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Visionary Marketing
B2B vs B2C Marketing. One often opposes the two main kinds of marketing but aren’t they more or less six of one and half a dozen of the other? Some time ago, Capgemini consulting, that used to be my employer at the turn of the 21st century, organised a meeting in Paris, France on the subject of B2B marketing as part of the release of their latest “Journal of Marketing Revolution”. During that conference, I took part in a round table discussion that brought together a panel of experts and filed practitioners. There I described the differences between B2B and B2C, based on my article for the consultancy firm, only available in French at the time. At a time when B2B marketing has such an important place in our digital and e-commerce economy, it was high time I translated it.
B2B vs B2C Marketing: Two Sides of the Same Coin?B2B and B2C marketing are two sides of the same coin. Please note that the coin in question is purely and voluntarily fictitious and was produced with Midjourney.B2B vs B2C marketing?What is B2B marketing, how similar and how different is it from B2C marketing? I took this opportunity to debunk a few inexorable myths about B2B marketing. But never before has B2B marketing been so radically transformed in terms of its practices, its evolution and the way in which relationships with customers and prospects are managed. In fact, there have never been so many demands in the field. Marketers are looking for solutions to their problems at a time when Business to Business marketing is in the process of emancipating itself from its big brother. This has not wavered since 2017, quite the contrary.
B2B marketing by the man who invented almost everything. If there’s one article worth reading, it’s this Fast Company post describing how McKenna came to Jobs’s aid and how he helped create Apple with some of the elements that are still present today in the perceptions of the public and in particular the brand’s users.The Pioneer of Business-to-business Marketing: Regis McKennaFor many years, B2B marketing was the poor cousin of marketing. It was almost a case of practising B2B by default, and yet there was a demand for it. One could feel this right from the beginning, when I first started to be in business in the late 80s.
We first tried to apply B2C methods to these professional markets, but to no avail, such was the gap between the two. During one of my first B2B marketing projects in the manufacturing industry, I launched a complete study (desk + field research) with a semi-directive and a directive survey of a reasonable and varied sample of architects.
Anecdote from the Early Days of B2B MarketingThe product was a colour version of the now-infamous Eternit roofing product (side note: unfortunately, many of our friends died from working with asbestos for this firm, but we didn’t know that at the time). For this engagement, I had decided to customise a methodology borrowed from quantitative multi-criterion consumer analysis and to transpose it for Multiplan on a personal computer. It happened in 1983, needless to say, this was quite revolutionary at the time. This survey and my recommendations were instrumental in delivering a very rewarding ROI in the following years.
B2B marketing vs B2C marketing in a nutshellOf course, this methodology hadn’t been designed for that purpose. But it worked. With a bit of common sense and hindsight, I quickly came up with the right recommendations that helped us find the right set of colours to implement (and which, of course, contradicted all our initial assumptions).
Marketing Techniques in B2C vs B2BMarketing methodology wasn’t really the real problem with B2B marketing in those days. Most of the issue originated from a low acceptance factor of methods that had essentially been pioneered for fast-moving consumer goods. “We aren’t selling hot cakes, you know!” and all that sort of things.
Approximately at the same time, a marketing genius, one I admire, Regis McKenna, who invented everything in B2B marketing and particularly high-tech marketing, was helping to launch one of the most iconic products of the past 50 years. I mean the Macintosh, in 1984.
A real genius he was. As he was instrumental in the take-off of Apple in the 1970s. Steve Jobs was not yet the marketing pro he later became. He also designed Intel’s Marketing strategy, and this at a time when it was believed that personal computers would never be a serious market, and especially that they would never be used by professionals.
He not only believed in it, but even made a fortune by taking a percentage of sales as payment for the advertising he created. Indeed, Apple did not have enough revenue to cover these expenses at the time. Some of his business partners were a little concerned. He wasn’t and decided to work pro bono and wait for the harvest he’s sown. He wasn’t disappointed.
Who is into B2B vs B2C marketing? 3 raised their handsA few years later, 15 years ago, I was presenting my B2B marketing methods for web services developed for an Orange Business Services subsidiary at a marketing conference in Istanbul. I went for a trick that I thought was clever and proved otherwise.
As I was beginning my pitch, I asked the audience: “Who here works in B2B marketing? ” That was probably the worst decision that I ever made, and a good lesson it taught me.
Barely 3 people in the crowd raised their hands even though there were nearly 1000 delegates in the room. B2B marketing was not (yet) on the agenda.
Things Have Changed a Lot in the B2B WorldBut things have changed since then. In a spectacular turn of events, B2B marketing, and particularly high-tech marketing, is once again flavour of the month. Back in 2017, Amazon was finally announcing record consumer profits after 22 years in business. It should be noted that its B2B business of cloud server sales (AWS) has been much quicker to turn a profit. Enough to boost the results of this new distribution giant. All the big players had been sniggering in the background for quite a long time.
Amazon Web Services, B2B Marketing With a Credit CardIn 2024, as I’m writing these lines, Amazon is thriving and guess what: AI is the new force behind these humongous profits. And behind AI one finds cloud computing and especially its market leader, AWS. B2B marketing is delivering big bucks. This is because B2B is a significant part of the economy (approximately two thirds).
B2B marketing approaches are varied. There is no such thing as a unique form of B2B marketing. There are as many B2B marketing techniques as there are products, services and industries. That’s what makes B2B marketing so exciting. I often bump into B2B marketers nowadays, even amongst my students, and I think they were right to choose B2B vs B2C marketing. That’s where the future is, not in selling washing powder. The market there is quite crowded and above all, all the marketing techniques are known and proven and somewhat repetitive.
Similarities and Differences Between the Two Forms of MarketingIn the following piece, at the request of Arnaud Bouchard of Capgemini consulting, I took a fairly in-depth look at B2B vs B2C marketing. I also tried to debunk a few B2B marketing myths along the way. For instance, I often hear that B2B buyer processes are rational, while B2C’s are all about emotions. If I were into gambling, I’d almost be ready to bet a million dollars on the opposite.
B2B Marketing Is No Longer the Poor Relation of B2C MarketingAs I pointed out above, B2B marketing is no longer the poor cousin of B2C marketing. On the contrary, I can see that in many areas that it has become more sophisticated and responsible for introducing new approaches and practices. This is particularly true of marketing automation and ABM.
A comparison between B2B and B2C marketing.
B2B vs B2C marketing: six of one and half a dozen of the other?Towards the end of the 80s, I began selling B2B marketing consultancy services. At the time, the very notion of B2B marketing didn’t yield very interesting prospects. Customers were reluctant, the market was rather sluggish, and my experiments came to nothing. Above all, the premise on which B2B marketing was designed in those prehistoric days were entirely wrong. We lacked the tools, the perspective and the experience, and we were simply trying to apply consumer marketing methodologies and approaches to business-to-business. Let’s make it clear, it wasn’t working.
B2B vs B2C Marketing: Similarities, Differences and MythsThis seemed both exotic and inappropriate to our prospects. A steel manufacturer located in the wilderness in the east of France was my first prospective customer. This respectable gentleman couldn’t imagine himself talking to a marketer who’d designed strategies for Procter & Gamble, Unilever or Henkel. He needed someone who would talk his language. Nearly 30 years later, as B2B marketing, mostly in the high-tech sector, is gaining ground, the tide is turning. In some sectors like marketing automation, and many other areas of Martech and Salestech, for example, B2B marketing is even leading the bunch.
B2B vs B2C or B2B Plus B2C MarketingAnd here comes a paradox. B2B and B2C marketing are both very dissimilar and very close to one another. Why is it? Let’s focus on the middle and top of the B2B market only and let’s forget about small and very small businesses.
First of all, there isn’t one kind of B2B marketing, there are many and especially for each industry. Besides, the tools we use for the segmentation of our B2B markets are still flawed. Ultimately, no two B2B businesses are the same.
No two B2B businesses are the same.
B2B vs B2C marketing: debunking a few mythsIt’s amazing how many myths there are regarding B2B marketing.
It is supposed to be a minor and boring subject. It is supposed aimed at catering for fully rational buyers who make their decisions over long periods of time in a completely organised way, under the aegis of a seamless, cross-functional organisation… and so on, and so forth.
The reality is quite different. Buyer behaviour in B2B has changed so much in the past few years that this kind of clichéd view bears no relevance to the reality of B2B marketing at all.
Where B2B and B2C marketing resemble each otherThe elements of convergence between B2B and B2C marketing are significant: they are even evolving at a rapid pace and under the impetus, in particular, of digital.
On the one hand, the growing importance taken on by what could be called inbound marketing as opposed to outbound digital marketing. Sales are no longer dependent on the presence of a salesperson in front of a customer. That seems obvious of B2C and is now true of B2B too. The pandemic also introduced many changes in the way that B2B is sold. Nowadays, face to face is no longer mandatory, one doesn’t need to leave the office every so often. In the past ten years, most of our sales and engagements were carried out remotely with the help of web conferencing.
The Evolution of the B2B Sales FunnelAlmost 60% of buyers have already made their decision before seeing a salesperson, whose presence they do not really think it is useful. But the change is much more profound. One witnesses how much — in B2B — the marketing and sales functions are now intertwined. Patrizi described this extensively (below and on his blog).
Steve Patrizi, the man behind the LinkedIn business model, designed this new B2B sales funnel showing the new roles of sellers and marketers — source Patrizi.comAs a result, brand reputation and even brand awareness are no longer insignificant in B2B marketing. Digital plays a major role within this new landscape. Especially at a time when buyers prefer to research information independently online.
Such digital initiatives often focus on in-depth content related to the company’s pet topics. They do this through blogs, white papers, how-to guides, videos and so on… That being said, there has been examples where major B2B brands have demonstrated (Volvo trucks and Caterpillar in particular) that brand awareness in B2B can also be achieved through branded content.
B2B E-commerce Is on the RiseAnother consequence of the above is that the share taken by B2B e-commerce is growing. In a 2015 report, Forrester even estimated that this would account for the bulk of the e-commerce market over the next five years. In 2019, 75% of UK e-commerce (EDI+Web) was indeed B2B according to German stats firm Statista. Half of it through EDI.
Source StatistaEDI + WEB e-commerce in the UK 2014-2019. Forrester was right – Source StatistaThis didn’t come as a shock, given that B2B accounts for around two thirds of the economy (See here Google Translate will translate the text and numbers for you).
Massive DataNext is the availability of data, data analytics and BI. All that makes B2B and B2C marketing ever closer to one another. On the one hand, B2C is moving away from mass marketing by opening up the prospect of mass customisation at scale (the old Peppers and Rodgers pipe dream is now within reach). On the other hand, customisation is B2B’s middle name. Nearly all complex deals, barring a few exceptions, are co-designed with clients. Better control and use of customer data blurs the boundary between B2B and B2C.
It should also be noted that, under the impetus of Big Data, B2B is moving away from the traditional sales model and investing heavily in marketing automation, lead nurturing, sales intelligence and predictive lead scoring. This phenomenon, initially confined to high-tech, is now expanding into other sectors.
Finally, service design is increasingly similar between B2B and B2C even though the names of the methodologies used differ slightly. “Solution Selling” is a staple of B2B marketing and sales. In B2C, one uses “Design Thinking”. Both methodologies focus on “customers’ painpoints” to Michael Bosworth’s vocabulary. Both involve that marketers step into their buyers’ shoes and address their main issues, while finding out what is “keeping them awake at night”.
Same Same, but differentB2B and B2C are getting closer to one another yet they are still different from each other.First of all, a B2B sales cycle is often a long life cycle, most of the time tied to a contract. This sales cycle is complex and there are usually many people that need to be convinced along the way. Identifying the decision makers with whom you need to interact during that sales process is key. This decision process often takes several months, years and even possibly decades depending on how big and involved the deal is.
All Is Not Rational in B2B LandHowever, it would be wrong to believe that all B2B purchases, even within key accounts, are performed rationally and according to rules edicted by procurement. Even in the IT field, many purchases are made directly by the business departments, and often via the Internet. In the highly rational and controlled field of IT, Amazon Web Services recently demonstrated, by opening its 2015 accounts, that it was possible to take a majority of the market in a B2B field (the sale of online server space). It did it with credit cards and sales processes borrowed from B2C e-commerce websites. Right from the start, it was indeed possible to open an account immediately with one’s B2C Amazon account on AWS with a standard credit card.
This is precisely what my coworkers deemed impossible when I was in charge of that business for a large telco. Next thing you knew, they were reselling AWS, QED.
Advertising Is Out of Bounds for Most B2B BusinessesSecondly, advertising dollars are scarce in B2B. If one excludes a few major American B2B players (Intel, IBM, Cisco and Microsoft), the vast majority of B2B vendors don’t do advertising. What’s more, they don’t always see the point in expanding brand awareness beyond their target audience, which is often very niche. Even though it is precisely by reaching out to users outside their target market that firms like Intel managed to emerge from nothingness. This is what made the American chip maker a long-term market leader, following Regis McKenna’s famous mantra: “Talk to your customers’ customers!”
Most of the time, however, budgets for advertising are in short supply. Most B2B players can’t spend 500 million euros in advertising, as I have seen it done in consumer marketing (in this particular example, such budget only amounted to 1.1% of the yearly revenue).
Accurately Targeted and Thrifty StrategiesAs a result, B2B vendors need to devise thoroughly targeted and thrifty strategies, often based on word-of-mouth marketing. This is another reason why digital is playing such a big role in B2B. For years, I declared that the future of digital would be in B2B. I must have been right in that respect.
Pricing and Market SizesThirdly, pricing and market sizes. B2C is about targeting segments within masses of consumers buying masses of — most of the time — low-price products.
High-end SolutionsB2B is completely different from that. Business to Business targeting is aimed at very niche populations and limited numbers of sales for — most of the time if one looks a complex selling — hefty revenues. At the same time, the purchasing process related to such deals is very complex and involves many stakeholders. I have, for example, worked on €150 million deals over 5 years. Deals like that are few and far between. They also require a lot of preliminary research and negotiations. Typically, a €150 million deal will take around two years to land.
In the firm (a large European Telco) that I was working with, all in all, the B2B arm wasn’t weighing more than 10% of the overall revenue of the business (hence, B2C sales amounted to 90%).
B2C was massive and based on a large number of very small sales. B2B, and on the other hand, was the result of a small number of very large sales.
The Cost of SellingThe cost of selling is also quite different with B2B. Firstly, because potential customers are not so numerous in B2B. But also because salespeople are infinitely more expensive in high-end B2B. You can’t just hire anyone to do complex selling, it requires skills and field expertise.
Acquisition costs are therefore much higher, and this is true not only offline, it is also verifiable online. While at the lower end of the B2B market, you can get leads for around €20, the average for the top end of the market is more likely to be between €100 to €1,000, or even more. Besides, all B2B markets are different and there is no such thing as a one-size-fit-all strategy for B2B.
Debunking a Few B2B MythsNow you understand why things are a little more complex than most people think.
B2C and B2B are converging and diverging at the same time. Besides, there are many myths surrounding B2B marketing that need to be exposed and challenged.
On the one hand, as stated above, B2B isn’t always rational even if it appears so. Buyer’s personal agendas often must be taken into account. Any good B2B salesperson knows this. They know how to flatter their buyers and reassure them — when needed. Buying this product or service rather than its competitors may have a positive or negative impact on their career. This is in no way rational or linked to the quality of the product or service. And this isn’t particularly new either. It merely highlights the importance of branding in B2B sales.
Content Marketing and B2BAnother point, I’ve read here and there that content marketing isn’t meant for B2B that it’s a mostly a B2C thing. I think it’s the other way round. Content marketing is crucial in B2B while it’s only a nice to have in B2C. B2C is often carried out without content strategies, which are often nice-to-haves. In B2B, there is no alternative. Advertising, as pointed out above, is out of reach. It’s way too expensive and often very ineffectual too because of the fact that most high-end B2B markets are niche. Besides, in B2B, there is no dearth of content producers. Any B2B firm is jam-packed with experts, engineers, marketers, partners and visionaries. And there are also B2B content marketing agencies to support these content initiatives. In fact, this is our business.
Last but not least, B2B marketing is said to be boring, whereas B2C marketing is deemed extremely entertaining.
Nothing could be further from the truth in my honest opinion. It all depends on the topic and the type of content you’re generating. Writing a blog about yoghurt seems to me more difficult to me and certainly a lot less exciting to me than one about big data. The latter may be perused by fewer readers, but it will attract a lot of enthusiastic feedback within a genuine community of interest. Engagement in B2B, is undeniably stronger, even though it may not always happen online.
B2B vs B2C Marketing in a NutshellIn conclusion, it is wrong to state that B2B marketing is identical to B2C marketing (that was the mistake from 40 years ago and one that we must not reproduce). It would be equally wrong to believe that the two are completely disconnected, though.
There are similarities and differences and the B2B and B2C marketing are also converging to an extent. B2C marketing may have been created a little earlier (respectively the 1960s and 1980s), but it is nonetheless undergoing considerable change. B2B marketing is no longer the poor cousin of B2C marketing.
It is even sometimes a source of inspiration for new marketing practices.
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What is the current state of Sales Enablement in Europe and especially in the UK? A recent Seismic–LXA survey carried out amongst 1,000 UK, German and French professionals produced some very useful insights regarding the current transformation of the sales process. It shows how sales are becoming increasingly complex and how organisations are adapting to the new situation. Sales Enablement is more than ever at the heart of these changes. Here are my five takeaways from this very noteworthy report. #Disclosure: Visionary Marketing worked with Seismic in 2022.
5 takeaways from the 2023 Seismic-LXA State of Sales Enablement reportThe state of Sales Enablement in 2023. S.E. can turn your average salesperson into a superhero, but many businesses have to overcome a few challenges before they get there — image generated with Midjourney.State of Sales Enablement: A Survey of 1,000 European ProfessionalsLXA conducted this survey in Europe and focused mostly on the UK (72% of the 1,000 respondents), with a smaller proportion of answers from France and Germany. It allows some sort of comparison between countries with a little bias on the UK, though. Continental Europe is far less advanced in terms of Sales Enablement adoption, this nuance is somewhat important.
The state of sales enablement report by LXA is adamant: all respondents in the UK have a Sales Enablement Function.Most respondents are working in sales, with a fair proportion of managers and top managers. This is a fine sample and the insights we can derive from that survey are extremely newsworthy.
LXA evaluates the Sales Enablement market at $508.9 billion in their report. This number encompasses both SalesTech and MarTech. Sales Enablement is indeed a very broad subject, and one must take this into account.
My commentary is summarised in this post. You will find an unabridged version in the enclosed Loom video. Often, we will abbreviate Sales Enablement as S.E., for convenience.
Exec summary of my 5 takeaways from the 2023 Seismic Sales Enablement reportThe State of sales enablement report puts numbers on our impressions from the field: Clients are becoming more and more demanding and sales are becoming increasingly complexMy five takeaways from the report are the following.
- Selling is getting harder. It takes more steps for you to get customers to come to a decision. And it makes sense in that context that Sales Enablement finds its place within organisations. That said, we still found 32% who are not entirely convinced that Sales Enablement means better performance. And I found this rather baffling.
- All respondents believe that S.E. is effective, but there is room for maturity improvement. Let us stress again that the survey is mostly focused on the UK. Sales Enablement is not as developed on the continent and especially in France. Over there it only came to the agenda — if one excludes international businesses — a year ago or so. It may have preexisted but neither with this name nor with a proper S.E. philosophy. Often, there is no such thing as a Sales Enablement Function to start with. A recent interview we carried out on behalf of Sparklane with S.E. professionals in French (including a Seismic representative) confirmed this.
- Respondents declare that sales and marketing alignment is a reality. But they keep contradicting themselves. Sales and marketing are increasingly aligned, that’s the good news. When I looked into the details, in the light of other surveys that we have analysed, I had my doubts and questions.
- S.E. deployment is suffering from a lack of “sales professionals and necessary data skills, content sales, operation skills and knowledge…”. I wondered whether such people exist or whether the crux of the problem isn’t the collaboration between teams. As well as the way one has designed and implemented sales organisations.
- Lastly, most respondents concur that processes and tools to drive their content strategy effectively are in place (but are content strategies implemented effectively?)
Clients are becoming increasingly demanding, and the sales process has changed and become more complexSixty-eight per cent of respondents agree that Sales Enablement is “key to driving business performance”’. But at the same time, one still finds 16% who strongly disagree and another 16% who feel “neutral” regarding that statement. And 32% still makes up one third of the total population.
Does this opinion relate to the tool itself or to how it was implemented? We witnessed similar reactions with CRM implementations, some 30 years ago.
Worthy of note is the fact that clients are becoming increasingly demanding as 47% think that it takes 10+ interactions with the average customer before they land a deal. It is an undeniable sign that sales are becoming increasingly complex and that complex selling is becoming the norm.
This is very consistent with what we see happening in the field.
Changing the way one engages with customers
The way you engage with customers has changed. Customers want to be challenged, and they’re also keen to learn from you as a supplier. You need to be seen as an expert – they want facts and credibility and expect you to know about them before you even pick up the phone. The planning, investigation and discovery that you do as a seller is probably one of the most important aspects of any customer engagement
Liz Waugh, Global Director of Sales Enablement, Crayon
The change in buyer behaviour has an undeniable impact on the discovery phase. This is probably where modern-day salespeople have the greatest shortcomings. We see a lot of sales reps who are feeling incredibly helpless regarding this changing sales process.
They know that they have to work differently and stop pushing their products and understand the customers better before they try to sell and close. They understand all the words but it’s very hard for them to put this new vision into practice.
A matter of educationSales Enablement can help but it’s mostly an educational issue with the overall approach of sales. One needs to change the way one does sales and turn the process on its head.
The Sales Enablement landscape is more mature in the UK than on the continent. Still, none of LXA’s 5 Ps gets a 5/5 mark. S.E. contributes to all the stages of the sales process and nearly 30% of respondents stress a split of responsibility between sales and marketing. This still leaves 70% of respondents where it’s not the case.
Sales and Marketing alignment: the good and the badSales and marketing alignment has been on the agenda for so long that the fact it is still on the agenda shows clearly that there is still a problem.
Where does alignment fit in a Sales Enablement deployment strategy? Well, that item is very confusing.
About sales and marketing alignment80% of respondents declare that sales and marketing alignment is a reality. When we look at the ownership of the S.E. function, though, this is a very different kettle of fish.
Most of that ownership seems to be in the hands of the sales function and marketing is only marginally in charge. Marketing, therefore, is kept on the side even though 30% of them are sharing the “responsibility for managing sales enablement” with sales.
I would like to see marketing a lot more involved in such projects and even possibly the merger of the two functions.
Beyond this, Liz Waugh has another good point.
Sales enablement doesn’t just land within sales. It should thoroughly involve the whole business. Everyone should be able to have a high-level discussion on what sales enablement does and the impact it makes. If you’ve made sure that there is consistency between sales and marketing, then everybody can land the right message
Liz Waugh, Global Director of Sales Enablement, Crayon
It’s not even a matter of sales and marketing alignment. That’s probably where it starts, but it’s a matter of really aligning the entirety of the company and focusing on customers’ needs and satisfaction.
Customer SuccessWe hear a lot about this new “customer success” function, yet we still have a long way to go before customer success is sales’ primary aim. As it should be.
Thus, I think it is high time that marketers change the way that they work, and it’s high time that sales started working better with marketing too.
Maybe it would be a good idea to stop calling them marketing and sales, to start with. Should we call them Smarketing from now on?
ABM and Sales EnablementAll of that is the essence of ABM — Account-Based Marketing — an area where marketers and sales are heavily focusing on deals and account planning together, not as separate entities trying to align with each other.
Now, despite all the talking, the way that sales have developed in the past decade has been going backwards in my honest opinion. Inbound and lead gen on one side, inside sales on another, Business development elsewhere, product development working separately, and yet another function, customer success, to patch things up.
Rethinking the way sales and marketing are runIt’s probably time to rethink the way that sales and marketing organisations are run, one cannot split all functions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, talk about “alignment”. This doesn’t make sense and organisations should be simplified and made leaner for the sake of customers and sales efficiency.
Talent issue?On another level, 72% of responding organisations strongly agree with the fact that the market is lacking “sales professionals with the necessary SalesTech, data, sales content or sales operations skills and knowledge…”
This is consistent with what Tony Hughes describes in “Tech-Powered Sales”.
My experience in that area is somewhat different, though.
Such full-stack marketers/sellers exist, and I’m probably one of them, but I doubt that this is replicable on a large scale.
Sales and contentLet’s take the example of sales content only. Certainly, far easier than mastering SalesTech and data management and other technical things. Despite my efforts and the fact that I managed to implement large organisation-wide UGC-based content teams in many countries, the only population I’ve never been able to convince was sales.
I think that getting sales to contribute to a blog is understandably more difficult.
For one, it’s harder to ask them to concentrate on chasing new deals and be in the field and ask them to sit at their desk writing content. This is something that we knowledge workers and consultants do all the time. It’s part of our job and taking hindsight and writing is part of our selling process and skills. It’s not naturally so for salespeople.
I know that Tony Hughes disagrees, but I’ve tried too many times to bring salespeople to the water and I couldn’t make them drink.
So, what if one tried, once more, to work as a team rather than ask people to do other people’s jobs?
Upskilling the sales forceNow, when it comes to upskilling the sales force, it seems that respondents primarily focus on personal selling skills like deal closing and negotiation. Obviously, one needs to learn and master selling skills.
Yet, the fact that the respondents place “understanding customers, ICPs and personas” second seems to me to be the crux of the problem.
Indeed, as the sales process is getting increasingly challenging, salespeople have to convince prospective customers differently and stop pushing their products and features.
A new requirement for sales teamsHence, what used to be a nice-to-have for upper-level KAM in large organisations such as value selling and solution selling is now becoming a must-have in this world where every sale is complex.
It seems to me that this is the area where salespeople must improve the most and where they feel awfully isolated. Therefore, they need a lot of coaching in this domain, and this is particularly where marketing can help.
Sales reps must learn to focus a lot more on their customers and targeted industries’ pain points and how to solve them. They must become trusted advisers, to put it in David Maister’s words. This is no small task.
It seems to me a lot more important than becoming a SalesTech wizard or a content specialist. For these last two items, I think it’s a lot more effective and scalable for businesses to rely on the help of marketers whom they should include in their account-management teams.
The commissioning processTo this end, I also think that beyond the rethink of the sales organisation, one needs to re-engineer the commissioning process to encompass marketing. How can you call for more marketing and sales alignment and not compensate them when they play a major role in identifying new deals and even more, closing sales?
It happened to me a few times in the past when I was playing a major role in an account team in paving the way to success for a large multimillion-dollar deal. At the end of the process, only the salesperson was raking in the money.
I always found this unfair and not conducive to inciting marketers to join the account teams.
Certainly, a lot of people disagree with that and think even that compensation should be taken out purely and simply. And I often hear that you do not need to be compensated to be motivated to sell. But I’m rather sceptical about this and it doesn’t fit with my field experience.
I believe on the contrary that this is a major trigger for motivation in sales and it is a good thing that marketers learn to work in that way as well.
A helpful survey for understanding the state of Sales EnablementTo conclude with this analysis, this survey was incredibly helpful in showing the progress made with Sales Enablement deployment. It also highlighted the areas where there is room for improvement in sales and marketing alignment.
There is undoubtedly a huge gap between the US and the UK, and continental Europe, though.
One would have welcomed a more thorough comparison with other European countries and maybe Seismic will deliver this soon.
State of Sales Enablement report: download the entire pdf presentationA more in-depth analysis is available in the recording which I have included hereafter.
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So you think your customers love your brand? Really?! Recently, I came across a motivational piece on Inc.com entitled: “People With High Emotional Intelligence Ask 3 Key Questions to Become More Likeable and Give Better Advice.” I am not usually interested in self development articles or books. However, I found these 3 questions useful to businesses if only you read them through the eyes of an entrepreneur. One may even venture to say that they are the very essence of marketing.
Ask these 3 questions if you want your customers to love your brandSelf-development isn’t my cup of latte but asking these 3 questions taken from a motivational article in Inc.com will help you become more likeable and make your customers love your brand!Love thy customers and they will love thy brand!Self-development isn’t my cup of tea, yet it’s one of the most popular book categories amongst the general public. It is understandable, people need advice and are in search of simple if not simplistic recipes. They need them to survive in a world which is generally perceived, not always rightly, as hostile.
When I came across that Inc.com piece, I found that I could turn it into a short bullet point list targeted at businesses and entrepreneurs.
After all, those who can ask these three questions can get their customers to love their brand better.
The piece is entitled “People With High Emotional Intelligence Ask 3 Key Questions to Become More Likeable and Give Better Advice”. Let us review these 3 questions and put them into a marketing and business context.
I have therefore hacked this list to my liking. You can read the original Inc.com article afterwards if you feel you need to become a more likeable person too.
[Businesses] like to be liked. It’s human nature: We crave connection and relationships, and we enjoy the affirmation and ego boost that results from knowing that other people enjoy being around us
So often, I come across business owners who will tell me, “I want to talk to my community.” Meaning “my customers”.
The issue though is that not all customers are part of a community. Brompton’s, Apple’s and Dyson’s customers maybe. Even that is debatable. Giff Gaff’s, that’s for sure. But most businesses’ customers aren’t forming a “community of customers”.
Number one reason is … you are not a likeable brand! It doesn’t mean your products aren’t good nor selling well. But there is no emotional bond between your customers and your brand.
Hence the three questions. Here they are.
- “What do you think I should do?” (as a brand)The essence of marketing is being interested in one’s customers. This doesn’t mean that product-led marketing has no future. It means that you should always ask customers how they feel, what they like and what they don’t like.
And that means being genuinely interested in what they have to say.
You do not need to carry out online surveys amongst millions of buyers. Interviewing, in depth, twelve of them will suffice and it won’t take that long.
- “What other facts would help you to make a decision?”
People make decisions for emotional reasons all the time
Love your customers and they will love your brand too. Image generated by Midjourney with the following prompt: “An old-fashioned 19th century sepia drawing of a lady customer who offers a bunch of flowers to a shop owner in a department store like Whiteley’s and is kneeling before him.” Not sure the AI got Whiteley’s right, though. Maybe it’s never been to Bayswater.The author is right. Emotion is part of the buying process. It’s also true of B2B. Truth be told, it’s probably even more true of the B2B purchasing process. B2B is said to be rational and B2C emotional. More often than not it’s the other way around.
- A B2B buyer will need to be reassured. Buying expensive stuff for a business means taking a huge risk and putting one’s head on the block more often than not. The more you reassure your client, the better.
- Buying a B2B service or product isn’t always a matter of features. Most of the time it’s not at all. It’s about reassurance as mentioned above, and feeling the vendor will support you and help you
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Failure isn’t just a threat for sellers, it’s also a threat to buyers. Failing to negotiate and buy the right service at the right price could cost you money and your reputation. The buyer is as much afraid of buying than the seller (I’ve worked on both sides I can guarantee it’s the way it happens).
-
“How do you think you would feel if you decided to do X?”Trying to put oneself in one’s customers shoes means genuinely help them make the right decision and partnering with them.
This is something I’m particularly keen on. Not just selling, but working alongside my clients to help them succeed.
“Customer Success” is even a popular job position at the moment. However I find that too often, it’s just a phrase and the customer success officer is just a seller in sheep’s clothing.
Try and be genuinely interested in the success of your customer and you will be surprised. We supported a client with a man from Mars report last year. It was just a wee three-day engagement but the outcome was nice:
Whereas our client was about to embark on a costly and useless B2C strategy which would have led to nothing, we comforted them by pointing towards a more rewarding low-hanging fruit strategy while emphasising a few issues that needed to be fixed.
This little engagement made our client save hundreds of thousands of euros (each year).
A few days ago, I received a little note from them with a box of chocolate. Yes! They sent us the chocolate, not the other way round. Not only that, they shared their prospects with us. They are genuinely grateful we helped them.
And we are genuinely happy we did. We feel proud that we’ve helped a nice company as best we could.
As the author at Inc.com points out:
You’ll give better advice, and you’ll become more charismatic in the process
See! Self-development articles can be helpful to businesses too.
Read the original Inc.com piece
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Social Selling is about strategy, it’s not about tools or tactics, let alone the infamous LinkedIn Social Selling Index. Social Media is one of the most important avenues for B2B marketers in the post-pandemic world. Let’s hear it from an expert on what it takes to be great at social and leverage this channel effectively. In this podcast Tim Hughes talks to us about the updated version of his book on social selling.
Social selling is about strategy it’s not about toolsSocial selling isn’t a tool, it’s about strategy and it’s a must-have in a post-pandemic world – Buy the book from Amazon now!TH In this new version of the book I have added more content and bolstered it after discussing with 15 practitioners – people that are doing social selling. For an organisation’s executive team, social selling ought to be part of the strategy.
When social media came out, many didn’t know what to do with it. The marketing department would leave it in a cupboard and then bring it out every week or two. They’d post something on a corporate page and ask everybody to like it, which more often than not doesn’t fetch good results.
Social now is a clear competitive advantage for an organisation. But it has to be run as a strategy, not as a tactic.
The key thing about the book is that I want to show there’s a clear connection between social media and leads and meetings. How are you going to use social to build a pipeline and get revenue?
Social Selling Is Not Communicating Online, It’s About DollarsWe have a definition as well as methodology for social. Social selling is using your presence and behaviour on social media to build influence, make connections, grow relationships and trust, which lead to conversations and commercial interaction.
A proper Social Selling strategy isn’t about communicating online Tim Hughes says, it’s about dollars and cents!The key thing there is we’re driving commercial interaction. Organisations now at a leadership level should be able to say at board meetings that we’re spending ‘x’ on marketing and getting ‘y’ from social media. It’s not about getting likes and clicks and views, it’s about revenue. They should be able to say we’re getting $10 million from the use of social media. That’s about driving a strategy from the top down to actually understand why they’re on social.
Let’s talk social media in terms of a classic exhibition. You as a buyer know what supplier you want to talk to. So you go over there, sit down and have a conversation. Probably at that exhibition there would be somebody who would have seen you and would talk to you. Now, we would expect what happens on social media is I walk into it and a salesman comes up and smacks me in the face with a brochure. Nobody’s interested in that.
LinkedIn is your shop window!
We know from research that people come to social media to be social. We’re not coming to social media to be smacked on the face with a sales brochure.
One of our clients is Namos, an Oracle reseller, with whom we worked to transform their sales team. We now have buyers coming on to social media, walking up to their sales team, which is transformational. Normally when it’s about sales people, folks don’t like or trust them. Here, we have buyers coming up to their salespeople saying, I think you can help me – and that’s translating. One of them has recently signed a $2.6 million deal.
We have organisations that are doing multimillion-dollar deals purely because of their position on social and treating it as a strategy, while ensuring that everybody within the organisation is involved.
Creating a mission statementWe do a classic brainstorming session where we get the C-suite and probably one of their advisors into a room. Then we work through with them about the importance of strategy and using data to show how the world is changed. People quite often recognise that there’s been this change, but they don’t understand that now 60% of the world’s population is active on social media for two and a half hours a day. This is the data that comes from Simon Kemp.
Telstra Purple came up with a mission statement which says a social organisation sees social as a platform for closing the distance between clients, prospects, remote employees and potential recruits. Social gives them the ability to get traditional visibility that you would expect from marketing. They’re a cybersecurity company. So they are very keen to be trusted and to get the trusted advisor status, for people to say that company looks like they know what they’re talking about.
Humans are social animals, and social selling is well suited for social animals who need to converse and collaborate with one another.Tools for Social SellingWe as a business actually use very few tools because this is about you and being human centric. We use Slack internally. I have used internal social now for a number of years. When I was in corporate, we used it to attain an increased efficiency of the employees by 25%. That’s like getting 25% more employees at no cost and it saved so much time. It didn’t stop meetings, but it used to cut down their time. It works only when you have senior leadership using it. Leaders should say, as they did in my previous organisation, that if you want to get hold of me, I am on Slack. I might check email only at certain points in the day. So Slack is where we should connect.
What Matters Is Conversations and CollaborationsWe use Slack, LinkedIn and a number of social platforms purely because today we live in two worlds – physical and digital. As soon as we go online onto social media, we’re in digital.
What we need to be able to do as salespeople and leaders of organisations is to be able to walk digital corridors and have digital conversations.
The key is to make sure that if you’re going to start in sales as the point of actually transforming your organisation to digital, then what you need are people who have seen it, done it and whom the sales team respects.
Age doesn’t have an impact at all on understanding social
Mindset required for social sellingIt isn’t just about social selling, but transforming your organisation to digital. We have the physical world that we all know and love, and we have the digital world. Social media is a conduit to the digital world. Your LinkedIn profile is you – it’s your digital twin. So the way that your LinkedIn profile looks is how you want the digital world to recognise you.
For example, at Cambridge Display Technology, they’re not using any recruitment consultants or recruitment advertising anymore. They have gone digital and empowered their people to talk online that it is a great place to work for. They articulate how great their diversity program is, or how well their ESG program unfolds. Those who read this on social say that it looks like a place I want to work for.
It the world of digital, social gives us new efficiency and new ways of working.
It’s not about tools, a new ERP system or anything like that. It’s about using digital is the way that we work, and that empowerment across the organisation means that we can work in different ways. We can strip out cost and be more efficient. What we would recommend is having an open mind and understand that there is a new digital way of doing things.
Businesses Navigating Their Way in the New Digital WorldWhen Adam Gray and I started our company six years ago, we thought we had eight months, at which point everybody would get it and it would become the norm. Here we are in our seventh year and 99.99% of companies do not understand this. There are companies who have got big marketing budgets and don’t understand digital.
There’s this misalignment from a leadership perspective to understand what social and digital stand for and what it means for their business.
To break away from this, it’s about likes and clicks and things like that. I recently read about an organisation who have got 300,000 employees. They’ve got 8 million followers on LinkedIn, but get 15 likes per post, out of which seven are internal. This clearly means they aren’t influencing their prospects and customers.
It’s about understanding the world of digital, the way it works and not just an understanding about social, but having the business acumen about how to apply it.
Things have changed because of Covid-19 and we need to do things differently. Organisations are coming to us as they are completely redesigning their processes which are 30 years old.
Social Selling Doesn’t Take LongLook at the speed of things – LinkedIn allows you to have 200 connections a week. That’s 200 conversations with people you’re trying to influence. Social selling actually shortens the sales cycle because of not having to deal with a lot up front. People will see you as soon you are online and have a conversation with you instantly.
We saw a real tipping point in October 2020 when people in the UK went into the second lockdown. We had to relearn the way we worked. I don’t need to commute anywhere, I can sit in my office or at home and run a normal day’s work.
The impediment to success on social and digital is that there are still so many mental models out there that 30 years ago is the way that we do things.
LinkedIn and its impact on social sellingIn the physical world, when we meet a potential client for a meal or sports, we don’t immediately talk about work. We try to get close to the person, and this is what being social is about. We don’t talk about business posts and personal posts. This is life posts. This is about understanding each other. It pulls people towards you. I know social selling, but also the fact that my father has dementia and he’s in a home allows you to know the real Tim Hughes – the Tim Hughes that you would deal with if he delivers a service to you.
What you’ll find is that LinkedIn will become more like Facebook, because more people will actually recognise the fact that by doing this you’re getting people to understand you
When you come to my LinkedIn profile, you should better understand what it is that I stand for. Your LinkedIn profile is your shop window to the world. It’s about as soon as your ideal customer spots you, he thinks you are interesting. He is curious about that and walks towards you. Your LinkedIn profile explains who you are, and it cannot merely be the fact that you go to work, but that you’re going to spend the next weekend seeing your parents. That’s part of me and who I am. People respect that and I get people coming to me which punches out my network, punches into the people that I’m trying to influence.
Social Selling Strategy: Social Media, Not Spam MediaSocial is not about putting a brochure online – neither your ideal customer nor anybody wants it. People buy people. I’m looking for a relationship with somebody. Someone that can help me solve my business issues and that I can trust. Somebody that I know that if the project starts failing and I ring them up, they’re going to take that call. Even if it’s a Saturday, I can look upon them that they’re an organisation I want to do business with.
Now, when I do business in the physical world, I don’t walk into a meeting and immediately give people brochures. I sit there and say, I’ve been working here for 20 years. I’ve been selling accounting systems for 20 years across industries. I generally know about some things about accounting, but there’s bound to be something I have missed.
It’s about bringing that expertise and also bringing your personality as people buy people. This is social media. This is not spam media.
It’s about empowering the people, that’s when things actually start happening and the magic takes place.
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Scaling a B2B start-up globally sounds nice, but how do you do this? To find out, I interviewed D.K. Lee, co-founder of Marqvision, a promising US start-up with operations in Korea and European presence in Paris, France. I spent some time with D.K. to understand his background, here is a written account of this fascinating discussion with a seasoned multicultural entrepreneur.
Marqvision’s D.K. Lee shares his secrets for scaling a B2B start-up globally in just two yearsD.K. Lee told us all about how to scale a B2B start-up in just two years. Replicating this for yourself might well be a challenge for many.How It All StartedD.K. Lee was born and raised in Seoul until he was 14 years old. Then he moved to Canada mainly to study English, and then spent his middle and high school years in Canada near Toronto.
Subsequently, he crossed the border and moved to Cornell to study management.
The founding of a B2B start-upRight after college D.K. (aka Do Kyung), joined EY where he was “fortunate enough to work with large corporations in Seoul like Samsung and LG and help them on digital transformation matters behind the scenes” he told us.
This is when he realised that “Digital transformation was actually happening within big companies, not just in Korea but all over the world”. He then joined a start-up, Seoul-based Dailyhotel, as chief of staff and investment manager.
In 2019, the company was sold to a larger business, Yanolja, with a $60-million valuation. Yanolja is, according to their LinkedIn page, the fastest-growing and No.1 travel platform and the only ‘Unicorn’ among travel-related companies in South Korea.
“That was my first exit experience,” D.K. told us. “Although I was not a founder, I was one of the older members of the company.”
He then went on to found Marqvision in 2020. He first met his co-founder in 2019. “We gradually built up our idea, worked on the prototype, and launched our project in the first quarter of 2020.”
Why found a company in the US?“The US provides a better foundation for entrepreneurs to scale their companies globally” D. K. Lee told Visionary Marketing. That’s only one of the reasons, though.
“I think it’s still the place where you find the best talents in the tech industry, whether it be engineers, product managers and the sales and marketing folks,” he added.
Recruitment is essential for my start-up to scale.
Marqvision isn’t located in Silicon Valley, though, but 400 miles south of San Jose, in Los Angeles. The reason being that entertainment and luxury goods companies are situated near the city of angels, not San Francisco nor the Valley.
If you can’t beat them, join them!Despite the reports we are having in Europe that Silicon Valley is going through a slump and the economic climate is rotten, it seems no other place on earth can beat California.
One distinct sign of this is that all other competing technology areas are rebranding themselves as XXX Silicon Something. Replace XXX with Berlin, Tel Aviv and “Something” with Roundabout for London or Sentier for Paris and you have it.
A vast majority of technological innovations are still coming from the United States, mostly from Silicon Valley
Off to a quick and great startMarqvision is off a great start and it happened in just two years. I’m still amazed at the speed at which such businesses grow. In this case it’s no miracle. The start-up did find the solution to a major business problem (See our story here)
D.K. thinks he’s “been lucky in many ways”. Having met a great co-founder and all the folks who worked with Marqvision.
Yet, the building and scaling of a start-up worldwide that fast can hardly be the result of luck alone. I asked D.K. how he’d done it so as to share his tips with our readers.
“In order to really scale your start-up globally, especially if you’re in the B2B space, you need to meet your customers face to face
“That’s the only way to get a vivid, and real feedback about your product, about your solution, about your service,” he said.
That’s a clear warning to all these would-be entrepreneurs I’ve seen who are afraid to share their thoughts with you in the early stage of building their business.
“And that’s the only way to continuously enhance your product to the next level,” he added. In order to do that, your team must sit by your side to meet with your client.”
And the result is staggering. In just two years, Marqvision was able to operate in five different offices across the world.
Winning a Prestigious LVMH AwardMarqvision’s success didn’t pass unnoticed. LVMH awarded the US start-up the prize for innovation in the data and AI category whereas “more than a 1,000 companies had applied for this prestigious award”.
“We were fortunate and honoured to have won the LVMH Innovation Award in the data & AI category” DK Lee (second on the right) declared. LVMH’s Arnaud in fifth from the left. [LVMH 2022 website]Joining the LVMH acceleration programme“Following the award, we joined La maison des start-ups,” D.K. Lee added, “a start-up acceleration programme offered by LVMH group.”
This is why Marqvision is also based in Paris’s Station F. “We have our Paris office over there until next year,” he told us.
Multicultural management in a B2B Start-up“I love working with French people,” D.K. told us, “I love the breadth and depth of their experience and what they brought to the company in the field of the luxury industry.”
Admittedly, there are some language issues he confided, but “we have a great product manager who is acting as an ombudsman between the locals and the rest of the team in Seoul and the US”.
The sheer distance and time difference between all three continents are also an issue he admitted. “Working remotely is an inevitable trend moving forward,” he added, “but we should not deny all the benefits coming from working together side by side and in a nice office.”
Hence the organisation of all hands meetings to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Working from Home or in the Office?I know some people might find it ironic that large businesses are moving forward with WFH policies and start-ups are pushing back on that same issue. It is perfectly understandable, however.
Big companies are more suited for remote working, I strongly believe that working together side by side for smaller start-ups is a much better way to build a stronger foundation early on
There is no doubt that collaboration tools have brought a great deal to modern management techniques and we, at Visionary Marketing, are using them on a daily basis.
However, D.K. has a valid point when he says, “all those tools are just a means to an end, and the end is actually the gathering of people. We could do that in person at a physical site, or we could do that through a gym or an audio conference. But I think one should know that it’s actually important for all people to get together.”
Marqvision even invited, a month ago, all its leaders from the US (East and West Coast) and Paris to their Seoul office. “So they could meet with our engineers, analysts and back-office employees. We had a great time, for just about a week. We had nice dinners and that was a great way to boost our morale.”
Scaling a start-up isn’t just about working hard. It’s also about keeping the old team spirit alive across all time zones.
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Blockchain technology is transforming the supply chain with limitless potential. It’s strengthening connections, making them more secure and transparent. Therefore, it’s a gateway for consumers to hold their favorite brands … Read on
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The media tends to focus on catchy and digestible stories for readers, which leads to disproportionate coverage of B2B vs B2C, namely in the high-tech sector. To find out why, … Read on
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A sound CRM system is a must-have in business-to-business sales. Which doesn’t mean it’s uniformly accepted by salespeople, who still tend to find it too unwieldy and useless. For good measure, … Read on
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The sharing economy, the circular economy, and the collaborative economy offer interesting prospects in B2B marketing, explains Navi Radjou in a video interview conducted at the Visionary Marketing Studio. Thanks … Read on
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At a time when Facebook was renamed as Meta, the so-called Metaverse (check Merriam Webster’s definition) is on everybody’s lips. Whereas experts are still wondering whether there is such a … Read on
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Marketers should strive to know their B2B customers better. As implausible as it may sound, since it’s the essence of their job, B2B marketers may not always have a clear … Read on
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Even though he shies away from saying he coined the term social selling, i.e. the use of social media as a value-adding platform for salespeople, Koka Sexton was indeed one of … Read on
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Digital Marketing isn’t just for consumer marketing, B2B can greatly benefit from it. That is to say, provided you understand how it works beforehand. A friend of mine is working in … Read on
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LinkedIn is aiming at keeping its users happy. In terms of Social Media, Facebook springs to mind with its 850 million users and growing every day. Yet, there is another social … Read on
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As I have witnessed time and time again, it is customary to say that B2C is more adapted to the use of social media than B2B. As matter of fact, … Read on
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What if B2B were the future of social media? Time and time again, I have heard people say that B2C is better suited to social media than B2B. As a … Read on
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