Case study: OneAccess increases B2B client engagement 3-5x with an improved Web-based customer buying experience

Many technology companies still tend to commercialize their products and services based on a combination of the technologies used and the key capabilities delivered to their customers.

Aside from only speaking to the needs of their technically versed client-side users, this approach usually fails to keep up with customers’ broader, evolving needs, especially when new, disruptive offerings emerge or existing technologies become obsolete.

We recently helped one global enterprise IT provider improve it’s Web-based customer buying experience, resulting in significantly greater customer engagement.

What’s the ideal way to showcase your customer successes?

As most marketing and business leaders know, to grow your business you need to demonstrate your company’s credentials by showcasing the customer successes that you’ve enabled.

In our previous article we saw that to leverage your past customer successes you need to develop a focused and repeatable way to generate powerful customer references that educate and convince new clients of the value you can offer them.

To showcase your client successes there are various techniques that companies use, each with its own set of merits and practical challenges:

A successful business is built on customer successes

In spite of the growing sophistication in technology, not the least of which includes the flourishing area of digital marketing, a new business opportunity is often won or lost simply by whether your prospect feels convinced of the true value that you are offering them.

From the customer’s perspective, in this situation there is often nothing better to help them decide than to hear an honest endorsement directly from another, similar customer.

That’s why it’s critical to properly leverage your past client successes when doing business.

Creating a customer-led company culture

Empowered customers are shaking the foundations of industries everywhere. Compared to the old way of doing business, today’s customer revolution is driven by a set of self-reinforcing, customer-first paradigms.

In this new order customers set the agenda by establishing the terms of engagement; customers increasingly provide inputs for new products and services, which they assume will come personalized for them; customers expect companies to listen and learn from their everyday experiences and get respect when things don’t go as planned. In this emerging world a customer-led marketing culture can be a company’s competitive edge.

While a few companies “get it”, most still need to adapt to these unusual and fast-changing times. At such firms CMOs and other business leaders should consider several steps to develop and foster a customer-led company culture:

Customer-led marketing is your competitive edge

Countless companies across industries claim to focus fully on serving their customers. Only recently however, has the balance really shifted, putting customers firmly in the driver’s seat.

Whether they are consumers or business buyers, today’s customers are often more tech savvy than the companies that serve them. They have increasing access to insightful, comparative information on suppliers and their offers; they now have the ability to express satisfaction or shout out their discontent to friends and peers and they are ready to switch providers when needed.

To serve today’s generation of consumer and business customers, companies must accept that customers are now in charge, and winning their business means creating a customer-led marketing culture.

Analyzing B2B Web behaviour can improve user engagement and boost qualified leads

As e-commerce continues proliferating across all sectors, more and more B2B companies are using the Web not just to provide their prospects with an online corporate brochure and product catalogue, but also as a way to establish and nurture customer relationships, in combination with traditional channels, while driving business.

Marketing leaders at B2B companies that are making the shift to a more Web-centric business model must place greater attention to their clients’ online behaviour in order to gain insights into how prospective buyers choose to interact with them when deciding if and what to buy.

Successful companies mix digital and traditional channels to satisfy their clients and achieve business objectives

With 2014 now firmly underway, there is no doubt that digital and social media along with mobile technologies remain at the top of the agenda of many marketing leaders. They are seen as critical paths for expanding their addressable market reach and growing the business.

While there is no doubt that digital marketing tools can boost the public awareness of a company and of its offers, while offering clients a personalized and interactive way of engaging with their brands, to achieve measurable business results, digital tools must be part of a company’s broader, well-thought out marketing strategy. Otherwise, it’s like spending money to generate more noise in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

How Cisco is focusing more on business to better serve its B2B clients

How Cisco is focusing more on business to better serve its B2B clients

While Cisco has continued at the forefront of the IT infrastructure industry with its salespeople continuing to convert leads and gain market share, over the past few years a growing number of deals were being lost on account of not being able to rely just on reputation, but also having to compete on margins or features.

According to Cisco’s director of Enterprise Marketing, the sales teams were no longer just dealing with their traditional buyers – IT Managers, Directors of IT, or Head of Wiring / Operation, but they were increasingly coming face-to-face with their clients’ CMOs and CIOs.

How would this impact their marketing and sales approach?

Tech companies: Sell customer value rather than products

During our recent interactions and discussions with various technology firms in the software, Web and telecoms sectors, it seems that when commercializing their products and services, the majority focus on either promoting the features and characteristics they offer clients (e.g. A cloud-based file sharing services that syncs across mobile and desktop devices), or on the practical benefits that clients get from buying their offers (e.g. Simple, secure file sharing from anywhere).

While many companies offer leading edge, technology-based products and services, a large number end-up with a ‘me-too’ approach.

Such products and services usually lack a clear set of measurable advantages that come from using the offer as compared to the next best market alternative, including the unique value provided to prospective customers.

Does this really matter in our quickly-evolving technology marketplace?

Want to sell more? Make it easy for your B2B customers to buy

In a recent article we discussed the power of consultative value selling for jointly exploring and creating more relevant customer propositions that offer personalized value.

While this powerful technique is especially suited for complex offers and relies on direct interactions with prospective clients, it requires a sales force skilled in the practice of identifying and selling value to clients. More importantly, it is part of a larger, customer buying-decisions process that spans various distinct yet interrelated steps.

In order to help clients make the best decisions when buying, companies must provide a relevant, streamlined process anticipating the multiple demands and requirements of the various client stakeholders involved in the decision-making process.

Anything else will result in confused and frustrated prospects that may eventually turn to a savvier competitor when buying.