Sales Momentum recently published a stat that says $15 million was spent on marketing new products which does not factor in the product vetting process, integration into back office systems, IT support, sales training costs and lost opportunity of poorly executed launch plans which could push that figure north of $25 million. This investment figure was balanced by a recent UCLA study which indicates more than 50% of new products fail.

While many factors contribute to the success or failure of new products such as competitive differentiation, ease of sale, and fulfillment support, one key area BIA/Kelsey has been investigating is the hand off between product marketing and sales. While there is often heavy investment in time and resources discovering, vetting, negotiating and integrating new products within a media company, often there are miscues in translating the product and marketing message into a coherent sales plan and approach. Some of the key areas fumbled include:

• Fully researching and defining the specific target audiences. Many product marketing plans focus on number of products sold by rep by market taken from their business plan revenue models. Once the product development phase is complete, marketing and sales need to work together to develop proper target audience identification, determine how or if the revenue goals can be supported by these audiences, then develop audience specific messages.

• Clearly identifying how the new product fits within existing product portfolios or advertiser bundles. New products are frequently introduced in a vacuum without enough thought on how they will be sold alongside other products, particularly when it comes to introducing digital products alongside traditional media products. Advertisers are confused about the volume of marketing products available, so local media companies have to work to make it obvious as to why the product is being added and the value it brings to their current marketing initiatives.

• Demonstrate how the new product enhances current marketing initiatives or enables the advertiser to reach more prospects. Advertiser budgets only go so far, showing them how a new product increases the effectiveness of the other marketing products they have purchased helps to streamline the sales process, increasing success.

• Focusing too much on features and benefits rather than on customer-focused needs. Products are a series of solutions to support advertiser business needs. The roll out of any product has to keep the needs of advertisers in mind so that solution sets can be recommended to solve their key business growth needs. Sales people often get overwhelmed by the number of media products in their portfolio, moving to viewing products as a portfolio of solutions helps sales people clearly see which products make sense and which products to keep in the sales bag.

BIA/Kelsey’s goal is to dig in and identify the best approaches to a smooth product marketing to sales handoff, as well as how we can help sales teams better strategize on developing sales messaging, strategies to maximize the ROI associated with new product launches to better maximize each product opportunity. We’re interested in talking with companies who are taking innovative approaches to product launches and sales teams who are figuring out how to integrate digital and traditional media products successfully. If your company feels they have something interesting to share, contact me to feature your best practices on our blog.

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The keys to any sales person being effective using LinkedIn are finding the right people with the right connections, leading with insights that are valuable to your target audience, and being able to leverage relationships to lead you to decision makers or other prospects. “There are on average 5.6 decision makers in most organizations and it is important to understand who those people are to be the most effective,” says Koka.

When advising sales teams on effectively using social media sites like LinkedIn, Koka recommends:

1. Build your profile to showcase your skills, insights and experience to build your reputation
2. Develop your network with people who can help you achieve your goals
3. Gather insights that are important to your audience and targets
4. Contribute your insights in meaningful ways within groups and forums

Sales people and sales teams need to understand that buyers are researching sales people and companies before ever allowing them to make a one-on-one connection. Sales people who position themselves as experts, who provide solutions from solid companies, are ultimately more successful than their counterparts who ignore the value of social selling.

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Hubspot is an inbound marketing company whose sales force approach came not from an established playbook, but from their own experience utilizing their own inbound marketing platform and data. Mark Roberge subscribes to the old sales adage of “what you don’t measure does not matter to sales.” As a self described data junkie, Roberge captures sales data based on Hubspot’s hiring criteria to better identify how skills and traits translate to sales success. Over years of collecting data, they have isolated the characteristics of their most successful sales people which they now use in their hiring and evaluation process. By using metrics to diagnose key performance factors, Hubspot is able to coach and manage their sales force more successfully.

Once hired, Hubspot is a big believer that all sales people need to be trained in a consistent manner are continually managed to those criteria throughout their careers. Part of Hubspot’s training is to certify all sales people on the product and approach. Hubspot achieves this by having new sales trainees set up their own small business then utilize the Hubspot system to build a site, create a blog, develop and add content and track their progress utilizing the company’s dashboard. By working through the platform as a small business, they gain an insiders view of how best to leverage the system as a way of improving their salesmanship on every interaction.

Jeannie Parent of Digital First tackled the classic dilemma of transforming a legacy media sales force into digital sellers, and one that could adapt to new selling methods. Digital First also took a “home grown” approach to their transformation process by developing an approach that is self guided but built off of their own sales best practices. Using many of their own internal resources, Digital First was able to create an online, video based learning approach which minimized time sales people were away from customers but maximized the learning process. Utilizing a bit of gaming mechanics, Digital first created a sales bade system where reps are taught key digital sales and product knowledge in an online learning system that must then be utilized on a sales call and successfully closed for the sales person to earn the necessary certification badge. Once certified, sales people are supported by digital literacy and other just in time training to support on-going learning and re-certification to maintain their commitment to the new products and sales approaches.

Neil Salvage from Lending Tree rounded out the panel discussion by reinforcing the idea that ensuring sales has the best and most attractive product not only increases sales motivation it creates customers who want to engage with them to learn about and purchase those products. Coming from Bellsouth and other highly trained sales teams, Neil points out that “you need to specifically define what you want sales people to focus on, stick to those goals then provide the support necessary for them to effective accomplish those tasks.” Neil also observes that one of the key problems with sales messages in this product overloaded time is that features and products are pushed rather than selling solutions specific to the customer’s needs. Neil also felt that the value after the initial sale has also been neglected since this leads to longer retention and greater life time value of the customer. One of the key ways Lending Tree simplifies the sale presentation is to avoid the lengthy demo of the product and focus more on the outcomes of using the product and how it can solve specific solutions. Other tips shared from the Lending Tree playbook were keeping the needs analysis to a small set of critical questions and not being afraid to ask for the close if the sales person has done an effective job in position the solution to the customer’s needs.

What all of these leading sales organizations have one thing in common is the recognition that you can’t cut operational costs to build year over year revenue growth, it has to come from a more effective sales organization that retains customers. When asked, all three companies advised that the ROI impact of taking the time and energy to train, coach and manage an effective sales process far out weighed the impact of losing customers or continuing to sell products that decrease in value over time.

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What used to separate each of the media types offered in local markets across the US and other countries was there was something unique offered by each media outlet. Newspapers covered local events and encouraged local discussions on events and issues of concern. TV was the brand medium and breaking news of the moment surrounded by engaging entertainment. Radio owned the music and entertainment space with all-day listening by format. Now we look at local media and everyone seems to be headed toward the same goal, with similar products, similar sales messages and often the same content strategies.

As an analyst firm to the local media space, BIA/Kelsey gets to see how media is being sold, products being developed and marketing strategies implements across all of the major media types. Often we see a drive to digital media without a content strategy matched to the effort. What I mean by this is that an understanding of digital products and consumer preferences has to be matched so unique content can be developed and tailored to each medium.

Newspapers and TV outlets have the advantage of reporters who can write volumes of valuable content and investigate issues that local communities care about; an advantage that seems to be lost as cost cutting has become the focus. Directories used to bring together the only comprehensive list of local businesses available, but have yet to adapt to how people now search for local businesses and how they can become relevant repositories of local information that influences research, connections and local business transactions.

When we look at the products being offered by local media companies seeking to adapt to the shift from traditional media to digital media, we see so many of the same products being offered through partnerships making them nearly indistinguishable from the media outlet across the street. Products like local search, SEO, display networks, reputation management, web site development all look remarkably the same to local business owners. How are local business owners expected to make a decision between options when the options are nearly the same? The unfortunate answer comes down to price and relationship and not unique value.

Media companies must examine their core strengths and develop products and partnerships that play to those strengths. The industry needs to stop desperately seeking digital revenues from the next “shiny” digital product and develop a more thoughtful way of bringing their product strengths to the market. If the digital product does not create a unique offering, or does not work to the strength of the media’s value, then move on to the next. Media companies should also demand more from their digital partners, working together to shape products that are unique to their market and leverage the media’s strength rather than pushing off-the-shelf products benefits.

In order to break though the clutter of media offerings to local SMBs, media companies have to get back to creating unique content and advertising offerings. Local business owners will then see distinct products from each of the local media outlets that will help them make good decisions based on value. Taking this step will also allow sales teams to develop clear sales messages and show how all the unique products they sell work together to supports specific business objectives.

BIA/Kelsey is about to release its Local Commerce Monitor survey and our new Consumer Commerce Monitor survey which should serve as a guide to how SMBs and consumers are changing and adapting to the digital shift on their own, and how media companies can uniquely adapt to create an advantage for their products, content and services to emerge from the sea of sameness weighing down the industry.

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I recently had the opportunity to speak with Bruce Burke, CMO of M-ize. That’s m-ize like monetize, and mobilize which is exactly what m-ize does with its social media platform. The focus of m-ize is on specific product categories and expertise so that reviews and posts are more relevant to what a consumer is seeking, and offering more targeted leads for businesses that interact on the social and mobile platform. According to m-ize“The mission of the company is to bring smarter consumers all together to connect to products, community, advice and customer support.”

For consumers, they can use the company’s new app, My Products, to track products they own, read reviews on products they are considering buying, create wish lists, and locate deals in their area. The value in the My Products app is that it allows consumers to learn in more detail about the products they desire from their social graph and from expert reviews in each product category. With topical brand search, users gain insights from category experts from a few expert sources rather than being inundated by opinions of the masses on sites like Yelp. Their wish list approach is similar to eBay and other sites allowing you to share these desired products and gather opinions to drive a purchase decision.

Now here is where the real value comes in. The My Products app allows users to enter product registration and warranty information into the app so a consumer can track when they made the purchase, warranty periods, maintenance information, customer service contacts, accessories and parts information and model numbers. Often times, this is information that gets lost or misplaced after the purchase but is critical to maintaining a high level of satisfaction after a purchase is made. Owning the pre-purchase and post purchase experience, m-ize’s My Products app can capture reviews of buyers as well as follow-up reviews from purchasers who have required customer service. The customer service aspect of high consideration purchases like electronics often drives the quality, believability and relevance of reviews.
Smart Blox menu of mobile services. The menu of services approach allows m-ize to customize the mobile experience for each brand or company based on the needs of their buyers and what services are most important to the company.

Companies that are seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the pre and post buying experience have the ability to build customers for life. Utilizing expert reviews and content specific to product categories, particularly high consideration purchases, often can drive intent to a higher degree creating leads further down the purchase funnel. Post purchase insights and support is an interesting purchase cycle to watch and we expect more activity in this segment of the market to generate leads, enhance brand engagement and allow for greater post purchase sales opportunities with extended warranties, accessories and repairs. Help us expose more of these post-purchase models by sharing company and products names in the comments section below.

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Moolah Media was founded in 2010 and has grown into a top mobile lead generation company. The core of the Moolah platform is a Real Time Buying platform coupled with a call tracking and analytics platform to quickly deliver and track high quality leads. The core of their customer base is currently national brands seeking to drive local traffic or local leads. In order to drive significant quality traffic, calls and actions, Moolah utilizes its creative team to work with advertisers to create targeted landing pages and mobile ad content that will generate the volume and quality of leads advertisers are seeking. Rather than just capture the click from an ad, prospects are taken to a more detailed landing page allowing them to quickly connect with the advertiser. Utilizing landing pages also allows the ad platform to serve the page in appropriate formats to be viewed on specific smartphones and browsers which increases the ability to keep prospects on the landing page.

Moolah has also created its own ad network of high quality publisher sites to ensure its advertiser sites are placed alongside high quality content. Coupling their ad network with its own call tracking platform, Moolah Media is able to serve dynamic phone numbers to match each creative offering on individual mobile sites so leads and impressions can be accurately tracked back to the source. “We handle between 100 and 150 thousand call leads per month,” says Shawn Scheuer, “with the capacity to handle many more depending upon the demands of our brand and local advertisers.” Having both traffic data and call analytics capabilities allows Moolah Media to offer more accurate testing of messages and placements to understand what converts at a higher rate or delivers the highest quality audience.

Combining targeted impressions with calls has also allowed Moolah Media to capture higher paying cost per lead revenues. For example, a satellite TV company might pay in the range of $7-10 for a phone call, but will pay exponentially more for a scheduled installation or in-home consultation since this type of lead has a much higher conversion rate because of the commitment of the prospect. While calls are at the core of their approach, Moolah Media also provides advertiser value by delivering sign-ups, registrations, and mobile numbers via interactive SMS campaigns.

Moolah Media also works in conjunction with publishers helping them monetize their inventory, reducing the need to sell off remnant space, and helping sites keep 100 percent of their mobile space filled. Because the platform churns a large number of campaigns and advertisers, they are able to extract valuable data for publishers to help further refine campaigns, create audience groupings and track performance by device type, carrier, location and other real time criteria. Publishers value the ability to map leads and sync them to audience behaviors and trends which help increase their ability to charge premiums rates for leads as opposed to lower cost per click rates on other sites.

“While other mobile platforms can generate a high volume of mobile clicks, we focus on generating high quality leads that tend to convert at a higher rate,” says Shawn Sauer. While it is still early days in the mobile ad space, the power and immediacy of calls on the mobile handset is what we view as the real game-changer and differentiator between the desktop and the mobile ad environment. BIA/Kelsey estimates that as much as $68.4 million of locally targeted advertising will be spent on generating calls in 2012. With as much as 30 percent of search traffic being generated on the mobile handset, advertisers and publishers are actively seeking ways to monetize this traffic and develop new business cost per action models to capture call-based advertising revenues. Moolah Media is laser focused on addressing and attacking this need.

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Simply Good‘s Loop mobile coupon platform is designed to help local merchants reward customers, handle customer service issues and support ambassadors who influence others to patronize local businesses. The concept is an on-the-spot bounce-back coupon where a waiter could offer a deal for the next time a person comes to the restaurant for them and four of their friends. Local retailers also have the ability to offer fans, or what they call ambassadors, the opportunity to “hook up” their friends and contacts with special offers at their favorite restaurants, bars, hotels and other retail outlets.

Retailers have a back-end measurement dashboard showing which employees are most active at providing rewards and offers, as well as what ambassadors are most active in bringing in customers with offers and rewards. Being able to see both options allows a retailer to reward those most active and provide additional incentives to those who are most influential. The dashboard also allows a company to segment offers to employees and ambassadors so they have more control over the offers available to both groups allowing for more specific measurement and targeting of offers.

Simply Good is making inroads with major Canadian media companies and sees a large portion of its future client base tied to media companies that touch a large base of retailers. We see great promise in using rewards and offers and strategically targeting them to current and new customers as well as utilizing people’s social graphs to extend offers to people more likely to redeem and become recurring customers. The insider motivation is very strong and the idea of being able to “hook someone up” with an exclusive deal gives the rewarder special status and provides real value to the person receiving the reward. Brilliant.

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I’ll be blogging live from Boston’s Techstars demo day. There’s lots of energy and excitement in the room as twelve new statrt-ups get their chance to present their business case and successes to win over investors. Early companies of interest on the local front include Shopsy who are mining the retail graph and Simply Good Technologies who focus on making local couponing extremely simple.

Looking forward to an interesting day.

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Mary Boysman, VP of brand marketing and advertising, demonstrated that Aspen Dental clearly get the big picture on how to succeed with local media. Aspen Dental is the fastest growing dental practice company in the U.S. with 380 locations spread across 23 states. With growth plans of 60-plus locations added each year over the foreseeable future, it is poised to be the largest branded dental practice in the U.S. Aspen Dental’s goal is to focus on secondary markets that may be underserved with affordable dental services. Rather than focus on office districts, Aspen seeks out highly visible retail locations to ensure traffic and visibility of its brand.

While brand awareness is important to Aspen Dental, audiences are the main focus of its local marketing efforts. The bulk of its targeting is focused on boomers who are 45 plus and seniors, all of whom are seeking affordable dental care but may not have dental insurance or have let their dental care lapse. While its initial focus was those who were too afraid to come to the dentist or embarrassed because they had not taken care of their teeth, its strategy is now focused on providing affordable and accessible dental care to the 45-plus market.

When seeking markets to enter, affordability of media, particularly television and directories, is a factor as is the number of locations it must open to support a viable local media plan. Over the past seven years, Aspen Dental has evolved its media mix from a heavy newspaper focus to a more balanced media mix that focuses on TV, directories and digital options. Digital is used in a tactical manner to test messages and to better understand how best to reach its key audiences who will spend on multiple services or major treatment plans. When asked about the company’s use of mobile marketing, Boysman replied, “mobile is here and all marketers should be able to adapt and build from mobile’s capabilities.”

Aspen Dental is able to take feedback from online media, and particularly social media, allowing it to test new concepts and identify unmet needs. One example shared was using feedback from its dentists about appointments cancelled at the last moment and customers wanting to make appointments online. Using this feedback, Aspen Dental was able to implement testing of an online appointment setting system paired with an email alert system that let customers know an appointment time was now available because of a cancelled appointment.

“The keys to our media success, said Boysman, is being nimble and understanding the interrelationship of all media types. Our goal is to use a multimedia approach that assures our patients know us.” Aspen Dental employs a three-pronged approach to its media planning using a blend of what it calls above the line advertising (broadcast, online display, PR, OOH); targeted advertising (sponsorships, sports, partnerships); and hand raiser activities (SEM/SEO, print and online directories, mobile and live chat).

Its laser focus on local and hyperlocal media usage makes Aspen Dental well-positioned to not only serve the marketing needs of its dental practices, but also assure its success in each of its markets.

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CSO Insights recently completed its annual global sales force survey and has come to some interesting conclusions. While sales objective achievement has increased overall, 2012 sales objectives are being projected at their highest level in recent years coupled with the lowest confidence levels in actually achieving them. One of our core beliefs with sales objectives is you can’t expect increased performance without increased support. CSO Insights’ data seem to support this:

“Increases in revenue goals need to be backed by investments in sales rep efficiency and effectiveness,” added Jim Dickie, managing partner, CSO Insights. “The study uncovered a wide variety of factors that can positively impact sales performance including optimizing lead generation, better alignment of the sell cycle and the buy cycle, and leveraging CRM 2.0 technologies such as sales collaboration, sales management analytics, and sales intelligence. Best-in-class sales organizations that focus on formalizing their sales process and deepening their relationship with customers are significantly outselling their competitors.”

From our point of view, those organizations willing to provide updated training on a more consistent and effective sales process, coupled with better market intelligence, are the ones winning in the local media space. So much of what we are seeing are inconsistent sales methods, lack of central management control over the sales process, more managers who are player/coaches, and a void in preparing media salespeople to have a deep strategic discussion on how digital media works with their core media or how digital media supports a small and medium-sized businesses’ needs and goals.

Recently, BIA/Kelsey has developed many new tools and research to help support managers and salespeople with market intelligence, education on the value of digital media and, more important, how digital media and traditional media can be sold side by side. Our core philosophy is that media salespeople should be the value experts with any of their portfolio products. As the value expert, they need to understand the customer’s challenges and the industry’s challenges so they can translate their portfolio of solutions to the customer’s needs and goals.

Sales is becoming less about personal relationships and more about information relationships. There is too much information on digital media available for SMBs and even brands to process which means the salesperson has to fill the role of information interpreter to become the valued consultant. Translating the myriad technical functions and features of digital media into concrete value messages, supported by simple to understand facts and figures, is what SMBs crave.

So while contemplating how to move the sales needle, think about how best to support the sales team and what support is needed to achieve even higher goals in 2012.

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