Finalizing your 2017 B2B Marketing strategy? Make sure you check in on what your B2C colleagues are doing too. In the annual “State of the Connected Customer” report for 2016 by Salesforce Research, surveyed marketers identified getting smart about personalization as a top requirement for meeting their marketing expectations in 2017.
Personalizing consumer messages has become the status quo for most B2C marketers. I have nearly a dozen emails sitting in my inbox, from this weekend alone, recommending cosmetics for my personal skin type and mobile apps for my personal habits. However, personalized messages aren’t just for B2C. Even for B2B, buyers increasingly voice that they want to be treated like humans, not numbers.
Forbes predicts that in 2017, B2B marketing focuses will include:
The two trends aren’t so separated. The answer to humanizing B2B messages with personalization can actually be found in those new data and analytic technologies. In the coming year, personalized experiences for business buyers will emanate from multiple channels including deployment of digital content, social interaction, and user communities.
The 2016 “State of Marketing” report by Salesforce Research shows over half of marketing leaders worldwide are set to increase spending on marketing tools and technology over the next couple years. The investments are driven directly by customer demand. For example,
Image: “State of the Connected Customer” Salesforce Research
For a tangible representation of this statistic, consider the possibilities of personalized, B2B marketing.
Targeted Messages and Target Markets
Your internal data reveals businesses are more likely to invest in your consulting services within a quarter of a new COO coming in. Using external data analysis of executive movements, you can deliver personalized messages to your target customers, automatically and effectively.
Engagement and Relationships
Your hospitality special events team is looking for opportunity indications around a prospect such as new industry conferences or changes in marketing spending. Events are automatically discovered, enabling your personalized messages to potential buyers that encourage your hospitality services over those of your competition.
With in-depth data and analytics becoming increasingly available, effective and personalized B2B marketing has become possible. It’s time to see your business buyers as more than just businesses.
We’ve heard of Hunters and Farmers. However, a recent webinar from Top Sales World, “Account Based Selling: Stop Selling & Start Guiding”, claims the Fisherman is the true MVP of selling. But who is the Fisherman?
An old, overlooked friend, the Fisherman is described by a 1990s article in relation to recruiting as a patient hirer with diverse requirements. The current seller definition follows the same tone. According to the Optis Group, the fishing salesperson is calm, realistic, and collaborative. For many, this sounds far from the aggressive Don Draper they think of. However, it seems increasingly likely that the Fisherman is the same person responsible for your top sales.
A survey was conducted on top salespeople in order to identify their core persona in terms of attributes that explain drive, motivations, and actions. I attended the survey’s accompanying webinar, “The Persona of Top Sales Professionals” by Velocify. Though this was intentionally not a personality test but rather a look into their perception of the world, for the purpose of testing my Fisherman hypotheses, I answered a short Myers Briggs test according to the survey’s top results and descriptions. Think of this as my Rosetta stone for comparing the Fisherman ideal to the current top sales performers’ persona.
The top answers by top salespeople indicate an ESTJ personality type. According to the Account Based Selling webinar, the Fisherman guides, not pushes, leads through the sales pipeline with support, advice, and appropriate interjection. Similar to Fishermen, ESTJs are described as those that provide “clear advice and guidance” while leading the way down difficult routes.
Dedicated planners, ESTJs value preparation and follow-through. This aligns nicely with the idea that knowledge and relevancy is key to Account Based Selling. Jonathan Farrington, host of the Account Based Selling webinar, proposes that to achieve relevancy, and therefore effective selling, knowledge must go beyond just product knowledge to encompass industry, sector, competitive, company, business, and self-knowledge. This concept carries over into the survey results with the group answering “knowledge is powerful” as essential to sales was the group found to have the highest quota attainment at 170%.
With solid comparisons found between Fishermen and the persona of current top salespeople, the metaphor may in fact be a useful tool for hirers of salespeople or current salespeople looking to adjust their own selling approach to modern consumers.
According to the webinars referenced:
This is part of the FirstRain Persona Series.
Every company needs an executive leader with a lion mentality. One that won’t shy away from a tough deal, someone that has mastered an intuitive awareness of how and when to nurture new business, and one that can lead the rest of the sales pack with a clear vision. And across many enterprise C-suites, Sales now has a direct seat at the table.
With today’s fast moving digital marketplace, the objectives of a sales executive continue to transform the traditional sales role. Sales responsibilities are inheritably linked to revenue goals and the tasks have brought on new members to the C-suite, such as the Chief Sales Officer, Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Revenue Officer. To keep things simple in this persona post, we will refer to these C-Suite level lions as the Chief Sales Officer.
Today, CSOs are constantly leveraging a sales strategy and market trends that will create the most impact for the enterprise, evaluating ways for new revenue streams, analyzing market disruptions and always, always on the hunt for business opportunities.
Clearly, the role today involves more than managing sales teams and includes strategic goals such as finding niche market opportunities and enterprise solutions to better position the company’s products and services. With characteristics of a true pioneer, they are always steps ahead and on the quest to competently execute a sales plan and turn value propositions into business deals.
In the Venture Beat article, “The Rise of the Chief Revenue Officer: Silicon Valley’s new secret sauce,” the author states, “A great CRO must be able to wedge into any aspect of the company to lay the underpinnings of a scalable revenue engine and tune everything for execution.” CSOs must continually assess and re-assess the current marketplace and then look for avenues to implement acute strategic business analysis to meet and exceed revenue goals.
Identifying what will create the strongest impact for the enterprise is the first step; deciding what steps to take next requires setting both, short-term and long-term goals; does the company continue to make deals more profitable and lower cost of sales, does it need to expand current contracts or scale products and service offerings into new industries, does the company leverage cross selling, does the company win in competitive situations, does the company provide thought leadership, does the company create sustainable teams and of course, they must execute.
Quarter after quarter CSOs must measure activities, technology and marketing strategy campaigns and understand what works, what doesn’t and ensure that they are introducing their products with the most compelling value proposition and approach into the market. The mindset is results-driven and efficiently integrating activities that will ignite results, both short-term and long-term is a must.
In addressing the need for a CSO, Greg Alexander of Sales BenchMark Index (SBI) writes, “A CSO understands how change ripples throughout an organization. They understand how decisions affect organizations, markets, product lines, competitors and business units.” – CSO’s leadership style must demonstrate an intuitive understanding of industry analysis, region, contract deals and clearly match them to the appropriate team members that will get the job done. They must always strategically seek, nurture and create business relationships for the profitability and product expansion of the business.
CSOs must find ways to connect the dots within an enterprise and bring more revenue streams in a constantly changing market. Relentlessly, they solicit new ideas to approach more streams of business and strengthen value propositions within different industries, often partnering with the Chief Marketing Officer to present the strongest, sometimes aggressive, go-to-market-strategy into play. Together, they will assess the strength of a business deal, with the aid of marketing campaigns, and deploy salespeople to initiate contact, and work together with product development to ensure that the product presentation maximizes value factors for the end markets.
Today’s CSOs must understand disruptions and their competitors, and be agile with a clear mindset, bold attitude and a keen insight of the best marketing strategy. They are responsible for connecting the dots; finding sales intelligence and new value propositions to better target go-to-markets and finding ways to move enterprise solutions forward, making the business profitable and expanding value in the product offering.
Partnering with other members of the C-suite is crucial to the successful growth of the enterprise. To transcend value through different industries in today’s digital marketplace, CSOs need competitive intelligence tools that show them the way, like FirstRain, that uses modern day technology not only to predict business opportunities but rather align business deals with real customer needs. FirstRain’s dynamic platforms aligns:
The responsibility for the growth and acquisition of new business is heavy, but with the successful integration of competitive intelligence tools and a solid marketing strategy, CSOs can propel a company forward.
CSOs do a lot of talking to nurture business relationships, but at the end of the day, their role is all about measurable results. True, successful sales leaders have a sixth sense of where profitability and business development must stand within their company’s initiatives, and partnering with sales intelligence tools that deliver them a cunning, comprehensive view of their customers and markets, allows them to execute on their sales acumen with real smart data.
Like a lion on the hunt, sales executives must have an acute awareness of their environment, and understand what small step will cause a disruption, when it is best to go in for the kill and when it is best to act patiently and wait for a bigger meal.
To read additional posts on FirstRain buyer Personas:
FirstRain is proud to have been named one of Oracle’s key ISV partners as part of Oracle’s Partner ecosystem expansion announcement at this week’s Oracle Open World (#OOW2015) annual conference. In support of helping customers maximize ROI from its Oracle Cloud Applications, our newest offering, FirstRain for Oracle Sales Cloud provides subscribers on-the-go access to real-time, relevant insights into the customers, competitors and markets they care about most. With FirstRain, Oracle Sales Cloud users are coached on who to call and what to say using advanced analytics and are able to quickly stay current on the critical changes impacting their customer’s business and end markets in a simple, elegant format directly in their Oracle Sales Cloud workflows.
You can read the full press release on the Oracle website or you can visit the FirstRain for Oracle Sales Cloud listing here. What to learn more? Please contact us for a demo!
FirstRain understands sales. Who should I be calling today? What should I say to attract their attention? Is my team prepared for that meeting? Are we all on the same page? How is my competition doing? What are they pitching? How do I intersect the value proposition with my customer’s needs? These are the questions that run through your mind every day. We got answers.
FirstRain gives you exactly the key information you need when you need it. Find new opportunities, develop and maintain key relationships with your customers, and ultimately close more deals.
Walk through a day in the life of a salesperson and gain a real-time understanding of the powerful information at your fingertips as a FirstRain user.
Collaborate, get smarter, and win.
The wait is over. The FirstRain Orion release is causing quite an impactful stir in the world of technology. Orion, released on June 17th, is the world’s first analytics platform that brings together external and internal unstructured data to coach teams and professionals on key business developments that affect their go-to marketing strategy, business relationships, and investments.
Recognition for this universal architecture is coming from every angle, including senior executives from Racepoint and top 10 global pharma company who highlight “smooth integrations” and “increased productivity” driven by FirstRain solutions. The primary topics of discussion displayed Orion’s ability to elevate the delivery of information by:
“We are delighted to bring the new FirstRain Orion architecture to our Fortune 1000 enterprise customers,” said Penny Herscher, FirstRain president and CEO. “The seamless integration of critical and personalized customer and market insights into their enterprise-wide solutions and mobile-first initiatives will help them grow revenue by dramatically improving the speed and quality of the employee’s daily business decisions.”
Review some of the articles covering the FirstRain Orion:
New analytics platform from FirstRain
FirstRain Extends Analytics Reach to include Internal Data Sources
The 2015 SAVO Sales Enablement Summit theme – Spotlight on Growth – brings together an elite community of sales, sales enablement, sales operations and marketing professionals united with a common objective – driving growth through a highly effective, productive and tightly integrated sales ecosystem.
FirstRain is proud to be a sponsor at this year’s summit and to show our support we will be exhibiting and demonstrating how our mutual customers can use SAVO and FirstRain together to drive growth.
The SAVO team has done a great job leading up to the Summit sharing with attendees the best way to take full advantage of the Summit. Here are a few blog posts that highlight what we all have in store for us this week:
There are also some great customer testimonials written from by Michelle Genser that are must reads if you are attending:
We look forward to meeting all the SAVO teams as well as customers at this year’s summit, and will be at the SAVO Smarter Selling Lounge from Tuesday evening June 2nd through Thursday June 4th.
Strategic account management is not a new sales strategy and it is known that effective SAM programs create customer loyalty, stimulate growth, enhance profitability, and lead to innovative service delivery. Since 1964, the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) has been focused solely on helping to establish strategic, key and global account management as a separate profession, career path and proven corporate strategy for growth.
This year’s 51st annual Strategic Account Management Association conference is taking place in San Diego next week from May 4-7th. Attendance is expected to be over 700 SAM professionals and sales executives from all over the country. With over 40 sessions, this year’s conference focuses on ‘transforming strategic account management from a sales strategy to a corporate strategy’ should lead to great discussions and learnings from attendees and speakers!
FirstRain is a proud sponsor of this year’s conference and FirstRain’s VP of Marketing & Alliances, Daniela Barbosa and FirstRain Executive Fellow, Nima Niakan will be in attendance to learn about best practices in competing for the future!
Attending? If you want to schedule a meeting with Daniela or Nima at the conference, drop us a line.
We look forward to seeing everyone next week!
Building solutions that meets today’s customer needs is core to our FirstRain mission. Over the last few months we have invested a lot of time with customers and prospects to really understand what today’s sales teams need as part of their sales acceleration strategy. Today we are pleased to announce our newest product update with FirstRain Personal Business Analytics™ for Sales 2.0 for salesforce.com. Starting today, FirstRain customers can download the newest version of FirstRain for salesforce.com from the salesforce AppExchange.
Transforming the way people market, sell and service through a customer-focused lens takes a deep understanding of the customer and the markets in which they operate. FirstRain gives sales and marketing teams the insights they need to understand emerging business challenges and opportunities, driving actions and strategic decisions in order to grow revenue. FirstRain ranks top accounts by the quality of triggers that are dynamically discovered based on a user’s role, and the products and services they sell.
Using an adaptive business graph that delivers powerful categorization and precision, and in-the-moment, context-aware personalization, FirstRain can now coach sales teams by alerting them of “Deal Breakers” and “Accelerators,” which include real-time triggered events on potential risks in active Salesforce.com sales opportunities or real-world events that will help accelerate sales discussions.
Welcome to a new way to know “Who to Call” and what to say!
You can read the full press release here, or sign-up to see for yourself here.
As we approach the much anticipated final four weekend of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, everyone’s talking about whether Kentucky will win it all. The past predicts that the championship isn’t in their favor, but so far they’re proving history wrong and fans can’t stop watching to see what happens.
March Madness may be killing sales productivity in your organization and with the odds of predicting the perfect bracket being 1 in 1,610,543,269 according to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight you definitely want your sales strategy to have better odds. The more we watch, the more we realize that transforming your sales strategy is a lot like playing the tourney.
Check out these top ten tips* we have put together for transforming your sales teams with analytics that reveal the changing relationships between businesses, markets and products—so you can win, on and off the court.
*Hover over each dot to view the tip.
