Marketing Interactions

The What Ifs? that Can Derail a Deal

We've all read the reports and research that shows B2B sales win rates are in an overall decline. But, it's not just losing the sale to a competitor that companies need to reverse, but the growth in "no decision" being made. CSO Insights finds that "no decision" being made in relation to a purchase has grown from 20% to nearly 25%.

In a B2B complex buying process, companies are often still focused on only one decision maker, if they have even developed a thorough understanding of the motivators, priorities, and responsibilities of that person. The problem is that a complex B2B purchase decision is never made by only one person. Never.

As marketers embrace content marketing and mapping content for delivery across the stages of the buying experience, one of the stages that gets the least attention is the one I label Step Backs.

Step Backs is the buying stage where the buying committee is actively reviewing research and considering options that can solve the problem. This is when the "funnel" swells as more people enter the conversation, bringing their own perspectives and concerns to the fore.

This is where the What ifs? happen:

• What if it doesn't work?
• What if it effects X?
• What if I have to re-engineer processes?
• What if users won't adopt it?
• What if it takes longer to implement than we think?
• What if it doesn't play nice with our other systems?
• What if...

The problem marketers face when this happens is that they rarely have content at the ready to answer the what ifs. This means that when the buyer who's championing the deal goes back to try and find the information he or she needs to answer those questions to the satisfaction of the committee and can't find content that does so, momentum halts.

Let me repeat this - momentum toward purchase stops in its tracks!

For, without consensus, the committee cannot choose.

You're probably thinking that they'll just call a salesperson to get the answer, right? Not necessarily. But, even if they do, are your salespeople prepared to answer those questions?

If salespeople are only called upon once the short list is selected, response time and the value of that response are critical factors for keeping the momentum of the deal moving forward. Buyers aren't the only ones who need content for that purpose.

However, consider the impact on the buyer if marketing has been providing content throughout the buying process that has helped to facilitate their buying process. Now, when it's critical to them to find an answer, they cannot find anything to quell the what if questions.

• Are they disappointed?
• Will they begin to rethink their choice of your company as their partner?
• Is this a disconnect that impacts their confidence in what they thought was the right solution?

The interesting thing to note is that as marketers become more proficient at content marketing, we also raise the expectations of our buyers based on the value that content provides. This is why the content needs for each buying stage must be addressed.

Consider that case studies need to be truer reflections of the journey to solving the problem. Reveal obstacles and show how your company's expertise was critical to overcoming the issue discovered along the way. Create a tip sheet of the "10 things that could go wrong, but why they won't" content asset and make sure it's findable - by both salespeople and your buyers.

There are many ways to address the what ifs that can derail a deal - but first, you need to figure out what those are. Do your research and ask your salespeople, new customers, and even those who didn't buy from you.

Then get content out there to address those key issues you discover.

Marketers need to address each stage of the buying process based on what buyers need at that time. Step Backs is only one stage - but it's an important one that can have a true impact on customer acquisition.

Deliver a Psychic Pizza with B2B Marketing

Catching up on my reading this weekend, I came across an interview in the AMA's Marketing News magazine with John Goodman, vice chairman of Tarp Worldwide Inc. In case you're not familiar, his firm is the one that discovered the ratio of 5:1 for cost of acquiring a new customer vs. keeping an existing one. He also says that, for B2B, think more like 20 to 50 times as much.

Let's get to that Psychic Pizza - an excerpt from the interview:

Q: According to Tarp research, if companies can anticipate the customer’s next question or need and proactively deliver it, they’ll move the transaction from uneventful to dazzling. You call this ‘psychic pizza’—that is, ringing a customer’s doorbell and saying, ‘Here is the pizza you were about to order.’ How can marketers create a ‘psychic pizza’ experience?

A: They can identify the next question the customer is going to ask or the next service that is going to be needed and basically figure out how to get there in advance with that answer or with that service.

He doesn't provide any B2B examples, but to give you an idea of what a psychic pizza looks like in action, consider Allstate Insurance. They know if you have children and they know when your teenager is reaching driving age. So they created a brochure that says "Here's how to talk to your kid about driving..." Parents have responded well because it helps them know how to approach that conversation with just-in-time information they need.

Applying the Psychic Pizza concept to content marketing works along the same lines. I'm constantly talking about the Buyer Q&A and the art of simulating conversations when developing a content strategy. It's essentially the same thing - albeit without the cool name.

The point is that Psychic Pizza applies to every interaction a company has with prospects, customers and even partners and employees. It applies to marketing, sales, customer service, product development, and more. For now, I'll box it in around eMarketing and the buyer experience.

From an eMarketing perspective, it really is about knowing your buyers well enough to develop what I'll term "psychic knowledge." Psychic knowledge for marketing comes from doing the work to learn about your buyers' problems and priorities well enough to break them down to determine all the questions, issues and obstacles they'll encounter during the process of trying to solve the problem. (buy your solution)

Once you have those pieces, you can answer each one with content designed to deliver recognizable value your buyers want and need to take next steps. That's how you build a Psychic Pizza for content marketing. Think of it in terms of anticipation, not assumption.

Start by figuring out how to get from "Why the Heck Should I Care?" to "Tell Me More." In many cases we don't start early enough in the process.

From an eMarketing perspective, marketers will need to get much better at analyzing online behavior to evolve their Psychic Pizza.

Mr. Goodman also made a great point about metrics. He cautions us to realize that using averages can cloak critical points that we need to isolate. For example, customer service call satisfaction. If we take this metric as an overall average, we may think our customers are highly satisfied. But, if we take out all the easy calls that are handled quickly and look at the more difficult ones, we may see something very different.

Additionally, he pointed out this obsession companies have with comparing themselves to industry metrics. That's leaving a lot to chance unless you know your customers are exactly like everyone else's customers. And, we all know they're not.

This concept of Psychic Pizza from a content marketing perspective gets to the heart of what differentiates your company from other options. It emphasizes the need to become proactive in our content marketing strategies through knowing just who the prospect or customer is and what they're looking for at this moment (anticipating) based on their previous behavior.

If what you know is that your prospect is a CIO in the Telecom industry, your psychic sensibilities need nourishment - lots of it.

Are B2B Salespeople Thought Leaders?

I was reading Opportunity Nurturing: Sending Stuff Isn't Always the Best Solution over on the Openview Blog where Devon McDonald interviewed Trish Bertuzzi, from The Bridge Group Inc. Trish really GETS IT, so I stop whenver I see her mentioned anywhere to see what she has to say.

In response to the question: Who should be sending nurturing content, marketing or sales?

Trish said: "It depends on how far along you are in the sales process. If you are intermediate, then marketing should be coming into play. If your opportunity is later in the sales process, the message needs to be personal from the sales rep because, at the end of the day, it’s all about relationships. Also, the salesperson needs to be viewed as the thought leader, not just the company."

Notice that last sentence? (emphasis mine)

Is this a component of your B2B marketing-to-sales strategy?

Are your salespeople working to be viewed as thought leaders by prospects and customers?

My guess for most of them would be "nope - not interested - need to make quota."

It just so happens that Sales 2.0 Conference is going on this week in San Francisco (#s20c) and there are a few Tweets that back up the need for salespeople to provide more value to buyers:

@barbaragiamanco: Buyers complete 80% of buying cycle b4 interacting with #sales people.#newhandshake #s20c

@LaurenEHarper: #Social is not a quick fix. Reality is it takes effort both on and offline to connect with prospects and make a sale- @barbaragiamanco #s20c

@heinzmarketing: "Ditch the pitch - this is a conversation economy, not a sales pitch economy" @gerhard20 #s20c

@asmithspi: Sales managers typically hire for selling and people skills but customers want industry expertise and business acumen @SolutionSelling#s20c

@scoremoresales: 70% mktg & sales execs rank "inability to differentiate as primary inhibit to growth via @TMcCormick2011 #s20c

Moving on, I was just in a conversation today about how to get the knowledge out of subject matter experts within a company to create bylined articles for them and set them up as thought leaders.

Not everyone is a writer. Not everyone is a publisher. But there's a lot of value lurking in your people that should be extracted and showcased. Not just for your company's benefit, but to help them prove they differentiate your company from others, and that they're worth speaking with because they have fresh, relevant and valuable ideas. The net is credibility and trust for your company AND your salespeople. That's what wins complex sales in today's market.

So, what should B2B marketers be doing?

First of all, it's a mindset: Helping your salespeople be seen as thought leaders also helps with content marketing strategy. It's content, right? Nice, meaty late-stage content that's something other than a solution brief. Think about it.

Secondly, you need to facilitate the process:

• Interview them.
• Find out what they're passionate about - it's really more than just selling your products.
• What issues do they see that they can help customers better understand?
• Why do they believe so strongly in your product? It's deeper than the feeds and speeds.
• What do they see coming down the pike?
• If you put them in a room with a product manager, what kind of conversation develops?
• If you ride along on a customer call, what do you hear?
• Are they active in social media? Can you help them be more effective?

After all, you don't want this to happen:

@sales20conf: #s20c @TomScontras reveals with lols that he got kicked out of #LI group for pushing his message. Ditch the pitch!

@sales20conf: #s20c @TomScontras In person or phone, reps know how to join conversation. But how do you show up in a social convo? @GlanceNetworks

A lot of marketers think helping sales makes them subservient, but you need to get over it. If salespeople are not successful in adjusting to today's buyer and giving them what they want and need, your marketing efforts are headed for the nearest drain.

Can you afford not to incorporate salesperson thought leadership into your marketing-to-sales strategy?

A B2B Marketing-Sales Funnel Disconnect

As most of you likely know, I'm a research fiend. I find it really interesting to learn what marketers think about their work, challenges and achievements. I've read a lot of research in the last few weeks - must be a fall thing - but Marketing Sherpa's Chart of the Week displaying the most challenging marketing-sales funnel processes got me thinking.

For today's post, I want to talk about the top and the bottom of this chart because I see a disconnect between the responses that might be part of the problem.

Top Challenge: Converting qualified leads into customers

I hear this challenge a lot. Quite often it's because marketers are focused on the "top" or "front" end of the funnel (what I call the buyer experience). Over the course of a complex sale the lengthy middle is a wasteland, often ignored.

This can be related to a few things:

• Time constraints: Marketers are often required to produce a steady stream of prospects based on their reporting periods (monthly, quarterly) rather than based upon the buyer's state of readiness.


• Lack of prospect knowledge: Marketers don't know their prospects well enough to understand the depth of the problem they're solving or what information is needed to engage them consistently over time. Without this knowledge, it's really difficult to create content that does its job well.


• Quest for the shiny object: Marketers are used to planning short-term campaigns. They get bored with the subject matter because they've been talking about it for several months and they assume that buyers will get bored. So they shift to a new campaign that jolts their buyers to a new mindset and start telling a different story. It's kind of like reading a chapter in a book, putting it down and picking up a new book and reading a chapter and then expecting to know the outcome of the first book. Relax and learn how to tell one complete story from beginning to end - your prospects will appreciate it because you'll be adding value they need.

Lowest Challenge: Lead hand-off and management

Really? Does anyone else see the disconnect here given the top challenge?

Jen Doyle from Marketing Sherpa writes:

"Participants rated lead hand-off and management as the least challenging funnel process. CRM and marketing automation tools facilitate sending a lead to Sales, but the real challenge is identifying the right qualification criteria to determine when the hand-off should take place."

I'd argue that's only scratching the surface. The lead handoff is not just about the technology that elevates a lead status or shuffles it from system to system. Jen makes a great point about qualification and timing, but we're still not quite there.

The time has passed for marketing to simply toss a lead to sales and say, "You're up!"

When you consider how long a buyer spends researching and engaging with content prior to being willing to speak with a salesperson, we've got to do more. Marketers need to orchestrate the handoff in a way that provides value for both the buyer and the salesperson.

Since marketers say they have lead management in hand, then they should know a whole lot about their prospects - especially activity history. Given what a prospect has shown interest in, what's the next step that a salesperson can expose them to that makes sense? Marketers need to set that up. Otherwise salespeople will start over, halting all the momentum the buyer has made in order to do their Q&A thing to learn what they want to know first.

I cringe everytime I get the sales survey - "So, tell me about your business..." Ugh!

Buyers don't care what a salesperson wants to know. They expect sales to step in and add value that aligns with where they are in their buying process. They expect fresh ideas and perspective. Marketers should be positioning salespeople to do this from the transition - and provide support through to purchase and beyond.

Marketing is a cycle that never ends, it just goes through different stages. Somehow we forget that.

The point of all this is that if marketers aren't thinking beyond the surface when rating their challenges, they may be misleading themselves about what needs to be evolved within their strategies and processes in order to eliminate these challenges.

Marketers need to start looking at the funnel (buying experience) in its entirety - as an integrated, strategic process - not a bunch of things on a checklist. Otherwise there will always be something that's left unresolved.

Content Marketing Needs More Than Content

A lot of companies have embraced the idea of content for use in marketing. This being said, there's much more to the practice of content marketing than just cranking out content. B2B companies with complex sales that overlook the strategy and process will find themselves in the weeds in short order.

I'm working with a lot of companies who are really trying to evolve the practice of content marketing, but I'm also talking to a lot of companies who just want content and quick-fire campaigns. Which defeats the point of sustainable marketing performance that optimizes the buyer experience for complex sales.

There's a reason why nearly 80% of marketers have said that they'd "better prepare their organization by building better processes and content offers to feed the automation system" if they had it to do over again. - DemandGen Report

Content is indeed the fuel for today's marketing programs (in all its forms), but if marketers are actually going to generate high-quality leads, nurture them in a way that drives pipeline momentum, and produce demand that turns into closed business, there must be more.

This often means that skill sets need to evolve, as well as thinking. Just take a look at an off-the-top list of my top ten (in no particular order) for what else is needed to make content marketing a high-performance practice:

1. Buyer personas - this is more than just title and industry. They're only helpful if they help you to identify the priorities, needs and interests of your target audiences. Yes, that includes influencers.


2. A clean database - this should be obvious, for so many reasons


3. Segmentation capabilities - content marketing is NEVER one-size-fits-all


4. Lead scoring - you must monitor profiles and behavior to judge interest and quality. This process can also help you refine your cadence and assess what's working and what's not.


5. Content strategy - what overall story are you sharing across markets, where should your company be represented, what will you accomplish and how will you measure it, etc.?


6. Editorial calendar - how does that story roll out with content? Who's developing the assets, how will it be distributed, where are the overlays, what are the calls to action, etc.? 


7. Lead management process - what defines a lead in different stages? What defines a sales-ready lead? How will the handoff to sales be handled? What are the rules of engagement? Etc.


8. Performance metrics - how will you prove the value contribution of marketing programs as related to revenue and customer acquisition?


9. Testing and optimization - you won't be right the first time and, even if you are, things will change. What's the process for the testing and refinement of messaging over time? Your "gut" doesn't count.


10. Sales enablement - how will you help salespeople step into the conversation gracefully? If buyers are spending 56% of their time with content (IDC), salespeople need to know just what that means so they can adjust accordingly and provide more value in the conversations they have with buyers.

Of course it should go without saying that all of this cannot be accomplished without marketing automation.

I'm not trying to make content marketing hard. In fact, I've helped companies successfully get started with a few core elements and layer on more of these as they develop competence they can build upon. Keeping it simple is a good rule of thumb for getting started, but failing to realize the importance of any of these components and plan for their development and integration into your content marketing practice is not a wise choice.

I'd be curious to know which of these you think are the most difficult to accomplish - and why?

Update: To Christa who asked for links to the IDC statistic - It came from a webinar I attended in July. The link to the archive is here. I also wrote a blog post about the webinar here.

5 Things a B2B Website Must Accomplish

Seeing that my last post was about a report that showed B2B websites were critical to marketing but not performing up to their potential, I thought I'd share some ideas about what your website must accomplish in order to start climbing that ladder of opportunity. It really doesn't have to be that difficult. After all, a B2B website must serve as a centralized hub for all of your online content marketing efforts.

1. Orient Visitors Immediately. You've got 3 seconds. You'd better make sure people can figure out what your company does, why they're staring at your webpage and what they should do/get — and do it fast. This doesn't just mean for your homepage, it means for EVERY page. This is yet another reason to dump the buzzwords and jargon. They take too much effort to slog through and eat up your 3 seconds without providing any value.


2. Speak Directly to Visitors. There's absolutely nothing worse than landing on a website that's "WE" focused. People don't care about you before they care about what's in it for them. Make sure your content speaks directly to them about stuff they care about — high-priority stuff. If it's not high priority then there won't ever be an intention to DO something — which is what your end goal should be. Always.


3. Provide Interest Pathways. Yes, I know. That last one had a bunch of you saying - wait, we have a bunch of audiences. Well, here you go. Provide interest pathways. In other words, if "X" is your priority, then click here for all the resources you need about that topic. Why is it that B2B websites silo their content under tabs for products, industries, customer stories, resources, news, events, etc? If it relates to a priority interest, it should all work together.
   
   Take this test — go to your website and see how many gyrations you have to perform to find all the content available on a particular priority that's top of mind for a specific audience. How can you improve upon that experience? Oh, and if you don't have any content that meets the challenge, get cracking.


4. Answer Questions. While you're doing the test above, determine which questions your content is answering. Here's the key takeaway - Does your prospect have those questions? And then map them to the buying process. Is there a logical progression? This doesn't mean the content has to be presented that way. People aren't linear. But what it will do is help you to find the gaps that you've missed. Do your answers apply to the status quo? Most marketers never get early enough in the buying process to provide a productive buyer experience from beginning to end.


5. Get Visitors to Do Something. I can't tell you how many websites don't ever ask for anything beyond contact us or sign up for our newsletter. There must be more. Help them figure out what content to engage with next, given what web page they're on. How about based on where they came from?
   
   What event can they sign up for that relates to their interests? What white paper or eBook can they download? Do you have related blog posts they might be interested in? And why do you rely on those little social media icons in the footer or header of your website to do the trick? Invite them to follow you on Twitter because...(you'll be Tweeting links to a new series on X in the next 10 days, for example) In other words, give them a reason to do something - don't expect them to figure it out on their own.

A couple of bonus tips - your website should also be capable of monitoring and scoring activity so you can tell if the five things you've gotten it to do above are actually working. How else will you know if you've done it correctly? And finally, ratchet down those forms. Do you really need more than name, email and a third field for something like title or industry for segmentation purposes to start with?

What would you add to this list to help marketers start seeing their B2B websites perform up to their potential?