Assess Marketing Automation Vendor Services Before You Buy - Another New Workbook

I wrote yesterday about our new workbook for marketing automation cost estimates. Today I’ll describe the other one: evaluating vendor services.  Both are available free at the Raab Guide Web site.

The problem with services is simple: you won’t use them until you’ve already bought the product. So the trick to evaluating them is to ask lots of questions in advance to understand whether they’ll meet your needs.

Of course, there are two parts to that mission: building a clear picture and knowing what you need. In terms of what you need, vendors offer three types of services:

• deployment: help with setting up your system
• support: help in operating your system after it’s deployed
• account service: help in growing your business.

Different companies have different needs in each area.  Buyers must understand those needs to know what they want a vendor to provide. I've written extensively about needs analysis in other posts and workbooks, so I won’t repeat those discussions here.

Similarly, the new workbook assumes you know what you’re looking for. It focuses on how to get it by providing suggestions for who to talk to, what to ask them, and how to interpret their answers.  Each service types involves talking to different people:

for deployment, talk to:

• deployment staff to understand their skill level, typical projects, and project management methods
• sales staff to understand deployment services and pricing
• references to understand the types of services provided and the quality of work

for support, talk to :

• head of support to understand services, staff qualifications, training, and reward systems
• front-line support staff to understand the kinds of problems they handle, internal systems that help manage their work, and how they’re motivated
• sales staff to understand support services and pricing
• references to understand service levels and satisfaction

for account service, talk to:

• head of account services to understand staff qualifications, measurement methods, and whether they have “success managers” separate from “account managers”
• account manager to understand their skills, training, workload, and objectives
• head of training to understand the kinds of training available, who delivers it, and if they understand how customers use the system
• head of professional services to understand the quality and scope of services
• head of partner relations to understand the types of partners and the company's investment in building a partner ecosystem
• sales staff to understand the types of account services and pricing
• references to understand the scope and quality of account services

The workbook offers dozens specific questions in each of those areas. I suppose you could just send each company the list and get back written answers, but you’ll get much more value from telephone and personal interviews. These let you listen to the replies and ask follow-up questions to drill into topics of interest. You probably won't need to ask every question to every person; the first few answers will often be enough to give a good idea of how the company does things in each area.

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Marketing Automation Vendor Selection: Summing Up

It’s time to wrap up this series of posts on marketing automation vendor selection, which were based on my November 10 Webinar with Neolane  (replay available here).  I’ve summarized them in three commandments.

• Forget the Past. Marketers have been doing such a bad job of selecting systems that they should forget their old approach and start from scratch. I described the old methods in the first two posts of the series, The Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing Automation System Selection and Marketers Do a Bad Job Selecting Marketing Automation Systems.

• Remember the Future. The paradox is intentional: you can’t remember the future because it hasn’t happened.  This uncertainty itself is what you need to remember.  I gave my own ideas about what the future might hold in Marketing Vendor Selection: Trends You'll Need to Support.

• Change the Present. This is the only thing you can change.  If you make the right choices, the future will take care of itself. I gave advice on improving the selection process in Vendor Selection: Writing a Good Requirements Document and Marketing Automation Selection: Finding a Future-Safe Vendor.

Believe it or not, there’s much more to be said on this topic. You’ll find a helpful (and free) vendor selection workbook in the Resources section of the Raab Guide site. I’m also working on four more workbooks on specific aspects of vendor selection, which should all be published over the next month or so. So stay tuned and good luck.

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Marketing Automation Selection: Finding a Future-Safe Vendor

Marketers can do a better job of picking their marketing automation vendors if they roll up their sleeves and try. I wrote yesterday about building a requirements document to define the features you'll look for.  But you also need a company that supports your long-term success. Here's how to identify a “future-safe” vendor.

• Past innovations: a history of advanced thinking shows the vendor understands marketers’ needs and suggests they'll adapt well to the future. But it's not just about being first: no one company has all the good ideas.  You also need to be sure the vendor is a fast follower, so its clients will quickly benefit from new ideas invented by everyone..

• Flexible technology: no one can predict exactly how marketing automation will be used next.  This means you need a system that can easily adapt to unexpected requirements. Look for APIs to coordinate with other systems and a database that supports custom objects. These are still surprisingly rare in B2B marketing automation systems.

• Training and support: will the vendor help you to try existing features and proactively train you when they add something new? Both are important if you’re going to get the most from their system. To assess service, ask how support staff are trained, managed, and incented, and talk to existing clients.

• Educational services: will the vendor help you learn about marketing practices in general, beyond training on their system? Vendors are in a unique position to see what’s new and what’s working across the industry, but only some take advantage of it.  The good ones have programs to train client staff on marketing basics and on new tricks as the industry evolves. Some vendor provide benchmarks to make it easier to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.

• Vertical expertise: how well does the vendor understand your industry, and do they have a particular concentration of industry clients? It’s true that marketing automation is pretty similar across different industries, but each still has its nuances. A vendor who specializes in your industry is more likely to add specialized features your industry needs. Training, support and education are also more likely to be industry-relevant.

• Financial strength: it's not enough to just survive.  A vendor needs resources to enhance its product and adapt to unexpected developments. Financial strength can also come from size, profitability, outside investment, or a large corporate parent. So define it broadly, but do take it into consideration.

• Corporate culture: look for a match between your own company and the vendor. Some of this is based on size and style: big, systematic clients work best with big, systematic vendors. But you also need a vendor with pride in innovation, flexibility, and client success.

It's harder to identify vendor characteristics than particular system features. But features come and go, often in ways you can’t predict. Picking a future-safe vendor is an important part of ensuring your long-term needs will be met.

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