Figure 4.6 Example of Social Media Analytics
The rFactr SocialPort dashboard screen, which displays useful analytics about social media activity.
While essential in regulated industries, this kind of social media messaging management application can be a boon to any company in any industry. If embraced by content creators in the marketing team, such applications can help improve sellers' confidence levels in their communications with Buyer 2.0. They can also increase the speed at which sellers develop situational fluency—and thus help sellers to establish effective personal brands as Micro-Marketers to Buyer 2.0.
The Micro-Marketer is the first of three personae in The Collaborative Sale. It overlaps with and supports the next seller persona required to succeed with Buyer 2.0: the Visualizer.
Corporate Assistance for Micro-Marketers
One of our clients, Emerson Process Management, has combined the roles of chief blogger and head of social media into one full-time position. This role monitors and facilitates the user community called Emerson Exchange 365.6
Emerson Exchange 365 offers depth and breadth on best practices, technical specifications, and industry-specific forums, where even competitors have been known to “lurk.” The platform includes a live tweet stream from both employees and customers, and is especially active during trade shows and user exchanges.
Using Twitter, a prospective buyer who just saw a picture of a newly installed valve might reach out to the person who posted the tweet to ask if it was difficult to install or how it compared to the valve it replaced, for example.
A competitor whose valve was replaced in this Twitter discussion might use this information to research misunderstandings about his company's product, or look up other customers using the same valve in their processes and educate them about proper care and cleaning, so that the customers don't blame the valve company for its poor performance and replace it with an Emerson product, too.
Does David Ivester, Emerson's area vice president for sales in the U.S. Gulf area, care that competitors are watching? No, he laughs: “Let the competitors see why they want to work for Emerson.”7
When researching this book, we even saw people posting about their career status on Emerson Exchange 365, including an engineering manager whose plant just closed, eliciting a quick reply from Emerson directing him to the company's LinkedIn community.
Assisting New Micro-Marketers
Control Southern, an Emerson Process Management business partner, dipped its proverbial toe into the social selling waters in the summer of 2013 when it hired Alex Boss, a recent graduate from the University of Georgia, as a marketing intern—and a marketing department of one.
Emerson Process Management maintains a lively social media presence, and Alex harnessed its tailwinds to help Control Southern's sales force jump into social selling. She began by interviewing Emerson's chief blogger and head of social media to prioritize her tasks and then created a Control Southern company profile on LinkedIn. She immediately started reposting articles there that were originally posted on the Emerson Exchange site to the LinkedIn page. Control Southern offers its customers several training courses, so Alex listed them on the company's page and account managers began sharing them on the platform, an easy way to begin using the service.
During the last company meeting, she brought in a photographer so that everyone would have a professional head shot, and then provided a best practices document for using the site. “Some people still don't know how to use it, but the younger ones are into it,” she says. Sellers are starting to reshare articles from Control Southern's page with their networks, and more are using the platform to research what their buyers are talking about online before they make their calls.
When Control Southern picked up a new product line, Alex wrote a press release and distributed it through PR Web. She optimized it for media sharing and carefully monitored headline impressions and the total number of times it was read. She posted the release on Control Southern's LinkedIn page, and some of the account managers said, “This is great; I can promote this at a specific plant.”
“I was pleased with the results,” Alex says. “Our headline was featured in certain industry segments, and better yet, an account manager got a call based on the release.”
Alex spends a considerable amount of time supporting the team in writing quantified business results (QBRs). Control Southern's salespeople are required to document a certain number per year, but until Alex was hired they weren't doing anything with them except store them—and that's a waste.
Following the format of challenge-solution-results, she worked with reps and their customers to write the QBRs and get them approved with customers. She then inserted them into a template using Control Southern's logo and colors. “This content repository will serve the firm and its customers for many years to come,” she says.
Her next step will be to publish the QBRs on the company's website, and then share them on LinkedIn and Twitter. Although some corporate policies require anonymity in the QBRs, Alex reports that customers are eager to share how Control Southern provided valuable solutions to their needs. “Our goal is to achieve trusted adviser status,” she says, “and a QBR helps us do just that.”8
Micro-Marketer Competencies
The Micro-Marketer persona requires sellers to possess or develop a number of key competencies—knowledge, skills, or abilities that enable them to perform the required behaviors for this persona. Managers implementing the Collaborative Sale should look for evidence of these competencies in any potential new hire, and examine what competencies need to be developed in existing sellers on staff.
Situational knowledge—understands the buyer's industry, job roles, areas of responsibility, and common business issues.
Capability knowledge—understands product and service solutions, and how they address customer business issues or capitalize on potential opportunities.
Demand creation—creates and uses business development messaging for generating demand, providing thought leadership, and stimulating buyer interest.
Problem needs identification—identifies buyers' business drivers for change within a targeted market, organization, prospect, or opportunity.
Communication skills—has ability to express points of view clearly, both orally and in written form.
Networking and relationship-building skills—is able to build productive social bonds with customers and buyers; builds, maintains, and leverages mutually beneficial business relationships.
Social media utilization—uses social media tools to expand seller's knowledge and to interact with and influence buyers.
Technical skills—is able to use appropriate technology to participate in social web and online customer conversations, as well as any supporting Micro-Marketer technologies, such as a marketing automation system.
Planning and organizational skills—can use structured processes and methods to identify a logical sequence of events and activities required to achieve an intended goal or result.
The Story (Continued)
The Delta Sky Club lounge felt stale to Jon. He wanted to pace the floor and walk off some of his energy that had accumulated during the past hour.
Nancy said, “Tell me what you're doing to market yourself as a thought leader in this space, Jon.”
Time stood still.
Eventually Jon said, “Nancy, I've been 100 percent focused on getting appointments and riding on airplanes. I don't have time to speak at conferences.”
“What are you doing on LinkedIn?”
“I have a profile and I use it for research. Why?”
“You don't have to speak at conferences to market yourself as a thought leader. You can do it right there on LinkedIn. I'll send you a link to a great webinar on how to get started.”
A week later, after watching the Micro-Marketer webinar, Jon decided that every Sunday night, when his wife turned to Masterpiece Theater, he would turn to LinkedIn for an hour or two of personal brand building
. He had no particular love for the period drama series that was currently running, but his wife enjoyed his company even if he wasn't following the plot with her.
Reading the insurance broker's LinkedIn updates, he shouldn't have been surprised to see that the broker shared a familiar white paper in his stream. Nancy had sent him the link to the same report when they met in the airport the previous week.
Jon's first thought was: Damn—I should have been the one who introduced him to that white paper.
He shook off the self-recriminations and went back to research ideas for how to build his pipeline and personal brand. He noticed that most of his insurance prospects belonged to a group that was facilitated by a PhD statistician with a keen interest in weather patterns, so he spent an hour scrolling through the threads and downloading a couple of white papers along the way. He scheduled time with himself to read the materials and decide which prospects would appreciate the information.
The threads also yielded five prospects Jon had never spoken to. He thought, I'll see how to get in their line of vision tomorrow.
Next, he looked at the groups that his two strongest competitors belonged to and monitored how they were conducting themselves. One used a lot of sports metaphors to kick off discussions, and Jon grudgingly admired how smoothly the competitor interjected that he used his software to help him pick his fantasy league players, even though that wasn't the software's intended use. That's working for him, Jon thought, but I'm not going down that road.
Another competitor frequently shared decks from conferences he attended. Very few of them were from the competitor's personal presentations; he shared decks from other panelists as well. Jon had recently watched a webinar that stressed the importance of curating content, and not merely pushing materials from ExyRisk. Jon noticed that his competitor didn't just share the decks generally; instead, to save potential readers the aggravation of scrolling through the entire deck, he advised group members which specific slides related to an active discussion.
I can do that, Jon thought, as he rummaged through his backpack for a thumb drive of decks from the conference he'd attended a week ago. Not only can I do this on LinkedIn, but I can also e-mail one of these to a couple of prospects who didn't go to the conference.
1 Sales Performance Optimization Report, CSO Insights, 2012. Also at www.csoinsights.com.
2 SPI telephone interview with Dave Stein, ES Research Group, October 1, 2013.
3 Kate T. May, “10 Brand Stories from Tim Leberecht's TED Talk,” TED Blog, TED, October 8, 2012. Accessed December 1, 2013, at http://blog.ted.com/2012/10/08/10-brand-stories-from-tim-leberechts-tedtalk/.
4 Gary Vaynerchuk, “Building a Personal Brand: It's Your Only Option,” Big Think Blog, Big Think, August 26, 2013. Accessed December 11, 2013, at http://bigthink.com/videos/building-a-personal-brand-its-your-only-option.
5 Jill Rowley, “The ABCs of Social Selling: Always Be Connected,” It's All about Revenue: The Revenue Marketing Blog, Oracle/Eloqua, February 27, 2013. Accessed December 11, 2013, at http://blog.eloqua.com/abcssocialselling/.
6 http://community.emerson.com/process/emerson-exchange/.
7 SPI telephone interview with David Ivester, Emerson Process Management, September 19, 2013.
8 SPI telephone interview with Alex Boss, Control Southern, November 4, 2013.
Chapter 5
The Visualizer Persona
Through all of human history, people have longed to know their future. In ancient Greece, rulers came to Delphi on the slopes of Mount Parnassus to speak to the Oracle, in hopes that she would dispense profound visions of their coming fates. So highly valued were these visions that people made long and arduous journeys just for the opportunity to hear them.
The power of vision still stirs people to action. Buyers with a clear picture of how they can solve a problem or take advantage of a new opportunity are motivated to purchase the capabilities needed to realize their visions. Conversely, if they cannot envision a better future state, then they certainly will not take action.
The difference depends on a seller's own vision, and the ability to help buyers see that compelling vision of their future—one that enables buyers to see how they can use new capabilities to realize tangible value. Sellers who have this ability are Visualizers.
What Is a Visualizer?
The Visualizer persona enables a seller to see what could be, help buyers see this vision for themselves, and make that vision so compelling that buyers are willing to take action.
To be a proficient Visualizer, sellers must know how to engage in useful conversations with buyers, whether those conversations are online, in person, or over the telephone. This is how buyers form opinions and perceptions about sellers, their personal brand, their company, and the value they bring to a buyer's situation. Sellers who collaborate to create compelling visions of future states distinguish themselves from other sellers—not only by what they sell, but also by how they sell.
Visualizers Are Fountains of Useful Ideas
Buyer 2.0 has little patience with sellers who do not bring insightful perspectives about how to solve problems and create value. Starting with the very first online interaction, telephone discussion, or face-to-face meeting, sellers who cannot bring new points of view are eliminated quickly from further consideration. Sellers who can't offer new or innovative ways to solve customer problems are perceived only as salespeople or vendors of products, not as useful and trusted advisers. The question is whether this type of seller will have a job in the future.1 Currently, we see the number of sellers declining in developed markets. Anyone who does not add value in the supply chain of business is being eliminated.2
Visualizers are creative freethinkers, and they often consider unconventional approaches to problems and opportunities. They serve buyers by helping them envision what could be, and they don't limit the components of their potential vision to capabilities from their own company. They are comfortable in establishing or engaging partnerships and alliances to get the job done for their customers, if required.
The cornerstone competency for the Visualizer persona is situational fluency, which we defined in Chapter 3 as critical to mastering all three personae in The Collaborative Sale. Situational fluency is the combination of situational knowledge, capability knowledge, people skills, selling skills, and a willing attitude to engage collaboratively. Without situational fluency, sellers won't have sufficient knowledge about the buyer to develop their own visions of what could be, and they will lack the skills to convey a vision in a compelling way to the buyer.
Drawing from their situational fluency, Visualizers develop informed opinions, and they are not afraid of sharing their viewpoints with buyers. Visualizers fearlessly imagine creative and innovative hypotheses about how they can help buyers to solve problems or capitalize on potential opportunities, and then test and refine the potential value of those ideas in conversations with buyers.
Visualizers Create Compelling Visions of the Future
Visualizers also help buyers see ideas in a compelling way—not only so buyers can understand that potential future state, but also so that they are highly motivated to achieve it. Visualizers have a unique ability to see possible futures. They can conduct what-if analyses on the fly—and can couch or phrase something in such a way that it captures the imagination and interest of buyers.
Salespeople who are Visualizers love their craft, are passionate about learning and growing, and are focused on helping customers solve real problems.
For example, one of our clients is a provider of gaseous element products to its customers. The company sells oxygen, hydrogen, helium, and other so-called pure gases for use in industrial and health care applications. The firm asked us to look at the sales team to see what kind of improvements could be made in their performance. As part of this project, we had the opportunity to observe one of their top-performing sales representatives, who specialized in selling to hospitals. We'll call him Steven here.
Steven sold almost twice as much as every other seller in the company, and he had done so for several years. We found him in his office, doing some online research on several hospitals located in an area he intended to call on. “Come on,” he said. “It's time to hit the road.”
We assumed he had made some appointments with prospects, but we soon learned that wasn't the case. “No, this is in-the-field research,” he said. “The meetings with the customer will come later.”
We arrived at the hospital. Steven asked at the front desk for directions to the intensive care unit. After a quick introduction to one of the nurses there, he asked a few questions, such as the number of beds in the unit and the kinds of cases they managed. It took only a few minutes.
“Okay, time to go around back,” he said. We then went outside, and walked around to the rear of the building, where a large cylindrical tank was stationed. “This is their bulk oxygen storage, and it's useful that I'm able to get this close,” he said with a wink. He snapped a few pictures of the tank with the camera on his smart phone.
“Back to the car now,” he announced, heading to the parking lot. He launched Google Maps on his phone and said, “We are here.” He pinched the screen around that point, studying it intently. “That's a five-mile radius—that should be enough.” He continued zooming, pinching, and studying his screen for a few minutes, quietly. “Yeah, this is good,” he said. “There's a strong case here.”
We weren't sure what he was talking about, but he seemed pleased. “Back to the office now,” he said. “We have work to do.”
Once there, Steven started his computer and began to enter figures into a spreadsheet. “It's time to let you in on a little secret,” he confessed. “I don't sell gases to hospitals.”
That made us curious. What did he sell, then?
“Almost all of the other reps in this company sell a commodity product, primarily to the purchasing manager. They approach the sale by offering a lower price, determined by the distance between the customer and our nearest manufacturing plant,” he explained. “Instead, I sell a solution to a critical business problem—risk mitigation in a hospital. Risk mitigation is worth much more, and buyers of risk reduction aren't in the purchasing department. I sell it to executives who own that problem. That's the difference between me and most of the other reps here.”
The Collaborative Sale Page 8