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Going Beyond Brexit: Doing Business in the UK, France, and Germany

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In this episode, we discuss how Brexit will impact the world of B2B with Martina Bozadzhieva, market research Europe expert at DuckerFrontier. Bozadzhieva’s expertise comes from direct experience navigating business dynamics in the turbulent European market. You’ll definitely want to listen if you do business in the UK, France, or Germany.

In This Episode:

  • Current business trends and challenges in the UK.
  • The companies set to benefit the most with a “hard” Brexit.
  • Unique EU regulations that impact B2B businesses.
  • Germany’s current economic state and unique aspects of doing business in Germany.
  • Business challenges and opportunities in France.
  • Differences in communication styles between the UK, France, and Germany.
  • Advice for country managers who are moving from corporate to another country, including how they can best interact with corporate.

Resources:

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a hybrid market research & marketing firm specializing in the B2B tech sector. Subscribe to the podcast to keep up with the most pressing issues facing marketers in the B2B tech sector. 

 

Win-Loss Analysis: Is Your Team Set Up To Succeed?

Win-Loss Analysis: Is Your Sales Team Set Up To Succeed?

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Improving win rates is within your control. After many B2B win-loss analysis research projects, we have found that simple adjustments can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of your sales team.

Largely, it comes down to ensuring your sales team has the time, tools, and training to do their jobs. Sadly, this is all too rare in the world of B2B tech.

We recently hosted four B2B sales experts on the B2B Revealed Podcast to learn what B2B sales teams really need to do their jobs well. Check out the episodes and summaries below.
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Data's Cold Embrace

Data’s Cold Embrace

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David Fisher, author of Hyper-Connected Selling, knows that technology-enabled sales is great, but it’s never going to satisfy the need for human connection.

The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.

As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.

   

B2B's Amazon Moment

B2B’s Amazon Moment

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Chloë Thomas, author of “B2B eCommerce MasterPlan” joins us to talk about B2B eCommerce. Yes, B2B companies need to go online. No, they shouldn’t be taking their cues from the Amazon consumer experience.

Chloë’s book: http://a.co/fZpuzum

The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.

As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.

   

 

Boardroom Diplomacy: Marketing Needs Allies

Boardroom Diplomacy: Marketing Needs Allies

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Myopic marketing executives focus solely on messaging to external audiences. Lack of attention to internal communications costs marketers influence on business decisions … and allies.

Savvy marketing leaders have an internal messaging strategy at the ready. This helps them achieve their creative goals while balancing business benefits.

In our latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast, Sean Campbell interviewed Darcy Kurtz, drawing on her experience leading global product marketing at Sage.

Partnership vs. Solo Artist

Darcy Kurtz

According to Kurtz, marketing teams often communicate poorly with other departments in their own companies. This inevitably leads to problems. Kurtz pointed out that sales and marketing executives at many companies fail to be “100 percent aligned”, and many fail, “to have the same goals.”

The tension begins when marketing teams act alone. They come up with great plans, messaging strategies, and value propositions without input from the sales team. Then, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are thrown over the fence, with the sales team is left holding the bag.

Aligning the funnel requires better cross-department communication. Sales needs to be involved in the goal-setting process so that marketing can bring in higher-quality leads.

“[Ideally,] marketing is being held accountable for more than just, ‘Did you bring in a certain quantity of leads or certain quantities of MQLs?’” said Kurtz. “I really look at quality as much as quantity, so how many of those are converting into true sales qualified leads and closed deals?”

Boardroom Fluency

Stunted collaboration between marketing and sales is only the beginning. Kurtz also urged marketers to rethink their approach to boardroom meetings.

“I’m a big believer that marketing needs a seat at the table when it comes to business discussions,” Kurtz said. “When I’m mentoring marketing folks about this, I tell them, ‘You need to learn as much about business management as you do about marketing management,’ to be successful long-term.”

Kurtz explained that marketers often expect to sell ideas to the boardroom based on creativity alone. Marketers should take more care in explaining how their creative work furthers the company’s business goals.

Get Diplomatic

For Kurtz, marketing leaders can only expect success when they change their behavior. That means collaborating with sales, learning how to speak at the leadership table, and reevaluating how to present work internally. As a result, when those changes start to happen, everything runs more smoothly.

Messaging For The Masses

Finally, listen to the full episode for more insight into effective marketing, with topics such as:

  • 02:31 – Non-traditional techniques that work with small and medium businesses (SMB)
  • 04:50 – Overcoming resistance to closer collaboration between sales and marketing
  • 09:36 – Launching a SaaS product and developing a Go-to-Market strategy
  • 16:46 – Linking integrated marketing with business strategy and goals
  • 21:20 – Customer-led marketing vs. product benefits marketing

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B brilliance? There are many ways to follow us.

Don't Fear The Churn: Inside Sales Management

Don’t Fear The Churn: Inside Sales Management

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Growth problems? Try treating your sales development reps (SDRs) like vital resources rather than cogs in a machine.

That’s the message from Trish Bertuzzi, the President of the Bridge Group, which she shared with Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell on the latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast.

Upend Your Expectations for How SDRs Should Work

Sharing insights from her book, The Sales Development Playbook, Bertuzzi demonstrates the connection between SDR job satisfaction and sales growth.

First off, it’s important to acknowledge that SDRs are put in a very difficult position.

As Bertuzzi says, “It’s a hard job, we make it harder by not giving them what they need to stay longer.” SDRs are provided with little training, the wrong tools, and are managed by people who expect the average tenure to last only about a year. It’s little surprise then that when SDRs outgrow their roles they also tend to outgrow the company.

Bertuzzi believes there’s a way to fix some of these key issues, to the benefit of both the SDRs and the organization as a whole.

Give SDRs the Freedom to Grow Into the Perfect Role

In order to improve the SDR work environment, Bertuzzi urges companies to give SDRs the freedom to grow, without expecting too much, too soon.

To do this, Bertuzzi is a big proponent of micro-promotions.

Don't Fear The Churn: Inside Sales Management

“Trish Bertuzzi is the Best Selling Author of The Sales Development Playbook and founder of The Bridge Group, Inc.”

“What we talk about in the book, and what we talk about with our clients is creating a learning culture and creating micro-promotions,” says Bertuzzi. That means getting rid of the system of of promoting SDRs to account executives after they’ve outgrown the introductory SDR role.

“If you’re an SDR1 you just do the SDR role, you’re an SDR2 maybe you get to start participating in discovery calls and even maybe running some of those discovery calls. You’re an SDR3 maybe you get to run with a couple small deals.”

By following this system, SDR’s responsibilities increase with their experience. Incremental changes in job title and compensation provide more of an incentive for SDRs to stick around.

Sharing from personal experience, Bertuzzi says that ultimately it’s “all about advancing them through a learning process that gives them the full set of skills they need to be successful.”

Equip Your Team with the Right Tools and Tactics

SDR success also depends on mastery of a few key communication skills.

Bertuzzi emphasizes that SDRs should have a solid grasp of how to use a phone and send effective emails.

While these skills can improve with training, it’s best to hire people with a natural inclination for the role from the start.
Bertuzzi describes how one company had SDR applicants spend a day shadowing the current team. After seeing what the job would really be like, only 50 percent of them continued to express interest in the role.

In all honesty, it did make recruiting more difficult. At the same time, it also meant that the people who were hired came in with a clear expectation of what the job would be like, making them more effective.

More SDR Wisdom

Listen to the full episode for more SDR answers, such as:

  • Where does the idea of “all bound” fit in a world of outbound vs. inbound?
  • Which is more effective: PACT (Pain, Authority, Consequence, Target-Profile) or BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Time-Frame)?
  • What qualities should you be looking for when hiring for your SDR team?
  • What are some effective outreach tactics for phone, voicemail, and email?

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B brilliance? There are many ways to follow us.

Heat Up Your Cold Email

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How can sellers use cold email to engage rather than irritate?

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Ryan O'DonnellIn this episode of B2B Revealed, Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell chats with Replyify Co-Founder Ryan O’Donnell on how to use cold email to increase audiences and avoid the spam filter.

Obviously, cold email is more likely to be welcomed when it is relevant to the recipient. But Campbell mentions how common it is for him to open a cold email that has nothing to do with his work. “…It wasn’t targeted, it wasn’t relevant, there wasn’t appropriate research done, [and] it wasn’t packaged correctly,” he said. Clearly, the seller hadn’t bothered to make sure their outreach was of value the recipient. This is a big no-no.

Instead, start with those who already have demonstrated an interest in your product or service. “The easiest place to look, if you already have clients, is your existing client base,” O’Donnell explained. These folks are much more likely to find your outreach applicable to their work than someone contacted out of the blue.

O’Donnell provides some helpful guidelines to prevent sellers from flooding customers’ inboxes and trying their patience. “We like to see 3-5 sentences per email. We like 5-10 emails delivered over the course of 30-45 days, with a mix of give-and-take. You’re giving the [audience] something of value,” O’Donnell said. Make sure buyers can quickly grasp the point of your communication and how it relates to their work. While an occasional follow-up is OK, don’t just keep bugging people who haven’t replied. Instead, focus your energy on those who have chosen to engage in a conversation.

Streamlining your cold email processes is possible through automation platforms such as Replyify. “Replyify helps you manage replies and to-do items, automatically send emails, manage unsubscribes, update contact information, and move folks around,” O’Donnell said. “Once you actually create these different sequences, and you put a strategy around reaching out to these different segments, or personas. It becomes really easy to keep that going because once the automation takes over on the email side, you’re just feeding the beast.” This platform allows sellers to monitor all of their cold emails for legal compliance as well as assess and hone targeting efforts.

In essence, cold email shouldn’t be a shot in the dark. It should be a clear, targeted message with direct relevance to the recipient. Aim to start a conversation, not bury the buyer in a deluge of unwanted email. Add value, not spam.

Defrost Your Cold Email Writing Skills

Want to improve your cold email writing skills, but don’t know where to begin? Listen to the full episode for more on this topic and check out our guide to sending legal cold emails along with tips for effective written communication.

Do you need more B2B brilliance? Check out the many ways you can follow us.

Your Favorite B2B Podcasts of 2017

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This year our podcast went through a major change. The B2B Market Research Podcast became B2B Revealed. Our focus broadened to a myriad of issues that impact our clients in the B2B technology sector. The result? More interviews, more thought leaders, more insight, and an even better B2B Podcast.

As the end of the year approaches, we decided to take a look back at your favorite episodes of the year.

Your Favorite B2B Market Research Podcasts of 2017

1. Customer Insights: You Need More Than Market Segmentation Data

For this episode, B2B Market Research/B2B Revealed Host Sean Campbell reviewed Clayton Christensen’s “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice.”

Campbell, also the CEO of Cascade Insights, explains the book’s special relevance to product teams and corporate researchers.

Understanding “jobs to be done” allows companies to build the solutions their target customers actually need and to identify unmet market needs.

Ignore target customers’ “jobs to be done” at your peril. If a rival meets that need before or better than you, you’re ripe for disruption. Market research can uncover your customers’ “jobs to be done” and spot disruption red flags.

2. Big Data Ethics: Math Responsibility

Big data is just a bunch of numbers without analysis. But, that analysis has to have a basis on good math. Unfortunately, many a big, impactful decision in business, technology, and government have a basis on flawed math and bad analysis… Worse, these false arguments give the appearance of being backed by big data. Needless to say, it has never been more important to math responsibly.

In this episode, Campbell discusses Cathy O’Neil’s excellent book “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy” and how it applies to the B2B technology field.

3. The Pre-Flight Checklist for Research Presentations

No one wants to sit through a boring presentation. To capture and hold your audience’s attention, you need to transform yourself into a master storyteller.

Luckily, there is an easy way to make sure your presentation is interesting, effectively communicating your story, and highlighting critical information. Campbell shares a pre-flight checklist to keep your business presentation from crashing and burning. Make sure your audience’s key takeaways are the ones you intended.

4. Market Research Recruiting: How To Get A Superb Sample

Unfortunately, sloppy market research recruiting is the industry standard. But why waste your research budget on a panel firm when they interview respondents that aren’t qualified to answer the study questions?

Campbell explains Cascade Insights’ unique approach to finding study respondents that can truly answer clients’ questions in context.

5. Sales Needs A Say In Strategy

Through interactions with buyers, your sales team is essentially doing qualitative research on target customers every day. So why do so many B2B tech companies overlook their sales team’s experiences as a valuable source of data?

Campbell describes the unfortunate tendency for B2B tech companies to isolate their sales teams. He goes on to explain why it’s in companies’ best interest to give sales a seat at the table when determining strategy.

Your Favorite B2B Revealed Podcasts of 2017

1. Why You Suck at Virtual Presentations

This episode features Roger Courville, the “Michael Jordan of online presentations and virtual classes.” Courville and Campbell discuss how to effectively teach via webinar, captivating audiences, and generating engagement.

2. Creating The Category

Campbell talks mid-market marketing with Matt Ipri, vice president of marketing and business development at Decision Lens. The two discuss how to create a new category when the product is first-of-its-kind.

3. Is Cold Email a Legal Evil?

Campbell takes a hard look at cold email legislation, market research loopholes, and international law. Spoiler alert: the legality of cold email varies from country to country.

He also shares tips for B2B tech companies to keep their cold emails legal, and less evil than the rest of the junk mail flooding your inbox.

4. Sell Like The Avengers

In this episode, Campbell discusses evolutions in B2B sales with Nic Read, founder of SalesLabs, co-founder of RGI and EdX, researcher, author, consultant, and teacher. Together they discuss how old sales habits need to change, and new approaches to consider.

5. The Spy Who Wasn’t – Clarifying Competitive Intelligence

No, it is not corporate espionage. Campbell interviews Competitive Intelligence Expert August Jackson on the strategy, systemization, and ethics of CI. Learn why a strategic pricing analysis program can get you more information than even the competitor’s price book.

Thanks For Listening!

We’ve enjoyed bringing B2B tech topics and thought leaders to our listeners. Here’s to another great year of B2B!

From all of us at Cascade Insights, we wish a happy holiday season and a fantastic 2018 to all of our listeners.

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Your Favorite B2B Posts of 2017

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It was a good year for B2B content. As we reflect on 2017, we bring you a countdown of our most read articles of the year.

10. What To Read In B2B

Our “B2B Book Reviews: One-Sentence Recaps” page offers an efficient path to seeking wisdom from experts and staying on top of new trends.

We provide you with some of the best classic and recent books on B2B – and a few we don’t think are worth your time.

For example, here’s what we had to say about these books:

This list will provide you the opportunity to improve your B2B skills, and is continuously updated with new books to rush order or avoid like the plague.

Have a book that you want us to review? Let us know.

9. #Mrx Pro-Tip: Interview Your Competitors’ Ex-Sellers

“Running B2B Market Research? 26 Questions to Ask Sales Reps” reveals the wealth of insight you can access by interviewing former members of rival sales teams.

This piece includes key questions to help you get the right data. For example:

  • What were the key selling points of the competitor’s product or service?
  • Which product features were clients most interested?
  • What buying criteria did clients have?
  • Which features left customers uninterested or unimpressed?
  • Which of the competitor’s product or service features were the most lacking?

Check out the full article for more key questions and best practices for interviewing ex-sellers to better understand your rivals.

8. “You Can’t Always Have Quant With Your Qual.”

B2B tech is a niche field. As such, it can sometimes be extremely challenging or downright impossible to get an appropriate sample for a quantitative study. Luckily, qualitative research can get the answers without relying on a mathematically irresponsible sample.

Learn how to design the right kind of study to match your needs with “You Can’t Always Have Quant With Your Qual.”

7. If You Have a Point, Make It & Other Grumpy Writing Tips

If you’re in B2B tech, chances are, your job requires you to communicate through writing at some point. Read “Write Right: Convincing Content” for the best ways to get your point across.

Marketing Manager Isabel Gautschi encourages you to mean what you say, make smooth transitions, procrastinate strategically, and say it in fewer words. She didn’t earn her editing nickname “Half-As-Long” for nothing. Check out the piece for more curmudgeonly advice for writing compelling arguments.

6. There Are No Stupid Questions, But There Sure Are Some Smart Ones

In “101 Market Research Questions,” we share some of the sharpest questions we have based studies off of for B2B tech clients. Check out the smartest questions our clients have asked us to answer over the years.

5. “This Methodology Opens Numerous Possibilities.”

“Gender Gap: A Look at 50 Tech Giants” shows us that LinkedIn ad targeting opens the door for a number of studies of the tech industry.

We took a look at the workforces of 50 large tech companies to uncover insights on the gender gap and to reveal the demographic information accessible to researchers through ad targeting.

Yep, the gender gap is still pretty gapingly wide. The good news is that researchers are not forced to wait for intermittent diversity reports to study it.

4. Disruption Red Flag: Competitors Know Your Customers’ “Jobs To Be Done” Better Than You Do

Are you missing a critical measurement of success? Find out with “Customer Insights: You Need More Than Market Segmentation Data.”

It’s essential for companies to understand “jobs to be done” in order to build solutions that truly meet their customers’ needs.

Using Clayton Christensen‘s latest book, “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice,” we examine essential questions for product teams:

  • What are target customers’ “jobs to be done”?
  • Does your solution get the job done?
  • Do you have the right data to measure whether or not it does?
  • Do customers have a “job to be done” that no current marketplace solutions meet? If so, this is an opportunity for innovation.

3. “Don’t Just Drop the Bomb and Leave.”

It’s difficult to be the bearer of bad news, but we share our constructive approach in “How Good Researchers Give Bad News.”

Check it out to learn how we turn bad news into constructive criticism. Advice includes:

  • Be direct.
  • Use data to defeat fear.
  • Acknowledge sample bias.
  • Describe the disaster you’ve averted.
  • Offer a cure.
  • Remember: There was a fire before you arrived.

Good researchers know not just share devastating findings and leave. Instead, they deliver the bad news, endure the pushback, and point the client in a direction that can improve their business.

2. Keep Your Presentation From Crashing & Burning

“The Pre-Flight Checklist for Research Presentations” provides a handy way to make sure your presentation is ready to soar to success. Relevant to anyone giving a business presentation, our advice shares practical tips for keeping your audience engaged.

1. Our Ageism In Tech Data Got Your Attention

Your favorite article of this year was, “Ageism in Tech: The Silent Career Killer.”

We examined government data, a Payscale study and LinkedIn ad targeting data to research ageism in the tech industry. Spoiler alert: the tech industry is not kind to those over age 35.

Thanks For Reading!

This year has provided us the ability to continue growing as a business, expanding our client base, and provide you with quality content that is important to you. We continue to appreciate our listeners and readers and encourage them to share their terrific feedback. We look forward to sharing more research, book reviews, and exciting interviews with you in the coming year. Thank you for your support, and we wish you the happiest of New Years!

This post is brought to you by Cascade Insights.

Channel Sales

Coaching Your Channel: An Interview With Steve Smith

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Business buyers have shoved IT out of the spotlight.

Search for B2B Revealed on your favorite podcast player (iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and more) to subscribe.

Surprisingly, IT service firms are failing to adjust to this new reality. Ill-advisedly, they continue to target IT departments rather than business buyers.

In this episode of B2B Revealed, Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell interviews Steve Smith, president of GrowthSource Coaching, on IT service firm survival. They discuss how failures in communication lead to bad sales strategies, and how companies can course-correct.

Smith is an expert in business management, leadership, and marketing.

Rediscover The Vision Of Your IT Services Company. Listen To Learn:

  • Red flags that your IT service firm has neglected its business goals.
  • The importance of understanding your business buyers’ “trade talk.”
  • How to translate your company’s value into terms that matter to your business buyers.
  • The difference between transactional and consultative selling.
  • Realistic business-building strategies.
  • How to be a better IT service firm leader or manager.

Notable Quotes:

“If you don’t know where you want to go, any place you end up at is going to be okay.” – Steve Smith, cautioning IT service firms to prioritize their business goals.

“The longer you’ve been at your business, or your occupation, or your particular trade, the more you start thinking and speaking in trade talk.” –Steve Smith, emphasizing the importance of sales teams being able to speak the lingo of their business buyers.

“You have to get out of your own head, if you stay in your own head for too long, your head will be your biggest competition.” – Steve Smith, discussing the importance of communication and getting sales teams comfortable with the human dynamic.

Mentioned in this Episode:

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