sales and marketing strategy

How to profit from buyers’ problems

Businesses pay money to have their problems solved. Sometimes they will pay a lot, and sometimes they won't. As a consequence, some problems are more 'attractive' than others to sales-oriented businesses that are offering solutions. As a seller, you may be the only game in town when it comes to solving some problems, and in a big pack for others. The challenge is to identify a buyer problem, or problems, that match your strong suits. Better still, find out what problems you can solve better than your competitors. Make a long list of all the problems READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy|

How to earn more profit than your competitors

What do you do when a tough competitor enters your space? Many businesses cut their prices, starting a 'race to the bottom' as their previously unassailed niche becomes just another commodity product or service. This strategy carries the seeds of its own destruction. In his classic book, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter outlines five forces that shape competition: New competitors enter the market Rivalry among existing competitors intensifies Substitute products arrive Buyers use their buying power to squeeze margins Suppliers assert greater bargaining power The classic case of a business READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Strategy, Tactics|

What revenue performance management can do for you

If you are at all familiar with marketing automation, you will have heard the term "Revenue Performance Management" floating around quite a bit. But what exactly is it and why is it relevant to you? Revenue performance management is a deeper level of marketing automation that provides more insight into the funnel, and therefore helps marketers better understand the buyer's journey. Additionally, it provides a deeper set of analytics, making it possible for marketers to better measure the effectiveness of campaigns, as well as the overall ROI that marketing provides. For an area of the company READ MORE ›

By Lauren Carlson|Strategy, Tactics|

3 Reasons Why Australian B2B Marketers Are Going Inbound

Inbound marketing isn't a well-known phrase to Australian marketers (yet!), but 2012 sees B2B marketers quickly catching on to the inbound marketing revolution. Inbound marketing refers to the art & increasingly the science of attracting buyers to your site, (getting found) converting them to leads (nurturing) and figuring out what is and isn't working (analytics). Better known phrases are website marketing, digital marketing or online marketing, but inbound marketing is a more comprehensive, inclusive discipline than these phrases suggest. Here are the top three reasons why we are beginning to make the switch: #1 It's Budget-Friendly (And READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Strategy, Tactics, Velocity|

Closing sales opportunities faster

How often have we heard sales managers complain that they are generating lots of selling opportunities, but the Sales team just doesn’t seem to be able to close them fast enough? Certainly not fast enough to achieve sales budgets. Out with the pipeline, in with the funnel One approach to this problem can be to do away with the sales pipeline. Clients often talk to us about what’s in the pipeline and what’s coming down the pipeline. But, in a sales pipeline, all opportunities within the pipeline are more or less the same. Let me explain why READ MORE ›

By Eddie Smith|Strategy, Velocity|

12 Online Lead Generation Mistakes to Avoid

The internet is a tough environment to make a sale, or even commence and influence a sale, especially for small to medium businesses. It's so crowded with competition and flooded with data that when someone does visit your site, it's a ever increasing challenge for B2B marketers to keep them there. Unfortunately, getting Google searchers to land on your site is only half the battle. Briefly skimming your homepage is different to sticking around and reading your content. People have almost zero patience when they're browsing online, so it's imperative to do whatever you can to keep READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Strategy|

Get Your Content Found: 5 Step Guide for B2B Marketer

A key challenge B2B marketers face when it comes to content marketing is coming up with the content itself - that is, what exactly to talk about. But that's only one part of the story. Ultimately, content marketing is about generating leads, and the way you distribute your content is actually what makes or breaks the success of your efforts. Ensuring your content gets found is hard work! We've broken it down into 5 steps: #1 Come up with good content You need to have something valuable to say, that people will want to read because it READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Strategy|

How to use five core strengths to win business

In our previous article “Four steps to winning new business”, we discussed the importance of developing a big picture strategy and identifying your key strengths to help you win new business. Today we look more closely at five core strengths and how they can be put to good use in your strategy. Strengths generally fall into one of five categories, each with a specific action plan that can maximise your chances of securing new business. 1. A superior solution You may have a superior solution over your competitors, but it is no guarantee that you will win READ MORE ›

By Eddie Smith|Strategy|

Think your market is too small? Try recycling

I was speaking with an executive the other day who repeated the concerns of her management team that their existing market was too small to sustain their growth. Expanding into new markets may look enticing, but there are large risks and costs associated with this strategy. As it turned out in this case I was able to show the company that their market was large enough to provide growth opportunities for the next 3 years. A little back of the envelope math indicated a bleak picture at first. Considering the size of their available market and their READ MORE ›

By Chuck Besondy|Strategy, Velocity|

How B2B Marketers Must Adjust to Shrinking Deal Sizes

According to Marketing Sherpa data just released, average B2B deal sizes are shrinking. What does this mean for the B2B Marketer? Its implications are highly significant. So if the average deal size changes, so does your marketing maths; your funnel velocity will now have to be higher to make the same revenue. Revenue Goal = Deal Size x Leakage x Lag x Buyer's Stage Where leakage means the number of deals that leak from stage to stage of your go to market funnel and lag is the time it takes for deals to close. So to achieve READ MORE ›

By Chris Fell|Strategy, Velocity|