Category: Uncategorized

Got this in an email newsletter today from Process Heating (not on their website however):

Results of Process Heating magazine?s electronic survey of industrial electric heater users show that most buyers prefer to purchase their heaters from U.S. companies.
Eighty-eight percent of respondents to the February survey indicated they do not look to China or India for their electric heaters or heating elements. Why not? Here are some direct quotes from respondents.

• We buy American.
• I try to promote the U.S. economy.
• I am comfortable with domestic suppliers.
• Because I live and work in America.
• Good U.S. manufacturers are available.
• Our company typically likes to go with American-made products.
• No reason to, and would prefer buying U.S.-made goods.
• We have an established relationship with a U.S. manufacturer and always patronize American manufacturers.

The February 2005 survey was emailed to more than 5,000 subscribers and had a 6 percent response rate.

So, while it seems that everything is made in China these days, the industrial B2B world still likes to buy American. If you’ve got foreign competition, it would be smart to boast that you are selling domestic products. Instinctively, you might think that doing so is too much ‘talking about us’, but to the buyers there is a benefit: feeling good about their decision.

One of the first topics I discussed on this blog was Industrial Quick Search, whose tagline “The engine inside the engine” defines what they do very well. They are a directory website service to increase visibility of industrial companies like mine. Their high Google rankings and convenient list of suppliers was quickly copied by Thomas Register (now Thomas Net). I joined their listings with the belief that the sooner a searcher can find my website and products, the better.

In recent history, Google has buried or dropped a number of their sites, including the one I am listed on. Traffic dropped significantly, but I am patient to see them recover (dropped to the levels I get from Thomas).

They haven’t been sleeping, adding content to their otherwise spartan directory sites. Now they are adding a new website, www.iqsdirectory.com which aggregates all their listings and looking to add an RFQ tool so that a visitor can blast their request to directory members. This becomes more of a ‘sticky’ website for the repeated industrial product searcher, more like GlobalSpec or ThomasNet.

But, as one person said to me about online directories recently, “what are they really selling?” In IQS’s case, its quality website traffic. Can they deliver like they used to?

One of the frustrations as a salesperson is paperwork. Since we implemented ISO, one of the added forms is a “Request for New Customer” form, that also requests a standard credit app (trade references, duns#, bank info) from all new companies that buy from us.

Apparently is a more common procedure these days, but most buyers don’t send this information with a PO, and most buyers don’t list their name or contact info on their POs. So you’ve got to hunt down the buyer and request that info. I usually wait until I’ve entered the order so I can also tell them what other problems their might be with their PO. At least for us, the ‘request for new customer’ doesn’t slow down the order, which is a competitive advantage over the #1 in our industry who won’t release any order till credit is approved.

So, while filling out one of these forms, I wondered if my new one-man marketing department should create its own ISO procedure requiring detailed info on new customers for demographic analysis? Or at least add these questions to the ‘new customer’ form. Probably better to tack on to someone else’s painful paperwork than add my own, huh? Shouldn’t we treat the customer’s demographic data with as much importance as the customer’s credit info?

I’ve always given my all to help my customers and reps. Its a point of pride to be able to take care of them and make them look good to their peers. But now that I am training my sales replacement so I can concentrate on marketing, I’m finding myself struggling.

Its almost like reading a text book at bed time…I know it is important, the info is good, and it has to get done, but, how the mind wanders and gets sleepy. My most efficient time right now is when my replacement is here training with me a couple hours a day. Its weird to be promoted out of a job and suddenly find that you feel like you can’t do that ‘old’ job up to standard.

Why is this? Perhaps its because my goals have already changed. Or finally getting a sense of completion and release after so many years of just continually juggling from order to order. Whatever it is, it just makes me feel incompetent right now. Must…push…self…harder.

The Marketing Profs just published good, “1,000 foot level” article on B2B copy writing. The basic point is that we are trying to create a relationship between our company and the prospect, and the copy and tone we use in our materials should support that. Telling it like it is not only shows honesty, but makes the benefits clear. Here are their Five B2B Copy Myths and my read on why to bust them. See the article for their detailed reasons.

1. “Don’t be negative”…sometimes you need to remind prospects of consequences so they can open up to your benefits.
2. “Appeal to the intellect, not the emotions”…engineers take pride in their ‘gut’ decisions, so help them feel confident in doing so (see the book Blink)
3. “Lead generation is everything”…breath down their necks trying to capture their phone number and they will immediately back away.
4. “Our mission statement and business philosophy help distinguish our company from the competition”…talk about the customer, not yourself (I hate mission statements anyway.)
5. “Our tone must be professional and businesslike”…skip the jargon and “be direct, forceful and concrete.”

With the slight rise in visibility this blog has had lately, I’ve gotten a few interesting emails this week. People asking questions, looking for help, or hoping for exposure of their services. Here’s an interesting one just because their product is innovative and their website interesting:

2 Minute Explainers offers to make short flash videos that try to explain your company or products capabilities and value in, you guessed it, two minutes. Probably it is more specifically a canned ‘elevator pitch’, assuring that your initial introduction is consistant and compelling. Makes me think about the Top Ten Reasons to select our product PDF/PowerPoint that I was making last year specifically for emailing to new prospects. The 2 Minute Explainers show a lot of work, but very compelling, much better than the old ‘flash intro’ site started adding a few years ago.

The site also has a number of interesting articles about marketing and presentations, certainly demonstrating the skill and knowledge they have, making them seem trustworthy to turn over your message to. Here’s a sample: Five ways to improve how you sell your ideas in print.

1) Use shorter lines
2) Don’t double space
3) Use more white space
4) Try adding linespace with sans-serif fonts like Arial and Helvetica
5) Use typographic characters

Its been interesting hearing what comes out of my mouth as I train my replacement take my sales job. The most interesting to me are my explanations of the unseen part of the job and lessons I’ve learned. I’ve been trying to warn him that instinct is a part of the job that he will have to grow into. “Don’t give too much information or you give a prospect an additional chance to object, but deciding what ‘too much’ is takes some experience”, for example.

In preparation for training, I did come up with what I think is a useful meme for helping the new guy assimilate information about his new job…”the four Ps”. Not the same four as us marketers use, but maybe you’ll see a resemblance:

• Product: Things to learn about what you are selling and how to present them.
• Process: How to actually do the job, use software, follow procedures.
• Politics: How to interact with different people who depend on you, and who you depend.
• Place: Getting your new work environment prepared.

I’ve told him that the first P is the most important for him right now. Customers and reps will be depending on him as an information source, so he’s got to learn the Product, or know where he can find detailed info on it.

For the last ten years, I’ve been the sole person doing marketing at my company, in addition to my original job as inside salesperson. In what was a three person office at the time, it was a decision of economics and efficiency. Having a salesperson also handle the marketing provided synergy that made sure the company message matched the needs of salespeople and their customers. I don’t think our website would be half as good if I wasn’t able to hang up with a new prospect and immediately modify our website to answer his questions (or fix errors).

Now with more than double the team and a couple new product launches to manage, its time for me to let go of the sales job. Personally, the sales job was getting tedious and unrewarding anyway. Management has seen fit to move me to full-time marketing manager, which is the reason I went back to school for my MBA five years ago. I’m pleased for myself, but also pleased that the company saw fit to invest in its infrastructure by realizing that marketing now needs to be a dedicated effort.

Over the next month, I must train one of our engineers in the fine art of inside sales (expect several posts on this process). I will miss talking to my sales reps and favorite customers on a regular basis, but look forward to making our company more professional, our salespeople more effective, and our customer more satisfied. I’ve got a list of marketing tasks I started on the plane home from California two weeks ago that I’m dying to tackle.

Oh, and….yippee!!!

I guess there is a learning curve any kind of software. But aren’t we all a little impatient to get to work, and we think we know how it works anyway. So it was with my first attempt at importing leads from our trade shows into Goldmine. Here are some of the issues I had:

• GM looks for txt files to import by default, which means it found my tab-delimited export from Excel quickly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t recognize the tab as a delimiter. Instead I had to view ‘all files’ and find the CSV (comma separated) export.
• I also had to drop the quotation marks (which Excel automatically generated) as a way to lock text elements together, in order for GM to recognize the records. Not a big deal until later.
• The phone numbers didn’t load because they had parentheses and dashes. Deleted the imported records, fixed the CSV file, and started over.
• Found out that the problem with not having quotation marks active during import meant that addresses and company names with commas make for big problems. Found it easier to manually fix the offending records.
• Zip codes from the Northeast US didn’t import properly because they didn’t have a zero at the beginning. Manually fixed these to. (How do you keep a leading zero in a CSV or txt file?)
• The first time I tried to mail-merge cover letters, nothing happened. I think this was caused by the fact that I already had another Word document open.
• The second mail-merge went much better. But I didn’t get a print dialog box, so I couldn’t pick the paper-tray with letterhead in it. 47 individual print jobs to wait for, or try to cancel.

I would suggest using mailing labels as a way of previewing the imported records quickly. I wish I had done that instead of rushing to do the letters first.

Don’t take my word for it, see what Jim Logan has to say about a couple successful campaigns he has run recently: JSLogan – Paper Direct Mail is Not Dead

Direct mail has always been on my marketing wish list. Jim makes it sound so easy…letter, stamp, then start booking appointments. The message and the list are so important, though.