From 0 to 1, how to build a ToB market operation system? (Down)

Nowadays, ToB plays an increasingly important role in marketing. In the previous article, how to build a ToB market operation system from 0 to 1? (Part 1) Mainly talked about the construction of the advertising system. The author of this article will then talk about the channel operation of the ToB market operation .

4. Channel operation system

I would just like to say one thing here: not all ToB products are suitable for channel distribution.

Generally speaking, non-standard products that are relatively low-frequency, highly complex, opaque in price, and have strong product correlations may be suitable for direct sales. The distribution model is suitable for relatively high-frequency, standard products with low complexity and large profit margins.

Of course, we cannot generalize. Cloud vendors’ distributors, system integrators, and solution providers have different resources and service capabilities, so they can distribute products at different levels.

I originally wanted to write more, but since there are so many great people doing this, I won’t do it.

The third layer: bottom layer construction

Basic content construction and tool construction are both systems built for the market, customers, and external resources, while the underlying construction is the underlying logic system that enables the above-mentioned module systems to operate efficiently and be used effectively within the company.

1. Construction of lead cultivation system

When it comes to lead nurturing, we have to mention the dispute between the sales department and the marketing department.

• Sales department: “You don’t have enough leads, and the quality is poor.”
• Marketing department: “We have a lot of leads. It’s obviously your follow-up strategy that’s the problem!”

The reason for this situation is mostly because the company has not built a good lead cultivation system, and the sales and marketing departments have not reached a consensus. In most cases, the sales department is eager to ask for new leads, and the marketing department gives the leads too early and gives them to the sales department without screening and cultivation.

Therefore, a lead nurturing system that is recognized by everyone has become something that must be done as the business develops.

Although we have talked about clues before, let’s talk about it briefly again.

1.1 Defining clues

One of the points of contention between sales and marketing departments is the quality of leads. If both parties do not reach a consensus on the understanding of leads, problems can easily arise because of different expectations.

Sales students expect that the leads provided by marketing students can be quickly turned into deals and help sales students improve their performance. They even hope that one or two communications will be enough to determine the needs and then follow up quickly. However, in fact, a large proportion of the leads cannot meet such expectations.

Marketing students also hope that leads can be converted quickly and use this to prove that their work is valuable. Of course, if the company has relevant incentive policies, marketing students will also look forward to it more. However, when sales students do not follow up on needs quickly, or give up immediately after following up once, marketing students will think that there is something wrong with the sales follow-up strategy.

If things go on like this, the trust chain between the two departments will become increasingly fragile, and the conversion rate of sales leads will naturally become lower and lower.

The first step to solve this problem is to define sales leads. ——What we talked about before.

From the moment a customer sees our ad, if the ad content piques his interest and he leaves a message, we consider this to be a standard market clue. Then our marketing colleagues will start to evaluate and label this clue, especially for key customers. We need to define customers from multiple dimensions.

Such as company size, products, industry, whether there are product or service opportunities, etc. At this time, this lead becomes a market-recognized lead. After that, sales colleagues will follow up and confirm that there is indeed a corresponding demand, and it will become a sales-recognized lead;

If it is finally confirmed that there is a corresponding purchasing plan in the near future, the lead will be transformed into a business opportunity, and the sales staff will take the initiative to carry out the subsequent follow-up work; however, if it is not transformed into a business opportunity, the sales staff can only continue to cultivate it, but may also stop related actions for various reasons, causing the lead to sink and be lost.

The definition of these leads should not be decided by the marketing department on a whim, but should be reached through consensus by the head of the sales department and sales colleagues.

For example: what are the market recognition clues, what are the dimensions we have defined, such a definition must be determined based on the company's customer portrait; this portrait can actually be defined in the early stage through the sales students' own judgment criteria, what their target customers are like, how they judge whether the customers have a chance to close a deal, what are the dimensions, and then discuss and refer to them, and then define them.

This process is actually to first determine what "good" leads and "bad" leads look like, and use this as a basis to reduce the circulation of "bad" leads and improve sales efficiency.

Of course, if our company is in a period of rapid development, it is not impossible to call every time there is a phone call, but the stakeholders must make plans and preparations, formulate sales strategies, lower sales expectations. It is especially important not to offend customers, even if they are just potential customers.

1.2 Clue Grading or Scoring

Grading sales leads and using this to judge the quality of leads is also something that requires consensus between marketing and sales students.

We can roughly divide it into the following categories:

• Invalid: There is no relevant demand, and the company's background is not good.
• Cultivable: Procurement with qualified corporate background and who has or has had relevant needs, but no needs at the moment
• Intention: Purchases with qualified corporate backgrounds and who have or have had relevant needs, and who put forward clear needs after sales communication, are defined as business opportunities.
• Convertible: Purchasers with qualified corporate backgrounds and who have or have had relevant needs, who put forward clear needs after sales communication and have clear product preferences, can also be defined as business opportunities.
• Already cooperated: reached cooperation

The above classification is not completely accurate and can be divided more finely, but it can cope with most scenarios at present. Of course, each classification requires consensus among stakeholders.

• Clarify the basic situation of current business target customers: For enterprises that do not meet the business target customers, you can first consider continuous cultivation to reduce the waste of sales staff's energy.
• The stage of judging customer intention based on customer feedback: For example, when customers are interested in or want to purchase products or services but have not yet reached a consensus, this is the cultivation stage.
• Identify the customer's purchasing stage and process, and determine the sales cycle: The main problem to be solved in this link is to solve the problem of customers' delay in purchasing. Is it a process problem or a problem in other links, such as whether there are competing products involved? Sales colleagues can take corresponding measures based on this.

1.3 Clue Scoring

When we started to receive a large number of leads, we scored the customers by monitoring their behavior. Some companies have a scoring mechanism, and some do not. At least we did not adopt a strict scoring mechanism before.

For example: how many points are awarded for attending a salon, how many points are awarded for browsing the official website, how many points are deducted for no interaction for a month, etc.

So I won’t discuss it in depth here, but I actually want to speculate whether the logic of scoring leads through marketing automation tools is derived from the sales staff’s evaluation of customers?

When following up with customers, sales colleagues judge the customers' current intentions through interaction with them. In a sense, this is similar to lead scoring. Of course, this is just my personal speculation.

1.4 Lead Nurturing

In fact, most of the content in this part has been discussed, so we will not discuss it in depth. Of course, we can discuss it in more depth, but since we are all starting from 0 to 1, it may not be realistic to do things in a very detailed manner right away.

For details, see: From leads to winning deals, how to make ToB business faster?

To sum it up briefly: the lead nurturing system seems to solve the problem of lead quality, but in fact it solves the process problem. Through the lead nurturing system, the efficiency of collaboration between teams is improved, internal friction is reduced, and the rapid development of the business is promoted.

2. Construction of a full-process data system

Tencent’s data architecture — isn’t it impressive?

But in fact, the so-called full-process data system construction we are discussing today is actually just the system construction of data flow on the business side, which is far less complicated. Of course, the most important thing is that I have never done such a complex data architecture.

So what we will talk about later will not be very complicated, and we will not even consider the customer life cycle. It is only at the front end of the business, so it should be relatively easy to apply to our own business processes.

I believe we are all familiar with this picture. Our data system revolves around the flow of this process and clues.

2.1 Data indicator planning and collection

Usually, the data collection dimensions of a product include basic data statistics, user attributes, user sources, user behavior and model data.

Some of these dimensions actually have implicit value for ToB business rather than direct use value. Since the data we are discussing today revolves around the business, it should itself help improve the business, especially in the early stages of the market operation system. A large amount of collected data is meaningless.

2.1.1 Market data

The data listed in the mind map is relatively simple, and the core purpose is to increase the conversion volume and conversion rate from users to leads.

2.1.2 Sales-side data

In reality, the data that needs to be collected on the sales side is far more complex than this, but as we mentioned earlier, this discussion mainly revolves around data from the business front end, and the core problem to be solved is to improve the conversion from leads to wins.

2.2 Data Presentation

We don’t even need relatively heavy data tools to help implement the above data; an Excel spreadsheet may be enough.

This table is only part of it.

Of course, when the amount of data grows to a certain extent, we still need the help of tools. We can build it ourselves or use third-party services. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is definitely more convenient to build it ourselves. We can do whatever we want and present it however we want. But after all, the cost is very high. It is not necessary in the early stages of business development. Third-party services are low-cost and fast, but they have relatively high limitations, and some links still need to be operated manually.

2.3 Data Analysis

Through the data collected from the market, we can analyze whether the current marketing growth strategy is OK, which channels are worth increasing investment, which channels can adjust the strategy, and which channels can be temporarily abandoned...

Through the data collected from the sales side, we can analyze whether the follow-up strategy is OK, which words are more likely to arouse customers' interest, which channels of leads are more valuable, which products or services customers pay more attention to...

Data itself has no value. It only becomes valuable when it is analyzed to improve business processes.

2.4 Rapid Feedback and Strategy Adjustment

Only by quickly providing feedback and making strategic adjustments based on the results of our analysis above can we ensure that the data is used effectively.

There is nothing wrong with trial and error in the early stages. At least we can find more effective marketing growth strategies and lead follow-up strategies through quick trial and error, which will have practical significance for subsequent business development and performance growth.

To summarize briefly:

The above method may not be correct and is for reference only.

As the business develops, the data system will inevitably become more and more complete and cover more and more aspects, but the presence of more data does not mean that it can immediately drive business development.

My former boss once said something that I would like to share with you today: "Behind the data is the business process."

We also said before that improving business processes through data analysis is valuable, so how to discover our strategic problems and new opportunities through data depends on our own understanding of the business.

3. Construction of a full-process linkage system

As the name suggests, full-process linkage means overall collaboration among all departments of a company, and the business process is naturally behind it.

In fact, I have briefly discussed this in my second article. Although I did not discuss it from the dimension of building a linkage system, the connotation is the same.

For details, see: From the perspective of the ToB team’s organizational structure, what exactly is ToB operation?

But there are a few points that need to be briefly discussed.

3.1 Clarify company strategy

It may seem abstract, but it is actually very important. It directly determines the direction of our business and team.

3.2 Clarify the boundaries of each department

It means exactly what it says: clarify the core objectives and job responsibilities of each department to reduce the chances of wrangling and cheating.

3.3 Build a customer-centric mindset

In fact, I particularly dislike the word boundary, especially when we encounter things that are directly related to customers. At this time, the first thing we should think about should not be the boundary, but how to quickly solve the customer's problem. Even if the problem cannot be solved in the short term, we must find ways to maintain good customer relationships. After all, NPS - Net Promoter Score is also one of the core driving forces of our performance growth.

Finally, let’s summarize.

I believe you can easily find that these two recent articles actually revolve around customer acquisition, leads and processes.

Not to mention customer acquisition and leads, many people's first reaction when they hear about the process may be that it is complicated, troublesome, and difficult to use. In fact, this is not the case. Efficient business processes can help us improve efficiency and reduce internal friction to a large extent. The reason why it feels troublesome is that we have not yet perfected the business process. If it is really useless, why would Huawei spend huge costs to transform the process?

Again, the ToB business is still in a stage of rapid development. There is no absolutely correct empirical methodology. It is not advisable to completely copy someone else's experience. The most important thing is to find a method that suits your company's business.

Of course, it is inevitable that we will take detours in this process, but these detours are something we must go through when running a business and as human beings.

Finally, I would like to share with you a quote from Mr. Chen Yinke.

“Only this independent spirit and free thought will last for thousands of years, as long as the earth and the sky, and shine forever with the three lights.”

May each of us be able to think independently and find our own value.

Author: Zixiu

Source: ToB Operation Club