Unless you were on an African safari for the past year, you probably heard that mobile device usage is skyrocketing. Gartner published a research report in 2011 showing worldwide tablet sales at almost 55 million units, up 181% from 2010. Don’t own a pink iPad yet? It might be time to get one. Business professionals lug around an average of 2.7 mobile devices, according to market research firm iPass, Inc. Their recent study, titled 2011 Mobile Enterprise Report, surveyed 224 global IT executives in 2011 and found 77% carry Blackberry devices while 52% use an iPhone. According to Good Technology, which provides mobile device management services to half of the Fortune 100, the iPhone4 is actually leading the mobile pack.

What does all this mean to us marketers? Perhaps we need to rethink how we communicate with and prospect to IT professionals, as there’s an excellent probability our emails are being read on a pink iPhone4.  To learn more about how a new app based on Aventi Group’s Vector methodology will revolutionize how technology companies find, nurture and motivate prospects, download our new white paper.

Set expectations and tone – here are just some examples.  Think of your own style and adjust.
• “I start and end meetings on time”
• “I’m one who needs a solid, data-driven business case before investing marketing dollars”
• “I favor experimentation, testing, failing fast, and using that data to make smart decisions”
• “I have a high bar when it comes to creative”
• “If you come to me with a problem, you better have a recommendation”
Don’t act immediately – it’s very seductive to jump in and start barking orders or making big decisions the very first week on the job.  The best CMOs use the first few weeks to validate assumptions in their 100-day plan.  Take inventory across the sales/marketing functions – demand generation, PR, social media, product marketing, sales/channel enablement, marketing operations, go-to-market planning, business strategy, product lifecycle management, etc.  You’ll have a pretty solid assessment of strengths/weaknesses by the time you have done this “audit” of capabilities and a more tuned 100-day plan.  Plan a 30-day checkpoint with yourself to ensure you’re on path to achieve the expectations you set in your 100-day plan.
Reach out to stakeholders – take the initiative to setup 1:1s in the first couple weeks with a 360 view – CEO/GM, VP of Sales, VP of Engineering, VP of Product Management, your own direct reports, key “thought leaders” in the organization, a customer or two, and maybe even a partner or two.  Use these sessions to listen, listen, and listen.  You’ll have plenty of time to jump to action.  Build relationship as this group will make or break this chapter in your career.
Flex your style – just as going from middle school to high school is a great opportunity to “re-make” yourself or shift others’ perceptions of you, this transition is the perfect time for you to make a conscious choice to doing things differently this time.  What lessons have you learned that you want to apply this time?  Maybe you’ll vow to better balance strategic and tactical concerns.  Maybe you’d like to say “no” more often than you have in the past.  Maybe you’d like to take more risks and be bolder. Maybe you want to use anger more skillfully to drive change.  Maybe you’ll be more consensus oriented or perhaps just the opposite.
Get the scorecard right – most likely you got a good sense of the business outcomes, goals, and success metrics for the CMO role in your interview process.  But plan to revisit, re-negotiate, or re-affirm these specific metrics at the 30-day mark in your 100-day plan.  Ideally you have built a nice dashboard that you can use to better manage your organization and work with your boss and peers.  Some common CMO metrics we’ve seen are:  revenue, revenue growth, pipeline of sales-ready leads vs. marketing leads (e.g. inquiries, nurturing phase), press/analyst outcomes, product line profitability,  timely and high impact product launches, strategic planning thought leadership, and employee satisfaction rating
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You want to sell to prospects with the highest probability of closing. Knowing the impending events for your product or service can greatly streamline demand generation efforts and focus your sales team and channel partners on the right prospects at the right time.  By tailoring your qualifying questions around impending events, sales can quickly uncover whether a lead is in a buying cycle or not.

What if there is no impending event that will drive a company to seek out your product or service? The prospect is not feeling any pain. He is happy with his existing solution because it is ‘good enough.’ This is where marketing can really add value to help improve the sales cycle. Think about the most compelling and differentiating features of your product. Interview customers about what they love most about it. How did it change the way they were previously doing business? Did it automate a manual process to save time and money? Did it reveal an additional layer of data for more thorough analysis? Think in terms of “what if you could achieve X faster, cheaper or with less effort or reduced risk?” Compare the prospect’s existing process with best practices of leading companies using your solution. Consider creating scorecards to measure the prospect’s current method against the best practice ideal to reveal where they may be falling short.

Have you found impending events to be a useful sales tool? Tell us how your organization is using them in the sales process.

1. Are you building solutions for your customer or your org chart?
I can’t tell you how many companies I have seen create new solutions by combining product teams that made sense organizationally, only to find out that customers don’t want to buy those products bundled together.

2. Are the products complementary?
Related to #1: This may seem obvious but be sure your customers are asking for both products at least a majority of the time. You should be combining products together that address objections in your sales cycle, not giving the customer new reasons to object or cherry-pick only the pieces of the solution most valuable to them.

3. Is the target buyer the same for all products in your solution?
This is extremely important. IT departments are vast in most enterprise organizations. If you have one product targeted at the IT Security Manager and a second one targeted at the System Administrator, combining them into one solution will make for a complicated sales cycle.

4. Is the sales process similar for each product in your solution?
Solutions should make it easier for sales and the customer to complete the transaction and realize value.  A solution comprised of a product with a two-month sales cycle and one with an eight-month sales cycle will generate a lot of headaches in terms of quotas and compensation unless the shorter cycle product is adequately compensated to endure the additional wait and deeper overall discounts that can result in this type of situation.

Many of these questions can be easily answered by examining feedback from your sales team and your customers prior to designing your solutions portfolio. As always, listening to the customer is key.

 
• Pricing and discount strategy
• Product packaging/structure
• Launch planning
• Demand generation
• Channel strategy
• Competitive differentiation
• Messaging and positioning
• Voice of the customer
• Market research
• Marketing budget
• Marcom
• Sales training/enablement
• Press and analyst relations
• Online marketing

We’ve found that few product managers can handle both responsibilities well because the ideal qualifications for the two roles can be quite different. We believe the marks of a great Product Marketing Manager are:

 
• Sales savvy—sought after by the sales organization as the product expert
• Credible—has deep understanding of customer needs and market dynamics
• Strategic – recognizes market opportunities and influences product direction
• Analytical – spots insight from data; facile with spreadsheets, analytic tools, and finance
• Creative – proposes fresh ideas from website copy to strategic partnerships
• Communicative – writes a blog, uses social media for thought leadership, passionate speaker
• Smart – applies solid business judgment, quickly learns new things
• Influential – has the ear of executives as well as line management

We’ll cover performance metrics in another blog post. Please let us know your own thoughts on Product Marketing Management in a high tech company.

Resources

• Silicon Valley Product Management Association
• Pragmatic Marketing
• 280Group on product management
• SDForum Marketing SIG

One of the benefits of being a consultant is that I get to work with a variety of companies and teams and as a result, I have learned a lot about best practices for telling your story with PowerPoint, especially for customer presentations. I combined a few successful styles I’ve seen into a short outline that I use to structure my customer presentations. I actually follow this outline for a variety of formats, including white papers, brochures and other types of marketing materials to create a story that resonates with customers.

1. Trends in the marketplace

Start with the relevant trends in the marketplace that are driving the need for your solution. Are regulations increasing for a particular industry? Has the financial crisis forced your customers to cut back in an area of their business? Are new platforms like Facebook leading customers to expect a similar experience in business applications? Keep it high level, stick to just defining the trend and resist the urge to solve the trend or link it to your product features too soon.

2. Challenges

The story flows best if your next step is to link those trends in the marketplace to the specific challenges they create for your customers. Increased regulation creates a lot more work for compliance teams to set up controls to meet those requirements. The downturn in the economy over the last few years has caused most businesses to have to find ways to do more with less. The explosion of social networking has created security and privacy concerns as employees use unsanctioned applications for business use. This section is where you need to be sure you understand your customers pain points in their own language. You need them to engage and agree that they are experiencing these challenges before they will be interested in listening to how you can help solve them.

3. Ideal Solution

If you have done a good job on the first two sections, now you should have their attention. Give some brief examples of how best run companies have addressed these challenges. Again, this should be generic, and not about your specific product. Compliance teams are automating compliance activities to better manage the increase in regulation. Companies are moving to cloud-based solutions to consume business applications with minimal upfront cost. Business social networking companies like Jive and Chatter from Salesforce.com are capitalizing on the desire of employees to have a secure social networking experience at work. Obviously these examples should also be functionality that your solution happens to also offer. You have given them the criteria by which to evaluate potential solutions for their challenges and now . . .surprise your solution meets all those criteria.

4. Finally . . . introduce your solution!

Here is where you can finally talk about how your company can help solve these challenges. Be careful, though. This is not your opportunity to churn out your laundry list of cool features, charts and product diagrams. Be consistent with the flow we’ve been following up to this point. Carefully match the specific benefit that your solution offers to each of the three or four trends and challenge areas you have introduced in the beginning. When creating this story, it may be helpful to start here and work backwards, as long as you work back to real challenges you know your customers have. Either way, telling a consistent story that holds the reader’s hand through the same four challenges and leads them to the matching solutions is the best way to keep their attention. Extra points if you can make the slide layouts match for each section to make it impossible for them to miss the connection. Oh and you should be able to cover all of this in four slides – one for each section.

Here are some additional PowerPoint tips from two of my favorite presenters, both with ties to Apple, Guy Kawasaki, and Steve Jobs.

Is PowerPoint the currency of your company? Have you seen other helpful outlines for creating effective presentations? Let us know what works best for you.

One of her comments was that traditional telemarketing where call center agents “dial for dollars” hoping to get an IT manager live on the phone is just a complete waste of time and money.

Over 90% of so called “leads” prove to be duds. We came up with a list of top ten reasons why cold calling from offshore or onshore telemarketing firms is just not working. See below.

The demand generation strategy that’s worked the best for our clients is based on messaging that’s laser focused on the IT manager’s pain points, a differentiated offer, an accurate contact list, leveraging knowledgeable consultants for inbound calls only (vs outbound telemarketers mindlessly reading scripts), and a web-based scorecard that rigorously measures lead quality.

Let us know what you find that’s really working and not working in high tech product demand generation.

• Outbound phone calling because almost no one answers the phone anymore thanks to caller ID.
• Agents who “pitch” at the customer instead of leading an engaging “discovery” conversation.
• Agents who have practically no domain knowledge.v
• Customer contact lists from traditional list rental companies.
• Calling a response to an email blast a “lead” when it’s really not even an “inquiry.”
• Email messaging that’s all about product features rather than customer problem/solution.
• Quantity focus versus delivering fewer, higher quality sales opportunities.
• Tossing “leads” to sales reps hoping they’ll follow-up versus teeing up only highly qualified prospects and maintaining follow-through.
• Campaign reporting that is all about lead delivery instead of revenue value of pipeline.
• Campaigns ad hoc events versus as an ongoing process with a well honed engine.

Given declining email open rates, what are tips and techniques to getting open rates back up in to healthy two digits?

If clients are struggling with poor open rates, more often than not it has less to do with the usual suspects – creative, subject lines and spam triggers – and more to do with issues of content and the relationship the company has with the people they’re emailing.

Fact is, email is no longer a viable lead acquisition tool – so forget trying to make rented email lists perform like they did 5 or 10 years ago; it’s not going to happen. However, as a tool for lead nurturing or customer marketing, email can still be extremely effective, and in those scenarios, we see double-digit open rates consistently, provided marketers do two things:

1. Respect their list, by taking a responsible approach to opt-in, opt-out, and email frequency; and

2. Deliver consistent information of value that’s personalized, targeted, and relevant to the recipient.

Fail on either count – i.e. bombard your database with “one size fits all” emails that are strictly promotional—and no amount of creative tweaking or email deliverability testing will help.

If you’re targeting IT management what offers really are working today versus the old model of whitepapers and webinars?

For all the talk of rich media, we’re finding that offers such as videos and podcasts, even if they’re very short, still don’t perform as well as the old standbys – downloadable, printable content like white papers, analyst reports, buying guides, solution briefs, etc. They may be old-fashioned, but they appeal in part I think because the reader knows that, having responded, he/she can consume the content at his/her convenience. Rich media is simply more work, iPods or no.

eBooks are the flavor of the day when it comes to offer content, but when you pull back the covers, they’re really longer, well-packaged white papers. Still, the word “eBook” seems to communicate perceived value for some reason, so if clients are willing to invest the time and resources in developing ebooks, they can perform quite well.

Webinars are still as popular as ever, though – critically – these days they’re much more effective for lead nurturing versus lead generation. As a first step for a new prospect, Webinars may be setting the proverbial bar too high, but as a next step for a prospect that’s already familiar with your company, Webinars can be a valuable tool for moving people along the sales cycle. Plus they’re easily re-purposed in hosted form for Web content or content syndication.

How should tech firms be combining email marketing with outbound telesales or teleprospecting?

Per my comment above, I don’t really consider email to be a viable lead acquisition tool any longer, so I’m hesitant to suggest any role as a complement to outbound telemarketing, except that on a one-to-one level, following up a phone call with a well-crafted email will never hurt, especially when (if you believe industry statistics) fewer and fewer people are responding to voicemail.

Where email marketing and telesales/telemarketing DO work well in concert is in the context of lead nurturing. With today’s marketing automation platforms, companies can trigger automated emails based on prospect behavior, lead score or demographics, and couple those emails with automated alerts to the relevant sales rep.

What else should VPs or Directors of Marketing consider when architecting an online marketing campaign to drive high quality leads (not just quantity)?

The quality of leads has much less to do with the marketing vehicle – email, search, direct mail, whatever – and much more to do with the offer itself. For example, if your offer is a high-level, educational white paper, you’ll likely generate leads that comprise a broad range of interest, from tire-kickers to buyers. However, if you orient your offer content to prospects later in the selling cycle, for example: a buying guide or customer case study – you may generate fewer leads, but those leads will almost certainly be more “sales ready.”

Thank you, Howard, for your terrific insights here! Howard can be reached at .

• Start and end on time – keep it to one hour a week maximum.
Assign homework—send out an agenda in advance with homework assignments for the reps. Here are prep questions that always generate solid insights and best practices sharing:
• Describe a win since our last call. Why did we win?
• Describe a loss since our last call. Why did we lose?
• What is your strategy for upselling an existing customer?
• What objections are you running into the most and how do you handle them?
• What differentiators resonate the most with customers?
• What is the pain point that’s driving your customer’s purchase?
• Listen—most sales managers I’ve seen love to hear themselves talk. It’s far more effective to use these sales meetings to have the reps talk about their business. Yes, their business is the focus not you. Ask questions. Put people on the spot. Try to listen 90% of the time and keep your talking to 10%. Encourage discussion rather than asking for data you can get yourself from your SFA system.
• Be up beat – I’ve seen sales managers use sales conference calls to humiliate certain reps for under performing. This may appear to work in the short term but it only leads to rep turnover in the longer run. So keep the meeting up beat and focused on team productivity not on any one individual‘s performance problems. Reps don’t need to like you but they do need your encouragement and recognition.
• Use your SFA system – one of the most effective approaches is to use a tool like Go-to-Meeting or WebEx to share your screen as people talk about a specific opportunity. They will learn that they must have your sales force automation (SFA) system updated and ready each week.
• Invite marketing – have your field marketing team listen in and especially have them lead topics on competitive win/loss, value propositions, lead generation, differentiation, and objection handling.
• Maintain control – it’s easy to go down a rat hole if one rep decides to go on about a particular sales objection they run into or about the poor quality leads they are getting from marketing. Limit these rants. I like to acknowledge the issue and have the rep go offline with someone in marketing or product development and come back with a recommendation to the sales team. Make them solve the problem rather than you.
• Look at system issues – I’ve seen sales managers browbeat reps in sales meeting expecting to get better results from them. This never works. Instead, look deeper into the issue which might be frustrating you and the team. Is there a training/competency issue? Process gap? Missing sales tool? Lack of motivation and discipline? Compensation issue? Diagnose before you pound the table for better results.
• Publish notes – sales managers almost never take notes and even more rarely send out action items from sales conference calls. What a missed opportunity to ensure good sales execution and follow through on commitments. Take notes. Publish right way then review briefly on the next sales conference call. This will build accountability too.

Here are red flags that tell us when product/solution management is most needed.

• Sales is selling “future”, features that development and marketing say is not yet committed
• Product Marketing is frustrated that product roadmaps (prioritization) are non-existent, changing weekly, or simply not rigorously managed.
• Development team is worried that they may not necessarily be working on the most valuable feature set or what customers will buy now.
• Support manager is urging proactive development to drive down helpdesk calls due to bugs.
• Customers are beginning to lose confidence that the development process will meet their long term needs
.

So Chris and Terry are wisely thinking ahead of these issues and planning for product management now. So what are some of the key accountabilities of product or solution management?

• Own the “Plan of Record” which is a prioritized list of features for development over the next 2 -3years.
• Establish and lead a cross functional team to ensure the whole product meets customers needs (e.g. marketing, support, development, operations, finance, and manufacturing).
• Manage milestone completions; ensure, for example, that a product is ready for launch only after having met all the exit criteria spanning the cross functional team.
• Provide visibility to executive management of all scope, schedule, and risks affecting the success of the product launch.
• Own the creation and updating of the “Market Requirements Document” (MRD) and “Product Requirements Document”
(PRD); note often Product Marketing is the owner of the MRD and Product Management owns the PRD.

Expect to see tension between Product Management and virtually every function head such as Product Marketing, Development, Support, etc. The best product managers I have ever seen tend to think of themselves (and be seen as) the “general manager” of the product by being able to own all aspects of the product that affect its financial performance and success in the marketplace. Please share with us your own stories about how product management has made a huge difference in your firm.