“As hard as it has become to sell in today’s world, it has become that much more difficult to buy. The single biggest challenge of selling today is not selling, our customers’ struggle to buy.”
– Brent Adamson, Distinguished VP, Advisory, Gartner
B2B buying is a different ball game altogether. Often, the buying process requires a lot of to-and-fro between the buyer and the customer. Buying decisions are made by six to ten people who bring different opinions on the table and is rather complex. It becomes even more intricate when millions of dollars are at stake and the buyers are large enterprises.
Acquiring large enterprise customers is a challenge and companies are investing heavily to assist their sales and marketing. But, is implementing sales and marketing automation enough to close deals faster? Automation makes sense when you’re trying to standardize the process and to monitor conversion rates. But what if you want to have a highly personalized approach with your high-value enterprise accounts? How can you ensure that your sales reps are well aware of the priorities and challenges of target prospects?
Insights can help you win your dream accounts. The biggest challenge marketers face is having inadequate and irrelevant data. Equipping sales reps with the data and insight they need is what sales enablement is all about. A major chunk of this process is understanding your buyer’s priorities and how you can help them close deals faster. Focusing on fostering a better relationship can be the much-required push factor for winning new clients since people buy from people.
Why does quality insight matter?
Enterprise selling organizations face a complex sales procedure which demands a high level of knowledge about their accounts at every stage of the sales cycle. Sales driven by insights can be a powerful tool and can help companies thrive not only survive.
Actionable insight fuels personalization to shorten the sales cycle
Actionable insight is of huge importance in terms of delivering personalization to accounts. With sales reps facing difficulty in delivering personalization, insight can be the answer to solving problems that companies face to achieve higher personalization levels. One of the ways you can offer personalization is through high-quality relevant content. Building high-quality relevant content is only possible if you are well-versed with your target audience’s priorities and challenges. A higher level of personalization can be achieved when powered with proper research. Industry-specific content like videos, white papers, blogs, webinars can give an edge to B2B marketers trying to sell into large accounts.
For example, you may require industry-level information specific to the North American region. Sales automation software cannot deliver account and industry level information at this level of segmentation. Hence, insights can help fuel marketing program with the right and relevant information.
Equips enterprise selling teams with the knowledge they need
One of the most efficient way to gather insights is through desk-research. Desk-research uncovers relevant insights with precision. This is due to the advantages that human intelligence offers in terms of research. To ensure the effectiveness of your targeted marketing strategy, insights on the firmographic, technographics, key executives and the industry they operate in are provided through desk-research. A huge difference lies in asking prospects what challenges they are facing rather understanding the challenges the large enterprise accounts are facing.
Doing some desk-based research through the eyes of your sales and marketing teams can yield insight about target companies that no tech stack can match. Recently, we presented a comprehensive account research analysis to a team pursuing new business opportunities. We delved deeply into each account through the lens of their internal communication tools.
During our investigation, we discovered that one of the target accounts had recently adopted a global solution that was unfamiliar to our client. As we explored further, it became clear that the target account had previously signed up for another solution addressing the same issues the client’s offering aimed to solve.
Next steps? Though not easy, the right thing to do was to drop the account and include another prospect where they stood a better chance of winning. The outcome was significant marketing dollars saved. Without that piece of information, they would have ended up spending countless hours of marketing, and media spend, only to realize at a later stage that the client had already solved the problem they were setting out to solve for them.
To conclude…
Quality insight can help sales reps make more informed and sound decisions. Sales teams need to know that enterprises often know their best accounts and are in a position to offer differentiated experiences. A research by Gartner found that customers who perceived the information they received from suppliers to help advance across their buying jobs were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease, and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret.
Above all, insights are often seen as a strong foundation for every marketing campaign. Sales reps can leave a positive impact as they establish a deeper level of understanding with their high-value accounts. By unearthing and delivering quality insights, any B2B organization can maximize its chances of establishing the relevancy required to enter the target accounts and foster the relationship required to win deals.