by gabriel_sales | Nov 12, 2013
Nearly every business today is looking for ways to generate more leads and close more deals. Many companies are now looking to marketing automation as a means to achieve this and end up dissatisfied with the results.
The reasons for dissatisfaction vary; some are challenged by the complexity of the software itself, others are frustrated by the software’s lack of integration with sales. Whatever the reason, we believe dissatisfaction with marketing automation stems from the same misunderstanding.
Many companies today see marketing automation as a be-all end-all solution to their marketing and sales problems. The problem with this line of thinking is that marketing automation is not a solution; it is a tool.
Let’s say you’re trying to build a house. You can buy the most expensive and high-tech drill available, but you still need blueprints, money, materials and a lot of hard work to get the house built. The same goes for marketing automation software. You can get the most expensive one or the one with the most features, but unless you have strategy, content, sales technologies and dedicated staff behind it, it is not going to work like you want it to.
Marketing automation platforms work best when they are a part of an integrated sales and marketing program. An integrated program combines sales pipeline management, content marketing, SEO and social media into a unified effort where each part supports and reinforces the others. A marketing automation tool acts like a connecting thread between the other parts, keeping track of all data and giving you valuable insights about your customers as well as the effectiveness of your various marketing tactics.
When used in this way, marketing automation can have dramatic results. In fact, 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.
If you’d like to know more about how B2B sales and marketing has changed in recent years, watch this quick video called, “The New Rules of Buying and Selling.” If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
by gabriel_sales | Nov 11, 2013
This is the part-two of a blog series on selling B2B consulting. Click here for part one.
2. Focus on technical expertise and tactics rather than ‘big picture’ results.
When engaged in selling, it is very easy for consultants to emphasize how great they are at specific tasks or skill sets. While this information become relevant during later stages of the buying process and the delivery phase, it does not help ease your prospects worries concerning risk when they are considering a purchase. In other words, people want holes, not shovels. When selling B2B consulting, you need to help your prospects envision an end-state where their problems are solved before you get into technical details. Only once your prospects share your vision for the future will they listen to the tactical steps of how you are going to take them there.
3. Attempt to maintain control over the prospect and situation.
In any selling situation, there are going to be power dynamics involved. While it is rational to want to maintain some type of control or advantage to reduce perceived risk, this is not the way to get your prospects to trust you. This is because buyers are now used to controlling the sales cycle for most of their purchases and will react negatively if you try to take their buying power away.
Furthermore, because consulting services are perceived as high-risk purchases, selling consulting happens through a process of collaborative solutioning to build trust. The keywords are ‘collaborative’ and ‘trust’. This means anything you can do to make your prospects feel like your relationship is a team-effort (and that you are not trying to ‘pull a fast one’ on them) will help. Helping your customers succeed should always be your ultimate measure of your success.
For more on selling B2B consulting services, watch this quick video on Selling Professional Services. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
by gabriel_sales | Nov 8, 2013
A B2B consulting sale has always been something that is truly difficult. This is because the B2B consulting sale involves several unique aspects that aren’t found in other type of sales.
First, from the customer’s perspective, consulting is a high-risk purchase as the risk to benefit ration is considerably higher than other kinds of purchases. B2B Consulting sales also carry underlying emotional risks for the prospect (i.e. risk of public failure), which may not get talked about explicitly, but need to be addressed somehow.
In order to sell B2B consulting services, you need to do everything you can to reduce the perceived level of risk and generate trust. To demonstrate this idea, here are three things not to do when selling consulting.
3 Ways to Lose a B2B Consulting Sale:
- Don’t listen; jump to conclusions.
Because selling consulting inherently involves a high level of risk, it is imperative that prospects feel like their needs have been understood. As a part of building trust with your prospect, you need to take all of the time it requires to get everything out on the table. This means asking follow-up questions—both to set context and to gauge underlying emotions.
Additionally, it is one thing to listen, but it is another thing to make your prospect feel heard. To do this, you need to affirm that you are hearing your prospects words by restating or paraphrasing what has just been said. Until you have proved that you have a clear grasp on their pains, needs and goals, your prospect will be closed to hearing your solutions.
To continue reading, click here.
by Glen Springer | Oct 31, 2013
For a lot of us at Gabriel Sales, Halloween is our favorite holiday. Most of us are dressed up in the office today, so we decided to try to bring some Halloween fun to the world of B2B sales and marketing.
Here is how we see the B2B marketing experience as it relates to Halloween:
1. Content=Candy
Everyone loves getting things given to them, but free things can always be more or less awesome. We all remember what house gave out huge Hershey’s bars and what one gave out dental floss. If you don’t want your company to be like the house that everyone avoids, make sure the content you provide your prospects with is king size.
2. Lights off=No (Foot) Traffic
This one is a no brainer. If you don’t have your content on active websites, blogs and social media channels, you will have zero trick-or-treaters.
3. Candy Bowl Outside=Anonymous Visits
Both Halloween and B2B marketing are about interaction, and the first requirement for interacting is showing up. If you just leave a bowl of candy with a “please take ONE” note, you have no way of knowing who is coming to your house and what they are doing while there. This is like having no analytics or marketing automation tool on the backend of your content marketing program. How do you know whether a group of teenagers took the entire bowl or honest children took just one each?
4. Decorated House=Good Visitor Experience
People remember good experiences and will come back to have them again and again. If your house is covered in elaborate carved pumpkins and statues of ghouls and goblins, your trick-or-treaters will remember and are likely to come back next year. Similarly, if you put a lot of extra time into making your website design a great experience for your prospects, they are more likely to come back and convert.
5. In Costume=Relate to Visitor to Build Trust
As a trick-or-treater, it is always more fun to go to a house where the person who opens the door is in costume. It shows that person understands what Halloween is all about, which creates an immediate connection. In B2B sales, the more you can do to make your prospects feel understood, the more they will want to interact with you in the future.
We hope you enjoyed our festive B2B sales tips and wish you all have a very Happy Halloween!
by gabriel_sales | Oct 29, 2013
As a B2B sales and marketing outsourcing company, we are always paying attention to the current state of the industry and where things are going. In terms of both overall trends and specific tactics, we like to believe we have our finger on the pulse of what’s hot in B2B sales and marketing.
Derived from our own research as well as what is currently working for our clients, here are a few blog articles discussing the 2014 B2B sales and marketing trends and tips you need to know to thrive next year:
The Shift to 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.
Click here to continue reading, “The Shift to Bought then, Sold”.
Buyer Personas
As the buying process changed with the introduction of web-based technologies, buyers changed too. Buyers adapted new traits and behaviors conducive to the new digital space they occupy. By understanding these new traits or characteristics and incorporating these insights into your sales strategies, you can make better connections, earn more trust and ultimately, close more deals.
Click here to continue reading, “Buyer Personas: The 6 Types of B2B Buyers on the Internet”.
The Future of SEO
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?
Click here to continue reading, “What’s Working Now in B2B SEO”.
To learn more about the recent changes in the world of B2B and how to adapt, you can download our white paper called, New Rules for Buying & Selling. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 16, 2013
One of the most critical tasks you can do when you are in B2B is building your B2B marketing database. Having a growing database of people to educate on industry topics and your products/services will be one of the defining factors in your company’s growth (or decline if the database is stale or waning). Continuing to build (and nurture) this database will help prevent major valleys in your sales revenue.
To best build and manage your B2B marketing database, we recommend using marketing automation software as your centralized B2B marketing database tool. Marketing automation software not only provides excellent contact database storage functionality (e.g. cloud, flexible volumes), it has other marketing functionality that allows you to do the following to maximize the use of your database:
- send automated mass & targeted messaging
- quickly build effective landing pages that support your lead generation
- segment your contacts in a variation of ways to customize your outreach
- analyze the contacts in your database on an individual and collective basis
- progressively score & grade contacts based on implicit & explicit elements
- integrate with other tools that provide extended intelligence
Over 3 years ago, we migrated our entire marketing database to a marketing automation software and the improved marketing and sales functionality has helped us improve top-to-bottom funnel conversions exponentially.
Using marketing automation software as your main B2B marketing database has a number of positive benefits to your marketing and sales team. Adopting this as a best practice in your B2B organization is one of our highest recommendations and we’ve been helping many businesses adopt this into their B2B marketing database strategy.
To learn more about the value of marketing automation, you can find more educational content here. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.
Nearly every business today is looking for ways to generate more leads and close more deals. Many companies are now looking to marketing automation as a means to achieve this and end up dissatisfied with the results.
