As discussed in part one of this blog a solid sales and marketing strategy is the key first step to achieving growth. Just to recap, in part 1 we discussed how to develop "The 4xWs" of strategy, namely:
- To Whom
- With What
- Through Whom
- Against whom
The 4xWs sets up a clear framework for your sales and marketing team to align and focus their efforts around your buyer.
Estimating your go to market funnel
Now we'll turn our attention to the next critical step. Tying your go to market strategy and investments to your business' financial goals. Firstly, clearly understand your businesses new revenue goals that are coming from marketing's activities and then, using an average sales value, work out the number of net new clients you need for each time period.
Establish a base line
Working backwards, then estimate how many proposals, meetings, qualified leads, contacts and visitors do you need to drive that revenue number. By estimating the conversion rates at each stage you will have built a "velocity model." You'll know how fast you need to run your sales and marketing to hit your business' revenue goals.
Bonus Tip: Don't forget the time it takes for a typical buyer to go through their entire decision making cycle from a complete stranger to loyal customer. In B2B markets this is often many, many months, even years. Understanding this "funnel lag" is especially important in rapid growth environments.
Now Plan Your Tactics (and content)
Now you've set your 4xWs and your funnel velocity you can plan out the tactics you need to string together to pull your buyer along their buying journey towards becoming a loyal customer.
Your content and tactics can be precisely tailored to your chosen target and the volume of activity you require to hit your revenue goals is understood. Its important that your content is linked to each stage of the buyers journey and that tactics are aligned to these different stages.
If you have no clarity around your target market and the volume of activity you need to drive, your business is in danger of simply executing tactics for tactics sake, simply doing what you did last quarter for lack of anything better to do - Or "random acts of sales and marketing" as we like to call it!
With the world of your buyer changing around you it has never been more important to revisit your go to market strategy and the planning process. Consider using a moderator to help you facilitate the process and challenge entrenched thinking about "how we do things around here."
Setting a proper plan is just one of many sales and marketing challenges facing firms. We want to help by, giving you a complete B2B marketing and sales plan with a clearly articulated set of tactics for both sales and marketing to use across the whole funnel taking just 9 easy steps to build!
