In a Forbes article, You’re Doing It Wrong: Demand Generation*, Patrick Spenner argues that demand generation marketing focusing on individual decision-maker personas may do more harm than good. The crux of Spenner’s argument is that current content marketing strategies don’t account for the complex and powerful group dynamics of buying committees, which underlie the decision-making process of B2B purchases. Nor, he suggests, do content strategies address the early stage at which these “group dysfunction dynamics” are at their peak: when the buying committee is “wrestling with the nature of the solution” (typically 37% into their buyer’s journey, whereas sales teams are only invited into the conversation, on average, at the 57% mark).
According to Spenner, the demand generation marketing challenge is to influence multiple decision makers early – before they actively engage sales – helping them reach the right consensus opinion (i.e. to buy the marketer’s product or solution). Yet, at least in this article, he stops short of explaining how best this should be done. Another article, The Challenges of Engaging with Multiple Decision Makers**, points out that identifying and focusing on the most influential decision makers isn’t an option, as individual decision makers rarely wield more than 30% of the influence.
However, Spenner doesn’t clarify that his research is primarily focused on large companies, with an average buying committee size of 5.4 people. In reality, buying group size depends on the size of the purchase. For purchases under $50K, as well as for small and mid-sized businesses, the buying committee is likely to be smaller, perhaps only one or two people.
Here are six steps marketers can take to increase target account engagement and sales:
- Consider whether account-based marketing tactics, which focus deeply on individual accounts as a market of one, make financial sense. ABM execution can be advantageous for both the seller and buyer in expanding business within large existing accounts, especially in complex sales with long cycles. Common sense tells us it is significantly easier to sell to existing customers, rather than sourcing new prospects.
- Research target accounts, identify the key decision-making roles and develop multiple personas (one for each primary decision-making function, e.g., sales, marketing, IT, finance).
- Use prospect market research surveys to identify current challenges and deliver early sales intelligence and engagement. These are great ways to initiate contact with decision makers during the investigation phase of their buying process. Consider surveying each persona type.
- Analyze each account and develop the commercial insights necessary to challenge the buying committee’s existing mental models and approaches.
- Working closely with sales, provide the sales intelligence, insights, and sales enablement capabilities necessary for the account sales team to be valued as thought leaders and trusted advisors by the members of buying committees.
- Build a strong feedback loop between account reps and the account marketing team. Share results from insights tested with targeted decision makers and make modifications as appropriate.
Are there more B2B marketing strategies that can be implemented to help sales enablement and improve alignment? Download our Intro to Survey-Based Lead Generation eBook where we’ll tell you what survey-based demand generation is all about, how our process works, how you can get in on the action…and more!
What steps do you find most effective in increasing prospect engagement and sales enablement?
References:
* http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickspenner/2013/10/21/youre-doing-it-wrong-demand-generation/