Why you should tailor your sales messages to the buying influences

Every day it's getting harder and harder to get marketing cut-through. Consumers are becoming savvier to sales messaging and advertisements and more reluctant to reach out until later in their buyer's journey. And while it's now easier and cheaper to get your messaging in front of consumers, it's also easier and cheaper for your competitors (and their competitors… and so on). Need proof? You just need to look at some of these recent stats: A global average of 37% of Internet users now block ads 79% of buyers wait until after they’ve fully defined their needs to READ MORE ›

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Why a one page plan will get you more sales and marketing results

It's quite an eye-grabbing statement to make - that a one page plan will bring in more results. But after 20+ years of shaping the sales and marketing of high growth businesses, our co-founder Hugh Macfarlane has found that brevity really does have merit. And this has never been more relevant than when it comes to your sales and marketing plans. Most sales and marketing plans are quite lengthy due to how much information is in them - everything from your target audience to your problem statements and your tactics. The intention when we build them is READ MORE ›

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Buyer-centric go-to-market strategy (with a little help from Geoffrey Moore)

This article is something of an essay on my current thinking about buyer-centric go-to-market strategy and has been shaped by a recent conversation with strategy luminary Geoffrey Moore. Why buyer-centric go-to-market strategy? And why now? As a high-school drop-out, I was in a customer service role from 1980 and earned my first sales role in 1983. I was lucky enough to start my career in sales at a company with a deep commitment to soft-skills training, and to work for managers committed to nurturing any skills they'd helped me acquire. I did very well. Not through any READ MORE ›

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Here’s why the buyer’s journey isn’t dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TtNWA3IjvM   Earlier this month, our co-founder Hugh was interviewed on the Pathmonk Presents podcast by host and design/UX expert Lukas Haensch. The Pathmonk podcast is a fast and effective show to sharpen your growth marketing skills. Hugh was interviewed to cast more light on recent statements purporting that the buyer's journey is dead. And as an expert on marketing and sales funnels, it was clear that Hugh could help bring more clarity as he discussed why this statement is categorically untrue. From here, we get an unfiltered view of Hugh's expertise on buyer-centric thinking, the READ MORE ›

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Five ways to lift B2B landing page conversions

A good landing page is key to a successful marketing campaign – it's what will convert your visitors into leads, after all. But a B2B landing page can often be tricky to create due to a lack of understanding of the wants and desires of your audience. B2B consumers are often driven by a real need for a product and have more pragmatic purchasing habits than their B2C counterparts. Knowing how to build an attractive and effective landing page for these consumers will lead to higher conversion rates, a better reputation for your business, and more sales. READ MORE ›

By |Tactics|
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Why saying “no” to an opportunity can get you 13% more sales

I want to talk to the topic of sales effectiveness and, in particular, argue why walking away from a bad deal early is a good idea. I could come at this conversation from multiple angles. I could explain why employee satisfaction would be higher if we walked away from bad deals. I could talk about why your market reputation is enhanced by walking away from bad deals. I could mount countless other legitimate arguments. But on this occasion, I want to mount my argument by looking only at the numbers - in particular, resource numbers. I'm going READ MORE ›

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The absolute basic sales & marketing must-do’s for DIY B2B digital marketing

In a perfect world, businesses across Australia would have access to the means to perform high-quality, efficient B2B digital marketing practices regularly. However, if this last year is anything to go by, for many finances are tight and extra time is non-existent. This means business leaders are faced with the tough choice of where to invest their resources. The reality is that many small B2B businesses can't afford outsourced marketing functions - or professional in-house teams - due to low revenue and the need to be cautious with expenditure. For these businesses, many are moving towards undertaking READ MORE ›

By |Tactics|
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The missed link between tactics and strategy

We know that if you change your strategy, you need to change your tactics. But the reverse is just as true: If you change your tactics, you might be changing your strategy (or at best, contradicting it) unintentionally. In my November blog, I argued that as we start to emerge from a torrid 2020 into an uncertain 2021-2, we have to be ‘OK’ about a seeming contradiction: that stability was still crucial, but we need to be comfortable pivoting both strategically and tactically. I want now to argue that we have to be very intentional about those READ MORE ›

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How the budget, grants, and changing markets will affect business (plus the 4 steps to growth in uncertain times)

In 1966, Robert Kennedy said: "Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself - on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort."  If Kennedy were alive today, I wonder what words he would use to describe the time we share and the world we live READ MORE ›

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Marketing on a Budget: What to keep and what to cut

Why is it that marketing is one of the first things to get cut when budgets tighten? The conception amongst B2B business owners is that positioning is a long game and that demand response is low, so taking a hiatus from both forms of marketing won’t make much difference. You could be forgiven for thinking too, in the current climate where online traffic has increased, we're 'over'; webinars again, and content creation is reaching saturation point, that your voice would be drowned out in the digital noise anyway. Sure, customers are reducing spending on 'non-essentials' so minimising READ MORE ›

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