Archive for February, 2012

Selling needs content as digital bait

“Content is digital bait” – what a wonderfully evocative phrase. I wish I could claim it.  Instead it appears in a summary of “The Future of Selling” white paper produced by OgilvyOne Worldwide (NY) and Ogilvy & Mather (NY).

The summary which appears in the WPP’s Atticus volume 17, a journal of original thinking in communication services, provides a telling insight into how the world of selling has changed.

And these are some of my key take outs:

• “Buyers have as much control over the flow of information as salespeople do.”
• “Buying, …has become a conversation between equals,…”
• “…consumers now create their own multi-faceted journeys towards purchase.  Salespeople are no longer in control and
  their role is to identify where the customer is in that journey, and to help them.”
• “The new skillset required by salespeople involves creating content as digital bait, deploying social media and partnering with marketing.”
• “Your customers and prospects are throwing off billions of digital buying indications every day.  They signal their intentions
  through the search key words they use, the blogs they read, the white papers they download and the shopping baskets they fill.”
• “…every time we aim to shape another person’s point of view, we are selling.”
• “…successful selling will always remain centred on the customer, but the successful salesperson will anticipate the customers’ changing behavior.”
• “Great selling is analyzing the customers’ needs and finding a way to solve their problems.”

Today the digital bait is content – preferably thought leading content

The game has changed irreversibly.  The sheer weight of information available to buyers these days means the buyer is in control. They are less reliant on sales people and they build trust in the brand long before they come into physical contact
with it.

How?  Through the content they consume about the issues important to them.  In a previous post I labeled them ‘contsumers’ - these are people who are hungry for information, information that helps them come to a decision or helps them solve a problem.

The brand that best understands its customer, their issues, their challenges and then provides them with useful, insightful content where they consume it and that helps them in their decision making, are the ones that will become the brands of choice.

Useful content vs thought leading content

I would like to make a distinction between useful content and thought leading content.  Hints and tips about wellbeing, insurance, savings and retirement, the pitfalls of cross border mergers and acquisitions, etc, falls into the useful content bucket.

Thought leading content is content that offers new or fresh thinking on a topic.  It’s not merely peddling an opinion or curating other people’s content – it is a new, fresh perspective often based on empirical evidence.

Thought leadership and sales

Sales needs to be working with the marketing and communication team as well as their customers.

The better understanding the marketing team has of the day-to-day challenges the sales team faces and more importantly the questions their customers are asking them, the better the thought leadership piece will be in the long run.

As the Ogilvy Paper says: “Selling may have once been an individual event, but now it is a team sport.”

Selling has changed irrevocably

“The future of selling” entailed Ogilvy researching over 1,000 selling professionals in the UK, US, Brazil and China.  One of the key findings was that 73% of those surveyed said that selling will be radically different in the next five years.  The key is information asymmetry – in other words the balance or imbalance of information and channels allowing one brand to get a head-start on another.

Brands not examining their content or not entertaining and exploring a thought leadership position will come second.

Craig Badings is a director at Cannings Corporate Communications.  He is the author of “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership” and the blog www.thoughtleadershipstrategy.net/ You can follow him on ttwitter @thoughtstrategy or join him on LinkedIn.

Seven insights to thought leadership that works

Over years of deep diving on the topic of thought leadership I have had conversations and interviews with people who not only work and consult in this field but with those who are thought leaders in their own right.

I have distilled the key learnings I have taken from them into seven points.

Here they are:

1. Short content is good – people no longer want long reports with a big ‘thump’ factor – that noise the report makes when you drop it on your CEO’s desk.
2. Re-use and re-purpose content – a lot of work, resource, time and effort goes into producing your material.  You’d better make sure you are leveraging it in every way possible.
3. Start small, think big, think new, adapt quickly – don’t start off with a massive production, you are probably biting off more than you can chew. Find something on which you can act nimbly, something relevant to the challenges facing your target audience and then deliver some new insights on these to your audience.  Importantly you should make it a long-term play – the best thought leadership I have seen has been running for upwards of five years or longer and it is adapted to change
   with the times and issues of the day.
4. Make it part of the business culture - if it is not owned from the CEO through to marketing and sales it is not going to gain the traction you want.  After all it is about empowering the business and those in it.
5. It is the sharpest tool in building eminence – those who are using it well all agree that is the best tool for building eminence for their brand and the best brand differentiator they have.
6. Great door opener – it allows you to ‘knock’ on doors and open doors where you have previously struggled to gain traction.
7. Enables conversation – you can host conversations that don’t centre on your product or your service – this is important – in fact it is one of David Meerman Scott’s mantras.  Your thought leadership material will enable your client facing people from the CEO down to have conversations with your market that focuses on their issues and stuff that is relevant and
   interesting to them.  In the process you build their trust about your knowledge of their industry.

Feel free to download my e book at the top right of this page.  I’d welcome you to follow me on twitter @thoughtstrategy and
join me on LinkedIn.

A summary of thought leadership in 2012 – 12 experts’ views

Summary of thought leadership trends for 2012

I asked 12 people who I consider to be leading global commentators on thought leadership as well as a couple who have produced some amazing thought leadership programs in-house over the years to comment on four critical thought leadership questions for 2012.

Interviewees included: Bob Buday, Erica Klein, David Meerman Scott, Jeff Ernst, Rob Leavitt, Britton Manasco, Dana van den Heuvel, Matt Church, Fiona Czerniawska, Dale Bryce, Elizabeth Sosnow, Marte Semb Aasmundsen and me.

You can download the full e book here http://www.thoughtleadershipstrategy.net/2012/01/thought-leadership-e-book-12-experts-on-the-thought-leadership-challenges-of-2012/

I have summarized what I believe to the key take outs below:

Question one: What will be the single biggest change we will see in thought leadership over the coming year/s?

• Social media will continue to allow us to easily conduct research and spread ideas but it shouldn’t supplant face to face
• Recognition of thought leadership as a key sales and service driver
• Increasing integration into the strategic business development blueprint
• More sophisticated packaging and presentation
• Real-time thought leadership i.e. thought leadership that responds to what’s going on now as opposed to campaign-like programs
• A swing away from quantity to more tailored information for specific clients
• Using it as a driver for empowering and motivating sales people
• Better resources leading to increased innovation and ground breaking thinking
• Cloud computing will start playing a role in ordering content and intellectual property

Question two: From your experience, what are the biggest challenges in
getting a thought leadership program off the ground?

• Time, resources and effort
• Agreeing priorities, processes and production and documenting this in a plan
• Commitment from senior management and subject matter experts
• Mediocrity
• Lack of or not having the right thought leader champion/s
• Too much focus on products and services
• Convincing your ‘gurus’ of the big picture i.e. the benefits of a thought leadership program
• The creation of relevant, compelling content
• Being brave enough to focus on one or two areas

Question three: What are the top three outcomes of a thought leadership
campaign?

• Increased awareness by your target audience of your expertise
• Business growth through better qualified leads and better close rates
• Enhanced brand reputation as insightful, innovative thinkers
• Talent retention, attraction and development
• Increased innovation around process and professional subject matter expertise
• Deepened relationships with customers resulting in better loyalty
• Differentiation
• Willingness of people to share and talk about your thought leadership ideas/material
• People subscribing to your content (if available online)
• Enhanced prospects for winning the work you want to win
• Building expertise and reputation internally and externally
• The ability to change industry standards and drive paradigm shifts
• Galvanize client facing employees to visit and share your points of view
• Own an issue and to be recognised as the pre-eminent expert in that field
• Share of Voice, Share of Mind and therefore Share of Market
• Marketplace momentum

Question four: Can content curation alone turn an individual or company
into a thought leader?

• No it doesn’t go far enough to demonstrate that you are a leading expert on a topic
• It makes you a “me too” provider
• Maybe in the short term but you eventually lose market position
• A curator reads an idea and says ‘how can I share that?’ a thought leader reads an idea and says ‘What do I think about that?’
• Curation can signal that you understand industry trends but it is ultimately a “me, too” play
• Only if they are a skilled curator – content created by others is not nearly as valuable
• Curation complements your own more substantial research, publications, and presentations
• If the curator arrives at new ideas or insights as a result of that content then it could be construed as thought leadership.

Craig Badings is a director at Cannings Corporate Communications.  He is the author of “Brand Stand: seven steps to thought leadership” and the blog www.thoughtleadershipstrategy.net/ You can follow him on ttwitter @thoughtstrategy or join him on LinkedIn.