This week on The Digital Download, we are diving deep into the art of optimizing B2B sales for sustainable growth. We are thrilled to welcome Tove Zilliacus, Country Manager Finland at Fenerum. With over two decades of hands-on experience, she is passionate about helping businesses scale by combining customer-centric selling with operational excellence.

Many businesses struggle with inefficient sales processes and missed opportunities. Tove will shed light on streamlining operations and leveraging technology to maximize sales potential.

Join us as we discuss questions like:

• How can businesses truly understand and deliver customer value?

• What are the key steps to optimize a sales engine for efficiency?

• How can digitalization simplify and enhance the sales process?

• What strategies empower sales teams to reach their full potential?

• Why is operational excellence crucial for B2B sales growth?

Tove's extensive background includes consistently exceeding sales targets and successfully launching innovative solutions across international markets. Her proven ability to build scalable lead generation and sales processes demonstrates a deep understanding of what it takes to drive significant growth. She helps companies clarify their sales strategies and achieve more with less, even digitizing sales processes for large organizations.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is highly encouraged!

This week's Guest was:

• Tove Zilliacus, General Manager Finland with Fenerum.

This week's Host was:

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

This week's panelists were:

• Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of DLA Ignite,

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Richard Jones, Director of Qure 8 Ltd, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-06-13

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:09]:

Good afternoon, good morning and good day, wherever you may be joining us from. And welcome to a new edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on tuning radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today we're diving into the art of optimizing B2B sales for sustainable growth. We have a special guest, Tove Zilliacus, to help us with the discussion. Tove is the country manager to for Finland at Fenera. But before we bring Tove on, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we're doing this, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:00]:

We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience and audience participation is highly encouraged. Tim, why don't you kick us off?

Tim Hughes [00:01:10]:

Thank you. Welcome, everybody. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and co founder of BLA Ignite and I'm famous for writing the book Social Selling Techniques to Influence Buyers and Change Makers.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:22]:

Thank you, Tim. Richard.

Richard Jones [00:01:26]:

Good afternoon, everybody. Richard Jones from Curate, partner of DLA Ignite, veteran in the cyber security and compliance industry, and a relative newbie to social selling and all that goes with it.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:41]:

Excellent, Adam.

Tim Hughes [00:01:44]:

Hi, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm Tim's business partner and also co founder of of DLA Ignite. And every time you introduce the show and you say the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, I get a little pang of. Of pride at that because it's remarkable because we've been doing this for how long have we did this for, Tim? Since 4th of May, 2021. Yeah. Which is a long time. So it is.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:13]:

It is a long time. It is a long time. Thank you, Adam and myself, Bertrand Godillot. I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus & Co, a very proud DLA Ignite partner as well. So as I said, this week on the Digital Download, we'll speak with Tove Zilliacus. Tove's proven ability to build scalable lead generation and sales processes demonstrates a deep understanding of what it takes to drive significant growth. Let's bring her on. Tovey, good afternoon and welcome.

Tove Zilliacus [00:02:51]:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:55]:

Tove, let's start by having you tell us a little bit more about you, your background and what led you where you are today.

Tove Zilliacus [00:03:03]:

Thank you. Yes. Hi everybody. I hope we have a big following from Finland here. I invited a lot of people to follow along, so maybe next time let's do it in Finnish. Yeah. So. Well, I'm B2B Sales Pro.

Tove Zilliacus [00:03:23]:

I kind of stumbled into B2B Sales. I was studying at university or business school in Helsinki and was finalizing my studies and was invited for an interview to the 3M company. I was like, well what. I don't know. Sales. That's not really what I was intended to do. I thought about doing like marketing was the thing I was studying. So.

Tove Zilliacus [00:03:49]:

But I'll go and see what it's like the, the interview. And then they offered me the job and I was 24 and they said you get a car, you get a phone. This was in 1998. You get a car, you get a phone and, and a computer and a, and, and a salary. And I was like, yay. So that's, that's it. And, and then I was, I was basically hooked then. I didn't ever look back.

Tove Zilliacus [00:04:16]:

I've been going from sales position to sales position and advancing from, from. This was a basic sales rep job where I was doing, I mean cold calling was the thing because there was no alternatives. Again, 1998, before Google. So, so you had to call people and they had to take you in because that was the only way they could basically get any more information about what's happening in their air field. Five meetings a day, driving around in, in Finland and like having two, three hotel nights every week. That was, that was quite hard. But I mean you were 25, so that's fine. Moving on to more interesting jobs and climbing the corporate ladder, if you want to say that.

Tove Zilliacus [00:05:01]:

Moving on to more account management, the global account management did a couple of years in, in London and then I came back to Finland where I landed a job with Xerox where I worked them for 12 years. And that's basically. I think that led my foundation of my understanding and how B2B sales actually really works or to actually turn it around. How does B2B purchasing work? Because that's what it's all about. And during those 12 years there, everything started shifting in the economy and in the business world also. So my own personal theory is that around 2008 two significant things happened. One was the big credit crunch. So financial problems.

Tove Zilliacus [00:05:52]:

Everybody was basically putting their wallets or like closing their wallets and saying no, we can't. Why anything. Nobody was taking any, any meetings because they were afraid that sales people will just come in and talk them into buying stuff. And then also what happened was that the Internet actually started to soar in. You can see if you look at Numbers of web pages built. It actually coincides with this. So you see a really hockey stick effect there. Before this Internet pages were more for universities and for pages saying that hey, we have a business, this is us, and that's it.

Tove Zilliacus [00:06:35]:

So these two things happen and something happening a lot with sales and you couldn't anymore get through. So you have to start changing stuff. This was a long time before social came in. So. And then after Xerox, I mean I've been, I was five years in the bank. That was interesting. Didn't really feed my creativity. So after that I started my own business.

Tove Zilliacus [00:07:02]:

Didn't fly off that well. Have a mortgage to pay. So I was in a, in a startup for a few years and now I'm the country manager for a very interesting SaaS business helping other sauce businesses with their financial processes. That's all I'm gonna say.

Bertrand Godillot [00:07:23]:

So, so, so def you a great journey.

Tove Zilliacus [00:07:27]:

Very, very, very short. Like 27 years of experience.

Bertrand Godillot [00:07:32]:

Okay. Okay. So let's start with the foundational questions based on your experience. How can businesses truly understand and deliver customer value?

Tove Zilliacus [00:07:48]:

That is, that is very, very good and interesting question. My first thought here is unless you really understand what your customers will achieve thanks to your solutions, then you don't know what the value is. So you have to really understand where you fit into the customer's journey. They don't care about your stuff unless you are selling a strategic, important stuff like thing for their direct production. Then they really care about what you sell, but everything else is, it's irrelevant. But if you can understand how your solution helps them achieve their own targets and goals, then you understand the value and you should talk only about that. So basically if I'm a recruitment company, my, my, I shouldn't be selling that. Yeah, we find the best candidates for you or we do the best aptitude tests or whatever.

Tove Zilliacus [00:09:03]:

But you should be thinking that because of us you will have the best people working for you and you will drive your business forward. Changing the narrative in this, the customers and the way. I actually, I'm a very visual person. So I, I, I draw stuff and, and I visualize this like this, that if my, I'm looking at my customer but I see him from the turn to the back and he's looking at his customers. So I'm thinking like, okay, so how do I get into his head and, and see what his customers need? And then I try to find myself in that puzzle. So something like that, it's, it's, it goes beyond the, the like feature benefit and then the value.

Bertrand Godillot [00:09:57]:

So I think you said something quite interesting as part of the intro and I, I've noted this down because I think it's so important. You, you talked, you talked about the B2B that you actually became an expert in the B2B purchasing process. And what I would like to understand is because we've got a lot of salespeople listening to this. So what are the key steps basically that you would take to optimize your sales process? Probably knowing your customers purchasing process. Am I correct?

Tove Zilliacus [00:10:40]:

First, first one, first you have to understand a few things. First is the, the value. So we've already established that one. So understand that and, and keep that in mind. Then the second part is to understand the actual buying process, what happens during different phases. And this is coming directly from, from my times in Xerox. And they didn't invent this. It's based in psychology.

Tove Zilliacus [00:11:04]:

So we're talking about a decision making cycle. And, and it has four phases and it fits very well with the, like with the ADA model. So attention, interest, desire and so forth. But, but I turned it into. Or at Xerox they turned it into something else. So you start off where you are very much unaware of other things, other ways of doing things. So you're doing your thing the same way and you're happy or almost maybe not happy. I mean you're unaware that there is any other way of doing said thing or whatever.

Tove Zilliacus [00:11:44]:

So you have to, so the step is there to get that customer to become aware and that you do by different things. But we are at the top of the funnel here. There's a lot of noise, but again if you keep in mind the value and always feed that in to your conversation, you will get them to listen to you. Now the next step, the considering the options. Not considering the options, but considering the before and after. So you have a current way of doing stuff or doing whatever. And then you have this new proposed step state you have still not actually said your, your own company or your business or whatever you said. Like okay, so there is, there is a way to get yourself from A to B.

Tove Zilliacus [00:12:33]:

You're currently biking and there is a way when you use maybe an A motor, but we are not talking still about the brand of car or whatever. And, and then you present what is the gap? What is the difference between continuing as I am or doing it the other way. And here you should try to monetize it or put a figure a number on it, like faster, more efficient savings, something. The third part is considering the Options, you've decided that it's smart to use a motor to get yourself from A to B. Now, now you can start talking about. My car that I'm selling to you is this and this and that and it has this and this and that. And I have sold my cars from many, many years and these are my customers that are very happy and blah blah, blah, blah. This is the first time you're talking about your own product.

Tove Zilliacus [00:13:31]:

Before that you're talking about the customer's own life and own reality. And then the last part is the closing. And this should actually be extremely easy at the end of the day because if you follow all of this, there is little less left for the customer to go like no, because if you have done all of this, 90% of the time you would be spending in that first part, the awareness part. So that's, and if you understand through all of that you understand the value and you keep that value in mind instead of talking anything else that than value, then you, you get, you, you going to get back to the closing part and the customer will say I get it now. And should the customer at any point go like ah, not so sure, then you back down, you back, okay, so Mr. Customer, we decided that this was this thing your situation is now that you need to get from A to B faster because whatever the difference between your bike and a motorized way of doing this is this and that. Now here are the references for my car that you could buy. So are there still any anxieties left? So basically that's the purchasing like decision making process of a customer.

Tove Zilliacus [00:15:04]:

So how do you put this all together? Is that when you are talking about these things with your customer or online or anywhere else, you keep in mind this value part and you stop talking about your products completely.

Tim Hughes [00:15:18]:

Yeah, so, so we've got an idiot in the comments. The first thing they said, this is very basic advice is absolutely right. But in my travels and I, I speak to an awful lot of companies, what you're laying out is like, it's just common sense. But most companies don't do this. Most companies, they know that this is what they should do, yet they get into some sort of customer interaction and what they say is, and our products got all of these different features and functions and it's really better than everybody. And, and they, it begins, it, it begins as if the conversation and the interaction with the customer starts with a product demonstration. If I show how good my product is, you'll be, you'll be interested in my product. But if we Go back to the very first thing you said about the.

Tim Hughes [00:16:13]:

The customer doesn't care unless you're selling like this super important thing to their production, which they do care about. Everything else is like, well, I have a business, it's working. I've got 20 different options that I can pick here. And, and I think that certainly, I mean, how do you feel about this? Because, because my view is that.

Tove Zilliacus [00:16:34]:

Every.

Tim Hughes [00:16:35]:

Business that's selling something in the B2B space needs like a reality check. They need a reset and they need somebody to point out to them that your product is actually in my eyes, the same as everybody else's product. So why you? So, so how, how should sellers begin to plant that seed? How should they reset their own expectations about how that conversation unfolds?

Tove Zilliacus [00:16:59]:

Yes, that's a very good place to start. I mean, what I do basically is I, I really try and find out as much as possible about the customer. This takes time. I do a lot of research before I even start contacting people for the first time. Because now we are the top of the funnel and they don't know who you are and why I should listen to you and not the other ones. And if you just take that time to really understand their business and then maybe you just use that sentence to hook them and say, okay, I see that you're designing a new product line in your business. Now this product is set to, you're going to sell this to smaller businesses and they like to be able to pay for this in a certain way. How have you thought about that? When you are building your own billing infrastructure, for example, this is an example from my day to day life at the moment.

Tove Zilliacus [00:18:08]:

So by just under saying to him, hey, I understand your, your current business and I know what, what you are facing every day and I really want to help you succeed. Then they start listening to you instead of going in and say, hi John, I have the best billing solution ever. We can do this and this and this and this and this and this and this. And they go like, yeah, whatever, so can the other guys. But because I could find this one thing, it can be very small, but I mean really understand that, hey, because of this real little thing, you need to have a solution like this. Now we can help you with that. Do you want to continue the conversation now he's aware of us. And then you start drilling down because this is really, As I said, 80% spent on that first top level.

Tove Zilliacus [00:18:57]:

No, how do you get through the noise?

Tim Hughes [00:19:01]:

Yeah, I mean I, I think that the thing that's really interesting is that every, not every, almost every seller seems to be delusional about how important they think their product is. I remember when we spoke for the first time, you said there's this quadrant and there's like, there's, there's strategic and tactical and then there's direct and indirect and everybody thinks they're in the strategic direct part and in fact they're all in the tactical indirect part. Because unless you've got that, that one thing that you can only buy from me. And I think that the example you cited then was uranium being sold to a nuclear power plant. It's like, okay, this is pretty pivotal for what I do, but if you're down in the other, the opposite quadrant, you're selling CRM systems. And there are lots and lots and lots of different vendors. And I always think that the sellers kind of, they overestimate how important the product is. They overrate the, overestimate the sophistication of the person that they're selling to.

Tim Hughes [00:20:05]:

Not the person's stupid, but the person doesn't understand your CRM system because why should they? They're in uranium manufacturer or whatever. And, and it strikes me that we need to have sellers need to have a reset, don't they? They need to think the customer doesn't care about my product. The customer, the customer doesn't see this as important and I need to put myself in the customer's shoes more.

Tove Zilliacus [00:20:33]:

Yeah, exactly. And, and that's, and that's the thing because we are, many of us are selling like, well let's say like this. You are being trained to sell your products on their features. How fantastic. This, I created this solution because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's very like if you're in a small company, you might be have a lucky founder led business. You have like everybody should need this because I created such a fantastic product. But unless you do the flip and think about what are the actual values of this product to the customer, then you really, you're not really hitting the mark here.

Tove Zilliacus [00:21:16]:

I had a very good conversation with a friend of mine, Lauri in Finland, who developed their product and he said during this 10 years that he's been in business, he said that the product has pivoted completely and only because the customers didn't use it to what it was intended. They started to use it a completely different way. And then they realized, Lauri realized, hey, this is actually quite good. So. And that again like keeping up your ears up and seeing like what is really of value to the customers. And I think I feel that too many salespeople are so focused on their own massive greatness of product. When I was working at Xerox we had this image that this PowerPoint show about the new product that we had or the new solution, whatever. And we had that machine centered in the picture of the company.

Tove Zilliacus [00:22:14]:

This is the. And these are all the functions of the business around it. And the bloody Xerox machine was in the middle. Now I started, when I started as a sales director in Xerox I started to have a bit more time understanding my customers better. I went to these like forums and, and where basically my customers met each other and had like whole days of, of conferences and stuff. And I was just sitting there listening on their day to day things. And then I realized it like just hit me and I'm like damn, they don't give a damn about us. They have these other things that they need to think about.

Tove Zilliacus [00:23:00]:

So I started thinking how do we fit into that? So how does Xerox become a helping thing of aiding the customer to where they want to go? And that's basically it. So how do you fit into this? Not everybody is going to be a strategic, important partner. The access is like the strategic and non strategic and then it's direct or indirect and most of us are somewhere in the indirect and, and non strategic. So. So we're like everything from toilet paper to even CRM systems. I mean because the, the thing is that there are, there are so many of them. I mean if you're buying plutonium or uranium for a nuclear plant, they're not that many that can provide that for you. Or like, like my, a friend of mine was actually I wrote it down because we had a conversation this morning and he said it's quite different when you're selling core banking platforms.

Tove Zilliacus [00:23:57]:

The sales cycle are like eight to 10 years because you don't change core banking platforms like that. But you can change the CRM system nowadays fairly easy. So again, understanding and getting a reality check that these guys really don't care that much about your product but they care if you can help them.

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:21]:

We have two with two great comments. Sorry, two great comments. This one I enjoy very much. Maybe because I'm French, but this, this one is about common sense and does, does play very well. It says why is common sense just like deodorant answer the people who need it most never use it. I think it's cracking. Thank you Mark for this one. And then we have a second one which is about getting through the noise isn't about being the loudest, it's about being the clearest.

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:55]:

And, and I think this goes, this goes pretty much around what you just said Toby. So thanks for, for these comments. Maybe a question on digitalization. So there's a lot of stuff that we used to do and we're taking a lot of time as you said, you know, doing your homework as a salesperson. Things have changed quite significantly or I mean could change quite significantly if you adopt them. So what's from your perspective the impact of digitization for both simplifying and potentially enhancing your sense approach?

Tove Zilliacus [00:25:46]:

Ah that this is such a, like a wormhole or something. First of all I, for outreach I, I think this AI and all these digital possibilities that I love that's really done as a disservice. I mean you can, you can, let's say you're selling marketing services. You can just go to any platform nowadays you can buy, you can get a list of marketing managers and then you just bombard and tailored message and the tailoring is basically your industry, your the size and your name and whatever. And I as, I have, as I said I have a one person company and I keep getting these emails saying wow, I've seen your work. It's so great we could offer you da da da. I'm like dude, have you even been to my website? So this is, I mean they're, and this is the noise that is somebody was getting through the noise it's getting filling up everybody's emails. And this is a really big problem because I actually the example I got here is a friend of mine had a marketing, marketing communications agency and, and he's the co founder of it so his title is still marketing manager.

Tove Zilliacus [00:27:12]:

And he got a message hi, I would like to sell to you marketing communication services. And he go like dude, he, this person really didn't do any homework. No. Because they took a big database and just like threw in there some keywords and then just like shoot out and hopes that something sticks. So instead of doing, making sure that taking the time to do your prospecting fine and honing in on your messaging and then calling people and trying really to be valuable to them because you can sit there and think about these sequences for weeks and days and you're still not getting more than you would be doing by actually tailoring your message that you're going to call somebody. And so but I mean do use these. I mean I definitely use AI for almost all of my messaging, whatever I write because I need to be very Precise. I usually write it and then I ask AI to make it even like shorter, briefer, use different words and like saying, don't use that word, I hate it.

Tove Zilliacus [00:28:31]:

Use another word and so forth. So use this. But don't. I mean, not everybody's going to be interested in your stuff and you will actually be making, you'll be hurting your brand a lot. So that's like. But I mean, what I wanted to, to actually touch upon here also was the how to make your sales more efficient. And that's what you, this lovely panel of people knows everything about. And that's like making the short sales cycles shorter.

Tove Zilliacus [00:29:05]:

Right. So let's say you have this. You, you are communicating with this way of, of that, that these people are interested in you and you are. Sorry, I keep hearing background noises. It's not from here. It's not from here. Okay, let me wind back. You understand what is the value that you bring to your customers? You start to do a lot of this messaging out.

Tove Zilliacus [00:29:34]:

You are on LinkedIn, you're on Instagram or Facebook, wherever your customers are the most. And you are basically just making sure that whenever your name comes up, you have something smart to say and something that is of value to them. You're not pitching your product. So my idea is here that once you pick up the phone and they answer, the idea is going to be, hey, we were just talking about you or I'm glad you called. So my tagline is a bit like make them expect your call. So that's what you can do to make it shorter. Because sales cycle has actually begun a long time before you even pick up the phone.

Tim Hughes [00:30:20]:

Yeah, I mean one, one of the things that strikes me is that, and I think that, that your kind of analogy about how when you were at Xerox, you, you've kind of got this PowerPoint slide and you've got Xerox in the middle and then everything that the company does around the outside. And I, I guess that part of the, the challenge in the B2B world for the seller is a visualizing themselves in that relationship as, as the relationship actually stands, rather than being that strategic partner, but also leading with an understanding of what the customer is going through at any point. So I work for a big American software company for a while and we used to do lots of journey mapping, customer journey mapping. It has nothing to do with mapping the journey of the customer to buy. It was absolutely mapping our journey of how we sold and, and that kind of disconnect and an inability to put yourself in the buyer's shoes makes you A, look like you're not listening and B, look like you don't really care what, what the challenges are. So I guess the question is what can a B2B seller do to start to reimagine how they could better be starting those conversations with customers?

Tove Zilliacus [00:31:49]:

Ah, I hate to say the obvious, but you have, you have one mouth and two years. It's just the, it is just you have to love the customer more than you love your own product. Basically, you have to understand that, that unless you know them really well and unless you're really interested in them, you won't get that far. I mean, I'm a curious person by nature and so, so I'm always very interested in understanding how, what they do and what are their challenges and what is the world that they try to get through. So that's why I, I sometimes I think I do a bit too much research before I even call customers. But, but that's basically what I, how I feel. But I mean, it's a lot of research and then be curious, understanding. I mean, not that only understanding the customer, but the industry they're in and what are their competitors doing and doing basically that mapping.

Tove Zilliacus [00:32:58]:

I don't know if you picked up on that now.

Tim Hughes [00:33:04]:

Yeah, absolutely. And you say, you know, you began that by saying, well, I hate to say the obvious, but you've got one mouth and two ears, so use them in those proportions. But actually what I see, every company that I talk to, I see them acting as if they don't need to do the basics. You know, we've moved beyond the basics. We don't need to worry about that. We don't need to do customer research because our product's really good. We don't need to listen to the customer because I already know what the answer is going to be. And I think that a lot of times we have to, we have to think back to how does selling actually work? And I think again, in your introduction you said, it's not about selling, it's about buying.

Tim Hughes [00:33:54]:

It's about letting them buy your product rather than you selling your product to them. And I think that when you think back to the old days when you would have sold things literally by knocking on doors, I mean, before any of us were born. But you know what I mean. You know, you knock on a door, you say to somebody, hi, I've got one of these. And they say, I don't like you. And they close the door and you move to the next person and then you and you keep doing that until they say, okay, I like you, why don't you come in and show me what it is that you've got. And actually if we get back to that way of thinking, clearly we won't knock on doors today. But that way of thinking is a very pure way of putting yourself in front of a customer where, you know, we try to have some sort of dialogue, you're not interested and I move on.

Tim Hughes [00:34:42]:

And you know, you said that the problem with email is that there's so much of it and you know, it's driven certainly I see it being driven by people just being lazy. I don't need to do any research, I don't need to segment. I'm just going to send an email to everybody in the world because some of them will buy.

Tove Zilliacus [00:34:59]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:35:00]:

And so what, what are people doing wrong? Because you know, there's, there's marketing automation there, there are AI tools, there's sales scheduling tools there, there's all of this information at our fingertips. Companies are spending more and more money on sales tech and yet fewer and fewer of their sales people are reaching their targets. So it's broken, isn't it?

Tove Zilliacus [00:35:25]:

Yeah. And that, that's, that's the thing. It's like I think that most are so worried about the tech stack. It's like, yeah, I mean you should have something to help you, but it shouldn't do the work for you. I mean have tools to help you keep track of your calls, of your emails and make sure that you know who to call and when did you talk to them last. But then let's, I mean all of this, I mean I get amazed by like people like, yeah, we can do anything and all that. And then it's like, so when are you going to call the customer? Actually because we do most of, many of us, let's say many of us do have sales led strategies where we, we actually, it's a sales person who is doing the selling at the end of the day. But I mean today that's only really the end of the sales process.

Tove Zilliacus [00:36:24]:

That's the salesperson is getting invited in. I believe for a few years ago Gartner said like it's 5% of all the buying processes start from the a call or are initiated by the salesperson. 95% is initiated somewhere else in this myriad of information. And so basically I would say this coming from me, I love sales and I love all the salespeople, but we are not the key anymore. We are there to make sure that maybe we land it at the end of the day to do the closing. But everything else has to happen from somewhere else. The customer is doing all the work themselves. They're not having the conversations with the salespeople.

Tove Zilliacus [00:37:12]:

How are they doing all of this? And that's basically marketing. And marketing is much more than ads and, and, and this stuff. So marketing. I'm a marketer at like, I have a master's in marketing, so I'm a theorist in that this sense that marketing is all the tactical and strategical activities you do to generate revenue. Now sales in this piece is part of marketing. So everything else that you do to generate this revenue actually should be part of marketing. There is old school but still valid P for promotion and that's the paid ads. But basically that's where you need to be making sure that when the customer is out there and maybe searching or maybe just surfing, he gets your messaging.

Tove Zilliacus [00:38:13]:

And that you can do as a salesperson through LinkedIn being relevant there. Or your company can help you with this. Your marketing communications can help you be relevant. But the problem here is going back to that value thing, when the marketing department puts out stuff like blog links or postings or anything like that, it's so bloody product focused, we lose track of the value again.

Tim Hughes [00:38:43]:

But hasn't that now created a situation where people just ignore all of that stuff? So, you know, the challenge for me as a buyer, so, you know, I like everybody else like to look at car adverts and adverts for rucksacks and phones on Instagram, but in the B2B world, I don't consume any marketing material. And the reason I don't is that there's so much stuff out there and it's so. And maybe it's partly because it's so product focused, but there's so much stuff out there and I'm drowning under a weight of things that are vying for my time. So the route to get, when I think about how we sell as an organization, our route to get to our customers is for us to form a personal relationship with the customer. And that's why all of the organizations that we work with, we teach them how to be authentic. Much overused word, but how to be themselves. I have a lot of sales conversations with people that play the guitar because that's an interest of mine. And it's a good starting point for a conversation because there is no, there is no hidden sales message in this.

Tim Hughes [00:40:03]:

There's two people talking about guitars or. Tim travels a lot. He talks to people about travel and food and all of this stuff that we all have interests in. And it's only when you develop that kind of conversation that people say, so what do you do when you're at work? And then you've got the opportunity to explain stuff. But marketing led sales, marketing led communications, I think are as good as dead, really, these days.

Tove Zilliacus [00:40:37]:

Well, that depends. Because I mean, if you are very strict in how you define it, this is definition question for me because I'm not talking about basically if I post on LinkedIn and I am not selling anything there, I am posting basically, hey, I had an interesting conversation with a customer and he was talking about a trip to France. This is content, it generates interest. It has nothing to do with my product. This is marketing. I'm placing myself on a map. So this is where. This is why I'm saying that social selling as a term is actually, it is marketing that you do there because you are making sure that people know who you are and what you stand for.

Tove Zilliacus [00:41:29]:

And then when they get to know you, like in your guitar example, you actually, they may be. They go, so we are now be talking about guitars for two months. What do you actually do? I've seen some of your stuff. And then you can like, yeah, well, it's this and that. It's like when you walk around in, when you go to a dinner party and, and you sit down and you meet everybody for the first time, you don't say, hi, my name is Adam and I do social selling training. You said, no, hi, my name is Adam and I love guitars and I live in the, in the east, in East Anglia and so forth. So, so it's the same thing is has to happen in the social context also. And that's what I'm saying, that it's a definition question that because we're so.

Tove Zilliacus [00:42:20]:

We are so inclined to say that marketing equals what a company's handle puts out or a blog post by the company. But let's say that you are doing a blog post on somebody else's page, you've been invited to somebody else as an expert speaker and all that. Now that's marketing.

Tim Hughes [00:42:44]:

Yeah, it is. But I think that what we see in our travels largely is that that is not part of the overarching marketing strategy.

Tove Zilliacus [00:42:56]:

I don't.

Tim Hughes [00:42:57]:

What is brand police advertising? Creation of brochures, creation of events, creation of email campaigns, all of which create noise in the marketplace. And marketing departments will often tell you that that noise creates background hum and awareness of the product, which I don't believe it does. Anymore. What you're talking about should be supported by marketing departments. They should be saying, tove, I want you to write something about this because this is topical for some of our clients at the moment and share this with you. But in my experience, marketing teams don't do that because marketing teams are KPI'd on metrics that often don't mean anything anymore. So impressions or, or whatever and success as you know from social comes from closing all of those loops. You know, if somebody drops a like on something, you know who they are.

Tim Hughes [00:44:00]:

So you can then say to them thank you for liking that and try to develop a conversation off the back of that. Whereas somebody, if somebody sees something, you don't know who they are, so you can't send them a note to say thank you. And interestingly, the last comment that we've had in is from somebody saying, I spent four hours writing a short email to SVP of a Fortune 500 perfect email relevant. He pushed it to a lower level million dollar deal. And that's lovely. That's absolutely. Though the problem is that that is one instance rather than an inevitable outcome. It's like people that cold call that say I cold called this target company.

Tim Hughes [00:44:40]:

I called them at six o' clock one evening. Everybody had gone home except the chief executive. They answered the phone. They became my best company. Which is very true and it does happen. But it isn't a cause and effect. It's a. It's luck.

Tim Hughes [00:44:54]:

Luck is never a good strategy.

Tove Zilliacus [00:44:56]:

No.

Tim Hughes [00:44:57]:

Most emails that I get and everybody that I've ever spoken to gets gets put in the bin.

Tove Zilliacus [00:45:03]:

Yeah. No I'm. Yeah. And, and I have actually I invited her here to listen in. I don't know if she is here but on I is very known in Finland for, for pushing this social selling. She. She wrote a book about it and all everything it's there and she, she. In Finland, Finnish sales is Munti with an M.

Tove Zilliacus [00:45:30]:

So you have like marketing Munti so two M's. So she said her tagline is that sales and marketing are like Eminem candies. They're like same flavor, like all the same bag and. And they have different type of flavors but it's the same thing. And, and that is exactly the thing that, that what you're saying that when you're describing is exactly that. That type of thinking that has to go away. And it has to go away because we are. When, when marketing is not measured on sales then you don't get a good combination here.

Tove Zilliacus [00:46:09]:

So when marketing is measured on how many Leads they get, we get crap lead generators. When marketing is measured on clicks, we get absolutely rubbish stuff there. But if marketing is going to be held accountable for the sales, actually, and then I have these marketing said, it can't be done. You can't do that. Well, why not? Because I think it can be very much done and you don't have to sit there and track and attribute every single deal. Like, did this start from LinkedIn or did it come from this blog post or where did it come from? Who cares? It's about the marketing. Favorite term, brand awareness. So when I pick up the phone and I call you, do you know who I am and do you know my business and do you know what we can do for you? So this is all like all that noise that you keep making in on social media is do they want to listen to you? Are you helping them? And it goes back to that value that do you really understand my business and can you help me with it? So it's not about me picking up a phone, calling any CEO that I've never spoken to and I happen to have a deal, something to, that I can offer them that is relevant for, for most of our SaaS companies.

Tove Zilliacus [00:47:29]:

So that's, I have it fairly easy. But still most of people who pick up the phone and call them, so if they get somebody to actually answer the phone, most of them will say, nah, not relevant for me. Drop me an email and then it's going to be gone. But if you keep grinding this and speaking about the value that can provide, then maybe the next time you pick up the phone and say, actually I've been reading your stuff and that's interesting. And then you have a conversation.

Tim Hughes [00:47:58]:

Well, we, Tim and I were at a big Salesforce event in London earlier this week and we were walking across the floor and somebody kind of pounced on us and said, hi guys. You don't know me, but I know you. See you. Which was lovely. It was, it's lovely when that thing happened. But yeah, I mean, probably seven years ago now, Tim and I wrote a book called Smarketing, which is about moving. And it just so happens he has a copy about moving sales and marketing departments into the same vertical, available in all languages now, about moving them into the same. Because for exactly this reason, you know, if, if, if I'm, if I'm compensated and measured on generating email addresses, I'll find lots of email addresses.

Tim Hughes [00:48:50]:

Actually what you want is you want me to be one link in the chain, whether I'm closing business or I'm, I'm generating awareness. It's really important, important that I'm one link in the chain and we measure the importance of the chain rather than saying, okay, your bit is just this bit because it's very easy and we see again and again don't be out performance of some departments and underperformance of the whole journey.

Tove Zilliacus [00:49:19]:

Exactly.

Bertrand Godillot [00:49:22]:

Does that come from the fact that prospecting. Because what we're actually talking about is prospecting as part of marketing. Right. And this is kind of full of the sales team desk basically. So that I think maybe that's, that's the reason where we are, where we are most, why most company companies are where they are today. It's kind of splitting the work between, between sales and somebody else who happens to be marketing. But then having two different KPIs, two different sets of KPIs create misalignment for sure. But changing this is quite, is quite a challenge.

Bertrand Godillot [00:50:12]:

The thing, I mean if you've got any tips, I'm all for it and I'm sure we're all for it.

Tove Zilliacus [00:50:21]:

Yeah. Richard, you wanted to chime in here.

Richard Jones [00:50:24]:

You mentioned about Gartner saying that sort of 5% of the sales process is coming in the hands of the salesperson, which kind of goes to prove that the sales person has been sort of emasculated somewhat and they have, you know, they have very little influence over what's going on. And that's primarily being driven by marketeers who are still working in a world where marketing was done a certain way. So it's, you know, from my perspective, sales was always about diagnosing before you prescribing. But we're busy prescribing before we do the diagnosing.

Tove Zilliacus [00:50:58]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I have a, I, I, I thought about one other analogy and I was coming home from coming to my, our kitchen, especially in the summertime. I do normally all the cooking and it's fine. I, I, my husband does a lot of other stuff, so, but I'm, I'm the person in the kitchen except for the summer. Then he does the barbecue. But what happens before you throw the stuff on the grill? That's me.

Tim Hughes [00:51:29]:

Yeah.

Tove Zilliacus [00:51:30]:

So you have the kitchen, you have an hours of chopping and stuff, doing things and, and then he goes like, ta da. I did the market. And that's a bit like the salesperson going like, yay, I got the deal in and the marketing is sitting there yet. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:47]:

Yeah. Okay, that's brilliant. All right, great. Well thanks for that. To this has been really great. Where can we, where can we find you? Where, where can we learn more?

Tove Zilliacus [00:52:00]:

Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I, I do want to connect with as many people as as possible. And, and if you're in the SaaS business in Finland or in Denmark and Norway where we are present, we can help you. And if you want to learn more about my theories on sales, I do have my own business also and I did, I have written a little book about how to help become a better salesperson available in Finnish, Swedish and English.

Bertrand Godillot [00:52:32]:

And we'll, we'll definitely put a link on that book on our newsletter because we now have a newsletter and you should know that.

Tove Zilliacus [00:52:42]:

I would love to talk more about this, but I know the time is running out. But the thing is it's very difficult to put down everything like this in 45 minutes and especially talking with these you smart guys and all your questions and also following the questions and comments on on the side. But this is just like I love talking about how to make V2B sales.

Bertrand Godillot [00:53:06]:

Better and yeah, and, and I'm pretty sure that came through to, to, to, to our audience. Okay, so we now have a newsletter as I was saying. So don't miss an episode. Get the show insights. Sorry the show highlights and the and the beyond the show insights and reminders about upcoming episodes. You may scan the QR code on screen and hopefully it will come up or visit us at Digital download live newsletter. On behalf of the panelist and the audience, I'd like to thank you so much Toby for joining us today and next time, see you next time. Thank you so much.

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