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Ever feel like you’re surrounded by predators, always fighting for every little win? The beginning of the year is a great time to swim without looking back and focus on what’s ahead. Give this song a listen with me as you read on, and don’t let those nasty barracudas ambush you!

Here is what the experts are saying, and some takeaways from the past week:

HubSpot Data – January Results

Luckily, HubSpot has continued to publish their Industry Benchmark Data this year! I referenced their reports heavily in 2020, and am happy to see January’s data and some early trends already emerging for 2021:

• Deals Created in January eclipsed the previous months’ numbers.
• Closed deals decreased, but that could be the typical January activity level.
• Sales Emails and Sales Calls both increased significantly in January.
• Contact Growth increased over December.
• Conversation Interactions, however, decreased slightly in January.

So what does this data tell us? Companies continue to increase their outreach and are going through the typical beginning of year ramp-up. Building new contacts, increasing outreach, and creating new deals indicates that overall sales activity is robust and optimistic.

This is consistent with our findings at Virtual Causeway as we work on client campaigns. It will be interesting to see whether closed deals increase as we get into the latter part of Q1. Activity so far is indicating strong potential, but until those deals start closing, the jury is still out.

Expanding Your Audience – Trigger Cities

Last week I highlighted an article from Chasm Group outlining how Segmentation was ‘in’ again. I recently read a music article outlining how ‘trigger cities’ are an important part of success in today’s streaming world – and I noticed a lot of similarities. The concept is that certain cities around the world trigger favourable algorithmic effects on music streaming platforms and help build your audience worldwide. According to Chartmetric, the following are the top cities based on monthly YouTube views:

1. Mexico City, Mexico
2. Lima, Peru
3. Bogotá, Colombia
4. Santiago, Chile
5. Jakarta, Indonesia

The idea is to find cities that have high music consumption and very low advertising rates. If you do some modest advertising in these trigger cities, chances are that you can grow your fanbase faster.

How does this apply to B2B? Where can you focus your sales and marketing efforts? It doesn’t have to be a physical geographical location – perhaps it’s a segment of an industry. But where can you find more ‘fans’ of your solution and build your base with the highest probability of success?

Forrester SiriusDecisions – Free Demand Spectrum Report

Our friends at Forrester are providing free copies of their research report to all registrants of our webinar this Thursday – sign up and we’ll send it to you! Last chance to register!!

As always, if I can help you out, let me know! 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

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