Creating Demand……

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself involved in a number of conversations about “Creating demand….”

Some have focused on marketing’s role in demand creation. Depending on whether you are in marketing or sales, there are various views of how well this is being done.

Almost universally, there seems to be a demand gen problem—it has become increasingly difficult to catch prospect/customer attention, regardless of the techniques we leverage for demand gen. Every channel for reaching and engaging them is overwhelmed. Most of it is bad quality, most of it is undifferentiated, poorly targeted. Our universal solution to meeting our demand gen goals is more and more often. But that fails.

And perhaps the issue is the whole concept of Demand Generation.

Implicitly, the concept of demand generation is to create demand or interest in our products and what we sell. It’s very self centered and misses what the customer is trying to do, unless they have already decided they need to buy something.

Customers don’t think in the same terms as we do. As a result, our demand gen programs are focused on the wrong goal. Customers, naturally, think about themselves, their jobs, their goals, what they do and how they do it. They are consumed with getting work done. They struggle when it becomes difficult to get the work done, when they have problems. Or there may be challenges that require them to think of the work they do differently–to change. Or there may be new opportunities which require them to define the work that must be done to capture those opportunities.

They aren’t thinking about a product or service, they are thinking about their jobs, threats, challenges, opportunities, goals.

As a result, programs focused on creating demand for our products, are likely to fall on deaf ears—even if they might actually need our products and services, they just don’t know they need them yet, so they don’t respond.

What if, rather than focusing on Demand Gen, we started focusing on “Change-Gen?”

What if we conducted “Change-Gen” programs. Things that cause the customer to think differently about their jobs and the work they perform. Is there a better way for them to do the work? Are there new opportunities they can address? Is there a way to make it easier for them to achieve their goals? Is there a way to help them better respond to the overwhelm/overload they face in just going to work every day?

Change-gen focuses on just that, inciting people to change, do to something new; alternatively, helping them better understand the issues around the change itself. It has nothing to do with what we sell, but it has everything to do with what the customer is thinking about and struggling with.

They have no interest in responding to our demand gen programs, until they have first committed to a change program. They aren’t even aware they might have a need for our products and solutions, until they have recognized a need to change how they get their jobs done. They have no reason to be interested in learning about our products until they have a problem which requires them to learn about our products.

Demand gen only works, if it does, with people that are very late in their change process. But Change-gen has a much earlier impact and creates much greater value for customers.

We may incite them to change, to do things differently. We may teach them there is a better way when they weren’t aware there might be a better way.

Or we may help them in the change process itself, to understand the issues, challenges, risks, critical success factors around that change.

Or we may help them to put in place a project plan, committing to the change and navigating them through the problem solving and change process itself.

And by doing so, at some point, they become more receptive to our demand gen programs. They already have an interest and a recognition of a need. Implicitly they now have a demand. But if we have helped them in their Change Gen, we are already engaged. They will be asking us for solutions, they will be hitting our websites, talking to sellers about solutions. They will have reached this point through the work we have done to help generate that need–or demand.

Perhaps, the most impactful programs marketing and sales can be conducting are those that create awareness of the opportunity to change (not buy). Perhaps programs which incite them to change, help them navigate change, help them create a need will ultimately make our demand gen programs more effective.

Action Item: What programs do we need to put in place to incite our customers to change? To help them identify a problem or an opportunity, focused on their jobs and what they do. How does marketing introduce Change-gen programs? What role does sales play in inciting customers to change?