Sales Marketing Stimulus Package Ebook Copy

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The Sales & Marketing  Stimulus Package A 7 POINT PLAN for: 3aligning sales and marketing, 3optimizing lead management, 3recovering lost revenue. TM

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The Sales & Marketing Stimulus Package Seven New Initiatives To Recover Lost BtoB Revenue Through Demand Creation and Lead Generation

The Stimulus Package....................................................................... 3 Lifting The 10% Tax Burden. ............................................................ 5 Funding The No (Good) Lead Left Behind Initiative. ......................... 7 A New Deal To Maximize Sales & Marketing Resources.................... 10 Insurance That Leads Are Hit While They’re Hot............................... 12 Raising The Digital IQ....................................................................... 14 Improving Close Rates on Opportunities. ......................................... 16 Avoiding Earmarks and Hidden Costs............................................... 18

INTRODUCTION

The Stimulus Package

Injecting more efficient capital, energy and management efficiency into sales and marketing practices Uncharted waters. Unforeseen events. These phrases of unpredictability have replaced the “endless bubble” or “irrational exuberance” as the catchphrases of business. However, companies are realizing that even in this “great recession” a few business elements remain constant. One of them is the importance of building demand for products and services. Another is aligning the sales and marketing process which targets prospective buyers and translates that demand into revenue. Companies that ignore these business realities will be treading on thin ice in this business climate. No amount of bank loans or creative financing can stabilize a company that cannot create demand, and manage the buying process for its products and solutions. However, a company that reinvests the intellectual capital, financial capital and management capital into a cohesive sales & marketing effort is investing in a stimulus package that will be far more effective in the long run. Lead management, backed by the properly aligned sales and marketing structure will provide an economic boost to most any company that has a viable business model and substantial product offering. The obstacle that stands often between demand generation and lead management is a lack of the sales and marketing alignment that is necessary to efficiently create demand and capitalize on ready buyers. That lack of alignment is depressing the number of opportunities which convert to closed deals due to the inability of sales teams to efficiently and effectively follow up on their most qualified prospects. The solution is a stimulus package of a different sort than the government has implemented. This stimulus package will inject more efficient capital, energy and management efficiency into sales and marketing practices. It will pull companies out of the doldrums of clogged pipelines and leaky funnels and into an active

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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INTRODUCTION

world of demand creation and lead generation. This eBook will make the case that seven new initiatives can recover lost opportunities, generate better prospects, and give sales and marketing personnel the tools to work smarter and more effectively by accessing intelligence about their prospects in real time. The Sales and Marketing Stimulus package is an automated, intelligent solution for any company stuck in the rut of old school sales and marketing turf wars. To understand how it can work, companies must first understand the price they pay for the status quo. The status quo should be unacceptable for any company. According to a report released in 2008 by CSO Insights, the cost of ignoring demand creation, lead management and sales and marketing alignment is staggering. Bottom line: Companies are being taxed 10% of their total closed business, resulting in 6% decline in total revenue on average. That 10% tax is the result of sales opportunities that never get addressed because the lead management system is not efficient and because the sales and marketing teams are working in separate worlds and toward separate goals.

Other costs/problem issues CSO Insights identified from poor lead management include: • 20% of opportunities forecast to be won resulted instead in “no decision.” Pursuing these non-deals throughout the entire sales cycle (to forecast close) is a costly waste of resources. • 40% of all sales reps currently fall short of their quota. • 50% of leads were reported to have been self-generated by sales reps, independently of lead management solutions that involve sales and marketing teamwork.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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L I F T I N G T H E 1 0 % TA X B U R D E N

Initiative #1: Lifting the 10% Tax Burden

Companies pay for the disconnect between sales and marketing and for the resulting inefficient lead management. Here’s how the Sales & Marketing Stimulus Package proposes to provide relief. Every company will have a different price to pay for its burden of inefficient lead management. But again, some things are consistent. Aberdeen’s Ian Michiels interviewed sales and marketing professionals from 315 enterprises and found that when sales and marketing technologies and processes are aligned, organizations outperform their competition. In his report, The Convergence of Sales and Marketing Technologies, he noted that best-in-class organizations enjoy (on a year over year basis) nearly a 50% uptick in revenues and a 21% increase sales conversions. As Michiels notes, sales and marketing alignment is usually the area that can be most immediately addressed and can have the highest impact. If sales and marketing are not working with the same intelligence, it makes it much more challenging to advance prospects through the funnel and close as many deals as possible. Lifting the 10% tax burden requires a new style and technology of communication. That approach requires marketing and sales to pass intelligence on leads back and forth seamlessly, enabling the right level and mode of contact for each prospect at each phase of the engagement. At the simplest level, what this means is that marketing can automate the process of nurturing a lead until qualifying criteria are met, at which point, sales can be instantly notified of prospect interest, and lead status updated so that marketing no longer sends emails to a lead which is being actively worked by sales. Similarly, if sales finds that a qualified lead is not engaged or ready to make a purchase, sales can update the lead status, passing responsibility for “remarketing” back to marketing. Lead qualifying criteria can be based not only

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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L I F T I N G T H E 1 0 % TA X B U R D E N

on factual information (industry, company size) but also on the prospect’s online body language, including factors such as frequency of visits to the website, number of pages visited, length of the visit(s), and specific pages visited.

CALCULATING A DIFFERENT TYPE OF SALES TAX Sales and Marketing Alignment

How much is your company paying in “ignorance tax?” Based on the estimations of revenue losses and lack of closed deals by CSO Insights, companies are leaving 10% of all deals on the table. Now some new accounts are

In improper alignment, marketing identifies lead from random list or databases that lack transparency. When properly aligned, marketing courts prospects based on agrees criteria and nurtures the lead within the lead management system. If it is qualified…

more valuable than others. But when the final account total is tallied, CSO Insights believes that the 10% of leads that go unresolved results in roughly a 6% hit to overall revenues. If a company could close that gap, here are some projections as to how its business would change: The Sales Burden: CSO Insights focused here on the Fortune 100 to illustrate what a 6% of unclosed business looks like. It estimates, along with Genius.com, that ineffective lead management costs the Forune 100 $225 billion in sales per year. That means for every $10m in sales budgeted by a Fortune 100 company, lack of proper lead It’s sent to sales which contacts prospect within marketing recommendation and keeps system updated.

If prospect is not closed or moved toward sale within a set period of time it is sent back to marketing to be filed or remarketed to.

management costs $575,000. The Marketing Burden: For the marketing team, CSO Insights focused on the 10% lack of lead closure. The 10% lead tax puts undue pressure on the marketing team as they have to generate more leads to keep up with the inefficient close rates. For a small to medium sized business, let’s assume an account executive has a $1 million quota and an average deal size of $25K. That means the sales person needs to close 40 deals to hit that $1 million number. At a 56% close rate (which correlates to the CSO research), marketing needs to provide 70 opportunities

Sales works toward moving prospect toward close

for the sales rep to reach their revenue goal. Now take away 10% of the business due to a lack of alignment and poor lead management. At the inefficient 46% close rate, the marketing department now needs to provide 86 qualified opportunities and a substantially higher multiple of that number at the top of the funnel. When you take this scenario a step further, the cost considerations clearly come into focus. Assuming a 5% conversion rate from lead to opportunity, it would require 860 additional leads to develop 43 opportunities. Assuming a cost per lead of $100, that tab would be $86,000 a $16,000 tax bill added to the cost of sale.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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FUNDING THE NO (GOOD) LEAD LEFT BEHIND PROGRAM

Initiative #2: Funding The No (Good) Lead Left Behind Program

“Set and forget” automation can leave good leads sitting on hold. Smart marketers are ensuring no good leads are left behind by notifying sales immediately with immediate access to prospect activity. Lead management carries two powerful motivators for any corporate executive. First it offers a fast ROI. Second, a lack of investment will have potentially disastrous consequences. Therefore, “no lead left behind” should be every company’s mantra. It represents a commitment to a spending where necessary on lead management, and in the process, enabling sales and marketing to lift the 10% tax burden. Unfortunately, marketing automation often signals an information lockdown. Under this “black box” approach, leads are left behind firewalls, silos and turf wars. They are often locked away from sales people who need it most. But if sales and marketing work together, and engage constantly and consistently, they can determine which leads are qualified and need immediate attention (from sales) and which leads aren’t and need further nurturing (from marketing). Secondly, solutions need to enable quick responses and follow-up when a lead goes from mere browsing to active buying. Unfortunately “set and forget” automation can let these leads languish “on hold” instead of instantly updating their status and turning them over to sales who can then provide the appropriate attention. A laser-focus on sales results and timely action that “leaves no prospect behind” is the goal. Unfortunately, companies cut lead generation programs due to overall budget concerns. Part of the attitude toward those cuts can be attributed to inaccurate lead scoring. Companies need to set the proper benchmarks for good leads and make sure that pulling the plug on unprofitable prospects is a fact-based decision. Too often those decisions are made from executive frustration, a lack of process, and a short-sighted point of view. Ineffective lead scoring is often the result of silos between sales and marketing teams. In many cases, the scoring

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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FUNDING THE NO (GOOD) LEAD LEFT BEHIND PROGRAM

of prospect behavior is ranked by the marketing department without input from sales on key criteria. When organizations fail to prioritize scoring and make it a collaborative process between sales and marketing, the “set and forget” mentality results in weak leads being pushed to sales. Best in class companies have established processes

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to review the value of prospect scoring based on web activity, historical data, job title, etc. This initiative also addresses lead quality and response. Ardath Albee, consultant and editor of the Marketing

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Interactions blog, stresses that the concept of “no good lead left behind” should be tied to the ability to specify “conversion events.”

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For example, if a prospect downloads a white paper; an auto-response welcome/thank you message is immediately sent with a link to the white paper. Then an automated message is generated internally which schedules a follow up message for one week after. But, if the prospect who downloads the paper shows a higher degree of

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later-stage buying interest, the company is only creating a lag time by holding off on follow up and ultimately could be leaving a good lead behind. For example, if an online demo is known to indicate a high-propensity for customer conversion, but doesn’t trigger the score required for sales readiness, the company could be missing out

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on an opportunity.

0

In a better scenario, when independent conversion events are triggered, sales is notified immediately and can take <10%

10–20% 20–30% 30–40% 40–50%

50+%

the right action because they have instant access to the prospect’s activity history and other information. “The

Impact of Lead Management on Pipeline

ability for a prospect to, if you will, override the nurturing campaign schedule and receive relevant engagement at

The DemandGen report shows that more than 20 percent of respondents saw a 10-20 percent increase in their pipeline as a result of improved lead management.

the right time could be termed the ‘no prospect left behind’ program,” says Albee. “Even better, interactions can be initiated on the prospect’s timeline, not the company’s.”

LEAD MEASUREMENT METRICS If a company does not find the funding for a “no (good) lead left behind,” program, it is more than likely competitors will. According to a January 2009 report from DemandGen Report, budgets for lead generation and lead management had already increased in 2008 for more than 50% of the respondents, and 81.9% indicated that those levels of spending would remain flat or increase again in 2009.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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FUNDING THE NO (GOOD) LEAD LEFT BEHIND PROGRAM

In other positive findings from the Demand Imperative report, the sophistication and metrics in place to manage the lead generation process is clearly on the rise. For example, more than 50% of companies now have established lead gen goals or quotas in place, and more than 20% are expected to measure and meet those goals on a monthly basis. And while the economic downturn has caused many companies to put more pressure on their internal demand generation teams to increase the lead volume at the top of the sales funnel (31.3%), the majority of respondents (59.2%) indicated there will be more of a focus on quality leads, rather than quantity. Looking forward to strategies that will help ensure that more qualified leads (and fewer unqualified leads) reach the sales team, more companies are putting an emphasis on lead nurturing programs to cultivate the interest of a prospect by providing relevant content and thought leadership. Then once prospects have shown a sufficient level of interest, sales can be automatically triggered to engage or re-engage.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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A NEW DEAL TO MAXIMIZE SALES & MARKETING RESOURCES

Initiative #3: A New Deal to Maximize Sales & Marketing Resources “Three rules of work,” said Einstein. “Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

It’s highly doubtful that he ever had lead management in mind specifically, but his rules echo through the ages when applied to sales and marketing alignment. Simplicity, harmony, and opportunity can define the new deal between sales and marketing. The two departments need to find common process, interest and even compensation in order to manage new leads. The “new deal” as part of the stimulus package means that sales and marketing have clearly defined and common goals. With this unified approach, marketing needs to plant the seeds for new prospects, and nurture them. Sales needs to harvest those leads or advise marketing on how they could be educated for future opportunity. Along the way, communication must be maintained. Web 2.0 solutions such as mobile SMS, mobile email, blogs, webinars, podcasts, and the interfaces that give all stakeholders access to lead management activities make communication easy. While communcation tools might be an option, competition and the current economy make them necessary. Let’s take a look at the new deal in action. BT Business, the BtoB division of the UK’s leading communications carrier, was looking to decrease the effort, and lead time associated with their online marketing efforts. With a quarterly planning cycle for the centralized email marketing campaigns that communicated to these clients, BT was often unable to respond or capitalize on changing market, economic or competitive conditions. They also needed an email marketing solution to help them better connect with, and better serve that BtoB market, which accounts for 45% of BT Business revenues.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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A NEW DEAL TO MAXIMIZE SALES & MARKETING RESOURCES

BT selected Genius Pro to help them better connect with their customers. With the Genius Pro email marketing solution the company was able to provide helpful advice and products to the market during the economic downturn. BT Marketing utilized Genius to send out tactical and personalized emails. The emails to BT Business prospects all looked as if they were personalized from a BT sales rep. In fact, the campaign was customized for over 15,000 corporate prospects. After receiving an email, the prospect could click on an embedded link to be automatically directed to a personalized landing page for more information. When this “trigger” was sent, the BT account manager associated with the account received an instant alert indicating the customer’s online interest. The account manager could then follow up with the customer to offer advice, service and or finalize a purchase of the promoted product. The account manager was immediately given access to a visual replay of the prospect’s Web site visit, so the account manager could see in which products and services the prospect displayed the greatest interest. Armed with this insight, the account manager could then follow up with the customer to offer advice and guidance on those relevant areas and move to finalize the purchase of that product. BT developed a series of five emails over 10 weeks (beginning in November 2008), which highlighted how BT solutions could help their customers during the economic downturn. The goal of the campaign was to leverage email to nurture potential buyers, highlight useful BT products and provide immediate service to interested prospects—ultimately facilitating increased brand loyalty and purchases. Each email targeted a specific concern and offered a targeted BT solution that addressed that concern. The result was increased sales effectiveness. BT account managers were able to identify, prioritize and quickly service customers who showed interest in BT products and the effort stimulated additional purchases and increased BT customer loyalty.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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INSURANCE THAT LEADS ARE HIT WHILE THEY ARE HOT

Initiative #4: Insurance that Leads are Hit While they are Hot

The proper response timing is necessary to capture, qualify and close every possible deal. Companies need to guarantee this ability, and this guarantee requires a new look at the old sales funnel. Part of the $200 billion-plus lost every year due to poor lead generation can be attributed to a failure to respond to them in a timely fashion. Investing in a lead management system is extremely important to this initiative. In fact, more than our other stimulus initiatives, lead insurance depends on having the proper technology. Manually managing leads is bound to result in poor response times, whether they are pursued by email or phone. For example, in his recent “Lead Response Management” survey, James Oldroyd, PhD, Professor at MIT, found that the ability to contact and qualify a web lead decreases dramatically after just five minutes. In just 30 minutes, the likelihood plummets by 100x. Yet the bulk of companies either have no systemized follow-up process or wait until more than 48 hours to respond to leads. In today’s economic environment you cannot afford to miss out on even one qualified opportunity. You need to capture, qualify and close every possible deal. State of the art lead management systems provide real-time lead management to ensure that leads in the pipeline are being handled by the right sales and/or marketing team member at the right time – resulting in better customer service, higher revenue and more productive marketing efforts. This enables sales and marketing to collaborate effectively, identify opportunities, quickly pinpoint their current interests, and instantly alert the best sales team member to build the prospect relationship. While the Oldroyd study focused attention on the lead time response issue, other research studies have supported it. Last year a CapGemini report, focusing on car dealerships, showed 34% of Internet leads want a response within four hours, 8% want an instantaneous response, and 50% are willing to wait up to 24 hours. Automated lead generation, the report said, would surpass the expectations for 92% of all leads. The likelihood of being able

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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INSURANCE THAT LEADS ARE HIT WHILE THEY ARE HOT

to get an Internet lead on the phone decreases significantly over time after they submit their information: Within the first 2 minutes = 51% Between 3 and 7 minutes = 42%

A NEW LOOK AT THE LEAD FUNNEL

Between 8 and 12 minutes = 35% InsideSales.com measured response times to inquiries made while on Web sites of all of the sponsors at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce ’08 during November. Inquiries were made on 124 Web sites through Web-based forms where available and all responses were tracked whether they came by email or telephone. The responses surprisingly found that some leads go unattended. The key results: • 53.2% of companies attempted response to inquiries on a web form by email. • 39.5% of companies attempted response to inquiries by phone. • 37.1% never responded by either media. • Average response time by email: 13 hours, 14 minutes, 24 seconds. • Average response time by phone was 44 hours, 31 minutes, 08 seconds. • Average number of email attempts of those that did respond: 1.45 attempts. • Average number of email attempts by all companies: .66 attempts. • Average number of phone attempts of those that did respond: 1.14 attempts. • Average number of phone attempts by all companies was .45 attempts. Best practices (5 minute response): 24.2% responded by email in 5 minutes. 3.2% responded by phone in 5 minutes. As is the case with all lead management, lead response times require automation and sales and marketing alignment. Measuring your companies lead response time is a good start. Improving that lead time through automated processes for personnel and data will close the gap.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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RAISING THE DIGITAL IQ FOR SALES AND MARKETING

Initiative #5: Raising the Digital IQ for Sales and Marketing By studying the digital behavior of prospects and applying Sales 2.0 processes, leading companies are capturing qualified leads and closing more deals.

Let’s take another perspective on lead management and sales and marketing alignment. The goal of both is to educate all the stakeholders in the equation. The smarter everyone is, the smarter they will manage leads. Lead management raises the digital IQ of the entire company. On a deeper level we can identifiy specific areas that provide that intelligence: Sales 2.0 and online behavioral cues. Sales 2.0 is generally applied as the practice of relying on internet-based communication to provide fact-based prospect knowledge to all members of the sales and marketing team. Sales 2.0 means that everyone on the team relies on the data collected on prospects, the scores assigned to the leads, and the manner of follow up. Sales 2.0 means not waiting for a inbound phone call, face-to-face meeting, or trade show to start prospecting or even closing an account. Deploying Sales 2.0 processes requires sales and marketing to adopt a new process for reading their prospects. They can’t see the furrowed brow that signals frustration or the subtle relaxation of the shoulders that indicates comfort. Clues from a prospect’s digital behavior are necessary because they can make sales and marketing people smarter. The proper alignment between sales and marketing will enable the communication necessary with the customer. While the digital behavior can effectively be used by automated campaigns to determine the right response in a nurturing campaign, if that same data is not presented to the right sales rep at the right time, so he/she can quickly and easily read the digital behavior, the whole point is lost. Unfortunately, most marketing automation systems overlook the critical role the sales team plays in the process of responding to new leads. Reading digital cues is for marketing and sales, not just marketing. © 2009 DemandGen Report

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RAISING THE DIGITAL IQ FOR SALES AND MARKETING

Sales 2.0 Author on the Role of Digital IQ Anneke Seeley is the author of the recently published Sales 2.0. She presented at the Sales 2.0 Conference in early March. A former executive with Oracle and now the CEO of PhoneWorks, Seeley has been at the forefront of implementing Web 2.0 communication solutions for sales and marketing. Now she consults with major international firms on bringing Web 2.0 together with the communication necessary to enable Sales 2.0.

Q: There have been quite a few definitions of the term Sales 2.0, some clearer than others. What’s yours?

Seeley: I describe Sales 2.0 as a more effective and efficient way of selling more efficiently. It is enabled by Web 2.0 technology. It is a combination of the art of collaborative selling coupled with the new culture of measurement.

Q: It seems like this will mean some new behaviors will need to be adopted by all different point people in a company.

Seeley: Executives in sales and marketing are being forced to rethink the way they do things today. Part of what forces this revision is the economy. You have to constantly rethink how you can improve your operation and reach out to prospective customers at the same time. A sales or marketing executive that truly embraces Sales 2.0 is always looking at the way customers want to buy.

Q: How has that customer’s buying cycle changed?

Seeley: Face to face meetings are rare. Some bigger customers will go all the way from pitch to close without a face to face meeting. That means sales and marketing executives must be more effectively aligned. They are truly contributing to the sales process in a shared fashion. They should share all available metrics and maybe even have a shared compensation package. The process of Sales 2.0 is being redefined constantly.

Q: How does Sales 2.0 intersect with lead management?

Seeley:Lead management is a very important part of the sales cycle and all parts of the company must respect that. When it comes to lead management it’s about strategy, process, and people. Now we have a lot of new technology that can improve strategy, and it can enable a smoother lead management process, and the entire sales cycle is certainly faster as a result. But what I see companies do wrong is that they start with technology before they look at people and process. Understand your lead generation issues first. Is my problem identifying prospects? Is it in finding a good group to target? No technology can help you understand where to start.

Q: Many companies are stuck in this

Answering questions such as “where was this lead before she was at our website?” or “what search terms did she use to land at our site?” provide lead management intelligence. If a prospect came to your website via a search engine, than those keywords need to be invested in. If multiple executives from a company come to your website and visit pricing pages or take a demo, the sales team should likely be triggered to follow up with that prospect immediately. Regardless of what a prospect did or didn’t do, nothing will energize the information that defines digital behavior like real-time information into the lead management system. A good example can be seen from case study of supply chain integration and e-commerce management firm Advanced Data Exchange (ADX). The company’s management team realized having an integrated approach to sales & marketing would be critical— as it prepared to launch a new service designed to open up EDI to millions of buyers and suppliers still relying on faxes and the post office for supply chain management. For the introduction of its CommerceMail service in late October 2008, ADX deployed the Genius platform for real-time marketing and sales analytics and the results have been fast and dramatic—enabling ADX to capture 60 qualified leads for their new service in the first 90 days. “When we implemented Genius, we made the commitment to working together as a

downward economic spiral. Can Sales 2.0 help pull them out?

team, keeping checks and balances on each other, and jumping in to help each other

Seeley: I have clients that have seen

the Genius Pro product to send out a series of four automated and personalized emails

dramatic results by implementing Sales 2.0 strategies, which include the proper sales and marketing alignment. One software company I worked with in the past year has seen a 12% sales increase and a 17% head count decrease. Another client in the medical hardware business has produced a 7% incremental jump in business. Those results are hard to dispute.

to prospects. Depending on their response (if they asked to see a demo), the ADX sales

when necessary,” says Heather Steele, senior marketing specialist at ADX. ADX utilized

team received an instant alert via the Genius Tracker. As part of the alert, the sales reps also received immediate insight into their interest and could then immediately reach out to the prospect.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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RAISING THE CLOSE RATE ON SALES OPPORTUNITIES

Initiative #6: Raising the Close Rate on Sales Opportunities

A coordinated game plan between marketing and sales results in cultivating prospects and responding when they are ready to buy. The most common cause for lead management failure is a disconnect between sales and marketing. Turf wars and silos get them to this point, good teamwork can help bring them out. In basketball parlance the sales and marketing effort is easy to see. The point guard (marketing lead management specialist) brings the ball up the court, looking for opportunities to score. He passes to the shooting guard (lead scoring) who has the opportunity to make the other players move into better position, or he decides to take the shot himself. But more often than not he passes to the front court (sales) where the big guys are closer to the basket. If they hit the shot the deal is closed. If they don’t hit the shot the ball is rebounded and passed back out (remarketed) to the backcourt. The basketball analogies go further than the sport. Everyone needs to play his or her position in order for the team to score. All members of the team need to be able to share the ball (or information) to advance the team’s prospects. Movement, agility, and awareness are the key factors. More formally, the process is called “dynamic engagement.” In the dynamic engagement process, marketing and sales pass lead communication and qualification responsibility back and forth seamlessly, enabling the right level and mode of contact for each prospect at each phase of the engagement. At the simplest level, what this means is that marketing can automate the process of nurturing a lead via email until qualifying criteria are met, at which point, sales can be instantly notified of prospect interest, and lead status is updated so that marketing no longer sends email to a lead being actively worked by sales.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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RAISING THE CLOSE RATE ON SALES OPPORTUNITIES

David Thompson turned a business frustration into a business opportunity and hundreds of clients have profited from his efforts. As the CMO of WebEx, Thompson realized the sales team found many of the leads provided by the marketing team to be useless. He started Genius on the premise that sales and marketing needed to work together in different ways, using Web 2.0 technology as a foundation for that change.

Similarly, if sales finds that a qualified lead is not actually engaged, sales can update the lead status, passing responsibility for “remarketing” back to marketing. Lead qualifying criteria can be based not only on factual information (industry, company size) but also on the prospect’s online body language, including number

Q: Describe some of the issues you had as a marketing executive

of visits to the Web site, number of pages visited, length of the visit(s), and specific

which lead to the launch of Genius.

pages visited.

Thompson: Lead generation and lead management can be a frustrating

All members of the sales and marketing team have visibility into the play, its prog-

process for any company because there’s an attitude that sales has its job and marketing has its job. There’s always room for finger-pointing. At WebEx we had an enormous amount of leads but at any given moment we were overwhelmed by them. At the end of the day, sales must know who to call, how to call and when to call. Marketing has to help them do that.

ress, and its success. Instead of actually passing, the lead management team has a series of engagements with each other and with the prospect. If no one drops the ball the chance of success is greater.

Q: What you’re describing is a pretty radical reinvention of marketing isn’t it?

Thompson: It is different, but let me explain. In the Sales 2.0 model the sales effort must help buyers buy when they want to buy. It’s up to marketing to do most of the upfront selling. For the long-term, marketing does have to support the commitment to sales. Marketing must court and cultivate customers who want to buy when they want to buy. That’s where lead management comes in. That’s where these incredible Web 2.0 tools come in. Now if you’re suggesting that marketing changes radically, yes, I agree. Branding? Forget about it. Branding is relationship-building and the cultivation of buyer’s interests.

Q: How would you convince a skeptical marketing executive that this is the right structure?

Thompson: In this economic environment you need more leads and you need better leads. If you don’t have the ability to generate them, you’re out of business. If you don’t increase the reach and frequency of your lead management efforts, the lead flow dries up. If you don’t have enough leads for sales to go to Plan B, or Plan C, you’re in big trouble. I’d say in this economy, for every one of your leads that has layoffs, you need to have a new one to take its place if necessary. © 2009 DemandGen Report

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AVOIDING EARMARKS AND HIDDEN COSTS

Initiative #7: Avoiding Earmarks and Hidden Costs

Doing your homework before implementing a lead management system could make or break the ROI. Be sure to read the fine print. Finally, as with any stimulus package, those involved with executing the plan need

use data standards. Start with a collaboration between sales and marketing on

to make sure it rolls out efficiently. If a solution requires IT funding and support, it

the definition of a qualified lead. Revisit and revise this definition. In essence,

will ultimately cost more than budgeted. If the costs associated overrun budgets,

the rich understanding in sales and marketing of the business rules much be

now the ROI calculation is different and the finance people are skeptical. Lead

reduced accurately to fields of data that are consistent across all points of

management solutions should be as close to “plug and play” as possible.

capture.

Some of the leading edge thinking in this area comes from Dave Green, presi-

3. The Process Breakdown: Unless there is a well-defined, thoughtful, well-

dent of PipeAlign and the co-author of The B2B Refinery. Green has advanced

documented process around what to do with a lead and what the conse-

the “lead refinery” methodology that urges companies to turn raw lead data

quences are for non-compliance, the high quality data in your new lead system

into revenue opportunities on a systematic basis. Along with Green we’ve iden-

will yield reports that make investments in lead generation subject to the CFO

tified four things that make or break a lead management solution.

expense-cutting axe, especially in times like these. That process must be com-

1. The Cross-Functional Breakdown: If there’s no cross-functional executive sponsorship, there’s no champion for the leads that come from sales channels,

municated repeatedly to all channels and to marketing. The process should also evolve as the business changes and as user needs evolve.

marketing campaigns, events, and even post sales operations. Without cross-

4. The Complexity Implosion. The temptation is to design a rocket ship to

functional executive support, those “in the trenches” trying to implement a lead

the moon, right off the bat. Don’t. Go slow. Automate only the most critical

system will run into turf wars that will slow or even stifle adoption of the platform.

functions. Make sure those work. Then automate a few more items. This “go

2. The Data Standard Breakdown: Without good data, the best software system in the world will not provide the results you are looking for. Define and

slow” approach allows users to understand the software platform more deeply before requesting functionality that they may never use.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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CONCLUSION

Investing in the Future During one of the challenging periods of his presidency John F. Kennedy, offered the following quote:

“When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” A similar choice exists for BtoB organizations. While many buyers have retrenched and sales cycles are often extended, there are some silver linings. Just as The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 promises to revive the slumping economy by boosting spending on energy, health care and infrastructure, the Sales & Marketing Stimulus package can put your company in a position to grab market share from weakened competitors and emerge stronger when the recession fades. Unlike the complex macroeconomic trends, there is a fairly simple and clear solution for the BtoB sector. The success of any organization is most easily defined by revenue growth. The sales and marketing stimulus package addresses that equation head on. When marketing is aligned as a demand generation engine, and the sales team is tuned in to intelligence on prospect behavior, the process of turning potential into revenue is seamless. The Sales & Marketing Stimulus package requires investment in Sales 2.0 technology and practices, as well as a laser focus from top executives and a shift in corporate culture. Companies can ignore the revolution in lead management. But they do so at the risk of leaving new business on the table, leaving revenue unclaimed, and leaving their future in the hands of sales and marketing tactics that are doomed to fail in the new world of BtoB buying cycles.

© 2009 DemandGen Report

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About Genius.com Genius.com is the first SaaS solution that delivers the benefits of marketing automation to both Marketing and Sales, embodying the principles of Sales 2.0 that make it easier and more efficient for Sales and Marketing to close more deals “in the cloud”. Our powerful, intuitive and instantly available demand management software automates marketing workflows and provides real-time sales alerts on qualified lead activity so Sales can provide immediate, informed follow-up. Genius delivers a complete sales and marketing solution including: email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, website tracking, instant alerts, and closed-loop reporting capabilities to manage and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles, drive revenues and prove marketing ROI. Genius.com® Incorporated™ 1400 Fashion Island Boulevard Suite 500 San Mateo, CA 94404 1-888-6-Genius [email protected] www.genius.com TM

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