Much has been said about the Hubspot Buyer’s Journey Simply stated, the buyer’s journey is the process that a buyer goes through in making a decision to buy. Hubspot’s definition: The buyer’s journey describes a buyer’s path to purchase. In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service.
There are 3 stages in the Hubspot Buyer’s Journey:
Awareness Stage: buyers become aware they have a problem.
Consideration Stage: The buyer defines the problem and considers options to fix it.
Decision Stage: buyer evaluates and decides on the right provider to administer the solution.
Here is an example of a buyer’s experience that I had:
Awareness: I value my sleep, but some nights I sleep better than others. What can I do to fix that?
Consideration: What are some different things I can do to improve my sleep? Eat earlier? Ensure I exercise daily? Have a glass of wine in the evenings? Have 2 glasses of wine? Maybe I shouldn’t have wine at all? Wow, what can I do to know what works and what doesn’t? I think the first step is to find something that can give me some data to help me! I don’t particularly like wearing a watch, but there are watches that can monitor my sleep with data.
Decision: Given my phone has everything I need on it, and I don’t like wearing accessories, my decision is based on finding the simplest watch that has the app that best tracks my sleep. I landed on a simple version of the Apple Watch.
What a great framework for a B to C marketing professional to align with in order to sell more to their target persona!
Leveraging the buyer’s journey for a B to B services decision is a bit more complicated. Decisions in this environment are more complex, involve more decision-makers, and are typically long-term engagements.
Then how can a B to B services organization leverage the buyer’s journey decision-making psychology? Ideal Client Experience is the perfect framework.
The rest of this blog will take a look at how an Ideal Client Experience is an effective framework to manage decisions that:
Involve multiple Stakeholders
Are more complex
Are typically long-term decisions with the opportunity to expand the services.
Before we do that, let’s remember one fundamental difference in B2B organizations and that is that there is a significantly higher investment in sales than there is in a B2C organization. In B2B, marketing is fundamental to the Awareness stage, but then the sales reps do the heavy lifting from there. On the other hand, despite arguably retail, sales reps do not even exist in many B2C organizations.
Multiple Stakeholders
The fact that there are multiple stakeholders means that there are multiple people going through their own buyer’s journey. A properly crafted Ideal Client Experience includes strategies to engage and leverage the buyer’s journey for all stakeholders involved in a decision given the nature of the service.
For example, a decision for a CRM typically involves sales and marketing or at least it should be given there ought to be alignment and visibility between sales and marketing. That said, it would never be implemented without a “yes” from IT and finance.
Given this decision is typically initiated by sales or marketing, the primary message is typically crafted around their goals and challenges. However the Ideal Client Experience needs to include strategies to engage with all of the key stakeholders and help them navigate their buyer’s journey.
More Complex Decisions
In addition to including multiple stakeholders, B to B services decisions are much more complex, especially when the business has a strong value proposition. The challenges that are addressed are typically much more comprehensive and complicated.
Structuring the part of the Ideal Client Experience that aligns with the Consideration and Decision stages of the buyer’s journey ensures that:
The impact of all challenges are explored in the needs assessment phase.
The business outcomes are properly communicated in the proposal phase.
The Assessment part of the Ideal Client Experience should be highly structured with an objective process to show how these 3 outcomes are being affected by the current situation. Then, the proposal should clearly state how the future vision/proposal will impact these outcomes.
Having a repeatable, objective process inside of the Ideal Client Experience helps make a complex decision simple by connecting the complexity to the business outcomes.
Expanding Services
B2C decisions typically have more limited opportunities to create future revenue streams. I also suppose items with consumables (water filters) are somewhat of an exception. I assume my Apple Watch decision might lead to additional Apple products, but the opportunity for future revenue in services organizations can be HUGE. This part of the Ideal Client Experience goes beyond the traditional buyer’s journey as we know it.
For a B2B services organization, the signing of the initial contract is just the beginning from 2 perspectives:
Onboarding – The need to create a very positive initial experience to manage change in the client organization and offset buyer’s remorse.
Client Success – The opportunity to increase value for the client by expanding/cross-selling services.
So, the Ideal Client Experience needs to be structured to ensure a smooth transition and position the business to expand services.
Onboarding
As Joey Coleman says, “Buyers decide in the first 100 days whether they will continue to do business with you or not.” Treating the onboarding process distinctly different from the process to deliver ongoing services is critical to the success of a services engagement. A change management strategy is critical in turning client satisfaction in this stage into long-term client loyalty.
Client Success
With many organizations, when the contract is signed, the client is turned over to operations while the sales reps turn their focus to finding more clients. No matter how good an organization is from an operational perspective, the possibility for expansion of services is limited.
Both sales and operations are critical in this stage to expand services to drive revenue growth. Integrated into this stage must be a framework for:
Staying connected with the client’s business, their goals, and their challenges.
Reinforcing the value being delivered in the current engagement.
Creating additional value for the client via expanding services.
In the end, Ideal Client Experience is a fantastic framework to leverage the buyer’s journey for differentiating, driving additional client value, and increasing revenue.
Series: How To Make Revenue Growth Predictable In Uncertain Times Part 1 Part 2
When entering a time of economic uncertainty, consistent revenue is critical. While one might be happy with keeping revenue flat and “hold our own” during tough economic times, the reality is that a business is either growing or dying. Thus, in a challenging market it is critical to continue to focus on the mindset, strategies, and activities that drive predictable revenue growth.
So far we have explored two strategies to make revenue growth predictable: focusing your message on ideal clients and aligning marketing, sales, and operations around the client experience. Today we turn our focus to process.
A process is a series of steps to create a predictable outcome.
Smart businesses run on processes. There are processes for hiring, invoicing, production, shipping, and support. Without processes a business would operate inefficiently, unpredictably, and unsustainably.
Now, let’s consider sales and marketing. What processes are in place for these teams?
For many businesses sales and marketing are the wild west. There is no process.
Salespeople are hired based on their experience or their book of business. The goal is to look for experienced salespeople rather than taking a risk on a new salesperson because these tenured reps “know what they are doing.” These gunslingers get sent out to the territory, each doing their own thing. Out of desperation, many cobble together their own sales tools to help support the talk tracks they have developed. It’s no wonder that Blender research that revealed 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.
Marketing doesn’t get a pass on this either. Jennifer Zick sums it up when she says that most companies do “random acts of marketing.” This spray-and-pray approach leads to sporadic activities and inconsistent results.
What’s missing here?
Sales and marketing need to take a cue from other parts of the business: processes create predictability.
Processes need to become usable Client Experience Playbooks that can be used by everyone on the marketing and sales team to drive consistent actions and create predictable revenue.
What Are Client Experience Playbooks?
Client Experience Playbooks present step-by-step processes that integrate sales, marketing, and operations, creating a consistent client experience that drives predictable revenue growth.
Client Experience Playbooks are anchored around the stages of the client experience, keeping the focus on the prospect and client.
Client Experience Playbooks integrate sales, marketing, and operations. This helps reduce the silo effect of these teams doing their own thing. Instead, the playbooks help these functions work together to drive net-new and cross-sell revenue.
Client Experience Playbooks go beyond process. They describe what great looks like. They give context for where the buyer is in their journey. They provide insight into what multiple decision makers and influencers might be thinking. They provide tools and content to support the client experience. They can even include small bites of training.
The goal is to get everyone working together in a consistent way to drive revenue at every stage of the client experience.
How Do Client Experience Playbooks Help Make Revenue Predictable?
There are many ways Client Experience Playbooks can make revenue more predictable in uncertain times. Here are five.
1. Consistent Execution
Client Experience Playbooks provide a baseline for consistent execution across every stage of the client experience. From a prospect’s first engagement with your company through the buying cycle to their ongoing enjoyment of your services, Client Experience Playbooks create consistent execution. At a most basic level, they create activity. On its own, activity helps spur sales. However, it goes far beyond activity to create consistent execution across your marketing, sales, and operations teams.
2. Increased Cross-Sell
Let’s be honest, most companies struggle with consistently cross-selling or up-selling additional products and services to their clients. This continually frustrates owners and executives who believe that they should be able to sell related products and services to their customer base. The challenge is that most companies do not have a process for cross-selling. Marketing creates leads, sales land deals, and then things get handed off to operations or customer success. At that point, the selling ceases. Client Experience Playbooks solve this problem by creating integrated processes to ensure that there is an ongoing progression of value provided to current customers that motivates them to buy more things from your company.
3. More Effective Rep Coaching
Data presented by Spotio showed firms where salespeople use the company’s methodology and get consistent coaching see 73% quota attainment. Every high performance athlete has a coach. High performance sales professionals need coaching as well. However, without a process in place, coaching becomes subjective. With Client Experience Playbooks in place, leaders can coach sales reps in the execution of the plays. Much like a sports team coach would help players learn and execute the plays, sales leaders can help reps do the same.
4. Streamlined Onboarding
In today’s highly competitive job market with increased rates of turnover it is more important than ever to create an effective onboarding process. Sure, you can show new employees where the coffee pot is, how to sign up for benefits, and where to find the employee handbook. You can take them on a tour of your office to meet everyone. Can you show a new employee how the company serves prospects and employees? Client Experience Playbooks give an end-to-end picture of the company’s client experience. The new employee gets a full picture of how things work. Whether they are in marketing, sales, operations, or finance, they can see the way that everyone interacts with prospects and clients giving the new employee context for their role.
5. Continual Improvement
In Traction, Gino Wickman makes a powerful point that you can improve a process that is not documented. With “wild-west” sales and marketing, nothing is documented making improvement impossible. With Client Experience Playbooks in place for each stage of your client experience you have a baseline. You can then test new processes, tools, and content to see if there could be a better way. This leads to continual improvement. Small, incremental improvements in key ratios like lead-to-appointment or proposal-to-close can create massive revenue increases. These incremental improvements become possible when you have playbooks in place.
Creating predictable revenue growth in unpredictable times requires you to manage things you can control. You cannot control the economy. You cannot control your prospects or clients. You can control your message, ensuring it is focused on the current outcomes your prospects and clients want. You can control your client experience. And, you can control your execution by creating Client Experience Playbooks. Together, these initiatives help ensure your revenue stays as predictable as possible when everything around you seems uncertain.
Growth Architect and author of Revenue Growth Engine, helping companies align sales and marketing to grow revenue faster.
When times get tough, it can be tempting to look for revenue anywhere you can find it. As one of my first sales managers used to say, “If they can fog a mirror and sign an order, we’ll take it.”
The reality is that not all revenue is created equal. And, as I say in my own business, “Not all clients are created equally.” There are some clients who provide more value than others. In this current environment, it is more important than ever to focus on “ideal clients.”
What is an ideal client? These are clients who need everything you sell. They have value because they are candidates for all of your products and/or services. They have to fit because they align with your culture. Ideal clients are especially important when:
You have limited marketing and sales resources.
Unless you are a major company, chances are you have limited sales and marketing resources. If you try to market and sell to everyone, you will end up reaching no one. Understanding your ideal client profile allows you to focus your business development efforts on a specific group of prospects. You might tell your sales team, “You can sell to anyone, but 100% of the time you will call on these ideal prospects.”
With ideal clients, business development also takes on an additional dimension. Since these clients need everything you offer, the marketing and selling don’t stop when the first order comes in. In fact, selling and marketing begin with the first order. Focusing your business on ideal clients allows you to direct marketing and sales resources to harvest the additional revenue opportunities in these accounts.
You have limited operational resources.
The combination of the current supply chain crisis and the tight labor market clearly demonstrate that even the best companies have limited operational resources. In this environment where we are acutely aware of limitations, it makes sense to focus resources on serving the type of clients who have the most revenue potential.
The old adage, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” tends to be true in daily operations. The reality is that many of the squeaky wheels tend to be nonideal clients. As a result, many times it’s your nonideal clients who end up getting most of your team’s effort. At the same time, morale suffers. Resources get diverted away from ideal clients and you miss the opportunity to maximize revenue and retention of ideal clients.
In the book At Your Best, author Carey Nieuwhof explained how leaders can fall into the trap of spending their best time on fire drills and challenging employees rather than proactively investing in their top leaders. But we need to intentionally schedule time with our top leaders because this is what will drive the organization forward.
Similarly, it can be easy to let the team’s resources get diverted toward challenging clients who are not ideal for your business, thus causing you to neglect ideal clients. But your ideal clients are ideal because they are likely easy to work with. That means you need to intentionally invest time and resources in them, even if they are not being the squeaky wheel.
You have limited financial resources.
Revenue is the lifeblood of business. I conduct revenue growth workshops with businesses across multiple industries, and I have consistently seen that ideal clients have significantly more revenue potential. Plus, ideal clients will be those customers who are more loyal, value what you do for them and see you as less of a vendor and more of a partner. That means they have a much greater chance of sticking around. If you need more revenue, I believe ideal clients provide the most sustainable path. Since they value what you do, they tend to pose fewer problems.
Focus on ideal clients.
Now, more than ever, smart businesses focus on ideal clients. This begins by understanding your ideal client profile. Next, identify the current and prospective clients who fit the profile. This allows you to focus your sales, marketing and operations efforts around attracting ideal clients and cross-selling all of your products and services to them to maximize revenue potential.
Every growing business needs a stream of leads from ideal prospects. One way to create leads is with lead magnets.
A lead magnet is information of value to a prospect that captures their attention and motivates them to exchange contact information.
In Revenue Growth Engine I highlight the problem of the filter. In today’s world, buyers are subjected to thousands of messages each day. Advertisements, email, and social platforms all compete for attention. We have adapted (survived!) by filtering out everything except for one thing: ideas that are valuable to us.
The only thing that gets through the filter are ideas that are related to the outcomes we want to achieve. These can include ideas and answers related goals we have or problems we want solved.
A Lead Magnet Example: My Trek To Mount Everest Base Camp
For example, I am currently training to go on a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp. This has opened up a long list of questions for me:
– What kind of jacket do I need to buy?
– What do I need to do to train?
– How can I avoid mountain sickness?
All of these questions and more are on my radar. As I go about my day, I successfully filter out thousands of messages. But as you can guess, an email that comes in about “The 10 Best Jackets for Severe Mountain Environments” or a social post about “How To Train to Hike at Elevation” will catch my eye. Furthermore, I’m spending time on Google almost every day searching for answers to these questions.
Let’s consider my concerns about training to hike at 18,500 feet. You’ve probably heard of “The couch to 5K.” I needed to do a dad-bod-office-jockey to 18.5K mountain man in less than 120 days. The outcome that I want is to get to Mount Everest Base Camp without the Sherpas having to call a helicopter in because I can’t keep up. I want to avoid being injured. At a more emotional level, I want to avoid being embarrassed in the eyes of my family, friends, and colleagues who know I’m going on this trek.
When it comes to solutions to my problem there are plenty of companies offering personal training, diet plans, and supplements. A smart company understands my real need isn’t for these products. My radar is attuned to ideas that will help me achieve my outcome of successfully getting to my mountain destination without embarrassing or hurting myself!
A smart company creates a lead magnet that captures my attention by addressing the outcomes I want. While looking for answers to my dilemma, I found a guide titled something like this: “How New Hikers Can Train For a Mountain Trek At High Elevation—Without Getting Hurt or Embarrassing Themselves.”
I saw this on the web during one of my searches. In exchange for my email address, they sent the lead magnet to me. Of course, the company that offered the advice also sells personal training plans, diet plans, and supplements. Since downloading the report they have made these offers to me by email. I also recognize their offers through retargeting ads that I see in Google ads, social ads, and YouTube ads. It’s not surprising that I reached out for a consultation with their trainer.
Characteristics of an Effective Lead Magnet
How can this apply to your business? Here are a few key characteristics of an effective lead magnet.
1. Must be related to the outcomes your prospects want
The lead magnet needs to be focused on the specific goals your prospect have and/or the problems they encounter hitting these goals. Information about anything else simply will not get through their filter.
How do you find out what’s important to your prospects? Pay attention. Listen to your best clients. Watch the trends of the economy and the industry you serve. Change is the one constant in our world. Any time there is change, there are problems. Focus your lead magnets on these types of topics.
Pay specific attention to the title or headline of your lead magnet. Be focused and specific. This is what will capture the prospect’s attention.
2. Must be useful enough for the prospect to give you contact information
The information needs to be useful enough for the prospect to give you contact information. You don’t have to give away a book. (Although, this is exactly what we do. You can get a free copy of Revenue Growth Engine by clicking here.) You do need to give away something substantial enough for someone to give you their contact information. This could be a special report, an ebook, a webinar recording, or an online course.
Remember, your offer may be free but in the eyes of the prospect it is not completely free. You are asking the prospect to give their contact information and a piece of their privacy in exchange for the information. This contact information has value to both you and the prospect. It’s important to remember this when you are creating your offer.
Fortunately, these days prospects know they can unsubscribe from email lists. While this has confounded many marketers, I think it actually helps boost conversion rates when someone knows that they can opt out if they get hammered by emails after filling out a form.
What Lead Magnets Could You Create?
Lead magnets can be used in all of your top-of-funnel activities. They can become calls-to-action on your website and blog. They can be served up in paid advertising to targeted audiences on Google and social platforms. They can be shared by salespeople.
To get started, think of the top 5 goals and/or challenges your clients face. (If you don’t know, ask!) Then begin brainstorming titles for content that answers those questions. This creates a menu of ideas from which you can build special reports, guides, webinars, live streams, checklists, and all types of lead magnets that will break through your prospects’ filters and generate leads.
Part of what we do at Convergo is help companies create a Focused Message Plan. This is a strategic approach to understanding the desired outcomes of each decision maker and influencer in your Ideal Prospects. This helps ensure that your company has helpful and relevant information to not only create leads but guide buyers through the entire journey of becoming a 100% sold client.
To learn more about how Convergo could help you create a Focused Message Plan and effective Lead Magnets schedule your complimentary explore meeting.
Leads are the lifeblood of revenue growth. One of the most frequent questions we get asked is, “What is the best source of leads?” This is often followed up with questions about whether “new” digital lead channels are better or whether it is better to be more traditional. (A lead channel is simply a predictable and measurable source of leads for your business.)
Defining Digital and Traditional
First, let’s define digital and traditional lead channels. From a marketing perspective this is primarily a question about media. Traditional media includes things like newspapers, magazines, television, yellow pages, and direct mail. Digital media includes media like search engines, websites, social media platforms, video platforms, webinars, live streams, and email.
In a sales context, digital versus traditional questions usually are a question of both contact research and communication platforms. Traditional sales methods for contact research were literal phone books, membership lists, networking groups, and referrals. Communication platforms included the phone, face-to-face prospecting, trade shows, and direct mail. Digital research about contacts includes online research, data providers, and social networks. Digital communication platforms include email, SMS, video, social inboxes, and social media interaction.
Which Is Better?
While traveling to visit clients, at dinner time our Integrator, Bill Poole (a renowned foodie) will often present me with a choice of two restaurants. When he asks me which I prefer, my favorite answer is, “Yes!” I’m usually confident that both choices will result in a good meal. Similarly, digital and traditional lead channels offer viable sources of leads. Let’s explore the benefits of each.
The Case For Digital
1. Focus
Digital lead sources allow you to tightly focus on a specific group. For example, where a television ad on your local nightly news would reach a broad audience a video on Facebook can be targeted to a specific group of prospects that meet your ideal client experience. Where a traditional salesperson might go door-to-door field prospecting or bang through a phone list trying to find a lead, digital sales efforts give salespeople tools to direct their efforts to target accounts and the core decision makers in these accounts.
2. Attention
It’s no secret that all of us spend way more time on our phones and computers than we do engaging with traditional media. If you want to capture attention you need to go where people are paying attention. Years ago we passed the time reading the newspaper, flipping through magazines, and watching network television shows. Now we scroll social media, read the news online, and watch videos on YouTube or TikTok. Before you say, “My buyers aren’t doing this,” I challenge you to look at the data. These days even the elderly have attention-grabbing phones and computers in front of their faces. If you want to capture attention, go where the attention is.
3. Scorecard Data
Digital lead sources provide rich (sometimes overwhelming) scorecard data. This allows you to see what is working and what isn’t, enabling you to adjust your strategy.
4. Education
Traditional lead sources only give you a limited opportunity to educate prospects. Digital sources include the magical power of hyperlinks, allowing you to guide prospects through a deep-dive journey of discovery.
5. Intelligence
Many digital sources allow you to trace the prospect’s journey through your emails and ads to your website. By tracking what information they have consumed the lead becomes enhanced with intelligence that helps make the initial conversation more effective.
The Case For Traditional
1. Proximity
My coach, Dave Sanderson, likes to remind me that “proximity is power.” There is something incredibly valuable about being close to your prospects. In-person prospecting and face-to-face interactions at conferences (look for me and the Convergo team at the upcoming EOS Conference) are incredibly valuable. Being there in person or talking on the phone lets us develop relationships and see opportunities to help in ways we can’t when we’re only in a digital format.
2. Novelty
Many marketing and sales teams have turned their focus to digital, giving up on traditional methods. Things like direct mail are beginning to see a resurgence in some industries as email inboxes become more cluttered than physical mailboxes. While field prospecting became extinct during the COVID crisis, my guess is that this will reemerge as a viable lead source for many industries in the years to come.
3. Risk Reduction
If you want to catch fish it is better to have multiple lines in the water. While many companies depend heavily on digital lead channels, there is wisdom in having analog channels as well. In many ways the digital world is still the Wild West. Things continue to change. Having all of your leads coming from a digital source could be damaging if that source dries up. Mixing in some traditional lead channels helps reduce that risk.
A Hybrid Approach
The word of the year in 2022 just might be “hybrid.” With hybrid word environments we are becoming accustomed to living in both a traditional and digital workplace. While this new way of work brings complexity, it also comes with some benefits.
Leads are no different. Most businesses need a hybrid approach that combines new communication platforms with traditional approaches.
The problem is that all of this brings complexity. How do you navigate complexity?
How To Navigate Complexity with Playbooks
The way you navigate complexity is with plans and playbooks. Your Revenue Growth Plan identifies your Ideal Clients and the key decision makers and influencers. Your Client Experience Playbooks define the marketing and sales tactics you will use at each stage of the Client Experience, especially the first stage of awareness where leads are created.
A good Client Experience Playbook includes the marketing and sales process, the message, and the people involved at each stage of the Client Experience. Your playbook should include a hybrid blend of digital and traditional lead channels that fits best with the buyers you are going after. By defining the playbook for lead sources you can keep your marketing and sales efforts focused. You can also measure the effectiveness of lead sources.
Feeling lost navigating your marketing organization? Check out the Marketing Navigational chart from our friends at Rocket Clicks.
When it comes to sales and marketing alignment, the focus is on ensuring that both departments tell the same company story. Because these two teams have the greatest influence over disseminating that story, there must be cohesiveness between the marketing and sales messaging.
Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Messaging
At a first glance, a company story might not seem like a direct contributor to your bottom line. However, a well-crafted story can be the difference between a company that gets by and one that bulldozes through all its quarterly quotas.
Relatability
Crafting a deliberate message plays a crucial role in ensuring cohesiveness. A story might not initially seem like an important part of marketing, but consumers value relatability when purchasing products. Good stories are complete. This reduces the risk of people filling in the blanks with varying details. Good stories also hone in on core values, such as family values, the value of hard work and the importance of integrity.
Build Trust
Consumer trust is at an all-time low in America. Variations in sales messaging can worsen this on an individual level, so it’s important to ensure all company information is accurate, up-to-date and reflects the same details. The salespeople that consumers meet in person should also relay the same information. Here’s Darrell Amy talking about building trust through messaging:
Relevance
Buyers don’t just buy products and services; they are investing in the outcomes these products and services claim to provide. Cohesive messaging sets realistic expectations based on relevant information that buyers can use to quickly make informed decisions. This is sometimes less about the details and more about how the information is framed.
Onboarding
Human resources professionals share marketing and sales messaging internally and this process begins with recruitment and then onboarding. Having one story that aligns across departments ensures that new workers get the correct information from the start. This significantly reduces the risk of misrepresentation, factual errors and poor phrasing.
How To Ensure Clarity in Your Messaging
Some business owners have mastered the art of storytelling and it lies at the foundation of why they started their businesses and how they have achieved remarkable success. Clear sales messaging requires a detailed review of the company history, products, services and achievements. It also requires collaboration across multiple departments. Consequently, for most business owners, hiring professionals to ensure sales and marketing alignment can go a long way.
Our professionals at Convergo have worked tirelessly to highlight the best of all that our clients have to offer. We partner with managers as sales and marketing professionals to perfect the marketing and sales messaging and boost sales. Reach out to our team to get started today.
