Siebel CRM on Demand

Siebel CRM OnDemand is an innovative, low-risk, flexible, hosted customer relationship management (CRM) solution brought you by the company that invented CRM –Siebel Systems.

The result is that Siebel CRM OnDemand provides businesses of all shapes and sizes with a centralized repository of customer data and a real-time snapshot of all customer interactions. So no matter what your CRM requirements are, Siebel CRM OnDemand accelerates business value and lowers overall Total Cost of Ownership.

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services. More companies trust their vital customer and sales data to salesforce.com than any other CRM company in the world.

In fact, more than 399,000 subscribers at 20,500 companies worldwide depend on Salesforce to manage their sales, marketing, and customer center and customer service.

Ok, you get the picture. You can see right away that there’s a huge difference between these. Saleforce.com does a far better job of messaging in the following ways:

• Use of simple, plain English…no technical mumbo jumbo jargon
• Focus on customers and their pain points
• Hard hitting facts that support claims
• Conversational style that entices you to learn more

It’s Powerful

Messaging is not copywriting. Messaging is the work that precedes copywriting and all other execution such as taglines, ad copy, websites, datasheets, corporate brochure, sales scripts, etc. It’s a simple framework that answers three basic questions:

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• Why does that matter?

The deliverable is a one or two-page document that is the source document for all ensuing marketing work.

It’s Expensive

Good messaging work is not cheap. Some of our clients have spent six figures on getting superb corporate messaging and positioning. Of course, not all companies can afford that. But we recommend you avoid the quick, one-time facilitated executive session approach to messaging work. I’ve yet to see breath-taking and high impact work for less than six figures.

It’s Demanding

Messaging work requires a time commitment not just from the marketing management team but the executive team and some field personnel. Great firms will want to interview your staff (execs, managers, sales, product marketing), customers, lost sales, and industry analysts. Then they’ll do their homework on the industry including customers, competitors, and other players in the market. The goal is to devise messaging that makes you stand head and shoulders above the masses. The process is also a way to build internal consensus since everyone has an opinion on what the tagline should be or not be.

It’s Disruptive

Messaging work will shine a bright spotlight on how well you have your act together in terms of business strategy, go-to-market plans, understanding of your target customer, product value proposition, and sales approach. Don’t blame the messenger (sorry) if your strategy is flawed. Thank them. Go back to the Siebel vs. Salesforce.com example and you can readily see some strategy issues gaping through. For example, Salesforce.com is clearly about being a service not software. Oracel/Siebel is waffley on this because there’s internal conflict on their strategic intent---software versus service. So view messaging work as a litmus test of sound strategy and execution.

It’s Galvanizing

You want messaging work to unite everyone in the company behind a simple message. Some companies have used messaging work to create and sustain a corporate identity or purpose. For example, look at how these companies use taglines (an outcome of great messaging) to focus on customers and call their employees to be their best:

• Avis --“We try harder”
• SouthWest Airlines -- “Highest quality customer service with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and company spirit”
• Symantec –“Helping ensure the security and availability of your information”
• Google --"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
• Seagate --"Whatever your storage needs, Seagate has the perfect drive for you"
• Nokia -- "Nokia connects people to each other and the information that matters to them"
• LinkedIn – “Open doors to opportunities using the professional relationships you already have.”

It’s Urgent

Your competitors are already spending bucks on messaging and brand building. And we all know that mind share precedes market share. Here are three more resources for you to review before you plunk down the big bucks to get your messaging right:

• Guy Kawasaki blog entry “The Art of Branding”
• C2 LLC’s “The Story Book”
• Kevin Randall ‘s “Brands Matter in B2B Markets”

Copyright © 2006, Sridhar Ramanathan of Pacifica Group

Hi Sridhar -
I agree with your thoughts on messaging. It's amazing how many companies do not give it enough importance nor understand all its components fully; as a result they are unable to guide internal or external stakeholders on how to make choices - strategic or tactical - in every area be it marketing, product or sales...

So one more descriptive phrase I would add to your excellent list is: "It is Decisive" i.e., A decision positioning helps one and all make choices and decisions based on what the company's unifying mission should be. Thanks!
--Reena Kapoor
www.ConiferInc.com

Posted by: Reena Kapoor | May 17, 2006 3:42 PM

Excellent summary Sridhar. For me a good test is, "do I have to work hard to read it?" My eyeballs started seeing cross-eyed half-way through Siebel's second paragraph. "...evolve your customer relationship strategy" - what the heck does that mean? One does not "evolve" something. Things evolve. You can't "evolve" something.

Great examples.

Posted by: Elise | October 8, 2007 9:38 AM

Hi Sridhar, on his blog Howard Sewell kindly linked to your *excellent* post, and so I'm cross-posting a comment I made to Howard.

You could argue that the three-question "who are you? what you do? why does that matter?" framework could even be simplified to *one* question:

"Why does your company *need* to exist?"

Answering this one question not only answers the three questions noted above, it *prioritizes* those answers.

I.e., your target customer only really cares about the "why does that matter?" -- if you can't do that, no one's going to care about who you are and what you do.

So when you frame your messaging challenge as answering the question "why does your company *need* to exist?," your answer automatically focuses on the "why does that matter?" And then the who you are and what you do naturally flow from there.

Thanks again Sridhar for your excellent post.

Thank you also to Elise for making a critical point -- if your target customer has to work hard to read what you've written, then chances are that target customer isn't going to be eager to talk to you further.

Another way to look at Elise's point: When you craft marketing messaging or marketing copy, you are building a "product."

And so marketing messaging/marketing copy that makes one's eyeballs start seeing cross-eyed...it is a *defective product*!

Posted by: Mike O'Sullivan | October 10, 2007 12:48 PM

Sridhar,

Excellent post. I could not agree with you more. In the "It's Powerful" section you talk about the framework consisting of the three questions. I'd suggest to you that it's actually four questions:

Who are you?
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?
Why does it matter to them?

OK, it's a variation of the three you mention, but asking questions in this manner keeps the focus off the company and on the customer/prospect. As we both know, it's very easy to get lost in how we have the greatest product/solution with the best feature set ever developed, as opposed to focusing on how we understand what you as a potential customer are going through, how we can help you and here are the customers who are just like you that we've done it for. I love the site. Keep it coming.

Posted by: Andrew Miller | October 10, 2007 6:07 PM

Amen!
It’s a shame really how much companies spend in research and development and marketing costs and fail to create messages that resonate like those you illustrated.

I think you are right …it takes hard work.

Are we so eager to launch or is it because we are so behind we take short cuts?

I looked at the current Health Care reform from the stand point of messaging in my blog post: 2009 Health Care Reform Initiative Lesson #8; Buyers Become Tone Deaf to Lazy Marketing Messaging .

I wish I could pull companies aside, (administrations too) and share how spending the time upfront truly insures a successful launch and hitting ROI objectives.

Great content!

Mark Allen Roberts

Posted by: Mark Allen Roberts | August 31, 2009 9:27 AM