B2B sales is about asking the right questions, and listening deeply to their answers. You should be asking some of these nine questions of most of your customers at some point in the sales cycle.

1. What business problem are you looking to solve?

This question helps you establish an overall singular business goal that the prospect is trying to achieve. You’ll also be able to view it from the perspective of the obstacle that is in the way and quickly determine whether you can help the prospect.

It is the kind of question you want to make sure you ask before you pitch. The pitch happens once and should be solid. To ensure that you get it right, you need a few pointers to guide you on what to exclude and what to cover in detail. You also need to offer a solution that isn’t just likely to work but is also uniquely tailored to their needs.

2. How would this solution improve an average day at work?

With this question, you can get an idea of how the prospect views your business, their presumptions about your offer, and where they see it fitting in their business. The trick is to keep some B2B sales questions broad rather than asking them to elaborate on how your solution eliminates their problem.

It is all about hearing them paint a picture of a perfect day at work. You can zero in on specific tasks and processes to find out what they find tiresome or confusing. From their answers, you’ll also be able to clarify the extent to which your solution addresses specific parts of their workday.

3. What is the ideal outcome you want from this solution?

A solution can be helpful to various businesses in different ways and to a varying extent. This question prompts the prospect to mention the final result of using your solution. And where that outcome is quantifiable and has a specific figure, you can determine the extent to which they want to rely on the solution.

Additionally, if your solution has many features or functions, you can ascertain the most needed one. The question can be something like, “Do you want to be able to package goods faster or have a safer packaging process?” The prospect can then tell you which outcome they desire.

4. What are your top couple of priorities this financial year?

It is essential for a client to feel a near-immediate change when they start doing business with you. It doesn’t matter if the actual significant results may still be further down the road. To make a client feel like they made the right choice picking you, you need to know what they want to tackle first.

So when you ask for the prospect’s priorities in the current quarter, you do not just understand how and where to apply yourself. You’re also getting an idea of how quickly you’ll have to become effective. For instance, the prospect’s priority may be successfully opening a new branch.

You can then start by focusing on how you can fully service that branch as you prepare to deliver to other existing ones.

5. How would this solution impact your business in the long term?

Such a question allows you to get a sense of the prospect’s organization’s more extensive and long-term goals. You can also ask this in a manner that doesn’t come off as intrusive or asking for trade secrets. For example, you may ask, “Are the customers more likely to buy if they get the email on new product offers on time?”

So in this way, you can find out whether helping them get marketing emails out on time helps them hit a revenue goal. If you’re lucky, some prospects might even give you deep insight into how a particular action on your end contributes to a bigger goal of theirs.

6. How does our solution compare with others you are considering?

While it may seem like this question makes you come off as afraid of the competition, that may not be the case. A seller who shows that they are aware of other people doing what they do and that the customer can opt for them comes off as serious.

This question can also help you discover the areas in which you might be lacking. You might even find out how much the prospect is fond of you, outside of your business capabilities. If a prospect says there’s no big difference between you and the rest, it may indicate a need to work harder to stand out.

7. What is your decision-making process?

Many organizations differ when it comes to their size and the resultant level of bureaucracy. You need to know whether you are speaking to someone who makes decisions. Furthermore, it is crucial to know who else has to weigh in and whether you need to cultivate a relationship with them.

This question also enables you to get a sense of the length of their decision-making process along with any steps that may be unique to the prospect’s organization. With this information, you’ll be able to stay ahead of the process and be ready for each stage by the time you get to it.

8. Who else in the business should we involve in our conversations?

If you get the sense that other people are involved in the decision-making process, this question can help you find out who they are. And in some cases, it may not even be about other decision-makers. There might be some ultra-specific information you need that is best conveyed by one of the prospect’s teammates who has more accurate data.

You can easily find out who else you may be coming into regular contact with if the deal goes through. The question may be as simple as asking who’s the go-to person for certain figures or a breakdown of a specific internal process.

9. What are the consequences of not proceeding with this solution?

Ask this question gently and with care. When you ask this genuinely, and you are not trying ‘SPIN’ the prospect into buying, you will get useful information that will help you understand your buyer more holistically.

You might discover some more pressing priorities on their plate. You might also find they have alternate solutions to this particular problem you were not aware of. All this information will help you correctly forecast the chances of the deal moving forward, and potentially help you work on a more important or pressing priority your customer has.

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Are you adopting a revenue-focused approach to planning your marketing activities?

If you usually take a data-driven approach, you will need to rethink your current metrics. These should be more than good ideas that justify marketing spend; they need to be actionable insights that inform your decisions.

Here are four ways you can measure ROI from your B2B marketing campaign:

Marketing-Impacted Revenue

Think of marketing-impacted revenue as the amount of money received with a clear history of a customer interfacing with one or more aspects of your campaign. These marketing efforts could be anything from social media ads to automated emails.

Reporting and analytics tools will help when measuring this metric. You will need to keep track of every type of conversion related to your B2B marketing campaign. These conversions include clicks on a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad, newsletter signups, web form submissions, etc.

Do not forget to create a detailed funnel for your marketing campaign. It will enable you to know which stages are being well-executed. You will also get to learn the point at which most of your prospects are losing interest.

Average Order Value (AOV)

When it comes to B2B commerce, the size of a deal is quite important. This is partly because there’s a considerable amount of attention paid to a prospect before they buy. AOV becomes even more important for businesses using the account-based marketing (ABM) approach.

Start by finding out the number of buyers who interacted with any part of your B2B marketing campaign. Pull up the figures for the revenue they brought in. Divide the total marketing-induced revenue by the number of buyers who engaged with the marketing campaign.

The result is the average amount spent by each of these customers. However, the average order value isn’t a full-proof indicator. You may have a scenario in which one marketing-impacted customer brings in most of your revenue. Suppose the AOV is still significantly higher than the cost per acquisition.

In that case, you can continue with your approach as you try to understand the behavior of low order value customers. Furthermore, pay attention to other tactics used to generate a purchase. These may include discounts, promotions, loyalty programs, etc. Such offers can skew your AOV.

Things get trickier when the offers are communicated to a particular portion of customers through specific channels. You may be wondering how high or low your AOV should be. The answer is tied to your overall strategy.

Some businesses go for profit maximization, making the highest margin possible from one customer’s purchase. In contrast, others go for sales maximization, getting a little revenue per person, but from many people.

Cost Per Acquired Customer (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Once you’ve run a round of marketing activities, record the total amount spent on your campaign. Revisit your updated customer list. Single out all the new customers you can trace back to one of your marketing activities. Divide your total marketing expenditure by the number of new customers acquired through your marketing efforts.

The result will give you a fair idea of the amount spent to acquire each new customer. Just like with other metrics, the customer acquisition cost (CAC) should be used cautiously. For example, you may be spending a decent sum of money on multiple marketing tactics, yet only one is very effective. It is vital to focus on the channel that brings in the most buyers.

Your calculations may produce a low CAC, which makes you comfortable. However, you might actually be spending a lot of money unnecessarily. Time intervals are also very significant when looking at CAC. In the beginning, your CAC might be low. But as you repeat your marketing activities, the number of new customers acquired from the same marketing expenditure may reduce.

Such revelations usually prompt marketers to respond by increasing the total amount spent on marketing. They hope that this will lead to an increase in new customers acquired. Sadly, this may not come true. Sometimes, the truth is that a specific marketing channel has been exhausted.

It could be that you’re marketing to the same people you’ve already acquired. Or maybe you’re targeting those who are not interested. In such situations, you should consider redirecting some of the funds allocated to that channel. Look for a different one where you haven’t hit the ceiling yet.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The size of the deal brought in by each marketing-impacted customer may be a key metric here. Never-the-less, it doesn’t paint the complete picture of the ROI for your B2B marketing campaign. It is crucial to get repeat business from buyers. This is because you’re likely to spend less on getting an already buying customer to buy again. New customers usually require more spending.

List down all your marketing-impacted customers. Attach the amount of revenue they’ve brought in for the time that they’ve been your customers. Compare it with your CAC on a case-by-case basis. This will help you determine how much your marketing campaign gets you per buyer throughout their time as a customer.

The CLV should be significantly higher than the CAC. That difference is partly to make up for other non-marketing costs of doing business. If the CLV is roughly the same amount as your CAC, there’s reason to worry. Yes, you may be making back all the money spent on marketing. But clearly not enough to cover the other business costs.

But as you record the amount of revenue from a buyer throughout their time as your customer, keep tabs on any additional marketing efforts targeting that customer. Some customers’ decisions to buy again are influenced by recurring messages about new offers.

These variations can make the initial cost of acquisition a bit misleading. Ensure that you have a journal or log laying out all the instances where a customer engaged with your B2B marketing campaign. Thankfully, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and other marketing-related tools have made tracking easier.

Derive the monetary sum spent on marketing towards the customer within their time as a customer. Subtract it from the total revenue they’ve brought in throughout that period. You will then have an idea of the potential of your initial marketing expenditure per customer. Additionally, you will also know the amount you may have to add down the road for more returns.

Resonate is a B2B marketing agency that can help your business achieve a commercial result through marketing campaigns. To learn more about our approach to marketing, please get in touch.

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If not, I recommend you consider these four points:

1. Identify effective strategies to stay ahead

As part of your long-term strategy, you should identify and put in place effective strategies to keep your business ahead of the market and your competitors. The long-term success of your business does not lie solely within your actions. What your competitors do and what customers want both play a significant role in whether your business succeeds in the long-term.

One of the best strategies to stay ahead is to keep an eye on what your competitors do. To remain relevant to your consumers and your industry in the long run, you have to do competitor research. Researching your competitors helps you understand a lot about yourself and the industry you are in.

For example, learning how they are positioning themselves, what their value propositions are and most importantly, how their business models differ from yours could help you understand how to beat them in the long-term. Some of the easy ways to research your competitors include;

• Reviewing their websites and social media channels
• Reviewing their client lists
• Reviewing marketing and advertising content

Reviewing this publicly available content from your competitors can help you understand your industry’s pecking order and where you lie in that order. This review will also make it easier for you to understand your industry’s current needs and where your competitors are coming short in solving these.

With good competitor and market research, you will be able to develop a long-term strategy that positions your business in the most marketable way. You will also be better placed to anticipate the industry’s direction and plan accordingly.

2. Reallocate talent and capital

When strategising for the long-term, it is vital that you put your money where the action is. Businesses that cannot reallocate capital efficiently are doomed to stay in the same projects long after they stopped making a profit. These businesses are also bound to miss out on emerging opportunities that require flexibility from business owners and a willingness to take on a new challenge.

There are generally two kinds of businesses. Some allocate the same amounts or proportions of investment to the different projects they are undertaking every financial year. These are often the majority of companies.

Then there are those in the minority that re-evaluate their investments every year or two, taking into account the performance of each investment to date and the changes in the market preferences and direction. These latter businesses also take into account the relative performance of all their projects before deciding how much to invest in each going forward. These types of companies vary their investments based on performance and the potential returns for the investors. They are less prone to bankruptcy and more adaptable to the industry’s changes in the long run. In fact, after fifteen years, McKinsey’s research shows that a business that can efficiently reallocate and redeploy capital will have a 40% higher evaluation on average than its static capital counterpart.

Some of the other benefits of capital and talent reallocation include;

• Minimising losses on failing enterprises
• Accelerating growth in returns and valuation
• Increasing industry relevance and consumer confidence
• Higher customer retention

3. Resist the urge to boost short-term profits

Short term profits are attractive and desired by all businesses and CEOs. However, the visionary CEOs know that short term profits should not come at the expense of long-term returns. A lot of short term profiting strategies come at the expense of greater longer-term profit. A profitable business and a good business leader is one that can understand the tradeoff between short term gains and long-term profit.

There is tremendous pressure in today’s business world to maximise short-term profits. Quarterly reports and monthly returns numbers put pressure on company executives to maximise short term profits and growth. This is at the expense of a sustainable long-term strategy that will multiply a company’s returns, not just increase them marginally as short term strategies do.

There are many flaws with trying to boost your short-term profits as a business. Many of these flaws are potentially fatal for companies if you do not mitigate them well. Because businesses do not have a lot of flexibility in what they can do in the short term, many will opt for measures like cutting costs. For example, laying off employees and diverting resources from long-term projects are some of the ways to maximise short-term profits.

While these measures will indeed increase your short-term gains, they will put your long-term survival in jeopardy. Laying off employees would dramatically affect your product’s quality in the long-term and could lead to a reduction in consumer confidence. This is why it is best for your organisation to stay the long-term course and resist the urge to maximise short term profits.  

4. Develop a sales and marketing plan that lasts

Sales and marketing plans have two relevant types; short-term and long-term marketing plans. While both plans have their benefits, the best companies can combine both into a holistic marketing plan designed to last.

A short-term marketing plan is designed to be executed within a year to grow sales and revenue in the short and medium-term. Short-term strategies often include sales discounts, team rewards and incentives, and advertising new products. This plan is primarily designed to increase the number of new qualified leads generated by the business in the short term.

On the other hand, long-term marketing plans are concerned with your company’s strategy over ten years. Long-term plans are more concerned with growing the quality of your customer engagement, creating brand loyalty from your consumers and thus increasing your customer retention in the long run. In order to achieve these long-term marketing goals, marketing teams deploy strategies such as;

• Social media engagement
• Thought leadership through content marketing
• Designing an effective customer management system
• Integrating sales and marketing teams
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Brand related public relations management

As we have shown you above, both the short-term and long-term marketing strategies have several apparent benefits. For that reason, you are not advised to pick one strategy over another for long-term success. The best long-term strategy is one that combines both of these plans to create a sustainable and effective plan that is built to last.

Keeping your eye on both the short and long-term when making strategic decisions in marketing will help your organisation plan and prepare effectively for its marketing campaigns. You will also come across as homogenous and consistent to your customers over time, which will help you earn their trust. 

The post Do you have a long-term strategy for your business? appeared first on Resonate.

I work with business owners who are very comfortable with the concept of hiring a sales consultant. They have made an investment which needs to give a return, and getting sales right is something they want to invest in.

Sales leaders and business owners who have a strong background in Sales are in a more difficult position. Their colleagues expect them to be ‘the’ internal expert on Sales and expect them to do their job without external consulting. But no matter how skilled you are as a sales leader, sales consulting gives you a valuable external perspective that allows you to reach peak performance. The best sportspeople in the world have the best coaches: we can apply a similar mindset here.

Reason #1: Diagnose pipeline problems

We are all very much ‘inside’ our own pipelines to the point that we sometimes cannot see the forest for the trees. We see detail: sales consultants see the bigger picture, just like you would if you were brought in to consult on another sales leader’s pipeline.

A good sales consulting approach will zero in on problems you may have brushed over, and find opportunities to increase the long-term health of your sales pipeline.

Reason #2: Create new go-to-markets

One of the best parts of working with a sales consultant is tapping into their ability to discover new markets. Consultants are typically working with multiple organisations with a wealth of current, relevant information up their sleeves. This experience reduces the risk inherent in any new go-to-market, and gives you an avenue to test your ideation against an external benchmark.

While identifying a new go-to-market, sales consultants can also provide expert insight into deploying products to the new market. Sales consultants may be more across what the rest of the market are considering and planning, which helps you choose the right opportunity to pursue.

Reason #3: Get honest feedback on your opportunities

Sales consultants will give you honest feedback on your deals, sometimes brutally so. In our experience, this has been the biggest single reason sales consulting leads to a commercial return. We will tell people to stop working on a certain opportunity and put their resources in a different direction that has a better chance of a win. We will call it out when there is really no chance of a deal coming in, but our client is too attached to the deal for whatever reason.

Again with the sporting analogy: golfers need an external pair of eyes to find fault with their strokeplay. That is what a good sales consultant will do with your opportunities.

Reason #4: Strategically target better accounts

Good operators generally go after a size of account and a size of deal that we have won before, with good reason. If we win business that is too small for our business model, it won’t be profitable. If we go after a ‘big fish’, the cost of sale and likelihood of loss can both be higher.

Targeting bigger accounts without increasing risk and cost of sale to an unreasonable level calls for rethinking your sales strategy. This is the point at which calling in external help can go a long way.

Reason #5: Have a coach who prepares you for the long game

One of the best things sales consultants can do is help anticipate opportunities and risks. It is common for teams to get so occupied looking for sales they overlook potential threats developing in the background. While your team is only focusing on the next client, your plans tend to get thrown aside. Blind spots are an unfortunate recipe for disaster when circumstances begin to change.

B2B sales consulting with Resonate

Resonate is a B2B sales and marketing agency that can help your business achieve a commercial result through leads, opportunities, and closed revenue. Please get in touch to learn more about our approach to B2B sales consulting.

The post 5 Reasons You Need B2B Sales Consulting appeared first on Resonate.

The goal of your sales and marketing teams is to drive revenue. When they are out of sync, the engine that drives your business will never reach peak performance. United sales and marketing teams will always deliver better productivity, ROI, business performance, and top-line revenue growth.

So, how do you get B2B sales and marketing alignment right?

Define lead scoring criteria

Commercial B2B marketing doesn’t often lead directly to revenue, unless there is a lead that Sales takes further. Getting lead gen right is crucial for Marketing to succeed; and aligning Sales and MArketing requires a tight, documented definition of a lead.

To align your B2B sales and marketing teams, define your lead scoring criteria. Your company’s lead scoring criteria are the methodology you use to evaluate a lead’s quality and its importance to the business. This metric allows your sales and marketing teams to focus on the right leads, dedicating a proportionate amount of resources and effort to each.

Given that the lead scoring criteria are company-specific, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to scoring leads. How you score leads should align with business priorities and the marketing personas your organisation targets. In short, it is up to you as a business to determine what the strength of each lead is. You do this by assigning a score to each attribute and varying the scores based on that attribute’s relevance to your business.

For example, suppose you are the marketing manager for a B2B internet service provider. In that case, your target persona might be an online service company with a need for reliable high-speed internet and a minimum of fifty employees. Those are the priority attributes you are looking for to qualify a lead. 

The other factor your lead scoring criteria should consider is the level of engagement or interest shown by the lead. You can determine the level of interest based on the engagement actions that matter to you. For instance, one way to know a customer is seriously interested is the number of times they visit your site or post your content. Your company should also determine its priority engagement actions and weight them proportionally. 

Get your marketing and sales data in the right place

It is vital that you keep track of where the marketing and sales teams get their data from, how they record it, and who has access to it. This is because sales and marketing teams cannot align if they are each using different data sources. Often sales and marketing teams work as independent entities that have no relationship to one another. While there are many ways to resolve this, one of the easiest ways is to centralise the teams’ data sources and storage spaces.

Keeping their data in the same place means that both departments can access both sets of data whenever they need it. It also helps marketing and sales teams find the synergies between their departments and aligns them behind one goal of revenue generation. This transparency between the two departments will also create a feedback chain between the sales and marketing departments. Both teams will know at which point the negotiations with a new lead broke down, so they can reiterate and redesign their processes to increase their overall success rate.

It is also worth looking into automating the information gathering processes and implementing strict data recording protocols across both groups. You can find several high-quality CRMs on the market that can help you achieve this automation and data integration. We are a HubSpot agency ourselves, for many reasons including how well the HubSpot platform enables Sales and Marketing alignment. 

Establish SLAs between marketing and sales

An SLA, or a service level agreement, is a contract between the sales and marketing departments (in this context). It formalises and specifies the exact nature of the relationship between sales and marketing and the rules of engagement for both teams. Marketing and sales teams usually have the same long term goal, which is increasing revenue. However, the two groups can often disagree on which team should do what. This is why both teams’ leadership needs to put this agreement in place as soon as possible.

This contract covers many things starting with the definition of success for both teams, which will further aid the harmony and synergy between them. Also included in the contract should be the individual KPIs for both teams.

Typical KPIs for marketing often include the number of qualified leads generated in a certain amount of time. On the other hand, it is usually about the conversion rate for the number of leads that could become prospects for the sales department. In the interest of transparency, you may also want the contracts to include the incentives for achieving the target KPIs for both teams. This helps clear up any issues between both departments over remuneration and compensation for work done.

Some of the other benefits of an SLA include a greater year on year ROI, clear job descriptions between the two teams and easy reiteration of the work process and flow between them.

Be clear about the roles of each team

As mentioned above, you must designate the roles within the teams. This helps make sure that there are no gaps in your business process from lead generation to closing a sale. Furthermore, clearing up the roles within each team eliminates any unwanted redundancies between the teams. These redundancies arise out of having similar, non-distinctive roles between the two teams. On top of the redundancies, an overlap in roles between the two teams could lead to friction and unhealthy competition between marketing and sales.

The marketing team’s responsibilities usually include; lead generation and engagement, product/ service positioning (product marketing) and customer relations management. On the other hand, the sales team includes sales representatives who make sales calls to convert leads into clients and a sales executive whose job is to close the sale.

On top of defining the roles, it is also essential to implement a chain of command consistent with the desired workflow process and the customer journey. Who begins the process of acquiring a new lead, then who takes over and so on. This helps, especially when there are personnel changes within the teams. Typically, a new employee would have to learn the entire workflow to understand where they fit in, which often wastes time. With this approach, they can hit the ground running by simply understanding their place in the workflow and replacing the missing node.

About us

Resonate is a B2B sales and marketing agency that can help your business achieve a commercial result through leads, opportunities, and closed revenue. To learn more about our approach to marketing and sales, please get in touch.

The post B2B sales and marketing alignment: the secret sauce appeared first on Resonate.

What is the difference between Sales Management and Sales Leadership? The topic of ‘manager vs leader’ is frequently discussed in business; how is the distinction made in a Sales context? And is it an important distinction?

The commonly accepted difference between leaders and managers is that leaders have people follow them, while managers are interested in the result of a person’s work.

A leader is primarily focused on input; a manager is interested in output. 

A Sales Leader is primarily focused on input; a Sales Manager is interested output. And in the case of Sales – it must be INPUT that leads to OUTPUT that is MEASURABLE.

Adopting a Sales Leadership approach means influencing and driving a better revenue result, by focusing on the right kinds of inputs. And here lies a key, powerful differentiation – Sales leadership is the side of the coin that can turn around an underperforming floor into an industry-leading salesforce.

Although Sales Management is still important, it must not be confused with the Sales Leader role. Only Sales Leadership can turn the futures of a business around through a top-line result.

‘Sales Leader’: It is not a job title, either. Sales Leadership is a role: a role that Sales Managers, business owners, CEOs, and even individual salespeople can, and should take.

Sales Leadership is (in my experience) a rare and incredibly valuable form of leadership.

Possibly the most important Sales management duty is forecasting pipeline, and reporting on pipe to their upper management. In line with this is the responsibility of ensuring top-of-funnel is always filled with net new opportunities, and that opportunities are well qualified and progressed.

A Sales Manager will look at budgets, numbers, and targets. A Sales Manager will do a good job of knowing and reporting on pipeline and opportunities, and ensuring measures and goals are well communicated with the team.

What will a good Sales Leader also do in the same context?

Sales Leaders will firstly make sure their team are enabled and equipped to hunt for leads and kickstart top of funnel activity. They will ensure each salesperson is motivated to find net new opportunities, and that every team member has the skills needed to create pipe. A successful salesfloor is always proactively pursuing people to do business with; a successful Sales leader is obsessed with top of funnel activity.

I have personally encountered B2B salesfloors where their business development managers have been given instructions to avoid loud phone calls, to avoid disturbing their Marketing team! The lifeblood of a B2B, sales-driven organisation is the phone; loud calls are like a strong pulse. A noisy salesfloor means one thing: they are focused on the funnel! Nothing makes me happier as a Sales leader than a loud room full of Sales professionals making cold calls.

So, what are some inputs in Sales that lead to measurable outputs?

There are three key areas of input that reliably lead to measurable output, in B2B Sales:

• Prospecting, to fill Top of Funnel;
• Building a Deep Understanding of the customer through meetings and conversations, and
• Creating Value as defined by the customer, through collaborative solution-building.

Prospecting is the simplest yet hardest of the three. Filling top of funnel requires energy, focus, and resilience to bounce back after rejection. Few salespeople (that I encounter) find prospecting a ‘fun’ activity. It can be rather monotonous and time-consuming. For most B2B industries, prospecting does not lead to immediate, gratifying results in the way of an instant sale. It is hard work, sowing of seeds to be reaped later down the line. It is both the most mundane and the most necessary Sales activity a Sales Leader must drive.

Deep understanding of a customer is the one activity I mention here which many Sales Leaders gloss over. Especially when a customer is ready and eager to place an order, the salesperson is not under instructions to develop a deep understanding. However, failing to properly understand their customer and their needs can lead to under-selling or over-selling and to dissatisfaction later down the line. Worse still, it can lead to bringing on an unprofitable customer which becomes a recurring nightmare. Sales leaders must stress the need to build and record a mutually agreed, written understanding of the customer – in writing – prior to taking on complex pieces of work.

Last but not least, good salespeople put time into building solutions that create customer value. ‘Customer Value’ rarely means what we think it does. For example, our product or people could be industry leading, and have unique and innovative capability. We can make the (bad) assumption that these features of ours constitute customer value, when in reality the buyer is simply satisfied that we constitute the lowest risk purchase for them due to the trust we have built. For every customer engagement and every individual transaction, a sales leader must be sure that customer value has been considered carefully. Salespeople who build collaborative solutions and demonstrate value well, create raving fans, and are the bedrock of a strong sales team.

Sales Leaders drive input that reliably leads to measurable output. They do not confuse their management role (of people management and revenue reporting) with their true responsibility of created uplifted results through smart, measured inputs. And most of all they realise Sales Leadership is not a lone wolf activity. A good Sales leader values what every person in the company brings to the equation, from Sales, to Operations and Delivery, and even down to the most mundane administrative position. A Sales leader leverages all the internal capability available to them to build value and deliver it to the right customers, month-in and month-out without fail.

Sales Leaders are the architects on which B2B businesses are built.

Does your business have the Sales Leadership it deserves?

The post Sales Management vs Sales Leadership – a question of focus appeared first on Resonate.

Are the right people playing in the right positions in your Sales Team?

The case for specialisation

High quality leads power up the sales engine of any organisation, large or small and irrespective of industry sector. And to get a sturdy supply of high quality leads organisations need high quality people focused on developing the leads.

Many organisations, especially in the SME space, maintain a sales force of generalists, who work every stage of the Sales cycle. Typically, each Sales rep is assigned either a geographical territory or an industry vertical to work. They are usually responsible for working leads to a close and generating a proportion of their own business cold. Often, they will also be responsible for retaining and growing existing accounts. They serve as a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ – the generalist model.

The reason for organisations embracing the generalist model is logical and it stems out from the financial constraints of organisations. The SME sphere frequently depends on five or fewer Sales professionals to drive their revenue line. Business and sales leadership generally perceives that a team so small cannot be structured into specialist roles and they gravitate to a generalist model. 

However, a generalist approach is a perilous one to take for an organisation with a growth mandate. Business owners want to see revenue – which eventuates from closed opportunities at the bottom-of-funnel. But without a team focused on widening the mouth of the funnel, the total number of opportunities in the sales funnel drops. Opportunities exit the funnel owing to a variety of reasons – closed because they are won, exit because they are lost to a competitor, go cold in the funnel owing to client apathy etc. Net result is that the number of opportunities that enter the funnel are lower than the number of opportunities that exit the funnel. In a generalist model, with no one focused on entering opportunities into the funnel, net new revenue takes a hit. 

“Generalisation leads to failure when nobody is focused on filling the top of the funnel.”

And no – organisational size is not necessary to build the right structure. Even a team of two can be given a good structural mandate: one person can focus on top of funnel, and the other focuses on the opportunities that have been progressed to the middle of the funnel and takes them to the bottom of the funnel.

In fact, this is exactly how we grew our startup (Resonate). We have an excellent Sales Development Representative (SDR) that focusses on the top of the funnel, relentlessly filling the mouth of the sales funnel with new opportunities. We have a Business Development Manager (BDM) who focuses on the middle and the bottom of the funnel and is responsible for taking opportunities to a close. Once the business has been won, we hand over the relationship management to the Account Manager (AM). 

These three team members of mine all have vastly differing abilities, skills, experiences, and strengths. My SDR is a quick and bright thinker, a master of good market research, and a gun with both phone and Social. The BDM is a senior seller driven by results, who can find a way over, under or through any obstacle standing in the way of a close. Like many AMs, ours is a brilliant relationship builder and a calm and reliable sort who customers depend on like one of their own team.

If you think about your own organisation, much of this will ring true. Even if you have generalists in the team, some of them suit a certain role better than others. They prefer it. They indulge that part of their job. They like playing in a certain part of the park and they play well in that position.

Sales is a team sport

This sort of ‘team sport’ thinking is a must for every startup, SME, and established business. Do you have the right players on your Sales team, and are they in the right positions? Have you established the right balance of defence and attack? Do you have a good captain and sharp midfielders who can direct play and re-strategise against the competition?

Some specialist sales teams focus on products, others focus on markets, and yet others on customer segments. But the most important specialisation ensures the total number of opportunities is always growing. They ensure the health of the sales funnel. The star role here is the Sales Development Representative.

Careful how quickly you scale…

A good friend of mine built a fantastic consulting business with a few excellent business partners, scaling up revenues in their first couple of years at a terrific rate and sustaining strong double-digit growth for the next few. They had the product, the market, and the budget to make some Sales hires…and they did. They hired fast, doubling the team in the space of a few months. They decided to bring on Sales Development Reps with a mandate to fill the funnel and help the company quickly grow market share.

I can see why the decision was made to grow so speedily. Their customer satisfaction rates and close ratios were industry-leading; their market growing; their vendor partners in complete support. It looked too solid a business proposition to fail.

Unfortunately, they were met with a raft of new challenges to deal with. None of these new SDRs fully understood the company culture, value proposition, or the way of working they’d need for success. Very few new hires ever do. And the directors of the business did not have time set aside to train them on your process, bring them up to scratch with the business and market, or teach them anything about Sales (for the staff they hired from a technical/product background).

For about a year, this organisation struggled to make their new structure work. Ultimately it failed, and many of the new hires moved on. It was an expensive and painful exercise. And it was a pain that could have been avoided.

When building a sales team, restructuring, and hiring new roles, do your thinking. Don’t act too quickly: give yourself space to perfect the model, then scale. You may find some of your current staff are in the wrong positions, or perhaps they are not a right fit for your company anymore. You must make sure your new hires complement the good talent you intend to retain.

Reward the right behaviours

SDRs are generally not responsible for closing, so it is impossible to use the same metrics, measures, compensation and bonuses as a BDM. Instead, think of what behaviours you want to drive and encourage.

In my experience I have found that focusing entirely on input measures such as phone calls is a mistake, because it fails to reward quality. It can lead to burning a territory through allowing poor sales behaviours – driven at scale!

I have also found that failing to set and enforce metrics turns an SDR force into an SDR flop.

Think about ‘halfway homes’: soft advances that indicate a prospect has moved forward and is ripe for a BDM to progress. Face to face meetings are a common soft advance, but not the best: what if those meetings are unqualified? The best halfway homes involve a time commitment from a prospect, such as their attendance on a webinar or completion of an assessment or trial.

Planning a robust Sales pipeline and rewarding SDRs for the right behaviours will lead to consistent and rapid growth in the number of opportunities in your pipeline.

He who defines roles clearly… WINS

Once you have started down the line of salesforce restructuring, and you have some SDRs getting into a rhythm, you will need to redefine roles further downstream. You will need to consider how each member of the team passes the ball to each other at what stage.

In particular, you must define who is responsible for the next step with a customer. There must be perfect clarity of the next step.

I live by the acronym ‘WINS’: What Is the Next Step? WINS lead to wins…if your sales team knows and executes next steps, there is a good chance the opportunity will have its best possible chance of progressing to a close.

This extends well beyond a close. Once again you will need to think about customer retention and customer satisfaction. While top of funnel is the most crucial stage of the Sales cycle, neglecting later stages will not help either.

An SDR must be able to clearly hand over a customer to their BDM, with both people thoroughly understanding WINS.

Hire for attitude, not (just) skill

SDRs are frequently junior roles. Although that does not have to be the case, it is a reality in most markets that senior salespeople take roles where they can leverage existing relationships. They are drawn to senior Account Management or BDM roles. SDR roles are then filled by people keen to begin a career in sales, or who see the SDR role as their ticket to a career inside your organisation. They may not have the kind of Sales skill they need.

This is why you should hire for attitude first, then skill. Yes, you will expect aptitude (intelligence, work rate, EQ, etc.) but you will find that a positive attitude in your SDR hires will allow them to listen and learn.

The SDR must not be a person who likes to put blame on others or avoid responsibility. Accountability is a must. Your Sales Development Representative is the one who decides who your next clients will be! They have one of the most important roles in the organisation. They have the keys to unlocking revenue and growth. They must see this responsibility, take it seriously, and act on it.

An organisation cannot hire an academic or a ‘talker’ in an SDR role, either. A person who loves a chat can keep prospects engaged on the phone, but to what end? Those SDRs must value their time above all else. Their attitude must be like that of a hunter finding food for a whole tribe. It must be ruthless and relentless.

Your mandate is revenue

In summary: you will only meet a growing revenue goal if your total number of opportunities is growing. The number one resource for top of funnel is the Sales Development Representative. Could the number one team member for revenue growth be… the SDR?

“Focus on the Funnel to avoid Failure; take the SDR role seriously and reap the rewards.”

The post How to build a sales development team appeared first on Resonate.

Creating an agile marketing team

To create an agile marketing team, executives and team leaders need to abandon traditional, siloed approaches.

An agile marketing team usually comprises a product owner, team lead and individuals working on specific project features. This should be a diverse bunch with a wide array of abilities and cross-department competencies.

The team includes:

• The product owner: They represent the client, handing down the general idea or direction that the marketing efforts should take.
• The team lead/scrum master: This is the link between the client or other stakeholders and the team. The lead is responsible for the team’s day-to-day operations. The scrum master organises daily stand-up meetings to check on each member’s progress. This also helps other members know what everyone is doing and where they are in relation to their own assigned tasks.

When you bring a team together, you should start by clearly highlighting objectives and deliverables. Moving forward, break these deliverables into manageable chunks that the team can work on in sprints.

The entire project’s progress is tracked via a centralised system. Popular software solutions for agile marketing teams include Asana, Wrike, and Monday.com.

Why choose an agile marketing structure?

As the name suggests, this type of structure infuses agility into marketing workflows. By employing this method, a marketing team can take on a relatively large assignment and work through it quickly.

Despite the fast pace, agile marketing methods still produce high-quality results. This is because team members collaborate closely during ‘sprints’. Furthermore, progress is tracked frequently and regularly to ensure that everyone is on course to hit their targets.

For example, a team leader will delegate tasks and provide each employee with a set length of time to complete them. Each member has access to other individuals’ progress. Employees provide regular updates through daily stand-up meetings where they update the team on their progress and challenges faced.

Running an agile marketing project

For a given project, the agile marketing team sets goals and objectives to hit. Then, the team conducts a kick-off meeting to lay out the path for this new agile operation process. Following this, the agile marketing team combs through the available data, analysing it to find any problems and issues that require immediate attention.

After developing possible solutions for the above issues, the agile marketing team breaks each solution down into key performance indicators (KPI) to gauge their effectiveness. As a result, the team prioritises the solutions based on two factors: the significance of their impact on business operations and how easy it is to put them into practice.

The team tests the solutions in short sprints – for example, two weeks – to see if they achieve the desired outcome. When the sprint ends, the agile marketing team brings everything together, reporting success to key persons outside the agile team. Furthermore, the team leader uses this as an opportunity to create tasks for the next sprint or project.

Scale agile, company-wide

Given the benefits of the agile approach, companies can start with smaller teams.

When the team becomes more familiar and comfortable with the agile system, you can expand it, implementing it across the entire marketing department. This transition is smoother if you can show that the agile system returns tangible results.

For example, the agile team might unearth effective solutions during its sprints. You can then take these solutions and implement them throughout the department to show their benefits.

When the marketing team becomes used to agile marketing, the department should have agile teams focused on specific areas or products. A team might focus only on an individual step of the customer journey. Alternatively, another agile team could handle a specific product. This allows the executives to easily track progress for future successful implementation across the organisation.

The post How to create an agile marketing team appeared first on Resonate.

Corporate strategies fail more often than they succeed. Most leaders think of all the reasons their strategy will succeed; they either do not know or do not want to know all the reasons their strategy will come off the rails.

Here are seven reasons your corporate strategy will not work – and how to get it back on track:

1. Conflicting values and priorities

Where values and priorities conflict, corporate strategy is doomed to failure. Everyone in the leadership team needs to agree on the values and direction of the organisation. It is best if this is a collaborative and participatory process that drives buy-in to your strategy. A lack of agreement can cause conflict over resource deployment, which can manifest in misunderstandings and mismatched priorities at lower levels of the business. Employees will become overwhelmed, as everything is considered urgent. If you have everyone on board from the beginning, you heighten your chances of delivering a successful strategy.

2. Inadequate leadership development

Leaders often need sufficient development so they can perform at a high standard. Where leaders do not have the right development, they might find it difficult to inspire the team and lead them toward an outcome. Poor leadership skills are also likely to lead to lower levels of collaboration and ineffective talent management. Offering leaders development opportunities and performance management can help address this.

3. Ineffective senior team

A major challenge in implementing corporate strategy is an ineffectual senior leadership team. Everyone in the senior team needs to be brought into the corporate strategy and communicate the same vision and objectives. If not, operational teams may experience difficulties prioritising. 

Other consequences of this are a lack of trust in the team and minimal commitment to the strategy, which can seriously hinder effective implementation. The leadership team also needs to facilitate a healthy and constructive debate when working on strategic decisions. 

Issues to look out for that indicate an ineffective leadership team include:

• Signs of groupthink where there is limited constructive conflict and decisions are not debated constructively.
• An insufficient focus on strategic challenges and a tendency towards decision making around tactics instead.

4. Ineffective leadership styles

When working on corporate strategy, the type of leadership style used is critical; the style that works best is a democratic or participative style.

A top-down or autocratic approach does not work because it lacks involvement from all levels of the organisation. It is much harder to secure buy-in from employees that have not had any input. A constructive and collaborative debate helps to understand what may or may not work. 

Another ineffective style is the laissez-faire approach, leaving people to get on with it with minimal intervention. If the leader is not involved and visible, the resultant lack of direction can cause a loss in focus. An effective leader in this scenario is one who is present, visible, and involves others.

5. Messy coordination, or lack thereof

An effective corporate strategy needs effective coordination. This is not always straightforward, particularly across disperse geographies or functional silos, or both. Team members will mirror the leadership’s behaviour, so leaders need to demonstrate the behaviour they expect to see. They must ‘talk the talk’ and ‘walk the walk’, encouraging coordination between different parts of the business. Open discussion between groups helps cross-functional teams identify which tasks add value and which do not.

6. Fractured vertical communication

Upward and downward communication helps clarify the strategy, embed it, and ensure that everyone understands the plan. When employees feel that they cannot clarify points or raise difficult issues, it can be hard to overcome challenges.

Employees need to feel comfortable addressing conflict without the threat of repercussions; fear to speak conceals challenges from the senior levels. An inability to communicate downward will result in a lack of understanding of what the strategy is. The senior team must facilitate transparent, productive, and open discussion in both directions. Better still, leaders should proactively seek input about challenges so they can keep operations moving.

7. You are not reviewing your strategy frequently enough

In recent decades, the speed of change in business has accelerated. Reviewing your strategy more often means that you can make adjustments to address changes in the business environment as they occur. An annual review leaves you at risk of continuing on a flawed path for too long. 

Emergent strategy is effective in environments of uncertainty. Keeping abreast of everything that is going on in the external environment provides an opportunity for continuous adaptation. Equally, understanding progress on initiatives and barriers will help you evolve faster. This will drive a greater chance of corporate strategy success.

Do you need to get your corporate strategy back on track?

We work closely with our clients and advise them on how to improve their strategy . Whether you are planning a new go-to-market, channel strategy, or a successful exit, our advice can help you succeed.

If you would like to learn more about our approach, please get in touch with us at sales@resonate.com.au.

The post 7 reasons your corporate strategy will not work appeared first on Resonate.

Why should you increase your average deal size? 

Increasing the number of transactions you close can be an inefficient way to achieve your B2B sales goal. This is more pronounced if you are in a high-trust business, such as managed services or professional services. We have a limited amount of time in which to build and maintain trusted relationships: creating profitable relationships in a trust-based sales environment starts by aiming for quality over quantity.

Increasing your average deal size should bring more value to your clients. As you increase your knowledge of a customer, you are able to find new and better ways to deliver value: this should translate to an increase in spend over time.

Increasing your average deal size should benefit your business, and your customer.

You can leverage the following techniques to help yourself or your sales team increase your average deal size:

1. Qualify-out poor targets

“Spray and pray” marketing campaigns target everyone and anyone. Getting maximum exposure can seem like a good idea, but the reality is that not every customer is a good fit. Not all business is good business: do not make the mistake of wasting your limited time and resources on clients too small for your goals. You are usually better off spending your resources targeting people who actively need your services. Using this strategy helps you create win-win relationships instead of trying to get as much money as possible out of the wrong end of the market. Being specific with your marketing helps attract more repeat customers and referrals from their positive experiences. Targeting a specific profile also keeps your sales and marketing staff focused.

2. Pursue larger clients even if they are ice-cold

Winning larger clients usually mean larger average deal size. But winning over a larger business is a slower and more difficult process than winning a small client. The higher up you go, the tougher client acquisition gets. Many established companies have business relationships they value and are unlike to break in a hurry. For these reasons, it can be easy to talk ourselves out of cold outreach. However, it’s important to remember the prospecting process is gradual. What starts as a simple email leads to a handshake at an event, a friendly phone call and eventually a sale. During the prospecting period, you need to find ways to create value. Even if reaching out doesn’t result in business immediately, it helps you become known in your industry. Being recognised is helpful years down the road when someone is ready to make a change, and they remember the efforts put in by you or your sales team.

3. Increase effort, not activity

By increasing your average deal size, you reduce the number of sales it takes to reach your target. Executing a higher volume of sales activity can lead to a lower average deal size, and even missed targets. Assuming more activity and more “knocking on doors” will lead to the right result is a common mistake businesses make. Instead, determine the right size of deal your organisation needs. and focus your sales efforts on the activities that are needed to get these. When we put ourselves under pressure to make quick sales, we will burn through the market looking for a “yes”. If you give them time to cultivate relationships and build value, you can increase revenue without increasing pressure on either your own business or the market. Taking this approach helps your salespeople learn more about your ideal clients. Instead of grasping at straws to create value, you can make educated guesses based on previous relationships.

4. Provide more services to existing customers

The first barrier here is fixed-price contracts: what if you have already set a monthly or annual contract value that the client has agreed to pay? In our experience, everything is negotiable provided you have a decision maker with a degree of discretion on one side, and additional value to deliver them on the other. Creating new services that complement your original offerings will help you find ways to deliver more value, and therefore increase your average deal size. Look for areas in your services where customers can customise their experience – you can offer these as added value. Exclusive content releases, paid coaching or training over and above normal service delivery, and results-driven bonuses or kickers are all possible ideas to incrementally increase deal size. Get your sales team to frame this value as customer-centric ideas to create improvement in your customer’s business. Looking at deal size from this perspective will help your clients see the value in additional services.

5. Steer clear of low-priced packages

Many companies actually have their prices too low. Low prices may attract people who want to trial your service but are unable to commit. Clients with this mindset usually don’t proceed to larger projects or managed service contracts, and end up occupying your resources without providing a long term return to either themselves or your own business. Setting your prices higher also helps you better serve your clients. Many products and services work better when executed by the entire company rather than just a handful of people. Clients who understand this are more likely to commit to long-term projects where there is an opportunity to benefit both sides. The right buyer is happy to pay more, for a service tailored to their needs.

6. Secure fixed prices for long-term contracts 

As the market and your industry continue to evolve, your prices will also have to adapt to the times. It is important to include in your contracts that your prices are subject to change, unless your clients make long term commitments. Explaining the type of price increase customers can expect yearly can help them make a decision. Locking in fixed prices provides stability for both sides and prevents any surprises. It’s worth breaking down the work structure in your contracts so clients can see exactly how their funds are used. Securing the fixed price language in the contract needs to be a highlighted goal for your sales team.

7. Accentuate where you can add value

Instead of offering discounts to close sales, find alternate ways to create more value for your clients. Discounts and trial periods cheapen your service and make it harder for people to appreciate the value that they’re getting. Staying away from discounts as a closing strategy is a simple mindset shift that will help you increase your average deal size. Instead of a discount, reinforce the value that you deliver. Reporting is a great way to start: specifically, regular reporting that shows your clients improvement in measures or KPIs that demonstrate a return on their investment in you. Other clients might value you allowing an additional degree of flexibility to their contract in return for a price premium. Yet others will pay more for a faster service level, or more attentive relationship management. Adding value is different for every buyer and company. What your clients find valuable will depend on their priorities and other factors that you can learn by building relationships.

8. Sell directly to the C-suite

You make the best use of your sales time and energy when you engage directly with decision-makers. When you deal with managers who have to seek answers from higher-ups, the sales cycle takes longer, and you have less control. Building relationships with professionals in the C-suite takes longer, but it gives you and your salespeople a direct pipeline to all the facts. Selling someone in the C-suite on your service will also have a much bigger impact than convincing a mid-level manager that it’s a good idea. While building relationships with the C-suite takes longer, it’s an effective way to increase your average deal size. Once people in powerful positions understand your value, the extra time spent building relationships becomes exceptionally valuable.

Get our help to increase your average deal size

Resonate helps its clients improve their strategy, marketing, and sales. We measure average deal size for our clients and we have demonstrably helped many of our clients increase their average deal size. We give healthy, pragmatic advice on which prospects to strategically qualify-out and who to chase (and how). We also design go-to-markets with you, and execute them end to end from a Marketing perspective so all you and your team need to do is run the sales cycle, with our guidance. Get in touch with us today if you would like to learn more about our approach.

The post 8 Ways To Increase Your Average Deal Size appeared first on Resonate.

B2B Marketing trends for 2021 are being driven by two primary factors: the COVID-19 pandemic, and the increased use of advanced technology by Marketers.

COVID has made B2B Marketing teams more important, as Sales teams are unable to use traditional face-to-face tactics to sell and require more digital marketing support. Our buyers are increasingly available online, which means many digital tactics have a higher chance of success than they did previously.

On a technology front, many of the platforms and practices that have been common in high-volume B2C marketing are increasingly being adopted in the world of B2B marketing.

We see the following 10 B2B Marketing Trends coming to the fore in 2021.

1. Video content marketing

As fewer people have been able to come face-to-face, video content has exploded, replacing human context in many cases. Video content marketing is the single greatest B2B Marketing trend we see over 2021.

Regardless of the reason for video, it is often a more efficient form of presenting content to an audience. If a picture speaks a thousand words, a video can speak millions! When it comes to B2B marketing, you need to ensure that your target audience understands what you are offering. In general video content will fare better than blog posts and other text-based content.

Additionally, video content lends itself well to sharing. C-suite executives are more often than not on the look-out for valuable content in their particular field. If you offer engaging video content, it will be shared across a sizable professional network, increasing the possibility that your prospects will come across it.

Therefore, it is prudent to invest in quality video. This can be a long-form video that engages the audience for a while. Alternatively, you can make use of a short video that piques your audience’s interest and gives them a better look at your brand and what you have to offer.

2. Podcasts

More than just a craze, podcasts have risen in popularity. Podcasts appeal to various individuals, addressing their different interests. Around 44 per cent of senior-level decision-makers carve out time in their day to listen. Podcasts are a good fit for brands who want to educate senior decision makers while they are otherwise ‘switched off’: we see high-quality, educational podcasts as a key B2B marketing trend for 2021.

Making a successful and compelling podcast involves identifying a niche that appeals to your target audience. However, merely identifying this niche does not translate to avid listeners. To attain loyal podcast fans, you need to provide quality content in each episode. Doing so earns you devoted listeners that will always look for new episodes. Not only does this paint you as a leading voice in that particular niche, but it also fosters brand awareness.

A podcast will elevate brands in 2021 because this content format is massively underappreciated and underused in the B2B realm. Consequently, integrating a podcast into your digital marketing strategy will help your brand stand out.

3. Webinars

The coronavirus pandemic has fast-tracked webinar adoption among professionals due to remote working. Businesses have gotten a taste for this, and we can see this continuing in lieu of in-person seminars: webinars will be a key B2B marketing trend for 2021.

9 in 10 professionals point to webinars as their preferred format for learning in a work context. Webinars are particularly useful when it comes to generating high-quality leads, increasing engagement and growing sales. Additionally, webinars grow a brand’s identity, exposing its service to an assorted assembly of attendees.

To leverage the power of webinars, marketing teams need to ensure that they integrate actionable insights into their presentations. This can include tips and tricks, industry trends and predictions, as well as expert interviews.

Furthermore, webinars can inform case studies of the brand’s solutions. Businesses can conduct research and present their findings – alongside actionable insights – via webinars.

4. Integrated Marketing Teams

Moving forward, stratifying a marketing team into different channels will hamper efficiency. This will be particularly apparent as omnichannel marketing takes centre stage in reeling in prospective business clients.

Siloed teams lack efficient cooperation and the ability to lead prospects through an increasingly sprawling customer journey uniformly. Therefore, bringing all sections under one group will foster better marketing campaign management.

Integrated marketing team members should know about each other’s roles so that they can align their goals to dovetail with others’. This will be particularly useful in 2021 as brands attempt to target businesses from all angles with a consistent message.

5. Search Marketing that appeals to multiple personas

Web search is now over 25 years old: yet as a marketing tool, search marketing is as relevant as ever. Search has evolved to a point where it’s a key part of nearly every digital marketing strategy. Compared to conventional SEO, B2B optimisation requires brands to tweak their content to suit multiple decision-makers. This is the case because purchases are approved at different levels.

Specifically, Search Marketing that appeals to multiple personas will be a B2B marketing trend for 2021.

To get successful conversions, you need to appeal to the individuals at these different posts in the target organisation. Therefore, the content needs to appeal to people on the ground, marketers and executives alike.

So, marketers need to derive search intent from their buyer personas. This makes it easier to do effective keyword research. These keywords should signal what exactly key figures in the target business would search for when looking for a brand’s service or product. With all of this in place, marketing teams should create content that compels their different audiences to take action.

In 2021, the strategy should include a content calendar so that the business has a consistent web presence. This keeps the brand in target clients’ minds if they need a service or product in that particular niche.

6. Omnichannel Marketing

Also known as integrated marketing, omnichannel marketing is set to be a B2B marketing trend for 2021 because of its emphasis on putting the prospective client first. This form of marketing involves leveraging different marketing channels depending on where your buyer wants to consume content – rather than where a brand would prefer to place their messaging.

For instance, a brand’s promotion strategy can include social media marketing, paid ad campaigns, email marketing and blog content. The goal is to ensure that the target C-suite executives see your brand wherever they turn. 

When they open their email, they have quality newsletters from your brand. If they log onto their LinkedIn, they see your branded content. Furthermore, they come across your ads on their browser and essential websites they visit. It’s this omnipresence that makes them think of your brand first should they encounter a problem or need in your area of operation.

Therefore, your market research needs to be on point, allowing you to understand your ideal client better. In doing so, you can target all the channels your prospects are likely to frequent.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has been powering consumer marketing for years now, and we see AI becoming a B2B marketing trend over 2021. 

Artificial Intelligence is already responsible for intuitive chatbots and smart replies in email, and helping find a good fit between employer and employee on LinkedIn. AI powers most advertising algorithms, Marketing Automation, and conversational marketing technologies. Artificial intelligence is poised to make an even more discernible impact on B2B marketing in 2021 as the technology evolves. 

Businesses continue to collect increasing volumes of data about their prospective clients. AI makes it easier to sort through this data, gleaning actionable insights. These insights can be leveraged to effectively market products and services to prospective clients.

This tech can scour large databases for potential targets; targets that are more likely to respond to the brand’s marketing efforts. Consequently, marketing teams will handle less cold calls and emails, allowing them to redirect their efforts.

Furthermore, AI will also bolster business’ personalisation efforts when it comes to marketing and handling individual accounts. The technology does this through a comprehensive analysis of prospects’ behaviours, permitting marketers to tailor individualized strategies for different potential executives.

8. Predictive Analytics

In the same breath from above, predictive analytics is set to become a B2B marketing trend in 2021. In this instance, businesses are turning to predictive analytics to inform their marketing decisions.

Predictive analytics bring plenty of positives to a brand’s marketing strategy. The tech allows brands to efficiently leverage their business intelligence to draw trends and future practices.

The resultant predictive models allow businesses to tailor their marketing campaigns to take advantage of future behaviour. After all, professionals welcome ambitious and progressive propositions that speak directly to their business’ future needs.

9. Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality is a fast-moving and unexpected B2B Marketing trend for 2021.

Both our two key drivers of COVID and technology apply here. Virtual walkthroughs have replaced physical walkthroughs; and virtual reality technology has dropped in cost as tech advances.

How might you apply VR or AR in your context? There are instances where even the best marketing campaigns leave prospects undecided. True, they are convinced about your product or service. However, they are still straddling the fence, unable to choose between you and the competition.

This is where virtual or augmented reality comes into play. VR and AR give prospects a hands-on experience with your product or service in a unique medium.

Furthermore, marketers can use this tech to offer more engaging presentations. Rather than go through mundane slideshow-filled seminars or webinars, virtual reality makes presentations more engaging.

In an ever-competitive world, virtual reality will make brands stand out from all of the noise.

10. Data Security as a core Marketing Competency

Businesses collect different kinds of data from their potential targets. Analysing data informs various decisions, especially when it comes to marketing.

However, prospective business clients are skittish about outside parties accessing their data. For instance, if your brand operates in the SaaS field, you would need to access your client’s data to integrate their system.

Therefore, you need to convince prospective clients that your system is impregnable, allowing you to safeguard their data assets. The onus is on the custodians of the brand – Marketing – to provide that data security is tight. Therefore, data security as a core Marketing competency is something we foresee becoming a B2B marketing trend for 2021.

It’s no wonder that two-thirds of large organisations employ Chief Data Officers to reign over this invaluable asset.

Moving forward into 2021, privacy and security will be more than a trend because businesses will collect even more types of data touch points across their operations.

Do these trends Resonate with you?

If you would like to learn how Resonate can work with your business to improve your marketing play now and into the future, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at sales@resonate.com.au. 

The post 10 B2B Marketing Trends for 2021 appeared first on Resonate.

Be part of the process to create a sense of urgency

It’s a popular belief that CEOs need to create a ‘burning platform’ to create a sense of urgency in the face of change. The ‘burning platform’ analogy comes from a story of a worker living on an oil rig in the North Sea. The man woke one morning to an explosion and a blaze of flames. He stumbled to the edge of the oil rig platform and saw a thirty-metre drop into freezing waters. On any normal day, he would not even consider jumping in the water, but due to the radical change in circumstances, he had to make a different decision.

The application of this in business is to present the ideology that the business will fail or be in trouble if the change is not imminent. While many practise this ideology to achieve results, I firmly believe it is often short-lived with little long-lasting impact. In short, using fear as a motivator for change is often ineffective and is not sustainable. So, what does work?

CEOs can initiate change by creating a compelling and positive purpose. Employees today are driven by purpose more than ever, with many even willing to earn less to do more meaningful work. With this in mind, employees need to understand why change is required. It is also important to show how this new course of action will yield positive results compared to what they are doing currently. This will help encourage sustained engagement in the new changes, while also ensuring a sense of urgency if they understand the importance.

Typically, where change is non-critical CEOs and business leaders delegate and then disappear. When trying to drive urgent change being part of the process is paramount. As a CEO, you need to stay involved, join your employees in the trenches, and help them to pivot to the new way of working. This continued involvement not only highlights the importance of the task but also initiates a Tipping Point.

A Tipping Point is the name given to a moment where everything can change at once. It only takes a small percentage of the population to hold an unshakable belief in something for the majority of society to adopt it. The same applies to business. The takeaway is that you only need to focus on a small number of people in leadership positions to reach a Tipping Point. This can create a shift in entire teams, to follow the new model of behaviour required in the organisation.

Irreversible and reversible decision making

Not all decisions are equal. In 1997 Jeff Bezos shed some light on his approach to decision making at Amazon, in his letter to shareholders. He highlighted the importance of making decisions quickly as a lean startup. Bezos stated, ‘Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had.’ He believed if you waited for 90% in most cases, you are going too slow.

In the letter, he defined two types of decisions, irreversible and reversible. He categorised these as Type 1 and Type 2.

He describes irreversible decisions as one-way doors. Once opened, you cannot go back to where you were before. These types of decisions require careful, methodical planning and deliberation. However, Type 2 decisions are more like revolving doors; they are reversible. These types of decisions can be made swiftly by high judgement individuals or small teams. Rather than treating all decisions as a Type 1 option, using a two-door approach allows for faster and better decision making to happen. This approach better facilitates rapid change.

Google is another company that executes on a model of fast decision making. When standing as CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt was an advocate of fast decisions. On Reid Hoffman’s podcast, Masters of Scale, he said ‘You’ll make some mistakes but you need decision making.’ 

He divulged that all decisions at Google were quick decisions, even the decision to buy YouTube, one of Google’s most valuable acquisitions, was made in ten days.

Yes, mistakes may occur, but both CEOs believed that making a quick decision is often the best course of action. With this in mind, it is vital to empower employees to make decisions, which creates a sense of urgency internally. This is even more prevalent during times of leadership in a crisis.

Costs of ineffective decision making

With decision making being a significant catalyst to bring about change, ineffective decision making is a setback. Despite companies around the world devoting billions of dollars each year on change management consultancy, only a small proportion excel at decision making. 

This point is re-iterated by McKinsey that found that managers at typical Fortune 500 companies potentially waste more than 500,000 days a year on ineffective decision making. This equates to a staggering $250 million in wages annually.

These numbers highlight the financial implications of ineffective decision making, but more importantly, the time wasted. This is an opportunity cost when it comes to creating rapid change and a sense of urgency, as slow decisions create slow outcomes.

Faster decision making not only helps the bottom line, but it also helps to keep up the momentum when it comes to transformative change within a company. This is not only key for maintaining urgency on short term goals, but also longer-term ambitions alike.

Embrace Intrapreneurship to bring about change

The term intrapreneurship is when a person behaves entrepreneurially within a large organisation. Embracing the lean startup mentality, where changes are like rapid experiments, can be a great way to drive a sense of urgency around change, without the fear of failure. 

Market leaders like Google have been praised for their experimental culture, embracing failure to drive innovation and change at unprecedented speeds. While they often fail to get it right the first time, it’s attitudes like this that allow for rapid iteration. The Google Pixel is a fantastic example; while Google succeeds in many areas, their phone has not historically been one of those. Despite numerous public setbacks, they have continued to work on the experiment that is their phone. 

With COVID-19, we have seen change at an unprecedented level. The Restaurant industry is a good example of these changes. Restaurants worldwide are now swiftly moving over to contactless technology for placing orders and making payments. This not only provides a better user experience but also reduces restaurant costs, as less staff are required.

While it is unfortunate circumstances that have driven this change, it’s clear that change can be quick and effective. CEOs should approach change with an experimental attitude, a clear purpose and buy-in from key high-level stakeholders, to generate the desired sense of urgency required.

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