by gabriel_sales | Apr 22, 2014
Not too long ago, sales had a lot of power. Sales people used to be able to use knowledge and information as a closing tool.
Today, we live in a world of information, most of which is freely accessible. Buyers have no reason to go to a salesperson for information when they can go a website to get the same thing. Google’s Think Insights recently wrote:
“. . . our research has shown that, on average, business buyers do not contact suppliers directly until 57 percent of the purchase process is complete. That means for nearly two thirds of the buying process, your customers are out in the ether: Forming opinions, learning technical specifications, building requirements lists, and narrowing down their options, all on their own, with minimal influence from you.”
The main take away here is not that B2B buyers are now completing the majority of their buying process on their own, it is that they prefer to do so. If buyers preferred the old sales process, they would have continued to engage with it. Data shows they aren’t, so the question we need to ask ourselves is what do buyers like about this new process.
The main difference we see between the old and new sales model is choice. In the old model, buyers had little choice in when to be sold to—everything was done in the seller’s way and on the seller’s time. Today, the buyer can choose everything about their buying process experience: when, what, how, where. If your sales and marketing process isn’t set up to give your buyer this type of freedom of choice, he is also free to choose to leave your buying process altogether and buy from a competitor.
The buyer likes to have freedom of choice. And, the company who is able to give it to them will be the one who wins the business.
Continue reading for more on B2B sales and freedom of choice.
by gabriel_sales | Apr 18, 2014
This is the second half of a blog series featuring tips for creating more effective B2B content marketing. You can find part one here.
2. Create a publishing calendar.
As we’ve written about previously, B2B marketers today are increasingly expected to act like publishers. It is no longer enough to publish content once a year or once a quarter; you need a consistent stream of valuable content to remain relevant to your customers and prospects. In order to keep track of and organize the publication of all of this content over time, it is a very good idea to create a publishing calendar.
Without a calendar to execute to, it is easy for a great strategy to fall apart halfway through. Conversely, if everyone on the marketing team has clearly defined tasks with deadlines attached, there are no excuses for not getting things done. Try to create publishing calendars or schedules a few months in advance, or quarterly. Scheduling out any further than that may prevent you from staying agile and optimizing for improvement. To ensure the process goes smoothly, it is a good idea to have daily or weekly meetings to assess progress and address any issues that prevent work from being completed on time.
3. Put production and approval processes in place.
Every time a piece of marketing content is developed, there are a number of steps the content has to go through from creation to publication. Many times, content needs to go through various stages of editing before it is approved—grammatical, formatting/HTML, etc. In terms of both efficiency and quality assurance, companies should document these processes for content production and approval.
When production and approval processes are in place, there is no ambiguity about what needs to get done before a piece of content is completed and ready for use. One thing to remember is to factor in the time it takes to complete the production and approval processes when creating your publishing calendar. For example, if an email vendor requires email creative two days before an email blast is sent, that needs to be documented in your production process and reflected in the deadlines of your calendar.
For more tips on creating more effective B2B marketing content, read 7 B2B Content Ideas that Help Move the Deal Forward.
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Apr 16, 2014
The world of content marketing and how it should impact your b2b strategy
MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute recently put out a report on B2B Content Marketing 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends. The report looked at B2B companies overall marketing effectiveness and found that 42% of B2B marketers say they are effective at content marketing.
When you take a deeper dive into the report, it seems there are identifiable factors that contribute to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of companies’ content marketing programs. The report shows that whether you have someone overseeing strategy, the number of tactics used, the number of social media tactics used and the amount of budget allocated all may impact a companies’ content marketing effectiveness.
However, it seems the factor most closely tied to whether or not a B2B company feels effective at content marketing is the existence of a ready-to-implement strategy. Taking this into consideration, here are three tips for more effective B2B content marketing:
- Create a content strategy.
If you have no strategy behind the content you produce, it is like trying to do archery in the dark; and blindly shooting arrows without a clear target is never going to be effective. In order for your marketing content to get people to take the actions you want (e.g. fill out a form, send an email, make a purchase, etc.), you need to think about who the audience is and how they will be able to use it. For every piece of content you create, there should be a clear intention and goal behind it, whether that goal is brand awareness or lead gen.
Part of creating a B2B content marketing strategy involves mapping out the stages of your sales cycle and developing content each stage. This entails early-stage, educational content (e.g. blogs, videos) to help with discovery as well as late-stage content that verifies the value prop (e.g. case studies, use cases)—and everything in between. By setting up your content marketing strategy like this beforehand, your prospects can find content that is relevant and valuable regardless of where they are in their buying process.
Continue reading.
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Apr 14, 2014
The 2014 B2B Content Marketing Report done by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found that 93% of B2B companies currently engage in content marketing.
These companies have realized that today, buyers begin to interact with B2B companies digitally before engaging with sales directly. They know that in order for buyers to interact with their company digitally, they need to have digital content for buyers to interact with.
While it is great that so many companies are engaged in creating content, many B2B companies are failing to understand the true function and goal of marketing content in relation to the overall sales process.
Many companies are treating their content—blogs, white papers, webcasts, nurturing emails, etc.—like an extension of their sales pitch. They see every blog post as another chance to push their product or sell their service. They see every email as the perfect place to try to close the deal. The main issue with marketing content like this is that the focus is on the company, not the customer. The emphasis is put on the company’s goal (selling) rather than the customer’s goal (solving a problem).
There is always going to be a time and place to sell. However, many of the prospects that interact with your marketing content are nowhere near ready to buy. In fact, only about 5% of B2B prospects are ready to buy at any given time. The other 95% are at various stages of their buying cycle—discovery, education, verification, etc.
This means that if all of your marketing content is simply an ongoing sales pitch, only 5% of your audience is going to be receptive to it at any given time. The other 95% still want to be educated or compare their options, and your sales pitch is going to seem pushy or annoying.
While talking about your product or service is okay, try to keep the hard sales messaging on your product and service related pages only. In your marketing content like blogs, white papers and webcasts, your focus should be providing valuable information that your prospect can use in some way. By providing value prior to purchase, you help to build trust with your prospect, which is a prerequisite for most–if not all–B2B deals.
To make sure your marketing content is focused on helping the buyer solve problems (rather than selling the buyer a product/service), you should first work to clearly understand what those problems are. Then, create content that answers any and all questions your typical buyer may have in trying to solve those problems.
A simple rule for determining whether your content is company/selling-oriented or customer-oriented is to ask, “What does this piece of content do for the prospect?”
If your only answer is, “It convinces them that my product is the best” or, “It explains why they should buy my service,” you probably should go back to the drawing board. ”If your answer is something like, “It gives them information on the pros and cons of SaaS solutions” or, “It explains the five most important aspects of energy efficiency,” you are probably on the right track.
To learn more about creating compelling and engaging B2B marketing content, read The New Rules for B2B Customer Engagement. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Mar 28, 2014
This is part two of a series on creating a cohesive sales and marketing relationship. To read part 1, click here.
2. Establish open communication.
If open communication between sales and marketing is established during the creation of content, this point may not be necessary. However, in cases where marketing creates content independently of sales, it should be marketing’s responsibility to inform sales of its purpose or goal and how it fits into the overall sales process.
For example, let’s say you publish a new white paper. Marketing should explain to sales what stage of the sales cycle it is most appropriate for (discovery vs. verification) and what its intended audience is (technical buyer vs. executive). Similarly, if a blog was written to address an objection from an HR perspective, sales needs to know that, so they don’t send it to someone in IT. This way, marketing is enabling sales to use the content as effectively as possible, and both sides are able to succeed.
3. Learn to rely on each other to make incremental improvements.
While the initial content strategy is usually marketing’s job, it is a good idea to source content ideas from sales as ongoing campaigns take place. In the day-to-day work of cold calling and qualifying, sales reps may have experiences that were not expected in the initial strategy session and could be used to inspire valuable sales collateral. For example, if your cold callers hear the same objection over and over, sales should ask marketing to write a blog that can be shared to help overcome it. Similarly, sales might find that while your value prop focuses on quality, the real pain your prospects are expressing on the phone is related to speed. By communicating that information to marketing, marketing can make more effective content that speaks directly to buyers’ objections and needs.
By keeping the lines of communication open with regular meetings—rather than working separately in silos—sales and marketers can work together to simultaneously create a better experience for your buyer and increase revenue.
Getting sales and marketing on the same page is probably never going to be easy; there are inherent differences to each function that will always create tension of some kind. However, by simply starting from the same place, communicating regularly and relying on each other’s input for improvement, much of that tension can be resolved.
To learn more about getting sales and marketing on the same page, read Holding Sales & Marketing Responsible with a Shared Quota. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Mar 27, 2014
Like other epic dramas of our time including Yankees vs. Red Sox and iPhone vs. Droid, the battle between sales and marketing is real, and it is not likely going away any time soon.
As a sales outsourcing company, we this is something we experience on a daily basis. And, our experience has shown us that while getting sales and marketing to work together is always going to be a somewhat cultural issue, there are several practical things you can do around content strategy and development to help create a team atmosphere, which will help alleviate some of the tension overall.
1. Start from the same place.
The first stage in getting sales and marketing to play nice is to make sure everyone is working from the same playbook. Above everything sales and marketing does, there should be your company’s sales story, which clearly explains the value prop and main selling points of your product/service. Everyone in both sales and marketing should commit the story to memory, and all sales scripts and marketing content should use the story as its backbone.
By making sure everyone’s work in the sales/marketing process begins from the same starting point, you help to ensure your prospects are getting a consistent and unified experience of your company—whether they engage digitally or on the phone. And, by establishing clear agreement between sales and marketing about ‘the big picture’ upfront, there is less of a chance for disagreement when the details are getting worked out later on.
To continue reading, click here.
Not too long ago, sales had a lot of power. Sales people used to be able to use knowledge and information as a closing tool.
