Five Ingredients To Win The Recurring Revenue B2B Bake-Off And Avoid Getting Chopped
As a keen amateur chef, I have been known to occasionally seek inspiration from tv cooking competitions. Those bite-sized episodes of culinary drama sometimes provide just enough to satisfy my hunger for light evening entertainment. Of course, all these shows follow a proven recipe: enthusiastic contestants, challenging ingredients, and a panel of picky jurors deciding everyone’s fate — all set against the backdrop of the ever-present ticking clock …
At the end of each episode, there is always a winner — a Chopped Champion, a Top Chef, a Star Baker. The victor is the one who, through the various phases of the competition, wins over the expectant jurors by their transformation of raw ingredients, while simultaneously wrangling technology, dealing with the heat of the kitchen, and letting the viewers know just enough about their unique and scintillating backstory. Are they chefs, or are they marketers?
For every winner, there are of course multiple losers — the eliminated ones. These unfortunate contestants tend to falter for a few simple reasons. While talented and accomplished competitors, they often fail to adapt their usual cooking approaches to the specific demands of the competition arena. They make an error either in what they serve, how they prepare it, or how they present it. And no one likes medium-rare chicken, even on a bed of seasonal yuzu-drizzled kale chips …
Recurring Revenue Marketing Demands A Different Recipe
Seasoned B2B marketers often face similar challenges when stepping into the competitive recurring revenue arena. Equipped with their trusted tools, know-how, and scars from years of competition, they often “play it too safe.” They apply tried and tested (legacy) approaches to their new environment, only to be greeted with an underwhelmed reaction from a new jury of buyers. But it’s not that they’ve suddenly become bad marketers. Recurring revenue marketing in B2B is still marketing, with the raw ingredients of brand, demand, engagement, and enablement. It’s just that these ingredients need to be prepared and seasoned in different ways to reflect the nature and demands of the recurring revenue environment.
Optimizing Five Stakeholder Relationships Will Help Your Recurring Revenue Rise
In our recent research report, Recurring Revenue Marketing Demands Customer Obsession And A Seamless Operating Model, Dawn Ferrara and I explain how the secret to recurring revenue marketing success is to reimagine marketing’s work through the lens of its interactions with five key stakeholder groups: buyers, product, sellers, operations, and employees. We examine what makes these relationships different in a recurring revenue model and introduce a new framework, the Forrester Recurring Revenue Marketing Propeller. This framework illustrates how marketers should adjust their approach to stakeholder relationships and what steps they should take to ensure that they win the trust and long-term patronage of recurring revenue customers.
We hope clients enjoy reading the full report. If we’ve left you hungry for more, please don’t hesitate to contact us to schedule a deeper discussion.