IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MARKETING MEDIA TECHNOLOGY Outbound to inbound, 04. cutting the cold calling In our focus group, multiple buyers report being frustrated by an onslaught of cold calls, ‘spam’ emails and unsolicited LinkedIn connection requests, a vast majority of which are irrelevant. At the same time, buyers do value the chance to hear about a relevant new product. Despite the deluge of email and social media posts, buyers in our focus group interviews say they do pick out highlights, or recall something to return to—often months later. Email outreach! So rarely has anyone The secret to resonating with buyers appears to be a very clear, succinct, focused researched my company email that avoids making grand claims (“saving the BBC millions!”) but provides or developed a real specific evidence of a suppliers’ relevance to the buyer, with a link for more information. Communicating one clear concept in the first paragraph is crucial. pitch. Buyer, survey respondent Outbound to inbound, cutting the cold calling Email newsletters from industry groups and trade press titles are valued by many buyers for providing a succinct summary of industry news, vendor activity, product There’s lots of spam in launches and new case studies, conveniently collated in one place. email and LinkedIn. But some things catch your Marketing plans an essential role eye. It’s important to Cutting through the noise requires highly-focused messaging—very clear position- raise awareness. ing of a product’s benefits and where it fits, along with accurate targeting of relevant CTO, European public accounts. ‘Spray and pray’ marketing struggles to be e昀昀ective in a market with broadcaster 2,000+ other suppliers all trying to reach the same audience. Sales and marketing teams are mostly likely to stand out when they are laser-fo- cused on relevant accounts, show they understand a customer’s business drivers and challenges, and can position their product in that specific context. This drives an increased need for marketing communications. Buyers are very resistant to approaches from inside- and field-sales teams unless and until they have already identified that the supplier is relevant to them. “It’s a shift from sales teams knocking on doors to marketing teams knock- ing on virtual doors.” as one supplier’s marketing VP put it. A recurring theme of the focus group interviews is summed up in one buyer’s clear “The key thing: vendors need to communicate what they can do, message: what business problems they can solve, so we know what they can do.”