According to a recent NAPEO market survey, almost one-third of PEOS who participated in the survey said they were experiencing a decline in operating income. Operating income is an accounting term that measures the profit associated with the business operations after deducting expenses like wages, depreciation, and the cost associated with acquiring new clients.

There are two sides to the equation of operating new income: revenue and expenses. There’s one business function that has an impact on both sides of the equation — and that’s marketing.

LeadG2 is an inbound marketing and sales enablement agency that does excellent work with organizations that are B2B focused and have complexed sales environments. What that means is they’re typically targeting executive-level decision-makers. It’s not a one-call close; it’s a sales process that might have a long sales cycle, a multi-step sales cycle that could last weeks or even months. It’s typically a higher ticket, more complex solution that’s being offered.

One of the markets that really describes this situation is PEO companies and human resource outsourcing firms. These organizations are trying to sell to business owners and trying to engage in complex discussions about how they can better manage their human resources, payroll, and benefits. This requires building trust, credibility – and it’s a long, complex sales cycle that often creates frustration. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to stop using tired and overused PEO marketing tactics.

The National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO) bills itself as “The voice of the PEO industry”—providing government advocacy, public relations, and marketing support to its members. In fact, they’ve done such a great job of producing marketing content assets that their member companies can integrate into their marketing and sale enablement strategies.

The NAPEO content library includes whitepapers, brochures, and infographics that are designed to build credibility and trust with prospects and educate them on the “what’s, whys and how’s” of PEOs. They also offer ad templates and social media graphics that can be used to evangelize the benefits of using a PEO. If this all sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

Five years ago, if you asked a room full of sales leaders to raise their hand if they were implementing sales enablement initiatives at their companies no hands would have gone up. In fact, you would have got a lot of blank stares because no one had heard of the term “sales enablement”.

Today if you ask that same question to the same room of sales leaders, you’d get a smattering of raised hands, but still quite a few blank stares. Most have heard of sales enablement, but a lot of sales leaders are confused on what it is; what it looks like in the everyday life of a sales professional; and why it’s important.

Hollywood has seen its share of celebrity power couples over the years – starting with Desilu (Desi Arnza and Lucille Ball), then leading to others like Brangelina (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), Bennifer (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez), TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) and more recently, Kimye (Kim Kardashian and Kanye West). This isn’t a new phenomenon. However, super couples with cute nicknames aren’t limited to Hollywood. 

The business world may have the most powerful power couple of all. In fact, this couple is so powerful that they have a commanding presence in virtually every business around the world.  No, it’s not Bill and Melinda Gates or Barack and Michelle Obama. So, who is this business power couple?  It’s Smarketing — sales and marketing.

When marketers develop their inbound marketing strategy, they’re typically focused on two primary objectives. First, they want to extend their brand. Then they want to generate leads. So, they’re creating content, plans, campaigns, and tactics to build an audience that drives traffic to their website.

But you don’t want traffic to just show up and leave. You want to build functionality, tactics, and content that will grab the attention of those visitors and get them to convert leads —into sales opportunities that they can transition to their sales team.

Those are two great objectives to try to accomplish, but there’s a third objection that marketers often forget or ignore — your marketing strategy.

When sales managers and marketers have broad — or very few parameters — to define their target universe, it’s extremely easy to get excited about the size of their market.

Examples of broad market parameters include:

• Small-to-medium sized businesses in the Northeast
• Companies with less than 1,000 employees in the U.S.

A lot of companies are going to meet these parameters. Consequently, the market universe will be huge. The common response for a lot of sales and marketing leaders is, “Look at all of the opportunity!”  They see the potential revenue associated with such a large market, but they fail to realize the obstacles associated with actually penetrating such a market.

Most salespeople are always looking for an edge. They’re looking for new ideas and tactics that can help them improve their performance. However, they severely underutilize the resources they have at their disposal.   

Marketing departments invest significant resources developing content to help support the marketing strategy and generate leads. Sales and marketing teams are both working towards the same goal, securing business and helping the company grow.

With the economy humming, several companies are in growth mode. Many companies that may have launched just a few years ago are scrambling to have their organizations keep pace with their growing client-bases and revenue goals. 

They’re discovering that their owner-led sales team that relied on gut instinct and desire is no longer sufficient if they want to keep pace with the competition. They need to build a foundation that can support their growth objectives while building a sales and marketing infrastructure that includes salespeople, processes, and marketing support. It can be a daunting task.  What should be done first? 

It’s every salesperson’s biggest challenge. How to get in front of more qualified decision-makers.

Everyone needs more opportunities going into the top of the funnel, and the first step in filling the funnel is securing that first introductory/discovery call or meeting. Life is good when our calendars are filled with new prospects who’ve agreed to carve out 30 minutes of their time. However, all too often, salespeople’s calendars have large swaths of empty space.     

So, what if there was a way to have appointments with your target decision-makers just show up on your calendar? Better yet, what if these appointments rarely cancelled because the day and time was selected by the prospect? In fact, it’s the prospect who initiates the idea of the appointment all together! And, what if these appointments didn’t require any cold calling by an outsourced call center or you? Sounds great, right?