Don’t let your dark side take control of your marketing strategy.

Don’t let your dark side take control of your marketing strategy.

As I write this blog, the global stock market is in a massive downward correction. Here comes more pressure to perform in the short term.

Every marketer has a dark side that emerges under pressure. From the “shotgun approach” of sending out more messages through every possible channel to the loosening of lead criteria with the hope that sales will continue to see lead volume – don’t let your dark side take over.

Instead, get focused. Immediately collaborate with your head of sales. Yep, from my keyboard to your eyes – pick up the phone and call your internal customer. Together, review your current strategy and discuss potential changes to your strategy, messaging and tactics. It’s not time to get fancy. Sure, you can offer up new tactics or recommend doubling down on one or two existing tactics that work. That’s expected. Instead, execute on what is already in your pipeline and to take a “rifle shot” approach by focusing on a few key ways to help close what is in the pipeline and to add quality opportunities to the top of your pipeline. Agree on the changes, the timeline and any new KPI that you need to add or adjust in order to measure your success.

You have to stay in alignment with what is happening in the field and what your sales team needs in order to deliver revenue. Do not attempt to do this in your own vacuum. If you do, your dark side will get the best of you.

Leadership – the hidden danger to successful sales and marketing alignment

Several weeks ago I co-facilitated a sales and marketing SLA (service level agreement) workshop with a multi-billion dollar technology company. It was part of an integrated solution Richardson is delivering to help the organization transform how they sell to their clients.

I can’t discuss the details of the engagement, but what I would like to comment on is how “people” make all the difference in aligning sales and marketing. What made this particular client unique is how their revenue team – sales and marketing – interacted with one another. In the workshop were global marketing and sales leaders who had responsibility for key business units and geographies. From the moment the event kicked off, the incredible high level of respect for each other and desire to collaborate was evident from one participant to the other. The egos were checked at the door. Everyone in the room was ready to roll up their sleeves and accomplish something many large organizations can only dream of – a working sales and marketing SLA.

In my experience, having a team this ready and open to collaboration is not normal – but best practice. Kudos goes to the executive leadership team for setting the expectations and to the senior project manager for ensuring that all participants fully understood their role, responsibility and accountability during the workshop. What a great group of people and some of the best I’ve had the pleasure to work with.

Much is written about how to align sales and marketing. Let me sum a lot of it up for you – just go out and buy a few marketing automation tools, build in lead scoring models, create some playbooks, hook it all together, make it accessible and bang, you got yourself alignment. Not so fast.

Very little is written about the “people” part of alignment. Yep, your ability to work with others. To be collaborative, respectful, honest and to be truly open to helping one another. Easy said, but very, very hard to do. Why’s that? Because you are dealing with attitudes, egos, hidden (or maybe not hidden) agendas, peer relationships and the “protecting ones territory” situations. If I can point to anything that tops the list of alignment killers, it’s the people.

How does a company overcome this issue? It starts with leadership. A sound relationship between your CSO and your CMO. If they can’t get along, then you are doomed to failure from the get go. How do you fix that? The CEO gets them help to correct their relationship issues. If that does not work, then the CEO needs to look to replace that executive who is unwilling to get along.

With solid leadership behavior, executives drive that behavior to their teams and they hold everyone accountable for doing the same. Having people ready and willing to work together, along with marketing automation tools, best practice lead management, process and training, you will have a recipe for successful sales and marketing alignment.

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Learn more about Richardson's comprehensive sales training solutions at http://www.richardson.com

Sales Enablement – coming to a marketing team near you.

Last week, I attended the Sirius Decision’s 2011 Forum. It was my third attendance to this stellar program. And I mean stellar. Sirius runs one of the most content rich and professional forums of its kind. Not to mention the five-star venue and the food. Oh the food!! The desert table at the cocktail reception was the best I've ever seen – or better yet – tasted. From content to the senior-level attendees to the speakers to the vendors, that Sirius crew really knows how to put on a class “A” event and if you are a sales or marketing professional, it should be a must attend in 2012. Did I mention the event was also sold out! Yep, standing room only.

I would have to say that the leading topic at the event was sales enablement. Not lead generation, lead management or even the much pontificated topic of social media. Just flat out how can sales and marketing teams work together to drive the generation of revenue. From the number of sessions covering the topic to how packed the tables where at the “birds-of-a-feather” breakfast, sales enablement was the topic of choice.

Even the vendors were hot on the message. You could have blind folded me and asked me to toss a dart through the exhibit area and I would have hit signage that had the words sales enablement on it.

Why sales enablement? Why now? Is it just another fancy term for sales and marketing integration? Not to many of the attendees that I spoke to. It’s the next step in evolution. Becoming laser focused on revenue generation – having both sales and marketing looking through the same lens in order to view a common goal.

Many attendees at the event were looking to tighten the bond of marketing and sales. Be it through strategy, tactics, process or technology, there was plenty to learn. I would like to comment that sales enablement is more than strategy, tactics, process or technology. Those critical components are the “what” of sales enablement.

Let’s not forget the “How”. The act of teaching sales people how to engineer a better sales dialogue. To teach marketing professionals how the sales process works – down to the nuts and bolts. Even teach them how to align content to the sales process based on what sales people need by stage. By combining the “what and the how”, sales and marketing teams will truly be closer to the nirvana of becoming one seamless revenue generation engine. Isn't that what this is all about?

Five must haves for any sales and marketing SLA

Do you have a service level agreement (SLA) between your sales and marketing groups? If your answer is no – read this blog. If your answer is yes – read this blog.

This blog is not about why you need an SLA, just Google that (or read my other blogs) and you'll find a ton of reasons why. It's about how you actually create one.

Try doing a Google search to find samples of a sales and marketing SLA. Wait, don’t do that. Let me save you some time - you'll find very little if any usable information. If you find any samples at all, they are most likely focused on only lead response or key KPI deliverables between both teams.

There are five must haves that need to be in any sales and marketing SLA:

· Executive Summary

· Communication Plan

· Terminology

· Marketing Accountabilities

· Sales Accountabilities

Let’s quickly review each one.

Executive summary – answer the following question: Why are we doing this? And answer it in a way that it will be clear to your entire executive team.

Communication plan – should include agreements around regular meetings, topics that will be covered in those meetings, key KPIs that will be reviewed and conflict resolution steps to name a few.

Terminology – agree on all key terms – specifically: marketing responder, sales accepted lead, sales qualified lead, qualified lead criteria, BANT and any other terms that need to be clear between each group.

Marketing accountabilities – this is more than just how many leads the marketing team is going to deliver. How about covering: percentage of closed revenue, reporting on win/loss, scoring the quality of your leads, maintaining a minimum quality threshold and alignment of marketing assets to your sales cycle.

Sales accountabilities – you surely want to ensure that sales reps are responding to leads in a timely manner. You also should consider including items such as: data fields that are mandatory to be completed in your CRM, win/loss reviews, minimum close ratios of marketing generated opportunities and closed loop feedback on lead quality issues.

Your SLA should be no longer than five PowerPoint slides. Keep it clear, concise and as simple as possible. There should be a signature page as well. Make sure both your sales and marketing executives actually sign the document.

Here’s to better alignment in 2011!!!!

The Human Side of Sales and Marketing Integration

I was on a flight back from San Francisco last week. I was coming home from working with a Fortune 1000 client on improving their sales and marketing integration. On the flight, I happen to sit next to a person who was a professor of art history at a local Philadelphia university. She was amazingly well traveled. Had been all over the world and has interacted with dozens upon dozens of different cultures and societies.

I was in awe of her experiences and it made my life’s travels seem so small.
She asked me what I do for a living. So I gave her my 30-second elevator response. I expected her eyes to roll over and to immediate disengage me. She did the opposite. She started to relate what I do for a living to some of her own experiences. Here was the learning moment for me.

Like countries, all companies have their own culture. Being able to learn the culture, adapt to the culture and to engage at a human level that brings together cultures of independent groups like sales and marketing was how she related my role to her experience . And she’s right. Sales and marketing integration is not just about aligning content, messaging, technology, delivering better leads, etc. It’s also about understanding each other’s culture, needs, points of view – so that collaboration and ultimately teamwork is achieved. This is best stated as – aligning the human side of sales and marketing.

A company can purchase the best marketing automation technology, deliver the best leads and have an aligned communication plan, but in the end, it’s about teamwork and the interaction of human beings in the achievement of common goals. Do not forget culture and the human element when you are embarking on improving your sales and marketing alignment.

Build a bigger pipeline - WRMR Radio

On September 9th, 2010, I had the privilege to be interviewed on the Pedowitz Group's WRMR (Revenue Marketer's Radio) program. What a great program for marketing people to participate in. Every week, Pedowitz's Debbie Qaqish interviews leading revenue-focused marketing executives and engages them in a very open conversation on how best-practice demand generation teams are building pipeline.

If you are a marketing professional who is responsible for demand generation and pipeline contribution, you need to visit:

http://revmarketer.pedowitzgroup.com/WRMR-Registration.html

I hope you find the content as rewarding as I do.

Frank

Your CRM or Your Salespeople? Understanding CRM Performance Beyond Just Features and Functionality - continued....

A couple of weeks ago, I started a discussion on the fact that many companies are not seeing or receiving the true value of a CRM system. The question that I started to answer was: Is it your CRM or your sales people. Before reading the rest of this blog, make sure you get up to speed by reading the first one.

Let's now continue this discussion.

CRM systems don’t come with a best practice sales process and methodology. A sales process is the steps that your Salespeople take from prospecting to closing an opportunity, to then managing and expanding that account. A methodology is the combined “what” the Salespeople will do in each step of your process to achieve the desired results.

A good way to understand this is to look at an example. If you have an Eight-Step Sales Process, it should be embedded in your CRM system where your Salespeople are held accountable for following the process and entering the necessary data that is required to manage opportunities. This provides your team with the consistency in both behavior and data gathering that you need to improve your sales performance, forecasting, and success. As you can see in the example below, the process is embedded in the opportunity management screen where the Salespeople are held accountable for completing specific fields or “gates” of information before an opportunity can advance from one stage of the process to the next.

This creates a consistent opportunity management process and the required data for improved deal, pipeline, and revenue forecasting. But just building process and functionality into the screens is not enough. Your team members need training on how to follow the process, use the new screens, and understand the data requirements to grasp how all of this will benefit them directly.

Technology
Your CRM system more than likely does a good job of managing customers and opportunities – keeping current contact data, scheduling of events, and tracking specifics of opportunities. But does it also offer integrated sales tools that help Salespeople to accelerate opportunities, plan for client meetings, collaborate with their team members, and be coached by their Managers – all supporting your sales process and methodology? These additional technology tools allow them to hit their personal goals of getting to quota, going to club, and flat out making good money - thus giving your team members the value they need to see to want to use your CRM system.

Here are some best-practice examples of technology tools that can be integrated into your existing CRM system:

A Sales Call Planner. This particular tool is used for Salespeople to prepare for and execute successful sales meetings. It is supported by a best-practice sales methodology, embedded learning assets, and is delivered on a platform that allows Sales Managers to provide pre- and post-meeting coaching.

An Opportunity Accelerator. This technology tool is used in conjunction with the Sales Call Planner to ensure that Salespeople are following a best-practice sales process, have a tool to manage the strategy of an opportunity, and are able to collaborate with a deal team or their Manager on the execution of the opportunity.

People and Data
By having your sales process and methodology embedded in your CRM and providing technology tools to enhance value, your Salespeople will begin to change their behavior in how they use the CRM system. Additional training needs to be supplied to your people that will allow them to understand their business. When the proper process and tools are in place, and training and coaching have been delivered, your CRM system will start generating data that, when properly reported, will give you and your team insight into how everyone should be managing their business – or better said, their pipeline.

Providing reports centered on the sales process and how opportunities are flowing through the process are an important part of adding the final “value” to your Salespeople. This will allow them to see how their behaviors are affecting their business. This requires the reporting of key analytics that are then provided to your Salespeople and your Sales Managers that will allow them to see patterns in sales behaviors that need to be changed through additional training and coaching.
Let’s take a look at what a baseline list of these pipeline management analytics should be.

If your Salespeople do not have access to their key CRM metrics, they will not know how their behaviors are impacting their business. They will also not know how to properly forecast and develop the necessary action steps needed to improve their personal pipeline.

If we go back to our Eight-Stage Pipeline graphic (shown below), we can look at the main ways that Salespeople should manage their business. First, they should manage the prospecting and nurturing of leads – as shown in the L1-L5 section #1 of the pipeline graphic. This depicts a five-stage lead nurture process that is either driven by Marketing, Inside Sales, or the Field Sales Team. These are the leads that come into your company that are not yet qualified to be added to your pipeline. There are two key analytics that your Salespeople need to learn about these leads: their lead conversion ratios (how many leads make it to the pipeline) and their acceptance performance against leads that are provided to them by their Sales Team.

In section #2 of the pipeline graphic, the Sales Team needs to know their full pipeline conversion information (how many opportunities enter the pipeline in the first stage and conclude in sales). They also need to see the volume of what they are entering and the velocity (how fast) they move through the pipeline. This data needs to be compiled for each stage of the sales process.

The next set of analytics exist in sections #3 and #4 of the pipeline graphic. It is important to have analytics for the top and the bottom of your pipeline. Not all Salespeople are good at prospecting (hunters) and closing or managing accounts (farmers). It is important to understand individual performance levels in each section. With this data in hand and with each Salesperson trained on how to read and understand their personal analytics, Managers will be able to collaborate with their team members to coach against the sales process and pipeline behavior. This will drive consistency, better forecasting, and improved opportunity execution for your overall Sales Team and individual Salespeople.

By combining an embedded best-practice sales process and methodology, tools to support the process, and the reporting and management of pipeline performance, you will have developed a revenue management system that will help you to achieve your corporate and personal goals.

How Can Richardson Help?

The Richardson Sales Readiness Service focuses on helping you develop and implement best practice sales processes and methodologies that drive the consistency and efficiency of your Sales Team. We will also work with you to build the necessary KPIs and embed it all in your CRM system so it can be reported, tracked, and managed. Our Pipeline Management courses build the business knowledge your Sales Team members need in order to improve how they manage their business and deliver your Managers the skills they need to coach to pipeline improvement.

To sustain behavior change, Richardson offers CRM-integrated tools that become part or your team’s everyday workflow and drive the consistency you need to succeed.

Visit Richardson’s website at www.richardson.com for more information on how Richardson’s Sales Readiness Service can help your Sales Organization reach their objectives.