by Fronetics | Mar 9, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
The other day a client called to express his frustration with content marketing. Not only was he disappointed with the number of leads that his company had obtained to date, he was also disappointed with the number of sales. He was ready to call it quits and pull the plug on all content marketing efforts.
This client was not the first to call and express frustration, nor will he be the last. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that as soon as a company incorporates a content marketing into their strategy, they will be flooded with leads — leads served on a silver platter and leads all boxed up and tied with a bow. I wish content marketing could do this — it can’t. That being said, walking away from content marketing is a big mistake — content marketing is an effective strategy that companies should employ.
The buying process for B2B buyers has become more complex and longer. The 2015 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report found that 53% of respondents reported their purchase cycle was longer than it was the previous year. The buying process has gotten longer because the majority of buyers (82%) are using more sources to research and evaluate products and services, and they are spending more time in the research phase itself. A full 80% of respondents reported they spend more time on research alone — this is up from 58% in the previous survey.
Social media and vendor-focused content are two key places where buyers turn to conduct research. More than half (53%) of survey respondents reported that social media plays in their research process, and 86% of respondents reported that content such as case studies and product data sheets influence purchase decisions.
The increased focus on research has changed when the buyers engage with a sales rep. Today, the average buyer progresses nearly 60% of the way through the purchase decision-making process before engaging with a sales rep.
Back to my client. I walked my client through these facts, and then we walked through the metrics we track on the monthly basis. Since my client had started using content marketing, traffic to his company’s website had increased significantly, visitors to the website were spending longer on it than they had before, and they were looking at more pages. Additionally the company’s social reach had grown and engagement — with customers, prospects, and others within the industry — had increased considerably. All of these things, I pointed out, were positive. I then reminded my client that the typical sales cycle for his company and industry was 12-18 months — far longer than the few short months that he had been using content marketing.
I spent the next few minutes going over the company’s content marketing strategy. We decided to make a few tweaks, and then discussed both goals and expectations going forward.
It is important for companies to recognize that content marketing should be a part of their strategy — more than ever, B2B buyers are looking for information and are using that information to make buying decisions. Companies need to be using social media. Companies need to be creating and curating quality content. It is equally important, however, for companies to realize that content marketing is not magic. Content marketing doesn’t shorten the buying process; rather it changes it. Moreover, content marketing doesn’t deliver sales — sales people still play a large role in lead nurturing and closing deals.
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This was originally published on Electronics Purchasing Strategies.
by Fronetics | Oct 13, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Imagine for a moment you’re entering an electronics retailer, ready to purchase a new television. You’ve been thinking about buying a new TV for a while, so you’ve done your homework. You know the difference between LCD and plasma. You’re certain that a 50 inch flat screen would look stellar hanging on the wall in your living room. Today’s the day. As you approach the salesman and begin to tell him the specifics of what you are looking to purchase, he looks at you and says, “Thanks for contacting me. I’ll be in touch within 24 to 48 hours.” It sounds silly, right? But that’s essentially what your company is telling prospects when it fails to respond quickly to online leads.
So how is “quickly” defined? Harvard Business Review (HBR) set out to measure how long on average it took for companies to respond to a web-generated lead. Auditing more than 2,200 businesses, they found an average first response time of 42 hours for businesses that responded to a lead within 30 days. Surprisingly, 23% of companies never responded. 
42 hours sure sounds like a long response time, but is it really? Turns out, it’s worse than you might think.
After reviewing the results of the HBR study, a research team at InsideSales.com examined three years of data across six companies that generate and response to web leads, from over fifteen thousand leads and over one hundred thousand call attempts. They focused on one question for this study: When should companies call web-generated leads for optimal contact and qualification ratios? Of this study a researcher wrote:
“…the odds of making a successful contact with a lead are 100 times greater when a contact attempt occurs within 5 minutes, compared to 30 minutes after the lead was submitted. Similarly, the odds of the lead entering the sales process, or becoming qualified, are 21 times greater when contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead was submitted.”
Essentially, sales teams aren’t only missing opportunities to contact leads when they wait to respond, they’re also missing opportunities to qualify leads.
So where does the organizational problem lie? It could be that your sales team is hyper-focused on their own sales leads, ignoring signs from online leads that they’re nearing closer to purchase. It’s also possible there’s inherit incongruence in the distribution of online leads to members of your sales team. Could you improve response time if leads were distributed differently? Also culpable could be the frequency with which your sales team checks for new leads. Is your CRM pushing sales lead notifications to your sales team only once per day? Pushing out immediate notifications could positively affect your lead response time. Whatever the reason you identify, it’s important to address and rectify these issues as soon as possible.
With a white paper authored by Google and the Corporate Executive Board reporting that today’s B2B customers are nearly 60% through the sales process before engaging a sales rep, it is unsurprising that a reported 35% to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. Is your sales team’s average response time faster than your competition?
by Fronetics | Sep 18, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
I start most of my days like you. I hit the snooze button on my alarm and lay semi-awake thinking about all the things I should be doing. Then, 20 minutes later (where did the time go?!), I autopilot my way to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. While I sip my caffeine, I scan the news to see what I’ve missed overnight. I recently discovered a new perspective on the inordinate amount of time I spend reading the news each morning.
Most news stories innately hold a sales lesson. In short, reading the news can increase sales.
Here are three news stories and an accompanying sales takeaway.
When the Brooklyn Museum of Art discovered that a third of items in their Egyptian sculpture collection were fake, they found a way to create value for their patrons by putting them on display. In sales, it’s essential to create and articulate value for your leads and prospects.
Daniel Pink, author of several bestselling books on the changing world of work, wrote in a post for the Harvard Business Review:
… the transactional aspects of sales are disappearing. When routine functions can be automated, and when customers and prospects often have as much data as the saleswoman herself, the skills that matter most are heuristic: Curating and interpreting information instead of merely dispensing it. Identifying new problems along with solving established ones. Selling insights rather than items.
What value are you providing to your potential customers? Is it unique enough to cut through the noise?
As Buzzfeed explains, “when you type a Facebook status, suggestions are made to auto-tag other users. When you start typing “grandma”, it often suggests tagging the seminal hip-hop artist Grandmaster Flash.” The result looks something like this:
Happy Birthday, Abby! Have a wonderful day sweetheart. – Love, Grandmaster Flash
Take a moment to think about why this is happening. It’s because some Facebook users are signing their names to a post – just like they would in a letter.
We sometimes need to make assumptions in sales about the tools and processes of our leads and prospects, but it’s important to ensure we share the same understanding of how they are being used. Taking action, like segmenting our buyers, allows us to predict the behaviors and characteristics of buyers with some degree of certainty. Understanding both the proficiencies and limitations of each buyer segments enables us to more meaningfully connect with leads and prospects.
It took thirteen years for this woman to find the owner of the photo. Thirteen years. Her dogged persistence resulted in an exceptionally gratifying ending – the woman not only found the photo’s owner, but also received confirmation that all six people in the photograph were alive.
Spend some time reviewing each of your successful closes and you’ll probably notice that many of them have one thing in common: persistence. Conversely, can any past missed opportunities be contributed to a lack of perseverance? Note how you navigated both successes and disappointing outcomes and whether or not you maintained momentum throughout the sales process. Identify what went right and how you influenced that. Understanding how and why you were successful increases the likelihood of repeating that success.
There’s a lot of news out there, but it’s worth taking the time to appreciate the implications of a few each day. Doing so can help you draw noteworthy conclusions about human behavior and inform your efforts to successfully engage with prospects. So, tomorrow morning give yourself a few extra minutes with that cup of coffee while you read the news.
by Fronetics | Sep 4, 2014 | Blog, Marketing, Supply Chain
The temptation is obvious: You want to use your business blog to proclaim the virtues of your excellent products. You throw around words like “unique,” “outstanding,” “robust,” and “industry-leading.”
Perhaps you even add a blinking “Buy Now!” button at the end, convinced your reader simply can’t resist hitting it.
There is only one problem: Your sales pitch made your prospective customer tune out long before they reached the last paragraph.
Imagine the following scenario: You enter a car dealership and are greeted by an enthusiastic sales agent, grinning ear to ear. He launches into his pitch about mega sales and the best deal of the century. Any question from you is brushed aside as he has more to say about the car model that he has decided you must have. Turned off by his sales strategy, you make a quick exit.
Or think of another example: A sales representative from a company whose website you browsed a few days ago follows up with a call and leaves a voice mail. The message is friendly. She does her best not to sound pushy. She introduces her “leading” company, which offers “a wide range of services” and a “one-stop-shop” for all your needs. By the time she reaches, “I look forward to meeting you,” you’re still ready to hit the delete button. Again, the voice mail was loaded with sales lingo.
As strange as it may sound, being “salesy” is bad for business. HubSpot, a marketing consulting service and software developer, goes as far as calling it one of the “7 Deadly Sins of Inbound Marketing.”
It reads:
Sin 3: Gluttony – Don’t be gluttonous and stuff your content with information about your company products. Focus on solving problems and helping your customers and community first and not jamming your product pitch down their throats.
Let’s go back to the two examples above and transfer the line of thought to your blog. Rather than forcing your products on your prospective customers, take time to answer their questions. You are there for them. They may be in the beginning of their buyer’s journey and far from ready to sign off on a brand new car. Perhaps they entered that dealership to browse, to check out the view behind the steering wheel.
And what if that voice mail had been phrased differently? What if the sales representative had spent a moment talking about what your browsing history said about the problems you’re seeking solutions to and presented some real-life proof of how her company could help? Basically, she would have been more effective showing how her company can deliver value to you. The same goes for your blog.
Here’s what you should do:
- Stay informative and educational.
- Demonstrate market expertise.
- Sound like a business peer.
- Focus on topics and questions of crucial importance to your target audience.
The bottom line: If you want to make a sale, stop selling.
