I do a lot of work for B2B companies that sell really complex stuff. I interview their customers constantly.

And there is no question in my mind now that THE most important sales tool is something that isn't even on the radar of most marketers: the product manual.

I've been telling clients for years that there is no such thing as a "virgin environment." Someone buying something that is going into his existing environment knows that he has to make sure that it will work with all the other things in that environment.

Greenhorn buyers attempt to find that information on the website or even in PDF datasheets. They try asking salespeople. But the cognoscenti (the majority of your buyers) have been disappointed so often, using these methods, that they don't bother. Instead, they go straight for the manual, which they hope to find on the website in downloadable form.

Interviewing thousands of customers about their buying process has convinced me that while the buyer is attempting to buy something he wants, he is also determined to see through any deception or manipulation. Sellers are often convinced by gurus that manipulation is the right way to increase sales; it is a strategy that directly contradicts one of the buyer’s main goals: “I will not be fooled.” Here is Part 2 of a 4-part series, in which we examine how customers choose a product or service. Part 1 (How Customers Decide to Buy) is here, if you haven’t read it yet.

Once buyers have developed a need, they begin their buying process. They go online and do their research, and/or ask around. But just knowing that buyers go online, and having a website and a social presence, is not enough to ensure the buyer will choose you. You need to know

Continuous interviews of buyers have convinced me that buyers have become so successful in creating their own "recommendation engine communities" that they are now able to learn just about everything they need to know about a product or service, without reading a single word of marketing copy or without talking to a salesperson. 

In other words, customers are making marketing copy and salespeople irrelevant. In this article, I'll focus on the selling side.

Customers always hated talking with salespeople, but before the web, online reviews, and social media, they had no alternative. Now they can efficiently find people like themselves, with similar interests, who can steer them in the right direction. Marketers see social media tools as marketing tools; customers see them as their buying tools. And they are really getting good at using them. 

They can search online, visit relevant sites, read blogs, watch videos, ask for advice from social media contacts, read reviews by other customers and journalists, ask questions

Frank Dale is the CEO of Compendium, a fast-growing content management company. Just before he became CEO, he did something all CEOs should do: He interviewed customers. But he didn’t just interview a few; he interviewed 100. In my mind, this puts Frank in a very special category.  

Compendium started out as a blog content management platform; as they’ve grown, the platform has expanded to include all types of marketing content, including content for social channels. 

There are a lot of things about the Compendium tool that make sense from the marketer’s perspective - including how the marketing calendar is designed. Each entry in the calendar appears in red, orange or green. Red means the marketer hasn’t gotten the draft; orange means it’s in review, and green means it’s ready to publish. At a glance, you can see which projects are on time and which ones are behind. You can also know, over time, which of your content authors are habitually late or on time. You can use that information to publicly motivate your authors to do the right thing.

The entertainment industry tends to portray people in business as greedy, selfish jerks. I spent a number of years in that industry, and I can understand why they think that way. Most of the people in power in that particular industry really are greedy and selfish.

Any industry that requires you to be thinking of yourself 24/7 tends to attract a certain type of person. I decided to leave show business because I knew that if I stayed in it, I would be ruining my chances of being the kind of person I wanted to be.

But the "jerk quotient" can also increase as companies grow. I’ve worked with hundreds of CEOs, entrepreneurs and other managers running companies of all sizes. There's no question that the bigger the company gets, the greater the possibility that it will be filled with jerks, unless the founder is absolutely devoted to customers and employees.

Thanks to site tracking, cookies, and A/B testing, you can monitor and analyze what any person does on your website, and how they respond to your content. So why are companies still struggling to produce content that helps them sell? 

Because metrics can tell you what, who, and how, but not why. If you don’t know the why, you don’t know what you have to do to sell more.

I’m writing this post because I feel sorry for all the companies that waste so much time and money on websites that don’t move the revenue needle. I am saddened to see managers being misled by their tracking results. I’m tired of everyone thinking that A/B testing is the end-all, when it never tells you the all-important WHY. 

All of this weblog analysis and A/B testing, if not coupled with real-customer-interview research, falls into the same old stupid category of

The other day I stumbled across a link to an article entitled, “10 Questions You Should Ask Your Customers to Understand Them Better.” Of course, you know I had to click on that article, which appeared on Andrew Hunt’s Inbound Sales and Marketing blog. 

The minute I began reading I knew I was reading words that I had written. I quickly scrolled down to the “10 questions” – and there they were, the very same questions that I developed conducting thousands of customer interviews. 

It’s a bad feeling when this happens, when your copy – especially copy that came from so many years of hard-earned experience – is staring back at you from a website or blog, and your name isn’t anywhere to be found. 

In this case, the entire article was lifted directly from my book, Roadmap to Revenue. Unfortunately, this is the second time this has happened. Andrew had done the same thing with another article, last year, copying a sidebar from my book and making it look as if it were his own. In that instance, we had exchanged emails and talked on the phone; he assured me it would never happen again. But it turned out he had also copied my content and another author's content (

My inbox is so full of "fake friends" these days that I use a web-based mail portal to delete their messages - and all the other messages I don't want - before I download my mail to Outlook throughout the day.

You can tell by the subject line that it's not a real friend. My real friends would never put "Mrs." in their email address, and they would certainly not say, "For Your Kind Attention," nor would they say, "Your" when they meant to say "You're" as in, "Your going to love this!"

These emails are so lame. So boooring! And they have ruined email as a marketing vehicle for those of us who are legitimate marketers. The problem with all channels - all through marketing history - is that they always get saturated by the hucksters.

Howard Gossage was a brilliant ad man, back in the day. He was a quirky genius who thought out of the box and was definitely ahead of his time. For a high-end shirt company, he offered potential customers a sample - a hankerchief-sized piece of cloth with a pocket on it and a buttonhole, so the potential customer could experience for himself how well those shirts were made. When he had a gas station franchise company as a client, he advertised that their tire-filling equipment dispersed pink air. He told long, fascinating stories in ads for a liquor company that literally put them on the map. He and his friends started the entire message-on-a-T-shirt craze by inventing the first Beethoven sweatshirt for Rainier, the ale company.

Yep, I've been very busy with client work, as you may have guessed. As you know, I don't post unless/until I have something helpful and well-thought-out to share with you. I have several new posts in the works. 

In the meantime, here's a fun 20-minute podcast interview I did recently with Michelle Davidson at RainToday (a great site for service business owners) about how buyers have changed the way they buy - and what business owners can do about it. 

Click here to see the short intro article and hear the podcast. 

Michelle is very sharp and I had a great time talking with her. 

Enjoy.

kz

Selling was something that worked when the customer knew less than you did. Selling was something that worked when customers had to depend almost exclusively on companies for information about products produced by those companies. Selling was all about "convincing" someone that they "needed" something.

Well, those days are gone, over, kaput. Not in the minds of company managers, sales managers, or salespeople, mind you. Nope, they're still playing the game as if selling still works, and selling still matters. It doesn't.

Customers begin their buying process with a need and a set of questions. Note that the need already exists. They start their research doing one of two things: they search on Google (for Low- to Medium-Scrutiny products and services) or they talk to their peers (for Heavy-Scrutiny and Intense-Scrutiny products and services). They start getting answers and recommendations, from other customers who have purchased the same product or service that they are thinking of buying. In other words, they turn to the Customer Community for answers - using reviews, discussion groups, blogs, and direct contact via email and conversations.

As a revenue coach, I do not consider my work successful until sales start going up. And sales will not go up until the CEO and other top managers make the mental shift from company-centered to customer-centric. 

Traditional methods of customer research do not flip that switch. I know, because I’ve seen them all fail: focus groups, online surveys, email surveys, and so on. 

Social media also belongs on the “fail” list. Executives believe that they are hearing what they need to hear from customers via that channel, but they’re not. Social media channels are dominated by ravers and whiners. The bulk of any company’s customers fall somewhere in between. They suffer, or walk away, in silence. 

This is especially true in the B2B markets, where people are cautious about what they say in social media channels - including LinkedIn. They know perfectly well that their bosses, competitors, and potential employers have access to those messages, and they are very careful what they talk about and how they say it. So the messages that companies get from social media don

The majority of CEOs and entrepreneurs still think that yesterday’s aggressive, cold-calling, hard-sell methods are still working. The truth is, using these tactics is more likely to irritate and repel your customer than to make them want to buy from you. How do customers want to be contacted? We answer this question in Part 3 of our 4-part series debunking common marketing and selling myths. If you arrived late to the party, here are Part 1 (How Customers Decide to Buy) and Part 2 (How Customers Choose a Product).

You just sat down to dinner. Your phone rings. You answer it, and a motor-mouth, angry-sounding recorded voice starts yelling in your ear, telling you that “you have been chosen,” or that “your credit rating may be in danger,” or that “[So-and-So Candidate] has an urgent message for you!” Click. Back to dinner.

Who on earth are they selling to? Forrest Gump? Someone who will patiently wait through the entire message, and then innocently give his credit card information to a call-out-of-the-blue telemarketer? It

I just finished interviewing a very smart customer for one of my clients. He’s a high-level manager in a tech company, a buyer of my client’s business services. 

During the interview, he explained how there were always two forces working against my client’s services: the comparable cost of accomplishing the same services in-house, and the fact that this customer is constantly pitched by competitive firms. 

Every so often, his own manager comes in and asks, “Are you still getting value for your money?” The customer is expected to have proof at his fingertips when that happens. He wants to be able to say, “Yes, they accomplished X last quarter for Y dollars. If we tried to do the same thing in-house, it would have cost us Z more.” Or, “Yes, last month they figured out how to improve on the automated portion of this process, and now we are getting that part done twice as fast, with fewer bugs. They also told us about a new tool they

I recently gave two keynotes for MarketingSherpa's B2B Summits, and am also doing some webinars for MarketingProfs. Prior to these events, I interviewed marketers who would be attending, so I could meet my goal of delivering presentations that were helpful, eye-opening, and radically career-enhancing.

These interviews are a good example of the Roadmap method in action, and the results were predictably successful. When I did speak in Boston and San Francisco, no one was doing their email or playing with their iPads while I was speaking, and there was a long line of very enthusiastic marketers getting their books signed after I spoke.

During the course of the interviews, one of the questions I asked was: What is the source of your information about customers?

They all said the same thing. Every single one. Small and large companies, newbies and veterans, all kinds of industries.

Their answer, in essence, was:

I keep track of the number of people who contact me who then end up becoming clients. My closing rate is currently at 96%. Since I started keeping track of it in 2008, it has consistently been in the low or mid-90’s.  

I think I can safely say that this is an exceptional closing rate, one that any salesperson would love to achieve, given that the average is closer to 15% - 25%. I’m going to tell you how I do it. 

First I should say that my closing rate would be closer to 100% if I took on jerks as clients, or if jerks were comfortable working with me. Neither is true. If, during the first phone call, I sense that a jerk is on the line, I find a way to back out. I also make jerks uncomfortable, which is OK with me. Manipulators don’t like my straightforward approach, and usually decide during our first conversation (or even just reading my blog content) that I am not a fit for them. This accounts for the remaining 4%.

"What I do is call my client's customers . . . " I said, in a dinner conversation with a marketer, at a conference.

“And they all say something different,” he interrupted, proudly, and laughing, because this was his own favorite rationale for not calling his own customers. 

“No,” I replied. “That’s the interesting thing. They actually say the same things, often using the very same phrases to describe their needs, preferences, observations, and trends. By the sixth or seventh call to similar types of customers, the trends are firmly established.” 

The marketer was suddenly quiet, because I had just yanked one of his favorite excuses out from under him. 

I always feel sorry for the marketer’s company when this happens. That same marketer could have made 5 - 10 phone calls to his current customers (using tested methods) and seen the truth for himself. He could have uncovered the issues that matter most to their current - and future - customers. He could have helped his company

CEOs and entrepreneurs tend to pay very little attention to the customer’s experience, as I mentioned in a recent article about Steve Jobs. They focus on product development, managing the people, business relationships, regulations, financials, and marketing. And yet, it is the customer’s experience that causes customers to recommend a company or warn others to stay away. It is the biggest sales driver or sales deterrent associated with the company. In this article, the last in our 4-part series, we answer the question, “How do customers want to be treated?” Here are Part 1 (How Customers Decide to Buy), Part 2 (How Customers Choose A Product), and Part 3 (How Customers Want to Be Contacted), for the late arrivers.

If I were to ask you about a recent experience you had as a customer, dealing with a company, you’d have plenty to tell me about that experience. You

What is going to matter most to all companies in 2013? Only one thing, whether you are a MomPopoly (great new term - thunk up by Carlos Dunlap et all at Colloquy) or a Fortune 50 corporation.

Not the news, the wars, the disasters. Not the constantly shifting regulations, the “cliffs,”  or the larger trends. 

Nothing matters as much as your customers' experience, every time they interact with your product, people, or processes. 

Their experience determines what they say about you to others who are considering buying from you. What they say determines if you prosper or struggle in 2013. It’s that simple. 

Even something as basic as your phone system will make them want to do business with you or want to avoid you; recommend you to others or warn them to stay away.  

Let’s look at this as if we were the customer. 

When you call a company to ask a question, you only do it AFTER you have looked online and have been unable to find the answer.

We all use email to agree on a meeting time. Unfortunately it’s terribly inefficient, especially when it’s done incorrectly. A salesperson who is sloppy about it will drive the new, potential client nuts and make the client wonder if she really wants to do business with the salesperson. It is the salesperson’s first test. You’ll want to pass it.

Here’s an example of good form:

Hi, Judy. 

I understand you want to see a demo of our SuperBigProgram. 

I’m able to do this with you at these times - all EST. 

Mon April 8 from 2 - 5 EST

Wed April 10 from 11 - 3 EST

Fri         April 12 from 9 - 12 EST

Please let me know if anything works for you within these ranges, or suggest another day/time. I will send you an invite with a link to the WebEx meeting. [Or, if it is a phone call:

I answered the phone. The salesman was a little nervous. Im new at this, he said, as I corrected the way he said my first name. I wasnt bothered by him not pronouncing my name correctly, although its usually the last name that people butcher.

He launched into his pitch. I was somewhat interested in what he was selling (book cover and internal page design), so I started to ask him a few questions. For example, I wanted to know if they worked on ebooks, since thats what Im most interested in now. He wasnt really able to answer; he brushed off my question with the classic evasion. We can do anything, he said. He then said he wanted to send me a brochure.

But I was beyond a brochure. I was already on the phone with him. I didnt care about a brochure; I just needed him to start answering my questions.