Question: Why Does Sales Content and Marketing Automation Matter for B2B Sales and Sales for Small Business
Answer: If you don’t have it and your competitor does you will lose business!
The rules of B2B Sales have changed. Small Businesses can now compete against bigger budgets. With the new wave of B2B marketing tools available, you can:
- Watch how your prospects are educating themselves
- Understand their needs
- Forecast their interest
All with limited interaction directly with your best reps until the prospects is ready to buy!
No one ever wakes up thinking, “I can’t wait to get a sales call today!” Nobody really wants to be sold. Especially by a salesperson. Really, when was the last time you even answered an unidentified call at work, much less listened for more than 30 seconds when a sales rep made his elevator pitch unless they hit a hot button in the first 15 seconds. Would you take a second call if they did not offer you something of value first and some additional content at the end of that first call? The same is true for your prospects. That’s why they avoid your salespeople until the last possible minute.
While your customers don’t like being sold they still like buying. So instead they are educating themselves by accessing your publicly available information and connecting with peers online until they’ve narrowed down their options. In fact, SiriusDecisions estimates that the buyer’s journey is generally 70% complete by the time a sales person is contacted. Think about it. When was the last time you made a purchase without spending time researching on your own first. Poking around on Google and Bing. Checking out the companies website while you were on the phone with the cold caller if you were interested. If how the buyer buys has changed… have you looked at how you sell to see if its meeting the buyers mark? Is your sales team running to stand still.
The winning closer is no longer the rep that hunts but the one who consults with prospects to simplify their decision-making process based on a keen understanding of buyer interest and behavior. When a prospect finally reaches out, your sales rep had better understand everything there is to know about the buyer and be prepared to deliver value. Immediately. That’s why marketing automation and sales content is critical. If you don’t have B2B marketing tools and processes in place your competition will win the business.
Marketing Automation Leads Means Sales Readiness – its about giving your salesperson the ability to deliver the right content and the right message to the right person at the right time. And its about:
Giving your highest paid talent a prioritized list of who to contact next based on
- Behavioral data that summarizes prospect interests and intent
- Tools that alert your top talent when their hottest prospects are online and at their desks
- A library of content aligned to specific stages of the buying process that helps your rep build trust and rapport with the buyer
Your success as a marketer, business unit manager or small business owner depends on your ability to help the sales team sell. Ask yourself these questions:
- What if your competitors demand generation engine could tell your sales reps what each prospect is interested before and during the entire sales process?
- What if your competitor gave their sales reps tools so they could send the right content and track that content as the buyer was buying?
- What if your competitors delivery team blogged once a week with their thought leadership and points of view to help your their sales reps address objections?
Who is going to win that deal?
If any of the thought we are sharing hit a chord or to see if Sales and Marketing Outsourcing or some Sales and Marketing Process Consulting may be able to help you accelerate your B2B Demand Generation Engine please feel free to contact us for a free benchmark and 30 minute needs analysis.
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