Account-Based Marketing

Understanding and Mapping the Consensus Buying Environment: Part 6

In the final post of our digitally enabled sales rep series, we address a newer phenomenon in sales, the rise of consensus buying and how reps can effectively navigate these buyer groups. Not so long ago, selling was straight-forward (not easy, but straight-forward). The process went something like this: map the organization, find the guy or gal who sits in the corner office, get to them, and if you were compelling you had your decision maker.

Not so today. Instead, in today’s environment, consensus buying is the new norm. In recent cutting-edge research by CEB, their finding was that on average there are 5.4 stakeholders in a B2B decision-making process. These decision makers have different motivations, perceptions of value, agendas, and politics. More often than not, the result of more decision makers is not a better decision, it is (the dreaded) no decision.

Adapting to the New Selling Environment

So what are sales people to do? At MarketBridge we see opportunities for sales people to improve their likelihood of closing deals in the following ways.

Really understand the buying group and the motivations of each decision-maker. There is so much profiling data available on who is involved in these buying groups and what they care about. Reps need an easy way to aggregate and analyze this information.
Identify the champion of the buying group who will drive the sale forward (and sell the deal for you). There are markers for these individual buyers (based on intent data, content consumption, and previous behaviors) which can help reps focus on the one buyer they need to get onside to start.
Focus energy on the decision makers who you can influence. There will always be detractors in any deal, so getting reps to focus on the subset of the buying group they need to get on-side is critical (and then enabling the champion to influence these key stakeholders).
Be prescriptive and proactive with the content the customer needs to drive the stakeholder group to make a decision. Most marketing and sales material is focused on helping to promote the product and get into discussions with prospects but more needs to focus on helping the decision group make the decision (and arming champions to push the deal forward). Prescription and pro-activeness is key in this area as most reps don’t intuitively sell this way.

What is exciting is that the data and tools to accomplish all of this exist today. The payback on deal conversion rate is huge; 1-2 more deals per rep per quarter can mean the difference between missing and crushing the number.

Are you feeling the effects of the new decision making process? What are you doing to address it in your business? We would love to talk about it with you.

It’s Not Me, It’s You. Three Fundamentals to Cultivating Customer Loyalty

September 17, 2015/in Account-Based Marketing Article Go-to-Market Strategy /by MarketBridge

Getting your customers to love you is not too dissimilar from keeping the attention of a love interest. In both scenarios you’re dealing with individuals that have unique idiosyncrasies, perspectives, interests, values, and shifting emotional states. These realities explain why there isn’t a “by-the-numbers” approach to win the hearts and minds of those who patronize your business. But don’t despair!

Despite the cards being stacked against you, there are fundamentals you can utilize to increase your odds of developing loyalty. So let’s dig into three themes that will get you and your company where you need to be.

Listening is the first and most-often ignored element of getting customer loyalty. While business and shareholder interests do not always align with what customers want, an earnest effort to listen and respond appropriately has to be made. For example, you may have heard that fast-food titan McDonald’s is in a bit of slump lately. After several quarters of sales decline in the United States, management at the Golden Arches are finally in a listening mood. For several years, critics and customers alike have demanded greater food quality, simpler menus, all-day breakfast (I heart Sausage McMuffins BTW!), and healthier food options. With McDonalds finally taking steps to roll out these initiatives, I can’t help but wonder if their current pain could have been prevented from taking a greater interest in listening its customers.

Once you have listening down pat, anticipation is another fundamental you have to possess. Outside of some Business-101 best practices of understanding market conditions, being well versed in the competitive landscape, and playing to your strengths, using feedback systems and analytics are key. Look, I know analytics is a du jour subject in some circles, but there are major reasons why analytics are gaining more respect in multiple business categories.

Capturing and interpreting data is key to developing business intelligence. Whether you’re conducting surveys, using qualitative feedback loops, polling, or even breaking down traffic and engagement levels on interactive websites or apps, you can learn more about your customers to properly predict and anticipate what they will want. The late Steve Jobs was respected for many things in his run an Apple’s CEO, but a major part of his legacy was focusing Apple’s efforts on anticipating what will delight users. Its iPhone business was born from people’s frustration by a fragmented and disjointed cellular industry. The iPad was a response to mediocre and undeveloped tablet market that had a ton of potential, but no thought leadership. This is more than acting on a gut feeling, the use of intelligence to form assumptions to act upon are at the foundation of anticipation.

Responsiveness ties into understanding the psychology of a loyal customer.Think about some of your own experiences such as: eating at restaurants, staying at a hotels, or making product returns at big-box retailers. Start mentally mapping the full spectrum of your interactions across the board.

Think of the touch points that your customers and clients use to interface with your brand whether it’s physical locations, websites, social media, phone applications, forums, and even call centers. The experience and service levels your customers have will influence their perception of your brand.

One example on responsiveness that comes to mind is a recent interaction I had with Vizio, a company I recently purchased a television from. Having heard of their great reputation for fast responses on Twitter, I sent a direct message to Vizio Twitter account regarding a technical issue I was having with their WWE streaming app, and I got a response in under 20 minutes. Taking into account that Vizio’s handle gets hundreds of tweets directed at them daily, I was rather impressed.

This is no end-all prescription on best practices to earn your customer’s loyalty, but these fundamentals are a great start. Listening will help inform your decisions on the products and services your customers are in need of. Exploring new business opportunities while avoiding proverbial landmines come with informed anticipation. Think of systems you can leverage to better understand your customer and play to those findings. Finally, ensure you’re equipped to provide your customers with stellar service and to be responsive. People tend to remember companies that are terrible and extraordinary while those in the middle are often forgot.

Gaining customer loyalty is not a science, it is alchemy; so have the right ingredients in house to give yourself a fighting chance in today’s hyper-competitive business environment.

How to do Account Based Marketing: A #FlipMyFunnel Conference Review

August 17, 2015/in Account-Based Marketing Article Go-to-Market Strategy /by MarketBridge

Our marketing team attended the #FlipMyFunnel conference last week, which was hosted by Terminus. It was a buzzworthy event, drawing both B2B marketers and digitally-enabled salespeople from companies of all sizes. The focus of the event was as the title suggests: the idea that marketing and sales can and should invert the traditional funnel, which dictates that marketers generate leads based on interest and pass them to sales. Instead, many of the keynotes urged the audience to first identify key accounts sales and marketing wish to target, and then engage these accounts down a path to purchase.

We at MarketBridge agree that the funnel must be flipped. Most organizations have a good idea of who they should be targeting, based on both transactional history, behavioral data, and of course, revenue goals and product pricing. There’s a method to doing this sort of marketing, and it requires sales and marketing connectivity.

How to Implement Account Based Marketing: a Step by Step Guide

One way to ensure success is to adopt an account based marketing program. Megan Heuer from Sirius Decisions gave an excellent presentation on the perfect formula for such a program, noting that ABM is the natural conclusion for marketing and sales to help grow the business based on data. Let’s take a look at the winning formula for Account Based Marketing.

1. Map budgets to opportunity.
In order to see success in the form of sales, marketing must align its efforts to accounts, sellers and actions most likely to deliver growth. Shift from persona to person, and execute by engaging individual customers based on needs, preferences, and timing.

2. Put your ABM strategy in place.
Use these four key categories to build your program:
A. Account data: What do you know about your key accounts? What is the transaction history with these accounts or lookalike accounts? What is currently in pipeline?
B. Account goals: What needs to be done, with whom, to achieve team and company goals?
C. Account actions: what tactics can marketing and sales deliver to reach these accounts?
D. Account operations: what is the process for keeping the program running smoothly? Who will be appointed to the program team?

3. Focus on supporting sales productivity.
Marketing can help sales take certain tasks off their plate. Help sales maximize prospecting calls and emails by providing initial engagement templates, topics, and sales collateral. If sales also supports customer relationships, marketing can help maintain positive experiences and non-selling support.

4. Build an ABM tech stack.
Everyone’s stack will look different, but make sure your technologies align to the ABM strategy. Key tools to include are data insights and services, customer lifecycle management, and automation tools.

5. Leverage customer experience.
Building an advocacy program must be part of any good ABM strategy. Marketing can support by working closely with customers to develop testimonials and case studies.

6. Treat customers differently.
On that note, make sure that your ABM strategy differentiates between customer acquisition and retention. Your advocacy program will play a big role in marketing to the existing customer base.

7. Measure more than just lead volume.
As we mentioned, most marketers and sellers already know who they need to engage. Therefore, lead generation may not be the best metric for your ABM strategy. Instead, engage with existing customers, focus on upselling and cross-selling accounts, and finding new buyers within target accounts. Be sure to shift measurement to reflect contributions.

Account based marketing is no longer a “nice to have” in B2B marketing. It is quickly becoming a standard program for modern marketing and sales organizations. Have you started with your ABM program yet? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section.

Are You Minding The #DigitalGap? How to Align Marketing And Sales to the Buyer’s Journey

August 5, 2015/in Account-Based Marketing Article Marketing Programs /by MarketBridge

We hosted our first ever TweetChat last week with Heinz Marketing, and we’re happy to say it was a great success! Thank you to everyone that joined the conversation. The topic of our chat was on the #DigitalGap that exists between where marketing and sales are spending, and how customers are buying. We took away some key insights from the chat, and thought we would share. Let’s take a look at the answers we received to the five questions posed during our TweetChat.

Q1: Is there a mismatch between how companies are spending and how customers are buying?

A1: This one was met with an overwhelming YES.

@HeinzMarketing: Companies buy what is familiar or affordable, vs. paying attention to where their customers are and how they are influenced

@ReIntent: Sure, it seems like customers want to “lurk” on SM without feeling like they’re being actively advertised to

@DSPMark: Companies must update web to provide info for customers without sales getting ‘in the way’

Judging from the responses to Q1, it’s clear that sales and marketing organizations are misaligned with their buyers. A big reason for this mismatch is companies aren’t investing enough in digital marketing spend and digital sales tools to accommodate customer buying preferences. Thus, creating a #DigitalGap.

Several followers asked for advice to B2B companies looking to achieve a balance between the buyer and seller journey. Matt Heinz suggested that it comes down to three things: precise customer understanding, lots of great content, and tools to segment delivery.

Q2: What are the primary channels customers are using today to conduct research before buying?

A2: Interestingly, many people responded that customers are using a lot of difficult-to-intercept channels, such as referrals and online reviews. Many also responded that the digital breadcrumbs buyers leave behind may be evaluated with intent modeling.

@reintent: Referrals! Yelp! Their moms! The low tech channels (that are so hard to intercede)

@debindc The key is getting signals of buyer intent before and after visiting the website

It is not easy to distinguish between true intent to buy and “just browsing.” Customers are spending more of their buying time online, which means companies should be putting more resources in the digital space, be it online advertising or digital selling tools. There are some approaches we recommend as a starting point. Predictive modeling can be used to analyze historical data and path to purchase, allowing marketing and sales teams to target more efficiently and deliver the proper messaging to distinct audiences.

Q3: Which portion of the buying journey are customers “missing” with their marketing programs?

A3: The consensus here was a lack of valuable content to nudge buyers to purchase, which typically sits beyond the awareness stage.

@heinzmarketing: Create content your customers would pay for. Surprise & impress them with constant value.

Others tweeted about the difficulty of crossing the finish line to conversion, and the lack of content that exists to facilitate this.

@ReIntent: Converting trail users to paid users. There’s interest, but often too little to commit

@DSPMark commented, “biggest challenge=time. So much of the content exists, but putting it in a digestible, presentable form…”

We learned that there are a couple gaps when it comes to this question. The first gap is the misalignment between the buyer and seller journeys, and the second is a lack of valuable content to fill every stage of that journey – especially consideration and purchase stage. Content is a vital piece of the buyer’s journey, and it shouldn’t stop with acquisition. Be sure to integrate personalized content at every stage of the buying journey, even beyond the sale.

Q4: What % of marketing budgets should go to digital programs? Is there a difference for B2B vs. B2C?

A4: Everyone agreed that a significant portion of the budget should be allocated to digital, and many chimed in that it depends on your customer’s habits.

@liv_mariani: over 50% depending on where your customers tend to be.

@heinzmarketing: Follow your customers. Where are they at each stage of the buyer’s journey? Different answers for everyone.

However, @dilianna pointed out that, “some marketers don’t know where those customers are,” to which @heinzmarketing responded: “Ask! Ask your customer-facing teams, ask analysts, ask the customers directly!”

We also suggest conducting some data analysis and understanding the touch-points of conversion for your content as well as which channels are receiving the most engagement.

Q5: Which digital programs continue to capture the largest share of online spend for your company?

A5: There were diverse answers here. Responses included paid search, advertising, personalization tools.

The bottom line: it depends on where your customers tend to be and what sort of historical engagement these channels have received. These were some smart marketers: it’s all about the data!

Stay tuned for our next TweetChat. Don’t forget to follow us @MarketBridge!

To learn more about the #DigitalGap, watch this video.

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Understanding and Mapping the Consensus Buying Environment: Part 6

Adapting to the New Selling Environment

It’s Not Me, It’s You. Three Fundamentals to Cultivating Customer Loyalty

How to do Account Based Marketing: A #FlipMyFunnel Conference Review

How to Implement Account Based Marketing: a Step by Step Guide

Are You Minding The #DigitalGap? How to Align Marketing And Sales to the Buyer’s Journey

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