The Empowered Buyer™ Magazine, Volume 1 — MASS Engines

THE

VOLUME 1

EMPOWERED BUYER

MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1 THE

VOLUME 1

EMPOWERED BUYER

MAGAZINE

MASS Engines enables brands to engage modern buyers. By building adaptive systems that anticipate needs and influence behavior, we facilitate productive sales conversations that fuel ongoing revenue growth. Our Empowered Buyer™ methodology utilizes a Lead Management Framework to map and automate the purchase journey, improving conversions to deliver measurable results.

04

F E AT U R E A R T I C L E

09

How B2B Brands Can Reach Today’s Empowered Buyer™

Who Is the Empowered Buyer™

12

A Healthy Sales Funnel Begins with Lead Management

16

Overcoming the Misalignment of Marketing & Sales

21

Three Companies with Great Content that Enable Buyers

24

Make B2B Buying Easy: A Prescriptive Approach to Marketing

2 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

EDITORIAL TEAM

Editor-in-Chief

Zee Jeremic

Managing Editor

Melissa Korn

Contributing Writer

Kate Inglis

Contributing Writer

Colleen Elep

Cover Art Graphic Design

Kaley McKean Luis Peña Valdés

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. All the rights of the artwork belong to the publisher and illustrator. ©2020 MASS Engines. Empowered Buyer™ owned by MASS Engines.

SEPT 2020

MASSENGINES.COM

Letter from the Editor

The internet has been with us for twenty years, but only recently have we started to realize the societal impact of its maturity. We once may have thought, “Now we have a new way to send messages to each other!” but now, we see the internet for the tectonic shift it is. It has wholly transformed how humanity operates.

Like the dawn of the printing press and the assembly line, the internet didn’t just give us a new tool. It's given us a whole new world, a revolutionary leap forward, the impact of which will take many decades to fully comprehend.

It’s not deceit to approach marketing as if we’re not trying to sell stuff.

It’s an antidote to the kind of tone-deafness and pressure we’ve all experienced as buyers. It’s a call to switch up our ‘let us tell you about us’ monologue, choosing instead to be genuinely helpful.

In this magazine, we’ll get practical and specific as we explore the biggest question: what mindset shift, process, measurements, technology, and content do we need to show up as genuinely helpful buyer enablers?

Whether B2C or B2B, too many of us in Welcome to The marketing are approaching this new and In the meantime, those of us who promote Empowered Buyer™ inspired reality with outmoded asproducts or services for people to buy Magazine. We understand every sumptions. Perhaps we interpret our — i.e. Marketers — are scrambling Marketer needs to draw a direct current mandate as broadcasting to keep up with technology and our the old way over new channels. It’s prospective customers, both of line between their team’s creativity still an ad, but now it’s a banner which seem a step ahead. What and revenue. We all want to be rock on a website instead of on telewe know for certain: buyers today stars, yet in the age of the modern buyer, vision. Or we augment our brickare an entirely evolved, brandwe’ve got a lot of rapid-fire information and-mortar storefronts with onnew species. If we’re going to get coming at us at once. We need to quantify line shopping. But as much as we their attention and keep it, we’d our performance. We need to figure out wish it were, marketing in the age better adapt. what works, and make it repeatable. of the Empowered Buyer™ is no We need to team up with Sales. And None of us buy the way we used copy-paste - it requires substantial most important of all, we need to to. We no longer see a billboard or a dire-thinking and re-tooling. accept and learn to thrive in rect marketing email and call the number listed. Instead, we enter our problem, Informed buying isn’t even a revelation for our current reality. need, or challenge into Google. An endless younger generations. It’s their normal basestream of inquiries later — like Alice down the line — and what’s normal for them sets the expecrabbit hole — we will either make a decision or narrow tation for every other generation. We are not designing down our next steps. the market. They are.

All without a single Sales or Marketing person in sight.

In this magazine, we’ll chart our explorations into the grey zone between a web visitor and a closed deal. We’ll explore how to earn competitive advantage by better categorizing, documenting, and approaching the revenue funnel — these days just as much a marketing domain as sales.

In the internet age, buyers are empowered in a way that represents a seismic culture shock for many Marketing Executives. Especially those among us who cut our teeth on ‘brand is king’ awareness campaigns, database marketing, or even billboards and yellow pages. Selling to modern buyers requires marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing — the ‘we’re not trying to sell you stuff’ marketing.

The independence and skepticism of the modern buyer has landed all of us in unchartered territory. But there are methods — many of them — to developing the kind of relevance, influence, and magnetism that draws the right people to your brand. With this magazine, we’ll give you the map of all those methods and how they interconnect.

It’s my mission to help Marketers adjust in this new reality. Watch this space for fresh thinking, new approaches, and a mindset shift for both ends of the demand spectrum. We’ll give you a sleeves-rolled-up approach to your company’s new revenue funnel and that of your marketing career and confidence.

— Zee Jeremic, Editor

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 3

Who is the Empowered Buyer ?

Emotional impact is about making absolutely sure that the customer sees themselves in the story you’re telling.

— The Challenger Sale

T

o resonate with buyers in a rapidly changing economy, Marketers need to ensure their brands are relevant to their prospects. Perhaps fittingly, Challenger’s message for Sales teams sounds more like a call-to-action for B2B Marketers in today’s buyer empowered world. This is because Marketing has largely taken over what used to be considered early Sales interactions.

As a 2019 Gartner report1 indicates, B2B buyers spend 45% of their time researching a purchase, and only 17% of their time talking to potential suppliers.

In a market where buyers direct their own purchasing research with the touch of a smartphone, Sales reps are losing their influence: prospects no longer have to listen to a sales pitch to make an informed decision. Times have changed, and changed rapidly. Buyers don’t want to be “sold to,” they want to make their own purchases based on the information they have gathered independently.

Companies need to shift away from touting the benefits and features of their own product or business, and focus instead on solving the problems of their buyers. If customers cannot see their needs or concerns in a brand’s story, they will simply move on to the next.

4 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

As brand storyteller David Beebe points out, “Marketing is like a first date. If all you do is talk about yourself, there won’t be a second date.”

How does this major marketing shift impact B2B? Let's first define the modern B2B buyer and what Marketers can do to engage them effectively throughout their purchasing journey.

Who is the B2B Buyer?

The B2B buyer often operates within formal buying teams or committees, with multiple stakeholders engaging in different phases of the buying process. Some members of the team may be involved for a short time, while others may see the process all the way through. Buying team roles are also diverse, comprised of people from different departments, backgrounds, and demographics.

Roles may range from executives to engineers, from CFOs to IT managers. B2B buy-

ing teams will also vary depending on the product being considered, and the unique dynamics that exist in any organization.

Given the complexity of B2B buying teams, the B2B buyer is probably best understood in terms of the role they play in the buying process. The Miller-Heiman Group developed a classic framework for understanding the dynamics of B2B buying teams, identifying the roles each member plays: Economic Buyer, User Buyer, Technical Buyer, Coach, and Researcher. Historically adopted by Sales departments, Miller-Heiman’s framework is also used widely by Marketing teams as marketing plays a bigger role in selling to the modern buyer.

What Empowered B2B Buyers Expect The expectations of B2B buyers are changing as technology makes access to information faster and easier. Because of the sheer volume of information available online, buyers want relevant, meaningful content that speaks to their needs.

The statistics speak for themselves. Demand Gen Reports’ B2B Buyer Survey2 found that

ROLE

DESCRIPTION Evaluates ROI and business risks

Economic Buyer

Typically senior or c-suite level staff Releases funds Usually has veto power Evaluates hands-on, user experience elements of a product/solution

User Buyer

Their department will typically be the one to use the product being purchased Will be impacted most by the product and wants to make sure it will serve the best interests of the time Has a high degree of influence on the purchase decision

Technical Buyer

(aka Gatekeeper)

Involved in the vetting process, and can block proposals based on established specifications Exercise sizzable influence over decision making but cannot make a decision to move forward Can be from numerous departments in an organization (eg.

IT department, finance, engineering, human resources) May be a consultant working outside the organization, or an executive inside the buying organization

Coach

(aka Champion)

Will support and champion your business inside the organization to key decision makers Can provide a seller with insight on all buying influencers in the organization Trusts selling company to deliver and may advance their career with the success of your product/service in their company Appointed by executive Researches solutions and makes recommendations

Researchers

May be one or more people Come from a variety of departments in an organization (eg.

IT department, finance, engineering, human resources)

67% of respondents wanted easy access to pricing, 64% wanted easy access to content without registration forms, and 66% wanted websites that showed expertise and spoke directly to industry needs. The importance of having a website with high quality content and an optimized user experience cannot be ignored: with 75% of B2B buyers only visiting a company site once in their consideration process3, Marketers can set their companies up for success by creating websites that stand out from the rest.

1 2 3

Marketing to the Empowered Buyer Marketers can start serving their B2B buyers successfully by anticipating what resources and information will add value to their research process, and putting the right technologies in place to make that content accessible and relevant.

Here are some key questions B2B Marketers should be asking when they plan their approach to engaging the informed B2B buyer:

MASSENGINES.COM

What are the specific roles/ departments for each member of your prospective buying teams?

What might their buyer journey look like?

How long will they be involved in the process?

What kinds of decisions will buyers be looking to validate?

What kinds of information and tools will enable your buyers to educate themselves about the decisions they are making?

How will you be able to identify those buyers when they interact with your brand?

Who can make the decision to purchase?

For example, companies spending millions on a B2B purchase will likely have a CFO involved near the end of the buying journey, though their involvement may be fairly minimal. The CFO’s main objective will be to understand what the ROI of the purchase will be, and will likely do their own research to validate. Businesses that have an ROI calculator (or similar tool) easily accessible, as well as content that substantiates the fiscal prudence of the purchase, will be well-positioned to influence that CFO toward choosing their brand over the rest.

Your Message Is What Counts Informed buyers expect and want more than a classic sales pitch when they start investigating solutions for their business. Sales is no longer the next, natural step. Rather, it is rich and informative content. Content that Marketing is responsible for developing and positioning in front of the buyer.

Marketers must be ready to respond with the right message at the right time for the right buyer, in a fiercely competitive environment where technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Honing in on the content that matters to your buyers will give your brand a competitive edge.

Anderson, Brent. “CSO Update: The new B2B buying journey and its implication for sales.” Gartner, www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey, 2019.

Lesonsky, Rieva. “What does it take to sell to the New B2B Buyer?” Forbes, www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2019/05/24/b2b-sales-tips, 2019.

Tuomisto-Inch, Hanne. “The Changing B2B Buyer.” YouTube, uploaded by Think with Google UK, 4 March 2015, www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/marketing-resources/data-measurement/the-changing-b2b-buyer/.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 5

THE EMPOWERED BUYER MANIFESTO ™

I am a modern buyer.

I know better than to trust sales and I no longer have to deal with them.

I have unlimited access to information.

I understand my own needs and am able to find solutions to my problems.

I don’t want to be sold.

I want to be informed.

Tell me why you exist and what differentiates you.

Show me what problems you can solve.

Give me valuable, insightful information.

Make the five minutes I give you worth my while.

Then I’ll give you twenty. Make it count?

I’ll give you an hour to earn my trust.

Once you have my trust, we can talk about money.

Help me succeed and I’ll give you my loyalty.

6 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

MASSENGINES.COM

W

e hear a lot about lead management in the age of the internet: attribution reporting, adaptive nurturing, mapping the buyer journey. There’s no shortage of advice on what to do. But every now and then, it’s important to take a step back and contemplate why it all matters so much.

The digital world has reinvented the exchange of goods and services. We see evidence of this reinvention from both sides — we’re all customers as well as sellers. Since the internet advanced far enough to be a commerce engine, everything has changed.

But if the reinvention is the egg, what is the chicken? Which came first — the shift, or the demand for a shift?

The modern buyer is at the root of every current pressure on sales and marketing.

These two classically quarreling siblings have to work together to coordinate activities through the funnel. Sales and Marketing no longer lead prospects through the funnel.

They lead themselves. Prospects say: “I’m trying to move my business and my career forward, and the only thing I know for certain is that I don’t trust sales.”

“I don’t have to put up with Sales reps anymore. I can sort out how to solve my problems by myself. I can go around them.”

“I will incorporate what I want into my own discovery. I don’t need a slick delivery. I can get it myself.”

“If I’m not feeling authentically helped by you, I will go elsewhere. Why wouldn’t I? ‘Elsewhere’ is only a click away.”

We may not be in charge anymore, but if we support buyers in their empowerment — not only accepting it, but amplifying it — we have a chance to have an entirely new kind of influence over decision-making.

By taking off our ‘sales and marketing’ hat and putting on our ‘prospective customer’ hat, we remember all we need to know. What

we’ve all experienced, being on the other side — having a need, and being approached by marketing campaigns and Sales reps.

Let’s tally some of the most important rallying cries we’ve felt ourselves, and use that perspective to inspire a long-overdue shift in how we approach our own funnel.

We know from experience that the modern buyer says: 1. “I’m busy and overwhelmed. There’s too much information coming at me— how am I supposed to sort through and trust what’s genuinely going to help me?”

B2B prospects can spot a dog-and-pony show a mile away, and won’t respond to it.

They’ll tune it out, being as familiar with their own sales process as they are with yours.

They know the process inside and out as well as you do. This makes them deeply skeptical of marketing and sales. There’s so much at stake — not only for them as an organization, but for the prospect as an individual. As is the case with most B2B deals, the stakes are huge and their career is on the line.

If you want to make a prospect take time out of their day to listen to you or pay attention to what you have to offer, speak to them in a way that gets straight to what’s on their mind.

Don’t think of it as earning their awareness.

Think of it as earning their trust.

2. “If I feel like you’re selling to me, I’m going to go around you. Get used to it.”

Prospects are much too savvy to be influenced by sales tricks. If they feel they’re being ushered into a pitch, they will go elsewhere to get the information they need, unvarnished.

Because they can.

Long ago, an Oldsmobile billboard might have led to a phone call with a Sales rep.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 7

not just as data points. ‘Mass personalization’ may sound like a contradiction in terms, but with automation, it’s not.

4. “If you make my five minutes worthwhile, I might give you twenty. And if you make my twenty minutes worthwhile, I might give you an hour.”

If you reach out to a prospect cold — based on an email address an individual might have left for some trade show swag — you’ve got virtually no chance of giving them any value.

50,000 LinkedIn messages — none of them personalized beyond Dear <First Name> — are spam. A few people might respond, but most won’t. That kind of effort isn’t any more worthwhile for you than it is for them.

If you are going to knock on a door, here’s the most important thing you need to know before doing so: do you understand the specific stressor, problem, or opportunity unique to that individual’s career, employer, or industry? Do you have all the information needed to show them that you know how to address those challenges specifically?

Now, a prospective customer can pop onto Twitter and post, “Hey! Who likes #Oldsmobile? #carfleets” and be immediately connected to an active community of hundreds of people who buy cars in bulk, just like they do. Within hours, they’ll have a wealth of impartial, real-life insight that they will trust more than any rehearsed line from a Salesperson. Even a simple Google search will nudge them one way or another.

Do your best with authentic and helpful outreach, but also, accept they’re going to go around you. Work with it. Show up with content that’s helpful and that emulates the kind of real, human-to-human input they’re looking for.

A good sales funnel positions the people of your company as trusted guides, not hustlers. If you demonstrate you understand your prospects and their problems, you

8 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

won’t be selling. You’ll be informing, positioning your product or service in a way that gets right to how you can help.

3. “I don’t want a call, and I don’t want a meeting. Here’s how to help me help myself.”

Be succinct. Do not waste your prospects’ time. Don’t inundate or swamp them. Pace the relationship. Off the top, send out a two-minute video, not a twenty-page whitepaper.

Think of it like a handshake. Consider what it takes to have a good, relatable conversation.

Don’t just talk about you — they don’t want to hear about your new product. Talk about that individual. Tell them what you can do to help them manage their team. Give them some value. Help them do their job.

Informed buyers are too smart for mass marketing. They know you have the capacity to approach them as real human beings, and

Are you going to offer prospects some of that help right out of the gate? With lead management and all the automation and data of the digital age, you should be able to. That’s what they expect.

Today, marketing is lost in an avalanche of information overload. Sales has been relegated to order-takers. As buyers grow more confident, they also grow more distant and tougher to reach, let alone impress.

To thread more trust and adherence (stickiness!) into your funnel, go beyond thinking of your brand marketing as a one-way monologue. Use the insight of data to make your marketing more responsive, like a helpful conversation between human beings. Be open to informed buyers, allowing them to be in control of their own discovery.

That’s how what we do becomes worthwhile—for us, and for them.

MASSENGINES.COM

How B2B Brands Can Reach Today’s Empowered Buyer

I

n the digital age, it’s become simultaneously easier and vastly more difficult to reach any given target audience. Of a certain generation, we remember the billboards, yellow pages, and ‘Mad Men’ before the colliding comet — the internet — extinguished all our most reliable assumptions.

B2B buyers spend just 21% of the buying cycle in conversations with Salespeople, and 56% of it searching for and engaging with content on their own.

(IDG Connect, 2013)

But perhaps ‘The Internet’ wasn’t the cosmic event that blew up marketing as we knew it.

Perhaps what changed everything wasn’t the tool itself, but what sprung from its blast radius — the Empowered Buyer™.

Today’s buyer is self-reliant. They’ll go around you as they go around all brands.

They don’t need you, and they’ll dodge your pitch. They’re unconvinced by a monologue, no matter how eloquent. They’ll seek out their own verification, and will either selfqualify or disqualify you entirely on their own.

Which may leave us — the Marketers — with a one-word response. Yikes. What does this planetary impact mean for what we do and how we do it?

A hundred or two hundred years ago, change was happening, but the pace was over generations, in thirty or fifty-year

shifts. But lately, we’ve clocked world-shattering social, economic, and technological change within a generation or less. In some periods, we can even feel the shifts in a matter of years. And on it goes. Marketing has to keep up.

The reality of the modern buyer dictates all buying and selling in the internet age. It’s the nature and root of all our stressors as brand strategists, representatives, and advocates. And among Marketing leaders, it’s even more disorienting for those of us who cut their teeth on old assumptions.

In 2015, the Content Marketing Institute polled over 5,000 B2B Marketers and found that while the wide majority (86%) use content, just 38% find their content to be even marginally effective, and only 8% find it to be very effective. Could it be that in translating our broadcast from print,

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 9

advertising, and traditional media to the internet, we forgot to change not only the channel but the message and its value?

Most Marketing leaders of today acquired their first email accounts in their early 20s or 30s. We may do research and order online, but have we really internalized how different life has been for Millennials and Generation Z? We like to think we get it, but if that’s the case, why do so many of us still plan and design our marketing as if the internet were simply another channel upon which to replicate a billboard?

Brands that understand the parameters and needs of who they’re talking to—think Casper mattresses, Amazon, or Dollar Shave Club—connect in entirely new ways, upending established, traditional gorillas we once presumed were unshakeable. This is what those brands know, and what they capitalize on:

10 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

1

For digital natives who grew up with the internet, ‘online’ is not an extra novelty, but the first place they go to fulfill their needs — from big and small consumer goods to friends, relationships, and entertainment. They didn’t grow up with the local mall as the community hub. They don’t even go to stores.

2

These days, our friends and social feeds are the primary influencers of what we’ll buy (and about almost everything else, too).

3

Online purchasing, warehouse access, and find-it-yourself big box stores have made experienced Salespeople completely foreign to digital natives. The moment an informed buyer feels led through a purchase — even with the best of intentions — an alarm bell goes off.

4

Modern buyers don’t consciously bypass traditional shopping or advertising. To them, ‘we’ — traditional brands showing up in traditional ways — are dinosaurs. We are extinct, and completely outside their frame of view. They don’t see us at all.

MASSENGINES.COM

In The Anonymous Buyer Journey, Steve Piper of the CyberEdge Group describes — even warns — that the modern buyer is self-educated and self-directed, with high-expectations and a consultative nature.

“Buyers do not want to be told what they already know,” he writes. “They desire meaningful insights and intelligent conversation that covers what matters most to them: the measurable impacts to their business.”

77% of B2B buyers 4 don’t talk with a Sales rep until after they perform independent research, and a whopping 67% of the buyer journey is now self-led, online. Scott Levine, VP Strategy at KERN, voices the challenge of the Marketer in reaching the modern buyer: “How can we create emotional loyalty and foster irrational brand preference in the moments that matter most, those in which our prospective customer is finally ready to purchase?”

To understand the successes and failures of those on the ‘front lines’ of adaptation, look to B2C brands. They are the first under pressure to show up in the newest places and ways.

B2B brands can take a cue from B2C, even for the largest and most complex purchases.

B2C LESSON 1: It’s not about you and what you’re selling. It’s about the buyer’s decision and how you can help.

Watch for how B2C brands offer substance and value to consumers who find their way to them as they search independently. Note brands whose content helps browsers make decisions, having been designed from the buyer’s point of view (which we all know, as buyers) to give them everything they need to feel good about the choice they’ve made.

B2C LESSON 2: If a small business can build up a library of content that helps buyers make decisions, any B2B company can do the same.

Plenty of larger B2C purchases — think cars, appliances, vacations — require a high degree of research, learning, and stress for buyers. Don’t underestimate the missed op-

portunity of a potential buyer landing on your website and seeing nothing that speaks directly to them and their needs, concerns, and questions. And don’t underestimate the reputational draw and trust you’ll earn if you do.

Hire someone in Marketing who understands the power of content just as well as the mechanics of email campaigns. Task them with keeping people on your website by making visitors feel compelled, intrigued, and relieved to be well-guided without being hard-sold.

B2C LESSON 3: If your brand is not a source of relief and gratitude in a crowded, almost impossibly difficult-to-navigate avalanche of information, your competitor's will be.

Twenty years ago, ‘marketing communications’ used to be announcements, event invites, and product datasheets. Content was dropped on the table not to earn a deal, but to help reps tick off feature boxes long after a lead had been qualified. Now, the modern buyer is hungry for information, but quick to aggravate and move on if you’re not relevant, or only talking about yourself. Thoughtful, non sales-oriented content is the most critical marketing deliverable at the top of the funnel. Informed buyers will find it themselves long before they even contact you. Make it earn its place.

In 2010, the average buyer checked five sources5 before making a purchase. By 2013, that number had grown to 12, and continues to increase. Our definition of ‘source’ has likely changed, as well, with fewer trusted insights

coming from brands and the media than from our social circles. We’re all modern buyers ourselves.

Before buying a car, people used to walk into at least three car dealerships and test drive many cars before buying. Now, buyers of the digital age walk into 0.8 dealerships before buying a car. They get all they need online, self-led — and not just from car companies or even professional reviewers. They’re reaching out to friends, family, coworkers, and peers. With all the technology we have, what earns our attention, our trust, and our purchasing dollars is connection. We simply use that technology to find it for ourselves.

Large corporations have more money to spend on marketing than almost anyone, but they can easily be outdone by small businesses who scale up helpful, accessible advice in a way that reaches buyers.

Being appealing to modern buyers is not a checkbox only the Marketing team with the biggest budget can tick.

It’s not about the biggest budget at all, but the biggest capacity to switch gears from the assumptions, focus, and style of the olden days to the new: FROM: Let me sell you stuff.

TO: Let me give you information that will help you buy.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the best way to sell is not to sell, but to enable. With informed buyers at the helm, brands who offer genuine help get the reward.

“Empower Yourself (and Your Buyer) with a Modern Sales and Marketing Process.” Digital Marketing Institute, www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-ca/blog/empower-yourself-and-your-buyer-with-a-modern-sales-and-marketing-process.

Beth Thomas, Erin Dean, Kelly Smith, Nina Thatcher. “Holiday Is (Almost) Here: 5 Shopping Trends Marketers Should Watch in 2014.” Think with Google, www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/five-holiday-shopping-trends-marketers-shouldwatch/, 2014.

4 5

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 11

A HEALTHY SALES FUNNEL BEGINS WITH LEAD MANAGEMENT

N

ot long ago, MASS Engines wrote an ebook called Lead Management: The Framework for Transformation. We’re thrilled to share an excerpt of Chapter One with you today. The ebook is a practical and in-depth guide to building Marketing’s value for the digital age, summed up in one challenge: To earn the trust and the business of the modern buyer, design your Marketing processes, content, and Sales funnel through their eyes. Know them, and cater to them.

By this point, virtually every Marketing executive understands we can use technology to send Sales more gold and less junk.

But if you want meaningful results beyond operational tweaks, we don’t just need a new tool. We need a new way of working with each other, fuelling Sales with a healthier, more engaged funnel by uniting departments and bridging silos. Knowing it is one thing. Implementing it is another.

LEAD MANAGEMENT: THE FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSFORMATION

Here’s a glimpse into Lead Management: The Framework for Transformation.

To access to the full ebook, visit our website: www.massengines.com/ebooks.

12 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

The Lead Management ebook is all about making it happen in a meaningful way: we lift the hood of lead management success, charting the kind of Marketing improvements that hit the Sales revenue targets.

The first revelation to accept: we don’t run the show anymore. Not in Marketing, and not in Sales. In the internet age, the modern buyer is in charge. And if your Marketing and Sales teams aren’t linked-up — worse yet, if they’re even competitive or antagonistic

— it’ll be that much harder to transform the funnel both teams share.

Fundamentally, Sales is still performing the same activities. They’re hustling. But for Marketing, the informed buyer is an absolutely massive shift that has expanded our domain. With modern buyers relying on their own self-discovered sources of learning, Marketers are not only tasked with collecting emails but with starting the conversation, offering education and guidance, and earning the trust of highly skeptical buyers long before a lead is passed to Sales.

No longer is marketing a practice of scooping up as many leads as possible, hoping enough go somewhere. The informed buyer means we’ve got to create content and experiences that are magnetic, drawing the right people with the right needs to us organically, at the right moment. The ebook we wrote is all about how to make it happen.

NEW MARKETING FOR THE NEW SALES If we were to write a lead management manifesto, we’d begin by declaring the following key principles: Marketing is first up to bat in managing and influencing the customer journey.

To extract the highest-possible learning, results, and repeatability from every campaign, Marketing must apply observable structure to the customer journey.

Precise measurement is the engine of precise outcomes.

Lead generation should not be a volumeplay, but a quality-play. A firehose of email addresses clogs the sales intake.

A moderate number of warm, qualified, ready-to-buy leads are priceless.

Marketing teams need not work harder, but smarter.

When we think of the iconic Salesperson, we imagine the charismatic handshake, personal connection, and a near-clairvoyant knack for discovering unmet needs. In the digital age, that icon has only disappeared in the sense that it’s no longer a single individual.

All the elements once delivered in a linear fashion — that single rep’s unique charisma, attentiveness, and intuition — are now delivered by way of a diverse array of channels, people, and touchpoints.

A single sales cycle might involve ten different people (Marketing, Inbound Sales, Tech Support, Product Experts, Account Reps), ten different touchpoints (a trade show, a newsletter, a Google ad, a phone call, a demo, a series of email outreaches, a webinar), and ten different modes (texting, social media, in-person meetings, phone calls, emails). The orchestration is dizzying — especially given we want the buyer’s perception to reflect well on us as a prospective partner. From the first hello, we want the buyer's experience of us to be elegant, well-executed, and helpful. Worthy of the trust required to say Yes.

A lead management framework keeps people looped-in, touchpoints consistent, and communication modes universally smooth and convenient. While it sounds ideal, it represents a tectonic shift for both Marketing and Sales. While nobody would disagree with the key principles of our manifesto — structure, precision, quality, efficiency — the staging of it will disrupt the way things have been done for decades.

We will establish a new definition of the word ‘success’, which Marketing and Sales will apply to themselves as well as to how they view each other. And we will establish a new system designed to bring formerly-lone-wolf individuals on both sides into the fold, layering a world of data and automation on top.

Lead management takes away the chaos in favour of organization in the form of better access, data, and functionality. It introduces fiscal predictability and accountability where there was previously very little. It shares the best practices of your best people across the playing field. It frees up energy and time to design tools and resources that close more flagship wins — more of the right kind of ideal customers.

We can define lead management not only by describing its benefits, but what we notice in its absence. It’s the mismatch of expectations between Sales and Marketing, crossed wires that sow much of the discord between what could otherwise be mutually appreciative teams who co-create success.

Acknowledge the current realities of everyone who contributes on the demand side.

To clearly state and mirror what staff experience — from front-line frustration to executives under impossible pressures — is a powerful vote of confidence that before you’ve even begun the redesign process, you’re already paying attention to what is true, and what matters.

MASSENGINES.COM

THE BUYER IS NOW IN CHARGE

PAST

PRESENT

Even with the necessary change management, lead management is the generative, newcontinent-building kind of tectonic shift. It’s worth doing because it hardwires what’s most valuable to your company and makes it possible for Sales and Marketing to act on it.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 13

SALES SAYS...

MARKETING HEARS...

LATER, WITH LEAD MANAGEMENT...

Sales needs more leads.

We share the pipeline, with leads in various stages of warming-up — so it’s never empty.

You’re drowning us in junk.

Sales needs more leads.

Rather than sending Sales a high number of ‘cold’ leads, we send them a smaller number of qualified leads always worth following up.

We’d rather chase our own leads. We feel like we’ll have better luck that way.

Sales is a loose affiliation of lone wolves. They’ll do what they want. That’s not on us.

Sales helped us design the process, so there’s mutual consensus on lead quality.

We closed the black hole of vanished opportunities.

What Marketing does is not helpful to us in the day-to-day.

Even though we surpassed all our quotas — we’re doing a great job — Sales is still not happy. That’s not on us.

Marketing doesn’t get it. I’m checking out.

Sales is impossible to please. All we can do is keep meeting our quota.

Our pipeline is empty!

Give me something.

14 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

We made room to design quality by relieving the pressure of quantity.

We’ve got the capacity to listen to Sales and act on it. Together we broke the status quo loop.

A lead management framework is a definitive break from the status quo. It’s designed to infuse the revenue funnel with an almost instinctual, magnetic forward motion from brand exposure to sales pitch for less friction and the better results of two truly empowered, collaborating teams.

MASSENGINES.COM

In this framework, a blend of automation, data, and process design equips Marketing to work with Sales to define, target, route, and nurture leads. But this isn’t just an expansion of the Marketing team’s already-full mandate.

Let’s look at the current process as a baseline:

WHAT LEAD MANAGEMENT LOOKS LIKE BEFORE MARKETING Exposure

SALES Nurture

Handshake

Needs Assessment

Demo/Quote

Relationship-building

(HANDOFF)

(REVENUE)

AFTER MARKETING Exposure

Nurture

Handshake

SALES Needs Assessment

Demo/Quote

Relationship-building (REVENUE)

(HANDOFF)

Linear view of Lead Management

In today’s market, the buyer is in control.

They own and self-direct much of the journey, seeking out information, confirmation, and insight from a variety of places with ease. But the very same open access that benefits prospective buyers has also made those buyers more accessible for Marketers, who can step in to serve as guides in the information overload of the digital age.

In rethinking the roles (and rules!) of prospect engagement, we see what looks like a huge task-transfer from Sales to Market-

ing. We do shuffle the handover line further to the right—with more of the funnel under the marketing banner—but two things help make that shift possible. Remember our manifesto: Marketing need not work harder, but smarter.

With lead management the funnel is clean, sensible, easy, and brilliantly executed, with no overwhelm or black holes. As closers, Sales reps can now trust each lead is more exclamation point than question mark.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 15

OVERCOMING THE MISALIGNMENT OF MARKETING & SALES

I

n most companies, Marketing and Sales are the growth-driving heroes. Both have a strong instinct for what customers want. Both have a direct impact on how much the company sells. And both pull from a lineage of best practices and insight on how to generate more interest and close more deals for more revenue.

But in most companies, Marketing and Sales are often misaligned.

In this issue, we’re diving into what makes modern buyers tick — how they think and what draws them in. If Marketing is going to connect and engage buyers in a way that drives revenue, we need to renew—or perhaps reinvent—our daily collaboration with our partner in success: Sales.

Marketing and Sales have traditionally had a strong sibling rivalry.

We’re locked together at the hip, but too often, we’re pulling in different directions, all the while blaming each other for quota shortfalls and missed opportunities. So let’s take a moment to talk. If we work together, how might we influence prospects, and start conversations that drive pipeline?

In this article, we’ll start exploring how to bridge the divide between Marketing and Sales and create a harmonious family that collaboratively grows revenue.

16 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

‘Misaligned’ is one of those corporate-speak diagnostic words we might use to describe broken strategies, teams, or mandates. It’s a tidy way of expressing deep frustration — the kind of dysfunction that crops up daily to impede our work. And nothing amplifies misalignment like massive, rapid change.

LET’S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK: Prior to the digital-age, prospects would go straight from an advertisement to a Sales call. But now, advertising sends interested prospects to a website. Sales no longer has the first handshake. Marketing does. We do more work at the top of the funnel before the hand-off, educating and ‘warming’ the leads, helping them refine their understanding of what they need so that when a Sales rep gets in touch, the prospect is that much more galvanized in their interest.

But if Sales perceives most of what they get from Marketing as junk — and doesn’t follow up once Marketing hands-off those leads — we invalidate the trust earned by the brand (and the money it took to build it). Market-

ing has spent time and money prepping for a Sales conversation that never happened.

Why bother catering to the buyer journey — learning to reflect buyer needs and concerns, anticipating their questions, customizing our approach based on role or industry — if the Sales team perceives Marketing leads as ‘of dubious quality’, causing them to not take prospective buyers seriously?

This is the crux of the misalignment between Marketing and Sales. Fundamentally, Sales doesn’t always understand how Marketing brings value, or drives revenue. The dysfunction affects both teams, making them sluggish, slow to respond, and chronically at-odds when both would rather be — and could be — in a state of flow.

The narrative of Sales as a lone wolf may momentarily explain the frustration. Marketing may say: “No matter what we send them or how good it is, they’ll still just go off on their own”. But it’s a crutch to think that way. It perpetuates the dysfunction. It doesn’t pay enough attention to why Sales feels this way:

Marketing sends crappy leads not worth my time.

An email address is not a lead.

I don’t care how good Marketing thinks the leads are. I just need more of them — a higher volume, and then I’ll sift through them myself to chase the ones *I* decide are good.

My livelihood depends on closing revenue. I have no time for speculation.

I don't get paid to sit with Marketing and try to explain what I need. Especially when they won’t really listen anyway.

Marketers are on-salary. They can’t begin to grasp the pressure we’re under.

To make marketing better, we begin by not turning away from the daily realities and pressures of Sales reps. They don’t choose to feel this way. Their experience with junk leads has earned their shortcutting around them. If we don’t begin here — if we lean on the lone-wolf narrative, why should any

company invest any money in marketing at all? Why should a company spend millions of dollars on marketing if sales is going to disregard their output anyway?

Clearly, the path to mutual understanding is more nuanced than that.

We would all agree in Marketing’s inherent value as a multiplier of Sales’ efforts. Awareness helps. Great storytelling, PR, and a high-appeal brand all help. Tailored, excellent content helps. It all feeds the kind of lead generation sales needs to succeed. But at the same time, marketing’s inherent value is difficult to quantify. Sales may say: “Marketing just spent a bunch of money on fonts. While I’m out here digging ditches, taking fire in the trenches, they’ve redesigned the flag for our nation. So what?” That way of thinking is a crutch, too.

When one team disbelieves in the value of another, collaboration is impossible.

Walls go up.

It’s not just Marketing teams that are affected by misalignment with Sales. When Sales

MASSENGINES.COM

doesn’t allow our work to be relevant — for Marketing to bring value by cooperating, sharing what they know and need — Sales suffers too. They remain self-marooned, immobilized and spinning their wheels in a state of cemented non-cooperation.

It’s fundamentally demoralizing to feel this way about your partner. And Marketers work hard. It’s painful for us to hear objections from Sales through an impenetrable wall.

How can we break through?

Can we align with Sales for the benefit of all despite a mutual legacy of misunderstanding?

Changing the culture of the relationship between Marketing and Sales can feel like an overwhelming task. We can feel cemented in our perception of the problems inherent to the ‘other’, and protective of our turf. So where to begin? As is the case with every entrenched challenge, we start with small steps that change how we show up.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 17

THE TO-DO LIST: Tactical shifts to build trust between Marketing and Sales 1

Start listening. Always respect the time of Sales reps, and be appreciative of the pressure they’re under every quarter.

There’s no need to call team-wide kumbayas of a dozen people when you could have informal touch-base meetings with one or two. Prioritize flow and movement.

2

18 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

Lead collaborative, relationshipbuilding meetings with Sales by answering the fundamental question they are absolutely justified to ask: “What’s in it for me? Why should I spend my time here instead of on sales calls?”

3

4

Next, make sure to say: “We’re going to keep this brief and only ask you the important questions.”

Live up to that promise by limiting the length and complexity of meetings or conversations.

Be explicit about valuing and appreciating their time and input.

Acknowledge reality. If Sales thinks the leads you’re sending them are not worthwhile, make sure they know you care about that. Don’t be defensive.

Listen to what they have to say.

5

Where is the low-hanging fruit in terms of the Sales reps? Strike a balance between the rock stars — you’ll need their instincts — and the people most likely to be engaged and willing to help.

Compile a list to undergo a pilot collaboration with reps who are either already successful, or who are driven to be more successful.

6

7

MASSENGINES.COM

Ask questions and capture it all, keeping an open mind. Too often, we probe into challenges with an already pre-set notion of what those challenges are. This causes us to explore only until we get a piece of evidence for our already-existing assumptions. Then we stop. Instead, keep asking better and better questions until you hit something unexpected, or that hasn’t been expressed before. Rather than seeking confirmation of the current reality, seek out complexity. Ask: “Who do you want to talk to? What does the perfect lead look like? What’s their title, industry, company size, state of readiness? And what causes you to reject a lead?” The answers, compiled, will serve as the foundation of your lead scoring initially and lead management system longer term. As soon as Sales starts seeing more leads that reflect this ideal, they’ll begin to trust the process. This is a golden moment.

In lead management, Marketing’s goal is to cut the number of leads we send to Sales in half — while doubling the quality. Make this clear from the get-go, as this is a big shift. Don’t be alarmed by the number of leads dropping.

Be encouraged. Help Salespeople understand how a smaller number of higher-quality (ready-to-buy) leads would affect their whole approach to their work, and their results. Prepare them for volume going down so they’re not sideswiped by it — and make sure they know their input will directly define what ‘good quality’ means going forward.

With alignment, Sales’ knowledge becomes actionable feedback rather than a barrage of complaints. Marketing can listen, adapt, and course-correct. If we work together, Sales will no longer have to hunt for cold leads on their own. With alignment, Sales will talk to people who are interested and ready to buy. This is what we all want. This is ease for everyone.

In the digital world, buyers enjoy exponentially growing autonomy and control.

8

Collaboration isn’t a one-time project.

Think of it more as integration. Send Marketing Operations to join in on regular Sales meetings. Hear all their pain points. Iterate the system to make a difference — and make sure they know you’re iterating.

It is mission-critical to establish trust, as always, but with so much noise and so many choices for every prospect, the funnel has shifted.

Sales still builds trust one-to-one. But before that one-to-one contact, the brand, as conceived and delivered by Marketers, warms the room. In the digital world, the impact of Marketing’s brand staging can’t be understated. More than ever, in these digital times, we’re in this together.

Rather than reflect on the barriers in the way — on the dysfunction and lack of flow — imagine what it would feel like for every revenue-influencing person in the company to be aligned. Collaborative, supported, appreciated. Imagine.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 19

20 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

MASSENGINES.COM

COMPANIES WITH GREAT CONTENT THAT ENABLE BUYERS

H

aving content that enables buyers to make informed, confident decisions can be a game changer in a market where people seek product knowledge with the touch of a smartphone. Recent Gartner research6 indicates that buyers are only spending 17% of their time speaking to potential suppliers, making it imperative for Marketing and Sales teams to work in tandem to serve up relevant information throughout the entire purchasing process.

B2B company websites that simply offer general product specifications alongside shallow, formulaic blogs are ill-equipped to compete in a buyer empowered landscape.

Responsive, content-rich websites enable B2B customers to get the information they seek when researching a complex solution.

Yet, B2B companies struggle to offer content that matters: CMO Council’s March 2020 study 7 found that a mere 12% of B2B Marketers believed their content marketing programs targeted the right audience with relevant and persuasive content.

6 7

So what does high-impact buyer enablement look like in action? We rounded up three companies in diverse industries that are exemplary in putting their buyers first through inbound focused, content-rich websites. Let’s take a quick look at who these companies are and how they are enabling their buyers to navigate all stages of the discovery and research process.

Anderson, Brent. “CSO Update: The new B2B buying journey and its implication for sales.” Gartner, www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey, 2019.

“Making Content Marketing Convert.” CMO Council and NetLine, www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/making-content-marketing-convert, 2020.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 21

HUBSPOT: DIGITAL MARKETING PRAXIS Hubspot’s content embodies the company’s inbound methodology: that Marketing and Sales teams can grow revenue by following a “flywheel” model that seeks to “attract, engage, and delight” customers.

Hubspot’s buyer-centred website attracts their market en masse, boasting 7 million visitors to their blog monthly. Their content empowers business professionals to enhance their Inbound Marketing and Sales processes through a diverse collection of blogs, e-books, kits, tools, webinars, courses, quizzes, and templates.

How Hubspot’s Content Enables Buyers When it comes to buyer enablement, Hubspot’s marketing is on point, focused on educating Marketing and Sales professionals in a wide range of roles and verticals. The blog enables beginners to understand a range of topics, providing advice on everything from creating a sales plan to writing an email newsletter. More experienced professionals will find guides on developing content strategy and e-books on managing and training remote teams. Regularly updated reports and curated statistics make Hubspot a goto resource for all things inbound. Their resources also feature industry specific sales and marketing guides for law firms, tech startups, and healthcare companies.

Hubspot’s marketing strategy is effective because it centers on solving the problems of their buyers first while compelling them to engage more deeply with their offerings, generating new leads in the process. A blog on the “14 Best SEO Tools” in 2020, for example, will lead to a download for a free SEO kit, while an article on “Sales Training Games and Activities” brings the prospect to an onboarding template. While empowering their buyers to learn and enhance their work, Hubspot’s Marketing team acquires contact data, builds valuable trust with the prospect, and captures a snapshot of their buyer’s persona and needs.

Hubspot takes buyer enablement a step further by allowing prospects to generate their own software subscription configuration and

22 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

quote. Given that Hubspot’s buyers are frequently Marketers that will view marketing tactics with a good dose of skepticism, having customers nearly close their own deal is a testament to the success of their methodology.

AVALARA: HELPING BUYERS NAVIGATE TAX COMPLIANCE

Avalara’s content enables their B2B customers by demystifying the complex and litigious world of tax compliance. Selling a range of software that automates tax compliance across different industries and state borders, Avalara offers accounting solutions for finance officers and controllers. Avalara’s content echoes the premise of its software, providing their buyers with a clear understanding of tax regulations and alerting them to financial obligations they may not even be aware of.

How Avalara Enables Their Buyers Avalara prioritizes the needs of their buyers by offering free, easy to use tools and resources that take the work out of researching tax laws across state and international boundaries. Their content allows buyers to understand the financial implications of operating their businesses in different tax jurisdictions. An interactive map on the site, for example, shows the different contexts that each state might use to establish a sales tax nexus, or require a business to collect sales tax from its customers. The site also offers a quick look-up tool for finding the sales tax rate for any given American location, which can vary down to the exact address.

The resource center also features a blog that keeps accounting professionals up to date with changing tax laws and world events. Avalara’s blog posts are detailed, especially when it comes to explaining legal implications and complexities that arise with the growth of new technologies, products, and services. A business owner or controller might not be aware, for example, that tax liabilities may exist for video conferencing or collaboration tools; a salon offering “virtual haircuts” during the COVID-19 pandemic may not realize those services could be audited in the future.

Avalara’s content strategy helps businesses stay tax compliant by demystifying the arcane field of tax legislation: an essential component for risk mitigation. Their content is relevant, updated frequently, and well worth subscribing to if you have the responsibility of tracking your company’s finances. Most importantly, Avalara’s content is comprehensive, explanatory, and written with a tone that inspires trust in their brand.

YALE APPLIANCES: B2C

CONTENT JUGGERNAUT

Yale Appliances is a home appliance retailer with two stores in the Boston area that any business can look to for a masterclass in buyer enablement. Yale worked with Impact, an Inbound Marketing agency with a buyer-centred “they ask, you answer” approach. Impact helped Yale shift away from traditional outbound methods and made content creation a company mandate. With this strategy, Yale’s content simplifies the dizzying task of researching a home appliance purchase, which can involve comparing dozens of brands, specifications, categories, and price points.

How Yale Appliances’ Enables Their Buyers Yale Appliances’ content makes buying appliances easy through a comprehensive resource centre containing guides, videos, and blog posts that compare brands and products in nearly every product category imaginable.

Yale’s content allows customers to navigate their own purchasing with information that speaks to shoppers at early stages in the journey, perhaps more concerned with the size, durability and style of an appliance than a specific brand and its product specs. For example, most refrigerator buyers at the outset of a purchase are interested in finding out which models have the greatest freezer capacity rather than which refrigerators LG has on the market.

Visitors to Yale’s resource centre can research their appliance purchase without ever leaving the site or calling a Sales rep. The site is set up for visitors to find content on the most specific of topics, from detailed comparisons of 36-inch gas top stoves, through the “5 best French Door and side-swing Ovens”, to the top 2020 18-inch dishwashers. There are even long-form, downloadable manuals for purchasing major appliances, literally saving customers hours of research.

MASSENGINES.COM

Yale’s content strategy of anticipating and answering their customers’ questions enables buyers because it eliminates the arduous, often dreaded task of browsing appliance stores and engaging in a high pressure conversation with a Sales-floor rep. Buyers can enter a showroom in the later phases of their buying journey and focus on intentionally testing out a narrowed down list of choices instead of browsing every model in the shop.

EMPOWER YOUR BUYERS WITH THE RIGHT CONTENT High-impact buyer enablement puts customers first through content that educates buyers and addresses their problems and concerns. Following the practices of these standout websites will take your marketing to the next level by providing resources that enable buyers to be successful and effective at what they are doing. In return, businesses get critical information about their buyers that enable Marketers and Sales reps to strategically serve content and position products in a way that is helpful to the prospect and leads to a sale.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 23

MAKE B2B BUYING EASY: A PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH TO MARKETING YOUR B2B BUYERS ARE EMPOWERED, BUT OVERWHELMED Prescriptive selling in B2B has received a lot of attention recently, and for good reason.

Your buyers, empowered to research new and often complex solutions online without the help of a Sales rep - may be experiencing buyer fatigue.

Buyers control their journey more than ever, gathering information from a variety of channels and contacting Sales well into the later stages of the sales funnel.

Marketers continuously churn out content, working to educate and influence their audience: a practice that has intensified as B2B products and solutions have become increasingly complex. In truth, this tide of unending information - combined with a buying process that includes multiple stakeholders with divergent interests - can be overwhelming to your B2B customers.

8

In The New Sales Imperative8, the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) presents prescriptive selling as the antidote for B2B buyer fatigue. Rather than responding to buyers with more information that may perplex or stall their efforts, prescriptive sellers give clear, actionable recommendations and explanations.

Taking a prescriptive sales approach puts buyers first and demystifies the unfamiliar territory they often navigate en route to deciding on a new business solution. It enables the buyer to make a decision confidently and can be highly influential in the 1:1 context of Sales where the customer is typically on the threshold of making a purchasing decision.

But what does ‘being prescriptive’ mean for Marketing, where the focus might be top-ofthe-funnel awareness-building, and trust has not yet been built between the brand and

Nicholas Toman, Brent Adamson, Cristina Gomez. “The New Sales Imperative.” Harvard Business Review, www.hbr.org/2017/03/the-new-sales-imperative, 2017.

24 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

buyer? How can Marketing teams demystify B2B buying in the early stages of purchasing?

Let’s explore what being prescriptive entails for Marketers and how it can serve the modern B2B buyer.

SERVE YOUR B2B BUYER WITH PRESCRIPTIVE MARKETING B2B marketers often communicate their messaging to tens of thousands of people at a time, which makes the idea of being prescriptive seem either impossible or presumptuous. In truth, Marketers have a subtle yet critical role to play in shifting from a traditional sales-enablement model to one focused on prescriptive buyer-enablement.

Besides equipping Sales reps with a repertoire of knowledge, content assets and tools to draw upon when courting prospects, Marketers can adopt a prescriptive approach by giving prospects curated, targeted resourc-

es that enable them to choose their own pathway to a solution. To put it another way, we can empower the buyer by repurposing the same tactics we have been using to support Sales.

further along in their journey who are willing to invest time in learning about your solution.

Prescriptive marketing is an act of serving your buyer, streamlining their research through targeted content and taking the work out of sifting through pages of information. Taking this next step in your marketing can have the powerful impact of differentiating your brand and content from the rest.

Taking a prescriptive approach to B2B marketing entails having a deeper understanding of the buyer journey and the types of content required to simplify the task of purchasing. Is there a specific way your buyer will look at solutions based on their role on a buying team? Create or adapt content to reflect that perspective.

RE-IMAGINING THE MODERN BUYER JOURNEY THROUGH A PRESCRIPTIVE LENS

With a prescriptive approach, the buyer has control over which content to consume, skim, or skip as they proceed in their decision-making. Less may be more: many prospects lack the time it takes to read through long white papers or sit through a 45 minute webinar. This doesn’t mean that the content you have already created has lost value – for example, you can repurpose sections from a white paper to create shorter articles. Save longer, “beefier” pieces of content for buyers

A solid prescriptive marketing approach involves researching and mapping buyer journeys with the aim of guiding prospects through their unique obstacles and hurdles. A deep understanding of the buyer journey gives Marketers visibility into what pathways prospects enter, follow, and loop through before having any real engagement with your business – or your competitors.

“Much of the buyer journey happens prior to vendor engagement”, states MASS Engines consultant Anthony Iannuzzi. “It’s alarming

STAGE

EARLY (“Information Challenges”)

BUYING IMPEDIMENTS

(“People Problems”)

to consider situations where a customer approaches your company and you didn’t help them get there. They chose you without your influence. What if someone else becomes the de facto choice?”

While companies should have a comprehensive account of their own buyer’s journeys, there are common barriers that most buyers encounter as they make a purchase.

The CEB elucidates some of the common impediments that slow down the purchasing process at early, mid, and late stages.

In our view, the early and mid stages are most significant to Marketers considering a prescriptive approach. The chart below summarizes the CEB stages and impediments and aligns them with roles we feel marketing should play in helping buyers work through those obstacles.

RECOMMENDED MARKETING PERSPECTIVE

EXAMPLES OF CONTENT SOLUTION

Trouble distinguishing between meaningful and irrelevant information.

Opportunity for Marketing to influence buyers and make an impact.

Infographics that compare and summarize conflicting viewpoints.

Interpreting conflicting viewpoints.

Confusion in this stage is rampant in new or rapidly changing industries.

Create “meta-content” that simplifies the wider context of information.

Knowing how much information is sufficient.

“Competing priorities” and varying purchase criteria.

MID

MASSENGINES.COM

Resistance to changing status quo.

“Hidden concerns”.

>> FOCUS on clarifying and curating information rather than adding to it.

Addressing internal issues on the buyer’s side can be effectively handled with the right content.

Identify the pain points of objectors and frame them with the solutions your product offers.

Intervention from a Sales rep would likely be met with mistrust.

Example content for a CFO may seek to justify the cost of a product or solution in terms of ROI.

>> COURT other buying unit stakeholders more aggressively with targeted content.

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 25

TRANSFER THE

LIGHT BULB

MOMENT TO YOUR B2B BUYERS 26 THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE

VOLUME 1

MASSENGINES.COM

As B2B buying continues to evolve, Marketers must follow suit. With prospects driving their own purchasing journeys, Marketers can pre-emptively address the problem of buyer fatigue by taking a prescriptive approach. This means re-purposing and simplifying content in a way that reflects the buyer’s perspective and place in their journey, and addressing the barriers they face throughout their purchasing process. In our experience, successful companies focus on educating prospects, effectively transferring the ‘light bulb’ moment to the client rather than explicitly promoting their product.

Providing real value to your customers’ experiences always triumphs and if you can enable your buyers to see what the best solutions are, your brand will be top of mind when it is time to buy!

VOLUME 1

THE EMPOWERED BUYER ™ MAGAZINE 27

EXPERIENCE DRIVEN RESULTS FOCUSED WE’RE MORE THAN JUST TECH

Our team is comprised of change management agents, MarTech strategists and marketing automation technicians with 35+ years of consulting experience.

WE SEE THE SUM OF THE PARTS

We work across all critical departments to ensure they have a seat at the funnel transformation discussion table from day one.

WE BELIEVE IN EMPOWERMENT

WE USE A PROVEN METHODOLOGY

WHY

MASS ENGINES

We’re only as good as your ability to own the solutions we implement. We support your funnel revolution with change management, training and governance.

WE KNOW MARTECH

Our 4 step framework is based on a proven academic model for technology adoption and is supported by a disciplined adoption pathway.

WE UNDERSTAND CHANGE

We help you motivate meaningful change in your organization by putting people and information at the center. Our process identifies challenges, communicates solutions and ensures long-term adoption across your organization.

We are laser focused on marketing automation & CRM as essential building blocks of the revenue engine.

Our experienced team knows the ins and outs of key platforms and common adoption challenges.

We’ve built our business on referrals and are proud to have worked with:

2876 Dundas Street West Toronto ON M6P 1Y8

info@massengines.com 647.952.8240

www.massengines.com