Leave the Hang-Ups To Us

7 Reasons Not to Manage the Complex Sale in Leads

Has one of these scenarios ever happened to you?

• A contact at one of your existing clients visits your website and downloads a document which creates a new Lead in your system. You are mortified when your marketing department sends your client an introductory email and follow-up call as if they were a new prospect.
• Two of your sales representatives independently follow up on new Leads. Because the associated company names were entered differently in your system, your representatives are unknowingly calling into the same prospect.

It's a sales manager's nightmare, but it is avoidable if you know how to tame your CRM. If you have experienced the challenges of tracking the complex sales cycle in Salesforce.com and you've been frustrated, you are not alone. The beauty of this CRM is that you can make changes to optimize the tool for your company's unique sales cycle.

Download our whitepaper: Entropy in Salesforce.com: 7 Reasons Not to Manage the Complex Sale in Leads to find out more about how to avoid these problems, keep your CRM organized, and your sales cycle running smooth. Then join in the discussion or ask questions right here on our blog.

The Real Cost of a Lead

We received a lot of feedback when this article appeared in our newsletter, Initial Thoughts, last week. In case you missed it, we've republished it here. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

Do you know what your real lead cost is?  This deceptively simple question can challenge your preconceived notions about how to evaluate marketing programs and sales partners.  It is common to weigh the cost of a campaign activity or a vendor's service in isolation, but the only way to accurately calculate a true meeting cost is to capture and compare all of your expenditures, from technical tools to the labor it takes to represent what you sell. 

Wise marketing and sales organizations want to have the lowest lead cost possible, so the price of outbound calling is a natural concern. When we are discussing our services with prospective clients, we are often asked what our meetings cost.  This number varies among clients and is determined by two things: the nature of what our client sells and the title of the decision maker.  Historically, our clients' average meeting cost has ranged from $800-$3,000.  Given the complexity of our prospect's sale, we can usually provide a ballpark meeting cost.  We have found that no matter what number we share with a prospect, once this question is on the table, the conversation takes an interesting turn.  Some potential clients find the estimated appointment price very reasonable while others balk. 

When we speak at Initial Call about "average meeting costs," keep in mind that almost all of our work is cold-calling.  So, the price of our meeting will reflect what it takes to qualify a target from scratch without marketing support--essentially the time it takes to navigate to the right buyer and uncover whether the target company is a fit.  A prospective client who is taken aback at the price of our sales appointment may be thinking that other means of finding opportunities are less expensive.  While that could be true, assessing the real cost of a lead requires one to consider ALL expenses included in generating and qualifying leads.
 
In the complex sale, we believe that most companies will find that their lead cost simply averages "$x,xx" regardless of the various activities employed to bring in prospects.  This means that if your cold-calling meeting price is $1,800, your lead cost for qualified inbound leads will be comparable if you consider the marketing activities that you employ on a regular basis: website optimization, email campaigns, direct mailings, trade show exhibits, etc.  Even if you do not have inside sales help today but your outside reps are cold calling, that lack of support is costing you something.  Probably something big. 

Obviously, certain activities may make more sense for your business than others.  For instance, you might never use direct mail or attend trade shows.  What we are saying is that it is unlikely that you will find a magic bullet--just one vehicle for generating business that costs exponentially less than another.  A company with a specialized software solution whose outbound-calling meeting cost is $2,000 will probably have to spend in total the same amount of money on other activities to generate one lead.  Their lead cost averages $2,000-no matter what methods they employ.

Naturally, everyone wishes that the cost of winning new business were lower, but truly driving down the net cost of a sale is very difficult.  Initial Call's theory is that most company offerings will ultimately settle at a relatively stable cost-per-lead.  Real reductions in the actual dollar figure, if any, are likely to be incremental.  What can vary within the lead cost is the outlay on any one particular activity.  For example, if we are able to call warm leads, the price of our meeting will be lower, but creating warm leads means investing in marketing somewhere else.  Once your business is established, rarely is the option to simply spend considerably less overall.  The question is, in reality, where to spend the money. 

Outbound calling isn't right for every sales organization, but it makes sense when you sell to a narrow audience and want to pursue target accounts.  As you evaluate the price of contracted inside sales support, be sure to weigh the real comprehensive costs of all other options for bringing prospects into your pipeline.

What Makes Someone Good at Lead Generation?

by Catherine Brown, President

This last week I participated in our Initial Call Sales Manger training via conference call.   Although we were discussing specific strategies for getting into large companies, the conversation turned to individuals sharing with one another about recent phone calls they had while prospecting for clients.  Listening to the examples that our Sales Managers gave of recent conversations they had while prospecting prompted me to ask myself the question, “What makes someone good at this job?”  Put another way, “Why are some sales people better than others at generating good meetings?” 

There are, of course, many answers to these questions.  There are a whole host of qualities necessary to be good at generating sales leads.  Tenacity, courage, limited fear of rejection, professionalism, the ability to communicate succinctly what you are selling…These are all important qualities.  However, I have concluded that an often overlooked quality that is important for success in producing high quality sales leads is personal warmth. 

A dictionary defines “warmth” as  friendliness, kindness or affection. 

I am not sure you can really teach someone to be warm.  I think true warmth is inherent in some people.  Sure, you can make small suggestions here and there so people sound nice,  but it is difficult to maintain a personality on the phone that’s not really true to who you are.  If you are warm, your prospects sense that you are open and listening. Warmth communicates sincerity.  No one likes to feel “sold” on the phone, and a person who communicates warmly usually finds out what they want to know from the prospect on the phone just by being nice.  The warm inside sales rep can turn a cold call into a discussion while they are busy being themselves. 

Jim Logan and Ford Harding both have written articles talking about other implications of how good inside sales people do their jobs through listening and good manners.  I appreciate being reminded that character qualities matter in those whom we hire, and both of these articles speak to this topic in different ways.  I hope you are encouraged to keep these qualities in mind while doing your job of selling,  managing, and prospecting for business.   

How to Leave a Voice Mail Message

by April Karli, Corporate Communications

Have you ever thought about leveraging your voicemail messages for maximum sales effectiveness? Recently Ford Harding posted an article called How to Leave a Voicemail Message suggesting ways to leave informative and concise voice mail messages that are likely to be returned. Tips include: state your name first thing in the message, indicate the urgency of your call, provide the core of your message concisely, and consider leaving a personal message at the end. One tip that may surprise you is to leave your phone number at the beginning of the message, immediately after your give your name, rather than the end. Here is a link to the Harding & Company blog where you can find this and many other helpful articles.

Focusing Your Profiling Efforts

by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

In an earlier post, we introduced our underlying premise that the terms “profiled” and “qualified” are not synonymous when it comes to target accounts in the complex sale. The purpose of this post is to further outline the steps involved in profiling accounts: objective targeting, high-level sorting and contact verification.

We are of the opinion that it’s better to invest getting your CRM in workable order so you can market directly to real names at the right companies than it is to spend more in order to market broadly to prospects and people you merely hope are right.

We define profiling as high-level analysis based on a prospective customer’s revenue, geography, industry, offering and (sometimes) the name and title of a person. When you buy a list from a broker (InfoUSA, ZoomInfo, Hoover's, D&B, etc…) and you narrow your results on the basic information listed above, you are beginning the profiling process by setting some objective parameters around who is a fit for you.

The next level of profiling includes a review of your target accounts’ offering(s). We have found that you can “bucket sort” and effectively eliminate about 25% of your target accounts just by reviewing their website. This step seems basic, but we have seen hours of calling wasted on accounts that, upon closer examination, were obviously never a fit. Someone should objectively ask, “From everything we can tell at this point, does this company meet our basic customer criteria?”

The final element of profiling is assembling or verifying contact names and information. Our experience is that purchased lists are typically at least 30% invalid. So, while a list may not cost much (between .10 and $1 per name), the data may not be very usable unless you invest in it further. Our recent work confirms that your cost for labor to verify a purchased name and title then secure a valid email address will run between $10-14 per contact.  Factoring in the cost of list purchase and other related expenses, the final cost per name may run up to $25.

Keep in mind these key steps in focusing your efforts occur before what we call “qualifying” begins. More in the next post.

The Power of a Well-Maintained Customer Database

by Barb Cullen, VP Client Delivery

Maintaining an accurate and current database of target customers and prospects is essential for sales and marketing success. Too often I see the state of a company’s database or CRM and understand why they may be having difficulty filling their sales pipeline. Sometimes the database is focused on capturing individual respondents to a marketing campaign rather than capturing corporate attributes about whether the target company fits the “ideal customer profile.” Other times the database is outdated with old contact names, missing email addresses, and incomplete information about the company.

The first scenario is problematic in that it profiles specific individuals and progress with one specific individual. This focus is too narrow. Individuals come and go at a company. Individuals respond to marketing campaigns for different reasons: the Amazon gift cards, the free book, tickets to a sports event, or the raffle prize, or maybe even, if you're lucky, because they have interest in the end product. Salesforce.com CRM users can work out of the “Leads” section of the database or the "Accounts" section. Leads focuses too much on individuals and not enough on Strategic Account Development. However, Accounts allows Salesforce.com users the ability to continually collect more defining information about an account as a strategic target. Creating lists through Accounts rather than Leads builds up a list of individuals who work at the target account and groups them together in the “Contact” section of the database, visible under the Account name.

The second scenario I often see is a database with outdated and/or incomplete information. This situation is problematic even if a company wants to target its existing customers. Whether being faced with competitive threats in the marketplace or employee turnover at your customer sites, you want to have a means to communicate your services and to be able to do some “maintenance marketing” to keep your message in front of your customer. Maintaining accurate contact information is essential. When your internal champion leaves a company, and your contract is nearing the end date, you don’t want to be shown to the door. To extend your customer relationship, it is important to be able to communicate to the right people – having their correct names and email addresses can help you to do that.

Lastly, it is important to be conducting some kind of marketing campaigns or activities in addition to the work that your sales people are doing. Tracking your target prospect companies and marketing to them via email or regular mail is extremely important.  Taking a multi-pronged marketing approach will help your sales team to generate more sales leads and lend more support for their direct sales efforts. Mike Gospe’s book, Marketing Campaign Development: What Marketing Executives Need to Know About Architecting Global Integrated Marketing Campaigns is a practical “how-to” resource for planning marketing campaigns. Look for a review on our blog soon.

There's Nothing Wrong With Me

by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

Communicating well is foundational to success. In sales, you can quickly lose your credibility with the use of a grammatically incorrect word or phrase. Even so, using proper grammar isn’t typically a conscious pursuit. On one particular point, however, people are sipping with their pinky fingers raised, verbally speaking. They are striving for correctness but getting it wrong. 

Not one lesson in all of history seems to have stuck in the minds of American children more than the English teacher’s maxim—misunderstood and boiled down to this principle: that using “I” is proper in every sentence, no matter what. I am hearing “I” misused on a regular basis—on the news, in conversation, and on TV shows. The English teacher in me would like to set things straight. 

First of all, rest assured—you aren’t as wrong as you fear. Only my children and the veritable Country Bumpkin are in danger of regularly using “me” incorrectly as a subject: “Me and Billy are going fishing.”  One easy way to check what is correct is to say what you naturally would say if you were referring to yourself alone: “I am going fishing.” This is it folks—what your English teacher was preaching. Don’t say, “Me want ice cream.” 

The confusion comes when the subject is at the end of the sentence, usually in a comparison. You can test what is right by finishing the sentence and repeating the verb. 

Wrong: “Stacy has brown hair like me.”
Correct: “Stacy has brown hair like I have.” 

Wrong: “Their family celebrates different holidays than us.”
Correct: “Their family celebrates different holidays than we [celebrate].” 

Wrong: “I am taller than him.”
Correct: “I am taller than he [is tall].”

What your teacher wasn’t saying is that “I” is always right. As an object, “me” is correct. Even with another person’s name included, “me” is proper. 

Examples, all correct:

“If you have any questions about tonight’s program, see me afterward.”
“If you have any questions about tonight’s program, see Gary afterward.”
“If you have any questions about tonight’s program, see Gary or me afterward.” 

The rule is that when you are the subject of the sentence, “I” is the way to go. “He,” “She” and I are pronoun subjects—the being or doer unnamed. 

Example:

“I was born on September 1^st.”
“He was born on September 1^st.”
“He and I were both born on September 1^st.” 

When you are the object, “me” really is okay! “Him,” “her” and “me” are simply pronouns used as objects—something is done to, for, or with, etc. this person. 

Example:

“Mom hugged me.”
“Mom hugged Ashley.”
“Mom hugged Ashley and me.”
“Mom hugged her and me.” 

I hope this is helpful. If you have any comments about this blog entry, email I and me will respond.

Traditional communication still matters

by Mark Horne, Guest Writer

Robert Bly is one of the most well known copywriters in the business.  Like many veterans of “traditional media,” he now has a blog.  Somewhat ironically, he occasionally uses it to strike a blow for the reputation of traditional media over against those who deride it in favor of social media on the Internet.  He writes against the opinion of new media advocates who claim intrusion advertising is dead.

If social media and other forms of electronic two-way communication are making traditional “dead tree” media obsolete, why hasn’t direct mail — perhaps the most intrusive of the paper-based marketing media — disappeared?

According to the Winterberry Group, total U.S. direct mail spending in 2007 was $58.4 billion, an increase of 18.2% over the $49.4 billion spent in 2004.

What gives? If “no one reads direct mail anymore” as one blogging consultant told me recently, why are advertisers spending more than $58 billion a year on it?

 

Obviously, we like new media or we wouldn’t be writing this post in it.  But Bly’s point is irrefutable.  Even with the popularity of “social media” people still read paper.  And they also still use their phones.  There is no evidence that will change anytime soon.

Aberdeen's Timely B2B Sales Research

by Catherine Brown, President

Inside Initial Call, we sometimes joke that the most difficult part of our job is telling the future.  Many variables affect success in a sales campaign, so there are no simple answers when estimating project outcomes.  Only after we learn more about the variables can we apply our knowledge and experience to a situation and predict results. 

So, while I don’t have a crystal ball, I wonder if Peter Ostrow of The Aberdeen Group does?  The Group’s recent research on B2B Lead Generation is particularly timely.  Did Peter know when he began his research work last year that the economy would slow and that companies would be watching their dollars more closely than in prior years? 

Being able to look ahead and plan for a range of market scenarios is the key to growth in any economy.  More than in past years (and we’ve been in business since 2002), we see executives wrestling with the question about which is better: to build a department (hire employees and train them) or buy talent (outsource to a lead generation firm).

I had a recent conversation with a Silicon Valley small business executive who professed to have found an excellent full time inside sales person to work for just $50,000 per year. Knowing the going rate for experienced sales professionals in the Bay Area, I question whether this new hire will deliver what he hopes.  This executive will spend both money and time to find out whether or not he made a good deal.

While controlling costs will always be a top business priority, we contend that a bargain resource may cost more in the end.   Retaining part time but superior talent is ultimately a better value than hiring a full time junior employee.  When you need inside sales support, look for resources who define a lead like we do at Initial Call (Download Aberdeens_March_2008_Report.pdf ).  Seek out someone who is able to qualify opportunities and who really understands what it means to build a sales pipeline.  Then you won’t need a seer to know you are getting your money’s worth AND the results you need.

No Bluffing

by Amy Keuper, VP Sales

Experienced “players” in the business world may think that the key to making a good deal is to hold your cards close—to avoid slipping up with a “tell” about your true position. Many prospects and sales people assume that maintaining a poker face will give them an edge. This is true in Texas Hold ‘Em and in any negotiation in which one party seeks to take advantage of another. However, since truly successful arrangements must be win-win, I propose that this secretive approach to services contract talks is counter-productive.  Transparency in the sales cycle benefits both parties.

First, openness preserves everyone’s most precious resource--time. If a client’s budget and a provider’s offering are not in alignment, a frank pricing discussion spares both people an uncomfortable dance. With a cordial parting of ways and a fair sense of reality, the parties can freely move forward to engage others, to refer one another if appropriate or perhaps to circle back at a future date. 

Secondly, a spirit of transparency enables the prospect and provider to explore together the true needs. When a potential client requests for a quote for X service, the salesperson should evaluate whether X service is right or whether Y offering would be better—or if both are necessary for success. This is consultative selling, which ultimately makes the client more successful since he will contract for a viable solution, not just what he asked for or thought he needed. 

Lastly, trusting each other enough to lay all cards on the table sets the right foundation for a long term relationship. If we at Initial Call have to create a proposal blindly, our first estimate of the work may be too broad or too narrow—which can work against us since we always want prospects to weigh us apples to apples if considering hiring other firms. Ironically, when prospects go “face up” about the competitive landscape as well as their budget, they actually help themselves since we are then able to bid the best value possible.

Shuffle up and deal!