We work with very large companies. Companies that should have a ton of internal resources to handle their challenges and day-to-day needs.
But I can honestly say that I have never had a discovery call and found nothing was needed. Never.
Many teams are spread thin and don’t have the time or resources to execute what is needed for things like GTM campaigns, product marketing or general growth targets.
These are the four common areas that come up over and over:
Pre-Sales and Marketing
1) There is always a new set of problems or challenges related to gaining the attention of your audience and finding new ways to drive demand to sales. This could be researching the exact right audience, creating a content strategy to win their attention, or building trade show content or an ad strategy that works.
Sales and Enablemnent
2) The sales team always needs more help and a methodical approach to move prospects from point A (hand off and discover) to point B (a closed deal) and this takes much longer than it should, and the close percent is much lower than it should be, especially for large B2B enterprise deals.
Training and Internal Communication
3) More training is needed, and better training. No athlete stops practicing, and it’s no different for the internal team. Training needs to happen daily, and there are always better ways to do it so people are their best daily. Competence goes a long wa,y and while most want to skip it or just try to hire an A-player .... Even A-players need training to stay at the top.
Customer Experience
4) Once the customer is sold and closed, you have to maintain the experience with onboarding and ensure they are happy from start to finish. Looking at every touch point with the customer, is it smooth? Is onboarding intuitive? Do you have a central knowledge base that is easy to follow? Are there SOP processes to handle every single touch point? This should be as sticky as possible.
These are the areas we hear about over and over again and what we’re committed to supporting. Each one of these areas is tied to the end-to-end sales journey and is connected to organic growth.
We isolate each area to review what needs to happen to attain the outcome in each.
In our current environment, there have been so many changes at companies that many need support at all levels with these challenges. Work isn’t slowing down; it’s increasing, and while we like to think technology will free us up, the reality is that it’s making us busier, so we have to take on a lot more, which spreads time (and us) thin.
I just finished a book on procurement (Profit from the Source: Transforming Your Business by Putting Suppliers at the Core) at large companies, and it said that over half of all major companies' business is produced by vendors yet most CEO’s pay little attention to the vendors or this aspect of the business. The point it was making was that procurement was a key player and could play a major role in this.
The point is that vendors can be a key tactic in growth if you focus on niche players who are very good at what they do. We did a project recently for the largest company for what they do and a big reason for their growth is because they are an outside company that confronts and handles a key challenge better than anyone, including any internal team.
Oddly, the comment “we have an internal team” comes up a lot, but upon further inspection, there are always gaps and holes.
Just last night, I was at my son’s hockey practice, and one of the parents who works at a very large company you would know if I said it said he is going to skip tomorrow to ski. I inquired further about work and he said “I work at a large company, no one notices if I call in sick.” etc ... Obviously not the end of the world if he misses a day and he’s an ethical guy that gets his work done but the point is, there are always gaps and needs and the faster the business moves the better and if you have highly motivated vendors helping move the giant flywheel of revenue and growth -- it’s good for everyone.
-Robert
