Listen Up or Lose Out

We are taught at a very early stage in life to be quiet and listen.  In contrast to the enthusiastic encouragement to speak those first words, once spoken we are then told that we need hush and just listen. It’s reinforced by our parents, family members, teachers, friends, bosses, partners, colleagues and others. The mixed message has good intent. Listening is core to our survival and the way that we learn.  

Listen: to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing; give ear.

So why is listening so difficult? We have ears and it appears obvious that we should easily be able to use this amazing gift. Listening should be inherent; yet, it is considered an acquired skill – a very basic and important communication skill that requires tremendous discipline and continuous practice.

Listening Skills: The ability to pay attention to and effectively interpret what other people are saying.

The challenge to being a good listener is that we have competing senses, active brains and a world filled with an overwhelming amount of distractions. The Internet and multitudes of devices have not helped in our degradation in listening skills. We also are challenged with the threat that “success” demands we always speak up, which comes in direct conflict with listening. If we are thinking and speaking, we probably are not listening.

How does listening impact business? Listening is by far the most critical communication skill that contributes to success in business and life. Listening is a particular skill that requires development, nurturing and investment by the company and leadership.

“If you aren’t listening, you are missing out.” Richard Branson

Beyond the standard people requirements of requiring good listening skills to do your job, listening is a core function of marketing in business.

Listening is required in every role; however, marketing serves the purpose to be the “chief listener” within the organization. Organizations should mandate marketing be the “listening post” for the organization.

Why marketing? Listening impacts the customer experience, how products are sold, what products go-to-market, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, retention and positioning of value-added services, to name a few. All of this requires listening to start the process and it should be done through marketing’s participation.

Marketing should act as the gatherer, interpreter and reporter of information and data that results from listening.

Everything about the business starts with listening. The information gathered through listening needs to inform business plans and strategy. All marketing strategies should be defined by what is learned by listening. Assumptions are risky and expensive. As we celebrate heroic unicorns that went to market on a “gut feel,” there are countless examples of failed launches, campaigns and businesses that resulted from not listening first.

Listening is the most important skill for any marketer.  Marketers are constantly challenged to cut through the noise to reach their audience. Listening requires concentration, focus and determination. Poor listening skills often results in misunderstandings and ineffective messaging, which can frustrate and annoy the recipient.  Worse, it can result in lost revenues and customers. In other words, failure in marketing.

As a marketer, what does it mean to really listen?

L = Learn:  Top marketers will use every opportunity to learn from customers, prospects, employees, and partners about what is most important to them. Listen to learn.

I = Identify:  Brilliant marketers use listening skills to identify the buying signals, values and goals of their target audiences in order to create informed and personalized conversations that produce results. Listen to identify.

S = Study: Smart marketers will study the evidence obtained by listening to align with data and other marketing tools in order to better understand habits, trends, opportunities and demands from their stakeholders. It will also validate or negate assumptions. Listen and then study.

T = Team Up with Sales: Wise marketers will not let sales and marketing function separately. They will team up with their sales and business development professionals to go on prospect calls, sit in on client engagements, attend events together, participate in regular sales meetings to best know how sales is selling. It is the only way to truly support sales and without sales, there is no need for marketing. Listen to sales.

E = Engage: Shrewd marketers will engage all stakeholders at every opportunity to set up times, places, and occasions for listening. This includes participating in social listening, going to events to listen to experts, soliciting input and continuous feedback, listening to customer stories to replicate success and  listening to the voices that have influence on your brand. Listen by engaging.

N = Nurture: Resourceful marketers build meaningful relationships by listening to their market stakeholders and then using what is learned to nurture and foster those relationships with that information to validate their needs, ultimately creating sustainable value for the buyer and seller.  Listen to nurture.

Marketing is responsible for sending clear, concise and effective communications. The only way to begin this process is to listen to everyone that has a stake in that message, internally and externally. This includes past, present and future customers, employees, partners, shareholders and investors, suppliers, community members and regulators. They all have a stake in a company’s success and they need someone listening to their interests and needs.

A marketer has many tools to utilize as a listening post. This includes social channels, digital media platforms, websites and content distribution forums, direct mail, emails, phone, survey and feedback tools, martech, thought leadership and customer events, meetings and onsite visits.

Listening impacts growth. It is fundamental to how companies grow globally. The first step toward entering new markets is to listen to the target market to understand the cultural differences and required market nuances that will meet the demands for your good and services. Listening starts locally, in order to grow globally. Utilize resources in local markets to listen, test and create marketing content and messages that will reach your intended audience.

In a recent sales and marketing study by Altify, they found that one-third of marketers admitted that their team does not understand the company’s customers. My advice, start listening!

Jamie Glass, CMO + President of Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.

EXTRA:  How do you rate yourself as a listener?  Here is a quick quiz that can help you assess your listening skills. This is not an endorsement of this quiz or do I have any affiliation, I believe it is easy and provides interesting insights.

 

Return on Marketing Requires an Investment

One of the most important decisions a business owner or CEO will make is establishing a budget for marketing. Like talent, product and infrastructure, marketing must be viewed as a necessity in business.  Marketing expenditures are essential investments for growth.

An average SMB (small-to-medium size business) will typically set a marketing budget at 4% to 6% of sales revenues.  There are several factors that can impact this budget.  As an example, a well-funded startup may invest 20% of revenues for aggressive consumer acquisition programs and advertising.  Notice, the “well-funded” qualifier.  Likewise, there is always difficulty in setting a budget for a pre-revenue company. Entrepreneurs will often spend most of their investments in product and then struggle to bring in sales. Startup costs must include marketing.  For every dollar invested in product, people and infrastructure, an equal dollar should be set aside for investment in sales and marketing.

Here are three simplified phases for marketing investment planning:

1.  Brand Awareness:  Your marketing investment should start with focus in reach and awareness including brand identity, a website, company advertising and direct and social marketing.

2.  Engagement: The second phase invests in additional marketing programs that support your sales efforts including lead generation, publicity, web marketing (SEO and SEM), market validation, events, advertising, presentations and customer case studies.

3.  Nurture:  Finally, maximize your marketing investments with customer communications, CRM services, loyalty initiatives and nurturing programs to maintain the valuable potential and existing customer relationships.  Once you have them engaged, use your marketing spend wisely to develop and grow your relationship.

After your marketing budget is defined, you will want to establish how you will measure the success of your investment.  ROMI is the acronym for Return on Marketing Investment.  The calculation is total revenue divided by marketing spend.  ROMI = Revenue ($) / Marketing Spend ($).

Some marketing activities such as branding, advertising, PR and social media are harder to track impact and influence. As a rule of thumb, the simple ROMI equation gives you a thumbnail sketch of your return on your marketing investment.  ROMI is a good KPI (key performance indicator) for leaders to use in the business dashboard.

If you are a startup or pre-revenue, the marketing spend will be set as your budget for purposes of forecasting. Some may argue that there should be other factors added or subtracted, such as attributable revenues; however, most businesses have a difficult time tracking every dollar spent on activities such as advertising. Start with the broadest “buckets” and as you increase your marketing reporting and tracking sophistication, you can scrutinize spending with finer analysis.

Marketing is an investment.  Success in ROMI requires budgeting, reporting and analysis in order to fully actualize the benefits.

In lean times, business owners have a tendency to cut marketing spend. Lost time and lack of investment, even during challenging periods, impacts long-term growth. The result may not be felt right away. It is an illusion. Prolonged periods of reduced marketing spend can dramatically reduce sales opportunities. The fewer dollars you put into a marketing budget the greater the exponential impact on future revenues.

Similar to an investment savings account, the more you put into your “growth” marketing account, the higher potential return on your investment. The more dollars spent on high risk marketing activities, the greater risk to returns. Any sound investment advisor, marketing or financial, will counsel a business owner and CEO to invest based on the organization’s risk tolerance.  Marketing investments should be treated like any financial investment.  Know your risk tolerance, invest accordingly.  If the business has low tolerance for risk, eliminate marketing spend in expensive tactics that are difficult to measure. Always diversify your investment to mitigate risk.

In order to qualify for a return, it requires an investment.  Failing to set aside funds to market is failing to invest in business sustainability.  Expectations of sales without an adequate marketing budget is a business built on luck. Though we would all like to be lucky, if you plan to sell something, invest in marketing to create the sale.

I have a problem with too much money. I can’t reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.” -Robert Kiyosaki

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

Ready to Engage Your New Customer?

The buzz in marketing circles today is engagement. How do you effectively hook potential customers into a committed relationship? The investment a business makes in the engagement process should be directly tied to revenues. If you expertly and skillfully engage, sales will increase.

Competent engagement helps a business target, influence, nurture and convert prospects to customers.  The more expeditious a business is in engaging with prospects, the bigger impact to the bottom-line.  How are you engaging your potential new customers?

The easiest way to initiate engagement is to view customer and wedding engagements as the same.  The difference between the two are in the details of tactics.  How you move from targeting into proposal are nearly identical in overall strategy.

Engagement begins by determining how to get someone to respond to your offer.  First, identify the target based on the qualifications of a “good match”.  Who is a suitable candidate for engagement?  What are the qualities you are seeking, both in demographics and social behaviors? Then you need to determine what makes you attractive to others.  Packaging and presentation of your “stand out” qualities are critical in the initial step of the engagement process.  Know where to direct your message and selling to the most qualified targets.

Second, you start the courting process, where all long-term valuable relationships begin. This step is more difficult to measure and needs careful preparation. You can spend a tremendous amount of resources influencing others and never get to the proposal. Laws of attraction and suitability apply.  Who you target, what you say and why they are a good candidate must already be known to successfully influence the “right” prospect.

Using engagement tactics like research, focus groups, asking for referrals can speed progress directly influencing better qualified prospects when cultivating relationships. Put out a few “asks”.  Look for agreement.  Identify the buying signals.  Know what makes this prospect want to engage further in the relationship.  Define what is in it for them. It might take some sampling and analysis to reach a successful outcome.

Third, define acceptable terms of the relationship.  Nurture your relationship to fully understand the “how and why” you need to partner.  Build upon the strengths of your bond through mutual consent. Constant communication, validation and envisioning the success of your relationship solidifies the “why”.  This is the beginning of a potentially long-term committed relationship, one that must be mutually beneficial.   Are you both in agreement? Create timelines and set expectations to help control spending, time and resources while nurturing your relationship.

Fourth, make the BIG proposal.  It is time to go all in and ask for the close.  Whether it be a hand in marriage or to partner in business, the only way to get to a “yes” is to make the proposal.  If you have taken time to go through an engagement process, building consensus along the way, you will have eliminated most of the risk in making the proposal.  Converting a prospect to a buyer requires you to “pop” the question.  It is time to seal the deal.

The opportunity to engage is there, are you ready to start the process?  Only if you are able to commit to an engagement, will you be ready to “tie the knot” with a new customer.

[W]hen you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.  ~Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.