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We are heading into tougher times. It is very important for all companies to be vigilant about the times ahead. The ones that survive, are those who make the right choices.
But what are the right choices?
If you only look at the numbers, a CFO and CEO sees a few functions, that are only spending money. Yes, you know this. It's marketing. The next thing they take under the loop, is who is generating money? Sales. And who in sales is not performing.
Now, there might be a TON of reasons that Robert is not performing as well as Mary or Gemma, but if there are difficult decisions to be made, me might be in trouble.
So, which one do you cut from. Here are two viewpoints:
- Cut marketing: Sure, you'll be able to make fast savings, stop the haemorrhaging. It's money directly out of your bank account. Who needs SEM, or Facebook advertising, or Linkedin promotions. Let's also stop working with that content producing freelancer, and who actually needs a video in these times.
- Cut sales: Robert isn't performing, he's costing us too much money, I'm sure the remainder of the sales team will take up the slack - if they know what's good for them. Good vibes in the team from now on, huh?
My take on this is that you will lose either choice you make!
It's time to make smarter choices, to look ahead. Here's what I see, when I randomly surf the web on B2B company's pages. The website is created with the notion in mind that the salespeople are "hunters" (I really dislike this terminology!). If a customer comes to your website and becomes more interested in what you have to offer, and he want's to know more, all he has to do is to fill in this form and HOPE that someone in sales will pick it up within 2 weeks time.
And why is it that salespeople are so "lazy" to contact that fantastic lead? Because the lead is bad. In most cases, they were curious about some detail, or needed some piece of information that was not on the webpage. Sales do not have time for these tyre kickers.
So, what can you do if you are pressed to save money fast?
My suggestion: cut a LITTLE from the marketing budget. If you are getting 10,000 visitors to your webpage, but they are bouncers or leave after 0.54 seconds, then you are attracting the wrong type of customers. Start by getting your ducks in a row 🦆🦆🦆:
- Workshop with sales and marketing to really find out what is the VALUE that your customer gets from your service
- Understand the customer's buying process, and what type of content is needed to help your customer move from one phase to the next in that process
- Make sure that you have the technology in place to collect leads, and to nurture them (lead bots, newsletters, webinars (even old webinars can be put on a platform which requires registration), CRM). Make sure you have the processes in place for the data to flow between these.
- Ensure that sales has playbooks in use, so that they know how to contact (even COLD) prospects successfully. The end game of each contact is NOT always to sell. It might be only to awaken the customer to an optional future, and then get the permission to provide them with more relevant information ➡️ Nurturing process.
Here are a few quick fixes for marketing:
- Talk to sales and customer services: you get tons of content ideas!
- Website: really look at them from a customer point of view, if all pages end with "contact sales for more information", really think about this, and have a conversation with sales: how can we help this customer HERE, on the website. Customers don't like to be left waiting for answers, and sales really hate rubbish leads.
Here are some quick wins for sales:
- Make sure that someone actually IS reading the inbox where these leads are coming in
- Decide what to with smaller customers: they do bring in revenue, but maybe you need to create "standard packages", or create a questionnaire that will help you quickly qualify them, or even think about having the sale completely online?
- Go through all your existing customers and ask them: do you know anybody who could benefit from our service?