B2B Sales Archives

What’s the difference between a Sales Cycle Vs. Buying Cycle?

by Glen Springer | Nov 29, 2012

Understanding the difference between a Sales Cycle vs. Buying Cycle may be the most critical shift an organization needs to make to see significant and sustained revenue growth, especially for complex or highly competitive sales.

In a nutshell, the Sales Cycle is how your company looks at moving deals through their own sales pipe and sales process to close deals. Typically the flow looks something like a lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified leads, needs analysis, proposal, negotiation, verbal, and closed. This is a company centered view.

A buying cycle is looking at your sales cycle from what the customer needs. Probably the best example we have seen of a buying cycle is from Robert Jolles book Customer Centered Selling. Below is our brief explanation of how we look at this cycle, addressing some of the implications it has for us as an outsourced sales and marketing company with how we divide the sales and marketing functions.

Phase 1 – Intention to Buy

The buyer starts satisfied with their current solution
The buyer acknowledges to themselves that they are not satisfied
The buyer makes the decision to do something about it
The buyer starts to think about “what are the criteria” to consider moving forward

As a lead generation and a demand generation company, we understand that intention is meaningless without action. The world is full of people with great intentions that never actually take any action. Your job as a sales person and marketer is to understand that your first task in generating demand for your solution is to help educate a buyer on the “criteria” they need to consider. You need to appreciate that given a choice, most buyers will sit on the fence for as long as possible. They want to move forward, they know it’s good for them to move forward, so you need to help educate the buyer enough so they do in fact move forward. Your first job as a sales and marketing professional is to inspire and catalyze the desire that gets your buyer to move from the passive buying process to the active buying process. More and more, this is becoming the function of your content marketing and inside team.

Phase 2 – Active Buying

The buyer needs to figure out how to measure the solution to: justify the purchase, understand the impact of doing nothing vs. changing, see the impact on topline, recognize the implications for bottom line, feel subjective relief of pain or risk
The buyer investigates deeply, typically with short list of solutions and a deep dive into one or more solutions
Selection is made; a front-runner is chosen
The buyer reconsiders their decision

During the “Active” buying process, your sales team is typically on point. It’s at this point that marketing should take a back seat – with one exception: marketing needs to continue to support the sales team with the content they need to help deal with the reconsideration phase of the sale. Your marketers need to be prepared to help the buyer remember why they were no longer satisfied and embarked on their buying cycle in the first place.

B2B Lead Generation Best Practices: Measure All Tactics

by Glen Springer | Sep 29, 2012

This blog will discuss a competitive advantage and a Best Practice for B2B Lead Generation for 2013. As a qualified sales lead generation company, we were surprised how many B2B marketers still had a black box correlating b2b lead generation to sales return on investment. We will let the graphics below demonstrate how easy it could be for your business to gain a leg up on your competition by simply implementing a tool like Pardot, as a best practice for B2B lead Generation.

According to the 2nd annual Webmarketing123 State of Digital Marketing Survey (of over 500 U.S. marketing professionals) Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are increasing in their level of adoption and spend, where spend is forecasted to continue to increase in 2013. The report when on to state:

“For B2B, lead generation is the top objective, and SEO is twice as effective as PPC or SMM for this purpose.”

“Budgets: 90% of marketers will increase or maintain spending on SEO, PPC, and SMM.”

Still doing SEO in-house? “Marketers using an agency are twice as likely to be highly satisfied with their campaign performance.”

What we found surprising in the study are the statistics below:

Hopefully a couple of pictures do paint a thousand words here. As we close 2015 and move to 2016 you need to ask yourself three questions around your b2b lead generation efforts.

How do I improve what I don’t measure?
If I do measure will it improve my performance?
How much more revenue will I generate once I focus my marketing dollars on what’s producing?

Gabriel Sales provides b2b lead generation services and builds demand generation engines that integrate both sales reps, b2b lead gen, sales engagement and inbound marketing efforts. To see how we can help accelerate your production in this last quarter of 2012 so you hit the ground running in 2013 please feel free to contact us for a free benchmark review.

For additional info on marketing automation implementations, tips to improve the performance of your telesales team, your b2b lead generation or how to accelerate your content marketing efforts please feel free to check out our resources page.

Top 10 B2B Demand Generation Strategies

by Glen Springer | Feb 3, 2012

We are calling this a Top 10 demand generation strategies list, but as we went through the strategies, we felt the need to give your b to b demand gen amplifier one more notch and took it to 11. This blog post is a quick reference for your company to build a successful b to b demand generation practice focused on improving your ROI statement.

1. Don’t wait to follow up on leads. You spend $15K, $30K, $100K plus on a trade show. You spend money on inbound pay-per-click, or publishers etc. If the marketing department is in charge of sharing the leads they may score and then share with an internal team or an outside vendor. If the sales team is in charge they will often prioritize by gut. We understand the value of both approaches. You want to call the best prospects first. However, generally what occurs is that lag time of a few hours can turn into days and weeks. That lag time hurts especially if your leads are in a highly competitive industry (getting there first improves your closing % by as much a 100%), your sales cycle is 90 days or less (first 3 get short listed), or your leads are driven by search engine marketing (could be a “just in time” need). Many marketers we talk to will proudly say “we call on incoming leads within a week.” Guaranteed they have never done a study on the effects of that delay.

2. Make those extra calls. Don’t give up on leads after 1 or 2 calls if you don’t connect. This is especially challenging for sales reps that are not supported by a demand gen inside rep. A sales reps’ job is to close business. If they have deals moving this quarter they don’t always have the time to make that third or fourth call. As a b to b demand generation outsourced company and a sales outsourcing solution provider we have done countless studies that have shown that the 3rd, 4th and sometimes 5th attempt is where the payoff comes. This is especially true the more senior the decision maker. They are just tougher to reach.

3. Have an additional piece of content. Have a new offer after every call to keep the prospect engaged and give your rep “a reason to follow up” to ask them what they thought. Bottom line is that content keeps a deal moving without needing to get your senior talent on the phone to educate the prospect. It provides a reason for dialogue. It allows you to keep asking “what else are you curious about or what can I share to help you”. It allows you to talk about their needs while you share your position as well. Selling is about the customer not you and this allows you to kill two birds with one stone.

4. Lead with more than just a demo as your initial offer. As a sales outsourcing company we understand that clients want us to transact now but it doesn’t always work that way. Their strategy is often to get the prospect in that demo as quickly as possible and if the prospect is ready to do that great! However smart b to b demand generation requires that you also have an offer for prospects that aren’t ready to make that commitment. The prospect is not unintelligent. They know that getting into that demo starts them on the path towards committing to buy. They may not be ready to make that decision yet and they don’t want to waste your time or theirs, so give them a way to engage that is a bit softer and slower.

5. Educate but keep the costs down. We live in competitive times so many businesses’ marketing efforts focus on the product and ignore the value of educating their prospects so that they realize the value they are offered. To win deals and ensure you are receiving a top dollar for your product or service the customer needs to understand the value you are driving for their business. To explain that value the customer needs and wants understand that value. So you need to help your customer by helping your customers get what they want – which is fair, independent and “neutral” views that help them take informed and unbiased decisions. This is quick content to create especially for your senior sales executives if you can get them blogging. What is common sense for you as the expert, especially when it comes to competition and the “internal independent research” available, is often very valuable new information for you customer.

6. Don’t forget about your existing customers. They are the core of your business, without them you don’t exist. So the core of your business is that successful relationship. Keep building on that relationship and continue to share content with them to build even more trust. This will organically turn them into advocates. They tweet, they belong to Linked-In, Google +. Don’t ask for them to do it. Just make it easy for them. Referrals work in new and unexpected ways so simply be surprised and especially grateful when they ask to contribute content for you.

7. Listen to your sales team and your prospects to generate your content strategy. In many cases, the sales team understands what the customer needs before the customer does. This is especially true if you have a disruptive solution moving into an existing market or an existing solution moving into new markets. Creating a great deal of content quickly is not tough. If you listen to your prospects objections and the same questions or concerns come up several times turn it into a blog post. You can than take that sales conversation to address other prospects’ needs and, even more importantly to your b to b demand generation effort, take that “sales conversation” into the social media conversation.

8. Know your the inflection point for your ROI statement when implementing a Marketing Automation Platform and Nurturing program. A platform (as an outsourced sales company we recommend Pardot) cost $16K. A 3 series webinar will cost you roughly $6K-$10K in house or external. Basic blog content creation will cost about $12K. And planning, database integration and implementation can range from$12K to $24K. So all in you are looking at $72K if you are starting from scratch. If you are following the best practices laid out above or you have implemented a sales outsourcing solution, or b to b demand generation solution with Gabriel Sales, you will already have a great deal of the content planning you need so an implementation is roughly $24K-$36K. You can do the math from there (we have a back of the envelope chart below to help). If your average deal size is $100K + the ability to track digital content and the time savings alone for the senior rep makes it an easy decision to pull the trigger. For smaller and shorter sales cycles it really comes down to how many leads you have in your database because countless studies have shown that if your product has legs you can expect to convert at least 1% to 3% of the leads that were initially just curious.

9. Create digital landing pages for your sales reps to use that are customer centric. As your content grows create a resource page that is customer centric. Design them to help the customer make decisions. Give them educational content, evaluation content and verification content in one easy to find area. Combine your general educational content (70%) with some vertical specific content (30%) so you are speaking directly to that particular need or pain area. Don’t make the content just about you make it about them; around the needs of your customer by decision maker type. Make it easy for your customers to find what they need, and almost as important, make your brochure dynamic so you are not wasting your sales reps valuable phone time keeping up with new additions to your marketing mix. Keep them focused on selling. Gabriel Sales has developed a simple to implement landing page engine that can be up and running for you in a matter of weeks to jump start this process.

10. Re-purpose the digital land page to generate inbound traffic and remove barriers to engaging. The “sales” conversation, the digital conversation and the “social media” conversation are the same conversation. The objections your reps hear and address are the same that customers who haven’t found you yet have. Make it easy for them to find you and maximize your sales content investment by driving traffic to that page with long tail SEO and PPC campaigns that keep your costs down. Keep the language on the page focused on the customer using the language of “your” and “you” not “we” and “us”. And finally keep the requirements of your form down to the basics – customer name andemail address. Keep any other fields optional.

11. BONUS: Lead Generation Reps and Demand Generation Reps have different tasks and need different skills sets. The new rules of sales engagement require your demand generation reps and your sales reps to have different skill sets. Lead gen reps are often calling cold. Their scripts are different, their call volume is different and their personality is different from what is required by reps moving inbound leads forward. Demand gen reps are there to facilitate. Lead gen reps are there to put leads in the pipe. Be conscious of the difference and either train your lead gen reps in the new rules of sales engagement (so they are not creepy or overly assertive) or hire a different rep to move deals from Marketing Qualified to Sales Qualified.

For a full overview of why we feel it makes strategic and executional sense to have your sales team involved in your sales content marketing strategy, strategic approaches to team integration and a road map for fluid communication, we invite you to visit our blog section.

Top B2B Demand Generation Requires Sales and Marketing Alignment

by Glen Springer | Jan 22, 2012

This blog is the second part of a three part series that discusses the difference between sales content marketing and other types of marketing and how you can approach creating a successful B2B Demand Generation Sales Marketing Alignment solution (with or without outsourcing) by aligning sales and marketing. In this blog we provide a simple framework for driving successful B2B Demand Generation Sales Marketing Alignment. CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE.

B2B Demand Generation Sales and Marketing Alignment

As an outsourced sales organization we firmly believe that every outsourced demand generation B2B effort needs “to start with the end in mind.” That “end” is closed business. As a company we build High Velocity Sales Machines for B2B Demand Generation. The marketing services we provide to support the sales efforts are focused on improving two areas: Demand Generation and Overcoming Specific Sales Objections. Our focus when executing marketing services in these areas is to create the feedback loops required for the marketing team to create content (or in many cases to produce the initial necessary digital content ourselves) to ensure that the sales content meets the need of the buyer exactly where they are in their buying cycle. You need to match your sales function to the customer buying cycle. Typically:

B2B Demand Generation – helping the customer define their problem and establishing your credentials as a thought leader to help them.
Sales Engagement and Qualifying – helping the customer to compare your solution to other solutions in the market. And to evaluate their alternatives.
Closing – sales starts when the customer says “No”. This content needs to overcome specific objections so that the customer can verify the ROI and confirm what you have already told them so they are comfortable committing to you.

For Gabriel Sales, sales content marketing is not strategic, it is tactical and measurable. The job of sales content marketing is measured, providing better B2B Demand Generation Sales Marketing Alignment. And when we make recommendations or create content that content starts by addressing a specific need or objection that we have heard directly from a customer.

Below is a simple framework we use when creating digital content or providing feedback loops to the marketing teams we work with.

We are giving our marketing efforts “A Sales Quota.” To do this you need listen and document the conversation with the customer. As part of our services we map the entire sales conversation to identify the objections, and then create authentic digital content that addresses those needs and objections specifically to get deals through the pipe.

To summarize, smart sales content marketing is a simple as:

Getting everyone to agree that the Sales Marketing job is to close business
Listening to the Needs and Objections of your customer to understand the “Sales Conversation”
Creating Authentic Content that addresses the client’s needs for where they are in the buying cycle

As an outsourcing B2B demand generation company we are not delusional. We know what we are the best at, and what other solutions are more effective for B2B Demand Generation Sales Marketing Alignment. We are the best at building outsourced demand generation engines that:

Generate b to b sales leads with cold calling efforts
Take cold call leads and inbound marketing qualified leads, listen to the customer and understand their needs and sales objections
Move deals from marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads by:

Creating and distributing great “Sales” content that move the deals forward

Training reps how to use that content

Providing great feedback loops to marketing teams so they can expand on that effort once proven

With a full pipe, we then transition to the close by staffing enterprise sales reps or inside reps as the need dictates.

The final blog will discuss how internal “marketing” teams and external agencies can build on smart sales driven b2b demand generation and sales content marketing to put more qualified sales deals in the pipe and provide effective B2B Demand Generation Sales Marketing Alignment.

If you would like to learn more about how an outsourced demand generation solution can help accelerate this alignment and scale, please feel free to CONTACT US for a free initial strategy conversation. Or visit the B2B Demand Generation Resources section of our Website.

To review Part 1 Top B to B Demand Generation Requires Sales Content Marketing CLICK HERE.

To view the final blog in this series on Successful Demand Generation b to b please CLICK HERE.

B2B Demand Generation Requires Sales Content Marketing

by Glen Springer | Jan 20, 2012

This blog discusses how Gabriel thinks about B2B Demand Generation and the hybrid role it plays in sales, sales marketing and market intelligence. In short, Sales Marketing is always supporting the close of business. In this blog we will share how you can close more B2B customers leveraging the opportunities in the new sales engagement model we now all face. This is Part 1 of a 3 Part Series.

To set some initial context to understand what Gabriel Sales means by “Sales Content” Marketing and how it supports B2B Demand Generation it’s important to understand that B2B Sales Content Marketing, at least from our perspective, is about moving a deal forward in the customer buying cycle so it results in a closed deal. Sales content supports the brand, but that is not its primary purpose. In a sales culture Demand Generation is not about Lead Generation and Marketing Qualified Leads. Who cares if a lead is Marketing Qualified. Demand Generation is about “Demand” meaning deals that are going to transact. Demand Generation means handing sales qualified leads over to sales reps that they can close.

A solid sales organization needs to be organized around an inside sales and marketing team that can generate Sales Qualified Leads and a team that can close business. As a sales outsourcing company we staff a team that can close business. As an outsourced B2B demand generation company, our goal, and the goal of any sales organization, needs to be creating a high velocity sales machines with a staff that does three things:

Identifies and develops Sales Qualified Leads as quickly as possible so the sales team can engage
Continues to nurture and develop Sales Accepted Leads (not ready to buy but worth investing inside reps time in) until they are ready to buy
Profile Accounts – So you can score them for continued follow up by marketing efforts

This requires us to combine outbound sales efforts with inbound sales content marketing services (either creating digital content or creating the feedback loops for our client’s marketing team) because the goal is to move a customer through their buying cycle.

For a high velocity sales machine that integrates inbound and outbound efforts your inside sales team needs:

To be experts in using sale marketing content to move customers from Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads.
To be accountable for driving insights and recommendations to the marketing team.
To have the tools and technology to provide that feedback.

For true sales and marketing alignment, sales marketing efforts need to focus on generating closed business by supplying qualified deals and helping your buyer to transact. This means your marketing team needs to:

Listen to the voice of the customer and the voice of the sales force
Quickly create content or support the creation of content that moves deals forward
Have their demand generation success scored on their contribution beyond simply putting MQLs in the pipe

To summarize, B2B demand generation is about sales content marketing. In part 2 of this blog series we will cover Gabriel Sales’ simple framework for aligning sales and marketing and simple steps you can take to get sales and marketing to work together towards a shared vision. In part 3 we will discuss how smart sales content marketing can be re-purposed to provide an exponential lift by increasing your marketing teams ability to put better Marketing Qualified Leads into your Sales teams’ pipe; and the role of Marketing Automation Platforms.

If you would like to learn more about how an outsourced demand generation solution may be able to help accelerate this alignment please feel free to CONTACT US for a free initial strategy conversation. Or visit the B2B Demand Generation Resources section of our Website.

To Check out Part 2 in this Series B to B Demand Generation Requires Sales and Marketing Alignment CLICK HERE.