Michael Cannon Articles

Why B2B Messaging Quality Is So Abysmally Low: Marketers Need a Better Way to Be More Relevant to Customers, Sales and the Growth of Profitable Revenue and Market Share - Click To Read Article
It’s a curious thing. Among B2B companies, there’s general agreement on the definition of high-quality messaging, yet the actual quality of most B2B messaging remains quite low. Why is this? It’s a critical question that needs to be asked and then addressed — i.e., marketers need to develop an effective, optimum way to be more relevant to their companies’ sales teams and customers to insure targeted growth in revenue, profits, and market share.

Twisted But True: High-Quality B2B Marketing Messaging Dramatically Reduces Sales and Marketing Effectiveness - Assess Your Messaging with This Five-Point Checklist - Click To Read Article
Does this sound familiar? Your company has spared no expense in training its sales force and providing it with a slew of slick, detailed marketing materials. Yet your highly motivated sales team keeps missing its revenue, profit and market share targets. Well-conceived and -executed marketing messaging can actually reduce sales and marketing effectiveness. Many companies fail to meet their objectives because their marketing initiatives are lacking one essential element: persuasive sales messaging. When giving their brand, company, and product messaging an analytical look, companies often quickly discover that their messaging to customers is mostly descriptive, rather than persuasive — a vital ingredient in closing sales.

The Top Ten Principles of Great Sales Messaging - Click To Read Article
Sales Messaging – the stated reasons you give prospects to buy from your firm – is the foundation on which all your sales and marketing efforts rest. Sadly, most companies lack a definition for their sales messaging, let alone a methodology for developing and deploying it. The results are millions of dollars in lost revenue, higher sales costs and missed bonuses. Here is your chance to break from the pack and enhance your competitive advantage. Use these top 10 principles to create a definition for great sales messaging that will enable your company to win more orders, increase market share and improve margins.

The Top Three Sales Messaging Deployment Blunders and What to Do Instead! - Click To Read Article
You’ve spent weeks painstakingly putting together a great sales messaging program designed to give your company a significant competitive advantage and boost revenues and market share. Now it’s ready to launch, the sales staff is waiting…but is it blunder-proof? Badly fumbling the deployment of sales messaging is the equivalent of putting a cake in the oven to bake and forgetting to turn the oven on. Learn about three of the most common mistakes companies make in releasing a sales messaging program and what they can do to correct or avoid them.

The Real Problems with Today’s BtoB Customer Messaging and How to Solve Them - Click To Read Article
Numerous studies confirm that many business-to-business companies lose billions of dollars annually as a result of ineffective customer messaging. It’s not that companies are ignoring messaging. On the contrary, they spend significant time and money on company-, market-, and product-specific messaging — all for the most part descriptive rather than persuasive. The problem is that these companies need to focus a lot more of their messaging dollars on creating effective sales messaging, a new messaging category that, when implemented, consistently results in impressive gains in a company’s revenues and market share growth.

The Messaging Mess: Billions Wasted Annually on Bad Messaging Separate Your Messaging to Dramatically Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness - Click To Read Article
There is a gaping problem in current sales and marketing practices. “The bad news is that U.S. companies are wasting more than $40 billion annually by not effectively differentiating their sales messaging from other messaging types,” says Cannon. “The good news is companies that do successfully implement great sales messaging experience increases in marketshare, revenue and net income of 15% to 25% or more.” Backed by independent research, the information in this article will help business executives quickly learn how sales messaging differs from other types of messaging, suggest a simple way to test if their firm is suffering from bad messaging and provide recommendations for how they can take the first step toward solving the messaging mess.

Solving the Six Biggest Problems with BtoB Sales Training - Click To Read Article
Companies both large and small realize the absolute necessity of having a top-notch, high-functioning sales force and spend a great deal of time and money in training and motivating their sales teams. It stands to reason that those companies’ sales training regimens should be every bit as good as they want their salespeople to be, yet way too many fall short. Identify and solve the six biggest problems with sales training to enable Sales to win more deals, faster.

Sales Messaging Must Fuel Your Sales Cycle: Does Yours? - Click To Read Article
It seems self-evident – to be effective, sales messaging must support the sales cycle. But research indicates that the majority of sales and marketing executives fail to follow this “obvious” rule – and thus rob themselves of up to 15% percent of the market share they could be capturing. Understanding and answering your buyer’s key question at every phase in the sales cycle produces a fundamental change in perspective.

Predictions: What Lies Ahead for Sales and Marketing - Click To Read Article
Over the last several decades, corporations have implemented sets of best practices and software automation tools for some of their key departments - Manufacturing, Finance, Operations - to allow those departments to measure their efforts and attain maximum effectiveness in helping their firm keep its competitive edge and grow revenues, profits and market share. But what about two other critical groups: Sales and Marketing? This article examines the current push by many boards and CEOs to create a more formal set of best practices and software solutions for their Sales and Marketing departments and then outlines the steps many companies are taking to develop and automate a set of best practices for Sales and Marketing.

Gold and Silver Bullets: Critical Messaging for Successful Investor-Funded Firms - Click To Read Article
Too often, companies use the same set of words and ideas in their attempts to win buyers as they use to win investors. But this approach fails to address key questions — and can cause firms to flounder. There is an efficient and effective way to increase profitability and avoid dissolution — through the use of Gold and Silver Bullets. The Gold-and-Silver-Bullet methodology demands clear, separate, and fully articulated answers to different types of stakeholder-questions. This helps companies gain secure footing with investors and customers alike, increasing valuations and accelerating sales cycles. Cannon offers groundbreaking advice and practical solutions that help firms evaluate and adjust blurred me

Five Ways to Test Your Sales Messaging for Greatness - Click To Read Article
What grade would you give yourself on the quality and effectiveness of the sales support messaging and materials you prepare for your staff? Not an “A+”? Don’t feel bad, you’re hardly alone. According to a recent poll that appeared in BtoB magazine, some 70% of the marketeers polled gave themselves “D’s” and “F’s”. This article gives sales and marketing executives and their staff a sure-fire way to doublecheck that their sales messaging is working to maximum effect, and, if not, ways to improve it.

Fire, Hire, and Repeat: Is There a Better Way to Improve Sales Performance? - Click To Read Article
Fire-hire-repeat is a classic management tactic and a major drain on productivity and profits. The time and money spent seeking out, interviewing, and training new hires alone should be enough to dissuade anyone from this tactic as their primary route to improve sales effectiveness – but the “body wars” are all too frequently considered the best way to improve sales. There is a better alternative. It is the sales and marketing system, not the sales team, that is most often responsible for the disconnect between sales goals and sales results. And addressing the breakdowns in the underlying system is a more cost-effective, less risky way to improve results and break the vicious cycle of fire, hire, and repeat.

Face Off: Value Propositions vs. Sales Messaging - Why Your Value Prop Is Losing and What to Do About It - Click To Read Article
This article debunks the myth of the value proposition as a magic bullet for sales. You'll learn why most value propositions are more like blank or copper bullets and how to provide your sales team with the silver bullets they need to grow your sales pipeline and win more business.

Does Sales Messaging Fuel Your Product Life Cycle? It Should. - Click To Read Article
Business-to-business marketing professionals who create sales messaging for each stage in their product’s life cycle reap great rewards – consistently attaining 5% more market share, 5-10% better margins, and the bonuses and promotions that come with these numbers. However, many marketing professionals fail to optimize messaging for each phase of the cycle – rendering their sales tools and promotions ineffective. This leads to underproduction in Sales, as Sales must re-create marketing materials in order to sell. Closing the gap between Marketing’s offerings and Sales’ needs is easy if Marketing uses proper sales messaging.

Answer Your Buyers’ Key Questions & Make Your Sales Messaging Great - Click To Read Article
In this article, you'll learn what buying questions are and why they're the secret ingredient in the creation of crisp, effective sales messaging. If your messaging is, well, mushy, like that of so many other companies, take three minutes now to learn how to create great sales messaging and start increasing your win rates.


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