Deploy your Winning Game Plan with Data Coaches, Playbooks and Data Plays
Well, it wasn’t a high scoring game, but If you watched the Superbowl, you witnessed an amazing display of defensive talent. Sure the players were great, but I’m talking about the coaching talent and specifically the play calling. Belichick put on another clinic showing why he’s arguably the GOAT (greatest of all time), and McVay, the brilliant up and comer, made me think of the innovative Bill Walsh of the 49ers.
The play calling prowess also reminded me of some of the innovative shot callers at our clients who we have the honor of collaborating with every day. Just like in football where winning is the end result of well-executed plays, driving demand, and closing B2B deals requires a consistent, high-quality execution of plays.
Build your playbook with high-quality coaches and data.
Our clients quarterbacking marketing and sales teams are working from playbooks just like the pros. A lot of research, competitive intel, analytics, and data goes into those playbooks. Creating the best matchups for a key competitive advantage means acting on the most current and accurate data. Each target account, just like an opposing player, needs to be studied. The high-quality, actionable data in these scouting reports come in many forms and from many sources. Compiling that data is time-consuming. It needs to be scrubbed for accuracy, validated and efficiently processed into plays that succeed. NFL players rely on scouts and research teams to assemble the data they use. Likewise, savvy revenue drivers scale growth by relying on a team of researchers to compile actionable data instead of tasking their sales teams. They are also keenly aware that acting on old, incomplete or inaccurate data leads to poor execution. In other words – game over.
The game plans of innovative marketers and sales leaders aren’t pulled together with cookie cutter formulas or with generic data sources. They collaborate with data coaches possessing deep expertise in verticals, and specific strategies – just like quarterbacks work with quarterback coaches and special team players work with special team coaches. The data coaches share and tailor the plays they’ve seen work well and know what is needed to consistently execute them.
Design your own data plays.
One example of winning data plays is putting actionable triggers in place to ensure marketing campaigns and sales team members have available actionable data. These plays are often tailored to first string, second string, and third string target accounts. Below are just a few of the signals and events designed by our clients that trigger a team of LeadGenius researchers into action to quickly update data to tilt the game of smart, timely engagement to their favor. They can be triggered individually as tasks or automated in a rules-based fashion for the entire organization based on things like sales stage progression, aging of stalled engagements, external intent signals, and other events.
- Decision Maker ID: Find the right contact when sales flag an existing contact as the wrong decision maker.
- New Contact ID: Find to people who have left their position and who has replaced them at the existing organization.
- Cross-sell Opps: Find similar profiles one layer up in the organization or in other divisions for upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
- Contacts with Intent: Find contacts at companies spending time on your website or displaying intent signals.
- Keyword Search: Find contacts based on keywords related to job functions, relevant technologies, or similar functional expertise identification.
- Buying Center Coverage: Find decision makers and influencers when building out buying centers.
- Enrichment: Fill or update missing fields on contacts or companies like direct lines or social info.
- Target Company ID: Find companies based on custom curated attributes – or companies affiliated with competitors.
- Look-alikes: Find companies that look similar to your customer base.
- Actionable Signals: Find companies based on news updates or intent signals.
Keep it simple and add more plays over time.
Start by selecting simple plays that are consistently executed. Over time you can augment with additional plays. As in football, your performance will not be judged by the size and complexity of your playbook. Instead, it will be measured by how well you move the sale down the funnel. Good play-calling is about making observations, gathering information, assessing performance, and using all the coaching and data available to you to create a competitive advantage.
Marketing and sales is a contact sport. The contact needs to be timely, relevant, and impactful. However that looks in your playbook, the plays only work with accurate data. Executing a play with the wrong data can result in much more than a penalty flag and loss of yardage. To avoid getting benched, seek out great coaching, a supporting team that huddles with you often and is committed to helping you consistently put “W”s in the win column for all your campaigns.
