This may seem a little counter intuitive - using lists of accounts and/or contacts, and their buyer intent data, as means to enhance one-to-one marketing and boost sales. Traditionally, we think of lists-for-fees as inputs to email marketing campaigns or programmatic advertising. Or maybe we think of rented lists as invitations to violate spam or GDPR regulations, so we avoid them like the plague. Either way, list-based marketing and cold-calling have gotten a bad rap for privacy concerns and for poor performance in reaching our revenue goals. Why? Because recipients are interrupted with salesy communications that they never requested and have little perceived relevance, timeliness or value. So, people seldom respond, and they often unsubscribe or otherwise block your future outreach efforts. Chances are, you have tried this approach more than once. Were you really happy with the results? If so, can you sustain that success over time? For most of us, the answer is, “I wish I knew…”
It’s easy to denigrate mass sales and marketing, even in its relatively modern forms:
Nearly every marketer I know will defend these tactics as being much better than the old school forms of mass marketing, like bulk emails or direct mail, TV or radio ads, misleading ads and landing pages, or robocalling. But do people want to be “sold to” via these new methods?
You can find data that both supports and rejects this premise. The only data that really counts is your data. If you have a 20% open rate and 3% click rate, does that mean that people want your emails and your offers? Depends on your perspective, right? Statistically, though, at least 80% of your contacts are saying “no”, and that should be enough to consider trying other methods, if you care about your prospects and customers that is. Yes, personalization and social selling are steps in the right direction, because they work better for marketers, but do they work for your customers? Why don't you ask them?
In many cases, personalization and automation can be used effectively to streamline communications and improve that “stay-in-touch” mode we want with all of our prospects and customers, but as a primary outreach tool? Well, it’s up to you, but I don’t think so in B2B complex sales.
Some people define one-to-one marketing as “personalized”, in which you use a clever combination of persona development and marketing automation to optimize digital engagement (see list of tactics above). I don’t agree. To me, it’s what it says - you and me having a conversation. If the conversation uncovers a need (by you or me) that the other person can solve, cool. If not, we talk about something else. It’s a simple, and ancient, concept. It definitely doesn’t have to be digital, but it can be.
I know what you’re thinking. The reason we have digital sales and marketing is that it scales. We can reach far more people on their devices than ever before, effectively read their minds, and offer them our products at just the right time. Everybody wins, especially us smarketers. But the buyers win too because we made the process so easy, and we reached them at precisely the zero moment of truth. That might work well with shoes and candy bars, but does it work with construction projects and cyber security systems? Never has, never will, in my opinion.
Ask any B2B account executive with a winning track record, and she will tell you the truth. You have to start, build, and maintain one-to-one relationships, and yes, work them into multi-person accounts to win deals and grow them over time. Period.
As you might expect, the recipe starts with strategy. Who’s coming over? What kind of meal are you cooking and why? How much time do you have to prepare? Which wine should you serve? What’s for dessert?
This is where you create a first impression. To do that well, you need to know your customers. Which traits determine the best fit for your products and services? Who is in the market and showing some buyer intent? Here’s my recipe for putting together some great hors d'oeuvres:
Now you want to hit that home run, by connecting with and building trust with your top prospects. Do this before you try to close any sales, because building relationships first is the key to higher close rates and shorter sales cycles.
The final course should be short and sweet. During your relationship building, you have hopefully developed a mutual sense of respect and trust. The deal comes more as a formality than a negotiation. You have already worked out the deal, and now you’re just toasting to it. This is how deals get closed at anything approaching a 100% close rate. Not only that, but because both parties want the same working relationship and success, you’re now working as a team to get there. A few important things to remember along the way.
Mea culpa. I’ve introduced several important, and controversial, strategic sales and marketing philosophies in a discussion about using intent data. For example, I’m not a huge fan of outbound marketing or cold-contact methods in B2B sales. I believe in one-to-one marketing and its cousin, personal (not personalized) sales. Why? Because that’s what customers want. Yes, they want to use digital channels to do their research, but they don’t want to be pushed by sellers at any stage of their journey. Does that mean we can’t, or shouldn’t, use data to assist them? Not at all. Both first and third party intent data are invaluable in finding people and companies you want as customers, and they give us critical information to help us gently build lasting business relationships.
The rest is gravy.
Photo by Jay Wennington on Unsplash