Creating USEFUL Communications, Marketing and Training Materials

Slick Marketing Materials: Why are they thrown away? Talk to a typical sales person at any company about the Marketing materials "Corporate" sends out. They usually laugh and tell you "I get those sent to me ... and they go into the round file!" Why? They're usually slick, graphically appealing, vetted through "focus groups", created at great cost by some of the best writers and designers in the country, reviewed by editing, executives, legal ... but are destined for recycling. Again, WHY? A story will illustrate: A senior executive asked me to look at the company's marketing collateral. She said sales wasn't using them, and they weren't getting handed to the customers. Worse, the on-line versions of the same materials were getting almost no hits. She wanted me to fix the materials, to reconfigure and rewrite them. "Maybe you could write some better meta-tags and headers for the on-line material." I refused! Talk to the User: Sales! The reason those marketing materials were thrown away? Marketing NEVER talked to Sales before the materials were developed! It sounds simple, but it's true! In many companies, marketing and sales NEVER TALK. And, when that happens, Marketing creates "fluff" that Sales thinks is "useless"! A Simple Solution: Ask Sales for Input! Instead of rewriting those slick materials, I worked with this exec to change the communications and creative processes in how the materials were created. We reached out to Sales from the very start. We called and emailed the best salespeople in the company, and asked them "You're really successful! How do you do what you do?" (Yes, we stroked their ego a little!) One highly-successful Sales pro, Mike in Florida, said: "Wow. I'm stunned! Nobody's ever asked me for my input before! Here is what I think!" And Mike gave us his secrets. He told stories about how he was successful, and why his customers bought from him. Marketing "got it". They created printed and on-line materials around Mike's stories and solutions. The materials went to the field... and had to be reprinted because they were so successful! Everyone said "Oh, I heard about these! Mike from Florida helped create these -- and he is great!" The result? <ul> <li>Best practices were captured AND TOLD. </li> <li>Solutions were captured AND TOLD, not only in marketing materials, but in training. </li> <li>New marketing materials and training were created that were EFFECTIVELY USED.</li> <li>Sales increased!</li> </ul> Why? Because Sales helped create the marketing and training materials, and those materials contained REAL solutions! The solution to slick marketing materials in the round file? ASK SALES for their input, at the beginning and throughout the process! An Added Bonus: Effective, Solution-Focused Training! There was a huge added bonus to changing the process: training got involved! Sales people saw the solution-focused marketing materials, and told the training department: "We need to understand how to do what Mike does!" So we created solution-focused training. We sat down with Mike, wrote a day-long training that basically consisted of him telling us how he did what he did. We documented it, told story after story after story for examples, then created activities to help attendees practice doing what Mike does. We even created job aids and check lists to help sales "be like Mike"! Mike taught a couple of classes (along with a "professional" instructor) on the corporate campus, then we decided to take it "virtual", and put it on the web, so sales people from throughout the company could access it. Was it successful? Of course! Why? Because the training, like the marketing materials, came from a fellow salesman! He could talk the talk ... and walk the talk as well! Another Extra Bonus: It's On-Going! The great thing about setting up a "capture the stories" process to create marketing and training is that everyone has success stories they want to share! After Mike told HIS stories and tactics, other high-achievers wanted to share their best practices. So the next version of both marketing materials and training was even better! And on it goes. Just because someone from Marketing finally asked someone from Sales: "Tell me a story about how you do what you do so well!" 2008-12-30T21:21:35Z

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creating-useful-communications-marketing-and-training-materials

2009-01-05T06:32:07Z

Fancy marketing collateral ends up in the round file. Why? Find out how to create USEFUL marketing and training materials!

Creating USEFUL Communications, Marketing and Training Materials

2009-02-24T09:48:09Z