Marketing’s Role in the Modern Sales Experience

B2B buyers have changed dramatically, especially during COVID. Consider these three recent trends, for example:

• B2B buyers are looking critically at any opportunity that comes to them, whether it comes from marketing content or from a sales conversation.
• B2B buyers are giving less access to sales people and traditional conversations. In fact, 83% of the buyer journey does not include a sales rep.
• B2B buyers place a greater priority on perspective and recommendations from people who aren't sales people, from their peers and from subject matter experts via content marketing.

So, as marketers, how do we approach the modern buyer? That is the topic of conversation in this episode of the Modern Marketing Engine with my guest, Spencer Wixom, Sr. VP Marketing at Challenger.

Listen as Spencer unpacks marketing’s role in the modern sales experience.

The 3 Pillars of the Modern Sales Experience

1. Role of messaging to the buyer

“I think it's really critical for B2B marketers to think about how we are interacting with today's buyer,” Spencer says, “who is putting more scrutiny on their decisions, who's giving less access to traditional channels for education and who is listening to so many other sources.”

Spencer believes that B2B marketers should use the three-act structure of classic playwriting to engage with buyers.

Act one is about introducing and building the understanding of the various characters, and introducing the problem those characters are going to face.

“In act one of the messages we create, we need to establish our credibility, why we have a perspective or a point of view about that customer’s business and we need to introduce a problem in their business that we're going to have a perspective or point of view on.”

Act two is the journey or the struggle. In act two of the marketing message, we have to introduce the status quo or the current actions that the customer is taking. 

“Those actions are costing them something in rational and emotional ways, and we need to explore that to build some motivation.”

And act three is the solution. We must suggest the next steps they need to take and connect that to our differentiators or our solution.

So, what is marketing’s role in developing this narrative?

Spencer says marketing should not create this message by itself. “It really is a cross-functional group that needs to come together to develop that narrative and we'd recommend marketing play a key role in that. But you also need to get the feedback of sales people who will

ultimately be delivering that narrative as part of a conversation. You need to make sure that product is involved in representing the end part of that narrative where you do talk about the solution.”

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