Views, impressions, multi-touch, omnichannel, lead scoring, IP tracking, retargeting…

… so many advanced ideas, metrics and measures and yet still there is no revenue.

This initiative was a success because we had 1000 impressions/visitors/clicks but sadly no more pipeline.

Too often B2B companies treat their marketing as if they were selling chocolate bars. If you are selling a complex/high value/strategic product or service you need to think completely differently about how you get people to buy it.

For most companies their process for selling their product is littered with fundamental mistakes. To be effective in the modern world you probably need to rethink the very basics of your go to market strategy.

Here are some things to consider:

1. The customer will buy when the CUSTOMER is ready rather than when you are ready. Incentivising them to buy this year rather than when they need to product/service probably won’t make them buy now. Imagine you have a young child and I sell scientific calculators. Your child will need one…but they won’t need one for some time. Me pushing, incentivising and discounting probably won’t change the fact that you are not ready to buy…yet.
2. Following on from that. Modern sales should not be about qualifying in/out but qualifying now/later. If you are the right person with the right product/service and it’s the right customer…they will buy from you. Perhaps now, perhaps next year, perhaps in 3 years…but you are the obvious choice.
3. The customer doesn’t need to buy YOUR product. Whether you are selling vehicles, CRM systems or consulting services the customer has choices. Even if you are the market leader you are not the only supplier in the marketplace so they might make a decision to not do what you think is the smart move.
4. It doesn’t matter if you are better or worse. If the determining factor as to whether people bought was whether the product was better/worse there would only be one supplier of each thing. That isn’t the case. There are many instances where the inferior product has won (VHS vs Betamax for example)…so don’t assume that adding another “killer feature” will turn the tide.
5. Your company brand will only get you so far. People seldom have relationships with companies but with people. Every company has good and bad people working for them and your experience of the company will often be based on the interaction you have with those people. That’s why in many instances when a person leave a business all of their customers leave with them…people buy people.

Our sales thinking is often based on facts - better use cases, better features, better functions, better targeting - but increasingly this type of thinking isn’t working. In a world where people have choices and everything looks that same (and believe me, what you do does look the same as your competitors to most people) the differentiation isn’t where you think it is.

In world where everything is “market leading”, “highly efficient”, “top performing” and “customer focused” you using this kind of phrasing doesn’t help you. In fact, you using any kind of phrasing doesn’t help you because all your competitors can use the same words as you. The differentiator in 2024 is not what you say but whether I BELIEVE what you say.

Trust is the key.

Trust comes from the relationship between YOU the seller and ME the buyer. Our personal relationship, rapport, friendship, interest in each other etc. is the differentiator because if I don’t know you, like you and trust you everything you’re saying is just words.

Your challenge is to empower your people (and yourself) to behave in a way that makes people like you and trust you, and this will only come from how your people behave on social.

If everyone in your business is attractive, interesting and entertaining they will build trust and visibility and clicks and impressions (all of those things at the start) but in a way that means something. A “view” where I don’t read it or believe it is utterly valueless, but one where I do is pure gold.

This won’t happen by chance though, you need to have a vision and a plan but this is the way forward.

#socialselling #pipeline #digitalselling #salestransformation #sales