It’s official: We, The Pedowitz Group, have acquired Bizmark Consulting and their best-in-class creative and communications services. They will transition into being our creative and agency services arm of the company, with founder Ed Gillespie leading this division.
I want to not only tell you why, but also how consulting itself continues to evolve because of how buyers just like you have evolved in your expectations (which is why we’ve made this acquisition).
And make sure to learn more about our creative agency services capabilities while you’re here!
How buying has evolved
People buy when they’re going to buy, and there’s far less you can do about it than you used to.
That’s been well-established by research from Gartner and Deloitte and by nearly any salesperson in today’s market.
But, how has that changed?
Yes, customers will do research on their own time, in their own way, with sources you may never know of (#DarkFunnel, anyone?). A Slack chat, a closed community, a Reddit thread, an in-person meet-up, a WhatsApp thread … the list goes on. But that’s only one piece of this puzzle.
There’s also a timing component as more companies move to a center of excellence model that better incorporates feedback from cross-functional departments. For example, IT, customer success, and finance have great input into sales and marketing decisions!
And that means it takes longer for many B2B buyers to get to the finish line, even as they have more of the information in their hands before you ever know they’re interested.
And finally, we’ve lived in an economy of convenience for quite some time. The easier something is, the more likely it is to lead to a positive outcome.
This is true for anything from online purchases to website load times, how easy it is to park at a restaurant to selecting the next Youtube video you’re watching.
A few other trends worth briefly mentioning:
- Privacy. Sure, I may be researching you, but I don’t necessarily want you to know it.
- Skepticism. More information than ever means a need for a stronger information filter than ever, and savvy users know this.
- Engagement. People want to be entertained while they research. Make them laugh, inspire wonder, or provide that “ah-ha!” moment and you’ve jumped to the front of the consideration line.
- Research habits. We trust peers and people with similar sensibilities more than we trust online reviews and algorithms. It’s why the “TikTok generation” is looking on TikTok before Google for answers or recommendations, and why we turn to Slack channels as final confirmations before actually filling out a contact us form.
All of this has setup something interesting that’s highlighted by two market inefficiencies we see in our consulting world:
How the market has failed
Buyers continue to be disappointed in many ways, but in this context I want to talk about two ways in the B2B sales, marketing, and RevOps spaces.
The first is from the over-proliferation of tech.
If you’ve seen the Scott Brinker supergraphic or perhaps G2 Crowd’s take on the landscape, it’s a massive amount of offerings. Even as economic pressures and M&As have their effect and will force some innovation / contraction of the market, it’s still too much.
There’s a lot of tech promising a lot of things that simply aren’t going to fix core issues many companies have. For example, an intent data platform won’t better enable sales / marketing to understand and align around an ideal customer – yet this continues to destroy many ABM initiatives, even in leading companies.
The second is fragmentation.
Think of your typical responsibilities. How many platforms, websites, processes …. things … are you engaged with on a daily basis?
How does that change over the course of a month? A quarter? Or since 6 months ago?
Every day is an onslaught of competition for our limited brain power, time, and energy. And we all have things outside of work that we focus on and may be more meaningful, from family, church, community, hobbies, and more.
And yet.
How many times have we tried an all-in-one solution, only to see why specialization can be so attractive?
- An SEO agency may offer PPC services, but may only be adequate instead of best-in-class because they aren’t as devoted to PPC’s intricacies.
- A RevOps consultant may understand some aspects of account-based marketing, but may not have the sales-side or tech-side expertise to fully enable the program
- A high-level consultant may be able to talk strategy all day, but then once they’ve left the client a PPT roadmap, they’re done – no need to get into the nitty-gritty of driving that change
There’s a struggle between convenience / time vs. expertise at play for companies.
But buyers demand (rightfully so) both, and nothing less is acceptable when we can order food to be delivered with just a few taps on our phone, much less move money between banks or connect with a doctor.
How does this relate to our big announcement, you ask?
How TPG is meeting this evolution
This acquisition of BizMark means we now offer a full suite of creative services in addition to the ways we work – such as staff augmentation, ongoing managed services, and transformative initiatives that span entire enterprises. If you’ve met Ed Gillespie or any of his team, you know how good they are and why they command such respect across the industry.
If you haven’t, you have truly missed out, and I recommend learning more about this amazing team!
In short, we now offer a much broader scope of services than we previously did, all under one (remote) roof.
But every team, including BizMark, is specialized in what they do and understands more than the average user. It’s why companies have chosen us since 2007 and why we’ve been able to drive well over $25 Billion in realized revenue for them.
Our technology teams, our strategists, our people who can drive broad change or dig into the tiniest of technical details – all of them have proven they can drive business outcomes that positively impact the bottom line.
Strategy + execution + proven results = convenience + excellence.
And that’s why we are growing, because our clients demand greater convenience with no interruption of service, strategic, and tactical excellence – and Bizmark is the perfect partner who shares these ideals.
Have questions? Want to know more? Curious about how we can help you? Here is the best way to get in touch, but I try to stay on top of my LinkedIn inbox as well and welcome your conversations.
Thanks for reading, and a special thank you to our clients who continue to trust us with their business. We can’t wait to provide even more value!