Seth Godin: 12 tips on leadership, business and marketing

His name is Seth, he’s been dubbed the King of Marketing by Forbes, and he cooks for his family every night. 

He is Seth Godin, author of 19 bestsellers, including Linchpin, Permission Marketing and Purple Cow.

His daily blog has a readership in the millions. 

Ahead of his virtual workshop in May 2020, the Marketing Hall of Fame inductee spoke with IML ANZ partner, The Growth Faculty. Godin shared lessons from his latest book, the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller and instant New York Times bestseller This is Marketing, and some fascinating personal tidbits about himself. 

Empathy is all that is available to us (marketers) if we seek to change someone else. They don’t see what we see, or know what we know. We need to earn enrolment “I’m going over there, do you want to come?”

Begin with a hurdle you can leap. You have no chance of changing everyone. Begin with the smallest viable market. Understand their worldview. Use psychographics, what they believe in, not demographics.

Your followers will tell others. If the small group that you seek to serve believes in you, and trusts you, then they will tell the others (if it raises their status to tell others about you).

There is no impact unless you change someone. A lot of people in marketing say that they do their job, and run ads. I ask them, ‘What change are you seeking to make?’. ‘Oh, I’m not changing anyone,’ they say. So, I ask, ‘Then, why are you wasting my time?’. No change, no marketing.

You can’t be seen until you learn to see. Do your customers feel you see them? Every brand, every marketer makes hard decisions all the time. Are you erring on the side of looking at your banker, or looking at your customer?

Authenticity is nonsense. An authentically bad surfboard? That’s not what I want. I want consistency. I want professionalism. Add that to empathy, and you get a promise of x, y, and z. I see your fears and desires.

The marketer is the CEO, the head of customer service, she’s the supply chain. If you’re interacting with me, you are marketing. Marketing is more about doing and action, now more than ever people are buying on reputation and proof.

A brand is not a logo. Think about a logo you admire, it will be a brand you admire. A logo is a symbol. A brand is a promise. If Nike opened a hotel, you would know what it looked like, if Hyatt had a brand of sneaker you would have no idea what it would be like. Hyatt has a logo, not a brand.

Direct marketing should be measured. Conversely, brand marketing is spending the money on the prayer, the hope, the belief, that it will change someone over time. If you spend money on FB for branding, stop the measuring, don’t measure the clicks.

In every (Adwords) auction that is taking place, Google keeps 95% of the money.  You do the work, take the risk, yet Google makes the bulk of the money. You need to do something unique and different, so people search for you by name.  

Status is super important. If you’re a hairdresser, you’re not selling a haircut, you’re selling an improvement in a person’s status. Marketers need to be asking ‘Am I raising the status, keeping it the same, lowering it?’

Daily practises for marketers should include strategic thought. How are you serving them, how are you earning their trust? Writing a blog every day for 17 years earns people trust. Your daily practise might be making 5 phone calls today to your best customers saying ‘How’s it going, are you in a jam, how can I help?’


Secure your place for The leadership Circle with Seth Godin

IML ANZ is delighted to partner with The Growth Faculty to bring you The Leadership Circle with Seth Godin.

This is a rare opportunity for leaders and their teams to learn from this best-selling author and leadership titan. Our IML ANZ community enjoy an exclusive discount to Seth’s 3.5 hour interactive virtual workshop.

Save 40% on tickets when you book here.

The business development journey for B2B leaders

By Adrienne McLean MIML

 

Understanding the business building journey is vital for B2B leaders whether they are the business owner or involved in sales and marketing. The more the whole process is understood, the better it is for everyone involved in helping the business grow.

However, there can be quite a perspective gap between the marketing team and the sales team. Primarily because marketing sees the process in a different way to the sales team. When understanding the business development process and their part to play, the truth is that they are closely dependent on each other. In fact, they are interdependent on each other for making the sale happen.

The three most significant, umbrella parts to understand about the process are:

 

1. Setting the stage

Marketing sets the stage for the business. The truth is that the marketing doesn’t get the clients, it is what happens next that books the business. The marketing defines how to introduce products, creates visibility and awareness of the products and importantly keeps the product front of mind for when prospects are ready to buy.

The role of marketing is to build a strong foundation for the identity of the product, the brand and the connection between the brand and the target market. Clearly detailing the problems that the target market will be facing and then detailing the solutions and the benefits that the product brings.

Marketing is an overriding title to cover:

  1. Lead generation
  2. Setting a fundamental understanding of products and services
  3. How the business builds trust and credibility
  4. How the business stays “front of mind”
  5. Define the channels to distribute messages
  6. Define the strategies to raise awareness of the business

 

2. Building credibility

This is an often-overlooked section when it comes to building the business. Professionals must remember that the right mindset has a major part to play in creating strategy and seeing the bigger picture. How open minded are you to change? How ambitious are you with thinking through bold plans for growth? How confident are you to action those plans? These are leadership and management skills can influence business success.

Because personal selling is about mindset and personal promotion, it can be uncomfortable for some. Service professionals are excellent at selling their product, but when it comes to promoting themselves, it’s another matter.

Skills like presenting, speaking to groups, communicating, speaking to camera and creating video, speaking on radio, creating podcasts, speaking with clients and prospects on the phone – all these have an impact when it comes to connecting and promoting yourself and your brand or organisation.

For leaders, developing these skills in for both themselves and their staff will help the business grow. These skills are learnt skills and building their employee’s confidence in these skills will deliver huge benefits. Developing communication and leadership skills empowers individuals, giving them life skills and building their confidence.

 

3. Closing the sale

Now, this is the stage of the business development process where the sales team takes the prospect from the building of trust and credibility to closing the sale. The marketing team has set the stage then hands over the prospect to the sales team to get the sale over the line.

To do this, the sales team will need to find out:

  • What are the problems they are experiencing?
  • What are their desired outcomes?
  • What products or services can the business offer to help them?

 

Only when the sales team can respond positively to these questions do they stand a chance of getting the prospect sold. This will require regular communication to ascertain whether your organisation can provide the suitable solution.
In the B2B business world, the sales team coordinate with marketing who hold a list of prospects in the pipeline. By presenting a credible persona and connecting with the prospects, the sales team could get the sale across the line.

Ideally, for the business development system to work, the marketing and sales teams are integrated working together to build the business. For B2B business leaders, building the connections with the marketing and sales teams is ideal for a coordinated approach with the vision focused on growing the business.


Adrienne McLean MIML is the founder and principal marketing and speaking coach for The Speaker’s Practice – which runs workshops, coaching and events that help professionals to improve their marketing and communications.

IML ANZ Members in Sydney are invited to join Adrienne at the Professional Services Marketing Conference on August 17th, 2019. This information conference takes delegates on the business development journey starting with marketing and digital marketing, going through to sales topics with mindset topics covered throughout the day. IML ANZ Members who book by July 17th enjoy a 15% discount when they use the code IMLEB. To book or find out more, visit www.professional-services-marketing-conference.com.

Leading sales and marketing from the middle

By Gunnar Habitz CMgr FIML, Channel Sales Manager at software vendor Noggin.

Amid a fundamental change for the sales profession we enter the age of the well-informed buyer. So, how can sales and marketing navigate across their buying journeys instead of sticking to old sales cycles? How can you operate effectively in the sandwich between top management and your teams while delivering KPIs and developing people?

The typical dilemma of a sales and marketing leader is leading from the middle. Delivering KPIs for top leadership, coaching and mentoring teams toward achieving those KPIs, and serving customers by escalation support. All of this while fighting the internal, often political battles that could knock the balance of company culture. If the requested KPIs are purely based on revenue, more sustainable elements are coming short. Leading from the middle is often a reality of many losses with few wins.

Although many companies continue to operate their sales and marketing structure as they have at the start of this decade, buying behaviour has changed drastically. Informed buyers reach out to potential providers only in the last mile of the buying journeys. The Corporate Executive Board (CEB) defined this moment at 57 per cent of the time between acknowledging a problem and implementing a new solution. That was mentioned in the 2011 book, The Challenger Sale, and today the trend is going towards 80 per cent. Aligning sales processes accordingly starts at the middle level with later validation by top management.

For both small companies and large organisations, middle level management becomes more complex with branch offices and overseas locations. When regional management positions, such as Asia Pacific out of Singapore or even Australian cities like Sydney or Melbourne, operate between country and regional interests they are often perceived to be too far away from reality.

On top of that, those leading both sales and marketing live and breathe another tension field where marketing often falls short. With two separate managers, both areas often compete against each other. As marketing talks to an audience and sales to individuals, only a holistic view and aligned KPIs embrace the rarely known ‘SMARKETING’. This approach combines those two flavours from lead generation to closing.

To be successful in the middle, certain skills and experience are required to motivate the teams wisely toward common goals while playing an integral part in developing the culture.

After spending several years overseeing international sales management in the European region, here are my picks for the top ten qualities middle leaders need:

  1. Communicating: Sitting in between all stakeholders, great communication skills are a must for to active listening and influencing. Be an active filter in between top leadership and your teams to ensure only relevant content is communicated down the line. That way, teams in the field can concentrate on doing their client-focused work. Conversely, a translation from market reality to corporate politics upwards is also needed.
  2. Curious: The best way to survive in the middle with success is to be curious. Like a spider on a web, the middle leader enjoys the right distance towards other internal roles, top management as well as customers and partners. Genuine curiosity into those mentioned roles paired with empathy and a lifelong learning mentality are the winning ingredients to further encourage the team members.
  3. Connecting: The old Nokia slogan “connecting people” is important to middle management. Leading sales and marketing teams requires building long lasting relationships with various internal and external stakeholders. Adopting personality profiling right at the first encounter from Myer-Briggs to DISC helps to truly connect to the other side and to refer further within the enhanced network applying a “givers gain” mentality.
  4. Contributing: The top leadership level and the teams at the bottom often see middle managers purely as messengers for their material towards the other side. On the contrary, I see the role as contributing their own views and content. Especially when the KPIs are set in a different way between those teams, it is critical to answer “what’s in it for me” for each level and then align them together as close as possible.
  5. Challenging: Given the changes on the sales side, it is the duty of the sales leader to challenge old processes and adopt to the new reality. Managing marketing and sales separately leads to an exclusive “us against them” approach. Keeping sales reps solely measured on revenue excludes modern KPIs such as Net Promoter Score which has the end customer satisfaction in mind. The sales leader must challenge that!
  6. Coaching and Mentoring: The sales and marketing manager develops the team using a situational choice of coaching and mentoring activities. When I moved up from an individual sales position to a sales manager, I realised the variety of needs to bring the organisation forward. Given the geographical distance, I needed to develop my own virtual leadership styles without regular face to face meetings or formal mentoring programs in place.
  7. Change agents: Nothing is so consistent in sales and marketing as change – and that doesn’t come in circles to return to an earlier experienced pattern. In his book The Future of the Sales Profession, Graham Hawkins says, “When buyers change how they buy, sellers must change how they sell”. The sales and marketing leader in the middle is the first to adopt as an active change agent with endurance towards all directions.
  8. Creativity: Most international organisations prescribe how their country teams have to execute strategies top down. Creativity paired with clever communication skills are the only way to adopt a central idea into a country reality. As an example, Australian customers immediately recognise strategies developed for the US and are often reluctant to follow them. Middle managers won’t be successful without being creative in their sandwich level.
  9. Cultural interest: A genuine way to drive this middle leadership section is applying an honest interest into the cultural background of team members with the attempt to include all members into a fruitful outcome. While the trend towards globalisation might turn into similar behaviours, in reality an appreciation of the cultural diversity towards common team values provides better outcomes.
  10. Client focus: What I learned from Carly Fiorina at the beginning of my career at HP is still valid, “The customer defines a job well done”, she said. Especially given the mentioned changes on the buying side, it is important to apply all the qualities above in the interaction with prospects and clients. It is the role of the middle leaders in sales and marketing to ensure the offered services suit the needs of prospects and existing customers.

Leading from the middle is a true challenge. But it can be very rewarding when you lead the organisation forward and influence teams towards future success. Leaders should develop all mentioned qualities and be careful not to be “eaten” in this sandwich level.