Marketing 2.0

Sales Reps and Marketing Hype

Sales reps hear a lot of hype from their marketing departments. In the end, it's the reps who have to get face-to-face with customers and persuade them to buy. That's a lot tougher than it sounds to the product manager sitting in head office. Product managers don't make it any easier when they try to B.S. the sales force. Here are a few of their favorite lines and what they really mean for the sales professional:

• "The product sells itself" — Okay, let's just set up a display in the customer's lobby and write up the orders. Unless you're selling water in the middle of Death Valley, chances are the sales reps need to do a lot of selling to make your product a success.

• "We really don’t have any competition for this product" — Uh, oh. Someone hasn't done any research. Everyone has competition these days and products look more alike than ever.

• "There’s huge, pent-up demand for this product" — Maybe if you are first to market with a product like Viagra, that's true. Most of the time, the world is not waiting anxiously for your new product.

• "Customers will pay a premium for this product" — Unless you have an established reputation and position as a premium brand, this is almost never true. Many products actually cost less than ever and increased competition coupled with flat demand is only pushing prices lower.

• "The sales targets are aggressive but doable" — If all of the stars and planets are in perfect alignment and you have a career year, you just might hit your target. In reality, most of you don't have a prayer of making plan.

• "The potential market for this product is in the billions" — Check that Excel formula, will you? While you're at it, stop drinking that funny Kool-Aid.

Auto Design Winners and Losers

Design is always a subjective consideration. What looks great to one person can be atrocious to another. This is especially true of automobiles. While some people buy strictly for utilitarian reasons, autos represent an emotional purchase for many consumers. If not, BMW and Scion would not exist.

Being an enthusiast, I’ve made some observations of the current state of automobile design. In my view, some brands are heading south while others are rising in design competence. The winners and losers may surprise you a bit.

Winners:

Toyota – For years, this company had the most conservative, plain-vanilla designs in the industry. Look for a Camry and you were sure to see a senior citizen driving it. Now things are changing. The new Camry is an emotional piece of work. It looks aggressive and chunky. I can’t believe I’m saying this but it actually looks cool. I’m not sure I would buy one but they have come a long way. The Sienna minivan also has a pleasing style and the Avalon has morphed from a car for your grandfather to a great looking (and performing) vehicle that is a legitimate rival for the typical luxury vehicles.

BMW – I know that Chris Bangle’s designs have been widely criticized but I think he is the most creative and influential designer out there. His redesigns have made the BMW models far less conservative, much more emotional and unique. Yes, it looks radical to some but great design always looks jarring at first because it breaks the typical mold. Then, over time, we familiarize ourselves with its new lingo and we love it. The true measure of great design is when others copy it. Take a look around the industry, especially at Toyota’s Avalon and you will see Bangle's design concepts like the squared off trunk copied by other manufacturers. I saw a black BMW 550 in the parking lot yesterday and it is just so much better looking and distinctive than anything coming from Mercedes or Audi these days.

Honda – They make the list on the basis of the brilliant new Civic. It looks contemporary, not retro and forges a new direction in fuel-efficient but stylish vehicles. It doesn’t get any better than a black Civic coupe whether you are 16 or 60. Now Honda doesn’t do everything right — see the loser’s list.

Chrysler – It’s funny how some things never change. When I was a kid, Chrysler made great looking cars like the Challenger, Charger and Roadrunner. The only problem was they were built like crap. My dad bought a Charger once and ended up putting three transmissions into it. He swore off the brand for life and later became a devout Camry owner. Today, Chrysler builds some of the best looking cars on the road. They took a chance with vehicles like the PT Cruiser and the 300 and they hit home runs in both cases. Their designs look so much fresher than their main domestic rivals. I don’t think they are particularly well made but they look good and they’ve sold well too.

Losers:

Honda – Honda makes this list on the basis of the redesigned Accord. They started with a soft, curvy front end that’s not too bad and they grafted on a back end stolen directly from the Chevy Impala school of design. This is without question, the ugliest Accord ever built, a discordant, unrealized design exercise that looks like someone welded two different cars together in the middle. Yeah, it’s that bad. Speaking of bad, the Ridgeline is absolutely the ugliest pickup truck on the market. Trucks are no beauty queens so this is quite an accomplishment on Honda’s part. Park a Ridgeline next to an F-150 and you’ll understand what I’m saying.

Volkswagen – They’ve written the book on how to screw up a good niche brand. Take a look at the Jetta — what is it now? They threw out the funky, chunky, small vehicle that was popular with many young people and replaced it with a bloated, non-descript body and a rear end lifted directly from the Toyota Corolla. There was a time when the Japanese used to copy German designs but it has now come full circle. As for the new Passat, it’s simply hideous— too large, too long, too clumsy. Say goodbye to fahrfignugen.

Audi – They used to build the world’s most elegant vehicles. The last A6 was like a piece of automotive sculpture. The new A6 suffers from the outlandish, over-sized grille and a pedestrian rear end. You have to go back two generations to find the last great-looking A4.  The current A4 looks like a Subaru. The only decent looker in their current lineup is the A3 — a clean, uncluttered design that actually integrates the big nose. As for the newly released Q7 SUV, I have just one piece of advice for Audi. The Ugly SUV party is over guys. How far the mighty have fallen.

Ford – I defy anyone to articulate the Ford design ethos. Their vehicles look like a collection of autos you’d find on a used car lot, not a coherent design statement. When they do produce a nice looking car, they brand it with a horrible name like Zephyr. Seriously guys, do you think an upwardly mobile young professional is going to say, hey check out my new Zephyr?  J. Mays is widely profiled as a design guru but judging from his body of work I’d say he is not suited to carrying Chris Bangle’s briefcase around. His recent Thunderbird and Mustang designs have been slavishly retro without a hint of clever interpretation. I honestly cannot tell a new Mustang from an old one. I don’t think the idea here is to just dust off the old body and slap it on some new mechanicals. As for the Ford Five Hundred, it looks like a last-generation Passat that gained weight. I think this guy is living off his reputation. Ford’s sales results support this.

Trying Harder:

General Motors – Give them credit for the Solstice, Lucerne and the Cobalt. The General is starting to wake from its long design slumber and produce some good-looking vehicles.

Hyundai – The Sonata is so elegantly designed, it’s everything the Honda Accord should be, but isn’t. This is a company on the rise.

The Age of Transparency

Back in the day, pricing used to be a confidential and closely guarded secret. Prices were negotiated between sales rep and customer and no one was the wiser. While consistency may have been more common in the retail market, business-to-business sales were controlled and negotiated by sales reps and managers. Often, there were as many prices or special deals as there were customers.

Now, we live in an age of transparency, where everything you want to know about a product or company can be found within minutes and with a few mouse clicks.

The Internet has enabled global aggregating and sharing of information in an open forum accessible to everyone. It’s not just the established review sites, magazines and industry professionals who are commenting — it’s regular customers who are posting their opinions and ratings of your products and your organization.

Twenty years ago, the process of selecting a product was fairly straightforward. You spoke to a salesperson and looked at some product literature. The price was whatever the retailer posted or the salesperson asked you to pay. You might read a review in a trade magazine to gain more information. You might find a friend who owned the product and get her opinion but it was generally hit and miss. If you had the time to trek to a few more stores, you could do some comparison-shopping.

Now, you log on to Amazon and right underneath the product description you find user reviews. These are reviews from real people who have shelled out hard-earned money for the product and are posting their opinions and experiences.

As for price, there are any number of sites that aggregate all of the lowest selling prices for a product and post links to the merchants. You can see everyone’s price at the click of a mouse. In other words, everything is now transparent in the global marketplace.

This transparency has profound implications for sellers. Here are a few:

• Price pressure – with everyone’s price posted, there’s enormous pressure to lower prices and keep them low. In a sense, it’s a like a global fire sale and only the most efficient sellers can survive in this environment.

• Customer support – the cost of low prices is often less customer support or none at all. Something has to give in the race to the basement for pricing and support is the usually the first to go. It’s becoming a self-serve world for transactions and after sale support.

• Advertising – why spend money on traditional advertising when potential buyers are linked to current customers in a global market? Your message is being subverted by user opinions and expert reviews anyway. If your company or product is new, then advertising to create awareness might be an effective strategy. In most cases, companies are turning to viral alternatives to spread their marketing message to bloggers, review sites and opinion influencers.

• Design – ever wonder why all the products from all the companies seem to have all the same features? Transparency has resulted in manufacturers and designers making products that look and operate the same.  It makes me long for the quirky, “insanely great” products of yesteryear. Even Apple, one of the best design companies in the world, now makes its computers with the same processing specs and internal components as its Windows competitors.

The bottom line for marketers is this — it’s getting harder to differentiate your products and services, and nearly impossible to control your marketing message. What’s needed are new communication strategies and a stronger emphasis on delivering a positive customer experience before and after the sale. One way or the other, they’ll be talking about you. In the Age of Transparency, one customer’s opinion is now heard around the world.