We were talking to an artist the other day about her work and how important the framing of a final painting is. The interesting story here and lesson that we learned was that she had a very good piece she framed herself that was in a gallery for 12 months with no interest from any buyers.
Then one day the dealer called from the gallery and said that they would re-frame it and take the costs out of the sale price and that the gallery should be able to sell it sooner. It sold before it was hanging on the wall!
In our business each element of a successful demand generation campaign is critical to the success of building new pipeline and in many instances you need a third party to provide real time market place feedback so adjustments can be made quickly and certainly in as real time as possible. The market clearly viewed the art as irrelevant and felt that it wasn’t compelling with the original frame.
The analogy for us here is that the framing is building the database, the painting is like the messaging, identifying buyer persona’s is like to you determining your target and then providing the best possible delivery mechanism, “the gallery” is a sophisticated caller. In our 12 year history, having all of these elements has proven the only way to be successful with demand generation programs.
Oh and yes, you still have to convince the marketplace that it’s worth their time to look at your solutions and or convince them that you do have something that can really affect them in the form of saving them money, getting more competitive or helping them grow more predicatively. We think often the marketplace can provide these clues and the only true way to acquire those are through conversations.
When visitors to the gallery failed to notice the framed painting it was only one element that hid the value of the art. We often see this same thing in appointment setting – one element that seems minor, the “frame” or database in this case (where the persona’s being targeted see no value to them based upon their job function), makes the entire effort suffer. And, like the appropriate frame, a properly designed database targeting an appropriate market may seem like a minor change but it is critical to selling the “art” in your demand generation program.
There is apparently little difference when it comes to art versus building new business opportunities; there is a proven model that sometimes needs external expertise, refinement, adjustment and repositioning.
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