event marketing « Dave Stelzl's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘event marketing

May

Data@Risk – Preparing for the Richmond Executive Security Luncheon; Speaking David Stelzl

Categories: Demand Generation
Tags: David Stelzl, event marketing, lunch & Learn, marketing event, speaker

Read Data@Risk

“At no point was sensitive or controlled information compromised,” according to reports from today’s cybercrime news – this is typical. It reminds me of the time my dentist told me, “There is no proof that amalgam fillings are harmful.” I told him, there was a time when studies had not proven that cigarettes cause cancer…and how can the security people at NASA be sure nothing has been compromised in the wake of April’s attacks?

Why are companies and high-profile organizations losing this battle? This week I will be speaking to business leaders in Richmond VA on the threats and risks associated with Cybercrime. No matter how much they spend, or how well protected they think they are, the criminals will continue to win as long as this is treated as a technical issue.

I was on a coaching call with a sales person yesterday who was complaining that only 7 people attended their last event…after further exploration I discovered the problem – the event was advertising more product information. This is not a product sale! It’s a risk sale. You can invite the business leaders, but they’ll delegate to IT every time when the topic is a product or feature, and if the product info doesn’t sound great, even IT will stay home. Focus on the trends, look at the growing risks – consider what these business leaders are worried about when it comes to technology. Address these business issues in your next event if you expect people to attend. This creates a win/win every time. In the end, business leaders need to know what is going on, and you must have a way to help them succeed in warding off the enemy.

Mar

The Incompetent Adviser

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Leadership
Tags: David Stelzl, event marketing, executive coach, new sales job

Micheal Bosworth, back in his 1995 publication of Solution Selling, wrote, “Power buys from power.” He goes on to explain that executives (people with decision making power) are looking for someone to advise them, and that person must be competent (a person commands authority with advisory power). But how do they know you are that powerful person before they buy? Over time it will become evident, but what about right now while you are working your way into the account.

A problem arises here – the typical sales person gets a new job, feels great about the new position, and goes out with a new brand behind them, hoping to conquer new and bigger accounts. It feels great at first. But, regardless of what the recruiter told you, the job is always harder than you expect. Sale is hard work! Weeks go by, calls are not returned, emails are deleted, and your ego starts to deflate. At some point you start second guessing just how great of an adviser you really are. Your message goes from abounding confidence to a gentler, softer sell. You are starting to wonder if anyone will ever talk to you.

This often leads to steeper discounts, desperate measures, and pleading with the prospect to do something. Anything!

I was on a coaching call the other day discussing this very dilemma. In fact I spoke with two sales people back to back sharing similar stories. It’s common for this to happen to anyone working a new region, or to a rep in new with a new company having a lesser brand in that territory. So what should you do?

There are many factors here, and of course, the right marketing strategy is going to be important. It’s clear to me that pure cold calling, brute force tactics, won’t do it in this market. But that is not my focus here…my focus has more to do with the self-talk that takes us from feeling confident and able, to subdued and defeated. A couple of words to keep you going are in order:

It’s tempting to sell everything, but the trusted adviser is a specialist. You can’t advise on something you don’t know – that means picking an area and becoming the best in it. Jim Collins gives us this advice in his book, Good to Great. Collins is talking to companies, but the same applies to the rep. You can expand later, but don’t be all things to all people – you’re just not big enough. Instead, pick a hot area and learn how to sell it. Lead with it, and learn to expand your presence once in the account. If you pick an area that is much needed in today’s business economy, you can be sure that most of the people you call need what you sell. The secret here is knowing how to apply educational marketing strategies to drive your offering.

Stop listening to the local rock station while driving to appointments. Instead, buy some of the great educational MP3s available today. I’ve mentioned various titles in the past, but the point here is, stop wasting your drive time on empty entertainment. Rock music actually puts your brain into a sort of trans that eases the pain, but does nothing productive for you (other than, perhaps keeping you awake after staying up too late). Teaching tapes (MP3s) by successful people bring encouragement and structure to your sales call. You want to enter these meetings with confidence, even if your numbers are terrible.

Use your downtime wisely. The temptation is to thrash from email to email, reacting to anything that comes along. Don’t be deceived – wise planning is better. Take time to study. Learn about the needs of the people you are calling on, write, read, plan out your calls, and make every thing you do into a quality effort. When a call comes, plan and execute. Build marketing materials, build your social brand online, and carefully plan out marketing efforts.

Don’t waste time networking over long lunches with people who can’t really help you. Do reach out by phone to people who bring encouragement and perhaps sound input. Consider using a coach. Coaches consistently show a strong return on investment because they do encourage and bring accountability to the process. I know many people shy away from spending the money, yet often the coach’s six month fee is completely covered in one good sale. That’s pretty strong if you ask me.

Mar

Finding New Business a New Way

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Demand Generation
Tags: cold calling, David Stelzl, event marketing, marketing campaign, speaker, technology conference

Setting up a New Event

Will they come? Just this week I was working with one of my clients in the northwest on filling seats for their first major marketing event. This is their first “asset owner” facing event, and like most, there was some uneasiness as to whether they would actually be able to attract buyers to their event; there always is when planning a first event. Just one week into their marketing campaign, 18 had already signed up (18 qualified asset owners). Within two weeks, 39 were signed up! How did this happen?

Well it wasn’t luck…Marketing doesn’t always work, but good marketing does. We didn’t just send out a bunch of emails last minute to do this. We started this process weeks ago, working out the wording, the format, and media that would most appeal to our target audience. We chose a topic that resonated with this target group of prospects, and we planned a phone campaign with scripts and timing to match the overall campaign theme and mailing.

Building a New Territory – Will it Work?

I was talking with a sales person yesterday from another company in the northeast. He is just a few months into a new position, trying to establish a new territory. In the past four months he has found it extremely difficult to penetrate the market he is in. He’s tried calling, emailing, and sending letters, but as you might have guessed, it’s slow, and people are unresponsive. Will an event work for him? The answer is yes! Events do work. When they don’t, it simply means they have been set up incorrectly. The topic is wrong, the marketing poorly planned, and the invite process, flawed. Events are the best way because they are based on educating, not selling. And smart people love knowledge.

What’s The Secret?

There are a few things that must come together with absolute perfect timing:

The topic must be newsworthy. What are we seeing in the Wall Street Journal? Nortel’s recent hacking incidents, Anonymous threatening governments, subscribers of a large porn site exposed online by hackers, and alarming cautions from our government leaders on the threats of hackers taking down power grids, stock markets, and other vital infrastructure (all new this month). This is not about products – so don’t let your vendor partners steer you in the name of funding. I have seen more companies this year follow their vendors for funding, rather than demanding their vendors fund what works. VARS – If your vendors aren’t going to cooperate here, find new ones. You can’t build a solution provider company using hardware vendor strategies.
The initial marketing plan must target the right people. That means the message is written to asset owners – people running a business. They don’t care about computers, networks, or firewalls. The owner of the company that does metal stamping, is thinking about metal stamping all day. The law firm senior partner is thinking about the law, court cases, case law, and winning an important case. What right do we have to demand that they stop and focus on a new virtualization technology or data center consolidation project? Send them something that matters to their business.
The calling can’t be done by amateurs – or professionals that make calls on contract. You sell technology solutions and you’re good at it. When you contract with an outside calling firm, you are contracting with someone who makes calls on anything from insurance policies to upgrading cell phone service. These firms cannot connect with asset owners – they are there to reach the mass market – consumer market, with a mass message. If they get a .2% response from their list of 10,000, they are happy. You can’t afford this kind of campaign. You don’t have a list of 10,000 asset owners.

Feb

The One Day Sales Cycle

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Demand Generation and Sales Strategy
Tags: cold calling, event marketing, selling firewalls, selling security

I just got off the phone with an excited client – owner of a solution provider company in the north. He called just to tell me about his one day sales cycle - about a month ago his team did an event, targeting asset owners, focused on assets, revolving around risk and security trends and threats; the sames stuff I have been writing about since I started this blog. Yesterday, he and his sales rep went in to meet a business owner who attended the event. They have never met with this business owner – he is pretty much a cold prospect, except that he did attend the event.

The Aftermath

1. They discovered in their meeting that his company is required to meet PCI compliance regulations – however, following my training workshop guidelines, they asked anyway; “What are you trying to protect?” The answer was somewhat surprising – The owner knew his company was out of compliance, and in fact, is paying a monthly penalty for it; but he doesn’t care. His real answer led them to the deal.

2. They “focused on the assets” – went through the discovery process I outline in my new book, From Vendor to Adviser, and identified his major areas of risk.

3. They could have done an assessment, but he was ready to buy. So instead of moving ahead with the assessment, they listened, learned, proposed, and closed, all in the same day. It took them one hour to go from not knowing anything, save the prospects name, to getting a signature. This is smart business.

I am looking forward to today’s Making Money with Security Workshop – starts at 1:00 ET. If you didn’t sign up, there may be a seat or two left: Check it out at http://makingmoneywithsecurity2.eventbrite.com/

Feb

Event Marketing Webinar Follow Up

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Channel Management, Marketing and Opportunities
Tags: educational marketing, event marketing, marketing ideas, sales training, Technology Sales

This afternoon I had the opportunity to present Event Marketing tips to a large group on Webex. This is such an important topic, it needs more time. For those who missed it, and perhaps a refresher for those who attended:

1. Getting the right people is both the most important part, and the most difficult part. But, contrary to what most sales people believe, it is not impossible, and not even as hard as you might think. It just takes some strategy and time. While most people don’t really like call scripts, a well rehearsed script can do wonders. Some have accused me of making this into a robot sounding message, but far from it…you would never accuse Russel Crow or Brad Pitt of reading from a script, but they do it all the time. It’s just that they have practiced to the point of sounding natural. The fact is, if they just did their own thing, the movies they are in would fail. They use a script, but add their own personality to it. Once practiced, this is not hard to do.

2. Mistakes are common. I reviewed several serious mistakes even the most sophisticated companies make. Why do they make them? Simply because no one is really studying and optimizing this process. One simple mistake is not gaining commitment there in the meeting. A follow up program that starts an hour after the event will take a 75% response down to a 5% response and you’ll never really know what happened. You don’t want this to be salesy – but that doesn’t mean you don’t sell anything. I heard one woman refer to this as the Invisible Close. By educating attendees, and providing a place for them to get more of what you are talking about, you help them get what they need. This can be done professionally without sounding like an encyclopedia sales person. Much more of this is addressed in my audio series – Important topics from Vendor to Adviser…in fact there are 5 hours of critical concepts in this series.

3. Conversion is key. If you aren’t focused on conversion rate, there is no reason to do this event. There are customer appreciation dinners, but you don’t really need to spend this kind of time and money on IT level customers…there are a handful of customers that deserve this type of treatment, but not many. Instead, measure your conversion, and work on building the percentages. Focus on getting the right people, and test your messaging, repeating the same kind of program over and over. Make minor changes – and there are millions of secrets I have discovered, including reducing attrition, getting higher level audiences, using better topics, etc, that draw the right people and increase the rate of conversion. This is a science, not a hope…don’t be fooled into doing the event for as little as possible. Make a wise investment and get a strong return. That is good business.

Jan

Building the List

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Demand Generation
Tags: call list, event marketing, lunch & learns, networking, rolodex

Two of my children have started a business selling holiday baked goods (note: these are their pies!) Valentines Day is right around the corner, so it’s a good time to be marketing chocolate and cookies, or anything family members might gravitate toward, to express appreciation to each other. But how do my children build their call list? The food is great (see picture), but getting the word out is difficult. “It’s a process of list building,” I tell them. “If you spend all of your time in the kitchen, experimenting with truffles and flavors, you’ll never sell anything”. But, no matter what I say, their tendency is to spend their time on the part they love, sometimes letting the business die a slow death.

Building the list takes time. In fact, you can’t really wait until the list is built, because it never is. It’s a process that takes a lifetime. Every contact should be a consideration, and every contact is, or knows someone who is. With this in mind, we have developed cards with pictures of the treats they prepare, with simple directions to access their “Buy Now” website. And every time they enter a store where they know someone, or meet a new prospect, they should be asking for referrals, handing out extra cards, and collecting more names. It must become their passion to collect and maintain these names, treating each one with respect and gratefulness.

This is the process every sales person must go through as they look to spread their value and identify new prospects. Event marketing depends on it, in fact, any marketing today depends on it, simply because people don’t want to hear from someone they don’t know. In 2012, your business depends on great marketing – events, webinars, campaigns, and referrals…

PS. Don’t miss my upcoming webinar (FREE) – Unlocking the Secrets of Event Marketing (Sign up Here)

Dec

Collecting Names

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Demand Generation and Marketing
Tags: event marketing, lists, marketing event, sales genie

Don’t stop collecting names! The success of any marketing program or sales campaign will depend on the quality of names you have in your database. Linkedin, Facebook, tradeshows, or free webinars, I don’t care where they come from; you need them.

When I meet someone, I want his or her card. Everyone I meet is either a prospect, or knows of one. Both are valid reasons to keep in touch. Occasionally I meet people who don’t have a card on them, or at least claim they don’t. A simple strategy helps remove this obstacle…make sure you have something of value to pass along. If I ask you for a card, it may just mean I plan to make a sales call on you later this week, or add you to a spam list. But if I have something of value to send you, I have created justification for my request. I find people are more than happy to Link or hand me a card, as long as they see some personal benefit.

Once back in the office, I will immediately follow up, sending them whatever was promised, but don’t stop there. Periodically send them information they can use to grow their business or address some personal need. People forget over time. In my own business, I have found that a quarterly mailing works well to keep people up to date, but not overwhelmed. Too much, and they will be asking to unsubscribe, but too little, and they will soon forget.

On occasion, I will find I have not been in touch with someone, only to find that they don’t remember who I am. When I finally get around to sending an update, they reply back in an irritated sort of way, wanting to know how they got on my mailing list. I can remind them, but at this point, it is too late.

If your content is good, over time they will grow to appreciate your perspectives. Then, when you include them in one of your events (online or in person), your chances of having them participate greatly increase.

Nov

Contracting with Call Centers – Often a Big Mistake

By Dave Stelzl's Blog Leave a Comment

Categories: Demand Generation
Tags: call center, cold calling, David Stelzl, educational marketing, event marketing, marketing speaker, outbound marketing

How do you get people to attend your next marketing event?

Recruiting attendees for your next marketing event may not be as simple as it looks. The tendency here is to assume that you know how to do this, and when everyone seems too busy to get involved, to assume that a call center is a great alternative. The problem is, I have yet to see this work. Since event attendees really need to be management level, and if possible, senior level – asset owners, there is more selling required here than might be obvious. A track record from past events suddenly becomes irrelevant when you look back and realize, most of your events have been sold out to IT and other non-asset owners.

In a recent event, where the invitation process was contracted out, I was told by the manager of the call center, “We are professionals and don’t require any input.” Wow! That’s great, so I can stop worrying about attendance, and just show up to speak on the appointed date? Far from it. Instead, their response turned into a last minute fire drill, with rooms rented, food ordered, speakers paid for, and only 2 qualified attendees signed up. With two weeks to go, this solution provider was forced to either cancel and take a loss of the committed expenses, or open the doors to unqualified IT-level attendees. The lesson here is this; the call center can fill seats, but it takes a higher level of expertise to reach people who can actually buy something. Our event went forward, with predictable results. A long list of attendees, high attrition on the day of the event, and very few resulting sales. Event marketing can be highly effective, but when approached incorrectly, can produce “nothing” at a great cost.