In high-end B2B marketing and sales, you don’t ask a prospect for the order on first contact any more than you’d ask someone to marry you on a first date. This is because, like serious relationships, substantial purchases entail perceived risks–such as uncertainty that the acquired solution will perform and be supported as described or that it will be delivered in the promised time frame. Before prospects can be converted into customers, their uncertainties must be reduced and perceived risks have to be minimized.
The majority of experienced capital-equipment and high-volume salespeople know this. They understand that a prospect must get to know a potential supplier, that the supplier must demonstrate an understanding of the prospect’s needs, and that the prospect must come to view the supplier as the best source for fulfilling these needs before the supplier is selected as the vendor of choice. They also recognize that this is usually a gradual process that begins with the prospect first becoming aware of their company, then considering its offerings, and, finally, coming to prefer them. Truly effective salespeople understand that a prospect becomes a customer only after he or she has passed through the four stages of the marketing and sales funnel (awareness, consideration, preference and purchase)–or, continuing the comparison between personal and business dynamics, not until the prospect has come to trust the seller’s company and believe in the merits of its offerings enough to enter into a relationship with it by making a purchase.
However, not all marketers understand this–a knowledge deficit that can have unfortunate consequences for their content development as well as for the impact of their inbound and outbound marketing initiatives. Limited budgets and pressure from upper management can compel marketers to pay too little attention to creating “top-of-the funnel” content focused on establishing company credibility and thought-leadership in favor of allocating resources to developing product-centric “bottom-of-the funnel” content.
The greatest hazard of such an approach is that it fails to cultivate prospects and pave the way for their conversion to customers. Also, as such, it doesn’t do much to expand a company’s market penetration or to contribute to its sales objectives.
Please look for my next post, which will discuss the types of marketing content that most encourage the development of awareness and consideration–or, in other words, what sorts of materials will best make your company’s case in these critical first two phases of the marketing and sales funnel.
Please see parts 1, 2, 4, and 5 of this article series on content marketing at GF&Z’s blog “Perspectives in Global B2B Marketing,” on www.globalmarcomm.com.
Ronald-Stéphane Gilbért, Global and Content Marketing Practice Director— Gilbért, Flossmann & Zhang Worldwide, Cleveland
Contact GF&Z at solutions@globalmarcomm.com