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B2B Sales Challenges: Smart Marketing Strategies For Success

Executive Summary:

In the world of sales and marketing, it can feel like you're constantly fighting an uphill battle. You may feel like you're throwing money and resources at marketing tactics that don't seem to be making a difference. However, there is hope. By getting smart about your marketing strategies and recognizing where things have changed, you can save money, redeploy staff, and ultimately become more profitable.

Let's take a closer look at some of the typical problems and dilemmas that businesses face in their sales and marketing efforts and explore some solutions.

Table of Contents:


The Problem: Broken B2B Methodology

The problem with sales and marketing is that too many people are trying to fix a broken methodology. The entire prospecting and cold-calling approach is now wrong, because the structure has changed. Businesses are trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Let me explain…

In the past, salespeople got their business by getting on their area early in the morning, knocking on doors, collecting information, making phone calls, making appointments, and finally, selling their wares. Tenacity and salesmanship, often referred to as 'the gift of the gab' or being a smooth talker, meant they became successful through consistency and persistence.

This approach is still considered acceptable by some older sales managers and directors, as it is how they ascended to their current employed or self-made positions. Therefore, there can't be anything wrong with this method, right?

However, the world has changed over the past thirty years, and technology has played a massive part. The buyer's behaviour has also changed. Now, our computer, tablet, and mobile screens are 'on' continuously, and content is freely available 24/7. It's not surprising that the previously successful interruption marketing (cold-calling) and advertising (TV) are no longer as effective as they used to be. And now, conversion optimization is required to engage with the 'always-on' digital screens of our prospective buyers.

The Solution: Engage with Prospects Early and Often

Today's challenge for businesses is to engage with prospects early and often, even if it means not having a direct conversation with them until they're about ready to buy. This makes marketing results more difficult to forecast, but new tools and software enable businesses to calculate where and how many people are at what stage of the buying process.

This is where the old school meets the new. In the same way, the earlier salespeople would go out prospecting and cold calling, this activity has pretty much been replaced by needing to produce "Content."  In the first instance, buyers are searching for answers to their questions, and without fail, they are nbot looking to speak to a saleperson about it.  They want to self-serve and self-educate.

What is Content?

Content is any piece of information that helps communicate you or your company's character or tone of voice. Content is a method of showing you care about your customers and your desire to help them understand an area of business or given situation. To do this, you need to show them you are prepared to create a variety of content materials such as Video for B2B, Live Streaming, and Podcasting.

The primary objective is to answer the questions; take a look at our B2B Live Streaming articles page here and review the questions.  Virtually all of our article are formatted in a way that presents an answer to a question.

Creating a Content Schedule

According to Hubspot, it is recommended that you publish one piece of content every five or six days. To make this easier, invite staff members to get involved, ask suppliers to provide content, or seek copywriters on websites like peopleperhour.com. Over time, content can be repurposed, keeping costs to a minimum.  Also be mindful that you need to keep an eye on all your content.  You need to know if it's working, which can be verified by looking at Google Search Console and Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager.  If it's failing, for whatever reason, edit it or delete it.

Delivery and Promotion

Once you've created your content, you need to deliver it and promote it. We have developed a brilliant automated strategy called Social 444 to post Adverts on social media, without needing any opt-in sign-up forms on your website. As you develop your content strategy and gradually execute it, you will realize that significant changes can be made internally. The excess salespeople can be redeployed to create content, especially providing all constant list of questions they are being asked by prospects.

Financial Implications

As you develop and execute your content strategy, you will notice significant changes in your financials. Here are some of the key financial implications to keep in mind:

  1. Salespeople are gradually not needed to carry out prospecting or cold telesales tasks: By creating and publishing content that attracts potential customers, you can significantly reduce the need for traditional sales tactics such as cold calling. This means you may not need to hire as many salespeople, or you can redeploy existing sales staff to focus on other tasks.

  2. More experienced salespeople can 'close' the inbound business: When potential customers engage with your content and reach out to your company, they will likely be further along in the buying process than someone who was cold-called. This means you can assign more experienced sales staff to handle these leads and close more deals.

  3. Surplus staff can be 'let go': By reducing the need for traditional sales tactics and redeploying existing staff, you may find that you have surplus staff in your organization. Depending on your business needs, you may be able to let some of these staff members go, resulting in cost savings.

  4. Over time, content can be repurposed, keeping costs to a minimum: One of the benefits of creating content is that it can be repurposed for other marketing activities. For example, a blog post can be turned into a social media post, an infographic, or even a video. By repurposing content, you can keep costs to a minimum while still maintaining a consistent marketing presence.

It's important to keep in mind that implementing an inbound marketing strategy will require an upfront investment in time and resources. However, over time, the benefits of attracting and converting more qualified leads, reducing sales costs, and repurposing content can result in significant cost savings and increased profitability for your business.

In conclusion, while it may seem daunting to shift from traditional outbound sales tactics to a content-driven inbound marketing strategy, the financial benefits are clear. By attracting more qualified leads, reducing sales costs, and repurposing content, your business can become more profitable and efficient.

Quick Takeaways:

  1. Traditional sales and marketing methods like cold-calling and interruption marketing are no longer effective as they used to be.
  2. To engage with prospects, you need to produce valuable content that demonstrates your expertise, helps your customers understand their problems and builds trust with your brand.
  3. Content can come in various forms like blog posts, podcasts, webinars, infographics, videos, and social media.
  4. Consistently publishing high-quality content can help you attract, engage and convert your target audience into loyal customers.
  5. A strong content marketing strategy can also help you save money, redeploy staff and increase profitability.

Next Step Conclusion:

To succeed in today's fast-paced digital world, businesses must shift from traditional sales and marketing methods to inbound content-driven strategies. By producing high-quality content that provides value to your customers and consistently publishing it on various platforms, you can attract, engage and convert your target audience into loyal customers. This not only helps you save money but also makes your business more profitable in the long run. Therefore, it is crucial to invest in a strong content marketing and Digital Selling strategy to embrace the fact that "Content is King."

Go to our Digital Selling pages to see how you can change the way you work and scale up your business.

25 September 2024

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Author

The author and founder of salesXchange, Nigel Maine is a B2B marketing and sales expert with a proven track record in scaling up growth for Technology, SaaS, and Professional Services organisations. With 30 years hands-on experience and unique approach, Nigel has developed an effective strategy that dramatically increases exposure and profitability for B2B organizations.

Nigel has founded multiple start-ups, is a published author, public speaker and hosts both a podcast and business live streaming show, broadcast on LinkedIn Live, YouTube & Facebook. He also has extensive knowledge of MarTech software, creative hardware and software, and A.I. prompting tools.  Contact: 0800 970 9751 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.