Six Steps to Accelerate Sales During Challenging Times
PLAYBOOK TOPROPEL SALES
THE FINN INSIGHTS SERIES
PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES 2
PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES
CONTENTS1 INTRODUCTION
– STEP 1. BUILD A FOUNDATION OF SMART GOALS – STEP 2. CRAFT EFFECTIVE MESSAGING AND POSITIONING – STEP 3. ROOT STRATEGY IN RESEARCH – STEP 4. SELECT THE RIGHT MIX OF MARKETING CHANNELS – STEP 5. CONTENT IS KING; TREAT IT AS SUCH – STEP 6. MEASURE TO MANAGE RESULTS
16 CONCLUSION
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INTRODUCTION: 2020 disrupted every aspect of our lives. Many have experienced deep personal loss as a result of the tragic COVID-19 pandemic, while businesses around the globe are striving to adapt to a “new normal,” protect employees and maintain a healthy bottom line amidst severe economic conditions. It's hard to put into words the full effects felt around the world, but the business implications are clear and business development strategies must adapt to the new commercial landscape.
To achieve success in these challenging times, it’s critical to think more strategically than simply continuing to execute past marketing and sales tactics. Your customers and prospects are facing new issues and have new priorities. In other words, that means your conversations need to be sensitive to their challenges to gain traction and build stronger relationships.
To help you build a strategic business development plan, we’ve created the Playbook to Propel Sales. Use it, with our compliments, to refocus your programs and revive sales. The Playbook offers six critical steps:
1. Revisit and refocus your business and communications goals.
2. Craft distinctive positioning and messaging to avoid commoditization and resonate with higher-level decision makers.
3. Leverage digital research to identify the best means to engage with customers and prospects.
4. Strategically select most relevant communication channels and develop an execution timeline with measurable benchmarks.
5. Develop compelling content that leverages the power of your dynamic new position to cut through the clutter and generate quality leads.
6. Continually measure the program’s impact and strategically make adjustments to fuel greater success.
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STEP 1. BUILD A FOUNDATION OF SMART GOALS For many companies, when they have news to share or a product to launch, it's
tempting to dive straight into tactics to get the word out. However, successful
business development initiatives start with a strategy specifically designed to meet
well-defined goals. Before lifting a finger on creative or content, B2B companies
should begin by assessing their missions, audiences, industry knowledge and
research to create measurable goals and a strategic plan of action. Start with
these steps:
1. Reconnect with your company’s leadership team
As business goals change, marketing and sales must align.
Conduct a marketing workshop involving the leaders of
the business, from the CEO and Managing Director to
heads of Sales, R&D, Manufacturing, Finance and Business.
Understand short term revenue opportunities, timing,
sales cycles, competitive challenges, value propositions,
geographic scope and other important factors.
2. Create SMART marketing goals
Translate business goals into marketing KPIs (Key
Performance Indicators). Create benchmarks that will
guide you through the next year and measure your
journey to success. See the measurement section of this
playbook to learn more.
3. Build greater alignment with marketing and sales
Too often B2B companies don't effectively align
marketing and sales. In many cases, marketing
initiates a campaign and sales continues to march
down the same legacy paths. To be effective,
marketing needs to better appreciate and
understand how their sales professionals engage
with customers and win business. It’s important to
understand if their sales professionals are mostly servicing existing accounts and
growing accounts organically; or are they more effective at engaging with prospects
and capturing new accounts. It’s paramount to continually get insight and feedback
on market dynamics from sales; however, marketing should also conduct its own
research to fully understand market dynamics and opportunities. In many cases,
sales professionals gain insight only from buyers and a few specifiers and therefore
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may not see the complete forest – only the trees. As marketing identifies new
opportunities, it’s imperative to share this insight with sales and collaborate on
effective training and education. This will enable sales to confidently move forward
and build business.
4. Develop decision-maker personas
Determine who, by title and function, at customer companies is the key
decision-maker that has the responsibility to specify and approve the
purchase of your product. Is the ultimate decision maker the head
of R&D, Manufacturing, Engineering, Marketing or Finance?
Make this determination and then initiate research to better
understand this persona's challenges and pain points. Collect as
many details as possible and review them with your sales team.
From now on, everything you do needs to resonate with this strategic demographic.
5. Put together a list of new product launches
Product launches should relate to the specific needs of
customers. This may sound obvious, yet too often product
development happens independently in the lab or in R&D
without truly researching customer priorities and needs. Also,
when new products are going through stage-gates toward
commercial launch, make certain that plans to launch are
created at least 12 months in advance. This allows sales to be effectively trained and
enables marketing to create measurable timelines to maximize industry events,
trends and opportunities to achieve the greatest impact. Also, avoid using project
names assigned by R&D and engineering as brand names for the new product.
Make certain that the new name will appeal to prospects based on the promise
of value rather than simply product formulation or chemistry. Take the time to
effectively position and name the product so that it gains faster traction and avoids
commoditization. Create a realistic timeline for each launch and start a countdown
to the big splash.
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STEP 2. CRAFT EFFECTIVE MESSAGING AND POSITIONING
Once goals have been articulated, it's critical that corresponding messaging platforms
not only resonate with target audiences but remain consistent to maximize impact.
To start, make sure messaging and positioning is original. Differentiation is the key to
standing out in often crowded marketplaces. There are several reasons why this
is important:
1. It's essential to avoid commoditization and win business based on value as opposed
to price. In other words, strive to connect with key decision makers so that price
becomes a detail – not the major consideration. Get your product specified by brand
name – not simply by product-type – in order to achieve more solid relationships.
2. Any company can present a product or service via a ‘shop-style’ e-commerce
platform, but this severely limits the opportunity to focus on unique business value
to achieve compelling differentiation in the marketplace. The key is to focus on the
challenges your potential customers face and how the benefits you can deliver via
your product or service will help alleviate those challenges, while also having a positive
impact on productivity and profitability.
3. Creating clear and differentiated positioning from the competition will single you
out as original thinkers – encouraging prospects to remain with you for a long time. It's
vital to demonstrate an understanding of the pain points faced by your prospects and
to convey the value you can deliver – be it in terms of overall equipment effectiveness
(OEE), for example, return on investment (ROI), total cost of ownership
(TCO) or a combination of these factors.
Once you have crafted your distinct positioning and
messaging platform, it's critical to deploy it consistently.
There are many channels where B2B decision
makers can gather information to inform a
purchase. Options range from trade media and
industry events to white papers, data sheets,
websites, webinars and social media. With so many
potential marketing tools and touch points, it's
paramount that a company maintain consistent
messaging across channels or that messaging
could lose its impact and even cause confusion in the
marketplace about the value of a brand or product.
Achieving consistency can be daunting, particularly
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when marketing teams are small and have limited operating budgets, but with the
correct approach and a dedicated expert partner, excellent results can be achieved.
Every element must be coordinated effectively, so that regardless of the outlet – be it
an online sales meeting or a single post on social media – the information you wish to
communicate to your audience is clear, coherent and aligned with your sales strategy.
Creating a checklist of key points or keywords rooted in the established messaging can
help. Checking every social media post, press release and speaking engagement script
against this list can ensure a high degree of consistency across channels and greater pull
through.
To help manufacturing and trade companies create messaging that
resonates, FINN Partners has developed the JumpStart Initiative. The
program is specifically designed to differentiate your B2B product or
service as outlined in this step, contributing to faster market traction.
To learn more, please follow this link.
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STEP 3. ROOT STRATEGY IN RESEARCHNew technologies allow marketers to listen to customers and prospects online, where
up to 70% of the decision-making process is conducted1. Matching a company’s
perspective to the interests of prospects is critical to success. A good place to start is
audience intelligence research, as well as website analytics, email audits, and online
studies that provide rich information for the development of a communications strategy
and to refine personas. Such research is best done in parallel with step one and two of
this Playbook to secure deeper market insights.
Another great tool is a survey of existing clients, uncovering their market challenges,
goals, behaviors and preferences. With an understanding of where the online
conversations are happening and what they are pivoting around, marketing
professionals can develop a solid communications strategy that will resonate with
potential clients. Take the guesswork and gut feelings out of the equation. Knowing
exactly what your buyers want might be just the advantage you need to break away
from your competitors.
New technologies not only offer greater insight into buyers’ interests, but also the
channels where they research online. Start with Keyword Research, which leads to
Conversation Channel Identification and, at a deeper level, Conversation Influencer Identification, which ultimately enables a Competitor Analysis.
Keyword research is used to define and set parameters around priority conversations
(social listening), inform messaging and content development and guide search engine
optimization and search engine marketing.
Conversation channel analysis
can indicate where the
conversation is taking place,
help identify trends and
sub-topics and, in turn, lead
to informed decisions about
what content to push out to
engage your target audiences.
See Figure 1 for an example.
1 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/the-ways-and-means-of-b2b-buyer-journey-maps-were-going-deep-at-forresters-b2b-forum/
Figure 1
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The next step – influencer identification – allows marketers to identify the “voices of the
industry” ranked by three metrics: reach, resonance and relevance in your sector. All
you need to do is connect with them and provide useful and relevant content. Finally,
by understanding how engaged your competitors are in the conversation and which
channels they are using, one can see the shortcuts to your prospects and cut through
the information clutter efficiently.
To learn more, read this White Paper by FINN Partners: “Content Marketing ROI in a TMI
World” here.
RED PAPER SERIES | 6
help define realistic goals based on that individual, and contribute to the definition of the best channels and tactics.
Once the personas have been finalized, specific actions and goals should be mapped to each over the course of the individual's engagement path (awareness, interest, engagement). Establishing a realistic understanding of how each persona will interact with content and activities from the first point of contact to the point of purchase will inform the content strategy and recommended activities. Further, being able to track expected behaviors vs. actual behaviors will help refine and improve tactics quickly to drive better outcomes.
Persona reports come in all shapes and sizes. The best are rich in detail but also scannable, allowing executives who are not neck-deep in your study to appreciate the results. Personas are the backbone of your content strategy. Everyone involved in marketing should clearly understand each persona and slavishly match the offering to the person.
DEVELOPING CONTENT STRATEGIES BY LISTENING TO THE ONLINE CONVERSATIONYou now have a detailed portrait of your buyer(s). Would you be surprised to learn that we can also identify the online conversations that are relevant to your industry and your buyers in great detail? The example on the left shows a robust online conversation surrounding senior living that includes conversations about physical therapy and assisted living, but more importantly about health care, wellness, good food, and physical therapy; in other words, a conversation about the total person. (The inner circle represents broad topics and the outer circle gives detail about sub-topics in the conversation.
Senior Living
Physical Therapy
Assisted Living
Communities
Clients' Senior Living
YOUR CLIENTON SENIOR LIVING
YOUR CLIENT INTHE CONVERSATION
Communities
Clients' Senior Living
Physical Therapy
Assisted Living
Senior Living
THE RED PAPER SERIES
CONTENT MARKETING ROI IN A TMI WORLD.
IMAGINE THAT.
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STEP 4. SELECT THE RIGHT MIX OF MARKETING CHANNELS
Every communications campaign should draw on a variety of tools to achieve its goals.
Analyzing what works for your target audience is the next step to success. As discussed
in the previous section of this Playbook, modern technologies enable marketers to track
where customers are coming from and what makes them convert into sales leads.
In a world overloaded with information, it's important to be where
your prospects are, but it's also paramount to provide an excellent
user experience and relevant information for each stage of the
decision-making process: identifying a need, identifying appropriate
suppliers, validating suppliers and solutions, and the final selection
of a supplier.
Modern, digitally empowered B2B buyers prefer to do their own
research online (68%) before contacting sales reps and say they can
now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely
on digital content (62%), according to Forrester2.
2 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/the-ways-and-means-of-b2b-buyer-journey-maps-were-going-deep-at-forresters-b2b-forum/
68%
B2B buyers prefer to do their own research online
62%
finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content
SOURCE: GO FORRESTER
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To adapt, invest in your online presence and provide your prospects with the relevant
technical information for each step of their journey. FINN Partners recommends the
following tools to help achieve your communications goals:
PROSPECTS ARE IDENTIFYING A NEED
YOU ARE TURNING STRANGERS INTO VISITORS
Thought leadership articles
Press releases
PR coverage
Search engine optimization
Pay-per-click campaigns
Blog posts
Social media posts
Advertising
Case studies
PROSPECTS ARE IDENTIFYING APPROPRIATE SUPPLIERS AND VALIDATING THEIR SOLUTIONS
YOU ARE TURNING VISITORS INTO SALES LEADS
White papers (gated)
Landing pages
Lead forms: calls-to-action
E-newsletters
Webinars
How-to videos
PROSPECTS ARE SELECTING THE “WINNER”
YOU ARE TURNING LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS
Demos, trials
Request a sales call or a visit
Marketing automation workflows
CRM integration
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Using a mixture of at least two tools from each section can help companies drive
awareness and generate sales leads. However, if the objective is to generate market
awareness, select from the top tools in the table, leaving the rest for the future. It's
important to note that all these elements work in combination, slowly nurturing your
prospects through
your sales funnel.
Offerings demos
and trials at the first
“meeting” with your
prospect might be
counterproductive.
Instead, let your
prospects get
to know you
through relevant,
educational and
non-promotional
content.
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STEP 5. CONTENT IS KING; TREAT IT AS SUCH
Regardless of the channel, it's imperative that content be crafted for maximum impact
at the correct stage (or stages) of the customer buying process. Regardless of how
sophisticated the technology behind our media platforms becomes, a few fundamental
points still guide the development of strong content.
1. Become an expert in your field and tell your story. There is an ocean of
content published every day. Cutting
through this requires you to have a
distinct point of view, to demonstrate
a thorough understanding of the
challenges an industry faces, and to
share ways to overcome them, but
there are other areas that are often
overlooked. For example, in highly
competitive markets, where suppliers
abound, it can often be the story of
why you do what you do that raises
your company to the top of the list.
Every company has a story to tell, and it's the content producer’s responsibility to
extract it, shape it and ultimately leverage it to gain new business.
2. Encourage enthusiasm throughout your content. Have you ever spoken
to the owner of a company? Invariably,
they are brimming with passion
and enthusiasm for their business,
its industry, its products or services,
the people surrounding it and the
future of its output. Then turn to
their website or other written output,
however, and that enthusiasm, that
spark, almost always seems to be
missing.
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3. Outsource content creation for consistency and efficiency. Not everyone in this
world is a writer, and it often falls to people within an organization to produce these
elements whose particular skill sets could be better deployed in other areas. Before
you delegate the writing tasks to someone, ask yourself… is it really an integral part
of their role? Writing is often placed in the hands of the people who are most likely
to be good at it, when it could perhaps be better taken care of by professionals
dedicated entirely to the craft of shaping value-added content pieces.
Giving the aforementioned craftspeople the opportunity to do what they do best
can pay dividends. A skilled content producer will always be objective, will always
think first about what their audience is likely to respond to and, critically, will dive
deep into your organization to incorporate the true value of doing business with you.
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MARKETING AUTOMATION
You and most of your customers receive over one hundred emails per day, making
it increasingly difficult to get traction. Imagine, however, attending a webinar and
receiving a useful template within minutes after it's completed? Chances are high you’d
open that email and be grateful for the thoughtful gesture. Why? Because it's relevant
and timely.
This is what marketing automation is about – delivering relevant content to prospects
in a timely manner and answering their questions. Marketing automation, per se, is
a software that helps marketers maintain personalized dialogue with prospects and
customers to move them forward along their purchasing journey.
For you, on the other hand, it answers the need to store and effectively nurture a
growing number of leads while also consistenly bringing new sales leads.
Key benefits of marketing automation include:
• Store and nurture sales leads effectively with minimal effort;
• Connect marketing and sales – most of our clients complain about the mutual
frustration of those teams;
• Lead scoring – this important feature allows you to focus your time and efforts
on pursuing only quality leads, increasing marketing and sales effectiveness and
ultimately boosting your bottom line.
As with any tool, it's only as good as the person
or team who uses it.
In conversations with numerous
prospects and clients, we uncovered
a lot of frustrations and unmet
expectations among the companies
employing marketing automation.
Some view it as an overcomplicated
email blast system, while others
struggle with CRM integration or
data quality. We, in the meantime, see
the main area for improvement as the
quality of content. Especially if you are
aiming to “charge” contact details for it.
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Free or gated content – choose wiselyWhile many of your marketing efforts are aimed at getting as many sales leads as
possible, make sure that you only “charge” contact details for highly relevant and quality
content that cannot be found anywhere else for free. Gated content that has generated
brilliant results for us in the past includes white papers, webinars, E-books and
templates. Other high-conversion calls-to-action were free trade show tickets, physical
samples, expert workshops and exclusive facility visits. It's always useful to brainstorm
with sales and management teams to generate additional ideas.
Segment per industryThe last thing you want is to spam your customer database with content that isn't
relevant to them. Seek advice from trade media, associations and strategic marketing
firms when building prospect databases.
Dialogue not monologueModern-day consumers expect to see a tailored page on Amazon and other B2C sites.
Why should their work/business experience be different?
Old-fashioned email blasts and most B2B websites don't take into consideration the
level of customer engagement with brands (awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty
or advocacy). B2B companies should also provide a dynamic user experience.
Marketing automation strategies trigger relevant and helpful communications when a
prospect interacts with a brand or service.
As mentioned above, relevant content received right after a themed webinar is more
likely to be opened than a Tuesday morning email blast with the same attachment.
Retain and extend customer relationsIt's five times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep and grow existing
ones. Marketing automation can help you cross-sell and up-sell by providing relevant
and timely content, interacting with your customers on their terms and boosting
engagement.
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STEP 6. MEASURE TO MANAGE RESULTSCircle back to your business and communications objectives and set Key Performance
Indicators to measure the success of your program. Were you aiming to raise awareness,
shift perception or generate sales leads? Measure against these targets.
At FINN Partners, we differentiate between quantitative and qualitative measurement.
The former includes:
• Coverage: the number of articles or percentage uplift during a set period.
• Share of Voice (SoV): a comparative view of coverage against competitors.
• Media meetings: engagement with target journalists and influencers.
• Website traffic: earned media article referrals to landing pages created for the
purpose.
• Email subscription registrations: captured data tracked through bespoke URL links.
• Social engagement: the number of shares, tweets, retweets and new followers.
• Sales leads. Contacts lists in marketing automation software, such as HubSpot and
Pardot, by Salesforce, enable the measurement of site visits, email click-throughs,
subscriber registrations and more.
• Conversion rates from a lead to closed sale.
Qualitative approaches measure the impact of a program on audience perception.
This can be achieved through:
• Face-to-face interviews or focus groups.
• Self-completion surveys, which are most successful with an incentive.
• Telephone interviews guided by a defined questionnaire.
• Tone of voice analysis of coverage and online conversations.
These are just some of the measurement
options, which should be carefully
selected at the start of the program,
coupled with the correct KPIs and
matched against smart goals.
Learn more about measuring
communications campaigns and see
examples of modern digital measurement
tools in this White Paper.
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CONCLUSION Where companies operating in manufacturing and other trade sectors are
concerned, as well as many other B2B industries, the reality in today’s connected
world is that the sales process can no longer be controlled by the provider of
products or services. Outbound marketing initiatives are becoming obsolete, as
existing and potential customers now have powerful tools at their disposal to shape
their own conclusions without a single interaction with the companies vying for
their business. Purchasing decisions can often be all but made before that contact is
established, therefore it is vital to ensure that all the information necessary to shape
that decision is available across a wide range of channels.
Interested in learning more?
Please email Alan Isacson
call him on +1 917 515 0566
WHO’S IN FINNFINN teams deliver with a talented mix of researchers, strategists, designers, technologists, content specialists and campaigners. All to help clients in the Manufacturing and Trade sector get better and stronger.
FOCUSING ON UNIQUE BUSINESS VALUE
FINN PARTNERS HELPS B2B PRODUCT
MANUFACTURERS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS
ACCELERATE GROWTH WORLDWIDE.
For nearly four decades, we’ve worked with clients to implement strategic marketing and integrated communications strategies aiming to avoid commoditization and win business based on value instead of price. Our results-driven campaigns are designed to future-proof B2B brands.
THREE CORE TENETS FUEL OUR SUCCESS:1. Focus on unique business value – not products and
services – to achieve compelling differentiation in the marketplace.
2. Connect with decision makers above the purchasing level so price becomes a detail – not the major consideration.
3. Close the loop between marketing and sales—two sides of the same coin—to shorten sales cycles.
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