Want to get an article published? Follow this one golden rule

If you’re looking after the PR for your company or use it as part of your mix, there will come a point where your comms plan is in place, your messaging is tight and you’ll ask – “How do I get an article published?”

My suggestion would be to follow one golden rule: Know the publication.

That’s it. Pretty obvious right? But ask any editor or journalist and they’ll tell you that this is seemingly beyond 95% of the marketing/PR execs that they speak to. So how do you join the 5% club?

For a start, read the publication. A lot. It’s not hard but surprisingly few people bother to do it. As a first check, you can confirm the publication is relevant and they’re likely to write about your firm or offering.

Then make sure you know the publication back to font – the regular sections, their editorial calendar, major features, their readership profile and circulation, what flicks the switch of the main journalists.

This means that, instead of calling them to say, “My company/product is so awesome, will you write about us?” your conversation can run more along the lines of…  “I enjoy the XXX section you run each month and noticed that you have an upcoming feature on XXX. Our CEO is an expert on this topic and has some interesting views, would you be interested in having a chat?”

Think of it like a sales engagement. The more you know, the more productive a conversation you can have. It shifts from being a one-sided pitch to being a collaborative conversation, where you’re speaking as equals and delivering mutual value.

Your level of understanding will be – grudgingly – appreciated by even the hardest hack. You’ll avoid wasting each others' time with lame, irrelevant pitches and end up seeing infinitely better results.

Three Templar tips for career progression

You may have realized by now that, in your early years, most business self-help books are utterly useless for career progression. Particularly when green & keen, we’ve all tried reading them – One Minute Manager, 7 Habits, Who Moved My Cheese, How to Win Friends, etc.

The irony is, especially when fairly junior, anyone spouting the business babble comes across as weird and so is unlikely to be promoted.

[As an aside, if you feel that emotional intelligence isn’t your strong suit, to the point that you need to learn it in a book, my advice would be to focus on the Big Data / Operations side of marketing. This is no bad thing, as you’ll most likely end up earning a lot more than your charismatic colleagues.]

With few exceptions, my experience of career progression has been that if you work hard, take the time to master your brief, are a reliable team member, have good organization & communication skills and are always upbeat, you’ll rise above most of your peers.

The one self-help book I would recommend is Richard Templar’s The Rules of Work: The Unspoken Truth About Getting Ahead in Business. It assumes you’re good at your job and suggests practical actions to help you get on and up. Rather than CEOs or wannabe Bransons, it’s aimed at those in the early stages of their career hungry to climb the ladder. Chapters include: If you can’t say anything nice, shut up; Act one step ahead; and Know the system – and milk it.

From the 100 rules, here are three I’ve found particularly valuable:

1)    Know something others don’t
Hopefully you know about a lot of things, however it’s worth being the go-to person for something crucial. This makes you indispensible and – if you pick your topic well – offers an opportunity to be a subject matter expert with insights the exec team crave. For modern marketers, you may want to consider:

• Funnel math – If there’s one thing likely to get you noticed by those up the food chain, it’s fully understanding and articulating Marketing’s impact on revenue. This is the difference between fluff & bluff and talking the talk of the top table. Refer to Rozzer’s Marketing Metrics post if you need some guidance.
• Systems and data – This is fast becoming one of the most influential areas of marketing and yet – due to complexity or dullness – one that many avoid. If you’re not one of these people then chances are you’ll be in high demand. Several years ago, one of my team took a punt that Salesforce was going to be the foundation of our company’s sales engine and so decided to master it. In her mid 30s, she’s now VP Global Sales Operations, one of the most influential people in the company, and pulling in massive coin.
• Market analysis – It’s often scary how many strategic decisions are based on a sales/exec manager’s gut feel – usually because they’re too time poor to undertake proper research and analysis. Being the oracle of market data – such as segment size, growth and potential – will give you a seat in strategy discussions. And being able to present this in a concise, compelling way, will take you far.

2)    The power of the unsolicited report
Personally, I’ve found this the best suggestion in the book. Most of the time, CXOs are too busy to do the research and so are suitably amazed/delighted when an interesting, snappy report appears out of the blue that addresses a pain point.

Chances are, when it comes to implementation, your name will be the top of the list and you’ll find yourself on some plum projects. In your manager’s eye, you’ll be elevated to a thinker and a problem solver, rather than just a foot soldier.

3)    Capitalize on moments to shine
Isn’t it annoying not to be appreciated for your brilliance at least a few times a day? The fact is, there’s likely to be only a handful of high-visibility opportunities a year where you get a chance to make a name for yourself. Like it or not, exec opinions of you are often based on these – so spot these opportunities a mile off and nail them.

Inside Sales training: Creating a playbook

As covered in Rozzer’s ‘11 Tips for Aligning Marketing and Inside Sales’, a high-performing Inside Sales team can send lead conversion rates sky-rocketing bringing joy and riches to you and your firm.

It may not be cool, fun or sexy but a large part of managing an Inside Sales team is having robust processes in place – when and how to contact a prospect; what to do before, during & after the call; correct use of your CRM and other systems; the handover to Sales; and of course how reps will be compensated.

Get these locked down and you’re free to do the fun part – the motivating, cajoling and rewarding. Get it wrong and you’ll spend most of your time on the back foot, neck-deep in admin.

Something that will make establishing these processes a lot easier is having a central guide or ‘playbook’ that documents the core Inside Sales processes and procedures. This keeps everyone on the right page and accelerates the on-boarding of new hires. Here are some sections to include:

1)     Aim & goals
Right at the top, lay it on the line as to why the team exists and what its purpose is. This could be along the lines of… “The aim of the Inside Sales team is to provide a predicable pipeline of qualified opportunities to the Sales team to increase new customer acquisition. This is achieved by improving lead conversion rates, enhancing market coverage, having more 1-1 conversations, qualifying opportunities early and thereby increasing win rates.”

2)     Sales process overview
Being an Inside Sales rep can be a tough gig so make sure the team knows their importance to the business by showing them an end-to-end view of how Inside Sales fits in the sales cycle.

Tip: Reps that are rock-solid on the Sales Process theory will likely find your processes and CRM tools a lot more intuitive.

3)     Demand generation
Leads don’t just fall from the sky, they take skill, money and hard work from marketing gurus to acquire. If Inside Sales reps understand and respect this, they’ll be more likely to treat leads like gold.

4)     Prioritization & Assignment
When your reps get to work in the morning, who do they call? Then who? Clear prioritization will keep them efficient and focused on high-priority prospects. Also make sure you get their territories and lead assignment processes crystal clear or face the inevitable turf wars.

5)     Call prep
I always give the same pep talk to new reps, “This lead cost $250 to acquire and could be worth millions to the company and thousands to you. So please make sure you do your homework before calling them.” A short (e.g. 5-step) research template they can pin up on their cubicle will help with this.

6)     The Call
After about a week on the phones, all Inside Sales reps consider themselves experts and will have developed their own pitch. However at least starting them off with a high quality script will give you the best chance of them staying on message. You can also lay down the SLAs e.g. “Leads will be followed up within X timeframe, and contact will be attempted a minimum of X times.”

7)     Post call
More process, but this is an easy one. “Log your call correctly in the CRM system and you get paid; don’t and you don’t.”

8)     Handover to Sales & opportunity progression
After a rep has booked a meeting, what happens next? If you’re primarily rewarding them based on sales-qualified opportunities generated (which you should be), then this will be of big interest to them. Any monkey can book meetings. What you want is qualified opportunities that have a high chance of closing.

9)     Metrics & reporting
Targets that need to be hit and how their output will be recorded, tracked and reported.

10)  Compensation framework
The section your reps will flick to the moment you give them the guide.

How not to phone interview for a marketing role

In the last two months I have phone-interviewed over 40 candidates for a handful of junior marketing roles and it is amazing the basic mistakes that people make. What I found is that you usually know within ten minutes of the call if someone is going to make the next stage.

One thing I did realise is that it is tough out there. Hundreds of graduates are desperate for entry level roles and many young people have been made redundant from struggling organisations. All the more reason to do everything you can to come across well in your first interaction (I am not going to cover CVs here although the errors here are worth a whole post).

I had some terrible phone interviews and in the end I classified the worst into the following categories. Do your best never to be classified as follows.

The Hunter

This person was out in the wild with the sound of the jungle seeping down the phone. Usually they were on their lunch break and standing next to a busy road or in the middle of a town centre. Every fifth word was punctuated with the sound of a car, a screaming baby or a dog barking. One guy bumped into a group of work colleagues and proceeded to have a 60 second conversation about where he was going for lunch while I was on the end of the phone (McDonalds in case you were wondering).

It sounds obvious but find somewhere quiet to do your call from or don't do it at all.

The Moron

Amazingly only around 60% of candidates had any idea what my company did. 60%! If you do not research what the company does and are not able to talk about it for a couple of minutes then you are a moron. Fact.

In some instances it was so bad that I had to end the call there and then. Why would you apply for a role that you have no idea what it entails? What kind of passion does it show? Spend at least the length of the scheduled interview time researching the company and the person who is interviewing you.

Desperate Dan

Desperate Dan doesn't always rear his ugly head during the interview, sometimes it is a spectacular encore. For example, one candidate who didn't get the role wrote two letters to me outlining how I had made a huge mistake and how it would have a large impact on the future direction of the Fortune 50 organisation I work for (bear in mind this was a graduate position). Unfortunately for the candidate this campaign moved to Twitter and the person in question implored me (and the world) on Twitter to reconsider.

The result? Blacklisted from graduate positions in the organisation and branded as a moron. Be gracious in defeat and don't burn any bridges. The person interviewing is taking a lot of things into account during the interview process and it is probably best for you both that you are not put into a role you are not right for.

The Theoretical CEO

This is the person who has a marketing or business degree, probably including a masters, and has read every book in the world. They quote the marketing greats extensively and are jam-packed full of jargon. They are seconds away from bursting onto the scene and making CEO in a matter of weeks.

There are positives here - the ambition and the knowledge - but generally this candidate has no idea how to practically deliver marketing day to day and is going to come down to earth with a bump. Theory is great, but if I am hiring a graduate I won't somebody who is going to roll their sleeves up and get dirty down the marketing mines. I also need someone who can take constructive criticism and continually evolve.

If you don't have any practical experience convince me that you are desperate to get down to some hard work and that you know you are not the finished article.

The Politician

This is the candidate who hears a hard question and just decides to answer an imaginary question that they would prefer to answer. Some are so good at it that you actually forget the question you asked in the first place.

While this can be a useful skill in life it is not good form in an interview. If you give me a random answer I am just going to keep asking you the same question until I get what I need. I definitely don't want to spend the next three years in meetings with you trying to search for the truth.

Happy hunting!

11 tips for aligning marketing and inside sales

Inside sales teams can unlock huge value for organisations. Unfortunately for most, this value tends to stay locked in the corporate safe alongside the finance directors compassion for marketing, the legal teams sense of humour and those naked pictures of the CEO's wife at the Christmas party.

There are a number of factors that make inside sales teams work but I am going to focus on the role of marketing and what marketers can do to ensure success - after all the vast majority of your qualified leads probably end up with these phone jockeys.

Get this relationship right and you are converting like you are on the road to Damascus, get it wrong and you are soon to be Chief Collateral Officer.

1. Map out the lead flow from generation to win/loss - What are the main stages in the sales motion? Who owns it at that stage and what do they need to do with it? What criteria needs to be met for the lead to move forward or back a stage? How long should you wait before you start getting worried that it hasn't moved?
2. Involve inside sales in the definition of a qualified lead and lead scoring - the key stage for you is the hand over point between marketing and inside sales. The only way to get lead scoring right, and have the right handover criteria, is to involve sales in the decision making. Also helps in blaming them later for not converting the leads.
3. Don't kid yourself that you are perfect or your leads are all hot - you can't win them all and you need to continually evolve your lead generation and scoring. The majority of your leads aren't ready to buy and therefore aren't ready for sales.
4. Get leads to inside sales quickly and with the right context - once your leads are deemed ready for sales get them there as quickly as possible. Leads and interaction recognition can change quickly and the sooner the sales contact the better. Of upmost importance is the context you give around the lead especially around the campaign and level of interaction.
5. Have and police SLAs - have an SLA for how fast you will get a lead to sales and have another one for how quickly sales will action it. Report on these SLAs to sales and marketing management.
6. Include marketing in inside sales team meetings - this ensures marketing can share what the promotion calendar looks like but also ensures open dialogue and a team spirit.
7. Report on contribution to target - talk in their language. For example what percentage of opportunities does marketing create?
8. Use complaints/moans/whining as an opportunity to create advocates - an unhappy inside sales rep, like an unhappy customer, is an opportunity to create a loyal advocate of your work. Take negative feedback head on and turn that frown upside down.
9. Use inside sales reps at industry events - good way to get the reps in the marketing trenches and understand what it takes to create a good lead. Also lets them own the discussion from start to finish.
10. Ensure your marketing teams listen into at least one phone conversation a week - often your sales team will have an initial qualification call and then schedule a further call or online presentation. Make sure your marketing team join a couple a month to ensure they gain customer insight and get a feel for the quality if leads.
11. Be positive - there is little room for emotional battles in business. Ensure you remain positive, professional and focused on the target.

Ok, this should get you started or help improve the status quo. Once you get into a rhythm reassess and constantly try to improve the relationship and process. Now all you have to do is help inside sales work on their relationship with sales and you are laughing...

From slumdog to millionaire: A guide for B2B marketing in India

Just coming to the end of a grueling but rewarding week working in India (is there any other kind?). As usual, it’s the characters that make doing business here so much fun.

One of my meetings was with an old industry don, head of a national association, who spoke non-stop for 30 minutes as if in a trance so I ended up just getting up and inching towards the door. Another meeting had 14 people sitting opposite me in a boardroom but only two of them spoke. Another, where I was dealing with different arms of a business, had three people that kept rotating, 15mins then swap, 15mins then swap, and so on for two hours. The other guys just waited at the door ready for their turn.

Funny thing is, there will be some great outcomes from all of these meetings. There’s an openness and a willingness to help that makes working in India a pleasure.

Pre-entry planning

Don’t get me wrong, from a corporate perspective India remains a shockingly difficult place to do business. Only last month it was ranked 132nd out of 185 economies in the International Finance Corporation’s Ease of Doing Business report. A real kick in the Gangulys for a country with such lofty growth goals.

If this hasn’t put you off – and the lure of a 1.2 billion, largely English-speaking market with 6% growth rate is too hard to ignore – then it shouldn’t be difficult to source the data you need to guide your strategy. There’s plenty out there, much of it online, that can help you identify where the opportunities lie, potential barriers and competitors. When you have this in place, your mind will naturally turn towards how best to invest your Rupees…

Going to market

Tactically speaking, B2B marketing in India can be a relatively straightforward. Due to being English-speaking and having some sound communication and technology infrastructures in place, you can often closely replicate the successful marketing programs from your domestic market (something you’re unlikely to be able to do in China, for instance, but we’ll talk about that some other time).

When it’s time to go to market, here are my experiences with some of the main B2B marketing channels:

Online
An estimated one in every 10 Indians are internet users, making the country the third-largest Internet market in the world after China and the United States. It will likely overtake the US within the next 2-3 years. Put any preconceptions aside, your buyers are online.

For SEO, there are local options but you may feel more comfortable starting with the usual suspects – about 84% of online Indians use Google and Yahoo. For PPC, I’ve seen consistently strong ROI from Adwords and LinkedIn investments. The conversion rates are around 20% higher than my firm’s global average.

Content marketing
The cliché is true: Indians like to learn. White papers, e-books, local case studies and blog posts are all well received. Whether email blasts, display ads, PPC or social media, there are plenty of channels available to reach prospects.

There’s also currently little resistance to providing contact details for gated content. When promoting whitepapers via email promos, I’ve seen up to 50% higher form completion rates in India compared to the US and UK.

PR
India has a large, free press, with established trade publications for every niche imaginable. It’s usually decent quality too, not just cash for coverage. Unlike in most Western countries, these publications are actually read (rather than sitting for weeks in their plastic wrapper). Find the right publication and you could be reaching tens-of-thousands of people with your articles.

Email & telemarketing
If you’re a fan of email prospecting campaigns, you’ll likely see good results. Compared to more mature markets, the BS detectors are generally low in India, giving higher response rates.

Ditto phone-based communications. Whether direct selling with Inside Sales or nurturing prospects with Sales Dev Reps, we’ve found this to also be a highly effective approach.

Events
Trade shows are big business in India, particularly in Mumbai. International B2B event organizers such as Marcus Evans and IQPC run a regular calendar of conferences usually aimed at higher level execs. A $10k investment can often secure you Gold sponsor status, with a speaking slot, booth, one-to-one meetings with 10+ target prospects, as well as the usual brand exposure.

We’ve also found self-run seminars to be effective, particularly if partnering with an established media or association brand. Webinars haven’t really taken off yet, which is surprising given the atrocious traffic in major cities.

These are just a few broad-based, mainly tactical observations to fuel some thought. If you do decide to dive in, good luck and hopefully these tips will help you go from slumdog to millionaire.

What Hollywood can teach you about writing client case studies

Whether it’s Batman, Spiderman, Bourne or Bond, you know how it goes. First, there’s the scene setting. You get some background about the characters – you understand them, like them, empathize with them. Then the baddy is introduced. The evil that must be overcome. The plot thickens, maybe a few complications thrown in. There’s a struggle, some explosions… And then victory, with everything working out in the end.

If a blockbuster deviates from this, I’m tearing up my ticket.

This tried & tested formula is also the perfect structure for your client case studies. Background > Challenges > Solution > Results. If I read a case study that doesn’t follow this plotline, it jars. It just isn’t taking me where I want to go.

Getting a star performance from your client

Now that you have your plot, the all-important next step is to ask your client the right questions to populate this storyboard. Here’s a generic client case study interview framework I stole from a journalist and have been using variations of for years:

1) Background
a) Thanks for your time. Can you tell me a bit about your company? (Actually this is just an ice-breaker, you’ll get most of this from the comms-approved website blurb)
b) Can you tell me about your role and key responsibilities?
c) What does a typical working day look like? (At this point, I guarantee they’ll say “There’s no such thing”. Smile and nod understandingly).
d) Can you tell me about the project/task at hand? Size, scope, key stakeholders, objectives.

2) Challenges
a) How were you previously doing things? What were the limitations/problems associated with this?
b) What were the main business drivers behind your company’s decision to use my firm’s product/service? What specific challenges did you face? e.g. time, cost, risk.
c) What were the implications of these challenges? What would be the potential outcome if these were left unaddressed?
d) Why did you select my company? What was the decision-making process? Who was involved?

3) Solution & Implementation
a) What product/service did you select? (You should know this)
b) What was the implementation process?

4) Results & Returns
a) In your role, how do you use my firm’s product/services day-to-day?
b) Who else in your firm derives the most benefit and how?
c) What are the benefits you’ve obtained from my firm’s product/services? How does it help you do your job? (At this point, you may want to have a few suggestions to hand in case they need prompting to say the right thing).
d) Compared to how you previously operated, what measurable returns have you seen? (What you’re looking for here is the moneyshot. A killer line about ROI like, “What used to take 5 days, now it takes 5 minutes. Thanks to your company, we increased our margins by 10%.”)
e) Think that covers everything. Anything else you’d like to add? (The Columbo. Never fails.)

Now you’ve captured the vital info, all you need is some Sorkin-esque prose, Spielberg-esque production and Warner-esque promotion. Voila. A Statue-worthy case study.