{"id":95904,"date":"2014-03-21T13:17:08","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T20:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marketinginteractions.typepad.com\/marketing_interactions\/2014\/03\/crossing-the-chasm-the-new-obstacle-for-b2b-buyers.html"},"modified":"2014-03-21T13:17:27","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T20:17:27","slug":"crossing-the-chasm-the-new-obstacle-for-b2b-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/crossing-the-chasm-the-new-obstacle-for-b2b-buyers\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing the Chasm: The New Obstacle for B2B Buyers"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve come to the conclusion that evolution is lopsided. Especially when it comes to B2B marketing vs. sales. It seems to me that either one or the other is evolving, but much of the time it doesn’t seem to be both. At least not within the same organization.<\/p>\n
The best marketers are on a quest to get to know their buyers. They’re doing the hard work to create personas, develop content strategy and execute content marketing in a way that moves the needle by building relationships.<\/p>\n
On the other side, salespeople who are in tune with their markets are spending the time to do research on prospects, learning how to apply the content that marketing is developing to supporting relevant dialogues with customers. And with all of this in hand, they’re adding value to keep the progression established earlier in the buying process moving toward the decision to buy.<\/p>\n
Then there’s everyone else. What the heck happened?<\/p>\n
Why is it that in so many companies these two ends of the buying process never join in the middle? It’s like buyers need to cross the chasm on their own to get from one side to the other.<\/p>\n
What makes you think they have the motivation?<\/p>\n
I’m hearing a lot lately that marketing is doing great getting leads into the early stages of the buying process, but that there’s a bottleneck in the middle that is somehow keeping them from moving farther.<\/p>\n
Take a look and see if any of the below sound familiar:<\/p>\n
There are a ton of things that could be represented in those bullets above. But each of them has one characteristic – the focus is on the company, not the customer.<\/p>\n
When are we going to learn that it’s not about what we want, but what our customers must have?<\/p>\n
Our customers do not want:<\/strong><\/p>\n What they do want is:<\/strong><\/p>\n Relationships are the highest currency we can build in today’s “social” business environment. I spend a lot of time failitating introductions for my clients to vendors who can bring expertise to the table that’s not in my wheelhouse. They like this. It makes them feel important and they get darn good treatment from those I recommend.<\/p>\n Why is it that marketers don’t facilitate introductions of highly qualified prospects to salespeople? Why is it that we don’t help our sales team see the value in pursuing the leads we’ve worked hard to nurture to a readiness for conversation?<\/p>\n Why is it that marketers don’t share the background of prospects with salespeople? Sure, marketing automation can help improve visibility to what they’ve seen or clicked on up to now, but do your salespeople know what other content you have that would enhance that prospect’s experience moving forward?<\/p>\n There’s a wide gap in B2B companies between the marketing and sales organizations. What are you going to do to close it?<\/p>\n Or are you relying on your prospects making the leap across the chasm on their own?<\/p>\n Feeling confident about that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve come to the conclusion that evolution is lopsided. Especially when it comes to B2B marketing vs. sales. It seems to me that either one or the other is evolving, but much of the time it doesn’t seem to be both. At least not within the same organization. The best marketers are on a quest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7020,"featured_media":93168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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