Reputation to Revenue

HP backs solutions rhetoric with org change and investments

2011-06-28T08:40:00-04:00

Everyone talks about "solutions" these days but few seem to invest in the changes necessary to move beyond the rhetoric. For example, truly developing, marketing, and selling integrated B2B solutions typically requires both a strong focus from the top down and a new alignment from the bottom up.

Far too often, companies talk the solutions talk but fail to walk the walk. They don't invest in new mechanisms to work across business units, new ways to connect with customers, and new skills for selling higher value offerings. As a result, we see companies promoting "solutions" that are really just bundles of existing products and services, launching marketing programs that neglect real customer needs, and falling back on the old feature-function approach to sales that customers long ago rejected.

Walking the Walk

Organizational initiatives at HP over the last several years suggest that the IT giant is indeed walking the solutions walk. HP has developed and sold enterprise IT solutions for years but a renewed push in 2009 led to a much sharper focus on 10 critical areas of business customer need, such as enterprise security, converged IT infrastructure, and application transformation.

As Magdy Assem, Senior Director of Enterprise Solutions Marketing, explained:

"Not everything is a solution. You have to look outside-in to really understand the key areas to highlight. HP and other big tech companies all have tens of thousands of products and even so-called solutions. But you need to know what matters to clients. What keeps them up at night? Then you can focus new resources on these areas, not on everything, and create integrated offerings to address those needs at a higher level rather than just selling a bunch of products."

Customer focus and integrated offerings are critical steps for solutions but perhaps even more impressive are the organizational changes that HP has made to invest in success. "This is a key point for solutions," according to Assem:

"We've been working on solutions for years but you need to go beyond just aligning the organization and actually put a structure in place and hold it accountable. We've done this in sales, in field marketing, and in solutions planning and marketing. These are stand-alone teams that are not part of any product team. This was a big 'aha' for us."

New Organizational Investments

On the sales side, HP has added a new layer of Account General Managers for its top global accounts to serve as leaders in positioning and selling integrated solutions. Instead of just adding incentives for existing teams to sell higher value solutions, the new structure reflects an understanding that companies like HP need senior level sellers to be solely focused on meeting customers' most important business needs.

"To drive growth, we need to sell HP, not just one or two products," says Assem. "This means we have to elevate the discussion and have a business dialogue. You want the top people from the sales organization focusing on the highest value solutions. They can then bring in all the product specialists when they need them."

Along with the new global account leaders in sales, HP has also invested in a substantial sales education and training effort to strengthen the bias toward solutions. This has included the creation of HP Sales University, reorganizing the annual sales kickoff, rethinking training programs, and refreshing sales education curricula to include monthly activities focused on solutions.

Beyond sales, HP has also added new solutions marketing groups in the field to support the new push in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. "You can't just align the product groups around solutions," according to Assem. "It won't work. You need dedicated people on the larger solution issues so we've added new teams headed by a VP for solutions marketing in each region."

Finally, at the corporate level, HP has added a new team for solutions marketing which Assem himself leads. The team's mandate is to define the key areas of solutions focus, develop and support key offerings, and work with marketing and sales teams across HP's business units and regions to bring solutions to market. The team includes dedicated specialists for each of the 10 major solution areas.

Overall, "this has been a huge investment to address customer needs and drive growth," says Assem. "We needed new skill sets to complement existing skills so we've done a lot of hiring and a lot of shifting within marketing and sales. Ultimately, finding people with business skills and teaching them the technology is a better route to solutions leadership than the other way around."

Return on Investment

Assem is quick to suggest that HP still has a way to go with enterprise solutions, and that the journey thus far has not been painless. "Building bridges and alignment across the organization is always a challenge," he notes. "You can't just add separate new groups or you'll risk duplicating efforts and losing support. And you really have to earn respect. It's never easy telling people a new way when they have been doing this for a living for many years."

Less than two years into the new push, however, Assem can see substantial ROI in three major areas: Average deal size has increased significantly with our global accounts and that's a key metric. We've also seen revenue growth in general with these accounts. Third, we have seen real growth in the solutions portion of the pipeline, which is another key metric for us."

Clearly not every company has HP's deep pockets. But the larger point holds for any organization looking to sell complex, high value solutions: If you really want to talk the walk, you're likely going to have to invest in new people, skills, and teams to move from rhetoric to reality. HP's investments in new groups within corporate and field marketing as well as sales help point the way forward.

What about you? How are you investing in people and organization to grow your solutions business. Please let me know in the comments.

Sustainability best practices can guide social media too

2011-04-19T19:32:51-04:00

Jon Hampson, Environment Director, for Capgemini UK, gave a great presentation last week on the top lessons for building sustainability programs at large corporations. Listening to Hampson recount the impressive strides Capgemini has made in reducing the company's environmental impact, though, I couldn't help but think about how relevant his lessons were for B2B social media, as well.

Focus on what matters. For Capgemini, reducing energy consumption in data centers and cutting back on business travel has proved far more consequential than other popular ideas like recycling and printing on both sides of paper. The latter are fine, but effective programs select a few priority areas, set substantial concrete objectives, and put aside the rest. As Hampson notes: "Lots of companies flounder with this, think they have to do everything even if impact is low or not aligned to major business objectives."

Social media is similar. B2B companies anxious to get started in social media often get caught up in the tools and tactics of disseminating content and building follower lists. These have their place, and what matters most will certainly vary across companies. By and large, however, what does matter most to B2B firms is using social media to deepen customer and market insight, improve internal collaboration, and strengthen engagement and trust with key customers and partners.

Build the business case and continually refresh it. For Capgemini, sustainability is not a nice-to-have program that makes people feel good; it's a commercial imperative with substantial business impact and potential. As Hampson notes, the business case for sustainability builds directly on key corporate priorities, including access to critical resources and markets, operational efficiency, legal and regulatory compliance, and competitive differentiation. As the particulars within these priorities evolve, and sustainability initiatives move forward, Hampson and his team adjust and refine the business case accordingly.

With social media, the business case should similarly be a work in progress rooted in core business priorities. Marketers investing in social media often focus on building awareness, demonstrating thought leadership, and (if at all possible), generating new leads. If "what matters" includes improving business agility, collaboration, and connection, though, these should be central to the business case with clear objectives and metrics (even if not financial) to support that case.

Leverage financial processes, baseline early...and manage expectations. Hampson made several great points here, including the data intensity and complexity of the issues, the importance of getting the CFO on board with a major new initiative, the inevitability of gaps and inaccuracies in the data, the need to make assumptions and be transparent about them, and the critical importance of measurable quick wins to build momentum.

The lessons make eminent sense for social media. Social media initiatives are not typically very expensive in terms of cash, but aligning with the CFO and emphasizing financial management and impacts is always a good idea, even if the results are not entirely measurable in dollars and cents. Managing expectations is also essential. Social media is a long-term game; few companies see substantial gains to the top or bottom line until they are well along with new ways of working. Yet quick wins are certainly possible, especially in areas including market insight, internal collaboration, and customer engagement.

Integrate and hold your nerve. Sustainability is about business transformation, Hampson said, rather than just another side issue or additional program. You don't want to create parallel processes; you want to transform existing processes and programs. This means engaging and empowering leaders and experts across the organization rather than doing it all yourself; it also means that active education and ongoing support for changing behavior is at least as important as new technology and tools.

Ideally, social media is really social business. It's also about transforming how companies work -- which certainly means that broad-based engagement and empowerment is critical rather than simply setting up a separate group to "do" social media. The leaders in social media have moved far beyond a few staff and programs in the last few years and invested heavily in social media training, centers of excellence to document and share guidelines and best practice, and active support for integrated action and culture change.

Make your reporting count. Interestingly, Hampson noted that his big lesson about sustainability reporting was that telling Capgemini's story out in the marketplace was just the tip of a fast-growing iceberg. The real need is internal, and reporting internally has become a huge effort. Most important on the internal front is tailoring reports for key stakeholders, providing actionable insight (not just data), and actively targeting the most important people and groups.

Given the complexity and rapid change of social media, as well as the generally long term nature of social business change, careful and aggressive internal reporting is also essential. Different stakeholders have quite different perspectives on how social media can help their aspect of the business; tailoring reporting to ensure relevance can go a long way toward constructive engagement across diverse groups and functions. And of course focusing on actionable insight (e.g., market feedback suggests we need much more effective value propositions) is a great deal more useful than simple data (e.g., our latest Facebook push yielded 2,000 new fans).

Hampson's lessons are actually useful for most any major change initiative. As we all look toward getting much more effective with social media, though, they seem to provide a useful guide to moving forward in the most productive possible way.

Do you agree? What are your top five lessons learned?

Photo by Kyle MacKenzie.

B2B marketing as media: Six ways to think like an editor

2011-04-04T14:58:41-04:00

B2B marketers in great numbers have jumped on the content marketing bandwagon and embraced the idea that marketing needs to be more like media. We have to focus on providing "readers" and "viewers" (i.e., customers, prospects, and other stakeholders) with interesting and useful material on a regular basis as the starting point for creating and sustaining interest in our products and solutions.

The big problem, of course, is actually doing it: consistently producing material that our hoped-for audiences actually care about enough to read, listen, view, and, ideally, comment upon and share more widely.

As documented in last year's MarketingProfs and Junta42 study, "producing engaging content" tops the list of challenges for content marketing; "producing enough content" is second. Despite the onslaught of "four simple ways" for this and "12 surefire tips" for that, it's just not that easy!

There is no end of advice around content marketing and marketing as media, but much of it seems simply to highlight general direction and attributes: Be helpful, solve problems, use a human voice, tell stories, re-purpose or "re-imagine" existing content, and so on.

This is all well and good, but it doesn't get you very far in terms of what to do tomorrow and next week and throughout the year. What kinds of content should you actually create? How can you become one of those few trusted sources that your customers rely on amid their ridiculously busy schedules? How can you truly think and produce like an editor of a must-read publication?

(Bob Shier is right: It's not about thinking like a publisher. Publishers focus on the business side of media; editors are the ones that worry every day about content, tone, and reader/listener/viewer engagement.)

From an editorial perspective, let me suggest six specific types of content that your customers will indeed want to read, listen to, and view.

What's New (otherwise known as… News!). What's actually going on in your industry, market, company, etc.? Trade and general business media used to serve this function for most of our customers, but we all know what's happening to them. Why not hire a real reporter and actually publish and/or aggregate industry news? Eloqua hired Jessie Noyes as a corporate reporter a few months ago to "cover" the marketing industry; I'd love to see more companies take a similar step.
Who's In, Who's Out. People always want to know about the comings and goings of their peers, competitors, industry leaders, and the like. Who got promoted? Who jumped ship? Associations and communities have often done this; Jeremiah Owyang does a nice job tracking People on the Move in social media. Why not define a relevant segment for your community and do the same? LinkedIn makes it much easier to track, and you probably want to keep on top of who's hot and who's not yourself anyway.
Who's Right? Debates are a great way to dig into issues and get people thinking. The Economist Debates have been extremely successful; BusinessWeek's DebateRoom and The New York Times' Room for Debate are doing it too. But you can organize more focused debates than they can for your specific issues and markets, right?
How Does It Work? Tutorials are booming online, with endless videos on everything from tying ties to… creating how-to videos. MarketingProfs has an enormous following based on its constant stream of how-to articles, webinars, and tools. Your product management and customer support people have great wisdom and experience in how things actually work. Forget the puff promos about features and functions and dig into the nuts and bolts of how things really work in practice, warts and all. The executives you're trying to reach may not care, but the direct users sure will.
What's REALLY Going On? Microsoft and uber-blogger Robert Scoble made an early splash in social media with Channel 9, a behind-the-scenes forum for developers to share their work as it was happening. You're probably not going to share the real inside dope on corporate strategy debates (which your customers would love, of course) but it's well worth considering what you can make more transparent. Getting behind the scenes in the industry at large may be an even greater opportunity. You've got people as smart as the analysts, right?
What's Next? We're all suckers for speculation on the next big thing. Personally, I get tired of all the year-end predictions real fast, and I think most of the instant analysis of what some new thing means are a waste of time (e.g., all the blathering about Google's +1 last week). But if you have some genuinely interesting ideas or perspective or, especially, research that looks ahead in areas of real concern, this can be a magnet for customer attention. Check out Deloitte's Center for the Edge, for example.

I know the six types of content here don't fall neatly into lead generation campaigns or phases of the buying cycle. That type of mapping is certainly important, but the first challenge is simply getting your intended customers to pay attention and gain trust that you're a useful source of industry information. If you can get this done, everything else becomes a whole lot easier.

Do you agree? How are you thinking like an editor? What types of content work best in your world?

Photo credit: greatestpeopleever

B2B ads worth spreading

2011-03-25T12:46:09-04:00

The always interesting TED announced the winners in an intriguing new competition the other day: Ads Worth Spreading. Building on the nonprofit's overall mission, Ideas Worth Spreading, TED decided to try and make a virtue of necessity. Advertising supports the free site; why not challenge advertisers to create ads compelling enough that people actually want to watch them and tell their friends to watch them, too.

It wasn't an original idea. Super Bowl marketers, among others, have always tried to get people to seek out and pass along their creative flourishes (Apple's 1984 Macintosh ad is still my personal favorite). BMW made a huge splash in the ad world in 2001 by commissioning top Hollywood directors to create short, high production value films promoting the ultimate driving machines. More than 2 million people registered on the BMW film site, and an incredible 94% of them recommended the films to others. Most agencies today at least hope their productions will catch the popular imagination and go viral.

So what's the B2B connection? For more and more B2B firms, thought leadership and educational content are the new advertisements. We're cutting back on traditional ads and shifting resources to content marketing (white papers, expert video interviews, ebooks, blogs, and the like) in hopes of getting our customers to pay more attention, raise their hands as "interested," and accept entry into our shiny new lead nurturing systems.

But here's the question: Are these "ads" really worth spreading? If you pulled together a group of your customers and asked them to review your thought leadership content side-by-side with that of all your competitors, would they pick yours among the winners? Would they rush to their email, Twitter, and Facebook accounts to tell their friends and colleagues that they simply must check out your new white paper or ebook?

Am I setting the bar too high? Perhaps, but consider how often you spread the good word about ads that cross your laptop or iPhone. Not very often, right? If your educational content is not good enough for you to pass along, why should it be for your customers? And if it isn't, how are they going to convince the myriad other people in their firm that ultimately need to agree that your solution is worth the investment?

Do you agree? Is your thought leadership worth spreading?

Customer references and solutions marketing: Building blocks for business impact

2011-02-14T16:40:21-05:00

B2B marketers focused on high value solutions know that customer evidence is like gold. Great products may sell themselves based on features or price. But when you're asking business buyers to invest serious money in a complex solution, typically involving a customized mix of products and services, they need to know you've done it before and that other customers have derived real business benefits.

Not surprisingly, sales people selling solutions say that customer references are their most valuable tool. ITSMA has found this repeatedly in sales studies. Similarly, a recent internal study by a very large technology solutions provider found that their sales people said customer references were absolutely essential for selling new strategic solutions.

The growth of formalized reference programs in recent years reflects a growing understanding that documenting and promoting customer evidence is too important to leave to ad hoc initiatives in PR or sales. The success of the Customer Reference Forum in building a broad-based community of reference managers is another sign of a maturing discipline.

Too often, though, reference programs remain short-staffed, disconnected from other key marketing programs, and overly reliant on the kindness of individual sales people to provide access to satisfied customers. Indeed, many formal reference programs continue to vie for marketing and sales attention with the parallel existence of informal, fragmented reference initiatives across the organization.

As a result, many reference programs remain stuck in tactical, reactive mode. They crank out case studies and testimonials to support marketing launches and events but have relatively little impact in accelerating strategic sales or deepening loyalty with the most important customers.

Benchmarking the Best

Over the past six months I've had the opportunity to work with several large B2B firms to improve their customer reference programs. Along the way, I've been able to review a number other programs with companies widely acknowledged as reference management leaders while also review industry data and talking with a batch of vendors, consultants, and program managers.

Comparing the best with the rest, six programmatic building blocks are particularly important for programs that provide substantial business impact.

Strategic Alignment: The best programs are tightly wired into the company's growth strategy and priorities to make sure they focus on developing the references and success story content that matter most to the rest of marketing and sales. Often this means having a broad-based leadership board or council to help set program direction and to make sure that the rest of marketing and sales understand the strategic value of the program. It also means having a senior-enough program director with the experience and clout to work on an equal footing with the heads of other key groups.
Team Integration: Reference programs rely heavily on support from other groups to identify the right customers, document the right information, and make the best use of the resulting references and content. The best programs have formalized team integration with a three-tiered approach to staffing and support:
- A central team, typically within corporate marketing, responsible for program leadership, cross-organizational collaboration, and global systems, processes, tools, and metrics
- Field-based staff, reporting to the central team but working on a daily basis with field marketing and sales on customer reference acquisition, activities, and relationships
- An "extended team" of designated representatives from other marketing and sales teams, not reporting to the central team but with defined responsibilities for helping coordinate reference needs and activities, reaching out to customers, documenting success information, and championing program resources and guidelines
Comprehensive Approach: Many reference programs focus on producing a few types of success story content, such as case studies, testimonial videos, and profile slides. These certainly can be useful but they represent only a fraction of the ways that customer evidence can support solutions marketing and sales throughout the customer lifecycle. The best programs take a comprehensive approach with strong emphasis on three types of program activities:
- Live references, including customer-to-customer discussions, event presentations, media interviews, analyst briefings, and advisory group meetings
- Success story content, including not only case studies, videos, and profiles but, increasingly, social media content, in-depth ROI presentations, internal "how we got the win" selling stories, and integration into thought leadership publications
- Relationship development, including focused efforts to support and provide real value to customer advocates through market visibility, executive access, peer networking, customer community, and other special programs (this is where tight integration with sales and other customer relationship programs is especially important)
Information Management: Improving information systems is a priority for many programs and the best programs take a broad view of effective information management. Whether they build their own system or contract with an outside vendor the best programs emphasize:
- Maintenance of an authoritative, comprehensive and regularly updated repository of reference data, content, and activity
- Easy, self-service access and usability for other parts of marketing and sales
- Tracking and reporting on reference activity and content usage
- Integration with other essential marketing and sales systems, such as CRM and web content management
Program Communication and Education: Many program teams are stretched so thin that simply keeping up with basic production leaves little or no time to help make sure the customer spokespeople or content are actually used. The best programs invest substantial time and energy communicating the value and the assets of the program as well as training other teams on how to support the program and use the system and tools. Having an extended team in place, as noted above, provides an especially helpful group for developing and implementing the necessary communication and education.
Business Accountability: As with many marketing programs, measuring the actual business value delivered by reference programs is not easy. Indeed, many programs struggle even to measure usage of their assets, relying instead on the most basic measures of output, such as how many case studies and testimonials they have produced each year. The best programs zero in on business impact around marketing and sales priorities. Specific measure typically involve around revenue contribution in strategic growth areas, sales pipeline acceleration, and satisfaction and loyalty of participating customers.

Constructing the six building blocks is no simple matter. Talk to the heads of the best programs and you'll hear about years of work, substantial investment, and constant attention to internal as well as customer relationships. But you'll also hear about serious business benefits like direct contribution to $ millions (or hundreds of $ millions) in revenue, critical support for new solution offerings, and measurable improvements in key customer relationships. The investments, in short, are well worth it.

Active use of compelling customer evidence is far from the only determinant of solutions marketing success. But having a well developed program that provides a steady stream of customer advocates and credible content certainly makes it easier. If you're looking for ways to create a stronger foundation for customer evidence-based marketing and a more effective reference program, the six building blocks are a great place to start.

Do you agree with the list? What's working and what's most challenging for your program?

Four levels of B2B content sharing: Publishing isn't everything

2011-01-31T19:54:52-05:00

Consistently creating engaging content is one of those programmatic challenges that strikes fear in the hearts of many B2B marketers looking to take more advantage of social media.

It shows up regularly in surveys on the obstacles to social media success; it came up repeatedly in the group of manufacturing and distribution company marketers I had the privilege of working with last week in ISBM's workshop on B2B social media.

As Chris Iafella reminded us in a post on content curation for pharma the other day, though, creating fresh original content is not the only way to provide value to the customers and others with whom you're trying to connect.

Indeed, there are four levels of content sharing that B2B marketers should include in their social media mix.

Four Levels of Content Sharing

Commenting on other blogs, articles, community sites, tweets, and other social sources provides a fairly simple way to build visibility, demonstrate knowledge, and make or strengthen connections. As with all social media activity, you want to focus on the most relevant sources while being constructive, concise, and non-promotional. Brief comments are no substitute for serious thought leadership or educational publishing, but they are absolutely a useful complement.
Curating interesting and informative content from other sources is another way to build and maintain visibility, become a useful resource, and, not incidentally, keep on top of important industry developments yourself. Effective curation is not simple. You have to bring real value which typically means really understanding your audience's needs and having a skilled editorial hand on the wheel rather than simply stringing together some automated alerts. Done well, though, a well-curated news or information service can be another vital complement to your own publication program.
Publishing your own thoughtful and useful content remains the foundation of most effective social media programs in B2B. It's difficult to truly demonstrate expertise on core customer issues without it; it also provides a much stronger basis for deepening connections and relationships than the relatively simpler approaches of commenting and curating. Within a broader, integrated approach to content sharing, however, the demands on regular publishing of original content go down a bit, while also making it that much easier to share in other ways. What and how to publish are enormous topics in themselves, of course. Suffice it to say here that the more you can invest in a issue-based, thought leadership approach, the better.
Syndicating your best content is the fourth element of an integrated approach. Once you have a bit of a track record with publishing engaging and useful content, there are any number of other social publishers (bloggers, community managers, etc.) anxious to share the content wealth. Syndication provides a powerful means to expand awareness and interest, enhance credibility through positive associations, and support friends and advocates looking for more sources to curate. The more you build visibility and connections through commenting and curating yourself, of course, the easier it will be to find opportunities to syndicate.

Sharing content is far from the only element of a successful social media program. Listening, building networks, and convening stakeholders in forums and communities are just as important. But content remains an essential component, and it continues to bedevil even the best B2B marketers. Building an integrated approach that complements your own publications with additional avenues for sharing can ease the publication burden at least a bit and while adding new value and connections along the way.

Do you agree? What's your content sharing strategy?

Is sales enablement dead?

2010-10-25T08:00:00-04:00

Sales Enablement is a huge topic in B2B these days. You can spend all day every day and still barely scratch the surface of all the dialogue, debate, and events exploring the "real" meaning of sales enablement, who is doing it well, what tools are most useful, and how social media will revolutionize the whole process. (Forrester's upcoming forum is a great example.)

The activity makes sense. We all know the B2B sales cycle keeps getting longer, more and more people are involved in big purchase decisions, and lead nurturing is incredibly important. We know that crafting custom solutions is essential if we're going to avoid fighting over discounts with procurement folks on the other side of the table. Our sales teams need to know more, do more, and be ever more capable of having the right conversations with the right buyers and influencers at the right time.

And this isn't just talk. Sales enablement is a big area for investment. According to IDC, ITSMA, and other analysts, sales enablement is a top priority for many marketing leaders. It's one of the few areas of increased spending (along with digital marketing, of course) amid relatively flat marketing budgets. Sales enablement companies like SAVO are growing like gangbusters.

So, this is great news for marketers, right? We're drilling into what sales really needs and making a difference.

Well, I wonder. In today's world of B2B solutions, is sales enablement even possible?

The practical reality for many B2B organizations is that sellers don't really sell anymore. What they do is help people buy once those buyers have made up their minds it's time for a purchase.

Buyers today have all the information. They have extremely smart and sophisticated teams that know far more about what they need than any sales person. They talk to peers across their industries to learn more about what's working and what's not -- and which vendors are worth considering and which are not. Along the way, in fits and starts, they decide it's time to invest in a new solution. Then, and only then, they start to talk with vendors and potential partners to see if you can deliver what they need.

OK, you know this, too. It's not news to say that buyers are in control and that they set the pace. So is it just semantics when I suggest that sales enablement is dead and the real issue is buyer enablement?

Surely we cannot just get rid of our sales forces, spread the good word about our solutions, and wait for buyers to show up. Indeed not. Especially in the world of high-end solutions, sales teams are more important then ever to helping buyers move from defined need and interest to crafting specific solutions that deliver clear value, and then closing the deal.

As sales guru Neil Rackham noted recently at ISBM's conference on marketing and sales alignment, sales people increasingly need to move from value communication to value creation. They can't just talk about the value of your offerings, they have to work with customers to help create the solutions.

To help this process along, sales people need a huge amount of help, i.e., enablement! As the analysts keep pointing out, too few sales people are well equipped for these kinds of consultative conversations and too few buyer executives find any value at all from our sales people.

But language matters. It reflects our mindset. And our mindset needs to change.

Buyers are in control; that's not going to change. Traditional selling is less and less effective, and often even counterproductive. Helping buyers craft solutions and invest in real value for their business is the way we should be thinking about our work.

For marketers, then, it's not so much about enabling sales, it's really about collaborating with sales to enable the buyers. More investment can help, and new tools can be useful, but I think the starting point is clarifying exactly what it is we're trying to do.

Do you agree? Is this a meaningful distinction or just a pointless word game? I'd love to hear how you're approaching the issue.

Photo credit: Dan Perry

Marketing to key accounts: It's all about the relationships

2010-10-11T08:23:00-04:00

I was interviewing a Key Account Manager for a large tech firm the other day, and was struck by her comment that she wanted the firm's marketing people to be much closer to her customer.

This is a large global account we're talking about, with a big account team and numerous multi-million dollar deals worldwide.

Sales people tend to be extremely protective of their accounts. They "own" the relationships; the stakes are huge, and they rarely want anyone else in the neighborhood (except when it comes to delivery, of course).

But here's the thing: This key account manager understood that marketing could potentially play a huge role in sustaining and strengthening the business with her account -- and she was frustrated that it wasn't happening.

Most important, the content and events that she saw from marketing were simply too generic. She still used some of it, but mostly she had to rely on her own team's efforts or colleagues managing other big accounts to get the specific information, contacts, and ideas that were most valuable to her account.

On the marketing side, meanwhile, I know that supporting the key account teams is at least rhetorically a priority.

As with many B2B firms, a relatively small number of key accounts generate a big percentage of revenue for this company, not to mention critical market insight, references, and the impetus for product and solution innovation. The marketing folks certainly understand this. Nevertheless, they are not able to provide the kind of focused support that that the account teams need.

I wrote recently about four keys to success with account-based marketing. Looking back at that post, however, I realize I neglected an even more basic point: Marketing people need direct relationships with the key accounts.

Only by having direct relationships can you get a real feel for the client's business environment, operations, needs, wants, language, and so on. It's an obvious point, but how often do we produce marketing content, organize events, and build sales tools without being grounded in those direct relationships? It's no wonder sales people ignore so much of our carefully crafted work.

So, what do we do about it?

The simple answer is go out and build those relationships.

OK, sure, but how do we do that?

Certainly you can't go around the account manager. That's a no-no. But you can put in the time with the account manager to work out a relationship-building program.

Sitting in on client review sessions is one easy step; working with the account teams to organize executive briefings is another (if your executives aren't willing to do these briefings for your most important accounts, you've got larger problems to worry about!). And, of course, organizing more substantial account-based marketing programs is an even better way to go.

It all takes time, and it all takes some serious relationship building with the account manager and team, too.

But the benefits can be enormous: Deeper insight into what your key accounts need, clearer direction for marketing programs and sales support, and tighter alignment with key account teams that are driving a great deal of the company's success.

How close is your marketing team to your key accounts? What's working in your relationships with key account managers? I'd love to hear in the comments.

Note: Originally posted on the Solutions Insights blog.

Photo credit: Rob Young

Why is customer-centric marketing still more talk than action?

2010-10-06T14:03:31-04:00

Michael Shrage’s recent Harvard Business Review post, Great Customers Inspire Great Innovations, got me thinking:

Why, amid so much evidence of the power of customer-centric business, are so many companies still mired in inside-out operations? Why do we hear so much talk but see so little action?

Shrage’s post reminds us that behind most great innovations lie customers and clients that made those innovations possible. "Busicom, a scientific calculator company, for example, commissioned Intel [in 1969] to design a chipset for its new programmable calculators. That led directly to Intel’s breakthrough creation of the microprocessor." On a much broader scale, "Wal-Mart’s incessant and relentless demands for ‘everyday low prices’ transformed every supplier it touched."

Shrage’s post also reminded me of an essential book from way back in 2003 by IT industry analyst David Moschella, Customer-Driven IT. Taking off from the familiar point that the tech industry was always led by vendor-based innovation, Moschella outlined the fundamental shift underway in the early 2000s toward customer-driven innovation in industries ranging from media and financial services to health care and education.

Ranjay Gulati’s more recent Reorganize for Resilence provides similar testimony, evidence, and examples of the power of customer centricity for solutions development, marketing, and sales (you can watch my partner Steve Hurley’s interview with Ranjay on our new YouTube channel).

Shrage, Moschelle, and Gulati are actually making a critical point beyond the normal blah-blah about listening to customers and strengthening relationships. As Shrage notes, even this approach (which is typically more talk than action) is not enough. Rather:

"The essential question is who are the customers that come with the problem sets and parameters that push you to rethink, or redefine, your business? Which customers and clients does your firm celebrate as innovation partners -- and why?"

What amazes me, though, is why B2B marketers aren’t investing more in serious programs to build key customer relationships, generate deeper customer insight, and build stronger customer collaboration at least as a foundation to help drive that necessary innovation.

After all, it’s not just academics and pundits like Shrage, Moschella, and Gulati pounding their fists. IBM’s latest survey of more than 1,500 large enterprise CEOs around the world showed that 95% of top performing organizations identified getting closer to customers as their most important strategic initiative over the next five years.

It is happening to some extent, of course. In B2B technology, where I spend most of my time, a number of companies are putting some real money where their mouths are. For example:

IBM's three-tiered program to engage top CIOs reflects a substantial investment in a sophisticated approach to help drive innovation as well as loyalty and advocacy
CSC's WikonnecT community for the insurance industry represents a sizable commitment to customer collaboration that similarly helps generate innovative offers
The EMC Community Network, bringing together thousands of customers, partners, and employees for ongoing conversation, support, and solutions development, is built around the efforts of a dozen-member corporate team with dozens of other community managers across the company

More often, however, I see situations where the rhetoric far outpaces the reality:

A large IT services firm aggressively (and expensively) using Twitter and other social media primarily as just another channel to pump out corporate-designed messages and content
A large enterprise software firm touting its launch of a new "community" but doing none of the spade work to make sure any customers actually care
A large technology equipment provider with nary an executive relationship program in sight

Needless to say, all three of these companies, like most of their peers, prattle on endlessly that "we're all about the customer."

For B2B marketers interested in moving beyond the rhetoric, there are some obvious next steps:

Invest in social media, but make sure there's a heavy focus on listening and engaging; social media is first and foremost a tremendous vehicle for customer insight
Invest in executive relationship programs, such as customer councils and peer networking events, but make sure there's no selling
Invest in key account programs, but as much for the insight and collaborative innovation as for hitting near-term numbers
Invest in program integration and information sharing; customer insight is of little value if locked in separate silos

If all this investment means cutting back in other areas, well, that's the price of truly changing strategy and priorities.

As always, though, it's the mindset that matters most.

I was reminded of this for the umpteenth time last week while pulling together some research around customer reference programs for a client. Most tech companies have a reference program, but far too many are focused transactionally on getting customer testimonials and promoting success stories. There's relatively little attention to actually learning more about customer needs, strengthening relationships, and building collaborative innovation (with some notable exceptions, of course).

These are your best customers, folks! If you're stuck in selfish transaction mode with them, there's a long way go to in getting to customer centricity.

Am I right to be so critical? What's working for customer-centricity on your end?

Photo credit: everywhereisimagined

The continuing rise of Account-Based Marketing: Four keys to success

2010-09-11T14:50:17-04:00

Over the last 10 years, more and more B2B firms have invested in account-based marketing: treating individual accounts as "markets" and devising focused campaigns just for them.

Back when my partners and I were developing some of the early methodology for account-based marketing in the early 2000s at ITSMA, it was a tough sell. We had seen strong results from ABM pioneers, such as Accenture, IBM, Xerox, and HP, but the costs of doing ABM were clearer to many marketers than the benefits. It is, after all, a pretty labor-intensive approach, and it requires a lot of negotiating with sales and account teams. Much easier to just spam the market with generic emails, webinars, brochures, and the like.

As marketers began to appreciate the value of more focused approaches, however, such as vertical industry marketing, as well as the critical importance of their top accounts, ABM began to take hold. By 2005-2007, many of the top B2B tech and IT service firms were experimenting with ABM. We were going great guns at ITSMA with research, workshops, an ABM Council, annual ABM awards, and, of course, direct consulting and training to help companies get started and succeed.

What many marketers realized was that developing highly targeted programs for individual accounts yielded a great many benefits, both externally and internally. Externally, ABM can generate substantial improvements in customer relationships, brand perception, solutions proof points, revenue, and profitability. Internally, ABM can help prove the value of marketing, improve relationships with Sales, and strengthen focus on core customer challenges and potential solutions.

New research from Alterra Group suggests that ABM has also gained traction in professional services. According to a recent survey, some 86% of consulting and other professional services firms are now using some form account-based marketing, and looking to further increase spending on ABM in the years ahead. Large majorities of survey respondents further suggest that ABM has a higher ROI than other marketing approaches, and provides significant benefits in terms of retaining clients, increasing revenue and profit, and attracting new clients.

Not surprisingly, the research also found that companies investing more in ABM and paying more attention to program metrics are achieving greater results. (One would certainly hope so!)

I know we're all focused heavily on figuring out how to "socialize" everything in marketing these days (with good reason) and, especially as the 4th quarter looms, on doing whatever we can to help close sales before the end of the year. If you've let your ABM efforts lag, however, or not yet begun to invest in the approach, the Alterra Group research should be yet another set of data points convincing you to keep ABM front and center.

From our own experience, I'd like to suggest four critical success factors that go beyond simply spending more money and measuring results:

Deep Research: Companies starting out in ABM often skip the hard work of preparation in favor of jumping right into outbound tactics, such as special events, collateral, and briefings. The real power of ABM comes from digging deep into an individual client's business situation, strategy, options, and operating environment as a precursor to really thinking through how you can help. Don't skip this step!
Client Collaboration: The best ABM programs are not only transparent to the client (i.e., you don't hide the fact that you're making a special effort) but developed directly with the client. Actively involving client executives in research, brainstorming, thought leadership, relationship building, and solutions development is a huge win-win. The client knows you're serious about investing real time and resources in understanding their needs and crafting customized solutions. You get the tremendous benefit of the client's insight, brainpower, and feedback to help keep you on track and develop solutions you might never have even considered.
Sustained Focus: ABM oriented to specific bids or quarterly results may be effective, but its greater potential comes in transforming the entire relationship with the client. Accenture, one of the first ITSMA award winners for ABM, turned a lot of heads in presenting its two-year ABM plans for top clients, but had transformative results to show for it. Thinking and planning longer term enables more ambitious strategies and much more substantial results.
Solutions Orientation: I've mentioned the "S" word a few times already. One of the big differences between ABM and traditional account planning is that the latter typically focuses on selling more of whatever is on the shelf and doing it as fast as possible. Don't get me wrong; good account planning is incredibly important. But stepping back to do the deep research, collaborate with clients, and think about a longer term transformation of the relationship literally mandates that you also step back from current inventory, put yourself in the client's situation, and think anew about what really is going to make a major difference for them.

Is ABM here to stay? Let's hope so; it's one of the most effective approaches we have in B2B marketing. Making sure we do it the right way, however, is the real test, and shortcuts are not likely to show such great results.

What do you think? Are you implementing ABM? What's working for you?

Photo credit: hapticflapjack

Strengthening thought leadership marketing: Five steps to excellence

2010-07-27T18:32:31-04:00

I've just had the privilege of helping judge ITSMA's Marketing Excellence Awards, and was impressed in particular with the submissions in the Thought Leadership Marketing category.

As recently as five years ago, thought leadership marketing was mainly the province of the top consulting firms. Few other B2B firms took it seriously. Boy, has that changed! The submissions in this year's awards program reflect a substantial increase not only in spending but, more important, in the programmatic discipline that is necessary to make a serious impact with customers and market influencers.

I can't name names yet because ITSMA is still selecting finalists and then the ultimate winners. It's clear from the submissions, however, along with working with many of these companies over the years, that there are five important ways in which the best of the best stand apart from the crowd:

Focus and depth: Lots of companies practice "random acts of content," dashing off periodic white papers, articles, videos, blog posts, and the like with little focus or depth. But when you're dealing with high level customers facing serious business challenges), the scattershot approach provides little value. Indeed, according to a major study of business technology buyers last year by ITSMA and Pierre Audoin Consulting, only 16% of these buyers believe that their solution providers are very helpful in showing them the possibilities to solve their business challenges. If you're going to join the ranks of the "very helpful," you need to pick one or a few issues, stick with it, and go deep.
Do the research: A lot of so-called thought leadership is really just opinion, perhaps based on a project or two. Our customers want evidence, and evidence usually requires research. The best thought leadership programs are built around serious research, including analysis of existing literature, new customer surveys, and in-depth case studies. One of the main reasons that the industry analyst firms remain so influential with buyers is that they are constantly cranking out new research. (Yes, marketers sometimes question the quality of that research, but it is generally miles ahead of the "thought leadership" content that vendors themselves produce.) To help make "thought leadership" worthy of the term, start from the beginning and don't skimp on the research.
Engage and empower internally. Too often, marketers publish thought leadership content but forget to tell anyone else in the organization. At best, this can mean losing the opportunity to have more colleagues representing that good thinking in the marketplace. At worst, customers start asking your people questions on an issue about which they have no idea. Especially as you begin to integrate social media across the business, you want more people engaging directly with customers, prospects, and other stakeholders. Engaging and empowering your customer-facing employees with thought leadership gives them something valuable to talk about, and can quickly become an essential multiplier for overall program impact.
Leverage your best content. Market engagement today is about pervasive presence and ongoing conversation, not just traditional publishing and speaking. Customers want to chew over and debate your ideas, often without you in the [virtual] room. To help make this happen, you need to leverage your best thought leadership content by publishing compelling bits and bytes in appropriate formats across the networks and channels where your customers congregate. If you're working on a white paper, for example, you want to think: Is there a short video we can produce? Where can we blog about this? What articles can we publish? Where are there opportunities to brief our best customers on our new thinking? Is there a debate I can set up?
Invest in expertise. Ultimately, great thought leadership programs are built around experts -- experts in the subjects at hand, of course, but also experts in research, analysis, publication, social media, and collaboration. The most successful programs invest in their people in at least three ways: Funding full time staff positions, recruiting for necessary skills and helping existing staff develop the right skills, and investing in partnerships for complementary capabilities (including brand recognition, as with prestigious academics, universities, and/or outside media and research organizations).

Building a successful thought leadership marketing program is a long-term process. The companies that are best, such as McKinsey, Accenture, IBM, Deloitte, and others, have spent years doing the research, building market presence, and refining what works. They pick key customer issues and stick with them. They go deep. And they invest in their people and programs.

What's missing from my list? What works best for you?

The four engines of B2B marketing success

2010-06-28T13:14:39-04:00

A friend recently had the good fortune not only to take over marketing for a successful B2B firm, but to do so with a mandate to build a new strategy that ensures a much greater impact on the business.

He's a bit like a kid in a candy store: he's got budget to spend, executive support for a more ambitious marketing program, and a relatively clean slate upon which to draw the new strategy.

The existing program has been pretty traditional, focusing mostly on collateral, events, advertising, and direct support for the sales team. He knows that's not enough, and is definitely interested in doing more with thought leadership and social media, but how best to reshape the overall strategy is not entirely clear.

Asked for some advice, I agreed with a stronger emphasis on thought leadership and social media (which I think are appropriate for all B2B firms), and I questioned the value of putting so much energy into advertising and collateral.

More generally, though, I suggested that the strategy focus on the four marketing engines that I think all B2B firms need to have running smoothly to ensure business success.

Four Engines for B2B Marketing Success

Content Engine:

As the need for more and better content continues to grow, marketing leaders have realized that they need an integrated "content engine" that consistently produces compelling content for every stage of the buying cycle. This includes thought leadership content to help build reputation and interest, educational content to support lead generation and nurturing, solutions and customer success content to support sales conversations, and, of course, social media content to support ongoing connections with customers and others.

Relationship Engine:

B2B marketing rises and falls on the strength of the company's relationships with customers, prospects, partners, and market influencers. For many marketing organizations, though, the objective of building, strengthening, and sustaining key relationships has no clear owner or strategy. A "relationship engine" may sound awkward but the idea is to ensure a comprehensive, consistent, and focused approach to strengthening critical stakeholder connections to increase sales, loyalty, and market insight. This should work across such areas as events, customer councils, account management, references, and social media.

Lead Development Engine:

The increasingly long and convoluted purchase processes that B2B marketers face puts a premium on well organized systems for lead nurturing and management. No longer can we focus on just the early stages of generating leads and then throw them over the wall to sales. More and more, we need to stay in the game with longer term programs to develop and sustain opportunities in close coordination with sales. Content and relationship programs contribute substantially to this effort but someone also needs to own the overall system for lead development, including qualification, scoring, nurturing, and assessment.

Solutions Development Engine:

Like many B2B companies, my friend's firm has a long history of successful products, satisfied customers, and productive partners. At the same time, also like many B2B companies, his firm is feeling the heat from increasing competition, margin squeeze on products, and buying decisions moving higher up in their customers' organizations. The result is a need for higher value solutions that respond more specifically to individual customer needs. Doing this efficiently and effectively means moving past the one-off approach based solely in the field. Instead, marketing needs to guide and support the field in determining top priorities for new offer development, crafting the right value propositions, and routinizing the process with the right stage gates and metrics.

The four engines don't cover every last aspect of B2B marketing, but they come pretty close and they provide a clear framework for building a comprehensive strategy that balances short- and longer-term success. Get each of the engines humming smoothly and results are sure to follow.

What do you think? Am I missing something important? Are all of your engines in good working order?

Photo credit: Imnop88a

Two cheers for Eloqua's Content Grid

2010-06-15T12:55:09-04:00

Actually, I think Eloqua's new Content Grid is fabulous: it crams a complex story and a lot of information into an easy to understand infographic on a critical topic for B2B and solutions marketing. Nice job, folks!

My small beef is with the definition of "content marketing" that underlies the grid. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge proponent of companies and marketing organizations getting much more serious about creating and executing integrated content strategies to support marketing and sales. Indeed, I make a decent part of my living these days helping companies make this happen.

What I don't agree with, though, is the equation of content marketing with inbound marketing. Perhaps I'm nitpicking at a casual line in Eloqua's blog post introducing the Content Grid, which explains the grid as "a simple framework for content -- or 'inbound' -- marketing." But the grid itself reinforces that equation with its presentation of relevant content types. It's all the fun thought leadership and social media stuff. What's missing are the nitty gritty product and service and solution descriptions and related (horror of horrors!) "promotional" material that, at the end of the day, are still necessary to help make the sale regardless of how effective your inbound marketing is.

Yes, inbound marketing is critical, content marketing is critical, and we all need to keep shifting budgets away from the old push promotion stuff that doesn't work toward educational pull materials and conversations with which our customers and prospects might actually engage. It's just that few of us can yet do away with collateral and promotion entirely -- especially when we're selling complex B2B solutions that require extensive purchase consideration, due diligence, and committee decision making.

I'm not sure Eloqua is even arguing that we should eliminate that stuff entirely, but I think it's a mistake to leave that still-important content out of the grid and the definition. If new directors of content marketing (another trend I support enthusiastically) just manage all the inbound stuff, we're likely to fall short in revamping and refreshing the basic product promotion material that still helps to seal our deal. The last thing we want to create is a great system of thought leadership-driven inbound marketing that collapses in the final phase when prospective buyers see disconnected and inconsistent product and service material.

So, two cheers for the Content Grid and the great intent behind it. Now if we can just broaden its scope a bit more.

What do you think? Do you have a content director? If yes, what's the scope of responsibility?

Editorial strategy: Why do B2B customers need your information?

2010-05-24T15:51:11-04:00

A new report from the always excellent Project for Excellence in Journalism got me thinking a bit differently about thought leadership and content marketing and marketing as media.

We all know that social media is increasingly central to how we get our news and information. The main finding in this new report is that Americans use different media for different types of information.

Analyzing a year of data on the top news stories discussed, linked to, and viewed on blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media, the Project found that, "the stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead in the mainstream press. But they also differ greatly from each other."

Topically, for example, there is much greater focus on technology-related news with social media. Further, Twitter has emerged as a key source for breaking news. YouTube is more about serendipitous surfing for randomly interesting content. Blogs tend toward more emotional stories and stronger partisan orientations (on all sides).

So what's the B2B marketing connection?

Several months ago, I wrote about Marketing as media: Are you in the top five? My suggestion then was that given the incredible time constraints under which our customers and prospects operate, we need to think about being a "top five" information source. They don't have time to pay attention to much more than that. So you're really competing for attention with sources like The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek along with leading trade publications, blogs, and social networks, regardless of what particular market niche we're in.

I still think this is true, but today's research makes me think more about how you carve out the right position in the broader business media landscape.

Of course you need to focus on the issues where you have expertise and the markets you serve. Of course you need to provide useful and interesting information. Those are table stakes. But beyond that, where do you fit more specifically for your customers? What do they expect from you? Most important, why do they need your information?

This is not a question about using different media channels for different types of information, although that's indeed important. And it's not about which format is best (white papers vs. videos vs. blog posts, etc.). It's really a question of editorial strategy.

Are you a source for breaking news? Possibly, but you better be really good at it!
Are you a "fun" source for diversionary moments, like YouTube? Doubtful, but certainly possible if you think it's worthwhile.
Are you the emotion-laden source for partisans on one side of some big industry debate? Maybe, especially if you're in a relatively new or fast-changing market, but you need to accept that you're turning off all the partisans on the other side.
Are you an aggregator of everyone else's best content? That's a great service, but does your own thinking and expertise get lost in the process?

I'm not suggesting that it's all or nothing, that you have to pick one thing. But trying to be all things to all customers is not likely a good route to success. Thinking more about the "why us?" question can only help in developing a more effective editorial strategy.

What do you think? What's your editorial strategy?

Photo credit: stevenharris

Four steps to strengthening B2B customer connections

2010-05-19T11:29:48-04:00

IBM's hot-off-the-press 2010 CEO Study confirms again what solutions marketers already know: getting closer to customers is a strategic priority. An overwhelming 88% of large enterprise CEOs told IBM that getting closer to customers is a top business strategy for the next five years, placing it at the top of the list. An even higher number of the best performing CEOs, 95%, stressed the point.

Is this really news? Isn't this just Marketing 101?

Well, sort of. The idea is basic, but making it happen, especially in large organizations, is not so easy.

The CEO imperative makes sense. Big company CEOs are struggling mightily, as the IBM report notes, with "the complexity of operating in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world."

In this context, and especially from a B2B perspective, close customer connections are essential to:

Gain deep insight into customer wants and needs
Gather input and advice on potential new offerings
Uncover new opportunities and co-create solutions
Obtain references, testimonials, and proof of value delivered

Creating and sustaining those trusted connections is extremely difficult, though, when our customers are overwhelmed with their own professional demands and tune out most of our marketing.

Social media brings promise of new and potentially more effective ways to build and maintain vibrant customer connections, both individual and communal -- but understanding how to turn that promise into reality is far from clear.

Meanwhile, face-to-face connections remain essential for key customers, especially at the executive level where so many of us need to be working. But our sales people have less time for relationship building and often little credibility in the executive suite. Beyond sales, it is difficult to know which face-to-face programs are worth funding.

A final challenge, especially for large organizations, is simply managing, coordinating, and building synergies across the wide range of programs and activities designed to strengthen customer connections.

Knowing this is a CEO priority, however, should make it at least a bit easier for marketing leaders to push forward with efforts to do what we all know is so important.

Here are four steps to consider:

Do an assessment. It's hard to even keep track of all the ways we're already connecting with customers. Research, sales, services, and delivery are obvious, but we also have thought leadership programs, social media and networks, executive relationship programs, reference management, key account management, customer councils, collaborative solutions development, and probably many more. Take stock of all these initiatives. Look at funding and staffing. Review effectiveness in terms of customer insight and relationship growth. Benchmark the competition. We need a baseline to identify gaps and next steps and to help build a vision of where we need to go.
Put someone in charge and build a cross-organizational team. We're already doing this with social media (hopefully!), but customer connections is an even bigger deal. We need someone with the big picture in mind and organizational partners and resources available to improve coordination, integration, and information sharing. We're not building relationships for their own sake, and we're not doing it just for sales either. If no one has accountability to ensure efficiency and effectiveness across the range of relationship-oriented programs, it won't happen.
Build executive commitment. The CEO wants to get closer to customers but is the rest of the leadership group on board? Are they setting the right examples and the right tone for their teams? Operationalizing the commitment to customer connections requires real investment and, as important, TIME. We need to push and prod and support senior executives to make the time to work on key relationships, participate in customer councils, and send the message that these initiatives are indeed a top priority.
Provide incentives. Companies that take customer satisfaction seriously put serious incentives in place to support the right behavior. Improving customer satisfaction is not the same thing as strengthening customer connections and relationships, but the principle certainly applies (as it usually does with any strategic initiative). Set specific goals, measure results, and then reward the folks in marketing, sales, service, and delivery teams for hitting their relationship growth targets.

What would you add to the list? What's working for you?

Photo credit: Marc_Smith