With businesses of all sizes are struggling to survive the current shaky economic times, cutting sales and marketing budgets is often the knee-jerk reaction for many. Brute-force methods are clearly not an option anymore, and experts keep stressing that B2SMB marketers must tailor their go-to-market (GTM) strategy and think beyond cold prospecting and traditional campaigning to keep afloat. But how do companies navigate economic obstacles such that abrupt cost-cutting decisions don’t add fuel to the flame?
At BuzzBoard we dig deeper to keep up with the revolving and evolving market situations. And our 2023 B2B SaaS GTM Outlook survey combined with day-to-day analysis further validates that streamlined data strategies and cost-efficient moves are necessary for revenue generation during economic contractions. Here’s more!
Give a 360 Degree Boost to Your Sales and Revenue System
Trust, evaluation, and flexibility—this trio acts as your starter pack to improve your marketing tactics. However, you cannot afford to rely on ‘gut feelings’, an ocean of irrelevant data, experiments with branding, indecisive spending, growth in sales hiring, etc. Precisely, there’s no room for any form of inefficiency when an all-round sales and revenue upscaling is considered.
One of the bitter truths at this juncture is, tech giants, globally, have been laying off staff to adapt to this novel economy. Companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, and others have laid off more than 95,000 employees in the past year. Another recent update by Challenger, Gray & Christmas claims the tech industry cut 21,387 jobs just this past February, accounting for 28% of all cuts. Our recent GTM survey found:
- 15% of companies are bringing in a hiring freeze
- 56% of them downsizing teams
- 49% are reducing go-to-market expenses overall
Although employers often find downsizing a practical way to cope with slower cash flow—with the revenue team often taking the brunt of it—things can spiral down further if not coupled with complementary efforts to optimize for efficient growth. This is particularly the case for SMB-focused organizations with a dependency on volume outbound selling. To compensate for leaner teams, businesses must focus on intentional and mindful selling in order to close new businesses.
Previous as well as existing patterns have shown that careful planning towards implementing cost efficiency has a higher chance of survival amidst the poorly charted waters of recession—in fact, it can help your business accelerate growth without making major expenditures.
Use Data as the Foundation for a Successful GTM Planning
Downsizing teams shouldn’t mean downsizing on data! In fact, it is often quite the contrary…
“Just a 10% increase in data accessibility will result in more than $65 million additional net income for a typical Fortune 1000 company.”
—Richard Joyce, Senior Analyst at Forrester
A recent Salesforce report puts much emphasis on new ways to use data and further mentions that marketers are now using the right tech and right data platforms to understand their customers’ needs more than ever—creating real-time engagement with the customers by unlocking actionable data!
Additionally, customer relationship scalability for businesses now largely depends on using tools and platforms in everyday work culture. Out of the marketing organizations Salesforce surveyed, 90% use CRM systems, 89% of B2B and B2B2C operate through Account-Based Marketing (ABM) platforms, and 62% have invested in AI.
Bringing together internal and external prospecting data can greatly augment the return on your martech. Seamless data flow backed by machine learning is helping marketers identify the most profitable customer segments and expect predictable results, driving a higher ROI.
“If there is going to be a higher cost to acquire better data, it’s got to be justified by a higher ROI,”
—Jeff Weiser, CMO of Shutterstock
The collaboration between quality data and automation largely reverses the negative impacts of limited budgets and resources and offers an immense opportunity to coach and maximize your sales reps’ expertise so that they can outperform their usual abilities. Your datastack can also aid in pre-qualifying your leads for adequate resource allocation and leveling up your demand generation game with increased conversion rates, a by-product of your competitive workforce.
“Nothing screams inefficiency louder than building a bloated top-of-funnel with irrelevant contacts (bought in bulk) for your sales to chase down, or trying to sell to accounts just because you have contact data for them.”
—Jyoti Bagaria, Associate Director of Demand Generation, BuzzBoard
Resource Reallocation for Delivering More Value
Actively and regularly reevaluating your resources and strategically shifting them from time to time often turn out to be the growth levers of marketing. For instance, your business might have access to surplus contact data, but they can never elevate your sales and demand generation efforts if they are amorphous, of poor quality, and reflect companies that aren’t a fit for your product.
Did you know that more than 60% of ZoomInfo users are unhappy with their SMB data?!
Incomplete and inaccurate datasets have direct impacts on revenue in the hyper-personalized, digital-first selling environment. As a result, your business ends up missing accounts that belong in your TAM while you continue to pay for irrelevant contacts.
Only verified, complete, and updated contact data that belongs in your TAM can streamline sales efforts and support effective campaigns with superior confidence. Furthermore, boosting your data play within your GTM function requires experimentation before you reach a steady state.
BuzzBoard uses a consultative approach to help you build a highly relevant, bottoms-up, total addressable market view and overlay it with the most accurate and complete contacts for your SMB prospecting! The result is that your team achieves more targeting precision and avoids operational wastage—leading to better conversion all around the revenue flywheel. Moreover, the relevant data records we source reduce your wasted spend, as you pay only for a fully enriched and accurate TAM.
Higher Revenue Comes from Higher Quality Data
64% of ZoomInfo users have low to no confidence in their SMB data!
Several data vendors treat large and small companies with the same algorithmic brush and workflows, leading to a severe deficiency in the quality and availability of SMB data. BuzzBoard’s account-first approach to B2SMB data delivers improved ROI by identifying, segmenting, and scoring SMB accounts with AI-driven techniques. This winning strategy helps you build your database with accounts that match your ICP, subsequently feeding in verified contact data to assist you in achieving your highest revenue potential.
Experience 2X Match and Enrichment Rates!
Studies have shown, ZoomInfo customers experience a match rate as low as 50%!
Account identification is often a challenge when dealing with an SMB database, causing sub-optimal enrichment and fill rates. BuzzBoard’s B2SMB account intelligence engine assures a better fill rate by correctly identifying the business accounts in your TAM and matching them to their respective contact data.
With access to over 20 million SMBs in the US alone, we help you build your ICP by using hundreds of data signals from each SMB in combination with our algorithms. We then match your ideal customer profile with real prospects.
New buying behaviors in our fast-changing economic landscape can be leveraged but only when your business replaces hard work with smart work. In particular, while you are being measured in your cost-cutting efforts, being measured in equal proportion on how you play out your GTM game and derive ROI from the expenditures you maintain is key. As data has become an indispensable part of your business for driving actionable insights and meeting customer expectations with incomparable precision, achieving data efficiency to support your operational and productivity needs is likely the best way forward.
