Aug 172011
Part one of this series described the importance of minimizing friction and maximizing trust as you attract and manage leads.
Part two describes how these low-friction, high-trust* leads help you feed your beast.
* These adjectives are TLOTL equivalents of free-range, grass-fed, gluten-free, and no high fructose corn syrup.
Why Leads Matter, Reason #2: Leads have unique and valuable insights into how you can get more new business.
If you have an established business, you have customers, employees, vendors, shareholders, and tax authorities who need your attention. Every member of those groups has a commercial relationship with you. Those relationships come with obligations and expectations. Your reward for maintaining those relationships is… …you get to keep running your business. And truth be told, if you’re doing an AMAZING JOB of managing those relationships, you probably don’t need to worry too much about leads. They will seek you out and buy from you. And if they have to crawl through five miles of gravel just to join your exclusive club of happy customers, they will thank you for the privilege.
If you’ve reached this state of business bliss, leads are, understandably, an afterthought. If you’re a generous CEO, you might consider a kind gesture towards them. Perhaps free first aid kits.
But 99.9% percent of businesses don’t have these high-class problems. For those companies, existing commercial relationships consume nearly all their resources. Some growth occurs organically. But customers churn, prices flatten out, fixed costs stay fixed, while shareholders demand predictable, profitable growth.
This reality is why I’ve titled this series of posts, “Why Leads Matter.” If I ask a CEO how to define a lead, many will give a straight-forward answer like, “it’s the people who talk to Sales about buying our product.” That’s a good start, but it’s incomplete.
Like any living beast, your business must eat. You may have great hunters on your sales team. But they hunt leads. Leads feed your beast.
By definition, leads haven’t bought your product, yet. But they’re considering a purchase right now. And that makes them unique.
Your customers and past customers have already drunk your Kool-Aid. Focus group attendees will accept your $250 in exchange for two hours away from home and their opinion of your Kool-Aid in a simulated “I’m thirsty” scenario.
But your leads, right now, are accumulating a ton of information that is valuable to you.
How so? Well, they’re:
- researching the overall market (analyst reports, research briefs, etc)
- listening to consultants, resellers, and others knowledgeable in your category
- talking to salespeople **
- looking at web sites, advertisements, and promotional offers **
- receiving email and direct mail, attending webinars, viewing infographics **
- participating in social media conversations**
** yours and your competitors’
The wisdom of this crowd can’t be overestimated. You could easily pay someone $100K per year to know your market as well as your leads. Maybe you already do. If so, ask them to show you how your leads are being heard in your product, marketing, sales, and operations plans. Remember, these are people who have given you (some of) their attention. They deserve (some of) yours.
Yes, this is my dog (The Mighty Quinn) when he was a puppy. No, I didn't stage this pic. Please don't report me to PETA.
One more nice thing about leads: you’ve already paid for them. Whether you’ve spent $100 or $100 million to bring leads to your door, they’re here now.
Short-term revenue is an ideal way to exchange value with your leads. But it’s far from the only way.
Listen to your leads.
Then feed them to your beast.
Aug 102011
I think leads are important.
[I know. Shocking.]
In fact I think the topic of leads is important enough to warrant at least 10-15 uninterrupted minutes of a CEO’s time each week.
As the owner of two small businesses, I know that’s expensive time. Leads are worth it.
In each of my next three posts, I offer a new reason why.
Why Leads Matter, Reason #1: Leads mark the key moment in time when previously invisible and anonymous people trust your brand enough to voluntarily “de-cloak.”
Why do they de-cloak? Do they do it because they’re ready to buy?
Sometimes they are. But at this point, probably not. They may buy later, if they still trust your brand and value your products. Right now, they just want information you have that (they believe) will be useful to them. So they volunteer information they have that (you believe) will be useful to you. And they would like this exchange to be frictionless.
What does “frictionless” mean to your leads in this context? It means that when they “buy” your product information with their contact information, they get what they pay for. Nothing less, and nothing more. If you promise people who fill out your registration form a free buyer’s comparison guide, give them a good one, and promptly. But don’t follow that up with an encore of three promotional emails per week until death-or-the-unsubscribe-link-do-you-part. And don’t tell your sales team to call blitz that group of people. Doing that may yield a few sales (that you might’ve won anyway), but it will leave a poor impression on the 90%-plus of your leads who don’t return your sales reps’ calls.
This kind of silent damage to your brand usually goes unreported. Your leads are too busy and polite to complain about it. But it only takes one disgruntled ex-lead to, in a fit of keyboard rage, flame your brand to 5000 Twitter followers, and their 5000 followers, and so on…. The choices only get worse from there, e.g., cease-and-desist letters, public mea culpas that distract your staff, etc…
Let’s not use the lead management process to mass produce disgruntled ex-leads. A poorly designed process won’t mass-produce revenue. In fact it might mass-reduce revenue. Instead, let’s help buyers get information with minimal friction, and then optimize the process to book more new customers.
When we remove friction we make room for trust. Trust, as you may have noticed, is a bit of a scarce resource these days. But real trust, which can only be earned and never bought, is a powerful thing. Trust attracts new visitors to your web site. Trust converts visitors to leads and leads to customers. And over time, trust makes customers into loyal fans who refer their peers and help you attract more visitors to your web site, and so on….
Image credit: Graur Razvan Ionut
My friends over at Focus asked me if I wouldn’t mind sharing an infographic they recently published on marketing automation. The infographic has some interesting metrics and data points from leading research and analyst firms covering the MA and CRM space. For anyone wanting a quick intro or an updated “lay of the land” in this category, it’s a good read.
[Attention all Federal Trade Commission hallway monitors: no money was exchanged and no other quid pro quo took place here, ok? Sheesh....]
Now, since this is a blog, I feel obliged to add some perspective on this topic. So, on top of the ones in the infographic, here’s two more metrics for you to consider. The good news: assuming you have some basic tracking tools like Google Analytics and/or a CRM system you can pretty easily apply these metrics to your business.
Metric #1: Your fresh leads who don’t buy. This is the basic “lead nurturing” scenario, and the subject of many marketing automation discussions. Let’s say you generate 100 leads per month and 8 of them end up buying your product. There’s up to 92 more leads that still need attention in some form. Sure they may have bought from your competitors. Or they may have shelved the project. Or they may have just been kicking tires in the first place. Marketing automation can help you stay connected to these 92 leads per month – that’s a run rate of 1104 leads per year for anyone who is counting — in a way that is cost-effective, scalable, and branded.
Metric #2: Your web site visitors who don’t become fresh leads. A lot of people don’t realize how marketing automation can help improve lead conversion. Here’s just one way: let’s assume those 100 leads per month above are derived from 15,000 unique visitors to your web site each month. Marketing automation can help you track and score those 15K “uniques” from the moment they reach your web site, which may occur well before the lucky 100 become known to your sales team. The benefits of this are two-fold:
a) Sales-effectiveness. Your sales people can better understand the prospect’s motivations and interests, as shown by the keywords used, and the pages/content viewed by that person before contacting your sales rep. This allows your sales team to use precious “talk time” more efficiently, presenting the benefits of your product or business that matter most to the prospect. And with the help of lead scoring (a point system that reflects the expected commercial value of a web visitor or lead), your sales team can further optimize talk time by calling out first to the highest scoring (hottest) leads.
b) Marketing effectiveness. Your marketing expert(s) can easily optimize landing pages, phone trees, email templates and other assets by analyzing the rich website and CRM data that are “married” to your leads and orders. And as powerful as Google Analytics is, most companies either don’t or can’t use it to answer important profit-related questions about your sales process. Questions like, “how do we attract, convert, and close more law firms with between 5 and 50 employees in major cities?” A smart implementation of a marketing automation process can answer questions like this.
Enjoy the infographic! (and click it to enlarge)
If you find the original post of this infographic on Focus.com, there’s some good banter in the comments section about marketing automation products being over-hyped and ultimately too hard to deploy (i.e., “shelfware.”). For the record, here’s my take:
Over-hyped = YES
Shelfware = NO, at least not with my clients.
Note: I’m hereby adopting a new policy on this blog. There will be a minimum of one self-promotional plug required in each post. There’s a limit to this all-you-need-is-love marketing, you know. Just ask the evil geniuses at Coca-Cola, who with one brilliant TV ad released about 40 years ago, heralded both the death of 60′s idealism and the birth of Gen-X cynicism.
But I non-sequitorize, or, something….
Anyway, most of the deployment issues with marketing automation occur when companies realize (typically, and unfortunately, post-purchase) that they lack the commitment required to do it right. There are other issues too. The products still need to mature, and the talent pool of implementors still needs to grow. There will be a shakeout in the marketplace for sure, and perhaps soon. But the basic building blocks of marketing automation are here to stay.
7 gains to expect by improving inbound sales
b2b marketing, b2b sales, budgeting, collaboration, culture change, forecasting, inside sales, lead conversion, lead generation, lead rot, lead scoring, marketing automation, marketing to sales handoff, rotting leads, sales effectiveness, sales lead management, sales process, web marketing
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Dec 042010
As I wrote in a previous post, not every company is ready or willing to do the heavy lifting that may be required to sustainably improve their inbound sales process. For some companies, it’s genuinely a case of “not ready.” For others, it’s really a case of “not willing” masquerading as “not ready.”
I completely understand “not ready.” As a business owner myself, I hate starting things that don’t get finished, or don’t get finished well. So as long as there’s a plan afoot to “get ready,” I never challenge “not ready” clients on their non-readiness.
The “not willing” prospect is a bit trickier. There are often deep-seated reasons why they resist making even simple changes. And rather than try to burrow under the surface to understand those reasons, I’ve learned to just keep these prospects in my “nurture” queue until they become willing and ready, or at least willing to get ready.
You may be trying to get your company (or client) ready/willing to build a better inbound sales process. Here is a list I put together of positive outcomes they can expect, that may help them move them over, or through, the wall:
1) Zero waste – A healthy inbound sales process provides on-demand visibility into, and management of, rotting leads – i.e., inbound requests for contact from prospects that do not receive a response within a prescribed period of time. Lead rot is bad for everyone. It’s a crappy experience for the prospect, it erodes favorable brand perceptions (Hell hath no fury like the prospect ignored – especially if that prospect uses social media), and it’s a waste of the company’s money and time.
Amazingly, many companies have lead rot, know they have it, and simply choose to allow it to continue. Sales management may not want to admit that leads ever reach a rotten state. Or they may even believe that excess demand is evidence that they need more headcount. The marketing manager may choose not to shine a light on rotting leads for fear of being perceived as a scold. S/he may even view rotting leads as a convenient back-pocket example (to be used only under duress / management scrutiny) of how “I’ve done my job” supplying leads to sales. And to the chief executive or business owner, any spirited discussion of rotting leads may appear like petty sparring between marketing and sales, or a distraction from the more pressing matter of this period’s revenue. So discussion is tabled, or it never happens in the first place, and the waste goes on.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A good process can eliminate rotting leads, reduce friction between all the participants, and help drive this period’s revenue.
2) A simple signaling system – Companies that “get inbound” have dead-simple metrics, dashboards, and management tools that everyone can understand with minimal training. And they use these resources to optimize the process. For example, if the dashboard reveals a surplus of leads, they pursue one of several solutions: increase sales headcount, reduce marketing, or simply re-route the excess leads to under-utilized sales reps or channel partners. Conversely, if leads are temporarily in short supply, they can increase marketing spend, or optimize web creative or lead capture forms.
3) Transparency – Yes, it’s a buzzword that has unfortunately been tarnished by many of its non-practitioners. But it’s also the goose that lays the golden eggs in a great inbound sales process. When companies encourage sharing of vital information, the resulting flow of facts, data, analysis – and, heck, even some well-reasoned conjecture — helps make the system work better over time.
4) Better budgeting and forecasting – Companies that have a good handle on inbound marketing and sales are better able to invent their future than those that don’t. When we see the entire revenue factory from loading dock to shipping dock, we can be smarter about budgeting and planning.
For example, we can estimate the expected yield from marketing investments, in terms of leads and opportunities generated. We can then factor this data into the sales headcount budget. And now that we know where the leads are coming from, how many people will be working them, and how those people and leads should reasonably perform, we can estimate the revenues that will result, using past experience to forecast within a range of potential outcomes.
5) Tighter management of marketing spend – With a well-defined lead management system, marketing can compare lead generation investments against well-defined cost of acquisition benchmarks. This data can be used to periodically re-balance – similar to the way money managers rebalance IRAs and 529 College Funds — the marketing portfolio for optimal returns. Or it can be used to manage vendors and programs to lower cost and/or better performance.
6) Tighter management of sales resources – With better visibility into leading indicators, proactivity replaces reactivity. Sales management no longer has to wait for the end-of-period results to inform their decisions on staffing, territories, lead distribution, and other process changes.
7) Minimal friction for everyone – Prospects can evaluate vendors without feeling ignored or harassed by sales reps. Sales reps have their best leads and opportunities (in whatever way their company defines “best”) in front of them at all times, stack-ranked by lead score or other predictive indicator. Sales managers know how many leads and deals each rep is managing without having to conduct a Spanish Inquisition (no, not the comfy chair!!) with each sales rep. Executives can quickly assess risk / upside to the current next period’s sales forecast. Marketing and Finance can nimbly collaborate on near- and long-term priorities, from promotions and sales closing tools, to annual budgets and cost of acquisition models. And finally, the added visibility into the sales process helps Operations make better staffing and other decisions that affect bottom line results.
Oct 202010
I’m pleased to share with TLOTL readers the Focus Experts’ Guide: Sales and Marketing Pipeline and Funnel Models. This collection of 14 one-page funnel visualizations was created by sales and marketing leaders who are active on the Focus network. If you spend any time following thought leaders in this space, you’ll recognize most if not all of the other contributors. I’m truly honored to be sharing pixel space with this distinguished group!
You can download the guide here (PDF).
Below I’ve included some additional links and context:
- Here’s the full list of other Experts’ Guide contributors, with links to their blogs (and my sincere wishes that the links boost or at least help maintain their organic search rankings).
Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist at Marketing Interactions
Michael Brenner, Director of Online/Social Media at SAP North America
Michael Damphousse, CEO/CMO of Green Leads LLC
Christopher Doran, VP of Marketing at Manticore Technology
Barbra Gago, Social Media Manager of Cloud9 Analytics
Steve Gershik, CEO of 28Marketing
Sue Hay, CEO of BeWhys Marketing Inc.
Matt Heinz, Principal at Heinz Marketing LLC
Carlos Hidalgo, President of The Annuitas Group
Jon Miller, Vice President of Marketing at Marketo
Adam Needles, VP of Demand Generation Strategy at Left Brain Marketing
Matt West, Director of Marketing at Genius.com
Steve Woods, Chief Technology Officer of Eloqua
- A link to the Experts’ Guide download page on Focus.com
- Craig Rosenberg, the leader of the Focus Expert Network, is currently running a guest post series with each of the contributors on his blog, The Funnelholic.
- And lastly — for anyone who may still be reading — here’s the back story on my entry:
I sent my picture to Focus at the end of August, right around the time my daughter attended her first few days of kindergarten. At the time, it occurred to me that I was participating in a kind of show-and-tell for grownups. Just like the objects that kids describe to their classmates, each funnel concept in this guide tells us a story. And the story isn’t just about the funnel as a business process. It’s also about how the storyteller thinks and solves problems.
Prior to submitting my picture, I had white-boarded it twice before for two different prospects. The first prospect said she really appreciated my (impromptu) illustration, as it helped her think differently about her problem. We haven’t done a deal yet, but had we not had that meeting, I probably wouldn’t have drawn my picture.
The second time I drew it was in a meeting with a prospect who – a few weeks prior — had asked me to send him a “brief, high level write-up on how we’d work together.” I wrote out my proposal in text form, and, per his request, kept it really brief – barely over 1 page in length. But as brief as my proposal was, when I met with my prospect, I could see that I had made excessive use of that obscure, incomprehensible, buzzword-laden dialect: consultantese. Even in sanitized form, I’m embarrassed to share that original proposal verbatim. But I ran it through a word cloud generator (thank you Wordle) to show what I mean.
Consultantese
Pretty messy isn’t it? The proposal wasn’t much easier to follow.
Once I drew a simple picture on my prospect’s whiteboard, our conversation became simpler, and we ultimately started working together.
No matter how long I work in this business, I still forget sometimes that consultantese has no place in my sales process. Plain English is better. And a simple picture is even better still, especially if it’s something my kindergartner might understand.
Oct 112010
A CFO with whom I once worked shared with me the qualities he believed essential in a VP of Sales. As he worked up the list from bottom to top, I was certain that some variation of “consistently achieving revenue and gross margin quota” was going to occupy the #1 slot. But instead, he treated me to this nugget of wisdom that has stayed with me over the years:
The thing I care about most is predictability. Of course I want the VP of Sales to make his number. But actually, I really need him to make the number that he has been forecasting to the executive team, as close to the mark as possible, regardless of where that number is in relation to quota. To put a finer point on it, if he over-performs against quota by 30%, but he told us that he was going to beat quota by 10%, I’m happy for the business that month, but that VP of Sales has lost a measure of credibility with me. And by the same token, even if he comes up short, I want him to tell me how much he’s going to miss the number ahead of time, and then deliver that result exactly. Because that shows me he’s in command of his business. And when he’s in command of his business, I can manage mine more accurately.
I was reminded of this conversation recently when the sales director for one of my clients happily announced the latest new customer win. I relayed my congratulations and then asked “how is the forecast that we discussed last week coming along?” I know, I know. Shame on me for not letting the sales director enjoy a few more moments in the winner’s circle. But this exchange, and that CFO’s words, point to an important truth about modern sales management:
It’s not enough to be a rainmaker. You also need to be a meteorologist.
It’s not enough to simply beat a sales goal. Management expects that. To be an “A player” in sales, you must be able to accurately predict AND deliver a specific sales outcome.
To the casual observer, this may seem like a ridiculously tall order to fill. But it should be noted that these kinds of sales acrobatics used to be easier to pull off than they are today. Sellers had more direct leverage in the sales process, buyers had less information, and there were fewer regulations on corporate accounting practices such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. These and other factors gave Sales VPs more hands-on control of the revenue factory.
Today, sellers have less leverage, buyers have more information, and compliance regimes have significantly reduced or eliminated sandbagging. But somehow the sales VP is still expected to accurately predict when it’s going to rain (hour-by-hour), how many inches will fall, and what the temperature, windspeed and direction, and barometric pressure will be. Oh and s/he needs to do this job while managing the people (sales reps, overlay resources, clients, channel partners, and executives) whose interactions will determine the final “weather report.” If you’re a Sales VP and this is your reality, here are a few ideas for how to pull this off….
1) Look at your past ratios and trends. Get a report of your past sales results, by month, going back 1-2 years. Then on the same timeline plot all of the contributing factors inputs to those results you can think of. How many sales reps were on staff during each month? How many selling days were there during each month? If you can identify a metric that is more highly correlated than others to variations in sales, you can try forecasting the next few periods using that ratio. It’s a low-tech and brute force forecasting method, but it may nonetheless make your crystal ball a little less cloudy.
2) Look at the sources of leads that convert into sales. Which lead sources have the highest conversion rates and deal values? Which ones have the most consistent conversion rates and deal values? You may need to optimize your lead generation portfolio for the same reason you may need to occasionally re-balance your investment portfolio – to get predictable returns.
3) Find out what your champions eat for breakfast. This is really just another take on the lead sources recommendation. If you had a widget factory with 20 assembly lines, and 4 of them consistently shipped defect-free widgets, on time, and in the quantities specified on the work order, you would figure out what goodness is happening on those assembly lines and make sure the other 16 know it too.
4) Look at marketing automation software and or services. Although much more of a “commitment to the process” than the first three suggestions, marketing automation can provide, along with many other benefits to your organization, more predictable revenue and profit over time.
Whatever you do, don’t try to pull this off alone or as a project managed solely within the sales organization. Making it rain is an art form, and it’s what you’re really good at. Meteorology is a science. So partner up with the scientists in marketing, operations, and finance people who “get” sales the most (but could never do your job) and ask for their help.
Today I saw a question on Focus.com that I found helpful in re-lighting the TLOTL blog boiler, which had been silent since my vacation to Southern California in mid-August. I literally have 5 post concepts from that trip that I have committed to banging out at some point. But sometimes, seeing a business problem in the form of a question is all it takes for me to overcome a mild case of writer’s block. Here is the question I saw, and my response below it. Enjoy! And, as always, your comments, questions, and protests are encouraged!
The Question: “I just read this blog post from Cloud 9 Analytics (http://cloud9analytics.com/2010/09/02/3-tips-running-a-successful-weekly-sales-meeting/ ). I was inspired to take this to the Focus Network. What are you (sic) tips for running a successful sales meeting? What have you seen that doesn’t work?”
My Answer: Great question! We’ve all been in good and bad weekly sales meetings. And since the stakes are usually high, these meetings are always educational, regardless of how good or bad the numbers are.
The tone and substance of the article you referenced is nicely even-handed and process-oriented. So I’ll go the other way, perhaps erring on the side of bluntness. Here are my 8 tips (4 “WHAT WORKS” vs. 4 “WHAT DOESN’T WORK”) for a good weekly sales meeting.
WHAT WORKS
1) Right audience. The weekly sales meeting needs to strike a balance between too few and too many participants. It can’t be a back-channel meeting exclusive to lobbyists and senators, but neither can it be an unruly town hall. To promote continuous improvement, there needs to be an atmosphere of transparency and collaboration. In my experience, there’s always a point of diminishing returns in meetings, where the honesty becomes a bit less rigorous with each additional attendee.
2) Solid routine. If every week’s meeting seems like bad Reality TV, there may be a lack of structure to the meeting. Call a side-meeting with the stakeholders where you propose a “time budget” for how the meeting will be run. Also get agreement on the specific reports and forecasts to be reviewed each week, and who presents them. Establishing familiarity allows people to focus on analyzing results and proposing improvements.
3) Meeting discipline. This is the weekly sales meeting — a necessity for most companies. For those who need to attend, it needs to be treated with respect. It starts on time, and it ends on time. Habitual lateness and random absences are not tolerated. If you’re on the road and your schedule allows you to conference in, do it, even if you are not presenting. Usage of mobile devices during the meeting must, by definition, be more important than sales (which keeps the lights on and probably pays for, or subsidizes, your mobile device usage). So if you’re using your iCrackoid during the meeting, there must be a family emergency — in which case you should excuse yourself — or a sensitive corporate transaction that can’t wait till the meeting is over. Holster that nerd-gun for the next 60, sit up straight, and pay attention.
4) Facts vs. fiat. If we want to help drive sales, then color commentary must take a back seat to black-and-white truth. The functions that support sales (finance, marketing, operations) often resist quick changes without a logical justification. If they resist for a personal agenda, or no agenda, that’s a “sales prevention department” problem. But if they’re being good stewards of scarce resources (money, people, time), they should be able to review data, and collaborate on solutions. In the long run, this approach builds a broader base of support for the sales team, and drives better results on the top line.
WHAT DOESN’T WORK
1) Hand-waving. If you present at this meeting, you must inspire confidence in your audience. For most of them (especially your CEO) this probably isn’t their first rodeo. They know it’s hard, and that’s why they hired (or had someone hire) a talented guy/gal like you to figure it out. So if you’re not yet performing to plan, show them how you’re getting closer to that goal. And ask for, and accept, help.
2) Learned helplessness. If you took an action last week to fix a problem, please be prepared to discuss either (a) how things are better now, or (b) how things will be better next week. This is especially true if you serve the sales team in a support role. But it’s also true for sales managers who enforce policy.
3) Needless sparring. Some bickering is inevitable when building cohesive teams. But frequent food fights not only waste time, they discourage contributions from smart people who prefer not to enter the Sales Thunderdome — i.e., “two men enter, one man leaves.”
4) Empty proclamations from the ivory tower. I’m talking to you, Marketing-executive-giving-the-monthly-update. We actually do care (a lot) about the focus group or web site usability study you recently conducted. And the Google Analytics reports showing the “engagement lift” from last month’s social media push are interesting (really). But unless you can discuss, numerically, how these projects grow revenue in the current quarter, let’s save it for later. This is the weekly sales meeting.
Aug 092010
[Post #2 in the "Other Voices" series, featuring Executive Conversation.]
As the title of my blog implies, I approach revenue generation through the framework of “the leads.” I believe that repeatable sales success happens when companies commit to optimizing the entire experience of potential buyers, from the initial awareness to the buying decision. How many times have we seen companies over-invest in one part of the buying process while neglecting an important function elsewhere? We can almost hear the prospects saying:
- “We’ve heard good things about this company and we need a product like theirs, but we can’t get anyone to return our emails and phone calls, and I can’t get my questions answered on their web site.”
- “The web site was beautiful but the salesperson didn’t know anything about the product and tried to close me on my first call.”
- “We were impressed with their product and customer list, but when the sales person presented to our CEO, [his/her] inexperience was evident, and we decided to [delay our decision / build our own solution / buy from their competitor].”
In the last post from the Other Voices series, I featured recommendations for optimizing web and advertising copy, an important front-end tactic for attracting the quantity and quality of leads needed to fill the pipeline. This week, I’m featuring another expert contribution, this time from the “business end” of the buying process: the executive sale.
So much of the modern buying process takes place with no sales person present. Buyers today have more power than at any time in history. And they have an endless amount of free research and peer-sourced opinions at their fingertips, which can distract and dissuade them from identifying suitable vendor candidates. So when a buyer is actually willing to engage a salesperson at close range, with executive decision makers present, the cost of a sub-optimal buying experience is extremely high.
Executive Conversation works with sales organizations to build business acumen for effectively engaging and selling to customer executives. Founded 20 years ago by experienced C-suite executives, Executive Conversation has helped clients like ADP, Polycom, and Honeywell improve sales effectiveness in the moments when it matters most.
I’ve done some consulting work for Executive Conversation in the past and we’re both members of the same neighborhood business association. Their blog contains a wealth of practical advice to prepare sales leaders for success in the executive suite. Their view of the executive sale is similar to my framework for lead management; success is a function of solid performance at key moments. With their permission, I’m re-publishing a list of “4 tips to perform in the moment.” A link to the full blog post follows the list.
1. Early in the sales cycle, validate your customer’s initiatives. Show that you both understand these drivers and see how they fit into the customer’s strategic plan.
2. Mid-cycle, secure agreement on the alignment between your customer’s business and your solutions. Extend this focus beyond the deal, to the formation of a partnership between your organizations.
3. As the deal nears closing, quantify its advantages. Underscore the return on investment, and relate it to your customer’s investment criteria.
4. Throughout your meetings, emphasize process and performance goals. When you come to a meeting, know the steps it must achieve to lead to the next stage. Make that the business of the meeting.
Full text of post from Executive Selling blog.
Every Lead Converts
b2b marketing, b2b sales, B2C, considered purchase process, copywriting, graphic design, inside sales, lead conversion, lead generation, lead nurturing, marketing automation, marketing communications, marketing to sales handoff, personal training, Pilates, sales effectiveness, sales lead management, social networking, social networks, web marketing
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Aug 052010
A slight detour for today’s post. Let’s pay a brief visit to the land of B2C retail fitness, to see if any insights apply to B2B sales and marketing.
One regular “client” of my consulting practice is the Pilates and personal training business my wife Heather and I have owned for the past 3.5 years. I have no formal training in Pilates or personal training, and to be honest, until this year, my physique more closely resembled the guy in the classic “BEFORE” photo than the slimmer “AFTER” version. For this reason and others, I’ve typically worked more behind the scenes in that business, handling finance, operations, and marketing, supporting our staff and Heather as they support their clients.
Heather wears several hats too, including the very important Head of Sales hat. This is a challenging and rewarding job for her. She helps people make and manage investments in their health. According to HealthyPeople.gov, a service of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, only about 23 percent of adults in the United States report regular physical activity for 20 minutes or longer 3 or more days per week. Heather’s trying to engage the subset of that population who:
- live close enough to our studio in Seattle to make regular ongoing visits with their trainer
- are able to invest in private instruction (we don’t offer group classes)
- are willing to pay for an elective health service not covered or subsidized by insurance
- are physically able to exercise
- have the time, or are able to make the time, to attend training sessions
- aren’t already working with a trainer at another facility
- value our services, people, facilities, and the way we do business
So yes, Heather has a challenging and rewarding job. Her business is highly relationship-driven. I know, I know, everyone’s business is relationship-driven, but hers really is. She’s learned, and taught me, a ton about how these relationships get started and grow. And as good as she has become at listening to prospects, educating them, and building their trust, the old adage is as true for her as it is for any sales person: you can’t win ‘em all. For any number of reasons, some within and some beyond her control, not everyone she meets will become a client. But every potential client, whether she meets them or not, will ultimately make some kind of decision, conscious or otherwise. That decision may be about whether to become a client, or it may be about whether to visit the website, pick up the phone, or ask a current or past client about their experience. And this brings us back to the theme of this post: every lead converts.
To explore what I mean by this, let’s apply the sentence in the broadest sense possible.
For simplicity, let’s define “every lead” as every person that engages Heather’s business. Not just the people who call her to ask about studio services or rates, or come in for an introductory session, or consider a membership package, but everyone. Any person who ever:
- walks by the studio and takes a flyer from the box outside
- drives by and notices nothing more than the window graphics or other branding elements
- visits the studio’s web site
- visits a third party review site (e.g. Yelp)
- observes or engages in a social media conversation about the business
- meets a current or previous client at a business function, or a kids’ soccer game
- meets a current or previous prospect at a [insert business or social event here]
Simplified Conversion Model
And now let’s define “convert” just as broadly. Not just the conversion of qualified prospects into clients, or of leads into qualified prospects, or even of traffic (foot, phone, or web) into leads. Let’s define conversion as any change in a person’s opinion of her business — no matter how strong or subtle, how temporary or permanent, or how grounded in fact or fiction — based on currently available information available.
And now, let’s go one step further and give a B2B-sounding name to this entire cycle of people gathering information and developing their opinions. Let’s call it: the considered purchase process.
Back here in the B2B world, we are trained to be efficient, mechanical, and sometimes even a bit mercenary about demand generation. And the military-industrial language we use to describe our trade – e.g., driving conversion, filling the pipeline, growing revenue (exponentially), launching multi-channel integrated campaigns, etc. – reflects the intense expectations of management that we take the beach deliver results.
But as we focus our energy on the relative few who ultimately decide to buy, it’s helpful to remember that every person’s opinion of our company changes as they interact with us. We may be leaving money or value on the table when we ignore those who don’t take our prescribed next step. Or worse, we may be creating headwinds for future sales efforts by handling these people in a careless way. Every lead converts, in either a good way or a not-good way. And unless you’re selling to a market of infinite size where no one ever bothers to share their impressions of your business, each one of those conversions matters.
Doing the things that get more leads to favorably convert, more of the time, helps us build healthier pipelines and more predictable revenue growth.
