PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES

Six Steps to Accelerate Sales During Challenging Times

PLAYBOOK TOPROPEL SALES

THE FINN INSIGHTS SERIES

PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES 2

PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES

CONTENTS1 INTRODUCTION

– STEP 1. BUILD A FOUNDATION OF SMART GOALS – STEP 2. CRAFT EFFECTIVE MESSAGING AND POSITIONING – STEP 3. ROOT STRATEGY IN RESEARCH – STEP 4. SELECT THE RIGHT MIX OF MARKETING CHANNELS – STEP 5. CONTENT IS KING; TREAT IT AS SUCH – STEP 6. MEASURE TO MANAGE RESULTS

16 CONCLUSION


INTRODUCTION: 2020 disrupted every aspect of our lives. Many have experienced deep personal loss as a result of the tragic COVID-19 pandemic, while businesses around the globe are striving to adapt to a “new normal,” protect employees and maintain a healthy bottom line amidst severe economic conditions. It's hard to put into words the full effects felt around the world, but the business implications are clear and business development strategies must adapt to the new commercial landscape.

To achieve success in these challenging times, it’s critical to think more strategically than simply continuing to execute past marketing and sales tactics. Your customers and prospects are facing new issues and have new priorities. In other words, that means your conversations need to be sensitive to their challenges to gain traction and build stronger relationships.

To help you build a strategic business development plan, we’ve created the Playbook to Propel Sales. Use it, with our compliments, to refocus your programs and revive sales. The Playbook offers six critical steps:

1. Revisit and refocus your business and communications goals.

2. Craft distinctive positioning and messaging to avoid commoditization and resonate with higher-level decision makers.

3. Leverage digital research to identify the best means to engage with customers and prospects.

4. Strategically select most relevant communication channels and develop an execution timeline with measurable benchmarks.

5. Develop compelling content that leverages the power of your dynamic new position to cut through the clutter and generate quality leads.

6. Continually measure the program’s impact and strategically make adjustments to fuel greater success.


STEP 1. BUILD A FOUNDATION OF SMART GOALS For many companies, when they have news to share or a product to launch, it's

tempting to dive straight into tactics to get the word out. However, successful

business development initiatives start with a strategy specifically designed to meet

well-defined goals. Before lifting a finger on creative or content, B2B companies

should begin by assessing their missions, audiences, industry knowledge and

research to create measurable goals and a strategic plan of action. Start with

these steps:

1. Reconnect with your company’s leadership team

As business goals change, marketing and sales must align.

Conduct a marketing workshop involving the leaders of

the business, from the CEO and Managing Director to

heads of Sales, R&D, Manufacturing, Finance and Business.

Understand short term revenue opportunities, timing,

sales cycles, competitive challenges, value propositions,

geographic scope and other important factors.

2. Create SMART marketing goals

Translate business goals into marketing KPIs (Key

Performance Indicators). Create benchmarks that will

guide you through the next year and measure your

journey to success. See the measurement section of this

playbook to learn more.

3. Build greater alignment with marketing and sales

Too often B2B companies don't effectively align

marketing and sales. In many cases, marketing

initiates a campaign and sales continues to march

down the same legacy paths. To be effective,

marketing needs to better appreciate and

understand how their sales professionals engage

with customers and win business. It’s important to

understand if their sales professionals are mostly servicing existing accounts and

growing accounts organically; or are they more effective at engaging with prospects

and capturing new accounts. It’s paramount to continually get insight and feedback

on market dynamics from sales; however, marketing should also conduct its own

research to fully understand market dynamics and opportunities. In many cases,

sales professionals gain insight only from buyers and a few specifiers and therefore


may not see the complete forest – only the trees. As marketing identifies new

opportunities, it’s imperative to share this insight with sales and collaborate on

effective training and education. This will enable sales to confidently move forward

and build business.

4. Develop decision-maker personas

Determine who, by title and function, at customer companies is the key

decision-maker that has the responsibility to specify and approve the

purchase of your product. Is the ultimate decision maker the head

of R&D, Manufacturing, Engineering, Marketing or Finance?

Make this determination and then initiate research to better

understand this persona's challenges and pain points. Collect as

many details as possible and review them with your sales team.

From now on, everything you do needs to resonate with this strategic demographic.

5. Put together a list of new product launches

Product launches should relate to the specific needs of

customers. This may sound obvious, yet too often product

development happens independently in the lab or in R&D

without truly researching customer priorities and needs. Also,

when new products are going through stage-gates toward

commercial launch, make certain that plans to launch are

created at least 12 months in advance. This allows sales to be effectively trained and

enables marketing to create measurable timelines to maximize industry events,

trends and opportunities to achieve the greatest impact. Also, avoid using project

names assigned by R&D and engineering as brand names for the new product.

Make certain that the new name will appeal to prospects based on the promise

of value rather than simply product formulation or chemistry. Take the time to

effectively position and name the product so that it gains faster traction and avoids

commoditization. Create a realistic timeline for each launch and start a countdown

to the big splash.


STEP 2. CRAFT EFFECTIVE MESSAGING AND POSITIONING

Once goals have been articulated, it's critical that corresponding messaging platforms

not only resonate with target audiences but remain consistent to maximize impact.

To start, make sure messaging and positioning is original. Differentiation is the key to

standing out in often crowded marketplaces. There are several reasons why this

is important:

1. It's essential to avoid commoditization and win business based on value as opposed

to price. In other words, strive to connect with key decision makers so that price

becomes a detail – not the major consideration. Get your product specified by brand

name – not simply by product-type – in order to achieve more solid relationships.

2. Any company can present a product or service via a ‘shop-style’ e-commerce

platform, but this severely limits the opportunity to focus on unique business value

to achieve compelling differentiation in the marketplace. The key is to focus on the

challenges your potential customers face and how the benefits you can deliver via

your product or service will help alleviate those challenges, while also having a positive

impact on productivity and profitability.

3. Creating clear and differentiated positioning from the competition will single you

out as original thinkers – encouraging prospects to remain with you for a long time. It's

vital to demonstrate an understanding of the pain points faced by your prospects and

to convey the value you can deliver – be it in terms of overall equipment effectiveness

(OEE), for example, return on investment (ROI), total cost of ownership

(TCO) or a combination of these factors.

Once you have crafted your distinct positioning and

messaging platform, it's critical to deploy it consistently.

There are many channels where B2B decision

makers can gather information to inform a

purchase. Options range from trade media and

industry events to white papers, data sheets,

websites, webinars and social media. With so many

potential marketing tools and touch points, it's

paramount that a company maintain consistent

messaging across channels or that messaging

could lose its impact and even cause confusion in the

marketplace about the value of a brand or product.

Achieving consistency can be daunting, particularly


when marketing teams are small and have limited operating budgets, but with the

correct approach and a dedicated expert partner, excellent results can be achieved.

Every element must be coordinated effectively, so that regardless of the outlet – be it

an online sales meeting or a single post on social media – the information you wish to

communicate to your audience is clear, coherent and aligned with your sales strategy.

Creating a checklist of key points or keywords rooted in the established messaging can

help. Checking every social media post, press release and speaking engagement script

against this list can ensure a high degree of consistency across channels and greater pull

through.

To help manufacturing and trade companies create messaging that

resonates, FINN Partners has developed the JumpStart Initiative. The

program is specifically designed to differentiate your B2B product or

service as outlined in this step, contributing to faster market traction.

To learn more, please follow this link.

https://www.finnpartners.com/jumpstart/?utm_source=whitepaper&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=jumpstart


STEP 3. ROOT STRATEGY IN RESEARCHNew technologies allow marketers to listen to customers and prospects online, where

up to 70% of the decision-making process is conducted1. Matching a company’s

perspective to the interests of prospects is critical to success. A good place to start is

audience intelligence research, as well as website analytics, email audits, and online

studies that provide rich information for the development of a communications strategy

and to refine personas. Such research is best done in parallel with step one and two of

this Playbook to secure deeper market insights.

Another great tool is a survey of existing clients, uncovering their market challenges,

goals, behaviors and preferences. With an understanding of where the online

conversations are happening and what they are pivoting around, marketing

professionals can develop a solid communications strategy that will resonate with

potential clients. Take the guesswork and gut feelings out of the equation. Knowing

exactly what your buyers want might be just the advantage you need to break away

from your competitors.

New technologies not only offer greater insight into buyers’ interests, but also the

channels where they research online. Start with Keyword Research, which leads to

Conversation Channel Identification and, at a deeper level, Conversation Influencer Identification, which ultimately enables a Competitor Analysis.

Keyword research is used to define and set parameters around priority conversations

(social listening), inform messaging and content development and guide search engine

optimization and search engine marketing.

Conversation channel analysis

can indicate where the

conversation is taking place,

help identify trends and

sub-topics and, in turn, lead

to informed decisions about

what content to push out to

engage your target audiences.

See Figure 1 for an example.

1 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/the-ways-and-means-of-b2b-buyer-journey-maps-were-going-deep-at-forresters-b2b-forum/

Figure 1


The next step – influencer identification – allows marketers to identify the “voices of the

industry” ranked by three metrics: reach, resonance and relevance in your sector. All

you need to do is connect with them and provide useful and relevant content. Finally,

by understanding how engaged your competitors are in the conversation and which

channels they are using, one can see the shortcuts to your prospects and cut through

the information clutter efficiently.

To learn more, read this White Paper by FINN Partners: “Content Marketing ROI in a TMI

World” here.

RED PAPER SERIES | 6

help define realistic goals based on that individual, and contribute to the definition of the best channels and tactics.

Once the personas have been finalized, specific actions and goals should be mapped to each over the course of the individual's engagement path (awareness, interest, engagement). Establishing a realistic understanding of how each persona will interact with content and activities from the first point of contact to the point of purchase will inform the content strategy and recommended activities. Further, being able to track expected behaviors vs. actual behaviors will help refine and improve tactics quickly to drive better outcomes.

Persona reports come in all shapes and sizes. The best are rich in detail but also scannable, allowing executives who are not neck-deep in your study to appreciate the results. Personas are the backbone of your content strategy. Everyone involved in marketing should clearly understand each persona and slavishly match the offering to the person.

DEVELOPING CONTENT STRATEGIES BY LISTENING TO THE ONLINE CONVERSATIONYou now have a detailed portrait of your buyer(s). Would you be surprised to learn that we can also identify the online conversations that are relevant to your industry and your buyers in great detail? The example on the left shows a robust online conversation surrounding senior living that includes conversations about physical therapy and assisted living, but more importantly about health care, wellness, good food, and physical therapy; in other words, a conversation about the total person. (The inner circle represents broad topics and the outer circle gives detail about sub-topics in the conversation.

Senior Living

Physical Therapy

Assisted Living

Communities

Clients' Senior Living

YOUR CLIENTON SENIOR LIVING

YOUR CLIENT INTHE CONVERSATION

Communities

Clients' Senior Living

Physical Therapy

Assisted Living

Senior Living

THE RED PAPER SERIES

CONTENT MARKETING ROI IN A TMI WORLD.

IMAGINE THAT.

https://www.finnpartners.com/perspectives/blog/content-marketing-roi-in-a-tmi-world-here-eys-how.html


STEP 4. SELECT THE RIGHT MIX OF MARKETING CHANNELS

Every communications campaign should draw on a variety of tools to achieve its goals.

Analyzing what works for your target audience is the next step to success. As discussed

in the previous section of this Playbook, modern technologies enable marketers to track

where customers are coming from and what makes them convert into sales leads.

In a world overloaded with information, it's important to be where

your prospects are, but it's also paramount to provide an excellent

user experience and relevant information for each stage of the

decision-making process: identifying a need, identifying appropriate

suppliers, validating suppliers and solutions, and the final selection

of a supplier.

Modern, digitally empowered B2B buyers prefer to do their own

research online (68%) before contacting sales reps and say they can

now develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely

on digital content (62%), according to Forrester2.

2 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/the-ways-and-means-of-b2b-buyer-journey-maps-were-going-deep-at-forresters-b2b-forum/

68%

B2B buyers prefer to do their own research online

62%

finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content

SOURCE: GO FORRESTER


To adapt, invest in your online presence and provide your prospects with the relevant

technical information for each step of their journey. FINN Partners recommends the

following tools to help achieve your communications goals:

PROSPECTS ARE IDENTIFYING A NEED

YOU ARE TURNING STRANGERS INTO VISITORS

Thought leadership articles

Press releases

PR coverage

Search engine optimization

Pay-per-click campaigns

Blog posts

Social media posts

Advertising

Case studies

PROSPECTS ARE IDENTIFYING APPROPRIATE SUPPLIERS AND VALIDATING THEIR SOLUTIONS

YOU ARE TURNING VISITORS INTO SALES LEADS

White papers (gated)

Landing pages

Lead forms: calls-to-action

E-newsletters

Webinars

How-to videos

PROSPECTS ARE SELECTING THE “WINNER”

YOU ARE TURNING LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS

Demos, trials

Request a sales call or a visit

Marketing automation workflows

CRM integration

10PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES

Using a mixture of at least two tools from each section can help companies drive

awareness and generate sales leads. However, if the objective is to generate market

awareness, select from the top tools in the table, leaving the rest for the future. It's

important to note that all these elements work in combination, slowly nurturing your

prospects through

your sales funnel.

Offerings demos

and trials at the first

“meeting” with your

prospect might be

counterproductive.

Instead, let your

prospects get

to know you

through relevant,

educational and

non-promotional

content.


STEP 5. CONTENT IS KING; TREAT IT AS SUCH

Regardless of the channel, it's imperative that content be crafted for maximum impact

at the correct stage (or stages) of the customer buying process. Regardless of how

sophisticated the technology behind our media platforms becomes, a few fundamental

points still guide the development of strong content.

1. Become an expert in your field and tell your story. There is an ocean of

content published every day. Cutting

through this requires you to have a

distinct point of view, to demonstrate

a thorough understanding of the

challenges an industry faces, and to

share ways to overcome them, but

there are other areas that are often

overlooked. For example, in highly

competitive markets, where suppliers

abound, it can often be the story of

why you do what you do that raises

your company to the top of the list.

Every company has a story to tell, and it's the content producer’s responsibility to

extract it, shape it and ultimately leverage it to gain new business.

2. Encourage enthusiasm throughout your content. Have you ever spoken

to the owner of a company? Invariably,

they are brimming with passion

and enthusiasm for their business,

its industry, its products or services,

the people surrounding it and the

future of its output. Then turn to

their website or other written output,

however, and that enthusiasm, that

spark, almost always seems to be

missing.


3. Outsource content creation for consistency and efficiency. Not everyone in this

world is a writer, and it often falls to people within an organization to produce these

elements whose particular skill sets could be better deployed in other areas. Before

you delegate the writing tasks to someone, ask yourself… is it really an integral part

of their role? Writing is often placed in the hands of the people who are most likely

to be good at it, when it could perhaps be better taken care of by professionals

dedicated entirely to the craft of shaping value-added content pieces.

Giving the aforementioned craftspeople the opportunity to do what they do best

can pay dividends. A skilled content producer will always be objective, will always

think first about what their audience is likely to respond to and, critically, will dive

deep into your organization to incorporate the true value of doing business with you.


MARKETING AUTOMATION

You and most of your customers receive over one hundred emails per day, making

it increasingly difficult to get traction. Imagine, however, attending a webinar and

receiving a useful template within minutes after it's completed? Chances are high you’d

open that email and be grateful for the thoughtful gesture. Why? Because it's relevant

and timely.

This is what marketing automation is about – delivering relevant content to prospects

in a timely manner and answering their questions. Marketing automation, per se, is

a software that helps marketers maintain personalized dialogue with prospects and

customers to move them forward along their purchasing journey.

For you, on the other hand, it answers the need to store and effectively nurture a

growing number of leads while also consistenly bringing new sales leads.

Key benefits of marketing automation include:

• Store and nurture sales leads effectively with minimal effort;

• Connect marketing and sales – most of our clients complain about the mutual

frustration of those teams;

• Lead scoring – this important feature allows you to focus your time and efforts

on pursuing only quality leads, increasing marketing and sales effectiveness and

ultimately boosting your bottom line.

As with any tool, it's only as good as the person

or team who uses it.

In conversations with numerous

prospects and clients, we uncovered

a lot of frustrations and unmet

expectations among the companies

employing marketing automation.

Some view it as an overcomplicated

email blast system, while others

struggle with CRM integration or

data quality. We, in the meantime, see

the main area for improvement as the

quality of content. Especially if you are

aiming to “charge” contact details for it.


Free or gated content – choose wiselyWhile many of your marketing efforts are aimed at getting as many sales leads as

possible, make sure that you only “charge” contact details for highly relevant and quality

content that cannot be found anywhere else for free. Gated content that has generated

brilliant results for us in the past includes white papers, webinars, E-books and

templates. Other high-conversion calls-to-action were free trade show tickets, physical

samples, expert workshops and exclusive facility visits. It's always useful to brainstorm

with sales and management teams to generate additional ideas.

Segment per industryThe last thing you want is to spam your customer database with content that isn't

relevant to them. Seek advice from trade media, associations and strategic marketing

firms when building prospect databases.

Dialogue not monologueModern-day consumers expect to see a tailored page on Amazon and other B2C sites.

Why should their work/business experience be different?

Old-fashioned email blasts and most B2B websites don't take into consideration the

level of customer engagement with brands (awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty

or advocacy). B2B companies should also provide a dynamic user experience.

Marketing automation strategies trigger relevant and helpful communications when a

prospect interacts with a brand or service.

As mentioned above, relevant content received right after a themed webinar is more

likely to be opened than a Tuesday morning email blast with the same attachment.

Retain and extend customer relationsIt's five times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep and grow existing

ones. Marketing automation can help you cross-sell and up-sell by providing relevant

and timely content, interacting with your customers on their terms and boosting

engagement.


STEP 6. MEASURE TO MANAGE RESULTSCircle back to your business and communications objectives and set Key Performance

Indicators to measure the success of your program. Were you aiming to raise awareness,

shift perception or generate sales leads? Measure against these targets.

At FINN Partners, we differentiate between quantitative and qualitative measurement.

The former includes:

• Coverage: the number of articles or percentage uplift during a set period.

• Share of Voice (SoV): a comparative view of coverage against competitors.

• Media meetings: engagement with target journalists and influencers.

• Website traffic: earned media article referrals to landing pages created for the

purpose.

• Email subscription registrations: captured data tracked through bespoke URL links.

• Social engagement: the number of shares, tweets, retweets and new followers.

• Sales leads. Contacts lists in marketing automation software, such as HubSpot and

Pardot, by Salesforce, enable the measurement of site visits, email click-throughs,

subscriber registrations and more.

• Conversion rates from a lead to closed sale.

Qualitative approaches measure the impact of a program on audience perception.

This can be achieved through:

• Face-to-face interviews or focus groups.

• Self-completion surveys, which are most successful with an incentive.

• Telephone interviews guided by a defined questionnaire.

• Tone of voice analysis of coverage and online conversations.

These are just some of the measurement

options, which should be carefully

selected at the start of the program,

coupled with the correct KPIs and

matched against smart goals.

Learn more about measuring

communications campaigns and see

examples of modern digital measurement

tools in this White Paper.

https://www.finnpartners.com/perspectives/blog/measuring-pr-out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new.html


CONCLUSION Where companies operating in manufacturing and other trade sectors are

concerned, as well as many other B2B industries, the reality in today’s connected

world is that the sales process can no longer be controlled by the provider of

products or services. Outbound marketing initiatives are becoming obsolete, as

existing and potential customers now have powerful tools at their disposal to shape

their own conclusions without a single interaction with the companies vying for

their business. Purchasing decisions can often be all but made before that contact is

established, therefore it is vital to ensure that all the information necessary to shape

that decision is available across a wide range of channels.

Interested in learning more?

Please email Alan Isacson

[email protected] or

call him on +1 917 515 0566

mailto:alan.isacson%40finnpartners.com?subject=

WHO’S IN FINNFINN teams deliver with a talented mix of researchers, strategists, designers, technologists, content specialists and campaigners. All to help clients in the Manufacturing and Trade sector get better and stronger.

FOCUSING ON UNIQUE BUSINESS VALUE

FINN PARTNERS HELPS B2B PRODUCT

MANUFACTURERS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS

ACCELERATE GROWTH WORLDWIDE.

For nearly four decades, we’ve worked with clients to implement strategic marketing and integrated communications strategies aiming to avoid commoditization and win business based on value instead of price. Our results-driven campaigns are designed to future-proof B2B brands.

THREE CORE TENETS FUEL OUR SUCCESS:1. Focus on unique business value – not products and

services – to achieve compelling differentiation in the marketplace.

2. Connect with decision makers above the purchasing level so price becomes a detail – not the major consideration.

3. Close the loop between marketing and sales—two sides of the same coin—to shorten sales cycles.

WORK HARD. PLAY NICE.CREATE A BEST PLACE TO WORK.TAKE RISKS. AMAZE. COLLABORATE.MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.

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PLAYBOOK TO PROPEL SALES