Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses – Part 2

In the last post I spoke about how, by identifying a Single Target Market, Small B2B technology businesses can become better at generating leads. I even spoke about how marketing and sales have to incorporate psychology more than plain analysis to attract the desired audiences.

So in this part, we will look at how we can help get our message better addressed to our audience , so that they connect with us, respond to us etc.

There are typically two methods for getting leads – the “pull” method or the “push” method. By its very nature, the word push means that you are pushing something against a resistance. While in the pull method, the person is being “pulled’ or “attracted” with what you say or do and wants to interact with you and therefore responds to you. There is now right or wrong method. Both have to be used to get leads. However with the “pull” method or also called the marketing driven leads, the advantage is that the prospect has shown interest in what you offer and therefore has reached out to you.

For marketing however, the biggest challenge is to be able to convince someone, with the messaging, so that they can comprehend the message and then respond back with an inquiry.

But even before you can convince someone, you have to be able to reach that person. This is where by targeting a “Single Target Market” ,at a time (which we covered in our earlier posts, can be seen here), you reach a focused audience.

The analytical aspects of reaching out and convincing are related to the number of people being targeted, the number of mails that reached, the CTR, etc.

Now come to the psychological aspect of marketing and how you can utilise this aspect.

Humans have 5 senses – smell, see, feel, hear and taste. If you use one medium – say email with text, then the other side will only read it. So they will only use one of their senses – viz “see”. On a podcast, they can only “hear”. In a video or film , they can hear and see. By utilising the 2 senses together, your message can have a better impact.

As per Cisco, by the year 2022, more than 82% of all Internet traffic would account for with video. People recognise the power of audio+visual since ages. Films have impacted us so much – whether it was Ben-Hur or Star Wars . This does not mean that there won’t be people who would like to read or would like to listen. Different people have different preferences, but as a marketer, when you are trying to make an impact video/films have a larger impact because they utilise the power of the human brain.

Watch the video here

When you use videos to showcase how you have helped others, how you have solved problems for others, similar to themselves, then it creates more trust. Since the brain comprehends better with the use of two senses, if the customer is facing a problem, similar to what you have solved, then they are able to immediately apply it to their scenario and think – “we should check them out”. That gets them to reach out to you – a “pull” lead. The more “pain” in the problem that you show in the video and it is relatable to others in the same industry, the higher the chance that you will be able to get someone to say “tell me more”. This is where the psychology comes into play.

Even though the customer has replied back to you of his own volition, it doesn’t mean that he is ready to buy from you. In most B2B scenarios, there is an elongated buying cycle which starts with someone being told to first do the research on different options, then figure the budget etc. This cycle doesn’t apply in case there is a disaster and someone needs something “right now”. As an example, if you have had your roof destroyed in a cyclone or tornado, you need to figure out a solution now and will not go through your usual buying process. Similarly in organisations if say there is flooding in a data centre, then they need to figure out, how to keep the systems running, NOW.

Other than the disaster scenarios, B2B buying is process driven and you need to nurture the lead over the process. We will take this up in the coming posts.

Till then .

Carpe Diem!!!

AI impacting the B2B sales process

AI, B2B, education, Sales

Education is still the strongest weapon

When I started my career in sales , we didn’t have mobile phones, email, internet. The receptionist would physically connect cables to get your extension connected to the external phone. We would literally go from one security office to another physically ,to check if the person was available and then meet the folks. For most people this would sound like I belong to the time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Earlier the sales person would carry the brochures with them in their briefcases. The information was controlled by the sales persons. The users would inform the challenge they were facing and then the sales person would take the brochure out from there briefcase and point out how their product/solution would solve the customers’s problem.

Since information was with the sales person, the prospects, would be willing to meet the sales person, so that they could get the information. Without the information, they would not be able to make comparisons between different products or solutions. The sales persons therefore got in much earlier in the sales cycle and the good ones were able to educate the customer, get the trust and influence the order.

Then came the internet. With the internet, all the information was available to the customers via the web. They could get whatever brochures, white papers etc. that they wanted, directly from the net, without having to wait or meet the sales person.

In this situation, the customers would gather all the knowledge that they needed to solve the problem before even interacting with the sales person. So getting an appointment became even more difficult. If the prospect had reached a stage where they now needed the information to compare or to get better pricing, only then they gave the appointment and that to, only to the vendors from whom they wanted additional information. So the companies who had not not put out enough information on the “net” , were not considered by the customers and therefore getting appointments became even more difficult for them.

So sales people had value , much later in the selling cycle, compared to earlier, but there still was value in how they would help optimise their solution or how the product would interact with other constituents of the existing setup in the customer environment.

Now with ChatGpt and other generative AI models coming in, even at the B2B level, my guess is that the sales person’ will be needed even later. The generative AI programs can write “code” and do comparisons between options and even suggest complete solutions.

Since customers will do all the activities on their own without the help of the vendors, they will do it as per their schedules. So the access to the customer will get more difficult for the sales persons. Since the customers may actually do the comparisons on their own, they may end up taking longer, since they may not understand all the nuances of a solution.

Having said this, the vendors can also use AI based tools to identify better on the prospects who could be looking for the solutions by using “intent” data. This was not available to sales people earlier. Once you have intent data, you can actually discreetly step-into the customers evaluation process and educate them with options about how other customers are solving the same problem.

Since you are now “educating” the customer again, chances are that they may get influenced by you. This again brings back the concept – that marketing is all about educating the customer. The way and timing of the education may change in this new world order, of AI, but education is still the best method to influence customers.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The biggest competition for you is Inertia of the customer

B2B, competition, Customers, Decisions, niche, Sales

One of Newton’s laws of Motion is – Law of Inertia – Nothing moves unless a force is applied on it.

As a sales person, for you the biggest competition you will face, is with the customer, not wanting to change the status quo. The customer always has a choice

Buy from you
Buy from your direct competition
Buy something else which can solve the problem – albeit not the same way – but solve it does
Remain with the status quo

It’s very nice when the customer buys from you. All the hardwork put up by you and your team, during the sales cycle, pays off for you and your company. In case of the second situation, where your direct competition is involved, you can take steps to pre-empt the competition, from taking away the sale. But to be fair to them, they may actually be better than you, in some cases. Either their solution is more apt for the customer or the sales person involved understands the customer better or she has a better relationship with the customer.

If the customer solves the problem with a different method, then you could be caught off-track. When I was involved in selling single and dual loop process controllers, a lot of times , after, SCADA systems became more affordable in India, I found, customers thought it better to go in for the complete SCADA system, rather than buying a controller for 2 processes. In other example, a person may prefer to travel by road instead of taking a flight. So the airline company lost the deal while the petrol/gas companies and hotel companies got business. In either of these situations the customer did go for a solution, it may not have been the solution which was being sold by you.

The worse situation is when after putting in months of effort, you realise that the customer is not willing to change. This is more painful in case of high value B2B sales, where multiple teams have to be involved to create a solution for the customer.

In B2B situations, the easiest situation for the customer is to not change anything. If it ain’t broke, why change. Change can mean that the new product/service will not work. If it doesn’t work, the peer level pressure that the manager will face will be enormous. It will be the manager’s failure, which will be highlighted to her forever, until and unless she works in an organisation which likes to try new things to succeed.

Sometimes it is easy to find out if your solution is moving forward or not. At other times you have to question the assumptions at different levels of the company’s hierarchy to identify if there’s any chance that your solution will be held back to maintain status-quo. It sometimes happens that you may have a sponsor at the lower level of the organisation, who wants to adapt your solution, but her manager may disapprove because she is scared of failure.

It may also happen that the benefits that you believe your solution will bring to the customer, is not what the customer believes. In that case it is your responsibility to showcase the benefits. On the other hand if the benefits are only going to “move the needle” marginally, then the customer may not be interested in moving forward and taking the risk.

The best way I have found, though not always successful 100% of the time, is to question the customer(s) on why they want to go in for the solution. What is the benefit they are assuming the solution will bring for them and why is the benefit(s) important to them. And then check this same thing at different levels of the hierarchy. If at any time you notice a dilemma or a “Re Flag”, you need to get cautious and keep digging till you find out.

If you focus on any niche in the market, then this becomes a lot easier to handle, because 80% of the issues that companies have will be similar and you can learn to unearth the issues in advance.

Till next time then ….. identify if your customer has any inertia holding them back.

Carpe Diem!!!

Understanding the priorities of the B2B customer

B2B, prioritizing, Sales

To achieve your sales targets

Most of my posts are generally related to marketing and not direct sales. This one is , however directly related to a major issue that sales managers face when leading a sales team selling to B2B customers.

When you lead a sales team, you build your forecast based on the probability given to a deal by the sales person. If the sales person doesn’t understand the priority of the customer, then she may ascribe a probability which she believes, but the customer doesn’t believe.

For any solution that is provided, there’s an impact that the product/service has on the business. The higher the impact, the better is the chance that the sale will happen fast. However their is another variable, that needs to be understood. That is about the urgency, from the customer perspective. Only if the Impact is high and the urgency is high, then the sale will happen, fast.

Here I am talking mainly about products/services that are being bought for the first time. If its a repeat purchase, where, everything is known and its only a matter of routine, then the logic, in the preceding paragraph doesn’t matter.

Now returning back, to my earlier argument, if the impact is low, but there is an urgency to get something done, then the order will get placed fast. For example, a company may be wanting to revamp their website. They already have an existing website. So getting the new website may not directly have a major impact to the business. But if it’s something that has been getting delayed for a long time, then the order will get formalised fast.

On the other hand, if something can improve production by 30%, but if the investment needed or the amount of disruption it can cause are high, then management may not treat it as so urgent. It may be good to have, but since nothing is “broken” yet, it gets pushed into the back burner.

Then there are the obvious cases, where, the customer thinks that they don’t want to experiment with a new technology and they pass the project forever.

So now it’s important that the sales person understand and question the customer on their priorities, the impact the product/service will have on their business and the urgency for doing it.

There will also be cases, when the management wants to showcase some new initiatives to their share holders or there is a new government ruling. So even though the impact may or may not be large, it suddenly acquires urgency. By questioning the customer on their reason, for wanting to go for the new product/service, you will be able to understand the dynamics which is playing out internally within the company.

That will make the sales forecasts more reliable. It is always better to have a few cases, where the probability is certain , versus lots of cases, where the probability is suspect.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!