Do You Know Your Customer As Well As You Should?

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We are working with a lot of tech companies right now looking to shorten sales cycles and increase meetings and pipeline.? Our most recent pulse survey to 75 revenue marketers fielded just last week shows the majority of marketers have same budgets as last year, yet the pipeline expectation from C-Suite leaders to marketing is asking for 50% growth in some cases! Sales has similar pressures and as a result, are looking to get higher quality, low funnel leads to accelerate the process. Everyone is turning to marketing to find those hand raisers close to wanting to do a deal. ( no pressure, said no one, ever)? Sound familiar?

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And while we put together customized programs and ways to increase multiple engagements with potential prospects, one thing is popping up time and time again.? A lot of marketers don’t know who their potential customer is to find those hand raisers.? Let me explain.? Yes, we are receiving lots of lists of titles and company sizes.? We even hear that your product or service can fix multiple problems throughout the organization.? The enterprise is a really big place and in this ever-evolving world where technology seems to creep into all different areas and departments, it is becoming more difficult to identify the “right” buyers, decision makers and buying committees.? For example, one storage customer was shocked to learn that their data protection deal wasn’t coming from IT, security or cloud but it was coming from their finance team because it’s was a compliance issue that was driving the deal.

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But they aren’t the only ones who have it wrong.? Many teams have been dependent on salespeople or intent data as a resource to let them know where deals are coming from.? But that hasn’t panned out too well either.? Sales often doesn’t know some of the buying team who are on the outside of their contacts and are being called in because their solution ?impacts their department.? Intent data is a popular idea to identify teams but all it does is shows some activity.? But without engagement and with too many false positives, it doesn’t lead to an accurate representation of a buying team.

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What is a marketer to do?? What are some ways to identify your potential customer and save time in the sales cycle and generate pipeline?? Here’s how you can take advantage of the landscape:

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Increase the Size of Your Net: ?Don’t just focus on the bread and butter titles and departments that have worked before.? Make sure you are reaching all the different teams that “could” be affected by your solution.? We are seeing that even if these people are directly involved, they can influence a deal one way or another.? Better to cover your bases and make sure they know who you are and how you will help and not hurt their present situation.

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Identify the Problem You Are Trying to Fix:? Here’s something that is getting overlooked a lot these days.? What is driving the need?? Too often we are seeing vendors with great content on the solution but not enough on what problem does this solve.? If you can’t engage them from the beginning with this, you will lose them.

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If You Can’t Identify the Overall Problem, Focus on the Pain Point: ?These are two different things.? Pain point is the symptom of the problem.? Our disaster recovery infrastructure is limited.? We need to expand our disaster recovery infrastructure to the cloud to prevent potential issues on prem in the event of a major disruption or interruption.? Either way the focus needs to be on what you are helping them fix and this is sadly becoming an afterthought and not the main goal.

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Use a Proven Method (that Identifies and Engages the Whole Buying Team): One of our customers just revealed that a new program they ran with us with 400 guaranteed leads resulted in 74, yes 74 closed deals!? How?? Because we were able to work backwards in identifying their goal for identifying the buying team and engaging them early.? By the time sales was on the phone calling them, they already were engaged via direct, interactive digital, phone and wanted to discuss their pain points and project with them.?

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Things are getting interesting.? Companies who are being strategic with their overall strategy and focusing on the multi-engagement methods are really seeing the fruits of their labor right now.? Take advantage of these options now by getting as many touches and engagements as possible before sending leads along to sales to give them the best possible opportunities to have meaningful discussions and grow meetings to pipeline.?

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Interested in hearing how others tackle this challenge?

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If you want to know who is demonstrating success with their demand strategies, check out some of your expert peers from Cisco, Google, Veriforce, Cloudflare, and Genesys.? They are presenting this week in Austin, Texas for Activate’s Change Up Your Demand Strategies and Tactics to Align with Today’s Buyers and Buying Groups Marketer Meetup.? If you are a qualified marketer and interested in attending, here is the link with further details: https://www.activatems.com/activates-summit-austin-tx-2024/?

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Thanks.? John

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