Maybe I’m an eternal optimist, but I really am seeing the B2B market pushing for recovery. Prior to March, B2B sales and marketing activity was at an all-time high. And luckily, it seems that businesses are looking to get back to those levels. What are you seeing?
Here is what the experts are saying, and some takeaways from the past week:
North America’s Economy – OPEN FOR BUSINESS?
My clients have all been reporting that sales and marketing activity (and more importantly – client/prospect engagement) has been picking up through the month of May. What do the experts say? Hubspot shows that deal creation and sales activity (particularly in the US) continues to increase as the economy opens up.
However, while sales results are incrementally improving week-over-week, the data shows that salespeople are still spending a great deal of time reaching out to poor-fit prospects. The deal pipeline metrics are an encouraging sign that more businesses are re-entering buying processes, but it’s still too early to tell how much of this growth will be sustained. Your sales team should continue prioritizing high-interest, good-fit buyers rather than indiscriminately prospecting – and focus on moving people through the buying cycle!
B2B SaaS Job Market
The Bridge Group recently conducted some interesting research into the B2B SaaS job market and how it’s been impacted by the pandemic. The good news? It seems like the worst could be over, and hiring is ramping back up. The bad news? Late March was brutal, and roughly 30% of companies surveyed laid-off sales personnel through late April and froze their hiring.
See the whole report here.
Shifting from Live to Digital Events
I’ve previously shared data and research from TOPO and SiriusDecisions about shifting from live to digital events in a COVID world. And last week, I shared some additional commentary on the music industry. I thought this article from Dave Grohl on the live music scene was appropriate and quite well written and speaks to the need for live events and interaction.
We all have seen some shoddy attempts at digital recreations of live events (both musically and within B2B). I think we’re all agreed that live music will come back – not sure when, but it WILL come back. But how about the B2B space? What do you think? Are we all itching for some great LIVE B2B events and tradeshows?
Shameless Plug – Webinar featuring VanillaSoft
Reminder that the first of our new ‘What do B2B Marketers Do Now? (in 29 minutes!)’ webinar series happens on May 27 at 2pm ET. We’ll discuss marketing and sales strategies to help organizations gain traction on the road to business recovery and growth. This month I’ll be featuring Darryl Praill, CMO of VanillaSoft, and leader of the INSIDE Inside Sales podcast.
I hope you can join us – register here. We’re all in this together!
Looking forward,
Rick
Rick Endrulat | President | Virtual Causeway | 519.866.1600 x622