B2B Prospecting Is Not What You Think. It’s Personal.
During a research interview on behalf of a highly innovative tech manufacturer, I asked a customer, what this company’s greatest strength is. The answer-my sales rep. B2B Prospecting Is Personal It’s a tenet of my marketing belief system and a strong competitive differentiator. The better we understand our prospects and customers as people, the better we can communicate with them about their goals and challenges. Are We Making B2B Marketing More Personal or Making More Marketing?
Great product, great promotion, and… great problems
Instigation: Applied Biosystems develops and manufactures the range of scientific instrumentation used by DNA researchers. One of their lower-priced devices to read DNA, the 2400, was used primarily in university research labs. Its features and reliability outpace all competitors, yet it was steadily, and inexplicably, losing marketshare. To resuscitate sales, AB decided on a promotion. They would bundle the 2400 with AB’s new line of popular chemical reagents. The promotional price would be less than the sum of its parts and labs would be getting the best instrument and reagents on the market. With great expectations, the salesforce began to call their customers that afternoon.
Putting Insights to Work: Getting PROSPECTS to Sell Other Prospects
Instigation: While this software giant is dominant on the desktop, its offerings were still considered weaklings in vertical markets like healthcare. These industries have been dominated by established vertical competitors with many years of experience and large, dedicated sales forces. With a small budget and big perceptual obstacles, Microsoft asked B2P to help attract and engage hospital CFOs to consider their financial information system, Great Plains, for hospitals.