By Steve Sullivan, National Sales Director
I recently attended a meeting in which chief technology officers (CTOs) were discussing their buying processes and how they handle marketers or sales professionals who are eager to pitch to them.
Hearing insights from across the table is always enlightening and provides a few important reminders for marketers. Here are a few that stood out:
Your prospects want to know you’re human. Marketing automation platforms, robocalls and other automated communications flood everyone’s inboxes daily. As a result, a general distrust exists over whether they’re dealing with a real person who wants to do business.
Your prospects are hungry for information. CTOs—and an increasing number of other executives–crave data, trends and insights into their areas of concern.
Your prospects have to trust you. Professionals need to know that if something goes wrong, they can rely on you to fix it. The ability to build this level of trust will motivate them to return to you.
These takeaways may seem simple, but if you dive deeper, each directly relate to how well you connect with your buyers—not necessarily about your products or service, but on a more personal level.
CTOs (and all executives for that matter) want to know that you understand their business and, more important, their pain points and challenges. Businesses like ours are meant to solve problems and add value. But when we fall in love with our products, instead of doing the work to let customers know how our product can improve their lives, then they won’t have time for us.
Takeaway: The burden is on marketers to articulate your story in a way that resonates with what’s important to customers. Without a story and human touch that links how products or services offer connection to customers, we’re as effective as those robocalls we all ignore.
Photo: Getty Images
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