by Fronetics | Mar 2, 2016 | Blog, Internet of Things, Strategy
B2B sales must recognize and accommodate buyers at various levels of self-sufficiency in the purchasing process.
Widespread access to the Internet has changed life as we know it. Not only are once-token errands like trips to the supermarket and holiday gift shopping increasingly shifting online, but B2B buyer behavior is occurring most often in the digital space, as well. In fact, an Acquity Group study found that 94% of B2B buyers in the U.S. conduct research online to make purchase decisions.
An Internet search can yield thousands of results when a B2B buyer goes to research a specific product or service. What’s more, the buyer can access online sources reviewing and comparing different suppliers’ products, streamline purchasing through self-service shopping portals, and access digital training and support tools without ever talking to another human. Essentially, “buyers can take over many steps of buying that salespeople once cherished as their source of value,” says a Harvard Business Review article.
But this doesn’t eliminate the need for salespeople in B2B sales completely. Rather, the authors suggest that today’s sellers must develop new competencies that better serve customers with more access to information.
How B2B sales are changing
Information technology and digital channels create buyers at various levels of self-sufficiency. While some are able to gather all of the intel needed to make a purchasing decision, some are more overwhelmed than before and need help sifting through all the available information. Most buyers fall somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. Additionally, customers can be at different levels at different times and for different products.
Therefore, salespeople need to be able to recognize where customers fall on the self-sufficiency scale and match their selling approach to the customers’ needs.
Salespeople must also be competent in various technologies that help manage customer information and outreach. CRM systems, analytics, and various infrastructures are just a few examples of digital tools sales teams have at their disposal.
New platforms like social media and email also supplant the need for traditional face-to-face selling but require an all-together different skill set. Video conferencing, podcasts, and webinars — these are also tools that sellers can use to accommodate buyer preferences and level of knowledge, should the seller be fluent in these technologies.
And with so many options to adapt to customers at various levels of self-sufficiency, salespeople must be able to coordinate communications across multiple channels. “Salespeople need competencies as orchestrators who can ensure an effective and efficient connection,” the authors suggest.
Salesforces, too, must adapt to the information age in terms of structure, training, compensation, and more.
How has your business adapted to B2B selling in the information age?
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by Fronetics | Feb 17, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Manufacturing & Distribution, Marketing, Social Media, Supply Chain
The US manufacturing index is at its lowest level since 2009. This is sobering news for the industry and for the economy. Within the industry, it is clear that the road ahead is not flat, straight, or even smooth. For companies to not just survive, but to also succeed, action needs to be taken.
In August 2015 Bruce McDuffee, Principal at Knowledge Marketing for Industry, released the second edition of the Manufacturer’s Growth Manifesto. If you haven’t read this, you need to do so – today. In the Manifesto, McDuffee spells out how manufacturers can achieve growth rates of 10%, 20%, and even 30%.
The key to attaining a double digit growth rate is changing your marketing strategy and adapting to buyers’ new habits. Specifically:
- Stop pitching products and start helping people.
- Start educating your audience utilizing your particular experts and expertise for FREE.
- Stop advertising product features and benefits of a product.
- Start promoting your useful, helpful papers, webinars, seminars, videos, etc. (not product information) to foster meaningful engagement.
- Admit to yourself and your team that your products are perceived as a commodity and it will take more than product revisions, releases and enhancements to gain the attention of your target audience.
McDuffee concedes that for those who have not previously embraced and engaged in this approach to marketing, “You may be thinking, WTF?”
It may seem counterintuitive, but the results are real. Your company will be able to achieve those double digit growth rates and realize these benefits:
- Reciprocity, credibility and trust in the minds of the people in your target audience.
- Top-of-Mind Awareness (T.O.M.A.) in the minds of your prospective customers so they remember your firm first when the day comes around and they need to buy.
- Higher prices, more sales, more market share, and higher growth rates.
Success, however, depends on believing in this approach and incorporating it into your overall business strategy.
Research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) found that while 82% of manufacturers use content marketing, only 26% say that their efforts are successful. A lack of buy-in/vision from higher ups is one of the key challenges identified by CMI. Another challenge that was reported was creating and executing a strategy; only 20% of respondents reported that they had a documented strategy. Notable though, is that 58% of the most effective companies reported that they have a documented strategy.
This approach is not relevant only to manufacturing. Companies across industries and verticals should take notice. Cerasis, a top North American third party logistics company offering logistics solutions with a strong focus on LTL freight management, shifted their marketing strategy and realized positive results. Within 25 months Cerasis realized a 14% increase in revenue. This increase was directly attributable to inbound marketing. In addition to this stream of revenue, the company’s sales team was able to generate revenue totaling $20 million during this period – more than double the previous two years combined.
Those numbers are not small potatoes. If you haven’t checked out the Manufacturer’s Growth Manifesto, make the time.
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This was originally published on Electronics Purchasing Strategies.
by Fronetics | Feb 1, 2016 | Blog, Strategy, Supply Chain
Reverse logistics presents unique challenges and opportunities. To meet these challenges and take advantage of these opportunities, companies need to be both prepared and flexible.
Ikea, a company known for innovation, is facing the enigma of reverse logistics head on. As part of the company’s sustainability strategy, Ikea is challenging the perception that its products are disposable by creating opportunities to recycle and reuse products.
In a recent interview with Fast Company, Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard outlined several of the company’s initiatives. They include programs that allow consumers to return plastics, batteries, furniture, compact fluorescent light bulbs, mattress, and textiles to the store. These items are then sold “as-is” or recycled.
These programs have proven successful. For example, in just a few months, over 6 tons of batteries were collected in Moscow, and 25 tons of used textiles were collected in Norwegian stores last year.
Ikea is looking at other ways it can provide end-to-end supply chain solutions. One idea is to take returned products and recycle them into other products. In his interview with Fast Company, Howard shares: “We would basically be taking old bookshelves, old furniture, or an old door that’s finished its first life and sending it into new products. You’ll have a kitchen that used to be a bookshelf, without seeing any visible difference in them. It’s not a revolution, but you have to actually fundamentally change your supply chain to do that.”
Ikea has recognized that old, broken, and unwanted products are an opportunity. Through these innovative reverse logistics initiatives, Ikea is not only acting in a more sustainable manner and reducing the company’s environmental footprint, it is also increasing engagement with consumers and creating positive economic opportunities for the company.
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by Fronetics | Jan 6, 2016 | Blog, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chain, Transportation & Trucking
Fronetics Strategic Advisors is a leading management consulting firm focused on the logistics and supply chain industries. Our industry and functional expertise enables us to fully support and guide our clients as they address critical business issues, take advantages of opportunities, and grow their company. Our clients rely on us to create and execute marketing strategies, capture value from their customer and channel strategies, identify opportunities for increased revenue, create and execute new organizational models, and lead transformational organizational change.
Supply chain talent is a salient issue. At Fronetics we not only provide thought leadership on this subject, we also engage with future talent. Each year Fronetics collaborates with MBA students from the University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. I am excited that several of the most-read logistics and supply chain articles were written by these students.
Here are the 10 most read logistics and supply chain articles of 2015:
It’s difficult to accurately predict what Amazon will be doing fifteen years from now, but whatever they are doing, it will mostly likely continue to shape consumer expectations and impact the surrounding business and consumer markets in ways we had not thought of beforehand. Read the full article.
There is a common misconception that the majority of goods we purchase arrive via plane, or are transported via road. The reality is that 90% of everything we buy comes by ship — and it’s not likely that this number is going to decrease any time soon. Read the full article.
While many of us may be familiar with recent advancements in home automation, like the Nest thermostat, the real impacts of the Internet of Things (IoT) will be in supply chain management. Recent reports by Cisco, IDC and Gartner all claim that a significant increase in the number of devices making up IoT will have a profound impact on how future supply chains will operate. Read the full article.
Cathy Morris, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Arrow Electronics, Inc., talks women in the supply chain and offers up career advice. Read the full article.
Regularly tracking your relationship with your suppliers and their performance toward your expectations is critical to ensure the success of your business. One mechanism for tracking this is the supplier scorecard — in essence, a report card for your supplier. Supplier scorecards, when used effectively, can help maintain a healthy supply chain and will benefit both parties. If not used effectively, supplier scorecards can damage the supplier relationship and hurt both businesses. Read the full article.
The pet food industry is a market that boasts $21.57 billion dollars in sales in the United States (2013). According to Trade Group, with 95.6 million cats and 83.3 million dogs owned in the United States, it is no wonder that there is such a large market for the food that the self-proclaimed “pet parents” feed them. However, it isn’t all good news for aspiring entrants, as they must first understand the supply chain that dictates this growing industry. Read the full article.
Uber, the on-demand driver-for-hire mobile service, has come to stand for disruption. The company has not only transformed the taxi industry, it has changed everything. Uber, Aaron Levie notes, is a “lesson in building for how the world *should* work instead of optimizing for how the world *does* work.” NY-based start-up Transfix is doing just this. With the launch of the company’s new app, Transfix is poised to disrupt the trucking industry. Read the full article.
“Man or woman, the Supply Chain of the future depends upon the perfect mix of talent. And, as we know, Supply Chain talent is experiencing a shortage.” Read the full article.
Looking at the manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, transportation, distribution and freight industries, there are a few companies that have emerged as leaders — companies that exemplify the business value of creating and executing digital, social media, and content marketing strategies. Cerasis, a freight logistics company, is one of them. Read the full article.
by Fronetics | Nov 5, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
We all want to see the fruits of our labors. Whether launching a product or a new social media campaign, we look for instantaneous numbers that will affirm we made the right choices. But here’s the problem: not all metrics are created equal.
So-called vanity metrics are measurements that have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success. Generally, they are easy to calculate but are influenced by too many factors—and are too vulnerable to random external events—to be reliable.
Website visits and number of subscribers are two classic examples. A spike in homepage hits may be the result of your marketing efforts, or it may be because of ghost spam. (Or, both.) Regardless, more visits do not necessarily correlate to increased revenue—just more visits. In the same vein, having 100,000 email subscribers means nothing if only 1% are opening them. You actually could be losing money in terms of resources allocated if the emails aren’t helping drive sales.
That’s why it is crucial to focus on return on investment instead of vanity metrics. You could waste hours reviewing a hundred different analytics that tell you nothing about how revenue was affected by a particular effort. Or, worse, you could use vanity metrics to justify decisions that don’t achieve their ROI.
As a simplified example: say you spend $100 on a banner ad for a new product on an industry conference website, and your analytics report that 100 people clicked through. This sounds like success! But don’t celebrate just yet. When you dig past the vanity metric, you find an extremely high bounce rate. That means most of those click-throughs left your site immediately, neither engaging with your brand nor moving any closer to becoming a customer. In fact, you find that only one click-through converts. Was it worth paying $100 for this one customer? Probably not.
But say you ran another $100 banner ad on an industry publication website, one that targets a younger audience than you think your product fits. Only 20 visitors clicked-through, which sounds less successful than the other ad. But when you follow those 20 click-throughs down the sales funnel, you see that 15 ended up purchasing $1500 worth of product. Already, the ad has paid for itself 15 times over. You’ve also learned that perhaps a younger audience is more suited to this product. The ROI proves the vanity metric was quite misleading in this case.
Lean-startup pioneer Eric Reis, who coined the term vanity metrics, said, “The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions.” In other words, measure the things that will tell you if an effort was profitable so you know where to put your time and money.
While vanity metrics tell you nothing about your bottom line, ROI can help you determine whether it was worth spending your resources in a particular way. This is extremely useful on platforms like blogs and social media, where things are constantly changing. Using ROI as a litmus test, you can keep experimenting and making sure you’re using these tools effectively. Tracking a vanity metric like number of followers, which is likely to build over time regardless, gives you no indication of which experiments were successful and which weren’t.
Your resources are limited, so it’s crucial to evaluate your efforts with meaningful numbers that illustrate their effect on your bottom line. Calculating ROI might take some time—both in the few extra minutes to do the math and the amount of time that needs to pass before all the data is available—but that number will be infinitely more valuable to you than any vanity metric on your Google Analytics report.
What metrics do you report to your team?
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