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How to discover the personal and emotional drivers for a B2B audience
“The best thing about doing this is that I got to have coffee with my Dad in the barn every morning until he passed. Now I have that cup of coffee with my son and will as long as he stays involved.” This statement paints a clear and vibrant picture of a small business owner’s emotional drivers. It surfaced in a series of qualitative in-depth interviews and encapsulates an emotional theme that ran through the interviews. It speaks to one of this audience’s core values and influences even their most rational decisions.
Read MoreSporadic Customer Journeys in Low Involvement Categories
Set it and forget it is the attitude in many low involvement categories – data security, business insurance, telecommunications, etc. Inertia keeps businesses from proactively evaluating alternative solutions or vendors. If the product or service is good-enough businesses don’t have the motivation to evaluate their options. The purchase journey for these products and services consists of long stretches of inertia, interspersed with periodic spikes in interest in alternatives.
Read MoreAre you hard to work with? It matters.
Do your internal processes pull customers and prospects closer to you or do they push them away Research shows that companies and individuals that find a vendor easy to work with demonstrate higher levels of loyalty and likelihood to recommend. They use the vendor more fully, e.g. buy more products, use more features. They will even use technically inferior products and services when a vendor makes their lives easier.
Read MoreUncertainty: The hidden barrier in B2B markets
Many B2B purchases are delayed or abandoned due to the uncertain outcome of the decision. Prospects compare the certainty of the status quo (good or bad) to the potential (but uncertain) benefits of a new solution and opt for the “devil they know”. The implication: B2B Marketing and Sales can help prospects reach a purchase decision by reducing uncertainty for the new solution, and increasing uncertainty of the status quo.
Read MoreMake it Easy for B2B Prospects to Buy (address the last mile problem)
Do some prospects slip away at the last stages of their buying journey, even though it seems your sales and marketing teams have done everything right? You may inadvertently be making it difficult for some prospects to make a decision. The following illustrates how this situation arises, and how to avoid it (names have been masked to protect the guilty).
Read MoreLittle Data: When B2B marketers don’t have access to big data
While B2B marketers wait for their organizations to adopt big data tools, they can leverage a range of cost-effective data sources to inform decisions that move their companies forward. The following are some of low-cost or free data sources (little data) B2B marketers, product managers and strategists can use to evaluate market opportunities, competitors, customer needs and overall market trends.
Read MoreKnow thy enemy: How to overcome barriers in B2B technology sales
The Art of War advises that we can outsmart opponents and avoid battle when we “know thy enemy”. While marketers typically define direct competitors as the enemy, internal barriers within prospect organizations pose equal peril.
Isurus has seen many innovative ideas in 20 years of B2B market research for technology companies. Some ideas meet great success out of the gate, others languish for years before taking off, and some recede and disappear altogether. Through this experience, we’ve identified four major reasons that prevent prospects from adopting new technologies.
Benefits generate interest, Pain generates B2B sales
Despite the best sales and marketing efforts, inertia keeps most prospects from changing vendors or trying new solutions, even when they display initial interest. Speaking to pain-points is often a more effective strategy than emphasizing aspirational benefits for overcoming the inertia that exists at the end of the B2B purchase decision journey.
Read MoreDeveloping a mid-market strategy for your enterprise product/service
The mid-market is an unfulfilled market opportunity for many vendors that serve enterprise segments. Rethinking the needs of the mid-market can improve a vendor’s chances of succeeding with smaller customers.
Read MoreRe-Thinking the C-Suite Sales Strategy
Selling to the C-suite or other senior executives is the holy grail of many B2B vendor’s sales and marketing strategies. Vendors believe a senior executive is in the best position to recognize the business value of their solution. We believe selling to the c-suite is not the right strategy for many vendors, based on recent research on decision-making, our conversations with executives and some practical realities. If you plan on moving your sales & marketing upstream, consider how the following trends impact your sales & marketing decisions and strategies.
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