Multi-faceted, webinar-based approach to sales and channel training

A global industrial technology leader, bringing world-leading expertise in energy management, industrial automation, sustainability, and digital transformation.

Opportunity

Our client’s Industrial Automation team was looking for a way to elevate awareness around their drives with both internal and external sellers to promote the opportunity for sales. They wanted to bridge the sales-to-marketing gap and make drives easier to talk to customers about—specifically by market segment. Also, to create awareness of their Industrial Automation Portfolio across all channels: internal sales, distributors, and EPCs.

The key stakeholders involved were their VP of Marketing, Director of Offer Management, and their Senior Director of Industrial Marketing and Strategy. As is often the case, their VP of Marketing had a history of working with Sudden Impact Marketing. The combination of trust and past performance led to their call to request our help.

Challenge

Our client believed their drives business was underperforming based on their present market share, despite the high quality of their equipment. The root issue was a low market awareness that they manufacture drives, much less the acknowledgement that they produce exceptionally good drives designed for specific industrial applications. The solution was to build an end-user-facing campaign with a companion channel campaign. The intent was to educate and inform their sellers on drives, and in the process, develop a systematic process for communicating the rest of their industrial automation portfolio.

Goals and objectives

The customer’s leadership had a vision of building a monthly webinar cadence with their internal and external sellers to speak to specific drives, for the most relevant industrial segments. Supporting those efforts would be videos featuring subject matter experts, sales decks, and leave-behind pieces that salespeople could give to customers and prospects.

The initial measurement of success was determined to be attendance at webinars—one for inside selling teams and another for channel partners. Sales numbers are tracked by segment, but sales cycle length would dictate that absolute impact on the bottom line would come further down the road.

Solution

Sudden Impact Marketing collaborated with the client’s internal team to design a strategy intent on building relationships with sellers and providing assets and educational tools to help them sell. The principal rule was that we needed to make it easier for salespeople to sell highly technical equipment. Videos from subject matter experts possessing deep experience with drives in specific segments were key to this effort. Peer-based tips and teachings resonate and are more relatable than technical briefs.

Sales tools were also needed, and created with the same strategy in mind. Salespeople don’t have to be experts in every piece of technology they sell, there are engineering experts for that. What they do need is to be able to recognize opportunity, ask the right questions, and be prepared to respond to customer questions at a higher level before bringing in technical experts.

As part of our strategy, we created a site to host the various assets and vertical (segment) information to act as an easy-to-access repository for the sellers, both internal and external, to quickly gather information before making a sales call in a particular segment.

Those strategies were chosen because sellers are often driven by their desire to provide customers with the best solutions available to solve their problems. By sharing information that is quickly digestible by both sellers and their customers, the journey to identifying the best solutions is simplified and more easily navigable.

Implementation

Based on decades of experience in the industrial sector, Sudden Impact Marketing was in a position to recommend the strategy described. The combination of research into the initial segments, messaging strategy, copy, design, web development, video interviews, and scripting of the webinar events constituted the framework and implementation that made the program successful.

Working hand in hand with this client’s internal marketing and product teams, we planned and organized the kickoff event, and created sales tools and complementary collateral.

Because the client wanted to launch ASAP, Sudden Impact Marketing aligned a senior team of marketers to build out the program, from launch through to a complete 120-day plan. The aggressive timelines necessitated multiple weekly meetings for planning, content creation, video recordings, creative reviews, and ultimately kickoff event rehearsals and reviews by sales and corporate management teams.

Outcomes and results

The initial launch webinar attracted 80 internal sales attendees, and the companion channel partner launch netted approximately 160 attendees. The Q&A sessions at the conclusion of the webinars indicated highly engaged audiences and an appetite for the content that was developed.

Learnings

The greatest takeaway from this program was this: To gain the mindshare of your sellers, both internal and external, you need to simplify the complex. The days of relying solely on technical documentation as selling tools are in the past. Today, you need to inspire sellers with peer-based success stories, videos that walkthrough use cases, and easily digestible sales guides that make starting conversations easy and elevate solution recommendations that solve customer problems.