How to Use Content Marketing and Automation for Consistent B2B Lead Generation

by | Feb 22, 2018

 

57% of B2B buyers have already made their purchase decision before ever speaking to a sales person (CEB Global).

 

Ask any modern marketer one of the keys to generating consistent leads, and one thing they’ll say – if not the first – is automate your content marketing. Automated content marketing makes it easy for you to send compelling messages at a thoughtful and coordinated cadence. Scoring your buyers engagement with the content allows you to understand your audience and where they are in the buyers’ journey. This process is the most effective way to generate and develop leads without breaking the bank. It also produces superior results because content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3-times as many leads (DemandMetric). Furthermore, B2B marketers say the number one benefit of marketing automation is the ability to generate more and better leads (Pepper Global). Add analytics to your content marketing automation efforts, and you have a good recipe for generating quality leads consistently – 42% of B2B marketing professionals state that a lack of quality data is their biggest barrier to lead generation (BrightTALK, 2015).

In today’s B2B market, buyers research and engage digitally with content through 67% of the typical B2B buyer’s journey before they even consider talking with someone regarding a purchase(Lenati). In fact, 47% of buyers want to view 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Demand Gen Report, 2016). So it’s paramount for your content marketing strategy and lead gen success to run campaigns with enough content to generate trust with buyers looking for you to:

  • Prove you understand the problems they face
  • Understand what problem your solution solves
  • Understand what does this solution do better than the others
  • Confirm this solution a good fit for their need

Addressing these FAQs that occur over and over again in your sales process can be automated with educational content that discusses industry trends, common pains, different ways to approach various solutions to industry issues, etc. This simple and substantive information that you can share as a thought leader gives buyers the information they need as they move through their buyers’ journey. Not only does it build trust with the buyer, it offers them insight to make an informed decision about solution options. Because in reality most buyers look at sells reps as a necessary evil. Only 29% of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product, while 62% prefer to consult a digital content (HubSpot, 2016).

Align Marketing and Sales to Improve Lead Generation Efforts

With the multiple moving parts involved in the modern sales and marketing machine, both departments must work together to generate leads, educate them, and move them towards a purchase decision. Marketo finds that companies with an aligned sales and marketing strategy are 67% better at closing deals. Having an aligned sales and marketing process that works well for generating leads is critical to any firm’s growth. With alignment, both entities understand the target audience, the sales cycle, the appropriate content to send through the proper channels at the right time. The coordination of sales and marketing bridges the communication gaps that otherwise stifle messaging consistency and lead qualification collaboration. By bringing marketing and sales together and making us more effective as a team, we can build a stronger program to meet advisor needs and achieve business results.” – Mary Rosai, Senior Vice President of Institutional Services Marketing, Charles Schwab (Marketo).

Create Authentic and Subtantive Content, Score It and Automate It

If you talk to any modern sales and marketing professional these days about content marketing and how they approach it, you’ll most likely hear four things in common. Think of them as “the four pillars,” of content marketing:

  1. Tell simple, direct and compelling stories
  2. Be insightful and helpful
  3. Leverage data when possible to back-up your claims
  4. Offer advice without hard pitching your solution

In this day and age, B2B buyers are squeezed for time, so they’re interested in useful, and simple to consume educational content that is easy to access and digest. Case studies, white papers and educational blogs helps buyers compare their efforts, challenges and pains with their peers and/or justify their investment. 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions (Lenati). The most tangible way to link your business to B2B buyers needs is to show how you solve problems better than your competition.

Marketing automation allows you to share your educational and thought leadership content along the buyers’ journey to develop trust and stay top of mind with consumers that are not quite ready to buy. Automation tools allow you to score leads according to the value of the content their engaging with, allowing your sales and marketing team to predict their readiness to buy based on the content they consumed. In a recent survey of companies leveraging marketing automation with quality educational content on a a regular basis 80% of users saw their number of  converted leads increase, with 77% seeing the number of sales conversions from those leads increase (VB Insight).

Summary

B2B lead generation is one of the top sales challenges facing many SMBs that want to grow their sales revenue. Generating a consistent flow of quality leads is critical to be competitive in the market. Telling simple stories in a systematic way and executing content marketing campaigns using modern sales and marketing operations is crtical to any business that wants to consistently grow their sales funnel in todays buyer driven market. Implementing the right strategy, lead generation techniques, and technologies to allow your sales team to focus on selling to qualified leads, while your marketers focus on sustained and consistent lead generation efforts will improve your sales results and help you meet your revenue targets.

About Us

Gabriel Sales specializes in helping SMBs and Startups grow business with modern sales and marketing operations. Our team can augment gaps in your existing sales and marketing operations or we can be leveraged for full service campaigns that include:

  • Integrated Sales and Marketing Strategies
  • Database Research and Targeting
  • Automation and CRM Systems Best Practices
  • Systems Implementation
  • Inbound Lead Generation
  • Outbound Lead Generation and Lead Scoring
  • Sales Qualification
  • Closing

To learn more about how we can help you grow your business (or decide if we are the right fit for you), we invite you to visit our page that details our integrated approach to sales and marketing outsourcing. Or feel free to contact us for free initial consultation and discovery session to see if our approach is the right fit to help you hit your revenue targets.

 

15 B2B Email Marketing Tips

15 B2B Email Marketing Tips

by | Nov 5, 2017

15 B2B Email Marketing Tips for SMBs to Generate Demand and Real Sales Opportunities

 

For ten years, email has delivered the highest ROI for marketers over any other form of marketing, returning $44 for every $1 spent. A June 2016 survey of U.S. marketers conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric found that email had a median ROI of 122% – more than four times higher than other marketing channels, including social media, direct mail and paid search. (Source: eMarketer, 2016)

What drives the success of email marketing?

A 2017 Marketing Sherpa report revealed, 70% of buyers prefer to learn about a new product or solution by email first, and then prefer to receive additional educational material even after being initially engaged by a business development representative.

And according to a 2016 Hubspot study, email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.

email marketing icon

With these eye-popping numbers, it’s no wonder 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.

So, what do these statistics really mean about the state of email and how it should be used?

As part of Gabriel Sales integrated B2B sales and marketing campaigns, we leverage emails at multiple stages of our clients’ sales funnel development program to generate new leads. We also use email marketing to develop buyers not yet ready to purchase, and over time, we use lead scoring tactics to identify which leads become qualified sales opportunities. Subsequently, we do a lot of research, and analyze a lot of our own data.

What the data tells us is, B2B email marketing does not always function in the same way as B2C marketing. B2C is typically focused on direct response and an immediate transaction, as opposed to generating leads and developing them over time. Thus, click-through rates (CTRs) are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns. That being the case, B2B has a slightly different set of best practices.

So, here are our 15 B2B Email Marketing Tips that can help you with improving your B2B sales prospecting campaigns across every stage of your sales funnel development.

1. Don’t Expect Immediate Results

Emails are a great way to introduce your solution and make buyers aware you exist. They are also a great way to:

  • Start a digital dialogue with the buyer
  • Educate buyers about the problems you solve
  • Kick off an outsourced sales lead generation campaign
  • Move a buyer deeper into the sales funnel
  • Build a short list of early stage buyers for buyer development reps to call

But buyers rarely buy, or immediately schedule an appointment after getting one email from you, so don’t expect overnight success. You will get some quick wins, but this will be a marathon or middle-distance race and not a sprint.

2. The Ability to Score Leads is Critical for Most B2B Companies

Most B2B companies are not straightforward transactional sales, selling concrete commodities that can be closed in one phone call. But that stated – if your sale is at a low price point and every buyer that shows interest can and should be closed, then lead scoring is not critical. What is critical: you need to call every lead as soon as they show interest, so all you need is the ability to track opens.

  • However, if you are like 90% of B2B companies, with longer sales cycles and a heavy need to educate buyers to build trust, then lead scoring may be critical for you to prioritize which buyers are most likely to buy. In fact, a recent Eloqua study of 10 B2B companies using lead scoring systems showed close rates increased by 30%, company revenue increased by 18% and the revenue per deal increased by 17%. Finally, according to Aberdeen Research, companies that get lead scoring right have a 192% higher average lead qualification rate than those that do not.

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3. Increase Your Results by Implementing the Right Marketing Automation or Email Marketing Software for Your Business 

B2B companies these days are implementing marketing automation systems to communicate regularly with potential buyers for product launches, solution education, and to keep their products or services top of mind. And why not, businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads. (The Annuitas Group)

So as businesses shift to automation software, it’s important to keep these statistics in mind:

  • 80% of marketing automation users saw an increase in the number of leads, and 77% had an increase of conversions. –VentureBeat
  • Companies using marketing automation generate twice as many leads as those using just email software. –Autopilot
  • Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. –Nucleus Research
  • 78% of successful marketers say that marketing automation is most responsible for improving revenue contribution. -The Lenskold Group

4. Have a Specific Intention for Your Buyer for Every Email

In this era of content marketing and access to digital education, email is being used for multiple purposes, so it is important that each email has a specific intention. If it’s an initial email lead generation campaign, you may just want to introduce a new solution or highlight a problem you help solve to identify buyers interested in the solution or need that problem solved.

If the goal is to communicate with a buyer you have been developing for a while, and who has opened multiple emails, or has engaged with your content in the past, you may want to ask for an appointment or send them a more specific piece of content to move them deeper into the funnel.

The key is to know what your goal is for every email, and don’t try to do too much at one time in a single email.

5. Set a Business Goal for Your Company for Every Email 

In this era of content marketing and access to digital education, email is being used for multiple purposes, so be sure you have a goal for each email. Is it for nurturing? Is it for generating a new lead? Or is it for developing a lead? Knowing the end goal for each message allows you to convey each message more precisely to your audience and often leads to better open rates and click-through results. As a best practice that’s produced great results for us we craft the copy of the email to the specific target audience and offer them the right educational piece according to the content framework below:

6. Use Trade Shows as an Opportunity to Generate New Sales Leads

Emails are a great way to build awareness and to fill your booth prior to a trade show. But over the past several years, we have discovered that a trade show is a great “artificial” event to also fill your database with a fresh set of leads.

The benefits of trade show audiences is three-fold: first, the average trade show attendee has travelled 400 miles, so your audience is truly national (Source: CEIR report ACRR 1153.12), second, more than 90% of trade show attendees say they are looking for new products (source: Exhibits Survey Inc.), and third, 46% of trade show attendees are in executive or upper management roles (source: CEIR).

We have had great results running campaigns to a rented, opt-in list of potential attendees – not necessarily registered attendees. Sending to this broad list of potential attendees, we have seen the following results:

  • 3X to 5X the typical unique open-rates of a cold outbound email campaign – because non-attendees are still curious about what will be happening at the show and what they will be missing
  • 2X to 4X the typical email click-through-rate
  • Emails are often forwarded to known attendees within the company by the original recipient
  • Inside reps are able to set meetings with buyers both at the show and buyers that are not even attending the show

7. Design For Mobile First

In 2017, the Apple iPhone leads email client market share with 33% of opens, so design your emails for mobile first. And over the past year, we have seen a rise in senior executives opening early sales pipeline emails on their mobile phones, so this becomes even more important. We became curious about why this was so we asked and the answer was simple: Executives tend to open these emails and check out the educational content offers when they are in between meetings, (in meetings, too, which they loathed to admit) and in the evenings at their kids extracurricular events.

8. Keep Subject Line Short

Buyers use smartphones over 60% of the time to view emails. In general, we put too much copy in the subject line, and often bury the point of the email at the end of the subject line. Our research shows, shorter subject lines are opened more often, especially when the point of the email comes first.

9. Keep Email Copy Brief and to the Point

Once again, more than 60% of buyers check email on mobile phones, so keep this top of mind when you write your copy. Your emails should be short, easy to read, and broken into paragraphs – no more than three short paragraphs is ideal. You can also use bullets to catch your buyer’s attention and highlight key points.

10. A/B Split Test Subject Lines

When we run outsourced sales lead generation campaigns, we run a series of three emails to the same list, as a best practice. We often use the same educational content offer for that three-part campaign, which allows us to perform a comprehensive A/B subject line split test as part of the first effort. We will often test as many as three to four subject lines in the first email, which allows the subsequent email blasts to drill down on the topics most likely to engage the buyer.

11. Don’t Overuse Your Company Name

Similar to your sales calls, spending too much time talking about yourself or referencing yourself does not get the most effective results. Keep your attention on the buyer, their challenges and their needs. Use your name once or twice. Don’t begin every sentence with your company. Email should not typically be an advertisement.

12. Lead with Educational Content Offers

B2B offers perform best when you offer something of value, so lead with an educational offer. Emails are the preferred way buyers wish to learn about new solutions, so attach a link to a valuable blog article, white paper or video that talks about the solution and not a product pitch. When buyers get a link with an interesting asset, they are more likely to save it and/or share it.

13. Use Customer Success Stories

At later stages of pipeline development, once a buyer has some familiarity with your solution, it will make sense to talk about yourself. When you do, use a case study as an example of a key success. This allows a buyer to understand how your solution has helped solve problems for customers like them, and helps them start to visualize and consider how your solution can help them solve a similar problem.

14. Use Your Buyers Name and Company in the Email

With the adoption of marketing automation tools, data merge fields are now the norm. It’s not acceptable not to personalize, so use the prospect’s first name in the email. You can also include the company name if it makes sense, however, only do this if you have a database you know is accurate. By doing so, your email stands out.

For most companies this is all the personalization you need. Personalizing email campaigns with different content offers, color schemes, etc. is not typically worth the effort unless you have database segments over 10,000 plus. If you do need to personalize, and deal sizes support this level of investment, it probably makes sense for your sales rep to manage this directly.

15. Always Have a Call to Action

Your email should always have a clear call to action. When we run an outsourced sales campaign, it should be as specific as possible and require the least amount of effort from your prospect. For example, briefly describe the value of the educational content and clearly display the link to it, or give them a day/time for a 10-minute call to discuss the value you can provide to their business. If you have a calendar app, such as Calendly, use it to let prospects set up their own meeting with you.

How Gabriel Sales Help?

Gabriel Sales specializes in helping B2B companies build modern sales and marketing operations.

We do this for companies with a wide variety of technology, service businesses and manufacturers that have a non-transactional solution based sales process. What this means is, to close the sale, you must build trust with the buyer, which typically requires a thought leader, consultant, sales engineer or demonstration of the product to engage the buyer and close business

Email marketing is just one piece of what we do. We can also help with strategy, automation systems implementation and other tactics required for demand generation.

Feel free to contact us to schedule some time to discuss how Gabriel Sales can help you grow your business.

B2B Sales Outsourcing Lead Generation Tactics

B2B Sales Outsourcing Lead Generation Tactics

by | Jun 12, 2017

Having useful B2B lead generation tactics is one of the top sales challenges facing many small business that want to grow their sales revenue. And generating a consistent flow of leads is critical in a competitive market. To grow the sales of a solution, establish or maintain a competitive advantage to thrive in today’s sales environment, which requires innovative approaches and hard work.

This is where a B2B sales outsourcing solution may be able to help. A B2B sales outsourcing company can assist you in framing and executing the most current and effective campaigns using modern sales and marketing operations. This will allow you to move faster, implementing the right research, lead generation techniques, and technologies. Your sales team can focus on selling, while your B2B sales outsourcing partner can focus on sustained and consistent lead generation to improve your sales results and help you meet your sales revenue targets.

With so many possible tactics available right now, your B2B sales outsourcing team will help you select the best direction for your business.. The following lead generation tactics are some of the options that will now be at your company’s disposal.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is now a requirement for lead generation success. Over 70% of buyers now prefer to learn about new products or solutions with educational information shared through email. You can share this content through social media campaigns, email-marketing campaigns, and with cold callers on first calls.

Over time, a bonus effect of quality content will enable you to slowly start moving to a higher and higher position in search engine results. A B2B sales outsourcing lead generation company like Gabriel Sales will be able to help you craft educational content that your buyers will enjoy in a short, one to two day content workshop.

Social Media Marketing

Once you have your quality content, you can share that content on social media. For most B2B companies, we recommend starting slowly and saving your best content for social media. The two most effective tools for B2B campaigns are LinkedIn and Twitter (in that order). It is also helpful to share that same content on Facebook and Google +.  Google+ is very helpful to improve search engine results.

Email Marketing to Generate a New B2B Leads

Email marketing is all about communicating through a structured email to generate leads and establish a relationship with potential clients. A B2B sales outsourcing lead generation company will be able to help you navigate through multiple vendors to target as many as 75,000 potential targets for about the fully-loaded costs of one sales development rep for one month. This will typically generate 2000 to 4000 early stage leads.

Email Marketing to Develop and Prioritize B2B Leads 

One of the most significant developments in sales and marketing over the past decade is marketing automation platforms. Marketing automation allows you to share your thought leadership to develop trust and stay top of mind with consumers that are not quite ready to buy.  These same tools also allow you to score leads and predict their readiness to buy based on the content they are engaging with. A B2B sales outsourcing company will be able to help you implement these campaigns and technologies the right way the first time with planned lead generation tactics.

B2B Sales Outsourcing Calling Team

Finally, a lead is only valuable if it turns into an appointment. The days of old school smile and dial and throwing bodies on the phone to generate more leads is over.  A B2B sales outsourcing company will be able to help you immediately staff a trained team of sales development reps that understand how to use content and marketing automation the most effective way possible to set appointments for your closers.

About Gabriel Sales B2B Sales Outsourcing Lead Generation Tactics

We specialize in helping SMBs and start-ups build modern sales and marketing operations. To learn more about our lead generation tactics and how we now view the sales challenges B2B companies now face and how we solve them we invite you to check out our new approach to outsourced sales page or visit our B2B sales outsourcing lead generation starter campaign page.

 

 

Reasons Start Up Executives Should Consider Outsourced Sales and Marketing

Reasons Start Up Executives Should Consider Outsourced Sales and Marketing

by | Nov 14, 2016

Here are several reasons Start-Ups may want to consider outsourced sales and marketing:

You Don’t Have Time to Wait to Go-To-Market

As an entrepreneur launching a new business will require you to spread your time addressing multiple responsibilities including managing finances, human resources, account development, product development and sales and marketing.  Hiring an outsourced sales and marketing company will help you to immediately maximize your sales and marketing operations.  You will immediately have an executive peer that can make your vision for sales and marketing a reality.  And this sales and marketing executive will also help you to avoid the pitfalls that have encountered to help you succeed faster.  And you outsourced sales and marketing executive will already have a full team in place behind them to put soldiers on the ground quickly all armed with the tools and technology they need for immediate success.  Most start-ups simply don’t have the runway and bandwidth they need to gain revenue traction fast enough to please their investors.  An outsourced sales and marketing team can move from strategy to execution 4 times as faster than building on your own so you start selling faster.

Lack of Funds for Multiple Full-Time Hires

Finding the best individual marketers and sales people is hard and getting harder. And the reality is that the top talent in this business environment have their choice of where to work, and in many cases do not have the unique skill sets working in a start-up environment requires. To compound the complexities for start-ups, successful sales and marketing efforts now requires multiple skill sets to help the buyer the way they now buy.  Success now requires having a database marketer, a content marketer, a marketing automation expert,  someone to help with content production, a sales and marketing strategists,  business development reps and a closer.   Hiring even a handful of these professional full time would cost you a minimum of $250K annually and there would be no guarantee that they would work well together as a team. And odds are that you would not need most of these hires on a full-time basis.

An outsourced sales and marketing company can bring a blended team to your company overnight at a fraction of the cost.  You will immediately gain access to all the talent you need at a fraction of the cost.  And one of the things that we believe makes Gabriel Sales unique is that when we craft our outsourced sales and marketing solutions we remain open to transitioning some or all of this team over to your team as revenue grows and your sales maturity increases.

Lack of Core Sales and Marketing Domain Expertise

Most start-ups are founded and driven by incredibly competent and passionate professionals and leaders.  But our experience has been, even when being founded by core sale executives,  the founders of most companies have not been in the trenches of the daily grind of sales and marketing on daily basis for many years. So, especially with the advent of marketing automation, most Start Up companies simply can’t afford the learning curve of building a sales infrastructure and process that will produce day after day consistently. In addition, hiring a sales and marketing team, without having the recent experience of managing these employees (often part time) can be time-consuming. An outsourced sales and marketing company with a blended part-time and a full-time team will help you move faster with less of your executive’s team bandwidth. As a result, your executive team can spend their time on higher value activities.

Every entrepreneur should examine their own situation and decide whether or not it makes sense to outsource sales and marketing in some capacity. If you have the funds, time, and expertise, you should hire full-time employees. You should consider a consultant to help you grow your business if you are lacking in any of these key areas. Please contact us if you would like to talk and determine whether outsourced sales and marketing are right for your organization.

Top 10 Sales Strategies for New Product Launches Sales Outsourcing Best Practices

Top 10 Sales Strategies for New Product Launches Sales Outsourcing Best Practices

by | Jul 23, 2016

Magic bullet for sales outsourcingTop 10 Sales Outsourcing Strategies for New Products

There is no grey area for Gabriel Sales that sales outsourcing for new product launches is ultimately about closing business.  However as a sales consulting firm that has driven millions in closed deals and over 200M in exits with successful new product and service launches over the past 10 years we also understand that we can drive wealth for the entrepreneurs, executives and investors that we serve by empowering the entire organization. This is done with the right feedback loops and insights so our clients can make the right strategic decisions for their business. Below are ten business intelligence and strategic areas that the right sales outsourcing partner for new product launches can  and should execute against as sales consultants drive the entire enterprise.  For additional resource for new products launches and go to market strategies please visit our Sales Strategies for New Product Launches Resource Page.

Sales Strategies for New Products

Rapid Communication – It’s critical that direct feedback loops are created from the sales team directly back to product development, the marketing team, and the CFO.  These feedback loops need to be available all the time.  Speed directly from the market back to the team is critical.  One of the advantages of a sales outsourcing firm that specializes is new product launches is that we have designed our internal systems to provide these feedback loops and are contractually accountable for them. The right internal feedback loops will improve the product and align sales and marketing for shared success.

Commit to Digital Content…especially Blogging – We are a sales outsourcing firm making 1000s of outbound calls a day.  Customers are not waiting for us to call.  If we get them on the phone being able to share a quick piece of content (video, landing page, short demo) goes a long way to getting them to spend more time with us on call two and the same content can also be leveraged to disqualify prospects.   The average customer leveraged 10.7 pieces of content in their buying decision in 2011 and this is projected to increase in 2012.  If you have a limited budget we have strategies and tactics we leverage for our customers that allow them to take advantage of our sales outsourcing for new product launch tactics that turn your blog into a virtual sales rep.

Be Prepared to Educate the Market – Most new products are offering a new solution that is disruptive to the market.   Many new product companies are enamored with their technology (since they have passionately developed it) and forget that in many cases before you get to share those technical specs you need to help the customer understand and define the business problem they are trying to solve. You also need to be prepared to educate your customer how to calculate return.  Don’t underestimate the value of keeping it simple for the prospect especially in the early stages of the sales cycle.    For more info on how to frame your content strategy, please check out our B2B content framework graphic in our blog What is Successful Sales Collateral?

Sell from Scripts – This is one of several areas where a new product launch sales outsourcing firm has some strategic value over hiring individual internal reps or rolodex reps.  Outsource sales firms are designed to sell using a repeatable process so selling from scripts is critical.  It gives us something to measure and a way to anchor the success of the sale in the message and the story as opposed to the personality.

Commit Focused Energy to your Initial Ideal Customer Profile – If you don’t know what this is we have a short blog series dedicated to this.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.  You need to take your best guess at what verticals and what decision makers will buy and champion your product.  And then test those assumptions and measure those results.

Document the Buying Process and the Sales Process –  As you take your first customers from MQL or Cold Call through Sales Accepted to Sales Qualified to Closed deal you need to understand the key events in that cycle.   As a sales outsourcing firm this is one of the sales consulting functions we offer our clients.   We believe it’s critical because when combined with the right sales metrics (see below),  mapped to the Ideal Customer Profile (see above) it gives us the ability to start to more accurately forecast dollars in and dollars out investments for the entrepreneurs and boards we serve.  It’s also critical to remember that the same digital content we discussed in point 2 at the top of this blog is contributing to the sale.   You need to get your sales reps and marketing team to score that as part of the buying process as well.   Documenting the buying process allows you to build a sales process that allows the buyer to buy on their terms which means a sales ramp that consistently moves up an to the right and we are all in this entrepreneurial business to build sales machines that turn growth rates into hockey sticks.

Measure the Right Success Metrics – You need to measure the success of your early pipe efforts from day one.   A sales outsourcing solution for new product launches has the advantage of having years (at least 10 years in our case) of historical data to benchmark your efforts against similar sales to similar markets and similar decision makers.   This is especially critical for new product launches that have no historical data to benchmark against.  To learn more about the metrics Gabriel Sales feels are most critical feel free to reach out to us to Learn if you can Build a High Velocity Sales Machine.

Know Why You Win and Why You Lose – If you are measuring the right data you will already be well on the way to knowing why your new product launch is successful.  Its also important to understand why you are not winning when you lose.  One value-add we provide as a sales outsourcing consulting service for new product launches is that after losing a deal we will call the decision maker if possible and ask “ for own learning, is there anything we could’ve done better?”  We will take notes and pass that information on to our clients.

Commit to Marketing Automation and Nurturing Prospects “Not Yet Ready to Buy” – Our clients are investing in more than closed deals when they are choosing to outsource part or all of their sales and marketing operations.  We are not going to win every deal the first shot we take especially for new products.   Some may not have budget immediately, others may be waiting for our clients to have a couple more customers, others may need to champion into their organization.   Data from Forrester states that 70% of Marketing Qualified Leads will buy in a solution area they invest time in exploring within 18 months.  If nurtured correctly 25% of your MQLs will hit your pipe within a year according to Aberdeen.   If you put 400 MQLs into the pipe in your pipe during your initial launch this means (assuming your product hits the mark) that you will have 100 SALs by year if you invest in nurturing out of the gate.  Gabriel Sales provides sales consulting to assist with multiple nurturing from lead scoring, to social media outreach, content testing and marketing automation software implementation.

Lead with Value Proposition but Sell with Differentiators –   Selling starts when a customer says “No” and arguments are never made in a vacuum. Value propositions are a great lead but they only take you so far.  To close a deal your business case needs to make sense in the context of a category. We take all of our new product launch sales outsourcing clients through a quick and proprietary process that helps us and them to tell that story.  This does not mean that you need to sell directly against the competition it simply means that the story will include what the prospect/marketplace has heard from the competition.  In many cases we find that that competition is an internal competitor.

To see if our Sales Consulting and/or Sales and Marketing Outsourcing Solution is right for taking your new product to market we invite you to visit our New Product Launch Sales Strategies Resource Page.  CLICK HERE

For a custom Go-To-Market Evaluation please feel free to CONTACT US to benchmark the market and see if a High Velocity Sales Machine is a possibility for you.

Recap of Denver Digital Summit 2016

by | Jun 30, 2016

If you missed it, the 2016 Digital Summit in Denver took place June 15-16, and it was great! The vendors told me this was the largest Digital Summit on the west side of the Mississippi (yes, larger than the Los Angeles event). #DSDEN16 brought together hundreds of companies to share ideas and discuss the trends in digital marketing. After a bit of reflection, here are a few major takeaways worth sharing.

Community

Denver is a booming area for the Millennial generation, and the success of businesses here was epitomized at the Digital Summit. It was perfect weather, everyone was ecstatic, and the flow of ideas and discussions brought important strategies to the forefront of everyone’s mind. Several attendees stated of all the Digital Summit’s they’ve attended, this was one of the largest. Relative to where you are, anyone in this field should invest in going to the Digital Summit next year.

Mediums for Marketing
The big takeaways were video and social – as one “socialite”, @kirill_kniazev,   stated in 140: #snapchat – do, #email – still good, #seo – great ROI, #mobile – more important than ever, create experiences, stories.

Snapchat is currently the hot social media app, and there was plenty of discussion around how to implement it within marketing strategies. This app is the catalyst for a shift in video marketing, making the norm quantity over quality. Snapchat allows for instant video, which means instant marketing. Now anyone can record and quickly watch videos from their phones. So while the quality is not on a professional level, sharing it is much quicker since the content has to be efficiently put into ten seconds. We see this as a must for targeting Millennials in the consumer space. In the B2B Marketing world, however, it may be awhile. The social winners for B2B sales and marketing are still LinkedIn and Twitter.

Marketing Automation

There was some surprise at the conference – the acceptance of marketing automation and how few in the sales team actually use the tools. Even when talking to sales reps from the marketing automation vendors, they do not use the tools themselves for sending emails. It is an underutilization of the amazing technology that many companies are paying 1000’s of dollars for every month. For implementation of marketing automation for sales, take a look at our recent post.

The Denver Digital Summit was educational, fun and entertaining. Thank you #AskGaryVee for inspiring my team, and see you there next year!