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The English language fascinates me. Words can have different spellings but sound the same, the same spellings but sound different, and all have different meanings… and idioms can confound even native English speakers!

With this month’s Super Bowl, I was reminded of a phrase in football that works for many situations. A top-caliber quarterback knows when to “stay in the pocket,” meaning he doesn’t get distracted by the chaos coming toward him – instead keeping his eyes on the prize, and staying focused on getting the ball into the end zone.

You can also be “in someone’s pocket,” meaning under their control or influence (like a prospect or customer). Or in music “playing in the pocket,” meaning grooving, where the rhythm section is locked in and working as a unit.

Whatever pocket you find yourself in, give this song by Alanis Morissette a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week.

Keep your Sales Team in the Pocket

We’re halfway through Q1 – how focused is your sales team?

Here are some simple tactics to get your sales team on track for 2023 quotas:

• Fill your pipeline each week. This could mean weekly follow-ups to warm contacts, or daily – yes, daily – prospecting.
• Get curious! 74% of buyers say sellers don’t listen. Prove them wrong! Find out how you can provide value for your prospects, not just for your own bottom line.
• Lead a thorough needs discovery. Don’t pounce on the first need you hear from a prospect. Take the time to dig deeper… you might learn of additional needs that give you, the seller, a more compelling case.
• Set goals and develop an action plan to reach them. You’re much more likely to get where you need to go if you have a destination in mind and an action plan to reach it.

They may be simple and straightforward, but often those tactics are the best ones! Which tricks are you using to stay in the pocket and hit your and your sales team’s goals?

Now Hiring – Musicians Wanted!

Musical ability and playing in the pocket aren’t all that make a successful musician. According to DK Music Business Academy, musicians often owe their success to specific traits that are conducive to business. Maybe that’s why so many of them have side hustles (remember Ozzy’s CryptoBatz NFTs?).

What are some of these traits? To name a few:

• Being consistent and making time every single day to create
• Caring about their audience more than vanity metrics
• Exercising patience
• Being able to take the hard (and sometimes long) road

But surely not every person successful in business can also be a celebrated musician. So then, how does this impact B2B?

Hmm, well those traits sound familiar, don’t they? Why don’t you try bumping this list up beside that first one and see how things line up! Regardless of whether you’re a musician, you can certainly draw wisdom and apply it to your own work!

And maybe next time you’re hiring you should be looking for a musician to help fill out your B2B sales roster…

Hot Takes Live – Replays

Our friends at breadcrumbs.io ran ANOTHER kick-ass session of Hot Takes Live. From the death of marketing funnels to data generation and – somehow – fidget toys… there’s a whole lot to learn! Check out the replay here!

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

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What do leads and deals have in common? Well… same letters, different order? (Reminds me of a word jumble – remember that? It was in the newspaper alongside Sudoku and the crossword.) But despite the similarity in appearance, the two are distinct.

Unjumbling – A Lead is not a Deal

I was having a conversation with a client the other day, and realized something – as B2B marketers, many of us create our own word jumbles in our heads – we see or hear leads but rearrange the letters in our head and understand deals. But they are VERY different, aren’t they?

Yes, leads (or a portion of them) should turn into closed deals. But they aren’t there yet. They aren’t even close! A lead is just a lead. Expecting a lead to be a closed sale is a pipe dream; leads still need to be worked. And sometimes you need to work them hard to get them to move forward.

Leads still need to be nurtured, and sometimes leads will die. That’s the nature of the business. Perhaps it’s the optimist in us: we get someone that is a lead and we think they should be a customer. That’s great – that should always be our goal. But realistically, they won’t all be customers. So as marketers/sales professionals, we need to understand that a lead is not a deal. Those 10,000 tradeshow leads are not going to turn into sales. In fact, many (or most) of them only stopped by the booth to enter your raffle.

Cultivating – Leads Won’t Cultivate Themselves

As a young marketer at an enterprise software company in the late ’90s, I fell into this trap. I thought that all of the leads I generated with my campaigns were awesome and I would personally help the company shatter its revenue goals. But I realized pretty quickly that leads require time and tenacity to move through the sales process. I got pretty good at explaining to our sales team why they should keep calling and following up with leads, even after they had left them one message or sent one email. Those 50 webinar registrants aren’t going to turn themselves into sales. Sure they expressed some interest, and filled out a form with some qualification criteria, but they need to be convinced that they need to keep interacting with you.

They need to be cultivated. They need to be guided through the buying process.

So they didn’t return your call when you called them after the webinar? Keep trying! Tenacity! Your competitors are calling/emailing/interacting with them – if you sit back and wait for them to reply or respond, they will probably respond to someone else!

Collaborating – Bring Sales and Marketing Together

Companies like SiriusDecisions have spent years talking about sales and marketing alignment. They have built a powerful niche in the research industry around it. Their demand waterfall is quite powerful – it’s a shared view between sales and marketing of the health of an organization’s new business-related activities. It measures the progression of leads through a range of stages – from cold to closed.

The key here is that it is a progression, and to move leads through the waterfall, marketers and sales professionals need to use various tactics to help leads move through the stages and eventually become deals.

Forget the Pipe Dream – Remember Your Pipeline

Leads are leads. Deals are deals. Don’t mix them up.

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

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