Just like the previous 45 games, the winner of this year’s Super Bowl came down to one stat. Turnovers.

According to Stats, LLC, the team that wins the turnover battle wins the game. Not the team to win the coin toss (that’s true only 49% of the time), scoring first (66%) or even the team that leads after the 3^rd quarter (84%). Rather, the team that hangs onto the ball ultimately is the victor.

Winning the turnover battle is even a better stat to watch than the more sexy “average more yards per pass play” stat (78%).

Sure, this year’s battle had only one turnover (an interception), but there could have been two turnovers had not NY been called for a penalty for having 12 men on the field (and who knows what the score would have then been).

Do Turnovers Predict Business Success?

I started my sales career with Intel—back in the go-go days of the late ‘70s. Intel was not the chip leader it is today. While we were dwarfed by Texas Instruments, Motorola and many others, Intel sales management was maniacally focused on customer wins.

When we won a new account, the Customer Win was celebrated. As a sales guy, it was a nice notch in your belt, especially when it was recognized with a Telex from the sales vp, Hank O’Hara, or a handwritten note from a regional manager like Frank Gill.

But the bigger prize was a Customer Win earned by taking away an account from a competitor. It didn’t even matter how big the account was or if the customer had some marquee value.

Nope. Stealing an account created heroes.

Same, too, for battling it out with a competitor for a current account. Nothing seemed to get management worked up into a lather like the prospect of losing an existing customer. Even a young field sales rep like me was given full license to call upon anyone in management to fly in for a customer presentation.

It was just part of Intel’s DNA to never ever lose an account and to pull out all the stops to win a new account.

Turnovers in Your Business?

Since I left Intel several years ago I’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of small businesses with revenues under $50 million. Some are rising stars. Unfortunately, though, most have flat-lined—having reached a steady-state of customer wins vs. customer losses.

With eerie predictability, the “Turnover Stat” holds true. Even in slow-growth industries, those businesses driven by customer retention AND customer acquisition just do better.

They make more money, have happier customers and are better places to work. Everyone just seems to understand the priorities without mission statement plaques.

How about your business? Does this “Turnover Stat” apply to you? Do you track it?

A Manifesto for turning the Marketing Dept into the Sales Team’s Secret Weapon

Just after completing my third webinar on my new Book Publishing Workshop last week, Frank Gillham called.

Frank is founder/CEO of Funding Architects in Tyler, Texas. Known as “capital campaign strategists,” his firm works with non-profits on their capital campaigns.

His pitch is simple:

While leaders of non-profits (churches, for instance) are skilled at their particular mission, it’s rare if that same leader is capable to raise the funds necessary to support the cause. Given that most capital campaigns occur (at most) every 5-7 years, there’s little opportunity to develop any fundraising expertise.

The cool thing about Frank is that he’s not some young pup. Frank is 80-years old. He’s even got a 10-year plan! And no, he’s not retiring any time soon.

But his phone call to me was about his greatest regrets: Relying on Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

What’s wrong with Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

I’ve always said that if you’re going to rely upon Word-of-Mouth Marketing as your main source of leads, you better have a lot of mouths talking you up. It’s a numbers game.

But Frank’s complaint about Word-of-Mouth Marketing had nothing to do with it being a numbers game. No, Frank’s issue is that Word-of-Mouth Marketing isn’t strategic. By definition you can only get more of the same customers you already have.

That really struck me as some very wise advice. I thought about it over the weekend, and then called him Monday to have him repeat it so I could record it and share it with you.

It’s just 6 minutes. Well worth a listen. Feel free to forward.

Download and listen here:
http://expertsmp3.s3.amazonaws.com/FrankGillham-on-Marketing-with-JohnFox.mp3

I look forward to your comments.

Early on in my sales career at Intel, a customer asked me to “help” him write a request for proposal (RFP). I say, “help,” because he really meant for me to write the entire thing. And this wasn’t just any RFP, it was for the very products I was selling.

Junior sales guy that I was, I debated my customer’s motivation. I had three questions:

1. Was this guy just trying to pawn off work on me? I mean, wasn’t he getting paid to do this?
2. If I did help him out, wouldn’t the RFP be (unfairly?) weighted in my favor?
3. Am I the only one he’s asking for help, or has he extended the offer to my competitors?

If you know anything about me, you know my immediate reaction was to offer help. But before I could, I had to get my questions answered. [Spoiler alert... answers are: Yes, Yes, No]

To the first question, I found out that Yes, he was trying to pawn it off on me. For good reason, though. The products he needed were not commodities or something his firm would be buying any more often than every 3-5 years.

As an example, telephone systems fall into this category. You need to get smart about a particular product, make sure you’re buying the right product at a good price, but once the deal is done, you can file it away for years. No need to revisit that purchase for a very long time.

Okay, check one. He needs help getting it done and has no interest in becoming an expert in my product line. Don’t fault him for that at all.

Question 2…was it fair? No. Writing an RFP for my customer would not be fair…to my competitors. Would the resulting RFP be weighted in my favor…Yes! Moral dilemma? No.

If you don’t mind, allow me to take a side road for just a moment and comment on something many B2B marketers don’t get about sales. Not to paint all B2B marketers with the same brush, I do have to say the great majority don’t understand this one, very important point:

People buy from People they Trust

When it comes to non-commodity purchases, buyers don’t buy stuff from people they don’t know. Why? Because Murphy’s Law is still law. Something’s bound to go wrong and when it does, you better have a relationship with the guy who sold it to you so he can make it right.

That’s kinda hard to do when your relationship is with a website and the only customer service contact is an e-mail address no-reply@widgets-inc.com

What was true in my Dad’s day of selling petroleum products for Sinclair (yeah I had all sorts of little green dinosaur toys) to my days at Intel to today… People buy from People they Trust.

And that’s why I agreed to help my customer write his RFP. I’d be the one who had to fix it if anything went wrong. I wasn’t introducing bias into the RFP, I was writing it so he’d get the best product for his particular situation… Mine.

Lastly, was I the only one helping him? To answer that I have to remind you that Trust is a two-way street. I didn’t even have to ask.

I wrote the proposal (I actually typed it on an IBM Selectric) and won the business.

In Part I of the Free Download vs. Paid Debate I told you I was going to be conducting research comparing visitor signup rates using content giveaways vs. paid content.

As John Hunt pointed out in his comment, this is basic psychology. Agreed.

But what we B2B marketers lack is field data. While there’s loads of research on consumer (B2C) marketing, there is surprisingly little for us B2B marketers to go on.

I’m starting my experiment today and I need your help.

I’ll be using my Press Release Checklist site, which has been in operation for the last 18 months, collecting analytics and conversion data.

On the site visitors get:

• My nifty 4-page Press Release cheatsheet
• A $100 discount voucher for 25% off PR Newswire national press releases (unlimited use)
• Example press releases
• The mp3 from a recent PR teleseminar I conducted
• 30+ days of e-mail coaching tips, additional resources and Q&A

Now I need your help getting traffic to the sight…

If you know anyone who wants help getting their PR/publicity off the starting blocks, could you please send them to the site?

Even if PR isn’t part of your marketing mix right now, I’d appreciate your click.

I’ll report back with the results in a month or so.

I must be living in a parallel universe somewhere. A sales manager buddy of mine was trying to convince me that the cost of a [human] sales call—the face-to-face variety—has stabilized or is going down. And further, that the cost was somewhere close to $50/call.

So, I did a little research… and sure enough… the devil’s in the details. The reason for the discrepancy is in the assumptions (and you know what they say about the word: ASSUME … that it can make an ASS out of U and ME).

Turns out they assumed the average $40k sales rep made 16 sales calls/week [that's 3.2 sales calls/day] for 52 weeks [slave-drivers...no holidays] = $48.08.

But in my parallel universe, sales reps can’t physically make 16 calls/week. In fact, for technical products and services, I have a hard time believing anyone can do this.

Then I came across this post at Sales Laundry [a worthy read, btw]:

Let’s say you have sales representatives costing you $60,000 in base that have on target earnings at $120,000/yr.

In simple terms, assuming this sales representative is working 40 hours a week (stop laughing!), and has two weeks off a year, he is going to work an average of 2000 hours a year. Doing the simple math, $120,000/2000 hours, this sales representative costs (or really has an hourly revenue rate of) $60 an hour before you factor in benefits, cell phone, car allowance, etc. Let’s estimate his cost at $85 an hour to execute his sales work properly.

Subject Matter Expert [SME]: (Could be an engineer, analyst, auditor, etc.) $80k/yr; $80,000/2000 = a cost of $40/hr. We will keep it simple and skip the benefits add on.

Inside sales representative: $40k/yr; $40,000/2000 = a cost of $20/hr skipping the benefits add on here as well.

So let’s look at our costs for these sales representatives and their potential sales tasks.

Site Visit: (Assuming 1 hour of prep, 30 minutes of travel, 1 hour meeting) $212.50 + plus the literature he left, lets call it a cost of $215 for that sales call.

Technical Sales Call (Assumes Subject Matter Expert and Sales Representative) $215 for the representative plus $100 for the SME or a total of $315.

While this second, albeit more rational approach, differs in the process of calculating the cost per sales call, I can at least say I feel better.

But how about you? What rule-of-thumb do you use for the cost of a sales call for your company?

Webcasts, White Papers, Product Trials, Editorial Articles… eBooks?

Click image for download page

As an undergraduate engineering student,  one of my most memorable courses was Engineering Law. Every day we’d hear stories (cases) about product liability, like the guy who used his Swingline stapler as a hammer (Swingline has a “tack” mode). Evidently, he didn’t quite comprehend what tack-mode meant, so when he hammered a nail into the wall, a staple flew into his eye, blinding him. He sued (and won, btw), claiming Swingline negligent in its duty to describe proper use.

B2B Marketers can be like this guy.

Why? Because many assume that their favorite marketing tools are appropriate for ALL stages in the buying cycle. With the flight to online marketing, for example, there are many who claim that Google AdWords is the only marketing tool they need. AdWords is their Swingline stapler—terrific stapler; lousy hammer.

B2B Buyers React Differently Depending On Buying Stage

In 2007, SiriusDecisions published their landmark End User Tactic Survey (summary slide deck here, see slide #24) which provided evidence for what many suspected: Every marketing strategy and tactic has a “sweet spot” — Specific stages in the buying cycle where the tactic is more effective than other methods.

SiriusDecisions found that Webinars, for instance, were more appropriate at the early stages than later stages.

New Research. Same Conclusions?

In July 2009, TechTarget conducted its own research, surveying 1,474 IT professionals (most from midsize firms) to learn about their buying process. While their research is specific to Information Technology, the results speak volumes about all B2B buyers. (note: The Media Consumption Report is available as a free download from TechTarget)

I’ve selected a few key charts and provided you with my insight and conclusions.

Awareness stage (problem identification)

a/k/a Outreach, Lead-Gen, Demand Generation

Marketing Tools used in buying stages

In the Awareness stage (problem identification), the top 5 online marketing tools are:

1. eBooks (a new entry… are you working on an eBook?)
2. Email newsletters (I bet you thought these were dead… includes newsletters from magazines, not only vendor newsletters)
3. Editorial articles (do you have a PR strategy?)
4. White Papers
5. Podcasts

Consideration stage (evaluation of alternatives)

a/k/a Customer Engagement

Sources for Evaluating

In the Consideration stage (evaluation of alternatives), the top 5 online marketing tools are:

1. White Papers
2. Trial software (Not just software folks! Applies to most B2B purchases of services and products. You’ve got to create a groundswell of users. See my note about “Freemiums” below)
3. Product literature
4. Editorial articles
5. Webcasts

At this stage, ebooks fell to #10. Surprisingly, Case Studies are #9.

Decision stage
(vendor selection and request for proposal)

Most Effective for Decision Making

In the Decision stage (vendor selection and request for proposal), the top 5 online marketing tools are:

1. Trial Software
2. Case Studies
3. White Papers
4. Online Vendor Demos
5. eBooks

Editorial articles falls to #11 and email newsletters to #12.

Additional strategic insight from the report

• On-demand and online videos don’t have to be live.
  In fact, only 10% preferred live presentations.

  Advice: Record it and make the archive available in an autoresponder sequence.

• Getting a prospective customer to evaluate your solution/service is critical.
  85% evaluate just 1, 2 or 3 vendors. Yep, that’s all.
  70% are very likely or somewhat likely to buy following trial.
  
  Advice: Get your prospects into a trial as soon as possible. If you have to give it away (the old, “freemium” strategy), so be it. Does your marketing strategy put this goal front-and-center?
• Evaluation may occur without involving a vendor.
  86% research a problem for just 2 months, or less and
  76% contact vendors within a month after their research is complete.

  Advice: Be ready to quickly pounce on an opportunity.

As you can see, both SiriusDecisions and TechTarget provide ample evidence for using multiple types of marketing strategies to get your sales team into your prospect’s buying process. It’s not a one-size-fits-all world any more (was it ever?). You need a complete game plan that includes a variety of approaches that are mapped to your sales cycle.