In this past year, we’ve sat with countless businesses and discussed their visions, goals and strategies for the years ahead. We have had the privilege of hearing about their biggest challenges and opportunities. We’ve seen businesses collapse and others soar, and it teaches us as a consulting agency what is really required in order for them to achieve their goals.
It also teaches us what is lacking within these organisations, and where we can help most. Not only that, we get to learn how we can make our business better, stronger and more foolproof for our clients. We pride ourselves on intently listening to our clients, and also know that within our small but mighty team, this ability to listen is creating a well-oiled machine that can deliver our clients the results they need to sustain their businesses into the long term.
With that, here are 3 things we’ve learned about business and marketing in 2022:
1. Sales staff and selling skills shortages hinder business growth - marketing can help:
Many of our clients have experienced a tightening around skilled staff who know how to sell in a B2B technology environment, and we’ve seen this as a theme that has grown in severity since the pandemic hit Australia. The technology industry is, and always has been, dynamic and fast paced. Successful tech businesses and MSPs are looking to grow quickly and to do that, they require the best revenue generating people on the job.
Many of our clients are looking for the best sales and business development resources to propel their business forward, but what do you do when you can’t find, or afford, that resource?
What we’ve learned, and have been guiding our clients to think about, is what is the primary objective here?
Is it to generate new leads for the business? Is it to open more doors in new industries? Is it to access that sales reps Rolodex? To sell a new service? To manage existing accounts?
We’ve found that often the objective is to generate more leads, and typically Managed Service Providers and Solution Providers will have a preconception of how that’s possible.
More people does not always equal more leads.
Times have changed, staff shortages are making it increasingly difficult to achieve this objective by simply hiring more staff.
What we’ve learned at TechTent is that the marketing function, when executed right, can fulfil the sales objectives of your business. We see this time and time again with our most successful clients.
When we’re able to develop effective strategies coupled with well articulated technology-focused business value, we can provide our clients with high quality, well nurtured, introductory conversations and ultimately qualified leads that turn into qualified sales pipeline.
Granted, the typical way of approaching marketing campaigns won’t achieve this result, B2B marketers need to start looking at the marketing function as a sales function and business development function. Ultimately, we believe that marketing should propel business forward. Marketing leaders need to sit next to the business leaders and align on strategic direction in order to meet the true objectives of the business as a whole. You’ve got to be confident in your ability to see the wider business problem and to provide a solution that solves that, rather than seeing Marketing as a “nice-to-have”.
Marketing, when done right, can fulfil the function of a new Sales hire. Yep, it can be done.
2. Almost all businesses have revenue challenges - what to do about it:
The past few years has seen many businesses experiencing revenue challenges, the peaks and troughs are inevitable. This is nothing new, business is hard, we know this first hand but there are certainly ways to navigate through this.
We’ve seen businesses collapse during 2022, and when reflecting on why and how this has happened we’ve noticed a few things.
Businesses that lack strategy, lack longevity.
Many businesses, inside and outside of Tech, struggle with developing a plan and strategic map of where they’re going. We’ve seen this in our previous corporate gigs for Tech startups, as well as in established businesses looking to reach their next milestone of growth. We’ve seen this with fresh-out-of-the-gates MSP startups and everything in between.
Interestingly, many of the businesses that we’ve seen that have collapsed have lacked robust strategic marketing resources. Let me explain…
Small to large businesses that have a culture or preconception that Marketing produces pretty graphics and fun events will hold off hiring in this area or will hire at a very junior level. This could be for many reasons, perhaps the business Directors and Managers haven’t ever seen marketing work well. Perhaps they didn’t realise that marketing could be a strategic part of their business. Perhaps they just thought it was a later thing, who knows?
When the true Marketer, who has trained in Marketing, has depth of experience and strategic mindset around marketing and business development - you are really onto a winner.
Why?
Because a true seasoned Marketing leader is a Business leader. They are one in the same and know how to be the visionary for your business - and how to execute on that vision. They have the ability to look objectively at where you want to go, and where the gaps are. They also know how to develop and design a simple and constructive plan on how you will get there.
When you have this type of function embedded into the centre of your business, rubbing shoulders with leadership and with the Business Development team, you have magic.
Our best clients work with us this way, they leverage all of our trained Marketing resources, and are open to us offering our knowledge and strategic skills to take their business to the next level. They don’t claim to have all of the answers, and understand that they need structure and planning to bring clarity to their entrepreneurial objective.
Marketing, when done right, can generate real revenue generating results.
3. Short sightedness will kill your business - think long term.
Successful business is a long term game. Perhaps because of the progressive nature of Tech businesses, goals change often, however this can hinder sustainable results. The beauty of working across the Tech landscape, assisting in growing businesses of all sizes, is that we have had an inside look at the mentality of many business leaders in this field. We are very fortunate to work with some incredibly talented and successful business owners, however they experience the “shiny object syndrome” (SOS) from time to time.
The definition, according to Google, for the SOS is “a continual state of distraction brought on by an ongoing belief that there is something new worth pursuing. It often comes at the expense of what's already planned or underway”. Sound familiar?
Being business owners, we understand how difficult it can be to trust in a longer term plan, however, we’ve learned through our observations of our own business growth and the growth of our client’s businesses, that the very best thing you can do if you want long term, sustainable results is to stick to the plan. Let the campaign run its course and let the executed strategy build in momentum.
Most Tech businesses are seeking more whitespace opportunities, for example. They want to speak to people they’ve never spoken to before and sell to them. When they don’t hear or see that contact happening within the first week or two of running a campaign, they can lose sight of whether the campaign is working and can feel the tempting desire of pivoting to yet another tactic. However, there are many indicators of success to look out for before that successful conversation happens, including becoming well versed in monitoring website visitors, social media channels and newly acquired database contacts.
It helps to look at these potential leads as real people as if it were a face-to-face engagement. How many touch points would you need to have with someone to educate them about you and your product before they were completely bought into you, your brand and your company? It’s like building a relationship, it needs feeding over time.
Marketing is a bit like this, it’s about building connections that naturally lead to business, in an organic way.
The tricky part is staying in the game long enough to reap the benefits. If you give up too early and pivot, chances are you’ll be in the same position in 6 months time.
Consistent marketing reaps rewards.
At TechTent, we develop consistent lead generating results for our clients by building simple go-to-market strategies and digital campaigns, coupled with compelling value propositions, that speak directly to your ideal clients. If this is of interest to you or your business, contact us here to learn more or request a free proposal: contact us today!
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