Why it is imperative to develop a data-driven process to grow and maintain your market share—refusal will result in martyrdom.
“Is this even worth my time to read?”
The short answer is, “yes,” though total transparency—this article was not published to instill any fear or uncertainty. Quite the opposite, though I kindly ask to buckle the f*ck up for this one, folks (excuse my French). However, this is only a small piece of the puzzle.
I will be shocked if you end up walking away sans-enlightenment. Today’s goal is to create awareness and provide certainty by taking you on a journey through the historically broken “traditional” marketing and sales processes and its anti-traditional data-driven future.
How it all began.
It all started at the beginning of the “Dial for Dollars” era. When the phonebook was literally the salesperson’s “Bible.” A time when cold calling was a go-to strategy to sell effectively. Connecting with people was more complex, and reach was short. Trust was almost immediately assumed because the integrity of the company brand protected it. Alternative choices for products and services didn’t exist yet or had little to no awareness outside of small geographical regions.
What did the process look like during this golden era?
You’d pick up the phonebook, dial a couple of dozen businesses, and walk away with a handful or two of meetings that are likely to result in a sale, then meet with them in their offices the following week.
Marketers were living in the “Mad Men” era. It was simple broadcast commercial ads, create radio jingles, erect billboards, and send direct mail and parcel services to get the word out directly. The tangible world where you can smell, taste, touch, etc., is much more limiting, but the limit made it far more manageable.
Selling and marketing are not the numbers games we thought. We were misled.
Unfortunately, this isn’t how the world works anymore, yet organizations all over the globe are still trying to function as if it were still the glory days. ConnectAndSell’s data on 48M+ cold calls says it takes ~3,000+ dials to set a meeting that results in a proposal opportunity.
“UHM… WHAT?!”
Marketers are sending thousands of emails and running digital ad campaigns that result in a less than 1% conversion rate. It’s nothing short of appalling.
Where did it all start going downhill?
At the birth of “modern” sales and marketing (c. 1990s), when the digital age began, the internet became a standard household service, digital ads and email marketing sprung up, etc.
The more connected people became, the less effective traditional sales and marketing strategies became.
We tried making up for this by getting extremely efficient with digital sales and marketing. However, it quickly transformed into a bunch of white noise and a mess of automated, meaningless messages flying around that was coined as the well-earned name we all know, called “spam.”
“Why?” You might ask.
Mainly because the ease to mass-communicate is inexpensive and easily accessible thanks to the beautiful innovation called “the internet.” Cheap, high-volume outreach results in endless noise.
The ability to be seen and heard becomes impossible because we’ve all become lost in a sea of distraction and misguidance. The more noise we create to get our prospects’ attention, the more noise others make to do the same. It all ends up as a highly ineffective cluster f*ck.
Less than 3% of the marketplace consists of active-looking stage buyers willing to listen to you. How do you expect them to hear, notice, or even acknowledge you? By doubling your outreach and advertising?
STOP!
You’re only adding to the problem. It’s like a heroin addict taking a small dose of heroin to make the sickness go away. It’s a short-term fix for a long-term, deadly problem.
Questions people are constantly asking themselves:
“How do I know I’m reaching the right audience?”
“Who can I trust when I need help?”
“Why do salespeople aggressively spam me offerings I don’t need?”
“Do others think my sales team aggressively spams them like that too?”
“Where should I be looking for more customers like the ones I have?
We don’t need more leads. We need more opportunities that fit.
Generating more leads is adding to the problem. High-volume outreach and the mass distribution of irrelevant content are a plague riddling the marketplace. It’s almost pointless since most have learned to tune all of it out.
We’ve managed to make selling and marketing nearly impossible for ourselves. And yes, we did it to ourselves.
How can a data-driven process help fix this?
The largest gap I’ve noticed while working with clients and staring at millions of sales and marketing data points throughout my career is that most organizations have no idea who their actual ideal target is.
Most Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) amongst sales teams go about 3-6 layers deep, though marketing teams aren’t much better, holding an average of 5-10 characteristics. (Gartner Study)
Does this sound familiar?
“Our ideal targets are VPs of Sales, CROs, and Sales Directors in the US, and the UK, who work in the SaaS industry, and whose companies’ size are between 500-5,000 employees.”
Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it.
Well, guess what? It’s not good enough.
AI data analysis can define your actual ideal target.
Without a data-driven process and advanced analytics on our client bases, we cannot get deep enough into its reality or remotely comprehend our actual target at a human level.
Realistically, a Total Addressable Market (TAM) in Business-to-Business (B2B) will likely consist of ~100,000 qualified prospective buyers.
Why the heck are we targeting millions of people, then?!
Stop generating more leads to find the needle in the haystack.
Find the needle in the needle stack!
Target with high-precision granularity upfront to accurately identify the people who fit.
Results of a hyper-targeted data-driven approach.
Minimized brand damage, effective messaging around hyper-relevant target groups, less noise in the market, and relationships are the keystone of business development—which it seems we’ve all somehow forgotten that’s the way it’s always been.
We control our fate.
Stop imagining a world where you can reach out to those you can help most without climbing a skyscraper of “no” s to get there. Make it your reality. It’s up to you and you alone.
I’ve dedicated my career to molding our data-driven future for marketing and sales by founding White Rabbit Intel to build innovative AI for optimized marketing and sales excellence.
My professional suggestion: “Hop on the train now, or get left behind to die with ‘tradition.'”
