If I asked you to write a brochure for Fortune 500 CEOs, you'd probably keep it at a high-level (one of those terms I despise, but use anyway) and you'd likely use words like competitive advantage, bottom-line business performance, innovation and globalization. All issues that your CEO audience faces everyday.

But let's tweak the assignment a bit. Write the brochure for Jeffrey Immelt. (If you don't know who he is, get out now).

Your bullshit barometer may come down a bit. You won't be quite so patronizing in your language. You'll read your standard CEO-type phrases and realize how pedantic they've become. Why?

Because when you picture someone like Jeff Immelt reading "Today's corporation needs to build innovation into its everyday culture to stay competitive in an increasingly global economy," you might even groan, because you know that's what he would do. After all, you haven't told him anything he doesn't already know (the number one failure of most marketing communications). You've haven't educated him. You haven't even said anything profound. So why should he continue reading?

Our colleagues in User Interface Design create User Personas to avoid this scenario. They already know users want computer-based applications that are intuitive and friendly. They know users prefer simplicity over complexity. Good GUI designers don't waste time on creative briefs that deliver historical analyses of what they already know. They conduct fresh "user research" to intimately understand what their audiences expect, but more importantly, how they behave and how they've changed.

Sometimes the person is real (based on some laboratory style observations) or fictitious. But even if they are imagined, the interface is designed around the known personality and behavior traits of an individual, not a bulleted lists of responsibilities  and tasks.

Dave Clark, a user interface designer for TandemSeven explains it this way: 

"Applications and portals that are based on user attributes alone often become overwhelmed with too  many features as baffled designers and developers cram in more capabilities and complexity. Personas bring the focus back to real people -- with a fresh view that can be a source of innovation. User research typically uncovers insights into unarticulated, unimagined new services and capabilities."

If you write for executives, try to get above the usual cliches. Do some digging and read about executive attributes that are personal and real. For example, read what Executive Coach Rich Gee said about senior executives in our recent interview:

"As individuals advance to executive levels, development feedback becomes increasingly important, more infrequent, and more unreliable."

Or what Eliza Collins, a frequent writer about executive success, has to say in her book Making it in Management:

"Successful executives have the capacity to tolerate ambiguity as well as possess the fortitude to be tough when necessary and to not give in to others' ideas of what is right."

These two observations of people who work with executives everyday show us that it is "lonely at the top" -- not in a cliche sort of way, but with some insight that is based upon their personal experience with executive interaction, not just something they've read or heard.

If you do some deeper homework about your audience using practices our colleagues in GUI development employ, you'll see your communications become more relevant, and more insightful.

Rather than write a brochure for a mass CEO audience, try speaking personally to just one of its participants. Think of an executive you know personally or read one of the many Jeffrey Immelt interviews. Then write him a letter. You'll be surprised at your more
conversational, more personal style. 

You might actually knock your copy up a notch or two with something like, "Several leading executives recently shared the techniques they use to burn their visions into the minds and spirits of their boards of directors. And you know what? They don't use board meetings. They don't depend on golf. And not one of them has ever engaged PowerPoint."

That might inspire a CEO to keep reading more than recounting something he or she already knows. By doing some audience homework, you'll become a source of insight, not a history lesson.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a summary of results from a recent Customer Experience Management research study conducted by the Strativity Group:

A majority of companies fail to deliver differentiated value to customers and therefore fail to maintain their loyalty. Additionally, companies routinely fail to analyze and manage their customer relationships according to specific financial criteria,leading to the ineffective execution of customer strategies.

Although respondents declare that customer strategies are more important than they were three years ago, the majority acknowledge that their employees do not have the tools or authority to resolve customer issues - a major indicator of customer commitment. “Respondents honestly admitted that they are selling commodities and that their core value proposition does not merit customer loyalty,” stated Lior Arussy, company founder and author of “Passionate & Profitable” (Wiley, 2005). “Such an admission should serve as a wake up call to every executive to reexamine their core value propositions and ability to deliver differentiated customer experiences.”

Results Highlights -

• 60% of senior executives claim they do not deserve their customers’loyalty
• 51% of respondents claim that their company does not deliver unique and beneficial products or services
• 56% agree that their company’s products or services are worth the price they charge
• 34% affirm that they have the tools and authority to serve their customers
• 75% do not know the cost of a new customer

Strategies Fail at Execution -

According to the study, 70% of companies indicate that customer strategies are more important than they were three years ago. Yet, basic execution parameters such as frequently visiting customers (34%), providing the necessary tools and authority to employees (34%), and strongly linking compensation with service quality (29%) is lacking.

It’s All in the Financials -

Overall, the study indicates a widespread ignorance regarding the economics of customer relationships. Over 75% of respondents did not know the cost of a new customer while 81% did not know the cost of a customer complaint. 50% of respondents did not know their organization’s annual retention rates. The failure to manage customer relationships on the basis of clear and pertinent financial metrics explains why companies’ strategic intentions often fail to translate into sustainable customer-centric actions. Organizations do not invest the appropriate resources and funds to establish long-term relationships because they are unable to justify them financially.

Employee Readiness to Execute Remains a Challenge -

The general trend is one of diminishing corporate investment in employees — ultimately leading to the curtailment of the employee’s ability to properly execute customer strategies.

• 29% of the respondents indicated that their compensation plan emphasizes quality of service and not just productivity
• 34% of respondents claim that their employees have the tools and authority to solve customer problems
• 30% of respondents agreed that their company invests in people more than in technology.

Companies continue to declare their commitment to customers while not fully comprehending what this commitment entails. As such, customer experiences are commoditized, employee readiness is limited, and strategy execution is deficient. The failure to create and deliver differentiated experiences leads to the failure to command premium pricing, drive preference of company or product, gain greater portion of customer budgets,and ensure the permanence of overall relationship longevity.

These results confirm that there’s still much to be done by many companies in the area of customer experience management and loyalty.  I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I am dissapointed.  I just don’t see how this situation can go on and on without more companies raising the bar.  For more on this study, check out the complete source article.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are several excerpts from an article by Bill Brooks, CEO of The Brooks Group, a sales management and training firm, The Ten Dumbest Things Salespeople Do:

The truth is, knowing what not to do in sales is just as powerful as knowing what to do. I’ve assembled a list of ten of the dumbest things salespeople do — things that are virtually guaranteed to totally and completely de-rail your selling career.

1. They don’t become students of their craft - These salespeople begin strong selling careers, and they really get into it — but then they go to sleep at the switch and forget to do things like read industry publications or new books by sales masters. They don’t go to sales seminars, listen to audios or view videos on sales-related topics. In short, these salespeople don’t constantly re-invigorate themselves.

2. They don’t “narrowcast” their offering - This means that they don’t become specialists at a particular type of market, or at delivering a specific type of product; they stay generalists.

3. They fail to position themselves correctly - The way people position themselves determines how their prospects and customers see them. In short, people pay attention to people whom they perceive as having something important to say to them.

4. They fail to prospect - This is huge. The biggest cause of failure in sales is having an inadequate supply of qualified prospects. How do you get prospects? Like I said above — host informational sessions for prospective clients, send mailings with targeted lists, speak at association meetings, host user’s groups, or offer a webinar.

5. They get in front of the wrong people - There’s an old statement that goes: “You can’t get rich selling to the wrong people.” It is best to be in front of people who: Can make a decision, have a need, have a perceived problem, or pain, and are willing to listen to you.

6. They listen to their peers - Listening to your peers often means you get too much negative input. It is important to understand that 80 percent of your peers are only delivering 20 percent of the results. And you know what? They’ve got nothing better to do than hope you’re not successful, either — so it’s not logical to accept their advice. Instead, listen to positive, upbeat advice that makes you feel good, and think clearly.

7. They don’t understand the economics of their product or service - Would you sell something for a buck and a half that cost you a buck? No you wouldn’t, but unfortunately several salespeople don’t understand value costing, and that’s exactly what they end up doing! These salespeople don’t truly understand what it costs to deploy their solutions in the field. They don’t understand the expense of telephones, manufacturing, advertising, marketing and promotion, so they end up giving the product or service away.

8. They mentally spend their income, before they earn it - If your pay plan is somehow designed to reward you for production or performance — not just a base salary for being around — listen to me. The sale is not made until you have received your commission check and it’s gone into the bank, and it’s cleared — only then is the sale consummated.

9. They fail to ask the right questions - In fact, they may have failed to ask questions at all. Or worse, they did ask questions, but didn’t listen to the answers.

10. They are either digitally compulsive or digitally impaired - In other words, they are so compulsive about digital technology that they spend all of their time on the Internet, or in sales force automation products. Either that, or they’re so impaired that they’re absolutely frozen about utilizing it. As simple, basic and fundamental as it sounds, the truth is — the most successful person is going to be the one who’s going to be in the middle. Bottom line: You should not be sitting in front of your computer screen all day long; you need to be eyeball to eyeball with prospects and customers.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Educated prospects are more valuable - and more qualified -  than uneducated prospects. Clients that understand the value of a good online customer experience, for example, appreciate the value (and price tag) of a talented information architect. 

One of the ways we educate prospects is with events, books, or white papers. The term "white paper" comes from the concept that you are communicating your position and point-of-view (POV) on plain white paper, absent of corporate letterhead or brand. It's a position piece, not a promotion piece. 

While you include your name at the beginning of the paper (as the author) and at the end (in a call to action) the content in between should be used to educate, not promote, lest your POV appear too self-serving.

Over the years, companies have indeed started to creep some "light promotion" into their white papers. McKinsey and Accenture for example, stick to the old rule and don't link their services to their point-of-view. They stay out of it and remain the objective educator. But product companies like Oracle, BEA or SAP subtly pull their solutions into the issues their white papers discuss. 

Of course, readers aren't naive. They realize the point-of-view you communicate in your white papers is naturally reflective of your firm's products and services. If you read a paper about hardware virtualization by IBM's VP of Technology ... would you think it has the same objectivity as a paper from an MIT professor? Probably not.

You expect the IBM white paper to be sympathetic to the IBM approach, although you certainly appreciate the general education you get from IBM. After all, they are indeed experts, and they are successful. So you don't entirely discount it. However, if they start to really talk up their products, you start to think, "this is a marketing piece, not a position piece."

If you use white papers to educate your audience, keep in mind some best practices:

• Quote experts outside your own organization to bolster your point-of-view and position.

• If you want a byline on your white paper, think about using a non-marketing or sales professional as author. Executives in research, human resources, finance, technology or manufacturing are good choices.
  

• Commission a paper from a known expert that will lend credibility to your point-of-view.

• While anyone with bottom-line revenue responsibility in your organization is usually not a good choice for a byline (again, they are seen as self-serving) the CEO is sometimes the exception, especially if he or she founded the company or is retired. Does a white paper by Larry Ellison gets more attention than the same paper by Todd Forsythe (Oracle's CMO)? You decide.

• Illustrate your points with examples of companies that are not your clients. An IT services firm for example says "E-bay (not a client) is the poster child for leveraging the value of services oriented architecture."

• Use an independent consultant, analyst or expert to introduce your topic, similar to what you see in business books. Websense, for example, introduces their webcasts with an independent point-of-view on web communications security from an analyst from Gartner or IDC.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Admit it! There are some subjects related to your product, service or solution that you dread talking about. Perhaps your offering isn't the most "leading edge." Maybe your pricing is much higher than competitors. Or maybe you're a boutique firm without the full spectrum of services of the bigger companies.

Whatever it is, you hope like crazy that your prospects won't bring it up. Yet you know deep inside that the topic is unavoidable. No matter how hard you try to dance around the elephant in the room and pretend its not there, it's just a matter of time before someone asks about it. Then you stumble through a lame response that makes you sound like a total patsy and your credibility plummets.

So what's a seller to do?

When I was in college, I worked at the Ground Round Restaurant as a waitress. On weekends, Leroy Larson played his banjo and sang the old favorites. After months of working there, I developed quite a liking for his rendition of songs by the Kingston Trio. (MTA & Tom Dooley)

Twenty years later, this group came to Minneapolis for a concert. I persuaded my husband to go with me – even though he wasn't enamored with their music. After the warm-up singers, a booming voice came over the microphone announcing the main act: "Ladies & Gentlemen … (long pause) … The Kingston Trio."

There was a roar of applause as we waited for this much beloved group to appear. Instead, from the left side of the stage, three old bald slightly overweight guys hobbled slowly to the center. One was leaning so heavily on his cane, that we weren't sure if he'd make it.

The audience was in shock. We were in the midst of geriatric unit. The once vibrant Kingston Trio looked like they belonged in the old folks' home.

The lead singer limped up to the microphone. When he got there he stopped. Slowly he scanned the audience, practically making eye contact with each person. As he looked at us, his head started shaking back and forth like he was in disbelief. He still was silent.

Finally he spoke. With a twinkle in his eye, he looked straight at us and said, "My goodness you've gotten old!" 

The crowd erupted in laughter. That was the elephant in the room that needed to be spoken. And once it was out on the table, it totally lost its impact.

How does this apply to selling?

When I sold for Xerox, my most feared competitor had a switch that automatically turned its copiers off after not being in use for 20 minutes. This was at a time when gas prices were high and people were big into conservation.

I lost more sales over this stupid feature than I care to admit. My competitor kept emphasizing its value. All my responses made me sound like I was on the defensive.

The truth was that the annual cost savings were miniscule. Plus waiting for the system to warm up again drove people nuts. But it wasn't till I started bringing up the subject myself that I regained my competitive edge.  Early on in the sales process, I would say:

"As you're evaluating systems you're likely to hear some vendors talk about how great it is to have an automatic off/on switch. For your information, when copiers are in the "wait mode" they're using about the same amount of electricity as a standard light bulb – which is minimal.

"What people don't realize when they get copiers with this switch is that you have to wait 30 seconds for it to warm up again each time its in use. I don't know about your employees, but find it unacceptable to wait for 30 seconds for their copy. They want it immediately."

I never lost to that competitor again. That's what can happen when you face into those dreaded subjects, think about them ahead of time and plan your response.  You might even need to experiment with several variations till you find a good way to say things.

What other elephants could be in the room? 

If it's pricing, address the fact that you're not the low cost provider head on and tell them why it's to their advantage. If you're a small company without the breadth of coverage of a corporate giant, point that fact early on in your discussions. Then follow up with several statements about why that's good.

Recently I noticed a corporate giant using this strategy in their television advertising campaign. SAP, a firm that offers a comprehensive range of enterprise software applications, is perceived by many smaller firms to be too complicated, sophisticated and pricey for their business operations. In their ads, executives/owners of these growing firms express surprise that they can get SAP's capabilities at such an affordable rate. It's very effective.

So what elephants are you tiptoeing around? What areas do you dread talking about?  Once you name them, start working on how to proactively bring them up when you meet with prospective customers. That's they only way for them to lose their impact!

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Once you’ve determined who you’re going to approach as a suspect in your lead generation campaign and have taken the time to get inside their head and create a position for your company and offer, another consideration is how you reach them. 

For example, once you’ve profiled your ideal customer and identified your target suspect by company, position and title, you’ll likely determine there aren’t many ways to reach them – either active or passive.  I’m not talking about the offer you’re going to make.  I’m talking about the delivery mechanism for your offer. 

For active approaches, where you do something to contact a specific person, there are only a handful of options: 

• call them on the phone
• send them something in the mail
• send them an email
• send them a fax
• visit their office

Passive approaches are few in number as well.  These are activities whereby you don’t reach a specific person, but attempt to reach a profiled person:

• advertise in a trade journal or publication
• banner ads on a website or blog
• website or blog content – search traffic
• paid search advertising
• word of mouth
• publication

That’s about it.  There just aren’t that many means to deliver a message to a suspect and make an offer. 

Thankfully, most of us will never have to choose only one method to deliver a message in our lead generation activities.   We can and should use more than one.  But these are choices we have to make.  You need to decide whether to or not to pursue active and/or passive lead generation activities.  There are pros and cons to each. 

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

RainToday.com's recent report "What's Working In Lead Generation" got me thinking about the relationship of thought leadership to branding and lead nurturing. In B2B marketing, all three serve the same purpose: to establish your company as a trusted adviser, so when a prospect is ready to buy, he or she will think of you and will want to speak with your sales reps.

B2B Branding

I'm often asked whether branding matters to B2B marketing. RainToday's report helps to demonstrate that the answer is yes, concluding, "If you are well known, whatever lead generation tactics you employ are likely to work better." In fact, 65% of companies that claim they are well know report being good or excellent at lead generation, while only 44% of the not well known companies report being good or excellent.

A key difference from B2C marketing: In B2B, mass advertising does not work to build the brand (the survey found that TV, radio, and print advertising were ranked 33, 31, and 29 – out of 33 – as least effective methods for B2B lead generation).

Instead, RainToday argues that B2B companies should build their brand by helping buyers research early in the sales cycle, demonstrating that they are trusted advisers who understand the prospect's problems. By using thought leadership to engage prospects early, you build awareness and increase your chances that the prospect will respond to future demand generation efforts.

Lead Nurturing

The report also has some of the best data I've seen about the importance of lead nurturing

The definition of "sales-ready" varies from company to company, but most said that only 10-30% of leads generated by marketing campaigns were sales-ready. The average value was 25%. Respondents also reported an average of 25% of leads should be disqualified. The remaining 50% of leads require "further nurturing".

RainToday points out that lead nurturing is not just sending a monthly email newsletter to your entire database, or calling prospects every few weeks to see if they are ready to buy yet. They argue that lead nurturing is your opportunity to demonstrate the value you can provide and to position yourself as a resource. This is similar to my post Lead Nurturing 101, where I defined lead nurturing as "the process of building a relationship by conducting an informative dialog that helps educate qualified prospects who are not yet sales-ready".

With this definition, lead nurturing is about using thought leadership to deepen your role as a trusted adviser, which in turn further builds your brand and improves awareness. The end goal is to stay within the buyer's awareness so that when he or she is ready to speak with a sales person, your company is an obvious choice.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You'd think that prospective customers would be delighted with your free offers, yet for some reason they're not biting. What's going on? 

The brutal truth is that they're not interested in your free trials, free assessments or free workshops. Even though you may think that it's a great deal, corporate decision makers don't. They're not stupid. They know there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Everything that's free ultimately requires two things:

• An investment of time.
• And a decision – which also takes time.

That's why free isn't selling these days. People don't have extra time to waste. Either something is worth doing or it's not. Free is entirely irrelevant.

Recently I was talking with a person whose service was actually FREE. His company analyzed corporate phone bills to help company's save significant revenue.   He was paid on a contingency, so the actual out-of-pocket expense paid by the client was non-existent. Yet he still found it difficult to get appointments.

Why? Because he stressed that his service was free. When I hear that as a decision maker, my immediate thought is, "What's the catch?" I know nothing is free.

So even if your company has something it gives away for free – don't lead with it. Instead, focus on the business value. Unless decision makers know that it will reduce costs, increase productivity, shorten time-to-revenue or such, they won't clear time on their calendar for you. Remember, it's all about business. It must be worth their time – even though it's FREE.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting article at BusinessWeek.com about how entrepreneurs and corporate workers network differently.  The biggest difference?  The latter group doesn’t do much at all.  Some just don’t understand why they should bother, while others are “afraid of being hit up by job-seekers and service providers.”

I’m fairly certain I could change people’s minds about the first reason, but I have to admit, I see their point about the second reason.  My husband has a high-level position at a Fortune 500 company, but I never mention it in networking situations and really try to downplay it as much as possible when asked.  It seems like EVERYONE has an idea or a product they’d love to sell into his company (heck, so do I!), but I don’t want him to be bombarded with sales pitches and requests for introductions.

In general, people hate to be in a position where they have to tell you “no” – no, we’re not hiring, no, I don’t know anyone at my company who is, no, we don’t need that service, no, I’m not in a position to introduce you to someone who does – and on and on and on.  It makes them uneasy to admit that they aren’t quite comfortable with you yet to refer you on, or that they may not have the connections inside their company to get you to the right place anyway.

So keep that in mind when you’re networking with corporate folks.  Don’t just jump into sales mode and focus on what they can do for you, before you even know what they do.  Approach them like you would a fellow entrepreneur, with the intent of building a relationship first, learning about them, and uncovering ways to exchange value FIRST.  You can't credibly offer your service as the answer to their problems, when you haven't spent enough time understanding their situation.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nobody wants to buy your product, service or solution. Nor do they even want to hear about it - unless they're desperately in need of a solution.

So what do most sellers do to remedy this situation? They try to convince prospective customers just how wonderful their offering is. As I repeatedly mention in Selling to Big Companies, this self-serving pablum actually turns customers off.

Six months ago, David Meerman Scott, in partnership with Factiva, wrote The Gobbledygook Manifesto. This blog post analyzes business terms used in over 388,000 press releases sent in 2006. Like me, David  has a real aversion to  companies who describe their offering as flexible, robust and world class.

When you use these types of terms, you may think you stand out from the crowd. Instead you sound just like everyone else - including all your competitors. You'll be shocked when you take a detailed look at his Gobbledygook Volume Analysis.

If you want to be successful in sales, use value propositions. Focus on the tangible business results your product or service offers. For more info on this topic, check out:

•  Making a Difference
•  Stop Sounding Like a Self-Serving Salesperson
•  Developing Strong Value Propositions

You might want to also check out David's follow-up article to his initial gobbledygook post on "Online viral thought leadership works - here is the proof."

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I came across some awesome benchmark data about B2B marketing budgets, courtesy of SiriusDecisions. Thanks to Mou Mukherjee of cadenceblog for sending me the presentation in the first place. (If you are not familiar with SiriusDecisions, you should be -- they are doing some of the best research available on B2B marketing and sales. This presentation was part of a webinar they did with Rainmaker called Bridging the Gap Between Sales & Marketing.)

Their data show how B2B companies of various sizes allocate their marketing program budgets. Here are the budget allocations for B2B companies with $0-100M revenue:

• Field Marketing / Demand Generation: 64.7%
• Corporate Communications: 15.0%
• Product Marketing: 9.5%
• Branding/Advertising: 7.2%
• Channel Marketing: 2.5%
• Market Intelligence: 1.1%

SiriusDecisions further broke the Field Marketing / Demand Generation data into sub-categories, as follows (this is for all B2B companies, revenue from $0 to $1B+):

• Tradeshows: 16%
• Tele-prospecting: 13%
• Email: 13%
• Live events / seminars: 10%
• Webinars: 9%
• PPC Search Marketing: 5%
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): 4%
• Other (direct mail, associations, online, etc.): 30%

Besides being useful for budgeting purposes, what can we learn from this? I'm not surprised that the largest spend is on the most measurable category, demand generation. That trend will continue as marketing works to be ever more accountable for driving revenue. At the same time, I'm baffled by the fact that the largest spend category within demand generation continues to be tradeshows. Surely companies do not find better ROI from tradeshow spending than they do from channels like search marketing and email? If you disagree, please let me know!

By the way, I know it's been more than two weeks since my last post. My excuse is that Marketo launched our beta product last week and I've been swamped with customer meetings (including a few with folks I met through this blog!). So far, things are going great – but it does make it hard to find time to write worthy blog posts. I'll do my best to keep posting at least once a week during the next few busy weeks, but if you're looking for something to read in the meantime, be sure to check out the Big List of B2B Marketing

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Richard Fouts

in·no·va·tion (from dictionary.com)

"the act of making a change or a new arrangement; doing something new or different; the act of starting something for the first time"

If you're not selling your solution based on its ability to innovate, perhaps you should start.

Through 2010, business innovation will remain a top 10 business initiative among Global 1000 companies. In fact, 90 percent of executives from this esteemed body say innovation is key to their survival (Gartner research).

By 2010, products representing more than 70 percent of today's sales will be obsolete due to changing customer demands and competitive offerings. (2005 Global Benchmark of Manufacturers, Deloitte and Touche).
54 percent of CEOs surveyed by IBM expect to radically change their companies over the next two years. These execs also plan to innovate operational and business models to drive business growth.

Participants in the 2006 World Economic Forum said innovation in creativity and design will make 20th century structures obsolete, replaced by new models and more flexible business processes that serve more diverse, more global audiences.

Selling the ways your product and solutions deliver innovation, can take place at several levels and in various discussion frameworks, starting with the CEO or members of the CEO staff. Senior executives are clearly the ones putting priority on innovation - and they are the ones that can fund it.

Focus not just on business strategy, but process and culture. Our good friends at futurethink have tools and techniques for making innovation part of an organization's everyday culture. You'll get attention if you can show how your solution drives long term innovation, versus incremental improvement. Check them out at getfuturethink.com

Focus on people, not just technology. The enabler of change is most often identified in technology terms, but be careful not to let technology inhibit your efforts. If you have to choose, go for process innovation that is not dependent on big involvement from IT.

Find the person accountable for innovation processes, practices or learning. Many organizations have put such a person in place -- and it won't hurt to ask. The owner of innovation ensures that people remain engaged in the ongoing process, not just the occasional brainstorm.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)