Our company’s latest White Paper – WP#17: Commissioning an Influencer Program: What is the Cost of Inaction? – is published today.
Here’s the intro:
In recent months there has been much talk in sales circles about measuring the cost of inaction. A recent survey from CSO Insights confirmed that ‘No decision’ was now the single largest barrier to sales for B2B vendors. For an Influencer Identification program, typically commissioned by the Head of Marketing, what is the cost of inaction, making ‘no decision’ or putting the idea on the backburner until the following quarter?
We see six main flags you should consider.
- Continue focusing resources on people who have minimal influence on your buyers – chasing media coverage your prospects wont see, briefing analysts that your prospects don’t follow, sponsoring conferences that your prospects wont notice, supporting forums that merely act as industry echo chambers.
- Losing your ‘window of opportunity’ in the market. The same window that was described in your business plan as being so critical.
- Not hearing of new prospect RFPs early enough in the process because you weren’t well networked enough with those at the head of the food chain.
- Allowing your competitors to respond more completely to RFPs and prospect enquiries, with them having already connected with the best choice of industry partners.
- Allowing your competitors to gain a competitive advantage by spending their time embedding their thoughts into the right people
- Further expanding your social media outreach with content marketing collateral when your prospects (and their influencers) may not even look at those channels.
It incorporates our latest thinking on the subject, as well as the findings from an email questionnaire we recently issued to Heads of Marketing in US-based B2B organisations asking their opinions on five questions relating to their Marketing Outreach. We had over 150 responses. You can benchmark your own opinions against them.
You’re welcome to download a copy here:
http://www.influencer50.com/influencer50-library-pass.aspx