Sit before you Strech...

"Irrinittu kaalu neeta" is an old Mallu proverb (Badly translaed as the Headline) but it holds true to toadys marketing atleast in the B2B industry.If you were to look for B2B Marketing on the web you would be overloaded with great advise on how to use the latest Web 2.0 tools for marketing your wares. Started with Blogs which in turn lead to social networking though MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook and others- moved to instantly gratifying social microblogging through Twitter and now everyone talks about Friendfeed ,where you bring in all your social networks and tweets into one place. Every marketing guru worth his salt (or not) is preaching about the "real time" connect with the customers and how to make your blogs,corporate social networks and Twitter accounts "human" and constantly and actively "engage" him/her.

As a marketeer you might be forgiven to believe that the entire world has moved on from offline to online in the B2B space and you must be the last person who hasn't done it yet. Well im here to tell you ( suggest rather,I ain't no guru to tell!) that although all these gurus are preaching from Tokyo to Hawaii that the customers will not see you in favorable light if you are not present in the online space, they might not be completely accurate.

I think many B2B companies are still struggling with their basics and this becomes more and more evident when the going gets tough like in today's market scenarios. Especially in immature markets like LAM and APAC regions. When business is booming, everything looks hunky dory when you look at your sales books at the end of the quarter. But when going gets tough, customers are deffering purchase decisions and delaying payments you are faced with realities. Did you get your basics right in the first place?

I haven't done any official market research but when i talk to my peers about how well they know their markets, I'm hearing a common voice - We really don't know the market out there. There are a million leads every sales guy or sales manager is sitting on but having no time or resources to work on it. And all of that potential gold mine is down the drain. I think most B2B companies still think daily sales (Which of course is necessary for any company to run) and forget there is need to understand how to channel their efforts to actually DO the Sale. Show me a Sales Manager who knows/is learning the insides of his market rather being the top Sales Guy of the team and Ill show you an exception to the rule.

Take a step back, think simple - know your strengths- identify your target markets and learn everything there is to know about them. Know all the players in these segments, identify the issues with each stakeholder (End User,Consultant,Contractor etc) and rationalise to them in clear terms how your prodcut/service is going to solve their problems. And for all these you need face time or atleast phone time- Mano-a Mano and not online lead generation. Everyone deals with a zillion tools daily in their line of work and no one wants to fill one more online survey. They want answers and the more personal it is the more confident they feel. So put your money first into the good old offline marketing department. This is not to say online is not the future but check out this year's marketing spends the consultants are recommending and you'll see what i mean. Get real, Get personal, Get business. Or find yourself on the floor rubbing your behind...