Buyer-Centric Strategy

May 6, 2021

Overview

Hugh outlines the buyers’ journey step by step and goes through the steps needed to have sales and marketing aligned on a truly buyer-centric strategy. 

Speaker

Hugh has proven his belief in a buyer-centric approach by successfully leading literally hundreds of marketing growth projects in six continents. He has trained thousands of B2B marketers throughout Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa, North America and South America, and built sales processes for both small businesses and enterprise-level companies. He has also worked with the B2B leaders from Sales, Marketing and Delivery in 30 countries to agree their objectives, strategy and processes for earning new business. Getting them on the same page. 

Key Points

 Buyer’s journey (backwards):

  • Decision made: B2B decisions are normally very complex. 
  • Preference formed: To make a decision, you have to have formed a preference. 
  • Offer understood: They need to understand the options. 
  • Need agreed: They have to have a need that they agree with you on. 
  • Gap acknowledged: They have to have a gap/problem that gives rise to that need. 
  • Interest established: Curious or interested, consuming your content. 
  • Positioned in category: They know who you are, but aren’t interested. 
  • Untroubled and unaware: Don’t know who you are and don’t know they have that need. 

Tactics for a Buyer-Centric Strategy: 

  • We find buyers able to be troubled about that problem 
  • We position as someone who could solve that problem 
  • We help them agree that they have that problem (and that it’s a priority) 
  • We help them work out what’s needed to solve that problem) 
  • We propose a solution to solve that problem 

Why should marketing and sales be on the same page? 

  • There’s a 67% higher probability that marketing-generated leads will close 
  • There’s a 108% better lead acceptance if they’re on the same page 
  • 209% increase in contribution from marketing’s efforts as a results 

How do we align marketing and sales? 

  • Sales and marketing don’t need to align to each other 
  • Sales and marketing need to align to: 
  • The same objectives (how many deals of what value) 
  • The same strategy (including the problem and the market) 
  • The same tactics 
  • The same measures 

What you need to do: 

  • Get sales, marketing, and product in a room together 
  • Agree on all of the problems that you solve 
  • Analyze options considering size, pain, growth, competition, barriers 
  • UPS, reputation, cost advantage, and referencability 
  • Agree what types of businesses (and roles) most have that problem 
  • Agree what a complete solution looks like 
  • Agree on what buyer-centric tactics you’ll use