The Overview #39
? Hey there. This is The Overview, a weekly roundup of noteworthy B2B SaaS stuff. You’ll find interesting thoughts, articles, and more from around the internet.
In this post:
Get creative with messaging + copy
One to add to the swipe file! How scared do you think the team was before signing off on this?
We can also tell a number of things about their target customer: more on the business side, less on the technical/security side. This probably isn’t what a Fortune 250 company would buy, but a high-growth startup that’s struggling with SOC 2 compliance? Absolutely.
Buyer first principles
Do customers wake up in the morning wanting to buy software? Probably not… but sometimes?
In this exchange with Marc and Peter, I suggested these first principles:
- All buyers have problems to solve
- Sometimes they know it can be solved with software. Sometimes they don’t know how to solve it.
- Buyers don’t buy software for problems they don’t have – but sometimes they can buy in advance of expected problems, or can be coerced to buy in preparation for
What else can we assume about buyers and their problems? Another suggestion: problems are just not tangible business challenges – think broader.
Train your people
How well do you train your team on customers, the market, the buyer journey, and the product – before letting them loose on sales calls and marketing work? Probably not very long.
This post from Dave Kellogg offers a number of practical suggestions for setting up sales/marketing success schools, including:
- Engage practitioners
- Make it mandatory
- Be operational
Learn, practice, and internalize foundations
No matter how much you read books, or follow Twitter thought leaders, or chat to peers… unless you’re actually putting the work in, you’re not going to reap the rewards and get better.
It’s not enough to gamble on luck. Honestly, B2B go-to-market is not really complex – it’s the same motions, the same signals. Get better at spotting them, and internalize the systems to help you do so.
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