What is B2B Sales & Marketing 2023?

I have a master's?degree in industrial engineering but have worked with the growth agenda in various?B2B industries my entire career. I love the space between tech and commercial and have a special interest in growing business areas and companies. My favorite questions are; "What is the offering, who is it for, and how do you go to market?"

Reflecting on my experiences with a variety of companies, there are for sure differences in B2B sales & marketing between the startups and the enterprise companies, but some things stick?out as the same frickin pain. Over the years I've tried different services and tools to solve these challenges but struggled to find partners and solutions that have that broad approach that I am looking for.

The key to B2B marketing is not just one thing or one tool. It is about finding the right combination of many things! At ARC, I finally got the opportunity to team up with brilliant people and figure out what we can do to solve some of these challenges. But first, a short check-in on the main problems.

Note - B2B is a too broad definition to for this context. To make sense I have focused this article on non-retail companies with F2F sales activities and conversion.

INDEX?

1. Challenges with B2B marketing
2. Top 5 focus areas to address
3. Other insights

Challenges with B2B marketing

Different than B2C

I'm so tired of hearing different sales pitches over the phone or by email, "Hey, we can create all your content " or "we have this tool that will optimize your conversion by 50%"?and "we have helped companies like XXL, COOP, H&M..." First, there is no way that these people can write content for our target audience.?Very often, it takes deep technical experience or specific industry knowledge to meet the needs of a B2B customer.?Second, the references are in the B2C retail space - things could not be more different! I cannot make it relevant even though I try, and I usually don't.

The buying journey

The B2B buying journey is different from B2C. It's seldom linear, has several stakeholders and it's longer, sometimes 9-18 months with a couple of "black boxes" where you have no clue what's going on. It's also often a hybrid that switches between online and offline.?

In my experience, many B2B companies are still running an "old school" sales and marketing setup; marketing is often separate from sales and the efforts are mostly focused on face-2-face meetings, conferences and tradeshows. These activities might still be vital, but something else needs to be added, namely the understanding of the online presence and the digital touchpoints in the customer journey.?

Gartner has written some great stuff on this topic that I think is spot on; In fact? Gartner research finds that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase? they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. When buyers compare multiple suppliers? the amount of time spent with any one sales rep may be only 5% or 6%.?But even more striking, 27% of the time is spent researching individually online (!)

These numbers might be different for your industry, but I think we can agree that the trend is obvious and after two years of the pandemic isn’t it painfully in your face?

What the heck is a conversion?

The main purpose of B2B marketing is to support sales, but it's tricky (if not impossible) to connect the marketing budget directly to sales transactions. The business case needs a conversion, but it has to be something different than sales transaction to make sense, and for many B2B companies it often comes down to leads.

But how much is a lead worth? What is the quality of the lead? And how do we prove that the lead comes from marketing spend and not a sales team effort?

Further, online pricing strategy models and tools does not work for most B2B. Our sales processes are partly offline and consists of customized solutions, negotiation, procurement processes and customer-specific pricing. How do you find out what to optimize and make decisions based on data when there are big holes in the data set? How do we track the customer journey to get the right data and really support sales?

Top 5 focus areas to address

1. Customer segmentation and value offerings

Who is your customer, and why are they buying your product/service? Your company might have done this exercise to perfection, but my experience is that it's partly in the head of salespeople. They know how to adapt their story and offering depending on the situation, who they are meeting, and what that person needs. This knowledge is tough to transfer into marketing language and digital content.

And yes, you can describe your products and services BUT do you do it in the perspective of your customers? Remember, they have a problem they want to solve - not necessarily looking for a solution, and if they do - what options do they have? This usually ends up in a customer segmentation/prioritization with a pain-solution mapping with, for example, different industries or sizes of customers. If you don't know who you are talking to is very hard to get your message right.

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2. Customer journey mapping

Map the customer journeys. Yes, it's complicated and hard work, but there is no other way. It gets easier if you have done your customer segmentation and customer personas mapping well and precise. You should be able to describe the person whose journey you are mapping, for example, a "CFO in telecom company with +400MEUR in revenue".

Map the journey on a high level first, then break it down to touchpoints (both digital and F2F). I suggest that you try to find 10-15 touchpoints to begin with. Remember, they could be small like seeing a banner ad or a rollup at a tradeshow.

3. CRM and other tools

When you have mapped all the touchpoints you can think of, you can start thinking about how to track and measure these. Most often it ends up with a CRM for B2B companies, but it can be a combination of tools; web analytics, CRM, CDM, Excel, etc.

Data in a CRM can be fed manually by salespeople but also automatically from digital tools. Here you must consider personal data privacy but remember, we are still able to track use and user groups and in B2B a company it’s normally what makes sense to track anyway.

CRM is a great tool for reporting and teamwork but also for storing and making data available for analysis and decision making, both for the individual user and the team. Your sales process in the CRM should align with the customer journeys as much as possible.

4.??Sales channel and content strategy

Based on the work you have done with the personas and customer journey mapping you can then start answering the following questions:

• What channels should you use to reach the buyer through different touchpoints in the customer journey?
• What type of content should you use in the different touchpoints?
• How do you create and adapt content for the different buyer personas?

You cannot pitch everyone with the same sentence, the message has to fit the person you want to reach.

5.??Lead Management

Lead management in B2B could include many things, the most obvious is to generate new leads but some companies have other needs that might be even more important. For example, many B2B companies have more than 50% of their revenue in existing customers, so new leads might not be the priority. Mapping this specific customer journey, matching channels and the right information for existing customers then becomes key!

Lead management can support us to:

1. Increase the number of new leads (sometimes called lead generation)
2. Increase efficiency by qualifying leads
3. Increase margins by working with the right leads
4. Creating and identifying new leads at existing customers
5. Supporting existing customers with new solutions and additional value

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Other insights

• Traditionally B2B marketing has been focused on facts and numbers. We have created content based on the assumption that buyers are only looking for product sheets and facts to support their business case and project scope. HOWEVER, more and more evidence shows that feelings and emotions are important for B2B buyers. Referring to Gartner’s finding that 27% of the buying journey is made online, by each individual, there is proof that B2B buyers are also people, like anyone. The characteristics might be a bit different and probably more focused on risk assessment but to say that emotions are not involved is simply not true.
• Another insight is the rise of the ambassador. Influencer marketing has blown up in B2C and its here for us in B2B as well. Finding influencers in your industry that can support you and your message on, for example LinkedIn, is a powerful tool. The message and the purpose must be transparent and true but if you have a cool story that you want to share, an ambassador might be the way to go.

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Hope this at least gave you some ideas or reminders, and it goes without saying, if you want to know more or need help just reach out!