Sales Effectiveness – Lead Generation

I saw some recent study results which suggests that lead generation is a top priority for sales organizations in 2010.  Given the state of the U.S. economy this is hardly a surprise.  As the saying goes, “A rising tide lifts all boats”, and well, a sinking tide, shows you were the rocks are.  I’m sure a lot of companies are discovering that they are not as good at lead generation as they thought they were.  Here are some thoughts on what a successful lead generation effort might look like pulled from experience at multiple companies as well as reading others thoughts on the subject.

1.  Process development and sales collaboration are  necessary first step.

Whatever you are planning to do to generate leads for your sales team, an understanding of the process is critical to success.  The last thing you want, as you invest more in developing leads, is to have a process that breaks down in the middle.  Without a process you are apt to drop leads somewhere in the middle and reduce the impact of your efforts.  Make sure that the entire sales team is engaged and involved. If the sales team isn’t on board with how leads are being generated and qualified, they are much less likely to follow-up on the leads they are given.  Then we are back to the problem of leads falling through the cracks.

2. Augment leads with as much additional data as possible

As leads are generated, marketing and sales should work together to determine what additional supplementary data can be provided about the lead that will help the sales reps to qualify the lead as quickly as possible.  The more supplementary data can be provided the higher the conversion rate is likely to be.  Not surprisingly, this again needs to be a collaborative effort between sales and marketing to balance the value of different types of information with the relative cost and difficulty of gathering that information.  Consider including data like: contact details, customer information, relationship history, marketing or industry analysis.

3. Understand and develop an approach for lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is the concept that not all leads generated by marketing are “ripe” to be handed off to sales. It is a concept that is being discussed more as companies use the technology available to them today for different lead generation tactics. This may include email campaigns, direct marketing, websites, webinars and white papers.  Not every contact who expresses interest in a webinar is ready or wants to talk to a sales reps.  Lead nurturing provides a way to cultivate the relationship and foster the lead until it is ready to be handed over to the sales team. By having a process for lead nurturing, you will improve the quality of leads being handed over to sales, AND be developing a future lead.  Now isn’t that beautiful.

There is a lot of hard work to be done in the months ahead while the economy continues to languish.  Strong lead generations practices will serve companies well now and in the future.

What is your digital age? What is the digital age of your customer?

I did some research this week on differences and similarities of how people are using technology and more specifically social media. I thought I would share some of this data with you today.  Some of it is sort of obvious and intuitive, and some of it starts to shed a little light in to the different habits that people have.

Wells Fargo completed a survey which I thought provided some good insights.  Their survey digs a little deeper than many to uncover different levels of understanding and comfort with technology.  Based on this information they categorized people as “digital novices”, digital teens”, or “digital adults”. What is the digital age of your customers?

• 92% of people have a cell phone, only 22% use an internet-based phone service like Skype
• 80% of respondents pay bills online, only 38% manage a 401K or IRA online
• Perhaps most interesting… the most ‘adult’ group of the survey was thirty-somethings, not twenty-somethings (who are more focused on entertainment)

For those of us in the B2B sales world these insights from Forbes may be on interest:

• 64% of C-level execs conduct 6 or more searches per day to locate business information.
• Sources of information that the C-Suite finds valuable:
  • Internet = 92%
  • At work contacts = 87%
  • Personal networks 73%
  • Newspapers 54%
  • Magazines 57%

Slack Barshinger did a study commissioned by Google which found among other things.

• 77% of small business owners use search engines to find business suppliers
• 80% find search engines to be the most effective tool for finding suppliers

And finally, LinkedIn passed the 55 million user mark in October 2009.  It took them 477 days to get their first 1 million users and only 12 days to get a million users this past October. At that pace they should be well past 60 m users by now.

Okay, so these are some interesting statistics but so what?  I wish I knew.  Social media marketing and digital marketing are all the rage, and rightly so.  People are changing how they use technology and how they gather information so how companies communicate their marketing message better change too.  What I am not hearing a lot of discussion about though is how all these changes in the online word is impacting the way things are done in the offline world – i.e. the world of sales. How is (how will) the C-Suite using online tools to manage their personal and professional contacts? How does that impact the buying and decision making process and therefore by extension the sales process?

CRM Success? or Failure?

“What does it take to make my CRM project a success?” I get asked this question all the time by executives that I meet.  They are usually either, (a) contemplating a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) implementation or (b) trying to figure out how to make an already implemented system more ’successful’. My blunt answer isn’t what they or you want to hear. Most companies, after all these years, still don’t see the success they are looking for.

I’ve been selling the promise of CRM for years. I’ve made it my career and I’ve drunk the cool-aid as well if not better than most. The results vendors and consultants will quote when trying to close a deal are indeed dramatic. And some, a few, companies will get those results, but not most.

Why? Because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. Consider this statistic: 42% of CRM functionality is unused. This is the first challenge. Most CRM software contains more functionality than a company needs or can use.  Time and time again, companies choose a CRM solution with capabilities they couldn’t imagine when they started the process. Just think about the other tools on your desktop.  How much of the functionality do you use in MS Word? in MS Excel? Do you even know what the functionality is that you are not using?

CRM requires a tremendous amount of change for an organization. It is a change in behaviors and expectations. Too often it requires more administration for the sales team without a clear benefit from the effort. Most organizations are not up to driving the change that is required over the duration of a long period of time.  Other priorities start to intrude.

In a recent survey of several hundred companies nationwide regarding their focus on customers revealed that two years ago, the percentage of companies that put themselves in the category of “extremely” customer-driven was 48 percent. Today, it’s 63 percent, and looking into the future two years down the road, 81 percent say their organizations will be “extremely customer-driven.” (NFI Research) If this is true, it should help companies improve their success rate with CRM as a stronger ‘customer-driven’ culture aligns well with CRM.  But I am skeptical.  As they say, we cannot all be above average.

So what hope is there for the rest of us, being companies of mere mortal capabilities? Be realistic and honest about what your company is ready for. Perhaps be a little more than honest, be skeptical – you’ll end up closer to realistic after being wooed by the various CRM solution vendors. Second, make sure you know what will make the biggest difference. If you are only going to implement 60% of the solution, you want it to be the right 60%.

Sales Management: Selling to Your Sales Team

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a Business Marketing Association (BMA) lunch where John Maples, vice president, sales, PepsiCo/Quaker Foods and Snacks spoke about Pepsi’s business-to-business sales and marketing efforts. It was an interesting talk and insightful to hear how their business-to-business efforts with convenience stores, Starbucks and sports franchises are coordinated with their direct to consumer marketing. After listening to John for a while one could hear that there was a definite trend in the way Pepsi approaches its businesses sales, which is to say that they do NOT leave it up to the power of their brand, but they do a lot of what John described as “a best practices spreading” approach.

Each instance of this “best practices spreading” had a similar plot line. Pepsi had a goal and some ideas for achieving that goal, one example might be selling oatmeal through convenience stores. The next step was to find an outlet that was willing to work with Pepsi. With this partner, they could test the idea and measure the results. Only after there were measurable, quantifiable results, could the real selling begin. Armed with these results Pepsi then shared the results with other outlets to explain the benefit of the new program and concept, in this example, increasing sales by having oatmeal beside the juice and coffee. In this way, Pepsi was able to test each concept and scale quickly because they had the insight and the facts to support their proposition.

Not only is this a great example of using data in business-to-business sales but it is a great example of how to approach transformation of a sales organization, whatever you are trying to get your team to do.  When I work with sales teams, I am frequently working with sales managers, or those outside of sales who are entirely frustrated with trying to get the sales team to change their stripes.  When I have been successful it has been from following a plan very similar to Pepsi’s.  Start by understanding how your change is going to impact the sales team.  How is it going to help them with their goals?  Find somebody, or multiple somebodies, to test the concept on. Measure the results.  Learn from the process and make adjustments if you need to.  Then and only then, when you are armed with the results, go out and ’sell’ the new approach to your team.

Strengthen the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing – Part 3: Build the Process

So you want to strengthen the relationship between Marketing & Sales?

• Step 1:  Establish and build agreement on common goals, then…
• Step 2: Define roles and responsibilities, finally…
• Step 3: Build the process for working together

I discussed the importance of establishing common goals and defining roles and responsibilities in my last two posts and consider these initial steps to be the hard work of building a strong foundation.  Step 3: Build The Process, is now about doing the hard work of building the house on top of that strong foundation.  The framework for building this house has three components to it.

Outline the process / operating model

Simply put, we need to define how the work gets done. What steps will be taken and in what time frame? Think of it as a checklist.  On NPR this week there was an interview with Dr. Atul Gawande during which he discussed his research about the power of checklists in manufacturing (Boeing), aviation (citing Capt. Sully who landed the USAir flight on the Hudson River last year) and operating rooms. Having a process, a checklist, can help in almost any situation by clarifying for everybody involved what needs the happen in what order.

Establish metrics Establishing metrics goes hand-in-hand with building out your core processes. How are you going to measure your results? How are you going to set expectations and know if you met them? How are you going to identify what is working and what is not? When you are determining what to measure, keep your overall goals in mind.  You metrics should related to your goals.  If you are trying to expand your customer base, you would be better off to measure the number of new customers instead of say revenue per customer.

Close the feedback loop Finally, make sure that marketing and sales continue to provide feedback to each other. To be successful this is going to be an ongoing and iterative process.  If you are going to be successful then you need to build a close-loop process. What this means is taking the results from the work that you have done and using it as feedback into the next iteration. Capture your lessons learned, you success and your failures pour this information back into Step 1.  Revisit and refine your goals, your roles and review the processes in your business.

Good luck with growing your business in 2010.  Making continuous small changes everyday in how you work together will add up to a big difference.  Even if you think things are going well.  Isn’t this a great time to take a moment to talk to you counterpart and validate that you share common goals.  It’s a great place to start.

Strengthen the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing – Part 2: Defining Roles

Last week I started a conversation about how to improve the relationship between sales and marketing because I am of the humble opinion that these two functions should be working collaboratively within your organization.  It can be dizzying to try and define what marketing is versus what sales is.  I’ve heard every definition imaginable and most are feasible, although not necessarily in agreement with each other.  In Part 1 of this series, I talked about defining goals as the starting point for a solid working relationship.

Today, I would like to talk about DEFINING ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Okay, so perhaps you are sitting there thinking, “Hey, what’s the big deal?” And, in part, you are right.  It isn’t a big deal to define roles and responsibilities for about 80% of what you do. It is sales’ responsibility to call on customers, to get contracts signed.  It is marketing’s responsibility to develop and execute marketing campaigns, to work with creative to design promotional material.  The challenge is that last 20% or so where collaboration and cooperation make all the difference.  It is the last 20% where things are no longer black and white but some shade of gray.

• What is marketing’s role in helping to generate and qualify leads?
• What role does marketing or sales play to define what a qualified lead is?
• What is sales responsibility to act on leads? or provide feedback on the leads being provided?
• What is sales role in strategic marketing decisions? And, is sales committed to taking time out of the field to participate?
• What is marketing’s responsibility to go out on customer calls with sales to understand the customer and the sales reps world better?

It is this last 20% that will define how marketing and sales will work with each other.  When was the last time that you had an explicit conversation with your counterparts to discuss this?  Did you come to an agreement?  Did you write down your agreement so that you could reference back to it later?  Did you commit to what you agreed to, or slide back into old habits after the meeting?

Both establishing goals and defining roles and responsibilities are about opening up the lines of communication.  Good communication is the foundation of most solid relationships. Sales and Marketing are no different. Good communication is a simple concept.  Achieving good communication, and reaching agreement on these areas is not at all simple.  In fact, reaching agreement may require major negotiation.  My hope here is to provide a logical progression of topics to cover, so that progress is made and negotiations do not stall out in a total impasse.

Coming next week, the final installment: “Strengthen the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing – Part 3: Build the Process”

Strengthen the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing – Part 1: Common Goals

I am always amazed when I am out talking to sales and marketing leaders at the nods and grunts of understanding that I get when the topic of discussion turns to the tension between sales and marketing.This is an unfortunate state of affairs and may be worth some effort in 2010 to improve. The team that is wasting energy on internal fights and squabbles, isn’t the team headed to the winners circle.

Do you have agreement on GOALS?

Starting at the top of the organization is there agreement on the overall organizational goals? on the goals are for both marketing and sales? In the abstract, it may be an interesting intellectual exercise to debate if marketing should be working on brand awareness or lead generation (or both); if sales should be focused making this quarter’s numbers or bringing customer intelligence back to the organization (or both). Within your company, though, you need to make some decisions and make sure that everybody is on the same page with priorities and assumptions.

I learned the importance of agreeing on goals back when I was in grad school.  We had a quarter-long consulting project that culminated our first year of study. When the teams were formed, one of the critical questions our faculty adviser recommended we asked ourselves was, “What grade do you want to achieve?”.  It sounds trivial, but as it turned out, it was extremely helpful to get this basic goal out on the table early. How much time and effort did each of us want to put into the project? Was the project a priority or was job hunting?  Was graduation the goal or receiving academic honors?  If one team member is aiming for “survival” so they can focus on other priorities, there is going to be conflict with the team member who wants to be top of the class.  The only way to resolve this is to get it on the table early and agree on a plan.  This is a simple example but hopefully it illustrates how agreeing on goals and expectations early is the foundation for a strong working relationship.

Going back to the work of marketing and sales it is important, and not just an interesting intellectual exercise, for the head of sale and the head of marketing to come to agreement on their collective and individual goals.  As with the team project in grad school, if there isn’t agreement at this foundational level then any efforts to build a collaborative working relationship are doomed. Get the new year started on the right foot.  Sit down and talk to your counterpart and find out if you agree on the underlying strategic goals.  If you don’t, work on negotiating an understanding that you can both commit to.

Coming next week:  “Strengthen the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing – Part 2: Defining Roles”

Is There Innovation In Sales?

“Is there innovation is sales?” This question came up last week when I was downtown meeting with a group of sales executives and business owners. Actually, the question was “Why isn’t there innovation in sales?”  In this day and age of social media and digital marketing the question shocked me. There are profound changes happening in the way people gather information to make decisions. Of course there is innovation in sales.

For starters, I would argue that any good sales person will innovate and is innovating all the time.  Last week my blog was about process and perhaps these sound like two different arguments.  They are not.  The sales process encourages innovation.  As an artist has a process for creating a work of art (sketches are created, colors are tested, before the final piece is created).  A sales process enables a salesperson to innovate. What innovation will improve the results I get? Does it work better to call, to email, to do it within 24 hours, within 48 hours? A good sales person, a good sales team, and a good sales manager is following a process and is always looking for the innovation which will make a difference in what they do.

Now, to give the person who asked this question credit, I had another conversation with a senior sales executive recently that illustrated why so many people have the perception that the sales team is only interested in quarterly quotas and only capable of executing tactics. Here we are sitting in December, getting ready for a new year, and when asked about his goals, all this executive could share was his sales goals.  He had no plans for improving the level of performance of his team, nor could he identify any road blocks – technology, skills, sales process or methodology – that needed to be addressed. I was amazed that as a leader in his organization he was not thinking deeper or harder about how to move his team, and the company forward.

I may be in the minority on this but I view marketing and sales as partners on a continuum of how companies connect with and communicate with prospects and customers in order to generate revenue.  The marketing function works on branding, building awareness with the purpose of generating leads. Once a lead is generated, the sales function works on nurturing that lead through the sales pipeline to close the opportunity.  With this view, any company who believes that sales doesn’t have to worry about what is going on with social media and digital marketing is putting their revenue at risk.  As more individuals use the internet to gather information and build relationships with companies and organizations, this will impact the role that the sale team has, it will impact the sales process, it will impact how customers relationships are nurtured.

Sales needs to innovate.  Some companies are innovating their customer relationship process.  Companies that do not innovate their sales process are gambling their future.

Great Conversation on Sales Process

The need for a sales process is a topic that I have commented on here and I am sure will continue to comment on in the future.  Today, I would like to link to a couple of other blogs that have touched on the subject in the last week.  Both of which I thin make some good comments.

The first blog was written by David Brock, ‘But We Have A Sales Process”. To quote David, “Without a process, selling is like taking a random walk through the forest—you never know where you’ll end up. A well-defined sales process provides a clear roadmap of the most effective and efficient means to facilitate the customer in their buying process.” I don’t want to steal all his thunder but the blog is worth a read and make some good points.  If you think you have a sales process, assess if your sales team is actually following the process. If you are using the process that came embedded in your CRM system, have you adapted it to the specific needs and lessons learned by your sales team?  If you want it to be a relevant and meaningful process, make sure it fits your needs.

The second blog that I would like to bring to your attention is one by Dave Stein, “More Excuses For Not Doing The Right Thing About Sales Effectiveness”.  Dave starts by giving us a definition for the sales process which is NOT synonymous with your sales methodology.  A sales process does not stifle creativity!  A process will actually enable and support creativity. Think of the most creative members of our community – painters, musicians, actors.  They almost all follow a process when creating great works.

Use your sales process.  Keep it simple and embrace it.  It will help you take the mystery and unpredictability out of your work.

Thanksgiving Proclamation By President Obama

What began as a harvest celebration between European settlers and indigenous communities nearly four centuries ago has become our cherished tradition of Thanksgiving. This day’s roots are intertwined with those of our nation, and its history traces the American narrative.

Today, we recall President George Washington, who proclaimed our first national day of public thanksgiving to be observed “by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God,” and President Abraham Lincoln, who established our annual Thanksgiving Day to help mend a fractured nation in the midst of civil war. We also recognize the contributions of Native Americans, who helped the early colonists survive their first harsh winter and continue to strengthen our nation. From our earliest days of independence, and in times of tragedy and triumph, Americans have come together to celebrate Thanksgiving.

As Americans, we hail from every part of the world. While we observe traditions from every culture, Thanksgiving Day is a unique national tradition we all share. Its spirit binds us together as one people, each of us thankful for our common blessings.

As we gather once again among loved ones, let us also reach out to our neighbors and fellow citizens in need of a helping hand. This is a time for us to renew our bonds with one another, and we can fulfill that commitment by serving our communities and our nation throughout the year. In doing so, we pay tribute to our country’s men and women in uniform who set an example of service that inspires us all. Let us be guided by the legacy of those who have fought for the freedoms for which we give thanks, and be worthy heirs to the noble tradition of goodwill shown on this day.

Now, therefore, I, Barack Obama, president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage all the people of the United States to come together, whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place where family, friends and neighbors may gather, with gratitude for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own and to share our bounty with others.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 20th day of November, in the year of our Lord 2009, and of the independence of the United States of America the 234th (year).

President Barack Obama