Using Marketing Automation for B2B Lead Nurturing

by | Oct 2, 2013

Photo of green plant between male hands on a black background[/caption]B2B marketers today face a complex landscape.

Old marketing tactics have dropped in effectiveness (cold calling, trade shows) while technological innovations have created an entire new way of buying and selling (digital content marketing, customer relationship management). Buyers now control the sales process and selling to them now requires the ability to reach and interact with prospects in an entirely new way.

Evidence of this shift can be seen in the findings of a February 2013 eMarketer report that lists the top challenges from B2B marketers today. Apart from not having enough budget (59%), marketers largest struggle is the ability to “reach the right target at the right time in the buying decision” (39%).  This shows that B2B marketers have started to recognize that the buyer needs to be the main focus of all marketing efforts.

This also helps to explain why from 2011 to 2012, there was a 233% increase in the portion of marketing budgets allocated to marketing automation solutions (eMarketer).

Marketing automation platforms allow marketers to manage of all of their prospects from one database and track their prospects digital behaviors to help understand where each prospect is at in their buying decision at any given time. Within the platform, you can assign different numerical scores to each piece of marketing content you create—with lower scores assigned to early stage content and high scores assigned to late stage content like pricing pages or product comparisons. By looking at prospects consumption of all marketing efforts (website, blogs, email marketing, social), you can determine what “next step” is going to be most appropriate for each prospect.

This is why using marketing automation for B2B lead nurturing is so effective, as some of the prospects that come into your pipe are not ready to buy right away. You will know this because your marketing automation solution will tell you that the prospect is not engaging with any high-scoring digital content that signals he or she is near a purchase decision, which tells you the prospect needs to go into a lead nurturing stage.

B2B lead nurturing consists of sending your ‘not-yet-ready-to-buy’ prospects marketing content that educates them on your solution and industry in a non-threatening way. A quarterly company newsletter or educational email campaign are good examples of this. By tracking consumption of your nurturing efforts using your marketing automation platform, you will know when a prospect moves out of the nurturing phase and is ready to be engaged by sales.

When done correctly, lead nurturing helps to build trust and keep your company top of mind when your prospect is finally ready to make a buying decision.

To learn more about the importance of B2B lead nurturing, click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

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.

Can a Sales Outsourcing Company Accelerate Your Sales?

by | Sep 14, 2012

sales-outsourcingContent Marketing is now required as ground cover for your sales team.   If you haven’t started you need to start now. As a sales outsourcing company working to successfully launch sales content marketing efforts for multiple clients we often hear that “it take to much time, or I am not ready to commit.”  Our position:

  1. Content marketing does not need to be complicated for B2B marketers to meet the needs of sales. As a thought leader you have tons of little snippets of value to share on a regular basis.
  2. You don’t have a choice if you want your sales reps to successfully compete and win.

As a sales outsourcing company we understand that, especially for company’s new to content marketing,  it may seem daunting.  But it’s easier than you think.  We are experts and thought leaders in sales and marketing tactics and strategies.  You are experts and thought leaders in your product and solution area.  One of the values we bring as a sales and marketing outsourcing company is that we have a methodical system to quickly turn your thought leadership into tools that will empower your sales and marketing efforts.

Below is our framework for content marketing that will help empower your sales team with the tools they need to be successful.

Using our framework we help our clients to quickly determine what specific content is required at specific stages of the sales cycle.  We implement Digital Demand Center™ our proprietary Content Management System to accelerate this process.  As the survey below indicates the majority of the content required can be initially distributed with blogs.   When combined with our expertise in sales storytelling, educational webcasting and sales video content production we can get your sales team (or our sales outsourcing and marketing effort on your behalf) to market with a winning sales content marketing strategy in a fraction of the time you may be able to achieve on your own.

Can Sales Outsourcing Help Your Company?

To check out what your peers are already doing check out this previous blog post.   To discover how we can help accelerate your sales integrating multiple tactics and strategies please feel free to reach out for an initial conversation.

B2B Demand Generation Requires Sales Content Marketing

by | 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:

    1. To be experts in using sale marketing content to move customers from Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads.
    2. To be accountable for driving insights and recommendations to the marketing team.
    3. 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.