Every year, the end of Q3 seems to creep up more quickly. Budget reviews are top-of-mind; everyone wants to hit those end-of-year targets before the out-of-office auto-responses start rolling in. Now is the time to double down on warm leads and fill that sales pipeline to ensure you’ll hit the ground running in the new year.
Here are a few of our favourite tweaks to make along the B2B sales cycle to accelerate your pipeline without a complete overhaul.
While a solid branding framework might not be the most obvious action item to accelerate your B2B sales cycle, it’s arguably the most critical. As Hubspot explains, "A brand is the identity and story of a company that makes it stand out from competitors that sell similar products or services. The goal of branding is to earn space in the minds of the target audience and become their preferred option for doing business."
Before investing in more marketing efforts to support the sales pipeline, assess what the brand is working with and where there might be room for improvement. As a bonus, fine-tuning a brand guide and the components therein will save time and money in the short and long term. Being able to clearly communicate and visualise a brand allows for clarity and consistency in the design and marketing phases.
Branding is a living, breathing entity that evolves and iterates over time. Often when a brand is launched there are some elements that work beautifully and are seamlessly adopted for use across platforms and touchpoints, while others morph or transition over time. Similarly, brand voice continually matures through use and ongoing evaluation, nurtured by the people working with it every day. We pose the question to you: Are these developments accurately reflected in your existing brand guide?
We’re not necessarily suggesting a complete branding overhaul right here and now, but being able to identify painpoints or weaknesses from a brand identity standpoint—and addressing them—will bolster all future sales and marketing efforts.
The to-do list item that’s inevitably pushed to next week, times infinity. This is your sign to finally do that sales collateral review that you’ve been talking about all year—it’s worth it.
We’re not just talking about pricing guides either. From HubSpot’s Everything You Need to Know About Sales Collateral guide, "Sales collateral is content designed and developed to complement your sales process. Sales teams share sales collateral in an effort to move your prospects through the buyer’s journey and convert them to customers."
The full list of sales collateral pieces can seem daunting, but speak with your sales team to identify specific content that would make them feel better equipped and empowered. Align these insights with your buyer’s journey to identify where each piece of collateral lands—awareness, consideration, decision—and prioritise based on your immediate business goals and current pipeline.
Plus, consider how this sales collateral might be leveraged within your wider content and marketing strategy. For example, a white paper is worth its weight in building brand trust alone when executed correctly. Reports show that B2B buyers find content utilising data and research in context to be the most impactful, so give ChatGPT a skip for this task.
We recently had the privilege of working with Kordia, a New Zealand owned leading provider of mission-critical technology solutions for businesses, to transform their segmented research and data into a visual communication piece. Not only can this report be downloaded as a white paper, but this industry-leading annual report has also been recognized by the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand for Best Corporate and Business Public Relations. How’s that for added value?
Who doesn’t love the last-minute panic of pulling an RFP response together? Possibly the three most dreaded letters to hear in the workplace, but alas, there’s business to be won so it’s all hands on deck.
And big business, at that. As Hubspot explains, “RFPs can play a critical role in the enterprise sales cycle. Enterprise companies that issue RFPs are often looking for businesses that can provide them with IT support, security, onboarding and training, and other additional services. To close these larger accounts, it's vital your sales team is prepared with an RFP response process, and is able to efficiently respond to these large companies within the time allotted." When the fit is right and your team is equipped to efficiently respond, RFPs can be low-hanging fruit.
After working with a wide variety of B2B businesses on RFP responses, here are our top tips to make the process less painful and ultimately, win more business.
Continue to fill that pipeline and give your sales team more to work with through a tailored and measurable marketing strategy.
While there’s no magic formula for success here, it’s really all about having a holistic understanding of your sales cycle, buyer’s journey, campaign objectives, and budget. That being said, we do have some suggestions that you can try on for size.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is an approach to B2B marketing that targets specific companies within a market with tailored messaging rather than trying to reach and convert a mass audience. Benefits of ABM campaigns include increased efficiency, streamlined sales and a measurable ROI, as compared to traditional mass marketing.
Repurpose or revamp, existing sales and marketing collateral to use in paid advertising campaigns. Identify your campaign objectives and SMART goals, how this aligns to your buyer’s journey then which piece of collateral speaks to that audience. The more customer data and user persona development, the better, since you’ll then be able to determine which platforms will be most effective in reaching these audiences.
Whether your in-house marketing team needs extra support on those white papers you’ve been talking about for months or your organisation is looking for an agency partner to implement a full-scope inbound marketing strategy, we’re here to help. Not to mention B2B-focused branding, RFP support and outsourced marketing services.
Get in touch now and prepare to sail through Q4 into a very merry new year.
Before the first day, you might also consider leaving a note on your new hire.
