© BrainRider Inc. 2010

BrainRider Knowledge Marketing Group

How to improve pipeline performance using knowledge marketing

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omewhere, pipelines are mighty conduits of commerce.

They not only work, they work beautifully. Everyone who

enters always buys. No one who enters ever leaves. Savvy

marketers happily entice multitudes of prospects through the

pipeline and into the open arms of talented salespeople adept at

converting them into customers.

If that’s the way things are at your place of business, dear reader,

you’re safe to move on. Go celebrate your good fortune with your

co-workers. This little book of musings is not for you. You’ve got it

made.

As for the rest of us, who work to woo and win customers in the

real world of business, where things sometimes go wrong not

because they can, but because they simply must… well, devoting a

few minutes to pondering the contents herein might just be the

most profitable thing you do today.

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e’re going to tell you how to know when it’s time to

call a plumber. A swashbuckling, honest to goodness

pipeline fixer. That would be us. And that’s the only

selling you’ll get from us here. This is hereby a non-selling zone.

If you’re having trouble with your marketing and sales, it could be

the result of a broken pipeline. Your prospects aren’t

flowing through it the way you’d like.

Most importantly, they aren’t becoming customers.

Not enough of them are buying what you’re selling.

We’re here to help you get your pipeline flowing and

create more customers. You’ll do it by figuring out what your

prospects want to know at each stage of the pre-purchase cycle.

And then you’ll simply share it with them.

We’ll even give you the content matrix you’ll need to make it

happen. If that sounds useful, read on.

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t’s unrealistic to assume that someone who needs what you

sell is going to pick up the phone and call you the instant he

realizes his need. Whether you’re selling pizzas or mainframes,

people are going to take a while to make the decision to purchase

from you.

While they’re deciding, you might

not even know they’re out there. If

they’re operating off your radar,

you’re much more likely to lose

them. That’s because you aren’t

building any sort of relationship

with them while they’re comparing

you with your competitors. They might have only a sketchy idea of

who you are, or what your products or services can do for them.

If someone is in your pipeline, you need to know it. Even better,

you need to know who they are, and what they want to know. To

learn that, you need marketing automation and lead generation

tools.

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t often happens that a prospect

enters your pipeline, then gets

bogged down or sidetracked. We

all live in the real world, and stuff

happens.

Attention wanders. Other priorities suddenly arise. Your

competitors make inroads. Your would-be buyer wanders off the

purchasing path to take the scenic route. [There aren’t a lot of

straight lines in nature.]

Perfectly understandable. But certainly unacceptable, if your goal

is to sell more products or services.

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his devious fellow is all too common. He enters your

pipeline, tells you who he is, then turns out to be someone

else entirely.

You ask him for an email

address too early, or too

often. You make him jump

through annoying hoops to

find what he wants. He

refuses to play along and

gives you a false identity.

Harmless, really.

Maybe he fills out a form on your website so he can download

your latest deck of brilliance. But he doesn’t trust you much, or

he’s in a hurry, or he wants his anonymity so your sales team can’t

pounce. So he types in his business email address as

wallywallydingdongpantsonfire@netscape.com. Tough sell.

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nce a prospect is in your pipeline, he needs regular

nourishment. Sort of

like watering a rare

and delicate plant. Do give him

the knowledge he seeks. Don’t

waste his time. Never give him

useless information: he might

bail out. Grow the relationship

like a peony. [‘Peony’ is a name

for plants in the genus Paeonia,

the only genus in the flowering plant family Paeoniaceae. That,

friend, is the kind of useless information we’re talking about. Try

to avoid it.]

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his one hurts, because you’ve given a lot of time and

attention to this guy. Your prospect has been merrily

advancing through your pipeline. Everything is proceeding

smoothly. You know who

he is, you know what he

wants, and you know

when he wants it. You

know how much money

he has, and what he

wants to spend it on.

But just when he’s about

to sign on the dotted line, it’s a no go. Maybe he’s a tire-kicker or

window shopper who never really had a serious intent to

purchase. Maybe he was mis-profiled somewhere along the line.

Maybe he was trying to negotiate a discount from you so he could

leverage it for a better discount from someone else. Maybe the

pre-sales relationship you thought you were forging was built on a

foundation of shifting sand. Ouch.

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eople buy things because they have problems they want to

solve. Classic marketing says we don’t buy a drill bit so we

can make holes in our walls. We buy it because we want to

hang a picture on a fancy hook that requires a nice little hole.

If your potential target doesn’t see your product or service as a

solution to a problem, maybe it’s because he doesn’t even know

he has a problem that needs a solution of any kind.

Perhaps he’s framing his situation in a way you haven’t worked

hard enough to understand. Or maybe he is a Do It Yourself type

who has no intention of buying a

third-party solution like yours.

Whatever the reason, he’s not

coming into your pipeline, at

least not without some special

encouragement. This guy needs

fancy wooing.

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Happy benefits of a healthy pipeline

et’s pause and consider the positive side of things for a

moment. What benefits will you enjoy from having a well-

managed pipeline that delivers nicely qualified leads?

• Less wasted money on inefficient pipeline remedies, quick

fixes and one-off untested solutions.

• Stronger referrals from clients who respect your sales

process.

• More trusted company and brand makes selling easier.

• Higher close rate because your sales team can spend less

time on dead ends and direct their efforts toward

qualified, receptive and educated leads.

• A steady flow of sales lets you prepare better forecasts.

• Less energy spent chasing new clients means more time

available for servicing and up-selling existing clients.

• This last one is a good one: Happier customers, a happier

sales team, more sales, higher revenues. Oh yes.

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hey need information about ways to solve their problem.

There are things they want to know about your company.

About your products and services. And a whole lot more.

So, exactly where are they looking for information before they

buy? Well, they’re only human, just like you. So ask yourself,

where do you look?

[By the way, this is an undervalued trick. Every day, spend some

time putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Look at your

business and your marketspace through his or her eyes. From that

perspective, what do you want to know? Not just right now, but at

every stage of the pre-purchase process?]

So let’s role play a bit. Imagine you’re in control of a purchasing

budget. Your CEO wants you to spend it to increase productivity.

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Stage 1: Defining requirements

• Prospects are casting a wide net, and may or may not have an idea of what the solution will be.

• The information-seeking has a broad focus using more generic, high level search engine terms and keywords: “How to increase productivity?”

• They may be seeking assistance with definition, scope, and

internal buy-in.

Chances are, when you’re researching a purchase, you begin by

asking people you know. You might do that over lunch. “Hey, Bob,

we’re going to be spending some money to try to increase our

productivity in the next six months. I know you guys did that last

year. What sort of things did you do? Was it worth it? How did

you justify it in your budget?”

Notice how general your goals and questions are. There’s plenty

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of time to get specific later.

You’ll also ask questions like that in online communities. Facebook

and Twitter are perfect for asking friends and followers for

recommendations and information.

Of course, there’s another place people go for information. Thank

goodness for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. They are

a ready conduit for pre-purchase information. And they let

companies like ours, and yours, track and measure search

behavior to learn what people want to know.

At this first stage of the purchase cycle, word of mouth

recommendations are important, because we trust the source of

the opinion or information. To be blunt, your potential buyers

trust their friends and colleagues more than they trust your

company.

But don’t worry: there are things you can do to build trust.

Sharing what you know is one of them. Be open and transparent.

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Find out what your prospects want to know at every stage of the

purchase cycle. Then give it to them.

Stage 2: Gathering information

• Prospects are searching for available options that will meet their requirements.

• Keywords and search terms will be more specific and may start to reflect solution alternatives or categories: “increase productivity new office chairs vs computer upgrades”.

• Their goal is developing a short list of viable alternatives.

You’re having lunch with Bob again. Some time has passed since

the last one, and you’ve been busy in the meantime reading blogs

and e-newsletters about how to increase productivity. You’ve

listened to a few podcasts and watched some videos online. And

Bob has tapped into his network to give you access to some of his

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friends and associates to gather more data and opinions.

You’ve heard that there are a couple of interesting ways to

achieve your goals, and you need to drill down and get some

specifics.

What will it be? New office furniture? You read a whitepaper by

some productivity guru who says comfortable chairs let people

work longer and smarter. Or should you use your budget on faster

computers to save time and aggravation? Or maybe all-staff

teamwork training seminars, to ‘leverage synergies’? (Whatever

the heck that means.)

After you’ve gathered your information, you have a huddle with

some of the department heads. You tell them you’ve been doing

research and you found out new computers are not affordable this

year. After a lot of internal debate, someone mentions that he

heard the CEO complaining about his bad back last month. So the

group cleverly decides it would be smart to go with the

comfortable office chairs instead of the teamwork seminars. Sure,

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that’s messy justification, but that’s the way business works. So

you go away and dive deep into the world of office furniture.

Stage 3: Evaluating alternatives

• Prospects are looking for information specific to how a solution alternative will work in their context.

• They are seeking comparisons between short-listed alternatives, peer reviews, referrals and experiences.

You discover that there are six big and well-respected

manufacturers in the field. You go online and tap into your

networks to make some comparisons. Which supplier has the best

reputation for quality? Service? Durability? Comfort? Price?

You visit their websites and immediately eliminate one of the

manufacturers. Their site looks like it was done in 1997 and has

never been updated. The guy in the stock photo on the home

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page looks like Benjamin Franklin. (Wait a minute. It is Benjamin

Franklin.)

The second manufacturer’s website offers a brochure for free

download. You grab it and leave. They didn’t ask for your email

address, so they’ll never even know you were there.

The third manufacturer looks good at first, but later you read

some strange posts about them on Twitter. They don’t manage

their reputation online, so rumors are spreading like wildfire.

Someone claims that he heard a guy in Nebraska has been stuck in

one of their chairs for three weeks and can’t get out. You cross

them off your list.

The remaining three manufacturers seem okay. You fill out a form

and download some more material from each of them. You get

busy at work and three months go by.

Your CEO takes some of the managers out to play golf. He shoot 74

and never complains about his bad back at all. Hmmm. You start

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wondering again about buying teamwork training seminars to

increase productivity, instead of spending your budget on

comfortable chairs.

Funny thing though. You remember that one of the manufacturers

sent you a link after you downloaded their brochures from their

website a while back. The link took you to an e-book they wrote. It

looked interesting, so you happily gave them a bit more

information about yourself—job title, size of company, purchase

time frame, that sort of thing—and read all about how their chairs

helped a company just like yours be more productive.

A month later, they sent you a nice thank you note and another

link. You gave them some more information about your company

in exchange for viewing a video about the durability of their

chairs. In the video, a monkey was trying to break an office chair

and he couldn’t do it. After awhile he got tired and sat in the chair

and spun it around. It reminded you of your boss.

It was pretty funny, so you emailed the video link to a dozen of

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your friends. Then you noticed that 457,000 people had already

viewed the video on YouTube.

So now you go back to their website and give them permission to

contact you directly to talk about their chairs. A week later, you

have a pleasant chat with a salesperson and she gives you some

more good information.

Meanwhile, you get an email from one of the other

manufacturers, offering you a 15% discount if you order 500 chairs

by this Friday. This is the first you’ve heard from them, and you’re

not quite sure you can trust them. Who are these guys, anyway?

The photo model in the chair looks a lot like Benjamin Franklin.

The fiscal year is ending soon, and you’re under pressure to talk to

the buying committee about what you’ve learned, and take a

recommendation to the CEO for sign-off. What’s it going to be?

The last-ditch discount? Or the manufacturer who has been

helping you do your research for months by sending links to useful

information?

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Stage 4: Final decision

• Prospects have a solid understanding of how each alternative measures up and the decision maker is trying to get comfortable with committing to one of the alternatives.

• They are managing questions from various stakeholders.

After a few weeks of back and forth, during which the helpful

manufacturer sends some custom information requested by your

IT department, which has a special need for smooth rolling chair

casters, your CEO says cost is important, but cost alone can’t drive

the decision.

He tells you to go with the helpful supplier. “Business is about

relationships,” he says. “It’s about trust. Those guys get it. They

know what they’re doing.”

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OK, your role playing is over. You’re

not thinking like the chair buyer now.

You’re back to being ‘you’.

hat kind of knowledge should your company share

to develop a relationship with prospects in your

pipeline?

• Research (choose and compile data e.g. price, product

lines, surveys)

• Market Intelligence (e.g. benchmarking survey, size of

market)

• 101 basic education, glossaries, and classes

• Product tours and overviews

• ‘News you can use’

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• Backstage pass: gain halo from a big event

• Success stories and case studies

• Personality-driven: use someone who is knowledgeable

about your market and brand

• Thought leadership

• Q&A

• Company & product info

• How to

• Top 10 lists

• Gap assessment

• Needs assessment

• ROI & Biz case

Deciding what to share is the first step to successfully nourishing

your pipeline. You also have to segment your target so that

people receive exactly the information they’re looking for.

And if that isn’t enough, you have to share it with them at the

right time. Which depends upon where they are in the pipeline.

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Remember, we outlined four stages of the purchase cycle in our

chair-buying exercise earlier.

On the next page, there’s a Pipeline Knowledge-Sharing Content

Matrix you can use (black boxes require no content).

Thanks for taking the time to read our little eBook. If there’s

something you want to know, just ask.

We’re all about sharing knowledge.

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BrainRider Knowledge Marketing Group is an agile company

whose partners bring deep experience working with B2B and B2C

marketers at Fortune 500 clients, mid-sized firms and

entrepreneurial start-ups in technology, telecommunications,

ecommerce, financial services, professional services, automotive,

food and beverages, pharmaceuticals and packaged goods.

www.brainrider.com