Don’t miss the first part: We live in a world of conversations – Part 1. Is it a conversation – or really a transaction?
How businesses worked pre-Web
Once upon a time, there were no Web sites, social media apps, or anything like that. And people made money.
Businesses thrived without a Web site or a Facebook account or Twitter. They didn’t have blogs. Some had articles published, but most didn’t. Few people were writers. Then, being a writer meant that you were published by a publication or through a publishing company – not through your own blog, which is a blessing and curse.
Sales people and business owners would go out into the world and share with whomever they met what they did for work. You’d hear about someone’s company at a dinner party, a cocktail party, in a line at the bank, or at your child’s dance recital. Or you’d walk past a storefront and if what was in the window struck your fancy you would enter and start exploring.
On their journeys, sales people and business owners would distribute business cards that could be placed into a rolodex for later reference. You didn’t need to talk to someone the moment you got a business card about something like a new roof, but you knew that you may need one in the next year or so. So you kept that card because you knew it may come in handy in the future.
The sales person or business owner would often take your information as well, if you had it available, and contact you from time to time with new information about what they sold – new products or techniques – or a promotion. You’d have an open conversation about what you were looking for when, granted if it wasn’t a high-pressure sale. (For those, most people hung up on the sales person and he lost that contact.) This sales person or business owner could be considered minimally an acquaintance; sometimes a friend.
Business was all about relationships pre-Web.
And it extended to larger projects and leveraging networks. Let’s say there was the possibility of a larger deal with multiple parties involved in buying and selling. Then a sales person or business owner would consider who was in his network of acquaintances and who would benefit from such a deal. And if those people didn’t want to participate, the sales person or business owner would ask the contact to reach out to their network and ask who they would recommend.
Successful business required relationships. Friends of friends.
Word of mouth has always been what really got you business.
Curiously – that’s what is also true today. How so?
First, let’s start with sales people. Sales people are often hired for their contact lists, which is mainly their relationships. Sometimes, sales people are told that they need to leave their contacts, again relationships, with their employer if they quit. This proves how relationships are key for business – especially introductions. If the individual trusts the judgement of the sales person at any level, at least that person will listen to what’s being offered.
Secondly, why are review sites so popular? We all value each other’s opinions about their experiences with the same company or product. Yelp is popular because it gives you insights into what other people experienced at a restaurant or another establishment. And I think we all read product reviews written by people like us before we buy anything. We want to know what other people think about a product or service.
Third, there is the influence people have through word-of-mouth. Most people trust the opinions of their friends – and that is what sells ideas and products. If you know that a widget was useful to your best friend, you’d probably consider getting it to fix your problem too.
And there are stats to prove that word of mouth is alive and working:
74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision.Word-of-mouth engines. They are 1.6x more likely to rate a product or service online at least once a week (versus consumers driven by entertainment or connection).
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
But do companies really understand this? I’m not too sure.
As written in Part 1, when companies want leads, they collect names and numbers by placing a form to collect that info before a key “asset.” The form may include additional questions – or not – that help with lead scoring.
And in the previous blog post, people caught on to the purpose of such a form and stopped falling for that nonsense. They started putting the connections together that filling out a form meant a call. And who wants to be bothered with sales people looking to sell.
(Something to consider here: no one wants to talk to a sales person who only wants to sell. Isn’t it more fun to talk to someone about new product ideas and better ways to do things? What if sales dropped the pressure and talked about how they could help instead and became a friend? But more on that later.)
Let’s talk about what a lead really is.
In the old model before the Internet and social media, a lead was someone who was interested in buying. There were a number of conversations that happened to introduce someone to a product or service before this happened, and that prospect was showing interest. It could take months or years sometimes to develop that lead – and a number of conversations occurred for that to happen.
And this process was based on facts, but slightly subjective. The relationship was what mattered.
The new Web world leveraged lead scoring methods. But are these scoring methods for a conversation and relationship or simply a transaction? Sadly, I think in our desire to simplify the lead process, we turned lead generation and nurturing into a transaction like everything else. It made sense at the time to help with prioritizing leads, but it missed the mark about building a relationship and what that means. And what word of mouth means.
We re-focused our efforts on willingness to buy rather than understanding what the customer wanted and determining if the company and prospect were a fit. We trusted that sales would be doing that – and they are. But knowing someone’s willingness to buy only tells part of the story.
Things like budget are necessary for purchase, but financing can be worked out in larger sales. What matters more, and what makes the sale, is the relationship. And from that relationship, you know someone’s general problems, pain points, what they need to be successful, what’s missing today. That is the knowledge you need to make a sale. It is that relationship that is required to go to the next level of the sale and the commitment after the sale.
The relationship is focused on making the customer successful. Lead gen scoring is focused on getting the product sold. There is much more potential for sales and a relationship if the customer succeeds.
And I think we all know, relationships happen through conversations and word of mouth.
So what happened to word of mouth, relationship building, and lead nurturing – not of the transaction flavor?
It went on pause. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do this.
We would need to shift how we perceive campaigns and content marketing to start, develop, and interrupt industry conversations. Something as simple as an ad campaign should spark a conversation – it should introduce a thought that is revolutionary to how someone sees the world now. There can be content support pieces to help describe the idea, but the idea should merit additional discussion.
The goal of content marketing is to introduce the right ideas that get someone interested enough to WANT to talk to sales. People should WANT to give out their contact information to keep the conversation going. And the conversation shouldn’t be so focused on selling – that alone ends a conversation if someone isn’t ready to buy. The conversation should be focused on building a relationship. To build additional conversations at the individual-level as well as larger company-level. And these conversations should be focused around how the customer defines success for him, for his team, and for his company.
The person sales is talking to from such a campaign may never become a lead – and that is ok. The person that sales is talking to may become an ally. And an ally could do the selling for you.
Any conversations like these would start a relationship. But the key is to shift a lead generation engine away from being transactional to more relationship driven, i.e. conversation driven. If we do this, we may have more success driving leads and sales – and promoting a word of mouth engine.
I’m not saying remove the forms before content. That works today at some levels. Keep that.
I’m proposing that we evolve lead generation to incorporate social media, online communities, and conversation-styled engagement. We need to reach out and engage with our followers on social media, get them to express their opinions. We need to get these people to understand what we are offering. We need ways for people to discuss ideas, share their thoughts, get involved, participate.
We need to move ourselves and others into the hybrid world of conversation that includes online and offline discussion.
And that brings us to why there is a Customer Relationship Lifecycle rather than simply a Buyer’s or Customer Journey. We need to focus on how the relationship progresses for each step of the process, how do we reach and interact with our customer, and bring them along the next step of the relationship to engage them further.
Customer Relationship Lifecycle
We need to make relationships the focus of businesses again. And that is what it means when we say business is all about the customer.