Time heals all wounds; it's just that the older you get, the more time it takes to heal. In the last post, I talked about ending up in the hospital. I have been on the mend, but the two weeks since have not been enough to get me back to 100%.
I had a week where I neglected (or just flat out could not do) yardwork. This week (being a holiday weekend) gave me more time to finish it. Usually, what could be done in a day took two and a half days. I found that slowing down actually helped me do a better job.
I have an electric mower, and it stalls if the grass is too long. If you slow down over the tall grass, it does a pretty good job of making it through and mulching the grass. I used the trimmer to clean up around the fence. Slower edging made crisper lines. All of the slowing down yielded a better job.
That does not mean that I will slow down in the future when I have more energy, but it's good to get the perspective of what it's like to speed through a job vs. slowing down for more precision.
The Need for Speed
When it comes to business, we often measure effectiveness in speed and efficiency. Tasks that are repeatable, automatable, or redundant can benefit from systems. These systems can range from homegrown spreadsheets to full-blown programs designed to automate results.
Businesses are often finding utility and benefits from AI-driven systems in this area. AI can be programmed to simplify, automate, quantify, and perform many other tasks that often take 2-3 times the work and man-hours or more. So you can do more with less effort.
More content, images, video clips, and crisper audio may yield more volume and pure quantity of content that you can post and distribute, but will it actually make a difference?
What's the Intent?
Often, we equate numbers with success. More content should reach more people, reaching more people should create more impressions, and more impressions should create more engagements, but what is the purpose or end goal of posting all of this, and what does that engagement mean to you?
Sure, making a sale is the ultimate goal in business, but there is often an event that prompts that sale. For example, if you run an e-commerce business, you can't generate a sale unless someone puts an item in a cart, which can then be ignored, abandoned, or completed. (Your software will tell you those numbers.) If your cart numbers are good, but you are closing 10% (sales), then you have an issue. Communication can often help or even fix that. Clear return policies, money-back guarantees, and even access to a human for questions can all improve those cart-to-close ratios.
If you are running a B2b business with a sales team, the event that prompts a sale is usually a conversation between a customer and a salesperson. So the thing to focus on is the activity, content, or action that is causing those conversations. Just like abandoned carts, not every conversation will lead to a sale, but you can measure the effectiveness of those conversations and what your team can do to improve the closing ratios.
When Less Is More
As I mentioned before, more content does not always equate to more sales. Rather, we want to pay attention to the specific content that leads to the actions that initiate those sales conversations. More often than not, it is a blog, video, or educational piece that causes someone to download something or fill out a contact form. If you can find one or multiple pieces of content that create action, you should track that action and watch trends of what is causing more conversations and closing sales.
What often happens is that when something works, people and companies tend to create more (pile on), which dilutes the effectiveness of what was working and dulls your ability to pinpoint what is really working.
The bottom line is: track success, try to pinpoint what makes it tick, and then try another approach to see if you can replicate it.
Feedback Loop
If possible, try to get feedback from both the client and the salesperson. Obviously, you can track the path to the conversation with the salesperson. It could be a LinkedIn Ad that leads to a teaser post, which the user clicks to get back to your site to read the full article. From there, you can track (with local cookies) how they got from the article to the salesperson. It could be filling out the contact form, or downloading a report, an ebook, or a catalog. Understanding the path (or funnel) can help you possibly replicate this with other products' content.
When it comes to customer feedback, provide your salesperson with a short questionnaire. They can interject questions and log answers during the initial conversation. Some salespeople may call this a script or a playbook, but it's best when presented less formally and more conversationally.
The bottom line is: create less content and gather more data on what is working and what is not!
Closing Thought
I know that mowing the yard is a task. I can choose to do it myself, or I can outsource. I know when I hire someone, they have one goal. They want to complete the task as fast and efficiently as possible. They may come with a team where one guy is edging, another is weed wacking, and the other is riding a turbocharged speed mower. The team can do a yard in one-tenth the time I could, but their attention to detail may suffer. Will the job be good enough? Sure, but then you miss the feedback you get by doing it yourself.
Where is the grass growing fastest? Where are the dead spots? Will the landscapers stop to pick up dog poop or just run it over and drag it through the yard?
It just depends on your desired result. Do you want to get the job done, or do you want to experience and improve the process?
Recovering from my illness made me slow down and notice that the grass is NOT greener on the other side of the fence. Hard work makes it look so good, which is a big part of my homeowner pride.
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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?
To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at The Bacon Podcast.
