by Glen Springer | Dec 23, 2013
In one of our blogs last week, we made the argument that regardless of whatever 2014 turns out to be the year of, content is going to be the fuel that will take us where we want to go. Whether we want to improve our social media presence or invest more in lead nurturing, content is the driving force that will lead us to either success or failure.
In addition to improving content development skills and learning to act like a publisher, B2B companies also need to be aware to two broad trends that I believe will be important in sales and marketing in 2014:
B2B Sales and Marketing Trends in 2014: Co-creation
The first trend is co-creation. ‘Co-creation’ is a relatively big philosophical idea that has recently been applied to many business contexts and situations.
In the B2B world, the concept of ‘co-creation’ can be applied in a few ways; the first is in regards to sales and marketing integration. If your sales and marketing teams are still working separately, it is not likely that you are doing everything you can to create a smooth and easy buying process for your prospects. The situation at many B2B companies is this: marketing creates content that they think is cool, and sales thinks it is worthless, so it doesn’t get used.
By having sales and marketing instead listen to implicit and explicit feedback from your audience, they can work together to co-create content that will be more effective on both sides of the table. For example, have your marketers listen to the objections that your sales reps hear on the phone everyday. Then, have your marketers create content with your sales team that is focused on answering those objections in digital format. With everyone listening to feedback and working together toward a shared goal, efficiency and effectiveness of all of your tactics increase dramatically.
Another way the concept of co-creation can be applied to B2B is in the creation of social proof.
B2B Sales and Marketing Trends in 2014: Social Proof
In B2B sales and marketing, social proof is essentially digital evidence of your customers’ satisfaction with your company, product or service. This could be in the form of a customer testimonial, a Facebook ‘share’, a LinkedIn ‘recommendation’, etc. Each time your prospects/customers share one of your blog posts on Facebook or gives you a written testimonial to be featured on your website, they are co-creating your marketing content with you.
The power of this type of co-created content should not be underestimated. In a recent survey of B2B marketing professionals on the value of different types of content in convincing prospects of a company’s value proposition, it was found that content sourced from existing customers was not only more effective than internally sourced content, but also more effective than content from 3rd-party analysts. This shows that as we go into 2014, co-creating content with your customers (case studies, testimonials, video testimonials) is going to be an increasingly high-value activity.
To continue reading the second half of this blog on B2B Sales and Marketing Trends in 2014, click here.
by gabriel_sales | Dec 20, 2013
As we take a look at the end of the year industry reports coming out that discuss the main B2B sales and marketing challenges going into 2014, we see the consensus of B2B marketers is that “getting more leads” is their number one challenge.
If your goal is to increase sales revenue, it is rational to want more leads; more leads equals more prospects, which equals more conversions and therefore more deals. However, as a B2B integrated sales and marketing outsourcing company who has run hundreds of sales and marketing campaigns for dozens of clients, we have seen a different approach to be much more effective.
From our perspective, the reason many B2B companies are constantly crying for more leads is that they are not effectively working the ones they already have. Consider these statistics:
- 5% of your market is ready to buy at any given time (Selling Power Magazine)
- 80% of leads are passed to sales before they are ready to engage (Marketing Sherpa)
- 70% of mishandled leads buy from a competitor (Forrester)
So, here is what is happening: A company gets a lead, and marketing sees a general level of interest. The marketing team then passes the lead on to sales before anyone takes the time to fully understand where the prospect is at in his or her buying cycle. Sales then determines that the lead is not interested or not ready to buy, and the lead is essentially thrown in the trash (or given to your competitor).
This is another example of the traditional sales model lingering in the digital space. The old way of selling said to ‘sell hard and fast upfront’ and keep pushing to the close. The problem is that this sales model does not work anymore. Not only that, but if you try to use this technique on buyers today, they will run. Fast.
Buyers are now in control of the sales cycle—they get to choose what marketing content to view and when to view it, when to engage with sales and when to buy. If you get in your buyer’s way while they are doing this with pushy sales messages or phone calls, you will come off as annoying or worse, threatening.
Rather than a traditional sales approach to lead generation, B2B companies need to engage in lead nurturing and sales pipeline management in 2014.
Lead nurturing addresses the problem of only 5% of your market being ready to buy at any given time. B2B lead nurturing generally consists of sending out early-stage educational content that is non-threatening and helps your prospects move through their own discovery and education around your product/service. When your prospect is finally ready to buy, he will be so grateful to for genuinely educating him that he will call up your sales rep and make a purchase.
Sales pipeline management is a way of managing lead generation, conversion and nurturing. By tracking your prospects activity across all marketing and sales tactics (content marketing, email campaigns, website activity, social media, etc.), you get a better understanding of where each prospect is in his or her buying cycle.
For example, if a prospect is only clicking in early-stage, educational blogs, you know they are not ready to buy. If a prospect is instead clicking on customer testimonials and pricing pages, you know it is time for a sales rep to pick up the phone.
By using digital strategies like lead nurturing and sales pipeline management, you ensure that you are not throwing away leads to early. To implement these strategies, you simply need to map out your sales process and create marketing content to fit each stage of your buyers’ buying cycle, then push the content at the appropriate time (using your marketing automation solution), track engagement and finally, bring in the closer when buying signals have been shown.
If this seems complicated or overwhelming, here are several resources to help you get started:
If you are interested in learning about the leads nurturing and sales pipeline management services we offer, you can visit our services page. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 24, 2013
This blog discusses the new challenges in sales, how the B2B buying process has changed, and how to adapt to the concept of “bought then, sold“.
If your team is accountable for growth, your challenges remain the same: set strategy, generate qualified leads, develop and close—with constant pressure to control your cost of sale. But in today’s digital landscape, your buyers are becoming more self-directed. They want to buy on their own time and expect to be educated digitally. Only once they feel educated on the concept of “bought then, sold” they are ready to be engaged by a sales rep.
In addition, over the past four years, call-to-connect ratios have plummeted, so inside reps are half as effective. Cold calling can still work in some scenarios, but it is more expensive. Trade show costs are also increasing, which is reflected in the rising cost per lead. Finally, email marketing is also more competitive with decreasing ROI.
Today, none of these tactics work in isolation unless (according to the top marketers in the US), you support your pipeline development with inside sales and a commitment to content marketing, SEO and social media—with the top 10% of marketers implementing marketing automation. This is because your buyers are now relying on digital education to help them understand their needs and sort through their options.
More and more products today are “bought then, sold,” and this buying process affects your sales process in one of two ways. Either, buyers take longer to educate themselves digitally, so you need to nurture leads longer. Or, the opposite happens, and your buyer does not even want to speak to a sales rep until feel well educated and are near a buying decision.
Statistics show that 80% of leads are passed to a senior sales rep too early, and 70% of mishandled leads end up buying from a competitor. So, the biggest mistake you can make is to try and close before your buyers is ready to buy. This will drive away your buyer and squander your existing lead generation budget.
The new rules of buying and selling mean you need to:
- Create relevant buyer content for both sales and marketing
- Score leads to get buyers to closers at the right time
- Nurture leads longer, at a lower cost
- Push content across all formats into social media
With a commitment to this type of alignment, you can expect substantial revenue (157% growth) at a decreased cost of sale within 18 months to pull away from the competition.
For a more detailed discussion of this topic of “bought then, sold” or to learn how we can help, watch this quick overview video.
by Glen Springer | Oct 14, 2013
SEO as a topic is hotter than ever with Google’s updated overhaul of its search algorithm (see Google’s Hummingbird for more details) as well as Google’s announcement of encrypting all natural search data (search the dreaded “not provided”).
So, as a marketing firm that uses B2B SEO to help businesses attract leads, what are we recommending now that these changes are in place?
To start, make sure each of your pages, blog posts and other landing pages are uniquely optimized for a specific key phrase. Then, look at your Landing Pages report in Google to see how many unique pages are being visited via the Organic source. Comparing this data over time will show us if the optimization we are doing and the new content we are releasing is resulting in additional traffic to new landing pages. An increase in total landing page count is the indicator of improvement. By having uniquely optimized these pages, you can better assume that your unique keyword reach is also expanding (since all [Google]organic traffic is going to eventually say ‘not provided’).
Additionally, don’t be afraid to spend a little of your marketing budget on PPC, even if it’s not producing leads, it WILL still give you the keyword intelligence that will now be missing from the organic medium. Try to do as much phrase and exact match as you can and look not only at clicks but impression counts to better estimate actual volumes.
With the move to semantic/entity search, implementing semantic mark-up is a critical piece to this changing world of search. Some semantic mark-up you can use that serves the B2B space includes authorship/people, events, testimonials, and videos. This is a huge change and a rather significant undertaking for any organization to change the way they do SEO.
Lastly, review and apply the foundations that are outlined by the search engines themselves (Google and Bing both provide starter/best practice guides). They’re telling you what they want.
Ultimately we are excited about Google’s recent changes for some key reasons.
It appears Google is rewarding white hat tactics (and we are firm believer in authentically and honestly helping buyers to buy) where websites are providing quality content at a consistent frequency that readers find helpful as they are making buying decisions.
Also, Google seems to be penalizing blog farming, weak back links/paid links and other sketchy black hat approaches.
We hope this information gives you some newfound direction in your B2B SEO efforts.
If you would like a preliminary SEO assessment, please complete the form below so we can review your site.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 11, 2013
For B2B companies today, filling your sales pipeline is less about selling and more about making authentic connections. Here are 7 tips to start filling your pipeline today:
1. Be talkative and get contact information when you are part of a group or casually “networking”.
Often times a perfect candidate for your sale is someone sitting next to you at dinner or playing pick-up soccer with you. You never know unless you start a conversation and ask.
2. Don’t forget to put that data in your database.
Sure you got an email or business card, but make sure that gets into your CRM so you can add follow-up and include them in your campaigns and prospect nurturing.
3. Rent a list and start calling.
There are plenty of vendors out there who have targeted lists that you can rent and start calling potential prospects to help fill your sales pipeline. You can drill down to very specific data points, including company size, revenue, title, position and more to find the perfect match to your existing buyer personas.
4. Optimize landing pages for lead conversion.
Creating landing pages based on each segment of your target audience can be a great way to put leads in the sales pipeline. For instance, if you are selling a B2B technology solution, you may want to make one landing page for IT people and one for management. By speaking to the specific concerns and needs of each customer segment, your customers feel more comfortable taking the next step.
5. Improve targeting of decision makers (do the work upfront).
Before you start making calls and sending emails, it is important to take the time to understand your ideal customer profile. By understanding that demographics of the people you are targeting (title, geography, company size, etc.), you can craft more personal messages to improve conversion.
6. Craft an educational content offer.
When you send out your first piece of marketing content, send something that is purely educational. If a prospect feels like they are immediately trying to be sold, they are not going to go into your pipe. They might even end up going to your competition who does not try to pressure them before they were ready to buy.
7. Make opening intro free of sales and marketing lingo.
When crafting the messaging and scripts for your sales and marketing campaigns, try to keep the words “sales” and “marketing” out of it. When it comes to filling your pipeline, you should be focused on education to create awareness and desire, not selling.
For more B2B sales tips to fill your sales pipeline, you can read more educational content here. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 1, 2013
If you’re in B2B sales, you know that cold calling is nowhere near as effective as it used to be. Call to connect ratios have dropped from 18-22% to 7-11% since 2010, which means the cost of using this tactic for lead generation and qualification has doubled.
In order to help improve your conversion ratios and lower your cost of sale with telemarketing, we suggest you do what most salesmen are too timid to try: ask for an appointment on the first call.
As a B2B sales outsourcing company with over 13 years of experience in cold calling, we have found tremendous success with this tactic and believe when used with delicacy, it can be highly effective for lead gen and qualification.
We believe one of the reasons this strategy works is that asking for what you want dramatically improves your chances of getting it. Research shows that 75% of sales calls end without the sales person asking for some kind of commitment. This is understandable, as everyone hates a pushy salesman. However, if done with tact, asking for a quick meeting does not have to be tense or carry pressure.
Here are a few quick tips for getting the first sales appointment on the first sales call:
- Let your prospects get all of their objections out first. Don’t interrupt; make them feel like they have been listened to and their needs have been clearly understood.
- Ask a series of light, qualifying questions first to get a couple of “yes’s” prior to asking for the meeting (i.e. Is this your email? Is this number the best number to reach you at? Is it all right if I send you some more educational information?).
- Ask for the appointment in the same tone and cadence as your light, qualifying questions. If the question sounds more like an afterthought or ancillary, it will carry less weight, and your prospect will feel less pressured.
- Be prepared to offer a specific time right away, rather than leaving it entirely open. Say something like, “We are open late next week; how about Thursday or Friday afternoon?”
- Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work the first time. We have seen this tactic work best when the question sounds natural and second nature, so with practice, your success should improve.
The most important thing to remember about using this strategy is your tone of voice or speaking style. Aim for nonchalant—rather than excited (which can come off as desperate)—when asking for the meeting. Getting the first sales appointment on the first call takes a lot of finesse, but with practice, it can be a highly effective strategy for lead generation and qualification.
For more tips on getting the first sales appointment, click here. If you would like more information on how B2B sales and marketing have changed in recent years, you can download our white paper called, “The New Rules of Buying and Selling in 2013”. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.
