"Contact, Convince, Close": The "three Cs" that are no longer enough for B2B Marketing

Marketing in Industrial Companies: The Cultural Context

When we talk about highly engineered companies (IoT, Mechanical Engineering, Life Sciences, Renewables, Oil and Energy, and beyond), marketing has traditionally not been a prominent feature.

This is partly due to a matter of mindset: until a few years ago, the role of marketing in the growth of an industrial company was somewhat elusive, especially for those with an engineering background.

Indeed, even today, there are still some resistances, particularly in a sector that, by its nature, is more concerned with tangible elements and less with "speculative" ones.

However, it is a fact that times have changed. Compared to the past, even professionals with the most technical backgrounds are better attuned to the opportunities offered by, for example, the integration of MarTech ecosystems. Many highly engineered companies, particularly large ones, are finally setting up internal marketing departments. This attests to the need to collaborate with specialized personnel capable of orchestrating systems, technologies, and most importantly, strategies.

To fully understand how these companies operate, it is essential to look at their products and the sales process in which they are involved. Promotion is often not even part of this process. The product is sold before it is even processed, following completely custom criteria.

This means that, especially in ETO (engineered-to-order) contexts, conversion still corresponds to the meeting. And the customer acquisition process is still considered today as the sum of two elements: phone negotiations and business card exchanges. 

‍For some, marketing still develops according to the "three C's": Contact, Convince, Close.

‍When this is the case, it is inevitable that marketing is relegated to the role of the “younger sibling” of commercial activities. At best, these two functions follow separate paths, despite having an equivalent weight within the growth strategy. And this can no longer work.

‍A recent article published by Forbes indicates that the lack of alignment between the objectives of these two departments can have a negative impact on the success of B2B companies, specifically on the stability and growth of their revenues. In short, where there is alignment, there are results:

22.1% of salespeople stated that the key benefit derived from better alignment between the commercial department and the marketing office was that it helped them close more deals (Hubspot, 2022).

‍What solutions can break this traditional paradigm?

‍Times have changed from when the marketing and sales departments could operate in isolation. Today, customers seek a continuous brand experience at every stage of interaction, and even a single mistake in the transition between marketing and sales can compromise the relationship.

The revolution is cultural: it involves harmony, collaboration, and mutual understanding between the various departments and the people involved in the processes. The key concept to keep in mind is this: if the processes between the marketing and sales teams are fluid, better results are achieved in less time.‍

Sales in Power? A No Longer Sustainable Paradigm

The activities of the commercial department undoubtedly represent one of the main drivers in the annual revenue growth of an industrial company.

The task of every Sales Engineer or Business Development Manager is to ensure an increase in annual sales volume while maintaining excellent profitability parameters. Revenues and profits must be maximized year after year.

A responsibility that is certainly not insignificant. But in a landscape characterized by the progressive digitization of customer acquisition channels and methodologies, how sustainable can this setup be?

‍Cold calls succeed in 2% of cases. Such a modest percentage suggests a different approach: it is necessary to present oneself only to those who truly need our products or services.

‍The days when industrial marketing was limited to participating in trade shows and distributing catalogs through agents are over. B2B marketing techniques aim to intercept potential customers who are already interested in the company's products or services. On this front lies the power of synergy between marketing and sales functions: tailored strategies, supported by martech stacks, align well with the sales team’s need to maintain consistent revenue flows.

Whether a company chooses to invest in collaboration with a specialized agency or decides to build its own internal marketing department, these two entities must march toward the same goals in perfect harmony.

Promoting Integration Between Marketing and Sales Departments: A Priority

In today’s dynamics, departments involved in managing business revenue streams must be increasingly aligned. But as we mentioned, the starting point in industrial companies sees sales almost never in tandem with marketing due to cultural barriers.

This issue can be addressed by Revenue Operations (RevOps): a management model that, through the dismantling of classic interdepartmental silos, provides adequate tools to tackle the complexity of today’s B2B customer journeys.

‍The goal is to cover all touchpoints and generate continuous value for customers. 

‍This approach has a significant impact not only on operational efficiency but also on the cultural impasse mentioned earlier. 

On one hand, it aims to enhance the role of the marketing department, giving it a strategic position on par with sales and customer service. On the other hand, it aims to centralize and align the functions of all business units with the goal of improving the overall Customer Experience.

By implementing a series of essential measures, departments will no longer be isolated but finally interconnected. This applies both to the circulation of information and in terms of decision-making processes and the sharing of common data and metrics.

‍The adoption of RevOps is one of the key steps in addressing the traditional fragmentation between sales and marketing departments, in order to create a more integrated and organic system.

‍There are three main objectives to strive for:

• Increased satisfaction of existing customers;
• Efficient use of resources—especially communication—of the sales department;
• Increased conversion rate of prospects into customers.

In summary, it is crucial to understand one key point: the maturation of B2B marketing is centered on a fruitful synergy with the sales department. However, it would be a mistake to consider such a result as the final and definitive goal.

On the contrary, it represents only the initial phase of an internal reconfiguration process aimed at harmonizing three fundamental elements.

The path to the future is traced by the three pillars of Processes, People, and Technologies. These pillars guide the evolution towards a marketing approach more focused on the so-called "PPT framework":

In 1964, Harold Leavitt, the American psychologist specializing in management processes, created a business management model called the "Leavitt's Diamond Model." This model included four elements: people, tasks, structure, and technology. Over time, Leavitt's Diamond has been reinterpreted as "people, processes, and technology" (PPT), often represented as a Venn diagram or a "Golden Triangle," which integrated tasks and structure within the concept of process.

The era of the old "three C's" model—Contact, Convince, Close—is definitely over.