Yesterday, Trish Bertuzzi and I presented a webinar entitled: What the heck happened to the sales profession I love? and we dived into three fundamental shifts shaping the direction of the New Sales Economy. I spoke a lot about herding cattle vs. herding cats and I wanted to elaborate on the analogy here because it is really, really, really, really, (clever … just kidding), important to getting where the sales and marketing professions are heading in the B2B marketplace.

First, here is the 2010 Super Bowl commercial (notice the extra reach it got from YouTube) from HP’s services division EDS.

The first thing about herding cats is….. “don’t let anybody tell you it’s easy!” If you’ve ever tried to herd a cat you know it’s damn hard. And anyone can herd cattle — they are slow, stodgy, and like to be told what to do. Cats are nimble, quick, and verrrrry hard to corner – so are our customers today. The parallel is that the majority of sales and marketing organizations are still trying to herd cattle, when the marketplace has changed to herding cats.

I don’t know why, but for some reason, herding cats makes a very good analogy for the B2B marketplace today.

There are 3 types of cats (prospects) in the B2B marketplace today. There are cats that want to talk to you now – they are in the buying process and will be making a purchase. There are cats that want to learn more and research – they will purchase within the next six months to one year (maybe sooner if you are really compelling and aligned). And there are cats that will run away from you faster than you can chase them if you try.

What do you do?

Start focusing on the first two cats and let the third cat be free. If you make a habit of chasing the third cat, you may catch it from time to time (pretty rare), but you will lose far more often then you win, and you will waste a lot of energy (cost) in the process. And the real big cats – the cheetahs (the big deals) will always out run you. Even if you did chase down the cheetah for some reason, it will be at the expense of all the smaller cats, and you will be very, very tired (costly). Does that strategy really make sense?

Inbound, Outbound Marketing, and Sales

I get asked about the difference between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing all the time. I also get asked why this is important to sales organizations. Well, Inbound Marketing is all about helping marketing and sales organizations herd more cats – the cats find you instead of you chasing them around like a crazy person. It helps get more sales reps, into more deals, more often. Inbound Marketing helps you close more business at a lower cost per lead.

How do you get more cats to pay attention to you?

A great way to get more cats that want to run away, to pay attention, is to give them food. In the B2B marketplace this food…. is remarkable content. Start publishing blogs, generating inbound links, and get active in social media. It makes it a lot easier to herd cats when you are offering them something they find interesting. If what you are offering is interesting enough, even the quickest of cats will come to you and it will buy what you are selling.