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

Do you ever start an email and just sit there waiting for the words to magically appear? Sometimes they present themselves to you in the strangest of places… while cooking dinner, while working out, or while standing in the shower thinking (which happens to be a great song by Jane’s Addiction BTW). Or sometimes you just need to kick yourself and ask, ‘What am I trying to say?’

Give this song by Lenny Kravitz a listen with me as we see what the %$# the experts are saying this week.

The Proliferation of Profanity

This article really intrigued me. Lottie, a firm that helps people find personal care homes, commissioned a study of 35,000 songs from the 1950s through 2010s to determine how lyrics have changed. There are some cool charts and some very interesting stats. What caught my eye was how explicit and sex lyrics have changed through the decades.

Take a look at the charts in the article – it’s fascinating stuff. As you can imagine, certain words are much more standard in lyrics today vs. a decade ago (or four, or seven). And we see that in all aspects of culture – TV, print, digital.

Have you noticed the proliferation of profanity in business communications? Is it now common to swear in a business meeting? In a LinkedIn post? As marketers, we’re always taught that your brand ‘voice’ is important. But if your brand is about a certain lifestyle, or caters to a certain audience, perhaps the profanity is appreciated. Has this crossed into the mainstream?

What the %$# are YOU saying to your customers? How are you saying it? And would you say it to them in person?

Making Connections IRL

How many business or personal connections have you made at an event? In spite of the forced move to virtual events over the past 2 years, we seem to be transitioning back to in-person events as soon as we can. We’re social beings overall – and nothing beats making those connections in person, right?

Our friend Gary Amaral from Breadcrumbs.io has a great take on this – our primary social instincts are just too powerful! Will we ever understand? Who knows… but Gary believes that making connections in real life leads to exponentially more value in every way. Live events provide us with opportunities for learning, relationship building, and deep business development.

Think back to the number of ‘random’ connections you’ve made at conferences. I can name many chance conversations and connections from past Dreamforce conferences that have added extreme value – either in the form of new client or vendor relationships or other important business connections. Have you been able to build those same connections virtually?

I am so excited to be hosting an event later this month with a local Senior Sales and Marketing networking group that I’ve developed over the past 2 years. It will be amazing to get a chance to hang out and network and just have some great conversations IN PERSON.

What do you think? How will we ever know if we never try?

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

The post Profanity’s Professional Proliferation appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

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

This time of year is always tough. For some, it’s full of sadness and feelings of emptiness and loss – kids are back at school, summer is ending, relationships are changing… it’s easy to feel sad and down and get caught up in the turmoil of the season! And how do you keep your team motivated – need I remind you that Q3 is almost over already?!?

This song by Smashing Pumpkins evokes a ton of memories for me… and it seems to have some glimmers of hope in it! Let’s listen and try to collectively ease the pain as we see what the experts are saying this week.

When I Can, I Will

Are your sales reps focusing on the wrong things? I loved a recent post by Art Sobczak on LinkedIn. So much emphasis in sales is focused on getting a ‘meeting’ with your prospect. But what’s their preference? According to Art:

A prospect agreeing to a meeting is a result of them seeing some possible value in speaking with you further. Not in you wanting to “get 15 minutes on their calendar.”

Focus more on what is going on in their world that the RESULT of your product/ service might be able to address.

Do your research, craft your approach accordingly – personalized and customized of course – ask questions during the initial conversation, and then quality meetings are a result, IF they feel you might have something that can help them/their organization.

I totally agree with this – sales and prospecting success is not about what YOU want. We need to ensure that our prospecting is smart, focused, and not self-centered and generic. Try to understand that when you can show a prospect value, they will talk to you!

Hail Satin! (Yes, you read that right)

I mentioned the Foo Fighters album of Bee Gees covers a while back (it’s actually pretty good!). Well, I’ve got some more ’70s nostalgia-related news for you! You may have heard that the original members of ABBA announced a reunion recently.

They’ll be releasing an album of new material, and supporting it with some live-ish performances. On May 27, 2022, they’ll perform a digital concert in London – with the performances handled by ABBA avatars, each modeled after the members as they looked in 1979 (also a great Smashing Pumpkins song!).

All our time can’t be given back – but maybe this is a way for those aging bands that can’t tour physically anymore to stay in front of fans and still be relevant (and still look like we remember them from their prime)!

Is this the future of B2B events as well? Digital avatars and fancy light shows? Who knows – but it will definitely ensure life won’t be so, so dreary!

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

The post It’s a Give and Take with Prospects – but Focus on the Give appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

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

Summer mornings at the lake can be very peaceful… the sounds of birds going about their morning business, water gently splashing against the shoreline, and the soothing echoes of… chainsaws!? Our lives are interrupted daily by these unwelcome intrusions! Hopefully your summer is going well and this blog series can serve as a welcome distraction – NOT an unwelcome disruption!

Give this song by Stone Temple Pilots a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week. Take it away, boys…

Nothing’s for Free – So Sell the Value!

I’ve been talking a lot lately with our clients and our internal project teams about dealing with price objections. Do these objections stump your sales teams? I wonder if it’s this time of year…

Whatever the case may be, I thought it would be worth sharing a great post from our partners at VanillaSoft – they define 4 common price objections: budget, high price, lacking features, and time. What are the price objections YOUR team gets regularly?

Communicating VALUE is what transforms these objections into opportunities, and Darryl Praill outlines the top ways to establish value when dealing with these objections:

• Establish and refine value early
• Know your own value
• Be prepared if you’ve previously given discounts
• Be confident
• Be willing to accept a ‘no’

See the complete article here. Communicating value can be tough sometimes – but it’s all about the story you tell. Is your team telling the right story, or do they all just hum along?

The Downward Spiral of Concert Cancellations

Concert and tour cancellations are starting (again). Last week, Nine Inch Nails announced the cancellation of their upcoming 2021/22 tour, leaving fans disappointed and the industry anxious about the future of live events again!

They’re not alone. Florida Georgia Line also cancelled their upcoming tour – and according to some, they may be more worried about pissing off their audiences than about infections! Many of these artists are Live Nation acts and they need to play by the promoter’s rules – which means they can’t go on the road without Covid/vaccine restrictions. And some of these acts that have right-leaning audiences… perhaps they’re worried about their fans’ reaction to the restrictions?

Whatever the reason – there seems to be some ambiguity as far as the future of live events and concerts again. Sure – we have some big tours rolling across the country now, but will these be paused as we see more and more acts cancel? And as B2B marketers – how does this bode for our fall event season?

Some may feel okay selling their soul to sign an autograph, but it seems many bands are backing out of concerts for various reasons. Hopefully the time of cancelled/postponed shows can safely end before live events are just a burning ancient memory.

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

The post Dealing With Those Pesky Cancellations appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

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

It’s official – summer is here! Things are opening up, we’re seeing B2B events and concerts again, and it’s tough not to feel optimistic. Do you feel like I do?

To celebrate, let’s listen to this track from Peter Frampton – one of the best live albums ever (listen to the crowd!) – and see what the experts are saying this week…

Do You Feel Like Your Buyers Do?

We’ve discussed connecting and building trust with buyers many times this past year. It seems to be harder than ever – so how can you connect and convert more customers? The answer might be empathy – and focusing on an emotional connection before conversion.

Empathy-based marketing is about stepping into your customer’s shoes to understand their experience and how you can better help them get what they want. You don’t want to think like the customer. You want to BE the customer.

According to Brian Carroll and markempa, there are 7 ways to apply empathy today:

1. Put your customers first
2. Listen and observe to map buyer motivation
3. Develop (digital) conversations, not campaigns
4. The best marketing (and selling) is helping
5. Give potential customers useful content they want
6. Proximity is influence
7. Practice empathy personally to set an example

You need to move away from marketing-centric thinking to customer-centric thinking and speak to your customer’s motivations from their perspective. Do you feel like your buyers do?

Live Show Formats Likely to Come Back First…

After a year of livestream-only events, it’s interesting to see how things are opening up again. Although live music is slowly returning, packed arenas and clubs may still be a ways off. According to Patrick McGuire (ReverbNation), the live music industry will most likely go through a period of transition, with the following three show formats most likely to return first after the pandemic:

• Distanced outdoor concerts – We’re already seeing festivals and tour dates kicking off!
• Small venue shows – Smaller venues have more flexibility to allow for distancing and other health requirements.
• DIY events – We’ll see artists continue to do interesting events like home-based concerts, etc. as they figure out the ‘new normal’ for live music.

Whatever happens, I think we’re all excited to see the live music scene come alive again!

Boring Work

I saw a great post the other day that I just had to share. I always cringe when I hear people say things like, “I hate doing it,” or “It’s soooo boring.” I think to myself – “Who cares? We ALL have things we don’t enjoy doing!” Here is what JustSell has to say:

“I understand those thoughts and have them too at times. But I also understand, like so many people that have gone before me, that maybe we’re not entitled to everything being perfectly wonderful all the time. Maybe we need to cuddle up with the fact that just because we don’t enjoy every minute of our work doesn’t mean we can’t be more enjoyable (and valuable) to the people around us.

“Maybe we should more often delight in the fact that the opportunity to work (to be of service to others) is a good thing. Maybe that’s our path to a better day.“

Boring work? Come on – let’s do it again!

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

The post Step Into Your Buyer’s Shoes appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

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

Who’s Ready to Return to the Office?

Our friends at the Bridge Group highlight that sales reps and leaders are much more likely to want to return to the office than non-selling office workers. Check out their blog post here, and their ‘decision tree for returning’. What’s the mood at your organization? Are you ready to return? Have your sales teams already returned? It’s easy to be rather mystified during all the upheaval.

Five Pandemic-Induced Trends Changing Business

According to Forrester, changes in customers’ expectations, digital experiences, work, technology, and business resiliency will alter business permanently as a result of COVID-19.

Below are the five macro shifts identified:

1. Safety and convenience influencing future customer expectations
2. Businesses riding the digital engagement wave to create hybrid experiences
3. Firms and governments investing in what was once impossible to drive the future of work
4. Smart firms retiring technical debt fast and then riding the tech disruption wave
5. Business resiliency becoming a competitive advantage

So if we don’t want to be outshined by the competition, we need to adapt and embrace new ways to engage with customers for long-term success.

Are Concerts the Harbinger of All Live Events?

No live concerts before 2022! Marc Geiger, co-founder of Lollapalooza, expects further delay in concerts reopening in this interview with Bob Lefsetz. Sorry, folks. Geiger predicts we won’t see concerts until we’re past the ‘germaphobia economy’ and into the ‘claustrophobia economy’.

Do you think this is going to be the same for B2B events? It’s amazing how things have changed. Chris Cornell’s line, “I’m looking California and feeling Minnesota”, has a whole different meaning now.

I hope you found some ideas here to help you along the way. Keep shining!

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or ask how I can help.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat | President | Virtual Causeway | 519.866.1600 x622

The post B2B Macro Shifts Underway appeared first on Virtual Causeway.