Innovate to win: transform your approach to B2B sales and marketing
The B2B buying journey has changed. Yet, the question remains: has your sales and marketing too? Despite more tools, software, and data at our fingertips, generating inbounds is harder than ever. Outdated practices and the convenience of automation tools have led to a deluge of impersonal outreach attempts.
But perhaps the biggest pitfall is focusing solely on the small percentage of prospects ready to make an immediate purchase.
Only 3% of your target market is ready to buy at any given time.
This means the vast majority are at different stages of their buying journey. Many don’t even recognise they have a problem yet—let alone a need for your solution. By only targeting those ready to buy now, you overlook the potential to nurture and convert the rest over time.
B2B sales and marketing requires a nuanced approach, connecting with the right message at just the right moment to ensure a more consistent and predictable pipeline.
Let’s get into it.👇
Sales and marketing is hard
You can’t deny it. Despite all the tools, software, and data available, sales and marketing is much harder now than it was even just two years ago. Everyone's inbox, Slack groups, and Teams channels are overflowing—drowning out personalised approaches.
Automation tools make it easy for anyone to blast out 1000 “Quick Question” messages a day. Each containing some variation of the following:
"Hi Kerry, I just need a moment of your time..."
"Could you direct me to..."
"Who handles the (recruitment, marketing, contract) decisions at your company..."
I don't blame them. After all, I know that if you give someone a quick and easy question to answer, they're more likely to respond. I also know that salespeople love to follow a scripted path. However, smart sales and marketing strategists have moved on.
Here's the thing, if you're doing what everyone else is doing (even if it has a proven success record) you will be ignored. If everyone has a quick question for me, then answering isn’t quick.
We need to get smarter. We need to be original, and decidedly unique.
Think about it. Every cold outreach you’ve ever given 15 minutes of your time to was probably because they were memorable. You didn't feel like a tally number on a CRM. Instead, they demonstrated how they could add value to your business in a way that others couldn't.
It may not always get a meeting, but it will always cut through the clutter. There’s no shortage of tricks to get someone's attention. But the best trick of all is to stop using tricks that everyone else is using and carve your own path.
Are you targeting the 97%?
As we already touched on, the problem is, most B2B businesses fixate on the 3% of prospects who are ready to buy right now.
But consider this:
↳ 60% of your market are unaware of the problem and your solution.
↳ 30% are seeking change but need education.
↳ 7% are researching and comparing options.
These are people at various stages of the buying journey, not just the ready-to-buy 3%. While you’re focusing on the 3%, the 97% are still watching. They’re educating themselves, learning about pain points, and starting to trust the experts.
Slowly, that 97% turns into the 3%.
If you haven’t invested in reaching them, you’ll miss out. Because someone else is grabbing their attention, educating them, and being a valuable resource to them.
So how do you create consistent, and sustainable demand that enables you to accurately forecast each quarter’s revenue?
The new model?
You need to cater to each stage:
👋 Build awareness of the problem and need for change with the 60%
📘 Educate and inform the 30%
💎 Offer value and build trust with the 7%
🎯 Be the go-to option to close the 3%
How?
↳ Create content that resonates with each group.
↳ Get people in your network and communities.
↳ Build trust over months, even years.
↳ Use signal-based selling to nudge prospects when they're ready to buy.
Strategies for nurturing and converting B2B leads
To win in the modern B2B buying journey, businesses must take a new approach. This involves creating tailored content, leveraging networks, building trust, and using signal-based selling.
Here’s how:
1. Create content that resonates
Content is the foundation of any effective B2B marketing strategy. But to resonate with each segment of your target market, you need to understand their unique challenges, pain points, and questions.
This means:
😎For the unaware (60%): Create content that highlights common problems your product or service solves, without making a hard sell. Educational blog posts, infographics, and short videos can be effective in raising awareness.
🤔For the curious (30%): Provide more detailed guides, webinars, and case studies that educate on the size of the problem and the solutions available. This content should help them understand the benefits of change and how to achieve it.
🧐For the comparers (7%): Offer comparisons, detailed product information, and testimonials that help them make an informed decision between options.
🥰For the decision-makers (3%): Use bottom-of-the-funnel content, ABM content, and targeted offers to give them the final push towards a purchase.
2. Engage with your network and communities
Building a presence where your prospects spend their time is essential. This could be on LinkedIn, industry forums, or at conferences and events. Only 2% of LinkedIn members regularly share and engage on LinkedIn.
In fact, businesses like Refine Labs whose leaders consistently share and engage on LinkedIn say 44% of their revenue comes directly from that channel.
👏I mean can we just appreciate that stat for a minute? 👏
The opportunity is HUGE. And it's largely untapped too—unlike Google search.
Other engagement strategies include:
Participating in discussions and providing valuable insights.
Hosting or joining webinars and online forums to share expertise.
Collaborating with industry influencers or partners to extend your reach.
3. Build trust over time
Trust is earned through consistent, reliable interactions over time. One way to achieve this? Regularly providing content that educates, informs, or entertains. This could be through blogs, ebooks, LinkedIn newsletters, webinars, or email.
The key is to ensure your content is genuinely useful and relevant to your audience's needs and meets them where they’re at. By becoming a reliable source of valuable information, you position your brand as an industry leader and a trusted advisor.
4. Use signal-based selling
Signal-based selling is about paying attention to various hints or "signals" that potential customers give, indicating they might be ready to make a purchase. These signals can come from how they interact with your website, emails, or social media, such as what they look at, download, or how they engage with your content.
For example, if someone downloads a buying guide from your website, that's a signal they're thinking about buying something. If they attend a webinar on a specific topic, that's a signal they want to learn more about it.
Once you've collected these signals, you use them to reach out in a personalised way. This means sending them information, offers, or assistance that's relevant to what they've shown interest in. It's about making your sales approach more targeted and timely, based on the actual behaviour and interest of the potential customer, rather than just sending the same message to everyone.
The goal of signal-based selling is to make your outreach as relevant and helpful as possible, increasing the chances that the potential customer will want to buy from you.
Bottom line: These strategies require patience and dedication. However, the payoff is a more engaged, informed, and trusting customer base, ready to move forward when the time is right. Remember, the goal is not just to sell, but to be a valued partner on your customer's journey.
Winning in the new era of B2B sales and marketing
It’s fair to say B2B sales and marketing have radically changed, driven by changes in buyer behaviour, technological advancements, and the need for a more personalised approach.
As we move forward, the key to success in B2B sales and marketing lies in our ability to adapt, innovate, and genuinely connect with our audience. By focusing on creating value, building trust, and leveraging insights to meet buyers where they are, we can navigate the complexities of the modern buying journey and achieve sustainable growth.
If this is something that rings true for you and you want to make the shift to the way B2B buyers buy today, then say hello. We’d genuinely love to hear from you.