Some of the Biggest Sales Messaging and Sales Positioning Mistakes That Even Top Brands Make

Staff WritersNimble Sales IntelligencePipeline & AnalyticsPredictive Analytics

By Paroma Sen On Feb 23, 2022

In a data-driven marketing and sales environment, sales leaders and sales teams can utilize an array of relevant buying signals and customer information to not only streamline every part of their sales activity but to also align overall business level efforts (like core website messaging tactics and website flows) to drive better and faster outcomes.

Today’s digitally-driven B2B marketplace is highly competitive and with the constant introduction of new martech and salestech features, as well as new innovators and startups, B2B brands have to rethink how they position their sales messaging vis a vis a growing set of competitors.

There are a variety of regular tactics employed by most B2B tech brands today. Among these, there are a few that might actually turn out to be counterproductive when it comes to driving sales or marketing outcomes:

Product Comparison Pages on Websites

In the B2B marketplace, it is not uncommon to find product comparison pages on brand websites where brands dedicate certain sections or pages to write about their best features and capabilities versus that of their competitors.

But here is where it might make sense for brand leaders and sales-marketing stakeholders to revisit this process.

Customers and prospects today have access to limitless third-party resources and online review websites that can easily share more neutral information about different products and their comparisons vis a vis other players. For brands who have product comparison pages on their own website, in most cases, they are bound to position their own product as the end-all and best-of in the market.

However, what really matters is fair, neutral reviews from users of products, irrespective of this.

This is why more and more prospects and customers depend on peer review websites or neutral websites that hold unbiased information.

Customer Testimonials that don’t Necessarily Speak of True Value

In B2B, it is common for brands to sport customer testimonials on their website. To take it a step ahead, marketing teams may even run full-fledged campaigns around some of their most recent customer testimonials.

It is at this point that sales and marketing stakeholders need to come together to dovetail how their customer testimonials are built out, keeping in mind that these kind of content channels need more value and have to be informative, relevant, to-the-point and catchy enough to drive ROI over time.

Customer testimonials that run as a Q&A or those that are scripted to share value based on how a certain product or service led to better outcomes and business ROI in terms of actual statistics and numbers are basic requirements at this juncture. What also matters are having testimonials conducted in interactive formats (by deploying the use of video/audio) and broadcasting testimonials from some of the better known brands in the market, brands that an audience would like to listen to.

Lack of Customized Pricing Policies

SMBs are the backbone of any economy. Understanding the needs of smaller to mid-sized teams can actually enable a lot of marketing and sales ROI. But when it comes to customized pricing policies, something like this can be useful to not just smaller and mid-sized teams but also larger companies.

In the B2B market, one of the basic fundamentals for a product company requires that they sport a pricing page on their website. While in most cases companies will divide this into different types of pricing plans (Standard/Basic/Free/Premium and such others), taking this a step ahead and incorporating a custom pricing option is useful, given today’s dynamics.

A custom service plan or pricing plan can actually woe some of your most toughest prospects and customers because it caters to specific features or product capabilities that they might need most while allowing them to forego the cost of other parts of your service.

End Note

B2B sales methodologies have to evolve in a marketplace where needs and buying patterns are constantly changing. Not only does this influence how sales people should dovetail their sales messaging and overall sales strategy, what also matters is how prospects are relating to your key competitors and market opportunities. Diving into the right kind of buying interests and data to constantly impact how future plans are shaped is key to optimizing sales success and creating value in a marketplace where there is no dearth of choice…