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It’s now commonly accepted that the majority of today’s B2B buying process is completed before vendors are even aware that there is an opportunity. Buyers are staying invisible while they complete research and answer their own questions. Imagine that! Or better—reimagine what you can do about it so more B2B buyers become leads for marketing or prospects for sales.
B2B sales and marketing executives need to find new ways to become visible earlier in the buying process, which means we need to throw out the old, traditional sales and marketing funnel. This old way of thinking that marketing attracts leads and hands them over to sales which then hunts among leads for prospects and turns them into customers is what’s hindering success in today’s marketplace.
The buying cycle begins when prospects start to question their status quo. Your job is to help buyers identify their performance gaps and, at the same time, position yourself as a resource to help buyers solve their problems. One way to do this is to make assessment tools available to your target market where they can easily find them.
One of my clients, Halogen Software, decided to help its target market of HR managers identify ways they could improve their succession-planning strategies. The challenge for Halogen’s typical prospect is: how can we identify, develop, and retain a talented workforce? Halogen’s succession planning software solves this problem by easily allowing users to:
We worked with Halogen to create a succession planning assessment tool that would give prospects an idea of their status quo, and show them areas for possible improvement.
The next step in the buying process is for buyers to ask themselves if the problem is worth solving. At this stage, buyers are starting to educate themselves about solutions and the financial impact a given solution can have on their organization. Giving prospects access to a value calculator through your website (or through a targeted campaign) is a great way to help them understand the value of your offering as it relates to their unique circumstances. Not only does this position you as an industry leader but you will also receive leads that are often better qualified than those you receive from your other lead-generation activities.
For example, another one of my clients, Nuance, uses a value calculator to raise awareness and capture leads by asking users to calculate their “hidden costs.”
Our approach was to create a value calculator that provides prospects with a cost breakdown and savings summary of using Nuance’s print management and document scanning and conversion solutions. Users can enter their own data or use the pre-populated data to estimate cost savings in categories like IT labor, office worker labor, office supplies, document storage and hardware.
Once buyers realize how much they can save — and where the savings come from — Nuance sales reps can have a useful dialog with prospects about value.
Once buyers are convinced they have a problem and the problem is worth solving, the next logical question is, “But at what cost?” By now, prospects have narrowed their vendor evaluation to a meaningful few. To stand out, vendors must build upon the approaches advocated above and now show buyers their offering’s net value. An ROI calculator is a great way to illustrate your offering’s net value and move buyers to action. I’d guess two-thirds of my clients use the following method: 1) create demand and capture leads via an assessment tool and/or value calculator and 2) close deals using an ROI calculator.
Another one of my clients, Tribute, uses an ROI calculator in two ways. First, it assures prospective buyers that the changeover costs incurred to deploy Tribute’s solution will be recouped, and in a short time frame. Secondly, the ROI calculator helps Tribute highlight the unique ways its software provides real, bottom line savings.
Remember…Early Visibility is Key
Vendors late to the party are often being played without realizing it. They see a lead come in and check the box for step one in their sales process, then check the box for step two, etc. What a waste of time! Vendors with the insurmountable advantage are those that identify buyers early and engage in meaningful exchanges around business value. It might take some imagination to accomplish this but I hope the ideas advocated above get you started.
David Svigel, VP of Account Services for Stratavant, helps hardware, software, IT services, telecommunications and industrial companies realize and communicate their full economic value with ROI selling tools. Read this case study to see how David increased the revenue performance for Nuance.
To learn more about turning cold calls into hot leads, visit salesforce.com, or download the free e-book.
