B2B Marketers will adopt these 10 things from Political Lobbyists by 2025

Ever wondered where B2B marketing is headed? What strategy & tactics B2B marketers will use in five years when, what we do today, is no longer effective?

The explosive growth of Account Based Marketing means more & more vendors are being matched optimally to stakeholder buying teams. However, as adoption of ABM tactics scales further and eventually becomes cost effective enough for early stage startups to adopt, the buying committees will become overwhelmed with ABM driven advances. Thankfully we’ve got some time to go before this happens, but what will ABM strategy in the future look like?

I’ve been thinking hard about this and I keep on coming back to the to the part of the sales journey that is not yet automated, not yet mined (for data) and of which few of us have insight for: the politics of the buying committee.

Organisational politics might be described as another way of saying how things get done in a business for the benefit of the business mission and, for your and and your team's personal success; it’s something that few ABM marketing leaders think about today - which I find odd - because most are intuitively aware that this is the unexplored region of the customer journey map, but perhaps our inability - beyond the Organogram - to articulate what we know about the political dynamics of our target accounts explains why this stage of the funnel is rarely systemised. Add to this that current ABM strategy and tactics are yielding exciting results for marketers, across all B2B industries, and the lack of motivation to understand the politics of the buying committee becomes easier to understand.

I keep on coming back to that part of the sales journey that is not yet automated, not yet mined for data and for which few of us have insight: the politics of the buying committee.

But in the future, marketers will inevitably struggle with waning ABM tactical effectiveness and I suggest in this article that they will need to adopt new ABM principles; I wager that competitive advantage will come from a deep understanding of organisational politics across buying committees and this will be accelerated by two new trends:

1) As Sales and Marketing teams align, and partner more closely, its likely departmental mergers will become common - marketing will eat sales is my bet - and this new Revenue Marketing unit will have to focus on influencing the buying committee in a highly sophisticated manner in order to hit their targets and remain competitive. 

Sales professionals, even in complex high touch industries, will be pushed to a very thin sliver of the final stage of the buying funnel. Yes I know most of you reading this are shaking your head whilst whispering to yourself, “...will never happen”, but techno-capitalism has an insatiable appetite for efficiency and it’s naive to believe that being a great relationship builder will somehow protect complex sales professionals from the sharp end of the arrow of progress.  

Marketing, supported by AI, will eventually take over the task of direct persuasion, which today is the domain of sales relationship builders, and over the next few years expect Financial Directors to angle their desk lamps toward the high cost of complex sales persuaders as they seek to find new efficiencies via new AI. Do you admonish Alexa - like you would a naughty child - when she plays the wrong track and then feel a little guilty for shouting? Do you ask her to sing you a song, tell you a joke - even make a fart noise. You've built an odd yet trusting friendship with her. Alexa for Business will be orders of magnitude more capable, more human, more knowledgeable and more trustworthy and it will threaten the complex sales profession - eventually.

techno-capitalism has an insatiable appetite for efficiency and it’s naive to believe that being a great relationship builder will somehow protect complex sales professionals from the sharp end of the arrow of progress.  

But the good news is that Sales Relationship experts can go beyond the funnel, into the political lair of the dream account, to apply their transferable skills to lobbying stakeholder buyer committees.

2) B2C brands today are aligning themselves with causes and taking positions in debates (see the Nike/Colin Kaepernick campaign for example) and so will B2B brands. Most brands, even B2C, have until very recently remained conveniently neutral so as to appeal to the largest buying audience. But brands represent more than just products and services - brands embody the values of the people who make, sell and bill the firm's product - and buyers want to be sure that the culture of an organisation translates to a worldview that they agree with. More and more, as the barrier between B2B customers and vendor employees fall, buyers will want to know that B2B vendor's employees think like them - this will demand more transparency across the buyers journey - the Amazonification of B2B if you will. This gives the buyer more data with which to make a decision and even less reason to contact the vendor high in the funnel.

Tying these predicted developments together, I want to draw parallels and extract lessons from the world of political lobbying.

For better or worse, very large multi-national corporations have been lobbying political institutions - persuading, influencing and cajoling - for decades. Today lobbying, especially in Washington DC, is an extremely sophisticated ‘industry’ with huge government deals at stake; deals in regulated industries where monopolies can be built for competitive advantage are extremely valuable to international corporations. 

Professional Corporate Lobbyists stateside can tell you how much money to give in campaign donations to influence policy - this is the rigged system we so often hear about in the news. But there are thousands more ethical lobbyists than crooks - and they fight for worthy causes such as animal rights and environmental protection without the use of financial incentives or Machiavellian tactics. They see their job as bringing the truth about an issue to the attention of the people in government - to those who can act on it for positive outcome. It's this latter approach that I want to use as an analogue, to suggest how your ideal account stakeholders will be managed in the future.

Now, by no means am I suggesting you use any or all of the tactics outlined below - now or at any time in the future. Data driven influence of buying committees will become critical to B2B sales & marketing success. so it it feels inevitable that some of these lobbying tactics will become commonplace in the next three to five years.

So just how do DC Lobbyists weave their influential web? And how might we adopt over time the tactics of ethical lobbyists to meet future B2B sales and marketing challenges?

Here are the steps Lobbyists take (credit: Guardian Politics, March 14th 2014) along with cheat notes for how you as a B2B marketer might adapt Lobbyist techniaques to your future B2B marketing & sales strategy. 

Data driven influence of buying committees will become critical to B2B sales & marketing success. so it it feels inevitable that some of these lobbying tactics will become commonplace in the next three to five years.

i. Control the ground

Lobbyists win by owning the terms of the debate & steering conversations away from those they can't win and on to those they can. If a public discussion on a company's environmental impact is unwelcome, lobbyists will push instead to debate politicians and the media on the hypothetical economic benefits of their ambitions. Once this narrowly framed conversation becomes dominant, dissenting voices will appear marginal and irrelevant.

What you can do: Your products and services, and positioning, in the mind of the buyer will have distinct benefits but even the best products have shortcomings. You will obviously want to focus any conversations with the buying committee on benefits and framing hypothetical scenarios that will be fruitful for the account's mission and fruitful for the committee as a whole or individually.

ii. Spin the media

For DC lobbyists the trick is in knowing when to use the press and when to avoid it. The more noise there is, the less control lobbyists have. Messages are carefully crafted to be synonymous with wider, national interests such as economic growth and jobs.

What you can do: When using the trade press, think about creating messages that drive home your cause (e.g: Salesforce and their 'end of software' position.) Remember our earlier point that buyers want to see behind the brand to understand what the vendor/brand owner stands for. This is your opportunity to use the press to drive your positioning and core messages home and provide valuable support the B2B ‘lobbying team’ on the ground.

iii. Create a following

It doesn't help if a corporation is the only one making the case to government. That looks like special pleading. What is needed is a critical mass of voices singing its tune. Lobbyists usually engineer this.

What you can do: Survey the people or institutions that buying committees turn to when they need answers to their strategic questions. How can you bring them on side and more importantly how can you have them deliver messages to your committee that might support your cause?

iv. Buy in credibility

Corporations, frustratingly for both well intentioned lobbyists & their marketers, are perceived as one of the least credible sources of information for the public. What they need therefore, are authentic independent people to carry their message for them.

What you can do: This is no less important when selling B2B; the least credible source of information in today's review rich ecosystem, is your business. It’s crucial to develop relationships via academia, research bodies and/or analysts and publish studies & papers with independent bodies who will then rally behind your cause and your brand.

v. Sponsor a think-tank

Even in London, think-tanks offer lobbying packages that include a media-friendly report, a Westminster event and ear-time with politicians. 

What you can do: Bodies and industry analysts are your ‘think tank’ equivalent - technology analysts such as Ovum, Forrester and Gartner provide packages for a fee to raise your profile across your customer base and get you in front of them at their well attended events.

vi. Consult your critics

Companies faced with a development that has drawn the ire of a local community will often engage lobbyists to run a public consultation exercise. Think HS2 or Heathrow's 3rd runway. Community consultation might be anything from running focus groups, exhibitions, planning exercises and public meetings and these forums provide a managed channel through which opposition can voice concerns. 

What you can do: Buying committee will have those who are ‘on side’ and those who are ‘off side’ with respect to your solution to their problem. Think through which channels you can develop, cost efficiently, to allow those who are offside to air their grievances and give you an opportunity to persuade them of the benefits of your solution.

vii. Neutralise the opposition

Lobbyists want government to listen to their message and ignore counter arguments coming from campaigners. Lobbyists commonly monitor opposition groups and try and find the influential person amongst all the 'anti' noise. Rebuttal campaigns are used to deal with this and some interest groups are positioned as friends and others, foes, to make it more difficult for hardcore campaigners to sustain their campaigns.

What you can do: You will quickly see the analogy here with your battle against your competitors; you would like the buying committee to ignore their message whilst listening to yours. Getting your ‘rebuttals’ to the buying committee’s budget holder - he/she who makes the final decision - is an important part of your stakeholder persuasion campaign. If some of your competitors are mature and still champion legacy marketing techniques then you could position them as contemporary luddites by simply highlighting the objective benefits of your modern, data driven approach to their problems.

viii. Control the web

Today's world is a digital democracy & gone are the old certainties of how decisions were made by taking Member’s of Parliament or Senators & journalists out.

Lobbyists control information online by flooding the web with positive information and they rely on the fact that few of us regularly click beyond the first page of search results; this way lobbyists make negative content almost disappear.

What you can do: You will not of course want to ‘flood the web’ with positive press releases that never get read, nor dishonestly make authentic reviews disappear, but this is a call to arms to maintain an aggressive content strategy and invest heavier when your sales team are engaging buying committees at their dream accounts.

ix. Open the door

Lobbyists need access to politicians and so they build trust, offer help and accept favour. However the best way to shortcut the process of relationship-building is to hire politicians' friends, in the form of ex-employees or colleagues. 

What you can do: This appears to me to be a natural extension of what is considered acceptable colleague referral mechanics on LinkedIn and other work related platforms. But rather than the shady practice of hiring your desired customer's colleagues, far more acceptable is offering to your prospect accounts invitation to your exclusive events with rare enterprise/motivational speakers. Drift do this well with their HyperGrowth conference which is a mix of B2B business CEO’s and speakers from the world of sport and entertainment.

x. Perception of Future Employment

There is the perception that decisions taken in government could be influenced by the reward of future employment and it's a concern that has been expressed for the best part of a century. The growth in the number of people moving through the revolving door is off the scale so the accusations appear to have merit.

What you can do: Nothing. I have no equivalent for this final step in the Lobbyists armoury; have customers of B2B vendors crossed over to work for the vendor following agreement of deals? Perhaps. And if this happens without breaking any contractual clauses on both sides then there is little we can say other than bon chance. But it goes without saying that it’s not ethical to explicitly dangle potential jobs in the negotiation phase!

The roles and responsibilities of B2B vendor sales & marketing teams are changing dramatically. The pace of this change is accelerating so it’s important you are not driving with cold tyres on wet corners; your rear axle will keep on slipping out. To keep on the road you must have an eye on the horizon and I believe that the future of successful ABM teams lies in understanding the organisational psychology of the buying committee - and - building a set of tools bespoke to influence this psychology in the favour of your worldview, your company's mission and its customer solutions.

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