Why Is Audience Segmentation Important

by | Oct 25, 2012

audience-segmentationDefining Audience Segmentation

Audience segmentation, also called market segmentation, is an important aspect of creating an effective sales or marketing strategy.  Most basically, it is about finding better customers.  In past decades, marketing has generally been directed at mass audiences, sending the same message to all potential customers.  Audience segmentation works to divide your target audience into groups that have similar interests or buying behavior.

By dividing your audience into segments and crafting marketing messages targeted to each segment, you are able to reach each customer with marketing that is relevant to him or her.  If your potential customer feels that your message is not relevant to them, you will most likely be ignored.

Segmentation also helps you build a better relationship with your potential customers because people are more likely to respond positively to messages they feel are directed to them personally.  The more targeted your message, the more likely it becomes that your customer will engage with you.

With time, segmenting can also help you uncover potential market opportunities you might have otherwise missed, allowing you to create products and services better tailored around the specific needs and interests of your various customer segments.

What this means is that in today’s world, sending out a generic or mass message is no longer worth your time and could even end up costing you business. When you send out a mass-message that a customer has zero interest in, not only will you be ignored, but your customer may also see you as incompetent or uncaring.

What you want to do instead is give your customers information that is directly relevant to their personal needs and known buying behavior. If you do this correctly, segmenting your audience can yield a substantial increase in response and engagement and, consequently, rates of conversion.

The most crucial aspect of implementing b2b marketing audience segmentation effectively is coming to understand what types of information each segment likes to consume and how each segment likes to consume it.  With this information, you can create and target messages using the forms of media most in line with a segment’s purchasing behavior.  For instance, if you know that a particular segment likes their content via videos, you’ll want to provide them links to your YouTube channel.  Similarly, if you know an audience segment prefers to read text, you send them text in the form of emails, blogs or white papers according to that audience segmentation.

The overall goal of audience or market segmentation is to avoid sending irrelevant messages to unreceptive customers.  By understanding that different people (and different businesses) have different needs and media-consumption preferences, you can set up a marketing strategy that operates more efficiently and much more effectively.

Outsourced Sales and Marketing Requires Strategic Commitment

by | Sep 21, 2012

Outsourced Sales and Marketing can help you to achieve your sales targets faster and at a reduced operational cost. This is especially true if you are just getting out of the gate. In a previous blog we discussed the time and money it can save you in recruiting, sales management and marketing management.  However you cannot expect to under fund your sales and marketing efforts and still compete in the market. This is especially true if you are a young company, a technology start-up or new to the market. An outsourced sales and marketing solution has the advantages of a fully functioning organization that is already in motion but you need to consider your competition and understand that if there is competition in the market that you need to invest enough to allow your sales and marketing team the ability to compete and win.

Some Strategic Issues that Shape Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing

Here are some of the areas you should expect your outsourced sales and marketing company to explore with you:

Market dynamics – What is your understanding of the market and selling dynamics of other companies –  Do you understand your differentiators.  What is your core value proposition? How deep is your understanding of the competitive landscape?

Do you have realistic goals –   Do you have any existing conversion metrics and sales pipe history to support those goals? Is one of the top priorities of your sales and marketing outsourced vendor to help with this?

Key events in your sales cycle – What are the key events that occur during your customers buying cycle?  What is your win loss ratio? Do you need your sales and marketing outsourcing solution to help you figure this out.  In that case you may want to position this as a consulting engagement to your board.  If any of the past several issues has left you wondering what is the difference between outsourced sales vs. sales consulting here is a quick overview from a past blog post…Sales Consulting vs. Outsourced Sales.

What does your existing customer set look like –  The prospects an outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales  will be targeting for you will want to understand who your current buyers are.   Prospects will want to know what vertical markets you are in and you will need to be able to provide your outsourced sales partner with reference clients in other verticals if they are opening a new vertical or market for you.

Do you have the budget and the patience to successfully execute to a successful plan –  While an external sales and marketing company can get you into the market faster and more effectively, a well executed plan takes time to ramp. Obviously using an outsourced sales and marketing company will allow you to gain traction quickly but they will not be able to dramatically change a company’s typical buying cycle for your product.  If your typical sales cycle takes 6-12 month you can expect an outsourced sales and marketing company to shave a month or two off that cycle at best but you need to account for the initial 90-120 days to ramp the initial pipe.  Do you have the patience to wait for the sales engine to ramp?  We typically see our efforts take significant hold at 9-12 months. We do have some tactics to gain traction with key accounts quickly.  To help on this front you need to have an ideal customer profile but realistic timing needs to be factored into the overall strategy.

The right level of funding  approved– All this boils down to the right level of funding.  Sales and marketing outsourcing help get you out of the gate faster and cheaper but it does not absolve you from the need to fund your efforts at levels where you can compete.  You need to make sure that senior management and your board are aware of this and do not set false expectations.  As with any strategic initiative you need to have buy-in and appropriate funding from the senior management team, and sales and marketing outsourcing is no exception.

There are many strategic decisions that you need to consider in executing a successful sales and marketing strategy.   This blog addresses a handful that we work through with you.   For additional tactics we use to ensure your long term success we invite you to check out a couple of our education series here:

Selling Smarter and Selling Faster White Paper

Build a Successful B2B Sales and Marketing Engine – Educational Resources

For more information on how Gabriel Sales has helped dozens of companies enter a market successfully  please feel free to contact for us an initial review.

Outsourced Sales and Marketing Requires Strategic Commitment

by | Sep 21, 2012

Outsourced Sales and Marketing can help you to achieve your sales targets faster and at a reduced operational cost.  This is especially true if you are just getting out of the gate.   In a previous blog we discussed the time and money it can save you in recruiting, sales management and marketing management.  However you cannot expect to under fund your sales and marketing efforts and still compete in the market.  This is especially true if you are a young company, a technology start-up or new to the market.   An outsourced sales and marketing solution has the advantages of a fully functioning organization that is already in motion but you need to consider your competition and understand that if there is competition in the market that you need to invest enough to allow your sales and marketing team the ability to compete and win.

Some Strategic Issues that Shape Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing

Here are some of the areas you should expect your outsourced sales and marketing company to explore with you:

Market dynamics – What is your understanding of the market and selling dynamics of other companies –  Do you understand your differentiators.  What is your core value proposition? How deep is your understanding of the competitive landscape?

Do you have realistic goals –   Do you have any existing conversion metrics and sales pipe history to support those goals? Is one of the top priorities of your sales and marketing outsourced vendor to help with this?

Key events in your sales cycle – What are the key events that occur during your customers buying cycle?  What is your win loss ratio? Do you need your sales and marketing outsourcing solution to help you figure this out.  In that case you may want to position this as a consulting engagement to your board.  If any of the past several issues has left you wondering what is the difference between outsourced sales vs. sales consulting here is a quick overview from a past blog post…Sales Consulting vs. Outsourced Sales.

What does your existing customer set look like –  The prospects an outsourced sales and marketing company like Gabriel Sales  will be targeting for you will want to understand who your current buyers are.   Prospects will want to know what vertical markets you are in and you will need to be able to provide your outsourced sales partner with reference clients in other verticals if they are opening a new vertical or market for you.

Do you have the budget and the patience to successfully execute to a successful plan –   While and outsourced sales and marketing company can get you into the market faster and more effectively, a well executed plan takes time to ramp.  Obviously using an outsourced sales and marketing company will allow you to gain traction quickly but they will not be able to dramatically change a company’s typical buying cycle for your product.  If your typical sales cycle takes 6-12 month you can expect an outsourced sales and marketing company to shave a month or two off that cycle at best but you need to account for the initial 90-120 days to ramp the initial pipe.  Do you have the patience to wait for the sales engine to ramp?  We typically see our efforts take significant hold at 9-12 months. We do have some tactics to gain traction with key accounts quickly.  To help on this front you need to have an ideal customer profile but realistic timing needs to be factored into the overall strategy.

The right level of funding  approved– All this boils down to the right level of funding.  Sales and marketing outsourcing help get you out of the gate faster and cheaper but it does not absolve you from the need to fund your efforts at levels where you can compete.  You need to make sure that senior management and your board are aware of this and do not set false expectations.  As with any strategic initiative you need to have buy-in and appropriate funding from the senior management team, and sales and marketing outsourcing is no exception.

There are many strategic decisions that you need to consider in executing a successful sales and marketing strategy.   This blog addresses a handful that we work through with you.   For additional tactics we use to ensure your long term success we invite you to check out a couple of our education series here:

Selling Smarter and Selling Faster White Paper

Build a Successful B2B Sales and Marketing Engine – Educational Resources

For more information on how Gabriel Sales has helped dozens of companies enter a market successfully  please feel free to contact for us an initial review.

Some Reasons Why Companies Consider Sales and Marketing Outsourcing

by | Sep 19, 2012

A recent Deloitte survey on outsourcing pointed to a projected increase over the next several years.   What is driving this across the board is a desire for companies to focus on their core competencies.  What was interesting to us as an sales and marketing outsourcing company is the expected anticipated growth of sales and marketing outsourcing specifically of 22%.  Why are so many diverse companies, both big and small, turning to outsourcing? Organizations chose to outsource for many reasons, and when asked which objectives were the most important to their outsourcing initiative 87% said reducing operating costs, 73% said improving customer service, and 49% said gaining a competitive advantage.

As an outsourced sales and marketing company we find that the largest area we are able to reduce operating costs for our clients immediately is in our ability to take over your sales recruiting,  sales management and marketing management overhead which can run into six figures plus annually (not including staffing the reps).  With this headache off your plate you can focus on your core competencies.

The report goes further and talks about some of the areas that are critical to a successful outsourcing engagement that we believe also applies specifically to sales and marketing outsourcing.  They are:

  • A spirit of partnership between the vendor and the company.  This is especially critical when the goal of sales and marketing outsourcing is closed deals.
  • Clear service levels
  • Strong and joint management of the relationship.   This is especially critical in sales and marketing outsourcing which may require pivots, as feedback from the market drives modifications in how the market should be approached.
  • Detailed contract terms
  • Strong vendor account management team.  When outsourcing sales and marketing this should include both a marketer and a sales manager.
  • A strong company management team.  We strongly recommend that you do not just plan on turning sales and marketing outsourcing on and walking away.  Staying engaged on a monthly or weekly basis can help the relationship flourish and generate more leads and closed business for your company.  Sales and marketing outsourcing companies are experts in selling but they cannot immediately replace your thought leadership in your product and market.

To discover if an outsourced sales and marketing company outsourcing is right for you please contact us for a quick review to see if our strategies can help.

10 Ways Marketing Automation Outsourcing Helps Sales

by | Sep 17, 2012

As a sales outsourcing company we are now quickly becoming sales marketing automation outsourcing specialists as well.  As an outsourced sales company we have a unique perspective how marketing automation helps sales because we specialize in leveraging content marketing to engage prospects as much as we use marketing automation to generate and nurture leads.  And by engage we mean helping to convince your buyer to buy from your company. Isn’t more sales what sales and marketing automation outsourcing be about.   This blog addresses the top 10 advantages of putting sales and marketing automation tools in your sales reps hands (if you have never seen an Marketing Automation Software here is a quick link to 5 minute demo so the points below make a ton more sense).

How Does Marketing Automation Outsourcing Help Increase Sales Reps Production?

 

Lead scoring: For companies that are lucky enough to have a steady stream of leads marketing automation prioritizes where your sales reps should invest their time. Marketing automation tools uses realtime scoring to see who is most engaged.  With this point system, you are no longer need to guess “where to start”.

 

Your buyer tells your rep what they are interested in:  Marketing automation identifies what content your buyer is most interested in.   Essentially giving your rep night vision goggles into your buyers interests and concerns.

 

Help your sales champion to champion.  A sales rep can be sold by their prospect.  You, as the rep have a hot one on the line and feels it is going great, then utilizing a Marketing Automation tool, you can see if you prospect is actually opening your emails, clicking on the content you are sending and going to your site.  If the content is not engaging or not being shared, you can raise that as an issue and ask “how can we improve our performance to make it easier for you to sell”. We find that the prospects that transact, typically engage with at least 12 pieces of content.  If a prospect is not engaging, chances are they are not serious about buying.

 

Saves time and provides feedback to your reps: email templates programmed in the Marketing Automation Tool can be measured in their effectiveness (essentially you can now do in the micro what you do with your bulk email blasts)  if emails are not working you know.   Streamlining great emails that work keep follows up simple and keeps your rep on the phone.

 

Save more time by automating follow up emails:  Using drip campaigns set up by marketing “from” the rep allows the reps to stay engaged with non- active prospects.  No more worrying about wasting time and precious phone time on cool prospects.  We never know when a cool lead will now be ready to buy and drips ensure prospects will think of you when that time arrives and they are ready to engage.

 

Quick access to all past communications:   with the streamlined integration between a marketing automation software (we use Pardot) and your CRM, all the rep needs to do is use their Outlook Pardot connector and all their email history will automatically be entered into Pardot and Salesforce.  This keeps updating the CRM simple.

 

Reduced headcount –  With marketing automation, reps can now “work”  more prospects, requiring less reps and more time for reps to work on closing deals, not nurturing non-ready to buy leads.

 

Prevents lead and deal leakage:  Typically sales reps will abandon leads if not ready to buy within a given time period (depends on the sales cycle- could be a month, a quarter).  Reps need to work closest to the dollar.  To close those deals on the horizon requires nurturing,  most reps do not have the time to do this even with the best of intentions.  They  are incentivized to close this quarter.   Marketing automation lets them close this quarter and continue to build a healthy pipe for next quarter. Marketing Automation cures that sickness.

 

Model the top performers:   Automation and CRM tools allow a view into top performers secrets of success  What leads do they pursue? What scoring attributes commonly lead to a sale? How do they engage prospects? When do they engage prospects? Periodic and systematic analysis of rep performance relative to the attributes and activities that are captured by demand generation tools and CRM can provide invaluable insights for struggling reps.

 

Call at the right time:  A lead deck  is a live feed that is part of the tool that notifies your rep the minute your prospects are active on your site.  When your prospects have your company top of mind, and your buyer is sitting at their desk (or on their PDA checking you out)  your rep has it’s a great time to pick up the phone or hit them with an email.

 

To see a quick demo of a Marketing Automation Outsourcing Tool Click Here.  To see if we can accelerate your B2B demand generation with better and faster technology integration  and getting your sales team up to speed please feel free to reach out for a quick conversation and we will let you know if we can help.   We guarantee what we are sharing here is simply the tip of the iceberg.

 

A Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company Requires Teamwork, Passion & Desire

by | Sep 9, 2012

A Successful Outsourced Sales and Marketing Company can take Tips from a Rock Star?

As a successful outsourced sales and marketing company it’s important that we keep our outsourced sales reps and marketers up beat and motivated.  Success in life no matter what your pursuit all take the same basic building blocks.   This quote was particularly helpful in demonstrating that with our sales team so we felt like we would share it with a wider audience.

Bono In response to the question about U2’s drive for huge worldwide success:

“Be honest.  Are you really telling me that you’d never contemplated failure before?”

Responded:

“I don’t remember it.  I would get angry, I would get upset that we weren’t what we could be.  I don’t remember thing that we never would be successful.  I always thought we would.  And as soon as we did, it would be clear.  Doubt, self doubt, was about the current material we could improve, but the destination was never a doubt.   See, there is a chasm between envy and desire, OK?  Envy is like wanting something that’s not yours, not worked for.  But desire is different.  Desire comes out of wanting what is yours, and still wanting it even if it’s not yet there.  When desire becomes envy there is a difference.  And there is a difference between the point of view of the fan.  When (a fan) looks up at desire they think I can be”

Great quote but what does this have to do with sales and marketing.   We think the difference between desire and envy,  where you are coming from in your heart and head is often the difference between success and failure.   Obviously you can’t get much more successful then U2 has.    And its clear from this  quote that this was not an accident.

What does this quote demonstrate to help create a successful outsourced sales and marketing company?

  • Success requires passion but not anger.  A drive to push yourself and your team.
  • Success requires knowing what your chief aim is.  Visualizing it.
  • Success requires never doubting that you are capable of it.
  • Success requires coming from a place (desire) where you believe in what you are doing (selling, marketing)
  • Success is about never forgetting that your success requires that you  genuinely care about your fan (customer).

If your sales pipe could use a boost feel free to contact us to see if one of our programs can help.