Posts Tagged ‘buying process’
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
In her recent Marketing Automation Software Guide (marketingautomationsoftware.com) blog post “How To Convince Your Boss to Buy Marketing Automation”, Kim Roman of G5 Search Marketing does an excellent job covering the key business factors that are important to include when pitching the purchase of a marketing automation platform to your boss. She covers everything from KPIs and ROI to possible objections and more.
Kim makes it clear that while marketing automation requires a new plan of operation, training, and upkeep, the benefits to be gained from such a transformative platform are worth more than the direct and indirect costs of implementation. She accurately identifies the combination of hard facts and real buying concerns that will make the case for why your company needs marketing automation.
While Kim focuses on tangible, economic benefits in order to get approval, there are also less tangible, emotional factors that play into convincing management to get enthused about your plans. Here are few additional things to think about:
- Look Good to Your Buyers: B2B buyers have dramatically changed the way they purchase products and services. Resistant to overtures from sales people early in their process, they rely on web research and social media to create a short list. Marketing automation platforms allow you to create the inbound and outbound programs that engage B2B buyers in digital conversations that match their buying processes. Without it, your competitors that utilize marketing automation will look much better to your prospects.
- Look Good to Sales: The flip side to engaging with B2B buyers through a marketing automation platform is that it will dramatically improve the efficiency of your overall sales process. Tracking the content consumed by a specific prospect, the timing and duration of his web visits, and response to email marketing offers will tell you precisely where a buyer is in his process. The information allows sales to only be engaged with prospects that are really ready to buy, increasing sales efficiency and decreasing overall sales cycles. The CMO will look GREAT to his sales counterpart.
- Maximize Content Marketing Efforts: A 2011 survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that B2B marketers spend an average of 26% of their marketing budgets on content marketing. Without a marketing automation platform, however, it is difficult to deliver the content to the buyer in the right form at the right time. If marketing automation is the engine, content is the fuel – spending money on fuel without an engine to burn it makes no sense. Investing in marketing automation will make the money already being spent on content marketing much more effective.
For further information on investing in marketing automation see: Whitepaper: Five Fast Payoffs for Investing in Marketing Automation and eBook: The Quintessential Marketing Automation Guide
Friday, February 24th, 2012
One of my guilty pleasures is to watch ‘The Bachelor’ on Monday nights with my wife. While it is true that this show may actually decrease your IQ as you watch it, I firmly believe that you can offset the loss of brain cells by making snarky comments about the participants, thus improving your quick wit and comedic timing. (Plus, we also watch “Downton Abbey”, which makes you smarter just because it's English.)
A few weeks ago, I was preparing for my presentation at the 2nd Annual Content Marketing Retreat in Langley, WA while enjoying my weekly dose of manufactured “reality show” drama. My presentation started with a brief discussion of the B2B Buyer’s Journey – the path that buyer’s take when going from lead to satisfied (or dissatisfied) customer. As I switched my attention back and forth between my presentation and the show, I had a shocking revelation: B2B buyers are exactly like The Bachelor!
How?
- Both start with a large number of choices, B2B buyers with any number of vendors that may or may not meet their needs, The Bachelor with 25 young ladies who may or may not meet his needs.
- Both begin the process with a little research, B2B buyers conducting that research online through websites, The Bachelor in a large cocktail party where he gets a few minutes to gather first impressions about each potential mate.
- At this point, the B2B buyer will likely connect with people like himself on social media, most frequently LinkedIn and Twitter, to get opinions about his potential vendors. Unfortunately, The Bachelor has to skip this step, as he is isolated during the show taping. Of course, if he could check social media, he would immediately eliminate the “problem” women and much of the show’s drama would be ruined.
- Both then start creating a short list, the B2B buyer doing that by engaging with the sales people of the vendors he likes best, and The Bachelor doing it through a series of one-on-one and group dates. Overtime, they both start eliminating those they don’t like or are unsuitable.
- Both then diligently start checking references on their short list. The B2B buyer does this with calls to other customers and those that have done business with his potential vendors. The Bachelor does this through visits with his final four “girlfriends” to meet their families and friends.
- Once the final two vendors/potential mates have been selected, it is time to go for approval. The B2B buyer does this with his management; The Bachelor does this with his parents.
- Finally, it's time to make a decision. The B2B buyer selects the best vendor and negotiates a contract; while The Bachelor selects the woman he can’t live without and slips a ring on her finger.
There is one final way these two are alike. Even once they become customers, B2B buyers are still buyers. Contract lengths are shorter than ever – a year commitment is a long one – and a typical customer will be continuously evaluating his options. We know from history that The Bachelor is no different – within 6-12 months, he’ll be out looking around for another “perfect” mate!
I liked this analogy so much I decided to use it to kick off my presentation for the retreat, The Customer Path: From Lead Gen to Customer. If you’re interested in seeing it, click on the title. It's only 15 minutes and I’m pleased to say the story was well received and got a good laugh.
Next week, I’ll tell you how some of our marketing automation competitors are exactly like Mike “The Situation” from ‘The Jersey Shore’. (Not really - I don’t think there is any exercise that would repair the brain cells lost from watching that show.)
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
As B2B buyers leverage Web 2.0 and social media to streamline their purchasing processes, the line between marketing and sales as it relates to prospect interaction becomes blurred. Marketing must take on the early-stage lead/prospect communication that was once the sole responsibility of sales, and frequently the two groups must work together to nurture a buyer from lead to prospect to customer. While challenging, it is possible to get marketing and sales on the same page. Below I have outlined three steps that can move your organization towards marketing and sales alignment.
- Senior Level Support - It is critical to have senior management support for all joint marketing/sales initiatives. At a minimum, the executive where marketing and sales meet - CEO, President, Chief Revenue Officer, SVP Sales & Marketing - should believe in the joint initiative and foster an environment of cooperation. There are cases where forward thinking marketing and sales executives “get it”, and start working together for their mutual benefit. Rather than continuing a culture of bickering and finger pointing, they commit to changing ingrained behaviors and working together for the common good. This is rare, however, so somebody at the top should set the tone and expectation about what needs to be done, even to the point of putting in joint incentives for the sales and marketing heads. Obviously, working together should yield better results for each of them, but sometimes you need a specific “carrot” to drive the desired behavior.
- Jointly Map the Marketing/Sales Process – The best way to build trust is to work together on a project that will have both an immediate impact and demonstrate how much each group needs the other. Both teams should get in a room and use a whiteboard to map the process a buyer takes going from lead to satisfied customer. This should be done from the buyer’s perspective – what do they experience as they make the decision whether or not to buy your product or service? Doing so will identify the steps in the buyer’s process where marketing and sales must execute smooth hand offs and where both teams need to work together to nurture the prospect. Once the process is identified, data can be pulled from the marketing and CRM systems to understand the flow of leads and approximate conversion rates at each stage of the process. The common ground that is established from marketing and sales having a mutual understanding of how buyers interact with your company is invaluable, and forms the basis for on-going cooperation.
- Start Streamlining the Marketing/Sales Process – Now that both teams have a clear understanding of how a buyer becomes a customer, it is possible to define a comprehensive program that moves a buyer through that process as efficiently as possible. It is tempting to try and fix the entire process in one fell swoop. Don’t do that! It is better to pick one key area where there is clear interaction between the two groups and optimize it first. The hand off of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales, for example, is a stage where many companies suffer a great deal of lead leakage. If marketing and sales have different ideas of what constitutes a qualified lead, sales may not follow-up while marketing assumes it no longer has responsibility for nurturing that lead, and the buyer ends up in no man’s land (or worse, as your competitor’s customer). A simple first step is to agree on the characteristics of a qualified lead that sales will always agree to contact. Once additional qualifying questions are answered, sales must either accept the lead and actively engage it or send it back to marketing for further nurturing. This will dramatically reduce lead leakage and lay the foundation for further marketing/sales cooperation on the rest of the overall process.
Getting marketing and sales aligned around a unified buyer engagement process is nirvana for many marketing and sales executives. Starting small and building on short-term success with visible executive level support will create an environment for long-term cooperation and result in improved sales results.
For more on Sale-Marketing alignment see our Best Practice: Candid Letter from Sales to Marketing.
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