Tag: Telstra

B2B Marketing Leader Interviews: Jarther Taylor

B2B Marketing, Conferences, Customer Experience

In the leadup to the B2B Marketing Leaders Forum APAC 2016, I took the opportunity to speak with Telstra’s GM Marketing, Jarther Taylor about the state of B2B marketing, the challenges that lay ahead, and the surprising ways technology and a focus on customer experience is changing the marketing and sales landscape.

 

Jarther-Taylor-Telstra-Business-speaking-B2B-Marketing-Leaders-Conference-Sydney-Australia-2016Gavin Heaton: We hear a lot of talk about the “marketing funnel” and the “sales funnel”. In your experience are these becoming one and the same?

Jarther Taylor: There are three factors driving convergence and of the marketing and sales funnel. So, yes they are becoming one and the same.

Firstly, as marketing increasingly digitised it can deliver better quality and more progressed leads at scale.  That is in the past, a B2B marketer may have had a bunch of responses from a DM piece or an event, and sales would then have the explore and develop that basic opportunity.  Today marketing can not only capture interest, but also progress that interest to a point of being ready to buy and then pass to sales to close the deal and help nurture and drive advocacy post-purchase.

Secondly, the buying process (which has replaced the selling process) is non-linear.  Gartner as a good model for this fluid approach of buying – Explore, Evaluate, Engage, Experience.  This fluidity and uncertainty is more culturally acceptable in marketing.  That is marketing leaders understand the customers may shift from being close to ready to buy (Engage) , to back to the Explore phase.  Sales management drives for a steady progression through the funnel, and sales teams are not ‘permitted’ to have an opportunity go from 30% certainty to 70% certainty back to 50%.  Marketing can help ensure that sales resources only engage during Engage!

Thirdly, the importance of customer experience across the buying and usage cycle is increasingly seen as a differentiator.  While at one point, sales was at the end of the line and customers were then exposed to usually less resourced service organisations, this has shifted with the introduction of Net Promoter Scores and the consumerization of business products (e.g. “why can’t my experience with you be more like Uber, AWS, Apple, etc.”).  This means than marketing, who has traditionally been responsible for representing the customer in the organisation, has a far great role to play across marketing, sales and service.

Gavin Heaton: Up to 60% of purchase decisions are made before a buyer reaches out to the brand. How is this changing the work of sales people?

Jarther Taylor: Sales used to be the ‘smartest person in the room’ when it came to B2B selling.  That is, the technical expertise on the product was what customers were after and went to the vendor to get that information.  Today most of the studies that support the 60% number show that digital research and speaking to peers is done well before engaging with the vendor.  I had a discussion with IDC just over a year ago, where they gave me multiple examples of customers wanting to now minimise the amount of time they spent with sales.

So sales need to get engaged earlier on in the piece.  That is, they need to be present in the online forums that customers are doing research in.  Marketing can help this through digital strategies like content marketing and social selling. Social Selling has proven extremely successful both at IBM and Telstra in building advocacy, trust and engagement with customers.

So with customers doing more research and having more knowledge before they get to the sales person, the conversations shift.  Sales need to have the capacity and capability to discuss options with a customer, challenge their thinking and add value to the buying process beyond taking an order.  For many sales organisations this is a major shift in culture, capability and structure.

 

Gavin Heaton: As consumers, we have become adept online purchasers. We plan and buy our own travel, research our purchases online before shopping around and so on. How is this self-service approach impacting the B2B vendor?

Jarther Taylor: Self-service in B2B tends to reside the in the Experience phase of the buying process I referenced above.  That is, once a commercial relationship between a customer and vendor has been set up, many of the more mundane actions can be done through a self-service portal.  Let’s say I’m an OfficeMax customer, then my office administrators can order approved stationary via an online portal.  Managing your billing or usage of technology via a self-service portal is also popular for many XaaS solutions.  AWS ,for instance, pretty much has it all online.

As a B2B vendor this can potentially mean a loss of engagement opportunities with a customer, but is also means that the engagement can be a lot richer.  For instance, rather mourning the loss to sell additional items in person, usage data of a product can suggest that the next best product is.  So it drives efficiency and also advocacy because you are offering the customer more useful products and solutions.

Another efficiency gain is the post-sales service can be scaled.  That is a contact centre can manage a much larger number of customers in a much more personalised manner.  Customers get better and more relevant marketing, sales and service engagement.  And as a vendor I am keeping my costs down.

Taking Digital Leadership to a New Level

Conferences, Digital Disruption, Digital Strategy

When I started this blog ten years ago, it began with a rant. A call to action. It was a poetic exploration of what it might mean to focus on your customer above all else. It was also a warning about what would happen if businesses refused to do so.

There are more to the words of consumers than the corporations expect.
We huddle in groups, in chat rooms.
We explode on the keyboards of a million call centres.
Our imagination is unheard of. Our thoughts cancel out the process.
We are your hearts and your minds.
We are everywhere, all places, all over the shop.

Fast forward ten years and over 2200 articles later, and it feels like we might be making a little progress on this transformation in business that we call “digital”.

When I spoke at Telstra’s Vantage conference just a couple of months ago, there was a palpable sense that a shift was underway in the way that Australia’s largest telecommunications company was presenting itself. It was more assertive. Less about cables and wires. More about services and transformation. About helping customers solve business problems.

And with the Telstra Digital Summit, we are seeing a stronger Telstra yet again. Also see Joanne Jacobs’ live blog.

Kicking off with Andy Penn, CEO of Telstra

It was the most comprehensive display of digital leadership that we have seen from Telstra. In fact, I would be hard pressed to think of another company that is making such a concerted shift. There was context setting from Telstra CEO, Andy Penn and newly minted Minister for Communications, Mitch Fifield, sprinkled with humour, references to 80s music and examples of how Telstra is shifting from its telco base to become more of a “technology business”. There was still a reliance on numbers over storytelling and “core” messaging than vision, but it’s a new dance that Telstra is learning and like anything at this scale, it takes time.

A vision of the future with Robert Scoble

Peering into the near future, Robert Scoble and Kathryn Parsons talked about the way technology is empowering people, students and businesses to transform their own futures. Robert, in particular took us into a world whose future is inextricably linked to technology. Part geek fanboy and part techno-utopian, Robert’s exciting new world is populated by ever more deeply connected, yet strangely disembodied, individuals shuttling between meetings in driverless cars and adventures in virtual reality. Robert is an expert at connecting out-of-this-world market valuations for new technology with a vision for the future that is yet to be created, but in a country that is struggling to spread 20th Century broadband copper across its vast distances, it feels like it may take Australia longer than most to reach this new future.

Decoding the future with Kathryn Parsons

The energy of Kathryn Parsons, CEO of Decoded is palpable. A great storyteller, she effortlessly weaves her own story with that of Decoded – the accelerated learning program designed to get you up and going with coding, data and technology in a day. Soon to be launching in Australia, Decoded’s launch reinforces the fact that education is one of the great opportunities of the early 21st Century. And just as Australia exports a substantial amount of education to overseas markets, we are now seeing more overseas businesses eyeing the Australian markets keenly. Joining the US-based General Assembly, along with almost all the universities, Decoded brings a rapid sense of flair to adult learning. It will be interesting to see the ripples as they roll out here.

Enterprises learning to dance – Telstra’s Muru-D accelerator

Annie Parker, founder of Telstra’s startup accelerator, Muru-D, showcased two of the current businesses working through the program. When I first saw Holly Cardew talk about her Pixc business, it was all images, and online products. Today, just months later, it’s storefronts, investments and ecommerce – a dramatic and welcome move up the value chain. And Cate Hull’s vision for FreightExchange – an uber for excess freight capacity – remains clear and eminently viable as it did on day one.

Dazzled by data – Lithium’s Rob Tarkoff

Rob Tarkoff, CEO of Lithium dazzled the audience with insight, data and a world of big data experience. He toyed with the audience – testing our understanding of Daniel’s Market Theory (ie there is no theory, Daniel is his son) – going on to explain how the “born digital” generation are already exhibiting different behaviours and expectations from businesses and communities.

The rear view from out in front – Uber in Australia with David Rohrsheim

Uber’s David Rohrsheim was a crowd favourite, riding the wave of popularity that Uber is experiencing in Australia. When he asked how many in the audience had taken an Uber in the last week, almost the whole audience raised their hand. Here, David was preaching to his choir. This is where I hoped for a little more than the “why Uber is so uber”, but the audience certainly loved the storytelling.

X marks the spot with Brian Solis

After lunch is one of the most challenging speaking slots. Stepping into the void, Brian Solis took us the challenging landscapes of customer experience. As ever, Brian delivered insight in a smooth, easy to understand way. He is certainly one of the most accomplished speakers I have seen – polished, word perfect and authoritative. This time he was all these things, but with another quality. A depth or humility that I had not noticed previously. And this made his talk on X – customer experience, the crossroads for business – so good.

A brain on legs – Larry Marshall moving CSIRO to a new tune

We often say that “if you are the smartest person in the room, you need to get out”. And if this is the case, Larry Marshall, CEO of the CSIRO, is likely to find himself meeting-free for years to come. A great combination of entrepreneurialism and scientific chops, he has a clear vision for his 90 year old startup. Echoing Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull’s push for innovation and “agile government”, Larry challenged not only the audience but his own teams – “we have to be beta all the time”.

Telstra’s digital journey with Kartsen Wildberger

Rounding out the day was Telstra Group Executive, Karsten Wildberger sharing part of the Telstra digital journey. He touched on the challenges as well as some of the wins. It was refreshing to hear Karsten taking on the challenge of disruption, reframing it as opportunity rather than a threat – and encouraged the audience to think the same way. “Keep the customer at the centre of everything”, he urged.

Lethal Generosity with Shel Israel

The nicest man on the internet, and in many ways, it’s chronicler, Shel Israel, stepped us through what it takes to be “lethally generous”. And he is that in person. In fact, this is the title of his new book, generated to the millennial generation which he sees as the “greatest hope for the planet”. Listening to Shel, you hear not just a connection to technology but also a sense of the great underlying humanity which the technology was created to serve. As he says, “great customer service, even if it costs you a sale, gets you a customer for life”.

What the tweet – Twitter in Australia with Karen Stocks

Rounding out the day – in the last presentation before drinks – was local Twitter CEO, Karen Stocks. Given that the whole room could be categorised as “early adopters”, it was a shame that the presentation didn’t take us more into the future of Twitter. Clearly there was a lot of love in the room for Twitter and for Karen as CEO – and the segments on #likeagirl and Periscope reinforced the power and relevance that Twitter has created in the community. But it would have been great to hear more about their story with data and the tools that are available for businesses, their partnerships with companies like IBM or new features and capabilities coming down the track.

What’s next for the digital summit?

It was a broad brush conference and tied together many of the digital challenges in easy to consume, shorter, 20 minute snacks. There was fabulous diversity in the speaking line-up – it certainly wasn’t yet another conference dominated by MAMS (middle aged men in suits). The tweet stream provided some great, light hearted moments and worked to engage the audience across the day.

The faster pace also kept the audience focused and the energy levels high. And Telstra’s new-found confidence was surprisingly refreshing. Where once, their positioning was tinged with the air of superiority and arrogance, this conference felt like a more hands-on, let’s get things done attitude was pervading proceedings.  Some ideas for the Telstra Digital Summit 2016 (hey ideas are free):

  • More Australian speakers actually speaking about Australian businesses and conditions. It would be great to hear from Telstra business customers and the successes they are having. Some of the Telstra Business Awards winners had compelling stories and amazing digital outcomes. More of that please
  • Breakout sessions for case studies and deep dives. There’s plenty of room in the exhibition area to have mini-talks on digital topics. This would be a great way for Telstra to showcase their depth of expertise and “lethal generosity”
  • Connecting the audience. With around 1000 people attending the conference is now at the scale where connecting and networking with others is a challenge. With plenty of conference apps now available, it might be worth investigating something that helps connect people, ideas and opportunities.

Interestingly, while reading back over my blog, I found this article from 2008 urging Telstra to embrace an “almost unmatched opportunity” on the digital frontier. It has taken six years to hear these words from the lips of a Telstra CEO. Let’s hope that this forward momentum will continue.

Time for Parents to Step Up as Digital Role Models

Cyber Safety, Privacy, Research Report

Working in digital and social media means you are often drawn into quite personal conversations with people. And by “conversations” I don’t just mean “discussions” or “chats” – but one way broadcasts where your only interaction may be to virtually “nod” (via a “Like”), acknowledge or amplify a situation (via sharing or a retweet). For while social media allows us to “engage” or interact with others, the vast majority don’t. Most of us are “lurkers”.

Lurkers are the 90% of people who use social media to observe. Watch. Listen in. It’s only 1% who create this content. We call this the 90-9-1 rule – or the “1 percenters”.

Participation-Funnel

You may only be “Friends on Facebook”, but this can expose you to a vast insight into a person’s life. For example, lurking you will learn about:

  • Private details – birthdays, relationships status, holidays, workplace, friends and networks
  • Lifestyle – favourite restaurants, foods, cafes, sports, hobbies, games
  • Travel – holiday destinations, desires, interests.

Social media reveals the pattern of your life

Now it all sounds innocuous enough, but think about all these pieces of information put together. What does it reveal? It reveals the pattern of your life. Every item that you post, share, click, promote and comment on can be found in your own feed. Perusing a Facebook profile page essentially provides a glimpse into your private world. For while you may feel that you are just sharing an inspirational quote with your loved ones, it generally means that you are sharing that quote with the friends of your friends. And in isolation you can easily ask – does this tell the “story of me” – and do I feel comfortable with strangers thinking that?

In fact, researcher Sam Gosling and author of Snoop – what your stuff says about you, uses his psychological framework, observation and analysis to explain how our small objects and personal spaces reveal a great deal about ourselves. While his research methodology centres on the analysis of personal bathrooms – his OCEAN framework has also been deployed as a Facebook technology to generate insights from Facebook profiles.

So when you see that 50 people have Liked one of your posts, the 1 Percenters rule suggests that more than 10x that number have “seen” it. And while this doesn’t mean that your update or profile has gone “viral”, it is far from private.

Think of the children

As an adult, this is not that frightening, right? But think of the role modelling that is taking place here. Especially for those who are parents – or who have high levels of interaction with children.

Telstra’s Cyber Safety – Balancing Screen Time Survey asked 1348 Australian parents of children aged 3-17 about their own use of devices. They also surveyed these parents on their children’s use of technology. The research revealed:

  • 65% of parents don’t think they’re good role models when it comes to device usage
  • 77% of parents considered putting controls on the device but 33% didn’t know what is available or HOW to implement it

It is that second bullet point that concerns me the most. Telstra provides Cyber Safety information available via their website, including links to:

  • eSmart – a cyber safety behaviour-change initiative of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, aimed at schools and libraries
  • Smart Controls for customer mobile accounts that can create restrictions on devices
  • Online Security – tools for broadband customers designed to keep your family safe

In the survey, when children were asked about perceptions of their parents’ device usage, 12 per cent said the amount of time their parent spends on their device impacts how well they look after their family, and a further nine per cent say the amount of time their parents spend on their device takes away from their family time.

Telstra’s Cyber Safety Manager, Shelly Gorr, said:

The results are a reminder to parents that they’re a key influencer on their children’s online behaviour.

Moving beyond screen time

There are plenty of additional insights coming from the survey – especially around the often vexed subject of screen time. How much is too much? How do you manage it? Why should you? Most of this is subjective – and dependent upon your own style of parenting. And while there is a real risk related to screen time – there is also much hype, conflicted and skewed research supporting both more and less screen time for kids. But surely this is not  a question of technology – but a question of “what kind of family” and “what kind of adults” are you preparing for the world.

If it is time for parents to step up as digital role models, there’s also a need for support for those parents. We are currently putting together a simple online course for parents interested in protecting their family online – and managing the effects of screen time. If you are interested in this, sign up below and we’ll let you know when it is available.

Register your interest in cyber safety course



ADMA-Telstra Young Marketer and Young Creative of the Year Finalists

Awards, Creativity, Marketing

adma-yc-ym There was a time where I wore a rather cynical hat when it came to awards. I’d look at the projects that won and the effort that would go into creating the award pitches and see holes, sub-standard work or missed opportunities. But with more experience on both client and agency sides, I am far more forgiving. And sometimes astounded or amazed at the work that does get done. After all, almost every piece of work that is seen in public has been pored over, compromised, championed and changed. It’s the rough and ready world of creative collaboration – and it’s harder than a dozen series of Mad Men would have you believe.

Which is why it’s important to celebrate the fact that great work is done and that there are scores of young marketers showing the leadership to make it happen.

Sponsored by Telstra, the finalists for the ADMA Young Creative of the Year are:

  • Tara Mckenty, Creative Director, Google APAC, for ‘Make your own luck’
  • Sal Cavallaro, Art Director, 303Lowe Sydney, for ‘An Eye into NY’
  • Brendan Graham, Copywriter and Strategist, Soap Creative, for ‘Under 30 invite’
  • Scott Nolan, Senior Art Director, Drifter, for ‘Flirt with your future’
  • Elliott White, Junior Copywriter, JWT, for ‘Launch brand you.’

And the finalists for the ADMA Young Marketer of the Year are:

  • Sue Kim, Product Marketing Specialist, Adobe
  • Richard Schmid, Advertising Manager, Dick Smith
  • Lucas Black-Dendle, Strategic Planner, Whybin\TBWA Group Sydney
  • Allister Hercus, Social Media Strategist, MEC
  • Penny Richardson, Head of Customer Marketing, Foxtel.

The overall winners will be announced on Thursday, 30 October at ADMA’s Australian Creativity and Effectiveness Awards (AC&E Awards) at The Star, Pyrmont. The winning creative campaign will be rolled out nationally as a call to entry for the 2015 ADMA Young Marketer and Young Creative competitions.