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B2B Sales Enablement

B2B Sales Enablement Strategy: Shorter Proposals Win

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Proposal writing is somewhat counter-intuitive. Many sellers seek to impress with doctorate thesis style proposals. But, the truth is, the best proposals are shorter rather than longer. Smart B2B sales enablement strategies and tactics focus on the customer instead of the firm. Proposals also need to answer buyers’ unasked questions.

Unfortunately, the vast bulk of proposals I’ve seen over my life fail to meet any of these criteria. Here are some of the frequent errors I’ve seen with B2B tech sector sales enablement strategies and tactics and how to correct them.

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5 Clues It’s Time for B2B Churn Analysis

5 Clues It’s Time for B2B Churn Analysis

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Let’s face it: you’re probably uncomfortable with the idea of churn analysis.

You’re busy trying to grow revenue. There are a million fires to put out, and you have to keep your team focused on maintaining a healthy pipeline and winning more customers.

Ordinarily, this is the normal thing to do. However, focusing on customer acquisition when your churn rate is high is like trying to drive a car with a flat tire. Your journey isn’t going to be smooth, and you may not even get to your destination.

There’s no hard and fast rule for what constitutes an acceptable B2B churn rate. However, analysts generally agree that anything over 10 percent is cause for concern. If that applies to you, it’s time to hit pause and figure out why you’re losing so many customers.

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B2B Sales Tactics Customer Buying Journey

Are Your B2B Sales Tactics Derailing the Customer Buying Journey?

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B2B sellers often think of their role in the customer buying journey as a numbers game. And organizations reinforce this notion. Promotions and pay bumps often hinge on how well the rep measures up to their KPIs. From the number of SQLs they convert to how much revenue they generate, these metrics are necessary for tracking and analyzing your sales team’s performance. However, these metrics don’t tell the full story but are chronically overemphasized.
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Lead Nurturing: How to Woo MQLs

B2B Lead Nurturing: How to Woo Your MQLs

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B2B leads don’t become customers overnight. B2B marketers need to master the art of lead nurturing to guide prospects in their buying journey. At this phase, your content has piqued their interest enough to fill out a contact form or download a whitepaper. Now your job is to keep their interest. You have to convince them that your solution is the best fit.

Knowing how and when to make contact with your marketing qualified lead (MQL) is the key to winning them over. But, there are a few things you need to consider before you make your move.
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B2B Sales Strategy

B2B Sales Strategy: Plan Before the Rain

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B2B sales strategy is centered on holding a strategic viewpoint- not just a tactical one. Great B2B sellers develop and revise plans for their accounts, rather than simply taking tasks as they come.

We get it, it’s hard to remember to be strategic when a lot of opportunities are knocking at your door. In this scenario, it’s easy to just keep writing proposals, scheduling meetings, and working on statements of work. But if you aren’t regularly checking back in on the big picture, your B2B sales strategy is likely to lag far behind organizational changes and opportunities in your accounts.

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B2B Churn Rate: Don’t Be A Chump About Churn

B2B Churn Rate: Don’t Be A Chump About Churn

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Customer churn is a normal part of SaaS business models. Some analysts think an annual B2B churn rate of 15 percent is considered acceptable. But, you might be aiming for 10 or even 5 percent. In any case, a lot needs to go right for a customer to be happy with a new product or service, and it is impossible to please everyone. But if the churn rate gets too high, you need to quickly determine where the problem lies.

Your customer analytics can usually provide clues as to where users are struggling with your product. However, these datasets won’t tell you the whole story, such as the internal dynamics behind why a customer dropped you, or ways your solution fails to adequately address jobs-to-be-done. Worse still, your data may even be misleading you! Qualitative insights from customer conversations are the only way to understand the churn your customer analytics can’t explain.

Here are four reasons for a high B2B churn rate you may not have considered, based on conversations we’ve had with B2B buyers over the course of scores of 14+ years of market research projects.

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B2B Buyer's Journey

B2B Buyer’s Journey: 7 Reasons Prospects “Swipe Left” Instead of Reaching Out

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First impressions matter, especially in the B2B buyer’s journey. Buyers identify the problem or need their company is experiencing and begin exploring their vendor options. They swipe left or right on potential matches based on nothing more than what they see on vendors’ websites.

The amount of time a prospect spends on all of that content you’ve produced is minuscule compared to the time you spent developing it. For example, Google Analytics data suggests that a reasonable target for average session duration on a B2B website is two minutes.

So much like a social media or dating profile, your site needs to be engaging right from the start.

Finally, buyers spend nearly half of their B2B buyer’s journey flying solo. A 2019 study from Gartner shows that buyers spend nearly half (45 percent) of their time in the journey doing independent research. Many potential leads are lost in this phase—without sales or marketing even realizing it. Why? Because something makes that prospect swipe left before they ever fill out a contact form, send an email or pick up the phone.

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Customer Experience Research

B2B Customer Experience Research: Because The Whole Company Needs Voice of the Customer Data

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Let’s face it, most departments, in most organizations, aren’t super familiar with what their buyers perceive, expect, and want. Why? Because, other than sales, most teams aren’t in regular, direct contact with customers. Even sellers miss a big piece of the puzzle, because they aren’t hearing from would-be prospects that have never heard of them or were turned off early in the buyer’s journey before becoming a lead.

Well-executed B2B customer experience research provides a holistic understanding of the voice of the customer (VOC). That is, current, potential, and competitors’ customers. This understanding is necessary to dodge common pitfalls in sales, marketing, product, and business leadership.

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Know Before You Go (To Market)

Know Before You Go (To Market): Key Go-To-Market Research Questions

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You’re going to market with a new product or service. You know you need a product roadmap, a sales plan, and strong marketing. You need to understand your market segment(s) and generate a pricing strategy.

But have customer insights sufficiently informed your go-to-market strategy? If you can’t pinpoint how the voice of the customer shaped your strategy, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Go-to-market research can help you better align your plans with real world success.

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5 Clues Your Product Team Needs B2B Jobs-To-Be-Done Research

5 Clues Your Product Team Needs B2B Jobs-To-Be-Done Research

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If you’re a product person and you’re good at your job, you’re already listening to your customers. You might meet regularly with your sales team. Maybe you’ve even gotten a voice of the customer market research program implemented. But if you’re one of the 34% of product managers who frequently or always worries that you’re delivering features customers won’t use, you might need more granular customer input, like understanding customers’ jobs-to-be-done.
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