The Messaging Mess: Billions Wasted Annually on Bad Messaging Separate Your Messaging to Dramatically Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness
The Messaging Mess: Billions Wasted Annually on Bad Messaging Separate Your Messaging to Dramatically Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness
Here are a couple data points to consider:
“80 to 90 percent of marketing collateral is considered useless by sales.”
Proceedings of the Customer Message Management Forums, published by
the American Marketing Association (2002 and 2003).
“Graphic communications is a $100 billion+ industry.”
National Association for Printing Leadership (2004)
Even if you reduce the percentage of marketing collateral that Sales considers useless by half, or to 40%, it’s still a $40 billion dollar problem annually. And, that’s just the money being wasted on the creation of graphic communications.
The bigger cost of confusing sales messaging with other messaging types is lost revenue. For example, how much lower are your win rates as a result of using poor sales messaging? Nigel Mott of Agilent Technologies recently asked this question for the product he supports and determined: “Great sales messaging increased our win rate by 30%.”
Another big contributor to lost revenue and higher costs is the amount of time your sales team spends creating the sales messaging and tools they need to succeed. As reported by the Aberdeen Group (Wellesley, Massachusetts: 2002) in Bridging the Great Divide: Process, Technology, and the Marketing/Sales Interface, “salespeople spend typically 30 to 50 hours per month searching for information and re-creating customer-facing content.” Think about what Sales could accomplish if this wasted time were spent driving deals into and through the sales pipeline.
**Sales Messaging Defined**
How do you know if your sales and marketing organization is suffering from bad messaging? The first thing you need to understand is what sales messaging is and how it’s different from the other messaging types. Let’s start by clarifying what “messaging” means and then define the common messaging types.
Messaging is the information you use to position your company and your products or services in the minds of the people you are trying to influence. It includes brand messaging, company messaging, product messaging, market messaging, application messaging and sales messaging.
Sales Messaging: At its core, sales messaging is persuasive. It provides compelling and persuasive answers to your buyer’s primary buying questions like, “why should I meet with you?”, “why should I buy this?” and “why should I buy this from you?” for each of the products and services you offer. And it delivers these messages at the appropriate point in the product life cycle and sales cycle.
**Sales messaging is the fuel that powers all your sales and marketing engines.
The higher the octane, the better the performance.**
Now let’s compare sales messaging to the other messaging types.
Company messaging: At its core, company messaging is descriptive rather than persuasive. It’s a description of what your company does, your capabilities, the products and services you offer, the markets you serve and the applications or solutions you provide. Done well, it also describes the value that someone would receive by doing business with your firm. Company messaging is typically the content you see in a company brochure or website.
Product Messaging: Product messaging is a sub-set of company messaging and it’s also descriptive. It describes what the product does and how it does it. It includes a listing of features and benefits and specifications. Done well, it describes the value someone would receive by buying. Product messaging is what you typically see in a product brochure. In my experience, most market and application messaging is implemented as a variation of product messaging.
Brand Messaging: Brand messaging is usually the tag line associated with your company logo. For the Silver Bullet Group, it’s “The Best Way to Increase Your Sales.” What you want brand messaging to do is to create a Pavlovian association between your company name and tag line. The goal of branding is to create awareness and consideration in your market.
No conversation about messaging would be complete without mentioning value propositions. Most value propositions are a variation on company messaging. They are usually a 1-2 line description about what your company does and the value someone would receive by doing business with your company. Some people may consider value propositions to be a messaging type too, but in my experience, they are usually more informal. They are created by the sales organization at the point of need, and are used in voicemails, emails and meetings. Rarely are they documented and leveraged as a corporate messaging asset like these other messaging types.
**What To Do Next**
Now that you have a sense of what sales messaging is, how it’s different from other messaging types and how expensive it is to confuse them, it’s time to determine how badly your firm is suffering by doing a quick collateral audit. Start out by having your Marketing Department collect all the collateral and tools they created and ask Sales three questions:
1) Where do you use this (each piece) in your sales process?
2) How useful is it in helping you sell?
3) How much time do you spend creating messaging and tools you need to successfully sell?
If your firm is like most, i.e. 50% or more of the collateral is considered useless by Sales, then estimate how much money you are wasting/losing.
Next, let your competitors, who have not read this article, continue to make the expensive mistake of confusing sales messaging with other messaging types. Let them continue to get their butt kicked in the market, while you create a plan for how you are going to implement great sales messaging, which has been proven to increase market share, revenue and net income by 15% to 25%. Use the recommended resources below to help you create your plan.
The Messaging Mess Billions Wasted Annually on Bad Messaging Separate Your Messaging to Dramatically Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Cannon's Website.
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U.S. companies alone waste more than $40 billion every year by confusing sales messaging with other messaging types. On the flip side, innovative companies routinely see a 15% to 25% improvement in market share, revenue and net income when they implement great sales messaging.
Here are a couple data points to consider:
“80 to 90 percent of marketing collateral is considered useless by sales.”
Proceedings of the Customer Message Management Forums, published by
the American Marketing Association (2002 and 2003).
“Graphic communications is a $100 billion+ industry.”
National Association for Printing Leadership (2004)
Even if you reduce the percentage of marketing collateral that Sales considers useless by half, or to 40%, it’s still a $40 billion dollar problem annually. And, that’s just the money being wasted on the creation of graphic communications.
The bigger cost of confusing sales messaging with other messaging types is lost revenue. For example, how much lower are your win rates as a result of using poor sales messaging? Nigel Mott of Agilent Technologies recently asked this question for the product he supports and determined: “Great sales messaging increased our win rate by 30%.”
Another big contributor to lost revenue and higher costs is the amount of time your sales team spends creating the sales messaging and tools they need to succeed. As reported by the Aberdeen Group (Wellesley, Massachusetts: 2002) in Bridging the Great Divide: Process, Technology, and the Marketing/Sales Interface, “salespeople spend typically 30 to 50 hours per month searching for information and re-creating customer-facing content.” Think about what Sales could accomplish if this wasted time were spent driving deals into and through the sales pipeline.
**Sales Messaging Defined**
How do you know if your sales and marketing organization is suffering from bad messaging? The first thing you need to understand is what sales messaging is and how it’s different from the other messaging types. Let’s start by clarifying what “messaging” means and then define the common messaging types.
Messaging is the information you use to position your company and your products or services in the minds of the people you are trying to influence. It includes brand messaging, company messaging, product messaging, market messaging, application messaging and sales messaging.
Sales Messaging: At its core, sales messaging is persuasive. It provides compelling and persuasive answers to your buyer’s primary buying questions like, “why should I meet with you?”, “why should I buy this?” and “why should I buy this from you?” for each of the products and services you offer. And it delivers these messages at the appropriate point in the product life cycle and sales cycle.
**Sales messaging is the fuel that powers all your sales and marketing engines.
The higher the octane, the better the performance.**
Now let’s compare sales messaging to the other messaging types.
Company messaging: At its core, company messaging is descriptive rather than persuasive. It’s a description of what your company does, your capabilities, the products and services you offer, the markets you serve and the applications or solutions you provide. Done well, it also describes the value that someone would receive by doing business with your firm. Company messaging is typically the content you see in a company brochure or website.
Product Messaging: Product messaging is a sub-set of company messaging and it’s also descriptive. It describes what the product does and how it does it. It includes a listing of features and benefits and specifications. Done well, it describes the value someone would receive by buying. Product messaging is what you typically see in a product brochure. In my experience, most market and application messaging is implemented as a variation of product messaging.
Brand Messaging: Brand messaging is usually the tag line associated with your company logo. For the Silver Bullet Group, it’s “The Best Way to Increase Your Sales.” What you want brand messaging to do is to create a Pavlovian association between your company name and tag line. The goal of branding is to create awareness and consideration in your market.
No conversation about messaging would be complete without mentioning value propositions. Most value propositions are a variation on company messaging. They are usually a 1-2 line description about what your company does and the value someone would receive by doing business with your company. Some people may consider value propositions to be a messaging type too, but in my experience, they are usually more informal. They are created by the sales organization at the point of need, and are used in voicemails, emails and meetings. Rarely are they documented and leveraged as a corporate messaging asset like these other messaging types.
**What To Do Next**
Now that you have a sense of what sales messaging is, how it’s different from other messaging types and how expensive it is to confuse them, it’s time to determine how badly your firm is suffering by doing a quick collateral audit. Start out by having your Marketing Department collect all the collateral and tools they created and ask Sales three questions:
1) Where do you use this (each piece) in your sales process?
2) How useful is it in helping you sell?
3) How much time do you spend creating messaging and tools you need to successfully sell?
If your firm is like most, i.e. 50% or more of the collateral is considered useless by Sales, then estimate how much money you are wasting/losing.
Next, let your competitors, who have not read this article, continue to make the expensive mistake of confusing sales messaging with other messaging types. Let them continue to get their butt kicked in the market, while you create a plan for how you are going to implement great sales messaging, which has been proven to increase market share, revenue and net income by 15% to 25%. Use the recommended resources below to help you create your plan.
The Messaging Mess Billions Wasted Annually on Bad Messaging Separate Your Messaging to Dramatically Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Cannon's Website.
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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