The marketing world is still trying to adapt to the fluid global B2B impacts and find solutions.
Two recent reports including the MDM 2020 Top Distributor Report and the Demand Gen Report’s 2020 Content Preferences Study point to significant changes including a longer sales process.
In the final blog of this series, your understanding of the new changes and requirements should be obvious. The sales process has expanded, in some cases significantly.
More diverse and larger buyer committee members, more demanding content, more advertising and reviews all mean one thing…a longer sales process. What does this mean? It means that if you don’t adapt to the time it requires to address the new concerns of your client, your sales process might be very short, as in no thanks, not interested.
On the other hand, if your proactive and make each piece of the sales flywheel more efficient you could actually control the time and money spent. Let’s examine a few ways to deal with this.
If you got more time, then so be it, use it to improve your sales process such as: Could your sales team spend more time getting more leads while waiting? Can you install a chatbot to shorten the wait for customers to find relevant content on your web site? Maybe a few extra minutes speaking to your engineers to find improvements to the products or production of them.
There is always a better solution, a better process, a better routine. Dig deep and use this extra time to shorten the new found time. How does your content and format improvements match up to the longer sales elements? Now you have more time for feedback and follow up. Maybe now you have a chance to run A/B testing on your email campaigns?
Remember the reason for the longer sales process comes down to the time to justify the purchase from a larger buyer audience. So, provide the business case for your clients so they can shorten the sales process. Be quick and available to step in when the sales process stops and find ways to keep things moving. In safety I used to call it pausing the job, not stopping it…because in reality that’s what I was doing, and it gave the connotation that safety was helping not delaying.
Use all available communications to keep delays to a minimum, instead of a call, use zoom meeting with screen capture to quickly answer a question. Encourage recording on both ends so that the summary and questions raised can be reviewed and completed. Even better is to have your team of experts in a web meeting to answer their team at the same time. With digital solutions and mobile devices, you can have worldwide members present to address questions.
Seek out time saving solutions such as software or writing more diverse blogs for lead gen. Don’t’ make your sales flywheel wait for anything or anyone, bring forth time through efficiency. One way to be efficient is to ask the right people the right questions at the right time, now is good.
Email me now for your free consultation to discuss your B2B Industrial Safety Marketing flywheel solutions.
And to help you with your extra free time, I encourage your comments on our B2B Industrial Safety Blogs to provide you relevant content based on your review.
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Thank you from your B2B Industrial Safety Copywriter!
Bryan Popowich
