How B2B Marketers Can Drive Sales During Challenging Economic Times

Karl Van den Bergh, CMO of Gigamon, a leader in Deep Observability.

Enterprise sales deals are taking longer to close today compared to what we saw pre-pandemic. According to a study by CAP, on average, B2B sales cycles have become 3.8 weeks longer. That is no surprise given the uncertain economic environment with the upcoming election, a slowdown in funding and the current inflation and interest rates. Business leaders are scrutinizing spend and requiring more sign-offs than ever before.

These factors are creating a perfect storm, making it harder for companies to drive sales. Marketers play a critical role here and need to lead their companies with the right messaging and approach to guide customers in their buying process.

Here are some tips to set your team up for success in what continues to be a challenging business environment:

Arm The Sales Team With Messages And Marketing Tools That Resonate

Marketers should focus on finding a compelling message that aligns with the current market conditions and customer needs—leaning into cost savings, ROI, energy efficiency and digital transformation, for example. Keep your messaging as simple, creative and as direct as possible.

B2B marketers can also provide their sales team with tools—like an ROI calculator and case studies— that support the message with real-world proof. As another example, if your product delivers measurable cost savings, consider a no-risk offer for customers whereby customers get the product for free and you share a percentage of the savings your product provides over the next year.

Architected in the right way, customers will opt to pay for the product upfront, as sharing in the savings will end up costing them more. The benefit is that you will demonstrate your ROI tangibly and differentiate your offering. And the customer will understand your cost savings ability, which helps justify and facilitate the purchase. It is a win-win.

Go Back To The Installed Base

It is no secret that it is easier and more profitable to sell to organizations that are already customers, as there is an existing relationship, proven product value and contractual terms in place. This is even more true when times are tough, as customers will be less likely to bring new vendors on board. Marketing and sales teams can look at existing customer data to determine the upsell motion (e.g., customers who buy product A are likely to buy product B as a next step) and identify the accounts that fit the gap profile. To help further focus the go-to-market effort, you can add third-party intent data to the customer data on buying cycles and identify customers who are in an active buying cycle for a product category.

Focusing on selling to the installed base—especially for established companies—is a good strategy in a challenging market, but you’ll still need to land new customers to continue overall growth. To help on that front, consider leveraging your partner network or current customers for access to accounts where you do not have an existing relationship. Deal registration, sales referral or customer referral incentives can help accelerate this motion.

Do Not Forget About Branding Table Stakes

While trying some of the demand-oriented activities above, don’t lose sight of the overall brand. One of the temptations during tough times, when budgets are constrained, is to deprioritize awareness and brand spend. Some spending might need to be curtailed in the short term, but maintaining some degree of brand presence in the market will serve your organization well over the long term.

In today’s world, we suffer from information overload, so marketers should be smart about spend, using creative approaches (e.g., humor and guerrilla marketing) to stand out and make their dollars go further. Keeping your brand at the forefront of your buyers’ minds will also help the sales team get in front of prospects. Additionally, organizations that continue to invest in branding during a downturn can increase mindshare, as their competitors are likely to be spending less. As a result, those who invest will come out ahead when the economy rebounds.

Branding targets need to be consistently reviewed, especially when you consider the fact that the buying group has expanded in recent years. Today, buying teams can consist of up to 20 people in B2B technology markets—that’s a lot of people to influence! The larger the buying team and the more vendors they consider, the longer the purchasing process can take, further extending the duration of the sales cycle.

Now that we are in the second half of the year, marketers must stay close with the sales team and the chief financial officer (CFO) to optimize and align on strategy, execution and ROI. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The only constant in life is change,” and this is proven in marketing every single day. As marketers, we must stay agile and nimble amid challenging times, expect ongoing change and be ready to adapt.

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