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.

Breadth: 

• One to One:  Executive Sponsor Programs; Account Based Marketing; Account Based Innovation; Major Account Programs, etc.
• One to Few: Roundtables, customer advisory boards; CEO dinners; small summits
• One to Many:  Conferences, trade shows; summits; industry or partner events
  

The Geehan Group recently hosted a B2B Executive Roundtable in Palo Alto, California, where our Founder and CEO, Sean Geehan, moderated a discussion with special guests Brad Brooks, VP Enterprise Marketing, Juniper, and Greg Jorgensen, past-CMO of Verisign.  In characteristic Geehan Group fashion, an intimate group of about 20 executives enjoyed a convenient, casual and socially-appealing venue—Zibbibo Restaurant—while participating thought provoking panel discussion, executive networking and, of course, a California infused wine tasting experience.  

The Theme:  Sean’s pending book release “The B2B Executive Playbook” helped carve the theme of the meeting around advancing business relationships from transactional vendors to strategic partners/trusted advisors—while reaching decision makers.  Sean moderated a lively discussion in which the audience asked stimulating questions and openly discussed panel responses.  The top concepts that resonated with me included:

“C level executives don’t have a ‘like’ button for you.”
Brad Brooks, VP of Enterprise Marketing at Juniper responded to the question of social media hype when it comes to the C level.  As is the case with most B2B companies, and following Pareto’s 80/20 rule, Juniper earns a large percentage of revenue from a small percentage of customers.  Most importantly, though, is that the C level executives in these top accounts are conservative:  So they don’t use a “like” button to click and review for input, instead they call their “friends”—peers in this case—to seek advice and input when making decisions.  Understanding this level of customer advocacy, Juniper knows they must build a strong relationship with decision makers.  To do so, as Brad noted, first requires establishing a foundation of trust.  For Juniper, this means they are always open to discussing and resolving customer issues, faithfully earning that trust over time.
 
”Centralize to gain benefit:  Decentralize to execute.”  
One of the most important aspects for a CMO to address is determining when to centralize and when to decentralize, as Greg Jorgensen, past CMO of Verisign, pointed out.  Because B2B relationships and sales typically occur at a regional level, the execution of marketing and sales programs needs to be delivered on a local level.   Greg noted, “The corporate function is best left to delivering in areas where process, consistency and cost savings can be maximized to the benefit of both the corporate centralized function and the regional decentralized function.”  And then let the region manage the delivery aspect of the program with the customer.

“Beware the ‘Sins of Wealth.’” 
Brad also stated, “Successful organizations can enjoy the ‘Sins of Wealth’ where financial success allows for missteps in B2B marketing execution.”  Spending for PR can quickly grow as a bloated organization misinterprets marketing awareness campaigns as the only metric for success—while neglecting the nurturing and rewarding of decision maker relationships.  “Balance is important … and determining who to influence is the responsibility of the savvy B2B marketer.”   A day will come when the relationship with the decision maker is paramount to retaining and growing your business.

“What a great event! The targeted attendees (marketing leaders), level of dialogue, intimate setting and open interaction was an experience to repeat!  And I loved the wine tasting networking where I could identify the common connection points to others I met.” – Maeve Naughton, Fortinet

There were many more comments from our panelists and contributions from our attendees worth taking back to reflect on and implement, but not enough space to capture here today.  Thank you to our panelists and attendees for joining me, Sean and Karen Posey in this engaging executive experience!