The Buyer’s Journey: Marketing & Sales Roles

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Kristy Pauloski

We have a great deal of research now about how B2B buyers travel through a specific process before they ultimately purchase. As sales and marketing teams adapt to this new world order, what roles should they play at each stage of this journey?

1. Recognize that it’s the a problem-solving journey – “buying” is a means to an end. The first step in solving any problem is admitting that you have one. When sales and marketing teams understand that this is not a “sales cycle” or a “sales process” or a “marketing funnel” then they have shifted their focus to the customer. The customer is only going to buy something if it helps them solve a problem – so think of their journey as a problem-solving process. Focus your time, energy, and resources on helping them solve the problem.

2. Deliver very specific content and services at each stage of the journey. Don’t send the same content or information to the buyers when they are progressing through their journey. At each stage, they need something specifically relevant and targeted to what will help them then and there. The same case study is not necessarily useful when buyers are just figuring out the scope/extent of their need and also when they are doing a vendor selection.

3. Play a different role at each stage of their journey. Marketing and selling in a complex solutions-oriented world requires that the people involved be able and willing to play the role best suited to the customers’ needs. At one point, being an industry expert is very useful (early on) and at another a facilitator of technical answers (later).

Here is a quick reference guide for marketers and sales people in working with prospects at all phases of their journey:

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Video is Out, Interactivity is In

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Kristy Pauloski

Four things that videos CAN’T do [that Interactive Applications CAN]: BLOG

  1. Allow for quick and easy content updates. Both technology limitations and the nature of a sequential video make it extremely difficult and expensive to alter content once created, often requiring a full reshoot.
  1. Operate across all platforms, without requiring additional add-ons (e.g. flash players in iPads.) Often times, videos have to be redeveloped or reformatted to play on multiple hardware devices, making the initial production cost very hefty.
  1. While watching a video, prospects aren’t able to choose their own journey as information is presented sequentially. Customers can only replay what they already watched, allowing a user very little freedom in terms of consumption.
  1. Cannot easily engage or allow customers to interact because videos are a one-way conversation, as they do all the talking in the demonstration, not the user. Interactive applications put customers ‘in the driver’s seat’ to navigate content based on relevance to their business needs and interests, creating a more targeted buyers journey.

Interactivity allows for engagement, relevance, and real-time content updates that give
marketers the ability to identify, customize, and deploy the right message to each stakeholder in the sales cycle, making them more educated buyers.

Companies like Kaon Interactive help provide solutions to the things that videos cannot by giving B2B companies a way to fully immerse their customers into an engaging sales experience. This can be accomplished by offering virtual 3D product demonstrations and interactive storytelling applications, displayed on mobile devices, tablets, laptops, websites, and touch screen appliances. The interactive 3D product models (which look and behave exactly like the products) allow prospects to interact with products from every angle, explore features and benefits (open doors, change components, demonstrate workflow processes, etc.), and control their own personalized experience based on individual preferences.

Interactive product storytelling helps companies visually communicate even their most complex value story by orchestrating a guided sales tour where customers can navigate relevant messages, presentations, collateral, and more to discover how a product/solution will aid in resolving their unique business challenge.

Why sit on the sidelines watching a video, when you can be an active participant? Imagine the endless possibilities of reusable interactive cross-platform content, which allows marketers and the sales team to generate engaging experiences ONCE and deploy them EVERYWHERE without being redesigned.

Don’t miss out! It’s time to join the ‘interactive’ revolution and use 3D applications and interactive storytelling to more efficiently reach your target audiences.

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What We Have Here Is A Failure to Communicate

Posted on September 16, 2014 by kaonmarketingguru

Screen Shot 2014-09-16 at 11.56.47 AMWhy do most B2B sales people miss their quota? At the top of my list is the failure to communicate. Just as in the classic movie “Cool Hand Luke”, when the (admittedly evil) Captain can’t get Luke to cooperate and he attributes this disappointing result to “a failure to communicate”, do we also see sales teams AND marketers failing to communicate effectively with prospects.

What must marketers and sales people know how to communicate?

1. A substantive understanding of the prospect’s business environment;

2. A knowledge of the technical, workflow, or business challenges faced by each constituent in the prospect’s decision-making process;

3. A differentiated benefits message regarding the value of the products or solutions being proposed;

4. A direct relationship between those differentiated business values and the customer’s problems/challenges.

Of course, selling and marketing is much more than just these four items, but without the ability to communicate effectively on ALL of these dimensions, it is unlikely that prospects will understand, and therefore purchase, even the best products.

Sales and Marketing must, therefore:

  • know your customer’s business well, and learn to speak their language (using their acronyms, their industry lingo, and the terminology common to their business ecosystem);
  • learn to listen well, so that when information is conveyed to customers, it is personalized based on what has been learned from the customer, and is thus relevant and useful;
  • focus on why the product or solution being offered is better, in specific terms of solving the customer’s problems – not just a knowledge of the features and benefits of those features;
  • communicate effectively about the meaningful and relevant outcomes that will result from the customer’s decision to purchase these specific problems.

Better communication always leads to better sales performance.

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