Funnelvision

A lawn care rep showed up at my front door yesterday.  I have a very visible “active need.”  Sadly, even this early in the season my lawn needs help.  I am not obsessed with my lawn, but it is important that it looks decent and my daughters can enjoy playing on it. And I am sure somewhere within the community bylaws, you can be tarred and feathered for an unsightly lawn.

Turn latent needs to active opportunities

I envied this rep.  He was able to clearly see and diagnose my problem, identify a solution, prepare a pitch, develop the right provocative questions, and anticipate my likely objections – all before ringing my doorbell.  Visible, active, needs sure are great.  But for most B2B sellers, it is not easy to find prospects with active needs, certainly not without a great deal of research and impeccable timing.  Even then, just because their annual report expresses the need for growth, or they had a bad/great quarter, introduced a new product, bought/merged with a new company, hired a new executive, etc. it does not mean they have an active need.  And if they do, there is no telling who in the company is aware and in a position to do something about it.

You could try cold calling, but cold calling an executive rarely results in a meeting.  In fact, the latest research revealed in the excellent new book, Selling to The C-Suite, by Nicholas A.C. Read and Dr. Stephen J Bistritz, shows that at best, only 20% of executives will usually grant a meeting from a cold call.  44% of executives will NEVER grant a meeting from a cold call.  Your best bet to obtain an executive meeting is to facilitate a recommendation from someone else in the company.  84% of executives will usually, or always grant a meeting this way.

For those of you thinking your email, followed by a phone call, is the way to go, while it is better than cold calling, it is only marginally better.  Only 24% of executives will usually or always grant a meeting this way.

Marketing can help here.  To quote the book, regarding smart Marketers, “They use the Internet to tease prospects through the Buyer’s Journey until they beat a path to the seller’s door.  Using this model, the first task of marketing is to educate buyers on the fact that they have a problem.”

It is important to realize that, like fixing an unsightly lawn, this is not a one-and-done process, which is why reps often give up and fail if they try to do this themselves.  My advice: work with Marketing on an approach to uncover meaningful pain, then  “poke ‘em in the eye” with it, turning latent needs into active ones.

Next Steps:

• Determine your ideal customer profile
• Make a list of the top 5 pains they are likely to have
• Connect with your marketing team to develop a highly-targeted, multi-touch nurturing campaign designed to reveal these pains until they become so obvious to your prospects that they can’t take it anymore
• Observe the activities of your target prospects and use lead scoring to help sort hot from cold leads

When people describe a great salesperson, they often add the adjective, “persistent” to the list.  But persistence is one of those wishy-washy terms that also walks a fine line.  Too much, and you’re a nag, a pest, an annoyance; too little and you risk a great opportunity and the ability to help someone who really needs it.

Image Courtesy of Blake Calloway

I am a big fan of Jill Konrath.   If you have not read her book, Selling to Big Companies and other materials, put it on your to-do list.  Full disclosure, Jill is also a friend of Eloqua’s.

Jill had a recent video blog post, “The Top 3 Mistakes Sellers Make When Cold Calling Big Companies,” where she talks about persistence.  She describes how you must not give up after a few tries.  In fact, she recommends planning on 10-12 contacts before you will connect with your contact.

Think about that.  How often do you contact each individual prospect before giving up?  Run a report in your CRM to find out (there’s no arguing with the data).  My guess – it’s a whole heck of a lot less than 10-12 times.  But Jill just gave you permission to reach out 10-12 times, so go for it.

Hold on, before you go crazy Kimosabe, you should probably consider what you’ll do/say for each touch-point, right?  And you should be prepared to add a whole slew of reminders on your calendar for each connection.  If you are prospecting into just 20 companies, with 5 unique individuals/company, and an average of 10 touches/contact, you’re talking 1,000 unique touch-points.  That’s a lot of reminders and a ton of material to create.  Hey, if it were easy, they wouldn’t need you.  However, I’m here to help you work smarter.

First, there is a department in your company called, “Marketing.”  I know you are convinced that all Marketing does is copy random names out of the phone book, call them “leads” and pass them to you to qualify.  You are wrong…they don’t use the phone book, they pawn off squishy balls at tradeshows and collect the “buyers’” names, believing that people who want squishy balls want to work with you.  I kid my friends in Marketing .

Seriously, Marketing is an invaluable resource.  Strong Marketing departments often have clearly-developed vertical messaging, detailed personas, and accompanying content/collateral.

Second, there is automation for this.  It is called “nurturing.”  In concert with Marketing, imagine:

1. Creating a list of contacts with whom you wish to connect
2. Developing 10 unique, high-value, touch-points for over the course of 3 months (~1x/week) – email, voicemail, direct mail, etc..
3. Automating these in a workflow that can adapt on the fly as your contact interacts with your communications
4. Receiving alerts as your contact interacts with your communications
5. Having tasks automatically added to your CRM, alerting you when to follow-up with calls
6. Scoring those who are the best prospects, giving you a sense of with whom to focus your time

You are not alone in this quest of finding good opportunities.  Be persistent and be sure you are spending your valuable time wisely.

Next Steps:

• Read everything you can get your hands on from Jill Konrath (you can start with this free eBook)
• Reach out to your Marketing team to see how they can help you with the 10 touches/contact
• Help them deal with the massive volumes of communications by pointing them to helpful companies like Eloqua (I’m a sales-person, I couldn’t resist the plug)

Huh?  But we sell…software, insurance, medical devices, etc…we don’t compete with Google!?!  That’s all well and good, but the fact is – you do.

Steve Woods, Eloqua’s CTO and author of the best seller, “Digital Body Language”, repeated this mantra in his Feb 24th blog post.  The post is all about the debate of whether to publicly reveal sensitive information (e.g., product pricing) without anything in return from a prospect (e.g., engaging in a sales-cycle).

Every bone in a sales professional’s solution-selling body tells him/her this is a terrible idea.  We are told that we need to sell the value first before the big price reveal…like the tote board on the Jerry Lewis telethon.  For some reason, the prospect has to earn the right to know the price.  Why?

As Salespeople, we are all competing with Google and the general self-service nature of the Internet.  Before search engines organized and made accessible the world’s information, a prospect had to reach out to a Sales rep for the equivalent of the 30-second spot.  That is no longer the case.  Furthermore, for references, rants, and recommendations, there’s social media at your buyers’ fingertips.

Steve is right.  Our prospects are going to search for and continue to demand more and more information, farther and farther into the buying-cycle, without having to talk to a Salesperson.  They are going to demand easy access and limited barriers.

In this brave new world, alignment with your Marketing team is so critical.  They will fulfill the buyer’s addiction for all this information, with or without you.  In return, you will need insight into the buyer’s digital body language.  Without this, you will be at a competitive disadvantage.  Imagine if your competition knows what the prospect downloaded, what they searched for that led them to the site, who else from their company came and how often, what emails have resonated, etc…and you don’t.

Google forces all of us to be better and more valuable to our prospects.  Just make sure you are empowered with tight alignment, strong processes, and effective technologies.

Next Steps:

• Think about what you would do if all of your company/product info were internet accessible to your prospects.
  • How would you sell differently?
• Consider how you would be able to outsell your competitors if you had access to your prospect’s digital body language and they didn’t.  What if the situation were reversed?

What if I told you I have a simple, fast, and cheap solution that will:

• Improve your marketing,
• Make great leads fall from the sky,
• Guarantee Sales quota achievement, and
• Drive your bottom-line, so that in just a few months you will be living the good life on the beaches of Maui?
  

  Ahh...the good life

Most of you wouldn’t believe me.  Some of you would.  Everyone would want to.

Believe it or not, I actually have competitors that sell this egregiously.  And since they do have some customers, someone’s buying it.

All too often I talk to prospects who were sold a bag of empty promises, either from their existing (soon-to-be “ex”) vendors, or a competitor of mine.  It is so easy to sell the vision for something because it is always depicted as utopian (see opening bullet list).  Words like: easy, fast, cheap come along for the ride.  It is a lazy way of selling and one that will eventually bite everyone (customer, sales-rep, and vendor) in the derriere.

The fact is, to achieve real sustainable results in business, there is no drag-and-drop, 3-step wizard, out-of-the-box, whatchamacallit with a big green “submit” button that can overcome an organization unwilling to change, or unaware of what/how to change.  It is the responsibility of sellers and marketers to paint the vision, but also to inform their customers on what it will take to get there and how to start planning for it.

To be fair, buyers are at fault as well.  The phrase “buyer-beware” exists for a reason.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is…period.  The siren song of easy, fast, cheap is awfully compelling, but particularly in B2B it is rarely the case.  There are just too many variables – existing processes, bad data, ill-defined metrics, internal politics and culture, tertiary stakeholders and vendors, budgets, market conditions, etc.

Last week I gave a presentation to one of my new customers in Virginia.  The audience was approximately 40 people, including their Executive Team.  The CMO of this organization has a vision for Marketing and needs everyone to get on board.  So why wouldn’t he give the presentation himself, or better yet, just start making changes?  The reason is that his vision will mean change for the organization and change is never simple, easy, or fast.  Sometimes, having an objective 3^rd-party paint this vision and describe the reality on how to get there, along with the changes that need to happen, is important to building buy-in.

Bottomline - Regardless of who delivers the message, it is important to recognize that change in all its forms (major and minor) is a journey.  As much as we sellers want to make it appear effortless – it is not.  And as much as we buyers want it to be effortless – it is not.  However, if Marketers, Sellers, and Buyers work responsibly together – from the start – the ultimate goals of success, achievement, and sipping mai tai’s on the beach, are far more attainable.

Next Steps:

• Buyers, don’t believe the hype.  Embrace the journey and be open to the realities of change.  It is the key to success.
• Sellers/Marketers, think about the vision you paint with your solution and explore what it takes typical customers to get there.
• Stop over-promising and under-delivering

What a great time of year.  For most of us, January is a Sales person’s equivalent of the first day of school…bright-eyed and bushy-tailed we begin anew.  “The holidays” are a distant memory and the world is our oyster.  And at the end of this quarter it will officially be Spring!

I realize Management is breathing down your neck for your 2010 territory plan and analysis of 2009.  Perhaps you are heading into your “annual kick-off” full of windowless conference rooms, Mexican/Asian/Italian buffet lunches, and more than a few stressed-out Sales Managers/Senior Execs.

I hope you had a great year despite the abysmal economy, but I suspect many of you did not.  Do not fret.  For the rest of the year, you will long for this moment so take advantage of it and use your time wisely.  There is nothing earth-shattering, but here are some thoughts:

1) Reflect on 2009.  Ask yourself where you succeeded and where you failed.  Dispense with the “gut feel” and use data (hopefully by now you’ve figured out how to use your CRM to run reports…if not, figure it out).  Breakdown your funnel and ask these questions at each step.  Record your observations.

2) Set specific, measurable, goals for 2010. Write them down and tell others about them. When you do, a funny thing happens – you achieve your goals!

3) Enlist Marketing’s help in your success in 2010:

• Clean your data and keep it clean – the cost of bad data is very real.  You will generate more and better leads and close more business if you have good data (check out this article at DestinationCRM).  Without reliable data, everything that follows will fail.
• Prospecting campaigns – read this post for ideas
• Nurturing campaigns – don’t rely on those “follow-up ticklers” for tire-kicking prospects because you know you will never follow-through.  Instead, work with Marketing to create some meaningful, personalized, automated nurturing campaigns.  Make sure the communications appear as though they are coming from you.
• Scoring leads – if you let Marketing get away with turning over another batch of unqualified leads at any point in 2010, it is your own fault.  It does not need to happen.  Work with them to explore how they can help (send this to them).  If Marketing or Sales Management does not listen (or care) find another job, or prepare to waste your time.
• Social Media – it is not hype.  Explore LinkedIn and Twitter for starters.  Your prospects (and their companies) are there.  At a minimum, it is a great way to learn about what is top-of-mind.  Try searching for topics that are relevant to your products/services.

4) Sharpen your Sales skills. Sign up for strong sales training (be sure to do your research first).  Search for and read a few Sales books and blogs that focus on your weaknesses.

Next Steps:
I invite you to post a comment on how you will ensure 2010 is a wild success.

Thanks Carabetta.

Guest Post from Keith Burrows

Alex Shootman, Eloqua’s Worldwide VP of Sales, has a favorite saying, “time kills all deals.”  In this day-and-age, nothing could resonate louder.  Are your deals moving faster/slower/same rate vs. one or two years ago?

Over the past four weeks, I have talked to about 25 SVP/VP’s of Sales about Sales Effectiveness.   The obvious focus is year-end numbers and the funnel for 2010.  There are three major concerns that have become evident  – growth and speed of pipeline development, lead quality from marketing, and sales generated pipeline.   Today, I want to focus on “velocity of the pipe” and what you and Marketing can do to drive speed.

To begin our discussion, let’s consider a few simple metrics:  

• Great Pipeline is 4x for a quarterly/yearly number
• Average sales cycle is six months
• Average deals size is 125K
• People hate to be sold versus educated

This group of sales leaders are seeing two types of deals resonate in the marketplace – Speed Deals (close less than 60 days) or Stagnant Deals (deals stuck in sales stage for 60+ days).  Speed Deals take care of themselves as the prospect aligns to a buying process that is determined quickly.  The Stagnant Deals are where the annual number is met or lost.  Moving deals through the sales stage is our ultimate goal, and the more methodically we can be - the better.  How to move Stagnant Deals:

1. (Obvious…but): Focus your time on “sales-ready” leads in the first place.  Educate your prospect on the steps they will need to take and people to involve – right from the start.
   
2. Monitor:  Are you measuring duration of each deal in their cycle – you can only attack what you know.
   
3. Tailor your conversation to your sales stage:  As sales professionals, we obviously will make the call, but voicemail is a terrible place to educate (great place to sell).  My suggestion is get with Marketing to craft/reposition content to address questions in each of your sales stages and deliver appropriately.  You can learn how Eloqua drives this philosophy - Sales Enablement.
4. Don’t go it alone - Provide the knowledge and competitive baselines.  The top 10% of sales teams are looked upon as trusted advisors, why?  They deliver third-party validation/thought leadership, they bring senior executives into their sales cycles, and they are experts at crafting the business case for their solution.
   
5. Lastly, Brutal Honesty - move it forward or qualify it out.  No faster way to get canned then blowing smoke, if you are having challenges bring them up early and often. 

Next Steps:

• Measure your pipeline (size, speed, stage velocity, etc.)
• Call a Field Marketer in your company TODAY and work to align your content to sales stage

Halloween is this week.  Turkeys everywhere are starting to get nervous.  Christmas decorations are coming out.  And before you know it, 2009 “top ten moments” lists are going to be all-the-rage.  There are just 2 months left in 2009.  Hopefully you’re still gainfully employed and your W2 is intact.  If you are in Sales, you are heads-down working Q4 business, but wake-up!  Q1 2010 is fast approaching and you have two choices:

• Ignore reality – Let your future-self worry about leads for 2010.  It’s what you’ve always done and you’re sure your future-self will be forgiving.  And who cares about what your boss might think.  Right?
• Embrace reality – Take action now.  Focus on Q1 demand generation for pipeline building and know that your future-self will be forever in your debt (s/he owes you anyway).

Take the “red pill” and embrace reality.  Know that you are not alone.  Work closely with Marketing to open the 2010 lead faucet.  Here are three ideas to get you started.  Pick one and I think you will be pleasantly surprise (heck, do all three and start 2010 off with a bang). 

1. Wake-up Campaign – Work with Marketing to create a solid “wake-up” campaign.  Target all of your quiet, qualified-out, non-responsive, 2009 leads/opportunities.  Develop focused messaging and promotions designed to illicit a response.  Track targeted prospects’ behavior and use lead scoring as a scalable way to prioritize where to spend your time.
   • Read about how Voxify did this with Eloqua, driving 400 companies to re-engage with Sales
   • Check out this Webinar for putting lead scoring into practice
      
2. Frequent Visiting Companies – Find out which companies in your territory are frequent visitors to your Website(s).  Actions speak louder than words.  People do not constantly visit your Website without a good reason.  Give them a call and find out what’s on their mind.
   • Read about what Plum Benefits did using prospect behavior
3. Hold an Event – If you offer free food and an interesting topic, people will always come.  However, to get the right people, work with your Marketing team.  Identify and segment the database to find the best target audience.  Don’t just rely on name/rank/serial-number, engage those who are most responsive to high-value marketing communications and Web content. 

 Next Steps:

• Take the red pill
• Chose at least one of the 3 demand-generation ideas and begin to map it out
• Pick up the phone and call Marketing (look up Marketing Manager, Marketing Operations, Event Coordinator, etc. in your corporate phone list…trust me, they’re in there)
• Execute
• Eat more vegetables (always a good idea)

There’s a better way…

COLD CALL.  The words send shivers up Sales reps’ spines and the spines of every buyer. I have wasted more time in my professional career making more cold calls than I care to discuss.  Cold calling is a great equalizer.  Whether it’s you or your CEO making cold calls, the person on the other end could care less and will despise you both for interrupting their day.  [For a laugh, wouldn't you love to see your CEO squirm while making those same 80 cold-calls he demands of you?]

Cold calling is not rocket science; it’s the complete opposite, falling into the category of working harder not smarter.  There are much better and more effective ways to build a good pipeline. 

Yet, there are still too many Sales VPs, Directors, C-level execs, and peddlers of out-dated sales books, who insist upon more cold calls.  They think it is the only/best way to build the pipe,  or perhaps they were not loved as children.  [Here's a test, ask them what they do when they get a cold call.  I doubt it's pretty]

In this day-and-age, cold-calling does not make sense.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about the Jill Konrath, or Jeffrey Gitomer-style intelligent prospecting.  I’m talking about pure, unadulterated, calling down a list, picking up the phone, and saying:

“Hi, I’m A. Schmuck from the Company You Don’t Care About and I’m calling to setup a time to meet and talk about how we can help you waste your time figuring out if I can sell you something to reach my quota and get my commission check.”

This is why the whole Do-Not-Call-List for consumers was established.  Why do some execs feel it is appropriate in a B2B context?  Imagine if Best Buy started cold calling consumers in the phone book to try and sell more plasma tvs.  It sounds ridiculous, but it’s not far from what countless reps do every day in the non-consumer direct-selling world.

There is so much technology available for your prospects to learn about your company on their own time.   Likewise, there are far better ways for you to communicate with prospects in a less frustrating and obnoxious way.  It is no longer acceptable or wise to randomly call a business professional.  Like you, they are far too busy to waste time dealing with interruptions.  This is one major reason why aligning with Marketing is more important to Sales than ever.

So what is a Sales rep with a cold-call blockhead for a boss to do?  Try this:

1. Understand who Marketing is talking to.  Ask them how their list is developed, maintained, and refreshed. On average 20% of your prospect database will churn every year so data management and replenishing with quality names is key.
    
2. Work with Marketing to develop a focused campaign for your territory.  Think about a prospect re-engagement campaign, trip-campaign, or special offer campaign.  Make sure the campaign involves multiple touches over a specific period with strong calls-to-action. Ask marketing to use lead scoring to help you systematically and consistently sort tire-kickers from sales-ready leads, so you don’t waste your time.
    
3. Uncover and engage with prospects through social media.  You would be surprised how many people are on Twitter and LinkedIn discussing problems you can solve and inquiring about what you sell.  Reach out to them and see how you may be able to help.
    
4. Ask to be alerted when prospects from your territory visit any of your Web properties.  Also, get reports on the top companies that most frequently visit your Website each day…these are likely companies that you should investigate and engage because you are on their minds.
    
5. Learn about what Marketing is doing to drive demand. Forget about the brochures and pretty pictures. Ask how they are optimizing the company to be found online.  Think: Ad-words, Search Engine Optimization, affiliate marketing, banner ads, etc.  Ask about how trade-show leads are processed and followed-up.  This can be a significant vein of opportunity.  

+ Attend relevant events and even try to line-up appropriate speaking engagements.  Just make sure you have a way to remain in front of your prospects to nurture them…out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Picture this: you walk into a store in a mall - just browsing at first.   You spot an interesting promotion on a sign that you’d like to learn more about.   You read the info, but have some questions.  Unfortunately, no one is available to answer your questions, so you wait a bit.

Don't wait to respond to your leads

Question: How long will you wait before leaving?
Answer: Not very long. 

Imagine if an hour or two later, while eating questionable chinese food with friends at the food-court, a clerk from that same store ran over to you to ask what questions he could answer.  How would you feel?  Would you be dismayed, put-off, surprised, confused…concerned for your safety?  I suspect you would have no clue what he was doing there, or talking about, and might call for security.

Good retailers try to ensure you have a limited wait to have questions answered.  When you are in a store, actively browsing, it is the point in the sales-cycle where you are most receptive to promotions, ideas, and conversation.  This is obvious…right? 

Question: Why in a B2B sales-cycle, do we think the same rules do not apply?
Answer: Good marketers and sales people know they apply, but they just don’t have a good process around lead response management

Consider This:  The odds of making contact with and qualifying a Web lead decrease dramatically the longer you wait to place that follow-up call, according to this study by David Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com and MIT Professor, James Oldroyd.  Their study found:
- Calls placed within five minutes of receiving a Web lead have the highest likelihood of making contact.
- The odds of contacting a lead drop 10 times within 30 minutes of that prospect’s online registration.
- The odds of contacting a lead drop another 10 times if you wait one hour.
- Waiting more than 20 hours to call a Web lead actually hurts your chances of qualifying that lead.

Essentially, leads do not simply expire, they self-distruct.  Time is of the essence.  Think of every lead as a potential buyer coming into your store who you don’t want waiting around.  If your human resources are limited, preventing speedy follow-up on leads in the ideal timeframe, you must implement an automated follow-up process and Lead Nurturing to stay top-of-mind.  In fact, the follow-up contact methods of email, fax, and chat all correlate with an increase in lead qualification rates, according to the Elkington/Oldroyd study.

Next Steps:

• Assess your average time to respond to a Web Lead
  • If it is less than 5-10 mins, determine where the latency lies and fix it
  • If it is more than 30 minutes, consider a major overhaul of your process, people, and technology
• CLICK HERE and review the Lead Management study

The concept of “lead nurturing” is not new.  Every company must remain in front of its prospects/customers with relevant information on a regular basis.  The B2C world get’s it, but B2B marketers have been slow to catch on.  In my experience, most B2B companies see it as Sales’ job.  I have yet to see the comp plan that explicitly rewards for nurturing leads.  The problem is it’s hard, it’s time-consuming, and the benefits for the rep are deferred.  Sales is most often focused on the here-and-now; for better or for worse.  Let’s take a look at a common scenario:

1. You (the rep) – make a cold call
2. Prospect - says, “Send some info and call me in six months”
3. You – say, “Uh, ok, will do” and feel disheartened
4. You – send the info and like a good Doo Bee (see Romper Room for details) put in a CRM task to call back in exactly 6 months
5. You – after a few weeks you think to yourself you should send over something to that prospect…but what?  So you never do.
6. Prospect - never read the info you sent and have forgotten about you altogether
7. You – (fast forward 6-months) – you call your prosect
8. Prospect - says, “Oh, we already moved forward with competitor XYZ, but feel free to call me in six months to see how we’re doing.”
9. You - sit with lint in your pockets wondering, “Why didn’t they just call me?  And, “What’s the deal with 6 months?”

It’s not your fault.  Ok, it is to a certain extent, but building a pipeline of sales-ready leads is not easy.  This is especially true if you are not aligned with your Marketing team.  Even if you are, if Marketing fails to track, score, and route leads quickly to Sales, the burden of pipeline development rests squarely on your shoulders my friend.  So who has time to find sales-ready leads that put bread on the table today, while nurturing/educating tomorrow’s dough?

This problem goes away when you have the ability to “tag” or “add” prospects to nurturing campaigns developed and automated by Marketing (in concert with Sales of course).  Imagine staying in front of your prospects when you are on vacation, in a Sales call, stuck in traffic, on a plane trapped in the middle seat, etc.

How would your sales-cycle change if you knew you could remain in front of your prospects, with topical/relevant information, personalized down to each individual, sent on a regular basis, without having to do anything other than tagging them for nurturing?  How about:

• Spend more time with higher quality prospects
• Nurtured prospects are far more likely to call you first when they’re ready, not your competition
• Stop making excuses to management and lose the guilt of knowing you should be staying in front, but just can’t find the time. 
• Provide valuable information to your prospects as a trusted advisor, which is always a good thing for the short and long-term.

Next Steps:

• If your company does not have Marketing Automation  or Lead Nurturing software, tell them to look into it
• If your company does have one, but Sales is unable to add prospects to nurturing campaigns, tell them to enable that capability.  If the system can’t do it, call me
• If the company is unwilling to invest in a Marketing Automation system, quit and find a job with a company that is willing (or already has one), or keep banging your head against a brick wall