How to Optimize Your CEO’s Anointing of Your Marketing Efforts Kristin Zhivago President Zhivago Management Partners, Inc.
Flow 1 Your Challenges 2 Anointing 3 The Buyer Revolution The Solution 4
Your Challenges
Who are you? • Company Size: Small Medium Large • Business or consumer: B2B B2C • Working level: C-Level VP Level Manage Specialist 4
What do you want from this? • New concepts • Actionable steps 5
Biggest Challenges • Getting customers to respond [relevance!] • Getting internal approval – and respect • Mastering tools/technologies How long have marketers had these problems? Forever. Just ask Tom. 6
Fortunately, doing one thing differently can solve all of your problems. Yes. All of your problems. 7
Anointing
Fact #1: You can’t sell successfully to customers until you have sold your approach and vision to your CEO (or other direct boss). Fact #2: You can use the same method to sell to customers that you will use to sell to your CEO. 9
How anointing works 1) Personal Knowledge of your CEO & Customers: You know who they are and how they think. You’re not guessing . 2) Trust: Credibility and respect from top management and working peers. FULL support for marketing from ALL in the company. 3) Anointing: CEO listens, agrees, supports your decisions and actions. 10
You will know you are truly anointed when you become your CEO’s trusted advisor. We are talking beyond “acceptance.” 11
Your CEO’s “functional persona” • Sales • Technology • Finance • Legal • Marketing • Operations • Serial entrepreneur 12
Sales CEOs Reactive Visionary Stress Process Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Key Characteristics: • Competitive Company-centric Customer-centric • Controlling • Easily influenced Best tools: • Stories backed by stats Stats Stories • Keep him excited 13
Technical CEOs Reactive Visionary Stress Process Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos Key Characteristics: • Logical Company-centric Customer-centric • Inclusive • Very process-oriented Best tools: • Empirical evidence, Stats Stories supported by stats 14
Finance CEOs Reactive Visionary Stress Process Meg Whitman, CEO of HP Key Characteristics: Company-centric Customer-centric • Can be elitist/exclusionary • Doesn’t excite easily Best tools: Stats Stories • Gather as much statistical data as you can, at every touch point 15
Legal CEOs Reactive Visionary Stress Process Frank Blake, CEO of Home Depot Key Characteristics: Company-centric Customer-centric • Can see both sides • Weak on processes Best tools: • Numbers, numbers, Stats Stories numbers • Empirical evidence 16
Marketing CEOs Reactive Visionary Stress Process Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Company-centric Customer-centric Key Characteristics: • Visionary • Customer DRIVEN Stats Stories Best tools: • Likes stories, but back with facts • Keep moving! 17
Operations CEOs Reactive Visionary Stress Process Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon Company-centric Customer-centric Key Characteristics: • Always thinking “process first” Best tools: • Systems that work Stats Stories • No movement without a method 18
Serial Entrepreneur Reactive Visionary Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn Stress Process Key Characteristics: • Behavior will be influenced by Company-centric Customer-centric background • Always moving Best tools: • Aggressive proaction Stats Stories 19
Interview your CEO • At least 2x a year, even 4x a year • Make a formal appointment • Ask open-ended questions: • How’s it going? • Goals • Challenges • Suggestions, questions, observations 20
Start thinking: • How can I help the CEO meet his/her goals, while at the same time helping customers meet their goals? • How should I be reporting on progress? • How can I make sure that we are relevant and attractive to customers? • What can I do about the fact that buyers are ignoring marketing and sales? 21
The Buyer Revolution
The Customer Community 23
Buyers are using these tools to ignore marketing and avoid salespeople. 24
Company-centric sales process Salespeople (and customers) hunt, one at a time. Hit and miss, invasive, mostly unsatisfying for both parties. 25
Company-centric marketing process Marketing sends out a lot of messages, hoping something will stick. Customers do a lot of research, trying to get answers to questions. More hit and miss. Gambling on both sides. 26
The Solution
Customer-centric selling/marketing Answers to Questions It’s not rocket science. They have questions. We need to be able to answer them to their satisfaction – what, when, how. 28
What ARE their questions? • Who are you? Specifically? • What can you do that no one else can do? • What have others thought of you? • What’s going to happen to me after I buy? 29
Aren’t you answering their questions? • Nope. • That’s why they’re ignoring your content. • They get better answers from each other. • That’s also why you’re not anointed: You’re Guessing. 30
How to answer their questions: Ask them questions. Your current customers will teach you how to sell to new customers, if you ask them the right questions in the right way, then act on what they tell you. 31
What should you ask them? • How do you feel about our product/service? • What was your buying process? • Are our prices fair? • What is your biggest problem/challenge? • What trends do you see in your/our market? • If you were the CEO of our company tomorrow, what would you fix? • What did you type into Google when you first started searching? How would you refine? • Anything I should have asked? 32
What will you learn? • Why they bought* • How they bought, including who was involved • What their concerns and questions were • How you satisfied those concerns/answered their questions • What they now tell others • What they typed into Google – FIRST (not what is in your web logs) • Trends and challenges (your opportunities) • Weaknesses of competitors • What you should be saying and where you should be saying it • What is broken, what should be fixed 33
* 34
What customers AND CEOs want 1. Education 2. Protection Michael 35
Thank You/Questions Kristin Zhivago Zhivago Management Partners, Inc. kristin@zhivago.com Blog: RevenueJournal.com Twitter: @KristinZhivago Book: RoadmapToRevenue.com 36
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