In our 19 years of experience in localization, we have found out that recommendations and networking are the most effective strategies in the b2b segment. However, if you aren’t lucky or smart enough to be found on Google’s first search page and your brand-awareness is tending towards zero, then even the most upfront salesmen are a waste of money.

Throughout our long business history, we have tried all sorts of sales and marketing strategies, starting with posting messages in field-specific chat forums, in the times when the very word “marketing ” wasn’t widespread at all. Then we had a business development department responsible for finding new clients and the development of existing relationships with the old ones. It was the time when the notion of inbound marketing was only in the making. We also tried a classic sales team with field-oriented sales managers making 50 cold calls a day.

Now we’re on to something fresh, effective, and flexible that may well combine everything that we’ve tried before. Last year granted us the luxury of reconsidering our presence on the web, so we used that period to redesign our website and our blog. We also launched a partner program and dived into the LinkedIn world of professionals. But this is only the beginning.

Although we have a team of as many as 100 people working in the office and more than 1,000 free-lancers worldwide, we’re trying to stick to the startup philosophy when it comes to changes. We also embrace one of the best principles in business in our view, namely that knowledge sharing is a very beneficial strategy for the whole business community. Our global changes in the marketing department have raised standards for the organization of knowledge-sharing sessions with the most successful b2b companies.

Knowledge sharing is often ranked side-by-side with IT, so we decided to invite Dmitry Bubnov, the CEO of Enbisys, our long-term friend and client to talk about his experience. Enbisys is known for its commitment to the principle that the culture of non-stop learning is the main tool of business development. This culture also includes the principle of knowledge sharing with other companies, therefore contributing to the overall increase in business competence which we all share.

Dmitry explained how their BDSM department (Business Development, Sales, and Marketing) operates and also shared Enbisys’ impressive experience in working with the creation and checking of hypotheses and theories. He told us how much money they spend on education every month, which is massive! Dima explained why it’s vital to know the cost of one lead and why the best salespeople are not from sales; how they motivate their senior developers to take part in the final phase of negotiations with clients; which channels and instruments show the best results, and how they use them.

Needless to say that such experience-sharing sessions have a huge capacity to motivate the team and are a priceless source of knowledge. But the basic principle defining the value of the knowledge-sharing culture is the ability to put the information obtained into practice. We have brainstormed all the ideas that seemed promising for our company and outlined our next steps. We are grateful to Enbisys and Dmitry Bubnov for the insightful session and are eager to proceed with this practice of inviting other companies to share their knowledge.