One of the most daunting tasks facing many growing B2B firms is picking the right sales and marketing tactics. It’s hard to know where to start, especially when there are so many one size fits all points of view. Many articles and posts, like “Why Top Sales Reps Will Be Unemployed in 2 Years”, often treat companies and their customers as one big homogenous market. The truth is there is no one size fits all solution. There are a variety of B2B Sales and Marketing Tactics that you can employ to help you reach your organizational revenue goals.
Here are a few suggestions on how to find the right sales and marketing tactics for your business.
Consider Customer Buying Behaviour
Where do your customers get their information and how do they make purchasing decisions?
At Venture Accelerator Partners, we frequently work with many growing industrial firms. Oftentimes, customers that get their information do so traditional marketing tactics like tradeshows, local newspapers and industry publications, and cold calling. Conversely, many of the tech entrepreneurs we work with don’t like or use social media personally, but their customers use information garnered from Twitter or LinkedIn as key research steps in their buying processes. It doesn’t matter how you like to receive information. All that matters is how your customers like to receive information.
Does Your Cost of Sale Support the Tactic?
Having an full-time outbound sales rep onboard can be expensive. Typically, if you’re generating less than $5,000 a year per customer, it’s hard to justify full-time costs. In such cases, inbound marketing tactics or a part-time sales solution may be a better choice. Before you make any decisions always ask yourself, what percentage of my price is made up of sales and marketing costs?
Do You Have the Ability to Execute The Tactics?
If you are new to a tactic or don’t have the skills or experience needed in-house, you may need to look outside your organization for help with sales and marketing strategy or to leverage external tactical sales and marketing expertise. Pick the tactics that give you the best payback and that you can execute quickly on.
Can You Wait For the Impact of This Tactic?
As a startup or growing organization, cost concerns and tight timeframes mean you may not be able to wait to land your first customer through great SEO or content marketing strategies (which take considerable time and effort to perfect). In the early days of a new business, you may need to emphasize certain sales and marketing tactics that can diminish in importance as your business grows, such as cold calling or referral programs.
It’s never been easier to start and grow a business in Canada. It’s a great time to be selling a product or service as there are many different options available. However, there may be too many options and entrepreneurs can often drown in opportunity. If you need some help picking the right sales and marketing tactics for your business, please connect with me and we can set-up a call or grab a coffee to talk.
