Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Value Messaging at Scale: How to Make it a Sticky Habit

L. Venkatraman, VP - Value Engineering and CIO Services, Mainstay


In my previous blog I outlined five habits of highly effective IT organizations. (Thanks for your insightful comments and suggestions, btw. Very helpful!)

But how can organizations manage to make these five habits stick? In other words, how do they make business value messaging a permanent practice? Not just for the CIO, but for all the VPs, directors and project managers across your organization.

In most organizations today, business value messaging is left to the discretion of each IT leader. It’s seen as a “style” or even an “artistic” skill that can vary wildly from one leader to the next. Some are naturally gifted in translating IT language into business language. Others feel uncomfortable outside the confines of their technical domain.

How about at your own organization: Is business value messaging a unique art -- or is it a consistent, repeatable practice? I would argue that if your IT organization wants to become a true strategic partner, you’ll need to practice business value messaging at scale. That means creating a formal business value realization program with full business alignment, rigor, repeatability and standardization. Here are five steps to get there.

1. Pick a Leader
First you need to Identify a leader to run your business value realization program. Your CIO’s chief of staff might be a good candidate for this role. Next, staff the team with someone with good business acumen and another with great communications skills. They’ll work with your IT leaders to develop standard processes and outputs across the organization.

2. Identify Sources of Business Value
Identify key projects that you know will add value to the business. These could be projects that:
·        Improve business processes (to boost efficiencies and productivity, or control costs)
·        Create new capabilities for the business (to improve competitive advantage, generate revenue or improve profitability)
·        Strengthen the foundation (to enable future growth and profitability)

Seeing each project through the lens of business value communication compels you to create business-friendly narratives, hard numbers, and visualizations that can appeal to a broad business audience across multiple channels. Consider creating a single-page “project inventory” focused on business value realization.

3. Define Use Cases and KPIs
Business leaders want to see business outcomes. So, for each project you identify, build 3-4 use cases that are expected to deliver 80% of the total benefits. Be specific. For example, explain your new customer application in terms of how its predictive analytic capabilities will boost retention and subscription renewal rates. Explain how other KPIs are impacted, such as retention costs, complaints per customer, customer satisfaction, etc.
Make sure your case studies are clearly articulated. You may have detailed spreadsheets and PowerPoints, but do you have a concise 30-word and 100-word summary of why you’re doing the project, and what benefits are expected?

4. Create an Editorial Calendar
It’s best to assume your business stakeholders have short memories. One-off communications are quickly forgotten, so reinforce your business value messaging with frequent communications that are both memorable and easily consumed. Of course, leverage all the channels and formats at your disposal:
·        Channels: Email communications, QBR meetings, intranet, internal social media, in-person meetings, cafeteria displays, etc.
·        Formats: Slide decks, blogs, dashboards, web pages, IT annual/quarterly reports, infographics, video-graphics, etc.

To orchestrate the communications, I recommend creating a basic “editorial calendar” that lists all the content assets to be published, the format and channel to be used, and when they’ll be published. Using a simple spreadsheet for the calendar is fine for most programs. Just make sure all your project teams have reviewed and bought into it.

5. Create a Content Library
Once your business value communication program is up and running, you’ll quickly accumulate a ton of content, most of which can be easily reused and repurposed across other channels and formats. To make the most of your assets, organize a “central repository” in which your published content can easily searched and retrieved for new communications.


Hopefully these five steps will help make your business value communications more consistent, repeatable, and scalable. In other words, making it a “stickier” habit. At a minimum, you’ll avoid the scramble of putting together communications on an ad-hoc basis. For example, preparing an IT annual report – a task can seem truly mountainous in the face of your other responsibilities – suddenly becomes an orderly, hassle-free exercise. Best of all, your credibility will rise in the eyes of business leaders who will increasingly view IT as a strategic business enabler.

6 Keys to Building a Great Lead-Generation Tool

Mark Tomlinson, Mainstay

What’s the secret to creating an online tool that looks fantastic and generates real leads? After years of helping clients build their sales pipelines, we’ve learned a few things about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to lead-generation tools. (Specifically, we’re talking about tools that can be freely accessed by the public – and your potential customers – on the internet.)
So here are a few tips on how to make your next lead-generation tool more successful.

1 – Keep It Simple
Too often we see clients trying to do too much with their lead-generation tool. They want it to gather too much data, or fill too many roles -- such as both lead-generation and sales. Unfortunately, that means the tool’s interface often ends up looking crowded and cluttered. This can irritate or bore prospects, causing them to drop-off early. Focus on gathering only high-level data to avoid being intrusive. Our rule of thumb for the tools we build is “slim, sleek and concise.” 
Remember that a lead-generation tool should only be your first touchpoint with the customer. The goal is simply to draw in prospects and set them up for follow-up interactions with sales teams, who may use a sales tool to orchestrate deep dives with the potential customer. This approach will allow for a well-defined sales cycle from start to finish. 
2 – Design an Effective Gate
The primary purpose of any lead-generation tool is to generate leads! So, every lead-generation tool needs a “gate” – that’s the point where you ask the user to pony up their contact information before continuing. We’ve found that it’s best not to put the gate at the front-end of the tool or you’ll risk drop-offs. Instead, pull prospects along with simple high-level questions and then entice them to register with the promise of additional, useful details. A good place to do this is just before the tool generates “results” from the user’s inputs. The results are the candy you can dangle in front of the prospect to capture the info you need to connect with them later.
3 – Streamline the Registration Form
Now that you’ve successfully coaxed prospects into sharing their information, don’t turn them off with a long, hard-to-fill-out registration form. The user will walk away if they are presented with too many questions. Keep it to the basics and keep it short. Your goal is just to be able to get back to them on a personal level. Lengthy registration forms invariably generate a plethora of junk data – not to mention drop offs.
4 – Deliver Sleek Results
Once the user has successfully registered, it’s time to deliver the goods. It’s worth making the extra effort to design a really sleek presentation of the results, complete with a high-level summary and clear, colorful charts. Not too busy, not too bland -- just right. Offer to email them an attractive report or presentation, or allow them to download it.
5 – Market It!
A great lead-generation tool should be marketed far and wide. To boost conversion rates, we encourage clients to post links to the tool across multiple outlets, including social media. Consider creating marketing campaigns to spread awareness of the tool, and pay attention to which outlets generate the most leads so you can fine-tune your next campaign. 
6 - Track Usage

One last piece of advice: Track how prospects consume your tool to identify touchpoints that trigger engagement as well as where they’re dropping off. Use this knowledge to modify your tool to generate more leads.

When designed and deployed correctly, online lead-generation tools can be one of the most powerful weapons you have in your sales and marketing program arsenal. To learn more about how Mainstay can help you cost-effectively build and market great lead-generation tools, contact sales@mainstaycompany.com or go to www.mainstaycompany.com.

Mark Tomlinson heads Mainstay’s Software Development team with over 10 years in the high-tech industry. He has designed award-winning sales and marketing tools for companies ranging from fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 companies.