Ampliz Podcast

Kiran is a Stanford graduate and currently holds the position of Director Sales Enablement for the APAC region at Salesforce. He comes with a diverse set of sales experiences acquired in the career span of close to two decades.

Here he shares:

Most of the companies are focused on increasing the depth of a lead pipeline. However, the businesses have failed numerous times to do so because they missed connecting to the business needs of the lead most of the time.

How do you qualify needs?

Tap all your lead sources from marketing, lead generation team, partners, Customer references, and even from the prospects you are currently taking. Have enough sources of leads. Do not hesitate to ask for recommendations from the customer.

Have a CRM in place to nurture and prioritize the leads that need your attention. Focus on the highest priority lead that is likely to convert.

Connect with leads within 24-48 hours because 7 out of 10 times the leads choose the vendor who connects with them first. Making the first move becomes even more vital as you set the benchmark for other vendors who arrive later; you get the first-mover advantage.

It is not only essential to qualify the right leads but also to remove those whom you cannot satisfy or work with your current capabilities. It improves your lead conversion rate, and you spend fewer resources on the leads that won't convert to deals.

How do you connect to the business needs of the customer?

Connect with people in high places in the organization. After that, go down to the next level below and follow the sequence until you reach the person who is responsible for acquiring your product or give you an in-depth understanding of their needs. Leverage social media to its fullest extent to do so.

Connect with all the stakeholders even try reaching out to the customer of your prospect to give you a better understanding of the problem lead is facing. It will not only help the lead but also the customer of the lead. Try to connect with everyone involved and will benefit from the resolution directly or indirectly to have a clear view of the bigger picture.

Sometimes when a lead approaches, you find out if the lead is an evaluator or a key decision-maker. Your pitch will change according to who is interacting with you. The same story won't resonate with everyone. Each has to be treated uniquely. To differentiate between the two, ask your prospect about the process you need to follow in specific deal value. It will give you a clear idea of the people involved and who is likely to be the key decision-maker in the process.

"Do not lead with a solution; lead to a solution."

Remember not to speak in terms of features and benefits. Even your competitors are having almost the same features. What differentiates you is the value you bring to the table and how well it connects to the actual problem the prospect is facing. Build relationships and credibility for the future.

Jonathan is the CEO of the GrowthHackers.com. He is an expert in his domain. He is a social media influencer, thought leader, and author to various thought-provoking articles for the growth of startups and businesses.

In this video, he shares little nuggets of knowledge from his vast experience on how different channels of Communication (Social media, instant messaging, Websites, and various others) can intertwine with each other and work cohesively to form marketing ecosystem.

He explains how a marketing ecosystem can drive traffic to the website, provide an immersive experience to the audience, and drive revenue. He also shares how one can create a sustainable Marketing Ecosystem, takes care of business without much effort from your side, and hence, lower the risk of conducting business.

Jonathan shares his framework for creating growth hacks that work for you. He defines the fundamental matrices that help you measure the KPIs for your automation. He also explains the Pirate Metric or AARRRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral) Metric and Marketing led product Growth Metrics (This metrics here focuses on improving the product as the marketing team gathers data on the customer wants).

He lists down the key metrics that you should always track or keep an eye out for (Traffic, Leads, Sales, ROI, CLV, Cost per Lead, and Cost per Sales) for your marketing ecosystem and your business to grow. He also sheds light on how to develop the growth mindset to push you during good and bad times.

He has also taken on questions related to brand building, the best organization that has done it to the best in recent times, how they did it, and various topics related to growth hacks and building startups.

Iris Chan is the Marketing Director at Seismic for the Asia Pacific (APAC) & Japan. She has a vast experience in building, leading, and nurturing global marketing teams. She is a keynote speaker and author.

She shares from her valuable experience what are the key ingredients to bring a marketing team together, how these marketing teams enable growth spurt in b2B organizations in specific. She also sheds light on how cohesive marketing teams benefit organizations and customers in having an immersive product experience.

The essential five qualities she speaks about are:

She also shares vital team-building exercises that build synergy like virtual knowledge sharing sessions to create synergy and enhance the overall skill of the team. Iris also sheds light on hiring great marketing teams based on the stage of the business.

Gurupandian leads product and growth at Ampliz. He comes with over a decade of experience working in the data industry, and leading global product and marketing teams focused on growth and revenue.  He shares his nuggets of knowledge and expertise on how sales and marketing teams can benefit from having a great b2b data partner.

What do sales and marketing teams need?

All marketers and sales folks focus on speedy growth in customers and revenue. Growth is dependent on a lot of engines or gears that run the growth engine. Faster the gears rotate quicker the growth. For gear to turn faster, the fuel is data.

The B2B data can come from the website forms event registrations, Demo signups, collateral downloads, social media, and many others. The data derived from the above channels aren't enough to put the finger on any of them and say that this is my prospect that will convert. You need much additional information to go along with it to complete the picture of who is the right lead. Accurate contextual data helps in a good Lead Qualification process.

How can a B2B data partner help?

Filling the missing data in leads is where most marketing and salespeople spend their productive time. This lost time can never be taken back and utilized on more productive work. Lead qualification and their priority rely on some vital data fields.

When it comes to running great campaigns, it again depends on the quality and depth of data that you have accumulated. Your marketing database is the result of your years of toil. Nothing hurts the business more than an outdated database. It cripples with rising opportunity cost and complexity of acquiring the updated information every day.

Data cleaning and validation is a cyclic process. With more and more people switching jobs rampantly, it becomes an important and equally difficult task. 30% of the data goes inferior every time you acquire it.

Customers are engaging with multiple parties and are exposed to the flood of messages every day. It has led to a shorter attention span and challenge for the marketer to find innovative ways to hold that attention. Marketers today to catch the attention are prioritizing leads on the go and hyper personalizing the campaigns like the latest hiring, tech stack changes, and many others.

Choosing the right data partner

The capabilities that you should focus on getting the right B2B data partner are:

Gunnar is the Senior Partner and Alliance Manager for APAC with Hootsuite. He has more than two decades of experience in working with Channel Partners and forging partnerships. Gunnar is a great mentor, and he is passionate about social selling.

In this video, he shares are critical constituents of a great channel partner and how one can use it for social selling. He says,

"In B2B customers do not buy products; they buy an outcome or something that can help them overcome a challenge. Sometimes these challenges or the required outcome cannot be achieved or overcome by the capabilities of a single vendor. That's where you need the channel partners who can glue different solutions together to help the prospect overcome the challenge or achieve a required outcome."

He calls his method a Triple Win with Partnership. With partner (Reseller, Referral, and Ecosystem), customer and you revolve around "Solve Customer Challenges" at the center.

Gunnar defines social selling as:

"A set of social media activities conducted by educated and enabled sales teams that create meaningful moments to build and nurture relationships."

Channel partners help create a social media ecosystem that allows listening to the target audience, learn about them, deliver the right content at the right time, and eventually pitch the product when the leads receive an adequate amount of lead nurturing.

There are various ways one can help their partners to do social selling effectively.

Foster Engagement: Improve social media capabilities of partners through up-skilling and collaborating with them on social media.

Social Selling Program: Here, you enable vendors to brag about you confidently and also concerned to end customers on social media.

Listen Together: Listen to user-generated content (UGC) to build credible content and do it together with your partner so that you develop a better understanding of each other as well as the end-user.

Employee Advocacy Program: These include the capabilities of your partners that help you work efficiently and make conversations that aid you in converting leads to deals.

Reverse activities: Reverse engineer the process you and your partner followed to get a product evangelist. Check what worked and what didn't work for you at that time. Work alongside your partner to create a successful workflow or a success model. Tweak and replicate it with other customers to enjoy lasting success and build great partnerships.

Gunnar, from his decades of experiences, shares the best ways to choose a partner, the qualities to look for in a partner, benchmark their performance, and how you can build a lasting mutually beneficial relationship. He also shares the key metrics that you can use to measure the effectiveness of the channel partner's social selling activities, and how to work along with them to improve gradually.

Davinia Khong is a B2B marketing leader, a keynote speaker, and is the senior marketing leader for the APAC region at Backbase. Davinia drives lead generation and branding efforts for Backbase. Here she describes the challenges in the first six months of a marketing leader and makes an impact.

She shares the common traps a b2b marketer should avoid in initial days, the guiding rules behind a great career, and the marketing tips and roadmap for growth.

Three common traps that a marketing leader should avoid in the initial days are:

Three guidelines to avoid the above strangling traps are:

Three marketing tips and strategies for marketing leaders

The 180 days roadmap for marketing leaders:

Quick Wins (60-90 days)

The wow factor (150-180 days)

Prepare your Pilot projects (30 -180 days)

She also shares various other tips for marketing leaders in sailing them through the tough times and pushing career beyond limits.

Sarah is the founder of Tribal Impact and author to the award-winning book “The Social CEO.” She is a keynote speaker, mentor, and authority in devising an inbound approach for businesses. She shares with us a general and in a very compact way to create an inbound strategy for our company. Sarah delivers to us the importance of having an inbound approach and how to minimize the risks involved with an inbound approach. She also shares the key ingredients of a great inbound strategy and the key metrics that help an organization understand if the inbound is working for them. She also shows how inbound can be interactive, not interruptive, or customized to an extent where you don’t look creepy. Sarah sets up a very holistic view of the digital inbound that delivers excellent value and generates revenue sustainably.

Nathan Latka a household name for anyone in B2B SaaS and Startups. He is one of the biggest influencers, celebrated authors, most recognized podcasters, and the proud owner of the Latka Agency. He is also the founder of the SaaS database Getlatka.com. He has interviewed more than 2200 SaaS Ceos to his credit. He talks about various B2B Saas models and how to choose a SaaS model that works for you. Pricing and delivery model are critical to a successful SaaS model of Business, Nathan describes them and shows how to implement effortlessly. He shares ten most effective SaaS models that most organizations follow and additional 5 SaaS models that can propel your growth. He also shares the insights he has gained from interviewing over 2200 Saas companies.

Marissa is the founder of a much-acclaimed consulting firm called the Marissa Pick Consulting. She is the Digital Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker, mentor, and one of the foremost authorities in influencer marketing. Marissa delivers and shares here her immense knowledge on the influence, impact, and the future of the influencer marketing for B2B. She lets us into the secret sauce of having a great influencer marketing. The COvid19 crisis, the viewership, and the consumption of media have changed drastically, which has affected and will continue to affect the B2B Influencer marketing. Marissa sheds light on how to create opportunity out of a crisis and build a great influencer marketing for B2B.

Gurupandian leads product and growth at Ampliz. He comes with over a decade of experience working in the data industry, and leading global product and marketing teams focused on growth and revenue.  He shares his nuggets of knowledge and expertise on how sales and marketing teams can benefit from having a great b2b data partner.

What do sales and marketing teams need?

All marketers and sales folks focus on speedy growth in customers and revenue. Growth is dependent on a lot of engines or gears that run the growth engine. Faster the gears rotate quicker the growth. For gear to turn faster, the fuel is data.

The B2B data can come from the website forms event registrations, Demo signups, collateral downloads, social media, and many others. The data derived from the above channels aren't enough to put the finger on any of them and say that this is my prospect that will convert. You need much additional information to go along with it to complete the picture of who is the right lead. Accurate contextual data helps in a good Lead Qualification process.

How can a B2B data partner help?

Filling the missing data in leads is where most marketing and salespeople spend their productive time. This lost time can never be taken back and utilized on more productive work. Lead qualification and their priority rely on some vital data fields.

When it comes to running great campaigns, it again depends on the quality and depth of data that you have accumulated. Your marketing database is the result of your years of toil. Nothing hurts the business more than an outdated database. It cripples with rising opportunity cost and complexity of acquiring the updated information every day.

Data cleaning and validation is a cyclic process. With more and more people switching jobs rampantly, it becomes an important and equally difficult task. 30% of the data goes inferior every time you acquire it.

Customers are engaging with multiple parties and are exposed to the flood of messages every day. It has led to a shorter attention span and challenge for the marketer to find innovative ways to hold that attention. Marketers today to catch the attention are prioritizing leads on the go and hyper personalizing the campaigns like the latest hiring, tech stack changes, and many others.

Choosing the right data partner

The capabilities that you should focus on getting the right B2B data partner are: