You Nailed It!

By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer

Have you ever heard the saying, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem (or opportunity) as a nail?

It was made famous by Abraham Maslow, yes, the same Maslow that gave us the hierarchy of needs and it refers to being over reliant on a familiar tool. It has many applications in life and business.

In the world of B2B marketing and sales, the hammer is often the sales pitch script, those written guides intended to help salespeople when interacting with prospects. When used properly and at the right time, they can be effective tools at helping prospects understand a seller’s solutions. 

However, too often they are created as a standard one-size-fits-all pitch and delivered without any understanding of who the prospect is and where they are in the buyer’s journey. And it can be no more useful than using a hammer to unclog a stopped-up drain.

You need more than a hammer in your B2B marketing and sales toolbox, but you also don’t need the equivalent of a 10,000-piece master tool set. Here are some ideas.

Content, Content & More Content. Create a robust library of content in a variety of forms that serves prospects throughout their buyers’ journey. It should include a mix of written articles and blogs, videos, and infographics. Create far more nonpromotional, early buyer’s journey content that addresses the most common problems your prospects face that you can help them with.

Media Partners. Carefully select media partners for opportunities, both paid and earned. Your media partners should be able to provide you with audience engagement metrics that go beyond standard subscriber demographics, clicks, and opens.

Prospect Engagement Analytics. Gather and organize real engagement data that will help you understand the companies and people most interested in your content, what they’re interested in, and where they are in their buyer’s journey, so that you can effectively nurture the relationship.

Ways to Measure Results. If you do all the above, you won’t have to guess how sales are being generated and attribution tug-of-wars between marketing and sales can be avoided. The data will inform and guide you.

This week, try putting the hammer away!