b2b sales marketing define ideal targetCategory Archives: Sales

B2B Go To Market Strategy – Choosing the Right Target Market

b2b sales marketing define ideal target

Although it may seem obvious, choosing the right target market is something that many organizations overlook in their haste and excitement to get their product or service out to potential buyers. Of course they know who their basic customer will be: Companies like X, with Pain Y, Net Revenue Z, etc.; but they haven’t taken the time to really challenge themselves to look beyond the basics to ensure they’re going after the right people in the right corners of their market.

When considering who will make up your ideal and high-probability customers, you need to put your main market through five key filters:

  1. The Need Filter. Again, it may sound obvious, but many organizations don’t really think about who needs them. If you’re selling in healthcare, a small practice will have very different needs than a hospital or a franchise holding with 10 locations. Where is the greatest likelihood of finding companies that need to address the pain you cure?
  2. The Flush-with-Cash Filter. Are you addressing a space that’s hurting financially or is flush with cash? Always go after the latter. Solving a problem for an industry segment that is going through a tough financial time (due to changing consumer demands or government regulations for example) is going to make selling cycles long and arduous.
  3. The “Just Right” Size Filter.  Much like Goldilocks, you need to find a target market that offers you just the right opportunity to become a market leader. You want a space that’s small enough that you can become the market leader in a relatively short amount of time but large enough that it’ll carry significant value (to your investors, partners, etc.) when you do.
  4. The Competition Filter. Don’t beat your head against the wall trying to crack into a very mature or overly competitive space unless you are 100% confident your offering is a game changer that is heads and shoulders above everyone else (and even if this is the case, tread carefully and carry a big stick in the shape of industry and thought leaders supporting you). Competition is a good thing on many levels, but don’t let pride talk you into a no-win situation.
  5. The Partner Filter. Now may not be the right time, but eventually you may look for partners to either help you sell/market your offering or to somehow complement/supplement your product. Are there potential partners in your product’s ecosystem that afford you this opportunity or will you always be going it alone?
b2b sales marketing define ideal target

Who’s in your ideal customer bulls-eye?
(Photo via 1monthop)

Once you’ve addressed the five filters, you’ll be ready to look at the core attributes of your ideal client. These are the typical criteria you think of when you list off who fits in your market (more on defining your Total Addressable Market in a previous post). These attributes, combined with the filters above, act like a bulls-eye—the center is your perfect customer and the subsequent layers are your additional, but not ideal, opportunities. We all know it’s unlikely you’ll snag a perfect customer every time, so consider the following when evaluating an opportunity:

  • Is this opportunity meeting all your ideal attributes? If yes, do whatever you have to do in order to win the deal (T&C concessions, pricing augmentations, etc.). Securing them will be worth it in the long run and any offers you make will be leverage-able down the road.
  • Is this opportunity meeting some or most of your ideal attributes? If yes, don’t undercut too much just to get the deal done. It won’t be leverage-able across future deals and you’ll start an internal environment of acquiescing to one-off changes.

Selling is hard. There’s no two ways about it. But setting yourself up for success is well worth the investment of your time and resources. Thinking through the filters you can put on your market as well as how you’ll handle different situations with different levels of opportunities will help you get the customers you need—and want.

Enabling Moment-of-Interest Marketing™: 4 Challenges to Overcome

Screen-Shot-2013-03-06-at-10.31.41-AM-300x119

Can’t get enough of this topic? Check out the webinar recording that discusses it in-depth.

How B2B buyers get information

Data from Google/Compete Tech B2B Customer Study, U.S. Sept 2012

As B2B buyers bring more and more of their consumer habits to their B2B purchasing efforts, winning at the critical moment–the Zero Moment of Truth as Google calls it–is all the more crucial to producing (and measuring) marketing’s ROI. Where a B2B buyer may have formerly called a sales line directly or filled out a Contact Us form and alerted you of his interest, he’s now able to seek (and decide) without alerting you.

So how do you make the most of a prospect’s demonstrated interest in order to win at that moment of truth? By implementing Moment-of-Interest Marketing™ best practices. To do so, you’ll first want to address four challenge areas endemic to almost every organization:

  1. Know what the prospect really goes through. Oftentimes, we automate processes that work great for us but aren’t really optimal for our prospects. Going undercover to experience your company the way your prospects do is a great way to ensure a logical, consistent, compelling brand experience while also ensuring your back-end processes work how you expect (i.e., did you get added to an email nurturing queue after you downloaded something? Did you receive a 1:1 reach-out?).
  2. Determine your breaking points. Do you actually know where your breaking points are? (If you’ve gone undercover as outlined in #1, you probably have a better idea) Is there any chance you can implement Moment-of-Interest Marketing™ with how your teams are aligned today?
  3. Do something about the silos. Sales and marketing living in silos is nothing new–but what are you doing about it? Charting clear responsibilities, expectations, and measurements is critical if you ever hope to make the most of prospects’ moments of interest. (Read more about smarketing love in our archives.)
  4. Rework those dated workflows. Your technology has to work with you, not against you. MAPs and CRMs are great, but they’re tools, not brains. If you’re using technology to automate unproductive workflows, automation only makes them unproductive faster. Take stock of your systems, their setup, and their ownership and restructure accordingly.

There are certainly more challenges than these (if someone wants to share tips for building your own printing press for additional campaign funding, I’m all ears), but these are the biggest hurdles we see clients face every day. What’s your biggest challenge?

Making the Most of Event Attendance – 6 Tips for Sales and Marketing

Business card exchange

I don’t know about you, but all I can think about is summer–and not just because the temperatures are in the twenties here in Minneapolis. The real reason I’m thinking about summer (and autumn for that matter) is due to the number of speaker applications I’m writing and event emails I’m receiving. This week alone I’ve gotten two personal calls from representatives who want me to sponsor an event and I’m wrapping up a prospectus for a September speaking opportunity–’tis the season for event planning!

As I take a break from writing about why Mark should speak at a fall marketing event (trust me, he should), my mind is drifting to the many events I’ve been a part of…from organizing to attending to following-up, I’ve seen the entire events funnel from a front row seat. And sometimes it isn’t pretty–like the time I had to call 25 CEOs’ assistants to get cell phone numbers in order to personally call each CEO and alert them to a room change–to a venue two miles from where the event was originally scheduled.

Like many marketers, I’ve usually been on the administrative side of events, in charge of dealing with booths, hand-outs, and the information and contacts amassed on-site. As most event attendees seem to come from a sales or leadership function, they’re largely focused on making connections and getting leads. Which is all well and good–if the loop is closed post event. In the spirit of starting a new year as harmoniously as possible, here are a few tips for making the most of event attendance–and maybe even inspiring some smarketing love:

For Sales/Event Attendees

  1. Time is not on your side. I not-so-fondly remember many (many) instances of hounding returning sales reps for the business cards they amassed at tradeshows so that I could turn them over to the IT department to be loaded in a CRM or automation system. The sooner you can hand these over, the timelier communication will be. Plus, it’ll inspire some goodwill with your marketing counterparts.
  2. Make the most of event attendance - get information

    Don’t just put this in your pocket! Take a moment to write down a note or two.

    Don’t rely on memory. Now that we’re talking about business cards, take a moment to scribble something memorable on the back of every card you get (ok, most of the cards you get). Even if it’s the person’s dog’s name, you never know what will be of use to someone else. Anything that marketing can use to segment and tailor communications is useful. Example: Met Steve at session on the future of banking being paperless. Steve might be awfully interested in your software solution that dramatically lowered direct mail costs for your customers.

  3. Pay attention. What were the big themes? Which booths/vendors got the most foot traffic? Which sessions were popular? Why were other attendees there? Even the seemingly insignificant details will help your marketing team make the most of following-up. Pro tip from yours truly: draft an email or note on your iPad/laptop and add a bullet here and there as the mood strikes. Send to your marketing team as you’re about to fly home.

For Marketers/Those Following-up

  1. Get ahead of the curve. Any decent event probably has a dedicated webpage (or 10) and a published agenda and/or speaker list. You don’t need your sales rep to tell you what the big themes of the event are to get started drafting follow-up communication. Hopefully they’ll help you fill in specific details to make your follow-up even better, but time waits for no marketer–be ready to dispatch messages, calls, blog posts, and even a thematic microsite.
  2. Have lunch with your sales reps. Or at least a phone call. Whatever works best, have a specific conversation about the event, who was there, what got people excited, etc. You never know what tidbits you’ll uncover that could give you a great hook for your follow-up. Pro trip from yours truly: use this opportunity to suggest pertinent content (like a great blog post) that the sales rep can send a contact who had a specific gripe/question. I’ve even been known to draft the email for the sales rep to personalize and send…taking ‘sales enablement’ to a whole new level!
  3. Have more than one process. Occasionally, sales reps have been known to hoard contact information of the most compelling people they meet because they want to ensure a 1:1 conversation. Which is fine–but you still want it in the system for ongoing communication efforts. The best way to make this happen is to have a good relationship with your sales counterparts (see #2). The other best way to make this happen is to have the right processes and routing rules in your system so that high-potential contacts don’t get inundated with messaging from all sides the second they are uploaded into your system.

As event season unfolds, there are many ways to ensure you’re getting the most for your money (and time). The most important thing to do is be armed with a plan.

Meeting Basic Expectations

holiday-shopping-300x225

‘Twas a week before Christmas and my inbox was jammed,

With offers and coupons for sweaters and ham.

When what to my wandering eyes should appear,

But an email that brought to my eyes a small tear.

It was from [Name Redacted], my favorite store,

And offered me deals to end the Xmas shopping chore.

Although they have all the items I like,

I can only buy in-store and it just ain’t worth the hike.

When I’ve been driven to rhyming, you know it must be bad. Like you, I probably received 836 emails today with holiday shopping offers. Unlike you, I still have a lot of holiday shopping to mark off the list (at least I hope this is unlike you anyway – there’s nothing worse than scrambling to finish up when there are 5 days to go) so I am all about anyone that can send me a compelling deal and still get it to me before next Tuesday.

An email from one of my two favorite department stores arrived today and it intrigued me enough to actually open it as it was offering 40% off. “Perfect!” I thought. “Now I can finish my shopping at a one-stop shop and get the last gifts I need!”

And then I actually read for comprehension and realized it was in-store only. If you’re anything like me, you would give almost anything, pay almost any shipping cost, go to almost any sketchy third-party site just to avoid having to go to the mall (look at what happened to me last time I tried). And most vendors have caught onto this–especially those who know that if they’re sending an email in the late morning on a workday, they’re pretty likely to reach someone who cannot readily drop by their storefront.

It’s simple really–in addition to meeting your prospects where they are with the right content at the right time (all checks in the “Yes” column for this department store), you have to meet basic expectations. I think it’s pretty obvious that from Thanksgiving to New Year, people want ease. Sure there are some who will nearly kill themselves to take advantage of a Black Friday sale, but a lot of us just want to get the holiday shopping rigmarole done as efficiently as possible.

Although this is a B2C story, it translates easily into the B2B space, particularly when you consider that B2B customers are acting more and more like consumers. Expectations for usability, versatility, and availability are high. If you’re not meeting prospects and customers where they are with the solutions they need, how can you have any hope of making a sale? Getting someone interested is only part of the equation–giving them the right next step is even more important.

Don’t take my word for it though–look at what your competitors are doing. The email in question came within seconds of three other emails from retailers promising I could find great deals online and get free or cheap shipping to receive by Christmas. If your customers expect it and your competitors offer it, guess who’s going to win every time?

File courtesy Arcadia University

All Aboard the Elevator

Elevator pitch dog

When’s the last time you thought about your elevator pitch? Or even the term ‘elevator pitch’? For some (author included), it induces an internal shudder–how can you possibly sum up everything into less than 30 seconds? For others, it provides a level of comfort–simplify and conquer.

Don't waste the opportunity to impress

My dog, Bella, in the elevator at home. You have 30 seconds to impress her.

Even if you haven’t thought about your “official” elevator pitch recently, it’s getting used daily whether you’re aware of it or not. An aunt is asking one of your employees what he does. A casual happy hour has turned into a networking opportunity. A prospect has mistakenly contacted your support desk and wants to know more. Is everyone at your company prepared to give a quick and easy overview that tells a powerful, easy-to-understand story?

The essence of the elevator pitch is easy: Who you are, What you sell, Who you sell it to, Why it’s different. It’s the streamlining and diffusion throughout your company that makes it hard. In my experience, there are some key things every elevator pitch must have:

  • Flexibility. Your business will change over time–so must how you describe yourself. Your elevator pitch should also have the flexibility to allow the teller (i.e., your employee) the ability to make it his own.
  • Adaptability. Depending on who’s in the elevator with you, you need to be able to change your pitch accordingly. Your aunt doesn’t care that your software is similar to SAP’s–but your prospect might. Give the right context to every listener.
  • Stickiness. Your elevator pitch has to stick on two accounts: first, with your employees and second, with your audience. If your pitch isn’t memorable and easy to understand, there’s no chance it will be re-told or consumed how you intended.
  • An end. Raise your hand if you’ve asked someone what she does and then been put to sleep by the five minute overview you got in response. I can’t see your hand raised, but I assume it is. The thing about the elevator pitch is that, oftentimes, the person asking you doesn’t really care what the answer is and isn’t devoting a lot of attention to taking it in. If it’s adapted to who he is and sticky enough to gain initial interest, follow-up questions will be asked. Keep it brief.

The most important thing you can do with your elevator pitch is empower your team. Use similar messaging on your website, in your boiler plate, and in your company meetings. A sticky, flexible elevator pitch will serve your entire business well.

Drinking the Smarketing Kool-Aid

Smarketing /n./ 1. The concept of Sales and Marketing being closely aligned. 2. A made-up word that is very useful.

Smarketing Kool-Aid

I’m a very visual person. I’m no great artist, but I love to sketch my thoughts and surround myself with visual reminders when I’m working through big projects or new ideas. Hence the container of Kool-Aid® that sits on my desk…because it’s all about everyone believing in the same thing.

In a previous post, I mentioned that some of the best marketing advice I ever got was to not do anything that Sales hadn’t bought into. Achieving smarketing alignment, however, can be incredibly difficult. Maintaining it even more so, which is why it’s imperative Sales and Marketing teams take the opportunity to frequently re-align.

I coordinated a smarketing alignment session this week here at OppSource with the primary goal of getting us all drinking the Kool-Aid® . What did this mean?

  • For starters, it meant setting a baseline for conversation which was accomplished with the results of surveys the Marketing and Sales teams took a few weeks back.
  • Second, it meant blocking off a substantial part of the day so that we could really dig in and focus. It’s hard to be out of pocket for an afternoon but it’s necessary to really dig into conversation.
  • Most importantly, it meant having some fun. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I’ve learned two things about workshop facilitation: 1. Play-Doh keeps people awake, and 2. Home-baked desserts make people happy.

So what did we accomplish? Frankly, quite a bit. We’re lucky to have a smarketing alignment expert in-house (why yes, she is available for outside consultation), but it all starts with a willingness from your teams to come together and honestly discuss the state of your union. Here were my top three take-aways from the workshop:

  1. Working from common definitions is critical. What is a lead? What is the go-to-market messaging and strategy? Who falls in our target addressable market? What attributes are more important than others? Everyone’s opinion may vary , but at the end of the day, everyone has to walk out of the room working from the same playbook.
  2. Marketing and Sales need a formal Service Level Agreement in order to achieve smarketing harmony. When will Sales follow-up? What criteria does Sales expect in order to follow up? What will Marketing do with a lead that’s passed back for nurturing? What timelines does everyone agree to follow?
  3. Things change. So must your processes. The last thing we did was agree on how and when we will continuously review what we decided. Your worldview today may be completely different next quarter, shouldn’t your process change, too?

Sometimes discussions get tense but they’re well worth the effort. And who doesn’t enjoy a midday brownie?


Sugar: the ultimate motivator

What’s Your MAP?

Nope, I don’t mean Marketing Automation Platform. I mean your marketing automation PLAN? Too often companies decide on a technology purchase and chart a marketing course to sail hand in hand with these tools. But they are thorny and require a constant flow of content, true dedication, skills specialization and steady attention to be successful.

Sure, you can stand up a marketing automation system in a day or two, architecting some general inbound or outbound workflows. The standard plug-in into Salesforce.com is easy enough to get up and running – but will it serve your overall business need? Did you define what that need was prior to purchasing? Was it that you needed to get some emails out the door? More leads in general?

Marketing automation’s value comes with its rigorous functionality set designed to keep your message and brand in front of customers on strategically timed intervals whether you choose to proactively include someone in your program, or they are an inbound registrant. Success requires thoughtful answers to several questions we outline below:

Ask yourself:

• Have you put someone in charge of your marketing automation strategy?

• Have you designed a series of 90 day content plans to make sure you have fresh offers coming off the assembly line for your database of prospects and inbound marketing efforts?

• Have you designated a person on your team as responsible for being the tool guru? As important, have you set their expectations and role definitions to allow the needed time to achieve this goal?

• Have you set a series of benchmarks defining what success “looks like” quarter by quarter?

• Have you defined what a ‘lead’ means to sales and documented the criteria?

• Have you secured buy-in for your sales team on the exact process they will follow when pursuing leads your marketing automation plan produces?

As you continue to vet your marketing automation plan, keep these questions in mind. Taking time and answering them, sometimes with tough decisions, will make your initiative a success.

Capitalizing on the Moment of Interest

 As previously noted, we’re all about Moment-of-Interest Marketing over here. Prospects want to seek, find, and learn as fast as possible…and then move onto something else. If you’re not capitalizing on demonstrated interest when it happens, you might miss your small window of opportunity altogether.

In part two of his two-part interview with ZDNet, Mark discusses the need for catching prospects right in their moment of interest in order to have a meaningful discussion while they’re emotionally connected to the topic. Here’s a preview from the full article available on ZDNet:

Brian Sommer, ZDNet: What’s the BEST best practice you’re seeing today?

Mark Galloway, OppSource: The velocity at which prospects research and consume information is incredible today. Timing your engagement with them has never been more important. We designed a best practice we call Moment of Interest Marketing™ into our standard lead generation workflows. Most of the clients we work with have way too much latency built in their prospect inquiry follow up process. Marketing collects inquiries and then batches them up for later follow up by inside sales or telemarketing. We instead try to enable either an online chat or outbound telephone reachout within 10 minutes of a prospect taking some kind of action with online content. We catch them in their “moment of interest.” They are emotionally connected to the topic and content you want to discuss and your chances of actually getting a hold of them are much higher. Read more…

Tech Sales Have Changed – So should your sales strategy

 It’s probably not very earth-shattering to tell you that the landscape of B2B technology selling has changed dramatically. In a world where consumers (regardless of being B2B or B2C) would rather Google an answer or ask their social networks for input, it’s hard to get a leg up on your competition.

In part one of a two-part interview with ZDNet, Mark Galloway discusses the new challenges of technology sales and how sales teams must mold to changing expectations and behavior. Here’s a preview from the full article available on ZDNet:

Brian Sommer, ZDNet: The recent issue of Harvard Business Review had an article announcing the end of solution selling. The authors suggest a different kind of sales person is needed to re-frame the sale (i.e., the Challenger). Are you seeing this, too?

Mark Galloway, OppSource: Absolutely. Nobody wants to be “sold” anything, even if it is disguised as a “20 questions – discovery session.” Rather our consumer behaviors are leaking over into our daily business lives. We want to have a discussion around issues that are important to us where we might get to ask the “sales person” 20 questions about how they have helped others solve the issue we are most concerned about. The best sales people are able to take these “moments of interest” and insert their fresh thinking into the prospect’s mind by planting ideas that are relevant to the prospect’s areas of interest, not the salesperson’s desire to retire their revenue quota.

Check out the full piece and feel free to chime in below with the challenges and opportunities you’re encountering.

Playing on the Same Team

It’s certainly nothing novel to harp on the need for smarketing harmony (Exhibit A), but seeing that it’s the number one complaint I hear over and over again from my peers, it’s clearly not a problem that’s going anywhere.

One of the biggest problems I see is that both sides think they’re drawing the short straw. Marketing is annoyed that leads responding to its fabulous campaign with the perfect offer and tailored content aren’t going anywhere and Sales is frustrated that it has to work leads that aren’t ready/properly educated/a fit. When executive management comes asking for answers as to why close rates are low, the finger pointing and aggravation is only heightened.

Sound familiar? To me, too. Anyone who’s worked in Marketing or Sales for more than five minutes has inevitably dealt with this to some degree. Although everyone understands fundamentally that Marketing’s and Sales’ efforts must be in line, typical business structure where these two organizations work in silos only reenforces the problem. A former marketing colleague simplified it nicely for me: “We’re trying to fufill a need for a customer…we should all be integrated and working together toward that goal.” Well said.

So now what? It all comes back to remembering that we’re playing on the same team with the same goal. Communication and collaboration between Marketing and Sales is the only way for both to function efficiently and effectively. A few thoughts for developing some smarketing love:

  • Daily: Say hi. Seriously; a little goodwill never hurt anyone. Send a great article you read and ask for feedback. Have a conversation about trends or upcoming customer visits or the next all-company meeting. Having a solid relationship is a great way to beget collaboration.
  • Monthly: Campaign check in. What’s producing good–and bad–leads? What tweaks can Marketing make to existing efforts? What collateral can Sales use to follow-up?
  • Quarterly: Win/loss rundown. What tactics lead to closed deals? When deals were lost, what was the main reason? (Incidentally, I’ve gotten some of my best campaign ideas from lost deal analyses.)

Have more great ideas? Add a comment below.