This post is based on a podcast with Jill Rowley. If you’d like to listen to more #FlipMyFunnel Podcast episodes, you can check them out here and listen to this episode below!
Marketing in today’s world is all about engaging with a potential buyer. Or at least it should be.
But too often, a seller simply automates the process. There’s no trust, no knowledge and no value to the buyer.
How many times have we all received an unsolicited email from someone who clearly sent out that same email to a thousand other buyers? How did you feel?
Probably the same way our latest guest on the #FlipMyFunnel Podcast, Jill Rowley, Chief Growth Officer for Marketo feels about those emails.
Jill came on our show to tell us about engagement — a whole new marketing philosophy.
Why We Need Engagement
Jill is no stranger to unsought solicitation.
Just recently, a rep from a video creation company has been hounding her about purchasing their platform. She never signed up for content from their company, she never asked for a white paper, nothing.
What’s more, the rep hadn’t done his research. If he had, he may have known that Jill is an investor in a competing product. She called the dog off.
How often do we find ourselves in a similar situation? A seller contacts us, out of the blue, with little to no information on us or our organization, and in the end, offers no real value. We keep hearing the same script about how wonderful the seller’s product is, and that same script, in the same email, is being orchestrated to everyone in every department in every company.
That’s old marketing.
A 2.0 Marketing Philosophy
Jill is a former believer in this non-engagement concept. She believed in it so much, she sold it to others. But then she heard Steve Lucas, CEO of Marketo, speak a transformative message about moving from simple automation and mechanization to engagement. She was hooked.
“I wanted to send apology letters to customers who bought from me.” She said. “This transformation from automation to engagement was real.”
[Tweet “”I wanted to send apology letters to customers who bought from me.” -@jill_rowley #FlipMyFunnel”]
So Jill hopped on board. In her words, “This is made for me.”
Marketo isn’t just selling marketing automation. They aren’t even simply selling marketing tech. They’re changing the marketing game with an entire engagement platform that helps users create scalable, personalized engagement at various touchpoints, and then manage those engagements with applications.
At Marketo, Jill has a new philosophy: know more, care more, do more.
Know More
Know your potential buyers. Do your research on them. Talk to them in their language, in their words. Use the words of your buyers and your buyers’ influencers.
Find a podcast, a video, anything your potential buyer has put out in the media to uncover what language they are using. “You’d be surprised at how much content is truly out there,” she said.
Care More
When you talk to a buyer, be focused on them, their needs and the needs of their organization. Show them you care about what they are doing, not what you are trying to sell.
Business is personal, because people do business with other people, and every buyer is saying the same thing, Jill said: “Talk to me human-speak. Show me you know me, show me you can help me, and prove you care.”
[Tweet ““Show me you know me…and prove you care” -@jill_rowley #FlipMyFunnel”]
Do More
You must provide value. The old adage, “Know you, like you, trust you,” is just that, old.
It’s simply table stakes. It’s not enough anymore. You need to provide value.
You may be nice, the buyer may like you as a person, and they may even trust you. But if you aren’t providing value? They can’t buy from you.
Last Thought: Dos and Don’ts
Besides her mantra, Know More, Care More, Do More, Jill offered a few specific do’s and don’ts to sales and marketing professionals. Here are those specifics.
Dos:
- ABC: Always Be Connecting. You never know where your next sale will come from. A full pipeline will save your life, so constantly be making new contacts and looking to add to your network, all the while fostering current relationships.
- Give to Give: Give to truly give. Don’t give to get something in the short term. “In sales, we’re on monthly, quarterly, and annual quotas, and often times, it leads to us making bad decisions.” Think long term.
Don’ts:
- Generic or Irrelevant: Remember those emails blasted to the whole world? Yeah, don’t be one of those.
- Be Desperate: Don’t repost and retweet everything your potential buyer has put on social media. It comes off as desperate. Because it is.
Building genuine relationships is difficult. “It’s harder. It takes longer,” Jill said. But in the end, it’s worth it.
This post is based on a #FlipMyFunnel podcast with Jill Rowley. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The #FlipMyFunnel Podcast.
If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.
