The need for a marketing-first strategy in the channel
Businesses from all industries are moving into the digital age. To outdo competitors and keep up with the rapid pace of innovation, IT companies need to understand customer issues from their point of view, and think out of the box to better emphasize the customer experience. As channel partners transform their business models to become cloud-led managed service providers, their ability to generate continuous revenue streams will increasingly be driven by customer service and marketing skills. Companies selling non-physical or complex products need digital marketing the most, as sales people have very limited time to walk prospects through intangible or difficult concepts. With customers more and more researching offerings online before purchasing, marketing has become a backbone of sales.
However, marketing functions are often detached from sales for reasons such as a narrow understanding of marketing, lack of belief in it, a traditional focus on sales as a more tangible KPI, as well as lack of training on marketing benefits. Many sales directors still do not believe in the power of marketing. With better appreciation and broader understanding, companies can bring about stronger marketing to support sales. Those that remain in their sales-focused stance risk losing out to competitors that can differentiate themselves through innovative marketing.
Digital methods best convey value propositions of companies in today’s digital societies, even before sales teams reach potential customers. Moreover, creativity is necessary to overcome the reputation of B2B marketing of being dry and uninteresting. Technology innovations such as smart cars, internet of things, wearables, flexible screens and augmented reality, which once were only present in science fiction; are now becoming a reality, creating new opportunities for the channel to reach out innovatively to customers.
Understanding the difference between sales and marketing
Many vendors and channel partners find it difficult to define marketing and sales metrics. The primary aim of marketing is to increase brand awareness, build brand, educate customers, pique interest and generate leads - all of which support the sales team to achieve targets. Qualified leads are thereafter passed onto sales people, who are needed for the final push through the sales finish line. While the sales function is also important in marketing, it plays a central role in lead nurturing by way of maintaining long-term customer relationships and loyalty and retaining regular customers. Each sales person is also more focused on several customers at a time. Customer support services can also be qualified as marketing as they serve to give customers a good brand experience, though many IT companies label them as ‘sales’. Unless given specific sales tasks, the job of a customer service person is to enhance customers’ opinions towards the company. Services can be a powerful tool for channel partners if they are to distinguish themselves from competitors or even vendors. As channel partners transform businesses to become service providers, customer support services will take on the role of customer retention and loyalty and even cross- and upselling.
Sales and marketing should not be approached as an ‘either/or’ but as ‘both/and’. It should be viewed as a whole, with regular communication between the two. To maximize success, the two disciplines should work hand in hand. Moreover, marketing needs to be a top-down commitment, with different departments playing their part to support marketing and eventually sales.
Cultivating a marketing conducive workplace
Management ultimately decides how effective marketing can be in an organization. Common criticism of marketing is that it involves a lot of fluff. However, organizations that drive a commitment to their marketing strategy in their company culture are often the most successful. For example, Veeam, the disaster recovery and back-up vendor, implores all employees to abide by a list of golden rules in their daily interactions such as ‘be genuine’ and ‘be inclusive’. This has helped to foster good working relationships and drive genuine experiences for many of Veeam’s customers. Alternatively, management can set the tone of its brand voice by creating standard procedures on how customers are to be treated.
Storytelling is a very powerful part of the marketing/sales toolbox, when it is relatable, believable and appeals emotionally. CEOs can take on the role of chief storyteller to drive the corporate message. Marketing and sales department heads should work together to devise appropriate storylines. CMOs with their knowledge of overall buying behavior can act as business strategists who advise CEOs. They can add context to the company's expertise, products and services. Increasingly, CMOs and CIOs will be working closer together to tackle shared objectives as infrastructure needs overlap. Ideas need to propagate throughout the organization and for this to happen, management needs to take educated risks and be visionary or risk being overtaken.
Traditionally, the nature of IT is such that in many companies it results in cultures that prevent creativity from flourishing. Nearly all technology businesses promote themselves as technology leaders, which is not credible. IT companies should look to add diversity, stir up excitement in their service and sales delivery via new features as well as look to appeal emotively, an area where IT has not done well. Marketers need to know the techniques of persuading an audience of many, which involves having good speaking and writing skills, a flair for aesthetics, as well as strong project management skills. In the digital age, the trick is to have short and catchy headlines.
In contrast to vendors who are each limited by the scope of their solutions and relative strength of these, channel partners have the advantage of offering a mix of different solutions from various vendors together, thereby adding value through integration and delivery; providing a true solution as opposed to a product. Partners may find it worthwhile to look into different storylines from vendors and how these stories may appeal to customers more. Marketing in channels may benefit from occupying a niche in the mix and add value as opposed to relying on vendors’ marketing input.
Management needs to remove rigid structures limiting creativity and give autonomy to creatives who now also include web designers, UX designers and software developers. Bridging the gaps between IT, marketing and sales teams is another important task for stronger (digital) marketing capabilities. Regular sessions can be organized where members of separate teams come together to discuss important issues and brainstorm marketing-related ideas. Other methods to encourage communication include using cross-collaboration platforms, such as internal chatrooms, to discuss issues across geographies and teams. Regular fixed meetings also help. Marketing directives need to come down from management and be repeated for the idea to stick. As a start, behaviors can be incentivized for change.
To facilitate change, some companies engage third party marketing consultants to provide external point of views in marketing transformation.
Social selling part of sales’ quarterly tasks
Social selling through the use of social marketing eg, LinkedIn and Facebook to build and maintain customer relationships, is now part of the sales teams’ everyday tasks for some vendors. For companies too entrenched in sales to move into marketing directly, social selling is a method to extend reach into wider geographies and digitally-savvy customers. Nevertheless, again, without marketing training and good content to share, efforts can fail since sales people typically abhor the creation of marketing content. IBM, SAP and Symantec use LinkedIn’s tool, Sales Navigator, which tracks social selling by measuring four elements: The ability to establish a professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights and building relationships. Each element is given a score out of 25, which are then totaled up to create a social selling index (SSI) out of 100 for the sales person. The scores are updated daily and are also tracked on a weekly basis by the program. To encourage social selling, the navigator also compares customers’ SSIs with their industry sales peers and people within their networks.
Adopt a marketing-first mindset to stand out
Marketing is often sidelined by the channel as a support function and cost center, but it is set to become a more powerful tool as society digitizes. Companies that focus more on marketing will benefit from greater brand recognition, better customer experiences and closer proximity to audiences - which all help increase sales. However, marketing cannot be alone in nurturing relationships and requires the support of management, technology and sales teams as well as operations. Marketing technology should be used to support existing human efforts in communications and events. Too much reliance on technology may also strip away the human touch. However, by ignoring marketing technologies (or marketing entirely), channel partners risk becoming overshadowed by savvy competitors and ignored by customers. Striking the right chord with customers is important, and organizations need educated efforts to figure out what works for them.