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First, lets define “success.” Actually, let’s define the antithesis of success. Success is NOT pretty pictures or cool designs. Yes, sometimes marketers can smoke and mirror their way through life, but tricks are for kids (someone wise once said that). Success in demand generation marketing is NOT the number of leads. The definition of good vs. bad leads is too subjective and wildly unpredictable. Success is NOT the number of meetings. Unless you are charging the prospect a fee to attend the meeting, a meeting in and of itself is nothing more than two people talking. So what is success in demand generation? It’s simple. Success is the amount of revenue you enable a sales executive to identify from the targets in your programs. I’ll say it again. Success is the amount of revenue you enable a sales executive to identify from the targets in your programs.

The reason I define success in such a manner is because it’s at this point at which the marketer begins to lose direct control of the actual sales process. The marketer still has influence and indirect control (helping provide reps with data sheets, case studies, and other sales tools to aid them in their journey with the prospect) but it’s still the point in that process where the 80/20 rule of control flips. As long as you have at least 80% control, you have the ball. Its where that responsibility ends, where you “make the hand off” that you need to hold yourself accountable, and where the metric for success should be defined. Read the rest of this entry »

If all you’re selling and implementing is technology, you’re going to have a tough time in today’s market. Your clients don’t need technology — well, they don’t need technology without an attendant business driver. This means that you need to have more than a passing knowledge of your clients’ business, and any solution you are selling should correspond directly to a business need. Of course, the more you know about your clients’ business, the better you’ll be able to make the connection between problem and solution.

The first tier of business-to-technology linkage involves the identification of pain points driven by business needs, but this is often too high-level to become an effective differentiator. Instead, you’ll need to dig deeper, gaining ground-level insights from the people who use the systems that you have to enhance, upgrade or replace. If your client sells shoes, for example, you need to know how the shoe business works. And if you have clients in highly regulated industries, such as finance or biopharmaceuticals, business knowledge becomes crucial.

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The “trusted advisor” line is nothing we all haven’t heard a gazillion times before. Every IT reseller wants to play this role for a client. It isn’t a differentiator any more. Take this approach, and you’ll join the crowd of IT VARs trying to win a prospect’s business … and it will feel like you haven’t done any marketing at all. Don’t let this happen to you. Rather than follow the pack down the trusted advisor road, be ready to demonstrate that you understand your client’s or prospect’s needs and are uniquely positioned to address them. Once this happens, you doubtless will become the trusted advisor.

What IT buyers really need are answers. They are contending with disparate infrastructures, rapidly increasing storage needs and staffs that aren’t growing fast enough to manage the workload – if the staffs are growing at all (let’s not forget what the broader economic situation is like right now). Quite simply, your prospects have clear, distinct challenges that they have to overcome in order to meet the needs of their end users. So, they are most likely to respond to IT resellers who can help them with real solutions that are delivered cost-effectively.

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Budget season is upon us. With last year finally etched in stone, IT marketing departments are looking for the best ways to put their cash to work in 2010. Though companies are beginning to invest more in technology, marketing budgets at IT manufacturers and resellers alike are still being managed cautiously. So, riskier approaches are likely to struggle for a share of this year’s allocation.

With this in mind, attitudes toward social media marketing are shifting, suggesting that this activity is no longer viewed as high risk and of nebulous value. The latest survey by MarketingSherpa shows that nearly three quarters of respondents have a positive view of social media marketing at budget time, which means we’ll likely see more businesses committing to it this year – and those that have moved in this direction already are probably poised to dive deeper.

Of course, specific perceptions vary.

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Since everything Google does can be used to enhance the delivery of ads against search results (and in other ad venues), it doesn’t need to charge much – or anything, in some cases – for the technology it offers. Unsurprisingly, businesses become pretty interested in low-cost and no-cost solutions. Though the trend is still in its infancy, many IT buyers are opening themselves to the idea of using Google-supplied software-as-a-service solutions in place of their existing systems.

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IT buyers are under pressure to show that their investments are performing. So, if they can keep TCO down and spread their budgets across more projects (with ROI potential), the result is an expanded ROI impact, with low investments yielding substantial returns. This means spending less – and compromising – can pay off in the long term … or at least it would appear that way. Google is making it easier for them to do this — or it’s at least creating the appearance of easier TCO and ROI.

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Search and online advertising offer limited upside for Google at this point. Sure, they can still contribute significantly to Wall Street’s expectations, but they won’t be sufficient to fuel the sort of growth Google needs to maintain the reputation it’s developed over the past decade. The company’s expansion into personal and enterprise applications shows that there’s a need for new revenue streams. This is the impetus for Google products that could wind up replacing some segments of the market where IT VARs operate.

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Being able to touch something isn’t as important as it used to be, and the ability to maintain control has declined in importance. Instead, IT departments are watching total cost of ownership and return on investment. Obviously, lower cost solutions favor these metrics. Cloud computing, software-as-a-service and other hosted and managed solutions are entering the IT cultural lexicon … and the attendant budgets and data centers. Google makes it easy to adopt, implement and afford its “nebulous” solutions. And, as long as they work as planned (which is most of the time), it’s easy for an IT department to be happy. When something goes wrong, though, remember that the Google organization and operation is not designed for support.

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It’s easy not to see Google as a competitor. First, the company’s major operations – search and ads – don’t really interfere with what VARs are doing, namely selling and implementing IT solutions. Also, Google isn’t entering the VAR space, so again, it doesn’t look like a competitor. The problem is more difficult to detect: Google is slowly trying to replace certain parts of the IT market. Enterprise use of its Gmail service, for example, replaces the opportunity to sell mailserver solutions. The problem isn’t widespread yet, but now is the time to watch Google’s moves and determine the impact to your business.

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