Funnelvision

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?

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)

Guest Post from Keith Burrows

Working with marketers every week, I run into this utterance at least once:

“We are so excited, we are re-launching our website, with great new content, our new brand…yada yada yada”

I then ask the same question every time: So how are you going to measure if this new launch will drive sales/revenue?

5% of Marketers have a great answer – the other 95% – well you can guess – have no clue.

I am begging the marketers of the nation.  When you look to “redo” that website, ask yourself how will this drive sales/ revenue for your organization?  Here are five simple things to think about:

1. How will I measure traffic on the global site? The easy one
2. How will I identify exactly who is on my website and what content they are deeming valuable?
3. What content viewership leads to a closed sale?
4. Can I aggregate the data and build behavioral profiles to start outreach programs that prospect/customer will view as timely and relevant?
5. Can I pull a list of all companies that visited my website? You will be shocked how often your competition stalks you – but more importantly you will see big companies looking at you and deciding if they will reach out.

Forrester recently reported that 84% of all B2B buyers are researching who they buy from via website, social media, search etc – prior to every engagement.  There is a dramatic shift going on in how people buy – your website and more importantly how you measure, analyze, and aggregate is your new critical mission.

The last step is sales effectiveness.  Remember, the buying pattern is changing.  The information you can collect off your website will not only make you a better marketer, but will make you the true hero of the organization.  Be sure, however, to pass the intelligence to the sales group – that is where you can drive revenue.

Next Steps:

• Do I need to redo my website? (Kidding)
• How can I find out more about my visitors to my site?
• How can I use this knowledge with my sales and marketing teams?
• Ask my Sales Team what information would be beneficial to them – visitors, scored leads, etc.?