Keeping an eye on trends in the B2B landscape isn’t just our job; it’s also something we happen to be incredibly passionate about. Over the last couple of years, we’ve noticed some changes – both through research and anecdotally – in how B2B businesses have been conducting their marketing.
The summary is this: we’re moving away from traditional strategies – reliant heavily on demand generation through content downloads and emails – and moving towards an approach that’s more
focused on positioning and branding.
There are plenty of interesting statistics (which we’ll delve into later) around this shift, but here’s one that drives home this point: 83% of customers armenia whatsapp number data eventually buy from the first business they engage with. And this seller, more and more, is the one that’s been leveraging data-driven content and unique research to position with that target customer over an extended period of time.
So, how does this shift affect the sales and marketing playbooks of B2B companies? After all, playbooks are a solution for businesses looking for efficiency, cohesiveness and a unified voice. So,
they need to reflect the current market.
In the search for answers – and to promote conversation within the industry – we dedicated our latest Referrer’s Lunch to the subject. The Evolution of the Traditional B2B Marketing (and Sales) Playbook was about how businesses are moving how a marketing intelligence and seo platform can solve content problems towards more nuanced approaches.
The result was a wide-ranging conversation that examined the changing landscape and what we can all do to thrive in it. align.me Co-Founder and Executive Director Brett Bonser took the helm for this journey, guiding us through his take on this brave new world. Our guest speaker was David Marshall, a serial entrepreneur and Founder of Performio, a global leader in sales commission planning and more recently SalesGrid, an AI Platform that helps sales teams plan and execute their sales process. In these roles, David has worked with and advised many global leading brands, including Vodafone, Johnson & Johnson, Commonwealth yeezy 350 boost v2s Bank, Westpac, Optus and others.
What exactly is a playbook?
Before we go any further, it’s important to define what exactly a playbook is. For assistance in this, we turn to our guest speaker, who provided attendees at our Referrer’s Lunch with this definition.
“A playbook is a comprehensive guide that details best practices from engaging customers through to closing deals.”
While that sounds like a pretty definitive explanation that could be used widely across sales and marketing, David was able to condense it even more. Ultimately, he told our attendees, a playbook is a recipe for your company’s success. And that it can be reduced to a simple phrase: