As the roller coaster economy of 2011 comes to a close, I offer perspectives I’ve observed over the last year to plan and provide insights to B2B marketers for 2012 and beyond.  Here are three critical trends for B2B marketers to consider… and the related impact to the senior B2B marketer.

• All companies are technology companies
• Time is the critical constraint
• With senior leadership…social media is not social

All Companies are Technology Companies. 
With the unprecedented access to development tools, platforms and new technologies – IT is ever present in products and services delivered by all organizations.  Take for instance a century old company in an even older industry - Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).  Their CIO, Heather Campbell, is recognizing that technology can have a profound impact to differentiate the business and provide competitive advantage.  In her role, she is propels CPR to “Drive the Digital Railway” by deploying new technologies to monitor and control train movement, managing systems that provide safer railways for all.  The focus in providing insight to transportation information and rapid development cycles for customer specific solutions today is the differentiator of CPR from competitors.
 
Every industry today is experiencing technology innovations that include how products are made, how they are used, and how they are delivered.   Customer engagement is equally being impacted by technology throughout the customer lifecycle.  Development cycles are much more rapid, further enabling an organization to respond to demands of customers in a manner that can differentiate you from competitors.

Impact to the Executive Marketer:  Lead the company in customer engagement to understand the levers of differentiation that can be developed to separate your organization from the competition.  Recognize that your customers are technology companies who need your products or services to differentiate them in the market.

Time is the Critical Constraint.
Today, the most precious element in our lives is not money, it’s not our family, it’s not our job.  It’s the time we have to spend and balance the demands on our lives.  The choppy economy has organizations pigeonholed and reluctant to hire.  The global workforce requires late night conference calls and early morning start times to keep up with the world around us.  Consequently, the pressure to do more with less takes time away from all the other balanceable facets of our lives.  The demand on time is true for the B2B customer as well.  Time especially becomes more precious as you move up to more senior roles in an organization.
  
Take Michael Petrisko, CIO at Hill International.  While on east coast time, Michael frequently takes late night calls with Australia and early morning calls with India.  His day is booked solid for weeks in advance.  To gain access to his time and his calendar requires advance planning and a compelling reason for anyone to meet with him.   A vendor approaching Michael has limited opportunity to gain access to his calendar, capture his attention, and win over his business.   Michael quotes:  “What’s important to me is that a discussion with a vendor has purpose and is relevant to my business – anything short of this is a waste of my time.”

Impact to the B2B Executive Marketer:  With a senior executive, your objective must be to win them over and to have them want to spend time with you and your organization.  Realize that every encounter must have a compelling business cause and reason to engage.  The more time you seek, the stronger the value proposition of your encounter must be.  Over prepare for your engagement and be sure your contact leaves the encounter with the sense that time spent with you and your organization was a valuable use of their time.   

With Senior Leaders, Social Media is Not Social.
I recently had the opportunity to host a CIO Advisory Council meeting with a large, well-recognized technology company.   Before the meeting, I thought I’d check the LinkedIn profiles of the 14 executives scheduled to participate.  I found that four of them don’t have a profile and three have less than 50 LinkedIn connections.  Hardly grounds for thinking these executives are social media junkies.  And these are CIO’s who live and breathe technology!   For a senior executive, the social media experience isn’t proving to be beneficial to their role, responsibilities, and networks.  More and more, senior executives are becoming aware and concerned about privacy and security.  Because an executive’s time is so critical, they tend to disengage or not engage in personal efforts to extend their networks and share their opinions.  Many public companies have social media rules and regulations limiting engagement and disclosures in public and even private forums.   The reality is that senior executives remain somewhat “Old School” in terms of how they engage socially and prefer a real conversation.
 
Impact to the Executive Marketer:  Think about the audience you are trying to reach and balance your budgets and portfolio investments accordingly.   If you are targeting a senior executive, don’t expect your answer to be social media.  Think about the encounter and the engagement… and invest accordingly.

Actually, it’s all up to you.  You get to choose.  So then … does knowing that make you feel empowered … or is it already causing you some anxiety?

I have had the opportunity to observe firsthand both situations and know beyond a shadow of doubt that customer advisory boards can be the sharpest tool in any B2B company’s tool belt. 

You can choose to make the most of what has got to be the smartest use of exclusive resources, or you can simply put together a meeting and check it off your to-do list. 

A lot of the research-based market insight you acquire is also available to every one of your competitors.  Wouldn’t you rather make strategic decisions based on valuable insight gained from your most important customers—those few that probably make up most of your revenue—who probably hold the life of your business in their hands?

Checkpoint:

• Are you thinking about starting a customer advisory board?

• Do you already have a customer advisory board

Regardless of which group you are in, keep in mind that every day what you do with this deliverable will either make you look like a smart investor of precious resources, or perhaps … a coward … if you do nothing at all.

By making the board a strategic initiative, a marketer looks like a rock star and earns recognition with senior leadership.  Otherwise, it just becomes a budget item that gets looked at often enough to eventually get cut.

So then … investment or expense?  You choose.  MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE AND BE A STAR. 

Earlier this year, Geehan Group gathered a select group of senior executives from the B2B sector to participate in a two day summit focused on: NaNavigating the Path to Growth and Transformation. The two day summit yielded a collaborative event where thought leaders shared their first hand experiences on how to develop strategies to lead growth and success.

The Summit was designed to provide fresh and proven ideas to take B2B Businesses to the next level. The Key note discussions included these topics: Blueprint to Exponential Growth, Winning with an Outside-In Strategy, Key Truths to Transformational Leadership, and From the Eye of the Storm-What I have learned about Change.

Attendees at the summit all agreed that they learned about the keys to successfully manage growth and transformation to achieve sustainable, predictable, profitable growth. A brief summary providing the key takeaways from the Geehan Group 2011 B2B Executive Summit is now available on the Geehan Group website.