Our second Podcast: Making the complex simple

In our second B2Be Different vlog and podcast, Co-Founders Stephen Judge and Samantha Tonge discuss how to create a simple yet effective sales and marketing strategy within the Engineering and B2B Manufacturing sector that will deliver impactful results.

Watch the video here, or read the transcript below:

Transcript

Samantha Tonge: Hi, so we’re here today. It’s our second ever B2Be Different podcast slash vlog, depending on where you’re watching this or listening to this, I’m Samantha Tonge. I’m the Co-Founder of B2Be Different. I’m here with my co-founder, Steven Judge.

Stephen Judge: I’m Steve Judge, I’m co-founder, as Samantha said, B2Be Different. I’m very happy to be with you today. Samantha to talk a bit more about making the complex simple.

Samantha: Our clients are engineering companies and B2B manufacturing companies. They tend to have very, very clever products and services, but there’s quite complex things they need to get across to their clients and their customers, and that is a lot easier said than done. So we thought we’d talk about this today to hopefully give you some tips about how to approach that.

First, we really need to explain why. I don’t know, you’ve had this conversation with clients as well. I often have the conversation “our customers are technical, therefore they want the first piece of content they receive is sometimes a really in depth data sheets and or really specific information about the product that’s maybe not the right piece of content for that stage. Do you have that conversation as well?

Steve: Most definitely people, you know, they manufacturing and engineering. In fact, many of the B2B sectors where you’ve got a lot of very clever, very, very technical people.
Getting to that point where everyone can agree on something really simple to say can sometimes be a challenge. People think it’s too simple, or it’s too smart, or not necessarily too clever, but often too simple comes across and what they sort of need to remember is that, and when you work with manufacturing and engineering companies, you understand that they are always very, very busy.

How can we engage with them and get their first first impression, that first, you know, eyeball. How can we get them interested to start with, if our initial conversation is based around a lot of technical knowledge, without actually getting over why they should talk to us in the first place?

The majority of people in an engineering and manufacturing business have an engineering background. You know, sales and marketing might have been there for 30 years, originally, as working on the, you know, in various engineering roles within the business, manufacturing or designing. So they’ve it’s what’s exciting. And I think, as well as sort of seen as a career for life, but in that they understand every single bit of the design, the manufacture and the production process. And our job is to say that’s fantastic. Understand we have to understand that, otherwise you don’t understand the business model, but then how do we get someone that you’re selling to who, in that environment, is probably just as busy as you are, without the time to reflect on all the information that we get bombarded with every day?

Because I think the technical knowledge is a given. If you’re successful in manufacturing engineering, you should be good at it. And one would assume that you’re that you’re experts in your field, whether it’s you know, a packing line machine manufacturer, whether it’s a you know, ball bearing manufacturer, whether it’s any kind of production machinery or engineered product valves. All of it’s got to be manufactured to, usually some kind of BSI standard, if it’s if it’s mission critical, business critical, but also you can’t exist for long in that space without being great. Our challenge is to, I think, communicate that greatness in a simple way, so that you can just grab someone’s attention as quick as possible. We know we we’re all busy,

Samantha: I think the other side of that coin is, even if your customers are technical, the B2B buying processes involve multiple people, including people who are very senior, have even less time. It might be someone senior who’s not technical, who’s shortlisting: “I want you to look at these products” “I want you to look at these companies”. It all comes down to where that is in the sales cycle as well. I mentioned data sheets. I’m not saying don’t have data sheets. I’m not saying don’t have that information that on your website with your sales team, etc. It’s just where someone is on the sales cycle depends on how much information they need at that point. Why should they look at it? I mean, it takes a long time to go through it, through that kind of level of information. Why should they be interested?

97% aren’t even in the sales funnel yet. They might not even know they have a challenge. They’re the people that might call you in five years time, because you’ve been getting your message out there again and again and again. So consistency of a simple message that’s easy to understand and remember is so essential.

Stephen: But I think, you know, up to the lights recent client survey report, 87 86% of people say they’re in a more pressurized environment than they were five years ago, which leads to, less time, less focus, less availability of mind, share of mind, so whatever you got to say, say it quickly and say it well, the report itself was specifically about the marketing industry, but they were saying that clients generally get approached by about eight new business approaches a day, 60%. Were generic, and interestingly, I think it was 36% of them said that they would, they welcome approaches from businesses. When you look at it, we all need a supply chain. We all need to know what’s coming over the hill. We need to know the new stuff, the good stuff, the bad stuff. That’s our job as a business is to make sure that our we have a solid supply chain that’s quality and that we’re looking at, you know, new things as they come out, cutting edge technologies. And 36% said that they would welcome more disruptive, bolder, more distinctive communications, because it makes their lives easier, yeah, easier to pick out from the big pot of information that’s being sent, whether it’s to your email box, whether it’s online advertising, more information is being created now than ever on a daily basis. So why am I going to pay attention to, you know, your message over anyone else’s message? look at all successful the big successful businesses, or even small successful businesses, the ones that have have cracked that that messaging the broadcast of the messaging to help fill the funnel., are the ones that you know have to, to a degree, have less of a marketing challenge because they’ve got the messaging right?

Samantha Tonge: Going back to the sales funnel, it’s you’re talking about businesses being approached directly every day. How many of us get hundreds of the same emails per week from different companies, exactly as you said, the same generic message, and it’s they’re not there in the sales cycle. Why are you directly messaging me repeatedly? In a lot of cases, you can get the follow up email. Why haven’t you responded? Well, because I’m not looking at SEO right now, or whatever it is, because I’m not there, or I have have that sorted out. I have someone who I know knows what they’re doing, I find this with clients as well, not just people who message me that they fall back on what feels safe. And I think what feels safe is we’ve been in this industry for X years. We have lots of experience well, so does everyone else? Why you? Why? Why your product at all? Why that? Why that general product, whether it’s you or your competitors, and when someone’s looking for that particular product, when they’re ready, then you need to have something a lot better than we have X years of experience, because that’s the stage where they’re interested. They already know they want SEO. They already know they want someone who knows what they’re doing. You need to have something, a message. As you said, get the messaging right.

Samantha: I think that brings us on to who are your customers? Having that tight idea of who it is you’re talking to and what that makes it easier to come up with a simple message, because it’s easier then to understand that customers ‘ problems, We’re talking about B2B. So being a particular industry, maybe particular departments within that industry, it might be HR in the public sector to just take a random example, it’s so much easier then to go, alright, I understand their problems and understand where our products and services help them with their specific issues. And then it’s a lot easier to talk about. It’s really important to talk about their needs and not specifications of your product, and talk customer language it’s easy to fall into trap of that, see a lot is, is using your terminology within your company and your industry, as opposed to your customers industry, because there’s almost always at least a slight difference, and following the trap of using product codes, as I’ve seen, product codes as navigation of websites, which is probably the worst example. But even in sales presentations, that use acronyms that a customer doesn’t have a clue what that even is. So it’s really important to simplify. A really good way of simplifying it is thinking in terms of, What is my customer’s issue? What are their pain points? What are they stressed about? What should they be stressed about? They may not realize they’re wasting time if you’re saving them time for just to take an example, it’s and that’s so much easier to do if you’ve got a really especially if you’re a small for smaller companies, it’s so much easier to put simple communications together if you have that really tight, targeted audience.

Steve: I think size of companies is also very important. . A lot of smaller companies don’t have particularly technical profiling or access to customer profiling. Their target audience is not 1000s of companies. There might be 1000s of companies that might be interested in their product. But when they’re in the direct network, and they’re the immediate their immediate geography, they’ve probably got more than enough potential customers there, if we knew who they were, and had the the means to communicate with them, But for a small business to invest a significant amount of time on the 97% long tail customer pipeline is quite an ask when there’s 3% there waiting. Both are very important, but let’s not lose sight of what all of this is about, which is ultimately about growing your business, and that 3% could be right on your doorstep, you know. And are there 3% likely to see a LinkedIn post or see what a networking event trade shows? If they’re local, why don’t you knock on their door?

Samantha: And another thing that, in terms of messaging it comes back down to the fact that people don’t have time as well. You’re not talking to stupid people. But one thing I will never forget that a former manager told me he always said, think tabloid, not broadsheet, and it didn’t mean being sensationalist. He meant short words, short sentence sentences be really punchy and stand out, something that’s engaging, something that’s what these days you probably call clickbait, maybe, but in terms of, but it’s a bit different when you talk about marketing, but if you think in those terms, because people are so busy, you need something that’s going to make them go, oh, before they’ll read your blog, or they’ll, you know, even if they look at any of your content, let alone get to the point where they’re a customer.

Steve: It’s all about that kind of messaging hierarchy, take retail, for example, just as the direct metaphor, you’ve got a shop sign that you could read from a very long way away. It might just say clothes. Don’t know what clothes, is it all clothes? Then as you get towards the shop front, you’ve got the promotional materials in the window, maybe pictures of maybe products in the window as well. And as you get right to the door, you’ve got all your opening times, you’ve got any potential offers as you walk into the store, you’ve got your point of sale, which is right next to all the products. There might be some technical information about that material on the card or on the label. It’s this, at what point you need, what information. And a website is exactly the same you land on a homepage, and it says, you should just say, quite succinctly, who you are and what you do. And then you’ve got, you know, the sectors you may serve, the products you might offer. You can go into the product you can go into product categories. You can go right down to an individual product. And if you want, you can look at the product. It’s that hierarchy, and it’s the same with all marketing. You’re not starting at that lower level of information, unless someone’s already looking for you, in which case that needs to be there, because they can find it. It’s searchable. They can find it indexed. At the moment that we are doing it outreach, that’s where we need to be. Smarter because we’re selling that first message, not the detail at the bottom. We’re literally just trying to get your engagement

Samantha: The other side of that coin, I find with some clients do the opposite as well. They’re only focussed on 3% . They’ve got to a really good point with focusing on people they know, customers they know. And they’ve grown to a point they can’t grow anymore without talking to the people they don’t know as well. What they should have been doing, probably, unfortunately, a lot of cases this, five years ago, they should have been talking to that 97% so that the three the 3% are now new customers. They’re growing within the market.

Steve: Some of those 97% will now be the 3%

You can’t undervalue simplicity you see a really simple message, and you think, Oh, I’d love to have come up with that, or that’s so simple, they think that simplicity is is, is something that it’s just there, it’s easy, it’s quick, and to get to the simplest messages takes, takes time a lot of time getting to the point where they got up to that point of simplified it down so obvious that everybody gets it, when you see something, you say, Oh, why didn’t I think of that? Because it seems obvious, but sometimes the most obvious, simple things are not that easy to see.

Samantha: It’s harder than putting a complex message together, yeah.

I wanted to say, just before we finish up, one thing that I thought was a great example of using visuals to get across something really simply. Is something you showed me earlier, and I absolutely loved it was one of your customers that did x-ray machines portable x-ray machines, where you bring it to the patient, that visual you showed, which is a nurse’s shoe on roller skates. It’s really punchy, the visuals as well as the words are really punchy. It’s, bam. That’s what we do. And that’s so much doing something clever like that is so much easier to remember than just a bunch of stats.

Steve: That was an interesting campaign, actually, because the publications rang us and actually thanked us for creating something that was a bit more impactful in the magazine.

Samantha: That doesn’t happen very often!

Steve: No! But the whole point of that was, you look at any trade mag, and it’s full of, especially B2B trade mags, product, the ads are a lot of the magazines are full of product ads, which are pictures of product a lot of the time those products look very similar. It’s not necessarily the product you’re buying. It’s what it does. How do you communicate what it does? If it’s a grey box, X-ray machines just look like it’s a photocopier. Not sexy. Doesn’t look great. Ultimately, it’s a functional machine. Doesn’t have to look sexy. It just needs to do what it does really well. It was the mobile X-ray unit, so you could move it around the hospital and take it to the patient, rather than having to take them to the X-ray department. So it was a case of finding something of conveying that mobility within the hospital. So hence the nurse’s shoe and putting a roller skate mechanism underneath it and shooting it became the main hero image. It really did stand out in that trade magazine. I’m very, very proud of that ad and all the feedback we got from it.

Samantha: Well, if you need any help taking your very clever, complex products and services to market, you need help, whether it’s figuring out exactly who you should be targeting, what your customers’ issues are right through to delivery. Give us a call if we’ve said it a few times like this. I think it’s easier said than done, making your complex simple, but it’s so important. So yeah, if you need some help, that gives a chat, and hopefully that was helpful, we’ll put links everywhere. A previous podcast that was more about how you stand out in a crowded marketplace, okay, and how you B2Be different.

Thank you everyone for watching or listening.

Steve: Thank you, and hopefully see you soon. Bye.