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According to the latest HockeyStack Labs report onB2B Customer Journey Touchpoints,266.
That’s marketing and sales touchpoints, including anonymous visits. But that’s also 20% more than last year when it was merely 222.
Here’s what you need to know for planning your Q4 campaigns or 2025 ad budget:
TL;DR? A B2B SaaS company needed 2,627 impressions and 222 touchpoints to close a deal in 2023, they now need 2,879 impressions and 266 touchpoints in 2024.
See where you stack up against the benchmarks andgrab a copy of the report here.
My side of the dashboard (Marketing) was all green:
But the other side of the dashboard (Sales)? The one that actually mattered? It was burning RED.
We’d just barely made 60% of our revenue goal – and this wasn’t the first month this had happened. Something was broken and we needed to fix it ASAP.
And that’s how I learned about the magic of Sales Enablement – and why it’s something every B2B marketer needs to know how to do.
Here’s why it matters, and 3 ways to get started:
1. Create Competitor Battle Cards:
A huge hurdle your Sales team faces every day are objections from prospects, especially where they stack up with your largest competitors.
A “battle card” is an easy way to help them out and you can get a basic template up and running pretty quickly. Hop into a google sheet and add key insights about your main competitors—what they offer, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to handle objections.
Tip:Sit in on a few sales calls (or binge some recordings) to get a sense of the common objections prospects bring up. Use that info to build your battle cards based on real scenarios.
2. Teach Better Storytelling:
Help your Sales team connect emotionally with prospects by telling a compelling story. Work with them to craft key narratives they can use that highlight customer success, how your product solves real-world problems, or how it’s unique in the market.
It can also mean educating them on how to position the product/use cases based on insights you’ve gathered from feedback or messaging experiments.
Tip: This isn’t just about handing over collateral and calling it a day – it’s about helping reps communicate value effectively.
3. Audit Your Content with Sales:
See where you stand by doing a joint audit with your Sales team – match what content you’ve created to each step of the buyer's journey and you can see where the holes are and start to fill them in.
Tip:Work with sales to identify the most common questions or objections they hear at each stage. Create content that addresses those questions head-on, so the sales team has ready-made resources to share.
Working with my Sales team at the time to get some of these basic assets to them helped close that gap – within a month, we improved to 75% of our revenue goal, and it kept going up from there.
And selfishly? It made me look really good 😎
Bottom line: Sales enablement helps your Sales team close more deals, meaning more revenue and it directly ties back to marketing.
Win win? I think so.
P.S. This all came to mind from an interview I was listening to with Brian Kotlyar, VP of Marketing at HighTouch – he has some really great insights (and some hot takes!) on how marketers can better work with sales.
As always, let me know if you want me to send over the link to the interview.
Any great tips of your own on this topic? Pitfalls to avoid? Just reply to this email – I read (and cherish) every one :)
One thing we’ve learned this year: the Exit Five community LOVES teardowns.
And it makes sense…you’re a bunch of smart marketers who want examples of what’s working, what’s not, and how you can improve.
That’s why we’re hostinga whole day of live teardownsatThe Ultimate Roast of B2B Websites on October 15th.
Over five sessions, 15 experts with perform live teardowns of real examples of each part of a B2B Website:
It’s free, it’s going to be a blast, and you’re probably going to have fomo if you aren’t there so go toexitfive.com/theroastright now and sign up.
P.S. Oh – and did I mention there’s prizes? Yes – prizes worth over $80k in value. We don’t just want to provide feedback—we want to equip you with the resources to make those improvements.
Register for The Roast |
HOT JOB OF THE WEEK: Peak Support is hiring a Head of Marketing ($140k-$185k). They're looking for someone with B2B experience who can lead a team of 5 to predictable revenue growth. 100% remote.
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