NAPLBizBuzz

TMC: Green Sales

You can spend an hour with Larissa Crum at TMC, or days with her at Management Institute in August.  One hour will convince you to spend the time with her in DC this summer.  But, here's the one hour gist, or at least a 2 minute piece of it.

There's no difference between sales management and going green. Why?  Sales responsibility is no different than any other type of responsible management.  The key issues are sustainability, chemistry, and knowing the landscape. Sales Stewardship so to speak.

1. Chemistry:  Your clients have got to like you. The chemistry has to be good.
2. Landscaping:  You can't be on a client's team if you don't understand their landscape (or playing field). Don't sell them shade plants (even if they have a shady spot) for their sunny patio particularly if they're planning a big garden party this weekend. In print terms: The client doesn't need a digital sales person, a fulfillment rep, and a database guru. They need one point person (the contractor) who can then bring in the specific team experts as needed.
3. Coaching:  A sales team like a sports team has star players. You can treat your players equitably or fairly. Larissa recommends fair over equitable. After all, would you pay the same for Eli Manning (NY Giants) as John Beck (Miami Dolphins)? If you wouldn't for a quarterback in football, why would you for a sales rep in printing?

Sales, by definition, is supposed to bring in revenue and profits, so if that isn't a green initiative, what is?

-- Rhona Bronson

TMC: Marketing Games

CMOs, chief marketing officers,  average very short career spans.  So, if printers think they have problems marketing, imagine the life of a marketing person!  One has to wonder if CMOs can't seem to get it right or find career stability, how can printing sales reps?

According to Peter Winters of The Winters Group, that's exactly what's supposed to happen.  In his session "Big Ticket Selling to the CMO" he advises printers to become marketing partners and discover where a client fits on the Big Marketing gameboard before trying to sell him or her anything.

The takeaway is that in today's world clients such a bank executives, publishers, and others are facing their own challenges and don't know where to turn. Winters suggests that you make the sales call and put yourself in the chain but not by providing solutions -- at least not at first.  Rather than boast about your great applications (read VDP,PURL or whatever you've got that's hot), first find out the marketing problem the client's facing.  Only then do you even have a chance at being part of the solution, preferably longer-term.

P.S. I've been the Marketing head of a publishing operation. In 10 years (apparently a long, and hardy marketing career), a few printers did try to call on me.  Mostly, I'd refer them to Purchasing or our Ad Agency because I wasn't buying printing.  I was buying media reach.  Our agency was buying the brochures. Well, I guess that was Winters point afterall.  Don't sell what the CMO isn't buying.

You can't be in the game if you don't know what game the CMO is playing, or what's considered a home run for the CMO with his or her superiors.  For too many CMOs the game's over fast and printers never even get a chance to be considered part of the team.

-- Rhona Bronson

TMC: Phone Philosophy

Do you remember the old phone marketing campaign "Reach out and touch someone"?  Turns out they were ahead of their time.  According to Jim Mikol, Executive Vice President of Leo Burnett ad agency (Chicago,IL), touchpoints are the KEY measurement tool for ad agencies, marketing campaigns and print.

Clients are looking for ROI every which way but up, and just giving out deliverability rates, drop percentages, households reached doesn't cut it any more.  The key is ACTION. Do you, the services you provide, the products you produce inspire your client's customers to take action?  Only then do you have a satisfied customer of your own.

How does a littler guy do it?  That was one of the questions from the audience. The answer?  Get partners. Talk to clients and get clear on the action they want. Find the services you need to expand your offering to client.

-- Rhona Bronson

On Demand: MindFireInc, Marketing's Missing Link - Adding Added Value for HP and Canon

I love it when technology's a verb - not a noun - adding real value, and that's what I saw when I stopped by the HP booth and met with Carrie Driscoll, Program Manager for MindFireInc.  While HP and Canon are focused on selling presses, MindFireInc, a strategic partner with both companies, is a solid added-value menu addition for these companies.  Licensing their web-based service (their flagship product is LookWho'sClicking) to printers, ad agencies and marketing firms, MindFireInc is a leading provider of personalized urls (one of the hottest new paths in 1:1 marketing) and VIP landing pages, with solutions that include web-based configuration, tracking, a reporting dashboard for customers, and more. With nearly half the users wanting a response channel online, MindFireInc gives them that.  And what I really liked (and what I think you will too) is how MindFireInc's web-based service can quickly, simply and easily capture customer data, support dialog, and measure results in real time. They're well worth a look at www.mindfireinc.com.

Richard S. Papale

On Demand: This Year's Busy-ness Buzzword - Can You Say "Marketing"?

So it's the last day and I'm preparing in my a.m. war room - a lone table in the corner at one of the On Demand food courts (by the way, can someone save me the Google time and tell me who came up with the name "food court"?).  Boston has been the wonderful walking city it is (only place I can find Wasabi ice cream at J. C Licks on Newbury Street near the Trident Bookstore) and the weather has been kind, if you don't mind a bit of rain and a slap or two of wind.  I used to live here, so that's no big deal to me.  On Demand has been nicely attended - good people traffic - although I don't think it's as well attended by the international community as they hyped. Fudged figures to me but I could be wrong, as my continuous tale of the tape is just an eye view from the aisles.  Presentations and booth conversations have seemingly been dominated by technology and marketing (communications), the latter bridging with existing and new technologies to increase personalization and the relevancy of marketing communications to (monitor, quantify) maximize ROI. The new buzzword is not TransPromo, but seems to be "marketing."  Marketers have been pushing for the limelight and now they seem to have gotten what they've wanted, and now it's their time to step up the game.  This was evident in yesterday's keynotes: "Emerging Technologies and What to Expect in 2008" and "The Changing Marketing Mix: A Marketing Perspective." Top areas where marketers expect to spend in '08 include: email campaign management; CRM; marketing performance measurement; customer intelligence and analytics; search engine marketing; and sales and marketing integration.  With the exception of the last area, it's metrics, metrics, metrics.  Key items: improving your customer db for personalization and using digital, db-driven channels (email, web, contact centers) to get insight into what customers value to be able to execute relevant messaging. But here's a couple of interesting numbers from yesterday's marketing keynote, "...despite interest and increased efforts, 50% of marketers report having fair, poor or little knowledge of customers and 47% rate their companies data integration capabilities as deficient or needing improvement."  Stay tuned in '08 -- to answer the needs of customers, marketers are looking to seize the day (ROI) with new technologies and channels available for the capture of customer info so that they can dialog with "relevance" with individual consumers - creating marketing initiatives that are valued, which will be the way to increase ROI, or what I like to call metrical ROM (return on marketing).  It always was and always will be all about the customer - and two-way (not one- way) messaging, something called dialog, or what we netizens refer to as continuous conversation (relationship building) in a fast and flexible media world, is of max importance.

Richard S. Papale

On Demand: Printers Are Breaking Out of the Shackles - Marketing is in the Vocabulary

Marketing.  Printers do understand it; they live it every day, so let's get beyond this, or better yet, maybe you should talk with John Foley, President/CEO of interlinkONE (innovative marketing solutions).  I just did.  While it's very easy to get lost in the tower of babel of the new generation marketing metalanguage (for example, the preceding nine words!), John Foley wouldn't let that happen. Marketing is toooooooo important to him.  And what's iron-clad cool is that John not only really understands marketing and delivers, he undertands the sales timeline, how to shorten it, and how to maximize full profit potential. With 12 years experience, and an impressive customer list, interlinkONE is a software company that provides web-based solutions to help print service providers expand their biz offerings to include a full range of end-to-end personalized marketing services. These folks roll up their sleeves.  I asked John what he thought about On Demand and he said that he's truly excited and encouraged that through the help of industry info disseminators, folks are beginning to understand technology, and it's a wonderful time in the print space to offer greater value and services from people like interlinkONE.  According to John, those who get it, get it, and are really moving forward.  If you're looking to break out of the shackles and increase print fulfillment and volume immediately, which in turn benefits your customers with increased responses, improved lead flow, reduced marketing expenses, and improved sales conversion rates, this may be the guy to call, or send a Dear John email.  He's got a track record of helping companies become marketing service providers.

Richard S. Papale