The document discusses how sales and marketing can better align and coordinate their efforts to improve the buying experience for customers. It argues that buyers now pursue information across multiple channels, so sales and marketing must work together with a shared understanding of buyers' needs to engage customers throughout their journey. The document provides examples of how LinkedIn solutions like advertising, content sharing, and warm introductions can help sales and marketing align their messaging and coordinate their outreach to buyers.
1. THE CONVERGENCE OF SALES & MARKETING #ConnectIn16
How Sales & Marketing Can Own
The Buying Experience
Mark Dick, Director ANZ,
LinkedIn Sales Solutions
Matt Tindale, Director APAC
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
8. Re: Enterprise Telesales
Steve, let us help you build an enterprise
telesales team.
Mark Marketing 3:14 PM (1 hour ago)
to me
REPLY
9. Re: Enterprise Telesales
Steve, let us help you build an enterprise
telesales team.
Mark Marketing 3:14 PM (1 hour ago)
to me
REPLY
10. Re: Enterprise Telesales
Steve, I didn’t hear back from you. I’d love to
share a case study about MegaCorp’s
enterprise solution.
Mark Marketing 3:19 PM (1 hour ago)
to me
REPLY
11. Re: Enterprise Telesales
Steve, I didn’t hear back from you. I’d love to
share a case study about MegaCorp’s
enterprise solution.
Mark Marketing 3:19 PM (1 hour ago)
to me
REPLY
12. Re: Enterprise Telesales
“Why SolarSlash uses our products,
and why you should too.” I wanted to
share another case study on…
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Telesales
You’ve got some nerve, Steve. You
have no idea how much your
enterprise business stands to…
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Telesales
Was it something I said? Look, Steve,
if I’ve done something wrong here you
gotta let me know, before…
Marky Marketing
to me
erprise Telesales
e our customers saying? It’s
u should ask, because I was
aring a series of case…
keting
Re: Enterprise Telesales
You’re making the biggest mistake of
your life, Steve. Can’t you see our
paths were meant to cross? It’s a…
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Telesales
Can we chat this week? I can only
imagine how busy you are, but if you
could just give me 10 minutes…
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Telesales
Just 10 minutes of your time! That’s
all I need to show you the incredible
enterprise-grade power of our…
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Telesales
Is this week better for a chat? I’m
available any day of the week, any
time. Seriously.
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Te
Look, it’s not that
just can’t understa
throwing away an
Marky Marketing
to me
Re: Enterprise Telesales
Marky Marketing
erprise Telesales
didn’t hear back from you. I’d
hare a case study about
rp’s enterprise solution.
keting
Re: Enterprise Telesales
I think deep down you’re not running
from me, Steve, you’re running from
yourself. Just let me…
Marky Marketing
to me
22. 4X More Likely To Buy
when referred
Customer are
THE CONVERGENCE OF SALES & MARKETING #ConnectIn16
23. Your
TESLA
Is Being
Built!
The Tesla Buyer’s Journey
Build the car of
your dreams
Get personalised
status
Join a community Enjoy door-to-door
service
24. You’re not compared to your
competitor’s experience.
You’re compared to every experience
ever.
THE CONVERGENCE OF SALES & MARKETING #ConnectIn16
25. Automating a bad experience
= Alienation at Massive Scale
THE CONVERGENCE OF SALES & MARKETING #ConnectIn16
32. Great buying experiences aren’t
created by connecting systems.
How can LinkedIn help?
They’re created by connecting people.
THE CONVERGENCE OF SALES & MARKETING #ConnectIn16
33. 433M
Professionals on
LinkedIn
Interest + Intent
Professional
Identity
Learning
New Skills
Following
Influencers
Getting Peer
Recomm-
endations
Publishing and
Engaging with
Content
Getting
Expert
Advice
#ConnectIn16
35. Shared Understanding, Targeting & Coordinated Engagement
Interest-Based Data
Field of Study
Group Memberships
People Followed
Posts and Comments
Professional Data
Company
Function
Industry
Geo
Content Engagement
Relevant Themes
Level of Detail
Optimal Delivery Method
Persona Data
Opinion Leader
Mass Affluent
Road Warrior #ConnectIn16
36. Marketing- Owned
• Your Company Page
• Showcase Pages
• Long-form posts
• Influencers
Marketing- Paid
• Sponsored Content
• Sponsored Inmail
• Display Ads
• Dynamic Ads
Sales
• Team Link (Warm Intros)
• Personalised InMail
• Elevate (Serialised Content)
• Personal Profile
• Lead Recommendations
Coordinated Engagement
Engagement Building Blocks
#ConnectIn16
38. $
Buyer
engages with
sponsored
content…
…downloads
an Ebook
…Buyer
receives a
Sponsored
InMail
Sales person
is prompted to
follow
Sales person
introduced via
mutual friend
Sales person
shares
relevant
content
created by
marketing
Sales person
sends
personalised
“InMail”
#ConnectIn16
Sales person
saves as lead,
researches
39. $
Microsoft Taps The Power of
LinkedIn Marketing and Sales
433M
Professionals are
on LinkedIn
DisplayAd
SponsoredUpdate
Elevate(ContentShare)
CompanyPage
SlideShare
WarmIntro
PersonalisedInMail
#ConnectIn16
41. Do Your Sales & Marketing Teams Own
The Buying Experience
• Ask yourself three questions
• Find the source of the problem
• Let us help
THE CONVERGENCE OF SALES & MARKETING #ConnectIn16
Hello and welcome to ConnectIn 2016. My name is Matt Tindale and I am the Director for Enterprise across the APAC region for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and on behalf of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, I’d like to welcome you all here today. Today I’ll be sharing the stage with my esteemed colleague Mark
And my name is Mark Dick and I’m the Director for LinkedIn Sales Solutions across ANZ and on behalf of LinkedIn Sales Solutions, I’d also like to welcome you all here today.
For the next 30 minutes both Mark and I will be be talking about how sales and marketing can own and should own the buying experience.
Technology has completely transformed the buying experience
How we interact with and approach buying teams in an ever complex buyers journey
How we nurture and who is responsible for nurturing customers
The importance of sales and marketing alignment
All to ensure the customer-centricity and that the best possible experience for all prospects
On that point if you went back to 1995 and took all the customer data housed in marketing and sales automation systems you could produce enough books to fill the French National Library.
A beautiful and massive library with over 15 million books
Increased by about 1,500% over the past two decades.
Not only is the access to huge amounts of data but we also have incredibly sophisticated automation tools that allow us to act on that data at massive scale.
Automation is changing the game from a sales and marketing productivity perspective.
Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than business as usual marketing messages.
Business that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads.
Firms that respond to someone who requests information within 5 minutes vs. 10 increase contact rates by 900%
Data and automation can be used by sales to produce amazing results……….
Source
+451% Annuitas Group. http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics#sm.0001tg264t12kzdyiw4f39hvn9xd1
+152 Epsilon Email Institute. https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2016/01/70-email-marketing-stats-you-need-to-know/
+900% http://www.insidesales.com/insider/lead-management/lead-response-management-infographic/
What we’ve accomplished is impressive. But before we pat ourselves on the back, let’s consider what this explosion of data and proliferation of automation tools has done fore the individual buyer.
A friend of mine is a major start up guy. He just launched a new business that is taking off and he’s ready to expand his telesales business. He’s looking to invest in some telesales software.
Interestingly enough, the other week he received an email from a telesales software vendor who wanted to set up a meeting. Unfortunately, the email totally missed the mark as it targeted enterprise accounts.
My friend promptly deleted it.
A few days later he got another email which again was oriented towards big companies.
So he deleted it again
After receiving many more similar emails my friend completely wrote the vendor off. So when he and I were chatting the other day and I informed him that this vendor actually had a great SMB solution he was really surprised. He decided to give them a second chance. The next day, not surprisingly, he received another email from them. This one had a special offer—a free 90 day trial. He clicked, filled out a short form and within 5 minutes received a call from a sales rep at the company.
Much to my friend’s disappointment, the rep launched directly into his sales pitch without asking any discovery questions. When he finally paused to take a breath, my friend asked about the free trial. There was an awkward silence. The rep asked my friend to stand by. My friend could hear the rep whispering to someone sitting next to him, asking about a free trial. Then the rep jump back on the line and told my friend they weren’t offering a free trial but that he had some flexibility on pricing if my friend wanted to purchase a few seats of the software.
My friend was very disappointed and ended the call.
The next week he received a follow up call from a different rep. The conversation went in a similar direction. The rep had never heard of the free trial but was ready to close a deal.
My friend told the rep not to call again.
Apparently the rep didn’t pass along the message because my friend received several more calls, becoming more an more annoyed with each interaction. His experience was so absurd, that it made for a great story. He began to tell it to all of his friends, many of whom where small business owners like himself—the very customers that the telesales vendor was trying to target.
So how did this vendor do? If you were to ask the marketing team, they’d call these interactions a success. My friend clicked their free trial offer in the email and marketing got credit for an MQL. Sales would view the interactions as neutral—they made contact with a prospect and decided he wasn’t ready to buy so they threw him back into the nurture bucket. And what about my friend? He’ll never do business with this customer again and, most likely neither will the many friends who heard about his story. Unfortunately, between the poorly targeted email messages, the disconnect between sales and marketing and the reps failure to understand my friend and his buying process, this company managed to make themselves totally irrelevant to my friend. It’s no surprise that they failed miserably.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a unique example. A lack of sales and marketing alignment is derailing far too many buying experiences. In the US alone, sales and marketing teams wasted an estimated $1Trillion dollars per year due to a lack coordination. And businesses in the US aren’t alone. Globally, companies struggle to deliver a cohesive buying experience.
Source: http://www.calliduscloud.com/blog/marketing/the-10-commandments-of-sales-and-marketing-alignment/
Perhaps a few years ago, the kind of experience that my friend had wouldn’t have had many repercussions. Buyers were used to being treated that way and there wasn’t really a better alternative. But that’s not the case today. Thanks to the consumer internet, people realize there is a better alternative and that realization has reshaped expectations about how the want to be treated. Many companies in the B2B realm continue to treat their customers and prospects as disposable commodities. They play the numbers game, serving up irrelevant content and uncoordinated experiences. They assume that while their outreach won’t matter to most, they’re hitting some many people that they’ll generate enough of a response to make their efforts successful.
Meanwhile Consumer Internet companies are engaging those same individuals with a highly personalized experience that has been endorsed by the people those individuals trust more. The contrast is stark and its generating a very strong backlash for B2B companies who have failed to evolve.
Netflix and Uber are two examples of companies that have embedded personalization and trust into their business models. We love Netflix because it knows us so well. It takes the initiative to screen out irrelevant content, serving up highly targeted recommendations that keep us coming back for more and more. Uber comes from a very different space. But like Netflix, it delivers a great experience through personalized engagement. With one click of a button, a car almost magically appears and takes us where we want to go—no hassle or frustration.
Netflix, Uber and hundreds of other Internet Consumer companies have learned something else—they fastest and most effective way to attract customers is to rely on the people those customers trust most—their peers. Today’s buyer is far too savvy to take a company at its word.
Source:
Neilsen. http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics#sm.0001tg264t12kzdyiw4f39hvn9xd1
The best companies put personalization and trust at the center of the buying experience. Tesla’s a great example. Rather than rolling out a fleet of pre-built vehicles, they allow each buyer to design the car of their dreams. And once they do, Tesla strikes up a personalized correspondence with them, providing them with real time updates on their car and serving up relevant content. Tesla buyers can also join a community of fellow drivers where they can get candid advice on the issues they care about most. Finally, once the car is ready, it’s delivered to the buyers door. Relative to the typical car buying experience, the trust and personalization Tesla delivers feels revolutionary.
Here’s the bad news. Today, we’re no longer being compared only to our competitors. We’re also being compared to Tesla and Netflix and Uber and every other great buying experience. That’s the daunting reality we all face.
So it’s important to acknowledge in today that the benchmark is being set by companies like Netflix and Uber and many other businesses that are putting the customer front and centre and building the experience around them.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the we now have huge amounts of data and when we couple this with automation and technology it can be extremely powerful. But when we get it wrong it becomes hugely damaging, exponentially alienating a massive number of prospective and current customers.
In a world where people expect to be treated as precious resources, companies who persist in taking such an approach won’t be in business for long.
Let’s look at how this applies to sales and marketing owning the buying experience. To do this we need to understand the underlying drivers of poor experience.
And a good way to do this is by mapping out the experience that Mark shared with us.
It all started with an irrelevant email that was badly targeted. The email was automated so the customer was bombarded which exacerbated the bad experience.
The customer finally responded not due the communication but because of a referral from a friend.
When this was handed from marketing to sales there was no transfer of knowledge, no context and this was again exacerbated by automation
When Sales finally made the connection, they were not aligned to the marketing offer and rather trying to understand just tried to close a sale
Not only did they lose the deal, they also lost many deals they never knew about as my friend spread the word that the company wasn’t worth dealing with.
Let’s simplify that diagram now and focus on what went wrong.
In essence, the core problem was the marketing, sales and the buyer were totally misaligned on their objectives. There are 3 three primary drivers of this misalignment.
No alignment on between sales and marketing over who the audience is and who to target.
No time taken to truly understand the buyers objectives, to share insights and to agree on the buyer’s core needs.
Sales and marketing failure to coordinate their outreach, ensuring that their messaging, timing and method of engagement are not cohesive or compelling.
Source:
8% of companies say sales and marketing are tightly aligned: https://www.act-on.com/whitepaper/introduction-to-sales-and-marketing-alignment/
76% of companies say buyers don’t understand their business: corporate visionshttp://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics#sm.0001tg264t12kzdyiw4f39hvn9xd1
So to rectify the problem, sales and marketing organizations need to agree on who they are targeting, share a common understanding of the buyer and coordinate their engagement strategy. Once that happens, their efforts will naturally align with the needs of the buyer.
Here’s an example of how these pieces can come together to deliver a great buying experience.
Agreement on who the audience is and who to target. Not just the single decision maker but who is the buying committee (Statistics showing that on average there’s 6.8 people involved with every B2B buying decision). They then need to agree on who to target
Then need to focus on the needs of the buyers and the business. What are the challenges of the business, what are their needs, what sort of information do they all need at the different stages of the buying cycle.
Now they can launch an integrated strategy to influence and nurture the buying committee to gain attention, educate, add value and ultimately to a sale.
The two groups interweave activities to create one seamless and positive experience.
Aligning sales and marketing delivers a better buying experience and that’s great for the customer. But it’s also great for your business. MathMarketing, conducted an alignment benchmarking study by surveying 1,400 professionals in 84 countries around the world. The study found that the businesses that have the greatest degree of alignment:
Close 38% more proposals than non-aligned businesses
Lose 36% fewer customers to competitors
5% higher revenue growth
Source:
http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/promo/6Keys_Sales_Marketing_Alignment.pdf
Revenue productivity—the amount of revenue returned for every sales and marketing dollar invested.
Response rates (marketing outreach) X conversion rates (lead to close) X the average sales price / amount by the sales and marketing expense to generate that revenue.
10% improvement will equate to a 50% improvement in revenue productivity
Customers with LinkedIn are seeing a much higher improvements 8X the response rate SC versus dispply, 38% improvement in win rates and 13% improvement in ASP.
*Response rate is blend of all direct marketing channels (telephone, direct mail, mobile, paid search, social, email, display). Data comes from Direct Marketing Association survey of 500 US based respondents, cross industry, representing small, medium and large companies. http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/direct-media-response-rate-cpa-and-roi-benchmarks-53645/
*Conversion rate is a blend of opportunity generation channels. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/11/b2b-sales-benchmark-research-finds-some-pipeline-surprises-infographic-gp.html
**LinkedIn analysis of deals that came via warm intros vs. those that didn't
I started off the presentation by talking about the dramatic strides we’ve taken in collecting prospect and customer data and in automating sales and marketing outreach. But when we evaluate the efficacy of our sales and marketing efforts through the lens of the buyers experience, what we realize is that success isn’t achieved by connecting systems. Its achieved by connecting people. This is the premise that underlies everything that we do at LinkedIn. Let’s spend a minute talking about how we’re helping sellers, marketers and buyers connect to enjoy incredible buying experiences.
LinkedIn is where the largest number of professionals gather to stay connected and informed, advance their career and work smarter. Over 433 million professionals are on LinkedIn. These are the decision makers, influencers, the leaders of today and tomorrow -- the people you want to engage, all in one place.
What makes LinkedIn incredibly compelling for sellers and marketers is the insight it provides about potential buyers. You’re probably familiar with a common LinkedIn use case—finding a job. It’s what incentivizes members to keep their profiles up to date and populated with a broad range of content about their experience and expertise. But that use case represents only a small fraction of how members are using our platform. They’re also following influencers who are speaking to the topics they care about, they’re publishing their ideas and engaging in conversations about topics that are relevant to them, they’re meeting new people and soliciting advice to help them do their jobs better and they are learning new skills to improve their impact. In the process, LinkedIn members are sharing information about what interests them and about intended decisions and actions. As sales and marketing professionals try to create relevant, personalized buying experiences, this kind of information is invaluable.
We’ve built a rich set of tools on top of this data designed to help sellers and marketers jointly target, understand and engage buyers in a way that is highly relevant and personalized.
Sales Solutions Can Understand their Audiences and Target
Connecting with prospects
Understanding their:
Interests
Field of study
What their sharing
Professional History
Marketing Solutions Understand their Audiences and Target
Trending Content
Persona Research
Buying Research
Specific Targeting
Industry
Function
Seniority
With agreement on how to target and what they care about, sales and marketing teams are ready to engage with potential buyers. Again, LinkedIn makes the process easy. From top of funnel awareness, to mid-funnel education to bottom of the funnel validation, LinkedIn provides the building blocks sales and marketing teams need to develop a cohesive engagement plan that systematically moves the buyer through the buying journey.
Brand Alignment
Company Page / Showcase Page – Sponsored Updates
Company page or a showcase page
Aligned to your company brand
Houses content, company information, though-leadership and product information
Mothership from which to engage with your audience in their feed via content
Sponsored Updates
Targeted
High engagement
Top of funnel to lead generation
Employee Profile Page
Extension of your brand
Not about potential employers but more about current company and what they can offer to clients
Provide greater consistency and reach
Elevate
Distributing coordinated, approved content via the individual
Greatly influences content marketing score
Brand alignment and consistent set of messages, with significantly increased reach
Owning the buying experience
Based on aligned audiences, buyers and influences, the buyer targeted with Sponsored Content based on her needs, interests and buying cycle stage
She then engages with a further piece of content and downloads an Ebook that includes product benefits and demonstrations
Based on lead capture a sales person is prompted to follow and connect
The buyer then receives a Sponsored InMail with more a stronger call to action
The sales person using Team Link a feature od Sales Navigator is introduced to the buyer by a mutual frind
The sales person is sharing relevant content supplied by marketing that enhances their reputation and that of their companies
Sales person sends personalised InMail
As a consequence of the coordinated efforts, the shared nurturing, lead capture and warm intorduction gets the meeting and gains a new customer
Let’s take a look at how all of these elements combine to deliver a great buying journey. In this example, purple boxes represent marketing activity and teal boxes represent sales activity. To begin, Dana sees a relevant ad on LinkedIn. Because the marketing team know what interests Dana they can ensure they they ad they serve up address a point that is top of mind for her. They reinforce the ad with a sponsored update which appears in Dana’s LinkedIn feed and content served up via the company page. In parallel, the sales rep gets a proactive notification that Dana is someone he should follow. When Dana posts a number of new job openings on LinkedIn, the rep gets a “money alert”—an indication that Dana may be ready to buy. Using LinkedIn, the rep is able to identify a mutual connection who introduces him to her. Marketing then feeds the rep content that would be relevant to Dana and he publishes it on his profile page. Lastly, the rep continues to engage Dana via personalized Inmails that reference topics she’s expressed interest.
If that kind of experience seems too good to be true, let me share an example of a customer who has incorporated this flow into their daily operating cadence. Microsoft is a LinkedIn Sales and Marketing Customer. By using LinkedIn data to target and understand potential buyers and by integrating LinkedIn’s engagement building blocks into a cohesive buying experience, Microsoft has seen dramatic impact.
As I mentioned, Microsoft uses LinkedIn across the funnel and has seen significant uplift on top of funnel metrics like response rates and cost per click. But ultimately, what Microsoft finds most compelling is the joint revenue impact that their sales and marketing teams have achieved. Collectively, they created 1.7X more opportunities and impacted $2.5B in revenue. Among the divisions that are using LinkedIn Sales and Marketing products, nearly a third of the deals closed is influences by LinkedIn.
As you’ve watched this presentation, at any point have you thought about aspects of your buying experience that could be improved. If so, I’d like to propose the following. First, ask yourself these three questions: 1) If I were to ask marketers and sellers who they are targeting, would I get the same question? 2) Do marketers and sellers have a common understanding of what buyers value and who they want to engage? 3) Are sales and marketing in lock step when it comes to engaging the customer.
If the answer to any of these questions is, “no”, identify the largest source of misalignment between sales and marketing. Is it a data problem? Is it an internal communication problem? Or do you simply lack a common environment where sales and marketing can jointly build the buying experience.
Lastly, let LinkedIn help. We’re very happy to bring forward the best practices that thousands of companies like yours are using to target, understand and engage buyers in ways that are relevant and highly personalized.