Keep your customers (happy) during recession

Recession has come as a strong incentive for companies to  understand more than ever the importance of customer loyalty and word-of-mouth, and to create strategies to ensure they come out of this downturn with good results, profit even.

Especially in B2B, there are three main tools that you can use to make sure tyour companu survuves the crises, and maybe even thrive afterwards:

• Retention. Attracting a new client costs much more than keeping the ones you already have happy. Furthermore, an old customer can bring new clients using word of mouth. Financially speaking, retention can lead to big returns. FedEx, for example, gained $100 million in revenues after a 1 percent improvement in customer retention.
• Repurchase. This is a strategic and profitable tool to keep your revenue base, and even increase it. The best way you can encourage repurchase is by providing your clients with a positive customer experience. Purchase habits will increase, thus leading to an increase in sales.
• Referral. Today, you can even measure the correlation between word-of-mouth referrals and financial outcomes through special programs or surveys. The financial benefits associated with word-of-mouth referrals can be impressive. The only “dark” side to this is that negative word of mouth can lead to significant losses in popularity and, implicitly, in sales.

More specifically, here are a few tips to help you set up a good retention program:

• Have one-on-one meetings with clients, just to discover their needs and worries
• Make the executive team’s contact information available to all clients
• Include thoughtful gestures into all client-oriented activities, especially in face-to-face interaction

From a recession point of view, opportunities now arise to do all those small tasnks that you’ve been postponing because of lack of time. And customer loyalization is probably the most important task you have to complete these days, to make sure you overcome the downturn successfully.

Filed under: b2b marketing, b2b sales, Best Practices, Business-to-Business, Marketing Results, Marketing Tactics, Relationship Marketing, Strategy

How to judge a lead-gen provider by its excuses

Being in the lead generation industry myself, I am curious what the competition is doing. Since „classical” sales methods don’t seem to work so effectively in the last few months, it seems that lead-gen activities are the last resort for some companies to stay alive. However, you should be very careful with selecting your lead-gen solutions provider, and keep in mind that not everything they present on paper can become reality.

Their job is to pass as many qualified prospects through the sales funnel, as fast as possible, to bring you more sales and a bigger income. When they cannot make it happen, there are some main reasons they will invoke. Here they are, not necessary in the order of importance, and some ways to figure them out:

• Hard work in the ultimate thing in sales

They will tell you how many long and tiresome hours they’ve spent  to gather hundreds of contacts, and send them more or less compelling messages on your behalf. You should understand that what really makes a difference is that they only approach the right people in the first place, and try to cultivate a profitable relationship with them.

• Leads are qualified in the 2.0 era

In the past, lead-gen providers were looking for leads in mailings, trade shows, advertising, networking or newsletters. In the 2.0 era, all these turned into blogs, videos, eBooks, free reports, press releases, RSS feeds or  email lists. Even the names sound more pretentious than in the past, the reality is the same: these are not leads. Most of the times, they are just inquiries from people who want something for free. Digging deeper into these sources, your provider may actually find a prospect. Who is neither a business referral, nor a lead.

• Everything counts as a lead

Your lead-gen service provider may take pride in the number of e-mails or phine calls you receive. Still, some distinctions must be made. Inquiries are not leads. People who want to get something for free don’t represent leads. Leads are people who:

1. Have a genuine business need that your product/service can fulfil
2. Have a budget
3. Are really interested in talking directly to you about your products and services to see how you can help them
4. Match the ideal client profile

Leaving philosophy and terminology aside, the best possible leads are the ones you receive through a referral. When this happens, it means thay you already benefit from an amount of credibility and trust, and chances are that you will get a new client – more than 50% of the times, as I’ve noticed.

Filed under: b2b marketing, b2b sales, Business-to-Business, General, how to, Lead Generation, Marketing Results, Marketing vs Sales, objectives, how to find leads, how to sell, Lead Generation, lead generation results, leads, Marketing Results, marketing tips

Don’t forget to invest in marketing these days…

…even if you’re quite busy dealing with the mighty crisis! J Which is perfectly understandable, since the CRISIS is everywhere on the news and in the papers, as if it were another self for the business people. Seriously now, it seems like the only preoccupation of the media and of the business environment is to offer us tips & tricks on how to fight/escape/overcome this downward spiral of our economic state. „Cut the marketing budget” seems to be one of people’s favourite tunes these days.

Sad to say, but they forgot to tell us something even more important: no matter waht we do, the crisis will not go away only by using reactive methods to fight it. We need to get proactive for a change, and, instead of cutting your marketing budget (which is one of the first mistakes businesses make during times of economic crisis), spend your money in a more intelligent manner to bring results.

Use all your flair, skills and knowledge to find out what people really need and want these days, and go for it! It works both for b2c, and for b2b. The secret is to view your marketing spending as an investment not an expense. Use the customer knowledge that you already have and implement intelligent marketing strategies during these times of financial distress. Some crucial tips are to:

• Have a rock-solid strategy
• Research your customer more thoroughly than ever
• Maintain market spend

This is not the first crisis economy has ever gone through, and it will certainly not be the last. Don’t be surprised to find out that companies have survived difficult times and have come out strong. Procter & Gamble, Intel or Wal-Mart are only a few companies that launched well-positioned companies during difficult times  and were successful with them. Why? Because they took marketing seriously during times of crisis more than ever.

Of course, you’ll have to adapt to all the fast changes the crisis has brought upon us: know who the customers are, what they think, what they dream of and how the crisis affects them. Revise your entire product line if necessary. Look at developing lower cost solutions, if possible. Be flexible, but at the same time be aware and always assessing.

Maybe I should have mentioned this at the very beginning, but the fact is obvious: if you cut your marketing budget, how will your potential consumers find you?!

Filed under: Best Practices, General, Internal Marketing, Marketing Accountability, Marketing Planning, Marketing Results, Marketing ROI, objectives, Strategy, crisis management, investment in marketing, marketing management, Marketing Planning, marketing strategy