How to increase sales—best practices yours free (a $399 value)!
According to the Aberdeen Group, whether a company is trying to move from Laggard to Industry Average, or Industry Average to Best-in-Class, there are specific, proven actions necessary to spur the necessary performance improvements.
For a limited time only, you can download Aberdeen's B2B TeleServices Guide free—a $399 value—and learn the following:
Download B2B TeleServices: The 2009 Buyer's Guide here. (through January 29, 2010):
Of course we're biased here at PointClear, but we're proud of an article recently published in Selling Power magazine. Called Lists, Leads, and a Ladder to Success, the article details long-term PointClear client CenterBeam's experience with outsourced prospect development. Here's a summary:
Looking for qualified leads for the managed IT services that CenterBeam provides to midmarket companies, Sales and Marketing EVP and CMO Karen Hayward opted to outsource.
"We knew the only way to get CFOs in a targeted, precise fashion is over the telephone," CenterBeam's Hayward said. "We looked at doing it [prospect development] in-house, and it took five minutes to know that was a nonstarter for us."
After a first experience with an outside lead-management firm which Hayward terms "a disaster," CenterBeam chose to partner with PointClear. "Very few have the staff to have business-level conversations with our market," she said of Atlanta-based PointClear.
Karen noted in the article that employing advanced segmentation ... using call flows, not scripts ... relying on college educated, experienced associates ... leveraging multi-touch campaigns ... set PointClear apart in the selection process, and has helped San Jose-based CenterBeam grow steadily at an average rate of 34 percent annually since 2003.
We invite you to download the Selling Power article today.
Post by guest blogger Mike Rogers, Director of Business Development, Customer Effective about PointClear sales leads.
At Customer Effective, we help clients maximize their customer relationships using solutions based exclusively on Microsoft technology. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, we are consultants and solution implementers serving midmarket and enterprise organizations worldwide.
We have been a client of PointClear's for about one year, and were introduced to them by Microsoft. As a young, small and growing company, we are hungry to fill the top of the sales funnel, and we've experimented with all sorts of lead generation approaches. We tried internal marketing campaigns, search engine optimization and hired our own inside sales representative before turning to an outsourced B2B teleservices provider.
I initially based my decision to outsource on personal bandwidth limitations. PointClear provides a full-time equivalent, dedicated prospect developer, as well as a program manager who keeps me up-to-speed, sends pre-meeting updates including recorded calls, fields questions from our team about messaging, and generally helps me to develop an efficient rhythm that allows me to run the rest of my business.
I have personally implemented teleservices campaigns in the past, and I get almost daily calls from other providers. However, our success with PointClear is due to proper on-boarding that includes a meticulous process to train the prospect development team on our background, products and especially the kind of information we need to support sales opportunities.
For each opportunity, we receive not only detailed background information and a specific next step, but also a digital audio file. That is something I have never seen before! The audio files provide very specific context for our sales reps as they engage a potential buyer. Additionally, they help us determine tactics for "re-heats" in situations where some ongoing nurturing is going to be required.
About 25 percent of our qualified opportunities come from PointClear, and we now have enough deals in the pipeline that the ROI on this effort is likely to be superb.
Complimentary copies (a $399 value) available from PointClear for a limited time!
According to a recently published Aberdeen report:
"Top-performing sales organizations are meeting the challenges of increasing the quality of incoming leads, as well as the overall size of their pipeline, by turning to external providers of B2B teleservices for a wide variety of deliverables. With the ultimate goal of focusing their front-line salespeople on properly identified and nurtured opportunities, Best-in-Class companies are building substantial, multi-faceted relationships with solution providers that go far beyond the simple acquisition of flat data or sales appointments."
Would you like to be reporting results like these right now?
Download and read the Aberdeen "B2B TeleServices 2009 Buyer's Guide" (just published) to learn how "Best-in-Class" companies accomplish these exceptional results.
Click the link below to get your copy of this valuable report.
B2B TeleServices: The 2009 Buyer's Guide
There is a limited quantity and the offer expires soon, so please take a moment to download the report now.
How do you hire quality people? We hire B2B sales lead generation experts and other staff year-round. As most experienced managers know, hiring is as much art as science. This posting provides some tips to improve your hiring "batting average".
In addition to integrity, intelligence and maturity, Jack Welch applies what he refers to as the "4-E (And 1-P) Framework'' for hiring. He states that he has found this method of evaluating candidates to be "consistently effective, year after year, across businesses and borders".
- The first E is positive energy. It means the ability to go-go-go-to thrive on action and relish change.
- The second E is the ability to energize others, and inspire them to take on the impossible.
- The third is edge, the courage to make tough yes-or-no decisions.
- The fourth E is execute—the ability to get the job done.
- Then he looks for that final P, passion—a heartfelt, deep and authentic excitement about work.
Source: Jack Welch: On Hiring, Inspiring:
My guess is that while I have heard a lot about Jack Welch, he has not heard all that much about me. Maybe one day we will get together and talk about business. Well, OK, maybe one day I will just read another of his books...
We do, however, share some of the same hiring philosophies. Mine might even be a little simpler. Around here the staff calls my framework "Dan's Big Hand Theory". It has that name because I put up my big hand and tell candidates that we are looking for associates who are:
- Nice
- Smart
- Curious
- Hardworking
- Ethical
The funny thing is that we do not assess candidates on these five characteristics (of course we do testing, role plays and have other tools to get a baseline on skills, intelligence, personality and knowledge). After the interview, we ask candidates to go home and ask themselves: "Am I nice, smart, curious, hardworking and ethical?" I can't tell you how many times I would have hired someone on the basis of skill, intelligence, personality and knowledge only to find that they didn't think they measured up.
Of course, they don't say, "I am not nice" or "I am not curious, I'm lazy", but I do think they leave here with a sense for what we are all about and whether or not they fit. The five characteristics we discuss help them assess their fit better than we ever could.
I would be interested in comments on this and any other suggestions you might have.
Companies don't fail because individuals in the company want to fail. Companies fail because employees don't know what the rules are. Companies that are guided by strong boundaries thrive by developing prospects and driving revenue. Companies loosely run, fail. Here are the ten things you need to do to ensure your company is successful:
1. Provide strong direction in sales lead management regarding market definition, offer dynamics and media mix, then reinforce that direction with strong sponsorship of appropriate activities and campaigns. As basic as it sounds, we work with companies every day that do not actually follow-through on this.
2. Get strategically involved in the marketing and sales planning process. You will be surprised at how much impact you can have.
3. Make sure that each and every prospect or customer "touch" meets strict standards that support the direction you have provided.
4. Stick to your guns. Once you've made a plan, don't change it based on a subtle market change or limited market research.
5. Hold marketing accountable for quality and value; make the sales force accountable for quality feedback and results.
6. Insist on regular, weekly reports. In most B2B companies the senior management team could and should review the status of every opportunity (their environment, what they're doing, their pain, who they're talking to). It would take just a couple of hours each week.
7. The sales force is driven by the "three C's": control, credit and compensation. Ironically, great prospect development programs are initially viewed as a threat by sales because of the "three C's". That is why you hear the following feedback on leads:
"No telemarketer can talk to the decision-makers I have to reach."
"I was already in that account and already talked to that decision-maker."
"The leads are really not worth what you are paying for them, just get me some names and I will engage the prospects."
These are not destructive, conscious objections. They are a natural reaction to the historical state of affairs and, as such, need to be addressed transparently and aggressively. Eventually, great sales people become great consumers of quality prospect development.
8. Insist on training. Start with the basics. Insist on self-education and participation in local and national events. This is a high payoff activity.
9. Set realistic expectations regarding timeframes and deliverables. Everything takes longer than you think. Quick solutions may make you happy for the moment, but you will eventually pay a price. Don't shoot the messenger who is trying to do the right thing and not the expedient thing.
10. Check your ego at the door. If something clearly isn't working, cut your losses, make the changes and move on.
Marketing and sales need a "judicial branch" to keep everyone honest: In the ideal sales lead management process, marketing defines the target market, the offer, the message and the media necessary to cost effectively generate the number of leads required by sales to meet revenue goals. As a "check and balance," sales must evaluate and accept or reject marketing's leads and marketing should be evaluated accordingly. This step ensures that marketing does not simply load the pipeline with low-level leads. Instead they must provide sales with legitimate, closeable sales opportunities.
Sales can either accept or reject leads on a lead-by-lead basis, and then convert the leads to revenue (or not). Once a lead is accepted by sales (the lead advances from marketing qualified to sales accepted), marketing's responsibility for the lead ceases (unless it requires nurturing or reheating, but that is not a marketing or sales responsibility and a whole different story).
For this process to actually work, organizations require a judicial branch comprised of senior sales and marketing executives, if not the CEO. The judicial branch is required to assess leads that have been rejected by sales, but "appealed" by marketing to ensure opportunities are not being squandered. This same team should evaluate sales effectiveness in lead follow-up.
I find that the missing ingredient in many organizations is a "judicial branch". The judicial branch could keep everyone honest. Unfortunately, this is not often done.
"In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield." Warren Buffett (1930 - )
(Part 3 of 3)
Over the past two weeks we have covered the current state of sales lead generation and the "no man's land" in the sales process. The basic process of lead generation is broken in most companies. The impact of "no man's land" on sales results is staggering. Hindsight may be 20/20, but I don't think it takes Warren Buffett to tell you that if you continue current practices future results won't get much better.
So what is the solution?
The solution is recognizing that "raw leads" require filtering by someone other than sales; and that many potential opportunities require nurturing (a task not best fitted for sales—for many reasons).
How should you filter and/or nurture leads?
Ask anyone, especially a sales person: "if your life depended on making a sale, and you could use any one of the following tools (but only one) to make that sale, which would you chose"?
-
Email
- Direct mail
- A telephone call
... 100% of the sales people and a high percentage of the rest of those questioned would pick "a telephone call". There are many reasons for that. The immediacy. The intimacy. The art. In the end, it is about effectiveness. Can you afford to call through the Yellow Pages looking for leads? Of course not! Can you afford to go into a death spiral of email mania and hope that your prospects call you and not the competition? Chances are many companies are taking that risk right now.
There is an expression that "nothing ever happens until you pick up the phone and make a call". It is and always will be true. I am not talking about a $10 per hour worker, or an off-shore telemarketer making low-level calls into a too loosely defined market. I am talking about highly educated, experienced professionals holding peer level discussions with targeted senior executives about business issues. A percentage of those discussions are going to yield qualified sales leads. Some will lead to longer-term interest and nurture prospects. Some will lead to market intelligence that should be fed to product development and marketing. You can't afford to have low-level telemarketers making a bad impression and limiting results to the poorest opportunities sometimes dressed up as low-hanging fruit.
There is a problem with lead generation (blog #1 in this series). It manifests itself in the "no man's land" of the sales process, Preference (blog #2 in this series). The solution is highly professional qualification and nurturing of potential opportunities—performed outside of the sales force so that sales can concentrate on closing business, not finding it.
Chances are your company is in one of three places:
- Looking in the rearview mirror and giving up too early.
- Looking through the windshield and wondering where you are going.
- ... Or closing your eyes waiting for the crash ...
If you get tired of looking in the rear view mirror, aren't quite sure what the windshield view is telling you, or worse, it might be a good time to see how a focus on lead quality over quantity, an accurate and mutually agreed upon definition of a lead and effective lead filtering and nurturing would impact results.
(Part 2 of 3)
Last week we talked about the state of lead generation and why most companies do not provide field sales with high quality sales opportunities. This week we are going to talk about what happens after a lead has been turned over to sales and why so few dollars in revenue are generated from so much lead generation investment.
Traditionally sales people are viewed as being able to convince, persuade, handle objections ... a very provincial view. Michael Bosworth, in his book "Customer Centric Selling" says it best: "Traditionally sales people are viewed as being able to convince, persuade, handle objection, overcome resistance, etc. This is a very traditional view of what sales is and it's a very manipulative way to sell. Buyers don't like to be manipulated. Buyers like to buy things, they just don't like to feel they are being sold to as part of the process."
In the sales process there is what I call "no man's land". A former colleague taught that buyers of anything, from chewing gum to complex, enterprise software solutions, go through four phases in the process of acquiring a good or service:
-
Awareness
- Interest
- Preference
- Commitment
Marketing owns Awareness and Interest.
Sales owns Commitment.
Marketing and sales own Preference—building preference for your product or solution over other available products or solutions. Preference can happen immediately, or take weeks or months to develop. Marketing should own Preference on those leads requiring nurturing. Sales should own Preference on sales ready leads.
Preference is the sales process "no man's land", and it is costing companies hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.
The way many companies operate today, unfiltered "raw leads" are sent to sales after companies with Awareness and Interest are identified. Sales is ill equipped to filter through the large quantity of so-called opportunities they are sent, so at best they cherry pick what appear to be the best opportunities (sometimes accurately and sometimes not). The rest of the "raw leads" end up inactive in some SFA or CRM system—essentially wasted.
If as few as 3 - 7 out of 100 "raw leads" are sales ready, what chance does your sales force have of finding real leads if they are sent batches of "raw leads" by marketing? And, what chance is there that qualified, longer-term opportunities will be effectively nurtured. I say: slim, and none. Even a man lost in the woods knows those odds are not going to result in ROI.
Next week we will talk about why the use of the telephone is critical to the prospecting process.
(Part 1 of 3)
If you pay attention to the headlines, you might come to the conclusion that cold calling is dead. It appears all one needs to do today is to load email addresses in one end of a magic machine; then out the other end come highly qualified sales leads. Tough economic times and smart people make relatively inexpensive, quick and easy marketing solutions seem very attractive. However, I think a lot of C-level and senior marketing and sales executives are failing because they are giving up on what works in exchange for snake oil solutions that will apparently save money in the short run but will be very expensive in the long run.
To set the stage, I stipulate that generating highly qualified sales leads by investing in low-quality, smile and dial prospecting never has and never will be a viable or effective option in the B2B lead generation world. Yet, it is being used today by more companies than you can imagine; and the relative ineffectiveness of this medium is pushing companies toward snake oil solutions.
For a number of reasons, there are those who feel you can outsource lead generation for complex solutions domestically for $28-32 per hour and generate qualified sales leads. Others outsource to far flung parts of the world to save money and expect to generate quality B2B leads. In fact, large organizations that depend on channel partners for revenue are often the biggest offenders—sending poor quality, unfiltered and unqualified suspects to resellers and calling them leads.
| I once asked eight out of the ten of the largest resellers for one very large software company what they thought about the leads they got. They answered, and pardon the vernacular, "they suck". Then I asked why they did not do something about it and they said, "I am afraid they will stop sending me leads". Honest. That is what they said. |
The problem in many large companies, and even some smaller ones, is that one department demands a certain number of leads, another department budgets and a third department is responsible for generating the leads within the budget. Since marketing historically receives little or no feedback on a lead-by-lead basis, a cost per lead mentality pervades and results spiral ever downward.
There are hundreds if not thousands of discussions going on in the B2B market right now about "how buyers buy" and "what sellers should do to sell more". Every single market research report about lead generation that I read states that quality is as important, if not more important, than quantity; and that lack of lead qualification criteria and failure to nurture effectively sinks ROI—yet the vast majority of marketing and sales executives give their company low marks for lead quality, lead definition and nurturing programs.
Most senior managers I speak with understand why it is important to provide field sales with high quality leads. However, there is a disconnect between that understanding and what is needed to execute a solution to the problem. Next week we will talk about the source of that disconnect.