Wake me up!
The conference day started philosophically. With Nick Southgate, who is a member of the School of Life, founded by Alain de Botton – and I like to read his books. With Southgate, however, I drifted off too often. Philosophizing right away while the conference has actually not even started. Wake me up, feed me with inspiration and set the tone for the rest of the day, that's what I like more in an opening lecture. It was only at the end of Southgate's story that I perked up a bit. He said that B2B'ers often make their sales process unnecessarily heavy and difficult and people don't like that. Keep it simple and accessible. Provide stories and videos that are worth sharing instead of super boring bullet points, frown-inducing product specifications and even more yawn-inducing digressions.
I spoke to Southgate briefly after his lecture. He said he suspected that B2B people list to data deliberately make their products so complicated. It’s because of the sales department. “A salesperson wants to visit a customer to explain things, and then they can offer a discount on the spot. They make things difficult to give themselves a strong negotiating position.” Discounts over content. No relationship, but short-term sales; what a missed opportunity. He recently bought a cabinet himself, Southgate said. “After watching a clear instructional video, I thought: this is so easy, I can even assemble that cabinet.” So he bought that cabinet – which is still not ready to use. “It takes me longer than I thought. But that’s because of me, not because of that video. It had such a sales impact that I even made a purchase decision for something ‘difficult’.”
Roel Haanappel of Unit4 did not deliver what the program guide promised. What stuck with me was that his nickname within Unit4 was 'Mr. Trechter'. However, a sheet made up for my presence: a photo of a coffee corner at Unit4. I was first distracted by the name on that machine, only then did I see a screen showing the blog scores of all Unit4 employees who blog. How many stories someone had written and how they scored. At Unit4, they are crazy about blogging. 15 employees do it and that makes for a lot of fun. Also outside the coffee corner. Not only because it has made Unit4 more findable on topics such as ERP, cloud computing and business intelligence, important themes for the company, but also because some blogs were picked up by the press. That gives the brand visibility in the media and feeds company pride. Plus: the company has to send out fewer press releases. Journalists read relevant stories on the blog.