The month of December is a busy time for everyone. Marketing teams are wrapping up 2024 campaigns, sales teams are driving the last few deals over the line, executive teams are finalizing 2025 budgets and revenue goals, holiday cards and client gifts need to get out the door before the 15th, the company holiday party is fast approaching, and on top of everything else, your plans for the first half of the New Year are supposed to be documented and baked… except…they aren’t.
If you’re like most sales and marketing teams, 2025 planning hasn’t exactly been given the attention it deserves and you’re starting to panic, but there’s no need! Emerald Intel is here to help. Download Emerald Intel’s Q4 Market Brief: 2024 Year in Review & a Look Towards the Future and read the below to jump-start your planning efforts so you can kick off 2025 feeling confident and prepared!
-
Settle on key target markets. Download Emerald Intel’s Q4 Market Brief: 2024 Year in Review & a Look Towards the Future for an in depth look at the states that are flourishing and those that may be experiencing change or challenges. Insights from the past year will determine where you want sales and marketing to focus their time—at least for the first half of 2025. Now is the time to refresh your ideal buyer personas, define key regions, learn a new region and its nuances, research regional industry events, build target lists, and more. These aren’t activities that should happen January 1. These are activities that need to be focused on now, in tandem with closing deals. If you want to have a successful 2025, pipeline building begins now.
-
Identify key target accounts and outline winning strategies! In some cases, sales cycles can last months, which is why it’s important to identify the top 10, 15, or 20 target accounts you want to win in 2025. Begin outlining your Account Based Marketing (ABM) plans now. Who are the key decision makers? Are they using a competitor solution today? How are you going to personalize your outreach? What problems are they likely facing today and how can your product/solution eliminate them? With a tool like Emerald Intel, research on the company and its key players has already been done, so you can focus on pulling together a strategic action plan that will deliver results.
In 2025, Emerald Intel clients should keep an eye out for Emerald Intel “nuggets”—a weekly digest of lesser-known industry articles with insights on the potential impacts for ancillary businesses selling products into the cannabis industry. Who knows… there could be golden opportunities hidden in plain sight!
-
If you don’t have one, get one! (a cannabis data subscription, that is) Reliable, accurate data is critical to landing business, regardless of industry. Do you want your sales and marketing teams putting even a third of their time and energy into researching, verifying, organizing, and collating a target list before they even get to take action?
Instead of hiring an intern for 60 days at $6,400 to collect information on 800 companies and 2,400 contacts—which may soon be outdated—invest an extra $2,000-$4,000 for a full year of access to 45,000+ companies and 100,000+ decision makers and benefit from constantly refreshed and new data as it becomes available. In addition to accurate data, easy access to that data is equally important. That’s why Emerald Intel offers a Google Chrome extension, meeting sales teams wherever prospecting takes them. With our extension, users can access in-depth company information, decision maker contact details, and more, without ever having to open another browser tab. The extension works on all cannabis websites, news articles, and LinkedIn profiles. Streamline your prospecting efforts, take action faster, and meet your revenue goals.
-
Look to the past and prepare for the future. Assess your key messages in 2024—what worked and what didn’t? Over the course of the year, your sales and marketing teams sent thousands of emails, hosted events, sponsored trade shows, created new content, and more! Some performed well, and others fell flat. Take the time to reflect on 2024 successes and failures. Key metrics like open rates (think subject line performance), click-through rates, replies, downloads, event attendance, and more, should be evaluated before you start planning for 2025. Re-run the programs that performed well—there’s no need to recreate the wheel! And for those that didn’t, dig into the why so you can avoid a similar outcome in the future. The last thing you want to do is spend money on campaigns and strategies that don’t produce.
-
Show your CRM some love. After a long, busy year, your CRM likely needs some TLC. Regardless of how amazing your sales and marketing teams are at administrative duties, mistakes will happen. Fields could be accidentally left blank, accounts might still be assigned to a team member that left months ago. Take a bit of time to do some general maintenance. You’ll be glad you did! And of course, with a tool like Emerald Intel, you can ensure your CRM is populated with the most accurate cannabis data.
-
Remove contacts from accounts that are no longer at the company;
-
If companies have merged or been acquired, make sure you combine those records into one;
-
Do you have basic details filled in for most of your database? Leverage a tool like Emerald Intel to backfill HQ addresses, job titles, and more.
-
Is there a process you could improve or streamline by adding a new field or writing a simple process document?
-
Clean up reports — some were probably created in haste. Delete the inconsequential stuff and formalize any that surface critical information quickly.
-
However you assign accounts (region, size, license type, etc.), ensure that each sales person’s territory is clean and accurate — which includes reassigning accounts that were owned by a departed employee.
-
We hope our Q4 market brief and this blog helps you prepare for a successful 2025. Happy Holidays and Happy Selling!
Ready to explore Emerald Intel’s reliable, accurate cannabis data and Google Chrome extension? Click here to book a time to chat with us!
