Return to Business Sales and Marketing Strategies

Return to Business Sales and Marketing Strategies

Most people, both professionally and personally, had to make significant adjustments in the first half of 2020. COVID-19 shattered our habits and drastically altered our social relations. Leaders in marketing and sales have adapted as well, altering operations and business methods to meet current difficulties. However, although we can improve our odds of health and stability by staying at home and watching movies, business executives must take severe measures to maintain their companies healthy and productive. This is a difficult assignment, but it is all the more vital.

Where should business leaders begin, though? How do businesses swiftly adapt and build effective strategies? As Sales and Marketing teams get back to work, here are a few ideas on where to focus your efforts.

Create marketing messages that are focused on your customers.

Marketing executives devote a significant amount of time and effort to establishing and coordinating plans that align with their company’s goals. Right now, a CMO’s four major tasks are saving pipeline, handling change, safeguarding their brand, and protecting income.

Maintaining these tasks can be challenging at times, which is why many Marketing executives are experiencing some concern right now. Some business leaders are even questioning whether brands can—or should—continue to sell and market when the world isn’t focused on business. According to a recent survey, only 8% of consumers worldwide believe that because of the coronavirus pandemic, brands should stop advertising completely. Despite this, a whopping 74 percent believe businesses should not take advantage of the situation.

With both of these numbers in mind, it is up to marketers to strike a balance. As the findings above illustrate, this is also true for B2C. But it’s especially relevant for B2B because target audiences are dealing with their own issues, such as working with less resources or finances.

Knowing this, it’s critical that marketing professionals return to the basics when it comes to campaign messaging. Understanding their audiences and addressing their pain areas with actual solutions are two of the most important things they can do.

Customers, whether B2C or B2B, are more interested in practical advise than in being marketed to right now. As a result, Marketers must concentrate on demonstrating value through informative and useful tools. Rather than pushing a hard pitch, consider providing thought leadership pieces and telling experiences of other customers who have overcome similar obstacles.

Align Yourself Every Day to Move More Quickly

Business leaders face a lot of uncertainty as a result of dramatic cultural and economic shifts. This insecurity is exacerbated by a lack of team collaboration, which frequently leads to communication failures, teams pushing in opposing directions, and wasted opportunities. To stop or resolve these typical problems, corporate leaders must unite on a regular basis to meet and respond to changes as they occur.

So, how does this work in practice? Teams may align on messaging, pipeline goals, and budgets by bringing together leaders from Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Finance in a near-daily meeting. This gives everyone a forum to voice their concerns and have them matched with practical solutions. Transparency, responsibility, and proactively solving problems together as an organization are the keys to a fruitful meeting of this type.

During these check-ins, keep the following in mind:

Creating a consistent message across sales, marketing, and customer service

Identifying and modeling the effects

Defining ideal customer profiles (ICPs) more precisely, as these may have altered in recent months,

Assessing which initiatives are producing results allows funds and resources to be targeted more effectively.

And figuring out the best strategies to target ICPs for a faster time to value.

Business leaders may reduce aimlessness and allow teams to pivot together by aligning regularly and supporting open cooperation.

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: What Role Do They Play?

Organizations may see a boost in demand as shelter-in-place orders fade and businesses and customers adjust to a new normal. While this may appear to be a good thing, the truth is that many businesses have had to lay off employees and slash resources, leaving them unable to satisfy demand.

An Augmented Workforce, powered by intelligent automation working in concert with business professionals to create top-line growth, is one strategy to help fill in the gaps. Organizations that use Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) realize the benefit in giving personalized touches to each and every lead, raising hot leads, and organizing meetings with salespeople at scale.

Salespeople only have so many hours in the day to conduct their tasks. The Sales Capacity Challenge is what it’s called. IVAs allow salespeople to focus on higher-value duties (such as closing deals) by automating many of the activities that they normally handle (including personalized lead outreach, updating contact information or asking leads if they are interested in scheduling a meeting). IVAs help Customer Success teams overcome similar difficulties, allowing Customer Success Managers to focus on creative issue solving rather than chasing clients to plan or reschedule meetings.

Your revenue-generating staff can be more attentive in completing high-value work by delegating due diligence to an Intelligent Virtual Assistant. During a CMO Insights webinar titled “Sales & Marketing Strategies for ‘Getting Back to Business,'” guest Rashmi Vittal (CMO of SimpSocial) revealed that SimpSocial’s own IVAs raised the hot lead rate by 15% in the 60 days prior to the webinar.