We are in one of the most challenging times in the history of B2B sales and marketing.
It doesn’t matter how many redundancies or restructuring is done, it won’t solve the real problem.
Unlike B2C marketing where automation scales relationships, the same doesn’t apply to B2B, no matter how clever the AI might be.
Creating real conversations with real people is the only way to grow your business!
Here are the driving forces behind the crisis we find ourselves in:
- Automated sales messages have annoyed recipients as they feel impersonal.
- Sales teams are in selling mode with pressure from leadership to sell, rather than guide their buyers to a positive commercial outcome.
- Generation X (age 41-56) hide from suppliers in the shadows, Millennials (age 25-40) are wise to sales tactics and Generation Z don’t answer cold calls or respond to cold outreach. These groups rely on insight available online and friends and colleagues to form their shortlist decision.
- Buyers don’t want to speak with sellers - research by Forrester has found that the actual time a buyer spends with a supplier is 17% of the purchase process, and when that time is spent with 3 or 4 suppliers, each are getting access to less than 5% of the purchase process to influence a buying decision.
- The purchase decision is 90% of the way through the purchase process before a buyer wants to speak with a supplier.
So tell me, how is an insight led approach going to generate more conversations?
It might with those in-market or in the consideration phase, though even then, if you don’t have a relationship with the individual, peer2peer, not business2business, you’re unlikely to make the cut. It can happen, if you’re lucky, however luck nor hope is a strategy to win.
Times have moved on, the solution selling approach died more than a decade ago and the age of the insight led sale no longer scales pipeline now that everyone of your competitors sound the same as you.
Our success as B2B sales and marketing leaders hinges on how we make our customers feel, and the differentiating experience we give them. And it starts way before any buying process begins.
Insight has its place, to trigger a thought in your customers mind, when their mind is open to it, however that’s less than 30% of your territory at any one moment in time. Using insight is powerful when used correctly; To change your buyers perspective on a particular problem they thought they had, to define purchase criteria that aligns with your unique differentiators. It will act as the North Star when shaping an evaluation process to help your buyer navigate the complex buying process and even used as a tool to build consensus with your buyers peers, to support getting additional budget approval or resources to enable the project to happen.
This, in the form of a well defined enablement program is what you need if your close rates are declining.
But what if you don’t have enough conversations with your target target audience, what do you do then? …throw more content at them, do more ads, more events, more expensive marketing activity. …if you want to stay in the crisis, fill your boots!
Organisations that succeed the crisis will do something very different.
- COMMUNITY
They will put community at the heart of everything they do. Bring customers, prospects and partners together in a safe and non-sales environment and encourage information sharing and learning, so potential buyers (your target audience) learn from each other and make informed decisions, without negative pressure.
- SOCIAL INTERACTION & INFLUENCE
They will empower their people to walk digital corridors effectively; teach them how to create and amplify their personal brand, activate their networks and create content that engages their target audience, scaling the number of conversations they, and their organisation can have. People buy from people, so empower them to create and execute their own strategy, and accept that automation and corporate content will not scale the number of human conversations you have, the old techniques simply don’t work in anymore.
- VALUE DEFINITION
In addition to bringing people together to create valuable connections, organisations that focus on helping, guiding and coaching will win; Help by providing marketers (your target audience) with the information they need to navigate the complexity of optimising or transforming their marketing strategy. Be empathetic to the challenges they face when convincing peers to support them, or secure much needed budget to realise the value of their ideas. Coach marketers (your buyers), help them see how they can successfully navigate the complex buying process that exists within silo’d organisations today.
Tackle these three things, have a strategy for each one, as part of your growth strategy, not forgetting the importance of enabling your people to create and deliver the value your company delivers to your customers.
My most successful times as a commercial leader within MarTech was when I brought Community, Enablement and Value together.
Deriving success in a world when others around me were struggling.
Leadership is often underrated, especially in larger organisations when the feeling is the wider GTM has all the influence, which is not always the case. One of the most successful phases in my career was building a business unit from scratch, to 40+ people and $22M ARR within a little over 4 years. And with an average deal value of $200k ARR that was a lot of deals, of all sizes. Our smallest around $30k and our largest $3.6M ARR.
A new emerging territory, untouched, with no existing MarTech customers. 103 countries and 30,000 companies within our TAM (Total Addressable Market), to sell too. You’d think that was a Sales Leaders dream. Well, it was mine and I now had the opportunity to make it a success.
It started with focus. I defined our value proposition around two vertical’s with a specific average deal size in mind, then I prioritised the countries we would deliver in, just 5 of them to begin with and the list of companies we’d target. After the first year I grew the sales team, I hired SDR’s (Sales Development Reps) and Marketing (no budget yet) but we had the resource to plan pipeline generating activities at very low / no cost, to aid the sales teams efforts with prospecting.
At the heart of everything we did was Community and Enablement. Continuous enablement of the team to understand the commercial value our platform and services delivered, and how to position that value effectively so that our customers, prospects and partners could see a clear pathway to success.
Building a community of marketers became the focus as our pipeline generation initiatives were networking opportunities, environments where learning and connecting, with lots of fun thrown in, became part of each one we did. Gatherings started small, with 10 or so people, and overtime grew to regular in person meet-ups and dinners of 60+ people. My peers could not understand how we were getting so many high value contacts together so regularly. In my mind it was quite simple, we did not sell to them, we were maintaining a customer renewal rate of 90% as a result of making our customers successful, and we didn’t mind if we brought customers, prospects and partners together, news spread and each person felt the experience was a valuable one - so kept coming back for more.
Enabling and empower the team was a constant.
Hiring top talent was paramount to our success. Though just one part of it, creating the environment and providing the tools they needed to create meaningful conversations with our target audience was also important. And reinforcing that through regular coaching and enablement sessions maintained a level of quality that supported our growth.
As a team we invested time in defining the differentiating commercial value our solution delivered to our customers. Doing the exercise served an important purpose of deepening the understanding of the value we could deliver and more importantly how a marketer to derive value from our solution, on their path to value. From a new business perspective, this meant we could coach our buyer effectively. Helping the define the correct purchase criteria. Shape an evaluation process that focused on commercial value and not features, build consensus with their peers to secure the support they needed for the project, and finally, secure the budget they needed to achieve ‘their’ objectives, and not just switch platforms, the ‘good enough’ option.
The pipeline problem is a constant for a lot of companies, falling prey to the dreaded peaks and troughs of progress is okay if your peaks are higher and more consistent than troughs. Covering such a large region we constantly experienced issues, whether it was a military coup in Turkey at a time Turkey was our 2nd most successful region, or the Oil Crisis in the Middle East - one thing was certain, we were focused on solutions and always believed in our success, and never used situations out of our control as excuses.
Supero was born out of the idea that our industry (MarTech ecosystem) was overcrowded with companies losing sight of the commercial value they delivered to customers and a lack of skills to deliver on this promise. We provide our clients with a modern solution to the slow-growth problem.
We help our clients build communities of like-minded marketers to support their customer and partner growth strategies. We provide social interaction & influence training and coaching to our clients, to empower their people / teams, to walk digital corridors effectively and work systematically to achieve strategic imperatives, when others struggle to make old sales and marketing techniques work.
For a friendly chat or to swap notes DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter.com/Alex_Supero or drop me a call/WhatsApp +44 7951 220113
#B2BSales#DigitalSelling #ValueSelling #WalkingDigitalCorridors
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alex_Supero
Subscribe to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Alex_Supero (more to come!)
Join our community Walking Digital Corridors on Guild: https://guild.co/groups/5769/walking-digital-corridors?uid=f2cc5fb136
unknownx500
