MARKET VIEW 10
Ken Ume
HEAD OF PRODUCT MARKETING
B2B Customer Acquisition: The role of human engagement in a world of digital-first enterprise marketing
The role of a salesperson is to reinforce the trust that we ask customers to put in our products or services.
Should enterprise sales companies invest more in virtual selling interactions, and if so what should they be doing differently?
Yes, I believe we should absolutely invest more in virtual interactions. And by that, I mean more than moving everything to flat screens. You need to inspire engagement and interactivity, as naturally as possible. Ideally, your sales process should be constructing a relationship with the customer that brings value to them. Every interaction, particularly one-to-one interactions, need to be worth their time and investment.
The role of a salesperson is to reinforce the trust that we ask customers to put in our products or services. In the past, we relied on face-to-face interactions to achieve that. Ironically, in a virtual setting, it doesn’t translate to merely seeing the other person on video. In fact, many people turn off their videos in a Zoom meeting. So now it’s about expanding the customer’s experience and utilising the many tools that assist with understanding where a customer’s mind is at. Tools such as Clearbit or Terminus help you identify if a customer is expressing an interest in your products or services and assist to adapt the sales strategy. Also arguably important are more interactive mechanisms that allow you to demonstrate a product without you having to grind your way through the buttons and configurations. Lastly, tools such as Prezi and Vidyyard allow you to break the mould of static presentations through animations, audio, and video. The point is you can still provide the power of face-to-face interaction without necessarily needing to be there. Allow the other person a chance to get a sense of who you are and what you’re offering.
One of the biggest challenges companies face is aligning their marketing and sales teams.
How can sales and marketing teams become better aligned and how should they form selling strategies?
Possibly one of the biggest challenges companies face is aligning their marketing and sales teams. There’s been a lot of emphasis on using technology to get in front of customers, but we have arguably fallen on the sales front. The mentality has been that if you get enough leads there’s bound to be a conversion figure, so the bigger the volume the better. The thing that is missing here is the focus on the value. Volume helps, but we need to be deep diving into the real anatomy of our customers’ decision making process. Marketing automation tools, ABX, and intent tools allow us to capture that insight and find the invisible or hidden trends and patterns that are indicated by very specific intent tools.. With account-based marketing or more importantly, account-based experiences, we’re deep diving into the prospect base–what their real decision making make-up is, and be more confident as we’re account or campaign planning. If we’re bringing sales in, we’re demonstrating not just technology to project marketing campaigns, but our understanding of the prospect base, segments, accounts and personas and what motivates and drives our customer’s decisions. We’re demonstrating the insight using data and report information that traditionally has not been used and in turn improve sales to be more knowledgeable and also demonstrates our own value.
KEN UME
Head of Product Marketing
TRIBAL GROUP
Millennials know that broadly speaking enterprise sales companies offer similar things, so we must appeal to the emotional aspect of decision making.
Should sellers of enterprise technology and services adapt their sales and marketing approach to address the generational shift towards entertainment seeking buyers?
While I agree that there is a generational shift in buyer habits and expectations, I’m a bit sceptical to view it as buyers just wanting to be entertained. I prefer to see it as buyers wanting to be engaged. Sometimes they want to laugh, sometimes they want to learn, and sometimes they want to be enthused. It can be a wide range of experiences on a wide range of platforms. And if you look at the variety of platforms that millennials use on a regular basis, be it LinkedIn, WhatsApp or even TikTok, you’ll notice that they can not only seamlessly switch from one to another, but they are also quite adept at finding the areas that engage them and resonate with them the most.
As marketers, our approach should be less about “telling” buyers how awesome we are, and more about creating a brand identity that knows where it falls in the engagement category; ie presenting your products as entertainment, being campaign driven and using ESG goals as part of the purpose, or focusing on the education aspect and providing informative resources to buyers, to name a few. Millennials know that broadly speaking enterprise sales companies offer similar things, so we must appeal to the emotional aspect of decision making.
Tribal Group offers products and services that enable customers to transform the digital student experience with greater efficiency and improved outcomes. Tribal Student Information Systems manage the complete student lifecycle: from attracting talent, on-boarding new recruits, day-to-day support, exams and assessments, to graduation and alumni communities. Their client base ranges from public to private, including alternative education institutions, with students anywhere from 50 to 200,000 students across multiple sites.
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