How can Opportunity Finder optimise your ABM strategy?

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is not a new marketing discipline. On paper it sounds like a simple proposition to find and locate the various stakeholders or buying committees within an organisation, to communicate with them when a need is identified, buying intent established and to nurture the account to a point that they are ready to become a customer.

Usually considered a strategy for enterprise marketing and sales teams, if done well, ABM can offer companies the ability to engage with customers earlier, identify the buying committees within target accounts, and deliver relevant content to the right stakeholders at the right time. It combines the various marketing and sales tactics that would have traditionally been siloed by industry, product/service or channel

WHAT IS NEEDED FOR A SUCCESSFUL ABM STRATEGY?

While the dream of ABM is like performing a symphony by Mozart, using a highly trained orchestra directed by a world class conductor, the reality is often very different- using an amateur orchestra, without a conductor using a score with a lot of notes missing.
In many cases, companies think that just because they have a target account list, or they have an online platform that manages data about their accounts they are “doing” ABM.
Online tools and platforms on their own will not be sufficient to deliver a successful ABM campaign. To do it right, ABM requires an all-in approach with a joined-up sales and marketing operation with clear stakeholders and shared go to market strategy, which is not as easy as it sounds.

Data

The data you need must be analysed. Questions that need to be discussed include:

  1. Who are our ideal customer profiles?
  2. What buyer personas at these companies do we want to reach?
  3. What does our target account list look like?

Once agreed, decisions on how to build out this data set or use third party tools and services is required. In a post GDPR world, it is always wise to verify and conduct due diligence on where the data comes from, if using a third-party.

Alignment between sales and marketing

Account plans are complex and require a shared strategy to align sales and marketing. Cross functional sales and marketing teams should be harmonised around the target accounts.

When implementing an ABM strategy, it is crucial to categorize your tactics by channel and clearly define your objectives. This will help you determine the level of personalization and targeting needed for each tactic.
For example, if you want to create tailored content for a specific persona, you would need a 1:1 tactic with highly personalized and relevant content delivered to that person. On the other hand, if you are organizing a webinar or event for your target account list (TAL), it would be a 1:Many tactic and may not require the same level of personalization as a 1:1 scenario.
By segmenting your tactics, you can effectively allocate your resources and time based on the desired outcome for each account. This will help you prioritize and tailor your efforts to maximize engagement and conversion rates.
Ultimately, ABM is about building strong relationships with target accounts by providing relevant and valuable experiences that address their unique challenges and needs. By strategically categorizing your tactics and objectives, you can create a more effective and efficient ABM strategy that drives long-term growth and customer loyalty.

Content

Once the right personas have been identified, relevant and timely content needs to be either created, repurposed, or recycled to ensure your company’s value proposition is front of mind of the persona you are trying to influence.

Sending complex IT ‘speeds and feeds’ about a technical product or service to the entire buying committee is not an effective strategy. Tools like ChatGPT will not replace the human intelligence needed to personalise messaging that is personalised to the interest of each potential stakeholder.

Harmonised automation technology

Like the symphony orchestra analogy, companies must look to orchestrate and automate content to deliver via the many channels available.
Lastly, ensure technologies that are enlisted or considered to be purchased to automate some or all of the processes to support your ABM strategy are harmonised with the aligned organisational structure.
Ultimately engaging in ABM is about getting better ROI from your highly orchestrated sales and marketing organisation to amplify the sweet music of closed won business.

WHAT VALUE SHOULD YOU EXPECT FROM ABM?

Reach

Once you have your first party and third-party data segments prepared and stack ranked in Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) order look to grow your brand and product awareness with influencers and decision makers within your ICPs.

Relationship

To grow your brand and product/solution awareness it is recommended to develop a two-way communication strategy with prospect clients to build trust in brand and solutions. Just sending out non-personalised content is not going to get the results you want.
It takes time to build that trust and although there are several commentators that say that traditional salespeople will increasingly not be part of the buying process, there will still be the need for human and human intelligence to influence prospective buyers. This may be why many companies are merging their demand teams into the sales functions over the past few months.

With regular communication and a dialled-down hard sell, it is a good way to identify customer pain points and potential needs that in the future can be potentially nurtured into a future sale.

Revenue

By adopting organisational alignment and the above considerations, companies can start thinking about generating credible opportunities rather than ‘leads’ that will if done correctly will produce a higher percentage of closed won sales and measurable return on sales and marketing investment.

HOW CAN OPPORTUNITY FINDER HELP IN OPTIMISING YOUR ABM STRATEGY?

Enrich

For successful ABM it all starts with Data. Companies often struggle with siloed, inconsistent, and incomplete data. BNZSAs Decision Science and Data science teams can help find those missing notes on the score, verify existing data using our Leadverifyr service and fill in the white space in spreadsheets of missing information to enrich data sets. BNZSA can also blend and optimize its own first party with third-party data, intent data, firmographic data and technographic data to create unique audience segments and stack ranked ideal customer profiles (ICPs) without having to wait for a prospect to interact with a website1 or click on an asset.

Find

If there is a lot of data that is old and potentially inaccurate, companies can utilize BNZSA’s ContactFindr service to discover the influencers and decision makers at ICP TALs.
ContactFindr aims to reduce the time involved in trawling through platforms like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other similar resources so our clients can target the right people at the right time with the right message on multiple platforms.

This service is supported by BNZSA data researchers who complete contact records manually using different sources & platforms and gain GDPR consent.

Ignite

By utilising social, programmatic, and digital engagement, BNZSA’s clients can ensure that every single decision maker in its ideal audience segments is aware of its brand, products and services or thought leadership on certain key topics, even if they’re not yet in-market.
BNZSA’s segmentation tools enables the ability to target programmatically by job function for the most cost-effective use of our client’s display advertising budget.

Engage

Increasingly, BNZSA’s clients do not have the time or resources to nurture-up top of the funnel opportunities and prefer to concentrate on opportunities that are more sales ready and closer to closing. By implementing BNZSA’s BDR time-based model, clients can supplement existing BDR and sales teams with highly trained BNZSA agents using a cost per time-based model.
Benefits of using this model for ABM are as follows:

BNZSA’s Warm HandoverTM is a three-way video call between a BDR, a client’s sales rep and the prospective customer. The BNZSA BDR is responsible for identifying and qualifying the lead, securing and scheduling the meeting, and ensuring that the sales rep has all the information they need to help close the deal. Conversion rates can improve by up to 300 per cent compared with traditional BANT2 content syndication.

Close

Taking the time-based model to the next level, BNZSA also offers its clients’ Sales Development Resources SDRs as-a-service that handle the entire sales cycle generating closed sales and revenue. They can use the clients’ email address, hold regular pipeline calls and be responsible for an agreed sales target.

Conclusion

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is an effective approach to engaging potential customers at the right time and with the right content. However, it requires an all-in approach that integrates marketing and sales operations with clear stakeholder alignment and a shared go-to-market strategy. Despite the challenges, ABM promises to provide companies with the ability to engage with customers earlier, identify buying committees within target accounts, and deliver relevant content.
Opportunity Finder can help companies optimise their ABM strategy by enriching first and third-party data, harmonising automation technology, and providing guidance on segmenting tactics, creating personalised content, and building strong relationships with target accounts. Ultimately, ABM is about building long-term relationships with potential customers that drive growth, customer loyalty, and measurable returns on sales and marketing investment.

The Use of AI in B2B Content Creation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come a long way in recent years, revolutionising many industries and making tasks easier and more efficient. However, despite its many capabilities, AI is not without limitations.

OpenAI’s language modelling chatbot, ChatGPT, was launched in November 2022. Harnessing the power of a unimaginable dataset compared to previous chatbots, 570 GB to be precise, ChatGPT has truly taken the world by storm.

Social media has been inundated with tips and tricks of how to use it optimally and posts lauding its success and rightly so, it is a very useful tool. (We may have even used it to help create this blog!) However, its popularity has fueled the AI vs human intelligence (HI) debate, even raising the question of whether similar tools will eventually replace creative content teams completely.

A worrying thought for any content creator, but fear not, as the answer is no. Although the capabilities of such tools seem endless, they are not without their limitations. Tools like ChatGPT certainly have a role to play in B2B content creation, but there is a long way to go to before they could ever come close to replacing a human team.  

Advantages:

Marketeers can and should use AI to elevate and optimise their workload but should not rely on it completely to generate original content. There are many ways AI can be used to enhance content creation such as:

Innovation and creativity:

Time efficiency:

AI can process large amounts of data in a short space of time and generate relevant ideas for your business. This saves time and resources which may have been spent by a writer manually researching a topic.

AI tools can be a great sounding board to get your creativity flowing. As mentioned earlier ChatGPT is based on a massive database of information, this allows you to access different perspectives and expertise and bring fresh ideas to your content plans.

Personalisation:

Tools such as ChatGPT can be used to generate more personalised messaging, making your content more relevant to your target audience. This can help to increase engagement and conversion rates.

Limitations:

Despite its place within B2B content creation, AI still has it limitations, which is why it should be used in tandem with HI rather than replacing it entirely. Some constraints to take into consideration are:

Lack of context:

AI can struggle to fully understand context in which is content is being created. This can lead to content that is inappropriate or irrelevant to your target audience being generated.

Limited understanding of cultural and social nuances:

Humans can identify nuances which need to be factored into messaging easier than AI can. Content with insensitive or inappropriate messaging can seriously damage a brand’s reputation.

Plagiarism:

As ChatGPT is based on existing information there is a high risk that it will not generate original content which can cause problems with copyright infringement and fair use policies if not detected.

No customer knowledge:

Similarly to not being able to fully understand nuance and context, AI will not fully understand what matters to your customers and cannot respond to customer feedback in real time. Crucially it also cannot generate original research which is a valuable content format in B2B.

Bias:

Although ChatGPT is based on a mammoth of information, a lot of what is freely available on the internet is heavily biased or simply complete misinformation or “fake news”. This can create an unreliable narrative throughout the content it creates.

It is clear that AI and ChatGPT have a place in B2B content creation, but it should be considered as a tool to enhance the work of human intelligence. While these tools can generate valuable content ideas and even entire pieces, there are too many risks involved in relying on them completely as they cannot replace the creativity, nuance, and expertise of human content teams.

Additionally, there are security concerns as increasingly malicious users are using AI to generate more realistic messaging to scam users, adding to growing cybersecurity concerns. We will delve further into the security threats that AI models pose in the next segment of our AI in B2B blog series.  

Avoid content fatigue and maximise your lead generation eco-system.

Companies invest in resources and do a lot of work to map out their addressable market, identify their Ideal Customer Profile and build a database of relevant contacts. This is an essential task to build an eco-system of consented contacts to use in sales and marketing outreach.  

Having a robust database of contacts is crucial for a successful B2B marketing strategy. But there are three questions that need to be answered when addressing this eco-system:

Even if the leads generated are high quality, contacts can easily become disengaged if bombarded with irrelevant content when they are not at the right stage of their purchasing cycle. Marketing and sales teams then play a dangerous game of trying to keep their prospects engaged and educated through content marketing, while also trying to avoid overloading them with messaging that won’t land.

So, once you define your audience how can you easily personalise your reach?

Data is key

Intent data, data science and decision science can help you to enrich your database with vital information regarding purchasing cycles, buying committees, and stakeholders within your target accounts.

This data means you can categorize prospects into the following:

Not only can you identify the “low-hanging fruits” that are currently in market, but also potential customers that may need further nurture and education before they are ready to buy.  

Tailor your messaging

These insights can be incorporated into your digital activity allowing you to tailor your messaging based on buyer persona, buying intent, industry etc.

This could be a programmatic campaign which has messaging revolving around a special offer or discount for those who are actively in market to encourage a quicker conversion.

Or this could be applied by tailoring emailing sequences with different messaging based on behavioural triggers and engagement levels.  

Quick & proactive BDR follow-up

However, it is not enough to solely engage prospects digitally it is important to have BDR or SDR resources in place to actively follow-up once their behaviour shows interest or that they are in market. This human element allows you to further understand their needs as a buyer, but also deepens their knowledge of your product or service.  

Quick BDR follow-up means you can capitalize on the momentum of the prospects interest, in turn bringing them further along the sales pipeline, and increasing the possibility of converting the opportunity to closed won.

BNZSA’s Opportunity Finder is a fully integrated solution, which follows these principles. It combines some of the most advanced lead generation tools, allowing you to identify credible, qualified opportunities, engage them at the right time and increase conversion rates.

Case Study

BNZSA recently applied these steps to a telemarketing campaign for our client, a blue chip IT enterprise in an effort to re-engage 62 leads which were deemed as closed negative by a third-party agency. Once these leads were passed to us, we:

By following this process, we were able to deliver:

BNZSA predicts the top 3 B2B marketing trends for 2023

With the new year well underway, BNZSA is looking ahead at the top three trends that will influence B2B marketeers in 2023.  

The IT industry has been hit hard in the past year with mass layoffs and uncertainty due to the looming threat of a recession. This trend has sadly continued in January 2023 with more companies announcing redundancies. In times like these, it's crucial for businesses to be smart about their marketing spend and make sure their messaging is reaching the right people at the right time and is relevant to that audience in order to generate real sales opportunities and revenue.  

To this end, BNZSA is looking at three key strategies that can help you make the most of your marketing budget.  

1. Curated Content Hubs  

B2B buyers are increasingly expecting a B2C-like experience when interacting with B2B companies. This means that they want easy access to relevant and valuable content and information, as well as seamless and efficient communication and collaboration throughout the buying process.  

To meet these expectations, B2B marketers need to focus on creating an omnichannel presence that allows buyers to engage with their brand and access content and information on their own terms. This can include creating a robust website or landing page with educational resources that acts as a content hub. Creating this space creates a point of reference for the prospect where they can be directed to further “bingeable” content, or where they can be redirected to multiple times whether through ads, emails or through their own interest. 

Prospects’ content experiences can be enriched by using programmatic advertising on social media channels. By tracking engagement and user behaviour on the landing page, prospects can then receive advertising with tailored messaging based on their user profiles and leveraging data on customer behaviour to push them to additional content relevant to their interests, industry, or job title.   

By delivering a B2C-like experience to B2B buyers, companies can not only improve the overall customer journey, but also differentiate themselves from the competition and build strong, long-lasting relationships with their clients. 

Creating personalised user content journeys through email content, social media advertising and landing pages, allows marketing teams to gather important data on what interests their customers and helps to identify buying intent signals which is valuable data which can strengthen a follow-up telemarketing strategy.  

2. Disintermediation  

Marketing teams are often handling leads being generated from various agencies which can lead to a disjointed and inefficient workflow. 2023 is the year where marketing teams will partner with fewer agencies, instead, procuring all their marketing needs from one place.   

Gone are the days where one agency handles your social media and digital activity, another handles the generation of opted-in leads which are then passed onto another agency for further qualification, before hopefully being closed by an in-house sales representative. Working with one centralized agency that has the capacity to complete each activity along the sales funnel, maximises marketing efforts. Not only does it provide a more cohesive and centralized insight into the progress of the sales pipeline, but it also creates a seamless flow throughout nurture activity.  

When one agency handles every activity, it facilitates a faster follow up as the prospect’s engagement can be tracked and incorporated into a telemarketing campaign. When a prospect’s behaviour shows high engagement there is no lull between the different agencies’ activity, allowing you to capitalize on the momentum and increasing the chance to convert the lead into a revenue generating opportunity.  

A "one stop shop" specialist agency such as BNZSA, can provide a full range of marketing services, from content creation, content syndication, digital and telemarketing activity, and even outsourced sales teams to close the deal all under one roof, streamlining pipeline generation from start to finish.  

3. Opportunities rather than leads 

Traditionally marketing has focused on lead generation, and rightfully so. But times are changing and there is a need for campaigns to be more strategic in order to convert leads into revenue generating opportunities. Marketing teams need to look at the entire pipeline to ensure prospects are adequately qualified and nurtured until they are sales ready to not only close the “easy wins”, but to also make sure that nothing is lost from the pipeline in the meantime.  

Our research shows that up to 98.5% of leads are lost from the pipeline. This means that marketing spends potentially worth millions of euros is not being spent efficiently, simply because the sales teams don’t have the resources to follow up on everything or there is a breakdown somewhere along the sales funnel.  

This year will see a huge focus on quality over quantity and a shift from “lead generation” to “opportunity generation”. One key issue is that “lead” is a generalised term that includes everything from a simple opt-in to a Sales Qualified Lead, but using the term lead itself does not necessarily tell you whether it is real sales opportunity or not.  

Simple campaigns that focus on gathering consented opt-ins no longer guarantee a high revenue return. Marketing teams need to focus on creating intricate campaigns with multiple digital and human touch points in order to optimize their pipeline generation efforts.  

Identifying and qualifying opportunities that have the highest chance of closing involves applying various strategies along the sales funnel in order to fully engage and convert prospects to opportunities effectively. This can be hard to get right at every step but disintermediation and creating curated content experiences are huge steps in the right direction.  

Switch to a Hybrid BDR and SDR "Sales As-A Service” model for more sustainable sales pipeline and faster returns on marketing investment in 2023

By Paul Briggs, Director of Global Corporate Development 

To hire and retain the best talent in the future it will not just be about overall compensation, it will also have to address growing themes of work /life balance, remote and flexible working, and other hygiene factors.  

Ultimately, these trends may force hiring managers and chief strategy officers (CSOs) to completely rethink how they hire, manage and workplaces and employees, especially when more and more companies are looking to adopt a 4-day week for staff without reducing current pay. 

Naturally, the main concern is how to adopt to these new working trends without affecting pipeline and ultimately revenue targets, especially when analyst Forrester notes that traditional “leads-based “contributions have declined in terms of contribution to overall revenue results performance. 

But instead of hoping that short-term re-orgs, layoffs and downsizing fixed assets will solve the current and future challenges companies are facing, many industry commentators are suggesting that the companies that will ride the wave of recession and post pandemic pain points will be those that are planning to move to a distributed enterprise where not only will IT and business solutions be provided “As-A-Service,” human resources, will be too! 

Time-based models for supporting IT vendors and channel partners are increasingly being sought after as new hybrid business models evolve. By engaging with well trained and highly specialised individuals, companies can either back-fill existing vacancies, generate new high-quality opportunities or provide validation or nurturing support for existing opportunities. 

BNZSA is one such company that has evolved its business model to provide its clients time-based full-time BDRs and SDRs “ Sales as-a-service”. These resources work with clients in a number of ways for opportunity and closed won sales generation, in addition to its traditional CPL-based content syndication offering. 

BDR-as-a-service: Time based Model 

By engaging with a BNZSA BDR in a time-based model, clients only pay for the time of that BDR which is usually 20 days a month. The BDR can either use client data such as Target Account Lists to prospect from. These lists can be validated and enriched by BNZSA’s Decision Science and Data science teams or BNZSA’s own mixture of 1st party, 3rd party and intent data to create custom databases and audience segments.  

The use of BNZSA’s data services is included in the BDRs time-based fee at no extra cost. As the BDR works in a waterfall model, this allows for a deeper engagement with prospects. As well as producing 12-15 Warm HandoversTM per month, a BDRs also has approximately 5-15 interactions with decision makers on a daily basis generating: 

Without recruitment fees to hire, or ongoing costs such as holiday and sick pay, the BDR can be trained by the client in the unique selling points of the product or service, understand who an ideal customer is and can work with the client on a script to ensure brand protection and management.  

In some cases, the BDR can also use a client’s email address and call on behalf of the client. With regular reporting and calls, the progress and pipeline of the BDR can be managed by the client and can complement existing internal teams rather than compete with them.  

As well as backfilling resources and generating opportunities, BDRs can also be utilised to validate and recycle opportunities that have been generated by social media or digital content syndication activity.  These opportunities may have either stalled or have been discarded because there is either too much volume or not enough time/resources to nurture the prospects into a more sales ready status. 

As BNZSA’s BDRs have native speaking support for 26 languages, companies that are looking to land and expand in new territories can also avail of instant support in these regions, which is also attractive for companies that are looking to IPO.  

As BDRs can be throttled up or throttled back, clients can add additional resources or scale back depending on clients’ requirements, leaving internal and channel teams to concentrate on existing customer needs as well as finding new ones. 

SDR-”Sales-As-A-Service" model 

Similar to the BDR-as-a-service model, BNZSA has recently introduced a hybrid SDR- As-A-Service" model, where the SDR is effectively a full-time sales resource for the client. Essentially it is a “sales-as-a-service” offering, with a fixed fee and commission pricing structure.  

Like the BDR model, the client only pays for the days the SDR works, has a client email, and calls on behalf of the client. However, the key difference between the two is that the SDR handles the entire sales cycle and is responsible for generating closed sales and revenue where the client agrees a commission structure to create a strategic partnership.  

Like an FTE sales resource, the SDR handles PO, payments and all details required to enter a contract. Between the client and BNZSA, the SDR is incentivised for bigger value, high volume sales and facilitates a deeper nurture of the opportunity through the whole funnel. As well as access to BNZSA’s data and decision science team, the SDR fixed fee also includes additional sales support and resources such as sales managers and project managers.  

Like an FTE sales resource, BNZSA’s SDR will, in concert with the client’s own model, earn commission on closed won sales, but unlike many internal FTEs not in the first three months of engagement if there are no closed won sales. And due to BNZSA’s industrialised internal training programmes, there is a shorter ramp up time to get SDRs up to speed and closing sales, but like the above BDR model, there are not the extra costs in recruitment fees, training, holiday pay, sick pay, pensions, technology, software licence fees or tax.  

And like the BDR model, BNZSA’s SDRs can support 26 languages with native speakers that allows clients to instantly ramp up in new territories, achieve a lower cost of sale and see quick, sustainable, and measurable ROI to investment.  

In short, BNZSA wants to offer its clients a strategic partnership that works because its client’s success is BNZSA’s success. 

Hope For The Best By Preparing For The Worst: BNZSA Examines The Five Key Trends For ITDMs For 2023 And Beyond.

As we enter the last few days of 2022 it is a customary tradition to do a bit of navel gazing about what the next year will hold for the IT Market and what hot topics will keep ITDMs awake at night next year.

As we end what has been for many, a rollercoaster of a year, there seems to be plenty of things that will cause a few sleepless nights in the months ahead!

Therefore, it is important to identify and adapt to these trends in a world that has had a perpetual round of shocks in the last decade that in more recent times has seen: a global pandemic, inflation, global supply chain issues, energy and food crises and latterly geopolitical instability through war. There are also many concerns over increasingly sophisticated criminal and state sponsored cyber-attacks. 

With another global recession on the horizon, it is more essential than ever to have the best and most actionable data, combined with continued investment in employee and customer value propositions, in order to ride the wave of these uncertain times.

In the first of this two-part piece, BNZSA will identify the key trends and challenges in the market for 2023 and beyond.

1. Hybrid Infrastructure

Many commentators have been tracking the long-lasting implications of Covid on the workplace and what knock-on effects it has had on the provision of IT services and employee working practices. While the race to look for more collaborative technologies during lockdowns and social distancing measures was a necessary first response to a natural disaster, most industry watchers believe that hybrid and remote working will continue after the pandemic.

In November 2022, a YouGov study on behalf of IT service and consultants NSC noted “… organisations should expect this to be a permanent and persistent pattern in their workplace and to prepare for this long-term shift.”

It also believes that this paradigm shift is the ‘new norm’ and that increasingly companies will move to a ‘distributed enterprise.’ The report also noted that the global market for IT and business services grew 29% to $84.2 billion in 2021 as businesses reviewed and implemented new technology to improve “overall long-term business resilience.”

In order to fully utilise hybrid-infrastructure, ITDMs must factor in the following trends. With opportunity, comes potential challenges and risks, which if not fully planned for may bring some nasty surprises along the way.

2. Modern Workplace

The knock-on effect of the long period of remote working is that many employees now associated office-based jobs with an unnecessary and expensive commute on backed up highways and overburdened public transport networks.

Whereas hybrid and remote ways of working offer more flexibility, productivity and time to be with family. Many workers have decided that going forward they want to work for companies that will offer remote or hybrid working, according to analyst Gartner.

It found that nearly half of employees surveyed wanted to work for companies that offered more hybrid work and latterly shorter working weeks. It also stated that the “employee value proposition must change for hybrid work and respond to shifts in employee expectations”

In its report, Gartner has identified these key future work trends:

In conclusion, Gartner believes because the ongoing transformation in the way knowledge workers work, the move to hybrid working will prove great opportunities for companies. However, it will also provide potential risks such as increased exposure to cyberattacks, which we will examine below.

Other factors such as the way companies have traditionally  procured and managed hardware look likely to change as demands for more bring (or use) your own devices (BYOD) grows and the demand of  purchasing more mobile devices rather than traditional desktop devices grows.

Break fix services will also be a consideration for the future in terms of maintaining, services and replacing devices. And with a growing need for employees to monitor activity and productivity of remote staff, there looks likely to be some concerns about how much data companies are holding on employees, how it is processed and other concerns that ITDMs will have to manage as part of ongoing privacy policies.

3. Digital Transformation

While YouGov/NSC found, in a survey of 263 business executives, that 79% of respondents had a digital transformation plan in place, almost half cited that legacy technology as a key constraint. Many are now looking to cloud migration or companies that offer as-a-service solutions, to not only help with their digital transformation plans, but to also maintain solid customer value propositions and customer experience.

To this end, YouGov predicts that demand for as-as-service offerings will rise. And this can also mean how companies hire staff. According to Gartner, in looming recessionary times functional leaders must get “recession ready.” And this means being agile in securing talent.

For BNZSA’s clients, the demand for BDRs-as-a-service and SDRs-as-a-service also looks set to rise in 2023 and beyond as companies look to backfill existing shortages or look to grow pipelines and closed won revenue by adding instant ‘virtual’ resources at a fraction of the cost of traditional FTEs.

During the pandemic, a lot of the traditional face-to-face (F2F) ways to educate potential customers on IT products and solutions and generate sales pipeline such as conferences and events were put on hold. In turn, this has accelerated many companies to look to digital solutions and social platforms to educate and also for lead generation provision.

While it is universally accepted that ‘content is the backbone of any buyer journey or customer experience. Analyst company Forrester notes that currently marketeers must catch up on critical skills to ensure content will deliver its ‘intended impact’. It also notes that having a pre-pandemic approach to content provision and content syndication in an increasingly sophisticated digital landscape will not yield the results or ROI that marketeers and sales people expect. While we may have to wait for the Metaverse or some similar virtual reality platform to interact with brands, there are plenty of smarter ways for companies to use content on current digital platforms.

To this end Forrester advises five important focus areas for content provision, effective digital campaigns and providing the right content to the right people at the right time:

As we approach 2023, it seems that while most companies may claim they have a digital transformation in place, it may be hindered by a number of factors that need to be addressed and fixed.

If for example, legacy hardware is the reason why cloud migrations and as-a-service provision is faltering, looking to companies that provide managed services and have the necessary infrastructure in place could be a short-term solution to allow ITDMs and marketeers to focus on other areas of the business that need to be fixed such as content.

Like managed service providers, there are a number of agencies like BNZSA that can not only create the content for your campaigns but also manage both the awareness and the generation of marketing qualified and sales ready opportunities.

4. Cloud Computing

While the migration from on premise infrastructure to cloud computing has been happening the enterprise for some time, it is quickly becoming a top priority for the mid-size market. According to YouGov/NSC, it found that: “in 2021, cloud spending by small and midsized businesses shot up significantly, with as many as 53% spending more than $1.2 million annually on the cloud - up from 38% in 2020”.

It also states that companies are increasingly looking for cloud-based solutions “to keep up with digital transformation and ensure remote workers have what they need to stay productive”.

Considering the above trends and challenges of modern workplace, hybrid computing and digital transformation, it is small wonder that YoGov/NSC found that execs from all sizes of companies ranked cloud services between 80-93% as the most important technology for their business post Covid.

In terms of best practice around cloud migration, there is a whole range of advice around whether to ‘lift and shift’-migrating existing architecture to cloud-based services, ‘refactor’ or fully refactor, according to AWS cloud migration partner Cloud Bridge that notes

“In our experience, there is no ‘right’ way. The key decision is whether to modernise as you move, or afterwards.”

5. Cyber Security

With the move to more hybrid and remote working combined with the growth of using more “as-a-service” offerings by cloud migration and outsourced human resources is creating more security threats for both enterprise and mid-size companies.

The holiday period is also a prime time for cyberattacks according to managed services provider, Transputec that warns:

"The main issue with cybersecurity over Christmas is that many organisations are severely understaffed during this time. Employees are often underprepared when the cyberattack takes place, and even struggle to deal with recovering from the damages done after the cyberattack. Detection and response times are much higher in Christmas than any other time of year as a result."

"Cyberattacks are more prevalent since organisations just don’t have the defences in place to deal with the numerous forms of cyberattacks. In particular, ransomware attacks increased by 70% during the holiday period of 2021."

According to Transputec, as well as raising awareness of cyberattacks over the holidays with staff and running compliance courses, it is also important to add things like multi-factor authentication to accounts and devices:

“This will provide an additional layer of security that makes it more difficult for cyber-attackers to bypass. Cyber-attackers have often been able to guess or steal passwords. Having multi-factor authentication helps your organisation become less susceptible to social engineering.”

Going forward into 2023, YouGov/NSC notes that “67% of the C-suite see the single biggest "headache", with technology today, as Cybersecurity.”

While Analyst Gartner also notes that for audit departments, executives see Cyber threats as a growing risk in 2023.

“Fewer than half (42%) of audit executives are highly confident they can provide assurance over cybersecurity risk — although 81% plan to cover cybersecurity in audit activities. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting geopolitical hostility could lead to increased cyberthreats. Even before war broke out, organizations believed that actors sponsored by the Russian government targeted them.”

However, there are certainly solutions. Having a strategy and backup in place to deal with cyberattacks is crucial concludes Transputec that observes:

“Since cyberattacks are more common during the Christmas season, it’s also important to have backups of your data in the case of a successful cyberattack. With cloud computing being commonly used, having a physical backup of your data could be a life-saver”.

Stay tuned for part two where we will offer some tips and advice from our internal experts, clients and ITDMs, using real world examples on how to adapt for these challenges.

BNZSA Spotlight

Digital awareness campaigns with a purpose

The digital challenges in B2B marketing

In the B2B space, digital can be hard to get right. You have to catch the potential buyer’s attention in a very crowded marketplace, where we are already pretty desensitised and mistrustful of online advertising and email marketing in general.

It’s particularly challenging given the education journey required to purchase many B2B IT solutions, especially at the enterprise level where budgets are high, stakeholders are many and buying cycles are long. The products are often far too complex to be bought in the classic B2C e-commerce environment – somewhere along the way a conversation with experienced sales reps, product specialists and integration consultants will likely be required.

At the same time, we know that B2B customers are expecting somewhat of a B2C experience in their buying journey – they want to have a rich content experience that will enable them to self-serve the information they need, when they need it.

The challenges of digital marketing in the B2B space

High competition:

The digital space is a highly saturated environment, and customers are inundated with the content they are exposed to, whether in their email inbox or social feeds. This has created an audience which is desensited to advertising, meaning digital campaigns need to stand out and be relevant to customers’ needs in order to grab the attention of the target audience.

Lack of focus:

Digital encompasses a wide range of activities and platforms – programmatic advertising, paid social, email automation, SEM and SEO. This means that businesses run the risk of stretching their marketing resources too thin as they attempt to have a presence on every available platform. The best and most effective digital strategies are laser focused on matching the right audiences to the right platform at the right time.

Lack of actionable insight:

In digital it is hard to understand the full impact the campaign has had. Whilst you can collect a lot of metrics, it can be hard to connect some types of engagement with real action – whether because privacy laws limit tracking on digital ads or because form fills collect unreliable or insufficient information. Digital can only work when it is supported and enriched with additional insights form data and BDR teams.

Integrating digital marketing and lead generation

On the one hand, every marketer loves to do digital. It's creative and strategic, and most importantly it gives fantastic metrics that can demonstrate the value of the marketing team´s hard work.

However, sales can struggle to understand the value of this work if it doesn't necessarily translate into immediate revenue. We´ve written previously about how in some cases just 1.5% of marketing leads translate to sales.

This tension means marketing teams end up treating digital as completely separate from their lead generation programmes, or at least confine it to the awareness stage of their funnel. This means that they miss the opportunity to provide real insights that can have a real impact on sales revenue.

But it doesn't have to be this way. In our experience, digital can be an incredible tool that accelerates the customer journey – both through demonstrating value and creating opportunities for prospects to raise their hands when they are in-market.

How can digital support B2B sales?

When integrated correctly, focused digital campaigns can be integral towards achieving specific goals throughout the sales cycle. When digital campaigns are run simultaneously with a complete BDR outreach strategy, this can:

By achieving these objectives, sales and marketing teams can ignite their sales strategy and accelerate pipeline generation. Despite the challenges, digital marketing is a valuable tool for B2B sales when done well.

BNZSA offers Ultra-Nurture, a lead nurturing services which integrates data and telemarketing to create well-rounded, successful lead generation campaigns.

Channel your MDF investment into Virtual Teams 

VARs and Distributors that want to beef up lead generation activity and accelerate pipeline growth, are increasingly looking to adopt virtual selling teams to add instant BDR resources to ramp up pipeline for vendor partners. 

Direct vendors and suppliers that utilise internal teams of business development resources (BDRs) are not the only ones looking to reorganise remotely or recruit virtually, the Channel is too. 

Traditionally used as a robust and complementary part of an IT vendor’s go-to-market strategy, value added resellers, (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) have been an invaluable extension to a vendor’s sales team, being a reliable source of both pipeline and sales. 

For this service, channel partners receive vendor training to get sales accreditation and marketing development funds (MDF) to support sales activities. 

Typically, especially pre-pandemic, this MDF funding has largely been invested into face-to-face events to generate leads, with one large enterprise software company spending over 80% of its annual MDF budget on events alone. 

Face to face meetings between reseller reps and prospects were also commonplace before the pandemic, but more recently, the number of B2B sellers operating virtually reached 90% in January 2021, up from only 24% in 2020, according to research firm Gartner. It noted: 

"For decades, direct field sales was the dominant go-to-market channel. This dominance is being challenged with 67% of CSOs planning to transition some field sellers to virtual roles, and 80% have already considered or are considering creating hybrid field/virtual sales roles."

Marketing trends in a post-covid world

However, following Covid and the cancellation of events during the lockdown the channel has been a little slow to embrace complementary ways to attract, validate and nurture potential prospects to the products and services they sell on behalf of vendor partners. 

Anecdotally, some channel veterans have commented that channel marketing is behind the rest of the marketing world by about five years and that most VARs are five years behind that. 

Although many channel companies have invested in digital marketing tactics such as pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimisation (SEO) to generate interest and leads, the results in terms of the quality of inbound leads is mostly disappointing in terms of return on investment (ROI). 

This is largely because, the content they are providing on their sites is often more important to them than their users or potential customers. Often VARs and Distributors are just recycling a vendor’s corporate marketing collateral which looks at speeds and feeds rather than producing content that would address the needs and benefits to their potential customers. 

Without a full events calendar to drum up prospects, many channel companies are now scrambling to find new ways to help with pipeline acceleration and lead generation support. One of these tactics has been to set up virtual teams to retain pre-Covid sales forces that now favour remote working practices and benefits rather than returning to the office, even if it means reductions in salary, according to Gartner. 

It also noted that chief strategy officers (CSOs) are also hesitant to fully commit to virtual teams as they are undecided if remote working is just a temporary hiatus until the world emerges from the Covid pandemic or if it is indeed the ‘new norm.’ 

There is an understanding that the ‘digital native’ Millennials and Gen Z, who have emerged into the work force in recent years, are already accustomed to digital communication and platforms. They favour the benefits of remote working and communication rather than working and commuting to office-bound cites.

But what is clear to many channel companies, is that by reallocating field sales to virtual sales teams there are many savings to be had such as less travel expenses, company vehicles and entertainment budgets.

Remote working – a virtual insanity or virtually impossible to ignore? 

While it was a necessity to work remotely during the pandemic, now as the world emerges from the pandemic, channel companies can reap the benefits of Virtual Teams without the worry that they are over committing to a strategy that will change as Covid restrictions lessen.  

As today’s MDF funding is less discretionary and requires more business planning that is tightly linked to sales performance, to secure funding being able to demonstrate a credible source of pipeline and sales ready leads is a better bet.  

Virtual teams not only increase pipeline, but it can also be measured in uplift of closed won opportunities, so it is very transparent for the vendor allocating MDF to its reseller partner. The opportunity is validated, has given GDPR consent so even if the opportunity is not sales ready, it can be put back into nurturing for the future. 

Increase conversion rates from digital content syndication

For those in the channel that have tried digital content syndication for lead generation, many are finding the returns are not as they once were, especially in a GDPR monitored market that has reduced the number of daily marketing emails by 1bn.  As we can see from the below infographic, compiled using internal BNZSA data, there is a very low conversion rate between the number of digitally content syndicated leads that are recognised as sales accepted. This is because in many cases the interest is triggered by open rates, not true indication of the prospect’s interest that you can get through tele-based means. There is often little nurturing, personalisation or validation of the prospect before it is handed over.  

So, it’s a small wonder that when these digitally generated ‘leads’ are passed on to a vendor’s sales team, there is the usual outcome of “I don’t remember downloading the whitepaper” or “Where did you get my details? I don’t remember giving consent for you to email me.” 

Even when customers are followed up with BANT style questions, many outcomes are considered closed because the prospect either a) might have the need but not the budget or b) need buy in from a group rather than overall sign off or c) may have need but not in the next 12 months as they might be working on another project. Combined with often unrealistic internal KPIs to move leads from MQL to SRL in a couple of weeks, it is often easier for sales to close the leads rather than do the required nurturing to move the prospect down the funnel. In this scenario many BDRs think it better to bin prospects that don’t instantly convert, than manage too many prospects that are stuck in the funnel because they have not had the required nurturing to be approached. This often means that vendors are paying several times for the same MQL which is wasteful and potentially brand damaging. 

BNZSA WarmHandoverTM vs BANT methodology

However, with a virtual BDR approach from BNZSA, highly trained agents call on behalf of the channel partner or vendor, strike up a conversation with the prospect, validate the person’s details are correct, gain consent to email over collateral, and capture any buying intent signals that might be useful to prioritise who to follow up, first. 

By deploying virtual teams, BNZSA agents are not only identifying those prospects that might be ready to have a call with sales, BNZSA’s agents also sets up the call with the channel partner’s vendor in what is termed a Warm HandoverTM which boasts a 70% conversion rate.

Conversion rate comparison between traditional digital content syndication and implementing a BDR approach showing how IT channel providers can better use their MDF.

Conversion rates using the WHOTM process, rather than BANT methodology, can improve closed SRL opportunities by 300%. 

Instead of competing with the functions of an in-house BDR team, adding BNZSA Virtual Teams offers companies an extension to its current set up. Not only are the resources dedicated to the campaign, BNZSA can in advance or concurrently surround target companies with programmatic advertising to raise awareness of the vendor’s product or service. 

All BNZSA’s agents go through a rigorous and industrialised training and onboarding process and are experienced in selling enterprise IT B2B products and services. 

BNZSA agents are also available to receive specialist training from a company’s product/subject matter specialist. BNZSA also employs highly experienced technical coaches that have spent years in the IT industry. They can add instant quality and experience to a company’s set up in a fraction of the time it takes to build this infrastructure in-house.  

With support for over 26 languages, companies looking to land and expand in EMEA have instant access to native speakers that can communicate with a company’s prospects and understand the various cultural nuances of that region and importantly get clear consent for follow up with email and other communications preferences. 

As BNZSA has the ability to rotate and scale resources depending on the client’s requirements, companies that use Virtual Teams will never have staff shortages through sickness, holidays etc. They will also have access to BNZSA’s data scientists, first party intent data, third party intent data and other multiple sources of technographic, firmographic and trigger data as part of the Opportunity Finder stack.

Prospects that are sent over from BNZSA are qualified, validated and ranked in accordance of where we see them in the purchasing process. This means that opportunities are much more transparent to the end client and not passed through as something that they are not. For example, if we pass prospects over as marketing qualified leads (MQLs), we have identified that they are towards the top of the sales cycle or funnel and require more nurturing before they become credible sales ready leads (SRLs). 

What are the benefits of Virtual Teams in channel marketing?

Virtual Teams are a hugely beneficial addition to both sales and marketing teams' resources, especially within the IT sales channel. Channel partners can face certain challenges such as lack of resources, inadequate data analytics, and inefficient training. Virtual Teams can help sales and marketing teams navigate these issues.

Benefits for marketing:

  1. Quality data sources: Clients who work with multiple resellers, often have difficulty accessing adequate and consistent data. BNZSA Virtual Teams are supported by in-house Data Science and Decision Science teams and our data services are built on first party intent data and second and third party data. Marketing teams will gain valuable market insights to drive strategic decisions.
  2. Better insights: Not only can Virtual Teams deliver more SRLs, through pipeline nurture they can identify key decision makers, organizational structures, purchasing cycles and buying committees, as well as consented opt-ins, MQIs and MQls with timeline and budget. All of which are key insights for marketing teams to leverage.
  3. Larger Audiences: Smaller channel partners can instantly expand their international reach instantly as BNZSA provides multi-lingual support with native speakers of 26 languages. This means that not only can marketing teams expand their lead generation efforts internationally quickly, but they can also localise their messaging in markets across EMEA, APAC and US.

Benefits for sales teams:

  1. Professional BDR resources: Resellers and distributors can often lack the resources need to recruit, train and retain qualified BDRs. By using Virtual Teams, channel partners can quickly professionalize and standardize their approach. This allows them to quickly ramp pipeline generation with highly trained BDRs with product specific knowledge.
  2. Enhanced lead generation: BNZSA's Virtual Teams are driven by highly qualified BDRs who have gone through rigorous training. Channel partner sales teams will benefit from a stronger pipeline as Virtual Teams can concentrate on prospecting and identify high quality opportunities.
  3. Increased revenue: Channel partners using Virtual Teams will receive higher quality SRLs with up to a 300% improvement in closed opportunities. This generates a healthy pipeline and substantially more revenue.

How pre-IPO companies can meet global revenue targets

When companies look to enter an Initial Public Offering (IPO), revenue targets are of course crucial for potential investors. An area that can be especially challenging can be requirements to generate a certain percentage of revenue outside of local markets. This is considered to demonstrate long term growth potential and validate a successful IPO. For example, many private equity or venture capitalists require at least 30% of revenue to be generated in EMEA before considering investment.

When faced with the challenge of expanding pipeline generation in international markets, companies often struggle to grow as quickly and efficiently as needed.

Launching into new international markets can be a costly mistake if not done correctly. Expansion comes with a high possibility of brand damage if you launch without the right data, sales structure, and customer focus in place.

Common challenges faced by pre-IPO companies include:

Lack of efficient sales structure to enable growth

International expansion requires a stable sales structure to facilitate growth. This calls for an experienced sales team, reliable and extensive data, and HR resources to support a large, international team. Training will be required to ensure a consistent customer experience and to absorb local feedback. Many companies will struggle to scale all these resources in an efficient manner.

Shortage of resources to localize outreach and offering

When expanding into global markets, it is hugely beneficial to have a localized outreach strategy. This requires multi-lingual resources and BDRs who are familiar with their target markets. It is a huge investment to onboard and ramp the necessary BDR resources to facilitate effective international outreach. Companies often face challenges with legal and regulatory compliance in new, unfamiliar markets which can create reputational and financial risks.

Limited experience handling larger enterprise accounts

Growing pipeline and revenue generation will often require working with large enterprise accounts. However, these companies will often have a complicated organization structure and procurement processes. Smaller companies who are only beginning to grow internationally may not have the resources in-house or procedures in place to support such large accounts.  As well as excellent cross-market coordination between BDRs working in different regions on the same accounts, there is also a requirement for company and contact information, as well as market insights to support their initial outreach

Taking these challenges into consideration, companies must consider whether it is feasible to grow their internal resources, or if they should partner with an agency with an established presence in their target market.

How outsourcing your sales team can help you IPO

Global B2B sales and marketing agency BNZSA can help streamline pipeline generation from day one. Our Virtual Teams have helped our clients to scale up rapidly and meet the targets required for a successful IPO. Virtual Teams can help address the following needs:

Speed and Scalability

Virtual Teams give you access to all the resources you require, at the moment that you need them. At BNZSA we have BDRs speaking 26 languages from 48 countries, meaning that you can reach EMEA, APAC and the Americas from Day 1, with the cultural awareness you need to adapt your outreach strategy to local markets. Working with an outsourced sales team allows you to scale BDR outreach and adjust and rotate resources as you require. This means you only pay for what you need without the need to invest in internal recruitment, training or employee holidays.

High Quality

A consistent and customer-obsessed experience will be essential to your brand’s reputation in new markets. Our Virtual Teams receive rigorous training and are subject to quality control for every single lead generated in any market. We invest heavily in our training programmes to ensure deep understanding of technical products – Intel’s Marc Beckers develops our IT training courses, supported by Head of Learning & Development Alvaro Aldana who brings experience in scaling consistently from Starbucks. This emphasis on quality at every stage means that our Warm HandoverTM process, which is unique to the market, boasts a 70% conversion rate.

Experience with large enterprises 

BNZSA’s Virtual Team of BDRs are experienced in tackling global enterprises and building relationships across departments and regions to secure revenue. They are supported by industry-leading data team who help map out the global decision-making matrix and enrich with contact information. Our Decision Science practice provides actionable insights about their prospective customers and to anticipate when customers have a need for a certain product or service. Using these insights, digital campaigns can warm and engage stakeholders around an enterprise, leaving the BDRs available to focus on the key decision makers.

Preparing for IPO can be a nerve-wracking moment for leadership team, and it’s tempting to hold all revenue-generating activities close to home. However, choosing the right strategic partner to help you meet your goals can relieve some of the risks and pressures, enabling you to focus on areas such as product that will ensure your ongoing success post-IPO.

Virtual Teams: The solution to BDR burnout and the Great Resignation

YouGov recently surveyed two thousand workers for recruitment website, TotalJobs. The results showed that more than 75% of participants had experienced at least one symptom of burnout this year. Two fifths of respondents cited unrealistic workloads as one of the biggest causes of burnout. 

Many sectors such as travel and leisure, which were hit hard by the pandemic are now facing staff shortages. However, there is also currently a record number of vacancies in sales and marketing. According to GrabJobs, roles within sales and marketing are some of the most in demand positions in the UK in 2022.    

Adding to the strain is what is referred to as “The Great Resignation”. Workers are deciding to quit or not to return to their jobs as the working conditions provided pre-Covid crisis are no longer appealing to them. Instead, people are now looking for companies who are more mindful of their needs and who respect their work/life balance. Companies providing benefits such as remote working, better pay and better career opportunities are now more competitive as employers.  

Sales teams within the technology and software sectors have been acutely affected by the Great Resignation, with voluntary sales departures reaching 67%, according to figures from Xactly.  

Challenges affecting in house BDR management: 

When considering the role and responsibilities of a BDR, the above challenges are compounded by an elevated level of burnout. A BDR position can easily be considered one of the hardest roles in sales as they face a high level of rejection daily, no matter how good they are at their job. Despite receiving compensation in the form of commission, the pressure can affect their mental health and lead to burnout. Some of the aspects adding to this high level of employee turnover and burnout are: 

Cost of Living:

With sharp rises in energy costs and geopolitical factors, 2022 has seen the cost of living rise steeply. As a result, workers are not just seeking out the most competitive employer for salary, they are more mindful of those that can provide benefits and working conditions that are more inclusive of their personal needs, such as remote working and flexible work schedules.  
There is also a pressure on BDRs to perform, hit quotas and achieve KPIs on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Although they are compensated for this work, missing targets and therefore losing commission can cause added financial strain. 

Covid:

During the pandemic, many workers faced with layoffs and uncertainty saw the time as an opportunity to reflect on their career path and their passions in life, with many deciding to pursue other opportunities outside of sales. 

Staff shortages:

As more workers change positions, the gap left in sales and marketing roles means BDRs are tasked with carrying an even greater workload to compensate for being short staffed, adding to the pressure to perform in their role. A higher-level of stress is key factor in BDR burnout.  

Unrealistic workload:

 Compounded by a high churn rate, BDRs are facing an unmanageable workload which can also negatively impact their mental health and add to burnout. According to BNZSA research, a BDR will have to simultaneously manage 1000s of contacts in a 12-month sales cycle. Tasked with outbound calling, trawling databases, coordinating with marketing and data teams, as well as handling inbound requests from various sources, BDRs can often struggle to prioritise their workload efficiently. 

Friction between teams:

Technology and automation to define workflows for lead follow-up are often chaotic and unmanageable. If processes to manage workflows are not clearly defined, this can lead to friction between BDR teams and Sales and Marketing. 

BDR Burnout is caused by a combination of the Cost of Living Crisis, high turnover in sales and marketing positions and a greater workload in a high pressure environment.
There are many factors which contribute to BDR burnout.

Virtual Teams as a solution: 

Designed to be an extension of your in-house team, rather than a replacement, BNZSA Virtual Teams is a ready-made solution. It is intended to not only enhance the functions of in-house teams, but also give instant resources, multi-lingual support and credible and compliant opportunities that are more mature in the sales cycle. 

Instead of hiring, training and paying for holidays and local taxation, customers only pay for the time of BNZSA's BDRs. They are virtual only in the sense that they are full time BNZSA employees but use an email domain and call on behalf of the client.  

BNZSA’s Virtual Team of BDRs and marketing executives provide our customers with end-to-end lead generation services including profiling accounts, following up on digital activity, qualifying leads, identifying decision makers, and buying committees which is key for companies wanting an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. Costing of Virtual Teams is via a subscription-based Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS) solution, rather than a traditional cost-per-lead (CPL) model. 

Virtual Teams have access to BNZSA's own technology stack, as well as the support of our data science team and newly formed decision science practice. This allows BNZSA to do a lot of the heavy lifting for our clients when it comes to providing high quality, sales ready leads. 

Using a Virtual Team has many benefits which can enhance your B2B lead generation strategy
Virtual Teams are an extension of your BDR resources - not a replacement.

Benefits of using Virtual Teams: 

Enhanced B2B Lead Generation:

Extend and enhance your lead generation efforts with our fully ramped and trained teams. We deliver high-quality, warm leads with our trademarked Warm HandoverTM process, developed specifically to increase conversion rates of the leads we deliver. BNZSA’s BDR will orchestrate a three-way call between themselves, the prospect, and a sales rep, allowing for a direct introduction. This allows for a smoother customer experience for the prospect, and a much more efficient use of time for the sales rep. 

Dedicated BDR Team:

With a BNZSA Virtual Team, they will function as an extension of your in-house BDR team, rather than as a replacement. Our process ensures consistent communication between our agents and your sales rep, creating an environment for constructive feedback, improving the quality of opportunities we deliver. They will be fully dedicated to customer campaigns. They will contact and qualify prospects on their behalf and be an expert in our client's products and services.  

Technical Training and Support:

Our highly experienced technical coaches are on hand to provide support to your team, adding instant quality and experience to your infrastructure. Our agents receive continuous training and guidance throughout campaigns, guaranteeing high quality leads.  

Localise in New Markets:

BNZSA can provide multi-lingual support with native speakers in over 26 different languages. This means our customers can expand their international lead generation strategy, and localise their messaging across EMEA, APAC and US markets. 

Flexible BDR Resources:

As BNZSA can adjust and rotate our resources based on clients’ needs, meaning a B2B campaign will not be slowed down because of sickness, holidays or other absences. 

Quality Data Sources:

Clients have access to BNZSA’s data services comprising of first party intent data, second- and third-party data, as well as support from our Data Science and Decision Science Teams, adding valuable insights to your B2B marketing strategy. 

Why BNZSA? 

 BNZSA is positioned to ramp your lead generation efforts quickly and efficiently with our Virtual Team offering. The Warm Handover (WHOTM) process has a 70% lead-to-conversion rate. With access to almost a decade worth of our own first-party intent data, along with the support of our Data Science and Decision Science teams, BNZSA have the resources to expand pipeline generation. BNZSA works with leading IT providers, with a 95% client retention rate. Get in touch today to discuss how we can add value to your B2B marketing strategy.