Sales and Marketing Performance Blog

Holiday Reads for Hi-tech Entrepreneurs, Marketers and Salespeople

I have read some really important books this year that expanded my view of the World and gained valuable insight and I wanted share my top reads in 2009 with you and include links to either Amazon or to my reviews. Please feel free to recommmend any of your favorites that have a base in science and serve to expand our understanding of the sales and marketing sphere.

1. Diffusion of Innovations, by Everett Rogers. The book that spawned a thousand books including Crossing the Chasm, Tipping Point and Why Killer Products don't Sell, - see review below. Compulsory reading for entrpreneurs, sellers and marketers of novel technology. Originally published in 1962, the 5th edition is published in 2003 and updated for the Internet. Interestingly Rogers in this update refutes the existence of a chasm between innovator, early adopter and early majority and states that it is a continuous variable with no sharp breaks. Start-ups that fail, typically have serious product positioning and marketing problems and fail to engage and sell early adopters. 
   
   
2. Why Killer Products Don't Sell, Ian Gotts, Dominic Rowsell. After reading his book I engaged and am partnered with Dominic Rowsell to include the insight from this work in my Sales and Marketing training courses.  Critical insights for venture investors, entrepreneurs sales and marketing professionals on the IMPACT Cycle and how how people buy and a valuable contribution to the growing body of sales knowledge. A short read, but one you will find yourself marking up and revisiting. See my review.
   
   
3. Talent is Overrated, by Geoffrey Colvin. For sales managers trainers and anyone involved in coaching or training, this is an important book. Citing a lot of work done by Prof. Anders Ericsson on the role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. It takes 10,000 hours or 10 years deliberate practice (out of your comfort zone, getting feedback from expert coaches) to become outstanding at anything. Anyone can be great, if they are prepared to put in the hours. Most people are not and this is explains why sales people get to a certain level of performance and never improve beyond it. See my review in Sales Talent is Overrated
   
   
4. The Nature of Technology, by W. Brian Arthur. I have been in the technology business since I left school nearly 40 years ago. That was an exciting time with the birth of the 7400 TTL series integrated circuits and having witnessed first hand the hundreds of thousands of technology platforms and products that have built on the Integrated Circuit. Arthur coins a new phrase to describe the advances in technology as "combinatorial evolution"; whereas in nature, evolution is biological and subject to the Darwinian laws of natural selection, technology evolves as a result of combinations of existing technologies and methods to create new innovations, the critical ingredient in the process is human knowledge and ingenuity. Good background for anyone in the business of innovation. See my review of The Nature of Technology
   
   
5. Inbound Marketing, by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan. We have been HubSpot customers for the past 12 months and HubSpot partners for the past 4 months. This is a "how-to" for anyone interested in Inbound Marketing from the people who coined the phrase and are building a very exciting company at HubSpot. By planning to implement all of the ideas in this book in 2010, you will capitalize on a phenomena that is rapidly changing the marketing World.  Simple straight forward ideas, well presented with numerous real-World examples. See my review of Inbound Marketing
   
   
6. Plan B 4.0,  Lester Brown.
   A little off the technology topic, but very important. If you don't read anything else this year, you must read this book. This book is about saving the planet and our civilization and addresses the major problems facing our generation, our children and generations to come; desertification, poverty, climate change, over-population, food and water. Brown has harnessed some of the best and brightest minds in thew World to pull together viable solutions to our problems. Read this book and get involved in the movement.

I'd be happy for you to add any books you would like to recommend. Please keep on topic which is to expand our understanding of the World in which we live and how science and technology are being applied to improve sales and marketing performance.

 

 

 

Are Marketing People Needed in Selling SaaS Solutions?

This is the second part of an article Are Sales People needed in Selling SaaS solutions written in response to conversations with three entrepreneurs who have created, or are creating SaaS solutions to serve very specific needs for a well-defined market opportunity. In conversation it emerged that none of them were planning on having any sales people in their business.

The next question I asked was, are you planning on having any marketing people in your business? The answer in each case was  either part time, or, we are not ready to hire yet. What is the role of marketing in a SaaS business? I offer the following definition of the role of marketing in a SaaS business,"Marketing identifies, attracts and incubates leads."

In the third step in this journey I went to each entrepreneurs Website and was not surprised to find highly product focused messages which were barely intelligible through the benefit statements and what David Meerman Scott calls product-speak gobbledygook; peppered with words like "next generation", flexible," "robust," "world class," "scalable," and "easy to use,", not forgeting "cutting edge," "mission critical," "market leading," "industry standard," "turnkey," and "groundbreaking," and the old favorites "best of breed," and "user friendly." 

The other problem with these sites was that they did not engage me around my issues and they did not encourage me to hang around.

So are marketers required in SaaS businesses? If you have gotten this far without reading the prior article, please stop now and read the prior article Are Sales People needed in Selling SaaS solutions, before reading on.

Marketing’s role in selling to the early market

To succeed in achieving early adoption of SaaS solutions, marketers must create mindshare at the individual level and establish thought leadership at the system level, by focusing on sector-based initiatives...when the World is a click away, focus is required.

To create awareness, interest and inbound inquiries, marketers need to incorporate "buyer-relevant" messaging focused on the persona's of the buyers in target sectors on the company's Internet site to garner mindshare in individuals and thought leadership at the system level, through a combination of the following content creation activities;-

• Redeveloping Website messaging to be buyer-relevant, rather than product-focused,
  
• Blogging regularly on topics of interest to buyer-persona,
• Optimizing the Website and blog-posts for SEO,
• Building inbound links with partners, interested visitors and industry thought leaders to increase Google rankings,
• Creating and archiving Webinars, videos and podcasts, which are instantly playable or downloadable,
• Creating e-books and white papers that pull prospects, which can be easily shared and which amplify your ideas through social networks. 
• Reaching out to interested individuals via opt-in email and RSS subscriptions

In “Diffusion of Innovations”, Everett Rogers examines the role of individual thresholds of adoption and the role of social networks to achieve critical mass at a system level. As mentioned in the prior article, Social Networks are inside their own "hypergrowth Tornado" of adoption and are core to the marketing mix.

Inbound Marketing platforms such as HubSpot offer an ideal set of integrated marketing and social networking tools for the entrepreneur and marketer to systematically create mindshare and generate inbound leads from interested individuals. 

Using inbound marketing platforms like Hubspot, an entrepreneur may find that the combination of tools provided and the range of services available from the supporting Hubspot partner community can provide a low cost and highly effective alternative hiring marketers....at least until sufficient momentum and cash is available in the business to support a full time marketer.

For a more complete discussion on this topic, please download our free white paper - Convert Inbound Lead Generation into Better Sales Performance.

For specific recommendations in improving inbound marketing and sales performance, you could register to download our Guide to Better Sales Performance.