Demand generation for long sales cycle

How long does it take to generate a sales opportunity, 3 levels of demand, and demand generation from the B2B buyer's perspective

How long does it take to generate a sales opportunity?

A lot of B2B companies report their sales cycle length is 90–120 days. They measure it from the first contact with the sales rep. But the buyer journey begins way earlier: from the first impression or marketing touchpoint.

At Fullfunnel.io, our typical sales cycle length is 9–12 months with 80–100 touchpoints across the buying committee of a target account.

(see the screenshot from end-to-end analytics in Dreamdata).

Most B2B companies have a similar sales cycle. But instead of adjusting their marketing and sales to the buyer journey, they:

• Have siloed marketing and sales functions focused on capturing demand only without creating awareness

• Prioritizing short-term tactics instead of long-term programs

• Cutting off programs that are not directly attributing to revenue.

As a result, they complain about declining pipeline and revenue, and claim that demand generation doesn’t work.

In today’s newsletter we cover:

• 3 levels of demand and buying intent based on the buyer journey

• B2B demand generation from the buyer’s perspective

• How we align our demand generation programs with the buyer journey

• How to build a demand generation function from scratch (+ an ultimate guide about demand generation strategy)

Let’s dive in.

Become a revenue-driven full-funnel B2B marketer

If you are a B2B marketer, your core KPIs are really simple: sales-qualified opportunities and revenue. Period.

To generate sales-qualified opportunities and influence revenue metrics such as ACV, deal close-rate and sales cycle length, you need to run demand generation, account-based marketing, lead nurturing, deal expansion and sales enablement campaigns.

It might be frustrating, especially, if you don’t have a prior background or experience of selling to mid-size/enterprise accounts.

So isn’t it time you stopped guessing at every turn… and started running these campaigns with a proven process, frameworks and techniques?

Select on-demand self-paced B2B online training courses to ramp up your skills and accelerate revenue at your company:

• Full-Funnel ABM 2.0

• LinkedIn thought leadership and social selling

• GTM strategy for B2B companies

• Full-Funnel Academy (includes lifetime access to all our courses, private community and events)

3 levels of demand based on the buyer journey

1. Demand for content.

Buying intent: –/low.

Example:

I'm a B2B marketer working for a B2B company with a long sales cycle and high deal size product. I'm interested in upskilling myself, learning best practices and industry trends.

Example journey:

1. I discover good content from a brand, and start following them.

2. I read something very relevant for our situation, and start binging on the related content.

3. I get curious about your solution, and check it out.

4. I may even reach out to you for a demo in order to understand how it works, and the potential benefits for our brand.

5. I might even try to sell it internally, but quickly realize this is not a priority.

6. I ignore your follow-ups.

Demand generation goals:

Motivate your target audience to:

• start following you

• subscribing to your events and newsletter

• engaging with your content.

Typical cycle length: 6–8 months.

2. Demand for solution.

This is a stage where inhouse conversations about possible solutions to the existing challenge start happening.

Buying intent: low/medium.

Example:

We're missing revenue targets by 40%. Our outbound pipeline declines while inbound is unpredictable and generates low deal-size opportunities. What should we do?

Example journey:

1. I start exploring solutions, by searching, asking my network, in niche Slack groups like Trenches.

2. I discover your content or your brand (e.g. someone recommends it).

3. I explore your solution multiple times, and have internal discussions with my team.

4. Since it seems like it might be the right type of solution, I may reach out to you for a demo to understand it better.

5. Meanwhile, we're exploring alternatives.

6. We decide that we can solve our challenge internally, or select a different solution category.

7. I ignore your follow-ups.

Demand generation goals:

• Repetitive visits to your website, including high-intent pages from multiple visitors

• Engagement with solution-based content on social and content hubs

• Sharing your content with colleagues

Typical cycle length: 3–6 months.

3. Demand for vendor.

This is a stage where the buying decision happens. Buyers do vendor research and talk to vetted vendors. The first vendors they select are the vendors that attracted their attention earlier.

Buying intent: high.

Example:

It's clear that we, marketing & sales, never worked as one team focusing on the same goals and targets. We want to go upmarket and generate enterprise opportunities with account-based programs. Which vendor will help us to achieve goals faster with our resources and budget?

Example journey:

1. I evaluate you as a vendor:

   1. I evaluate you're not a good fit, and remove you from a consideration set.

   2. I evaluate you're a good fit, and you end up on the shortlist.

2. I try to build an internal consensus.

3. We review our needs and purchase criteria, and the available alternatives.

4. I introduce you to my colleagues, and we dive deeper

   1. We decide a competitor is a good fit.

   2. We agree that we understand the total cost, and we believe this investment would yield a significant return.

      1. We expect impact X within Y time.

      2. We have a clear plan, the right people and infrastructure to implement the solution.

      3. We understand the change management required and feel confident we will be able to do it.

      4. We understand the main risks, and have a plan for a proof of concept to de-risk our decision.

5. You are vetted by our procurement department.

Demand generation goals:

Generate sales opportunities

Typical cycle length: 1–3 months.

Here is how demand generation looks from the buyer's perspective.

At Fullfunnel.io, our typical sales cycle length is 9–12 months with 80–100 touchpoints across the buying committee of a target account.

It's usually triggered by LinkedIn thought leadership content. Core nurturing channels:

• Weekly newsletter where we dive deeper into ABM, B2B demand generation and GTM strategy for companies with long sales cycles and enterprise sales (the one you read now)

• Live weekly podcast where our community can ask questions and get a detailed answer from us

• Quarter webinars

• Content hubs

To create a sales opportunity, we first help our target accounts with:

• Developing a strong business case to get buy in for the necessary changes from stakeholders and sales

• Highlighting what (and how) can be refined in their current marketing programs

• Creating pilot programs with clear metrics, timeline, resources and budget

A lot of B2B companies pay attention only to creating demand for a vendor and claim their sales cycle length is 1–3 months.

They ignore the rest of the buyer journey and pay a solid ROI tax on it.

Buyers that are in market spend 6–9 months consuming content related to their jobs-to-be-done and business challenges.

Before they become in market, they create a list of preferred vendors.

If you want to be among them, make sure your demand generation program is aligned with the buyer journey.

In the next chapter I’ll share how to create B2B demand generation function from scratch.

Drive pipeline THIS quarter with a full-funnel ABM programs.

If any of these challenges sound familiar:

• You are aligned in theory with sales but don’t do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives. 

• You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you don’t know how to fix it

• Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.

• You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales can’t get even a reply. 

• You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets

We can help. 

We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.

How to build a B2B demand generation function from scratch

* Download infographics to zoom in.

Here are 10 steps we take to build a B2B demand generation function from scratch.

1. Develop a demand gen strategy.

Demand gen is not a bunch of organic and paid tactics. Make sure you have:

• Clear ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

• Marketing message

• Goals and resources

2. Run customer research.

Run customer interviews and analyze the digital behavior of your buyers to understand:

• What channels do your buyers use for education and research?

• What are the questions and topics they are interested in?

• What are their KPIs, “jobs to be done” and the typical challenges?

• Who do they follow and trust?

• What communities/associations do they engage with?

Here is an episode where we describe the entire process.

3. Categorize demand topics.

• Business triggers that can push your buyers to start looking for a solution

• Demand triggers: what can attract their interest and motivate them to learn more about the problem or an opportunity?

• Discovering and evaluating solutions

• Decision-making: what can influence their decision?

Look at 3 levels of demand above.

4. Prioritize demand generation programs.

Map out all demand generation programs you believe make sense to launch. Prioritize them by:

• scope

• budget

• resources

• ease of launching

• potential impact.

5. Develop or refine demand capturing.

Before launching a pilot demand gen program:

• Reduce friction points (long inquiry forms, pricing unavailable, etc.)

• Define one process of demand capturing (retargeting of engaged accounts, intent data, etc.)

6. Launch a pilot program.

Don’t push all of your resources into the pilot campaign. Instead:

• Define the goals and align them with sales and execs.

• Define a small pilot team

• Select only one channel and one program. Don’t do multiple things in parallel.

• Create a clear timeline and leading metrics to track progress.

7. Operationalize demand generation program.

After your campaign gets traction, document the process and onboard or hire a team member to maintain the campaign.

You need clear workflows and demand generation calendar, not a bunch of chaotic tactics.

8. Create a demand generation report.

Add a mix of self- and digital attribution (digital analytics + How did you hear about our product?) to show the impact of demand generation on revenue.

Below is a video where we explain how to measure demand generation.

9. Scale demand generation function.

Gradually launch and document new demand generation and demand capturing campaigns.

10. Document and build a demand gen team.

Don’t hire for the process that doesn’t exist in the beginning. Bring people to maintain the existing campaigns, refine them and give some space for experimentation.

Below is a guide on developing cross-functional teams.

Full-Funnel B2B marketing function and cross-functional teams

Join a waitlist for our B2B full-funnel demand generation course.

In summer, we are going to record a new step-by-step demand generation course designed for B2B companies with long sales cycles.

It covers everything: from a detailed review of demand gen programs that work to getting buy-in from senior leadership and sales.

Sign up below and get an early-bird ($100 off, $249 instead of $349) discount when the course goes live.