Responsible for effective infiltration of target audiences, building pipelines and generating leads, a carefully thought out sales and marketing strategy is vital for advancing your position in the market.
More often than not, operational success is assessed by reviewing short-term campaign results. Metrics such as sales conversions and numbers of generated leads being the primary parameters routinely evaluated.
But what if we told you that a campaign with lower initial conversion rates doesn’t always mean campaign failure? Focusing your efforts on instant results alone can mean you overlook a significant portion of your target market, while underestimating the importance of thoughtful, long-term strategies.
Without further ado…
Let’s talk about the 95-5 rule!
What is the 95-5 rule?
Let’s first ask ourselves, what is the purpose of sales and marketing in the B2B space?
Albeit through different strategies, sales and marketing efforts involve a harmonious approach that centres around generating and converting potential leads into paying customers.
Given this primary focus, it’s common for stakeholders to seek out and expect instant results when evaluating campaign success. This idea has been routinely documented, with one example finding up to 95% of B2B marketers expecting significant sales within the first two weeks of campaign execution.
But did you know that only 5% of our target audience is ready to buy? According to recent research by Professor John Dawes, a whopping 95% of your target market is not interested in buying your products or services at any given time. This means that it could take months – even years – until potential customers are actually looking to buy.
As well as reinforcing the need for a long-term strategy perspective, this insight allows us to reflect on our current marketing and sales approaches. In other words, this highlights the importance of why building a lasting impression as the ‘go-to’ company is so valuable for long-term success, prioritising activity that drives future leads to your services once they’re eventually required.
So how can this be achieved through our sales and marketing activity? We dive into this in further detail:
Building a lasting impression through marketing activity
In accordance with John Dawes’ findings, successful advertising predominantly aims to build and refresh memory links to a brand. As the 95-5 rule suggests, our marketing efforts will mostly reach individuals who aren’t yet interested in buying.
With this in mind, it is more effective to focus your marketing efforts on these potential buyers, prioritising activities that build a positive and thoughtful brand image, as opposed to securing quick sales or wins.
For example, typical marketing efforts may focus on explaining product benefits and features that will convince marketers to buy. But if an individual is not in the market to buy, this approach will have little resonance. This demonstrates how important it is to incorporate activity that broadens the creative spectrum, builds memory links and establishes a long-term presence within your wider audience.
This should involve memorable efforts that increase brand awareness, build brand reputation and cultivate trust to build a long-term, lasting impression to those not yet in the market. For this to be achieved, it’s important we focus on several factors:
Fully understand the audience
First things first, it’s important to gain a deep understanding of your target market in order to craft successful, meaningful campaigns with highly relevant content that resonates with the audience.
Build a recognisable brand
Building familiarity as a trusted provider is key. This includes consistent brand messaging as a highly reputable, industry-leading business, both through a digital presence as well as a physical presence in industry events and conferences.
Employ strategic, meaningful activity
This includes employing consistent lead nurturing campaigns within a multi-channel approach to establish trust and resonate within the audience long-term, as opposed to just generating content designed to catch quick wins.
Identifying the 5% for an effective sales approach
The 95-5 rule is important as it reinforces just how small the window of opportunity really is; with the reality of so few potential leads to capture, it shows just how vital it is to focus on identifying those willing to buy.
With this, the pressure is on. Your sales team must be prepped and ready to uncover your potential customers, identify those interested, and nurture them into qualified leads.
For this to be optimal, successful activity should harbour a 3-pronged approach:
Valuable prospecting
The first focus should involve leveraging industry knowledge, research and applications relevant to your services and products to help construct a list of the most relevant prospects within the industry.
Market research
Developing an in-depth understanding of your target market remains the foundation of successful sales activity, helping you to create fool-proof approaches that complement your exact market needs.
Consistent telesales and follow-up activity
With a highly researched target market, along with a relevant prospect list in place, consistent telemarketing activity has the highest chance of building a solid pipeline of those potentially willing to buy.
Nurturing the 95% with optimal sales activity
It goes without saying, if the sales team is primarily responsible for business revenue and profit growth, their focus will most definitely involve identifying the 5%. But what about the 95% not ready to buy?
Professor John Dawes details that individuals largely use their memories when buying, rather than searching. With familiarity key in building memory links to a brand, telemarketing can be utilised to reinforce brand awareness, establish connections and build repour with individuals who’ve been qualified as potential buyers.
Keeping the business name fresh in the minds of potential leads is essential for forming longer-term opportunities; when the prospect is in the market, they’ll already know who best to approach, and even already have a contact to reach out and speak to.
Don’t be a fool, remember the 95-5 rule!
The 95-5 rule serves as a poignant reminder that if business growth is of top priority, it’s important to execute sales and marketing strategies that resonate with future buyers.
Targeted telemarketing activity is highly effective at identifying the 5%, but is equally useful at maintaining memory links and building relationships with potential buyers within the B2B space. Marketing activity, on the other hand, is a powerful tool utilised to both build and reinforce your brand as the go-to company for when customers are ready to buy.
A multi-award-winning agency, Network Scientific offer specialist scientific telemarketing, lead generation and specialised marketing services to those in the scientific arena. Experts in the field, we provide our clients with specialist, sales and marketing resources to help their businesses grow, developing long-term sales and marketing strategies to achieve long-lasting business goals.
Get in touch to discuss your next sales and marketing campaigns.