by Glen Springer | Mar 25, 2014
This year was the first time I ever filled out an NCAA bracket.
I like basketball, but I’m more of an NBA girl. To be perfectly honest, the only thing I knew about the tournament going in was that my team (Colorado) didn’t have much of a chance after losing its star player to an ACL injury earlier in the season.
So, not knowing anything about the teams in the tournament, I decided I would get creative with my bracket. I narrowed down my choices of how I would make my picks: base them off of school colors or team mascots. I couldn’t decide, so I flipped a coin.
Mascots won.
This meant that I had North Carolina Central (Eagles) beating Iowa State (Cyclones) in the first round. It meant that I had Saint Louis in my final four because I thought a Billiken, a good luck figure that represents, “things as they ought to be,” was way cooler than Michigan’s Wolverine. It also meant that I had the Orange (Syracuse) winning the whole thing, purely because of the novelty of having a fruit for a mascot.
As of today (after the 2nd round), my bracket is destroyed. I am now in last place in the office pool, and my co-workers are laughing at me.
What did I learn from my first Final Four failure?
You can’t replace a strategy backed by logic and data with guesswork and expect success.
My bracket picks—despite the creative enthusiasm that went into them—were not based on the realities of the world today. As cool as I think the Billikens are, it does not change the fact that Saint Louis has never made it past the third round in tournament history, and the odds weren’t stacked in their favor to make it happen this year.
Picking my NCAA bracket based off of mascot preference is like executing sales and marketing campaigns without a strategy and data. Without conducting market research and leveraging analytics to discover your ideal customer profile and determine what tactics are most effective, your sales and marketing campaigns lack any sort of intelligent direction. You might as well pick who to target based off company logos.
So, while it is nice to think that you can succeed at something without having any real knowledge or skill, it’s not generally how things work.
Whether picking sports brackets or running content marketing campaigns, having a data-based strategy that supports your decisions is the clearest path to victory.
If you want to know more about the value of conducting market research and creating a go-to-market strategy prior to campaign launch, read 3 Things You Can Learn From Go-To-Market Strategy Consulting. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Mar 3, 2014
B2B professional service companies are a rare breed. The sometimes abstract nature of the service makes for a tough sale and a longer sales cycle than most. These companies therefore need all the help they can get in terms of sales and marketing, so knowing where your buyers are evaluating your services is key to a successful sales process.
In a recent survey reported by MarketingProfs, it was found that the two most common places people go to evaluate professional services companies are the company’s website (81%) and search engines (63%). Beyond that, buyers ask friends or colleagues if they have heard of the company (62%), look to social media (60%) and ask a reference the company provides (56%). The survey also found that buyer used an average of 3.2 methods in their evaluation process.
While these findings are not surprising, there are several conclusions that can be drawn.
1. It makes sense for professional service firms to devote significant resources to their website and invest time in leveraging it as a sales tool.
If 81% of your buyers are heading straight to your website to evaluate your services, your website better be set up to allow them to do that. A homepage with a “sign up for our newsletter” link is no longer enough. Professional services companies’ websites need to include readily available content that:
2. Professional services firms need to use social media—if only for evaluation/vetting purposes.
B2B professional service firms are never going to be the most buzzed about thing on social media. But, if 60% of buyers look to social media in their buying process, it makes sense to at least have a presence there. The same survey found that LinkedIn is by far the most commonly used social platform during evaluation of professional services companies (70%). Twitter is only used 5% of the time and 25% of buyers check Facebook, Google or other social networks.
So, while posting constantly on Twitter might not be worth the time for professional services firms, setting up company profiles on LinkedIn, Google and Facebook is probably worthwhile. You may not need to post updates everyday, simply having an active company profile is sometimes enough to be seen as a credible, 21st century business.
3. For professional services companies to be most effective, one tactic is not enough.
With so many places to get information today, buyers are leveraging multiple resources over the course of their buying process. This suggests that to be most effective in their sales and marketing efforts, they need to leverage a variety of sales and marketing tactics to meet their buyers everywhere they are looking.
Because professional services buyers are looking an average of 3.2 places during their evaluation process, focusing only on your website—or only on SEO, or only on social media—is not enough. Professional services companies need to simultaneously work and monitor all spaces where prospects are engaging to produce the best results.
For more sales tips of B2B professional services sales, read 10 Sales Strategies for Professional Service Firms. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Jan 14, 2014
For many B2B companies, a gigantic sales staff is not in their arsenal. This is understandable; many B2B companies are small and have to stretch the resources they do have. Because of this, the CEO sometimes ends up taking on the role of the entire sales department, from the junior rep who does cold calls to the senior executive that closes.
From our experience selling B2B products and services for the past 13 years, we have found that there are several issues with this approach.
It may seem like a good idea to have your CEO selling through the entire sales process, as he knows the most and is the most senior. But in reality, he does not belong selling at the front of the pipe. It is like walking through the front door of a business and seeing the CEO sitting at the receptionist desk. It just doesn’t feel right.
This is because selling this way creates issues with perception. If your CEO is the first person a prospect interacts with at your company, he or she may be left wondering, “Is there no one else working there that can take my call?” or “Why isn’t someone else doing this?”
Additionally, this practice is inefficient in regards to business. If your CEO is selling to every prospect that comes in the pipe, he is going to spend a lot of time selling to people who are simply kicking tires. Because your CEO is your highest value employee, having him sell to people who are not really interested equates to a lot of time and money wasted.
The reality of B2B sales today is in the early stages of the sales process, prospects simply want to know you understand their problem as they explore their solution options and short list preferred vendors. When a prospect is new to the sales pipeline, they may be quite overwhelmed by their problem. A senior executive may exacerbate this feeling by speaking beyond the prospects grasp of the issue, moving to quickly or just creating an environment where the prospect is overwhelmed with jargon, numbers and statistics. Regardless of the situation, no one likes to feel like they are way behind.
Here are our suggestions for an alternative approach:
- Hold your CEO back in the early stages of selling and use his expertise and passion as a closing tool.
- Clone your CEO’s early-stage sales efforts into digital content that can be shared one-to-many by more junior employees
- Use your CEOs expertise when other executives are at the table who are peers and speak the same ‘language’
This approach does several things. First, it increases your bandwidth for selling by enabling you to engage with many people simultaneously. It also allows you to determine what parts of your sales or marketing process are working and what aren’t. Finally, it allows your highest value employee to focus on your highest value activities—closing, delivering and growing the business.
For more B2B sales tips, read “3 Reasons Your B2B Sales is Failing”. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Nov 22, 2013
While we were unable to attend Dreamforce this year, we’ve been keeping an eye on the amazing presentations coming out of the event from industry experts. One of the most interesting insights we’ve seen so far came from Marcus Nelson of Addvocate, who discussed how to effectively promote your content.
He began his presentation with these three statistics:
- 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know
- 70% trust consumer opinions posted online
- 14% trust advertising
To us, Nelson’s numbers show that regardless of new technologies and marketing platforms, people and relationships are still at the heart of selling.
So, what does this mean for promoting your content? It means you need other people than you to sing your praises in digital form. Nelson suggested that companies need to start taking advantage of an underused resource—employees. He explained that in a new Edelman Trust Barometer report, it was found that the average employee is trusted two times more than a C-level executive. By having your employees actively promoting your content as individuals, they can engage in authentic conversations with your prospects that will build trust without exhausting your financial resources.
Nelson and many other presentations at Dreamforce also give evidence for the growing importance of social proof—defined by Wikipedia as a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. In terms of sales and marketing, this basically means that when people are unsure of what to do in a purchasing situation, they look to others who have been in the same situation and imitate their behavior.
Understanding how social proof works and using it to your advantage is a skill we believe will grow in value in 2014. Tactically speaking, the digital consumer looks for social proof in customer testimonials, social media and other third-party resources, so making sure there are positive and accurate reflections of your company in these places is key to making social proof work for you.
For more tips on how to succeed in the coming year, read 2014 B2B Sales and Marketing Trends. Pease feel free to contact us with any questions.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 24, 2013
This blog discusses the new challenges in sales, how the B2B buying process has changed, and how to adapt to the concept of “bought then, sold“.
If your team is accountable for growth, your challenges remain the same: set strategy, generate qualified leads, develop and close—with constant pressure to control your cost of sale. But in today’s digital landscape, your buyers are becoming more self-directed. They want to buy on their own time and expect to be educated digitally. Only once they feel educated on the concept of “bought then, sold” they are ready to be engaged by a sales rep.
In addition, over the past four years, call-to-connect ratios have plummeted, so inside reps are half as effective. Cold calling can still work in some scenarios, but it is more expensive. Trade show costs are also increasing, which is reflected in the rising cost per lead. Finally, email marketing is also more competitive with decreasing ROI.
Today, none of these tactics work in isolation unless (according to the top marketers in the US), you support your pipeline development with inside sales and a commitment to content marketing, SEO and social media—with the top 10% of marketers implementing marketing automation. This is because your buyers are now relying on digital education to help them understand their needs and sort through their options.
More and more products today are “bought then, sold,” and this buying process affects your sales process in one of two ways. Either, buyers take longer to educate themselves digitally, so you need to nurture leads longer. Or, the opposite happens, and your buyer does not even want to speak to a sales rep until feel well educated and are near a buying decision.
Statistics show that 80% of leads are passed to a senior sales rep too early, and 70% of mishandled leads end up buying from a competitor. So, the biggest mistake you can make is to try and close before your buyers is ready to buy. This will drive away your buyer and squander your existing lead generation budget.
The new rules of buying and selling mean you need to:
- Create relevant buyer content for both sales and marketing
- Score leads to get buyers to closers at the right time
- Nurture leads longer, at a lower cost
- Push content across all formats into social media
With a commitment to this type of alignment, you can expect substantial revenue (157% growth) at a decreased cost of sale within 18 months to pull away from the competition.
For a more detailed discussion of this topic of “bought then, sold” or to learn how we can help, watch this quick overview video.
by gabriel_sales | Sep 4, 2013
In the B2B sales world, marketing videos are becoming more and more popular as a B2B sales tactic.
While there are many different types of B2B sales videos you can make, it is good to start by considering what you want the video to do (entertain, build brand awareness, etc.). As a B2B sales and marketing outsourcing company, we have found that “headshot” videos of your top executive/s can help move prospects through the sales cycle while simultaneously making your entire sales process more efficient.
Here are three advantages to using headshot videos of your top executive/s as a B2B sales tactic:
1. It makes your prospect feel more comfortable.
Most executives are experts in one thing or another, and experts love talking to other experts to bounce ideas around and troubleshoot. Executives love talking to other executives because they share a certain type of understanding and perspective in regards to what really matters. For example, executives think about things like P&L and margins in ways that junior salesmen have not yet considered. When a prospect sees that they are in agreement with your executive’s way of thinking, you are one step closer to closing.
During your B2B sales cycle, you can offer an onDemand video of your top executive speaking about the problems you solve for your customers to facilitate that experience of understanding for your prospect in a digital format. Simply by watching a short video, your prospect feels like they have been able to pick your executive’s brain enough to speak intelligently about your product or solution.
2. You can address objections digitally.
Headshot videos of your executive are also valuable in addressing objections digitally. When selling any type of product or service, the same type of objections are likely to come up over and over again. By having your executives address these objections in onDemand videos, your prospect feels like you understand their concerns, and your salesperson doesn’t have to explain the same thing over and over again. This can be especially useful for high-level objections that require technical expertise or explanation beyond the knowledge of a junior salesman.
3. Everyone spends their time more efficiently.
The most important advantage of creating headshot videos of your executive is time efficiency. For most B2B business owners, their business is like their ‘baby’; they love it and could talk about it all day and night. Unfortunately, that is not an effective B2B sales tactic as your executive’s time is expensive and could be spent better elsewhere. By filming your executive’s pitch and sharing it with prospects digitally, your executive can instead have a one-to-many conversation—saving huge amounts of valuable time.
Using a marketing automation platform, these type of executive headshot videos can also make your entire sales process run more smoothly. When you send or share your videos with prospects, your marketing automation platform will tell you which prospects watched what videos. This way, you will know where each prospect is at in terms of discovery and education, so you know when to bring in the executive to help with the close. This saves both your executive and your salesmen from wasting time in meetings with prospects who are not educated or not looking to buy yet.
In summary, headshot videos of your executive can be extremely useful for your prospects, your executives and your salespeople. Your prospects love them because they get high-level education from someone who shares their business perspective. Your executives love them because they no longer have to give the same pitch or address the same objections over and over again. Finally, your salespeople love them because they help push prospects further along the sales cycle while also giving visibility into when to bring in the executive to close.
If you would like more information on using video for B2B marketing, click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
This year was the first time I ever filled out an NCAA bracket.
