B2B’s hard new playbook: Don’t bet everything on chasing marketing qualified leads – most buyers call you and have already made their choice when they do

Mi3 Audio Edition

The B2B world is a market where you don't call customers, customers call you - although it’s the opposite of widespread B2B marketing assumptions and practice today. A B2B awakening is underway as business marketers see increasing evidence that an under-investment in B2B brand work leads to a sea of sameness and mediocre results among buyers – across most industry sectors, many feel there is little supplier differentiation, limiting the likelihood you’ll receive that all-important first call. But if the phone does ring from a buyer, the latest round of research across Asia Pacific says you’re overwhelmingly likely to land the deal, irrespective of the sales teams prowess.

Sameness leads to nothingness and a B2B marketing strategy that prioritises marketing qualified leads (MQLs) over all else comes with serious limitations, according to this week’s guests.

Instead, the brand signals you send out “need to align with how modern customers research and purchase, particularly in complex B2B environments where decision making often involves multiple stakeholders,” says Sophie Neate, Global Head of Digital Marketing & Content for industrial giant ABB.

When making the case internally for change, however, don’t underestimate the support from sales teams, says Lara Barnet, the Head of Marketing in Australia for the global technology-managed service provider Logicalis. “Sellers face that problem more than anyone else,” she says. “They’re on the front line, they're the ones picking up the phone and talking to customers. They face this all the time.”

The broader growth in influence of buying committees necessarily lessens the influence of a single C-Suite decision maker, and that influence wanes further as the size of the buying committee scales along with the value of the opportunity. An MQL led approach also fails to recognise that customers, not sellers, control the product research agenda and most of those are invisible until they choose to turn public. By then, says the boss of B2B agency Green Hat, Stuart Jaffray, it’s likely too late - they have mostly made their decision.

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