B2B Marketing and Sales Archives

Better Salespeople Need Less Sales Enablement Content

B2B Marketing and Sales, Content Marketing, Revenue Growth, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence

Generating revenue and winning customers requires a balance of good content and confident sales. Design your sales enablement content around what your medium-skilled salespeople need.

Your top salespeople have sufficient confidence and sales skill that they don’t need a lot of content to be successful in their sales efforts. However an average salesperson with less confidence and less sales skill will require much more content. Top sales people usually need less content because they are able to develop a greater level of customer relationship and trust.

One of the responsibilities of sales management is to specify the content requirements that sufficiently augments the sales skills of the average salesperson so that revenue is successfully generated.

June 12, 2017/0 Comments/by Bud Hyler

Extend Lead Qualification Process Beyond BANT

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence

We have written and published a number of articles about BANT and other methods of qualification. This is a guest post from Bud Hyler with insights on taking lead qualification to another level.

Extend the lead qualification process beyond BANT to include qualification based on the prospects probable valuation of your specific product’s advantages. BANT only qualifies the prospect to the level of probability of buying a product in the same product category as the firm’s product using the qualification criteria of:

Are the decision maker?
When do you intend to buy?
Do you have budget?

That is the expectation of purchase for any product in the category, not the expectation of purchasing your product with your differentiating capabilities.

May 30, 2017/0 Comments/by Bud Hyler

Smart Rooms for Account-Based Sales

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, CRM, Marketing Automation, Measurement and Analytics, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence, Technology & Websites

The buy-sell process for B2B high consideration products and services is complex and highly collaborative involving team selling to committee buying. Virtual workspaces like Smart Rooms from Journey Sales facilitate this process by helping account teams share, collaborate and communicate with buying teams throughout dynamic sales and onboarding lifecycles.

Journey Sales built Smart Rooms natively on Salesforce® as digital workspaces that allow sales teams and service teams to quickly create personalized, guided digital experiences with their account buyers and track engagement along the way.

To optimize B2B sales, we often design funnels to drive out metrics and codify sales processes. Linear funnels for B2B are particularly relevant when purchasing is transactional or follows a highly predictable process. Yet, for complex B2B and high consideration sales, customers are interacting with a range of 3rd party research, journals and publications, as well as your competitor’s funnel. This is why we need a non-linear more collaborative approach to selling and engaging the client – one that allows us to build our value propositions responsively and engage customer teams over time. For these more complex sales and dynamic environments, a Smart Room is a great fit.

May 21, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Go-to-Market Strategy and Plan

B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Strategy

A company needs an effective go-to-market strategy that makes it easy to buy from and sell to. Go-to-market strategies and plans are a blueprint for how the company will reach customers, streamlining and establishing a strong focus on the steps that a company must take to co-create value with customers.

May 9, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Under the Microscope: Commercialization

B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Strategy

The commercialization process prepares you to introduce products and services into the market. There are several different frameworks that describe the product development process in detail and commercialization is typically included in this overall process. For our purposes, in assessing and constructing a revenue architecture, we focus on elements of commercialization that impact marketing and sales execution.

Consider the traditional “7 Ps”: product, place, price, promotion, people, process, physical environment. For the purposes of the Revenue Architecture framework, the commercialization activities are central to marketing and sales execution. Sales and marketing teams do sell for a hypothetical company – their job is to sell the products and services the company offers. Commercialization helps influence product design and quality, and paves the way for more effective productive marketing and sales execution.

Activities prior to Commercialization include Market Strategy: Customer Value Research and Analysis, Firm Competencies, Competitive Industry / Market Analysis, Customer Win/Loss Analysis, Firm Performance Analysis, Requirement Definition, Product Line Economies , Budget Planning and Cost Management, Market Acceptance and Availability,Product Strategy, Product Roadmapping.

The Commercialization process includes: Value Positioning including Target Market Definition and Sizing, Customer Engagement Model, Commercial Use Cases, Pricing, Terms and Conditions.

Activities we review after commercialization include Go-To-Market: Positioning and Value Communication, Routes to market, Channels and Partnerships, Marketing Planning, Launch Planning, Customer Acquisition Models, Sales Enablement, Collateral, Lead Generation, Sales and Channel Training, Customer Relationship Management, Funnel Analysis, Market Assets at Different Sales Stages, Technical Tools and Marketing Assets.

April 22, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Use a Mass Customization Approach for Account-Based Marketing

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, Revenue Growth

Traditional account sales is an important, but expensive approach to market. Traditional marketing programs are not account-centric and often fail to deliver the needed impact at the account level. Targeting strategic accounts requires that marketing and sales work in partnership to orchestrate effective account-based marketing and selling. Yet, customizing an approach to a specific account can be costly.

A strategy you can employ to keep costs down is “mass customization” – a leveraged approach across multiple accounts that uses standardized, more modular capabilities that can be customized and configured for the account strategy.

March 20, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Under the Microscope: Market Strategy

B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Strategy

A Market Strategy is a core element of a company’s revenue architecture and differentiated strategy. Revenue leaders need to define how to approach the Market Strategy based on attractiveness, competitive positioning, and fit.

This post dissects Market Strategy and its components and explores why it is essential to any business.

March 9, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Achieving Marketing-Sales Alignment with the Closed-Loop Marketing Architecture

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, CRM, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Growth, Revenue Programs

Closing the Loop – Aligning Marketing and Sales

Traditionally, marketing teams generate leads, while sales teams close deals. With the web and the shift of the customer buying process and business-to-customer interactions, the lines between marketing and sales are blurred. Companies today know that they need to adapt, but how?

Growth-focused companies often wrestle with aligning marketing and sales to maximize revenue growth. A key goal is establishing a “service level agreement” between marketing and sales teams that defines both the required quantity and the characteristics of the ‘MQL” or Marketing Qualified Lead”. But there is more to it then that. Marketing and sales teams today, must work together to orchestrate the customer experience end-to-end and generate leads, nurture opportunities in the pipeline and ultimately convert sales. And, they need to track this end-to-end so they can attribute revenue to marketing programs and campaigns and see what is working and not working.

A useful framework to manage this end-to-end process is the “Closed Loop Marketing Architecture”.

February 17, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Let’s Talk About Email – Why and How to Use Email Marketing

B2B Marketing and Sales, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Growth

With the rise of social media, many “traditional” online marketing tools have fallen out of the spotlight in the glamorous new world of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Marketers scramble to discuss the latest marketing campaigns that can be implemented with social media.

However, email marketing is one of the marketing tools that should be discussed in earnest. Email marketing is still useful and has its place in the modern B2B marketer’s repertoire.

February 5, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Revenue Systems: Your Platform for Sustainable Revenue Performance

B2B Marketing and Sales, Measurement and Analytics, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Systems, Technology & Websites

We define Revenue Systems as the foundation for sustainable revenue execution. Revenue Systems include brand, people, process, and technology that enable marketing and sales. These core capabilities help attract, capture, deepen and expand relationships. Assuming the right strategies are in place, your revenue system provides the platform you need to execute marketing and sales programs and achieve marketing and sales performance metrics.

Some B2B organizations still view marketing and sales as distinct organizations with different skills, and requiring different technologies and processes. While there are distinctions in the role of marketing and sales, today’s buyer lifecycle experience is fluid and must drive the marketing and sales process. Leading businesses recognize that in order to attract and engage these self-directed buyers, marketing and sales teams need integrated branding, technologies and processes. With a Revenue Systems approach, leaders can architect an integrated platform and manage continuous and non-linear buyer journeys.

November 12, 2016/0 Comments/by John Stone

Better Salespeople Need Less Sales Enablement Content

Generating revenue and winning customers requires a balance of good content and confident sales. Design your sales enablement content around what your medium-skilled salespeople need.

Extend Lead Qualification Process Beyond BANT

Smart Rooms for Account-Based Sales

Go-to-Market Strategy and Plan

Under the Microscope: Commercialization

Use a Mass Customization Approach for Account-Based Marketing

Under the Microscope: Market Strategy

Achieving Marketing-Sales Alignment with the Closed-Loop Marketing Architecture

Let’s Talk About Email – Why and How to Use Email Marketing

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