Focus on the right segments, focus on the right buyer personas, focus on the right pains that the persona is likely experiencing, and focus on the best activities necessary to get the team to their goal of creating new opportunities for the sales team.

I encourage all of our teams to have a model day for success, and apply it daily. It sounds a bit cheesy and perhaps micro-manager-esque, but the day of a prospector needs to be hyper-focused. Why? Between inbound emails, outbound emails, outbound calling, inbound calling, and researching it is very easy for someone in this role to get distracted and in turn not meet their daily productivity goals. To be less of a micromanager, ask your rep to design their own model day — what works for them, what they think they need to be successful — review it with him/her, and then hold him/her accountable.

Here is an exercise that I encourage lead gen reps to execute at the end of every day to get focused and buttoned up for the following day (45 mins):

1. Pick 3-5 companies to focus on tomorrow that you want to “win over” (i.e. set an appt)
2. Identify each company’s email formula (i.e. first-name.last-name@company.com)
3. Identify the corporate # (make sure it’s accurate in sf.com)
4. Identify a minimum of 5 leads per company in addition to what you may already have in your CRM (this might be more difficult if your target is more narrow, but then again, it doesn’t hurt to have convos with potential champions!)
5. Identify if you have any 2nd or 3rd connections with these leads in LinkedIn; reach out to those connections asking for an introduction
6. Find something interesting about the company that is relevant to leverage (i.e. new product release, promotion, award, etc.)
7. Send emails to the new leads to warm things up for your call tomorrow

I can assure you that your reps will come in the following day with a greater focus if this exercise has occurred the evening prior!

Editor’s Note: To get more great tips on improving your B2B sales and marketing strategies (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

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We had a great first day at OpenView’s User Experience workshop, which featured incredible insight from Kyrie Robinson, a User Experience Partner with the Silicon Valley Product Group. On that note, I thought I’d explain why we felt user experience was an important topic for our portfolio companies to understand and what led to OpenView creating this workshop.

For the last several decades, B2B software vendors have been happily shielded from having to design products that delighted their users. As you might expect, that environment invariably led to products with correspondingly horrible user experiences.

Early on, that wasn’t a major problem. When we all started our professional careers, the software we used was primarily designed for the semi- to fully-technical user, who tended to be a knowledge worker with a college degree. We were willing to tinker with the software to figure out how to use it, and that was typically after our IT group spent months and thousands (if not millions) of dollars implementing and customizing the software to suit our business need.

Then came the browser, SaaS, and Agile development.

Today, SaaS companies can deliver software without months of deployment and customization. That solved one problem, but it didn’t do much to address the problem of usage complexity. In fact, by delivering software as a service, software developers were able to create more features. Agile development made matters worse by accelerating that development velocity, leaving users saddled with bloated, heavily featured SaaS products that attempt to cater to every conceivable user persona. As a result, the shield that B2B software vendors have been using to hide the horrible user experience and design of their products is quickly dissipating.

Why? Because of two fundamental changes:

1. The iPhone and iPad revolution

Steve Jobs made us all realize that our business is no longer about technology. It’s all about user experience. Jobs gave the world a computer that delivers a delightful user experience that doesn’t require a manual or extreme customization. Moreover, he built an ecosystem around that computer that required software developers to deliver products that simply worked, and worked simply.

Jobs also planted the desktop browser seed of death. Developers now have to design their products to work within the confines of the smartphone/tablet interface. That in turn is forcing software designers to strip away the majority of their product features and deliver only the bare — and most critical — essentials.

2. The graduation of the Facebook generation

With more and more and more college graduates growing into business software buyers and users, B2B software companies are dealing with a generation that wants the same computing user experience that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Skype give them on their iPhones and iPads. Put simply, they don’t possess the attention span required to figure out how to use outdated B2B software.

So, what does that all mean for the B2B software industry? It means B2B software vendors need to start adopting a B2C approach to product design.

Here are six steps to get you started:

1. Read these three books: Mary Cagan’s Inspired, Steve Krug’s Rocket Surgery Made Easy, and Eric Ries’s Lean Startup.

2. Hire a product leader to build a product management function: Keep in mind that there is typically a big cultural shift when you take this step. First, a founding CTO may take issue with having to let go of product decisions to the product leader. Second, you might also struggle with development engineers who have to surrender product and design decisions to the product management team.

3. Give the product leader a budget to hire a User Experience team (UX): As CEO, start articulating why user experience is going to be the crux of future product development. Your support is paramount, so you need to believe in the decision.

4. Figure out your market segmentation strategy: One of the biggest drivers of over-featured products is poor market and user segmentation. Product designers must narrow their target market in order to design the specific features that users actually need and want.

5. Bring the voice of the user into the design process: Expose your management team to the voice of the user so that it can develop empathy and familiarity with them. One warning:  Don’t confuse the buyer with the user!

6. Simplify, simplify, simplify: Give your design and development teams the liberty to prune legacy features from the product and allow them to make bold strokes.

Got it? Good. Now, let go of the past and begin embracing the user!

Want to learn more about user experience? Check out this roundtable series with Kyrie Robinson, Chris Kaufman, Andrew Maier, and Susan Weinschenk  from OpenViewLabs.

More and more B2B companies are recognizing the power of social media in terms of building community, increasing thought leadership, and generating leads. With over 800 million active users on Facebook, more than 300 million tweets sent daily, and one hour of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, it’s easy to get carried away and let everything just pass you by. The truth is, B2B companies can’t afford to overlook a solid social media strategy (which is why we have assembled a group of biggest and brightest minds in social media including Jay Baer, Tim Washer, Ekaterina Walter, Mike Sansone, and Nate Riggs for a series on the Labs site).  In case you have missed it, here are the articles to date:

• Social Media Matters: Exploring the Future of Social Media for Your B2B Business
• How To Build a Ground Swell for Your Startup Using Twitter
• 7 Steps to Successful YouTube Marketing
• Tips for Turning Your B2B Facebook Page Into a Beacon for Your Brand
• Funny or Die? Why B2B Brands Shouldn’t Be So Scared of Comedic Content and Social Media

Part of my work at OpenView is to help our expansion stage portfolio companies develop their strategies around content marketing, influencer marketing, and social media. As a result, I am always looking for ways to help marketers within our portfolio companies and other startups execute their jobs smarter and more efficiently. A great place to start this conversation is with an quick, simple assessment.

Here are my thoughts on how to assess your progress with social media at the expansion stage:

B2B Social Media Assessment

What are your current social media activities?
What channels are you currently participating on?
Do you have goals for your social media strategy?  If so, what are they?
What message/story are you trying to convey with social media?
Do you have a content strategy? What content do you currently share?
Do you have the staff to support social media engagement?
Do you have a release calendar?
Do you have social media guidelines?
Are you tracking conversions from social media?
What metrics are you currently tracking?
What tools do you use to help manage or track your social media efforts?

So, now I need your help.  What did I miss?  What isn’t really that important?  What should be elaborated?  Please, sound off in the comments!

Editor’s Note: For social media lessons from the top venture capital firms online, check out OpenView’s new report: “The 10 Most Influential Technology Venture Capital Firms Online.” And to get more great tips on improving your B2B marketing (and growing your business), sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

That is why I wanted to share this WSJ article I found in their “Small Business” section written by Antone Johnson titled 5 ‘IP’ Mistakes Start-ups Should Avoid. You might find Johnson’s five mistakes interesting:

1. “Contamination”
2. Mixing up what came from where
3. Planning to launch a business around a clever, catchy brand name that can’t be used
4. Confusing types of IP and means of protection
5. Overvaluing patents

When it’s time to raise capital these mistakes can come back to haunt founders and/or CEOs, regardless of whether their companies are in the early, expansion, or growth stage. To get the details behind these five mistakes you can read the complete article here.

All the best!
G

Editor’s Note: To get more great tips on helping your company navigate the startup or expansion stage, sign up for the OpenView newsletter.

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Over the last 4 weeks, I have written a series of posts on how to measure an individual’s online influence and provided tips to improve your return on investment in the Blogging, Tweeting and LinkedIn influence channels. This week, I will shift my focus to online brand influence.

Earlier today, OpenView released the second of its 2-part series of reports on online influence in the Venture Capital space. The latest report ranks the top 10 most influential venture capital firms online and provides some highlights of the tactics that these firms are using to bolster their online influence.

In this post, I’d like to share some of the best practices that virtually any company can implement in order to elevate their brand influence.

• First and foremost, to develop a successful brand influence program your company needs to a) know who it is trying to influence; and b) focus its efforts on serving that group of individuals’ interests and needs.  For B2C companies, this is pretty straightforward. Your audience will be defined by the key characteristics in your ideal customer profile. For B2B companies, finding your target audience is a little more complicated. You will first want to identify your ideal customer profile and the characteristics that define that group. Then, you need to identify the buyer personas, user personas, and influencers that are involved in the purchasing process at target companies. These individuals will be your most targeted audience group. Depending on the size of this group of companies you will likely want to refine your requirements slightly to increase the size of your target audience.
• Identify where members of this community go for information that is related to your company’s product offerings and services. Often there are great marketing channels that provide very little overall influence value because individuals from a given community may not rely on them for information. Therefore, the return on investment in these types of channels may be minimal. You can identify the top influence channels to interact with your target audience via an online survey or a simple LinkedIn poll.
• Make your company’s online presence an important component of the community of companies and individuals that it does business with.  For example, the most influential venture capital firms have realized that they are at the center of startup and expansion stage company job searching, and have made this a key functionality of their webpages.
• Leverage other community channels to expose other members of your target audience community to your content and brand, and expand your brand influence. The more touch points that you have with your target’s community, the more likely your target will become aware of your company and what it does and will potentially follow you in one or more of your target influence channels. This will lead to more chances to influence these individuals and engage with them directly.
• Align the interests of your company with your target audience community. This establishes a relationship beyond being a customer with this individual. For example, companies selling to US pharmaceutical companies may want support online movements protecting drug patents, as this is an issue that is important to these individuals.
• Align your key employees with your brand.  Your employees are an extension of your company, so you should leverage their involvement with your community to amplify your influence. One way you can easily do this is by publicizing the activity of the key players in your company with your target community across each of your major channels of communication.
• Engage directly with your target audience directly using your corporate communication channels.

If you are interested in learning more about brand influence, I recommend reading Inc.’s article on “How to Measure Your Brand’s online influence.”  Additionally, please follow me on Twitter at @bhickie to stay abreast of my current thoughts on startup and expansion stage marketing and business strategies. I post my weekly blog post to my Twitter feed each week.

Editor’s Note: To get more great tips on building your brand influence and helping your company grow, sign up for the OpenView newsletter.