Every business requires sales to grow and establish its domain in the marketplace. As business owners, we have all tried relentlessly to achieve our goals by employing various marketing techniques to fuel our sales targets, and more recently have been relying heavily on digital marketing as well. And yet, many businesses are faced with poor Return on Investment (ROI) or results that do not look encouraging.

It is therefore important to first understand the truths that govern business sentiments today and how these truths are shaping buying decisions.

Truth 1: We are in a world of business transformation

It is essential to realise that in sales, especially B2B, we are not selling to companies or businesses. The ideal clients or prospects are real people, with real careers, aspiration and fears. All our marketing activities should cater fundamentally to these soft-aspects that ultimately affect buying decisions. If your service solves a problem, helps in building a better career / business for your prospect, and makes them feel good, the buying decision becomes easier.

Truth 2: We are living in a more connected world than before

The internet is the largest adventure we are all a part of, and this is just the beginning. The smartphone is an indispensable part of our lives, and no matter how much we may resist this onslaught of internet in our daily lives, we can not ignore its power to help our business grow. Smartphones and online media have captured our greatest resource: ATTENTION. So, given the power of attention, we have the opportunity to make an immediate impact on our prospects.

Truth 3:  The B2B buying process has fundamentally changed

The days when you could simply cold-call/email your way to a sale are long gone. Today, decision-makers who are considering higher-level service are asking questions, seeking out advice and making their final decisions, all on social media.

If you want your business to not only survive but thrive in this fast-evolving business world, then you must take these truths to heart.

By understanding that what we do on a very basic level changes the lives of our clients (Truth 1). It is imperative to instruct and advise our ideal customers of these realities. And given that the connected world we live in has provided us with the power to reach every decision-maker in our world instantaneously with micro-targeted content (Truth 2), and that they are now using that content to drive their own buying decisions (Truth 3), means that we now have the ability to educate and inform our ideal clients of these truths.

What is Relevance?

‘Relevance’ determines your business’ survival in a rapidly evolving world. Following are the pillars of business relevance.

1. Your client avatar (Pain)

This is who your target prospect is, and more importantly the ‘pain’ they're in, and what ‘vision’ they want to achieve. This doesn't mean the avatar most of us think when we start defining our ideal client as a ‘young CEO based in Mumbai’. That's not really our ideal client avatar. The first step to defining a real client avatar is to define the pain that they're going through. Pain is what a business owner goes through when they are either unable to generate revenue or unable to satisfy their clients or unable to keep their employees motivated.

2. Your signature offer (Vision)

This is your unique methodology, or vehicle, to pull them from their state of ‘pain’ to their ‘vision’. This is the vision of eliminating the risk of a bad business decision. The vision of engaging in top assignments and the vision of looking golden to their clients or employers and getting that well deserved promotion they've been working for years. You, as a service provider, need to align your signature offer with their vision and their aspirations.

3. Your messaging (Journey)

It is the journey of your ideal client's ‘pain’ to their ‘vision’ getting fulfilled that you must track. It is the funnel you need to map out to generate a high-quality client. Funneling is a psychological journey. A funnel is an extension of great content created for your audience, and it's that great content that does most of your selling, so that by the time you're on the phone or face-to-face with your prospect, the hard job of selling is done. No one wants to be sold by the salesperson in front of them. People want to sell themselves, research themselves, look up reviews for themselves. They want to be informed buyers.

Whichever digital platform you utilise, whatever amount of money you may spend on these channels, unless you are not relevant, unless you are not reminding yourself and your target market about the truths in today's business, and unless you are not giving a journey to your target prospects, your digital marketing efforts will remain futile.

Here is the key takeaway from this article: Identify your clients genuine pain points, create your solution around that pain and finally map a funnel that addresses their concerns on the platforms that they are present on.

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