In the world seemingly on a rudderless course steered by automated ‘personalized’ marketing; we are inundated with the latest and greatest sales behavior predictions using social media, networking, blogging, video platforms… a digital cornucopia of the ‘it’ factors pointed at customers that will buy.

Beware of sales behavior predictions.

Some of the statistical data is downright poor and maybe that’s because simple statistics rely too much on buying habits under a limited number of situations, markets or conditions that bear little resemblance to what you sell. Few experts are willing to debunk these easy and simple hypothetic links e.g. a social network platform that works for selling Pepsi may have little relativity for selling houses.

Yet many a marketing guru would have your company totally revamp its selling process based on these statistics; worse yet with relatively ‘green fielding’ methodologies in lieu of tried and true methods.

Social Media Sales Stats: Does this mean the end of Wal-Mart?

Even when demographic and econometric modeling is added, a statistic hypothesis of a certain sales behavior doesn’t necessarily mean anything. For example, Twitter touts 200 million users. Even with such screaming growth, does this new wave of internet marketing spell the end to Wal-Mart? Hardly, for many solid reasons, not the least is new internet platforms are a figurative drop in the bucket. The 176 million living and breathing customers that visit Wal-Mart stores weekly and ‘stay’ awhile and ‘buy’ vastly outnumber Twitter and MySpace.

Stats tell you what customers aren’t buying.

Car crashes killed 34,000 people in 2009 and in 2008 there were six million accidents, about a one in five chance it will be your time. No one could possibly sell cars based on these statistics alone. Car manufacturers avoid the poor statistics and replaced them with items that do not change the statistical facts: zero interest loans, free this and more that. They have used poor stats to their benefit: ignore what customers aren’t buying.

Great stats can fail to sell.

Airlines can statistically prove air travel is many times safer than traveling by car. However, many a travel plan is based on a perceived and intense decision not to fly for safety reasons. As infinitesimal as the risk may be, the buying decision for air travel is not based on favorable safety statistics. So airlines ignore statistics that won’t sell: a hugely favorable safety statistic is something they can’t sell because many passengers aren’t buying it.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner
Maximize your statistical edge: “Sell a ‘Trend”

Even with exposure to the unlimited ‘customers’ on the net, selling a trend is possibly the only edge over blanket numerical statistics. What makes a trend is selling to good markets and ignoring weak markets, niches or products with proven methods and options that accentuate your edge.

At MosaicCRM we rely on tried and true statistics, particularly in the two vital areas of activities and sales opportunities.

• Market Analytics show aging, margin, unit volumes and revenue distribution is a single step
• Track Stalled Opportunities as an indicator of competition, sales programs and sales cycles
• Identify Customer Buying Cycles to minimize the selling cycle and maximize personnel deployment

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Written by
Bill Noonan, CEO MosaicCRM

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Protocols for Measuring and Optimizing Activity Results

Helping organizations and their users achieve their activity objectives is the hallmark of MosaicCRM. Our business processes offer a unique and important approach to measuring activity ‘results’.  This differentiation is particularity valuable when it comes to Account Retention and Acquisition: our activity protocols are vital to optimize activity effectiveness and success.

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The Big Brands make it look so very easy…and lucrative.

The hype around social networking has reached a fevered pitch and that should be warning enough to stop and take a closer look. A big part of the SMB interest in social networks is the irresistible allure and appeal of the numbers and dollars; potentially huge followings that are interested in you, your products, brand, culture and of course, want to buy your stuff.

Here’s the rub: achieving this nirvana has so far been limited to a few handfuls of mega brands and trying to imitate them could be economic suicide. It is almost as if social networking is  a damned if you do and damned if you don’t proposition. The ‘perception’ pressures are enormous: if you don’t ‘social network’ then you aren’t with it. If you do and do it half-assed, then the ‘perception’ is equally bad.

Social Networking ‘Things’

Big brands like Pepsi and Red Bull… organizations that attract numbers in the millions are plowing up the social network fields. So if they can do it, why not SMB’s? Well the why nots make for an interesting conversation of ‘things’. As an individual, micro business or SMB, missing any of the following ‘things’ could have a dramatic affect on the success of your social network investments.

• Cultural Thing: Today’s population is a mosaic (pardon the intended pun) of cultures, rarely one taking the commanding lead. However, branding your company with a culture is extremely valuable. Without strong cultural branding, will your social media have any significant impact?

• Generational Thing: it is a multi-generational thing. Big brands go far beyond the obvious as generational interests are not constrained or limited by traditional age brackets e.g. Grandma is having a blast with her IPad as is her granddaughter. Heck, she probably bought it for her granddaughter. As a SMB, good luck figuring out how to get into that conversation.

• Segmented Thing: It is multi-segmented and here’s what makes that interesting: the more segmented your market, the better the conversation you can carry on. Look at Red Bull: multi-everything and multi segmented via dozens of really interesting sports venues, each with a rabid fan following. Conversations here are damn interesting if you are a specific segmented follower and publisher e.g. messages and conversations that are segmented tend to be noticed and generate greater followings.

• Categorical Thing: Yes it is very categorical to be ultimately relevant but it is not so obvious. Carrying on a conversation with an automaker would predict you are in the market for a car. This is categorically correct and very cool if your organization can craft interesting messages and conversations. Costly too.

• Time Thing: Do you have the dedicated resources to be so interesting? Or, like me, is all your time consumed with running the business? There is no part time, something maybe this week approach to commercialized social networking. Also: does your target followers have the time? If they are like me running their business, probably not.

• Multi-Platform Thing: It is really tough to have a multi-presence  conversation on a single platform or network. Each has it’s own methodology, message style, culture and design appeal.

• Money Thing: Ha! Do you really believe the hype all this was cheap, almost ‘free’. It takes enormous sums of liquid cash to support a marketing budget to create, sustain and maintain a social media following. How liquid: it’s practically measured by the hour. Don’t forget the FREE part to keep your followers connected: add on to your budget promotions and discount offers to keep them coming for more.

Social Networking: Is it for you?

How many mega brand companies are like Red Bull? How many companies have a following that interesting? Can a SMB like mine carry on such interesting and dynamic conversations with millions… thousands…maybe hundreds or is it only a few dozen followers.

MosaicCRM Experts Corner

Fitting social networking into CRM and vice-versa is totally possible, even preferred over  having a second ‘social network’ database. Managing and collecting social network data and transposing this into your CRM program is radically different from the traditional historical based ‘interaction-transaction’ type recording.

Depending on the number of followers and how they are segmented with ‘the things’  will help to set the groundwork for more proactive communication routines within your CRM platform.

• Social networking requires you to adapt CRM to recognize the instant real time data and transpose this into live response data
• More than ever customer centric response models are vital: Re-engineer your CRM to optimize this closed loop marketing process
• Evaluate the type and degree of customer information needed to assist sales efforts in this medium
• Use CRM to spread the results of the customer experience within your organization

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Written by Bill Noonan, Founder and CEO of MosaicCRM.

I welcome your inquiries, questions and comments.

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