[Tech Marketing Feature] It’s taking longer to close sales than it did this time last year, or even earlier this year. Many companies are making decisions more slowly. There’s a good chance your company is among the slower movers. When possible, companies are purchasing more incrementally, putting a toe in the water to purchase only what they believe they need. Buyers are decidedly risk averse. We know the economy is to blame, but it’s time to be proactive. What do we do about it?

The good news is that opportunities still exist. But while it’s taking longer to move prospects through the funnel, marketers need to put programs in place to impact these lengthening sales cycles—today. Here’s how:

1. Continue your direct marketing programs. Now more than ever, you need to communicate consistently with your buyers and prospective buyers. Resist the knee-jerk tendency to cut this aspect of your marketing budget. Your clients need to keep hearing from you. They need to know that you’re solving problems for companies like there’s. They need to be able to trust you with their money and time. And they need to know that you’re a source of stability, not risk. Well executed ongoing direct marketing programs can help you accomplish this. If you make the mistake of going silent, your buyers will go to a competitor that’s still making noise.  

2. Maintain and boost credibility. Help prospects and existing clients feel good about purchasing from your organization with a credibility, or public relations program. Credibility can appear in various manifestations from bylined articles and blogs to coverage in trade and news press. Awards for financial excellence or leadership can also be important. Make sure you leverage this credibility and your prospects and customers are aware of it. Ask yourself what mediums your organization and key players should be featured in to impact your buying base. Then map out a strategy to do it. Tie your credibility programs in with your direct marketing program for maximum synergy.

This is no small undertaking. If you are serious—and smart—about public relations, it can yield very big returns. PR takes time, strategy and talent. Expect PR budgets to be cut. This is a good thing for those of us who continue to diligently make an impact with credibility programs.

3. Lead with cost savings. There is no better time to lead with ROI and cost savings than when spending tightens among your buyers. If this benefit applies to your offerings, are you leading with it? If not, buyers will pick competing products or services with marketing messages that clearly offer a tangible return on investment. Of course, this won’t apply to all products and services, but to the extent you can save money and time, make that message clear.

4. Let your clients talk for you. Another way to overcome your audience’s potential fears of risk is to leverage your client base and let them do the talking for you. Peers can communicate your value proposition much more effectively and meaningfully than you can. Use testimonials from your biggest fans and make sure they are featured prominently in your marketing materials and mediums. Video testimonials are even better. There are many clever ways of making these testimonials work, from having them on your home page or blog, to linking from YouTube.  

5. Don’t be a loser. Everywhere I go I talk with executives who have had to lay off employees, talented professionals who’ve gotten the axe, and sales and marketing experts who are feeling the pinch. But generally, there are two responses. There’s pity and foreboding in one corner. Then there’s optimism, will and drive in the other. As a marketer for your business, keep those stark contrasts in mind and always remember that people want to surround themselves with winners, trust winners and give their business to winners. In all of your marketing activities, create programs worthy of a winning company, and harness the attitude of a winner.

6. Get with the strategy. What do you want to communicate about your company, products, etc? Is it your ubiquitous market penetration, dominance in an industry, product innovation, new line of business? If you’re going to be true to your goal of moving prospects through the pipeline, you need to be strategic in what you’re telling your audiences and why. Make all the programs you’re putting in place hit hard on that theme, and do it consistently, creatively and in a way they will remember.

Keep this strategy in mind and lead with messages that matter, consistently, and in meaningful ways. And watch those slow movers pick up the pace and decide to give you their business. Just remember to track the programs you put in place and the status of that pipeline so you’ll be able to demonstrate that those cycles shortened because of your marketing insight.

One more note from today’s Washington Technology newsletter. The same slowing trend is occurring with mergers and acquisitions. Read more here: http://www.washingtontechnology.com/print/23_16/33816-1.html.

I was at the Affordable Meetings National Event Technology Expo tradeshow (http://www.affordablemeetings.com/ete/) at the Washington Convention Center last week. It was about a 10,000 square foot expo area, so it was a fairly easy floor to navigate. These are good opportunities for me to observe and be reminded of what works well when working the booth–and what can be improved.

Among the exhibitors, there was a strong contingency of vendors representing various hotels, conference centers and regions. While Q2 plans events, I’m fairly far removed from that service offering. Many of the reps came out into the aisle and hit me with all of the reasons I would want to plan my next conference or team-building outing at their facility.

However, and this is important, no one asked this basic question: “Are you responsible for meetings and events for Q2?” Or : “How many events does your firm plan a year?”

Many insisted on promptly scanning my badge. Wouldn’t a better approach have been to see if I was qualified?

Toward the end of the day, a number of booth staff were insisting that I take home their freebies. I’m sure this is because they didn’t want to carry them home with them. Anybody want some keychains, pens, etc. that came home with me against their will? The lesson is, if you have to find unwilling (unqualified) strangers on which to unload your promotional items, don’t bring so many in the first place.

I don’t fault these people from trying to generate interest. But I take issue with the methodology that says, “everyone who comes by our booth is a customer.”

A group sales rep with Club Med did it right. I told her I was interested in going to Club Med with my husband. By most definitions, especially hers, he and I don’t constitute a “group.” She politely gave me a brochure with her card, chatted for a few moments and moved me on. She didn’t scan my badge or take my card, so I won’t appear in her database. She realized that’s not a good use of her time.

We all know there are myriad advantages of upselling and cross selling our client bases. This is a much easier, more cost effective audience to reach than untapped prospects. No matter what you budget, looking to your client base is always a good idea. But when things tighten, it makes the most sense.

Are you doing enough to maximize the possibilities that exist within your current and inactive client base? Read on for some practical ways to ensure your marketing programs are effectively hitting these buyers.

1. Host user groups. Largely the domain of software companies, annual user groups are powerful means of boosting customer loyalty, reinforcing to customers their value to your company, and creating soft-sell opportunities to extend into this base. User groups can range from grand spectacles to smaller-scale events. They must have considerable value to get your customers to attend, with a focus on helping users do their jobs more effectively. Considering hosting a user group but not sure on how to get started? Contact Q2 Sales to learn more.

2. Hold customer appreciation events. This can be part of a user group, or an independent program. Ideas include sporting events, renting a movie theater for a day, upscale receptions and more. Regardless of the activity, it’s recommended that you take the opportunity to promote a new product, service, upgrade, etc. Otherwise, you’re missing a great opportunity with a captive audience. But, be careful. There’s a fine line between short, insightful comments and droning on and losing your audience. Nothing inspires the captives to be set free like a long and boring address.

3. Distribute a client newsletter. From a resource perspective, a newsletter program is a tactic that’s manageable for most organizations. But you must be able to generate content every month or quarter. Many corporate newsletters don’t get read for a variety of reasons-too many to go into here. But if you want the create a resource-focused client newsletter with the purpose of cross selling your client base, you need to lead with content of value. Blatant sales overtures only inspire unsubscribes.

One of the most effective goals you can accomplish through a client newsletter is to educate your client base on other services or products you offer. There’s a good chance your client base doesn’t know about other ways you can help them. As a result, they may unwittingly take their business elsewhere. But by including short case studies or service briefs, you can help round out your customers’ understanding of what you do. And this will help round out your bottom line.

4. Consider bill inserts. Depending on the level at which you are selling, bill inserts can be worthwhile. These can promote special discounts for customers, upgrades, or other offers only for customers. If the price tag is high enough, your invoices will go to the decision maker you want to reach. Otherwise, they won’t get to the right person and shouldn’t be pursued.

5. Offer incentives for Customer Care. If customer care will play a role in upselling or cross selling activities, then offering incentives for these team members is essential. Whether their role is in promoting the offer and moving customers through the sales pipeline or closing sales, carefully consider incentives to encourage them to create results.

6. Don’t be a bad loser. There are two kinds of losers in sales and marketing. The first kind is the worst. They lose, don’t learn why, and continue the same patterns. The second kind lose, find out why, and take precautions to minimize the chances of losing again.

Good marketers know that when you lose customers, you need to find out why. Challenge your team’s assumptions and find out the real reasons for these losses. A survey of lost customers, administered by a third party, can help you learn why. These lessons learned can go a long way in your future cross selling and upselling efforts.

There are many ways to reach your client base and encourage them to continue to buy from you. Even if you implement or improve only one or two of the programs outlined above, you’ll make a measurable impact.

White papers can establish a level of credibility for your organization and its writers, and should be valued by your clients and prospects. Most white papers focus on technical issues, but the concept is expanding into non-technical topics as well, including marketing.

Below are Q2 Marketing’s 11 tips for consideration in creating a winning white paper program.

1. Inventory pain points to craft a white paper that speaks to your customers’ and prospects’ greatest needs. Determine what critical needs are going unmet to your prospect base and craft a white paper on how to meet those needs. Determining your competitors’ white paper market penetration and distribution strategy should be a core component.
2. Establish goals at the outset. Will this white paper be a method of capturing qualified leads? Establishing credibility and mind share for an innovative technology, product or service? Will it be a component of a larger white paper library? A component of a direct mail strategy? Answering these strategic questions early will lead to greater success.
3. Determine distribution strategies. How can your white paper get the greatest visibility? There are many good IT white paper distribution networks including Bitpipe, KnowledgeStorm, TechRepublic’s ITPapers and ZDNet. MarketingProfs is a comprehensive source for marketing industry white papers. Various trade publications also have white paper portals and distribution methods. These can be powerful methods of sharing your knowledge with the market.
4. Have a follow-up strategy in place. What do you with the leads the white papers generate?
5. Determine how you will measure the results of this campaign before initializing. Will it be web site registrations, increased qualified attendance of special events, shorter sales cycles, etc.?
6. If you make your white papers publicly available, it’s recommend to capture information from prospects requesting your white paper. Yes, the information provided may be phony. Your competitors may download your paper and they won’t tell you who they are. But many individuals will give accurate information that will tell you who they are and why they’re interested. This will help your sales force understand what actions to take next.
7. Sometimes it’s smart to make access to your white papers a privilege, particularly if it includes information you’d prefer your competitors not to have. If your white paper has value for prospects, make them take an action. This even more greatly increases the perceived value since the paper is not publicly available.
8. Use it as a direct sales tool. Your white paper can be an additional resource for your sales force during sales appointments and can further establish your organizations as credible, proven and leading edge.
9. Re-purpose the paper. Bylined articles and presentations, for example, will increase the exposure of your content-and its visionary creators.
10. Reward outstanding performers with the privilege of creating or contributing to the development of white papers. This positions your people as thought leaders and can go a long way in employee loyalty.
11. Sound complicated? It can be. But it can also be extremely effective. To find out more about using white papers to generate leads and position your company as a thought leader, contact Q2.

This is a perfect time to take inventory of your customer, partner and colleague referrals. It gives you a chance to look back at the referrals you’ve received and put plans in place to receive even more.

Are you getting as many referrals as you would like? A better question is: are you getting as many qualified referrals as you would like? It’s always surprising to us how many firms are disappointed in the quality of referral business they receive.

But there’s good news here. And as is often the case, it’s made possible by marketing.

If you received fewer referrals than you projected, or you would like to improve your organization’s referral program, read on.

Referrals come from three sources: current and past customers, business partners and other colleagues. Employees, too, are a lead source that should never be taken for granted. But like sales, referrals don’t just fall out of the sky. As marketers, you have to help make them happen. Referrals take solid strategy and well executed tactics.

Here’s the formula for receiving quality referrals:

Provide excellent service and/or products + Stay at the top of prospects’ minds + Enjoy good relationships + Provide motivation = Receive high value, sustainable referrals

How to Earn More Referrals
You should be getting lots of referrals. If you don’t have a program in place that’s working for you, now’s the time to begin implementing. Follow the tips below and you’ll be reaping measurable returns:

1. Institute a formal referral program. Measurable results start here. There is absolutely no substitute for having a structured program with incentives in place to encourage your customers to refer you. You must stay on top of mind. For a good example of this, think about your real estate agent. He/She knows that referrals are a major part of their business. They are always incentivizing by giving away restaurant and movie certificates and other gifts. They know we have plenty of options and understand the value of being at the fore of our thinking.

Define what the program “payout” will be based on the sale that’s closed. The amount of money you spend on a referral program should be consistent with the dollar value of what you’re selling. If you’re a low margin reseller, the referral gift will be very different than if you’re making product sales of $50K and up. You must pick a referral gift that is to scale.

As for the payout, it’s recommended to only give these referrals gifts upon close of the sale.

2. Look outside your customer base. The program should apply to more than your current customers. You should also open it to past customers, as well as business partners and other colleagues. Anyone who has interaction with prospects you’d like to add to your roster is a candidate for the program. If you have a board of directors, they should be bringing you leads. If they’re not, find out why.

3. Promote the program. Without promotion, your referral program is like a tree falling in the woods. Your customers and partners won’t always be thinking of you. They certainly won’t go out of their way to identify opportunities to bring you business. But if they respect your organization, know you appreciate referrals and have incentives for bringing you good ones, then you are on the right track.

It’s essential to continually remind clients and partners of your services and value proposition. Tell them you value their referrals. You can promote the program through newsletters, invoice mailers, special direct mailers, or when sales reps or project managers meet with your customers. Special events to thank customers for their business are a powerful way to build good will and encourage them to provide you with qualified leads.

4. Give them something of value. It’s always recommended to give your customers standard referral gifts, particularly if the product or service you’re selling is a standard item. People talk. If one customer finds out that they got a $20 gift certificate, and another got a gift of ten times the value of the same type of referral, you could burn bridges, all in the name of trying to build relationships.

If your organization has clients on maintenance contracts, think about giving “gift certificates” that can be applied to service contracts, additional services or sponsored company events, such as customer conferences. This is a gift that benefits both the customer and the company. We have seen this company gift certificate approach work well time and again. It’s well received by the client base, costs the company soft dollars and improves your relationship with your client. There aren’t any losers with this type of program.

5. Arm sales to gather referrals. Your sales people understand the value of referrals. Make sure they are part of the program. If sales is integrated into this program, they can use it as a tool to touch base with your customer base, warm up leads that have cooled, or resume contact with a customer who hasn’t purchased from you recently. In this way, your referral program is an integral part of your sales and marketing strategy, not a bolted on after-thought. Integration is essential!

6. Measure the success. The only way to know if your program is successful is to measure its results. Results of this program should be relatively straight forward and easy to measure. Since your client or partner will be receiving a gift for referring you, they will help ensure that the lead is traceable back to them. Otherwise, how do they get their gift? If you are promoting the program and your customers are talking to other qualified leads, you should notice an increase in the number of referrals you’re getting and the number of sales closed. The only way to be sure of this impact is to measure it.

Referrals can be a valuable part of the growth strategy for your business. If you need more motivation, think of the opportunities you’re missing by not putting a program in place.

A hot topic for any marketing or sales professional–leads. It’s all about the leads. We, as marketers, execute the most complex and the most simplistic programs in search of new leads. We spend months implementing programs for trade shows, direct marketing, road shows, newsletters, white papers and more. Upon execution, the leads come pouring in. Then, what do we do?

Some of us throw every single lead received to Sales. “Let them qualify the lead,” we think. We are just responsible for the garnering of the leads, not the qualifying. Speed forward a few weeks and suddenly we are in a tense conversation with our counterpoint in Sales about how no leads were received. “We provided tons of leads to you. You just need to work them,” we say. “You provided nothing of value,” they say.

Ah, the Achilles’ heel of the Sales and Marketing relationship. Marketing provides leads to Sales. Sales works a few leads and becomes discouraged when those leads are cold. Sales states, “no good leads were received.” Marketing hits back with, “plenty of leads were passed.” And, not so suddenly, we [Marketing and Sales] are at another impasse.

Here is how to take charge of the situation and avoid the impasse although. Once leads are received, Marketing should review and classify them as hot, warm and cold. Classification should be based on the information vetted when the lead was obtained. This is incredibly important with trade show leads. At shows, no one should be swiping lead cards without qualifying the lead first. It is not a contest to determine who can swipe the most leads.

From all leads received, only hot and warm leads should be passed to Sales. Marketing should own all cold leads and include them within appropriate programs. As the leads are worked. Once they warm, then they should be passed to Sales. This approach works benefits everyone. It keeps Sales busy working and closing deals and loving Marketing for keeping the pipeline full. And it keeps Marketing challenged to create programs that propel cold leads to warm or hot.

So when the leads start pouring in, resist the urge to throw them over the wall. Take the time to classify.