The nation of Papua New Guinea has no idea how many people it has. The official count, according to this article in Financial Times, is 9.4 million, but other valid data shows that the population may be closer to 17 million. Apparently when asked to guess, the Prime Minister thought the population might be closer to 11 million.

That’s an entertaining factoid … until it’s not. How does a nation without any grasp on its population provide services? Collect taxes? Build schools and hospitals? Calculate wear and tear on roads? 

Before you finish shaking your head at the short-sightedness of others and go on with your life, let me ask you this: Do you know the number and value of leads in your sales pipeline right now? Do you know what percentage of those leads will ultimately close, and how long it will take for the average lead to move through each phase of the pipeline? Do you know what the dropoff will be from phase to phase? Can you make an accurate revenue forecast based on that activity? Are you using those accurate sales forecasts to create cash flow forecasts?

Most B2B small and medium-sized enterprises are still managing sales with 20th Century sales tactics.

• Exhibit at (or walk) trade shows to collect leads
• Run ads in trade magazines
• Buy industry lists
• Send cold emails
• Hire lead-generation services

Some (but by no means all) B2B SMEs have beefed up websites to get more inbound leads, and have their marketing departments nurture those leads until they are qualified, at which point the leads are thrown over the wall to sales. All these methods tend to be used as individual tactics, different sales people preferring some of those tactics over others. 

But that kind of I’ll do it my way you do it your way sales method throws strategy out the window and leaves business owners without the control they need to manage growth. Falling short on sales goals is obviously hard on cash flow and profits. But coming in far ahead of sales goals can cause operational and quality problems that reverberate through the organization and cause customers to lose trust.

What’s necessary is to consistently fill the sales pipeline with relevant leads and to be able to reasonably predict how that pipeline activity will relate to sales in both timeframe and dollars/pounds/euros/etc.

Many people incorrectly believe that sales forecasting is just a glorified term for dusting off the crystal ball and making a prediction, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Companies using modern tools for sales management are able to build, manage, monitor, and analyze sales pipelines to increasingly accurate degrees. 

From a sales perspective this degree of control over sales is incredibly empowering. Each day the salesperson can look at what’s in the deal pipeline and proactively do the work to keep moving all their prospects and re-purchasing customers through to close. Even better, managing this way eventually leads to insight about what causes prospects to drop off between phases, which in turn can lead to the development of resources to mitigate the dropoff and improve close rates (and therefore, revenue).

From a management perspective, the benefits are even greater. Discussion about the challenges of managing distance employees has been a pandemic-era phenomenon, but challenges around maintaining visibility to sales team performance — many of whom have always worked from a distance all or part of the time — are well-known. Using the proper tools for sales enablement, sales managers can see how each team member is doing relative to managing their deal pipelines, coach them in specific rather than generic ways, and gather insights useful for training, product line and channel alignment.

If you are a member of a Fortune 1000 sales team, then this information is probably old hat. But for the majority of small and medium-sized enterprise owners, the tools necessary for this type of sales enablement have been unaffordable and largely unimplementable until very recently. 

Salesforce has long been recognized as a sales enablement tool, but in recent years HubSpot has added a suite of features specifically designed for holistic management of an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. For the smallest businesses, Keap can be used for sales enablement as well, though without some of the automation and integration benefits more readily available with HubSpot and Salesforce.

Unfortunately, ineffective implementation of sales enablement platforms has left a bad impression on many sales teams. These problems are actually relatively easy to fix systemically, but resistance at the individual and sometimes cultural level frequently gets in the way.

At StrategyWerx, we embrace a technology agnostic approach to systems implementations. This enables us to remain objective about fitting customers with the right tools for their strategy, organization, technology stack, and culture. We maintain certifications in many different software applications and platforms in order to support our customers, and by maintaining relationships with platform providers we are also often able to pass on access to additional services and/or savings. Looking at the three main marketplace sales enablement tools, we tend to frame them in these ways:

• HubSpot: For larger small businesses (10 employees and up) through large enterprises with significant B2B sales pipelines that also pursue a significant marketing practice (inbound, outbound, and/or ABM). 
• Salesforce: For medium and large enterprises fielding large sales forces with more focus  on channel selling than marketing. Salesforce’s marketing features and automation are not as developed as they could be as they still rely on 3rd party tools.
• Keap: For small businesses (10 employees and under) that want to implement basic sales pipelines and integrate them with marketing. Keap’s toolset is much smaller than that of HubSpot or Salesforce, but the pricepoint is more accessible for small  businesses and toolset is sufficient for most companies at the beginning stages of growth.

With 80% of business owners concerned about labor shortages in 2023 and 38% already planning to hire, it’s no surprise that business automation is high on planned investment lists. Just remember that business automation isn’t just about administrative and operational benefits … sales and marketing enablement and automation should be a big part of those investment calculations. Not only will the right tools save you time and improve productivity and quality, they can also shorten the time from lead to invoice and increase the number of leads you convert.

To grow a business, you don’t need to attract every single customer. You just need to attract the right customers. It’s something we’ve been helping our clients do for years, whether retailer, supplier, or manufacturer. In order to do this, you need a strategic growth plan, which involves reflecting on your business’s strengths, weaknesses, and values. When you know yourself, you get a better idea of the types of customers you can best serve. Account-based marketing (ABM) is a powerful tool for attracting, retaining, and serving the right customers.

What is Account-Based Marketing?

You may think that the recent emphasis on customized experiences is just a B2C phenomenon. In a retail setting swamped by choice, customers seek out customizable, personalized experiences with businesses that share their values, that speak their language. It’s not just the retail consumer looking to connect with a business it can vibe with. The same turn toward personalization is happening in the B2B sector. In this environment, it is more important than ever to focus on the right kind of client, to go into every marketing campaign with a clear sense of who you are and what you have to offer.

ABM is a sales method that, as part of your manufacturing sales strategy, will help you get focused and stay focused on selling to the right clients. At its core are just good marketing principles: creating targeted, persuasive messages for specific customers. In practice, it’s a method for aligning the work of marketing, sales, operations, and customer service into a unified team focused on generating revenue.

Marketing Is not Just for Retailers

In the B2B world, opportunities for growth can be limited by the small number of potential customers in your industry and long sales cycles. This is especially true for sales growth in the manufacturing sector. ABM can overcome these limitations by focusing on providing personalized service to a smaller number of high-value accounts.

Marketing and messaging can often seem too squishy and imprecise for B2B organizations, whose customers are driven more by research, data, and experience than by the kinds of emotional appeals that might sway the everyday consumer. The extent of many B2B organization’s marketing efforts is having salespeople get on the phone with suppliers or get in the car to talk with potential buyers in person.

If you want to grow, however, you’ve got to not only be proactive but focused and intentional, crafting the right message for the right customer. You craft that message by gathering data and building from what you know works. ABM is a data-driven, results-based approach that allows you to track sales activity and marketing effectiveness the same way you manage and track production activity.

Tailored Marketing Campaigns for High-Value Accounts

ABM is a strategy best suited to sectors where annual account value is high and number of sales opportunities is low. An ABM approach is about crafting clear, targeted messages for a targeted group of high-value customers. Contrast this with the traditional approach to marketing, in which you attempt to appeal to the broad universe of clients for whom you might be a “good” fit. The most likely result of that approach is time wasted chasing leads that amount to nothing. You will avoid wasted effort and convert more leads if you zero in on the clients for whom you are the “perfect” fit. ABM lets you target them in a way that shows them that you have taken the time to understand them and what they need.

Demonstrating to B2B decision makers that you understand and can deliver exactly what they need is crucial in manufacturing. Whether it's through webinars, blog posts, newsletters, ebooks, social media, sales emails, or paid ads, ABM ensures that you’re pushing the right content through the right channels for every stage of the customer journey.

Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams for a Cohesive ABM Strategy

The key to a successful ABM strategy is teamwork. Management, marketing, and sales can’t remain in their own boxes, passing customers back and forth to each other with no clear purpose or collaboration. All departments must bring together their expertise to:

• Create an accurate ideal customer profile
• Distill the essence and capabilities of the organization into a clear and targeted message
• Identify suitable clients
• Gather data on the best way to reach those clients
• Identify tools and information that will help educate the prospects at each stage of their buying journey
• Put the ABM plan into action

These bullet points do not denote a linear process but just some of the actions an organization will take while constructing and implementing an ABM strategy. Take for example a make-to-order manufacturing company experiencing a period of low demand. Their approach to seeking out new customers, which includes a PPC advertising campaign, a broad direct mail marketing campaign, and cold calling prospects, isn’t producing results.

With the help of StrategyWerx, the company shifted to an ABM approach as part of a sales organization upgrade. We helped them develop an ideal customer profile, conduct research on potential customers, and draw up a manufacturing sales growth strategy based on addressing those organizations’ business needs and pain points. To raise their profile among these potential customers, they offered a series of webinars which they marketed through data-backed targeted ads and supplemented with blog posts. They also promoted the webinar through a press release to industry publications. The result? They amassed a new list of warm leads from the webinar’s attendees.

While this webinar reached fewer organizations overall than their earlier scattergun efforts, the company realized a much better return on investment using this ABM approach. They effectively bypassed all the unqualified leads and went straight for the ones they know their business can best serve. Furthermore, they came out of the campaign with a much clearer understanding of their own goals and capabilities, stronger relationships with their customers, and new CRM infrastructure to manage accounts and integrate sales, marketing, and operations teams.

ABM Made Easy

On the surface, this might not look much different from a traditional marketing campaign. But the difference is the planning and the intention behind it. ABM is best used as part of a broader strategic framework, with marketing, sales, and operations all working from the same playbook. As ABM targets only the most qualified leads with personalized messaging, the revenue team must collect and analyze reliable data. The good news is that none of this is as daunting as it seems. We’re here to help you get started with the methods and technology that will unleash growth.

If you want to live a satisfying, rewarding life, you have to play to your strengths. You have to know who you are, what you’re good at, and what you’re not so good at. You’ve got to put yourself in positions that bring out the best in you. Sometimes we just have to get through the day, and the next day, and the next day, but if you don’t have some broader plan or vision for yourself, you end up directionless and stagnant.

It’s the same in business. Too many businesses only plan for the short term and don’t think beyond the current quarter. As important as those short-term goals are, they must be mapped out and executed within the scope of a long-term strategic plan. Setting goals and making plans is vital to the success of any business, as we’ve been saying for years. In this blog post, we’ll focus on strategic planning.

Strategic Planning for Sustainable Growth

Successful growth requires laying the track before the train. The way you do that is with a clearly articulated strategy—a plan designed to achieve a specific long-term goal. Strategic planning involves understanding what you will need to learn, develop, and invest in to accomplish that goal. While this seems like something only larger businesses would have to worry about, strategic planning is even more important for small businesses because they have fewer resources to work with.

Strong planning leads to more efficient and effective allocation of limited resources, which in turn gives you a clear understanding of what you will need in the future. Growth planning is a vital component of strategic planning.

The Steps of Strategic Planning

1.       Where Are You Now?

Strategic planning is a fluid process, but there are some steps every business must take to assess its current capabilities and identify areas for improvement. First, take a look at where and what you are right now. Ask yourself the following questions.

• What is your competitive advantage?
• What makes you different from other businesses offering similar products or services?
• Who are your current customers, and why do they work with you rather than another manufacturer?

You will also want to assess your business’s current capabilities: your personnel, processes, and production.

• What is the capacity of your current staff and facilities?
• What is your current unit cost and market share?
• Are you operating at close to capacity or do you have built-in room to grow?

Take, for example, a company whose employees are at their limits in terms of the hours they can work and the productivity they can provide. You have employees doing multiple jobs. You’re having to turn away new clients. You’re managing the floor while also doing the marketing and trying to run the company. Your strategic plan is going to look a lot different than the strategic plan of a company that is actively seeking out new clients because its employees and facilities have so much unused capacity.

2.       Where Do You Want to Go?

After assessing where you are, it’s time to think about where you want to go. What are your growth goals? At this point, you’re looking at a roadmap and planning your route. You could just get on the road and follow the signs, but you might end up spending more on gas, food, and lodging along the way as you spend time correcting wrong turns, sitting in traffic, and diverting around construction. Good strategic planning gets you to your goal faster and with fewer resources expended.

• Where would you like this business to be one, three, five, ten years from now?
• What are some model businesses who have already achieved that kind of growth? How did they do it?
• How will you conduct sales and marketing with growth in mind?
• How will you raise sufficient capital to invest in growth?

3.       How Do You Get There?

With your destination in mind, you can begin planning your route, so to speak. Note that the first question below is about your staff. Every employee of the company should be involved in strategic planning. They should be aware of the company’s plan and understand the role they will play in its future.

• Will your current staff need any additional training in order to scale up?
• What new problems will growth bring?
• How can you adjust your processes to accommodate adjustments?

One company that successfully implemented strategic planning for growth is Oakland Fortune Factory, owned by Alicia Wong and her mother Jiamin. Jiamin needed her daughter’s help with translation, but Alicia arrived with a vision of what the company could become. There are plenty of fortune cookie manufacturers, but Alicia saw a niche for gourmet fortune cookies with customization options.

It’s not just a vision for cookies that guided the company’s strategic planning, but a vision for the company’s place in the world. “My passion and my purpose are to use the cookies to help nonprofits that work for social justice,” Alicia told The Oaklandside. Finding a niche, understanding the company’s purpose, and analyzing available capital, staffing, and capacity all came together through a plan that allowed the company to grow and thrive.

Accommodating Scalability through Flexible Infrastructure

Scalability refers to the ease with which business functions can be expanded. One person making custom jewelry in their garage could be an expensive hobby or a profitable business, depending on the goals and business acumen of the one person in question. But what it is not is easily scalable. Without major organizational changes, a business like that has a definite ceiling. Ask yourself these questions when evaluating your business’s scalability.

• Do you have enough floor space to expand? Is your use of space optimized?
• Is your workspace optimized for workflow so that no time or effort is wasted as products move through different phases of production? How will this workflow change as you expand?
• Are you running at capacity? If so, how can you best increase capacity?

It’s not just physical infrastructure that needs to be flexible. Your IT infrastructure must also be flexible enough to scale up with your business. You’ll need a CRM system that is scalable for businesses of any size, providing as little or as much as you need as your business grows.

Begin Your Growth Journey Today

Laid out like this, it all seems easy. But each of these simple steps requires a lot of thought and research—and often, an expert voice in strategy, management, and organization. You’ve built the train, and you know how to operate it, but you might need help from a specialist in laying down track and blasting through mountains, so to speak. Strategic planning, growth planning, and investing for growth is our specialty. StrategyWerx is here to guide you through your growth journey.