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Why Sales Cycles Have Gotten Longer—And What You Can Do About It

Team Talent — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 09:55:38 +0000

In today’s B2B and B2C sales environment, one trend is unmistakable: sales cycles are getting longer. What used to be a relatively quick, straightforward process driven by trust in advertising, simpler products, and fewer decision-makers has evolved into a multi-step journey. Now, the process involves more people, deeper research, and a sense of hesitation that sales teams must work through.

Part of the reason for this hesitation is that many products and services in the B2B world just don’t feel as necessary as they once did. Take the novelty of computers and software in the early days—businesses rushed to adopt these innovations. Today, however, when companies are pitched yet another version of a tool they already have, the enthusiasm is not the same. Many buyers see the hassle of transitioning to something new as more painful than the potential benefit. Whether it’s new software, furniture, or even a vehicle upgrade, the status symbol of upgrading has lost its lustre in many industries.

This reluctance to adopt the next big thing is one of many reasons why sales cycles are dragging out longer. But by understanding these underlying shifts in buyer behaviour, and aligning your strategy accordingly, you can still achieve growth even when deals take more time to close.

The Evolution of the Sales Cycle

The lengthening of sales cycles is not a sudden development—it’s the result of gradual changes in technology, buyer expectations, and the complexity of the products and services being sold. To understand this trend, it’s helpful to consider some of the factors that have contributed to this transformation.

Products and Services Have Gotten More Complicated

Over the past few decades, the products and services available to businesses and consumers have become far more sophisticated. Technology, especially, has introduced complex solutions with multiple features and capabilities. This complexity has led to buyers spending more time researching, evaluating, and understanding how a product or service fits into their existing systems or workflows. For example, purchasing a simple piece of software in the past might have required little more than a quick review of features and pricing. Today, however, the process involves ensuring the software integrates with existing tools, evaluating its long-term scalability, understanding its data security measures, and determining how it aligns with broader company goals. The need for more understanding and evaluation naturally lengthens the sales cycle. Buyers want to be certain that what they’re purchasing will meet their needs both now and in the future, and they need to fully understand how it works before making a commitment.

Diminished Trust in Advertising

In an era where misinformation and “fake news” are rampant, consumers and businesses alike have become more sceptical of what they see in advertisements. Scandals involving false claims and misleading marketing have led to a broader distrust of companies’ promises. This distrust has created a more cautious buyer, one who no longer takes advertisements at face value but instead seeks third-party validation before making a decision. Buyers today are more likely to turn to reviews, case studies, testimonials, and peer recommendations before making a purchase. They spend time researching online, reading reviews, and speaking with colleagues to ensure that what’s being advertised aligns with reality. This growing need for verification contributes to a longer decision-making process.

The Rise of the Research-Driven Buyer

In line with the declining trust in advertising, buyers now feel like they must become experts before they make a purchase. The ease with which information can be accessed on the internet has empowered buyers to conduct extensive research on their own. While this might sound like an advantage for businesses offering high-quality products or services, it also means that buyers are taking their time to evaluate every detail. Whether through reading articles, watching videos, attending webinars, or reviewing online forums, buyers are gathering a wealth of information before they ever reach out to a salesperson. By the time they do engage with sales, they often have highly specific questions or concerns, having already narrowed their choices through self-research. This phenomenon has extended the time it takes for buyers to move through the initial stages of the sales funnel.

More People Are Involved in the Decision-Making Process

Another key factor behind longer sales cycles is the increased number of stakeholders involved in purchasing decisions. In the past, a single decision-maker might have been responsible for evaluating a product and making a purchase. Today, particularly in B2B sales, purchasing decisions often involve multiple people from different departments—each with their own priorities and concerns. For example, a company looking to purchase new software may have representatives from IT, finance, legal, and operations all involved in the process. IT might be focused on integration, finance on budget and ROI, legal on compliance, and operations on ease of use. Coordinating these different perspectives and ensuring that all concerns are addressed naturally extends the decision-making timeline.

This Trend Affects Companies of All Sizes

It’s important to note that the factors contributing to longer sales cycles aren’t limited to large enterprises. From small businesses to multinational corporations, the trend of extended sales processes is affecting companies across the board. Even small startups are taking their time to evaluate products and services, engaging in lengthy research phases before making a commitment. This is in part due to the availability of information. Small businesses now have access to the same level of detail and analysis as larger corporations, and they are taking full advantage of that. The democratization of information has levelled the playing field but has also contributed to longer sales cycles for businesses of every size.

Navigating Longer Sales Cycles: What You Can Do

While longer sales cycles can be frustrating, they don’t have to be a death sentence for your business. In fact, understanding why the sales process is taking more time can help you adjust your strategy and continue closing deals successfully. Here are several key strategies to help you navigate this new reality.

Create High-Quality Content to Educate Buyers

Given that buyers are now more research-driven, it’s crucial for businesses to provide valuable, informative content that helps buyers make informed decisions. Content should be designed to educate, not just sell. This means creating blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, videos, and webinars that address your buyers’ most common questions and concerns.

For example, if your product is a software solution, you might create a detailed guide explaining how your software integrates with other platforms or a case study showcasing how a client achieved measurable success using your product. The more value you provide through content, the more likely buyers are to trust your brand and engage with your sales team.

Furthermore, good content can help nurture leads through a longer sales cycle. As potential buyers conduct their research, they’ll return to your website and consume your content, keeping your brand top-of-mind.

Follow Up Over a Longer Period of Time

Since the sales cycle has stretched, it’s important to adjust your follow-up strategy accordingly. In the past, sales teams may have focused on quick follow-ups designed to close deals within a short window of time. Today, however, a longer sales cycle requires more patience and persistence.

It’s critical to stay in touch with potential buyers throughout their research and decision-making process, providing helpful information and addressing any new concerns as they arise. Regular follow-ups demonstrate that you’re invested in helping the buyer make the best decision, even if it takes time. Just be sure to strike a balance—frequent communication is important, but you don’t want to overwhelm or pressure your prospects.

Build a Larger Pipeline

With sales cycles taking longer, it’s important to ensure that you have a larger pipeline of leads. A small pipeline can lead to bottlenecks in revenue generation, especially if it takes months to close a single deal. By building a larger pipeline, you can ensure that you’re always engaging with new prospects, even as others move slowly through the sales process.

Expanding your pipeline can involve a combination of inbound and outbound marketing efforts. Inbound strategies—like content marketing, SEO, and social media engagement—can help attract leads naturally. Outbound strategies, such as targeted email campaigns or paid ads, can also be effective in bringing new prospects into your sales funnel.

Become Better at Explaining the Benefits

As products and services become more complex, so too does the need for clear communication. Buyers want to understand not only what your product does, but how it benefits their specific situation. This is especially important when multiple stakeholders are involved, each with different concerns.

Your sales team should be adept at explaining the value of your offering in clear, simple terms. Focus on how your product solves real problems for your customers, and tailor your messaging to the different stakeholders involved. A member of the finance team will be interested in ROI, while someone from IT might want to understand technical compatibility. Tailored messaging that addresses each stakeholder’s unique concerns will help build confidence and move the sale forward.

Pay Closer Attention to the Sales Process

In longer sales cycles, the sales process itself becomes more important. Sales teams need to have a clear understanding of where each prospect is in the buying journey and adjust their approach accordingly. This might mean implementing a more structured sales process with defined stages, from initial engagement through to post-sale follow-up.

Sales teams should be diligent about tracking interactions with prospects, documenting each touchpoint, and noting any changes in buyer behaviour. Tools like customer relationship management (CRM) systems can be invaluable in managing these complex, multi-stage sales processes, ensuring that no lead slips through the cracks.

Align Sales and Marketing Efforts

Longer sales cycles have highlighted the importance of aligning sales and marketing teams. When sales and marketing work in silos, opportunities are missed, and the buyer experience becomes disjointed. To combat this, businesses need to ensure that both teams are working toward the same goals, using consistent messaging, and sharing data.

Marketing should focus on generating high-quality leads through targeted content and campaigns, while sales should follow up with personalised outreach that speaks to the buyer’s needs. When sales and marketing efforts are aligned, the buyer’s journey becomes seamless, making it easier to build trust and guide them through the sales process.

Longer Sales Cycles Are Not a Death Sentence

While longer sales cycles may seem daunting, they’re not the end of the world. In fact, they offer businesses the opportunity to develop deeper relationships with prospects and deliver more personalised solutions. The key is to adjust your strategy to align with these extended timelines, rather than expecting buyers to make decisions as quickly as they may have in the past.

The modern buyer journey is all about trust, education, and value. By focusing on building relationships, providing high-quality content, and aligning sales and marketing efforts, businesses can navigate longer sales cycles without sacrificing revenue growth.

Here’s why longer sales cycles don’t have to spell doom for your business:

Deeper Relationships: With a longer sales process, there’s more time to build meaningful relationships with prospects. This allows your sales team to truly understand the buyer’s pain points and tailor solutions that meet their needs.

More Qualified Buyers: Buyers who take their time to research, evaluate, and consider all options are likely to be more qualified. They’ve done their homework and are more confident in their decision, leading to higher-quality sales and fewer returns or cancellations.

Higher Retention Rates: Buyers who are given the time and information they need to make a decision are more likely to stick with their purchase. By providing a smooth, supportive buying experience, you can foster long-term loyalty and increase customer retention rates.

Adjusting to the New Reality of Sales Cycles

Sales cycles have undeniably become longer, and this shift is here to stay. The complexity of modern products, the need for trust and transparency, and the increased involvement of multiple stakeholders all contribute to this trend. While longer sales cycles can be challenging, they also present opportunities for businesses to build stronger relationships with buyers, improve their sales processes, and align their marketing efforts.

The companies that succeed in this new landscape are those that embrace these changes, provide valuable content, follow up with patience and persistence, and tailor their messaging to meet the unique needs of each buyer. By taking these steps, businesses can continue to close deals and grow, even in the face of lengthening sales cycles.

In the end, a longer sales cycle doesn’t have to be a death sentence—it can be an opportunity for growth, refinement, and deeper customer engagement.

The key takeaway? Embrace the longer process, adjust your strategies accordingly, and keep the focus on delivering value at every step.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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Marketing Has Changed and One Person Cannot do it All

Team Talent — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 09:57:54 +0000

We’re Only Human: Marketing Has Changed

As recently as the early 2000s, marketing was a much simpler affair. There were a few set channels where you could reach your audience. Mail was cheap and somewhat effective. People still had landlines. A social network refers to your friends, family, and co-workers. The internet was in its pre-pubescent stages, and many of us still had dial-up.

If you wanted to reach your target market, it was a matter of placing an ad in the paper, sending out some letters, making a few phone calls, or doing some kind of in-person event. Throw in radio and TV although the reality is both weren’t very effective for all but the largest businesses.
Basically, the number of channels for your messages was fairly limited and well-defined. So marketing was a lot easier to get your head around. The issue of course was that you’d pay a lot more to get your message out there. Most forms of marketing had a high cost just to get it in front of your audience.
You used to have specialists who knew how to run specific campaigns and would go from company to company implementing these. It could be a way to launch a new product. It could be a special mail-out that used certain tricks to get a good response. Or it could have been a calling campaign, what we called telemarketing back then. These specialists would learn how to do it and do it well. Then go from company to company replicating their success for a good premium.

Information was relatively scarce during this time. While the internet was starting to tackle this, you still relied on what the advertising said. You’d have to go in-store to research a product. You might rely on magazines and newspapers for reviews to check if the quality is good. And forget about easily comparing models. Small local shops served a real purpose here because you could build a relationship. Trust gave you reassurance when making a purchase without doing in-depth research.
Using economic terms, you could say the search cost for information was high. Basically, it would cost you a lot of time and effort to drive around stores to try and compare products. For services it was even worse – you’d have to have meetings upon meetings with different companies to decide. At least they came to you.

A Rising Tide

The internet was poised to change everything, but in the early 2000’s it wasn’t quite there yet. Some of us will remember how it was still a bit of a wild west. Google’s algorithm wasn’t mature enough to distinguish between good and bad links. Forums were all the rage. Neopets was in its prime. Runescape had just been released. Google ads were cheap and good SEO meant tricking the algorithm.
To give some perspective, Google Ads didn’t hit $10B in revenue until 2006. As of 2021, it was $209B.
As the internet matured, it opened gateways for communicating. Individuals could connect with anyone at a moment’s notice. Companies could place their ads in increasingly targeted ways. We went through many iterations of social networks. Finally landing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as the top dogs. Although younger generations continue working their way through newer formats – Vine, Snapchat, Tiktok … what’s next?
Meanwhile, Google continued developing its algorithm to the point where anyone working in SEO dreads updates. Changes have toppled even huge websites from top spots in Google search results. So now what used to be a formulaic approach to getting a good ranking is more of an art. An art that requires many steps just to prove your content is worth reading to an algorithm.

Marketing has changed. Forever.

Over the past few decades, there has been a shift in behaviour at the societal level. Traditional media has floundered with plunging advertising revenue causing many institutions to go belly up. Fake news has become prolific. Proper reporting is out the window, in favour of hype and shocking content.
Many cowboys from the earlier era of the internet also managed to spoil the legitimacy of advertising. Over time this has taught consumers to not believe everything they read online. And now there is an inherent mistrust of what companies say in an ad. Certain scandals that happened over the years with the largest businesses have reinforced this.

Consumers have been taught to do their own research. The volume of information has thus skyrocketed, and the internet has made it much easier to do comparisons. From websites that compare specifications, to forums, and review sites.
Over time, blogs emerged reviewing certain products that started gaining traction and trust. This evolved into Youtubers, who eventually evolved into influencers. Although this concept isn’t that new, celebrities have been influencing us for decades. The change is that now these influencers seem relatable.

Cue the drama and scandals that rocked different industries of influencers. This brought on the popularity of micro-influencers. This is where the market sits now. Small accounts with maybe 1-20k followers who are relatable, authentic and haven’t gotten caught up with huge brands. Consumers flock to these micro accounts because there is a perceived level of trust.

We’re Only Human: Marketing Has Changed

Not too long ago, marketing was a far simpler affair. In the early 2000s, businesses had a limited set of channels to reach their target audiences. There were print ads, direct mail, TV, radio, and maybe some form of telemarketing. The internet was still in its infancy, and social media wasn’t even part of the conversation. Back then, a social network referred to your friends, family, and co-workers.

The landscape was far easier to navigate. The number of marketing channels was limited and well-defined, so businesses could focus their resources more narrowly. However, the cost of reaching customers through traditional channels was high, and it wasn’t easy to measure return on investment (ROI). With fewer ways to engage customers, most marketing strategies were about casting a wide net and hoping that some of it stuck.

Fast forward to today, and marketing has transformed dramatically. The digital age has opened up an array of platforms and tools, each requiring specific skills and expertise. Whether it’s content marketing, social media management, paid advertising, or email marketing, modern marketing demands more complexity than ever before. And the truth is, no one person can do it all.

Simpler Times: Marketing Before the Digital Age

To understand how much marketing has changed, it helps to look back at how things worked in the pre-internet era. The marketing channels available to businesses were relatively few, and while they were effective, they were also costly.

1. Print advertising was one of the most common methods of reaching customers, with ads placed in newspapers, magazines, and other publications. While print could be highly targeted based on readership demographics, it was expensive, especially for national publications.

2. Direct mail campaigns were another go-to marketing method. Businesses would send letters, brochures, or catalogues directly to potential customers. These campaigns had their strengths—direct mail allowed for personalised communication—but they were time-consuming and costly, requiring printing, mailing, and handling logistics.

3. Television and radio were the big hitters in advertising, but these were only accessible to businesses with large budgets. Small businesses could rarely afford the cost of prime-time TV spots or radio jingles, which made these channels predominantly the domain of large brands.

4. Telemarketing, or cold calling, was another common tactic, especially for B2B companies. Telemarketers would call potential leads, pitching products or services over the phone. This method was effective in reaching decision-makers but also required specialised skills in sales and communication.

Because the number of channels was limited, marketing professionals could focus their efforts on mastering these few avenues. Specialists in print ads, telemarketing, or TV campaigns would travel from company to company, replicating successful strategies. This model worked for decades, but it had its downsides: high costs, low adaptability, and minimal data to track effectiveness.

The Dawn of Digital Marketing

The internet began to gain mainstream traction in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At this point, marketing was still focused on traditional channels, but the potential of digital advertising was starting to emerge. Early internet users will remember the dial-up days, when websites were basic, search engines like Yahoo and Ask Jeeves ruled, and the idea of social media was non-existent.

It wasn’t until Google revolutionised search engines that digital marketing as we know it today began to take shape. Google introduced pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where businesses could bid on keywords and have their ads appear at the top of search results. This was a game-changer—PPC advertising allowed even small businesses to compete with large companies by targeting specific audiences without breaking the bank.

Social media arrived on the scene in the mid-2000s, with the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Suddenly, businesses had a direct way to interact with their customers, build communities, and promote their brands. Social media advertising introduced hyper-targeted campaigns, allowing companies to reach specific demographics with laser precision.
Content marketing also began to take off during this time. Rather than relying solely on traditional advertising, businesses started to create valuable content—blog posts, infographics, whitepapers, and videos—that provided useful information to their audience. Content marketing aims to build trust, engage customers, and ultimately convert them into leads or sales.

It’s also worth noting that SEO(Search Engine Optimisation) has also been a thing, it used to be simple—just pack in keywords to rank higher. But Google evolved, penalising keyword stuffing and rewarding quality content. Now, SEO involves complexities like keyword research and technical optimisation. Globally, as seen in New Zealand’s B2B market, content holds more value, as it builds trust and long-term relationships, which are essential for success. According to HubSpot and Search Engine Journal, high-quality content is now considered more critical than SEO for driving engagement and conversions, as customers seek valuable information rather than content merely optimised for search engines.

The shift toward digital marketing fundamentally changed how businesses approached their strategies. Instead of relying on a handful of expensive, mass-marketing channels, they now had access to affordable, data-driven tools that could reach niche audiences. But with these new tools came the need for new skills, and marketing was about to become much more complicated.

The Fragmentation of Marketing Channels

As the internet evolved, so did the number of digital marketing channels. Today, businesses have a bewildering array of platforms and tactics at their disposal. From social media and search engines to email marketing and influencer partnerships, the opportunities to reach potential customers are vast. But this abundance of options comes with its own set of challenges.

For one thing, each marketing channel has its own set of rules, best practices, and target audience. What works on Instagram won’t necessarily work on LinkedIn, and a successful email marketing campaign requires a completely different skill set from running Google Ads.

Within social media marketing alone, the landscape is incredibly diverse:

Facebook remains one of the largest platforms, offering a mix of organic posts and paid advertising opportunities. It’s great for building community, but it also requires businesses to engage with their audience regularly and authentically.
Instagram focuses heavily on visuals, making it ideal for brands that can showcase their products or services through photos and videos. Instagram Stories, IGTV, and Reels add additional layers of complexity to an already feature-rich platform.
LinkedIn is the go-to platform for B2B marketers, allowing businesses to network, generate leads, and share industry insights. LinkedIn Ads have become increasingly popular for targeting professionals and decision-makers.
TikTok, the rising star of social media, thrives on short-form video content. It’s especially popular among younger audiences, but it requires a completely different creative approach than other platforms.

Beyond social media, content marketing continues to be a cornerstone of digital marketing. Businesses that produce valuable, educational, or entertaining content can attract and retain customers over time. But creating high-quality content is a time-consuming process that requires skills in writing, design, and video production.

Finally, Email marketing has evolved into a highly sophisticated channel, with tools for segmentation, automation, and personalisation. Businesses can use email to nurture leads, build relationships, and drive sales, but they need to know how to craft compelling messages and create effective campaigns.

The SME Challenge: You Can’t Do It All

The rise of digital marketing opened up countless opportunities, but it also made marketing more fragmented. Businesses now had to juggle multiple platforms, each with its own set of rules, best practices, and target audiences. What works on Instagram won’t necessarily work on LinkedIn, and a successful email marketing campaign is vastly different from running Google Ads.

For large corporations, building out a full marketing team that covers everything from content creation to social media, and email marketing is doable. They have the budgets to hire specialists for each role and the resources to stay on top of the latest marketing trends.

But for SMEs, the reality is starkly different. Most small businesses can’t afford to employ a dedicated team of marketers, let alone juggle multiple specialized agencies for content, and paid advertising. While working with various agencies is a practical solution, it’s neither affordable nor manageable for most SMEs in the long term. This is where the cracks begin to show: too many cooks in the kitchen without a cohesive strategy can lead to fragmented messaging, missed opportunities, and disjointed results.

The challenge isn’t just about cost, either. Keeping track of all these moving parts—content strategy, social media updates, email marketing campaigns, and paid ads—is time-consuming and often confusing, particularly for business owners who are already wearing many hats. With marketing being more of a full-time commitment, even experienced marketers struggle to juggle these areas successfully. That’s where a comprehensive solution like Smarketing Lab comes in.

Why SMEs Can’t Afford to Do It All Internally

Most SMEs simply don’t have the budget to hire multiple experts for PPC, social media, and content creation. Let’s break this down:

• Content creators are required to produce blogs, videos, and social media posts. Quality content is no longer optional; it’s a necessity to engage audiences, and generate leads.

• Social media managers are responsible for engaging with audiences across platforms, developing tailored content strategies, and building an online community.

• PPC experts are needed to run Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Instagram Ads, ensuring that every dollar spent on ads produces a return on investment (ROI).

• Email marketing specialists are tasked with nurturing leads, maintaining customer relationships, and driving conversions.

For large corporations, having a full in-house team of marketing professionals covering all these bases is feasible. For SMEs, hiring full-time specialists is simply not within their budgets, especially when their primary focus should be on growing the business, not managing complex marketing campaigns.

This is why many SMEs turn to external agencies to fill the gap. But here’s the catch: hiring multiple specialized agencies—one for web development and one for social media—gets costly fast. Managing these different agencies can become overwhelming and inefficient, leading to inconsistent messaging and ineffective marketing strategies.

Embracing Automation and AI

As marketing has become more complex, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) have started to play an increasingly important role. These technologies allow businesses to streamline their marketing efforts, manage campaigns more efficiently, and make data-driven decisions.

For example, email marketing automation allows businesses to send personalised messages to thousands of customers with minimal effort. Automation tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign can segment audiences, schedule emails, and track responses, enabling marketers to focus on strategy rather than manual tasks.

In the realm of paid advertising, AI tools are being used to optimise ad performance in real time. Google’s Smart Bidding, for example, uses machine learning to adjust bids based on factors like the time of day, location, and user behaviour. This allows businesses to get the best possible ROI without having to manually manage every aspect of their campaigns.

AI-powered chatbots are another example of how automation is transforming marketing. Chatbots can handle customer inquiries, provide personalised product recommendations, and even help guide users through the purchasing process. By automating these interactions, businesses can improve the customer experience without having to increase headcount.

That said, while automation and AI are powerful tools, they are not a substitute for human creativity and strategic thinking. These technologies can help manage tasks and optimise processes, but they can’t replace the unique insights that come from understanding customer needs and behaviours.

The Human Factor: Creativity and Emotional Connection

Even as marketing becomes more data-driven and automated, the human factor remains crucial. At the end of the day, marketing is about connecting with people on an emotional level. While data can tell us what’s working and what’s not, it’s the creative ideas that truly resonate with audiences.

In today’s crowded marketplace, consumers are bombarded with ads, promotions, and content from every direction. To stand out, brands need to craft compelling stories that speak to their audience’s values, desires, and emotions. This is where creativity comes into play.

Consider the rise of influencer marketing. While data and algorithms can help brands identify influencers who align with their target audience, it’s the human connection between the influencer and their followers that ultimately drives engagement. Consumers trust influencers because they perceive them as authentic and relatable—qualities that no algorithm can replicate.

Similarly, storytelling is a powerful marketing tool that transcends data and automation. A well-crafted story can make a brand memorable, create an emotional connection with customers, and inspire action. Whether it’s through a heartfelt video, a compelling blog post, or a clever social media campaign, storytelling allows brands to humanise themselves in an increasingly digital world.

The Future of Marketing: What’s Next?

As we look to the future, it’s clear that marketing will continue to evolve. New technologies will emerge, platforms will change, and consumer behaviour will shift. But one thing will remain constant: the need for human creativity, collaboration, and adaptability.

Artificial intelligence and automation will undoubtedly play a larger role in the years to come. AI will become more sophisticated, helping businesses personalise content, predict customer behaviour, and optimise campaigns with greater precision. Automation will allow marketers to manage more complex campaigns with fewer resources, freeing up time for strategy and innovation.

At the same time, data privacy will become a major focus. With regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), consumers are becoming more aware of how their data is being used. Marketers will need to be transparent about their data practices and find new ways to build trust with their audience.

Video content will continue to dominate. With platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram pushing video to the forefront, brands that can create engaging video content will have a significant advantage. Short-form videos, in particular, are becoming more popular, especially among younger audiences.

Finally, we can expect to see more emphasis on personalisation. Consumers increasingly expect brands to deliver personalised experiences that are tailored to their preferences and behaviours. This will require marketers to leverage data and technology to create highly targeted campaigns that speak directly to individual customers.

Why Smarketing Lab Is the Better Choice

Here’s where Smarketing Lab steps in. Instead of juggling multiple agencies and hoping they all work in sync, Smarketing Lab offers an all-in-one solution. Whether you need help with social media management, content creation, paid ads, or even web development, they handle it all. It’s a one-stop shop that simplifies your marketing efforts, saving you time and money.

1. Cost-Effective Marketing
Hiring several agencies gets expensive fast. Instead of paying separate fees for website development, and content marketing, Smarketing Lab provides an all-in-one package for the price of what you’d pay for just one marketing hire. This means you can focus your budget more efficiently and get more bang for your buck.

2. Consistency and Coordination
When you work with different agencies, you often end up with a fragmented strategy. Your social media team might not know what your content creators are doing, and your website goals may be disconnected from the overall approach. With Smarketing Lab, everything is coordinated from the start, ensuring your strategy is consistent and aligned across all channels.

3. Tailored to SMEs
Smarketing Lab understands that not all businesses need a massive marketing overhaul. They work with you to select the services you need, whether it’s enhancing your content strategy or refining your marketing efforts. They tailor their services to your specific goals and budget, providing flexibility without breaking the bank.

Marketing Has Changed, But Help Is Here

The way we approach marketing today is worlds apart from what it was 20 years ago. The digital age has brought endless opportunities, but it’s also made things more complicated. For SMEs in New Zealand, trying to handle it all in-house can be overwhelming, and working with multiple agencies is both costly and hard to manage.

That’s why Smarketing Lab offers a better solution. By providing a comprehensive, all-in-one marketing service, they make it easier for businesses to streamline their efforts and get the most out of their marketing budget.

In today’s fast-paced world, you can’t do everything yourself—but with the right partner, you don’t have to. Let Smarketing Lab take care of your marketing needs, so you can focus on what matters most: growing your business.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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The post Marketing Has Changed and One Person Cannot do it All appeared first on Smarketing Lab.

You Can’t Afford to Lose Elapsed Time

Team Talent — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 10:46:40 +0000

You Can't Afford to Lose Elapsed Time

Business owners have always taken a long time to make business decisions. Sometimes this is warranted, and sometimes it causes them to miss out on real benefits due to the elapsed time.
Back in the day, things moved and developed at a much slower pace. New inventions took years to come up with and then bring to market. Computers hadn’t reached mainstream yet and so time was on the side of businesses.
Nowadays, things have notched up a gear or five. Technology is advancing at a galloping pace. Both hardware and software have been advancing at pace for years now. It’s gotten to the point where businesses need to become faster at making decisions or face the impact.

• Business owners are used to taking longer to make a decision. This has become exacerbated when it comes to what technology to use
• Often, the technology they are evaluating becomes replaced by something better by the time they finish their analysis and make a decision
• The opportunity cost thus means they’ve lost out on the latest advances in technology
• For large businesses, this is understandable
• For small and medium companies, we must be faster, more nimble
• Fast decision-making means you can reap the rewards of the best tech available today
• Fast decisions also mean fast failures
• Waiting for the next best thing also means missing out on improvements
• Long decision-making means you extend how long it will take to see results

You Can’t Afford to Lose Elapsed Time: The Need for Fast Decision-Making in Business

Business decisions have always been a careful balancing act between risk and reward. The weight of responsibility on business owners, CEOs, and decision-makers has led to a traditional tendency to take time with choices, ensuring that every detail is scrutinised. While this deliberative approach has merits, the landscape of business has changed dramatically. Today, the cost of waiting is no longer measured in missed opportunities but in missed competitive advantages.

In an era marked by rapid technological advancement and fast-changing markets, slow decision-making can have significant consequences. The time businesses take to make decisions—especially when it comes to technology—has direct implications for their ability to remain competitive, innovative, and efficient. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in particular, agility is not just a preference; it’s a necessity.

Gone are the days when businesses could afford to spend months, or even years, analysing their options. Now, the speed at which companies make decisions directly affects their ability to adapt to change and leverage new tools to improve productivity, profitability, and customer experience.

The Traditional Business Mindset: Why Decision-Making Took Time

Historically, businesses operated at a slower pace, and that was understandable given the context of the time. Technology was developing at a gradual rate, and companies had the luxury of time to evaluate new tools and strategies before implementation.

Back in the 20th century, technological innovation took years to move from concept to execution. It could take a decade or more to bring an invention to market, and even longer for it to become mainstream. Early computing systems, for instance, took decades to go from experimental machines in research labs to being commercially available for businesses. As a result, businesses had time to fully vet decisions, gather feedback, and watch how competitors responded to new technologies.

Additionally, businesses relied on face-to-face interactions, paperwork, and slower communication methods like postal mail and landline telephones. Because the entire system moved at a more gradual pace, decision-makers had the time to engage in extensive due diligence without worrying about being left behind by faster competitors.

But fast-forward to today’s digital age, and the rules of the game have changed. With the explosion of information and the ability to communicate instantaneously, businesses can no longer afford to take the same methodical, slow approach to decision-making. As the speed of technology increases, so does the need for faster, more nimble decision-making.

The Modern Landscape: Technology Moves at Breakneck Speed

Today, technology is evolving at an exponential rate. The rise of cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and advanced automation has transformed not only how businesses operate but how quickly they need to adapt.

The Pace of Hardware and Software Advancements

In the past few decades, both hardware and software have developed at a staggering pace. What was once state-of-the-art can become obsolete within a matter of months. Businesses must stay up to date with these advances to remain competitive. From computer processing power doubling approximately every two years (as per Moore’s Law) to software updates happening overnight, the pace at which technology advances is unlike anything businesses have seen before.

For example, cloud technology has revolutionised how businesses store data and run applications. What used to require on-premise infrastructure can now be done on remote servers, accessible from anywhere in the world. This allows for rapid scaling, collaboration, and flexibility. But adopting cloud solutions requires businesses to act fast. Waiting too long to migrate from outdated on-premise systems can mean missing out on the cost savings, security, and efficiency that cloud computing offers.

Similarly, the adoption of AI-powered tools has transformed many industries. AI can now analyse data faster than any human, automate processes that used to take days, and predict customer behaviour with increasing accuracy. But again, slow decision-making can mean missing out on the competitive advantages that AI provides.

Long Decision-Making Processes Mean Missed Opportunities

One of the most significant risks businesses face today is that by the time they finish evaluating a piece of technology, a better version is already available. Companies spend weeks or months weighing the pros and cons of implementing new systems, only to find that the solution they were considering has already been surpassed by something faster, cheaper, or more efficient.

This is the essence of opportunity cost in modern business. The longer it takes to make a decision, the more likely it is that the opportunity to benefit from the latest advances has passed. For example, if a company spends six months deciding whether to adopt a particular customer relationship management (CRM) platform, a more powerful version or an entirely new platform may be released in the interim.

And it’s not just about adopting new technology—it’s about staying ahead of the curve. Businesses that wait too long to make decisions risk being outpaced by competitors who are more agile and willing to act quickly.

Why Large Businesses Can No Longer Afford to Wait

It once seemed that large enterprises could afford slower decision-making due to their size and resources. However, this is no longer the case. Today, even for large corporations, slow decision-making is a survival issue. The same rapid technological shifts that challenge smaller businesses affect larger ones too. Even companies with deep resources must embrace agility—being flexible and adaptable to swift changes. Prolonged indecision can lead to falling behind in the market, as competitors that move quickly take advantage of the latest technologies and efficiencies. Many large organisations have recognised this and are now adopting more agile practices. Agile companies, regardless of size, can implement decisions quickly and adjust to new realities. This agility is crucial for staying relevant in today’s business environment.

For SMEs, Agility Is Survival

For small and medium-sized businesses, agility has always been essential but is now a critical component of their survival. SMEs operate with fewer resources, tighter margins, and less capital than their larger counterparts, making their ability to pivot and adapt quickly a major advantage. Agility enables SMEs to respond to market changes and adopt new technologies faster than larger, slower-moving companies. It’s not just about making fast decisions; it’s about being flexible and able to recover from mistakes quickly. In today’s world, even if fast decisions lead to quick failures, those failures provide valuable lessons for improvement—far better than delaying action indefinitely.

The Importance of Being Nimble

For SMEs, agility isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a survival strategy. In many industries, smaller companies have thrived by quickly adopting new technologies and implementing innovative practices. They may not have the same market dominance as large enterprises, but their ability to make decisions and adapt rapidly allows them to remain competitive.

Nimble companies are better positioned to take risks and test new technologies without the bureaucratic delays that often plague larger organisations. This ability to act quickly gives SMEs a significant edge in markets where the pace of change is accelerating.

Balancing Fast Decisions and Fast Failures

Of course, with faster decisions comes the risk of failure. Acting quickly means that sometimes, businesses will make the wrong choice. But in today’s fast-paced environment, failing fast is often better than delaying indefinitely. Companies that adopt new technology quickly can learn from their mistakes, iterate, and improve, whereas businesses that wait too long risk losing ground to competitors who have already mastered the latest tools.

In the tech world, this concept is well-known as fail fast, fail forward. The idea is to move quickly, learn from mistakes, and improve. The lessons gained from these fast failures can lead to better decision-making in the future. In contrast, businesses that are slow to act may never even reach the point of failure—because their competitors have already pulled ahead.

Fast Decisions Mean Faster Results

In the modern business environment, the speed of decision-making directly impacts how long it takes to see results. The longer a company spends in the decision-making phase, the longer it will take to implement the solution and start reaping the rewards. This is particularly true when it comes to technology adoption, where first-mover advantage can be a critical factor in staying ahead of the competition.

Tech Adoption and Competitive Advantage

Adopting new technology faster than competitors gives businesses a significant edge. Being early adopters allows companies to integrate cutting-edge solutions, gain operational efficiencies, and offer improved services to customers before their competitors catch up. Whether it’s through adopting AI, automation tools, or cloud-based systems, fast decision-making can drive tangible improvements in productivity and profitability.

Moreover, businesses that adopt technology early often have the opportunity to shape industry standards. They can position themselves as leaders in their field, setting the pace for competitors to follow. On the flip side, slow adopters risk falling behind, scrambling to catch up as the industry moves forward without them.

Waiting for the Next Best Thing? You’ll Always Be Waiting

One of the traps that businesses often fall into is waiting for the next best thing. Decision-makers may hesitate, thinking that if they wait just a few more months, a better solution will become available. While it’s true that technology is constantly improving, the cost of waiting often outweighs the potential benefits.

By delaying decisions in hopes of finding a perfect solution, businesses miss out on immediate improvements that could have already made a difference. Moreover, no solution is ever going to be completely perfect, and the pursuit of perfection can lead to analysis paralysis, where no decision is made at all.

The Importance of the Sales and Marketing Process in Fast Decision-Making

Fast decision-making isn’t just about technology adoption. It also requires aligned sales and marketing efforts. When sales and marketing teams are working together effectively, the decision-making process is accelerated.

Align Sales and Marketing for Clearer Decision Paths

One of the most common reasons for delayed decisions in businesses is a lack of alignment between sales and marketing. When these two departments operate in silos, there’s a disconnect between the messaging being communicated to potential customers and the solutions that are actually being offered.

By aligning sales and marketing efforts, businesses can create a more streamlined decision-making process. Sales teams can provide valuable insights into customer needs, while marketing can create targeted campaigns that address those specific concerns. This coordination ensures that the message being communicated is clear, consistent, and aligned with what customers actually want—helping accelerate the buyer’s decision-making process.

Clear Communication Leads to Faster Buy-In

Fast decision-making requires clear communication across all levels of an organisation. Whether it’s a small team of decision-makers or a large company with multiple stakeholders, communication is critical to ensuring that everyone is aligned and that decisions can be made quickly and efficiently. When departments are aligned, the message to decision-makers is unified, speeding up the process and cutting down on internal debates that can drag out timelines.

By having all teams—sales, marketing, product development, and leadership—working toward the same goals, businesses can reduce the friction that often causes delays in decision-making.

The Perils of Inaction: Missing Out on Improvement

While it’s true that fast decisions can lead to fast failures, inaction can be equally harmful. Waiting too long to make a decision often results in missed opportunities. Businesses that hesitate to implement new technologies, refine their processes, or pursue new markets often find themselves left behind.

The modern business landscape doesn’t reward the wait-and-see approach. While it’s important to carefully consider decisions, being overly cautious can result in stagnation, missed growth opportunities, and loss of competitive advantage.

The Impact of Long Decision-Making on Results

The longer a business takes to make a decision, the longer it will take to see the fruits of that decision. Delayed decisions push back implementation, which in turn delays the benefits and results that come with those changes. This is especially true when it comes to technology.

For example, implementing a new CRM system can help businesses better track customer interactions, manage leads, and ultimately increase sales. But if a business spends months deliberating over which CRM to adopt, that’s months of lost productivity and missed opportunities to improve sales processes.

Delaying Improvements Means Staying Behind

In the competitive world of business, there’s little room for complacency. Every day that a business delays implementing new strategies, refining its processes, or adopting new technologies, it falls further behind competitors who are already reaping the benefits of those improvements.

Imagine a company that is slow to adopt automation technology. While it’s deliberating over the best solution, its competitors have already implemented automation tools that allow them to produce goods faster, more efficiently, and at a lower cost. By the time the slow-moving company makes its decision, its competitors have already pulled ahead, capturing more market share and reducing costs.

Act Now or Fall Behind

In today’s fast-paced business environment, speed is a competitive advantage. Businesses that can make decisions quickly and act on them are better positioned to succeed than those that take a wait-and-see approach. Whether it’s adopting new technology, refining processes, or aligning sales and marketing, fast decisions lead to faster results.

But fast decisions don’t have to mean reckless decisions. By balancing speed with thoughtful consideration and aligning internal efforts, businesses can reduce the risks of fast failures while still reaping the rewards of acting decisively.

In the end, time is money—and businesses that wait too long to make a decision may find that they’ve lost more than just time. They may have lost their competitive edge, their market share, and their ability to innovate.

You can’t afford to lose elapsed time. Act now, and position your business to succeed in an ever-evolving landscape.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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The post You Can’t Afford to Lose Elapsed Time appeared first on Smarketing Lab.

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Business Struggling With Sales

Assia Salikhova — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 07:05:49 +0000

Take a Quiz to Assess Your LinkedIn

This is the last article in a series discussing three different business scenarios and what each can do to survive and thrive during a recession. If you’ve missed our introduction article “The Ultimate Guide to Predictable B2B Sales During a Recession”, read it here first. While there are five steps to ensure predictable sales, we’ve highlighted three specific actions to take if you’re a new business.

For new businesses that have started in the past 24 months, the first article is for you.

For established businesses who aren’t feeling the pinch of the recession, check out the second article.

Let’s get into the third and final article. This is for you if you are an established business and you have recently started to experience a downturn. Things may have been as recently as last year or a few months ago, but now everything is starting to look a bit down.

Struggling is perhaps a bit of a strong word here, what I mean is your business isn’t performing at the level it has previously or the level you expected it to. This isn’t necessarily a bad position to be in, depending on how long this has been going on. If you’ve caught it early then there are plenty of options on the table. Leave it too long and as your cash dries up, so do the options.

A reduction in sales can be broadly attributed to either internal or external influences. To keep things concise, we’ll focus on external influences that are causing issues. Internal problems like poor customer service, issues with the product, and problems with the company culture are outside the scope of this article.

It is customary to think that cutting costs and hiring a new salesperson could be a solution. I strongly disagree because:

When times are getting tough, Marketing is needed more than ever (read more about it in “The Ultimate Guide to Predictable B2B Sales During a Recession”)
When sales are slowing down a new salesperson might be not a viable solution for your company – learn the reasons why in the article 13 Common Myths About Hiring Salespeople: Debunked

External Influences

The easiest way to understand if it’s an external influence is to explore what the rest of your industry is experiencing.

Is there a general decline that seems to be hitting everyone?
Is your industry closely tied to something that is performing poorly at the moment?
Be this property prices, inflation, commodity prices, etc. If the reason is easy to identify, it can be easy to solve.

You of course can’t do much to control these external influences, at least not now, instead focus on what you can control:

Your business
Your team culture
Sales Process
Work efficiency
Use of technology to do more with less effort

When external influences are rocking your business, it’s time to look inward.

Retaining Customers

If you’ve been losing customers, it’s a good idea to reach out to 5-10 and have a chat to discuss why they have left. This may provide insights that you haven’t thought of before. Perhaps there is a hot new entrant to the market you’ve overlooked. Or perhaps they just don’t have the cash flow to invest with you. Until you actually speak to them, it’s hard to really have a clear picture of what is going on.

In my experience, companies are often too shy to reach out to past customers assuming that there is some awkwardness or bad feelings. If you did something wrong, then of course the obvious solution moving forward is to improve your performance. But if you did nothing wrong then you may be surprised that your past customers would welcome your call and may gladly share their feedback about your company and the quality of products/services.

In any case, the key objective is to retain what customers you have. It costs easily 10x more to win a new client vs. sell to your existing customer. So conversely, you should fight 10x as hard to keep your current clients happy and buying from you. The advice here is very similar to that for companies whose business is doing well, so you can skip up a few paragraphs to that section and have a read.

PRACTICAL ACTION to fight this 10x more that costs you nothing or very little:

Embrace Campaign Based Marketing businesses:

It could be sending a letter of appreciation or customer testimonials with each invoice
Try slipping in a block of chocolate, with a note saying thank you for your custom
Even adding the words “THANK YOU!” to your invoice might make someone’s day and positively differentiate you from the others.

Old school? Yes. But because hardly anyone does this these days, it ensures you can stand out. A $3 block of chocolate is unlikely to break your bank, but it can build loyalty for an account spending thousands of dollars a month. The idea is to provide value at minimal additional cost to you.

Run an online webinar to answer questions about your products or services or to demonstrate and explain your products and services further. Recently we called 200 customers of a software development company and discovered that 34% of them wanted to participate in a webinar explaining the software they are already using.
Make an extra customer care phone call. No staff? No time to do that? Well if the times are a bit tight your reception or even your accounts can do these calls with no other purpose but to build better personal relationships and show good customer service. A non-sales person might even have a better conversation along the lines of “How are things? How we can best serve you?”
Send weekly or fortnightly newsletters with industry updates, your company services/products explanation, and introduce your team (ask us for help if you are not sure where to start).
Take your key customer/s/ to lunch – your investment is way less than their overall business with you at stake.

Want more? Register for a session with me and discover more money-making low-cost solutions you can start doing right now https://lnkd.in/dfGYSdUm

Review Internal Marketing

If you’ve “been good”, you have some form of sales & marketing in place. Now is the time to sit up and review what is and isn’t working. It’s possible you fell asleep at the wheel and forgot to measure; this can make things tricky now but not impossible.

Any brand-building activities can likely be put on hold without any major effects in the short-medium term or reviewed to make sure there is a direct sales call to action. This includes things like industry and business memberships you don’t use, radio spots, billboards, any kind of sponsorship, TV spots, and EXPO. Trade Shows and EXPOs may be okay to stay, as long as you are making the most of these events by capturing leads and then following up with them. If you’re just there to shake hands and give away some candy then perhaps it’s best to skip this.

It’s best to favour things that can be directly linked to new sales.

In short: lead generation.

Since you’re in B2B, the most effective forms of outreach will be: calling, email, social media, google ads, SEO, and maybe mail.

Yes, some of these are a bit outdated, but a call to a decision-maker still works and is still the fastest way to get to a yes or a no. SEO can be a tricky one as it’s a very broad topic. I would suggest focusing specifically on on-page SEO, and ensuring any agency working on this for you is creating quality content. Backlinks generally aren’t the only important thing these days and this content becomes more and more important in the eyes of Google as time marches on. Be careful about deploying Chat GPT to do this for you – Google will eventually penalise this content so it’s best to avoid any AI-writing tools.

One of the most common challenges we witness is when a company full of sales “farmers” is trying to force them to become “hunters” going out to do cold calling and opening new sales. This never works even with the best intentions and huge company support.

Read more about this in my article 13 Common Myths About Hiring Salespeople: Debunked

PRACTICAL ACTION. Is there a solution? Yes, there are three effective solutions and two of them are FREE:

It’s FREE for you as a business owner to embrace opening new sales yourself. This is not beneath you to return to the market – most times you have the highest expertise, and the best connections and you can tweak your prices to close more sales.
It’s FREE for you to inspire your “farmer” minded salespeople to offer the best customer service and call your existing and past customers to upsell.
And of course, you can reach out to a company like Smarketing Lab where we can call for you and secure new appointments and open new opportunities. That is a hands-free solution that works well too.

Google Ads are another questionable item for several B2B companies. If done properly you should have a stream of enquiries. However, so many get it wrong. A good check to see if the ads are working for you is to see if you can pull up a list of enquiries that came from the ads. If this cannot be produced, you’re likely getting a bad deal which should be reviewed.

Review Sales Performance

Hopefully, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise to you, but it’s time to check in and see what your salespeople are doing. If you happen to be in charge – then check in on yourself. The key thing you need to see is the sales process. I know enough about businesses to tell you that you probably don’t have a formalised sales process. But it’s important to get something on paper, a rudimentary flow chart at least.

Once you have a basic idea of how you get sales, you can start looking at measuring things and then improving areas that aren’t performing. Without this process in place, it really becomes difficult to troubleshoot sales as there is no telling what is really going on.

For example, has the number of prospects coming from your website fallen, or has the number of calls your salespeople made dropped? Perhaps the issue is prospects are choosing to put off the decision more than before. If you’re not measuring anything, then you will never really know. Humans aren’t great with giving accurate estimates, so any qualitative feedback you get will likely be at least half wrong. In short: Get your act together and start measuring things.

When you measure, you can find a bottleneck.

When you don’t measure every step you can’t possibly find what needs to be improved.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Draw a sales process – involve your sales team to help
Ask to see sales stats in order to identify the areas of greatest concern
Implement a CRM so that you can have access to stats with ease at any time

3 Steps for Established Businesses with Lower Sales

To sum up, if your issue is external, you likely can’t do much about it. So rather than sulking, go look internally for ways to improve your situation.

Start by ensuring you stop losing customers, provide them the value they crave and ensure you go above and beyond for them.
Second review any unnecessary marketing spend like brand awareness, and refocus this on lead generation.
Finally work with your sales to produce a sales process, you’ll need it now and, in the future, to tune up sales.

Still in Doubt?

You’re not alone. When sales are slipping it can be easy to enter a panic and freeze, not sure what to do next. While the steps in this article are good areas to start, sometimes you just don’t have the time or mental capacity for anything. That’s when you know it’s a good idea to get some help.

Here at Smarketing Lab,

we have a number of ways we can assist. The lowest level is being a virtual CMO for your business. You’ll meet with me every week for 14 weeks and we will set 10 goals to achieve over this period of 100 days. This can be a real game-changer as we navigate through any issues you have around Sales and Marketing and how to resolve them.

If you feel you need a bigger hand – the next step up is us doing the marketing for you. We can start with a strategy or a Strategic Action Plan. The next step is discussing what internal resources exist and where there is a gap that needs to be filled. Our team has a wide range of skills from calling, copywriting, web design, LinkedIn management, email marketing and more. We can assist you at every level of your marketing no matter how big or small.

Reach out and book time with me today – https://lnkd.in/dfGYSdUm

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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The post Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Business Struggling With Sales appeared first on Smarketing Lab.

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Company Where Business is Going Well

Assia Salikhova — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 07:02:29 +0000

Take a Quiz to Assess Your LinkedIn

This is the second article in a series discussing three different business scenarios and what each can do to survive and thrive during a recession. If you’ve missed our introduction article “The Ultimate Guide to Predictable B2B Sales During a Recession”, read it here first. While there are five steps to ensure predictable sales, we’ve highlighted three specific actions to take if you’re a new business.

For new businesses who have set up in the past 24 months, check out the first article.

For established businesses that are experiencing a slowdown or lower sales, either since last year or more recently, this third article is for you.

Now let’s get started with the second article. This is for businesses who are established, and not really feeling any kind of downturn.

If you’re in this camp, you’re doing well already. However, now is not the time to rest on your laurels! The business may be going well now, but it’s important to take steps to ensure this continues into the future. On the upside, you will have spare resources to invest in this.

In our 20 years in business all too often we get approached by businesses who were doing well … until just one key client leaves for whichever reason and all of a sudden they need urgent sales, which is next to impossible to do for a company that did no marketing for years!

Don’t be that company, maintain your market presence by marketing at all times. Simple, yet effective!

Retention Should Be Your #1 Priority

The best way to ensure continued success is by ensuring your customers stay with you. In uncertain markets, you need to stay in touch with all of them and let them know you are still here and ready to service their needs. Customers tend to have short memories, and managers change all the time.
Therefore a past customer is no guarantee of a future one unless you are actively building top-of-the-mind awareness for them.

You can view this as improving your customer service, and use it as a chance to educate them about your products and services. You’ve likely heard of a customer mention they bought something you sell and then act surprised when you mention you also provide this. This is not because they suddenly don’t like you, they genuinely didn’t know you provide it. This is why education and staying in touch are so vital.

Once your follow-up and education are well sorted, it’s time to review what value you currently provide vs your competitors.

Is there something missing that can be added at low or no cost to you? We’ve all heard of customers receiving a small chocolate with every delivery, and how much this small gesture can build loyalty. But do you implement this in your business?

The chocolate is a metaphor, of course, it’s not always viable in every industry. The key is to think outside the box and find ways to provide value over and above what your customer expects. For service-based industries, it could be providing special insights that only you know. Or if you have a good geographic concentration of your customers, why not put on a customer appreciation evening?

On that note, it’s appropriate to mention that 100% of business owners I met over the years agree that NONE of their customers actually know all the products or services they provide. That is why your customers and past customers can often buy more from you if they know more about what you offer.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Choose to invest in marketing. If times are good, you have the ability to invest in marketing so that times will continue to be good!
Start a regular email newsletter – fortnightly for services or weekly for products. This creates an opportunity for your connections to learn more about your products and services. Sounds too complicated? Ask me how 12 months’ worth of emails can be developed over 6 weeks with little time investment from you.

Explore the Merits of New Product Development

Any downturn can be an excellent opportunity to spend some time developing new products and services. And this is especially true if you are coming into it from a position of strength. If sales are stagnating, you may choose to spend your efforts investing in something new. This can put you in a great position to take advantage once the market returns, and suddenly you have something new over your competitors.

Remember if developing a new product/service:

do good market research first. There’s no point imagining what the market wants, you need to talk to them! Breakthroughs like the iPhone are far and few in between. Most new products are built based on robust conversations with current customers to uncover what their current pain points are.

This doesn’t have to be limited to products and services by the way. You can look at your internal business and see what can be improved there. Would a piece of custom software make the customer experience better, or streamline your own delivery? Perhaps the website needs a refresh? Or maybe you have a lack of good quality content to entice new prospects? While your competitors may be struggling, take this opportunity to invest in future sales.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Investigate anything that is new or happening in your industry. Whether this is a straw poll type of chat or a more robust market research, this can be a great way to build your future success.
If nothing product/service comes up, consider how you can improve the way you do things. Is there a way to become more efficient, or do things to a higher standard?

It May Be Time for M&A

Depending on how well you’ve done, you may have a significant amount of cash to invest. A merger or acquisition shouldn’t be left to the big boys. Even a small business can explore this option. And in fact, during a downturn, it can be easier to find the right business at a discounted price. This can be a risky strategy as a lot can go wrong, especially if you have to merge teams.

Some things to remember:

Sometimes you are just buying the list of clients, make sure they have one!
How much duplication of admin can be cut down/handled by your current team?
You can merge up and down the supply chain, don’t be limited to direct competitors.
A merger can be a good way to expand beyond your city while sharing the risk with another business.
Try to look for businesses that do things in the same way you do them – a good cultural fit is usually vital.
Sometimes you are just buying talent – i.e. the employees.

M&A can reap great rewards, and once you’ve done it once you may end up continuing until you’re a well-known brand. Just remember the fundamentals that made you a success in the first place, as these aren’t likely to change over time.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Be open to opportunities that may come along and try to think laterally. Oftentimes once we become open to an idea we start seeing the opportunities all around us.
Have a chat with a business broker so you understand the process and are well-equipped if you do notice any opportunities.

3 Steps for an Established Thriving Business

To summarise, if you have an established business that has done or is doing well there are three broad areas to continued success.

First off you want to secure your position, this means ensuring you retain your existing customer base. Look for ways to delight them and keep in touch to ensure they keep coming back to you.
Second, this can be a good time to develop a new product/service/internal process to increase how competitive you are.
And finally, if you are really cashed up, it may be worth looking at mergers and acquisitions to fuel growth.

Still in Doubt?

You’re not alone. Lucky for you, you’re in a great position with a lot of different options available to you. That alone can be overwhelming! We’re here to help.

The easiest way to get clear on your goals is to work with me on a weekly basis as a virtual CMO. We’ll set 10 goals to achieve over a 100-day period, this equates to 15 weekly meetings with myself. I’ll bring a lot of ideas to these meetings and provide a sounding board for your thoughts. These 100 days can be truly transformational and you’d be surprised what can be achieved in such a short time period.

Or if you’d like something a bit more hands-on, we can start with a Strategic Action Plan.

Note this isn’t a full-blown strategy, you’ll get actual actions to take to solve your biggest challenges with sales and marketing. Then we can discuss what internal resources are available to get you going, and where we can assist.
Our team has a wide skillset, so we can step in at any level of marketing whether it’s emails, copywriting, calling, web design, LinkedIn/Social management, or something a bit different.
Take the first step today – book a chat with me and let’s see how we can work together. https://lnkd.in/dfGYSdUm

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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The post Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Company Where Business is Going Well appeared first on Smarketing Lab.

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for a New Business

Assia Salikhova — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 06:57:44 +0000

Take a Quiz to Assess Your LinkedIn

This is the first article in a series discussing three different business scenarios and what each can do to survive and thrive during a recession. If you’ve missed our introduction article “The Ultimate Guide to Predictable B2B Sales During a Recession”, read it here first. While there are five steps to ensure predictable sales, we’ve highlighted three specific actions to take if you’re a new business.

For established businesses who aren’t feeling the pinch of the recession, check out the second article.

For established businesses that are experiencing a slowdown or lower sales, either since last year or more recently, this third article is for you.

Now let’s dive into our first article which goes over what to do if you’re a reasonably new business (18-24 months). This is probably you’re first ever recession in business, and you’re not sure what to expect.

First things first: congratulations on starting your own business and surviving the first 18-24 months!

Hopefully, by the end of your first or second year, you should be able to see how viable it is, and if you’re still here I assume it is a commercial success. Remember your business shouldn’t just replace your job. A business that can’t work without you is just a risky job.

Always keep your eye on the end goal – exiting the business, whether through a sale or by employing someone to do your bit.

Alternatively, maybe you are in the midst of launching your new business – the advice here will still serve you.

Running a new business in a recession can be tricky. You’re likely not very well known in your industry, and word of mouth isn’t necessarily something you can rely on. However, you are also most likely a nimble company and able to adapt much faster than older competitors. You also likely don’t have much baggage and are open to doing things a bit differently.

No matter. Success can and is still found in certain industries and niches. There are a few keys to marketing as a new or newish business during a recession.

Understand Your Competition & What Makes You Different

As a newcomer, it’s likely you’ll have to face off and win against established businesses. The best way to do this and succeed is to know what everyone else offers so you can establish a unique selling proposition. Finding your own niche or special approach that customers value is key to succeeding in a tough market environment.

Established businesses tend to become complacent with their offerings and are often out of touch with what the customer actually wants. This proves an excellent opportunity to swoop in and pick them off one by one. Researching your competition and your customers is the key to making this work.

During a recession, it’s extra important to know your customer back to front. Their needs are likely changing or have changed due to the slowdown. If you can find out what it is and tweak your offering that will put you in good stead to succeed.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Get clear on who your target market is and then speak to 10-20 people in your target market, well beyond your friends and family. Sounds hard? Trust me that’s the easiest action you’ll ever do for sales in your business. And frankly, if that scares you, you have to question if you are ready for business ownership.

Same-Same = Not Good Enough

If you’re starting a business that offers the same thing as everyone else, this simply isn’t good enough. Unless you are in the commodity business, then perhaps you don’t have much say.

However, every other type of business must find a niche in order to find success.
Build it and they will come may have worked for a few companies. But think of the most well-known brands like Coke or Microsoft. Notice what extraordinary efforts they take to keep sales coming. While you don’t need their huge budgets, you definitely need the tenacity, passion and persistence they demonstrate even while they are very well known.
Nowadays you need to build it right, communicate, market and advertise it to a specific audience, and then hopefully they will come.

A niche not only allows you to find your best customers, but it also cuts down how much work you actually need to do. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone, which by the way means you are no one to nobody, you can focus on being very good in a particular area. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a broad set of services; it means you have to be single-minded in your approach to the market.

For example, you may have opened a café. I’m not suggesting you just start making 101 types of muffins and nothing else.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

I suggest you look around and see who the market is. Does your café attract mostly families, teens, corporate workers, tradies, or someone else? Look for ways you can appeal to your audience. Whether this be through specials or focussing on a particular type of baked good.

For service-based businesses, this means focusing on a particular industry or specific type of service within your business. If you’re an accountant, be the best accountant for mechanics for example. Find exactly what they need from you and how you can add real value to their business. Do this, and you’ll be sure to find customers who really value what you bring to the table.

Can Be Hard to Break In, But The Opportunity Is There

As a newcomer, you may have issues breaking through established competition and getting new clients. However, opportunity abounds, and if you’ve followed the two pieces of advice above, you should know what strategy to take. Take some time and find the best approach that gives you results. Don’t forget to measure your actions so you can understand what actually brings you the sales.

Offering something unique or the same thing with a new spin on it is the way to go. The Challenger Sale is a good book to read to educate yourself on how to succeed in any market environment. The gist of it is you need to challenge your prospects with insights only you know as an observer of the market. Then of course show how your product solves these newly found problems for the client.

Owning a social media game is another great way to stand out from the crowd. If you are on the younger side of the spectrum, you may have some good ideas about what is popular and gets attention on social media right now. Put this knowledge to good use and outmanoeuvre the larger more established businesses.

Remember how you are a spry and nimble business? It’s time to put this quality to good use. Run through ideas like a bullet train.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Test, measure, and aim to fail quickly. The faster you can discount a sales/marketing idea, the faster you’ll get to what works for you. There are no bad ideas, if it meets common sense approval – just try it. One of the common mistakes in business is to stay in the testing phase forever.

What that means is that once something is working – scale and continue to test and measure. If it’s successful – scale more. If not – look for other ideas.

3 Steps for a New Business

To wrap up:

A new business needs to understand the competition and its unique selling proposition.
Finding a niche is no longer an option, in an economic downturn, it’s basically a necessity.
And finally, breaking through the competitors may be hard but not impossible.

It’s important to be adventurous and persistent in your sales and marketing approach. Testing and measuring is the way to go to find exactly what works in your field.

Still in Doubt?

You’re not alone – these are times of incredible change and everyone is a bit on edge. It’s valuable to recognise that the situation is largely new for everyone and you are not alone, we are all in the same boat. If this is your first time in business, you’re probably not too sure what to expect. That is OK.

The good news is that there is always a pair of helping hands. One of the simplest ways to get clear on your sales and marketing is by having a sounding board and advisor you can trust. That’s why I’ve started offering a special virtual CMO service. We’ll meet weekly for 15 weeks and during these 100 days aim to achieve 10 goals when it comes to your business.

Think you need a bit more of a hands-on approach? My team is here to take the stress of marketing away from you. We are a multi-disciplinary bunch and have a wide range of skills to tackle any aspect of marketing. Whether it’s emails, web design, copywriting, video, LinkedIn management, strategy, or something else.

Get started by booking time with me for a chat and let’s see how we can help https://lnkd.in/dfGYSdUm

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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The post Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for a New Business appeared first on Smarketing Lab.

Ultimate Guide to Predictable B2B Sales During a Recession

Assia Salikhova — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 06:49:32 +0000

Take a Quiz to Assess Your LinkedIn

Whether we are in a recession or not, we can all agree we live in times of fast and unexpected changes. There is a real likelihood that the speed of change will only grow in the future as we embrace tech further.

This article offers you the ultimate guide to changing your sales process in order to have predictable B2B sales.

There is no promise of a fast solution or 10x growth, although some might apply our ideas to do just that. Instead, the aim is to show you that every company is capable of taking action to not only survive but also thrive in unpredictable times. This is possible if five fairly straightforward ideas are taken on board and implemented.

Think about it, just five ideas coupled with consistent actions are all that is standing in your way! Just do it!

But first, let’s be clear about where we are at right now. While your situation may be different it’s important to recognise where we are coming from.

If you’re ready to dive into something a little more specific, we’ve also got four mini-guides for three different business situations, check them out below:

What’s the starting point?

With all the news coming out these days, it can be difficult to stay positive. Many businesses are facing tough challenges, and one of the easiest things to do is cut costs. Marketing is traditionally first out as it’s often viewed as an unnecessary expense.

This attitude is the very root of the problem – too many companies of all sizes in various industries perceive marketing as an expense rather than an investment.

To be fair it’s a two-way street, and this perception is partly a result of a non-practical marketing approach that is too focussed on research and strategy and misses implementing great ideas. Let’s face it, some marketers have a lot to answer for.

When you recognise the true nature and the value of marketing as an investment in future business, it makes almost no sense to cut it as the first resort. Instead, it’s now time to face the challenge head-on and invest in marketing that works. Inaction during challenging economic times leads to even fewer sales soon after.

It’s common for companies who take action, even complete newbies, to grow during times of economic challenges because many others slow down and don’t seize opportunities.

What to do during Recession?

Step #1: Put Yourself Into Your Customer’s Shoes

1.1: Talk to Your Customers

Understanding your customer is Business 101. But when times are tough, it’s even more important to spend some time and really get an understanding of what your customer is going through. By putting yourself into their shoes you can appreciate what their pain points are because let’s face it – they have likely changed recently.

1.2: Review Your Offering

Changing requirements is an opportunity for you to outshine your competitors. If you are able to listen, understand and then tailor your approach, this can really make you stand out from the crowd. You might be thinking, how do I go about doing this?

Well, it’s easier than you think. Pick up the phone and have a chat with your customers. Ideally, pick the ones you have a good relationship with and who are more likely to be open to discussing what’s going on. Ask open-ended questions about their situation and try to think of ways you can help them. It could mean altering your services or increasing/decreasing certain things. Maybe it’s about offering long-term financing options.

The point is, to speak to your customers and find out what their situation is. Then take that information and see what you can do to help. It doesn’t always have to be financial either – it could be as simple as a workshop that shows them how to do something or use something more efficiently.

1.3: Make a Real Effort to Retain Your Customers

Understanding your customer’s current situation is the first step in ensuring you retain them. Showing up will give them a sense of comfort, knowing that in these times of change, they can still rely on you. Altering your offering so it better suits their situation and needs shows them you are paying attention.

Often these conversations with your customers can lead to a sale. They likely don’t know your full product range, so when you are having these chats keep in mind if there is anything you offer that solves their challenges. It could be something that increases efficiency or productivity etc.

The bottom line – talk to your customers, and your prospects, with the aim of helping as much as you possibly can. Both with advice and offering services/products where relevant. Chances are you will either get more business immediately or sometime in the future.

What to do during Recession?

Step #2: Communicate. A LOT MORE.

Step 2.1: Basic Information is Important.

Recessions are a good time to re-assess your communication skills. I don’t mean verbal, although that never hurts either. I mean what are you putting out there into the world as a business?

Are you offering sage advice to your customers and prospects that help them? Or are you leaving it up to Wikipedia and your competition to educate them?

It’s been fairly common knowledge that senior managers prefer to talk to you after they’ve done their own research. And in 2022, Gartner confirmed this in a report: 72% of decision-makers prefer a ‘rep-free’ experience. This means they are able to educate themselves about you, without you.

What does this look like in real life? In short, it means there are people out there right now looking for solutions you can provide. If content marketing is a foreign concept for you then they are likely not to find you or your company and as a result… go elsewhere. If only they knew you can do it so well!

Now is the time to understand and embrace content marketing. For some that might mean that you need to start from the very bottom and work your way up. Imagine your customers know nothing about your product, that is the lowest level you need to start with.

FAIR WARNING:

for every highly technical industry, please stop thinking your company is well-known or that your customers understand all your technical jargon. First of all, the market is pretty ignorant and most companies are a lot less known than they think they are. Second, often times the decision is made by a senior manager or the company owner who might be not as technically minded as you would expect them to be.

A pretty classic example: digital transformation. Senior management can’t even start thinking let alone make a decision unless they understand some digital fundamentals. When I mention Senior Management, that includes their IT department. Hard to believe this? I’ve spoken to hundreds of companies in this exact position, and more often than not senior managers have a knowledge gap.

2.2: Address Pain Points

Simple articles explaining the basics, all the way up to guides and case studies that really showcase what your business can help them achieve. The reality is that a lot of people who think they know everything, really don’t know all that much. Commonly used jargon might actually be causing confusion. So while the temptation may be to dive into complex thoughts, it’s important to have the basics right first.

Content that addresses current pain points is a great way to show off your knowledge while helping educate your prospects on what you can do for them. Case studies are a great way to do this in a more interesting and engaging format. Better yet, ask if your customers would be open to recording a short video testimonial. Video testimonials like this really help you stand out from the crowd and build trust.

2.3: Claim Your Space as an Expert

Now that you have all this wonderful content, it’s important to put it to good use. And this means LinkedIn or other social media platforms. You need to connect with your target audience and share your ideas and thoughts. By doing this you claim your space and develop your reputation as an expert.

The word “expert” is often questioned by our clients. But why? If you’ve been in the business for a decade, are you not an expert in your field? If you’re a bit newer but part of a team, you can still claim expertise via them. The term expert in this context doesn’t necessarily mean someone who knows everything, just someone who knows more than others.
Worst of all, if you aren’t showing up and claiming your space, this leaves a gap for your competitors to do it for you.

What to do during Recession?

Step #3: Show Up Consistently

3.1: Network More

We all know that a large part of success is just showing up. This is especially true in times of uncertainty. It’s important to be visible not only to your clients but to your prospects as well. The last thing you want to do is make it harder to be found, or worse give them the impression you are no longer in business.

While appearing at offline networking events and trade shows is still a good strategy, online is a much cheaper alternative and you can reach a wider audience.

3.2: Social Media Works More Than Ever

Furthermore, being merely visible on the right social media for your audience is the bare minimum you can do these days. Even if it’s simple posts that explain your products/services and their benefits, this is better than nothing. What this signals to your customers and the market, in general, is that you are still around and available.

Times of change bring times of new management as well, and sometimes this ends in a review of suppliers. Being present online is a good step in ensuring when they are doing a review, you are easy to find. Explaining the benefits of working with you on social media will help ensure any new managers are able to self-educate themselves even if you are not always calling up.

3.3: Collaborate With Others

Collaborating with complementary businesses is another great way to show up for your clients. This is a seriously under-utilised strategy because everyone seems to be looking out for themselves. An arrangement like this can be as simple as committing to referring customers back and forth, or you can do package deals and cross-promotions.

These partnerships are a good opportunity to use your imagination and deliver something your customers will really value.

What to do during Recession?

Step #4: Use Technology to Communicate a Lot More

We often think we are good communicators. But are we?

How up-to-date is your website?

If you sell offline – do you have enough printed material?

How often do you post on social media?

How frequently do you send a newsletter?

When did you last publish an article or video?

Can you tell when was the last time you spoke to each customer?

When did you last speak to each prospect?

The reality is, business gets in the way of all of the above. So it’s only natural that sometimes we forget to post, or don’t have quite enough time to make that call. This is where planning in advance and automation can really make life easier.

4.1: Employ a CRM, That You Will Use

A good first step is to have a CRM. However, the best CRM is one that will be used. So if you’ve tried in the past and failed, maybe just stick to an Excel spreadsheet for the time being. It’s better you have a spreadsheet of customers and notes, than a fancy CRM that you never touch and doesn’t get updated.

4.2: Create Content in Advance

Social media posts and email newsletters can all be thought through and created in advance. LinkedIn even lets you schedule posts natively within the system online or via mobile. So there is no reason you can’t “be present” online. This can seem like a mammoth task, so break it off into chunks and work on a quarterly or monthly basis.

Set aside a few days for creating content, then schedule it and rest assured that it is working for you in the background.

4.3: Use Automation and Modern Marketing Approaches

In addition, leverage the power of automation tools available at your disposal. This means creating landing pages that can sell for you when you are asleep, calendar booking software that lets prospects find a time that is good for them, follow-up emails that answer enquiries immediately, chatbots that can answer your most commonly asked questions, and so much more. All these little automation can help push the prospect further down the sales process without your involvement, leaving you more time to shine and add value.

If you find few words in this section sound like a foreign language for you, it’s time to learn modern marketing approaches because it’s not as complex as you think. You are always welcome to ask implementation experts from Smarketing Lab for guidance.

What to do during Recession?

Step #5: Optimise Marketing

5.1: Slim Down Multiple Agencies

At times, companies end up with a few too many agencies. While it may seem like a good idea initially, the reality of working with 2-5 agencies is that there’s often a lack of a unified strategy. Either each one is looking for you to provide a strategy, or each is advocating for their approach.

This can be detrimental to a business as it either floats aimlessly producing different pieces of marketing materials that don’t work together. Or it gets pulled apart in several different directions, with sometimes disastrous results in the end.

We advocate for a multi-disciplinarian agency that can cover the bases of what is needed, instead of an agency really focused on doing one thing really well. Just like many things, marketing works best not when every different section is performing at its peak, but when the whole is optimised. That’s not to say everything can’t be the best, it’s just not necessary. So, now is the time to review how many agencies you work with and aim to slim it down. One way to do that is to find out the full range of capabilities of agencies you are already working with.

5.2: Use Internal Agency & Augment With Agency Expertise

Review what internal resources are at your disposal and discuss how these can be used with your agency. If you are a competent copywriter, there may not be a need to pay for articles to be written. Instead, perhaps look for an agency capable of taking your thoughts and turning them into other forms of content – social media posts and videos for example.

A good tip to increase your reach on social media is to have your team engage with it. Even if they just react to your company posts, this will give it a boost as it shows people are interested and engaging with your content. The end result will be that your communication reaches more of your target market. Simple actions like this consistently bring a lot of value.

These cost-saving suggestions not only keep your marketing efforts going but also empower your team to stay productive during potential market slowdowns.

Where to from here?

Simple consistent actions have been the key to predictable sales for businesses over the last 120 years, and now it’s our turn to align with market trends.

No matter your situation, you now have five good steps to move forward with your marketing (and sales). Recessions are part of our market reality, and while you can’t have unlimited growth with zero consequences, the good news is that the world continues turning. We will get through it if we’re proactive.

Every business owner and sales manager understands that predictable sales result from a multitude of relatively small, often simple consistent actions. These actions are measured and adjusted based on the results. Those who invest time and effort in doing the so-called “low-level sales activities” succeed in every market situation.

Today, we invite you to review what the “low-level sales activities” for your business are. Explore how a new mix of known and new content & marketing-related activities can differentiate your business, creating more predictability of sales in the years to come.

So, keep calm, carry on, and implement some of the strategies we’ve discussed here. Not sure where to begin? Still feeling overwhelmed?

I have one final piece of good news: help from Smarketing Lab is here.

Like a veritable superhero, we love to help businesses succeed.

Reach out and let’s have a chat. Start by booking a complimentary Strategy Planning Session with me at https://rb.gy/moqm3

Assia Salikhova
Managing Director, Smarketing Lab Limited

P.S. This article is the first in a series of four articles that will cover ideas that can help any B2B company stay afloat. In the next three articles, I will cover three key scenarios based on common types of companies we see every day.

In three articles (to be published weekly) we’re going to discuss the following scenarios:

Brand New B2B Business. Imagine a new business that has just come to market within the past 12-24 months. You likely started during or just after the pandemic and may or may not have found success. This recession is likely your first.
Established B2B In Good Shape. If you are an established company and your business has been and is going well, then you might be wondering what to do to keep it up. While you keep reading about the doom and gloom, your business isn’t feeling any major changes. Or are they around the corner?
Struggling From a Lack of Sales, Established B2B Company. This is about you if you are an established company and your business has been affected recently. Perhaps it was good a while ago, or maybe it was good as recently as last year. Whatever the case, the business has noticeably slowed down. Ideally, you’re not in crisis mode, as if you are it may be too late.

While there are many other scenarios, we believe these three cover the majority of situations. Share in the comments if you feel other common situations are not covered and I’ll be happy to write some more about it.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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Waiting to ‘see what happens’ in an election year is lousy business

Assia Salikhova — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 04:00:29 +0000

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As someone deeply involved in the business world, I am dumbfounded by the customary but inexplicable inertia and indecisiveness that infects New Zealand SMEs in an election year.

This phenomenon not only hampers business but also negatively impacts the overall economy.

Despite the pressures and uncertainties that elections bring, there is no excuse for succumbing to this inertia. It is essential to acknowledge that very little changes during this time. Prices, exchange rates, and technological advancements continue to shape the business landscape, regardless of election outcomes.

Many people argue that they need to see what the new government looks like before making decisions. However, this 'election year pause' can only set a business back.

Unpredictable and uncertain times demand a head-on, consistent approach. Waiting, and delaying decisions is not the solution.

In today’s rapidly evolving business world, companies must adapt swiftly to changes in technology and consumer behaviour, or they risk being left behind.

The market is flooded with overwhelming information and choices, making it easy for businesses to freeze and make no decisions. However, those who fail to make timely decisions will need help to catch up with the ever-changing landscape.

New Zealand businesses must learn to thrive in a dynamic environment. Unfortunately, the speed of decision-making is not keeping pace with the rate of change. People often feel overwhelmed, but trying to understand it all is impossible and potentially harmful.

To counter the tendency to freeze in the face of uncertainty, I propose three key strategies for businesses:

Improve and expedite the decision-making process: Businesses should commit to making decisions promptly and efficiently instead of allowing discussions to stagnate. Leaving a meeting without a decision only leads to wasted time and inertia.
Invest in education: To navigate the complexities of the modern world, businesses must expand their knowledge beyond their specific fields. Understanding digital transformation, political events, and economic trends is crucial for informed decision-making and sustainable growth.
Embrace change: Rather than fearing or resisting change, businesses should develop an appetite for it. Change is an inevitable part of the business landscape, and those who adapt quickly will thrive.

As the business landscape evolves at an unprecedented pace, my belief remains steadfast. Consistency, coupled with adaptability, is the key to success.

I aim to empower organisations to achieve long-term goals and thrive in an ever-changing environment. We can successfully navigate the dynamic business environment by encouraging businesses to maintain their marketing and sales efforts during both good and bad economic times.

Talking about business during election year,

New Zealand SMEs must overcome the inertia and indecisiveness that hinder their growth. By implementing the strategies I have outlined and embracing consistency and adaptability, businesses can navigate the dynamic environment and flourish.

Remember, making swift decisions, expanding knowledge, and embracing change are essential for long-term success in today’s ever-changing business landscape.

For a free, no-obligation consultation, contact Assia by booking a time convenient for you at calendly.com/assia1/5-steps.

Set aside just 55 minutes and discover how a 5-Step Recession Proof Action Plan for Sales & Marketing can work for your business to go beyond survival into the stability of predictable B2B sales.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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Find Time for B2B Marketing When Business is Booming

Assia Salikhova — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 02:53:36 +0000

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This article is the ultimate guide to B2B marketing for businesses that are doing great right now and have no time or headspace to think about it. First, because they are busy and second because even though their sales cycle is months or years, they assume that when needed, marketing will bring a flood of business to their doorstep.

Business is booming. You have orders coming out of your ears. Your team can barely keep up with the production, or delivery of services. You even have a waitlist for your waitlist. And you struggle to hire more staff to help with delivery.

This is an envious position to be in, and there are many businesses that end up in it for one reason or another. If this is a result of your efforts in sales and marketing – I salute you. You probably have good systems in place to keep it up long-term.

Read on anyway for a sanity check.

This article is really aimed at those businesses who have ended up too busy but weren’t in control of this happening. Basically, this means some external event has caused demand to surge. It could be that a competitor shut their doors, there is a tight supply, the government did something, or maybe a pandemic happened. Whatever the case, you’ve slowly or suddenly ended up being at capacity.

Typically, when we speak to businesses like this, they aren’t prepared to do any marketing. And why would they? Business is BOOMING! Your head is busy delivering. There is no time to work on the business. This is a common thought process; however, it can be detrimental.

The reality is that sooner or later the gravy train will end, and it’s important to have a solid foundation on which to bounce back. While times are good, you have a bit of extra profit, and you need to invest some of this in your future success.

This is your ultimate guide to B2B marketing when times are good.

Tidy up Your Brand Story & Messaging

This can be a really boring job, but it is good to have done. Luckily for you, once it’s complete it often doesn’t need to be touched for a long time.

Brand Story

Studies have found that the likeability of your brand is one of the key drivers in every purchasing decision. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since as a consumer yourself, there must be brands you like and identify with yourself. While there are many ways to make your company ‘likeable’, a good story about yourself or your brand is one of the most distinctive and memorable methods.

Even though B2B is a business-orientated transaction, the decisions are made by people. People identify brands as likable or not mostly on a subconscious level. This is a process we can’t stop, but we can positively influence it by sharing a better brand story.

When business is going well and your company has been established for a while, this is the perfect time to reinvigorate your story or create it from scratch. This will support your future success and help make your message very clear.

By the way, if you think a brand story is only important for your sales and marketing, think again. Today brand stories are equally important in order to attract talent. Many people, especially younger people, want to work for a company that has values aligned with their own. A brand story is one of the ways to share your company values with the world in order to attract future customers and talent to you.

Brand Messaging

Once you’ve nailed down your branding and story, it’s important to become consistent across all media.

This starts with creating brand guidelines. It can be as simple as a piece of paper where you have your logo, your brand fonts, your brand colours, and any additional guidelines. More complex versions offer different logo versions depending on the background colour, brand voice guidelines, social media guidelines, and design standards for future graphics.

Once your brand guidelines are decided upon, it’s time to review your current media to ensure it’s all aligned. This is where the process can get difficult. Especially if you have produced many print materials over the years that are a mismatch of colours and designs.

We recommend starting with the simple things:

Your Website
Your Signature
Any Digital Assets
Your Social Media
Your Business Cards

Print materials that are close to running out can be done next. Any older print materials should be reviewed, if they’re not too far off the current branding then they can be kept. If they’re really way off or the content has become outdated, it’s time to recycle these.

Clean Up Your Website & Its Messaging

You should think of your website as your online sales rep. It should be able to present your business in a professional manner, answer any and all questions, educate your potential customers, and provide reasons to work with you.

Given all that, does your website currently do this? Most websites can be improved. It’s become quite easy to build a professional-looking website. What hasn’t changed, is the difficulty in creating good quality content.

When we say content, we mean all the images, texts and videos on your site. Here are the steps we recommend doing to ensure your website is up to scratch:

Check you’re happy with the design
Go through every page and note down what needs to be changed or updated
- Implement these over time
Go through with a fresh pair of eyes, imagine yourself as a prospect. Try to understand what is missing
- Make a plan of attack to address any issues
Review your blog
- Often over time our views change, and we get better at explaining things. Now is a good time to review what you wrote in the past and make tweaks to this content.
Come up with new topics for blog posts
- Create an achievable goal for yourself to write them. One a month is already a good start
Investigate your competition
- Check out their websites, see what they’re doing and try to make sure you’re at least as good if not better than they are

Work On Your On-Page SEO

One thing we find businesses are often lacking is their On-Page SEO. You probably don’t even have a clue what this means. That’s OK.

In simple terms, SEO can be split into two sections: On-Page and Off-Page SEO.

Off-Page means anything that doesn’t happen on your website. This primarily means building backlinks. A backlink is a link to your website on another website. Google bots read these links from other websites and use algorithms to assign a score to your website.

A higher score = easier to rank high on organic search. Historically more backlinks = higher score. Without getting into complex details, this is no longer the silver bullet it once was. Most SEO companies focus on this type of SEO.

On-page SEO is everything that happens on your website.

In some respects, you have a LOT of control over this. It can be a somewhat complex subject. In short, there are certain things you can do on a page that help guide Google bots and help them understand the information on the website.

Using this information and analysing your content, they come up with a conclusion as to how relevant your website is. Then based on this they determine where to position your website when someone searches on Google.

While this is a more technical job and we recommend enlisting help for it, there are good free resources. If you have the time then this is something that can be done yourself.

Ubersuggest – a great tool that has free and paid versions to analyse your site and identify issues
Neil Patel – same people as above, Neil goes over every aspect of SEO
Yoast SEO – for WordPress websites this is the best free tool to analyse how good your on-page SEO is
SurferSEO – a great paid tool to optimise your blog posts with correct keywords
Google Keyword Research Tool – lets you see what people are searching for, and optimise for these keywords

Set Yourself or Your Company Up as an Expert

Isn’t it great when people come to you for help? When it comes to business, it can really cut down the sales cycle. The prospect already knows you as an expert, trusts what you say, and likely has an idea of what you can do for them. How do you achieve this?

The short answer is LinkedIn. While for some LinkedIn is a battlefield for the next job offer, for business owners it’s a way to establish themselves and their companies as experts.

This doesn’t mean you need to become a public figure, far from it. It means engaging with your prospects, sharing your advice, sharing helpful articles, engaging with their posts, and overall building connections. You can think of it as a non-stop networking event.

Just act like you would at a networking function. When you connect with someone, try to ask some questions about what they do. Share some insights if relevant. Stay in touch over time and build a relationship.

When posting, think about what value your company has that can be shared. What is something that is truly useful? Better yet if you can share an article that you wrote. A pro tip is to break down an article into small chunks that can be re-purposed as posts.

Automate Engagement With Past and Future Customers

You’ve likely heard of the old adage that you must keep in touch with each customer every 3 months in order to maintain the relationship. Who has time for that these days? Nobody. What’s worse is that recent studies show you have to stay in touch even more often due to how busy everyone tends to be.

Well, the good news is that what passes as a touchpoint is a lot more achievable than in the past. Expensive old-school media has been replaced with targeted online ads, free posts on LinkedIn, and email. The best bit is that part of this can be automated.

We suggest that a regular newsletter is a great start to connecting with your clients, educating them on everything you offer, and generally building top-of-the-mind awareness. This last bit is vital for your business to survive, and even when they don’t open your emails, they likely see them. Just this is enough to jog their memory and start to build top-of-the-mind awareness.

A newsletter doesn’t need to be long and boring, it doesn’t need to have 35 of your top-selling products, you don’t need to write down your life story, or what you had for breakfast, and it doesn’t need to be sent every day.

We’re big fans of short and simple newsletters that aim to do three things:

Remind about the benefits of working with you
Educate on a set of products or a service you offer
Introduce the faces behind the business

These three simple actions will set you up for success in the future. They may seem too simple, but there is beauty in simplicity. Educating your customers is a hot topic at the moment. Email is a great way to do so semi-automatically.

The reality is a lot of your customers most likely don’t know about everything you do. Frankly, it’s a pompous assumption that they ever would. They are busy professionals and don’t have the time to study your business and catalogue every product and service you offer. Drip-feeding them information about different services and products is a low-effort way to educate them. Will this result in immediate sales? For some companies – YES. But for others, it will plant a seed for the future.

Create Sales Processes & Build a Funnel

Most businesses we’ve worked with don’t have a formalised sales process. In fact, they often don’t even have a sales process in their heads. If you start talking to them they have some long-winded story of how they got their start, how they slowly built up a client base, and how they’re now a success. Very few companies can point out and say exactly how they can acquire a new customer. Even fewer can give numbers to back this up.

While business is booming, it’s a great time to formalise your sales process. When the gravy train finally stops, you’ll have a set of processes you can follow that in theory will produce new sales. How great does that sound? Of course, nothing is as simple as it sounds.

There are two types of sales processes you can have – inbound and outbound.

Inbound

You can think of this as a pull approach. The goal is to help customers find you, educate them, get them to enquire and then close.

A lot of content marketing is focused on this approach.

Generate demand/traffic
Communicate benefits/educate
Proposal stage
Follow up
Close
Customer Care

Outbound

This is a push strategy, you go out into the world and connect with customers directly, then pitch, follow up and close.

Content marketing still has its place in outbound, although it is limited.

Identify your target market
Prepare your approach
Approach
Proposal/Presentation
Follow Up
Close
Customer Care

These are the most basic forms of the sales process you can have. Of course, you can add as many additional steps as required. But even starting with either type of sales process and implementing it all the way through will set you up for success.

Where to from here?

Now that you have recognised the need to continue to invest in marketing when times are going well for your business, it’s time for action.

First of all, we are running a webinar that goes into more detail on everything covered here in this article. It will arm you with actionable steps you can take.

The good news is – you don’t have to do it alone, because professional help with expertise in your industry is here and ready to help.

Secondly, book a 4R Blitz session for personalised advice. I’m running these 45-minute sessions personally and together we’ll discuss where you are, where you want to get to, and how to achieve this.

Finally, everything discussed in this article is something we have successfully implemented for a client or ourselves. So, if your business is booming, and you simply don’t have time to do it yourself, reach out. My number is 027 231 8631 or email me at assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

Ultimate Guide to B2B Marketing

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator, developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz Ready for the next step? Learn about LinkedIn from Business Services from Smarketing Lab Find out how well your LinkedIn profile stands by taking a special Quiz to discover how your profile on LinkedIn stacks up vs industry standards. Then ask for help when needed. Because the #teamtalent at Smarketing Lab is on standby ready to help you gain the full benefit from LinkedIn for your business. Learn More

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Why Does Business Growth Not Happen on Demand?

Assia Salikhova — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 02:32:47 +0000

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We’ve been in the business of helping companies grow for a long time now. And anecdotally, I’d say 7 out of 10 businesses don’t pursue growth. They’re pretty ok with what they have, and maybe add a minimal number of new accounts a year.

Often what happens when these types of businesses want growth, is they need it immediately due to some outside shock.

This happens with good businesses that have usually had a combination of an established client list and ongoing word of mouth. This formed their main sales and marketing for years. Investment in anything else was simply not needed.

Then one day something outside of their control happens. A key customer goes under or moves their business to a competitor, or a few mid-sized customers. This creates a gap in sales that is impossible to fill at short notice.

Why?

Because investing in sales and marketing has not been a priority for many years. Creating this from scratch, and then going to market to close new accounts takes time. Especially for large contracts where the sales cycle can be 6 months or more.

Imagine suddenly that your website is out of date, you have no sales presentation, you don’t really have a current idea of your target market, there are no digital or printed materials, no formalised benefits, and no sales staff.

This is a situation we see businesses fall into quite often due to external factors. Step one is recognising you might have under-invested in sales and marketing. Step two is understanding how to manage this risk.

Four ways to grow revenue and profit:

Growing your business is a fickle thing.

You want it, it’s hard to achieve, and even harder to maintain. Sustainable growth is the dream of many: a reasonable % increase year on year.

When we talk about growing your business we mean to increase either revenue or profit.

There are four general ways to achieve this:

Sell More to Existing Customers
Open New Accounts
Increase Margins
Mergers & Acquisitions

I can’t tell you much about how to increase margins or what mergers could be a good idea in a short article. What I can do is discuss the first two ways of growing your business.

These tips can be implemented in most B2B businesses.

No matter your industry, no matter your target market, and no matter if you sell products or services.

Sell More to Existing Customers

Did you know it’s 7 times cheaper to sell to an existing customer than it is to a new prospect?

This should be common knowledge by now. Yet time and again business owners forget this simple truth. I’ve even been guilty of this, so I speak from experience.

Why do business owners forget this simple truth?

They already know everything we do and will reach out when they need us

Sometimes we think our customers already know what we do and there’s no need to reach out. They know what we do so why bother educating them or seeing what they’re doing?

Let me challenge you, how many times have you heard that a customer went to someone else to buy something you offer? I bet it’s happened more than a handful of times, am I right?

If you question them why they didn’t come to you, they’ll often say “Well, I didn’t even know you did that!”. Usually followed up by “Of course next time I’ll come to you.”. If we rule out that they’re unhappy with your services, then the logical conclusion is they are telling the truth.

They genuinely didn’t know you could offer them what they needed. Or they don’t trust you can do it well.

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened with our customers. I’m sure it’s the same for you.

Research shows that since 2019 over 60% of purchasing managers (as many as 70% in 2021) prefer to learn about solutions by exploring the internet and be well prepared before seeing a sales professional.

Our take on this is that we all are pretty guilty of not sharing more knowledge. All of us can do more to educate and develop trust in our solutions and products. You can think of this as positioning your company.

They’ve already bought everything under the sun from us!

Other times we think they’ve already bought everything they could from us, there’s no way they need anything further! This happens a lot with companies that sell large pieces of equipment that don’t need to be replaced for a while. Say the replacement period is once every 30 years.

Why bother reaching out at all for those 30 years?

Again, I challenge you – most of these companies offer service contracts. Yet not all of their clients take them up on it straight away. It could be a financial thing, or just not important in the moment. Somewhere down the line though, servicing becomes crucial to ensure the longevity of this equipment, so why not keep reaching out?

Additionally, few companies operate a single piece of machinery.

There are bound to be further sales opportunities by reaching out.

We’re not sure if they’re happy, so best not to rock the boat

Finally, sometimes we’re not sure the client is happy.

Especially in the case of monthly services, when there isn’t much feedback happening, it’s easy to start thinking what ifs. A very common one becomes, what if they’re not happy with us for XYZ reason?

So, months go by, and this what-if starts giving you real anxiety every time you think of checking in on them.

9 times out of 10, the client is perfectly happy. They’re chugging along using your products or services. Hey, they might even be thinking about reaching out from time to time. For any regular deals like this, there are always things you can upsell or cross-sell. It could be an extra feature on software, it could be additional products that need to be delivered monthly.

For that 1 time, isn’t it good to solve your customers’ problem? Who cares that they’re unhappy?

They’re not unhappy with you personally, they’re just unhappy with what they’re getting from your business. The great thing is it’s almost always an easy fix.

Maybe they didn’t understand something.

Maybe they feel embarrassed to ask for help.

Whatever the case, reaching out is never a bad thing.

So how can you actually sell more to existing clients?

The solution is simple really, reach out.

Aim to speak with every client once every 3 months.

This doesn’t need to be a hardcore sales call. It’s checking in, chatting about their business, connecting with them, understanding their goals, and seeing if you can offer them anything new.

When it comes to something new in your company, it’s a good idea to call as well. Wouldn’t they want to know you now offer XYZ?

It could be a lifesaver for them!

What about time-poor individuals?

Automated email follow-ups are your friend in this case. A simple email that is sent every month or two that checks in on them, and maybe shares an article you’ve written.

The technology is commonplace, the content can be written to be very conversational.

There really is no reason to not do this. If you feel uncomfortable, you can always set these emails up as a template. However, I guarantee you won’t stick to every 1-2 months for each client.

What else can be done?

The other thing you can do when it comes to growing your business is to educate your customers about what you offer and build top-of-the-mind awareness. We have a trick that does both in one: automated newsletters.

A simple fortnightly email that goes over some benefits, highlights a service or group of products and introduces a team member. That’s as simple as this can be, super gentle, not smarmy, and effective.

The beauty of an email is that it doesn’t need to be opened for it to register in the minds of your customers. Just seeing your company name is the little nudge that will help jog their memory and start to build top-of-the-mind awareness over time.

So, when they think of your industry, they think of you.

If you’re ready to have a chat, book a 30-minute consultation, and let’s explore how this duo can be remarkable for growing your business.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions in growing your business.

assia@smarketinglab.co.nz

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Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Business Struggling With Sales

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Business Struggling With Sales

For new businesses that have started in the past 24 months, the first article is for you.

For established businesses who aren’t feeling the pinch of the recession, check out the second article.

It is customary to think that cutting costs and hiring a new salesperson could be a solution. I strongly disagree because:

External Influences

You of course can’t do much to control these external influences, at least not now, instead focus on what you can control:

Retaining Customers

PRACTICAL ACTION to fight this 10x more that costs you nothing or very little:

Review Internal Marketing

In short: lead generation.

PRACTICAL ACTION. Is there a solution? Yes, there are three effective solutions and two of them are FREE:

Review Sales Performance

PRACTICAL ACTION:

3 Steps for Established Businesses with Lower Sales

Still in Doubt?

Here at Smarketing Lab,

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Discover the Values and Benefits of Upgrading and Optimising LinkedIn Profile

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Company Where Business is Going Well​

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Company Where Business is Going Well

For new businesses who have set up in the past 24 months, check out the first article.

For established businesses that are experiencing a slowdown or lower sales, either since last year or more recently, this third article is for you.

Retention Should Be Your #1 Priority

Once your follow-up and education are well sorted, it’s time to review what value you currently provide vs your competitors.

PRACTICAL ACTION:

Explore the Merits of New Product Development

Remember if developing a new product/service:

PRACTICAL ACTION:

It May Be Time for M&A

Some things to remember:

PRACTICAL ACTION:

3 Steps for an Established Thriving Business

Still in Doubt?

Or if you’d like something a bit more hands-on, we can start with a Strategic Action Plan.

Assia Salikhova

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Discover the Values and Benefits of Upgrading and Optimising LinkedIn Profile

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for a New Business

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for a New Business

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Recession Proof Guide to Predictable B2B Sales for an Established Company Where Business is Going Well

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.

Smarketing Lab Co-Creator,
developer of profitable B2B solutions to grow your business.