By "indirect," I don't mean that sales people should be under-handed, evasive or dishonest. I believe sales people should be straightforward.

Some take "indirect" to refer to channel reps. I'm not referring to that either. This article is for bag-carrying sales reps who manage a territory or a good number of accounts. And by "indirect," I really mean to say getting referrals, rather than cold-calling directly into accounts.

Using referrals isn't by any means a new idea. But how many sales reps do it efficiently and effectively? Do you? What this first part of the article is to describe is the necessity and benefits of thinking "indirectly" with the goal of raising the urgency of prospecting and selling through an ecosystem of indirect relationships.

I break the forcing functions as impacting three dimensions: width, depth, and time.

You need wider coverage because you need to do more with less
Typically, sales reps need to cover more because corporations need to do more with less. Now, you may be a rep who feels that you territory is too small. In that case, "wider" coverage means turning over more of those stones with a finer-toothed comb in order to find opportunities. In either case, the first rule of hitting a quota is building sufficient pipeline to cover it. And wider coverage is going to require basically churning through more and more accounts to fill that pipeline.

It's more than a single rep can do.

Leveraging others sales reps at other companies to turn over referrals addresses the coverage issue. These other reps could be typical resellers or consultants, or you can have an expanded view of whom to get referrals from (a topic covered later in the article).

Without them, the numbers are clearly against you. Remember: you need to do more with less, coverage more prospects for less revenue. How will you do that?

Niche products and complex options requires deeper expertise product wise and company wise
There are endless choices for corporations now. And solutions need to be more focused and in some cases more complex. The typical targeting approach is to start with the C-level and work down. Nowadays, every sales rep is armed with a Hoovers account or access to a Yahoo finance page and they are looking for the CFO, CIO, or the VP of whatever it is that they need.

Meanwhile, solutions (technology or otherwise) often meet specific needs and can fit within a set of complexity either in explanation or deployment at the customer site. You cannot get that from typical, publicly available data. You need depth within the organization, not only executive-level sponsorship. You need to get into a company and build value from the people experiencing the pain directly.

You also need depth in terms of the product and solution -- what systems are in place and how does it fit their unique environment?

Referrals can give you bits and pieces of that information. Why? Because they may have spoken to the right person you need and understood their needs. Or, better yet, the company you are targeting is already one of their customers.

Imagine the kinds of information they could provide to you.

Time isn't on your side -- similar products to yours are coming out and if you miss the window, you've left money on the table
As much as we all like to believe that our product is superior (and it could very well be), often times if a customer has a pain and someone gets there before you, you've lost the sale. How many of you have reached a prospect who is a great fit and they tell you that they just bought Product A or Product B which is a substitute or competitor? Isn't it that much more frustrating when you realize (and even the prospect realizes) that you have a better solution? But the purchase has already been made. There are plenty of reasons to lose a sale that are out of our control. But do you want getting to a customer too late to be one of them?

There are more competitors, all using efficiency-enhancing tools like sales-force automation and online marketing tools, who are driving to your targets before you can. Where can you get an upper-hand? What about through referrals, people who could even know the customer has a problem before they have gotten a solution? Conclusion -- it's not a new idea, but do you think it's a good one?

Sometimes the best ideas are ones that we already know, but just aren't implementing. Building your business through referrals is one of those.

But our approach is slightly different. That’s why we call it building your “ally force.” In the same way that a company builds a sales force, you build an ally force – allies who turn referrals and contacts to you. In other words: Don't be the lone wolf. Run with the pack, instead.

The forces are closing in. You need wider coverage; you need deeper expertise and penetration; and you need a faster go-to-market. Allies are the way. Stay tuned to find out more on how.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a "Sales 2.0 world" sales and marketing are the same thing.

I'm a bit weird in that during my career I've spent several years in both marketing and sales (and studied marketing at Wharton but now "eat and drink" sales). My take away from being on both sides of the departmental divide is that this is a problem we have created for ourselves - it's not a fundamental one.

The problem usually starts when a growing company appoints its first head of marketing (if it has a head of sales) or its first head of sales (if it has a head of marketing). As soon as that happens it opens up the possibility of departments not being aligned.

To me sales and marketing are just different parts of the same function. The point for a business is to generate leads and close deals. Who cares who does that? As a CEO, I certainly don't, as long as we close deals then the accountant could do it as far as I'm concerned.

The biggest real divide I have seen between sales and marketing people is that sales people think everything can be done on the telephone and marketing people will use any mechanism possible before calling a prospect themselves. This is a bit of a strange differentiation in jobs isn't it?

As we move into a "Sales 2.0 world", we sales people are starting to be armed with the more advanced tools we need to deal with ever more difficult-to-reach buyers. But as we start to use these tools look what's happening: sales people are sending their own mass email (e.g. Sales Genius) and grabbing their own contact lists (e.g. Jigsaw), so sales people are doing the same thing as marketing people.

As Sales 2.0 picks up, sales and marketing departments are going to look more-and-more alike. Maybe the big change will come when the first marketing person makes a cold call - a bit like the opening scene from the movie "2001 - A Space Odyssey". (By the way, please, email me if you know what the end of that movie means I'm still trying to figure it out).

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Many organisations do not know who their major accounts are. Certainly many of the people who manage the relationships do not know and even if they know, very few people understand why this customer is a major account but that one is not.

A quick way to test this is to ask ten people in your organisation who your ten most important accounts are. You can be sure that you will receive more than ten answers. In one company we worked with, we received 56 different answers from 10 senior managers! The clarification of major accounts has been a critically important part of our work with a number of the organisations with whom we have worked.

Understand:

We need to understand our major accounts better than our ordinary customers. We need to understand the world they work in, the challenge of their markets, the competition they face etc. We need to understand the individual projects (be it fighting to win new business or managing an existing project for maximum profitability). Major Account management involves understanding who takes decisions and how, who are our competitors, how does our offering impact on the customer’s business? Those who manage, need to keep developing their skills of questioning and listening, of networking and analysing.

Plan:

If a customer is worth being called a major account, then they are worth a plan. It is of course possible to sell successfully in an unplanned way, there are always opportunities to be seized by chance. But if we are serious about developing a long term relationship and if this customer is really important to our success as a business, then we need to plan. We will look later at two types of planning. One of the most encouraging spin-offs in our work with clients is when we see the emergence of succinct, professional business plans for major accounts that cascade down into satellite plans for other parts of the business.

Influence:

There are many people to influence. We need to influence technical people and commercial people; we need to influence our customers, their clients and our colleagues. The major account manager often has little authority to tell people what to do. Instead he or she needs to influence and persuade.

Deliver:

It is good to plan and understand and influence, but our business will depend on our ability to deliver what we promise. This is often seen as the responsibility of customer service but in fact the whole organisation needs to be committed to delivering what the customer needs, the right quality, at the right time and to do it in such a way that the customer feels good about it.

Manage:

Any major account needs managing because success does not just happen. By manage, I mean doing all those things which make things go smoothly. It may be arranging a regular review meeting with the customer, or training the account team to understand the customer better or handling problems or managing complex projects. If we work hard on all six areas of account management and if we gain the trust of our customers, then we will greatly increase our chances of long term, sustainable success.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This post continues my efforts to bring you the content that we present in our live "mini sales training" events.

In Part 1, 2, 3 & 4 I discussed how preparation is critical and went through some of the details of preparing what you are going to say and who you are going to contact. Then in part 5 I talked about multimedia prospecting. In this post I’d like to tackle attitude.

Prospecting is Like Golf
Do you play golf? Well if you ever have, you may have experienced what an incredibly frustrating and hard game it is. Strangely though it is the fact that it is hard that makes it so addictive to so many people. Ask any golfer and they will remember that one beautiful shot they hit. It's that one great shot (out of on average 100 other poor to average ones that keeps people coming back).

My experience is that prospecting is like golf in this way. It's very hard (and often frustrating). But that one sale you make is like that one beautiful golf shot. It feels really great. There's something about the thrill of that one "yes" in amongst those 100 "no's" that is addictive -- to me at least. It keeps me coming back.

Be Positive but Set Obtainable Goals
Now one of the things I notice about many golfers is that they are overly optimistic. They remember that one good shot and they suddenly think all their shots will be like that. It's not realistic. We are not all "Tiger". If you understand what really happens with your average golf shot, you actually end up playing better golf. Don't plan to hit a 250-yard drive when you average 180 yards. Some of playing better golf is about understanding the actual way you play not the way you dream the world should be. You should feel good when you drive the ball 190 yards (and really good if that happens to be a straight shot).

Similarly in prospecting, we sales people get sucked into a fantasy of thinking every call we make is going to be a sale. Sure having a positive attitude is great thing but setting yourself unrealistic goals will not keep you feeling positive ("stretch goals" are good but not crazy goals). Unrealistic goal setting will tear you down quickly. If in your normal prospecting campaigns you make one sale for every 100 calls, you should feel great if you make 50 calls and make a sale -- you are way ahead of your average. Feel great about that!

Go into your prospecting campaigns knowing how they really work -- not how they might work for "the world's greatest sales person with the world's greatest product" (aka Tiger Woods of sales - if there is such a fellow).

If you adopt a positive attitude based on reasonable goals and commend yourself every time you beat your average, I believe you will find prospecting more fun. You'll know what the "par" is for the tough course you are playing and you should pat-yourself-on-the-back every time you "hit a fairway" or sink a "four foot putt".

PS Apologies to all non-golfers: from my experience skiing works as a decent analogy here too or anything else that takes buckets of skill and practice to master…

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This post continues my efforts to bring you the content that we present in our live "mini sales training" events.

In Part 1, 2, 3 & 4 I discussed how preparation is critical and went through some of the details of preparing what you are going to say and who you are going to contact. Now it's time to start talking about everyone's worst fear: prospecting.

Cold Calling is Dead. Cold Calling is Alive and Well
Cold Calling is Dead. Cold Calling is Alive and Well. I am studying both of these conclusions on an ongoing basis using our telesales team as a "lab" to see empirically which is true. Well so far my conclusions are: both are true and both are false. In other words the truth right now lies somewhere in the middle of these two statements. We find that the telephone is the most essential tool in prospecting for new business. And to conduct a campaign without using the telephone is not an effective option in 2008 (this could of course change). However we also find that using the telephone on its own is becoming less-and-less effective.

Multimedia Prospecting
The most effective way to prospect today is to take a "multimedia prospecting" approach. This means using the telephone AND using other (dare I say it "marketing") approaches to reach people. We find you need to combine telephone calls with email, ground mail, fax and even gifts to get the attention of busy executives.

In our telesales work for technology and B2B services companies we now find it takes 7-12 cold calls before we can get through to an executive on the telephone. (Interestingly this number is an average over a many different campaigns where we are targeting many different prospect titles and selling many different products but the number stays in a pretty steady range).

Relying on just getting an executive on the phone with these kind of success metrics is very time-consuming and expensive. But alternating attempts to reach people by phone with efforts to reach them via email, ground mail, fax etc. can really improve this number. By combining the telephone with letters, email and multi-dimensional mailers (books, gifts etc.) we find you can increase your chances of finding the "medium" that appeals to that particular executive.

We have found that some prospects regularly answer their telephone, some never seem to answer their phone, some people respond instantly to email (and carry their Blackberry or Treo everywhere), and some people need to receive a good old-fashioned letter before they respond. We have experienced several situations where sending executives something creative like a gift basket with customized contents and then following up consistently by phone finally landed a meeting with a very hard to reach CEO, CFO or CIO.

So when prospecting don't put all your eggs in one basket...go multimedia!

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Salespeople (or, I should say, order takers) who are used to taking calls all day are still having a hard time adjusting to the email-driven business world we live in now. The same is true of many small business owners.

The phone is no longer the "instrument of choice" for today's busy buyers. Their preferred way of contacting companies when they are interested in a product or service is via email. And yet, too many salespeople and entrepreneurs are still treating email as an intrusion into their busy day. Because they get so much email and spam, and because they don't want to spend all day typing notes to people, they just aren't giving incoming email buyers the attention that they deserve.

If your salespeople are struggling with this issue - or ignoring it - it helps for them to see the email scenario from the buyer's point of view. It will help them understand how just a few minutes spent responding can make the difference between closing a sale or losing a customer for life.

If you aren't responding to emailed leads within 15 - 30 minutes, you're not succeeding in today's email-centric environment. It doesn't really matter how small or large your business is, or what you sell. If you want to cash in on your email leads, you have to find a way to make absolutely sure that those emails will be responded to appropriately and immediately. Here are some tips.

1) Use templates. Create an appropriate set of templates for immediate response. Make sure that there are sections that can be personalized, and always use that first email to interact with the customer. Don't just provide information; ask questions, too. They should be specific - so the buyer knows that it was typed by a real human being responding to their concerns, not a nerdy response robot.

2) Use a first responder. If the "knowledgeable" people are too busy to create the first email response, have someone do it who can get the conversation started, then turn the lead over to a "knowledgeable" person once the customer has responded.

If you want to make more sales during a recession, this is one of the key places where a relatively small investment will pay off in a big way. It's criminal to ignore incoming email leads when the economy is roaring along; it's suicidal to do it when the economy slows down.

3) Keep track. Know exactly how many emails are coming in each day. Know the sources. Know who was assigned to those emails and what happened afterwards. Publish the results every day, in an email that all the sales agents and managers receive.

4) Set a standard, and help your salespeople to meet it. All first emails should be responded to within 15 - 30 minutes. If this just isn't possible now, because all your salespeople are on the phone, figure out how to make it happen. Use the first responder, or send all new calls into voicemail for the last 15 minutes of every hour, so salespeople have a time that is dedicated to emails. Or, train them to take a call, then do an email.

5) Have a tickler system. First response is critical, but so is follow-up. Each salesperson should have a system that ensures they will follow up with the customer at the appropriate time. Send the first email, wait five hours, then send the second, for example. Your timing will depend on the length of your sales cycle and the complexity of your product.

Email has become the main method for buyers to contact vendors and start the buying process. Too many companies are not giving email the attention - and infrastructure - it deserves. Plus, I can't tell you how many times I have used a "webform" to send an email to a company, and have never received a response.

Hellllllllllooo!!! Customers who send you an email are ready to spend money with you. If you refuse to engage - on their terms - you are walking away from revenue.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What can I do to be more effective? It's a question that's always on my mind. That's why I began this exploration of LinkedIn. I wanted to find out if and how sellers were leveraging this technology to improve their sales results.

In this article, you'll discover even more ways you can use this tool to create more opportunities, connect with decision makers and win more business. Again, real sellers and real results.

Strategic Visibility & Connecting
Tim Hayden, President of Game Plan Marketing & Events shares what he's trained his team to do with LinkedIn:

1. Focus on connecting. Anytime you receive a business card from its owner, you then "know" this person. While not everyone is a valuable link, search for that person on LinkedIn right away. Because you have their email, you can send them an invitation to connect.

2. Increase your visibility. Don't simply add people to your network. Ask or answer questions on LinkedIn. Make sure your public profile is complete. But most of all, recommend people in your network and ask them to recommend YOU!

Anytime you do any of the above, LinkedIn posts updates online or in weekly updates to everyone in your network.

3. Make LinkedIn your homepage. Whenever I open my browser, I can immediately review my "LinkedIn Home Page" which shows what others in my network are doing and who they're connecting with. I also check every 2-3 days to see "Who's Viewed My Profile." Just as you can use web statistics to see what companies are looking at your website, you can also see with about 80% accuracy who's been checking out your profile.

In the past two months, I've used these strategies to identify more than 20 new business leads –and converted two to clients!

Keep-in-Touch Strategy
Stu Garrow, Managing Director of Software Traction Pty, Ltd says: As we know in sales, it's much easier to keep an existing contact happy than it is to create a new one. The real value in Linked-In is to remind you who you know and provide a way of keeping in touch with them.

Every week, you take 5 people from your list of contacts and you send them a short email. It is amazing how many times a few emails will turn into some live opportunities and the simple act of keeping in touch will place you way in front of a competitor.

Visible Network Reminder
Barak Kassar of the creative marketing firm Rassak Experience shares: Selling is networking – and sometimes networks are hard to visualize. LinkedIn can be like putting a die-trace on your network, making it visible to you. This makes it easier to figure out who to contact in a given situation, even if I don't always make the contact through LinkedIn. Also, I've been introduced to some incredible people directly through the LinkedIn tools.

Starting a Networking Group
Rob Kingma, Ernst & Young Revenue Growth Services adds: I started to focus on LinkedIn as a selling opportunity after hosting the first physical gathering of LinkedIn users in Australia. This event was an outcome of an in-person meeting I had with my country's most connected user. The result was a turnout of 120 LinkedIn users and three business opportunities for our practice.

Leveraging Long-Lost Relationships
Mark Hunter of The Sales Hunter says: LinkedIn can reconnect you with former colleagues you've lost contact with. I've used it to get in touch with people I worked with nearly 20 years ago. The process I used was simple. By entering previous employers into the search bar, LinkedIn gave me a list of people who'd also worked for these firms.

Though I didn’t know everyone, I discovered several whom I knew quite well at one point in time. Reaching out to these people not only enabled me to catch up on time gone by, but also to cultivate some significant opportunities that are on track to close this year. Plus these conversations led to other past associates and, again, potential prospects emerged. 

Currently, my profile on LinkedIn enables me to be found by others who are doing the same thing. This proves the need to make sure your profile includes all of your previous employers and locations to allow you to be as visible as possible.

Creating a Business Relationship
Nick Wright, head of Nick Wright Consulting contributes: I use my Google Reader to leverage LinkedIn. I go to the homepage, click on the "Answers" tab, then I pick the categories I want to follow (ie: Marketing and Sales > Sales > Sales Techniques). Then I simply click the RSS button to subscribe to their feeds.

When I pop open my Google Reader each morning I quickly browse the headlines - which are the questions asked. If I find one that's aligned with my interests or business goals, I click on it and go directly to that question's page on LinkedIn. At that point I use the Q&A's as a reference tool to learn from ... and if I find an answer I really like, I'll click on the person's name to go to their profile.

Then I look for a blog or website listed on their profile and go from there. I subscribe to his/her blog and become a regular, ultimately planting the seed for a possible business relationship to grow.

Accidental Success
Kent Speakman of Suitcase Interactive shares: When I was adding contacts to LinkedIn, I mistakenly included the President of a very large company in my network. We'd been trying to get in to see him for about 7 months, but none of our account entry strategies had worked.

When he got my invitation to connect, he proceeded to check me out on LinkedIn. Then he sent me an email saying thanks for sending the link, but stating that he didn't know how he knew me. (I'd found his email address on Jigsaw.)

I responded with an email that contained our value proposition and a humorous apology. From there, we exchanged several emails and a series of voicemails. Because he liked what I was sharing, he connected me with his Vice President – who was indeed in need of our help. We got the bid for the work and hereby my first accidental LinkedIn success story.

So What Have I Learned?
LinkedIn isn't a panacea or a miracle cure for your sales woes. Instead, it's a valuable tool that we, as sellers need to learn how to leverage to our advantage. It's a way to augment our prospecting and business growth efforts, not replace them.

While I've focused on the numerous ways that people have used LinkedIn to get business, I've also heard from others that it may not be appropriate for what they sell or that the decision makers they're trying to reach don't have profiles posted. I'm sure they're right.

Since I started this exploration, I've discovered a multitude of ways to use LinkedIn that I could never have conceived of on my own. I've learned that it's not just about making connections with someone who knows someone who knows someone. Rather, it's about a new way of thinking about your network, your personal visibility and your relationships.

Personally, I am choosing to participate in this new Sales 2.0 world. I believe that it's the way of the future. I don't know where it's all going, but I am sure going to find out. Join me!

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I last held down a real job I worked in a small sales team of senior sales executives selling high-end, high-cost technology projects to Wall Street banks.

Like most sales teams we would have weekly sales meetings where the team and our sales manager met in a conference room and reviewed our sales pipeline and what needed to be done to move each opportunity forward.

I did not like these meetings much at all because I always seemed to have the smallest pipeline. Some of the other reps in the team had 30 or 40 opportunities in their pipeline report and I would sit there with 5 or 6. It made me feel inadequate. I was always thinking “how am I ever going to make my numbers with such a small number of opportunities?”

Fast forward a year. I closed five large deals -- lifetime value $2-3 million dollars. The other reps from our team with the 30-40 opportunities in their pipeline still had 30-40 opportunities in their pipeline but zero to one deals worth a fraction of those I closed. What was wrong with this picture?

It turned out of course that the 30-40 deals in some reps pipelines were not well-qualified. These were not buyers who were really ready-and-able to buy. There was wishful thinking here on behalf of some of these reps. A buyer showed some interest so immediately the rep entered this opportunity into their pipeline report at "40% probability" (i.e. 40% likely to close). And that's where the opportunity typically stayed for weeks and months until it was blatantly obvious it never would close.

Meanwhile (without knowing it at the time) I was holding the opportunities in my pipeline to a higher standard. If I got interest from a prospect, I might enter an opportunity into my pipeline at 5% probability but then I would take that opportunity out again a week, or two, later if it did not progress. So my pipeline was small. I was constantly “culling” the dead opportunities and I was not overly optimistic about what I put in or at what percentage I put them in at.

My small pipeline allowed me to focus. Since I had so "few eggs in my basket" I focused my energy on these opportunities. I strategized how to move each deal forward. I "covered the bases" finding each person involved in the deal and worked with them to move the deal forward.

Meanwhile the reps with 30 or 40 opportunities in their pipeline felt overwhelmed with their bounty. They simply did not have time to strategize and set action plans for 30-40 deals. They took their "eye off the ball". They did not manage the sales process but rather they left it to chance whether prospects became deals. A majority of their prospects turned out not to be real, budgeted, ready to buy opportunities. Yet they invested their time equally between what turned out to be unqualified and qualified prospects. In short, they gambled.

Weed out the unqualified opportunities from your sales pipeline quickly (throw them back to the marketing/nurturing process). Then focus your full attention on the real opportunities that remain. In reality most sales people will never have enough real deals in their pipeline to gamble with them. Make sure those real opportunities you do have “hatch”.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s 9 a.m. Monday morning. Do you know what’s happening with your leads?

Your ultimate goal is to use the information gleaned from lead follow-up results to determine which lead generation sources or lead nurturing approaches are resulting in the most closed sales and revenue for your salespeople. The only way to know is to learn what happened to the leads you passed on to your sales team or channel partners.

First off, please understand that if you are supplying your salespeople with truly qualified, sales-ready leads, they will follow up. If they see the sales leads you send them as opportunities to close sales and make their quotas and earn their commissions and bonuses, they jump right on the leads.

However, even if your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors are following up, it is sometimes a challenge to get them to report back on what happened to the lead.

Instead of requiring sales to do extra paperwork, the best way to determine what happened to the leads is to query the CRM system that the salespeople use and see for yourself if the leads were followed up and what the sales results were.

Of course this requires that your company have a CRM system which its salespeople use to manage their opportunities and customers. And you also must enter the leads into the CRM system in the first place.

Unfortunately, when you sell through channel partners such as independent reps, distributors and resellers, the option to leverage a CRM system usually isn’t available. So here are some additional ideas to encourage lead follow-up and reporting back on follow-up activity and results from your companies channel partners.

A “mystery lead” program
Follow-up the mystery lead, get an incentive! Randomly select a lead in every sales territory each month and designate it as the “mystery lead.” Then tell sales that if they report back on that specific lead they earn a prize or incentive.

What’s hot right now for incentives?
Common incentives are gift cards or pre-loaded credit cards, a night at a resort hotel, dinner at a top restaurant, or the latest electronic gadget. You can get creative and have fun with it too. One of my clients gives away a free house cleaning or a car detailing.

The value of the incentive is dependent on how much you are willing to spend to close the loop on lead follow-up. It also depends on the value your salespeople put on the time required to do the necessary paperwork, and how many potential winners there may be.

I recommend that every salesperson have a chance to win for a lead followed up in their territory every month, rather than pulling only one salesperson’s name out of a pool of potential winners.

Points for follow-up program
Your salespeople, reps, dealers or distributors earn a certain number of points for every lead they report back on. You can give additional points for ongoing status reports and bonus points for reports on leads that resulted in closed sales. Then these points can be redeemed for merchandise such as logo-wear, desk accessories, iPods, digital picture frames or even laptops or a smart phones. One client even includes housecleaning services and car detailing in the list of things their resellers can choose from.

Tie lead follow reporting to the size of their paycheck.
This approach works well for some companies. If they report back on the lead before the sale closes, closing the loop, they get a higher commission on that sale (the carrot). Or if they don’t report back on 80% of the leads they were given within a 90 day period, they don’t qualify for their quarterly bonus (the stick).

So whether you do it yourself by querying the CRM system, or use a carrot or stick approach to getting feedback on lead follow-up results from the folks in sales, you can get more of the information you need to determine how best to target your lead generation investments and resources for the maximum bang for your buck.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Historically, database marketers expected to increase results by up to 8x when following up a direct mail or email campaign with a telephone call. However, did you know that stopping at a single touch leaves anywhere from half to substantially more business on the table for your competitors to grab?

Intuitively, most marketers would agree that a series of touches, consisting of quality outbound calls, emails, voicemail messages and direct mail over a period of time is the most effective way to reach and convert your market to revenue. The number of touches, combination of touch types and number of cycles necessary to optimize contact against any given market might surprise you.

For years, through our sales lead management programs for clients including Ingenix, D&B, CenterBeam and Microsoft, we have been tracking the number, frequency and type of touches necessary to adequately cover its clients’ markets. Based on this data, we have determined that unless you are touching contacts within your target market with at least 9 individual touches including a minimum of two email messages you are not generating the results you could.

But you shouldn’t stop there. Our data also shows that the initial contact cycle; the first time you touch the market with those 9 individual touches, will yield only 40%-50% of the total opportunities. The other opportunities existing within the market can only be identified by continuing to touch the same prospects, with the same multi-media, multi-touch strategy on a regular basis.

Point of Diminishing Return
You should expect lead rates from the second and subsequent touch cycles to generate anywhere from 120% to 210% of the initial lead rate. Our data across all market segments shows that lead rates decline after the fifth contact cycle. At that point, a prospect has received an average of 41 different touches over a period of 15 months. The most effective way to cover prospects after the fifth touch cycle is via periodic email and/or direct mail – leaving the door open for the prospect to make contact with you when they are ready.

Size Matters
As would be expected, reaching senior level decision makers within very large companies requires more individual attempts (quality outbound calls, voicemails, emails and direct mail). Our benchmarked data shows that it takes about 1.6 times the touches to generate a lead in a large company as compared to a mid-market or smaller company.

Be Prepared To Respond
As basic as it seems, you need to be prepared to field responses from your multi-media, multi-touch campaigns quickly, as failing to appropriately handle inbound calls and/or email responses substantially reduces the rate of conversion to a qualified sales opportunity. Contacts responding to a voicemail or email comprised over 20% of all the leads PointClear generated for clients in 2007. Somewhat surprising, though, is that the most frequent responders to voicemails or emails are senior level decision makers. In fact, nearly 2½ times more leads are generated from a multi media, multi touch, multi-cycle approach against senior level decision makers in large companies as compared to lower level line of business decision makers in larger companies or all levels of decision making at mid-market companies.

Reaching your market
The overriding indicator of the appropriate number of touches and the blend of media (calls, voicemail, email, direct mail) is company size and the level of the decision maker. Other factors such as a cold versus a warm market segment, brand awareness and industry or solution maturity do not impact attempt types or cycles.

“One and done” does not work
Using the “one and done” approach, common in database marketing campaigns historically generates just one out of a potential 100 opportunities that are possible with multi-media, multi-touch strategy, multiple cycle campaigns against the same market.

Summary
While there is a lot of attention on marketing automation, scoring algorithms and electronic marketing today (and rightfully so), there is still not enough focus on building highly qualified databases and measuring ROI or ROMI based on the cumulative impact of multi-media, multi-touch and multi-cycle campaigns. Almost 30 years ago, direct marketers knew that the success of any given campaign broke down as follows: 60% list, 20% creative and 20% offer. The more things change the more things stay the same.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Are you pitching your services to you? Or to customers? I still see ego-centric sales pitches coming from even the most seasoned veterans. So here's an important tip: Rather than begin sentences with you -- trying starting sentences with them. It's easy. Just replace words like We with Clients, You, or Your.

For example:

We provide corporate housing in the world's major cities. Our inventory is managed by our central office to help us track availability.

Better

Clients that staff professionals on short term assignments throughout the world benefit from our large inventory of corporate housing. Clients like you access temporary housing in 65 cites across 35 counties. Click here to see what we have available, right now.

Take a look at this ego-centric pitch:

We have used a range of pricing models throughout our history. Our experience in managing different types of projects assures you get the model best designed to fit your needs.

Not bad, but try a more customer-oriented pitch:

Your portfolio of projects doesn't fit into a single pricing model. You need a contract that will deliver the greatest return, based on your desired business outcomes. Talk to us about your project's requirements, constraints and its goals. You'll get a recommendation based on what is best suited to deliver, including customer testimonials and references.

Most sales people have a knee-jerk reaction to begin their point-of-view with where they're coming from.

Why? Because it's natural to think about what we need to be successful. Another way to solve this auto-reaction: Make the first half of your sentence about the customer, the second half about you.

If you make it about them, your prospects will start seeing themselves as customers.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Carrying on the theme of my recent post on lead nurturing as trusted advisors with the  human touch, I came across Mike Volpe's post over the HubSpot Marketing Blog. I thought he did a nice job of showing the human touch in action as part of the lead nurturing process.

The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers - regardless of their timing to buy. It’s about relationships. As you read Mike’s story, you'll notice how he helped “Kristen” move through her buying process not by selling but by seeking first to be a relevant resource to her.

Lead nurturing requires a shift away from the traditional marketing mind-set to a new way of thinking centered on the following tenets:

• Companies don't buy - people do. Don't ever forget the human touch. 
• Build relationships with the right people and companies regardless of their timing to buy.  Engage these people early in their buying process (preferably before) and you can co-create and influence their vision.
• Trusted advisers win more sales than slick brands.
• More ROI is reaped from the patient tending of future customers (relationships) over time. Think: customers for life.
• Lead nurturing is a conversation, not a series of disjointed campaigns. 
• A multi-tactic and multi-touch lead generation portfolio will always outperform marketing tactics that stand alone.
• Generate relevant content that engages the right decision makers/influencers.
• The first impression matters.  So does the second.  So does every single touch after that.  Consistency and relevancy is key.

If you keep these ideas top of mind, the way you nurture leads will naturally go beyond just e-mail. You’ll start thinking about how you and your sales people can be a relevant resource. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They will come to you first when they are ready. Again, it’s about relationships.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)