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26 Aug 2010
This is the second in a series of articles on how thought leadership underpins the new sales approach.
In my last blog I talked about how thought leadership is the new sales pitch because customers no longer want to be sold to. Today I cover how thought leadership can create a compelling value proposition for your customers and how you take this to market.
Five years ago thought leadership didn’t even rank as a focus for B2B marketers. Today across numerous B2B surveys thought leadership is ranked one or two as the area of most significance for marketers.
Thought leadership is the new difference
Every sales person needs a value proposition. Without it why would people choose your product or service? Typically the marketing and sales chain comprised the sales and marketing guys coming up with a set of key messages which would be incorporated into the advertising and marketing collateral. Glossy brochures, presentations, press releases, adverts, web pages, product demos, etc would be trotted out to generate sales leads.
The problem is that most of us are tired of being sold to or marketed to in this way. Many of our customers question the validity and authenticity of these company or product centric messages. They know that they are being ‘sold to’ and it is turning them off.
Enter thought leadership. It is very customer-centric but more importantly it should focus on evidence-based views and opinions that deliver insights and knowledge to the customer or prospect about the specific issues and challenges they face today and into the future.
Thought leadership has a customer not a ‘me’ focus
Thought leadership is not about you and it is not self-serving gumph about your product or service – rather it is about your customer and their issues. The content you make available to your customers and prospects should facilitate their thinking around how they can transform their business and overcome their challenges and issues. By illuminating trends and insights that will impact their business down the track you are saying very firmly to them that you can help them get there.
Your thought leadership point of view needs to be relevant to their world and in the process you should be shifting your culture from one of ‘Hunter’ to one of ‘Trusted Advisor’.
It is a big leap for many companies and in some instances and insurmountable one. The key lies in how you arrive at a thought leadership point of view and then how you package it and how you take it to market.
How do you share your thought leadership with your market?
If you are no longer ‘selling’, how do you get your brand out there and known to your target publics? Unfortunately there is no one simple answer. What I will outline are a number of tactics you can use for sharing your thought leadership.
The first step should be conducting detailed research into where your primary target publics consume information. Without this, you can waste an awful lot of time, money and resources trying to reach them.
What follows are a list of tactics you could use – the ideas is to choose those that best match the way your target publics prefer to be communicated with.
They could include:
· Research – driving evidence-based findings to back up your opinions on an issues which you have chosen to speak and write about. Depending on how you frame your research, this will give you lots of great content
· Writing – having a number of compelling written stories on your thought leadership point of view gives you a host of options including: books, press releases, opinion pieces, letters, white papers, newsletters, research summaries, fact sheets, background papers, blogs, web content and social media content for things like webinars, etc
· Talking – great thought leadership content will arm your thought leadership champion as well as your sales team and the rest of your employees with compelling talking points centred on the issues of your customers. It also delivers content for presentations, speeches, roundtables, one on one meetings with customers, etc. Depending on your thought leadership point of view, you may even consider going on the speakers’ circuit.
· Online – today much of your thought leadership content should be searchable online for two reasons. To push you up in the search engine rankings and to position you as the expert in that field. This should not be restricted to your website but you should examine how to leverage your content in other channels such as You Tube, Flickr, Digg, Stumble Upon, microsites, forums, Face Book, Twitter and Linked In to mention a few
· Third party endorsers – depending on your thought leadership content you may consider employing the services of a third party endorser – someone who already carries weight in their field but who is prepared to add to the debate with qualified comment
The sale
Despite sharing all this great thought leadership material you still need someone to close the sale. The only difference is the map of how you’ve arrived at the sale has changed irrevocably. Thought leadership is the new way to charter the path to the sale and done well it a) distinctly differentiates you from the competition b) creates less resistance to price c) vests your prospects psychologically in the brand before they purchase, and d) vindicates their purchasing decision.
Thought leadership post the sale
Importantly good thought leadership delivers sustainability to your customer relationship that the normal sales process and marketing collateral does not. It gives you a great platform to go back to them with new, useful information and in the process it builds advocates out of your customers.
Question: Are there any sales and marketing people out there who have differing views or alternatively have experienced the shift from hunter to trusted advisor? I’d love to hear from you.
4 Responses to “Thought leadership – a marketer’s new value proposition”
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Craig – excellent post. I had a meeting yesterday that touched on these tactics quite directly, and I believe you are entirely correct. Advertising and traditional marketing will continue to be of importance (witness the latest results in the industry about non-social advertising – bit of a comeback), but differentiation is so difficult. I’ve experienced much the same phenomenon in my own sales activity…
Cheers,
Sean
@commammo
Excellent article. The salesman culture shift, from ‘Hunter’ to ‘Trusted Advisor’, is smart thinking in today’s B2B markets. I’ve experienced positive results with that thinking.
Sean you’re so right, differentiation is difficult that’s why companies should be taking the plunge and allocating real budget to thought leadership research and strategy. You ain’t going to differentiate yourself through your marketing collateral and sales specs.
Thanks Stephane, if you have the time I would love to hear about the impact this thinking had on your business. You can e mail me at cbadings@cannings.net.au if you don’t want it to appear publicly on this site.
Cheers
Craig