Ep. 100 – Where thought leadership is falling short with today’s customer and how to fix it - with Brent Adamson, co-author of the Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer.

For our 100th episode, we’re excited to interview Brent Adamson, the global head of research with Ecosystems, a SaaS platform for collaborative customer value management that helps its users quantify and align with customers based on the value being delivered.

Adamson is most known as the co-author of the books The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. And as marketers, both books have been instrumental in shaping our view of content development as an agency and the role it plays in furthering the B2B sales process.

But with everyone trying to teach customers something new and lead with insights (whether they’ve read Challenger or not) the overall impact on customers is less likely to enlightenment, and more likely to overwhelm. 

So, instead of seeing your content and thinking, “Oh wow, I’ve got to do something different,” they’re thinking, “Oh no, here’s another thing I have to worry about.”

Adamson takes the role of content a step further in this episode, explaining that both the marketing and sales process today not must only build trust for the supplier, but also within the prospect's mind so that they can accomplish the implementation on their end. 

Key takeaways from this episode:

• Why B2B marketers should focus on creating a collaborative and value-based conversation with customers, rather than simply presenting ROI calculations, and generating content.
• Why it’s important to help customers feel confident in their decision-making process by providing context, connecting them to relevant content, and addressing their concerns about implementation.
• Empathy is a crucial skill for salespeople, as understanding how customers think about their business and helping them feel better about themselves can lead to successful sales outcomes.

Other resources to check out:

Interview with Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius who publishes a yearly report about how B2B buyer behavior is changing.

The Lead Gen Mistake I Guarantee You’re Making – how to create content that better identifies intent from today’s b2b buyer.

And, if you want an outside look at your content with actionable advice, take advantage of our Content Audit. Valued at $20K in free consulting.

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Is your messaging a sales ally or sneaky saboteur? Let us help with our free content audit.

We’ll look at your website’s messaging, content, and conversion potential from the eyes of today’s buyer and deliver a presentation with new combinations to more sales conversations and demos.

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