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Overcoming the Elevator Pitch: Buying into the Buyer Experience

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes Before technology became ubiquitous in every aspect of life, the buyer-seller relationship was much more of an even exchange. The door-to-door knife salesperson would demonstrate how their cutting solutions could slice through an empty can of cola and point out how the old, outdated implement you were holding couldn’t. There would be the talk of a singular pain point, a singular solution, and a price point. It was personal. It was relevant. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the “elevator pitch,” where the seller has about 30 seconds to quickly sell you a product (or a screenplay or a shoe-shine), and you’re presented with two options: shake hands to seal the deal, or walk off at…

Transcending Old Sales Patterns: 5 Advantages of Virtual Events

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes In recent years, virtual events have made their importance known. While first used for convenience, then out of necessity, long-lasting benefits were made clear through the continued use of virtual events as part of an engagement marketing strategy. A buyer’s takeaway from traditional events (walking from booth to booth or room to room) doesn’t necessarily have a long-lasting impression and there is a significant cost required.  Travel, in-person networking, pounding the expo floor, and decision fatigue – not to mention all those emails piling up in their inboxes – can keep potential buyers from retaining the information they want to take home with them. Sales strategies benefit from including a digital presence. While not necessarily…

Engaging Customers & Competing More Effectively at Parker Hannifin

Parker Hannifin has partnered with Kaon Interactive to create an interactive digital sales experience. The goal is to develop an omnichannel and scalable application, deployed on an enterprise-wide platform, that we can use to: Consistently communicate our competitive value story. Enable our sellers (channel, direct, BDs) to have more sophisticated conversations without the support of SMEs. Elevate collaboration engagement everywhere our buyers are (events, sales meetings, executive briefings, training, on the web, etc.). Parker Application Roadmap 3 Easy Steps to Add Your Parker Story #1: Fill Out Parker’s Creative Brief Download and complete a creative brief for your division. The creative brief is a series of strategic questions to help us better understand your business, go-to-market strategy, and the sales…

Engagement Vs. Disruption in B2B Marketing

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes An unfortunate reality for engagement marketing is that a long-term strategy is a hard sell to a client that wanted results yesterday. Conversely, a flash-in-the-pan strategy is often an easy sell.  But quick fixes are not viable long-term solutions. While urgency and execution may be needed up front, we need to think about both depth and distance for continued results over time. A solid marketing strategy should be seen as a marathon and not a sprint. Agility over long periods of time will always have a stronger ROI over a reactive focus on the now. So you’ve found your audience. Now what? We’ve seen disruptive marketing technologies and tactics be the hero of the day…

Effective Customer Engagement in a Digital-First World

By 2025, 80% of B2B buyer and seller interactions will occur in digital channels. Pair this with another Gartner study that illustrates that 43% of buyers overall, and 54% of millennial buyers, would prefer a rep-free experience, and it is clear that we must make every touchpoint count. A Shift in Control | Internal & External This transformation to digital-first has shifted the way we engage audiences. Due to an ever-increasing desire for self-service and self-discovery, companies must now empower internal and external customers to take control and digitally problem-solve independently. This will build trust, so when customers are ready to further the conversation, J&J will be positioned as the company to help them solve their problems. More and more,…

Demand for B2B Engagement Selling Soars

Kaon Interactive Surpasses Growth Milestones MAYNARD, Mass., Aug. 15, 2022 -- With enterprise selling seeing its biggest paradigm shifts in decades, Fortune 1000 B2B companies have unprecedented demand for technology and platforms that enable complex storytelling and sales in hybrid work environments. As the leading interactive B2B sales and marketing customer engagement platform, Kaon Interactive has reached historic growth milestones throughout 2021-2022 in its efforts to simplify complex selling in an increasingly complex environment for the world's largest companies in life sciences, manufacturing, IT and more. The launch of Kaon's LiveShare® solution at the beginning of 2022 as the first metaverse-driven B2B sales collaboration tool has accelerated growth. LiveShare changes everyone's role from observer to active participant during virtual meetings by enabling real-time, multi-user, interactive collaboration.…

Hybrid Customer Engagement Strategies for 2023 Omnichannel Selling

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes The B2B buying environment has drastically changed over the past few years, so our content and digital collaboration strategies must change with changing buyer expectations. The most important difficulty to overcome is keeping your customer engaged with you throughout their buying process to discover the value your solution offers. To do this, you need to make your content available to them whenever and wherever they are looking for it.  Realign digital marketing strategies to meet buyer expectations If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that sellers have benefited by pivoting to a multi-channel, strategically hybrid environment. With potential buyers wanting to take the reins on their own experience, delivering highly engaging, value-driven content and…

Why 3D Virtual Demonstrations Help Sellers and Buyers

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes Innovative products and solutions benefit from innovative demonstrations. An interactive virtual 3D product demonstration enables your sales team to get prospective buyers interested and engaged with your solution in a way that’s both practical and reliable. It is also an effective way to address the prospect's specific product-related concerns in real-time while acquiring important information from the buyer. Amplify your marketing strategy and your sales through virtual demonstrations Virtual demonstrations allow for interaction that may not exist with the physical product itself. Enhanced access to products can offer differentiated value to buyers and secure or increase deals you may have lost otherwise. Interactive 3D product tours are photo-realistic and animated to mimic the physical product…

Win More Deals with Sales and Marketing Alignment

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes Image Credit: Austin Chan, Unsplash We all have heard the jargon about sales and marketing alignment. It’s one of the latest B2B terms everyone is talking about and writing into objectives. It’s urgent.  But, what does it even mean? Why is it so important? How do marketing and sales leaders find this rainbow unicorn that is sales and marketing alignment? How do you know when you’re there?   What is Sales and Marketing Alignment? “Sales and marketing alignment is a shared system of communication, strategy, and goals that enable marketing and sales to operate as a unified organization. Working together, aligned teams can deliver high-impact marketing activities, boost sales effectiveness, and ultimately grow revenue.” -- Highspot…

Lab Design Tool (LDT) Training Videos and FAQ

LDT Training Videos Whether you are a seller or marketer using Kaon's Lab Design Tool for sales effectiveness or you manage a range of agile lab spaces, these videos will guide you in how to optimize the use of your LDT application. Note that your specific version of LDT may look slightly different and may or may not have all the features in the training videos below. LDT Frequently Asked Questions Do you have a question about the Kaon Lab Design Tool that you don't see here? Email it to David, LDT product manager, and he will provide your answer.

Sales & Marketing Alignment in Today’s 4D Environment, 8th September, 2022

How are you transforming your customer experience in the new digital landscape? The move to “4D” selling, which is digital, dynamic, distributed, and data-driven, has redefined how organizations reach and engage customers. Customers are constantly raising the bar, but sales and marketing teams often fall short in consistently or concisely communicating their value story. Leading organizations are incorporating marketing messages inside immersive storytelling experiences that include 3D Product Tours, calculators, configurators, videos, and much more to engage customers. So how are you connecting the dots across the sales and marketing technology ecosystem to generate more consistent growth and better customer engagements? Join us and a select group of marketing leaders to discuss challenges and gain insights to help you differentiate…

Jul 18, 2022

How B2B Sales is Changing Through Virtual Engagement

Image Credit: Foundr Magazine The world in which B2B sales happen is skewing digital. How are you keeping up with this pace of change to offer engaging, collaborative tools to your sales team? This is a challenge for many enterprises that were forced to quickly pivot to virtual sales meetings and implemented the best, albeit not highly effective, tools they could find. Now, collaboration technology and engagement platforms are available. Enterprises, however, should carefully evaluate these technologies for their specific challenges, use cases, users, and audience so that they deliver ROI and impact. "The importance of face-to-face meetings isn’t the face-to-face part. It’s the part where you do things together. It’s the part where a vendor and a customer work…

Transform Your Sales Cycle with a Digital Buyer Engagement Strategy

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes The B2B buyer demographic is shifting toward millennials and Generation Z. As such, this demographic is highly digital and independent.  Gone are the days of relying on a couple of channels, like email and phone calls, in a linear buyer’s journey. Today’s buyers are on a non-linear problem-solving exploration.  The overwhelming consensus is that a multi-faceted, personalized, mostly touchless approach is required to connect with potential buyers.  Enterprises are starting to act to these trends and continue to innovate how they are reaching and engaging their buyers. “Providing the customer with a set of simple to use, yet powerful digital solutions is critical to keeping a level of engagement with them throughout the entire cycle…

$1 Trillion in Losses: The Cost of B2B Sales and Marketing Misalignment

Realize Instant ROI from Sales and Marketing Alignment Did you know that only 2% of sales and marketing teams consider their working relationships excellent and that on average sales ignore 80% of the leads and marketing content provided to them? "Kaon truly enables the integration of sales and marketing. Great opportunity to understand how create a more effective customer journey!" -- Terry Coutsolioutsos, Senior Vice President, Sales Operations, Marketing, and Communications, Siemens Healthineers Discussion Topics Why B2B sales teams are not using the content that marketing provides The true difference between sales enablement and buyer enablement The science behind creating highly qualified and engaged buyers for sales Strategies and tools that will help sales and marketing align throughout the sales…

Jul 5, 2022

Increase Sales Enablement Through Interactive Customer Engagement Platforms

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes Customers now more than ever are not engaged with old sales methods and presentations. The simple fact of the matter is that the once tried and true tactics have failed to keep up with the times. In today’s B2B landscape, a potential buyer needs more than an impersonal cold call or PowerPoint. There needs to be a memorable exchange that drives the conversation and piques curiosity.  The old saying used to be “the customer’s always right,” but nowadays it should change to “the customer should always be engaged.”  According to “Why Customer Engagement Platforms Are So Important,” by ZenDesk, a brand can create emotional connections with customers by engaging in the communication channels that are…