B2B Outbound

Welcome to this week’s recipe for Sales Development Success!

In case you missed it, last week I shared my three key ingredients for a tasty sales call, check it out here…

https://youtu.be/yB-gv0Vao6s

But it’s important to also understand how to handle a call that doesn’t secure a meeting. Because – let’s face it – this is going to happen the majority of the time! Between gatekeepers, voicemails and prospects that simply don’t have the time to speak, the chances are, you won’t secure a meeting every time you dial, no matter how engaging you are.

1. A sprinkle of valuable conversation 

Sales Development Rep (SDR) conversations are often so focused on the outcome of the call that the caller forgets to listen to the prospect. There is such a heavy focus on booking a meeting that gathering as much information as possible from the prospect becomes overlooked. However, this actually limits you from securing a meeting with this person in the future, or even better, a meeting with their colleague now!

From a combination of listening effectively and asking the correct questions you can draw other insights from a prospect conversation, regardless of the outcome. Some of these include:

- Learning the decision makers’ schedule/ upcoming holiday

- Obtaining a new decision makers’ name

- Getting a better number to call back on in the future

- Understanding the challenges and potential for future opportunities

- Obtaining valuable information you can leverage with other contacts

- Disqualifying an account or contact

2. Add some fresh follow up

You may be thinking “getting this information might be a pat on the back for the value of my performance in a conversation, but how does that help me now? I have to book meetings to hit my targets!”

Well, as mentioned, you’re not going to schedule a meeting with every decision maker you speak to. But, it is still important not to throw in the towel on the conversation because you lose faith in securing a booking. Whilst there may not be an opportunity with this specific person, there are other contacts in an organisation who are a potential opportunity. Take a pause and consider further lines of questioning and methods of maintaining the conversation.

The only way to find an alternative opportunity in a conversation is to arm yourself with knowledge. How do you do that? By letting the prospect speak and asking questions such as:

- What are your business priorities?

- What’s the best alternative contact you could speak to, and what’s their direct number? (ask politely if they could check that person’s signature for a number if they say they don’t know)

- Why isn’t this important to you right now? (it may be in the future)

TASTY TIP: Questions involving the word ‘you’ are more likely to keep the audience engaged and responsive, even if the question isn’t about them e.g. “Who would you recommend I get in touch with to continue the conversation?”

3. Serve up the next steps

You’ve had the call, learnt some information, but you were unsuccessful in booking a meeting, what comes next? Use the information you’ve learned to start conversations with other stakeholders.

It becomes significantly easier to schedule a meeting with the second, third or fourth decision maker you engage with at an account because now you’ve started to really build up a picture of their current situation and their business goals.

However, don’t forget that it’s best practice to make your next steps clear to the person you’ve had a conversation with, as it sets the scene and justifies any follow-up actions. The most obvious example of a next step is sending across a meeting invite, but don’t ignore other valuable next actions:

- Sending across an introductory email

- Sending over a relevant piece of content

- Looping in their colleagues

- Reaching out to their colleagues instead

- Proposing a call back date (ensure the call back date you suggest is nice and early, worst case scenario is that the prospect pushes it back)

Bon Appetit!

And there you have it, my best advice on how to get value out of a sales development conversation, no matter the outcome. If you would like more information on how to be insight led before you pick up a phone, then join us next time for Kitchen’s Tuesday Takeaways!

Let’s start by getting the obvious out of the way.

Brands are not created overnight. They go beyond colours, shapes, and words. They even go beyond the strategy deck that orchestrated it.

Now on to the less acknowledged, but the more important part.

You don’t own your brand. The ™ on top of the logo or the copyright block at the bottom of the website might prove it technically. But in real-world terms, it’s the customers who own your brand.

By constantly engaging with your brand’s content and repeatedly buying your products, customers are letting out a space in their minds for your brand. It’s an emotional contract based on the elements that represent your brand.

This emotional contract turns a checkmark into a swoosh which becomes a belief that everyone is an athlete; an ‘M’ into a golden arch that promises easy, feel-good moments; and a unique shade of red into a drink that tastes like happiness.

So when companies go for a rebrand, they are essentially altering this contract. And that’s why the first reaction to most rebrands is often an ‘Oh no!’, followed by chants of ‘Bring it Back’. In some cases, the new identity makes space for itself, and in others, not so much.

Let’s look at some of the famous rebrands from way back to recent times and the reactions they generated.  

The One Where They Wanted the ‘old’ Coke

This one’s a classic (get the wordplay?). Coke’s sales had been slipping for 15 years in a row. So Coke decided to alter its recipe to revive consumers’ interest and backed by a blind taste test with 200,000 participants.

The result: over 1,500 calls a day to Coca Cola’s consumer helpline. Protest groups over 100,000 strong, songs and banners in tribute to the Old Coke, hoarding over $1000 worth of Old Coke and much more. Remember, all this happened in 1985, without any social media.

Within four months of launching the ‘New Coke’, the company withdrew it from the market and brought back ‘Classic Coke’. Coke’s official website narrates the story as ‘one that will live in marketing infamy.’ It shows how people’s affinity towards a brand can go deeper than the product itself.

Capgate

Gap was finding it hard to keep sales up. Their flagging sales were coming on the back of the financial crisis of 2008. Like Coke, Gap also thought a rebrand would bring the customers back to the stores.

However, changing their 20-year logo didn't bring them the expected results. Within just a couple of days, Gap’s Facebook page generated over 2,000 comments - mostly negative. There was even a site set up – makeyourowngaplogo.com, with users creating nearly 14,000 parody versions of the logo.

Seven days and $100 million later, Gap returned to its 1990 logo. The moral: not all sluggish sales can be treated by a rebrand.

Rebranding to Consolidate: Google Workspace and Meta

Our daily interactions on the internet come mainly from two companies - Google and Meta (yes, I said it). The two tech giants’ decided to consolidate their brands for similar reasons - to offer a cohesive experience through interconnected apps.

Google’s Lack of Visual Differentiation

Google unveiled Workspace by redesigning its G-suite apps such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Google Docs. But it’s the use of Google’s four colours to create different shapes that got users reacting. When viewed together on tabs or mobile screens, it started getting harder to differentiate which logo is for which app.

Expected cynicism for Facebook

Facebook has been trying to brush off one controversy after the other. We can look at it as a journey that started in 2019. First, it unveiled a new logo that would appear at the bottom of apps like Instagram and Whatsapp. The objective was to create a distinction between the app and the company.

In 2021, they unveiled Meta - a rebrand of Facebook, the parent company. The rebrand marks the company’s focus on delivering social experiences through the Metaverse - a virtual space or presence.

The jury is still out on this one. Some believe this is a PR stunt from a company desperately trying to shift the narrative from its data breach scandals. Some others look at the rebrand as the perfect representation of the richer and immersive possibilities that await with web3. 

Setting Out in a New Direction

314. That’s the number of drugs Pfizer manufactures. A majority of them help treat life-threatening conditions. The pharmaceutical giant’s rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine has been essential to humanity’s return to normal.

The company used this sheen to rebrand and reposition itself.

The new logo emphasises Pfizer’s shift towards curing and preventing diseases than just treating them. The new logo takes Pfizer’s name out of the pill shape and puts it next to the DNA’s double helix structure, highlighting its research capabilities.

There are more outbreaks of novel viruses, and there’s a greater need for faster vaccine development and rollouts. Pfizer has used its success with the COVID-19 vaccine to set the course for its future. It’s a timely and well-thought rebrand.

Rebrands Are Like Adolescents Having to Move Houses. Help Them Out.

No matter how good the reason behind a rebrand is, it’ll always be hard to get your customers on board in the beginning.

Like an adolescent leaving their old friends for an unknown neighbourhood, your customers will find it hard to leave their memories of the brand and will throw a fit.

As marketers, we must take heart in this expression of opinion. It shows that they care. And that in itself is a big win.

Take the customers on a journey with the new brand. Explain the ‘why’ behind it, show them the ‘what’s new’ around it, and be the friendly sibling. Help them settle in. More importantly, give them time.  

What does Dungeons & Dragons (D&D if you’re in the know) have in common with Learning & Development (L&D)?

The former is a legendary fantasy role-playing game. The latter, according to the CIPD, is about ‘ensuring people have the knowledge and skills to fulfil organisational and individual needs and ambitions’. The connection between them isn’t obvious at first, but all will become clear very soon.

Punch!’s Talent Manager, Emma Hollands, has recently been hand-picked for CIPD’s People Management HR 30 under 30. A ‘list of the best and brightest young HR and L&D practitioners set to become the next generation of leaders within the profession.’

But Emma didn’t start her career in HR. Far from it.

In June 2019, Emma joined Punch! as a Sales Development Representative, using phone, email, and online tactics to generate sales opportunities for clients. So how did a self-confessed, tea-obsessed, lover of all things ‘nerdy’, earn her place amongst the top HR talent in the industry in less than three years (and while still in her 20s)? What’s her secret sauce?

Well… Emma knew, before the rest of us, what D&D and L&D have in common and she used it to her advantage…

It was during a late 2019 Punch! ‘book club’ session, that Emma demonstrated a knack for presenting. Her skills were spotted by CEO, James Snider, who asked if she would start curating and delivering training sessions for the wider team, alongside her current responsibilities. The rest is history.

Emma thrived on the new challenge and started to learn about HR law and recruitment in her spare time. Then something unexpected happened. If you’ve been following the story you might have guessed what…

Covid-19.

But less than 12 months after joining Punch! and, in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic, Emma was appointed the role of Talent Executive on a permanent basis. She was challenged to define and implement Punch!’s remote recruitment strategy and L&D programme.

Between March 2020 and August 2021 she successfully recruited and onboarded 42 new team members and singlehandedly delivered over 150 hours of training. Yes, aside from spearheading a 40% growth in Punch!’s headcount, Emma also developed a unique training framework.

Every individual at Punch! has an L&D journey that is linked to their own professional development and progression within the company. Emma has worked cross-functionally to define five key ‘accountables’ for each job role, to allow for a transparent approach to individual growth and career progression.

She also created the ‘ABM academy’ - Punch!’s own accreditation for all team members to learn and understand the basics of Account-Based Marketing (ABM). Emma delivers regular bite-sized training sessions to employees of all levels (including leadership) on topics such as GDPR compliance, presentation, and listening skills.

“Emma is a force of nature. Someone that thrives in her role and brings her whole self to it. She has recognised that we all benefit from ongoing training and has developed a whole series of sessions tailored to our needs. They provide time away from the day-to-day, where small groups come together and learn. As new areas for development are identified, Emma creates a new course to help. An ongoing process that ensures we're all continuously learning and improving. It's down-to-earth, practical, adaptive training that only Emma could provide.” - Andrew Godley, Head of Client Services.

So, back to the question - ‘What does D&D have in common with L&D?’ The answer is actually quite simple.

Storytelling.

‘The core of D&D is storytelling: friends gather to tell a story together, guiding their heroes through quests, battles, and adventures.’ The secret sauce for Emma’s successful L&D career is her aptitude for storytelling. Her skill for creating engaging, collaborative, and memorable learning experiences for all of Punch!’s employees has earned her a place amongst the top-performing HR practitioners under 30. Not bad for a nerd.

Emma comments: “No one learns by being given information. Likewise, I don’t expect players in D&D to go on an adventure, just because I said so. You need to show your participants a villain to defeat, or a treasure to claim; you need to create L&D opportunities that respect attendees' time and showcase the practical value of what you’re trying to teach. I believe in both L&D and HR, making an impact requires preparation, empathy, and, above all else, a sense of fun.”

What’s the Problem With B2B Copy?

You’re in an aeroplane, climbing 36,000 feet into the air, and then the engines cut out.

How many people could recite the flight safety announcement? Let alone remember the words on the safety card.

Not many.

No matter how relevant or important something is, people tend to listen to what's interesting rather than what’s informative.

That’s why there’s a problem in B2B copywriting, especially for long-form content.

In long-form B2B, you’re distilling complex topics into digestible information. But if you want your copy to be memorable, your words need to be more than just information.

Too many eBooks and whitepapers read like dull regurgitations of fact. It’s time they embrace the imaginative again.

This is what’s wrong with long-form B2B copy and how you can fix it.

Drowning in Adverbs

Here’s the start of a typical B2B whitepaper:

Adverbs push up like weeds through good B2B copy.

Keep them to a minimum because they spoil the patio.

Of course, some weeds are pretty. When you deploy an adverb next to an adjective, there’s an opportunity to create surprising and entertaining contrasts between the words.

But usually a strong active verb is far more impactful than an adverb.

Rather than saying: ‘The need for better long-form copy is increasingly important.’

Say something more interesting: ‘The need for better long-form copy is boiling over.’

What Happened to Metaphors?

My favourite teacher at school was Dr. Love.

He taught biology. I have zero interest in biology, let alone the role of pseudomonas in the nitrogen cycle.

But thanks to a song Dr. Love created, pseudomonas’s potent contribution to the denitrification of soil will never leave my brain.

It’s not what you teach, but how you teach it.

Which is why good metaphors can resurrect long-form B2B copy.

A drive for clarity and economy of expression seems to have furloughed metaphors. But while readability is now at an all-time high, bore-ability has also ballooned.

The power of metaphor is its ability to reach beyond a complex subject and provide the reader with an alternative ground in which to understand that subject.  

It’s why Shakespeare’s characters often resort to metaphors, not out of pretension, but because they’re grasping for new ways of understanding complex circumstances.

Your long-form copy might not wade into the existential depths of Hamlet or Macbeth, but by introducing ideas with a simple metaphor your information becomes more meaningful.

Just remember. The only thing worse than a lack of metaphors is a proliferation of dense and nonsensical ones. If you’re using a metaphor: make it good; make it relevant.

Embrace Your Skim Readers

A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.

Gandalf also said: Long-form copy is never lengthy, nor is it short. It is precisely as long as it needs to be.

But whatever length your copy, some people still won’t read it. Even though you won the Pulitzer Prize for Stand-Out Long-Form B2B Content and followed it up with a Booker Prize shortlisting.

People rarely have time.

As a copywriter, you cannot control the amount of time a reader will have when they click through to your content.

So when you’re structuring your document, keep your most time-sensitive readers in mind.

Your headlines, read one after the other, should be the hooks of your story. Place your ideas at the top of your paragraphs. And your final CTA should be one clear action.

(Thanks for not skimming.)

Don’t Forget Design!

Copy and design cohabitate. Be your designer’s best friend.

Before you begin drafting, brainstorm themes, layouts, and graphics so that from the very first word, your copy has design in mind.

Wall of text? Smithereen it with any number of formatting tricks:

• Bullet points
• Statistics
• Line breaks
• Pull-out quotes
• Graphics
• Images
• Checklists
• Quizzes
• Listicles
• Maps
• Fact boxes

Etc…

The best pages of long-form copy are a collage of memorable information, enjoyable in their component parts, but unified by design choices and the story of the headlines.

Never Settle for a First Draft

Good long-form copy does not arrive with the beauty of settled snow overnight.

It is beaten into shape.

Firstly, at a structural level, then sentence by sentence. Exfoliate the extraneous words, tighten the tedious, and dig to the heart of what you really meant.

Time away from a piece will rejuvenate your editorial judgement. With fresh eyes, you can cut and restitch your copy until it’s better.

Then, and only then, will it seem like the secret to good long-form copy is simply hard work.

But the real secret, no matter what you’re writing, is acceptance. Accept that the first draft will be terrible so the second can be better.

If each draft is more memorable than the last, your long-form copy might just shed the Boring 2 Boring stereotype soon enough. 

So, Now You Know…

Long-form copy is vital to converting customers and communicating brand identity.

It demonstrates your expertise and functions as an opportunity to interlace your company’s solutions with your customer’s needs.

It’s technical, instructional writing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be imaginative.

Embrace the imaginative and your long-form copy will be far more effective

What makes B2B marketing creative? Is it doing something that your competitors aren’t? Is it sticking to brand guidelines? (shudders) Irrespective of this, B2B marketing has been getting a lot of stick in regards to creativity (or the lack of it).

A recent discussion has arisen on how long-term gain such as brand marketing is more beneficial than short-term goals like lead generation. Similarly, another debate that is gaining traction amongst marketers is should B2B be adopting B2C processes to push for broader creativity, over the traditional B2B marketing creative?

There has been an unfortunate stigma attached to B2B for many years. B2C has always been viewed as the cooler, older sibling.

Accurate representation of B2B and B2C marketing respectively.

It’s hard to argue against this point. When sharing industry creative work amongst the wider team here at Punch!, the same comment tends to come up again and again…

‘I really struggled to find a creative B2B example’

The B2B creativity problem is, unfortunately, systemic. Whilst B2C principles are gaining momentum within agencies^[1][2], B2B companies themselves are unfortunately less inclined to adopt the same thinking.

But is this criticism justified? Is B2B hindered by forces B2C aren’t bound by? And if so, how can B2B companies revamp how they look at creativity?

Brand Guidelines… Handy or Hinderance?

Ahh, brand guidelines, every agency creative’s religious text & instruction manual rolled into one. Now don’t get me wrong, I know their purpose, and completely agree that they’re a useful tool to have. It’s more what they represent than their intention.

‘We Just can’t get it past our brand team’

Anonymous

My biggest gripe with brand guidelines is that they’re often used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for shutting down creativity. But let’s talk about what a brand actually is. Is a brand defined by its colours and fonts? Is a brand defined by its mission and vision? Or is a brand simply the product or service it puts out?

However you define your brand (I personally sway more towards the middle of the three ‘definitions’), guidelines should be used to ensure that the logo is consistent and that the right shade of blue is used. They should not hamper the creativity of your marketing output.

Linked to Leads

I mentioned the debate of brand against leads in the introduction, and this is intrinsically linked to the conversation of this article. If the objective of a marketing programme or campaign is to generate leads, first of all, the length of the campaign is likely to be much shorter than a brand campaign, meaning that ideas have less room to develop and evolve both thematically and visually over the course of a campaign. Secondly, the channels & tactics used to do this (email, phone, content nurture to name a few) tend to be less visual than those for brand (paid media, OOH, etc.). 

Looking to B2C for Answers

Take a B2C example, have you seen a Coca-Cola campaign that looked the same? Yes, the distinctive bottle remains the same, but outside of that, each campaign is uniquely different. What about Nike? Or McDonald’s? There’s a reason it’s the biggest brands that have the most diverse marketing.

Mimi Turner in ‘The Product Delusion^[3]’ uses Coca-Cola to convey the problem that B2B marketing faces. She imagines if the brand marketed themselves as B2B brands do, they would focus on ‘how sweet, brown and fizzy it was’ and surmise that ‘95% of thirsty people agree that Coca-Cola solves their thirst problem’.

In reality, this doesn’t work, because the product is near identical to competitors like Pepsi. What they can compete on however is the brand recall in buying situations, and being memorable with strong creativity.

As with B2C, most B2B offerings compete in vastly saturated markets. So it’s worth asking, can you differentiate on product? Is your USP actually unique? And even if it is, is it alone memorable enough for someone to remember your offering when they’re in market for it?

Justifying a More Creative Approach

This type of thinking is intrinsically linked to the 95:5 rule^[4], which states that based on a 5 year contract length (for example, this principle can still be applied to any contract length), only 20% of your accounts are in market in any year, and only 5% in any quarter. With this type of thinking in mind, if you’re wanting to engage with your whole target market, then you need to aim to be memorable when the future time comes to buy, and not just there for those in need at present. And how do you be memorable?         By having creative that’s unique and interesting.

Conclusion

The meme at the start of the article of Daniel and the cooler Daniel is actually a great representation of B2C and B2B marketing, because they’re the same thing, trying to reach the same people, just with different buying journeys.

In terms of creativity, there are a few B2B companies that come to mind and Salesforce is a good example of B2B creativity done right. Taking a leaf out of a traditionally B2C creative tactic of creating ‘mascots’^[5]. Characters such as ‘Astro’ and ‘Einstein’ (Salesforce making the most of the public domain) give a memorable, personal quality to a very impersonal product such as software. Does it work? Well, I remembered them for this blog.

Sage is another interesting company to watch in this space. Not only did they rebrand recently with a more interesting art style, their CMO Cath Keers has spoken in two separate Marketing Week articles about ‘Why Sage is swapping B2B for ‘human to human’ with the launch of its first brand purpose’^[6], as well as a shift to long-term brand building to drive sustainable growth.^[7]

In the current state of things, these examples are far and few between. So is there hope for more inspiring B2B marketing? We can look over the channel for exactly this. Cannes recently announced the Cannes B2B Lions^[8], a set of awards to showcase the best in B2B creativity. This alone should spark an urge for more creative work in B2B, and the knock on effect of this, combined with the thinking above as, both become more routine in agencies and companies alike sees the future of B2B creativity looking brighter than it’s ever been.

[1]https://adage.com/article/stirista/its-time-bring-creative-new-thinking-b2b-marketing/2358786
[2] https://trunkbbi.com/news/creativity-in-b2b-a-myth-or-a-must-have/
[3] https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/the-product-delusion
[4]  https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/marketing-solutions/resources/pdfs/advertising-effectiveness-and-the-95-5-rule.pdf
[5] https://www.salesforce.com/blog/meet-trailhead-characters-blog/
[6] https://www.marketingweek.com/sage-first-brand-purpose/
[7] https://www.marketingweek.com/sage-cmo-b2b-power-brand/
[8] https://www.canneslions.com/enter/awards/engagement/creative-b2b-lions#/

Image sources:
http://www.adeevee.com/2014/09/coca-cola-coke-meals-print/
https://www.afaqs.com/news/advertising/coca-cola-introduces-new-global-platform-for-brands-trademark-and-new-perspective-for-its-logo
https://bbj.hu/budapest/festivals/in-hungary/coca-cola-defends-lgbt-tolerant-poster-campaign

In a herd of horses, you want to be a zebra, and it’s a marketer’s job to show off their business’ stripes. But when everyone is trotting along the same path, churning out content that is indistinguishable from one another, your stripes get overshadowed by the bigger, older, and wider known horses. Sound familiar? This is an incredibly common problem for B2B marketers. So, how do you break free?

Daniel Priestley, entrepreneur and international speaker, suggests that what sets apart the successful from the standard is focusing efforts on ‘how to get people to line up to do business with you’. The successful focus on exclusivity, by being memorable and therefore desirable. They stop trying to follow the herd, who show off their services to whomever they pass. Instead, they focus on their stripes and let their defining features draw the clients in. And, soon enough, they become oversubscribed.

This book teaches you how to change your strategy to attract the clients you want to work with. You’ll learn why it's important to have a personal brand that will set you apart from notorious competitors. And, how to develop content that is relevant for every stage of the buyers' journey. If you really want to learn how to make your marketing life easier, you should read this book. But, for your ease, I have broken down and summarised the key points Priestley makes and provided the corresponding chapter titles if you wish to learn more.

Building Your Strategy

To build the right foundations you need to define your core driver. Which, if you become the best at it, will set your business apart from the rest. Priestley refers to this as a ‘Market Imbalance’. This is achieved when your business is an industry leader in either; innovation, relationships, convenience, or price. Most industries will have four main businesses that each dominate in one of these areas.

Think supermarkets: Aldi dominates on price, whilst Waitrose focuses on a great customer experience and building relationships. Tesco is convenient with the most access to their stores across the country, and M&S predominantly stocks their own brand, choosing to innovate with new products. It is crucial to decide which of the four you want to be a business leader in, and use this driver within your marketing. Chapter: Principle 3 goes into greater detail about how to decide which factor you should focus your efforts on.

If you want people to love your product/service, you need to do your client research. The key to delighting your clientele is to solve their highest value problems in a ‘remarkable’ way. Spend time researching and understanding your ideal customers’ day to day struggles. This in turn will help you communicate how your product/service is the best solution. If you come across an issue they face that they are currently unaware of, you have struck gold. Phase 1 discusses how you can gain insight into what currently drives your clients purchasing decisions.

In Principle 4 Priestley discusses why marketers appearing desperate to sell, will only continue to drive customers away. No matter how crowded your industry is, have your standards on who you want to work with, and who isn’t a right fit for you. By setting boundaries at the start and defining the target specific groups to which your services are relevant, you will attract the right clientele that your business wants to work with. Targeted ABM programmes are a great way to achieve this, focusing on a select few accounts, instead of the masses.

Becoming a Memorable Brand

Once the foundations are established, you need to build up your brand. It is far better to become famous to 5000 genuine, right fit accounts than to have overnight success for the masses and be forgotten in a heartbeat. Priestley suggests aiming to have 5000-10,000 genuine, loyal fans of your company. There are 5 key ingredients your marketing strategy needs to become famous to the 5000 which are discussed in chapter: Principle 2.

Priestley uses the term ‘remarkable’ a lot throughout his book, remarkable meaning “worthy of being talked about”. Clients positively talking about your business is the best bit of marketing you can get. And how do you get clients to talk positively about you? By leaving them feeling unexpectedly overjoyed. Whilst it isn’t technically a marketer's duty to delight clients, it is worth having the entire company aligned that happy customers = great marketing. And, marketers can get involved by making sure every single touchpoint that prospects come across, from website to sales pitches, is delivered remarkably. Learn more about how to implement remarkable delivery in the chapter: Phase 4.

Part of being memorable is being relatable. In Priestley's words, ‘companies can no longer survive as faceless corporations hiding behind a set of logos, colours, symbols and sounds.’ Instead, you should focus on building a personal brand. Stories are a driving force behind personal brands, whether that be the story behind your company name, the story of your client's success, or the story of an employee who works at the business. By sharing these stories, you are building an authentic brand voice that gains your audience's trust. Personal branding offers smaller businesses a way to compete with larger competitors who have years of product awareness, just by being more relatable. To learn about personal branding, read Principle 7, and The CDE team (Key Person Of Influence), for more information on the importance of storytelling, read Phase 5.

Creating Relevant Content

Priestley talks about having an ecosystem of content in Principle 6. It is a spectrum of products your business offers to meet the needs across every stage of the buyer journey.  Stage 1 & 2 is what Priestley titles ‘products for prospects’, which consists of thought leadership and information that you give away freely or cheaply. With an abundance of disposable content at our fingertips, Priestley makes it clear that unless you are offering incredibly high-value insights, that are not freely available on the market, you should not be charging prospects money for this content. Instead, you give the ideas for free but charge for the implementation of that work from stage 3 onwards.

Of course, you want every client to be at stage 5, where your business completely solves the client's issue. But, having lower price point services, and offering to help supervise or work together on projects, provides a low risky ‘first step’ for prospects. As B2B services tend to be higher cost and investment, marketing your Stage 3 & 4 services as trials for your product will help shorten the buying cycle. This gives you time to build trust with your new clients, and if you delight their expectations, they will commit to stage 5.  

Priestley takes a deeper dive into ‘products for prospects’ with the 7-hour rule. The belief is humans need 7 hours of content, ideas, conversations and connections to build enough of an emotional connection and trust in your brand to sign a deal. Therefore, marketers should provide the sales teams with 7 hours' worth of content to use to drive prospects over the line, before attempting to close them. These 7 hours should focus on entertaining and educating prospects using the 80:20 rule: 80% education with 20% entertainment. There is more detail and ideas on how you can educate and entertain your clients in Phase 2.

Finally, Priestley states that to become oversubscribed you need to run campaigns filled with events and promotions to encourage prospects to come to you all at once. This process is The Campaign Driven Enterprise Method. The entire final section of the book titled The CDE Team gives a step by step guide to building a successful campaign, including the key team that must be involved and what they require to ensure success. But, as a marketer, the base assets you will need to fulfil your role in a successful campaign is: approved copy and images to turn into compelling materials, approved content such as case studies and reports to repurpose into different ways and help drive leads, a lead capturing system to store data on who is responsive to the marketing materials, and measurement benchmarks to know a set allowable cost per lead, cost per sale and budget, with the flexibility to test ideas without going rogue with overactivity.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, businesses have been pushed to their limits. Technology is one industry that has seen massive ebbs and flows of growth and opportunity. Despite this, it has become increasingly clear that individuals and businesses alike will suffer from the financial effects of the pandemic. Even the 'pandemic winners' of the tech industry are preparing for challenges stemming from an impending recession and some of the highest inflation in history.

Start-up tech companies worldwide have laid off 134,654 employees since the start of the pandemic [1], and big tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft and Coinbase have either slowed down or frozen hiring [2], despite the incredibly rapid growth that the industry experienced over the pandemic.

Sales development representatives (SDRs) are some of the most influential members of your business’ development. They are responsible for creating qualified leads and play a crucial role in helping bring you new growth opportunities. But, building a strong team of representatives that are motivated, driven, and focused on getting results is not an easy task.

In times of recession or economic hardship, layoffs and downsizing are not unusual, and they may be a necessity for your business. A company experiencing a downturn, having a budget shuffle, or merely wanting a more efficient way of running its operations may want to consider outsourcing its SDR team which can benefit these three key areas; price, performance and productivity.

Price

In tough economic times, it is essential as a business to make sure you are cost-effective.

The cost of hiring new SDRs to replace those who have been promoted or moved on can be high, on average it costs between 1.5-2 times the employees' salary [3]. With this comes the lengthy process of advertising, recruiting, and training. This is not ideal when you rely on a team to identify the qualified leads essential to your growth.

The recruitment and onboarding costs with an outsourced SDR team are entirely eliminated. The benefit of outsourcing is having a team of SDRs ready to take on your projects with all the technology and know-how they need right away. In addition to saving money on the recruitment and onboarding stages, further expenses associated with employee retention are no longer your responsibility. Holidays, sick pay, and pensions are all covered by the provider of your outsourced services, which will have a positive knock-on effect on your team who are no longer distracted or compromised by team time-off.

Outsourcing allows you to be more flexible with your team. If it turns out more project hours are required, it won’t be necessary to hire more SDR’s.

Performance & Productivity

Building an in-house SDR team can face trial and error. It takes time to gain the right talent; on average, an SDR takes 3.3 months to reach their full potential [4]. Coupled with the fact that the average tenure of an SDR is between just 13-18 months, [5], the pressure that will come from having to complete the recruitment and onboarding process multiple times over can have a negative impact not only on the management team but also the productivity of your sales development representatives.

High morale levels are important to help SDRs reach their goals, yet 31% of managers find the performance and productivity of the team to be a challenge [6]. An outsourced team of SDRs are supported with coaching and development systems to ensure they reach their full potential and are motivated, engaged, and rewarded for their results.

With the practices in place already, often built over a number of years, you can expect experienced SDRs to handle your projects from day 1, relieving you of the responsibility of delivering results. The in-house data team will be responsible for sourcing, building, and cleaning a list of prospects for SDRs to work from, so they can focus on results.

There is no denying the importance of an SDR team in your business. If you think you can benefit in any of these areas by outsourcing your SDR team contact Adam Clarke, Business Development Manager at adam.clarke@punch-sales.com.

Developed by IBM in the 1950s, BANT is a way of identifying qualified leads, an opportunity is considered valid if a prospect meets ¾ of the BANT acronym criteria [1].

B - Budget, does the prospect have the funds to purchase the product/ service?

A - Authority, does the prospect have the authority to make decisions or influence others?

N - Need, does the prospect have a use for the product/ service?

T - Timeline, will the prospect be needing your product/service urgently?

The whole process was successful for IBM’s sales development reps (SDRs) who no longer had to wait days or even weeks to qualify a lead, weeding out the prospects that weren’t a good fit and making the sales process more efficient.

But is it now an outdated phenomenon?

The creation of other lead qualification methods, such as PACTT, means that SDRs are no longer dependent on BANT alone, but is BANT really a thing of the past? And if so is PACTT going to be the one to dethrone it?

As Trish Bertuzzi, author of Sales Development Playbook, explains, PACTT is a different approach for super-qualifying leads. Trish describes the outdated BANT method as "going on a first date and asking for a credit report." [2] PACTT allows us to treat our customers as individuals, not just put them into a neat BANT-shaped box.

P - Pain points, these are areas prospects struggle in, and they are important to understand. The ability to show empathy to a prospect is crucial to building a successful relationship. But, if the prospect has no need for what you are providing it is unlikely you’ll turn them into a qualified lead.

A - Authority, as with BANT, authority refers to whether or not the person you are speaking with has the authority to purchase your products/services or at least has the influence to persuade the person who does. Sales Development Reps want to be using every minute of time wisely, and this starts with making sure the conversation is with a decision maker.

C - Consequence, following on from pain points, the consequence is the result your product/service will have on a potential prospect. It could be simplifying a process so they don't have to worry about the extra time spent. The results your product will generate are determined by many factors (such as the size of the organisation, industry, etc). If your service is unlikely to have a large consequence on the prospect’s pain points, it may be time to disqualify them as a lead.

T - Target Profile, having your ideal target prospect mapped out before you begin outreach is important, it will ensure you are targeting the people most likely to purchase your product/service. This supports consequences, as having an established idea of your best fit accounts and ideal customers means you can easily differentiate who fits the match and will take the most value from your product/service.

T - Timing, when it comes to closing a sale or gaining a new client, timing is everything. The key here is to know when to strike. Is your prospect nearing the end of a contract with a current supplier? Can they break away from their current suppliers? All of this will be considered in determining whether they are a good fit.

So, why should you use PACTT when prospecting?

2. PACTT identifies red flags

The whole point of a lead qualification process is to ensure the leads you have are qualified, the prospect must be as much of a good fit for you, as you are for them. The target profile in PACTT focuses on qualifying the potential for a good relationship and whether or not the lead is likely to become a sale.

2. Timing x2

 Yes, BANT does include elements of timing, but there is very little emphasis on this as a qualifier. In the PACTT model timing is taken into account when a prospect's current contract is up with their current supplier, this is important to be able to engage with your prospect at the right time.

3. BANT doesn’t consider consequences

PACTT identifies consequences that are both beneficial and negative for you and the prospective prospect, knowing these ahead of time is crucial to helping qualify real leads and developing a good client relationship.

4. Pain points

One criterion that BANT misses out on completely is pain points, knowing the company’s point of contention is an important part of the sale, as this can guide how to help the prospect realise why your product/service is going to be of value to them, not just in a surface level way but how it will improve the way they operate and run their business.

5. Budget

 Back to the B in BANT, budget is an important qualifier when it comes to ensuring a lead is real, the last thing you want as a sales person/team is to be selling to a prospect that simply has no allocated budget for your product/service. However, making the budget a huge factor in your qualifying process is not a good idea. Most companies have adapted how they run their budgets since the creation of BANT, which makes this qualifier slightly outdated. Potential prospects often no longer have fixed budgets aside for solutions like yours, so, if you’re waiting around for the budget to become available you, may have already missed the opportunity.

To Conclude…

The PACTT framework has helped our team better qualify prospects for our clients. Punch!’s mission is to make our client's pipeline grow, and we do this by constantly adapting our qualification criteria to result in a higher return on investment!

So, you’re thinking about outsourcing your sales development? Or, perhaps you’re just intrigued to know more about what it is Punch! do? Well, you’ve come to the right place. We have compiled some of our most frequently asked questions to shed some insight into how we work, what we do, and what you can expect from Punch!.

Our processes

How long does it take to get set up and what does it involve?

Depending on the messaging, strategy and documentation you already have in place, our initial Strategic Planning stage will take a minimum of 4 weeks.

The Strategic Planning Process

First, we will conduct the Sales & Marketing Alignment Workshop, where we will ask you to present to us as if we are a prospect as well as ask you a series of questions to get under the skin of your business

Using information gathered from the workshop, we will create a toolkit and messaging document for your approval. This document will be based on your proposition, USPs, ideal customer profile, requirements, etc.

Next, there will be a period of internal onboarding and technology setup. Once these stages are complete, activity will commence.

It’s really critical that our team understands your offering before launching the programme. We use this initial period to learn about your business, which will result in better optimisation and development of the SDR programme as it runs. 

How much of my time will be taken up during the onboarding phase?

In addition to the workshops, we will need help with gaining access to certain tools, email accounts and calendars. We will also want you to proofread the toolkit and provide suggested amendments. Outside of this, no additional time should be required, however, we do have an open-door policy to all clients and very much welcome your input at any time. 

Meetings

How much per qualified meeting?

We don’t use a cost per lead model, we operate on a resource model, charging a day rate for our sales development work. The average cost per lead for clients who are on our FTE package is £928 once ramp time has been completed. This will vary from client to client depending on their package and how many days a month we are on retainer.

If Punch! books a meeting and it turns out the stakeholder doesn't want to meet us, is it a waste of time?

We put every measure in place possible to ensure this doesn’t happen, including:

• Carrying out diarised Qualification Calls’ with the prospect to fully qualify the opportunity
• Sending calendar invitations and monitoring for calendar acceptances

We have a formalised process of checking in on appointments in the lead-up to a meeting. If a meeting needs to be rescheduled we’ll always aim to do this ahead of time rather than there be a ‘no show’. Our team is also incentivised based on attended qualified meetings, so there is a heavy emphasis on making sure these meetings are sat. 

Billing

What is your payment policy and when will I receive an invoice?

The first invoice (for Strategic Planning) is delivered upon commencement of the Sales & Marketing Alignment Workshop. Following this, we invoice on the 1st of each month with 30-day terms, meaning payment is only due once activity has been completed each month.

Punch! Team

How will my team be structured?

You will have a dedicated Sales Development Manager who will be your day-to-day contact. They will provide you with weekly, monthly and quarterly reports giving you a true snapshot of the progress being made.

Your team will also include a MarTech Manager, Data Research Manager and Sales Development Trainer who will all provide ongoing support.

What is your staff retention rate?

Our current retention rate is 80% for SDRs and Management staff working with Punch!. The majority of our management team has been with the company for over four years.

How do you incentivise?

At Punch! we create and facilitate topical games sporadically, we find this helps to maximise team engagement and incentivise peak performances, the prizes can range from vouchers to additional time off, and the games can be individual or team-based. The games are great tools to encourage healthy competition but more importantly, they encourage the team to work together in achieving our common goal.

Punch! Services

Why do companies outsource to Punch! Sales?

We hear many different reasons why companies decide to outsource with us, just a few include;

• Struggling to find the right people, someone who is motivated/self-driven or even someone who has obscure sector knowledge.
• Their attempt at setting up an SDR team hasn’t quite worked how they envisioned
• High turnovers have left them in a lurch
• They may already have a team who is great at handling inbound leads but aren’t as strong at outbound
• They are entering new markets and need assistance in planning/messaging cadence
• Having trouble defining their audience

There are many more reasons why companies benefit from outsourcing their SDR team

Can you help support our internal SDR training?

During our strategic planning phase, we’ll build out a toolkit, call tracks and email templates to help our team. These can be leveraged by your internal team also, and as an optional extra our SDMs can support your internal SDRs with training, and joining sessions to discuss the pipeline with our team to ensure the best alignment.

What are the additional tangibles Punch! deliver?

 Strategic Planning 

• SDR Toolkit, created by our strategy team this document will be used internally to train the SDRs working on your account and will include information about your products and services, features and benefits, key metrics, key customers, key competitors, battle cards, your ICP and TAM, buyer personas, value proposition, sales enablement materials, marketing content, GTM plan and SDR workflow overview
• Implementation of prospecting tools such as data scraping, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Vidyard video marketing tool, and Hubspot CRM

On-going activity 

• Establishing key data points such as contact information for each new target prospect. Other marketing initiatives can be used to target these contacts
• Maintaining databases according to mutually agreed-upon specifications and enhancing data by identifying decision makers' names, job titles, email addresses and context

Where conversations are held

• Ensure information is recorded so that you can continue those conversations as and when you wish
• Seek permission for future contact
• Raising brand awareness through a multitude of communication channels
• Building trusted relationships with prospects
• Growing your LinkedIn connection base 

Expectations

How often will we meet/communicate?

Regular communication and weekly meetings are fundamental to the success of our relationship. Your SDM will be your day-to-day contact and meet you once per week to review activity and ascertain how your sales team has progressed with each of the opportunities we’ve sent over.

When will I see an ROI from the sales development work?

Whilst the answer is dependent on your sales cycle and a couple of other factors including; value prop, proposition age, awareness etc. 

Typically we see the best returns from clients that commit to a 12-month or ongoing programme with us. This allows us to schedule follow-up meetings and helps push opportunities through the funnel so your sales team can close deals. The main reason clients stay with us long-term is because we help them grow their business.

What reports will we receive?

We will report to you on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to give you a true picture of progress in the short, medium and long term.

This can include;

• Weekly or cumulative stats
• Opportunities generated
• Contacts identified
• SQLs and pipeline generated (calls made, emails, contacts contacted)
• Contacts in warm pipeline
• Status of accounts in pipeline
• Appointments and the intent topic (product)
• Account insights (product used, contract renewal dates, customer/competitor satisfaction

Miscellaneous

Who owns the data?

We identify and source our contact data using a variety of different processes to provide up-to-date, accurate information and ensure we’re always reaching out to the best-fit prospects. Initially, this data belongs to Punch! Sales and is stored internally in our CRM for our SDR team to work through. As soon as contacts are added to the pipeline or a meeting is scheduled; that important prospect data belongs to you.

If you have any questions we’ve not listed, don’t hesitate to get in touch at adam.clarke@punch-sales.com