Demand Creation 2.0

Demand Creation 2.0
Scott Miller

District Vice President of Sales - Ceridian

E-book by Scott Miller Demand Creation 2.0
www.scottymiller.wordpress.com 1 of 20

There is an old story about two salesmen that were assigned to a new
territory in Africa to sell shoes for their company. The first one reported
to the home office that Africa was a terrible market and that no one wore
any shoes. The second one reported back that this was the perfect market
because not one of his prospects even knew about his product.


Demand Creation 2.0

I am a frontline Sales Manager with nothing to sell in this e-book but
observations and ideas. My team is no different from most sales teams.
We have a finite number of prospects for our B2B solution and a CRM
tool to help manage our activity. We can’t depend upon marketing to give
us leads so we have to create our own. We have different levels of skills
and enthusiasm when it comes to creating demand but like most, we have
a deep reservation in picking up the phone and calling a stranger.

“I think the hardest thing for sales management to understand is that
their sales force is unprepared and unwilling to handle demand creation.”

Without any direction outside of a mandate to get more deals – my team
did what they do best. They think their industry knowledge, tenure, and
high compensation required them to craft lengthy and well researched
correspondence to targeted executives. (Imagine the laborious process of
researching, writing and rewriting the perfectly tailored e-mail and phone
script.) We were selling to VITO but VITO wasn’t buying from us.


The problem with this approach is that when these lengthy, targeted
pieces of correspondence went unanswered – my team got frustrated.
They began to take on the mentality that they are closers and setting
appointments only prevents them from do what they are paid so
handsomely to do. In truth – my highly compensated / senior sales team
rose to their station because they are very productive and demand
creation activity that doesn’t generate demand is just……unproductive.

What we needed to understand is that our buyers are very busy and even
if we craft the perfect pitch to an individual, it could be the wrong time,
the wrong approach, the wrong person, or even the wrong median.

We created an approach that allows senior sales people to use their
tenure, experience, and status for demand creation – but instead of
spending this time focusing on an individual or company – they focus on
a group of individuals. This process takes the same amount of time as
traditional targeted demand creation efforts but is wildly more
productive because it generates results. We created an 8 step formula
based upon the wrongs of traditional demand creation.


The 5 Wrongs with traditional Demand Creation

Wrong Approach: There was a study from PWC that found a CFO
receives an average of 57 solicitations a day. With all the e-mail
automation tools and inside sales teams that have sprung up over the past
decade, I bet that number is more like 100. So our challenge is to get
above the noise. You could have the perfect solution for the perfect buyer
at the perfect time, but if you are caught in a spam filter or the buyer
never gets the message – what good does that do?

Our remedy is to ensure our message gets above the noise by a multi-
touch campaign style prospecting effort. Our friends in B2C marketing
understand one and done marketing is just as effective as none and done
long ago. They tell us we need to be simple, short, and persistent if we
want to capture our buyer’s attention. (J-E-L-L-O) My goal is to “touch”
our prospect eight times over the course of a three week campaign. That
way we can feel somewhat comfortable he or she understands that we are
serious about trying to get their attention.


As someone who can influence buying decisions at my company, I am
solicited every day. E-mails that have HTML or an opt out link at the
bottom of the message are easily ignored. Voicemails without a follow up
e-mail will never get a response.

To avoid this happening to my reps, I want them to avoid the one-off
targeted solicitation and spammy e-mails with multiple colors. Our
approach invests the same amount of time it takes to wordsmith a letter
to one individual but we write correspondence to a group of individuals
that have something in common.

For instance, instead of writing a specific letter to the CFO of one of our
top prospects, we write a letter than would benefit any CFO. We then
select 30 to 50 CFO’s from our CRM that will be the target of our
campaign.

Wrong Median: There are numerous ways to contact today’s buyers. We
can call them directly like most of the English speaking work will do. We
can e-mail them; even put a read / receipt so they know we mean
business. We can work with the executive assistant who is paid to keep


us at bay. We can use snail mail that will sit in a pile of like solicitations in
its own version of purgatory. Or, we can do all of these knowing that the
whole, in some cases, is greater than the sum of its parts.

We know that busy executives actually do have a preferred method of
communication. We just don’t know what it is yet. Our campaigns start
with a piece of snail mail – except we bypass mail purgatory by sending it
in a FedEx or UPS envelope. These absolved pieces of literature are
guaranteed to be opened and set the campaign off on the right note
because you earned the buyer’s attention. Next, we follow up with an e-
mail referencing the package. The next touch is a dial directly to the
prospect, working with the executive assistant. Touch four is an e-mail,
five a voicemail, six an e-mail, seven voicemail, and touch eight
transitions the prospect to lead nurturing.

We use an e-mail aggregator called BuzzBuilder that sends the e-mails
directly from the rep’s address, helping to build name recognition. We set
the four e-mail touches up at the beginning of the campaign and notify
the reps via Outlook when their e-mail will hit their prospects. We
schedule three separate dialing sessions the day after the e-mails drop.


What were cold calls are now much warmer with correspondence sent
ahead of time, giving less phone reluctance. BuzzBuilder will let us
know who has opened the e-mail or forwarded it to a colleague. This
helps triage the effort for the dialing sessions. There is much less pressure
on these dials because we are only solidifying the multi-touch campaign.

Wrong Message: One of the fatal flaws in demand creation is that our
message just isn’t compelling. Think, why would a decision maker want
to see you because you are in town or you have free time? Where is the
value in “checking in?” Along those same lines – today’s dialers make the
mistake that their company’s credentials are going to get them in the
door. Again, I fail to see how your ranking in Gartner’s magic quadrant,
product differentiation, or when your company was founded will compel
someone to call you back. Those superlatives are only effective if there is
an active evaluation – we are just trying to spark one.

To grab a decision-maker’s attention, we need to first change jobs. Put
yourself in their position and forget every last thing you know about your
robust product suite. What are the top things that your stakeholders care
about? If you don’t know – look it up. The CFO is a key stakeholder in


our sale so they are often the target of our campaigns. If I wanted to
understand and reference their top concerns I can Google: CFO top
concerns. An article from CFO magazine comes up that states the Top 10.

Not all pains are created equally. If we want to gain traction in our
accounts we need to take the most strategic pains and link our solution to
help solve them. For our demand creation campaign – we have to be
generic enough to appeal to our entire targeted list but strategic enough
in our messaging to attract their attention. I wrote this blog about
keeping messaging P.I.T.H.Y

We also want to evolve our messaging over the course of the campaign.
Again, take the CFO Magazine article that lists the top 10 concerns of the
CFO. Our strategy is to take 3 of those concerns to reference and link to
solving them over the course of the 8 touch campaign. If one of those
pains doesn’t resonate – then perhaps one of the remaining three will.

Wrong Time: The reason we selected 8 touches was we found that is
about the right number of times to guarantee you got the attention of
your buyer. However, when we first started doing this, we tried to


collapse the process into one week. We learned from multiple out of office
auto responders or executive assistants telling us that our prospect was
out of pocket for the week – we were not taking full advantage of the
system.

We chose to spread the multi-touch campaign over the course of three
weeks to make us feel as though we were going to reach our prospect at a
time of convenience. After all, we ask for a specific date to meet in our
solicitation and it is just too easy for the recipient to ignore the e-mail if
they know they can’t make that date. That process will happen three
different times with three different dates over a three week period. Our
goal is for a more well-thought out decision to meet with us on a
permission basis.

Our final solicitation (or touch 8) states that we have made multiple attempts to reach the
prospect and the lack of response must be either one of two things: they were either not
concerned about the pains we can help solve or they just don’t have time to discuss them.
This usually gets the best response with an apology from the buyer for being difficult to
reach with a time they can meet.


Wrong Person: Just like pains, not all organizations are created equally.
The CFO is a key stakeholder in our sale but so is the controller, the CIO,
the VP of HR, and the HR Director. When it comes to creating demand
however, we let the law of gravity dictate how we navigate our
prospects. We equate it to the ease of pushing a bolder down a hill. Start
at the top and get sponsorship all the way down the org chart until we
find the eventual business owner of our solution. By starting low and
trying to cultivate an evaluation, you are doing the equivalent of trying to
push a bolder up hill.

To wrap it up in a nice little bow – our demand creation methodology
looks like the below over the course of three weeks. We have seen results
as good as 10% and as bad as 1%. We know for this to be effective, the
reps have to make the phone touch 3, 5, and 7. Otherwise, they will be
looked on as a spammer and the campaign will yield little fruit.


The Eight Touch Campaign
1. Snail Mail Touch – In a FedEx envelope to ensure it gets to
the recipient. Reference 3 strategic pains you can solve.
2. E-mail Touch – Referencing letter, Pain 1, date to meet
3. Phone Touch – Referencing letter, Pain 1 and date to meet
4. E-mail Touch – Reference Pain 2, second date to meet
5. Phone Touch – Reference Pain 2, second date to meet
6. E-mail Touch – Reference Pain 3, third date to meet
7. Phone Touch – Reference Pain 3, third date to meet
8. Transitioning E-mail Touch to Lead Nurture


First Call:

The art of weaving your demand creation efforts into an active evaluation
comes in the form of the first call. As stated before, the point of the 8
touch process is to push the targeted research out until the first call is
secured. We take full advantage of the new found time to know as much
about our prospect as possible. After all, they haven’t agreed to evaluate
us, just to meet. We can’t blow this opportunity with the archaic, “what
keeps you up at night” question (or if you had a magic wand.)

P.I.C.T.

We have to earn the right to be seen as a peer. Today’s buyer is skeptical
of big-promising / know-nothing sales people that just want 20 minutes
on their calendar. To be seen as a peer we need to know our buyer as well
as can be expected without having met him in person. My team achieves
this by creating a PICT profile; Person, Industry, Company, and Title.

It is with this profile that we can paint a picture of our prospect and tailor
a well researched and impactful first call script.


Person: The old cliché is that companies don’t buy, people do. We want to
know our buyers on a personal level to gain insight into who they are,
what motivates them, where have they been.

LinkedIn is the perfect tool to understand how someone wants the world
to see them. I ask my reps to (at the very least) know where their buyer
went to school, where else have they worked and how long they have
worked at their current job. If the buyer is a savvy LinkedIn user then he
is part of LinkedIn groups, shares the books he has read, gives and
receives recommendations, and links with other professionals. What a
treasure trove of information to begin a conversation!

This research will let us know if we have any connection in the buyer’s
network or worked with the buyer at a previous company. We can
understand if they are primed for change if they are new to the company
or if they were part of the team that brought in the current supplier.


Industry: Our buyers expect us to know macro-economic trends in their
industry and First Research is a great tool to help us put it all into context.
We want to know how governmental regulation, foreign competition,
energy costs, and technological advancements impact our buyers.

Every company is subjected to their industry trends and having an
understanding of them brings instant credibility to your first call. Being
able to articulate how your solution can positively impact those trends
sparks an instant evaluation.

Company: Rick Page at the Complex Sale taught me that companies
really only have 5 enterprise-wide issues they care about. Revenue is the
byproduct of these issues.

1. Competitive Differentiation
2. Customer Acquisition and Retention
3. Growth
4. Governmental Regulation
5. Good Press


When we are researching a first call we want to be not only armed with
this information about our prospect but how our solution could
potentially impact any of these 5 areas. I tell my team that this is what
separates tellers from sellers. Our buyers can get our product portfolio,
financials, and customer case studies off of the web. Conversely, we can
get the information we need to have a great first call from the web as well.

Public companies are required to publish an annual report or 10k and it is
almost unfair the information they are required to share. You can get
insight into all 5 of the above enterprise-wide issues inside of an annual
report. For private companies, check the press releases section to get an
idea of the newsworthy. Every press release brings some sort of “trigger
event” that we could potentially link to and we should be versed in the
ones that apply to our solution.

But don’t stop there; companies will only put positive information on
their website. Try using a Google and Google News search to see if there
could be information that the prospect is not so proud of but potentially
even more useful. This could be a lawsuit, security breach, labor dispute,
environmental impact, service complaint, or product deficiency.


Title: Inherent in a value proposition is a keen understanding of the pains
of the non-technical buyers and a linkage of our solution to solving those
pains. Many organizations make the mistake of having one generic value
proposition – when in fact the value proposition must be tailored to the
individual with whom we are having the appointment.

Successful sales forces are able to take their operational features and
functionality and translate their benefits into a compelling value
proposition for non-technical buyers. As we begin to sell more complex
solutions, more stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process.
These stakeholders often do not have the technical expertise to
distinguish our solution from the competition or other in-house
alternatives.

I challenge my team to articulate how we have helped this title in the
past. We must KNOW their pain – not assume it. This empathy builds
trust and trust is what sparks evaluations.


Lead Nurturing

We made a significant investment to gain our buyers attention with the 8
touch campaign but even a 10% success rate means 90% our prospects did
not agree to meet. We don’t want to waste the effort on those who simply
didn’t respond. After all, the 8th touch is an invitation to keep the
conversation going. I tell my team that no response doesn’t mean no
business. We put the non-respondents into our lead nurturing campaign
to continue what we started.

Brian Carroll of InTouch writes an excellent e-book entitled Lead
Generation for the Complex Sale. You can download it here. In it he
explains the multimodal approach to keep prospects engaged in a manner
that they prefer; before they are ready speak with us individually.

The webinar is a central focal point for our lead nurturing strategy. We
invite all of the prospects we contacted in our previous campaigns to join
us for a monthly webinar. We can keep them engaged and we gauge their
level of interest in us by their attendance. Even without attendance our
reps build credibility with strategic, consistent, and timely information.


Trigger Events

Jill Konrath in her bestselling book, Selling to Big Companies, coined the
phrase, “use the news.” What she is referring to is allowing your
prospects to tell you when they are ready to buy. Organizations offer
press releases about new position appointments, quarterly earnings,
partnerships, new initiatives, and many other reasons in an effort to
generate public relations and investor interest.

Google Alerts also allows you to set up an e-mail notification anytime
your prospect is in the news. Savvy sales people take this information to
be the first knock on the door linking their solution to facilitate enterprise-
level changes.

This is a great way to keep an eye on your prospect base so that they can
tell you when there is change. It is the perfect complement to the 8-touch
and monthly lead nurturing campaigns.


About the Author

Scott Miller is a District Vice President of Sales at Ceridian Corporation.
He has worked in Sales, Sales Consulting, Sales Management, and Sales
Training for over a decade. His passion is optimizing the sales process so
that his sales team can be in front of the right buyer, to say the right thing
at the right the right time. That is what Sales 2.0 is really all about.


Demand Creation 2.0

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