Thought Leadership Interview #9 - Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic «

I’m pleased to bring you a series of interviews with thought leaders in B2B Sales and Marketing.

This time we interviewed a sharp guy in marketing — Craig Rosenberg of Focus.com, but better known as the Funnelholic.

If you like what Craig has to say, just visit him at Focus.com or send an email to crosenberg at focus.com. I wish to thank Craig for his contributions to Fearless Competitor.

Many more thought leaders are coming soon, so stay tuned. We’re on a mission to bring our readers the very best.

CSO Insights recently found that quota achievement was at its lowest rate ever, lead generation budgets were flat or cut, and quotas were being raised. Jim Dickie sees this as the Perfect Storm. Jim Dickey said it is like raising the high jump bar, when we could not clear the last height. As a marketing expert, Craig, what are you observing in B2B sales?

I didn’t see Jim’s statistics, but if he is right, then we’re going to see a lot of sales guys unfairly lose their jobs this year. From the marketing side, I’ve seen steady or increasing budgets for lead generation, content marketing, and social media. Granted, this is anecdotal and from statistics I see here and there. I think there are a couple of things to think about regarding the current state of B2B sales:

Sales Enablement can help – There’s a rise in sales enablement titles on Hotjobs.com and an increase in sales enablement funding. If we’re going to try to get more out of each individual sales person, we can just go with the old school, “Here is a phone book and a pen, now go get some deals”. Organizations should focus on having a resources dedicated to onboarding, training, supporting content, etc.
Sales 2.0 tools can help – I hate using that term, but at least you know what I mean: there is a technology movement dedicated to making sales more efficient. Again, if we have to do more with less, than lets give them what they need to do that.
If lead gen is cut, you better have a great install base – Sales guys CAN close more business if all they are focused on is closing business. If they have to generate their own leads, then the perfect storm becomes a nuclear winter. The art of taking names or inquiries and getting to opportunities is laborious and long. The lead gen process should be funded and out of the hands of sales guys. They can then focus on bringing in more business.

Let me repeat my point in #3: Sales can close more business if sales is focused on closing business.

The economic challenges of today are a major problem for B2B sellers. Blogs and content sharing are critical elements. Websites like Focus.com are popular and The Funnelholic is a very popular blog. How can a robust online presence help generate leads? Can you share the lessons you’ve learned with our readers?

In today’s content marketing revolution, the smartest person in the room wins. Your online strategy should move from brochures and data sheets to free advice and thought leadership. My CEO Scott Albro has a saying “Always be helping is the new Always be closing”. Will this translate into leads tomorrow? Maybe not, but there are a lot of benefits. I’ll use the sites you have listed above as examples:

Focus.com – This is where buyers can come from free expert-driven research that help them make better considered purchases or do their jobs better. You can sign up to become an expert and start answering people’s questions on the site which does not require a ton of resources. You can also write briefs (bigger than blog posts but lighter than articles). So, you can do the math: buyers coming to a site asking questions and wanting to learn more about your market + you helping them solve their problems = a happy buyer and expert status for you. How does this help you? This is the nature of today’s internet. The “fight” online is to be the trusted advisor in your market and sites like Focus help you do that.

Funnelholic.com – This is my blog and it’s focused on demand generation, sales, and marketing. There are a couple of rules we decided to associate to my blog:

No overt selling – the blog is a pure third party resources for sales and marketing
If it’s a good topic, write it even if it doesn’t help me or my organization – I did a webinar with Peter Burris from Forrester and he said something really important: “Marketing organizations will have to start adopting the ethics of publishers”. That is what I am doing here, if it helps marketers, it’s going up.

Now, the benefits. What we have found is that the Funnelholic has done more to lend credibility to the sales cycle than generate more leads. I’m not really the smartest guy in the room, but I can be perceived as being pretty close and I can help talk to customers or potential customers. Will there be more leads? Yes, but once you have spent a lot of time creating a lot of content on the internet. If done well, you’ll begin to get leads from people that want to work with you, the trusted advisor.

Changing of the status quo is a major impediment to progress. It’s hard to make change happen. How can marketing and sales leaders implement change without incurring undue risk?

This is true, it is hard to make change happen. If you’re a marketer, before you begin the process of creating an inbound demand generation strategy, make sure you already have locked down where your lead numbers are going to come from. Inbound marketing takes time, so in the meantime, have deals with per-lead vendors like Focus who can guarantee you a number of leads and a CPL. That way you aren’t reporting no numbers because you’re in the midst of a strategy change. Change it with ROI. Once you can guarantee that you will hit your marketing pipeline numbers, start to layer in new strategic moves that will take more time to come to fruition.

Sales has to hit their number, period. All the things I listed above in Answer 1 are doable without risk. With sales, I believe you NEVER roll out anything without testing it against a small group first. If you are going to start using a new Sales 2. 0 tool, choose a couple reps to start with that won’t risk the number. Make sure it works, figure out how they use it and roll it out.

Today it’s more critical than ever that marketers measure the impact of options. They need to know what’s working, what’s not, and what to change. What do you recommend they do?

Get marketing automation. Next question? In sum, everyone should measure because they can. Here are some tips:

Choose 3 metrics that you look at every day – Don’t choose more than that. You have to figure out the 3 that really tell you what is going on and look at that.
Choose 15 metrics you look at every week – Open up the number of metrics you look at on a weekly basis. A lot of these metrics should be focused on optimization.
Look at the bad AND the good – I learned this from the B2C guys. If they saw something that worked, they capitalized. Many times, we put too much emphasis on red flags and not enough on what’s working.
Choose metrics you can control – Closed business depends on the sales team. When you are creating “justification” metrics, marketers should be held to pipeline or opportunities created. Marketers drive “shots at the plate”, sales closes them.

Content is more important than ever. Buyers look for content at every stage of the buying process. What do marketers need to know about content and what actions do you recommend they take?

Give the buyer what they want not what you want to give the buyer – The internet has created massive competition for consumption of content. You have to create content people want to download and read. That means you have to get away from the “datasheet” and start thinking like a publisher.
Map content to the buying cycle – Determine how your buyers buy and map content that helps them across each step.
Ardath Albee’s Rule of 5 – Take 1 idea and create 5 pieces of content for it (whitepaper, blog post, webinar, ebook, email, etc.).

If a CMO were to ask you today – What are the 3 most important takeaways that I need to know? What would they be?

The buyer has changed forever, act accordingly – the access to information has made the buyer much more powerful than they have in the past. This changes your approach to content and distribution….your entire approach
Marketing departments of today are more like publishers – this isn’t my quote, but its true. You have to create content with a publisher mindset not a marketing department mindset.
Give sales what they want – If you build your factory to create leads, but your buyer (sales) wants opportunities aren’t you missing something? When you consider your entire demand generation machine, work backwards from what you are going to hand-off to sales. If you’re going to hand them inquiries, you have failed. If you’re going to hand them SQLs (sales-qualified leads), you are on your way.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s also the author of two highly acclaimed white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing (and he’s about to start on his third white paper) and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Find New Customers helps business develop and implement programs to drive more sales leads by improving the way they find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.