What Do B2B Marketers Do Now? is an ongoing email. Join the mailing list to be the first to receive these weekly insights!

There are some bands where I vividly remember the first time I heard their music. Something about the music had an impact on me. When I first heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers I remember being a little confused – they were a hugely energetic blend of different genres – and I didn’t know what to think. But I liked it. And I had a feeling they were at the leading edge of a new style of music. Does your solution or product excite your customers? Confuse them? Both?

Would you trust an outside firm to sell or market your solution – or is that like a band doing a bad cover version of your ‘song?’

Give this cover a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week – and let me know if you think it’s as good as the original…

Outsourcing for Complex Sales

I’ve mentioned books before that have been instrumental to the way many of us marketers approach our strategy. Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm was significant in my tech marketing education. I also really enjoyed Brian Carroll’s Lead Generation for the Complex Sale – at the time, it seemed to encapsulate many of the things I was trying to do with Virtual Causeway’s clients in the B2B Enterprise space.

One thing I’ve always promoted is outsourcing key elements of business processes to experts. And why is lead or demand generation any different? Can we outsource lead generation for a complex product, solution or process?

According to Catherine Robles at VanillaSoft, you should! While I don’t believe there is any ‘silver bullet’ in B2B demand gen, I do think it’s worth looking at the reasons they say outsourcing lead gen is an important tactic for you:

  • Talk to hot and ready leads – outsourced lead generation means you speak to the right people at the right time.
  • Focus on other business-building tasks – when you outsource lead gen, you free yourself from the pressure of trying everything to generate interest in your business all at once.
  • Get all the leads for less cost – ongoing costs of one new hire can far outweigh the price of outsourced lead generation.
  • Take the guessing out of growing – work with a company that’s 100% committed to refining its processes and methodologies (people who keep on learnin’) to improve the results of your lead generation.
  • Never let a lead go un-nurtured again – an outsourced agency can fill the top of your funnel with leads, AND make sure they are qualified and nurtured.

Unless you’ve been living under a bridge, outsourcing is a way of life in business. But is outsourcing demand generation right for you?

(By the way – I participated in a VanillaSoft webinar with experts in outsourced demand gen last year – check out the recording!)

More Song Catalogues Sold

Speaking of outsourcing, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have become the most recent artist to sell their music catalogue – selling the rights to all of their songs back to 1982. What does this mean? The band cashes out on a lifetime’s work, taking future royalties upfront in a big lump sum and setting them up with a worry-free future – at least when it comes to money.

The reported price for the Chilis’ catalogue is US$140 million. It is now up to Hipgnosis (the buyer) to unlock the value in those songs to make their money back and then turn a profit. How will they do that? Radio performance fees; royalties from album sales; other artists recording Chili Peppers songs; TikTok campaigns; licensing for TV, movies, and commercials; and efforts to boost streaming of songs.

How does this impact B2B? In essence, these companies are content aggregators. They are purchasing as much content (music) as possible, and are betting on the fact that they can leverage economies of scale and do a better job of promoting this music and monetizing it than the artist and their original labels could do.

Are the artists ‘selling out?’ You be the judge. But with the current halt in live music as a revenue source for many of these artists, they’ve had to come up with alternate revenue streams. Check out this running list of artists that HAVE sold their catalogues – it’s a world that’ll just keep on turnin’!

Who’s next? Who haven’t we heard from yet… Bands like REM seem like logical candidates, don’t they? Who do YOU think will be the next to try to reach the higher ground?

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat