“Customer preferences have been steadily shifting away from relying primarily on in-person interactions with sellers toward accessing digital channels for completing buying tasks".

Gartner Digital Buying Survey tells us that 43% of B2B customers prefer a rep-free experience. When split by age groups, 54% of millennials, 43% of Gen Xers and 29% of baby boomers preferred a rep-free experience...

What happens when you apply this filter to a traditional Sales and Marketing culture?

Brent Adamson puts it best in his recent article in Harvard Business Review -

“Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete”:

“Most B2B sales and marketing teams typically function in a “serial,” or linear manner. Marketing engages prospective buyers early in their purchase journey, qualifying their readiness and fit for sales rep engagement through digital “content nurturing.” Once those leads have been designated “marketing qualified,” individual sellers take over, pursuing those leads through in-person or virtual interactions. In the middle is the “handoff,” where marketing passes the baton to sales, and online customer engagement gives way to in-person customer engagement.”

Thousands of versions of this model exist and are in play today, becoming less and less effective each month. 

To test this, we ask a simple question when we meet a management team…

“...what have you done to adjust how you create demand for your products and services now that your buyers have moved to digital…?”

The answers are often confused and regularly include some words around how someone in the organisation is “doing a bit more with LinkedIn…”. When that is explored it usually means that there are more posts going out from the company page.

We are in the middle of the biggest evolution of demand generation and sales conversion in the last 50 years, in every sector and every geographic location. 

A moment in time where every element of what we used to call Sales and Marketing is being dismantled, scrutinised, reframed and rebuilt….and the general response is to put more stuff out on the company page and get more people to share it... 

As Brent Adamson says…

“For years, however, B2B buying has dramatically evolved to a far more digitally dominant buying behavior, rendering much of that commercial model not only out of date, but nearly obsolete.”

So, the information is out there, the headlines are there for all to see....what gets in the way?

We often find that the organisations look upon the digital transformation of demand generation and sales conversion as a marketing issue. 

Many start at the front and try to work back and often end up asking the wrong questions…

"We don’t have enough leads and our pipeline is shrinking = Do more marketing!"

This is something we see across the board. A complex digital problem trying to be fixed by doing more analogue activities in a digital format… “doing a bit more with LinkedIn…”.   

The issue runs much deeper and wider and speaks to the core of the company culture and appetite to win.

This is the time to sweat out the finite details of how your buyers are now buying and how you fit into that motion.

This is the time to sit down, put the ego and emotions to one side, take a deep breath with the team and do the hard sums…

1. How do people buy from us today?
2. What will enable more to buy from us today?
3. How will they buy tomorrow?
4. What do we know today?
5. Who can help us?

and..."how do we tune into that and how do we get the march on our competition?"

For this you need the best advice, the most up to date and grounded in data not gut feel or anecdote.

Instead of tinkering about spamming the world with corporate brochures, turn the company thinking towards creating influence.

Another question we ask management teams when we meet them…

“Who are the leading technical and commercial digital influencers in your sector...?” 

Not a single person has ever told me who it is in their sector. 

Not only should you know but you should have a plan to make sure its you and your team.

The buying world is looking for influence.

How do we know that…?

The 2021 Thought leadership Impact Study from Edelman and LinkedIn gives us Gold…

“B2B thought leadership, when done well, significantly influences brand perception and buying behaviours throughout the entire decision process.”

Think about that for a second…

Your thought leadership significantly increases your brand perception and buying behaviours through the entire process…

Think back to earlier in the article….” We don’t have enough leads and our pipeline is shrinking...”

This not simply a marketing issue to fix, this is board level.

Let’s here from John Ghiorso, CEO at Orca Pacific:

A modern CEO spearheading the march on modern thought leadership as a brand builder and lead generator...

This is just one simple element of the non-linear approach that is required to remedy the broken Sales and Marketing situation we find out selves in. 

Many still sit on the fence hopeful of ‘green shoots around the corner' or that all these activities that do not currently contribute to pipeline, suddenly will, like magic.

Its time to do the internal analysis and have a look at what is current and effective in the worlds and make sure you are your team are at the leading edge. 

You need to be the leading technical and commercial digital influencer sin your sectors, that’s where the Gold is.

Live Social ‘22

CruxDLA Ignite

/