Don’t Trust Your Marketing Department? – Finally…Sherpa Says It

I just saw this statement from Marketing Sherpa regarding their B2B Summit, and I felt compelled to point it out.

…Jackie Kiley of Sybase advised everyone to *never* put suspects, inquiries, or unqualified leads into the salesforce.com system (or whatever salesforce.com wanna-be you’re using.)Fact is, the minute names hit SalesForce they hit the laps of your sales reps who then are judged on performance from then on. If you put anything in the system that a rep probably can’t close, then they look bad, they waste invaluable time, and soon they begin to distrust *all* the leads you give them.

Once sales doesn’t trust your leads, you’re completely sunk. Time to look for a new job.

 

Let that settle in for a second.

If Marketing floods Sales with a list of 100 Names, how can we be expected to find the estimated 20% of those names who are actual “Sales Ready” prospects.

Marketers – A couple of items in the above statement that I would point out and Translate:

1. *Never* put suspects, inquiries, or unqualified leads into the salesforce.com system – TRANSLATION– If they just filled out a registration form for a general whitepaper…they probably aren’t yet a lead. Lead Qual, anyone?

2. If you put anything in the system that a rep probably can’t close, then they look bad, they waste invaluable time – TRANSLATION – Nurture them in the Marketing Pipeline, and only pass those who show buying signals to your sales team. Sacrifice Quantity for Quality.

3. …Your sales reps who then are judged on performance – TRANSLATION – Quota carrying sales people have to close deals today….You should consider the following when determining what constitutes a “Lead” (Thanks to Jame Ervin for the definition):

• Is this person someone who wants to buy something? – If Yes, proceed
• Does this person have approval to buy something? – If Yes, Proceed
• Will they will buy your product, or one like yours soon (and let me note that “Soon” differs from industry to industry)? If Yes – Congratulations…You’re the proud owner of a “Lead” that you should pass over to your sales team.

Winning one for the Gipper: Marketing and Sales unite

We’ve all heard the phrases and more than likely utilized them. “There is no I in team,” and “Don’t give up until you reach the finish line.”

You probably think I’m referring to sports, whether it’s utilized in basketball, football or baseball. In fact, these quotes, analogies or any of the Vince Lombardi phrases that people toss around are applicable in business.

The world of business utilizes sports analogies and phrases so much for one reason: both sports and business rely heavily on teamwork. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to accomplish much of anything on the playing field or in the board room.

Recently, I was playing in a church league basketball game. With my team engaged in a tight contest, we suddenly found ourselves a man short on the court. This was not due to an injury or for a lack of players, but because one of our players decided to take a breather by going to the bench to catch his breath.

Now, imagine our surprise when we realized we had only four players on the court to the opposing teams five.  When up against superior numbers in a team game, the side with fewer people will always lose. Look at how hockey teams in the NHL do in power play situations. Have an advantage over your opponent, especially in terms of a numerical advantage, translates to scoring and the ultimate goal: winning.

Taking this story and applying it to the business world would be interesting. Imagine your team is comprised of sales and marketing individuals. The marketer’s job is to promote brand and consumer awareness of your product or service. By advertising and distributing information on your company, the marketer does everything in their power to create an atmosphere where the sales team will be successful in that selling that product or service. 

By making the public or other businesses desirous of your good or service, the marketing team has done their part, and then they hand off the task of closing the deal to the sales team. If the marketing team has done their part, then a slam dunk will occur on the sales-side of things.

Say though, the prospect is like most potential clients, and requires a longer sales cycle then the slam dunk prospect we are all hoping will come along.

At this juncture, the marketing team must continue to assist the sales team if a prospect needs to be nurtured along the path to the promised-land: the deal. 

But what is the best way to utilize both sales and marketing department’s valuable time? Drip Marketing.

Through drip marketing/drip emails, the sales team can stay in touch with a client that is not sales ready and send out personalized emails on a timed basis. These periodic, automated emails ensure that you stay in touch with a client and nurture them to sales ready status, all along automating the process to further qualify your lead. This can help to free up valuable time for both sales and marketing teams, leading to high fives all around.

In short, marketing and sales teams working together to both nurture and ultimately convert the prospect into a client is the end goal. If one falters then the team suffers, much like the basketball team I play on when we were in a four-on-five match-up. By using drip marketing/drip emails, both sales and marketing can focus on other avenues and constantly stay in the prospects mind, without to much of a time investment.

Oh, and just to put a further exclamation on the point: we lost that game by 19 points.

A Father’s Wisdom – CRM Talk

Sales Professional – Where do you live? I mean, where do you spend the majority of your time each day? If you answered anything other than “My CRM”, then in the words of Donald Trump – “You’re Fired”.

So why is the CRM so important? Whether you utilize Salesforce, Upshot, Dynamics, or something else, there are a few life lessons that my Daddy told me that ring true, and no, not his classic “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”:

1. Use it, or Lose it – Retaining Important Information

Sure this rings true with things like your golf swing, your strength, and that jumpshot that had you 2nd Team All State, but it also rings true for CRM usage. Keep EVERYTHING inside the CRM. Names, Numbers, E-mails, Appointments, To Do’s and Customer Notes. Not using the CRM will directly effect your organization and productivity. You shouldn’t be searching for a scrap of paper that had a note on it, or having to look through Outlook to identify the last e-mail that was sent to this customer. Make the CRM your primary organizational tool, and you’ll be more effective in each communication with a customer.

NOTE – A recent post by Jim Berkowitz, CRM Mastery, indicates that 1/3 of new CRM implementations end in failure because Sales People aren’t using the technology. This is reflective of the attitude that many small companies have related to “My wallet is too full from all these 100’s, and my diamond shoes are a little too tight” – We’re already making money, so why should we care about process improvement or sales time optimization. Sad really………..

2. Shoot for Nothing and You’re Bound to Hit it – Opportunities

Your pipeline is your lifeline, so it is critical that you keep your opportunities entered, and more importantly, up to date. Having the opportunities to direct your activities will allow you to keep your focus while being bombarded by meeting requests, phone calls, e-mails and all the other things that attempt to take you away from the one thing that matters – Closing deals.

3. Focus on the Rim, two dribbles, elbow in, bend knees, shoot – Power of Process

As a washed-up, former basketball player, I often think back to days spent in the driveway learning to shoot free throws. Great free throw shooters, which I never was, shoot free throws the same way every time – it’s a process. Your sales process is defined, so reps can utilize the CRM to automate many of the common functions your sales representatives are expected to do. Most CRM Systems support the development of e-mail templates, many support rudimentary prospect scoring which can be augmented by third party products available onAppExchange (or other such sites), and most have the ability to automate the import of leads from a Marketing Automation System. Management can get into the act too, by implementing alerts when a lead is not acted upon in a specified amount of time, or receiving automated reports on a specific day.

In the end, get a CRM, use that CRM, and extend the power of that CRM by implementing processes and third party applications which provide advanced functionality. You’ll be glad you did.

Friday Rant – Technology as a Silver Bullet

I’ve always heard the term “Silver Bullet” but never took the time to research it to learn the origin of this term. Thanks to Wikipedia for this definition:

“The metaphor of the silver bullet applies to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technology or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem.”

Let me provide a slightly revised definition from Derek-i-Pedia:

“Holy Cow. We’ve got a HUGE problem and no idea what do do about it. Since we’ve already changed our logo, and reorganization is out of the question, let’s throw technology at the angry looking 7,000 lb. gorilla in the corner.”

Sales organizations are notorious for attempting to cure low productivity or poor win rates with technology. I just read an article in the DemandGen report which indicates that 79% of “Best in Class” organizations were using or planning to use sales analytics technologies.

These organizations will likely spend lots of money, to get a system that will take months to be implemented, which may not be adopted by the sales organization anyway. Doesn’t sound like a Silver Bullet to me.

Here’s a couple of suggestions regarding technology for sales:

1. Think Small – Need a new CRM? Organizations like SalesForce have gotten it right by providing an on-demand solution with an attainable price point for you to use and evaluate for effectiveness. Paying a nominal monthly fee for a new technology makes more sense than breaking the bank for a solution which looks great in demos, but may never work that way because of your organization’s business processes. The new world of Software as a Service (SaaS) allows you to test drive, evaluate and terminate, all for much less than the price of a purchase.

2. Think Process – No technology will magically fix the shortcomings in your sales organizations. Web Marketing Automation and Sales Force Automation tools are useless without implementing processes driven by best practices. Thinking about scoring a prospect’s activities on your website? What interaction is worth more points – visiting the pricing page (shows intent) or the careers page (shows intent to call HR for a new job)?

3. Think Realistic – The best technology isn’t going to cover up a broken system or process. Identify specific goals that you hope technology will help you resolve (e.g., Utilizing Landing Pages for my Pay Per Click advertising will improve my conversion rate by X %, or using Web Marketing Automation will allow my reps to engage X number of new clients per week because they can focus on selling rather than educating customers).

If you’re looking for technology, put the processes in place to help that technology be successful.

If you’re looking for a Silver Bullet, good luck killing that werewolf.