Strategy

Ask pain funnel questions in the right order [video]

The best pain funnel questions, asked at the wrong time, will lose you a deal you might have won if you’d asked them in the right order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-7mxhOkFgA Popular sales training company Sandler uses the term ‘pain funnel questions’ to describe the questions a sales person should ask. I’m going to show you today that their questions are good enough. If you master these good-enough questions, you'll go a long way to succeeding in sales. And if ‘good enough’ is good enough, then have a go at mastering pain funnel questions. But if you want to excel, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales, Skills, Strategy, Tactics|

Go to market strategy examples

The best way to build a go to market strategy is to copy someone else. Unless you want to make money, or grow consistently, and then it's not such a great idea. Let me show you why with three classic go-to-market strategy examples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pMtCHq3WYk The right strategy doesn't depend on your product, but your buyers. Let's take a look at the companies, their buyers, and their strategy. At the end I'll give you a model for working this out for yourself. Desktop Computers For my first example, let's take a company that wants to own the desktop READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How often should you blog for B2B [video]

How often should you blog for B2B? Here's my answer: As often as you can say something valuable Certainly no less often than monthly Email once a week, even if you blog less often https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WvGlVfjeZM First, you need a foundation - a monthly blog. If you haven't published a blog every month for the last couple of years, fix that first. Just do it. Where do I get the content? I'm going to give you a strategic answer so you get your message right, and a tactical one - a tip for creating lots of valuable content. READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Ideal Client Profile [video]

What is an ideal client profile, and how do you define yours? Your ideal client profile describes the type of businesses you want to serve, and excludes those that you don't. It's not so much a list of your segments, but the characteristics that need to be true of all of your segments. Let me explain what this really means and how to define your ideal client profile. https://youtu.be/CTTi2x6TTLE Your target market is those businesses who most feel the pain In any go-to-market plan, your target market is those businesses who are most affected by the problem READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Trouble your market about the right problem [video]

Trouble your market about the right problem Don't ask your prospects what's keeping them up at night, because you really don't care if they have a problem you can't solve. What you do care about is how much the problem you do solve is hurting them. Be strategic - even selfish - and help your market understand why the problem you solve should be at the top of their list. Let me explain why some problems help your competitors more than they help you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdtdPkyPvmw&t=2s Establish a need Your solution, whether it's a product or a READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

Best B2B Marketing Campaigns [video]

What are the best B2B Marketing Campaigns? In this weeks Funnel Vision I'm going to show you some extraordinary campaigns with clever creative content, and explain why none of these will help you to maximise marketing- generated revenue. Then I'll show you what you do need to do, and then bring that creativity back into play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIpvT4BMOnU Building a campaign list I want to build the definitive list of campaigns that we need to build in B2B, and a few hints on how to build each. For example, you may need campaigns for Key READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How to fire a bad customer

Steps to consider when firing a bad customer Work super-hard to fix their issues first If it's them (they will never be happy), grit your teeth, then Reframe the issue as a misalignment, not a fault Keep it classy. Don't give or accept blame. Refund their last payment Why should you fire a bad customer, anyway? If you are genuinely in the business of delivering great service to your clients, anything that gets in the way of that must be fixed. Just as equally (maybe even more so), if you value your staff and want them READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

What’s the cost of content marketing? [video]

What's the cost of content marketing? I'll assume that you've bought into the need for content marketing, and you just want to know what it should cost. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZF7CQk-FjBs Conclusions Content marketing is just a part of your total marketing, and your marketing spend should be somewhere between 2 -5% of your gross revenue. You should allow for the following: Planning ($25,000): $5,000 for an external audit. $20,000 to build your strategy. Execution: Insource for $80,000 per person, on average. You're going to have some younger team members, and some more senior, and therefore wages will change; READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

B2B buying behaviour – 4 changes, 4 needs and 4 new strategies [video]

B2B buying behaviour is changing. How is it changing? What do buyers need? What should our strategies be to take advantage of that? There are four big changes that need to be made. https://www.youtube.com/embed/dAW5vJNLfyc The four big changes are: The commoditisation of industries; The rise of procurement; The changing nature of the act of selling; The rising role of risk. There’s a link between point three and point four. Buyers want less content, more one on one, more insight, and they want collaboration and co-creation. Therefore, we should segment according to the customer behaviour; make customer READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

B2B CRM Strategies

Looking to build B2B CRM strategies? A lot of the fundamentals are really important. The devil is in the details but neither the fundamentals, nor the details are hard to get right. https://www.youtube.com/embed/7NDkvtsvXU8 I asked Dr. Google what advice he'd give someone looking for B2B CRM strategies and the essence was five points. Work out what you want your customers to do, and build your CRM to manage that progression. Segment your database according to where they are in their customer journey. With acquisition, B2C is mostly about data and segmentation and B2B needs these, plus READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|