B2B Marketing: Act Less Like a Rock Star and More Like a Roadie

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Andrew Nemiccolo — No Comments ↓

Rockstars not wanted

Why customers (not you) should be the heroes of your content marketing stories.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, I was talking with 20 business owners in the Kauffman FastTrac New Venture program about the power of story for business communication.

“Who or what should be the hero of your marketing stories?” I asked the group. Quickly, the answers came in: “The product! The company! The founder!”

While those three topics are certainly important for any marketing story bank, I asked the group to consider others. After a few moments, one person called out, “The customer!”

Budding entrepreneurs aren’t the only ones who sometimes think of the customer after their cool product or service. We’ve all seen big B2B brands cast their latest offering as the hero of the marketing story, with the customer as a side note: “This year’s software platform has two XJ7a dashboards instead of just one. Wow!”

Natural enthusiasm and an abundance of technical knowledge make it tempting to frame your product or service as the “rockstar” in your marketing message. Avoid this.

Instead, consider a “roadie marketing” mindset. Great roadies are proactive, extremely flexible, and most importantly, help their rockstar clients shine in doing what they do best. The humble guitar techs and loading crew do the grunt work that makes those rock and roll moments possible. In the same way, show how your organization’s products, services, and people support your clients as the true rockstars in growing their own businesses.

How to be a B2B Marketing Roadie:

1. Share a story. The elements inherent to a story, (such as conflict, hero, and resolution), will practically require you to describe scenarios, success stories, and use cases instead of dry lists of features and benefits. Naturally, clients will be central characters in many of these stories. And if you feel you simply must convey facts, figures, and data, a story is still one of the best ways to make the numbers memorable and meaningful. Ironically, the research data consistently shows that stories work better than data does alone. Think about that one for a minute…

2. Take a client’s perspective. Ask your clients to get involved and actively shape the story. User-generated content, case studies, and video testimonials put your clients front and center. A client can connect with the audience (your target customers) better than you can. The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer showed “a person like me” has re-emerged as one of the three most credible spokespeople, with its biggest increase in credibility since 2004.

3. Embrace imbalance. One rule of thumb for content such as case studies is to let your clients do most of the talking. If two-thirds of the material in a story is about your product, service, or organization, then flip the ratio. Interview your clients, listen closely, and use their authentic words—even if it’s not the perfect corporate-speak you’d prefer. Prospects listen more closely to their peers than they do to your sales and marketing lines, anyway. A 2011 Forester research study on enterprise software purchasing behavior showed that peers are the number one source of insight at 93%. Salespeople are trusted just 22% of the time

4. Don’t “rescue” the client. Take a step back. Show how the client solved their problem – with your help, of course. If the arc of your marketing stories always involves your company or product as the knight in shining armor riding in to save the day and douse fires, it removes the potential energy from the story. Your clients aren’t victims in need of saving, they’re rockstars! And you can be a darn good roadie for them.

To be a rockstar marketer, act like your clients’ roadie

Now, take another look at your organization’s marketing content. Is it framed with your organization as the rockstar? How can you reposition to allow the client to be front and center?

Be a roadie marketer and help your customers shine like rockstars. In return, you’ll be a rockstar in the eyes of your clients and prospects!

What other B2B roadie marketing practices would you add to the list?

Flickr photo is creative commons license, Attribution 2.0 Generic, courtesy of PabloBM

How to Diversify Your B2B Client Case Studies and Avoid Marketing Ruts

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Andrew Nemiccolo — No Comments ↓

I have a relative who likes to tell the same story every time we see her. It’s a good story that makes people laugh, but it seems to be the only one she knows, and she tells it regardless of the situation or the audience. Sometimes it feels like she isn’t sure why she’s telling it – it’s simply become a reflex. Do you know someone like this? Are you someone like this? Everyone has “old standby” stories.

Perhaps you also know a business that has fallen into the same communication rut. Sales and marketing teams regularly tell the same one or two stories—and not much else. There’s nothing wrong with classic, bedrock stories, like the founder’s story, that epitomize the organization. However, having a wider repertoire of stories will make your communications and marketing much more versatile. For example, if your primary story is, “We’ve been steadfast in this business for 100 years,” that may not very useful when you need a story about a fresh, agile newcomer breaking the status quo.

Reflective, not Reflexive

Avoid the rut of using the same story over and over in your B2B marketing with a diversity of client case studies in your storybank. And to get more mileage out of each success story, consider the many lenses through which content like client success stories can be viewed. (Hint, it’s not all about your company or your products.) Listen closely to your clients and prospects and reflect on the ways that client organizations and key decision makers think of themselves and their situations.

Taking the broadest view possible increases the chances of finding points in common with your prospects. Yes, that healthcare CFO you’re trying to woo will be interested in your existing healthcare clients’ experiences. But that CFO may be equally interested in the innovative risk reduction work you’ve done with CFOs in other unrelated industries.

Here are just a few of the many ways to organize, tag, and view your client success story catalog. Notice that some of these lenses apply to the organization you’re marketing to, and some apply to the decision makers in those organizations. Big difference.

Lenses for Client Success Story Bank

Geography

Examples: Rural America, Downtown Toronto, Brazil.

Question answered: Have you worked with organizations in our part of the world?

Industry Verticals

Examples: IT security services, clean energy materials, gourmet pastries, jet engines, healthcare analytics.

Question answered:Do you really understand our specialized industry?

Organization Size

Examples: Small, medium, large, enormous

Question answered: Can you properly handle a business as big (or as small) as ours?

Organization Mission

Examples: Business, Non-Profit, Government, Academia

Question answered: Do you really understand our culture and goals?

Adoption Curve / Sales Funnel / Client Status

Examples: Innovators, majority, laggards. Browsing, researching, ready to buy. Current clients, conversion clients, never-before clients. (These three are all somewhat different, but you get the idea.)

Question answered: Are you going to make this comfortable and appropriate for the stage we are in now?

Business Challenge

Examples: Accelerating sales cycles, raising quality levels, reducing churn, improving morale.

Question answered: Can you show how your widget/technology/service will improve my actual business results?

Functional Role

Examples: CIO, ER Nurse, VP of Marketing, Solopreneur

Question answered: Do you really understand the nature of my job responsibilities?

Emotions & Values

Examples: Safety, Excitement, Convenience, Fairness, Social Responsibility, Innovation

Question answered: Are we aligned philosophically? Does this feel right?

Products & Services

Examples: Product 1, product 2, service A, service B

Yes, you’ll probably want to have examples for all your offerings, as appropriate, but I wrote this one last, since your prospects think about themselves and their needs before they consider product.

Get Started

With these lenses above as a starting point, a case study for your West Coast biotech client will obviously fit those two specific geographic and industry categories. Don’t stop there. Look for multiple connection points, too. The more lenses you use, the more client-focused your marketing mindset will be. For example, themes like the speed at which you delivered results and the innovative solution your team co-developed with the biotech’s CIO might also resonate with organizations and decision makers outside West Coast and biotech.

A note of caution: Stories are not like Swiss army knives that you simply whip out to save the day. But having a broader selection and wider awareness of the facets of client success stories across your organization will increase the chances of having the right story at the right time when the right person is ready to engage.

Nobody wants to be a one-story wonder like my relative. Avoid the ruts in the road and try some new paths. Take a moment to catalog your existing client success stories, using this model as a rough guide. Writing it out as a mind map or grid format helps to visualize. Are there any gaps or opportunities? What are your strengths?

This blog post includes only a partial list of lenses and tags for client success stories. What have I left out? In what other ways does your organization categorize its case studies as marketing content?

Road rut photo courtesy of flickr photographer Debs (ò‿ó)♪, creative commons license.

Tagged with: client case study, client success story, Marketing, Sales, storybank
Posted in Marketing, Sales

When Leaders Should NOT Tell Stories

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Andrew Nemiccolo — No Comments ↓

Beauty and Danger: Stories Shouldn’t Live in Cages

These days, leaders are frequently urged to tell stories to provide direction, navigate a crisis, or sell the next big thing. Yes, stories are powerful, but they shouldn’t be used recklessly or with ill intent.

Jo Tyler of Penn State makes the point in her amazing TEDxPSU talk that stories have a life of their own, whether we tell them or not.

Sharing the story of a leader she knew who used a story carelessly and ended up causing damage in his organization, Tyler makes the point that sometimes it’s better to take a step back, and listen for the authentic stories around us, instead of relying on “caged stories” all the time.

By the way, it seems like the recent expansion of the TEDx series has diluted the quality of some of the talks, in my opinion. This is one of the great ones! No matter what your professional role is—if communication skills are at all important to you and your success—check out this talk. Tyler’s storytelling is engaging, and the message will give you food for thought about your own communication.

Thanks to Karen Dietz for alerting me when she posted Tyler’s video on her Just Story It curated ScoopIt site.

Tagged with: Caged Stories, Jo Tyler, TED
Posted in Communication, Leadership, Story

Book Review: Lead with a Story (Not Your Slides)

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Andrew Nemiccolo — No Comments ↓

Paul Smith was nervous the first time he had to make a presentation to Proctor & Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley. His anxiety only increased when Lafley sat down with his back to the slide screen, and didn’t turn around once, ignoring Smith’s carefully crafted slides on the screen the entire 20 minutes of Smith’s talk.

Smith was baffled, but moved on through his program. After the presentation, Lafley agreed to proceed with Smith’s recommendation. But all Smith could do was wonder what had just happened. Later, he wrote:

But then it occurred to me. He wasn’t looking at my slides because he knew something that I didn’t know until that moment. He knew if I had anything important to say, I would say it. It would come out of my mouth, not from that screen. He knew those slides were there more for my benefit than for his.

Smith recalls that only then did he understand that Lafely had chosen his seat so that he could focus on having an engaging conversation with the presenter. The CEO had listened to Smith’s stories, instead of being distracted by his slides.

Stories about Stories

The “sitting backward” story is the first of hundreds in Lead with a Story by Paul Smith. The book is a practical guide to leadership stories for professionals. He makes the point that stories–not charts and slides and official manuals—often help us communicate what we really need to say.

The first chapter answers the question, “Why tell stories?” with the “back to slides” story and some data and theory on the efficacy of story. The rest of the book is devoted to different scenarios and applications for stories in the business world.

Lead with a Story will show you how to use stories to:

Lead Change
Define Customer Service Success and Failure
Build Courage
Demonstrate Problem Solving
Delegate Authority and Give Permission

In other words, stories can help us develop the skills that we all need to be leaders. Each chapter explains a particular concept with a story or two from Smith’s experience, his research, or one of the dozens of interviews he personally conducted in preparing for the book. The chapters close with exercises for daily usage.

While some business storytellers spend a lot of time on theory, or chalk storytelling skill up to some magical indefinable quality, Smith breaks it down with pragmatic ways that we all can use story to be better people and better decision makers.

Use These Ideas

Here are just a few of my favorites from the many chapter-end summary and exercises. The first two are interesting ways for marketing to conduct “storymining” for case study and success story candidates.

Find stories your customers have written about you already on industry websites or customer review blogs.
Have an eye-opening moment with a customer of your product recently? Write the story, even if it’s only a few sentences long. Share your a-ha moment with others. An example is the choice between shortening and milk.
Make the facts, numbers, or events relevant to your audience—something they can relate to in their everyday lives, like the snowstorm in the courtroom.
Use a metaphor to capture the power of your whole story in a single word or phrase, such as the yellow cab.
Bullet points cannot define company values in any actionable way to an employee. Only a story can. (Think of the train wreck in Wisconsin.)

Get a jump start on developing your own bank of leadership stories and check out Lead with a Story today. You may find yourself referring back to it often.

Tagged with: Book Review, Lead with a Story, leadership, Paul Smith, Story
Posted in Book Reviews

Van Halen and the Brown M&M’s

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Andrew Nemiccolo — No Comments ↓

Hard rockers Van Halen were infamous in the 1980’s for their onstage antics, off-stage partying, and the capricious demands they made from promoters. The best-known request in the very lengthy rider to their standard concert contract for was for a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown candies removed from the rest. If any brown M&Ms were found with the rest of the catering food backstage, the band reserved the right to refuse to play, and still be fully compensated.

Based on these stories about the rider, I had always assumed that Van Halen were spoiled musicians, taking advantage of their rock star status. Radio DJs and fans spread this urban legend. The band’s reputation as bad boys continued to grow, fueled in by stories such as the 1980 Pueblo, Colorado show, where the band allegedly caused thousands of dollars of damage by trashing their dressing rooms.

But the actual reason Van Halen wrote in the brown M&M clause is simply brilliant! In his 1998 biography, Crazy From the Heat, original front man David Lee Roth explains that the odd request was actually a test to ensure the safety of the band and the quality of the concert experience for the fans. After some bad experiences with inattentive concert promoters, the band added the M&M clause into the contract.

Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors, whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.

So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say ‘Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes…’ This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: ‘There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.’

So I would walk backstage, if I saw brown M&M’s in that bowl…..well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.

Besides the genius of having a simple “quick-check” like this, what I love about this story is the complete contradiction between the public perception of the M&M clause and the band’s real reason for having it. Van Halen apparently did nothing to dispel the rumors about their behavior. Being known as a safety-conscious group with pencils and clipboards would have detracted from their rebel reputation. It was more than a decade later that David Lee Roth publicly explained his rationale for placing a candy canary in the concert coal mine.

Van Halen had every reason to put on a safe, reliable show. And at the same time, they had every reason to maintain their hard-rocking image.

The M&M story contributed to both goals.

In this video, “Diamond Dave” explains the thinking behind the peculiar request.

: Tour Rider Page

: Infographic

M&M photo by Matthew Keefe

Tour Rider page by The Smoking Gun

Infographic by SONOS

Tagged with: Brown M&M, Story, Urban Legend, Van Halen
Posted in Creativity, Story