Tag Archives: pain point

Marketing , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Content Gets Competitive

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Freelance friend, you are a working professional who knows the environment in which you work. You know all too well that the B2B marketplace continues to become more saturated and, as one would expect, more competitive, as the years go by. B2B buying decision-makers, who are your prospects, have also become more demanding. The 2026 B2B Global Pulse Survey by McKinsey found that today’s buyers expect …consistent information and immediate access to expertise. When those expectations are not met, research shows, they move on.

In order to reach the planned revenue target, Freelance professionals, as well as small business owners and other marketers, must keep up with the growing expectations of prospective customers and get smarter about the strategies devised to promote and explain the case for using your product or service. As you do, keep in mind that your prospects have begun to consult B2B influencers to guide their buyer’s journey, as posts in this diary have recently indicated. The influencers are perceived to be both highly knowledgeable and independent. That’s a trend that will no doubt inspire you to create more authoritative content. Memorable and impactful will be your guiding stars.

B2B brands are investing more in editorial excellences, in-depth guides, and contributions from subject matter experts to provide real value.

Thought leader level content

Buyers want substantive proof of the business case that supports your service or product; enthusiastically delivered promises are not enough. Buyers are in search of informational marketing resources that ensure they’ll be able to make informed decisions when evaluating potential purchases. As a result, expectations continue to rise, making it more difficult for Freelancers to stand out as a professional who has a solution that has the potential to solve the problem or facilitate reaching the goal. Measurable outcomes and Return on Investment are prioritized, making case studies, industry reports, and original research the drivers of engagement and trust in your marketing content. Letting the quality of your supporting data confer to you thought leader style expertise is now a must-do for B2B Freelancers, because your prospects are being seduced by influencers. However, the research you quote is most likely to have been sponsored by a well-respected marketing research platform. As long as the data refers to the point you’re making, you’ll be taken as credible.

Interactive

Here’s the blistering truth—B2B buyers don’t want to talk with salespeople, as confirmed in a 2025 sales survey conducted by the business and technology research platform Gartner; 67% of B2B buyers indicated that they prefer a rep‑free experience. They’re up to here aggravated by avalanches of cold -calling mass marketing emails. Prospects on a buyer’s journey do like the opportunity to evaluate products or services anonymously by using digital tools before they engage with a vendor. Interactive explainer videos that include embedded clickable hotspots that adapt to the prospect’s learning path are a favorite resource, as are webinars that facilitate live chat and interactive infographics.

As the buyer’s journey heats up, prospects are happy to speak with a vendor (maybe you!), to confirm the self-guided research and discuss negotiable matters, such as the possibility of customization and price. To help reel in your sale, Gartner recommends the following:

  • Provide content that demonstrates your brand understands the pain points, goals, priorities, concerns and questions that prospective buyers need to make the right decision—
  • Help buyers quantify the benefits of your product or service for their organization (e.g., including solution performance data and other details). Consider creating free DIY interactive digital tools, such as interactive images, infographics, or surveys, that will help you present a memorable user experience for prospects who are on a self-guided buyer’s journey.
  • Help prospects feel confident and in control of the purchase decision (e.g., by providing a choice of tailored recommendations based on prospect input).
  • Encourage prospects to advance step by step as appropriate through their buyer’s journey by including compelling calls-to-action.

Brand storytelling

Humanizing your organization by inviting customers and prospects to get to know you is the reason to develop a brand narrative. Sharing customer success stories, divulging your motivation to become a founder and other mission-driven details can make your brand feel more relatable and relevant to current and prospective customers. Sharing relevant backstory details about your company—starting with what inspired you to launch your entity—can have enormous benefits for your business, including capturing consumers’ attention and helping you truly connect with customers. Ultimately, a strong customer relationship can help drive growth and increase sales. Brand storytelling is a marketing strategy that involves using authentic narratives to connect with your audience and build genuine emotional connections. It’s more than just promoting what you sell — it’s a way to share your values, purpose and background in a way that resonates and sticks. A company’s brand story should include certain key factors: 

  • Company mission statement: Your company mission and vision statements must be included in the telling of your brand story. You want people to support and feel connected to your company and what it stands for; not just the products or services you sell, but for your values. Ensure your company’s vision and mission statements are visibly accessible on your company website. 
  • Specifics: Include customer testimonials to verify how highly customers think of your brand. All-purpose, generic statements such “many people love our products” are just empty platitudes. Your storytelling will ring true when you mention a customer’s (first) name and describe their review in specific terms, such as, “This product saved me money and made my life easier.”
  • Simple and meaningful language: Potential customers should be able to easily read and understand your brand story in all its forms. Don’t exclude your audience by using words or phrases that are buzzwords or jargon that may not be understood and therefore will not resonate or show your authenticity. Instead, use meaningful language designed to evoke emotion and build brand intimacy.

Redesign/ reuse

Marketing experts call this “recycle-repurpose,” but I think redesign – reuse illustrates the task better. You might like to think of content creation like a traditional Sunday dinner that many American households probably still adhere to. When I was growing up, most American mothers would put a roast of some sort into the oven, peel potatoes or cook macaroni or rice, trim the spinach, shell the peas, or whatever and if energy allowed, or if guests were expected later in the afternoon, a cake or another dessert would be baked—from scratch. The kitchen would have a hunger-inducing aroma!

Like content creation, a big, traditional Sunday dinner is expensive to produce in terms of creativity, time and money. To maximize ROI, my mom cooked extra food on Sundays so that leftovers would be available for our Monday night supper. The Sunday dinner strategy can also be used to maximize the ROI of the marketing content that you create. For example, take a look at at the case studies you’ve developed. It’s almost certain that some clever editing will give you two or three sentences that can be dropped into your next newsletter or email marketing letter or become a social media post on its own. Effective repurposing of your long form content. Meaningful quotes that were first heard in a podcast, webinar, or panel that you participated in can be included in a video that gives an overview of one of those appearances. Recognize that your content is a valuable resource is an important aspect of your marketing strategy that is worthy of repackaging and is an enabler of the consistent publishing that prospects expect.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Breya Jones. Bridge tournament in Louisville, KY (2024)

Sales , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Don’t Close the Sale, Educate the Client

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What does it take for you to bring in sales that convert prospects into clients? Perhaps you are a silver-tongued charmer who is capable of successfully “closing” a sale with almost any prospect? Or is the usual outcome of your sales process sort of hit or miss—not a disaster, but no one would wonder if you have a license to print money?

As you’ve done when unraveling other business obstacles, dissecting and analyzing how you sell, meaning that you’ll study the usual trajectory prospects follow when they include your service or product in their buyer journey—from the initial demonstration of the prospect’s interest to the outcome, when the prospect either becomes a client, or moves on to your competitor. Whatever you learn will indicate which of your intentions are not landing and may also direct you to the remedy. Begin with a review of sales basics.

  • Have you identified your ideal client and how to access them?
  • Do you know the usual pain points or goals that motivate prospects to consider your company?
  • Have you priced your offering appropriately?
  • How clear and convincing are you when articulating your unique sales proposition?
  • What’s your sales success rate when you must respond to an objection?
  • Are you able to detect buying signs that tell you when it’s time to ask for the sale (which could mean the prospect must contact the decision team and recommend a yes vote)?

If your analysis reveals that either your USP is vague and falls short of articulating the strengths of your offering, and maybe even leaves you vulnerable to objections that signal questions about its performance, you have a messaging problem. Attempting to defuse objections is not the cure for prospect hesitation; and bringing in a sale is no longer about dropping magic words that you hope will result in converting the prospect into your client. Enabling B2B sales in the post-pandemic ecosystem often requires that you educate prospects by presenting content marketing info that addresses their priorities and concerns and will, brick by brick, demonstrate that your solution is effective and reliable.

You must keep in mind, though, that the B2B sales process has become opaque; prospects developed an appetite for no-contact buying during the pandemic and the habit has become entrenched. Research from Gartner found that B2B buyers prefer a buyer journey that requires little to no contact with sales reps or other vendors (e.g., Freelancers); findings showed that 75% of buyers prefer to have little interaction with sellers. For that reason, B2B buying journeys and decisions are increasingly made without Freelancers or sales reps. If prospects must make contact to explore a question or two when evaluating from whom they might purchase, they hold tight to the self-serve, Do It Yourself mode. “I can handle this,” they say and you have little to no opportunity to influence, or even interact, with your prospect.

If interaction with the Freelancer or sales rep is unavoidable, a short list of “finalist” vendor candidates is typically contacted to schedule a product demonstration or learn the details of implementing and obtaining the service. But by the time you or any other vendor learns that a possible sale is in progress, the sale is already in BOFU, bottom of the sales funnel; too much has transpired to allow you to exert some control and influence over the sale. Any “sale closing spiel” is circumvented as you realize that you’ve stumbled into a decision that’s well underway—-without you. But Gartner research also revealed an upside, if you choose to see it that way—DIY online purchases are far more likely to result in buyer’s remorse.

Closing versus education 

Of course! Unless the prospect is re-ordering a service or product with which there’s been direct experience, it is unwise for prospects to assume they can successfully navigate the ins and outs of the purchase without guidance. They don’t know what they don’t know.

You designed your marketing/sales funnel to facilitate the initial stages of a buyer journey that’s conducted online and in DIY independent mode. Prospects whose level of interest brings them to MOFU and its gated content should feel comfortable to make email contact to identify themselves and request the info they’d like to view. The plan was for the Freelancer to thank the prospect for his/her interest, send the gated content and begin to discreetly monitor and guide the sales process. In so doing, Freelancers could also save any wayward prospects from themselves by being available to answer questions and make recommendations that encourage a successful experience with the product or service.

In fact, Gartner research indicates that those with sales responsibility should provide marketing content that captures the attention of prospects because the info communicates the value of your service or product and facilitates the decision process. The content must be relevant and aligned with the pain point that the prospect must resolve or goal that must be attained. That’s how a well-designed sales/marketing funnel should work.

More than ever, high-pressure sale “closing” tactics are not what typical B2B clients respond to today. The best way to bring in a sale in the current zeitgeist is to present a rational, evidence-backed case that reveals how and why your solution will effectively and efficiently resolve the prospect’s pain point or facilitate achievement of the goal. Rather than dwelling on product or service features and benefits, a strategy that was a given in 20th century selling, the best recipe now for Freelancers to obtain a degree of influence over the sale is to guide the prospect through a discovery process.

  • Diagnose the pain point and discover its origin
  • Document current, or previous, solutions that disappointed
  • Describe what doing business will look like when your solution resolves the pain point or enables the goal to be realized
  • Determine which solution appears to be most capable of producing the prospect’s desired results and outcomes

When a prospect contacts you for information about your solution, and you learn that a serious buyer journey that involves one of your solutions is in progress, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by stepping up and seizing what may be your only opportunity to signal that you understand prospect needs and discuss and send “how-to” content and performance data, which can include one or more of the resources listed below. Your thought leader credibility will yet again prove its usefulness when it supports the value-affirming sales interactions that are most effective with prospects now and are the best option to move the sale forward. Helping prospective buyers feel confident and in control of the purchase decision (e.g., by providing a choice of tailored recommendations based on their input and criteria) builds trust that can enhance the perception of your solution and give you the sale.

  • Case studies and success stories
  • Webinars and podcasts where you are a speaker
  • Blogs, e-books or other articles that you contribute to or author

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Image: © Prague Daily March 2, 2025 The weekly market in Prague’s Lesser Town.