Crucial B2B Marketing & Sales Tips for a Post-Pandemic World

At this point, many B2B marketing and sales professionals are not sure what step they should take next. The shift to remote work has made traditional boots-on-the-ground sales efforts less effective, high turnover rates have caused lead contact info to go out of date faster and on top of all of this, stakeholders are setting massive growth goals in a risk-averse economy. 

The webinar is full of actionable info organizations can use to get the returns they need from their marketing and sales efforts, so we wanted to outline a few of the key takeaways from the event in this post.

However, to get the most out of the event, we highly suggest you access the full webinar by clicking the link below.

First Step: Aligning Sales & Marketing Teams

In today’s rocky economy, businesses need to be more agile and adaptable than ever before. For that to happen, sales and marketing teams need to be more aligned than ever before. 

All too often these two departments operate in silos, leading to frustration and missed opportunities. Sales teams don’t get enough leads to meet their quotas, while marketing teams don’t get the feedback they need to capture those leads.

To ensure these departments are working as one unit, your marketing and sales leaders should regularly sit down to:

• Discuss and align overall organizational goals and the processes to reach those goals.
• Talk about the quality of marketing leads coming in (i.e. are these leads turning into profitable customers?).
• Consider the problems your target customers are facing so marketing can craft messaging that resonates with them.

This communication will make sure marketing and sales are on the same page so they can work together to capture and convert prospects into loyal customers, increasing their efficiency and effectiveness.

Clarify Your Message

In order for your marketing and sales messaging to be clear, concise and impactful, you must clarify your message so it resonates with your ideal customers.

The idea here is to keep it simple. Your messaging should revolve around three things:

• Need — What are the common needs, pain points and challenges your customers are facing that your organization can help them with?
• Solution — How does your business satisfy this need of your target customers?
• Impact — What is the positive impact customers have seen thanks to the solution(s) your business provides? (Case studies are a great way to showcase impact.)

By focusing on these three core areas, you can simplify your message to the points your prospects care about most. This way, whether a prospect visits your site or talks to your sales team, they will clearly understand how your organization can benefit them.

Use Your Website to Promote Your Message & Bring in Leads

On average, around 50-60% of a buyer’s discovery and research process happens before they get in contact with any sales team. Because of this, your website needs to have two things:

1. Clarified messaging focusing on buyer needs, your business’s solution(s) and the benefits your customers can expect to see.
2. High-quality content that will help your target prospects during their research and discovery process.

With this, prospects that visit your website will see informative content that establishes authority and trust alongside powerful messaging that showcases how your business can solve their problems.

From here, you’ll want to drive customers to landing pages so you can acquire their contact information to pass them along to your sales team. The best part about this is that these leads are often much closer to making a purchasing decision because they’ve already been reading your content and marketing messaging, which shortens sales cycles for your organization.

Driving Prospects to Your Site

But this is only one piece of the puzzle. Even if you have the above, you still need to get the right eyes on your site. To do this, you should focus on three key marketing channels simultaneously: organic search, paid advertising and social media. 

Implementing random tactics that focus on only one or two of these channels is what we like to call whack-a-mole marketing, and it’s almost never effective.

Have Sales Acts as a Resource

them to try and get them to convert. Instead, they should act as another helpful resource that can help solve the prospect’s specific needs. 

Of course, if the customer has a specific problem that your product/service can solve, then your salesperson can provide information on how your business can help. However, if the customer is still clearly in the research stage, the salesperson should focus on offering useful information and resources related to their needs. 

By taking this approach, your salesperson will build trust and credibility with the prospect, making it more likely that the prospect will become a customer when they are ready to purchase.

Use Technology to Make Prospects’ Lives Easier

Post-pandemic, around 80% of decision-makers prefer self-service or remote human interaction over in-person meetings. It makes sense. In-person meetings are time-consuming, and now the entire business world can confidently use video conference apps like Zoom to save time.

This is why it’s important for your sales team to use technology to make your prospects' lives easier. Of course, this means using video calls for client meetings, but it goes beyond that. For example, your organization’s CRM and marketing automation tools should share data with one another. This allows sales to identify pain points and needs based on blog posts prospects have read, web pages they have visited and emails they have interacted with.

Using this information, your sales team can send helpful content and info that revolves around a prospect's specific needs that they can view in their own time. You can even have your marketing automation software automatically send this information based on actions the prospect takes. This not only makes your prospects’ lives easier but your sales teams’ lives easier as well.

Don’t Drop Marketing & Sales Efforts

In times of uncertainty, organizations often make the mistake of cutting their sales and marketing efforts. However, this only hampers your current business objectives and makes it more difficult to rebuild these departments later on.

So instead of making drastic cuts, it’s better to focus on increasing efficiency and getting better results. We’ve already outlined a few of the ways you can do that through the tips above. However, to really set up your organization for success, you need to get access to the full Evolution of Sales & Marketing webinar.

Click the button below to learn more about the steps you can take to acquire more qualified leads, shorten sales cycles and get the measurable returns you need in the post-pandemic world.