Why You Can't Sell to the CMO

I've recently completed my tenure as Vice-President of Marketing for Farley's & Sathers, the 4^th-largest confectioner in the US. Like most executives, I fielded a huge number of sales contacts. And if my experience was representative, then the modern sales industry is marked by disturbingly low levels of forethought, professionalism and effectiveness.

If you’re a sales professional trying to reach the CMO – or any other executive – here are the things that are working against you:

There are too many of you. One month, out of frustration and morbid curiosity, I tracked the number of unsolicited sales contacts I received. The average was 25 per week. That’s one about every 90 minutes, or over a thousand per year. I’ve heard similar numbers from other executives. Responding to every such contact would make us enormously ineffective at our jobs. So our default response is none at all.

Your pitch does not differentiate or motivate. Most openers sounded nearly identical: “I'm Joe Dokes with ABC Digital Media... we specialize in (insert three buzzwords)… we really think our approach is different, though I'm unable to articulate that in this voicemail...” Would you return that message? “Can I just get 30 minutes of your time?” No, I’m already working 12-hour days; I don’t have half-hours to throw around. “Can you put me in touch with the person responsible for these decisions?” Not unless you’ve given me a very good reason to do so; I have to protect my staff’s time too.

Your attention to detail sucks. Lose the grammatical errors. Spell the name of my company correctly. Don’t identify my competitor’s brands as mine. These are mistakes I saw daily. If this is your attention to detail in your opener, what am I to expect if we work together?

You’re unprofessional. After I ignored one guy's first two requests for the contact info of my brand managers, he sent a third email comprised entirely of the following: "Any insight on this????" (The fourth question mark was a classy touch.) He wasn't the only stranger to take a tone with me, but doing that simply guarantees that I'll never reply. And don't presume to call me "Matt"; nobody does that except Mom & Dad.

I don’t know you, or know of you. If I haven’t successfully worked with you in the past, and I don’t know anyone who will vouch for you, your chances of getting on my schedule are near zero. And please recognize the difference between a trusted reference and a random shared connection on LinkedIn.

You haven’t done your homework. Mass-mailings smell like it. If you can’t demonstrate that you know something meaningful about the challenges I’m facing, don’t even bother making contact.

Your title is wrong. Sorry, but it’s true. I’m much more likely to take a call from a partner or president than from an account exec, simply because they’re much more likely to understand how I spend my day.

Bottom line: The number of sales folk with a differentiated, compelling approach – in other words, those that were actually able to get through to me – was somewhere south of 5%. Your job as a salesperson is to be in that elite group.

In a follow-up post, I’ll discuss what the good ones did. Until then, whether you’re a salesperson or the decision-maker, what are the successful approaches you’ve seen?

This post was inspired by a discussion started by Gary Reid in the Chief Marketing Officer Network group on LinkedIn.

Taco Bell Launches the "Five Buck Buck Box." Seriously.

Twenty years into a marketing and branding career, I'm still regularly amazed by what makes it to market.

Taco Bell has just introduced a new menu item. Below are two screen-grabs taken from the Taco Bell website this week:



Note that it's not the "$5 Box." Or the "Five Buck Box." It's the "$5 Buck Box." That's the "Five Dollar Buck Box."

Or, if you prefer, the "Five Buck Buck Box."

A number of agency and client personnel no doubt saw and approved this creative, so I'm assuming this was a deliberate choice. The question is why?

Every touch-point is an opportunity for your brand to gain credibility - or lose it. Taco Bell, you may not care about grammar, but why offend those of us that do?

You NEED To! You HAVE To! Or Do You?

You see it all the time: Blog posts, newsletters and LinkedIn discussions that say you MUST do something, or else!

“Five Things Every Business MUST Do to Succeed in 2012!”

Or…

“Twenty Social Media Tactics You NEED to Employ – or Your Abject Failure Is a Foregone Conclusion!”

Or…

“Ten Things You MUST Do to Build Your Personal Brand – or Risk Career Suicide!”

You know who talks the most about how you NEED to brand yourself? Career coaches and personal branding “experts.” I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of professionals who have ever mentioned their “personal brand” to me.

And it’s true that some businesses need a fully developed social media strategy. Others succeed with only the basics, or none at all.

The point is this: There’s no pre-baked, accurate list of things every brand or business MUST do. Strategy is situational. So are tactics. Your business has its own history, objectives, strengths and challenges. What works for another may not work for you.

When you come across an article with this kind of tone, check the motivations of its source. What do they have to gain by telling you what you HAVE to do?

Until we’ve spent some serious time together, I don’t know enough about your business to tell you what it needs. Nor does any other stranger. Anyone who opens the conversation with an uninformed imperative is setting you up for a sales pitch.