From a reader: [The] Suspense is killing me. Geoff, PLEASE tell me you will address the alternative to selling a thing/solution soon (ie the proper way to describe the value you are selling.) Is it stories about customer success? Is it positioning a system as a “tool” or “means to an end result?” I agree with what you are saying and face the challenge of obliterating the word “solution” from the marketing collateral I help write every day.

Excellent question.

Decision-makers seldom, if ever, read brochures or product data sheets or any of the traditional marketing materials. If they’re needed at all, such materials should be specifically targeted at lower-level folk (gatekeepers and speedbumps) who worry about such details. When a company decides to sell M2M — which is where the big B2B money is located — they’re making a decision to operate on a level where mass-produced marketing materials are ineffective. What’s important in these high-level sales situations are:

1. The credibility of the sales rep as a potential manager of a function. This comes from the education, background, experience and appearance that the rep brings to the table. The rep must look, act, talk and think like a manager who would be responsible for that function inside the customer’s organization.
2. The reputation of the firm as a provider of a function more effectively than if provided within the customer’s own firm. This reputation comes primarily from colleague-to-colleague referrals rather than specific marketing materials.

Here’s an example. Suppose you’re selling Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Nearly every CRM vendor in business today sells CRM as a “solution” using brochures, canned presentations, and websites to communicate the technical superiority of their product or “solution.” They typically take a bottoms-up approach and either try to get line sales managers or IT managers interested in their product, and then help them sell the software purchase up the line, in order to secure IT budget dollars.

Contrast that with the approach taken by BearingPoint, the $3.4 billion-a-year management consulting firm. Their CRM practice comes into an account with the message (backed by testimonials and references) that they can help make their client’s selling process more productive. They study the customer’s current sales process and technology, provide recommendations for improvements, and then implement those improvements through a combination of sales training and technology. They use whatever outside-built products (like Oracle Siebel) that are required to achieve that goal. Essentially, BearingPoint takes ownership of the cultural and technological change effort that would otherwise need to be driven from within, had the customer elected to simply purchase a CRM license.

Needless to say, BearingPoint sales reps call at the CSO level and above. To satisfy the product-oriented thinking in the lower levels (like the IT manager who’s concerned with compatibility), they simply use the product brochures supplied by the CRM vendors. The software “solution” is thus a detail — an element in an entire programme of outsourced change management that leads towards greater sales productivity.

Does this mean that software companies can’t make money selling just software? Not at all. But since CRM is not yet a plug-and-play application and typically involves the redefinition of sales processes, extensive training and behavioral changes, CRM vendors must either:

1. Supply those services themselves and become an outsourcer of the “sales process transformation and evolution” function.
2. Become an “outsourcer” of CRM software to organizations (like BearingPoint) who are themselves outsourcers of that function.
3. Depend upon the customer to provide the bulk of that function themselves, drawing upon the customers (probably meager) expertise.

The third option, which is practically universal among CRM vendors, carries a large risk of failure. Customers wrongly think that adding a CRM “solution” is like adding word processing or email, and have no idea of how to make the changes in sales process required to make CRM into an effective tool. Not surprisingly, CRM implementations have an high failure rate (i.e. > 50 percent), and CRM software often ends up as shelfware that never gets used.

The correct sales and marketing approach for each of the above strategies is:

1. M2M selling at the executive level inside customer accounts. All marketing materials will be customized — like RFP responses. Referral selling will play the major lead generation role.
2. M2M selling at the Value Added Reseller (VAR) level. Marketing materials will center around the vendor’s ability to support the VAR in the selling and delivery of the “sales process transformation and evolution” function.
3. Pretend that CRM is a plug-and-play application, convince the customer of same, and then cross your fingers every time a system goes in, and then pray that the entire project doesn’t turn into a gigantic PR disaster.  About 90 percent of the CRM vendors follow this strategy.

In other words, obliterating the word “solution” from your marketing materials isn’t going to help, if you’re still trying to pursue a product-driven strategy. It isn’t about what words are used in the brochure but how the your company’s capabilities are to be positioned in the minds of decision-makers. Does that help?

Original post by Geoffrey James

Corporations spend billions of dollars a year on sales training worldwide, so you’d think that sales executives would know whether that money was well spent. But you’d be wrong. Sad to say, the most common way to measure the effectiveness of sales training is through anecdotal evidence r

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As both an affiliate marketer and product owner I see a lot of good and poor merchants who are looking for you, the affiliate marketer, to represent their product. Read on for tips and signs of a good product and product owner to represent as an affiliate …. Download the ebook version of this if you like which contains resale rights. You may sell the book version of this for whatever you think it’s worth keeping all links and material intact.

Where to Find Products Well, as an author and product owner obviously I’d like you to pick me , I even have a large collection of books and software I’ve either written or acquired with resale rights so you can own them outright and start your own collection of products for which you may wish to utilize the talents of affiliate marketers, but if I want to find another product to represent, first, I’ll check with those people with whom I have established a relationship. Not finding a suitable product for my marketing needs with them I may check my Clickbank storefront and do a search for the type of product for which I’m looking. This is also a quick way to get a start as a free version is also offered.

Although an owner of a Pro Storefront myself, I admit to enjoying searching for and marketing individual products as well as writing my own. The next place I’ll look is the Paydotcom market place. Both Clickbank and Paydotcom offer free signups for affiliates. Finally last but not least, I’ll check Payloadz merchants who have affiliate programs.

Now that you know where, let’s move onto some additional questions. Are You Interested in The Product? If this is your first affiliate product pick something you’re interested in yourself. People buy for emotional reasons and later on figure out logical reasons why they bought. It’s much easier for you to be excited and discuss the benefits of a product you’re interested in and people will sense your excitement!

Anyone who has known me more than one day knows I’m a martial artist. I’ll discuss the benefits of martial arts training all day to anyone who will listen. People take martial arts for fitness, self-defense, weight loss … well, you get the idea.

If this isn’t your first product and you want to find a popular product my storefront shows the number of downloads. Another way to find popular products is to open up my Submission Sites Clickable ebook, go to the list of article submission sites (a good free way of marketing) click on a site to open the web page and see what topics on which marketers are writing articles. Does The Product Fit Your Website? Even though I love martial arts, if I’m selecting a product for my education subindex or Steve Weber’s full time pet supply site, I’ll need to select a more appropriate product or, since domain names and web space is so cheap now, just start another website. Will The Product Sales Page Help You or Hurt You Look for leaks. A leak is a chance a prospect may click off the sales page without ordering a product for which you’d be paid. An example of a leak is my own sales page for my Affiliate Page Maker.

Why do I have leaks on my own product page? It’s a $2.00 product with resale and giveaway rights. I can’t feed the family on that too much unless they upgrade or order one of the other products. Notice the 2.00 order link takes the prospect to a page showing the difference between the $2.00 version and the enhanced version, thus helping the guest see the advantages of the enhanced program. This is referred to as an upsell.

Here’s an example of a page designed to target martial artist interested in increasing their striking power Notice the testimonials with a final one from a female champion near the order link who read my book. I ask for an optin via my self-defense tips newsletter. The only leak is the search box at the very bottom. Since I have such a huge website, I’d rather people stay on my site instead of the search engines.

Look for multiple order options. let’s say for example someone is trying to sign up Paydotcom affiliates You look at the sales page and discover the merchant is offering a Clickbank order option on the same page. That means there’s a 50 - 50 chance of you, as an affiliate, being paid for your work.

An exception to this rule would be my Paypal Order Form Maker which, like the Affiliate Page Maker offers a cheap promotional resale rights version of the program. As long as the purchase link inside the program will give you credit if prospects buy the full version later on this will help you and not hurt you. Something I recently started doing to make my affiliates are paid is to offer custom resale rights versions to anyone who has ordered the full version with my affiliate’s link right in the program he or she sells or gives away. Is There Contact Information? A few years ago I decided to attempt to increase my affiliate base by going through the Clickbank Market Place and contacting the merchants. My plan was to become their affiliate and give them my affiliate information in exchange. What I discovered was a severe lack of contact information on these pages. Some of these pages didn’t even have offers for newsletters, also known as ezines which is short for electronic magazine. Based on that experience I wrote What Does a Good Sales Web Page Need? Most merchants still don’t have contact information, but those that have newsletters will often respond to their readers. I’d say I’m about 95% successful in receiving emails back from merchants by subscribing to their newsletters and emailing them from there.

Why else do you want to subscribe to their newsletters? To check for leaks in the newsletter itself! It won’t help you even if you have a one year cookie like Paydotcom if the merchant’s newsletter offers payment directly to Paypal. Are There Affiliate Tools Available?

I really don’t see this from merchants as much as I’d like to, but articles, book covers and email templates do make an affiliate’s business easier. Naturally I’ve done my best to provide tools for my affiliates. Any articles I’ve written can be changed by my affiliates to their affiliate link using software I’ve written. My index page of my products produced by my HTML Indexer can be copied and pasted into emails with my affiliate’s link and any graphics or covers for my books and software can easily be taken and used by my affiliates. Conclusion Finding the right product and merchant is fairly easy following the above steps. I hope you consider representing my products as well.

About the Author

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AffiliateTools/files/

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