Here's how the traditional approach to marketing and sales works: Step One. Get people to your website. Step Two. Once people are on your website, get them to convert on a form. Step Three. After they fill out a form, nurture them with emails and phone calls until they buy from you, unsubscribe, or even worse -- do absolutely nothing, forever. Yes, I dramatically oversimplified the process, but stick with me for a minute. Now that we laid out how traditional marketing and sales work, take a second and think about the way that you buy and behave as a consumer. If you're anything like me, when you're thinking about buying something, I bet the last thing you want to do is fill out a form or talk to a sales rep. You try to avoid those things at all costs. Because these days, we can find out just about everything we need to know before making a purchase, and many times, we can buy things or get the information we need without ever having to talk to sales at all. But in our jobs in marketing and sales, we stick to those traditional methods. That's how we do marketing and sales every single day -- because that's how it's always been done. That's how everyone does it. But there are already examples of companies that have broken the mold of traditional marketing and sales. Companies like Slack, Buffer, Trello, MailChimp, Zapier, InVision, Shopify, Quip, and others. They let us buy things the way we want to buy them -- on our own time. Want to try before you buy? Go for it. Want to buy something without ever talking to sales? Great. Have a question and need to talk to someone? Yep. You can do that, too. As Shopify’s chief sales scientist Loren Padelford said about the future of sales: “Our job is to do what our customers want. Customers are in control of the sales process now. We need to customize to the customer process, not to the sales company process.” Those modern businesses believe helping is the new selling. They believe that customer experience is the new marketing. And they've figured out how to have 1:1 conversations at scale. We think that there are two paths forward for businesses from here: 1. They can stick to their guns, keep doing what everyone else has been doing, and wait for that threshold level to get higher. 2. They can follow the lead of those modern businesses and change the way they do marketing and sales to match the way that people actually want to interact with a business today. And that's what we're talking about in this SlideShare -- the future of marketing and sales and why the current model is starting to break.

1. IS IT TIME TO CHANGE THE WAY WE DO
MARKETING AND SALES?

2. That’s the question we’re asking.

3. And it all starts with a look at how
traditional marketing and sales work
today.

4. PS. I’m Dave. I work at Drift and I’ll be your narrator today.
My email is dg@drift.com if you have any feedback or want to say hey.

5. Click here to learn more about
That’s just a link to our website, not a lead form :)
OK, onward…

6. Here’s how traditional marketing and
sales work today.

7. Step 1. Get people to your website.

8. Step 2. Once people are on your
website, get them to fill out a form.

9. Step 3. After they fill out a form,
nurture them with emails and phone
calls.

10. “Just following up…”
“Hey, saw you filled out a form…”
“Just thought I’d check in again…”
“I realize your inbox is crowded and
my last email may have been
lost, so just…”
DAY 1
DAY 3
DAY 7
DAY 10

11. … and then continue “nurturing” until
they buy from you, unsubscribe, or just
do absolutely nothing and stay on your
email list forever.

12. That’s how traditional marketing and
sales work today.

13. Yes, I might have simplified how things
work at your company, but stick with
me for a minute here…

14. Now that we’ve laid out how marketing
and sales work today, think about the
way that you work today — as a person.
A real person. Like Matt. He’s our
Product Manager at Drift.

15. If you’re a real person like Matt, then
I’m willing to bet that when you’re
thinking about buying something…

16. You hate filling out forms.
And you avoid talking to sales reps on
the phone at all costs.

17. Because these days, you can find out
just about everything you need to
know before making a purchase.

18. And many times, you can buy things or
get the information you need without
ever having to talk to sales at all.

19. It’s 2016. You know that information is free
now. Marketing and sales don’t get to play
gatekeeper for you any more.

20. So when you see one of these…

21. Or have to do this…

22. You think to yourself…

23. “Why do I need to talk to sales right now? It was
just an eBook I wanted to see…”

24. “I already filled out a form…”

25. “Can’t I just send you a message on your
website?”

26. Preach

27. So let’s think about that for a second…

28. We hate when people do those things
to us.

29. When we’re buying, we hate filling out
forms and talking to sales reps.
We avoid them at all costs.

30. But in our jobs in marketing and sales,
we turn around and use them on our
prospects and customers…

31. We stick to those traditional methods.

32. Because that’s how everyone else does it.

33. And even though we know it doesn’t
work on us — we’re reluctant to make a
change to the way we do marketing and
sales.

34. The reason we’re reluctant to make the
change?

35. It's all because of something called the
Threshold Model of Collective Behavior.
Don’t worry. We didn’t make this up. It’s from
that guy — Stanford sociologist Mark
Granovetter.

36. The Threshold Model of Collective Behavior In
One Slide
We're all driven by peer pressure. And when it comes to peer
pressure, each one of us has a threshold. That threshold -- how
likely we are to go against the crowd -- is driven by the number
of people who have to do something before we do it too.

37. This threshold especially applies to the way
we act in marketing and sales today.
So much of what we do in this industry is
driven by best practices, playbooks, and
benchmarks.

38. On one hand, this is a good thing.

39. Since there are a ton of best practices and
benchmarks, we can spend less time trying to figure
things out from scratch and more time creating.

40. But it also works against us in a big way
when it comes to making changes.

41. In order to switch things up from the way
everyone else does them, we need to see
everyone else doing it too.

42. And this is the reason why we've been
sticking to traditional marketing.

43. “Yeah I know. But I need to see more
people abandoning the traditional way of
doing marketing and sales. It still works.”
That’s the common response to breaking away from
the mold in marketing and sales right now. Back to
the threshold thing.

44. But here’s where we’re wrong.

45. There are already examples of businesses
that have broken the mold of traditional
marketing and sales.
Threshold Alert!

46. In fact, they are the companies that you
probably tell your friends about.
The companies that you genuinely enjoy
working with and buying from.

47. Modern businesses like these.

48. As people, we love working with these
modern businesses because they let us buy
things the way we want to buy them — on
our own time.

49. Want to try before you buy? Go for it.

50. Want to buy something without ever
talking to sales? Great.

51. Have a question and need to talk to
someone? Yep. You can do that, too.

52. LOREN PADELFORD
“Our job is to do what our customers
want. Customers are in control of the
sales process now. We need to
customize to the customer process, not
to the sales company process.”
GM, Shopify Plus

53. JOSH ELMAN
“Messaging is where we spend a ton of
our time and expect to communicate. It
is ridiculous we still have to call most
businesses.”
Partner at Greylock
Source: botgig.com

54. Those modern businesses believe that
helping is the new selling.

55. They believe that customer experience is
the new marketing.

56. And they've figured out how to have 1:1
conversations at scale.

57. And they've figured out how to have 1:1
conversations at scale.

58. And they've figured out how to have 1:1
conversations at scale.
Oh and they treat you like a person, not like a lead.

59. With that in mind, we think that there are
two paths forward for businesses today.

60. They can stick to their guns, keep doing
what everyone else has been doing, and
wait for that threshold level to get higher.

61. Or they can follow the lead of those
modern businesses and change the way
they do marketing and sales to match the
way that people actually want to interact
with a business today.

62. And we think that looks a whole lot more
like this:

63. Than this:

64. Which path will your business choose?

65. It doesn’t have to be a huge overhaul.

66. For us it started with these simple
changes.

67. 1. We made the decision to make all of our
content free. No more gated content.

68. 2. We switched all of our newsletter CTA’s
to feel real and human, like these:

69. 3. We changed up our welcome email so
people would actually want to respond
and say hi:

70. (We get 50+ personal responses a week now)

71. 4. We gave everyone that visits our
website the ability to talk to us and put
our faces on every message — because
we’re real people.

72. So, if you want to have more 1:1
conversations with your customers, those are
four easy ways you can start.

73. Want to make the switch?

74. Click here to learn more about how Drift
can help you grow your business by having
1:1 conversations with your prospects and
customers at scale.