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How to Match ROI to Your Buyer's Needs
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It’s Time to Rethink How We Communicate ROI
For decades, B2B buyers made purchasing decisions based on price and features.
But in today's cash-constrained market, buyers are looking more for value.
They want to know that your tool or tech or service will:
Be easy to implement
Show fast ROI
Easily scale with the team,
Enjoy good user adoption.
In fact, according to G2’s 2023 Software Buyer Behavior Report, 47% of B2B buyers expect to see ROI within 6 months.
That means your product or service needs to make sure it’s delivering on those expectations.
But it also means that your messaging needs to shift from focusing on your price/features/functions to your ROI..
Yet, according to our research, 60% of companies don’t know how to show ROI at all (much less show they can deliver it in 6 months!).
Match Your ROI to Your Buyer Persona
When most people think about ROI, they think only about Attributable ROI: if I spend $1,000, I will get $100,000 back.
But that is only one of the five types of ROI we have identified. There are four others!
Different personas in your buying committee will care about different things, and attributable ROI is not the only game in town..
The CEO and CFO want to know it will make money or save money.
The head of a functional department (VP or C-Level) wants to know your product or service will help them achieve their objectives on time and on budget.
A manager is focused on not adding work to their team and making sure change management/onboarding is easy and straightforward.
The users just want it to make their jobs easier.
So who are you selling to? That will help you tell your ROI story.
G2: A Fast, Efficient Way to Collect ROI Stats
The best proof of ROI is not a slide in your sales deck claiming that you offer it.
The best proof of ROI is a collection of validated experiences of real users explaining the ROI they experienced.
While G2 is much more than a reviews platform, embarking on a review campaign with G2 is a quick and easy way to gain proof of ROI and provide content and context for value-oriented messaging.
Step 1: Identify the kinds of ROI you offer.
We can help you do that, or you can look at the table above and talk it through internally. Go beyond the high-level category of ROI and brainstorm the kinds of stats you think your customers could provide. We’ve provided a bunch of examples below, but it can include things like building pipeline, saving time, reducing mistakes, reducing risk, increasing ease of use, etc.
Step 2: Create a campaign with G2 that solicits these kinds of stats from your customers.
If your tool is saving time, ask your customers to estimate the amount of time saved in their review. If your tool is generating demand, ask them to include a stat (many companies will be uncomfortable saying you generated 200 leads or $2M, but they might be willing to say your tool increased qualified leads by 50% year-over-year).
It’s important to create an environment where both positive and constructive feedback are welcome, so be sure you're always asking for authentic feedback from a representative group of customers! However, that doesn’t mean you can’t plant the seed for specific numbers from customers that do have a good story to tell.
There are two ways to solicit specific feedback in your G2 review: 1) you can do it in the email when you send our requests for reviews to customers or 2) Some G2 packages allow you to add custom questions.
Step 3: Follow up. Once your reviews are live on G2, consider following up with customers that love you but didn’t offer specific stats. CS and Marketing folks can often elicit more specificity if they know what they’re looking for.
Just last week, we were interviewing a customer for an ROI study for Reachdesk. The customer loved the platform and had left glowing reviews, but they were vague. We asked if they’d be willing to look at their Salesforce, and within 5 minutes, figured out that Reachdesk had influenced $9.8M in pipeline that closed at double the rate of opportunities that didn’t get a gift.
Step 4: Collect your most powerful ROI stats in one place. Try to get a variety of proof points to address the ROI needs of different personas, as shown above.
You can do this yourself and create a slide, or you can get a third-party to do it for you. Forrester does Total Economic Impact studies. GTM Partners does ROI studies…whoever you decide to use, there is power in third-party validation.
Step 5: Leverage G2 reviews as much as you can. Send prospects to the G2 website. Testimonials will always be more impactful when seen on a third-party site than on your marketing site. Use G2's reputation for unbiased voice of customer feedback by sharing reviews in your display ads, sales decks, presentations, and everywhere else you can think of. Peer reports of ROI are the single most valuable tool in your arsenal.
Example ROI Studies and Stories
We’ve done nearly 20 ROI studies for companies using a combination of G2 reviews, customer interviews, and their own case study data.
There are so many ways to show value to different buyer personas. Here are a few examples.
Airmeet
Airmeet has some traditional, attributable ROI metrics that will impress C-level buyers. But they also have some metrics showing incredible value to the marketers who will be recommending and using their solution every day:
$1.1 M influenced pipeline (WorkRamp)
$270k pipeline generated (PartnerStack)
70% show rate (Recro)
4900% increase in audience growth
G2 Marketing Solutions
The G2 Marketing Solutions ROI stats should speak to anyone on the buying committee of a company considering G2, including marketers, sales people, sales leaders, CROs, and CFOs.
G2’s full-funnel impact includes increasing:
4x more MQLs (Mine)
$20M in pipeline (IBM)
85% closed-won deals influenced by G2 (Highspot)
174% increase in ARR (Reputation)
81% bigger deals (BetterCloud)
Whatever kind of revenue metrics you want, G2 is showing they have tangible proof they can deliver it.
Read the G2 Marketing Solutions ROI Study
Hushly
Hushly describes itself as an “all-in-one conversion cloud designed to improve buyer experiences and drive conversions for B2B marketers.” So it makes sense that their ROI study would focus on value via:
62% better lead quality
243% lead conversion
1800% improvement in content engagement
The audience here is marketers who need to be given confidence that if they invest in Hushly, they will be able to show the platform delivers good leads with good conversion, all while making sure the right content is seen by the right people at the right time.
Insightly
Insightly is a CRM. Every B2B company needs a CRM.
So how can Insightly differentiate within a category everyone needs but in which there is substantial established competition?
Remember that B2B buyers are looking primarily for fast time to value. Insightly is able to show off hundreds of G2 reviews proving they are faster to implement and show ROI faster than their competition.
Insightly customers also report:
242% growth in revenue (Sport Court LV)
360% growth in installations (Better Earth Solar)
6000 new customers onboarded (We Got POP)
These are powerful claims that could appeal to a VP of Sales or CRO looking to choose between a few CRM platforms. Insightly also has an impressive go-live time which will speak to managers and users who don’t have a lot of patience for long onboardings.
PartnerStack
PartnerStack makes the bold claim that they can increase partner-driven revenue, so they’d better be able to back it up.
They do, in spades.
Their ROI stats show they can not only increase partner revenue overall, they can increase it as a percentage of overall revenue (since partner sources often have a lower CAC):
200% growth in partner-driven sales (Monday.com)
432% increase in average partnerships revenue (Apollo)
50% of revenue comes from partner sources (Gorgias)
3x more monthly active partners (Jungle Scout)
Read the PartnerStack ROI Study
PathFactory
PathFactory is a content intelligence platform so their goal is to show that content, when activated on their platform, has a material impact on revenue. Their ROI study shows proof that PathFactory:
167% increase in pipeline (BazaarVoice)
40% improvement in funnel velocity (Tibco)
4.5x increase in revenue (TrustYou)
70% target account list penetration (Nokia)
202% increase in the number of engaged partners (Cisco)
These stats speak to a number of different personas who might be influencing the buying decision for a platform like PathFactory.
Read the PathFactory ROI Study
SalesIntel
Salesintel is a sales intelligence platform and B2B contact data provider. Much like a CRM tool, sales intelligence is an absolute necessity for B2B companies of a certain size. You can’t live without it. But you do have choices.
A common frustration of users of sales intelligence platforms in general is the high error rate. So Salesintel counters that by leaning into proof of their high data quality: theirs is 94%.
They also have customers saying Salesintel helps them:
Identify 50% more prospects (TitanHouse)
7x more likely to reach prospects on the phone (Scalex.ai)
150 increase in engagement (Peak Power)
66% increase in average deal size (CDYNE)
A variety of ROI proof points speaks to a variety of buying committee members that may be from sales, marketing, or rev ops.
Download the SalesIntel ROI Study
Sendoso
Sendoso is a gifting platform that leans into trust, relationship building and individual connections.
They are able to show some traditional (attributable) ROI numbers such as revenue and pipeline influence as well as pure ROI that will appeal to executive decision makers, but they also offer a few proof points that will speak more to managers and users in marketing and sales: increased webinar attendance and higher response rates.
750 opportunities influenced (Anaplan)
$8M in revenue influenced (Outreach)
72% increase in webinar attendance (Verkada)
Splash
Splash is an event marketing platform for virtual, in-person, and hybrid events. Their customers love being able to scale huge, on-brand event programs with ease.
Being able to produce hundreds of events that are effortlessly on-brand isn’t necessarily going to speak to a CFO but it will absolutely impress a CMO or VP of Marketing that is exhausted from having rogue teams produce events that are not up to snuff in terms of branding. The marketing leader is also going to be impressed by stats related to the volume of events a team can pull off and the reduced effort needed to do so.
What will speak to the CFO are the proof points about hundreds of millions of dollars in net new pipeline driven by events.
50% net new pipeline (Gainsight)
200% increase in revenue (Top 6 Financial Institution)
$200M in pipeline (Expert Voice)
60 hours saved per event (Expedia)
They’re covering all their bases: everyone in the buying committee should be impressed by the ROI they deliver.
Vidyard
Vidyard makes virtual tools for online sales and marketing teams.
They need to show not only that their product will increase sales but that it is easy to use and will make outbound more effective and efficient.
Vidyard’s ROI stats show they can have a material impact on pipeline and revenue, but also that they are easy to use and help sales people connect better and book more, better meetings that close at a higher rate.
4x more meetings booked (Hubspot)
$125M in new pipeline (Taulia)
1103% increase in conversion rate (Marketo)
85% less effort to connect
4-5x more meetings booked
25x increase in close rate
Our specialty is finding the best stories in your G2 data, case studies, and customer interviews and telling them in ways that will help you close deals faster.
We are planning a summer ROI roundup with 5 new companies included.
If you’d like to be a part of the summer ROI report, schedule a strategy session to learn more.
GTM Problem of the Week
Send us your most pressing GTM problem, and we’ll get an analyst to answer in brief.
Dear GTM Partners,
I am VP of Marketing for an HR Tech company.
Our biggest problem is generating enough qualified pipeline.
Which GTM Motion should I focus on in 2024? My CEO wants to do everything, my CFO doesn’t want to spend any money on anything, and I don’t know where to start.
~Overwhelmed in Ohio
Dear Overwhelmed,
We’ve been in your shoes, and it’s a tough place to be!
We imagine your CEO as Dug, the golden retriever in the movie Up, distracted by every squirrel: Outbound! Events! Partners! PLG! EMEA! APAC! New logos! Expansion! (and that is no offense to your CEO, we love golden retrievers!)
Meanwhile your CFO is perhaps more like Scrooge McDuck, smart and tough and reluctant to spend an extra penny.
And here you are, supposed to make recommendations that will actually move the needle and drive business success, while tempering the experimental nature of the CEO and showing the CFO you are fiscally responsible with your budget.
Unfortunately, we can’t tell you exactly what motions you should use without understanding a lot more about your business, but we can share a few guidelines that might help you decide.
We recognize 6 GTM motions: Inbound, Outbound, Event-Led, Product-Led, Partner-Led, and Community-Led.
Unless you are a platform company with multiple product lines selling to multiple markets, most companies will do well with using a few GTM motions, but not ALL of them. Focus is going to be key for you. Ask yourself these questions:
If you’ve determined you do need to try something new: are there any you are already doing well? Circle those. Are there any you just can’t take on right now or that don’t make sense given your business model? Cross those off. That probably leaves you with one or two you’re considering.
On a spreadsheet, list out your current segments down the left side (e.g. SMB, Midmarket, and Enterprise or Financial Services, Retail, and Logistics. Across the top, create columns for TRM, example clients, Primary GTM Motion, Secondary GTM Motion, Products, Revenue and Percentage of Revenue, Volume (# of closed-won opps), ARR, Win-Rate, Velocity, and NRR/GRR. Here is a spreadsheet that is way too tiny to read but gives you the jist.
Fill in what you can. You’ll be surprised at how looking at your business in this way is clarifying. You’ll start to see patterns.. .it probably doesn’t make sense to do a new GTM motion for a segment or product that makes up a small percentage of your business. Ask yourself if your business particularly lends itself to one or another, what kind of investment would be needed for each, whether you have the staff and budget to do it well. Doing this exercise with your CEO and CFO or presenting it to them should provide the evidence that you’ve thought it through strategically.
Hope that helps, but we are always here to pitch in if you need us!
We solve GTM problems like this every single day!
Book a call to learn more about how we can help.
GTM News
A non-comprehensive roundup of GTM news, nuggets, and announcements
B2B Acquisitions Abound! Sendoso acquired Alyce, Salesloft acquired Drift, InformaTech and TechTarget merged, Totango and Catalyst merged. . . all this news is in line with our #1 prediction that partnerships will drive more acquisitions in 2024.
New GTM Book: Jared Fuller’s new book on Nearbound hit the stands! Jared reveals his formula for transforming partnerships from a siloed department into an integrated strategy across your organization using a "nearbound mindset.” We also believe Partner-Led Growth is the fastest growing GTM motion. Read more about it here.
Series B: Congrats to Openprise, one of our longtime customers and partners, for raising $25M in Series B funding, led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. This round of funding is a signal of the increasing importance of RevOps Data Automation in the RevTech industry. Check out their ROI study to see why the market has such confidence in them.
GTM Events
A list of upcoming events of interest to GTM professionals
March 20, 1 p.m. ET, Virtual: GTM + AI
March 22, Austin, TX: GTM Made Simple Roadshow
March 28, Austin, TX: SaaSOpen
April 4, 1 p.m. Virtual: Rev Ops Leadership Summit (details coming soon)
April 11, Salt Lake City, UT: GTM Made Simple Roadshow
April 18, NYC, Pavilion CMO Summit
Hope you liked the new format of GTMonday, but we want to hear about it whether you did or didn’t.
Leave us a comment, and we’ll get you a branded t-shirt!
Hope March is treating you right, and let us know if we can help with anything at all.
Love,
The GTM Partners Team
