David Meerman Scott's new book World Wide Rave builds on concepts in his highly original "The New Rules of PR and Marketing" and creates a manifesto for massive inbound marketing success in marketing ideas/products/services over the Internet. Rich with anecdotes and stories from people who have created their own World Wide Rave, David inspires challenges and stimulates thinking which has profound impact for anyone selling or marketing anything. 

An overnight success - 10 years in the making, David's ideas are rapidly changing the way people market products and create PR. He describes himself as a recovering marketing executive having led marketing efforts at Knight Ridder and News Edge in the old World of Marketing and PR.

Every day in the technology business I see old-World examples which David highlights - marketers wasting time, money and precious resources on doing things the old way. Buying PR services, counting print impressions, spamming people with direct mail and email campaigns; hiring telemarketers to generate leads because their me-too Websites don't have sufficient inbound lead flow to feed the sales force.
Typically these companies are product-centric; you'll see product features and benefits (another sure sign of old-World thinking) on their site and the good stuff, their interesting ideas are under lock-and-key...you have to give your contact details to get it - so they can SPAM you with email and hound you with Telemarketers.

#HUGS2011 Report

I was in Boston last week for #HUGS 2011, the 2nd HubSpot User Conference and this is my report.

Last week in Boston there was even more for marketers and HubSpot customers to get excited about than at this event a year ago.  HubSpot’s community has grown in the past year to more than 470+ partners and 5000+ customers and more than a thousand of the faithful gathered for the second Annual User Group Meeting. You can read my report on last year's event HubSpot 2010 user group meeting here.

HubSpot was founded just 5 years ago by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (pic on stage taking Q&A at HUGS 2011), with a grand vision to make marketing easy for everyone. It is clear with the recent funding from mainstream V.C. firm Sequoia, as well as Salesforce.com and Google that the bets the founders made in Inbound Marketing are beginning to look extremely valuable.

Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing method and product suite are very much what the market needs and wants as evidenced by the rapid adoption of the Inbound Marketing methodology and dramatic growth of the company.

Co-founders Brian Halligan and  Dharmesh Shah reviewed progress made in the past year and outlined the strategic direction for the company. (Disclaimer; - we are a San Francisco Bay Area Hubspot Value Added Reseller, focused on creating clarity in marketing messaging  to drive inbound marketing and sales performance and have been using the system for nearly 3 years.)

The Challenger Sale Momentum

The Challenger Selling concept is gaining in popularity based on the number of people joining the LinkedIn Group, the rank of The Challenger Sale book, (currently #2 in Amazon sales and marketing category) and the references to the book on the Internet.

Last week we saw a spat between sales training profesionals in one of the LinkedIn groups, about the veracity of the Challenger model, caused no doubt by the mindshare "Challenger" is generating in the market at the expense of rival approaches.

The Challenger behavior archetype identified in The Challenger Sale research stands out because Challengers produce better results than any other sales behavior type selling complex B2B products and services. Why? Because these individuals bring insight and informed opinion to influence the thinking of buyers and they exert a degree of control on the outcome of a complex B2B buying process.

Introducing new high technology and green technology products or services or getting an acquired company’ products sold through an existing sales team is a challenge for entrepreneurs in early stage companies and sales and marketing leaders in more mature companies.  

We have had both as clients, however I’m always astonished to see smart people doing really dumb things with their own and their investor’s money. There are a few telltale signs of a struggle going on inside an organisation. This is a struggle to find new prospects and to improve sales and marketing performance, accompanied by lots of hand-wringing and pointing blaming fingers at each other.
 
The first clue that there are problems is the corporate Web-site. The company’s Website, which is without a doubt the company’s most valuable asset (after its people), very often looks like it has been written by the product management team.  Often densely packed, with no white space; or sparse with nothing to engage the accidental visitor other than “product-speak”= meaningless features and benefits and gobbledygook. Pay-per-click is used to generate inbound leads and is fast burning investors cash.

The second clue, is that the sales team is tasked with making cold-calls to generate their own leads; and the company is wasting money on external telesales teams to generate appointments that hardly ever convert. We are marketing and selling in the Internet age and in 2009, buyers don’t want cold calls and junk email from suppliers to introduce them to their latest widget….yet strangely we see telemarketing companies thriving and a die-hard group of cold calling sales trainers and promoters who are championing an obsolete way of doing business.

I believe that in all high-tech and green-tech companies, sales and marketing should be united and aligned under one leader. A sale starts with an inbound visitor and it’s the role of marketers to generate inbound visitors that convert into leads. Sales and marketing teams need a universal way of defining leads and engaging prospects around their buyer-persona; one language from the Website to the sales person's lips that engages buyers around how their products or services are used by their customers to create value; the messaging reinforced by high value video testimonials, keyword rich blogs, case studies, Webinars and sector relevant white papers and E-books that pull in prospects.

In the past couple of months I have met with four entrepreneurs, all highly passionate about their products and excited with the potential for them in the market.

Most sales professionals will be very focused on closing last minute deals in the popular end of year discount-fest enjoyed around this time of year by our customers. Most marketers will be considering how they can improve program performance in 2010 to generate more leads and build mindshare.
It's a bad time to be calling sales and marketing leaders to engage in conversations about improving sales and marketing performance in 2010, but when is a good time?
So instead of calling prospective 2010 clients, I'm posting a blog and sending a link with the top 10 things for sales and marketing leaders to consider in their planning for improved performance in 2010, with a link back to a landing page on our site to register interest in further discussion.

Stan DeVaughn of Turner DeVaugh sent me a survey his firm conducted late last year in conjunction with Jigsaw for the CIO council entitled, “Vendor-CIO First Contact: Smarter Approaches for Vendors Seeking to Connect with CIOs”, which you can download by clicking on the link.

This is an enlightening, yet disturbing survey into the business development behavior of sales and marketing representatives from IT vendors and B2B software companies. It surveys more than 300 CIO’s about their experience with first contact from new vendors and suggests ways that corporations can better defend themselves from unwanted cold calls and SPAM.

The survey interviews 30 sales professionals to understand the problem from both sides and offers enlightened vendors suggestions on how to better engage their target market, and is worthwhile reading for every sales and marketing executive.

The chart in figure 3., excerpted from the report is worth pondering a few moments;

• Sales reps revert to the cold call and telemarketing to generate leads, (despite low conversion rates) in order to satisfy sales managers, who need to be seen to be driving lead generation – this does not serve either organization.
• Lack of preparation and lack of homework prior to a call is just plain unprofessional–period.
• Unsolicited emails are SPAM and are as unwanted and annoying as cold calling to CIO’s; IT executives are actively encouraged to use permission-based SPAM filters.
• Emails and voicemails with no clear value proposition–from the clients perspective, rank in the top 5 DON’T DO list.

We’re in Q3 2010, yet many IT vendors doggedly persist in 1980’s cold calling and poorly targeted email techniques, despite the miniscule success rates in vain the hope of connecting with IT buyers. 
“When we want or need a product like yours, we will find you” - is the CIO mantra that sales and marketers need to heed and understand; IT executives are not waiting for your call or your SPAMMY email.
The right approach to engage IT executives is made clear for vendors in figure 9:

1. Vendors wanting to make first-time contact with CIO’s should do their homework prior to making an approach; leading with an opinion on value-creation, specific to the company and relevant to the industry.
2. They should seek to connect through referrals from trusted acquaintances and social network introductions with a clear and relevant value proposition,
3. They should also be prepared to include rather than circumvent the executive administrator (gatekeeper) in the process of calling IT executives,
4. They should be prepared to use current technology to reach buyers on a permission basis and track click-through rates to measure buyer interest,
5. Vendors should be prepared to use vendor portals and to communicate with a clear and relevant value proposition, coupled relevant proof points.

Conclusion and Call to Action

If the activities of your sales and marketing team rank high on the CIO annoyance scale in chart 3 or if they struggle to communicate value and differentiate offerings as in figure 9., then more of the same Outbound Marketing techniques are not going to help.

We believe the top priorities for IT vendors to help CIO’s and IT executives to find you on the Internet, understand your offerings and interact with your sales and marketing team are as follows;

1. Best Book: Seth Godin's Linchpin really addresses a bunch of personal issues that prevent people from getting the important stuff done.
2. Obama's healthcare reforms: mean affordable healthcare coverage for me and my family and the employees of our business...and millions of other small business owners and employees in the US.
3. Moving back to the USA...it was a good time to go to the UK in 2003 and it feels like a good time to be back in the US - an added bonus, we missed the coldest, snowiest winter in Scotland for 60 years.
4. Becoming an affiliate of WhiteboardSelling provides a logical output of our Messaging Architecture process and translates it into something the sales team will actually want to use and enables me to implement a lot of the Salescraft technique I have developed as well.
5. Our Toyota Prius has to be the smartest car I've ever owned and we are averaging 50+ MPG. A real surprise inside, with more leg and headroom than our old Volvo Waggon and a terrific load deck that will carry most stuff we need to haul.
6. Moving in to our Pebble Beach home in just 10 weeks from purchase with a complete renovation has to be some sort of record...thanks to my wife, Robin.
7. My new Kevin Burns Putter...this is the first putter I have ever owned that is scientifically fitted exactly for my physiology and putting stroke. It is also the finest quality milled putter available and the custom-fitting-machining process that Kevin Burns invented and his practical stroke improvement tips mean that KBGolf putters are the only truly custom golf clubs that actually improve your game.
8. Best Work Engagement: Working on implementing Inbound Marketing at hot Cloud Storage spin-out Scality in Paris.
9. Best Wine of the year: 1976 Penfolds Grange Hermitage - a majesterial wine, still improving, incredible colour, nose and massive sweet and intense chocolatey red and black fruit flavors that linger for minutes, this wine still has 20 years in it.
10. Best Pub: The Central Bar, St Andrews and ask for a pint of my favorite real ale "Bitter and Twisted" from Harviestoun Brewery.
11. Best New Golf Course I played: Loch Lomond, Scotland thanks to my host Rick Gardner and the best parkland layout I've ever played - shot a 79 gross.