Leadership & sales buy-in
How to persuade and get support from your senior leadership to launch new programs or change the go-to-market approach (e.g. shifting from lead generation)
You want to launch a new program or try a new channel that requires either:
Changing the go-to-market approach (e.g. running brand awareness or thought leadership instead of lead generation)
Involve sales to do joint activities (e.g. Starting a new ABM program or alignment on the key initiatives)
Purchase a new technology to enable a specific process (e.g. intent data)
Bringing a new vendor because of lack of skills/background or capacity
You have a clear plan, but now is the hardest part:
Explaining to sales why the change should happen, and how do you want to work together
Setting up realistic expectations to avoid your program being shut down in 3–4 weeks because “there are no leads”
Justifying the investment to your leadership and CFO.
Today I want to share:
5 stages of leadership buy-in
Required change management and data to get leadership and sales buy-in.
How to justify marketing budget for new programs, technology or vendors
Let’s dive in.
Become a full-funnel B2B marketer who drives revenue
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 (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?
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The pyramid of leadership buy-in
Before sharing specific tactics, let me show how leadership buy-in happens. Here is a pyramid that represents different stages.
1. Problem and it’s root reason for buy-in.
We can’t come to the leadership and say: “We’re missing revenue targets because our playbooks are not working anymore. Let's do X”.
Here are 3 layers of proof and reasoning we use to get a problem buy-in.
a. Analyze lost deals.
What are the most common reasons you lose deals?
Extract and group them
b. Interview sales.
Present to sales the lost reasons and ask their opinion:
“What’s the root reason?”
Compliment their answers with the next question:
“What is the biggest challenge you face, and why do you think it happens?”
Quite often you’ll hear:
It’s hard to get even a reply, not to book a meeting. I think it’s because of lack of brand awareness among target accounts.
c. Analyze recent won deals.
Start with interviewing recent closed won deals.
How did they become aware of you?
Did they check any marketing content before becoming a client?
What internal discussions did they have and how they presented your product?
Why did they decide to buy?
How do they typically do vendor research and evaluation?
Collect and present different touchpoints.
Connect the dots between lost and won reasons.
d. Present performance of the current programs.
One of the most important metrics we look at when evaluating B2B marketing and sales programs is the account-to-pipeline ratio.
It shows how many accounts from your list were converted into sales opportunities. Combine it with the sales pipeline velocity, and you have a clear picture of your program performance.
Here is an example.
Basic analysis shows that it takes more time to generate pipeline with ABM. But this program generates better opportunities with higher win rates, and has a much higher account-to-pipeline conversion rate.
The G2 program generates pipeline and revenue faster, but the quality of the pipeline is worse.
Outbound has the lowest win rate and account-to-pipeline ratio.
If you want to dive deeper, you can also include
ROI
GTM team productivity (time spent on program: pipeline value)
Budget
Reply rates for sales
To make a full picture, create diagrams with different programs performance YoY with monthly breakdown. You’ll clearly see what programs are declining.
Combine it with the lost reasons and sales challenges, and the insights of how your customers buy, and you have a solid challenge proof.
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.
2. Priority buy-in
One of the biggest motivators for leadership to move forward is the cost of inaction.
What will it cost us / what will happen if we don’t solve the problem RIGHT NOW?
My favorite way to present it is showing by what % we’ll miss sales targets and how it will impact our strategic goals (e.g. not getting a new investment).
Use a sales pipeline velocity calculator that clearly demonstrates your revenue trajectory based on the current metrics.
*You can download the sales pipeline velocity calculator with a video explanation here.
3. Program and expectations buy-in.
Now it’s time to get a buy-in for your solution.
Why do what you’ve suggested? How you’ll know it works? What can we expect?
Here is how to present your program.
1/ Plan a short sprint - your company is already running them and is familiar with the concept.
2/ Connect the dots between your program and revenue.
3/ Set clear goals and KPIs.
4/ Define leading indicators as intermediate metrics to track program progress.
5/ Create a detailed plan and timeline, not "we'll run some ads"
6/ Keep your timeline max to 90 days. Focus on 5-7 key activities.
7/ Define the necessary roles you need to involve, time required to maintain tasks and resposnibilities.
8/ Define weekly pillars (key activities) the team members should focus on.
9/ Create monthly report to track program.
10/ Integrate it into a revenue report and track the impact on sales pipeline velocity.
Ideally, you need to compliment your plan with an “external social proof”.
Interview or talk to consultants and marketing agencies that work with your industry, or non-competing companies that made a change you want.
Why did they decide to make a change?
What are their core activities, and why do they run them?
Before / after results
Add it to the entire collateral to get the buy-in for the approach and set up realistic expectations.
4. Resources and KPIs adjustment buy-in.
Every new marketing and sales program should have its own set of leading and lagging indicators. However, if these indicators are controversial to the core incentives/KPIs of the teams involved, the program is doomed.
Here is an example.
Let’s assume you want to increase brand awareness and develop a thought leadership program together with sales. You want to involve one sales rep.
The first question you’ll hear:
How will it help us to hit our sales targets?
Present leading and lagging indicators that are aligned with the core challenge and root reason.
Leading indicators:
Personalized connection requests
Thoughtful comments
Posts
Non-sales touches⠀
Lagging indicators:
Conversations started with the buying committee members of the target accounts
Inbound opportunities
Account engagement
The program requires a mindset shift and KPI adjustment.
If you consider running this program, check our ALLbound LinkedIn playbook.
If core KPIs/Incentives for Marketing (MQLs) and Sales (Dials/cold emails & messages) won’t be adjusted, doesn't matter how successful the program is, the pilot team will be frustrated with the results because of missing KPIs.
But more likely it simply won’t work.
Sales either pitch buyers too early instead of trying to understand where they are in the buying process and how they can help.
Or, when they don't see immediate pipeline/meetings booked, they ignore the program and focus on their KPIs.
Listen to the episode where Divash Basnet, VP Marketing Cardata explains how did he get buy-in from VP sales to involve a sales rep, and how the KPIs were adjusted.
5. Budget buy-in
Here is one of the most important rules to get a budget buy-in:
If you can’t explain how a specific marketing investment leads to revenue or cost reduction, it is treated as a useless expense and won't be approved.
𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞:
Ask for a trial
Run a pilot campaign or create a process/automate existing process
Document it
Show positive signals
Connect outcomes to revenue.
For example, you want to buy a sales and buyer enablement software.
Here is how to connect outcomes to revenue.
Sales enablement software sends real-time notifications when buyers that received content from sales consume it. Sales can see how much time buyers spent and what exact pieces of content and pages they looked at. Sales can do timely personalized follow-ups based on the collected insights and book a follow-up meeting.
As a result, it will help us to win more deals faster.
𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲:
Ask the agency to dive deeply into your business and come up with a personalized program, not a standard offer (e.g. not with “we’ll run ads for you”).
Document the responsibilities of an agency.
Make a forecast with the agency demonstrating the impact on sales pipeline velocity or revenue.
Compare agency skillset and costs to salaries of in-house marketers
Example.
You consider hiring a LinkedIn Ads agency vs making somebody from your team to run LinkedIn ads.
I'd compare how much time you need to:
Plan ads strategy
Create different formats, copy, creatives
Set up pixels and tracking
Run tests and experiments
I'd also include the consequences of running a program by an inexperienced person (high CPC, High CAC, etc.), or if the program is not executed properly.
Most teams, if they consider bringing agency, simply don't have time and resources to run a specific program.
𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦:
Start on a shoestring budget and track positive signals
Document it
Compare to other programs and explain what goals it helps to achieve or what challenges it solves
Make a forecast demonstrating the impact on sales pipeline velocity or revenue
Here is how to structure a pilot.
Next steps
Summarize your research and report in a one-page internal business case that presents:
What do you want to achieve and why?
What would be if not solving it now?
What metrics your program will impact?
What do you expect from your program?
Who will be involved?
What’s required budget?
Later in summer we’ll run a deep dive session for paid subscribers and share a template for internal business cases. You can save your spot without being charged now.
The recession is still there (just look at the volume of layoffs in the B2B tech companies).
Every cent is being reviewed thoroughly.
But here is the great news.
The more you think in terms of revenue, the more you'll look at marketing from key stakeholders' perspectives, the more robust will be your position, and the more support marketing will get.
🙌🏼