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Personal Customer

Business Buyers are People Too

Dec 2016/in , , , /by

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:

  • Data management and analytics
  • Personalized message creation and delivery

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,

70% statistic

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.

Mega Trends

Staying Ahead of Sales Mega-Trends: Consumer Expectations

Jul 2014/in /by

This is part 3 of a 4-part series addressing how Personal Business Analytics help our customers respond to the emerging mega-trends set forth by McKinsey on the Salesforce blog.

B2C-inspired customer expectations

With the proliferation of mobile in consumers’ everyday lives, as well as increased expectation of BYOD workplaces, both B2B employees and customers are coming to expect the same level of personalization that they get as consumers. In order to meet these B2C-inspired consumer expectations, “sales leaders need to develop frictionless and personalized models to connect with the customer across any channel.”

The need to understand how to really connect with your customers has led to the rise of CRM and enterprise collaboration platforms, but employees tend to resist change in their existing workflows—which can result not only in stagnating customer relationships but also in slowing sales cycles. The answer is to place intelligent guidance right where sales already lives, while providing value-based information stickiness in the tools you need them to use. This can be done with very specific, granular insights based on their role, product lines they sell, regions they cover, industry focus and market and competitor relationships.

Connecting with your customer anywhere, anytime is a priority—and as our FirstRain usage stats show across some of the biggest global sales organizations, mobile is the fastest growing platform to connect sellers with buyers’ needs. But for many organizations, gathering the customer intelligence needed to turn the sales team into customer experts is time-consuming. They are simply unable to create very personal experiences with basic sales intelligence tools they may have previously invested in, many of which don’t even have native mobile apps. Consumers today have access to almost everything they need on their mobile devices, from banking to finding their next date, so consumer expectations now mean having the same experience when it comes to customer intelligence. They want their phone to help them build better relationships with their customers so they can win more deals; so, when selecting a tool to match the needs of these sellers, consider:

  • Are your current sales intelligence tools available as highly personal solutions in both native mobile apps, as well as integrated into enterprise workflows like CRM, enterprise portal and collaboration platforms?
  • Can your sales teams quickly create a very personal and intelligent view into their full customer revenue cycle, from initial sale to renewal?
  • Are you meeting consumer expectations by giving them specific, granular insights based on their role, product line, region, industry, market and competitor relationships?

Drop us a note if you’d like to learn more about enabling your sales teams with frictionless and personalized views that help them connect with your customers.

brand strategy

Build an Effective Brand Strategy: Understand Your Targets

Jun 2014/in /by

Developing a strong brand is an essential part of building value. Your brand is the most outward-facing, recognizable element of your company, and in the end, that is what people respond to. Of course, a good product is the building block of a good brand, but the brand itself is what conveys trustworthiness and quality.

However, according to an article in The Economist, research shows that decision-makers feel that brand is a central element of the seller’s value proposition. B2B products, do not elicit the same kind of emotional connection that consumer product do—but a strong brand can nonetheless facilitate access to prospects and speed up the sales cycle by clarifying benefits and reducing perceived risks.

Needless to say, brand strategy is something to take seriously. Chief Outsiders offers a look into how to make your brand as strong as possible:


  1. Determine what the criteria are for your target customers’ decision-making. What are the things that they care about most? What business problems are they trying to solve? When you truly understand your target customers, you can position your product and develop your brand in a way that speaks to them most.
  2. Assess where your brand is currently positioned. Are there gaps in your brand strategy, and are there new opportunities to be had? Being able to make an accurate evaluation relies on a complete knowledge of the current trends in your target market, as well as a good view of where the market is heading.
  3. Choose where you would like to be positioned and adjust your messaging accordingly. You should be able to relatewhat your company does and how that’s different from other providers in a way that is supremely relevant to your target. Especially in B2B, one target market could have radically different priorities than another—but they each need to understand the value of your product.

The goal for a brand strategy is to have your brand reflect quality, which in turn will help convince more customers to buy from you. But that’s no easy task—your message needs to deeply resonate with your target buyers. By truly understanding the markets you wish to enter or lead, you will be able to clearly articulate the value your product provides in a context to which your targets can personally relate—winning you more loyalty and more deals.

Video_Camera

How to use video for lead generation

Jan 2014/in , /by

Video is a fun and engaging way to find sales opportunities, and it’s not just for B2C anymore. B2B companies can harness the power of movie as well. According to Janine Popick for Inc., 92 percent of B2B customers watch videos online, and 43 percent of B2B customers watch videos when researching products and services.

You don’t have to outsource a video production company to make a great video, although that’s certainly an option. You just need to create content that people want to watch. Put someone in front of a camera, and demonstrate what a font of knowledge they are. Sales reps are generally pretty dynamic individuals, so get one of them to be your spokesperson. Having a genuine employee in front of the camera will also make you appear more authentic.

Here are some tips for engaging your customers and generating leads with video:

Create awesome content

If you can’t come up with a reason to use video marketing, you probably shouldn’t do it. If you don’t have a wealth of information you’re dying to share, video is useless. However, if you have tons of ideas and need an engaging outlet to reach your audience, video is perfect.

If you need ideas, using customer intelligence analytics can help you determine what kind of information your customers really need. The best content will anticipate the problems customers have and provide them with solutions.

Make the video engaging

According to Jeff Molander in Target Marketing Magazine, many marketers fail using video because they overthink what they are saying and forget to consider how they will say it. It may be easier said than done, but in order to be successful on this channel, you need content that really says something interesting while keeping the viewer’s attention.

Try telling a story. The human brain is programmed to respond to narratives, and they tend to be more memorable than straight facts. In the Salesforce Blog, Jeff Ogden notes how popular television show The Walking Dead consistently gains more viewers than the NFL. This compelling narrative of a small group of survivors outrunning bloodthirsty zombies tells a story that is both gripping and visually engaging. Just remember, you don’t need gore to create videos that users want to watch.

Generate leads

Finish off videos with a clear call to action to find potential buyers. Once you’ve hooked users on your fantastic video channel, you can even require a user registration so that visitors have to give you an email address in order to continue. YouTube allows you to overlay ads if you are a Google Adwords advertiser, according to Popick.

Training with Gamification

How to use gamification for B2B training and lead generation

Jan 2014/in , /by

Everyone loves a good game. Games engage us and put us in a flow state that leads to a feelings of well-being. That’s why the gamification trend is on the rise, and will continue to trend upward. Games are a great way to engage customers, too, even if you’re in the B2B world. They’re also a great way to train staff and provide business insight.

What is gamification?
According to Forrester research, gamification can be defined as “the insertion of game dynamics and mechanics into non-game activities to drive a desired behavior.” In layman’s terms, gamification is making the boring aspects of life more fun by adding points systems, badges and other hallmarks of game playing. It’s a way to make often less-than-interesting aspects of business life more engaging for clients and employees alike.

If you’re still unsure of exactly what gamification might look like, Foursquare is a good example for consumers. This social platform essentially transforms the act of visiting new places into a game by allotting points whenever a user checks into a named location. You can unlock badges by visiting a certain number of locations in a similar category. For example, you can unlock a badge after visiting 10 different Mexican restaurants, or 10 different movie theaters. Whenever a user checks in, he or she receives points that allow friendly competition between users. While this platform is designed for consumers, it is an excellent model for the way gamification can be applied to training.

Using gamification to improve sales productivity
When training salespeople, you often have goals in mind that you would like them to reach before sending them out into the trenches. Gamification is a great way to help novice sales reps achieve these benchmarks. It’s a good idea to create metrics and other measurable goals for new salespeople. Every business does things a little bit differently, so things like CRM protocols can also be included. Naturally, measurable goals make it easy to implement a game. According to Bob Marsh for Salesforce blog, creating a leaderboard is a great way to engage new salespeople. Add a point system for each goal, and display the results in a public setting.

Displaying these outcomes in the open can help sales reps learn from each other; it also creates a culture of open communication. There is no shame at being at the bottom of the leaderboard in the context of a friendly game, but it may help the new hire see that they need to work on some key skills. You can also include more seasoned associates in the game.

Customer engagement and lead generation
According to David Kirkpatrick on Marketing Sherpa, B2B companies can use gamification just as well as B2C. Implementing a captivating game online is a great way to get users to get engaged on your company’s website, and it can be as simple as offering rewards for persisting in certain behaviors. As an example, Kirkpatrick notes how software company SAP made its online community more active by integrating game dynamics. The community message board was already very active and users would frequently answer one another’s inquiries. The company assigned the title of “expert” to certain users with a track record of responding frequently.

Adding gamification strategies can be a good way to find sales opportunities. Kirkpatrick recommends giving users a set of goals to reach. Once users download a white ​paper or watch a promotional video, you can have them take a quiz. Allow them to unlock expertise badges about your products. Once they reach a certain level, offer them some kind of reward.

You can also gamify normal social media posts. In an example cited by Corey Eridon on Hubspot, a business posted a statement on Facebook, requesting that users respond whether it was true or false. Out of the correct answers, the company randomly selected someone to win a gift card. The initiative ropes in prospective clients and keeps current ones engaged.

Rewards
It’s a good idea to provide an incentive for people to play. While achieving the highest status, or the highest number of points can a good enough reward, shelling out for gifts can make the experience even better. Whether your reward is aimed at your own salespeople, or potential leads, chances are giving people a concrete reason to play your game will improve the outcome. For customers, offer early access to white​ papers and other content, or even a discounted rate.

lifecycle

Understanding the life cycle of a sales lead

Dec 2013/in /by

A big pet peeve of salespeople is that they are given terrible leads by their marketing team. However, it may not be that the leads aren’t great, it may be how the salesperson is choosing to follow up on them. Think of it this way: Leads have a life cycle, like plants do. Just because a lead has peeked its head out of the ground doesn’t mean you can harvest it. Give your leads some TLC to see a maximum return on investment.

The buying cycle is changing
Buyers have already done their research before approaching a business. They could find a company through social media, search engines or other online channels. With the advent of content marketing, potential buyers could learn a lot about your company without ever having talked to you. You no longer need to seek out prospects. They’ll come to you. For this reason, prospective buyers are often at an early stage of the buying process during their first conversation with a sales rep.

A study from Marketing Sherpa Business-To-Business Demand Generation Summit found two different conclusions. Sales people need to:
1. Respond more quickly
2. Be more persistent.

Pounce quickly
Your leads are using the Internet to their advantage, and you should too. If you have data on when they were browsing, use it to make a call. The Marketing Sherpa study demonstrated that effective response times could be far shorter than most sales reps think. The likelihood of reaching a new sales lead drops 10 times if you wait longer than an hour after they first show interest. After an hour, the odds decrease another 6 times.

Be persistent
According to Michael Boyette for Marketo, about 45 percent of B2B leads end up buying. Out of 100 leads handed down by the marketing department, roughly 45 of them will be sales opportunities and about 15 of those will actually close.

The mistake is in thinking that the remaining 30 leads are dead. According to Boyette, they might just not be ripe enough. Depending on where they are in the buying cycle, they might just not be ready to commit. It doesn’t meant you should stop trying. Keep in touch with green leads. If you were gardening, you wouldn’t water plants once and then stop. If the apples were too green when you went out to pick them, it doesn’t mean they’re worthless – they just need some more time.

Nurture your leads
If potential customers aren’t quite ready to buy, they may not be ready to talk to a sales rep just yet. Keep building brand awareness for your products by sending them messages and content. Doing this can actually speed up the buyer’s timeline, making them likely to purchase more quickly. According to MarketingSherpa data cited by Marketo, lead nurturing can lead to a 45 percent increase in return on investment. Knowing your customers can help you determine when and how to approach leads when they are reaching fruition. Use customer research to determine what their buying cycle might look like before trying to close the deal.

new years

Make content your New Year’s marketing resolution

Dec 2013/in /by

Content marketing is the probably the biggest marketing trend of 2013. It seems likely that content will remain the biggest marketing industry buzzword going into 2014. Do you have a resolution for the New Year? Maybe it’s time for your marketing department to come up with a collective resolution: successfully implementing a content marketing strategy in 2014.

You may be thinking content marketing doesn’t work for B2B, and you’re not exactly wrong. A lot of companies haven’t figured out how to get content marketing to work efficiently for them. The truth is, B2B content marketing brings a unique set of challenges. However, provided you know what you’re in for, the return on investment can be just as high as it is for B2C.

The challenges of B2B content marketing:

  • Not all traffic is good - While a lot of B2C companies can benefit from easy content that simply drives traffic, B2B content needs to be engaging, thoughtful and demonstrate expertise. When done right, B2B content will be aimed at aimed at industry experts. Bad content can attract a whole lot of the wrong audience. You may be getting more traffic, but if it’s not improving your sales prospects, there’s really no point.
  • Getting your voice heard - In the past, things were much simpler. You knew exactly where your content would go, and who would get it. Basically, marketers would write articles for glossy industry magazines that would go out to a list of subscribers. These days, content sources are free and marketers often struggle to be heard over the din of voices.

How to implement a successful content strategy

Because of these challenges, it’s not surprising that about half of companies surveyed by Content Marketing Institute reported they had no content marketing strategy. Given the lag in adoption of this marketing channel, those firms that do find a way to implement a successful content marketing strategy will be ahead of the game.

Here are some tips to get started:

  1. Get to know your consumers - Use customer intelligence to learn as much as you can about your consumer base. You can’t generate great content without knowing who should be reading it and why your services matter to them.
  2. Generate awesome content – Be a resource for your consumers. Write informative content targeted directly to prospective buyers. As Leigh Hoops writes for Forbes, consumers are constantly bombarded with information, and they’re getting sick of it. She also says if a piece of information feels too valuable to be giving away, then you’re doing it right. On the other hand, make your content as readable as possible. Your prospective buyers are busy people too.
  3. Find your consumers - Having trouble finding your audience? You’re probably not looking in the right place. Social media may be great for B2C, but if your company is using Facebook and Twitter, you could be throwing hashtags into the void. Of the companies that do use content marketing, 91 percent are on LinkedIn, according to Content Marketing Institute.
  4. Don’t give up - Continuous content is a must. Don’t disappoint your newly enticed prospects by neglecting your blog. According to Holly Chessman for Social Media B2B, the biggest reason corporate blogs die is because people stop writing them. To make sure you aren’t putting your content strategy on the back burner, it’s a good idea to create an editorial calendar. Make writing part of your daily duties. If you have trouble figuring out what to write, it’s okay to delve back into old content and put together a “greatest hits” collection.

When done right, these strategies will help you generate better leads for your sales team. Don’t let your fears hold you back from the jumping on the content marketing bandwagon.

personas

You Can’t Target Everyone: The Need for Buyer Personas

Oct 2013/in /by

By Nora Weintraub

 

You’re most likely aware you can’t go after a huge target market if you want to create successful advertising strategies. But many companies have trouble segmenting their customer base and generating separate marketing materials for each buyer persona they want to pursue. How can you create more relevant and targeted campaigns? By using customer intelligence, your marketing team can effectively segment your customers and have better knowledge of current and prospective clients.

 

Especially for B2B organizations, persona-based marketing is critical because many different players are involved in the decision-making process. B2B products often apply to very specific niche markets, so there’s no sense in trying to attract everyone. You need to get the most relevant customers interested in your products or services.

 

Why Do You Need Personas?

 

Most would-be customers encounter completely generic content when they research new products. Personas are virtual characters and represent a segment of customers with particular demographics, industries or roles within a company. Knowing your customers can help improve marketing, sales and even product development operations, according to an article by Mike Telem in Business 2 Community. You can more accurately define your ideal prospects and discover what really matters to them, helping you create more effective and engaging content.

 

B2B purchases typically involve a number of people within an organization, and each of these people will have different concerns. Financial executives won’t have the same considerations for new software as IT managers. And the end users of the product will have different concerns. Without targeting based on buyer personas, your marketing team may not be generating the right amount of leads, and the sales team may not be able to achieve significant revenue gains.

 

Start Using Personas and Get Better Results

 

Simply personalizing content isn’t enough, Patrick Spenner wrote in Forbes. While personalization can help companies target individuals, it doesn’t give B2B buying much of a boost when four or five people are involved. The more people in the buying group, the less likely you are to effectively engage all of them with the same kind of content.

 

In addition to needing more people to decide on a solution, people aren’t going to buy something immediately after discovering your product, according to Irakli Beselidze in a separate post for Business 2 Community. B2B buying cycles can last for years. The consequences of making the wrong decision can be disastrous, so buyers take their time and weigh their options. And even after you make the sale, you want to keep in contact with previous customers for when they need to upgrade in the future. This means you need to create content that targets multiple people, not just the executives with the decision-making power.

 

Some organizations wait for their audience to give clues to who the decision-makers and key influencers are. But companies need to stop doing this and start focusing on buyer personas to generate more effective campaigns. Rather than just launching content and hoping it provides value to someone in the buying cycle, you need to start studying buyer personas through customer analytics. Watch customer behavior while they are going through the different phases of the sales cycle. Since your customers are increasingly growing more knowledgeable and tech-savvy, you need to convert big data analytics into actionable insight. It can help you more effectively reach all the different people involved in the B2B decision-making process.

 

rocket science

Reducing Marketing Rocket Science: Understanding the Buyer’s Journey

Sep 2013/in /by

By Nora Weintraub

 

One of the latest buzzwords for sales and marketing is “the buyer’s journey,” which makes it sound like your customers are going through an epic voyage to purchase your product or service. Without customer intelligence as a backup, it’s difficult to identify the exact steps along a prospect’s path. If your company sells products to other businesses, the journey gets even more convoluted and tangled along the way. Knowing your customers can give you a better understanding of their pain points, how they found your products and what it will take to convince them to make a purchase.

 

If you ask a chief marketing officer about the buyer’s journey, he or she may have a very different opinion than the customers themselves. And because most people rely on Internet searches to find product information, the buyer’s journey usually begins from an online platform. The average CMO only manages to get a 5 percent email click-through rate, meaning most of these executives fail 95 percent of the time when trying to connect with their prospects during the journey, according to a column by Mathew Sweezey in ClickZ. There’s a definite disconnect between many of the best planned marketing campaigns and what customers are actually doing.

 

Buyer’s journey is more direct and has fewer stops than marketers think

 

Yes, it’s true that customers have more ways to reach your sales team and more sources of information on products and services than ever before. But in Sweezey’s research of B2B buyers, he found that the average client only does a few Google searches before making a decision. Although some people start out by asking their peers for recommendations, they will still consult the Internet at some point during their journey.

 

Many marketers know they need to provide different types of content for buyers in varying stages of the voyage, but some may not realize that the majority of customers prefer shorter reading material. Most prefer a length of under five pages. Companies need to understand what types of information are most relevant to their customers based on the stages of the buyer’s journey.

 

Shorter trip doesn’t mean you can get lazy with marketing

 

Although your customers are using the Internet to a higher degree to navigate the road to making a purchase, you need actionable insights to help them along the way. While you may employ a variety of marketing techniques, the end goal is the same: to get to know your clients and form a relationship, Jason Thibeault wrote in an article for Econsultancy. Your organization won’t be able to adequately meet your customers’ needs unless you have a deep understanding of their pain points and create appropriate marketing materials. The Internet has given companies far more ways to market and sell their products, but the basics are the same—personal connections still matter in the digital age.

 

But that doesn’t mean you can’t leverage customer analytics to form a better picture of your client base. Although the basic point of marketing is always the same, knowing where customers are in the buyers’ journey and how they got there is important to build on the relationship. Marketers that take advantage of chances to make personal connections with their prospects may be able to increase the odds of converting the lead into a sale. Even if the Internet has sped up the trip from prospect to customer, people still want to have a conversation.

 

The journey may be essentially the same, but everyone is different and may have different communication preferences. The better you know your customers, the more appropriately you can communicate with them, making the whole sales process easier.

 

team

Hiring and Training for Maximum Sales Productivity

Sep 2013/in , /by

By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Marketing

 

Your sales team is the backbone of your organization. In some cases, sales productivity can improve with training programs, but people who are innately good at selling often have specific traits. As a manager, you need to maximize your team’s capabilities to improve sales productivity.

 

Characteristics of highly successful salespeople

 

Even though many people choose to make a career in sales, some have the personality characteristics that make them great at what they do and some don’t. According to an Inc. magazine article by Geoffrey James, the best salespeople are assertive, self-aware, empathetic and excellent problem-solvers. As sales becomes more customer-centric, emotionally intelligent sales reps will become more valued.

 

Passive salespeople won’t be able to close deals and aggressive reps could scare away potential clients by being too pushy. Being assertive is the happy medium, and reps with this quality may be able to take better advantage of sales opportunities. Empathy is also critical for a top performer because your employees need to be able to understand what your clients are experiencing, such as their unique needs and pain points. And problem solving capabilities can’t be taught. Your sales team can’t rush in and try to solve a problem for a customer before they really know what it is. Great salespeople can help their customers see how things will be in the future once they have solved their current issues.

 

Hiring for your company’s sales culture

 

Just because a candidate has an impressive resume with previous selling experience doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is a good fit for your organization. Depending on your industry and customers, the sales cycle may be different and the average deal could vary. Beyond these characteristics, the candidate may be used to a different corporate culture or target audience, according to an article in Forbes by Ken Sundheim. Especially for more complex B2B sales cycles, getting the right person in the position is important. Being good at selling is more than just knowing how to find business opportunities. Reps need to be able to understand their customers to sell effectively.

 

In some cases, you may be able to determine whether a potential new hire has the right stuff by asking certain questions in the initial interview. You can ask him or her to give a sample pitch, about the relationships they maintained with loyal customers and creative ways they have pursued leads to determine if the candidate would be a good fit at your company.

 

Giving your salespeople the right tools helps them succeed in various circumstances

 

Although some reps are bound to be better at selling than others—whether they are more competitive, better problem-solvers, more understanding or what have you—your sales team needs to have the right tools to succeed. In an infographic for Salesforce, Kevin Micalizzi reported that 95 percent of sales reps don’t even understand their employers’ strategies. If you expect your team to maintain personal relationships with your clients and they have no idea about their business, are your reps coming through? It can take a while for an employee to become fully productive, so sales managers need to start training early.

 

As companies become more customer-centric, it will be more important to hire and develop sales reps that know your customers and can maximize productivity. Organizations that boast a large number of engaged employees can grow profits faster than those that don’t. With the right tools, your team can take advantage of every sales opportunity.

 

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