Mining Conference Exhibitor Leads With Inside Sales

So, you've heard everything that needs to be said about marketing at industry conferences and seminars? You've moved on to the promise, and results, of Web-based marketing and don't want to waste your precious marketing budget on those expensive, 'old-tech' events? Time to re-think. Exploited intelligently, the right conference or seminar can give your Cleantech start-up a surprising number of qualified leads.

Here's how: the traditional, and expensive, conference lead generation and branding campaign is very well documented. ID the related industry conference, negotiate with the conference organizers, contract for booth space, build your campaign around that booth. Then, integrate various marketing and sales components such as your Website, press releases, pre and post-conference direct mail and email, custom collateral, impressive booth graphics, installed base newsletter promo's, conference week dinner or bar sponsorships for key prospects, booth give-aways (anyone need a logo'd aluminum pen), can't live without prize raffles (every wonder why you never won the prize when you dropped your business card into the plastic fishbowl at the booth?... Marketing and Sales make sure only the top prospects 'win' the raffle, leveraging that for the follow-up sales call... I know, I know, unfair... now you can save that business card), even magicians or other acts hired to attract conference attendees to your booth. The list of integrated marketing activities prior, during and after the conference that, with a little innovation and stellar execution, result in the right (though expensive) outcome, is long.

However, there is another way. Leveraging clever pre-conference analytics, an inside sales team armed with the right call list, phone and email scripts, marketing back-office follow-up, and on-site conference support from your company's Sales Team, your company can skip the expensive conference booth and still capture those qualified leads you so highly desire. The trick is to realize that many of those leads are already at the conference exibiting, not just attending. The surrounding conference booths are staffed by both influencers and buyers from companies you want to do business with. Once you realize this, you now have defined targets that you can locate easily and approach intelligently. While the target volume is lower compared to the attendee volume flowing by your booth, the quality is much higher.

So, here is a short, linear summary of your lead generation campaign:

1. ID the appropriate conference to target your lead generation campaign toward
2. There are a number of clever ways to do this that are too numerous to mention in this post
3. Analyze the conference exhibitor list, the list is published by the conference organizers on the conference website EVERY time
4. As a bonus to your campaign, review the conference speaker's list on the conference website. Some speaker's work for the exhibitor companies, some don't. Some speakers work for companies you want as customers
5. Once you have your macro list, eliminate the obvious exhibitors and speakers that don't fit your target profile. Marketing should take this first screening cut
6. Next, qualify the list further with your Sales Team. Some on the list will already be customers, and may, or may not, need targeting at the conference (think up-selling)
7. Your Sales Team will tell you what companies on the list they want to priority target
8. Now, you have your final target list of exhibitor companies and conference speakers
9. At this point the next phase of your campaign project plan begins with...

Your Corporate Website: Sales Tool or Information Repository?

Conservation and Transportation Cleantech start-ups in particular are beginning to borrow a page from the technology product start-up playbook and converting their corporate websites from an information only site to an important sales tool.

Many early stage start-ups, due to time and resource constraints, initially launch a corporate website that tells 'the story'. IE: we learn all about the company's offering, the market problem it solves, the credentials of its management team, associated investors, possibly a bit of independent news about it, and even those ubiquitous press releases. A visit to the website might also offer up a few 'down-loadable's' including the corporate brochure, data-sheets and even white papers.

All useful information. However, what's missing? The selling! Tuned properly, the corporate website should qualify visitors as leads, while disqualifying others, and deliver those leads to a further qualification process. Let's look at a few examples... one example is to offer a free or discounted readiness assessment on the website. A SaaS/On-demand-based Cleantech product company in carbon emissions management could offer to its target customers a rapid readiness assessment. The assessment would offer to analyze the prospect's readiness to participate in, and financially benefit from, the growing global carbon marketplace. The deliverable would prove, or disprove, the company's potential for ROI based on any initial recurring or CAPEX costs. The assessment might even model the financial risk of delaying participation in a sophisticated, automated carbon emissions management program. While the assessment and resulting deliverable would be performed by real people collaborating closely with the potential customer, the offer, and call-to-action, would live on the website.

Another lead generation activity on the website that delivers proven results, in addition to loyalty or 'stickiness', is the online calculator. The calculator could be built around a baseline estimate of your company's carbon emissions vs. the 'industry standard' for like companies of similar size, for example, or a simple quality differential between using a legacy, manual solution vs. SaaS-based solution for carbon emissions management. The calculator would require only minimal interaction in the form of relatively simple information in-put by the website visitor. The results, however, are anything but minimal to the Cleantech company running the calculator. Using available Web analyzer tools such as LeadForce, which can give you very detailed information on visitors to your website, it is possible to get deep profile information on the calculator user without requiring that user to fill out an eForm prior to using it. With that information, the product company can profile the user, and prioritize outreach to further qualify. That is important, as it is critical to identify the 'bait' on your website that a visitor will give detailed business information to in order to gain access, and those the visitor will not.

Ahhh, the ever challenging balance between your goals of website stickiness and loyalty, lead generation, intrusiveness and the right to ask for someone's information.

Cleantech Expands in Financial Services... Baird Launches Practice

Baird, an international wealth management, capital markets, private equity and asset management firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia, announced that it has launched a Clean Technology focus. The launch makes Baird one of only a few financial services firms that provide equity research, policy research and investment banking capabilities in the sector.

The financial services firm's Chairman, Paul E. Purcell, explained: “Clean technology is an area of tremendous growth and, in many ways, a natural extension of several of Baird’s existing areas of focus. Adding this talented and experienced team gives us immediate credibility and a unique competitive advantage in this very dynamic sector. It establishes Baird as a premier clean technology equity capital markets franchise.”

Established in 1919, Baird oversees and manages client assets of more than $62 billion and was ranked #14 on FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2009.

Baird is one of only a few, but growing, financial services firms that provide equity research, policy research and investment banking capabilities in the Cleantech sector. To learn more about Baird's launch, see this link: http://www.rwbaird.com/ab/news/baird-news/article.aspx?ID=39eABckzUYmPm-IlFUtXQxUdMGMfjIcoA2H1zw-WyF0Zq44ro9AZ0CpY8DjG2H8S

Cleantech Sector Jobs Booming...With an Asterisk

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent non-profit, the fledgling renewable energy industry has grown steadily over much of the past decade, adding jobs at more than twice the national rate.

The non-profit, which focuses on improving public policy, informing the public and stimulating civic life through investments, reported that solar and wind-power companies, energy-efficient light bulb makers, environmental engineering firms and others expanded their work force by 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007. The average job growth in all industries was 3.7 percent during the same period.

Impressive numbers, however, the report admits that its numbers end in 2007, pre-recession. Since that timeline, alternative energy companies have been hit hard by the recession, with a string of bankruptcies in the ethanol industry and layoffs in the wind-power industry.

An indicator of what's been happening recently in Cleantech is to look at the venture investment in the sector worldwide, which dropped 41 percent during 1Q09, compared to the previous quarter. This according to the Cleantech Group. To read the full Pew article, check out this link:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/11/BULF184G42.DTL&type=business

Web Conferencing: Your Way to Building a 'Sticky' Community

All the buzz these days is around building virtual communities – or social networks – using innovative technologies that employ voice, video, text or even avatars. According to Wikipedia, these “virtual, or online communities are used for a variety of social and professional groups interacting via the Internet.”

The success of these communities is undeniable, if measured only by the sheer size of some of the more well-known communities and by the money invested in them by other, larger corporations and venture firms. One example is Facebook, which has 120 million active users and more than $300M invested in the company so far.

While the power of these communities to influence actions and drive behavior is proven, there remains a solid, if unspectacular, technological augmentation in the form of web conferencing. Made commercially famous by the companies WebEx and PlaceWare*, web conferencing remains extremely popular today.

And yes, Virginia, there is a connection to Cleantech Marketing too... (famous quotation alert: borrowed from history's most reprinted newspaper editorial first published in the New York Sun on September 21, 1897 by veteran newsman F. Pharcellus Church).

According to Wikipedia, web conferencing is “used to conduct live meetings or presentations over the Internet. In a web conference, each participant sits at his or her own computer and is connected to other participants via the Internet. This can be either a downloaded application on each of the attendee’s computers or a web-based application where the attendees will simply enter a URL to enter the conference.”

But then you already knew that. And your response might be, “So what?”

The real community building magic occurs in a form of web conferencing called a webinar. Generally speaking, a webinar is a one-way communication form with limited audience interaction. The magic occurs both in the way the limited audience interaction is conducted and in the overall systematic outreach to one’s webinar community.

Let’s examine the first point, the so-called “limited audience interaction.” Most commercial web conferencing systems – and there are scores of them – offer an electronic Q&A whereby the audience can ask questions of the speaker online. Many presenters prefer this format because there is no audio to worry about, and they can manage the quality of the questions. Who wants to answer an audio question the attendees can hear (some of whom may be your clients) that is either a) not relevant to the topic of the webinar, b) too difficult to answer, or c) disingenuous because it comes from a competitor who sneaked onto the webinar? Nobody. As such, the electronic Q&A format is often preferred. It also enables the presenter to selectively introduce questioners to one another during the webinar session so they can share tips on the webinar topic or share tips with all attendees online. The result: a managed community, one that gains topic insight value both from the presenter and other webinar attendees.

The second point, outreach, is very compelling. If you can deliver a systematic webinar experience, one that combines a regular calendar expectation; relevant topics presented compellingly by knowledgeable and capable presenters; online forum parameters that deviate little; and pre- and post-webinar communication that is not intrusive, then you’ve captured the magic. Furthermore, that magic translates into an ongoing interest from people to whom you’d like to sell (or influencers of those to whom you’d like to sell) to return again and again to your webinars. A sticky community is born using an old, standard tool. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, then why do so many early-stage technology companies execute their webinar programs poorly — losing all hope of building a relevant community? We will talk more about this topic on a future post.

* WebEx was founded in 1995 and was acquired twelve years later by Cisco for $3.2 billion. PlaceWare is a spin-off from the famed Xerox PARC and was acquired five years later by Microsoft and re-christened Microsoft Office Live Meeting,

Are Technology Services Companies Closest to Cleantech Revenue?

No less a well-informed observer than a key investor at the VC Draper Atlantic states unequivocally that the best place to be for Cleantech talent right now is with the technology services companies... not the start-ups themselves.

The argument works this way: while investement in Cleantech companies has declined recently due to the recession (venture investment in the sector globally dropped 41% during Q1 2009 compared to the previous quarter, according to Deloitte), those start-ups that have launched and are now selling products will find it difficult during the near-term to sell into enterprise customers for all the reasons documented in the business press... companies are conserving cash, reducing headcount, and are reluctant to spend money on innovation offered by an early stage company they've never worked with, let alone even heard of. Not only will they not buy, but many won't even return phone calls.

Thus, the argument insists the best sales channel for newly released Cleantech products is through the technology services companies that already have a long-standing relationship with the target customer. The Big Technology services companies -- Tata, Cap Gemini, Infosys, Accenture, others -- as well as smaller tech services companies, already know the buyers and influencers at the customer, and can use that knowledge to get a first meeting. As a result, they are, or will, offer Cleantech Practices based on implementation partnerships they have signed with the early stage product innovators. So, if you're looking for where the hiring action is in Cleantech, go where the money is. Go find your opportunity with the technology services companies.

Thus goes the argument. On the surface, makes sense. Does it hold up right now? Let's take a look. A quick check of Tata's website shows the company has an Energy product company, Tata BP Solar (http://www.tata.com/company/profile.aspx?sectid=CYU/8i5KfvM=) consisting of an alliance between Tata and BP Solar, one of the largest solar energy companies in the world. Cap Gemini shows an Energy, Utilities and Chemicals practice - http://www.us.capgemini.com/industries/ind_overview.asp?IndID=3. However a universal search of their website using the keywords 'Cleantech' and 'GreenTech' delivers only two items. Once you get past the nice picture of Tiger Woods and the invetiable "it's tougher than ever to be a Tiger caption below" Accenture's Energy practice is focused on serving the oil and gas sector including upstream, downstream and oil service companies. A universal search on the company's website with the same keywords results in one hit, in French.

So, just who are the Cleantech services companies? We know the products are out there. The global market research and investment firm The Cleantech Group™, claims there was a total of $2B of Cleantech venture investment in Q2 2008 alone in North America, Europe, China and India - an all-time record. U.S. companies alone received a record $1.49 billion in 54 financing rounds, accounting for approximately 74 percent of the total.

California-based companies received approximately 40 percent of Cleantech investments, with a record $794 million in 21 investments.

Cleantech Chronicles: Beginning... Talking Marketing

The time is right to talk Cleantech Marketing. However, before beginning, let’s start with a good working definition of the market. One can be found, no surprise, in Wikipedia:

Cleantech is a term used to describe knowledge-based products or services that improve operational performance, productivity, or efficiency while reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste, or pollution. Its origin is the increased consumer, regulatory and industry interest in clean forms of energy generation—specifically, perhaps, the rise in awareness of global warming, and the impact on the natural environment fom the burning of fossil fuels. The term Cleantech is often associated with Venture Captial funds.

Venture Capital funds? More on that important, highly related topic later!

Interestingly enough, Cleantech, and its related first cousin, Greentech, are not referenced in Miriam-Webster's dictionary. In fact, the first word M-W offers when searching Cleantech online is clean-cut! We ARE talking about a nascent industry after all.

Now that we've mined Wikipedia for a solid market definition, let's break that definition down to a more segmented description. Mike Harding, one of the entrepreneurs behind Montara Energy Ventures, along with other industry participants and observers, provides one:

• Conservation Cleantech
• Transportation Cleantech, and
• Energy (aka Electricity) Cleantech.

Each of these segments are distinct in their own way, with a related ecosystem of investors, start-ups, media and analysts. That’s not to say there are no interrelationships between the three… there are. However, the use of these three segments separately as a working definition, particularly when talking about Cleantech Marketing, will prove useful.

Before examining each, its also worth noting that there are four important parameters that over-arch and help define the three segments from a start-up view. They are related, and include short-tail and long-tail investment, and high, or low, up-front capital costs. These four parameters, which we'll examine, have a material, influential affect on marketing scope related to the start-ups represented in each sector.

Let’s jump back to our definitions of the three Cleantech segments, starting with Transportation Cleantech. A good example is the company Better Place. This is a company that knows how to get noticed. A Google search titled 'Better Place Batteries' results in over 12 million listings.

Venture-backed Better Place, based in Palo Alto, CA, came up with a novel way to reduce dependency on oil through the creation of a market-based transportation solution that supports electric vehicles. Think gas stations everywhere that, instead of dispensing gas, switch out your nearly depleted car battery with a fully charged one. You're in and out in minutes, just like pumping gas using today's model.

A great example, widely recognized, of Transportation Cleantech. One key item to note is the construction cost of each of Better Place's battery switching stations: $500,000. The good news is that is about half the cost of building a traditional gas station. The bad news is the company's business model calls for MANY battery switching stations to give drivers the coverage they will need. That translates to very high capital costs for this transportation start-up.

However, the company has much going for it, including a charismatic CEO, Shai Agassi, strong executive team, blue-chip investors such as VantagePoint Partners and Morgan Stanley, and growing government support. Including early government support from Israel. And, a consumer market that appears to be moving steadily toward electric and hybrid car use. This is a company, in spite of high initial 'CAPEX' costs, that has many elements in-place that support the potential for a successful global marketing effort.

Now, if only the price gap between a hybrid/electric model and a standard gas model automobile would shrink to a more reasonable level. In some cases, today's hybrid model is as much as $10,000 more than the same model gas model. For the average US consumer, a small Toyota Prius or Honda Civic may pay for the price difference after 3-5 years, but what about an SUV? And, SUV's remain popular in the US. Will consumers pay the higher freight? A good summary of this issue can be found here: http://personalbudgeting.suite101.com/article.cfm/hybrid_suvs_is_better_gas_mileage_worth_cost

Speaking of CAPEX costs and the unimportance of marketing, let's examine Cleantech Energy. There are many examples here, but generally we are talking about setting up a power source and then supplying it. The power source could be geothermal, solar, wind or hydro. Some stretch that source to include nuclear power. Generally, all are considered energy that is environmentally friendly, non-polluting and are believed to lower carbon emissions, in the process creating less pollution. Most are usually placed in the 'output' context of electricity.

Many sell their output as Cleantech power directly to govermental entities such as cities or states, or to the for-profit energy companies that supply those cities, states or nations. The reality for many Cleantech Energy start-ups is that they must solve to a very high CAPEX model. That model includes a requirement for land, physical plant, often onerous govermental regulatory requirements, and complex negotiations covering major, long term contracts with commercial or govermental customers.

While there is an argument for some marketing among key constituencies that influence land use decisions, regulatory passage, and approvals from elected officials and their voting publics, it is brand marketing only. There appears to be little need for demand generation marketing, or the creation of qualified leads that transition to new customers. Cleantech Energy start-ups know who their target customers are. And those customers are finite.