“Where” to meet your B2B buyer -2

B2B, Marketing, persistence, Positioning, Sales, segmentation, single target market

In my last post I wrote about how “intent” data could help you find the buyer or you could set up Marketing Joint Ventures with people who either sell before or after your product or service is needed.

Inspite of this however you need to figure out “when” they will buy, what will be the trigger to buy so that you can meet the buyer at that moment in case you have not been able to identify them in advance.

One of the key triggers in a B2B buying process is when there’s a change at the Executive level. Depending on what you’re selling, the Executive level could vary, sometimes a V.P level, sometimes a CXO level.

Whenever someone new comes in they always have an agenda to achieve in the next 1 year. If what you have to offer is part of the 1 year priorities then you can essentially get a reason to be in touch.

Keeping a track of new joiners at the executive level can help you identify the “where” to meet your targets.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Creating Dissonance in the B2B buyer’s mind

B2B, Business, Marketing Stamina, messaging, persistence, segmentation

Most B2B purchases are not impulsive in nature, until and unless they are really low value or for some reason are whimsical in nature.

The advantage of doing B2B business is that because its not impulsive, if you do a good job then most often, you end up staying with that customer for a long time.

One reason for this way of things is the inertia in the procurement department, the other is the cost of doing re-evaluation of vendors so until and unless its something which is periodic in nature, procurement departments don’t want to upset the “apple-cart”. If you are the incumbent, then this is good news.

If you are the outsider, then its bad news, because you have to wait a long time to even get entry – if at all into the account. In B2B accounts you have to have a lot of what Dean Graziosi calls “Marketing Stamina” to keep pounding on the doors of your so called prospects.

What helps though is if you have a small niche to focus on. Then you can concentrate your energies and work with what Dean Jackson calls the “inevitability concept”, which is basically saying that over a 2 year period or 3 year period, some incumbents will make a large enough mistake for the customer want to check you out.

Now this wont happen if you are not in front of the customer on a regular basis with some story which drives what Robin Robins calls “the wedge” into the customer’s existing set-up, so that when the wedge is deep enough the customer feels immense pain and calls you. The dissonance that you create should be large enough for the customer to feel a material impact.

It however needs to be understood that if you have 100 possible customers in your niche, then over a two-three year period you may end up picking up maybe 10 of these. What you then need to keep working on is how can you get these 10 to refer you more clients.

In B2B or for that matter in all kinds of customers a “referred” customer is always a better customer to have both from profitability point of view as well as long term engagement.

If you can keep increasing the share of the customer’s wallet on a regular basis and also get referred then you can have terrific growth.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Persistence

Marketing, Marketing Stamina, persistence

I had written yesterday how I felt so weak after getting the vaccination for COVID-19 that I had to cancel all my meetings with my team.

Today also the weakness continues so this post will also be short.

I had every inclination to not write this post, I could have given myself the excuse that I am not well.

But then I keep talking about being persistent day in and day out, so I would not be practicing what I preach, which would be an integrity problem.

Even if we do something in limited quantity but do it consistently so that the practice is not lost, whenever you get better , you will be able to scale up very fast.

This is also very true with your marketing. If you don’t want to have a Yo-Yo business then come what may, you have to ensure your marketing engine keeps running.

This is all for today.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing Stamina

Marketing, Marketing Stamina, messaging, persistence, Positioning, Product Management

I had heard this word for the first time about 2 years back in one of Dean Graziosi’s books or training seminars. I heard this again today while I was doing the Breakthrough DNA training, from Dean Jackson.

I have pre-dominantly come from the technology background where typical deal cycles are around 3-6 months. Being B2B, these are not impulsive purchases where people are not bothered about the risk with low value items.

In this scenario it takes months and months of messaging, following through, which results in leads getting generated.

Even after the leads come through its not going to result in an order.

Its your persistence to keep following up with the leads on a regular basis because sometimes it could take months for these customers to decide. This persistence is what both these gentlemen call as Marketing Stamina.

To ensure Marketing Stamina you need content to keep adding value to your prospect. But you also need to have cash flow to ensure you survive while this process is going on.

This is where the economics of lead generation and lead nurturing come in. You need to be clear how much money has to be spent to get a lead to come into your funnel and how much time the lead stays in the funnel before they buy (not necessarily from you). During this time you have to keep nurturing these leads.

This is different from the concept of Life Time Value. Life time value is about long term profits from a customer and the referrals. However the economics of lead gen and lead nurturing are more related to cash flow today.

So based on your economics and what you can afford to spend you choose the media for running the message to your prospects for both lead generation as well as for lead nurturing. You can’t run out of money or stamina because that is how you will build a long term business.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!