Making these kinds of moves isn’t easy, of course, since any alterations to a company’s supply chain have far-ranging implications throughout the organization. For starters, such changes require much more cooperation and information sharing across business units than many companies are accustomed to.

Information sharing between a company and its customers is even more important, and is part of understanding supply chain peculiarities, especially when we are dealing with a two-step distribution model.

Interline Creative Group, Inc. has been helping one of our clients share information with their customers for the past eight years, producing reports that detail distributor activity across a variety of metrics. These reports – which the national sales manager said are “the best in the industry” provide a strong basis for business discussions between our client and their customer base. Among the metrics, the reports (which are pulled from raw data from the client’s SAP system as raw data, and then formatted through the use of macros into dashboard-looking reports) detail such things as:

• Net sales and number of units on the customer’s top five best-selling product categories and specific models and parts.
• Overall total sales in specific industry categories used by the client (i.e., product groups) compared to the national averages
• Special information on program participation by the distributor in the company’s spiff programs
• Total sales on a month-by-month basis to reflect any industry trends
• Six years of total sales graphed to see gains and losses by the customer

These reports are then prepared for the individual customer, and then rolled up to reflect regions (for the regional sales manager) and overall buying group. For a sample of the Interline report referred to in this article, go to http://intrln.com/contact and request a copy.

After reading it, I thought I’d review some of the highlights of this piece (if you are interested in a copy, drop me a note at http://intrln.com/contact).  Because what they say about outdoor advertising, in fact, has unbelievable relevance in today’s age of electronic communications.

For example, the article pointed out that “a one-punch fighter might win in one round (but ‘meets himself coming back’ when the competitors ‘gang-up’ on him in the second round) or more often, miss completely and knock himself out. The best fighters win on points.”

This is the argument for frequency in advertising. While you can get a knockout with an award-winning campaign (for the WSJ best of 2011, go to http://goo.gl/lRf2P), how many Volkswagens were sold because of a little boy in a Darth Vader costume last year? Great brands go for advertising with frequency AND continuity. Or, as Thomas Denton wrote in the 1938 article, “Giving and taking, they (brands) carefully protect themselves from lasting injury…A top notcher piles up scores in every round.”

Let’s review some of the other tidbits Mr. Denton pointed out that make so much sense today (perhaps more than ever as we try to break through the clutter).

1. “Since the prospect is away from a phone, and away from a store, the outdoor advertising message must be remembered…must throw its punch in a flash – but it must be strong enough to make an impression.” Do you wonder about the growth of mobile (See Nielsen 3Q2011 Mobile Media Report at: http://goo.gl/hy0ew)? What Denton said about outdoor advertising is completely relevant about your website – especially now with the mobile apps. Even in print, where “they” say there is less clutter (have you seen a VOGUE magazine lately?), standing out takes frequency and continuity. When Denton says “the picture and copy line must be delivered with a real ‘sock,’ quickly, imperatively, definitely,” isn’t that true of any communication? To break through clutter, you have to be different – not just different for being difference sake – but truly unique. Little Vader is cute, but do sales rise because the force is with you – or him?

2. “Both the first round and the last round in the advertising battle are fought wherever the purchase is made.” And now you know the importance of today’s e-commerce websites, the first and final rounds of an increasing number of purchases (for a webinar on-site deployment of social tools and the impact on e-commerce sales by Lauren Freedman and Cathy Halligan, go to http://goo.gl/msnt3). But, what about the “considered” purchase? In B2B, the purchasing channel is populated with “value-chain participants” – people who have influence, but take a lot of time and have a lot to say on what is and is not purchased. Indeed, most manufacturers in B2B hesitate to open “stores” online, for fear of disturbing their distribution channels, which flock to the web for their storefronts!

 This channel confusion complicates things, but shows the relevance of CONTENT, which is the “product” on any website, e-commerced or not! You never know WHERE someone is reading, or about what, and hence, CONTENT transactions occur. This begs the question: how good are your content transactions?

For example, one of our clients received a call from one of their successful sales representatives saying that they really needed to re-print the entire catalog. The problem was that we had just showed the pro forma showing that the entire catalog didn’t need to be reprinted: only one-third of it changed. Our strategy was to reprint the “parts,” and have the rep deliver that content into the customers’ offices. However, the representative told our client that there was no way he, or the other reps, would be going into customer offices and “updating” the catalog (blowing, by the way, a perfect sales call). This “content” was enough to convince the client to re-print the entire catalog – a significant investment.

The point of this story is that it depends on who you talk to, and you have to be talking to everyone these days! The fight is really unlimited rounds, last company standing! The rounds in between the first and last round of a fight in B2B are what drive business toward the eventual sale. Unfortunately, a company has to be everywhere, or as Denton put it: “The prospect may hear about your product through radio, read about it in the newspaper or magazine, be told about it or see outdoor posters, but the sale is made at none of these places.” Sound advice – because the website becomes, then, THE store! As a matter of fact, your website should be your single focus, with EVERYTHING driving people back to it!

3. “Store advertising isn’t easy to place. There are too many people trying to do the same thing.” For real stores, even today, Denton is right.  But for the virtual store, the website, nothing is easier! In fact, there isn’t a week that goes by when we are not deluged by calls offering all manner of space opportunities on websites. The problem is: these websites are not selling anything, nor are they offering places to sell our clients’ products! They are “content hubs,” so they offer places to “message” an audience.

So here is the question: in today’s content-rich environment, why would a client believe that “shoppers” at any website “store” are more relevant than the shoppers at their own store (if they give them something to buy!). Let’s re-phrase Denton’s statement to: “Website advertising is easy to place. There are many people trying to do the same thing.” The question is: what are you going to do?

It’s funny how things don’t change, and yet they change so much!

For more thought leadership on this topic, or a copy of Thomas Denton’s 1938 article, contact Jim Nowakowski, President, Interline Creative Group, Inc. at 847 358 4848, or http://intrln.com/contact.

 1. Measure, measure, all is measure

Don’t you wonder why we still don’t know what we get for our advertising and marketing investments? Go figure. But unless you make up your mind to measure everything you do when it comes to marketing, you’ll never know what works or doesn’t work.

For example, we studied over 3,500 leads for a client and found a professor in the batch – but not just any professor. This was the Department Chairman in the field of our client’s product category! Our client missed the lead, but in other instances, we have seen clients throw away leads like this as “education” or “students.” Are you kidding me? Cultivating that inquiry would have benefited the client in so many ways! Look and measure everything!

2. Channel, Channel Burning Bright

What channel isn’t being disrupted today? If your regular channel isn’t working, try another. Or, try something different in the channel you are in. People are looking – and finding – information everywhere. They want to be treated like wholesalers, like consumers, like designers or contractors.

For example, you will see that social and digital media are a lot less expensive than traditional channel marketing tactics (i.e., direct mail). But all isn’t what it seems to be. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it works better! So before you abandon what’s working because you want to Twitter your way to the top, think twice! (By the way, Twitter is a channel, too.)

3. I see YOU!

In some circles, it’s becoming more in vogue to concentrate on engagement – not the customer you are engaging. Well, think again. We had a client who recently developed a product based on research, only they developed it based on exactly the opposite of what the research said the customer wanted. Apparently, the company knew better what their market wanted than the market itself did. Can you guess the outcome? Remember who the customer is!

4. How much is too much?

Buzz words like “big data” can be confusing. We all know there’s a lot of it out there, and it’s getting worse. But remember, there’s gold in that data!

It’s about looking closer. Underneath. For example, doing a simple overlay on your data file can be revealing. We appended SIC codes to a client’s file recently, who believed it was comprised of one type of customer. Our appending revealed that the majority of his customers preferred to classify themselves as something entirely different – and gave us the opportunity to pursue an entirely different line of thinking.

5. Value — de gustibus non est disputandum

While you can’t argue about taste, you can also say that value is in the eye of the beholder and you can’t argue about that either. But value is really what sales is all about; our CEU for designers Staying in Front of Your Customers brings this home.

Therefore, you have to look at each of your customers as an asset – something of value. Peter Guber, one of the most successful and powerful producers and executives in Hollywood, put it this way: “Don’t aim at their wallet. Aim at their heart. Think of what audiences want. They want experiences, not comedy.” He added, “Trying to sell something or get a new client? Look at that person on other side of the table as an audience, not a customer.”

6. Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

Herds are interesting, and so are groups. There’s safety in numbers, which is the basis of herd philosophy. But herding is what we do in society. All herds need leaders, and leadership is one of the singular principles that determine whether the herd survives. Take the herd down the wrong road, and things go south pretty fast.

So enters trust. If you trust in the leadership, you follow. If you don’t, you take another path. It’s been the story of business since business began. For example, entering into social media as a leader or as a follower – which is best? The answer is often somewhere in between. If you move too fast, you’ll miss as many of the opportunities as moving too slow. But move you must!

For more thought leadership on this topic, contact Jim Nowakowski, President, Interline Creative Group, Inc. at 847 358 4848, or http://intrln.com/contact.

The presentation concludes with these findings:

• no changes in budgets or staffing in 2011 to change those challenges
• the company’s CRM and sales automation software has to deal with the challenges, and
• they (companies) use social media to identify and qualify leads.

What’s the real message here? For example, the survey reported that 14% said changes in customer buying behavior drive sales strategies. But the survey also said that 13% was driven by product commoditization pressure, and another 14% on the need for product and service innovation. Is this “new” information? Thanks Frost & Sullivan for verifying these factors; however, many companies already know of the unbelievable pressure to bring down a price, or the drive to innovate. The question is really what do you DO about them? If customer behavior in purchasing is changing, HOW is it changing? And, what can a company do to accommodate that change?

Which leads to another question: are these questions verbatims that were standardized, or choices provided to respondents and then selected? For example, one of the presentation slides (by the way, these slides are terrific stimulators http://goo.gl/jO68Y) said that the sales challenges are predominantly caused by ineffective processes and staffing issues. The challenges like identifying and qualifying prospects or enhancing a rep’s productivity are blamed on processes and skills. But, what the heck is a “process?” And skills? Isn’t that salesmanship 101?

F&S’s concept to solve this challenge is what they call a “Growth Team Membership”, or GTM, which supports people who report to the CEO and provides best practices, events and services to address such internal challenges. The “value” is fairly straightforward: 1)speed design and implementation of initiatives by not re-inventing the wheel; 2)save money and reduce risk by avoiding mistakes made by other companies; 3)accelerate problem solving with a cross-industry perspective; and 4)improve the performance of the company, and productivity. These are all admirable objectives and statements of a value proposition. Are they really that “out of the box?” Any strategy worth its salt tries not to re-invent the wheel, yet how often in your company have you and your team members found yourselves doing just that?

Interline believes this Frost and Sullivan presentation is worth the look because it challenges you and reinforces what you already know or suspect you know. We all have to understand not only a company’s value proposition, but how everything we do affects the eventual outcome of a transaction – whether that transaction is handling a phone call from a client, or doing a transition on the e-commerce channel. True, process is everything, but when you spend your time thinking about the process for process sake, you sacrifice work, and without work, there will be no time to think about the process because you’ll be out of business. As John Caslione, our consultant friend, said once, “When the bullets are flying, you don’t have time to call a meeting.” (http://intrln.com/caslione)

For more thought leadership on this topic, contact Jim Nowakowski, President, Interline Creative Group, Inc. at 847 358 4848, or http://intrln.com/contact.

Many companies embark on social media with the Nike philosophy: “just do it.” But that doesn’t cut it in today’s “engagement” environment. According to a piece in Infoworld Daily, corporate focus on social technologies has been in “marketing organizations that use it to monitor what customers are saying about the company, trying to influence customer views. The buzz word is “reputation management,” so companies think that by adding Twitter, Facebook, etc. to traditional advertising and marketing channels they are “doing social media.” According to IBM’s paper, that’s missing the mark.

IBM surveyed more than 1,000 consumers worldwide and interviewed 350 executives and found out companies assume customers are seeking them out on social sites to feel connected to their brand. Wrong! Customers are more interested in getting tangible value, so the white paper suggests businesses are confusing their own desire for customer intimacy with what should be the real motivations for engaging customers: creating value in THEIR eyes, not our own!

Interline understands we have our work cut out for us in understanding this “new world.” For example, the white paper points out that for people, social media is about family and friends, or news and entertainment – not interacting with brands. More than half of the people they interviewed don’t even consider engaging with businesses via social sites. That’s a disconnect.

Because if IBM’s white paper is true — and our on experiences with our clients’ participation in social media reflects the truth of it — 45 percent who do interact with brands say they need to feel “a company is communicating honestly before they will interact.” So the real question isn’t about adding the social channels to your arsenal of tactics; the real question is defining “honestly” not as bragging about your latest stand on an issue, but rather, REALLY doing something meaningful and of value for your customers. That’s hard work, and requires a kind of new thinking all around. We think IBM’s paper is worth the time to consider their findings and to start that thinking. Thank you IBM! Get the download: intrln.com/ibm

Many blame the Internet, but we believe that part of reason – if not the main reason – is the failure of the industry to understand the changing needs of its readers and how they want to receive specific information – that, and for taking for granted that business “will always be the same.”

Within our marketplace, a b2b magazine operates by attempting to bring advertisers and readers together to “conduct business.” Yet, because of the flux in that marketplace and other communication channels opening up, it becomes increasingly difficult to find out how readers seek, gather or even want information.

For example, MAGAZINE A was a publication in in the B2B arena, but today, it no longer exists. One of the things that happened before it crashed illustrates the opportunity in front of all of us. Here is the story.

We had an ad running in it for a number of our clients that drove people to a Website we had created called www.contractor-resource.com. At this Website, we collected information for our clients from readers who would either 1) come to the Website and request information, or 2) circle the reader service card if the magazine had one. And here is where the problem – and the opportunity – occurred and why we are writing about this experience.

MAGAZINE A ceased publication with its March 2009 issue, but didn’t tell anyone, and then published that issue in September 2009 (probably because they want to receive the last-gasp revenue from the advertising)! When we started receiving leads from this final issue, we called the leads as we always do, and were asked point blank where the “other” companies were that were in MAGAZINE A could be found on our Website, www.contractor-resource.com. Apparently, the magazine cut the readers service card and made it impossible for the reader to get information from the advertisers. The readers were going to our website, and thought it was the magazine’s! We capitalized on this opportunity, and put many of the advertisers from the now defunct MAGAZINE A on our Website, where we collect leads and send them back to the advertisers.

We believe the time is perfect for such opportunities for the following reasons, especially since the explosion of the social media channels. First, according to the Magazine Publishers of America, the growing composition of public-place readers among total magazine audience has fueled advertisers’ interest in understanding the effects of circulation source and price. When you can get 50 “likes” on Facebook for $100, but it costs you tens of thousands to “maybe” get some inquiries, what’s to figure out where to spend your money? Advertisers are learning this, and magazines have to deal with it whether they like it or not.

This “examination” of circulation and price isn’t just happening with the “public place” readers – it is happening in our own trade magazine arena. Advertisers continually question the “value” of advertising, and we have to tie in the circulation to that justification, and more.

More important, what is “advertising” is being redefined. This further confuses the issues and presents even more opportunities. Talking to one publisher today, he is offering an advertiser “custom content” along with advertising to help them penetrate his audience. Just a few years ago, editorial as advertising was one of the few places you just couldn’t go. Now, everything is fair game.

The real measure, however, is in the follow-up – the back room – where the action happens, and that is our specialty. Let’s face it: Many advertisers don’t have the back-room structures in place to monitor and fulfill the activity from a magazine, much less understand its value. This is the opportunity to do it for them.

We must understand circulation’s relationship to readership, and to sales – not just building a “bridge” between buyers and sellers, but actually creating ways to push those two pieces together.

Our interests here at Interline is to help both sides become better marketers by offering a wide-range of services (see www.interlinegroup.com). All of these services are centered on one thing: driving response.

Affinity Research LLC noted that based on interviews with more than 60,000 magazine readers in 2005, on average, more than half took or plan to take action as a direct result of exposure to specific print ads. How does a magazine currently show that to advertisers? Reader action levels were similar for both paid and non-paid readers. It is this “action” that this channel can capture.

Our experience in not only tracking such activity, but documenting the sales activity that results from proper lead management, will help prove the value of advertising in your magazine!