Latest from the Intellegentia Blog

When I was on territory selling big ticket ERP, Retail, and Supply Chain software solutions, I spent the best part of a 9 month sales cycle digging deep into a prospect's organisation, understanding the motivations, politics and pain points of the various buyers, decision makers, recommenders, and evaluation teams.

As a sales team, we worked to tried and tested sales methodologies, trying to find the ‘fox’ and nurturing all the players with different valuable information to meet their specific needs, countering competitive threats and answering objections.

It was a Solution Sale. It required patience, delivery of information at the right time, a game plan that all the sales and marketing team bought into, and a process to move them towards a decision.

A report published by Software Advice looked at reasons why companies are looking to invest in Marketing Automation Software. It found that a large percentage of businesses in the study were being overwhelmed with managing clients, contacts, and leads (nice problem to have) and are primarily seeking software to improve lead management.

The study looked at small companies in the US with a turnover less than $50 million, a majority of which had small staff teams. So, at least from these findings, it is clear that there is a growing need for lead management at the SME level. If the same research was carried out in the UK, I suspect the results wouldn't be too dissimilar.

But what about organisations that have a 'more defined business development/lead follow up' process? This is particularly true for companies in the technology sector, whose sales cycles tend to be lengthy and complex in nature. Are they any different to small companies with a high volume of leads and customers to process? In our experience, the answer is - NO!

B2B sales requires you to build relationships with prospects and what better way to do so than through the most relationship driven marketing platform: Social Media.

The possibilities this channel provides are endless – as long as you have a strictly managed social media strategy and your very own segmented social ecosystem in place. Social Media plays a vital role in your B2B Marketing strategy if, like most things, you know what you’re doing!

Is it the sales, engineering, purchasing, production or services department that is the engine that drives a company’s growth?

WHILE EVERY ONE OF THESE PLAYS A ROLE IN THE OPERATION OF A COMPANY, NONE OF THEM CAN MAKE IT WORK WITHOUT MARKETING

Marketing is the beginning of the process that is going to help drive your business growth. It is a continuous multi-channel process not a single event that requires constant adjustments and refinements, and today a majority of the effort is going to be online. 

It therefore stands to reason that a solid marketing strategy, processes, execution and measurement should be the most important aspect of any business. Your company’s image, reputation, sales goals, growth plans, and customer service requirements are all driven by marketing. So, why do companies pay such little attention to this essential function?