CREATING THE B2B CUSTOMER

Alan/Anthony, Inc. - Spring 2007

"Sales" is to "Marketing" as "Fiber" is to

Cereal

California

Satellite

Advertising

By Robert Bell, Senior Partner, Alan/Anthony

If you grew up in the USA, the title of this issue may revive unpleasant memories. (If you were educated elsewhere, this kind of infamous analogy used to appear in the SAT exam, which is used to judge high school students on their readiness for university.) Analogy questions asked students to make often incongruous connections. Is "medicine" to "illness" as "love" is to "treason," or is it as "law" is to "anarchy?" (See below for answer.)

Our purpose here is not to bring back memories of childhood trauma but to make a point. Time and again, we have seen that people who run companies and the people who sell their products and services do not grasp the difference between sales and marketing. As a result, good companies waste time, effort and money, and get in the way of their own success.

"Sales" Is To "Marketing" as "Fiber" Is To "Satellite"

That's the correct answer. By "fiber," we mean the optical fiber used in high-bandwidth communications. As telecom junkies will attest, optical fiber excels as a route from one point to another. Not only can it carry an almost unlimited amount of data - whether TV pictures or Internet packets - but fiber transmission has also become incredibly cheap following the over-building of the telecom bubble.

Satellite, on the other hand, excels as a high-bandwidth route from one point to many other points. Think of television. A signal is beamed from the broadcast center up to a satellite, which beams back a perfect copy of that signal. Every antenna within the satellite's beam is capable of receiving it. For this kind of one-way, broadcast traffic, it costs no more to connect 10,000 points than it does to connect just one.

The Golden Rules of Marketing

So, in our analogy, sales is like point-to-point fiber. It is a one-to-one, interactive process between a salesperson and prospect. While making a sale, you can introduce a message, see if it works, and, when required, adjust immediately. Evolving the story as you go, you can create the best fit with a prospect's needs. A good salesperson interacts with the customer in an intensely creative way, and that creativity often takes place “on the fly” and in the moment.

Marketing, on the other hand, is like satellite communications. It is a one-way "push" to the entire market, from prospects and customers to the business press. Through public relations, email broadcasts, direct mail, trade shows, conference presentations, special events, and white papers you reach everyone at the same time. That can be very powerful. But you can squander that power and actually damage your cause if you approach marketing as though it were a sale.

Professional, successful marketing follows three Golden Rules:

1.	Get your story straight. In marketing, you can't evolve your story through feedback with a prospect. You're "talking" to thousands of people at one time, and they can't for the most part talk back. If you try out three or four messages on them, you will only cause confusion. Instead, you must put time and energy into making sure the message is as powerful and relevant as possible before you take it public. You do research, identify needs, decide how your products and services can best meet those needs, then craft a persuasive value proposition with strong appeal to the average prospect.

2.	Tell your story. Tell your story, then tell your story and tell it some more! Once you have an effective story, you need to tell it a lot. This requires a coordinated program that delivers the message multiple times in multiple ways: sales literature, Web site, mailings, the graphics in your trade show booth, the PowerPoint presentations your salespeople use, press releases and public relations. Repetition of the message is the only way to give it impact.

3.	Stick to your story. Keep your story consistent for months and, if it is successful, much longer. Not only will consistency help a message get through, it also makes the message more believable. When you hear the same story over and over again for a long time, you're likely to think that it is true, unless you have good reason to disbelieve it. This is called "common wisdom," and it is a powerful ally to have on your side.

And that's why "sales" is to "marketing" as "fiber" is to "satellite." Sales is two-way and one-to-one. Marketing is one-way broadcasting. Remembering the difference can save you a lot of money and make you even more money over the long haul.

(Answer: "Medicine" is to "illness" as "law" is to "anarchy.")

News Briefs

In January, the Marketing & Business Communications Division of Bowne & Co. retained Alan/Anthony to provide marketing communications services. Bowne (NYSE: BNE) provides financial, marketing and business communications services around the world. Dealmakers rely on Bowne to handle critical transactional communications with speed and accuracy. Compliance professionals turn to Bowne to prepare and file regulatory and shareholder communications online and in print. Marketers look to Bowne to create and distribute customized, one-to-one communications on-demand. With 3,200 employees in 60 offices around the globe, Bowne has met the ever-changing demands of its clients for more than 230 years.

AAI's senior partners Louis Zacharilla and Robert Bell will lead a May 17-18 conference, Building the Broadband Economy 2007, at the Brooklyn campus of Polytechnic University. Now in its fourth year, Building the Broadband Economy is an international meeting place and idea exchange for local government officials and their private-sector partners in telecom, IT, finance, real estate and consulting. It's a unique opportunity to learn from the world's most innovative communities how they have made the broadband economy work for them, sometimes against great odds. It offers a global perspective on the best ways to create broadband infrastructure, attract knowledge workers, foster innovation and implement e-government programs that contribute to economic growth and bridge the digital divide. More information at the Forum Web site.

Recently, Senior Partner Louis Zacharilla -

Moderated a panel on January 16 on "Satellite Applications That Open Asia-Pacific Markets" at PTC'07, the annual conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council. Panelists included Andreas Georghiou, CEO of Spacenet; Malcolm Warren, Asia-Pacific Director for ViaSat; John Dwyer, CEO of End II End Communications; and David Ball, Asia Vice President for Intelsat.
Emceed the February 20 Teleport Awards for Excellence Luncheon at SATELLITE 2007 in Washington. Congratulations to winners Arqiva Satellite Media Solutions, Echostar Satellite, RRSat Global Communciations CEO David Rivel, and Comtech EF Data.

Senior Partner Robert Bell -

Moderated a November 30 panel session at SATCON 2007 in New York. "The Media Food Chain” featured Barbara Jaffe, SVP, Network Operations for Home Box Office; Gwynne McConkey, SVP, Operations, Information Systems and Technology for Lifetime Entertainment; and John Honeycutt, SVP, Television Operations Group, Discovery Communications.
Moderated a February 20 panel on "Growing the Enterprise Market" at SATELLITE 2007 in Washington. Panelists included Abel Avellan, President, Emerging Markets Communications; John Dwyer, CEO, End II End Communications and Errol Olivier, former President, CapRock Communications.

B2B Without the BS, by Alan/Anthony’s senior partners Robert Bell and Louis Zacharilla, is a frank, no-bull guide to marketing strategy, marketing tactics and sales management in the unique B2B space. To see what the president of one of the satellite industry's leading engineering companies has to say about it, read his review on Amazon.com.

For more information on effective B2B sales and marketing, contact Alan/Anthony at lzacharilla@alananthony.com or call +1 212-825-1582 ext 102. Complete information on Alan/Anthony's services is available at www.alananthony.com. Click here to unsubscribe.