Welcome to the second issue of Spark, your virtual home for pragmatic and irreverent advice to accelerate technology sales.

In this June edition, we begin by printing a letter from Bruce Richardson that responds to our take on the industry analyst market. Next, Brian Sommer delves into the different types of tech marketing organizations. Are you in a state of ignorant bliss or are you a knee-jerker or market maker? Read on and decide for yourself. Our second feature piece is by Jason Busch which highlights how to deploy tech marketing’s secret offensive weapon: content. Last, in Out Takes, we offer a lesson from the trenches in making content the centerpiece of a solutions sales approach.

Disagree or have something to say? Get in touch: info@azulpartners.com

Letters

Gentlemen,

Thanks for including me on your marketing efforts. Naturally, I think that some of your views are too cynical. A good analyst has an advantage in that he/she gets to see most of the 360 degree view of a given market segment: You should have a strong knowledge of the products and strategies of all of the vendors and integrators and strong relationships with key buyers—both early adopters and laggards.

Contrast that with the typical CMO that comes in and presents to us. One of the first slides shown is a list of customers. In my experience, many (not all) of the executives presenting only have superficial knowledge of how their own customers actually use their products. They also tend to see the world in terms of how the software was designed versus the customer’s business process or problem.

Many companies have incorrect views of their competitors and the competitors’ perceived weaknesses. A good analyst can set the record straight. A good analyst can also take about pricing trends—and how customers want to buy; make recommendations for/against alliances; and identify adjacent market opportunities or dead-ends.

The relationship is not so much with the firm as it is with a passionate analyst.

Now, I hope your next piece is about the Extortionist scheme of a certain firm’s Magic Quadrant.

All the best,

Bruce

Shape the Markets You Want
(Don’t React to the Markets Others Force You Into)

I feel for Paula Abdul. She’s now in the position of defending herself against the image of her that another person has spun out in the media. She’s now playing defense. She’s reacting and trying to protect her personal brand.

Marketing is either reactive or proactive. You’re either trying to create new opinions and impressions about your firm and its products or you’re reacting to the market shaping activities of others. Worse still, there are some firms that choose to do nothing.

Three profiles of technology firms frequently emerge:

The Ignorant Bliss Firm—This is a firm that is absorbed in self-centered, subjective mental activity often to the exclusion of interaction with the outside world. These companies assume that customers will seek them out regardless of their invisibility from a marketing perspective. In one situation, a company we visited was blissfully unaware of how their company comes across just from looking at a Google search of their firm. It seems the only news about them was a preponderance of very old news articles that detailed their delisting from the NASDAQ. There really was nothing about their products, recent innovations, etc. Geek-driven firms are notorious for this behavior. They see little value in communicating with outsiders or don’t know what or how to say it.

The Knee-Jerker Firm—Knee-Jerkers wait until someone else does something and then their Marketing organizations spring to life. For example, they get really involved with analyst firms after the analyst company doesn’t put them into their recent top-right quadrant (Instead of working with the analyst firms long before the new report was prepared). What typifies a knee-jerk marketing presence is the mind-dulling abundance of me-too marketing collateral, press releases and messaging that the vendor generates but does not trigger a corresponding cascade of new interest in the company or its products. If your collateral, stories, white papers, etc. are not causing a landslide of new leads to enter your pipeline, then your messages are not original, not compelling or differentiating. In other words, these marketing efforts are truly a day late and a dollar short.

The Market Maker—These companies define the market for everyone: buyers, competitors, researchers, etc. They constantly articulate new ideas, new positions, new value propositions, new products, etc. They do not seek confirmation – they define the future. These firms use their executives to promulgate new ideas into the marketplace. Their CEOs are divinely more comfortable behind a podium in major shows, media events, etc. than they are behind a desk administering to the day-to-day needs of their business empire. They are leaders not accountants, bureaucrats or coders.

Tech research analysts love market makers. These firms are where so many analysts get their ideas for new research pieces. While a market maker may describe a new space as one three letter acronym and the analyst uses another descriptor, you can bet the analyst is going to rate the company with the most current and compelling thought leadership higher in at least one direction of their quadrant than all other firms.

We believe more firms should aspire to market maker status. They need to do a better job of promoting their innovations, their vision, etc. onto the marketplace.

Why is it important to be a market maker? Great market makers create buzz and incite others (i.e., others beyond your sales force) to talk about your product, recommend it to others, etc. Market makers produce compelling, must-read white papers and presentations. They develop the sort of stuff that decision makers actually read and, even more amazing, pass on to colleagues and others in their industry. Market makers turn non-employees (e.g., interested prospects, analysts, and sometimes even competitors) into extensions of their own sales organizations. They get others to help in the promotion of their firm. And, they achieve this via thought leadership.

How Market Makers Force Your Hand

When market makers are successful, they trigger a number of defensive behaviors from you and your competitors. Market makers define the space. They identify the core function/feature set with which all other solutions will be judged. They earn the right to freeze other competitors even if competitors offer better solutions now.

Market makers own mindshare with prospects, analysts and the media. They own markets because they took the time and energy to create compelling afterlife stories. They inspired an entire ecosystem to understand the potential that their solution can effect. They convinced large numbers of people that they are the one, true visionary beacon in that space. People are listening to them because their messages are compelling, somewhat visionary, aspirational and inspirational.

Once a market maker captures mindshare, market share quickly follows. Look at Apple’s iPod. It wasn’t the first personal, portable music player. It is, though, the first firm to correctly market this technology as a lifestyle product that taps into a needy psyche of many of its buyers. While other firms emphasize larger hard drives, different colored earphones, etc., they are missing the opportunity to connect with the visions and life needs of buyers (and, by extension, to lead). Apple has the lead while competitors are trying to appear more like slightly more powerful versions of Apple’s product.

SAP is a market leader in ERP. No matter how many application software companies Oracle buys, it will need more than acquisitions to shape the mindsets of prospective buyers. Ownership of a solution does not imply that market and mind share will come along.

Competitors react, quite predictably, to the emergence of market makers by trying to emulate the same vision, solution set, etc. Competitors try to confuse the marketplace. Competitors will try to affect some sort of market parity with the market leader and, by doing so, trade on the market maker’s brand success. Competitors may try to create equally compelling collateral, messaging, etc. but most prospects actually remember who came out with the big ideas first and often reward leaders. Parity or mimicry is, at best, a poor proxy for vision or a compelling afterlife. If a market leader has emerged in your space, you need a well-thought out vision and a tremendous campaign/program to get it out there. The way to win mindshare is via high quality thought leadership not me-too collateral.

How to Shape Markets

In no particular order, every tech marketer should:

• periodically assess the company’s and competitors’ market positions
• identify the weakest category of competition and decide how they can be marginalized (and their market share converted to your firm)
• develop a hierarchy of messages (from the overall company level to specific solution buyers) and the collateral that makes each resonate
• develop one or more internal thought leaders. Arm them with the compelling story that will catch the press, analyst and prospects’ attention
• design a PR campaign to showcase your afterlife stories, the executive telling them, etc.
• develop unheard of buzz that solidifies your firm’s leadership mantle in the spaces you desire

Equally important, technology marketers should focus less time worrying about the ways others (e.g., competitors and analysts) are pigeon-holing the company into market spaces and positioning that competitors are promoting. Continued defense and attacking of competitors in less relevant or irrelevant spaces is a poor waste of time and money. Help your firm win in the marketplace by winning the hearts and minds of prospects and quit wasting energy on non-buyers (like competitors). As we say in Texas, “Think Big, Be Big!”

Reach Brian at brian@azulpartners.com

Tech Marketing’s Secret Weapon

Virtually all tech companies depend heavily on content in the sales and marketing process.
But few organizations produce the most effective types of content, and even fewer know how to deploy content most effectively. Why? The problem is that most organizations use the wrong armaments to go into battle. It would be like applying World War II technology and tactics to the modern urban combat theater. And today, the other side is not only more advanced, they’re also smarter and savvier. You can’t use a rusty old Willys and a scattershot Browning and expect to get very far.

The good news is that the right level—and mix—of content can change the battlefield, putting you on the tech high ground from which to attack and conquer. But building the right type of content is not easy. It requires rethinking how you go to market and present your company and your solutions.

One organization we know was able to redefine the market it competed in by deploying content to effectively influence customers. In fact, it was also able to influence a number of the analysts covering the sector to adopt the terminology and coverage areas that it itself examined in its own thought leadership (one of the stealth goals of the entire campaign).

How did this vendor do it? Brochures, case studies, and decks were only a small piece of this effort. The vendor was able to shape the market by publishing a series of whitepapers that examined and analyzed market trends, processes, and technology—all from a business perspective in its own name. In addition, the vendor focused on integrating this content into an overall marketing campaign to influence customers and the general media (by repurposing material across customer events, webcasts, user-groups, seminars, conferences, bylined articles, and other areas).

Thanks to the content and the organization’s market message, the key analyst firm covering the sector called the vendor’s positioning “great” in an important brief. And media outlets starting picking up on the vendor’s research—in large part due to strong, integrated PR efforts—publishing byline articles that excerpted the research. The number of qualified leads improved as well, due to targeted campaigns and programs that showcased the content as a centerpiece of lead generation efforts.

In this case, whitepapers were a substantial piece of an integrated campaign to influence market perception. But most whitepapers aimed at a business audience aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. That’s because virtually all tech organizations confuse business whitepapers with technology whitepapers. Technology whitepapers—which by our estimates account for approximately 90% of whitepapers authored by vendors—are often wasted efforts, as they fail to capture the imagination of the reader. Except for prose wrappers spun by copy writers, technology whitepapers are often interchangeable with collateral and feature/function checklists. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong!

In contrast, a good business whitepaper is different from the start. It frames a business problem and ties in enabling technology as well as social, economic, and political context to fully educate the reader. Effective whitepapers are expert, but not academic or pedantic. They’re also easy to read and tend to attract an executive audience that wants to learn as much as possible about a subject in a compressed timeframe.

Obviously, effective business whitepapers are only one tool in the tech sales rucksack. Other marketing artifices such as business blogs, newsletters, diagnostics and selection kits can be invaluable as you pack for the long content march to victory. But remember, effective content really is a secret weapon that goes far beyond the lackluster propaganda that 90+% of the tech sector deploys. If you’re willing to commit to the effort, it can give you a huge advantage in the field. As we say at Azul Partners: “Don’t sell to the market. Influence it.”

Reach Jason at jbusch@azulpartners.com

Out Takes …

Clients and colleagues often ask us: what is the best way to create and influence a market? We believe that content is a great place to start. But content that is not tightly integrated into to a broader sales effort is often less effective than it might be. So what’s the best way to coordinate efforts? Organizations can start by using content as the centerpiece of a solution sales approach. For example, one organization we know created an executive presentation, a whitepaper, and a diagnostic (customized by industry) on the same subject, which they distributed directly and through channels. They also educated their channel partners and their own customer facing organization on how to deploy each tool most effectively in different stages of the sales process. The result? In less than six months, the organization has more than tripled its pipeline with highly qualified leads that want to talk to them. Their biggest is challenge is having the time to engage each prospect in a meaningful dialogue. And that’s not a bad problem to have.

This newsletter is published by Azul Partners, Inc a market strategy and content advisory firm. Founded in 2004, Azul Partners advises the world’s leading software and professional services organizations. We work with companies to develop persuasive content and novel strategies that incorporate rational arguments, deep research and subject matter expertise. Learn more by visiting us on the web at www.azulpartners.com or drop a line: info@azulpartners.com