B2B Buying – The Ideal B2B Marketing / Sales Model

Brian Cohen and Nelson Gilliat sat down to discuss the B2B Buying Process and how B2B Marketing Leaders like to buy from Software Vendors.

In this short video, our co-founder and CEO, Brian Cohen explains how he believes that proper B2B Marketing should be done and how Sales should be integrated. Be sure to watch till the end and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Author bio

Brian has 15+ years as a marketing strategist and visionary leader with a track record of transforming the marketing function and propelling it to new heights for several SaaS companies as an advisor, consultant, and employee. He has spearheaded highly successful campaigns that captivated target audiences, optimizing the marketing funnel to maximize conversion rates, and accelerate sales cycles.

Brian Cohen is also the Co-Founder and CEO at StoryLab.ai. You can find more info about Brian on LinkedIn.

Video transcript (auto-generated)

Maybe you can talk us through your ideal marketing and sales model. Or you can focus more on marketing if you want and some of the general principles that you abide by. And you know, if you had a magic wand just how you think B2B Marketing and Sales ought to be done?

And maybe, some things that aren’t being done today but should. Or some things that are being done today but shouldn’t. So it could be like do’s and don’ts.

Go ahead.

Definitely. There’s so much to unpack there. But I think the ideal scenario. I think we talked about part of it. From the sales side, and just making that full cycle and really supporting somebody and walking them through the Journey.

Bu moving that back to the marketing side. I think it’s really important for us to educate. To provide value beyond somebody downloading an asset and us throwing 700 of those or thousands of those a month to a BDR team to cold call.

We’ve started this notion of creating conversations versus lead generation.

We call it demand generation but we want don’t want to use that term because that’s getting kind of muddied as well. We’re really trying to create conversation so we only want to progress folks to a conversation with our sales team that ask to have a conversation in some form or fashion.

And in our intent pyramid we kind of look at that in two different pieces. And we look at purchase intent. somebody is booking a demo or or a pricing request they’re probably more likely to want to have a conversation with you or they’re probably ready or somewhat ready to make a purchase if they’re asking that.

But a level down from that is conversational intent. Somebody that wants to have a conversation with you but probably isn’t ready to purchase yet. So that’s
kind of that experience in in that conversation is where we really see shifting BDRs and doing outbound and doing this lead gen format we’re pulling them into this experience of some form of education. So at Foleon it’s showcases. where we show someone what their branding would look like within our platform. So we give them that customized experience and without this being a ‘hey are you ready to buy’? Do you want to book a demo now? Do you want to talk to a to an AE?

We’re building this experience and showing them value and showing not only how they can strive to be better with our platform but how they can do that outside of the platform as well. So just really trying to educate and support the market.

Right on. So you know, Brian has focused marketing on generating real leads or website demo requests. Buyers that explicitly request to speak to sales as opposed to trying to spam buyers to speak to sales and focus marketing on doing proper non-spam marketing to help buyers become aware of, learn, try, and buy the product or speak to sales to the extent they need sales help.

He’s having conversations and what proper non-spam marketing is, it’s a sense it’s you’re educating, you’re informing, you’re charming, and you’re wooing.

You’re not annoying someone and intruding on someone’s personal inbox and you’re not bugging them to go speak to sales.

Other Demand Generation books, articles, and videos

Demand Generation Book

• Improving Lead Generation – For B2B SaaS Marketers

Demand Generation Articles

• What is Demand Generation
• How to Improve Demand Generation with AI
• Improve your Lead Generation Strategy
• Lead Generation versus Demand Generation
• How to Improve Lead Generation with AI
• Demand Generation shift to education with content
• Inbound Marketing Strategy Ultimate Guide
• How to Improve Inbound Marketing with AI
• Demand Creation and Employee Advocacy in Demand Generation
• Top Demand Capture Channels

Demand Generation Videos

• Ungating Content Does Not mean Deleting all Forms on the Website
• What does Conversation Generation mean in Demand Generation
• The Important Categories of Demand Generation
• Demand Generation is a Team Sport, not a Job Function
• What you Need to Know About Ungating Content Offers
• Shifting from Collecting Contact Information to Demand Generation

B2B Buying Videos

• B2B Buying Process – How do you like to get Aware of Software Vendors?
• B2B Buying – How do you Like to Learn about Software Vendors
• B2B Buying – What should Software Vendors Include on their Website
• B2B Buying – How Not to get Marketed to by Software Vendors
• B2B Buying Process – What Information do you need from a Software Vendor’s Sales Team
• B2B Buying – What information would you like from Marketing VS Sales
• B2B Buying – Do you dislike talking to more than 1 salesperson
• B2B Buying – Talking to sales getting paid a full salary VS commission
• B2B Buying – The Ideal B2B Marketing / Sales Model
• B2B Buying – Refocusing Efforts From Sales to Marketing