Today's guest blogger, Reg Nordman, is the Managing Partner for Rocket Builders, a Vancouver based sales and marketing consultancy for high growth companies. He works with large and small companies such as, Asentus, Maximizer, Sophos, Microsoft Canada, and Research in Motion. Previously he has worked in direct and channel sales for major firms such as Unisys and Commodore.

Search is now the dominant buyer behaviour:

• 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process. (source: Marketo)
• 62% of business buyers now spend more time researching product and services online than they did prior to the recession. (source: Google)
• 65% of C-Suite executives conduct six or more work-related searches daily. (source: Google)

Recent data from DemandGen on what buyers do today show that:

• Less than 10% of recent buyers were contacted cold by the solution provider
• More than 80% said they contacted the solution provider directly
• 9 out of 10 buyers say that when they are ready to buy they will find you

Is your content set up to attract the right buyers? DemandGen tells us buyers make up a short list of who to contact through these activities:

• 78% started with informal info gathering
• 59% engaged with peers who addressed the challenge
• 48% followed industry conversations on topic
• 44% conducted anonymous research of a select group of vendors

Today, unless the bulk of your qualified leads are finding and approaching you, your content is not doing its job. How do you feel knowing that there are all these short-lists being made out there and you will never know about them? And if you keep going the way you are, you will keep missing opportunities.

It gets worse, since even if the buyer finds you, IDG Communications says:

• IT buyers found relevant content on a vendor’s website only 42 percent of the time. (way less than half)
• The lack of relevancy for the prospect reduced the vendor's chance of closing a sale by 45 percent. (Cut it almost in half again—your chances just dropped to less than 20% of a win, that is if they find you.)

So before you redo your sales dept., add a bunch of technology to sales and marketing, spend a ton on outbound marketing, first ask yourself if your content is even giving you a fighting chance. It sounds like for most companies it is not.