Author: Digital Selling

The goal of business is to generate revenue through customers by convincing them to buy your product or service. The only way to achieve this goal is to truly understand the people whose lives you want to improve. The more an organization knows its customers define the success of its product and brand. 

The organization that understands its target customer better and is closer to its customers than competitors will win.

Understanding your customers is essential in building a solution that people are willing to pay for. You must put yourself in your target customer’s shoes to understand who they are and what they care about. You can only build a solution that customers need and deliver efficiently.

However, understanding your customers goes beyond just knowing their pains and problems. In this sense the front line (marketing or sales professionals) are crucial to describe who your customers are and, most of the time, they will tell you all about their pain points. But understanding someone’s problems doesn’t give you the complete picture. If that’s all you know about your existing or potential customers, you’re missing the context in which this pain occurs. Building empathy for your customers, in turn, builds more brand credibility.

Context is everything.

From the seller’s point of view, it’s hard to know what he doesn’t know about the customer and what he should know to offer the customer the right option. In B2B sales, we generally know who our customers are and their problems. But that’s not enough: organizations must also understand the context in which their customers operate, what their typical day-to-day life looks like, how they feel about the issues at hand, what events they attend, and who they follow in the media. social media, what they read, and what products and services they use and like. Building empathy with your customers helps you create effective marketing and sales strategies that focus on your customers rather than your solution.

Most companies start the process by creating customer personas based on demographics and psychographics that include things like attitudes, values, and interests. They can find industry-specific generic personas online or make guesses based on what they think they know about their actual or potential customers. Most of the time, these personas amount to assumptions. And there is a better way!

Before developing a persona and ideal customer profile, take the time to understand your target audience more broadly. This knowledge will help you select the ideal customer segment to target and even the people whose attitudes, values ​​, and beliefs align with your organization. It will also form the basis of your go-to-market strategy.

You cannot please everyone.

Here are steps you can take to build a more comprehensive view of your customers.

1. Understand the larger target audience that may be feeling the pain you are solving. For example, let’s say you provide training for sales reps. Your target audience could be the VP of Sales in organizations of all sizes or any industry. However, the fact that people experience the same pain does not mean that they have an identical context. While every VP of Sales feels it is important to train their sales reps, in a large organization, the VP of Sales has a larger budget to deal with this problem and may hire outside trainers. In a smaller organization, the VP of Sales may have to train their direct reports.
2. Identify potential customers (people who have a specific problem your solution solves) outside of your larger audience group. For example, your prospects might be VPs of Sales for organizations that generate more than $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
3. Build an ideal customer profile (ICP). Your ideal customers are potential customers with problems you can solve who are ready, willing, and able to buy your product or service. Ideally, the person who fits your ICP is aware of the problem and already looking for a solution. 
4. Create customer personas. Only after understanding the broader target audience and outlining the main target in the form of an ICP can you delve into psychographics and personality traits—attitudes, beliefs, values, etc. — from your customers.

The aim is to analyze the broad target audience before defining your ideal customer profiles and personas to ensure you understand the market you are targeting and select the right targets. 

In other words, understanding your customers requires you to first understand the entire market and then focus on an ideal customer profile to pursue. Understand first, then segment. It’s also worth noting that choosing the right market and the right customer can lower your customer acquisition cost (CAC). It’s easier to sell your solution to people who are already familiar with the problem, and even easier if your target customer is already in the market for a solution. 

Additionally, a go-to-market strategy that targets the right customers positively impacts customer lifetime value (CLV) and churn. Low customer lifetime value (CLV) and high churn are the results of selling to the wrong people – those who aren’t experiencing the problem you’re solving or aren’t experiencing enough pain to justify the expense, whether whatever the costs of your solution.  

The purpose of this article is to show you how to create a 360º view of your customer and what characteristics you should consider when selecting your ideal customer profile and persona. Learning about your broad target audience is key to defining your ideal customer profile, but it can be separate from the ICP creation process.

The ICP is the foundation of your brand story, strategic messaging, customer acquisition process, and content strategy. Therefore, every marketing playbook and every go-to-market strategy plan should start with a careful analysis of your market, defining your ICP, and deeply understanding your ideal customer from every conceivable angle.

To build a strong brand, you need to grab your target audience’s attention. To get attention, you need to make people care by showing them the vision and the promised land. And to do that, you must have an organization centered on the customer experience — a company that closely understands its customers, their feelings, beliefs, and attitudes as well as pains and concerns. Your customer’s feelings and emotions are an important part of the decision-making process. We often make decisions based on our emotions and then find a way to rationalize our decision. In the B2B market, not all purchasing decisions are made based on a rational analysis of how a solution will help the company. 

As people buy solutions for their organizations, their individual needs must also be met. Purchasing on behalf of your organization can be stressful and anxiety-provoking. That’s why having empathy and knowing your ideal customer profile is the key to selling more.

When we think of a sales funnel, we imagine a single bottleneck – that is, a single source of leads. Normally, in Inbound Marketing, this source is the various forms and lead magnets that Marketing develops. But does it always have to be like this?

Not necessarily. That’s why we need to talk about the Y funnel.

The difference is that the Y sales funnel contemplates two lead inputs: the inbound (marketing) and the outbound (sales). It has this designation precisely because of the two lead generation pathways at the top, which makes the funnel resemble a Y.

Companies that adopt this funnel better coordinate their marketing and sales efforts. The result is increased efficiency in both directions. Both sales prospecting and marketing lead nurturing gain a new lease of life that streamlines leads.

It’s worth reviewing what both do independently to understand how they stand to gain when they work together.

Inbound Marketing vs Sales Outbound 2.0

The Marketing team launches content and campaigns directed toward its target audience. As the materials he produces appeal to pain or a need, his audience is willing to give their contacts in return. 

However, this is far from meaning that leads are ready to talk to sales. Therefore, the other function of Marketing is to nurture contacts with materials and resources until they become a real sales opportunity. 

Already The function of sales is to carry out the so-called prospecting, which is direct contact with the lead to determine if he has the profile, and interest and is at the right time for the purchase. But prospecting isn’t just based on the leads that Marketing generates. Sales reps also have the autonomy to look for leads (on LinkedIn, for example) and make direct contacts of a more commercial nature – this is what creates the second entry in our funnel. 

But, what happens when Marketing has stagnant leads that fail to respond to email sequences? Or what can sales do with immature leads? 

The answer should be clear by now… send it to the other department! And thus make a bridge between the two teams.

From inbound to outbound flow

A lead that once showed interest in various materials, but in the meantime stopped interacting with you, will not be reactivated with more inbound Marketing. You need to make prospecting contact to realize the status.

During the prospecting phase, the rep may discover that a lead is already fully aware of their problem. So the marketing material couldn’t add value! Just waiting for a business contact. The rep’s call reawakens his attention and reestablishes communication.

The opposite can also happen. Finding out that the lead has lost interest, or has hired a competitor. In that case, prospecting is useful because marketing manages to keep the contact list sanitized, that is, with only potential leads.

From outbound to inbound flow

And when does lead enter through outbound? What happens if sales happen to start a conversation with a company that is interested, but doesn’t have the budget available yet? Or that you only think about buying from here for 6 months? You will not simply leave this contact aside, and run the risk of being “fished” by a competitor.

In such cases, you should do the opposite. These contacts move from the outbound flow to the inbound nurturing flow. Thus, you will receive sequences of contacts specially formulated to help you make a more informed decision and consider your company’s proposal when the right time comes.

As the lead interacts with the company’s emails, resources, or website, you should assign a lead score. Of course, you don’t have to do this manually: CRM and Marketing automation tools, such as RDStation, make this process easier and a higher score reveals more willingness to buy. This is what Marketing tells you it’s time to forward to sales again.

To recap: while inbound marketing has the role of attracting, converting, and nurturing leads, outbound captures leads, communicates directly, and qualifies. Depending on the maturity of the leads, the ideal time to get in touch is detected for a more direct approach. If that moment has not yet come, nutrition is continued. It is the Y funnel that establishes the bridges that support the passage from inbound to outbound flow and vice versa.

We have already seen that this relationship is mutually beneficial, but the advantages do not end there.

When closing the sale with a customer who received adequate information about the solution through nutrition, the probability of churn is lower. 

On the other hand, the Y sales funnel is also very useful for training new marketing and sales employees. By clearly distinguishing between roles, new talent can quickly understand the different stages of the sales process and what their role is.

The clear division of processes also facilitates the work of managers. It becomes easier to discern which link in the chain is failing – the professional, team, or stage – or, on the contrary, achieving better results. This “monitoring”, so to speak, allows continuous optimization of the sales process.

The Y-funnel reminds both teams that they must unite efforts and strategies, exchange information with each other, and work towards goals that complement each other. This is how the sales process becomes more effective and predictable, which – dare we say – is one of the main objectives of any sales manager or CEO.

If there is a key to business growth, it is this: creating a sales process. I don’t want you to waste another minute without knowing what it is, how, and when to implement a sales process. 

The sales process is a sequence of steps used by the sales department to take a prospect from “lead” to “customer”. In establishing this process, everyone involved and interested in sales, from the sales manager to reps, and even the CEO, uses the same terminology.

Why is this so important? The answer is simple. This sequence structures the sale finds leads and opportunities. Therefore, it allows you to follow the evolution of sales and visualize the progression toward the revenue targets for the month.

At each new step, metrics are established for the sales manager to be able to draw comparisons with previous months and monitor evolution. If the progression indicates that it will fall short of the objectives, it can act surgically in the phase that is harming sales. 

For example, you may notice that sales development reps are not generating enough prospects to move on to closers. In that case, you can work with reps to qualify faster or ask marketing to reinforce inbound marketing.

So if you only see fog when you try to estimate billing at the end of the month, the sales process will bring you the clarity you need to try to change course.

How to create a sales process anyway? First, it is necessary to recognize that the role of sales is not to force a deal but to accompany the consumer throughout his purchase journey.

The modern consumer has access to a lot of information and uses the web to reach companies. The most successful sales processes leverage this inbound flow to create an inbound sales process that helps the customer navigate all stages of their buying journey: need recognition, solution discovery, solution evaluation, and purchase.

In this way, sales reps help customers recognize a problem or an opportunity. Then they help you discover the solutions, evaluate them and make a decision. If you follow this journey, you will align your sales forces with the steps that customers naturally want to take.

When to create the sales process? Ideally, before hiring more sales reps. Establishing the sales process makes it easier to train new talent and get them started in the right direction from the start. In addition, it also allows you to measure the success of each rep and coach when performance falls short of expectations. Or, the contrary, if you identify a sales rep with good performance, investigate and apply it to the team.

You can’t scale a business without a sales process. It is necessary to establish steps that the whole team recognizes, from sales to marketing to managers, and create tailored metrics. Only then will scalable and predictable growth be possible.

Let us guess: you’re here because your sales consistently fall short. And to make matters worse, Marketing and Sales blame each other for missed goals instead of joining forces.

Malaise is relatively common. One in four companies believe these two departments are not aligned, and while 75% believe there is “some sort of alignment”, only 17% believe they are highly aligned.

If you are part of the 83% with an alignment deficit, either you haven’t recognized the true importance of SMarketing (Sales + Marketing), or you have some misconceptions.

The interdependence of Marketing and Sales

The first thing you need to understand is that SMarketing is the joining of efforts of two teams with different skills – and not the transformation of two teams into a homogeneous team. The two functions are different, but we need to recognize theire interdependence.

As Sales are the ones who deal directly with the Customer and are well aware of their pain points, Marketing benefits from these insights to optimize campaigns. On the other hand, as Sales depend on the leads generated by Marketing to achieve their goals, they need to provide Marketing with the necessary information to design the profile of ideal customers and obtain qualified leads.

It becomes clear that, although the secondary objectives are different – ​​as we will see later on – the team’s objective macro, which is to generate revenue for the company, and that is why it is so imperative to join efforts. 

The risks of lack of alignment

The lack of synergy between these sectors inevitably results in a loss of business opportunities. It is estimated that only 37% of misaligned companies achieve sales objectives.

This happens because, without this coordination, Marketing ends up capturing leads with the wrong profile. This generates a domino effect in which sales end up wasting time chasing fruitless deals, while “hot leads” are lost in a pipeline full of unfit leads, that is, those who are not interested in your offer.

The impact of this is negative. The company is faced with very high customer acquisition costs, distant sales targets, and, deep down, an unsustainable business.

Definition of functions and moments of interaction

For there to be synergy, it is necessary to clarify the functions of each team and at what moments they should interact.

Firstly, Marketing communicates with a vast public and its competence is to guide Marketing actions – as much as possible –toward the fit public. Marketing departments often have a limited budget, so they don’t have the luxury of “shooting in all directions” and seeing what works.

So, the role of Marketing is to define buyer personas, identify the channels where they are present, and shape the message in such a way that it captures the attention of people with the pains/needs that the product or service solves.

Then Marketing develops the mechanism that allows you to turn website visits into leads. Producing didactic and informative content and building an image of authority and trust, can transform leads into prospects and pass them on to sales.

When into Sales play, they are no longer dealing with a vast audience, but qualified leads – or sales-qualified leads, SQLs. Marketing has already carried out a filtering process, during which it has educated the customer and established a certain amount of trust so that sales have more chances, but it is the salesperson who finishes.

Here, the Sales specialist uses his arsenal of communication tools – email, telephone, videoconferencing, messaging, social selling, face-to-face meetings, etc. – to gain the prospect’s attention and trust.

Then, the role of the sales specialist is to highlight, with great power of argument, the characteristics, benefits, and value proposition of each product or service and make the connection to the pains that the prospect feels.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

We’ve already seen that Sales follows Marketing on the purchase journey and how they contribute to each other’s success. But what specific aspects should be aligned?

• • The ideal profile of Client and buyer personas. Salespeople communicate directly with Customers and must share the knowledge they acquire “in the field” to help Marketing capture better leads: what role they play, the size of the companies they work for, professional sector, age group, gender, interests, preferences about the sources of information they use, pains, the content they seek, etc.
  • Registration of information and use of the CRM. middle Marketing is responsible for nurturing leads at the beginning and of the funnel; knows which contents, pages, and emails they interacted with and which products or solutions they evaluated. This information must be recorded in the CRM, as it is essential for sales to create the so-called “rapport” and convert.

• • Lead qualification and Lead scoring. By jointly defining what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead and a Sales Qualified Lead, as well as lead scoring parameters, Sales are more likely to communicate only with those truly interested leads.

• • Definition of KPIs. It is important to define the Marketing KPIs (traffic, leads generated, emails opened, etc.) and the Sales KPIs(sales growth, average ticket, number of sales) separately. But also include the end-to-end conversion rate, that is, the number of sales made that came from the opportunities created by marketing.

• • Definition of complementary goals. Sales cannot achieve its objectives if marketing does not guarantee a certain number of qualified leads. Therefore, a fundamental part of SM marketing alignment is to determine lead generation goals based on sales needs.
• AgreementLevel. All the previous points (plus those that make sense in your organization) are signed in a Service Level Agreement (or SLA, Sales Level Agreement), a document that defines the responsibilities and expectations of each team, guaranteeing complementarity.

Conclusion

Why is it so important to align sales with marketing? We dare to say that the most correct question is why NOT to align sales with Marketing, since they are so interdependent and that they do not work without each other.

Contact us to align sales with marketing and stop losing business opportunities.

If your sales are complex and your sales process is basic, something needs to be fixed with that equation. 

Determining the complexity of your sales is the first step in defining the right sales process for your company. But first, it would be best to start by addressing the concept of “complex sales”. What are complex sales and what are they based on?

Complex sales are characterized by having 1) a high level of involvement and risk perception, a consequence of the high cost of acquisition, 2) a long sales cycle, exceeding 2 months and 3) several participants in the decision-making process.

If you have a product or service with a high cost, you certainly recognize these 3 characteristics. I am talking, for example, about software development companies, advanced technological products, industrial machinery, business intelligence services, or other companies whose offer represents a large investment with long-lasting effects for the customer.

These sales become complex for logical reasons. First, the public for these solutions is necessarily companies of a significant size – the only ones capable of bearing the cost and in need of making a large investment.

As the investment is significant, the perception of risk is more excellent. Making a wrong decision at this level can cost a company thousands of euros. Therefore, it is understandable that the client wants to study your proposal in depth, know in depth the benefits of your solution, and compare it with that of other companies. This negotiation process can take months. 

Another thing that lengthens the sales cycle is the number of stakeholders involved. These companies have several stakeholders with decision-making power and it is unlikely that it will go through a single manager or the CEO. 

Instead, you have to deal with the financial decision-makers who assess the conditions for the investment, the technicians who give the endorsement on the adequacy of the solution, and other internal influencers capable of derailing or moving the negotiation.

Altogether, they are a handful of people your sales reps have to communicate with and convince, sometimes indirectly, so it’s no wonder that your sales reps take several months to close the sale.

It has already become clear that complex sales are the opposite of those low-involvement sales in the B2C market, where a consumer makes a purchase decision, alone, within the space of 30 minutes. Incidentally, even in B2B, there are sales with little implication, for example, when a startup decides to try social media management software for a few months.

What does this knowledge bring back to your company? We have to refer back to the importance of creating a sales process. In complex B2B sales, you must establish a sales process that helps sales reps motivate different decision-makers by highlighting the benefits to the pain points right. In addition, a good sales process allows you to replicate good practices that improve the approach and help to reduce the risks of a bad decision, both for you and your client… which is the last thing you want after months of investing in this business.