FOUNDER’S GUIDE TO B2B SALES Marketing is a complex field which could have its own playbook. This section focuses on the part of marketing closest to sales: demand generation. THE WORLD’S SHORTEST MARKETING PRIMER Marketing lives at the intersection of three things: Business benefits – why buy a product or service? It provides a solution to business problems, it’s better/cheaper/faster and there are customer testimonials as proof Product differentiation – why buy your product or service? This comes down to your high-level product positioning, agenda-setting your differentiating features and mapping unique features to customer problems Buyer priorities – why give my product the time of day? The best marketing talks to customers about what’s important to them. Successful marketers research the areas which top their customers’ pain point list and they map these problems to their company’s solutions THE MARKETING FUNNEL Like sales, marketing has a funnel. It starts with names (or contacts) and finishes with opportunities, which are passed to sales to hopefully become won deals. Below is an example of a marketing funnel. NAME A person we found to potentially add to the database. RESPONSE A person who responded to a campaign (“hand raiser”). NET NEW LEAD Not duplicate. Not garbage (e.g. [email protected]), within a target market. MARKETING Meets the agreed tests to be passed to SDR. Often some combination of QUALIFIED LEAD demographic (e.g. CFO title at 500+ person company) and behavioural (MQL) scoring (e.g. downloaded evaluation guide, attended weekly demo). STAGE 1 SDR-qualified, usually via some form of BANT qualification. OPPTY STAGE 2 Sales-accepted lead (SAL), indicating that a seller concurs OPPTY it is a valid opportunity. DEAL Closed / won opportunities. (For the definition of BANT qualification, see here.) SPRING 2023 .39