S is for superhero. And, S is for smarketing. The alignment of sales and marketing teams around common goals is a talent of a more earthly nature than spider-like abilities, and yet, it has the potential of radically transforming the way B2B organizations market and sell their products. The best of it? You don't need to be born on the planet Krypton to unleash its potential. In this blog, we cover five practical ways of running a smarketing program that works.
Information has become our most valuable commodity. Skimming the top five results of a Google search makes us feel like an expert in any field, with enough knowledge to make an informed decision about our purchases, our health, the books we need to read, our whole life, or simply, our next dinner menu. Similarly, informed decisions drive the already long and sophisticated B2B sales process.
It quickly became a canonical sequence in film history. In it, Mel Gibson, on a horse and with his face painted blue for battle, delivers a heartfelt, motivational speech before sending his troops into a fight for freedom. It’s a powerful scene, and one that teams of any size and field can relate to.
Every so often, a team needs some inspirational words to boost morale, build trust and rapport, and get everyone re-invigorated to hit their goals. In other words, everybody can use a movie speech from time to time. That’s why sales kickoff meetings exist.
Sell. More. Faster. That’s the ultimate goal of any sales organization. In practice, this means round-the-clock pressure for salespeople to hit their quota, close more deals, and increase revenue. Salespeople are no strangers to stress.
But if stress starts to escalate out of control, and sales targets seem as challenging as climbing an eight-thousander without supplemental oxygen, you need to re-examine your sales process and figure out the stages you can tweak to boost productivity.
A common cause of death among salespeople and marketing professionals is death by quicksand. Figuratively speaking, of course. And by quicksand, I mean being buried by an ever-growing, uncontrollable, gigantic pile of irrelevant, erroneous and outdated customer data. To dig yourself out of trouble before it’s too late, you want to make data cleaning (aka data cleansing) a habit that sticks.
It’s just selling, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ve heard this question a few times after you’ve mentioned you work in business to business sales. Such an assumption makes your eyes roll because business-to-business sales, more commonly known as B2B sales, is a tough field in which salespeople face demanding professional buyers and overzealous decision‑makers.
Yes, business to business sales is just that, sales from one business entity to another, and therefore, requires persuasive communication and strong negotiation skills. However, mastering business-to-business sales is much more than just selling. Due to the complex scope and scale of the business-to-business model, salespeople must achieve a thorough understanding of a prospect’s needs, so they can adopt a consultative role.
Because the way people buy has changed, this is the right moment to review what makes business-to-business selling different, and how technology is changing this way of doing sales.
Salespeople and gold miners have a lot in common. No, I don’t mean the tireless ambition, the deep-rooted desire to be successful, and the unstoppable drive for precious minerals. Instead, salespeople and miners share one key activity: prospecting.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is the rising star of the B2B world. The rapid surge of marketing and sales tech has pushed forward the development and implementation of ABM at a scale. Left and right, companies are jumping on the ABM train, and they are doing it for a reason. A report from the Information Technology Services Marketing Association found that 84% of companies surveyed said that account-based marketing delivers higher ROI than other types of marketing. It looks like ABM is something worth considering, isn't it?
But what exactly is account-based marketing? And more importantly, is it right for your business?