Terminology, in any industry, is always a popular topic. Here’s why we’ve changed some key phrases.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 43 seconds.
In marketing, sales and advertising, people are very quick to use certain words, but they don’t always know what they mean. You need to think very carefully about the words your business uses and why it makes sense to use them. Which is exactly what we have done and would like to share with you:
Below are 3 of examples of terms Spitfire Inbound uses, almost on a daily basis, and how we refine them to make sense to our market.
Close a sale has been removed from our vocabulary
Here at Spitfire, we use the word Open. Close is the C-word of sales and originally comes from the American real estate industry. However, real estate and inbound marketing are two very different industries as the one is transactional and the other is a partnership that focuses on the journey future customers take. In a transactional environment, the chances of selling multiple homes to the same people (for example) are very slim. However, we work in a B2B space where we focus on long term sales and adding value to our customers, and having a partnership or relationship is important for the inbound relationship to work. In the inbound marketing world, customers want to feel they are being helped and that they are more than just a sales opportunity. The Brian Halligan saying, “ABC (always be closing)” is now obsolete. We need to always be helping, this is the inbound way.
According to Business Knowledge Strategies, “Many sales people don’t lose sales because they fail to close, but because they can’t effectively open the sale. ”
We need to talk about integration
A lot of people talk about the integration between sales, marketing and services, but do you know what this actually means? Don Peppers, an American best-selling author and keynote speaker believes the common definition of integrated marketing no longer works. “Integrated marketing incorporates an individual customer’s own perspective into all customer-facing functions at a company, including marketing, sales, and service. Truly integrated marketing, in other words, happens when the customer’s own worldview infuses all your customer-facing processes.”
This means that businesses wanting to expand and bring in more leads will have to align their sales, marketing and customer services team to improve the efficiency and overall effectiveness of the business. If truly integrated marketing does not occur, it will be highly detrimental to your sales process and create customer confusion. Furthermore, when all departments work together, everyone is working towards common business goals, which will result in a highly successful business aimed at pleasing their customers.
What about benchmarking?
The Marketing Teacher says, “Benchmarking relies upon a comparison between the activities of your own organisation and those of another. Originally, benchmarking was used in manufacturing operations where one process could be compared and contrasted with another.”
Some questions come to mind:
- how do you know benchmarking works for you?,
- “how should you be benchmarking?”,
- “how do you know you’re looking at the right benchmarks for your specific industry?”.
To answer these questions, it’s best to use your own data and look at what works for your business. At Spitfire Inbound, we use benchmarks for specific industries by looking at YOUR data and making decisions based on it. We incrementally improve on your current situation instead of doing pie in the sky!
Data on its own means nothing, until you use it to tell a story you can action to create value for your customers. Insights from your analytics are much more important than the numbers on their own.
In a nutshell, consumers don’t tolerate bullsh*t anymore! Don’t just use marketing and sales terms for the sake of it - use it, only if it has meaning. You need to use the terms that resonate with the audience, clients and customers you're speaking to.
The terminology we use is a big part of how we communicate with and nurture our customers. If you want some help improving your open rate and ability to measure your integrated marketing take a look at our Sales Guide: How to Turn Your Entire Business into a Lead Generating Machine, or get it touch today.
