Tactics

Grow your business with the Content Marketing Domino

I love those crazy Youtube videos where dozens of (usually nerdy) students have spent weeks crawling around on hands and knees laying out hundreds of thousands of dominoes, all in preparation for the big moment that kicks off one almighty chain reaction. A great B2B content marketing strategy should have exactly this effect on your target audience. What's the link? The role of content is to influence the thoughts, opinions and decisions of your buyers with the ultimate goal of generating more sales. Each piece of content within your content strategy has a role to play, i.e., READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Tactics|

How to find contact details for your ideal target market

I want leads, I want their names, and I want it now. There's a strategic piece to this and a tactical piece to this. I'm going to show you today some of our favourite tactics for finding the right names and the right buyers. But along the way I am going to argue very strongly that you need to get the strategy right first and then I'll show you how we get the names. Well there's a strategic piece to this; of course, I need to have the right buyers - people who are likely to have READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Alignment, Tactics, Velocity|

The #1 Sales issue: inability to communicate value

For three years in a row, the highly influential benchmark and advisory firm Sirius Decisions has reported that the number one revenue inhibitor in complex B2B sales environments remains the average sales person’s inability to communicate value. You’d hope that we would have made more progress in solving this. I believe one of the reasons that we haven’t is that most of the effort has been spent focusing on the value of our solutions and not on the cost to the prospect of not dealing with the problem. Personalising our value Of course, we need to find READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Tactics, Velocity|

How to choose content to get buyers across your funnel

Do you lead or do you demand? I read a great article from the Content Marketing Institute asking whether we should focus on lead generation or demand generation. I'm going to show you how to answer that question for yourself. In the article, the Content Marketing Institute - a very highly regarded organisation by the way - argue that your content strategy can't deal with both Lead Gen and Demand Gen. Lead Gen is all about names and Demand Gen is all about shaping behaviour. Well, I'd argue content strategy must deal with both. What about positioning, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics|

Why marketers are now your best salespeople

I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but the research we read from many marketing research firms such as Forrester, Gartner and IDC tells the same story over and over again. Today's buyer OWNS the buying cycle more now than ever before. Salespeople are losing control and being pushed further and further down the buying decision process. Of course it varies greatly with product complexity and market maturity, but Forrester's research confirms that today’s buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through their journey before they contact the vendor. Similarly, READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Strategy, Tactics, Velocity|

Digital marketing disconnect: The vaccum facing leaders

"There is a digital disconnect in executive ranks, a leadership vacuum created by a mismatch between expertise and authority." So says Jake Scrofman in The Harvard Business Review Blog. This pithy summary hits the nail on the head. In many, many of our meetings with prospective and current clients the senior team are aware, in principle at least, of the potential of digital, inbound marketing to drive increased revenue, improve sales and marketing efficiency and a reduction in their cost of sales. But they don't know what and how to change. The result is they cling to READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Tactics, Velocity|

How to size your funnel on the back of an envelope

“Perfect is the enemy of good.” So said Voltaire, an 18th century French philosopher. If we cycle forward to the 21st century, our problem is we drown in detail. We get so caught up in the statistics of conversion rates and click through rates and sales conversion rates that we lose the clarity of what is actually going on in our funnel. In most businesses you can ask the sales leader what their closure rates are, and they'll know and you can ask marketing what their click through rates are and they'll know that too. However, READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics, Velocity|

B2B Marketing in 2014: Content, Context & Conversation

Content Marketing has emerged as one of the key growth areas for B2B Marketing in 2014. It seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. And yet, as Doug Kessler so eloquently explains, we are in the process of drowning in a deluge of drivel masquerading as thought leadership. It’s just that Doug didn’t use the word “drivel”. More on that later. Diverting the deluge of drivel How can we avoid contributing to this deluge of drivel? David Meerman Scott - referring to a conversation with Greg Alexander at Sales Benchmark Index - highlighted the important linkage READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Tactics|

How to set quotas and improve the yield from Sales

What's a normal quota per sales rep? Half a million, 1.5 million per annum? Or is that revenue or gross profit? Is it lifetime value or one time value? Or somehow a one year value? If we want to improve our yield per rep, do we decide better ones? To me, quota setting is all a bit well kind of looking over the shoulder. Isn't there some better way to do it than that? When you look at what a normal sales quota is, and for a start I want you to think about sales value not READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Tactics, Velocity|

Why the Cost of Inaction is so important in B2B Sales

Return on Investment (ROI) projections are often regarded as a critical element of B2B sales proposals, particular for high-value considered purchases. There’s no arguing that they have a role to play - but your sales people would be very unwise to rely on them. In fact, I’ve become convinced that over-reliance on ROI calculations is one of a number of key factors that are driving the high level of “decisions to do nothing after all” that so bedevil many long and complex sales cycles. Are you keen to find out why? 1. Most prospects distrust vendor-supplied ROI projections Most prospects have READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Strategy, Tactics|