business model environment, your revenue generation process and the skills of your revenue generation organization. All of which must be designed to facilitate your customers’ buying journeys.

If social media can and should play an important role in facilitating your customers’ purchase processes, then you shouldn’t leave the initiative to each individual sales person (and just give her a ½-day introduction to LinkedIn), but treat the area as a strategic component of your marketing mix. Define how you recommend using social media in your specific situation, provide a repository of assets and templates to be used and find out how to benchmark the best performing approaches12.

Expecting each sales representative to generate their own content is utopian. Those who can will do it and you don’t want those who cannot to even try. Leaving the initiative to the individual sales person may make some successful, but it will be impossible to scale predictably.

www.tbkconsult.com

12

See Trish Bertuzzi, The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales. Moore-Lake; 1 edition (January 15, 2016)

18

Social Selling Without Situational and Contextual Content Is like Partying with Robots

About the author Hans Peter Bech is an Amazon bestselling author. He is a frequent blogger on issues related to growing information technology companies to global market leadership and has written several books and numerous whitepapers on business development in the IT industry.

Hans Peter also facilitates workshops for the TBK AcademyÂŽ and is an advisor for governments and companies. He holds a M.Sc. in macroeconomics and political science from the University of Copenhagen.

Hans Peter Bech

More about Hans Peter Bech

www.tbkconsult.com

More publications by the author.

19