I guess this is more a post about sales rather than marketing per se, but still – understanding buyer journeys and how you can help at different stages is an important part of the marketing role, particularly when the sales cycle is complex.

I’ve read quite a lot about marketing funnels – how customers at different stages of their journey want to hear different things from you – so you need to interact with them in different ways at different stages. But it’s always felt rather theoretical – it looks good on paper, but does it translate in to the real world? Of how people actually interact with your company? Or is it just for nice PowerPoints?

In the last few months I’ve experienced being on the other side – i.e. actually buying something – four different times. And all at similar price points to my company’s offerings. It’s been really interesting being the recipient of marketing (and sales) output from these four different companies. I’d say two of them have done a good job, and two have done rather poorly (both in terms of sales and marketing).

Rather than name names, I’ll just list the things that I think the two good companies did well and not so well. Most importantly though, it was only by experiencing these processes for real – i.e. not on a PowerPoint slide – that I really understood the impact on the potential buyer. My top-level conclusion was that it’s very easy to undermine your product with poor marketing and sales, and most of these things were pretty obvious.

Anyway, here are some of the things sales folk and marketers did well and poorly:

1. Listen to the buyer, and adjust as you go along. This is the biggest one for me. I kept re-hearing things of which I was already convinced. A lot of marketing collateral, messaging and content is targeted near the top of funnel – “We’re just trying to get people in with a high-level aspirational message, to get the lead numbers up”. This is fine, but if I’m already on the phone to you, then I’m convinced of stage 1. A couple of times I was sent collateral introducing me to the company – but I already knew who they were and what they did! And worse, these were repeated at the top of every sales call. If I’m talking to a sales rep, I want to talk detail, functionality, price, engagement plans, PoCs, that sort of thing. I don’t want to watch a 10 minute brand presentation. Again. The best presenters jumped straight to the point in presentations and calls, not repeating old messages, and recognising that I was already convinced they knew what they were doing.
2. It’s not just about functionality – I’m buying the company as well as the product. The best two companies start out with their company pedigree – how long they’ve been around, who their customer base is, even who’s on their board and who’s invested in them. When I know a company is run by the best in the business, and they have a long runway ahead of them, I’ll take them seriously. If I get a sniff that this is a start-up run out of someone’s garage, I’ll run a mile.
3. Product vision and roadmap are key. Again, the best sellers presented a roadmap for where the market was going, how they understood the market infinitely well, how they would be providing functionality now and in the future (read “years”). These investments are always long-term and I need to know that the company has a vision of what’s coming and that they understand the market better than me. And that they’ll create product to match!
4. Case-studies and big reference customers are really useful. The best sellers opened with “By the way, we’re currently being used by [insert long string of companies we’ve all heard of]. Do you want to talk to any of them?”. Immediately removes any fears I have that this is a two-bit organisation.
5. Professionalism. Perhaps I’m repeating the same point here, but there was a marked contrast between the professionalism or “grown-up-ness” of different organisations. From the way people talk to you at a booth, to the way they run presentations. This was also reflected in the tone of the marketing material. I’m buying grown-up products, not toys for my kids! Some of the material was “fun” but expensive marketing software is a serious business 🙂
6. Dump the superlatives. It’s a minor one this, but every time you use the phrases “best”, “unique”, “incredible”, “leading” and so on, it doesn’t mean anything. You need to use more descriptive and meaningful adjectives in your collateral. For example, if something is described as “The most complete database of prospects for …” then that means something – it means that there’s a good chance the database has the most entries and covers most of the market. All to be validated, but still good. However if it’s described as “The best database of prospects for …” then that doesn’t mean a thing!
7. Great and intelligent objection-handling is key. By far, the biggest differentiator between good and bad was the ability of the sales person to listen to my objections and handle them well. Two examples:

• How to do it properly. Certainly for one of the purchases I had some quite complex and internal reasons why I couldn’t proceed to do with priorities, timing that sort of thing. Rather than ignoring those objections, the great salesperson listened and came back with a plan for how they could work with me to alleviate my time pressures (rather than add to them), and remove this roadblock – a great piece of work that really helped the sale.
• How not to do it. In contrast, with another seller in a similar situation (i.e. I was blocking based on various complex reasons), he just repeated the sales pitch again. I.e. ignored my objections and just kept hitting me over the head with the same slide deck. It didn’t help..

It’s also worth pointing out that, if part of your role as a marketing department is to represent your company in the best possible light – i.e. to provide the best possible customer experience for customers – then your sales people are leading the charge on that front. My “customer experience” of all of these four companies was primarily determined by my interactions with sales people – and there was a marked contrast between the good and the bad. I like to end on a positive, so here are the traits of the great sales people (much of which follows from the points above):

1. Knew their product. Not to the same level as their technical colleagues, but to some depth.
2. Responsive. I.e. replied to emails and phone calls. So basic, but incredible how hard it was to get in touch with some people.
3. Professional. I’m not your mate 😉
4. Great at objection-handling – see above.
5. Had my interests and goals at heart. The best took time to understand what I was trying to do.
6. Grown-ups. This isn’t an ageist thing, but – I don’t like being sold six-figure pieces of software by kids straight out of college. A few years experience really shows in the call.

So, if you want to really understand what the “Buying Process” actually means in the real-world try it out. Of course, if you really want to be sneaky, try it out on your own company! Or get a friend to do so. Hopefully you’ll be impressed. But it might also highlight where you’re dropping the ball or using inappropriate marketing at different points. Worth a try.