The tech or SaaS sales conversation…fix it with simple sound bites

The tech or SaaS sales conversation…fix it with simple sound bites

Tech or SaaS sales conversation planning – a few simple sound bites

The tech or SaaS sales conversation.

A SiriusDecisions study found that 82% of B2B decision makers felt that tech or SaaS salespeople were unprepared for the meeting.

Many salespeople, even the pros, spend too much time on slides and not nearly enough time planning the sales convo.

Inevitably the slides often focus on the tech or SaaS salesperson’s company and solution, which is the wrong information.

Remember, by the time you’re in a sales conversation the prospect has already gathered 70% of everything they want to know about your solution from the web.

Waste not one minute repeating the obvious.

Creating sales convo sound bites

If your offering is complex, like tech or SaaS, you can’t have too many sound bites. Get together with fellow sales people and marketers to create them. Write on a yellow pad or, better, put them into an organized sales playbook, preferably digital so your reps have instant access.

How do I fix the tech or SaaS sales conversation?

So how do we fix this? Create 60-second conversational sound bites that lead the prospect where you both want to go. Some simple conversation planning will go a long way to getting a prospect to commit to the next step, and then the next.

A simple framework that we use is based on the customer’s decision making process. We find that customers want answers to three big questions:

    Why change?

    What is it about my current state that’s inadequate?

    Sound bite: “Lots of our clients have found themselves in that exact same situation. Their current state was too labor intensive and managed with spreadsheets (or whatever they were doing). What have you seen about our solution that makes you think we might be a good fit?”

    Why now?

    What will it cost your company to delay fixing this?

    Sound bite: “In one case a client was spending _____ annually on that situation. With our solution they were able to cut their costs by 75% and show positive ROI in the first year. Let’s calculate an average monthly or annual cost of delay, based on an estimated cost of ______.”

    Why us?

    Sound bite: “We’re having this conversation because you think enough of us, so far, to spend this time with me. What capabilities do you see that we bring to the table?”

    Create sound bites. Experiment with them. Watch your numbers go up.

    ROI Calculator for B2B Marketers

    ROI Calculator for B2B Marketers

    Your B2B marketing ROI matters.

    Wooden blocks spelling B-2-B against a blurred background.

    You are welcome to use our new marketing ROI calculator, customized especially for B2B marketers.

    We looked at a lot of ROI calculators available on the web and found them inadequate. So we developed our own.

    Our calculator is built in Google Sheets. I recommend that you download the calendar, study it a bit, and customize for your business and circumstances.

    Pay attention to the built-in notes, indicated by red triangles in a few cells.

    This is a free download if you are a subscriber to my monthly updates (scroll to end).

    Many thanks to Anders Hoff for providing the foundation for this calculator.

    The back story

    Marketing ROI in B2B has evolved from a mostly ignorable nuisance to a must-have for today’s top performing marketers.

    CEOs and CFOs are under more pressure than ever to show results and they’re transferring that pressure to you.

    Most ROI calculators seem to be configured for e-commerce. This doesn’t work for overall B2B marketing, with our lengthier sales cycles and metrics requirements.

    An ongoing project

    View this ROI calculator for B2B marketers as the start of your ongoing efforts to track ROI from various activities over time. You will need to customize the calendar for your purposes. For example, there are fields for deal closing probabilities that only you can enter. However, we’ve provided some back-of-the-envelope formulas to get you started.

    Plan to own the calculator. Download it from Google Sheets and customize it. Share it with your colleagues, especially those in sales. Help them understand your objectives for measuring ROI and how it helps the company overall.

    How to use

    Our calculator is actually six calculators in one, plus an Overview of all your marketing ROIs:

     

    1. Email
    2. Events
    3. Advertising
    4. Social media
    5. Public relations
    6. A blank template
    ROI calculator for B2B marketers

    Pick one ROI calculator that seems like a good place to start. Customize it where you can and make a note of the fields for which you’ll need to find information. All of the ROI calculators contain probabalities of a deal close from various CTAs. Obviously someone scheduling a demo from your landing page is going to carry a much higher weight than someone just clicking on a content link.

    The best way to use this is make a copy of the entire worksheet for each month. Then within that month make copies of individual spreadsheets for multiple campaigns in the same category.

    Works best with a marketing automation platform

    You’ll work a lot faster with a marketing automation platform. A good platform will deliver a lot of the data you’ll need for this spreadsheet.

    However you can still find the right data with Google Analytics, your website platform and dozens of other tools that deliver campaign results.

    July Newsletter – from Mike Harris

    July Newsletter – from Mike Harris

    Key marketing trends for the second half of 2023

    • high cost marketing exiting stage right
    • artificial intelligence in marketing
    • strategic narratives and executive branding

    As we wrap up 1H, here are some new and helpful trends in B2B marketing for 2H.

    1. Smart money moving away from high-cost marketing

    I’ve always been a fan of low/no cost marketing. With new clients, that’s the first thing I make sure they are maximizing.

    Now, smart companies are catching on to what’s not working so well anymore:

      • Paid search and SEO. It’s just too crowded and expensive for SMBs. Recent studies have pointed to this as a key reason CAC has risen dramatically in the last year.

      • High-cost CRM and marketing automation platforms. Way too many SMBs are using expensive legacy platforms like Salesforce, Pardot, Hubspot, et. al., when hundreds of high quality options are there for a fraction of the cost.

      • Advertising in general. Ad-blocking and ad-blindness are real, and here to stay. Never in the history of business have sales prospects had so many options for ignoring our advertising. And they do.

      • One-size-fits-all marketing. Regards tech and SaaS purchasing, many companies have added non-tech people to the purchasing process. That’s a key reason why marketing doesn’t resonate with everyone in the value chain.

    I could go on. My point is there are more ways than ever to engage audiences and prospects without giving your CFO heartburn.

    #2. Artificial intelligence changing the marketing landscape

    Marketers have always been good at chasing shiny squirrels, and throwing good money after bad.

    Regards AI, you can bet that the 80/20 rule will apply here. Eighty percent of marketers will rush into it, and waste precious time and money because they don’t know what they’re doing.

    “Hey, we don’t have a marketing plan but I just KNOW AI will generate leads to beat the band!”

    The twenty percent, however, will take a look at everything they’re doing (or could be doing) in marketing and ask, ‘how can AI help us save time and money with our growth initiatives?’.

    How To Organize Marketing Growth Initiatives

    B2B Marketing Activities for 2024

    Here’s a handy list of AI tools for marketing. I’ve been using some of them and think they’re pretty nifty.

    #3 – Strategic narratives and executive branding

    We may not believe our solutions are commodities, but most observers perceive us that way.

    It’s getting harder and harder to stand out. And I’m seeing lots more demand for strategic narratives linked to executive profiles and stories.

    Why? Humans in 2023 are following humans, not companies or products. The question ‘why us, why now?’ gets answered faster when an audience sees an authentic, unique human touch in your company.

    Resonance is everything these days.

    I have a new offering in this space.

    Wrap Up

    Enjoy the 4th of July.

    Thanks for keeping me in mind for marketing projects. This year I’m focusing more on one-and-done projects than long term contracts. Seems to be the way consulting industry is heading.

    Finally, I’d like to intro you to a professional colleague, Eric Weynand. Eric is a CPA and a Texan, who has a fractional CMO practice based in Montevideo, Uruguay. I’m enjoying our chats and can recommend if you need fractional accounting and/or CFO help.

    Schedule call

    Location – Nashville, TN (U.S. Central Time)

     

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    Location – Nashville, TN (U.S. Central Time)