Close the Buying Gap

Whether you are already creating content—or don’t know where to start—in Close the Buying Gap, we research and develop your custom buyer enablement strategy, including GTM, content and messaging recommendations.

Backed by buying process science, this will fuel your commercial engine to sell more, and sell faster.

 

Program milestones

  • Get definitive answers about your buyers’ needs, pains, buying triggers, internal drama, pricing woes —all the stuff they won’t ever share in a sales call.

  • Demystify the buyer journey and then codify it for daily team reference.

  • Identify buying obstacles and developing laser-targeted marketing resources and tools to help.

  • Access key buyer language to align your marketing messaging and sales team to speak your buyer’s language.

  • Empower sales to be a buying guide, anticipating buyer needs and sharing the right content at the right time

 

Does this sound scarily familiar?

  • Prospects open up your website and yawn because you sound just like your competitors.

  • Still, they can't figure out how your features compare to your competitors because they *sound* different...but they don't *seem* all that different.

  • And that's assuming your product or service is different in a way that matters to your buyers.

  • Because buyers can't create consensus with their buying group to choose you as a supplier just because you are the first, or the 'most innovative'.

  • Your team is publishing what you thought was thought-provoking blogs...but buyers don't find any stats, stories or proof that helps them as they are still trying to sell this dang purchase to the CFO, who will not relent on asking for real-life use cases.

  • Sales deals are falling flat because things keep getting stalled out on the buyer's side as they try to sell this to 4 additional VPs.

  • Meanwhile back at the ranch, your sales team has no visibility into what's going on. Account Manager sends "Just following up post-demo to see where things are at", which, unsurprisingly, gets ignored.

The net total?

Buyers who want to pay you money to solve their problems are struggling to buy from you and it is seriously hurting your sales.

Enter: Buyer Enablement Strategy

Defined: Commercial strategy based on qualitative buyer research that gives prospects the tools and resources they need to develop confidence, build a business case and reach internal consensus around a B2B purchase decision.

 

Close the Buying Gap

8-week Buyer Enablement Research & Strategy Program

  • For founders, CROs, and VPs of Marketing or Sales at B2B SaaS start-ups and scale-ups 

  • Who are ready to stop running marketing and sales by guesswork and start making decisions and investing resources based on buying process science.

  • In Close the Buying Gap, we interview a larger group of your closed-lost and closed buyers and translate what we find into actionable marketing recommendations, backed by buying process science.

  • Includes:

    • Interview footage and qualitative analysis of up to 10 closed-won and 10 closed-lost deals of your choice

    • +100 slide research deck mapped against key buying process obstacles, and chock-full of buyer quotes,

    • Buying process map one-pager

    • Secret shopper buying audit

    • Actionable insights on your buyers’ patterns and trends

    • 12-month content strategy, including topics and mini-outlines for blogs, webinars, guides, diagnostic tools, case studies and more

    • Conversion copywriting recommendations for your website and email campaigns

    • PLUS: Sales, Customer Success, and Product feedback directly from buyers

 

How does it work?

 

Phase 1:
Pinpoint where buyers are getting stuck when buying from you.

First, I'll send you an intake form to fill out. Then, we’ll meet and explore potential sources of buying friction with your commercial leader(s), and marketing and sales managers. Things like:

  • What does your marketing/sales pipeline currently look like? How is lead quality?

  • What do you know about your buyers and how they buy from you?

  • What does a typical sales cycle look like? 

  • Where are buyers slowing down or getting stuck as they progress to a purchase decision?

  • What's the most common reason for recycled leads?

  • Where are the greatest sources of friction in the sales cycle? Are you chasing leads to book demos? Are MQLs not showing up to demos? Does the sales lag post-demo?

 
 

Phase 2:
Audit your buying funnel for quick wins to speed up deal progression.

Has it been a while since you took a good look at your pipeline messaging?
You’ve been so busy selling, your team hasn’t had time to look critically at how you sell. 

Here’s how I can help. In this phase, I'll audit your marketing/sales pipeline looking for quick wins to improve communications efficiency and make buying easier.

To do this, I’ll put myself in the shoes of an ideal buyer (think secret shopper), then will request a demo and experience your sales process. I'll be looking to answer questions like:

What unanswered questions might the buyer have through this process?

  • Where is the buyer missing key information? 

  • How can we rejig SDR, AE email copy to provide this information, answer questions and reduce friction?

  • Any tweaks (or overhaul changes) we can make to the SDR call script or demo to better address buyer needs and questions?

I'll develop an outline of messaging and communications recommendations to be implemented across your marketing and sales pipeline.

This will include:

  • Strategies for building trust earlier in the buying process by answering top priority buyer questions in marketing messaging

  • A prioritized sequence to order key messages for sales and nurturing email copy

  • How SDR calls and demos should be positioned and what should be covered

  • Key buying obstacles and the corresponding content assets to help sales anticipate and meet buyer needs 

We'll go over these recommendations together, so you'll have an opportunity to ask questions and go deeper into any key areas.

 
 

Phase 3:
Conduct buyer interviews and glean golden insights

Next, I’m going to have conversations with as many of your ideal buyers as possible (some closed-lost, some closed-won) and learn everything I can about:

  • How they identified and quantified the business challenge that led them to you

  • Other solutions (or categories) they also explored

  • How they built requirements

  • The meetings and conversations required to create internal consensus

  • What they perceived to be the biggest buying challenges

  • Any pieces of content they created to help themselves through the buying process

  • How they’d advise others going through this purchase process

 
 

Phase 4:
Present research and buyer enablement strategy

Next, I’ll organize what I learn into an actionable research deck, including strategic sales and marketing recommendations and buyer enablement content ideas.

This research will also be a super useful knowledge-scaling resource to help current and new marketing and sales team members quickly get their heads around the *real* buyer journey.

This deck will include: 

  • Buyer pains, challenges and/or obstacles they commonly struggle with

  • Prioritized buyer enablement content outlines (for guides, blogs, buying tools, etc)

  • Sample content calendar for the next quarter

  • Buyer feedback on demo, website and more

  • Psychographic observations on buyers

  • Other solutions and vendors they considered

  • List of key buyer requirements, prioritized

  • Sales recommendations on how to leverage content to signal buying progression

  • Insights on how they sold through this purchase decision internally

We'll go over this material together, so you'll have an opportunity to ask questions and go deeper on any key areas

 
 
 

P.S…What Comes After Completing This Package?

With more clarity on the buying process and the gaps in your current content strategy, it’s time to create your *new* buyer enablement content assets.

You have a few options:

  1. Book me for a half-day to review and provide feedback on your team’s content outlines.

  2. Keep me around in a content strategy advisory role, overseeing content creation at your organization.

  3. Handoff the research and content strategy to your marketing writer to go forth and develop your articles, case studies and guides.

  4. Or, I can recommend a few trusted B2B SaaS writers who are familiar with my research and content strategy and can run with it.

 

"Helped increase lead quality and decrease the length of our sales cycles"

“At our organization, the work Sarah did for our Buyer Journey audit, web messaging and content for lead nurture helped increase lead quality and decrease the length of our sales cycle, and I would not hesitate to recommend Sarah to other B2B SaaS companies looking for a highly productive and impactful consultant able to deliver real results.

She is a great communicator and has a committed, focussed and pragmatic approach to delivering results. She thinks strategically and her decisions are based on solid research and analytical understanding of the issue at hand. She applies incredibly high-quality standards to all of the work she is involved in, demonstrated by her strong client and user focus.

Sarah has the uncommon ability to integrate herself into an organization quietly and effectively. This allowed her to operate as an extension of our marketing team with no heavy lifting required from our side – not always the case with consultants and agencies.”

— Chrissy Gow, Director of Marketing, EventMobi