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Market Segmentation: Select Markets and Isolate Audience for Engagement
Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue StrategyThe universe of markets and buyers is incredibly diverse, and your decisions about where and whom to target can make or break your revenue performance. A company can’t be all things to all buyers in all markets. As the competitive landscape is always changing, with more players vying for prospects’ time and attention, it is vital to select markets where you can effectively compete and win. Then, continuously segment the market to isolate specific audiences to engage at the right time and place with the right message.
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Financial Advisor Go-to-Market Model
Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue ArchitectureA go-to-market model is based on your business model and your target audience of personas. It helps you envision the best ways to access your ideal clients. Yet, in addition to understanding how you might best access your particular target client segment, you should consider what is best for you and your firm. For example, what volumes do you need? How comfortable are you with outbound prospecting? To what degree are you comfortable using social media or digital marketing?
Begin by determining how to access your ideal clients.
A. Determine your territories or market focus as a team – who will focus on which prospects or segments.
B. Identify referral partners (asset management relationships, custodians, referral networks, COIs, etc.)
C. Identify marketplaces or communities that may be relevant (e.g., FeeOnlyNetwork, Investopedia, NAPFA, FPA Planner, Zoe Financial, SmartAsset, and others)
D. Identify touch points should might based on the audience, e.g. inbound and outbound marketing, PR/media outreach, advertising, re-marketing, high-value content, and thought leadership, webinars.
E. Identify social and other media channels you might use to reach prospective clients (Google or Facebook Advertising, LinkedIn Sponsored posts, etc., radio, print), media/PR, content/thought leadership publishing/syndication, speaking, charitable activity, e-mail, apps such as a retirement readiness quiz, webinars).
F. Consider what capabilities you will need to support your go-to-market strategy, including web channels, collateral, technologies, processes, skills, and measurement/monitoring.
G. Align your team around the go-to-market model and high-level campaign strategies, ensuring buy-in and supporting execution commitment.
Target selectively:
Explore all 9 strategies for growth by downloading the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™.
Enterprise Funnel Math
Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Architecture, Revenue GrowthEnterprise funnel math exercises help align marketing and sales teams by zeroing in on critical funnel metrics like Sales and Marketing Qualified Inquiries (e.g. MQI) and Marketing and Sales Qualified Leads (MQL and SQL).
An enterprise funnel math model can help you identify the mix of tactics for for different funnel characteristics. For example, a sales-driven funnel might be designed with sales-led prospection activities and ABM tactics. A high volume lead gen funnel might be driven by Inbound Marketing or Paid SEM. Each funnel will have its own “DNA” and can be modeled top to bottom across deal stages to inform go-to-market strategies and budgeting.
Defining Your Funnels
A simple spreadsheet can help you produce a flexible working model that can be tailored to each company. To make it work, it is important to identify the right funnels or segments. The more granular your funnels are, the more accurate the funnel model will be – but too many funnels will add complexity. So, we typically identify 4-8 segments that represent distinct marketing and sales motions. Select segment that have a distinctive “funnel DNA” – not necessarily a P&L, or a geography segment. Often a funnel is centered around a product or service offering. Funnels can always be rolled up into geos, or P&Ls.
We develop Funnel Math Models with several tabs:
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Integrated Marketing and Sales Process
Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Closed-loop Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellenceBuyers want an efficient, effective, quality buying experience. They don’t consider whether their experience is “marketing-generated” or “sales-generated”. They choose if they want to engage with your web content, 3rd party digital outposts or marketplaces or with your sales people. They most likely will interact with all of these in different sequences and in unstructured and unpredictable ways.
Buyer engagement efforts take place all along the buyer journey and to deliver the experiences buyers expect and maximize your revenue impact, you need an integrated marketing and sales process.
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Sales Qualification Tools using FACT instead of BANT and SCOTSMAN
B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Programs, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellencePost originally published in 2014
We have written a few articles about collaborative qualification and how to select and apply the right sales qualification tools – including SCOTSMAN and BANT. These tools are quite familiar to B2B sales and teams that focused on a considered sale. Yet, we see some challenges:
So what is the right approach to sales qualification? We suggest a collaborative approach using FACT.
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Chief Revenue Officer Success – The First 90 Days
B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Architecture, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellenceWritten with contributions from Ed Funaro
As growth focused companies realize the critical synergies required across the marketing, sales and customer success functions, they are increasingly recruiting a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to lead the way. Yet many CROs fail without a properly defined role and an adequate onboarding process. It is vital to ensure CRO success.
A Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is responsible for a company’s revenue streams. He/she has the ultimate accountability for driving revenue growth. The role is clearly cross functional. The CRO oversees and aligns revenue-generating departments: Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. It is a challenging role. The average tenure of a Chief Revenue officer working at the same company is incredibly brief – only about 18 months, according to an annual survey from CSO Insights.
The first 90 days are critical – Whether a company makes money rests with the CRO. Expectations are that the CRO will have about one quarter or 90 days to prove they can meet management’s expectations. As Michael Watkins points out in his top selling book The First 90 Days.
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