b'SHAWN BROOK Sharing InformationPRESIDENT, SEED WORLD GROUP @SeedWorldGroupsbrook@seedworldgroup.comCreates a Culture of Trust seedworldgroup.comInformation is the resolution of uncertainty.Claude Shannon Is MARKETING aCLAUDE SHANNON WASa famed Michigan-born mathematician whoDirty Word?published the revolutionary The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1948. This work created the field of information theory and changed how the world thought about information sharing. MARKETING IS THEfuel that drives your sales Shannon challenged the notion that communication is just the dissemi- engine and is critical for success. I hear it often. nation of information. Its more about what you could share, dont shareLets just cut our marketing spend, because we are and do share. Its about transparency and completeness of informationnot sure how the market will fare. and how access to that information is granted. This is a dangerous concept! I would suggest Given our tagline is Delivering Trust Through TransparencyTM, understand- that without marketing to generate leads, your sales ing information sharing is critically important to me and team at Gro Alliance! department will at best be running very clunky and Think about this in terms of current events. Without the sharing ofoften not at all. complete information, anonymous social media users quickly rush to fill theSales can identify some outbound leads by reach-information void with whatever they believe or suits their needs. Peopleing out and making cold calls, but I have yet to meet a take one snapshot in time or just the first piece of news they receive andCEO that is does not believe his organization can grow change their entire worldview as a result. Humans are not good at deter- without identifying new opportunities. That means mining if they have enough information to form an opinion, especiallyINBOUND leadssomeone from your target audience when they arent actively trying to gather all the information they could. putting up their hand and saying I might, possibly be Leaders need to pay especially close attention to this. What is sharedinterested in that. and what isnt is critical when change is happening in your organizationI would love to tell you that it is easy to build a lead and industry. Some are worried that if employees know there is successcapture strategy but it is notit can however, be a that theyll want more from the company. Others worry that if the newsstraight line process. Meaning that if you:is negative employees will be concerned about layoffs and look for othera) Understand your audience VERY well.jobs. Their solution is usually to share less information. Some leadersb)Have a clear strategy on what you want your believe this gives them more power. The opposite is true. A lack of infor- potential client to do.mation creates uncertainty, and no one is comfortable with uncertainty!c)Understand how to build the necessary touch Employees and competitors will fill in the information gaps with theirpoints to move them to the point of putting up own assumptions and the rumor mill starts. Ultimately, withholding infor- their hand because they are interested.mation erodes trust and fractures relationships. Then you too can build a successful lead generation The solution is simple, but hard to execute. Share all you can! solution!Some things cant be shared due to confidentiality issues, but in allI worked with a client recently that was uncon-other cases, err on the side of opennessvinced that they could actually generate inbound and transparency. The goal is to create aleads. I heard a lot of: our business is different; people culture where comfortable conversationsdont understand unless we are standing in front of about the business and employee per- them; we need to convey our ideas one-on-one.formance are normal. This reduces anxi- This client defined a clear strategy along with clear ety and allows the entire organization toexpectations on how to reach out to this target audi-function as a truly connected team.ence, then built content along with a lead magnet to collect people that MAY be interested in what they were offering. This generated over 80 warm leads for their sales team, which resulted in over $1,000,000 in JIM SCHWEIGERTrevenue that was outside their regular sales target list PRESIDENT, GRO ALLIANCE from clients that were not on their radar. .So Ill leave your with a couple of questions. On a@jim_schweigert jim.schweigert@groalliance.com scale of one to 10, how much does your marketing GroAlliance.com efforts contribute to your sales? Where does that number need to be for you to move to the next level?34/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2021'