Month: March 2022

Categories
Sales Technology

Embracing Sales Technology Trends

Embracing Sales Technology Trends

B2B selling has evolved in recent years, although at a glacial rate, as the digital world has provided expanded access to data and enhanced insights. While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause issues for many businesses, and the gap between surviving and shutting down hangs on a knife’s edge, the online sales movement has gone from zero to sixty in a matter of days.

To deal with this new reality, sellers are expanding their emotional intelligence to attract new consumers and ease the worries of existing ones, using new selling approaches, bolstering their customer service skills, and using new sales technology. 

It has been said that the future of sales is the irreversible shift of organizations’ sales and marketing tactics, procedures, and allocation of resources to a buyer-centric model, as well as the shift from analog selling process to highly automated, virtual client engagements.

There is now a growing emphasis on sellers’ roles and the tools and technology that may assist them in doing what they do best. That’s the basis on which we’re forecasting sales patterns and trends in the years to come. 

Trends in B2B sales

Trends in B2B sales

Growth Driven by Products

If you operate in the software sector, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase product-led expansion a few times. Companies, as you may know, can have a variety of growth and revenue strategies. Some companies rely on sales-driven growth, while others rely on marketing-driven growth. Product-led growth is the newest buzzword. It’s a marketing strategy in which sales and customer retention are all predominantly driven by the product.

Firmographics 2.0 

Firmographic data sets, such as size, location, and industry, are without a doubt the most often utilized prospecting and ideal customer profile criteria. These factors guide the judgments of millions of sellers throughout the world on who to approach and not. 

When it comes to firmographics, we’ve depended on very static and limited data sets for decades. The primary address is used as a location indication, while standard industry designations are used as industry information.

Sales tech developments are seen to improve firmographics data gathering. When machine learning methods can profile organizations with much greater accuracy, outdated and generally 10-15-year-old sector codes can be discarded.

Today, revenue teams may now choose from a variety of areas, including 3D technology, data visualization, network security, and green technology.

The same may be said for data on location and business size. Target groups may now be built based on the headquarters site and sub-locations.

Moreover, rather than focusing just on revenue and employee numbers, perhaps a focus on growing momentum is a preferable selection criterion as well. What is the rate of growth in online traffic, and how are searching and hiring volumes behaving? Sales and marketing personnel will become more precise in the years to come, which we refer to as firmographics 2.0 in targeting.

Digital sales 

Modern selling will become highly automated. Sales teams will devote more time to larger possibilities that need a consultative approach, discovery sessions, and customized bids. More individuals will become involved, both as buyers and sellers.

Client-facing digital portals and microsites will grow in popularity as a result of these broader sales processes. Parties can share important documents, communicate with one another, and create customized bids for potential leads.

In reducing any buyer friction before the contract is signed, the purpose is to deepen the connection. These portals also allow vendors to evaluate the material their clients watch and engage with, which is essential for determining which content has the most impact.

Versatile sellers

The COVID-19 pandemic has solidified omnichannel interactions as the preferred sales channel for B2B companies. When given the option of in-person, distant, or e-commerce channels, buyers have demonstrated that they desire all of them. Sales models will become hybrid as purchasing becomes multichannel.

A versatile salesman communicates with consumers via phone, emails, online chat, video, applications, and in-person appointments on occasion. This will almost certainly result in channel disputes, as well as a significant need to rethink the onboarding process for new sellers.

As the sales and revenue operations team transitions from a multichannel to an omnichannel approach, attribution becomes even more critical. However, it may result in channel conflicts, such as when two agents approach and engage with the same consumer at the same time, disrupting the buyer experience.

Most sales executives, who began their careers using a more linear sales style, will need to return to school to improve their abilities in all of these new tools and apps. Proposals may be participatory and trackable, and the first point of contact doesn’t have to be a well-written email or a well-rehearsed cold-call script, but rather something altogether different, such as a customized video message sent right to recipients’ social network inboxes.

Conclusion

This year, innovation, expertise, and transparency will continue to merge in B2B sales to answer the concerns of corporate buyers. The trend is turning toward account-based selling and digital transformation, driven by client behavior and sales technology.

It’s time to do an honest self-evaluation and figure out what will help your sales organization rise with the tide and what will sink it.

Categories
Sales Play Social Selling

How Social Selling Fits into Your Sales Plays

How Social Selling Fits into Your Sales Plays

Social selling is more valuable than ever before, with over half of the world’s population using social media. Sales leaders who like to stay ahead of trends rather than pursuing them should start integrating the process in their businesses.

For companies, social selling is leveraging social media to create leads and fuel your sales funnel.

This does not imply copying and pasting cold templates into LinkedIn and sending them to your connections. This is similar to spammy selling, where your odds of closing are nil.

It varies from standard sales strategies in that it places less emphasis on a quick response. Individual sales reps, on the other hand, focus on the “long game” and cultivating relationships over time.

To increase “organic” sales, sellers use social media to develop long-term connections, communicate authority and trustworthiness, and surface on decision-makers’ radars.

Data reveals that those that stay in the game for the long haul get rewarded. Top-performing sales agents, for example, consider social networking sites “extremely vital” to their performance, closing transactions 51% faster than their counterparts. Leaders in social selling also generate 45% more possibilities.

What does this look like in a business setting? Some companies have reduced their average selling process time by 20 days and increased the percentage of leads converting to prospects by 25% after implementing social selling tactics with LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator.

Social selling also makes it simpler for sales professionals to receive referrals from their LinkedIn networks, which is important because referrals account for 65 percent of new business for most businesses.

social selling is a must.

In the digital age, social selling is a must.

The development of digital technology has skewed the scales in favor of purchasers in business transactions. They’ve regained control of goods sources. Social selling is a prospecting method that returns power to the seller while maintaining a personal touch. Thanks to an active and non-intrusive presence, the seller has been able to return to the beginning of the purchasing cycle.

Social selling, like telephone or email marketing, is not a closing tactic. It’s the blend of the points of contact that allows you to reach out to new prospects in the places where they’re most comfortable. Social selling is a logical progression of sales professionals’ prospecting strategies.

Even if the two techniques are complementary, social media marketing must be separated from social selling:

  • The goal of social media marketing is to cultivate and maintain a relationship between a business and its audience through content to raise brand recognition.
  • To boost quality leads, social selling enables sellers to engage with their prospects and be acknowledged as experts in their professions.

Because there are fewer “personal” networks on Twitter and Linkedin, this strategy is easier to implement, and consumers are more comfortable and receptive to the concept of engaging in a dialogue with a vendor.

How can social selling help your company

How can social selling help your company?

You already know how to perform social selling if you’ve spent time on social media conversing with friends, sharing images, publishing status updates, and so on. You may be already aware of it.

So here are a few pointers to help you improve your social selling skills and start connecting with prospects:

Make a listening station.

You may “listen” for hashtags because individuals love to use them in their social media posts. Create a column in Twitter’s Tweetdeck program, for example. Create columns for phrases pertinent to your industry. Help out whenever someone shares anything you can help with, whether it’s a query or an article they created. Respond to their queries and promote their articles with your social media accounts. This establishes a rapport with that individual, and you become a valuable resource.

You may also look for hashtags on LinkedIn and follow them on Instagram. Pay attention to them as well, and engage in similar dialogues with others.

Make your material.

You already have industry knowledge and skills, so share it! Don’t merely wait for opportunities to sell. Write blog posts that assist individuals in resolving a specific issue. Take pictures of your solution in action and share them with us. Hold webinars to educate people about a specific topic. Bring potential clients on as guests to your podcast and invite them to share their knowledge.

If you provide enough material, you’ll ultimately get the credibility and a reputation, which will aid you in your sales calls.

Social selling allows you to develop your knowledge so that you don’t have to prove it every time you meet with a new prospect. The evidence element of the sales process is complete if they contacted you because of your social media post. They are aware of your abilities and have self-qualified to join your sales funnel.

Conclusion

Because it is based on true sales concepts such as creating connections and trust, social selling works in sales. However, it’s a time-consuming and intricate procedure. Rather than a race to the finish line, social selling is a relationship-driven marathon.

You may open the floodgates to bigger transactions, quicker sales cycles, and recurring referrals and sales once you’ve created crucial contacts and earned confidence.

Categories
Sales Play

Working with Other Departments to Build Winning Sales Plays

Working with Other Departments to Build Winning Sales Plays

It’s no secret that departments, such as sales and marketing, may struggle to communicate and collaborate successfully. To resolve this, the connection between these departments must shift from competitors to routine partners for a business to work successfully and productively.

How to Improve Communication Among Departments

There are several methods and tactics that a business may employ to improve communication between its departments. Here are some tips to think about.

Working in silos isn’t a good idea

The first issue to consider is the significance of functioning as a cohesive unit, which is especially vital when departments are working remotely, as many do these days.

The fact that animosity can often arise between the PR, marketing, and sales departments is a difficulty. This frequently occurs when one party believes their contribution is undervalued or when the other department fails to keep half of the contract.

In some cases, sales and marketing departments can actively work against one another. Therefore, systems used by all departments must be integrated to ensure a harmonious sales process. Marketing and PR departments must believe that the marketing qualified leads (MQL) they pass on are being followed up on, and sales must believe that marketing is assisting in the development of the appropriate sales funnel.

This is why you’ll see more and more mid-sized enterprise companies combining sales, public relations, and marketing operations under the leadership of a chief revenue officer or chief growth officer. The CRO is in charge of all revenue-generating activities. They are responsible for teams such as marketing/public relations, sales, channel sales, and customer success.

Even if you are unable to reorganize, basic efforts such as agreeing on what constitutes a sales qualified lead (SQL) upfront and working collaboratively to set lead and income objectives may make a significant difference. It’s a fantastic approach to bring departments together so they all benefit from their efforts.

And, let’s face it, this is a great opportunity for everyone to rethink how we collaborate. For certain companies, team structures and established ways of doing business may alter. Make regular (video) calls to ensure that everyone is on the same page and moving in the same direction.

Communicate in the same language

Communicate in the same language

Define your funnel as the first step in getting departments to speak the same language. Make sure to explicitly define each team’s function in the funnel with important department stakeholders.

It’s now important to define the phases, determine what qualifies customers for each level of the funnel, and make sure your departments are aware of this information.

This is how the final product should appear. Everyone in your company should be aware of the distinctions between a prospect/visitor, lead, SQL, MQL, prospect, and client. All subsequent phases in getting the departments to collaborate and unify their processes at your company are built on this foundation.

Set consistent objectives

Misalignment among departments can cause gaps in the conversion of leads to clients and block sales funnels. This imbalance may be exacerbated by segregating your department goals. If both divisions work toward a common set of objectives, you’ll have a better chance of meeting your revenue targets.

Prospecting is one of the most difficult phases of the sales process for sellers, according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound 2018 study, but the problems may be lessened when sales and marketing departments communicate. When the two teams can work together toward the same objective, the goal is more likely to be achieved.

Define your sales funnel stages clearly

Define your sales funnel stages clearly

A company’s funnel stages must be precisely defined so that marketing and sales departments speak the same language when it comes to prospective clients.

An imbalance might result in lost opportunities, preventing businesses from converting leads to consumers. Qualified leads can fall through the cracks if a company doesn’t comprehend how leads are defined at each point of the pipeline and how the handoff procedure goes.

Create a Service-Level Agreement

In the Hubspot study, turning leads into customers is one of the top marketing goals for the next 12 months for 69% of respondents. This conversion is supported by a full service-level agreement.

SLAs may be a useful tool for establishing clear and direct communication routes between marketing and sales departments. There is less possibility for error or misinterpretation when a roadmap or blueprint is presented. SLAs frequently contain details such as the ideal customer profile, lead definitions, objectives, and how to manage and assess success.

SLAs are also an excellent tool for ensuring a smooth transition from marketing to sales. Processes are in place, for example, to calculate an expected follow-up timetable for MQLs that have been forwarded to sales.

Closed-loop reporting can also benefit from an SLA. While marketers have data on how prospects have reacted to marketing messages, such as opening an email, completing a form, or visiting the website frequently, sellers have the chance to learn even more about prospects through one-on-one discussions.

Sales can be tasked with gathering crucial campaign details and informing marketers as to what worked in terms of client acquisition through these more customized interactions or even provide little pieces of information that the marketer may be unaware of, such as a blog article being referenced in a webinar on a different webpage. This new information is valuable since it will assist marketing in fine-tuning initiatives to improve their chances of success.

From 'competition' to 'collaboration'

From ‘competition’ to ‘collaboration’

It takes a lot of teamwork to guide a prospect through the purchase process. It would be irresponsible to argue that one department is more vital than another because they all must work together to achieve total organizational success.

For example, it is not only the responsibility of marketers to attract the desired prospects, but it is also the responsibility of sales to assist marketers in better understanding their clientele and which leads have successfully converted into clients in previous encounters.

Marketers pique clients’ attention, while sellers keep them engaged. Working together, departments do not erase the inherent disparities in their roles; rather, they create a more efficient and cohesive task force within the company.

Categories
Content Marketing marketing marketing tips

Using Conversational Video Storyboards to Boost Your Marketing Strategy

Using Conversational Video Storyboards to Boost Your Marketing Strategy

According to Hubspot, 85% of enterprises utilize video as a marketing strategy, which is unsurprising given that mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year. While blogging and long-form content are important components of any marketing plan, they aren’t enough if you want to grab your target market’s attention. But how can you make good use of B2B video marketing? Here are a few tips. 

Create a strategy.

Create a strategy.

The adage “failing to prepare is preparing to fail” couldn’t be more accurate in B2B marketing. The most important aspect of your success with it is your plan. In this sense, ensuring that your marketing plan interacts seamlessly with all of your other marketing platforms, such as blogs or social media, is critical. 

Simply said, video isn’t a stand-alone marketing strategy; it needs to work in tandem with the rest of your efforts.

Begin with the funnel. 

A great place to begin is to search for ways to include it in your current marketing funnel. And, because the video is better at establishing a personal connection with clients over other types of content, it will be more successful to make them for clients early in the buyer’s journey. This is a fantastic way to assist or educate your prospects on significant industry and business challenges while also establishing your firm as a thought leader. 

Whatever stage of video marketing you’re in, it is essential to a good video strategy to make sure that the visual content you develop corresponds to precise moments in the client experience. Your material must fulfill their needs and include a call to action that encourages them to take action.

Create personalities for your target audience.

Create personalities for your target audience.

Understanding who you’re talking to is the foundation of every successful marketing approach. And video is no exception. Before you can develop video content that your target consumers will engage with, you need a clear image of them and their position.

Begin any video marketing campaign by building customer personas. This will assist you to tailor the content you generate for certain groups of your target audience (which will make it more effective), as well as confirming what kind of material you’ll need to develop in the first place.

Think about the sorts of videos you want to make.

There are various types of video content you may develop to fulfill the demands of your clients at each level of your funnel, just as there are several customers for whom you should consider generating video content. It’s worth remembering that the more diverse your material is, the more your market will see you as a thought leader in your field. So shake it up a little. Just make sure it is still in line with the rest of your approach.

Make a storyboard for your video

It’s crucial to plan out your video material ahead of time if you want the completed result to strike home, just like it’s important to have a sound approach when it comes to video marketing.

A decent narrative and storyboard are essential for success. The screenplay is what the presenter (or the narrator in the video) will say, whereas the storyboard is a visual blueprint of your video from beginning to conclusion. What you need to film should be based on your narrative and storyboard.

Make use of video to supplement your textual material

When making a video, we generally suggest starting with the script – after all, it’s the foundation for whatever may happen in it.

The good news is that if you currently have a written content marketing plan in place, you’ve already completed the majority of the effort required to write a screenplay that will provide genuine results. A majority of executives prefer to watch a video rather than read text, so making videos to accompany the information you’ve previously produced will allow leads to consuming it in their desired format.

This method also greatly reduces the amount of labor necessary to generate a video. For example, the script may be based on the textual material from a top blog post (which should already be written communicatively), and the storyboard can be based on the visuals from the article. 

Make sure you're using the correct platforms to distribute your work.

Make sure you’re using the correct platforms to distribute your work.

Promotion, like every other type of B2B marketing content, takes effort. So, once you’ve finished making your video, the next step is to show it to your audience.

For B2B, social networking, particularly LinkedIn, is always a good place to start. On LinkedIn, a majority of executives say they exchange videos with coworkers on a weekly basis. As a result, placing it there enhances the likelihood that your target audience—and the genuine decision-makers within it—will notice it.

Subtitles are also important in this situation… Because most people scan through their social media feeds without turning on their speakers, adding subtitles enhances the likelihood that they’ll stop and view it. 

Adding your films to your Youtube account (or another video hosting platform) also makes it simple to embed them in other places, such as your website and blog. This makes integrating their dissemination into your entire content strategy much easier.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing you should remember from this post, it’s to make sure that each video you make has a defined function inside your funnel.

It’s not enough to make marketing videos just to “do video” – they have to serve your clients and complement what you’ve been doing on other marketing channels if they’re going to help you generate leads.