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[Music] [Music] d [Music] [Music] d a [Music] why [Music] [Music] what [Music] [Music] welcome to Data Center go to market sales and marketing Q&A I'm Joshua fineberg from dcmi and I am thrilled to have you with us for this week's live streaming show a dynamic weekly live stream show where I look at the most pressing issues that are top of mind for go to market teams in and around the data center industry including folks in sales marketing customer success product Channel Partnerships and executive sponsors regardless of whether you work for a collocation or wholesaler hyperscaler Edge or module or some kind of data center operator or maybe you work for a technology company that sells to your partners with data centers or a facilities related company or a construction company or real estate company or sales and marketing related company that sells to or partners with those in the data center industry but I am thrilled to have you with us for today's live stream so what's on the agenda for today we're going to first start by looking at how to reach data center clients then we're going to turn our attention to how to build IP infrastructure sales strategies Internet Protocol sales structure uh infrastructure sales strategy to gain customers then we'll turn our attention to what it takes to diagnose sales and marketing problems at hyperscale collocation multicloud and manag services companies take a brief break for a word from our sponsor and then we'll come back and look at how to get leads for your data Center's website we'll turn our attention and look at what it takes to increase visibility for companies that are doing air quality purification environmental type of work environmental monitoring type of work for data centers and then we'll close out this week's show with a overview of sales and marketing for data center Consulting design engineering construction and commissioning companies a company that is involved in all a multifaceted company that's involved in Consulting design engineering construction and commissioning so with that let's Dive Right In first question is how can you reach data set clients it's a terrific question and a great question to be asking for where we are for within the year within the marketplace within the decade because there's a couple things that first uh are super important to realize one is the way that you want to reach data center clients this year is vastly different than how you would have approached this three years five years ago 10 years ago during most of the 2010s it was quite common that prospects would not be ready for a conversation with your sales team till they were about halfway through their buyer Journey till they were about halfway through the sales process what were they doing before they got to that half point or what was at the time the 56% Point um what were they doing during that first half they were looking around they were asking questions on social they were asking questions on social media they were maybe reading some some reviews they were attending some webinars they were attending some podcasts so this was a fairly common Playbook throughout most of the 20110 in the last few years especially since the few years in which a lot of people stayed home during the uh during the lockdowns and a lot more people got used to being remote teams and work from home all of that accelerated so in the 2010s CB corporate executive board that's now part of Gartner said that like 56% of the sales process the buyer Journey was over before B2B buyers were ready to talk with your sales team in the latest research coming out of Gartner they now now put that number at 83% so it jumped from 56% to 83% of the journey is over before you get to meet a potential customer before you get to meet a prospect and wow is that a huge deal why is it such a huge deal because they're doing all of the researching and comparing options and evaluating pricing nearly all of that before you get to meet with that future client that means that if your company is successful in building a relationship as early as possible with those prospects you're going to be in great shape because they're going to see you as the teacher as The Trusted adviser as the subject matter expert as the thought leader you're going to help them understand how they evaluate all of the different options how they weigh the pros and cons how they set up the magic spreadsheet to decide what gets a lot of weight and what gets less weight what happens however if you're not the one or the company that gets found early if you're invisible that means somebody else is coaching them on how to buy somebody else is coaching them advising them on how they should look at this problem and if it's not you even if you do get to meet that Prospect during the last 177% of their research and decision-making process likely the only thing that's going to sway their decision at that point is cheaper and being in the business of Cheaper as our competitive Advantage totally sucks we do not want to be in the cheaper business we want to be in the position of being seen as experts as thought leaders as the go-to option in the industry for whatever it is that we do in the data center industry whether we're a great data center operator or a technology company or facilities company or or builder of data centers in construction or in real estate or or sales and marketing it's vital when it comes to reaching data center clients that we first have this mindset and then from a tactical perspective once we have this mindset starting from the top down permeating throughout the entire company that you've made a decision that you want to be the best well-known experts in your space for what it is that you do then you can get into the Tactical stuff like defining your ideal client profile your ICP figuring out and ranking who the most important stakeholders are that you want to build relationships with in those particular accounts What we' call the buyer personas and ranking them so you have a primary buyer Persona a secondary buyer Persona maybe a tertiary buyer Persona once we've decided on who the stakeholders are then we go out and build buyer Persona documents Frameworks blueprints so we know exactly what each of those people needs to do in their job to get a promotion and exactly what is stressing them out what their biggest challenges and frustrations are what's causing them to lose sleep what causing them to have to lose vacations and time away from their loved ones what could jeopardize their job if they screw up so once we have consensus on that then we're in great shape to start building a strategy for how we're going to educate and build trust with that Persona during not only the final 177% of the buyer Journey but during the full buyer Journey during the first 83% and the final 177% so we can completely Crush those 28 touch points in between complete stranger and purchase decision that's what it takes to be super successful when it comes to reaching data center clients next question is how do we build sales strategy for IP infrastructure to gain new customers how do we build a sales strategy a go to market strategy to gain new customers for IP Internet Protocol infrastructure it's a fantastic question what it largely comes down to is we first need to understand where our company does best let's say we're going to go on the the foundational here that you're not a completely pre-revenue brand new company and if you are you've actually had some decent hypothesis on where you're going but let's say that your company is at least somewhat established you have somewhat of a customer list you have some logos on your website you have some case studies so we want to look at where you have been the most successful and we want to try to clone that assuming that you want more clients like that so what do we do well we look at where we've been most successful with onboarding and retention and expansion and great Word of Mouth referral digital Word of Mouth referrals from our our best clients that we've sold and and on and provisioned and onboarded um and successfully supported for IP infrastructure and then once we do that from there we're in a great position to look at what our best customers have in common that made them most successful with our platform once we know that then we can figure out okay where are they located are there particular industries that they have in common or business models that they have in common is there a certain company size that's a really good indicator that we're going to be successful with them are there techno are is there certain platforms that're going to already be invested in that are that will integrate especially well with what we do so once we have found the commonalities at the company level we'll use that to build our ICP our ideal client profile once we have a simple one-page document of What kinds of companies we want then the next step is to figure out who the people are in those particular companies that are most responsible for researching and making purchase decisions about IP infrastructure is it a data center manager is it a telecommunications manager is it a network manager does it depend on the compy size what the role is possible all of the above but once we know who the ideal client is we need to figure out who the most important and second most important stakeholders are in those kinds of accounts that we need to build relationship with to advance our sales Pro so once we have identified at the company level what's going on next we need to figure out who the people are the most important kinds of stakeholders in those accounts and then we rank them who's the primary buyer Persona the most important economic stakeholder who's the second most important kind of economic stakeholder and then we need to build a plan for how we're going to get our company and our team members in front of those people that allow us to build a relationship with those stakeholders as early as possible in their research and decision making process so we need to have a strong consensus about among each of those kinds of stakeholders what their biggest goals are that they're trying to achieve when it comes to IP infrastructure um we also know need to know what they're most frustrated about when it comes to their existing IP infrastructure how they're currently the status quo that they're currently working through once we have strong consensus on that then we basically build a plan for figuring out how we can educate and build trust with each of those people in a way that puts deposits into the relationship bank account uh so that they see us as teachers subject matter experts trusted advisors and thought leaders about anything and everything having to do about what's top of mind for them when it comes to IP infrastructure so we'll want to invest in video content blog social media posts email newsletters that do a great job of nurturing and continuing to build a relationship with them over time at the risk of getting a little meta it could be live streams it could be webinars or a fantastic one to many way for you to educate and build trust with those buyer personas that are most likely future buyers of Ip infrastructure and webinars Live Events can also be a fantastic way to build deeper relationships with your existing clients like in the context of account management customer success customer marketing um that's how we go about building a sales strategy to get us great clients great future clients that are looking for IP related Internet Protocol related infrastructure services or or that kind of platform next question is how do we diagnose sales and marketing problems for a company that's in a a variety of different areas that dips its to that's part that sells hyperscale that sells uh collocation multicloud and manag services so how do we figure out sales and marketing problems at a company that is involved in hyperscale collocation multicloud and manage services well the first thing we need to identify is what actually is working let's look at the glass half full first let's figure out which clients that you have on boarded and you've retained over an extended period of time are super happy with your company they give you great surveys Great Net promoter scores they raise their hands high they'd love to be in your case studies and you interview them on your webinars and in your podcasts you go to panels at conferences and and they they they're constantly singing your Praises so let's go with the idea that we want more clients like that and not necessarily just any old client right um because I know a lot of people especially in collocation and manag services that are like miserable about a significant chunk of their client mix um they're not profitable they don't appreciate them they're nasty and condescending towards their staff so is a host of problem they're losing money they never take their they never listen to the recommendations at heart they're always looking for who can do it cheaper so but let's go with the idea that you have a core group of clients that you want more of and it doesn't matter necessarily whether they're hyperscale or collocation or multicloud or managed Services it's entirely possible by the way that you may need a different go to market strategy a different sales strategy marketing strategy for each of those different lines of business or at least aligned around some things that they have in common like for example a company that wants collocation usually tends to be considerably smaller than a client that would be a high of hyperscale uh there's going to be exceptions to that but for the most part the reason that they're not buying a a wholesale facility that they're not getting a wholesale facility of their own or hyperscale facility of their own and they're taking a piece of of your collocation capacity is usually because they're inherently a smaller company with a smaller budget right so let's first go with the idea that we may need to segment a little bit by size before we can diagnose what's going on because if we're trying to use the same sales and marketing strategy for demand generation and Lead nurturing and sales cycle acceleration you know collocation is more similar to manag Services than not but is collocation really that similar to the journey that somebody goes through for hyperscale these are all things when you put your product manager hat on you're going to need to think about before you even get to sales and marketing strategy but let's so we've defined like what success looks like we have an idea of like what we think our ideal client profile is we may need to segment it further by size and lines of business then we're in a place where we can start thinking about diagnosing the sales and marketing problems like what if you look at the current growth rate over the past 12 months what's going on at the Top Line at the bottom line with customer satisfaction with net promoter score things like that um on the different lines of business and are there things that jump out at us that we may as a business not want to continue doing let's go with the idea for the most part though let's assume that you're happy with all four of these lines of business and maybe it's a resource issue so within each of those lines of business you'll Define what kind of company again the hypers scale is gonna tend to be hyper larger right it's gonna be a hyper SC it's gonna be an order of magnitude bigger than than typically wholesale way bigger than collocation right um so once we have that in mind we need to have a go to market strategy uh that centers around the value proposition that we provide who the most important buyer personas are in these kinds of accounts and how we're going to go about building a relationship with these buyer personas as early as possible in their research and decision-making process so we're going to need content we're going to need events we're going to need a Playbook so we can be there during the full buyers Journey not just the last seven % of the buyer Journey when they're ready for sales contact but the entire full buyer Journey remember Gartner very clear most of the buyer journey is now happening without your sales team most buyers are going through most of the research and decision-making process completely self-guided on their own they don't want sales contact till they're at the very end of the journey so if we want to have an active role in shaping how they evaluate the different options that are in front of them we can't come in looking like a vendor or looking like a a aggressive salespeople we need to present ourselves more like big four Consultants thought leaders trusted advisers teachers subject matter experts and the better job we can do that and the more precise we are about who they are and what their goals are and what their challenges are and teaching them some useful ways some useful insights but that not only answers their current questions but anticipates where there going to be two three four or five steps out from now and helps to guide them along the journey and helps to help them frame the the criteria that they're going to use to evaluate all of those options remember think 28 touch points in between complete stranger and purchase decision our goal is to not just show up for one of those and we could have the most amazing poolside Cabana party in Vegas but that's only one touch point right we could have an incredible golf tournament epic celebrities all kinds of cool stuff great party and it's still only one of 28 touch points so what do we need to do to be involved in as many of those TW 28 touch points as possible we got to be with them throughout the whole journey um so when it comes to diagnosing sales and marketing problems across a really diverse line of business uh like hyperscale collocation uh multicloud and uh manage services first we need to figure out if we need to segment these lines of businesses because it's very possible you need a different good and Market Playbook and some different team members uh depending on the account size the size of the deals the nature of it there's going to be some commonalities and there's going to be some differences once you've figured that out then you can go about things like setting your goals your Revenue growth goals your average deal size goals your quota your OT um your okrs that you're GNA your objectives and key results that you want to focus on for the quarter the the kpis that you want to make sure that you're directionally leaning in towards but none of this matters till you get the strategy right figuring out where you can win what you want to do to continue what kinds of clients that you want to get going forward um and making sure that the culture is really ready for for you to succeed in today's marketplace where it's such a self-propelled buyer Journey now and it's so vital for your sales and marketing teams to reinvent themselves when I do consultations with colos and and multicloud and manag services a little bit with hyperscale but in general across the board what I encourage most marketing professionals to do is to be prepared to go much deeper into the buyers Journey than they ever have before and I also encourage sales professionals to come back and take an active role in the early stages of the buyer Journey much earlier than they have before the idea of punting early and middle awareness and consideration complet the idea of being able to say that things like content and events and awareness and consideration is not the job of sales that's in a bygone era um and it for a lot of small companies I'm not even sure they should really be differentiating between sales development and account Executives anymore and really small companies where you're your prospects don't want to have a handoff but either way regardless sale in order for your sales team to be seen as teachers trusted advisers thought leaders subject matter experts they need to be prepared to be involved in some way shape or form supporting these initiatives in awareness and consideration and along the same lines and in order for your company to achieve its growth goals in today's Marketplace and solve some of these sales and marketing problems your marketing team members need to be prepared to take prospects and hold their hand with sales very deep into the buyer's Journey as much as possible alignment is incredibly important culture is incredibly important but most of all before you start worrying about fixing sales and marketing problems make sure that you have a topown prioritization companywide that your company wants to be the best gosh darn experts in the industry when it comes to explaining what goes on what goes on uh as companies are researching and making decisions around hyperscale collocation multicloud and managed Services um so yeah that's that's an excellent question um I'm so glad that you brought it up and before we jump into the next couple questions we just have a quick data center go to market sales and marketing QA is sponsored by dcmi elevating the role of sales marketing and goto Market GTM Professionals in the growth of the data center industry to stay informed about upcoming episodes subscribe to the data center sales and marketing newsletter on the dcmi website at .csi.com again that's . dcsm i.com now back today data center go to market sales and marketing Q&A so glad to have you back for this week's data center sales marketing go to market live stream data center goom market sales and marketing Q&A show I am Joshua feberg from dcmi we are all about elevating the role of sales marketing and go to market Professionals in the growth of the data center industry so the next question that we're going to talk about today is how do we get leads to our data center website this is a great question what does it take to get lead generation going on our Data Centers website well there's two things that I see going on that prevent people from getting leads on their website first and foremost not enough of the right people know that your website exists and this is a competitive battle that in many cases is fought using a number of different tactics and strategies but if we think forward with just the anticipated imp that generative AI is going to and large language models are going to have on disrupting the traditional search results page we need to be realistic enough to understand that if we think through the next couple of months the next three years it's very likely that a lot of people that would have traditionally looked at a Google search engine results page are now going to ask questions with Gemini or co-pilot or Sira or Alexa or something like that um it's just it's gotten so much faster so much more convenient so a lot lot of the golden Heyday that's existed for the last 20 years of SEO search engine optimization and search engine marketing is going to change quite dramatically um historically in the data center industry as in the in the broader mid-market Enterprise technology industry strategists Revenue growth strategists loved keyword topical based targeting because you know intent you don't necessarily know where they're located although with paid ads like using Google ads search engine marketing could say like okay yeah I want everyone that's typing in hippoc compliant multicloud in the United States or something so you'd have that keyword and then you just want the ads to run in the United States and with the exception of people playing games with like VPN virtual private networks or something like that you know it works pretty well you're getting people that have typed that into a search engine and you know with a very high degree you know 90 plus percent certainty where they're located but here's the big butt you have no idea if they're from a tiny little company that can barely afford your services or they're from a huge company that's too big for you that would choose to do this in house or maybe it's just a a student in a business school doing a a research paper on the state of multicloud infrastructure in the industry and they're not even remotely qualified so you know the intent when somebody does a search uh regardless of whether you're tackling that from a a free organic search perspective SEO perspective or a paid perspective with search engine marketing using something like Google ads or ads um but you have no idea who they are the benefit of LinkedIn is you know exactly who they are but there's a really good chance that you're intercepting someone at a very early stage in the journey as opposed to late stage intent like the beauty of LinkedIn for example is whether you regardless of whether you're using like LinkedIn sales Navigator and doing outbound Outreach or whether you're doing LinkedIn ads using L LinkedIn campaign manager or you'll have a little less Precision sometimes a less Precision uh with Organic just posting content organically text content or image content or video content either on your personal profile or on your company feed but the beauty in general with LinkedIn is you can have an enormous amount of precision about not only where someone is located but the industry they work in their job role their seniority their company size a whole bunch of factors that allow you to stack this up successfully around this so if you're thinking going forward that you'd like to exper the best of of both of these so you have topics you want to be found for and you have a a Target account list an ideal client profile that you want to get your website in front of going forward a good way to think about keyword theme topical based targeting is we anticipate that YouTube is going to be where a lot of the attention is going to be going as people move away from traditional search engine results pages so instead of just creating an oil ordinary text based blog post or a text based pillar content page or something like that going forward start with video first create the five minute video and then create the blog post create the 40 minute video or the webinar recording or something like that and then create the derivative content from there that you're trying to get found uh with Organic search but in the meantime you're building up what a lot of people don't realize is YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the United States it's one of the most unpopular one of the most popular search engines in the world of course yes most people know that YouTube and Google have the same parent company alphabet right um but we don't anticipate that large language models generative AI is going to throw the same is going to have the same disruptive impact at least in the short term as it will with the traditional search engine results page so if your company wants to get leads to your website think about what kind of video content you need to create for your most important buyer personas and throughout the full Buy Journey let's say you have a primary and a secondary let's say you have two buyer personas and they're each going to go through an awareness a consideration a decision three stages of the journey so you have two personas and three stages that they go through what that means is you need a strategy to cover all six of those boxes with the topics that are most important that they would be looking for for who that person is and where they are in the journey so thing number one is think about that and of course if you want to go faster than just organ GIC YouTube has an ads program also that's run on the same engine basically as the Google ads platform in addition to that I'd encourage you in the data center indust history especially to heavily prioritize LinkedIn as the most important social platform and Linkedin specifically around you having a Target account list and doing outbound in a way that demonstrates your thought leadership and trusted advisor ship and being a subject matter expert and teacher about the topics that are most important to your bu personas and if your unit economics allow if your lifetime value is high enough I'd encourage you to also experiment with some super targeted ad campaigns using the LinkedIn campaign management the LinkedIn ads platform that are driving people to targeted lead generation opportunities either natively using the LinkedIn leg gen forms or driving them to a traditional landing page on your website where you promise so much value that people are tripping over themselves to basically trade their business card for what's on the other side of the landing page so when it comes to getting the right leads to your data Center's website with a big emphasis on the right leads because we want leads for the that for the most part are going to turn into sales opportunities and sales opportunities that turn into great clients that stay with us forever and are super profitable and we love serving but let let's go with the idea that we want great leads the two playbooks that I think are most important to be thinking about going forward is a video first strategy centered around YouTube first and then basically that'll trickle down to your blog and that'll trickle down to your email marketing and derivative social posts with long form short form and intermediate term video content image based content and text content that's on the that's playing the search side of getting great website leads and then on the social side where we know the demographics but we don't necessarily know the intent heavily prioritize getting really good at LinkedIn both from an organic standpoint from LinkedIn ads driving to both landing pages and experimenting with the the natively built-in leaden forms with within the LinkedIn ads platform as well as getting really good at setting targeted Outreach up using account filters and Lead filters that you can set up in linked in sales Navigator so next question up is how do we increase visibility for a company that sells data center air quality purification Solutions so your business is in air quality purification specifically for data centers but to make this more contextual for other people that are watching I think a lot of the same advice could apply to many different kinds of businesses that are facilities oriented that are facil that work at the data center at the facilities level it could be Energy Power Cooling cleaning um environmental monitoring there's a lot of different things that go on if you look at our our website on dcs.com you'll see how we segment out the different kinds of facilities related companies in and around the data center industry so in this particular case we're looking at air quality purification but we could be looking at a host of different business models and industries that uh help data centers with facility related challenges so to increase visibility for that we need to First understand what kinds of companies are a great fit for needing air quality purification is there a certain size of the data center is there a certain location of the data Center are there certain industries that that data center if it's an Enterprise data center are located in if are or are they a data center operator like they're a collocation facility or hyperscale or or wholesale or Edge or modular or something like that so we need to understand their business model we need to also understand where they're located where they're going to be a good fit like in other words can you do can you sell can you implement air quality purification globally or is it just within a certain country or a certain set of countries that will help us quite dramatically to figure out what we want to do to increase visibility if you are operating globally and let's say you're operating globally primarily to English-speaking countries English-speaking buyers then organic content creation organic content visibility can be really helpful I'd recommend first starting with video-based content and then use the video-based content to repurpose into image-based content and text based content what kinds of topics should you cover in your video first approach to content creation sales enablement thought leadership being a trusted advisor subject matter expert well look at first and foremost when it comes to air quality purification who is the most important stakeholder that you're going to deal with regardless of whether it's an Enterprise data center or a Outsource data center operator is it the same kind of person regardless of who's the most important kind of stakeholder that you're going to engage with and who's the second most important kind of stakeholder that you'll engage with regardless of whether it's an Enterprise data center or CER like Colo [Music] or wholesaler hyers something like that mod once we know who that person is then we need to figure out what that person is working on in their job what are their goals they trying to achieve and what are their biggest challenges what are their biggest frustrations once we know the consensus on their biggest goals and their biggest challenge is we document that into a buyer Persona and we use that to create a Content calendar that we where a goal basically is to provide incredibly helpful useful Ed useful content that educates and builds trust with that buyer Persona around your idea of being the best teacher on the planet when it comes to that particular topic air quality purification for data centers so we figure out what the topics are that they're interested one by one we systematically tackle creating great educational content about that we repurpose it in a lot of different ways it could be live video content like live streams like this it could be uh webinar based content you could repurpose the live content into on demand videos and put them on YouTube and Linkedin and other places like that you can repurpose that into image based content like uh carousels LinkedIn calls documents you could repurpose that into blog posts and and shorter text posts and an email marketing ebooks there's a lot of different ways to do that but when it comes to increasing visibility for air quality per we need to dial in who who are the companies and then who are the the most important people in those companies that we need to increase visibility with so once we do that we can probably end up with a couple dozen different topics that we want to be found for and in addition to those couple dozen different topics that we want to be found for there's probably anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand companies that we want to get visibility with so it's not an infinite list of companies of course so we should be able to document that so when it comes to the kinds of companies that are particularly strong fit for air quality purification within the data center space Not only will we know the companies not only will we know the stakeholders and and the top topics the goals and the challenges that each of those stakeholders are most interested in we need to build a a finite list a prioritized Target account list of the companies that we want to build a relationship with over time in extreme cases maybe it's a few dozen companies it's probably more likely somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand and with those companies we want to use increase visibility with we can use a two or three pronged approach uh what tends to work best in the data center industry is a combination of outbound and a combination of ads um so for outbound we use a tool like LinkedIn sales navigator to build a list and there's certainly a lot of other Alternatives that are a little more tightly focused on email marketing but we're looking to build a relationship with those stakeholders get visibility in front of the most important stakeholders ideally as early as possible in their Journey so we want educational content we're going to probably have like ebooks downloadable templates planning guides modeling guides um case studies webinars are a fantastic thing to invite people to using a cold email assum that's incredibly targeted and in addition to outbound assuming that your unit economics are strong enough that there's enough Revenue at stake I'd very strongly recommend do at least doing some small amounts of testing with LinkedIn campaign manager with the LinkedIn ad system where basically after you've developed your content offers that are all about why your company is the best education best source of education and thought leadership when it comes to air quality air uh quality for purification for data centers you and you can Target people at those specific companies you can say okay at these specific companies there's a handful of different job titles there's a couple of different job roles there's a couple different seniorities couple different skills group memberships things like that and you test all of them individually and it what's great about doing those tests is you buy 10 clicks for arguments like say let's say we spent $50 us to buy 10 clicks and at the end of $50 we say did we get a lead yep cool we got a lead how is that lead oh it's it's actually the right person that's terrific so what we want to be able to do with that right lead is we want to make sure that we um are paying attention to Quality and if we get a great lead we increase the budget and we keep running that particular lead we buy 10 clicks and we get no leads we turn that off and over time just like any if you've ever done any kind of paperclick advertising um Google ads or you know this the model's been around for 10 20 years already LinkedIn ads have been around for for over 10 years um the great part about it is as long as you're not lazy you can run a lot of really tiny low budgeted and for very small amounts of money you can figure out what's working and what's not and you can also feed that into your Outreach your outbound as well to learn from that so when it comes to increasing visibility for air quality purification we need to know who what the company who the companies are where the stakeholders within the company that we want to reach what they care about and what we're going to do use search a search based approach to increase visibility that's going to start with great content on YouTube and what we can do with a a demographic account company level person kind of Target targeting level using LinkedIn both for outbound using sales Navigator and potentially email as well as LinkedIn ads um so we have one more question that's going to get covered today in our live stream um how can we do sales and marketing for a multifaceted company that does data center Consulting design engineering Construction and commissioning that's a lot of different lines of business but I've actually seen a lot of companies be super successful as consulting firms integrators very similar to if you think about the technology provider that's been around for decades that's served as like outsourced it or fractional it for small and medium-sized businesses a similar model has evolved for small and medium siiz data centers where they just don't have a huge deep bench of talent and because of that they really do appreciate having one throat to choke right one single point of accountability that can take ownership of a lot of different areas that have to do with uh the intersection of technology and potentially even facilities so one particular company that uh is involved in Consulting design engineering construction and commissioning a lot of the initial setup stuff when it comes to getting a new data center online um so what should the sales and marketing Playbook look like for that well we first need to recognize that when it comes to those five different kinds of services as long as your company has been around for a while you probably have some muscle memory about who you've been most successful with right you have your logos your case studies um you know where who on board's the smoothest who retains the best who's the best sorts of of digital word of mouth and and just word of mouth and referrals in general so once you have that established you're looking for patterns how do we clone that how do we replicate that so we're looking for like what does that company have in common are they located in a certain geographic area is there a certain company size or is there business model commonalities are there industry commonalities we need to to know those that's incredibly important because when it comes to being that diverse with providing five different complimentary skills unless you have a huge company it's very likely that there's a li Geographic limits maybe you're just providing these in the United States or just providing these kinds of services in the United Kingdom are just providing these in Singapore um so what's the what geographic factor is going to show up in our ideal client profile and then what company sizes uh are are most important as I alluded to earlier the managed Services model IT consulting firms Network integrators that have been successful for decades as outsourced it for small businesses usually don't have a deep bench of it Talent there's kind of a version of that for small and midsize data centers that don't don't have a deep bench of talent so your ideal client profile when it comes to sales and marketing for this kind of business will more than likely have a geographic component it will also have a size component the size may be based on a certain number of employees a certain amount of Revenue a certain amount of square feet a certain amount of kilowatts or megawatts all of these things will factor into helping you to decide who's qualified and who's not and then from there once you've defined at the company level you and your your sales development team your marketing team should sit down and build a targeted account list of the perfect clients that look like your best clients that you would love to not only know you exist uh that your company exists but you'd love to have them on your deal board in your sales Pipeline and some of them become clients you know sometime in the coming months or in the coming years so once you have that figured out then you can go about saying okay I know what the companies have in common who are the people within these companies that have brought enough oversight that they are influ that they're some kind of stakeholder even some kind of decision maker about things as broad as cons as Consulting Services design engineering construction and commissioning so we have the company identified we have the people identified then were're in a position to build a go to market Playbook to try to get found as early as possible with the most important stakeholders bearing in mind that the journey people go through to buy these kind of services today is so different than as recently as a few years ago or 10 15 years ago um 10 years ago people people typically got through half of the research and decision-making process before they were ready to talk with you now they're almost through the entire research and decision-making process before they're open to meeting with someone from your sales team like 10 years ago uh CB the corporate executive board that's now owned by Gartner said the number was like 56% 56% of the buyer Journey was over before someone wanted to speak with someone from your sales team the latest research that Gartner put out put that number at 83% and based on what we're here anecdotally from most of the companies that that we work with that number actually is probably considerably past that already approaching 100 you know 90 plus percent rapidly approaching to the point where people want self-service as much as possible so where people have become a lot more allergic to spending time with your sales team it's so important that your sales team no longer presents itself as a sales team your sales team needs to be seen more like Consultants teachers trusted advisers thought leaders and subject matter experts a good back of the napkin is if you think about how a big four consultant would present themselves to a mid-market or Enterprise client your salese should have positioning and stature that makes it so your prospects actually want to spend time with them as opposed to them having to beg Kajol bribe manipulate whatever a lot of unsavory ways of trying to twist someone's arm to get them to spend time with them so how do they get prospects to want to spend time with them it's not just about answering prospects question questions it's about sharing unique insights about what's coming next and then after that and then after that and then after that guiding them through the path that you know that they're almost certainly going to be going on because you've seen the pattern recognition about what each of those points look like and when we think about a typical Journey where there's 28 steps between complete stranger and purchase for something as complex as a combination of Consulting design engineering construction and commissioning um there's a lot to unpack there about being the ones who help teach and educate and build trust with prospects and help them frame the criteria against which they compare different options best to breed versus the single point of contact there's a lot of different things to figure out about with those stakeholders what their biggest goals are what their biggest frustrations are what's causing them to miss time away from friends and family and and a lot of stress and figuring out proactively what you can do to add value before you try to extract value from that kind of relationship so your overall approach should be to be seen as helpful teacher trusted advisor Consultants um much less like a vendor much less like a sales professional and your your sales Professionals in general might have punted this in the past down to marketing they can't do that anymore um marketing and sales need to work together collaborate to own that relationship throughout the entire Journey for as many of those 28 touch points as possible the the single big uh lavish Cabana party in Vegas One Touch point out of 28 the great to golf tournament One Touch point out of 28 in other words it's not enough um because you still have 27 or or 26 or 27 different things to fend off where they're going to be looking elsewhere for advice so if you want to be the one that's providing the inside and advice to to completely uh be the one that's top of mind and and sure to be on the short list and maybe the entire short list by the time they get to that 83% point it's a big commitment a big investment to being able to be the one that completely um owns those relationships as as much as much as possible and being humble enough to admit to yourself that like what worked five or 10 years ago is no longer going to work I think about when I used to go to Data Center conferences 10 years ago and I looked around the room um you know it was a very different demographic age-wise than what you see now and I always use that at the risk of over generalizing when a 75-year-old CEO retires they are not replaced by a digitally resistant 75y old CEO right they're always replaced by the Next Generation who's going to be a lot more open to navigating the journey the way a Gen X would or a millennial would or even gen z a lot more self-service a lot more self-propelled the buyer is in the driver's seat the seller is no longer in the driver's seat and the sooner you recognize that and the sooner you're willing to revamp and reposition your entire approach to sales and marketing the better job you're going to do at attracting engaging and building relationships with future clients for data center Consulting design engineering construction and commissioning so there's one more question that was submitted during the live stream here um I don't know if that's going to necessarily have broad enough appeal so um I will get back to that person offline but I'm I'm so glad you're able to join us today for our data center go to market sales and marketing Q&A live stream I am Joshua feberg CEO of dcsi we are all about elevating the role of sales marketing and go tomarket GTM Professionals in the growth of the data center industry I wish you great success in growing your business make sure that you like this video subscribe follow us we love creating content like this it's all about educating and building trust and empowering you to know what you need to do next for your company to be successful in growing in today's environment and today's hyper competitive data center Marketplace remember there's enormous opportunities Jensen Wong sees from Nvidia sees a trillion dollars going into this industry Michael Dell sees the demand for data center Services growing a h hundredfold over the next 10 years but the opportunities will not be distributed evenly they're going to go to those companies that know how to to engage buyers best as teachers thought leaders trusted advisers and subject matter experts I'd encourage you to think long and hard about some of the tips and insights that I shared with you today and we look forward to seeing you back again next time until next time I'm Joshua Feinberg from DC SMI data center go to market sales and marketing QA is sponsored by dcmi elevating the role of sales marketing and go to market GTM Professionals in the growth of the data center industry to stay informed about upcoming episodes subscribe to the data center sales and marketing newsletter on the dcsm website at .csi.com again that's .csi.com