The Sales & Marketing Stimulus Package - A 7 POINT PLAN for: 3aligning sales and marketing, 3optimizing lead management
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presented by
The Sales & Marketing
Stimulus Package
A 7 POINT PLAN for:
3aligning sales and marketing,
3optimizing lead management,
3recovering lost revenue.
TM
sponsored byTA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
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............................................... 18INTRODUCTION
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 market-
ing practices. It will pull companies out of the doldrums of clogged pipelines and leaky funnels and into an active
© 2009 DemandGen Report • 3INTRODUCTION
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 through-
out 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 • 4L 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 orga-
nizations 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 • 5L 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 more valuable than others. But when the final account total is tallied, CSO Insights believes that the 10% of leads
databases that lack transparency.
When properly aligned, marketing that go unresolved results in roughly a 6% hit to overall revenues. If a company could close that gap, here are
courts prospects based on agrees
criteria and nurtures the lead some projections as to how its business would change:
within the lead management
system. If it is qualified…
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 bil-
lion 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
If prospect is which contacts management costs $575,000.
not closed or prospect within
moved toward marketing recom- The Marketing Burden: For the marketing team, CSO Insights focused on the 10% lack of lead closure. The
sale within a set mendation and
period of time keeps system 10% lead tax puts undue pressure on the marketing team as they have to generate more leads to keep up with
it is sent back updated.
to marketing the inefficient close rates. For a small to medium sized business, let’s assume an account executive has a $1 million
to be filed or
remarketed to. 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 for the sales rep to reach their revenue goal. Now take away 10% of the business due to a lack of alignment and
prospect toward close
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% con-
version 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 • 6FUNDING 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 up-
dating 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 • 7FUNDING THE NO (GOOD) LEAD LEFT BEHIND PROGRAM
of prospect behavior is ranked by the marketing department without input from sales on key criteria. When orga-
nizations 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
25
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
20 Interactions blog, stresses that the concept of “no good lead left behind” should be tied to the ability to specify
“conversion events.”
15 For example, if a prospect downloads a white paper; an auto-response welcome/thank you message is immedi-
ately 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
10
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
5 customer conversion, but doesn’t trigger the score required for sales readiness, the company could be missing out
on an opportunity.
In a better scenario, when independent conversion events are triggered, sales is notified immediately and can take
0FUNDING THE NO (GOOD) LEAD LEFT BEHIND PROGRAM
In other positive findings from the Demand Imperative report, the sophistication and metrics in place to man-
age 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 • 9A 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 compensa-
tion in order to manage new leads.
The “new deal” as part of the stimulus package means that sales and marketing have clearly defined and com-
mon 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 com-
munication 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 • 10A NEW DEAL TO MAXIMIZE SALES & MARKETING RESOURCES
BT selected Genius Pro to help them better connect with their customers. With the Genius Pro email market-
ing 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 personal-
ized 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 pros-
pects—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 ser-
vice customers who showed interest in BT products and the effort stimulated additional purchases and increased
BT customer loyalty.
© 2009 DemandGen Report • 11INSURANCE 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 custom-
er 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 • 12INSURANCE 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 Sales-
force.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 surpris-
ingly 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 align-
ment. 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 • 13RAISING 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 • 14RAISING THE DIGITAL IQ FOR SALES AND MARKETING
Sales 2.0 Author Seeley: Face to face meetings are rare. Some
on the Role of bigger customers will go all the way from pitch
Digital IQ to close without a face to face meeting. That
means sales and marketing executives must be
Anneke Seeley is the Answering questions such as “where was this lead before she was at our website?” or
more effectively aligned. They are truly contribut-
author of the recently “what search terms did she use to land at our site?” provide lead management intelli-
ing to the sales process in a shared fashion. They
published Sales 2.0. She
should share all available metrics and maybe gence. If a prospect came to your website via a search engine, than those keywords need
presented at the Sales
even have a shared compensation package.
2.0 Conference in early to be invested in. If multiple executives from a company come to your website and visit
The process of Sales 2.0 is being redefined
March. A former executive with Oracle and now
constantly. pricing pages or take a demo, the sales team should likely be triggered to follow up with
the CEO of PhoneWorks, Seeley has been at the
forefront of implementing Web 2.0 communica- Q: How does Sales 2.0 intersect with that prospect immediately.
tion solutions for sales and marketing. Now lead management?
she consults with major international firms on Regardless of what a prospect did or didn’t do, nothing will energize the information that
Seeley:Lead management is a very impor-
bringing Web 2.0 together with the communica- defines digital behavior like real-time information into the lead management system. A
tant part of the sales cycle and all parts of the
tion necessary to enable Sales 2.0.
company must respect that. When it comes to good example can be seen from case study of supply chain integration and e-commerce
Q: There have been quite a few defini- lead management it’s about strategy, process, management firm Advanced Data Exchange (ADX). The company’s management team
tions of the term Sales 2.0, some clearer and people. Now we have a lot of new technol-
realized having an integrated approach to sales & marketing would be critical— as it pre-
than others. What’s yours? ogy that can improve strategy, and it can enable
a smoother lead management process, and the pared to launch a new service designed to open up EDI to millions of buyers and suppliers
Seeley: I describe Sales 2.0 as a more effec- entire sales cycle is certainly faster as a result.
tive and efficient way of selling more efficiently. still relying on faxes and the post office for supply chain management.
But what I see companies do wrong is that they
It is enabled by Web 2.0 technology. It is a
start with technology before they look at people For the introduction of its CommerceMail service in late October 2008, ADX deployed the
combination of the art of collaborative selling
and process. Understand your lead generation
coupled with the new culture of measurement. Genius platform for real-time marketing and sales analytics and the results have been fast and
issues first. Is my problem identifying prospects?
Q: It seems like this will mean some new Is it in finding a good group to target? No tech- dramatic—enabling ADX to capture 60 qualified leads for their new service in the first 90 days.
behaviors will need to be adopted by all nology can help you understand where to start.
“When we implemented Genius, we made the commitment to working together as a
different point people in a company.
Q: Many companies are stuck in this
team, keeping checks and balances on each other, and jumping in to help each other
Seeley: Executives in sales and marketing downward economic spiral. Can Sales 2.0
are being forced to rethink the way they do help pull them out? when necessary,” says Heather Steele, senior marketing specialist at ADX. ADX utilized
things today. Part of what forces this revision
Seeley: I have clients that have seen the Genius Pro product to send out a series of four automated and personalized emails
is the economy. You have to constantly rethink
dramatic results by implementing Sales 2.0 to prospects. Depending on their response (if they asked to see a demo), the ADX sales
how you can improve your operation and reach
strategies, which include the proper sales and
out to prospective customers at the same time. A team received an instant alert via the Genius Tracker. As part of the alert, the sales reps
marketing alignment. One software company I
sales or marketing executive that truly embraces
worked with in the past year has seen a 12% also received immediate insight into their interest and could then immediately reach out
Sales 2.0 is always looking at the way customers
sales increase and a 17% head count decrease. to the prospect.
want to buy.
Another client in the medical hardware business
Q: How has that customer’s buying has produced a 7% incremental jump in busi-
cycle changed? ness. Those results are hard to dispute.
© 2009 DemandGen Report • 15RAISING 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 responsibil-
ity 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 • 16RAISING 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
Similarly, if sales finds that a qualified lead is not actually engaged, sales can
realized the sales team found many of the leads provided
by the marketing team to be useless. He started Genius update the lead status, passing responsibility for “remarketing” back to market-
on the premise that sales and marketing needed to work ing. Lead qualifying criteria can be based not only on factual information (industry,
together in different ways, using Web 2.0 technology as a
company size) but also on the prospect’s online body language, including number
foundation for that change.
of visits to the Web site, number of pages visited, length of the visit(s), and specific
Q: Describe some of the issues you had as a marketing executive
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
ress, and its success. Instead of actually passing, the lead management team has a
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 series of engagements with each other and with the prospect. If no one drops the
them. At the end of the day, sales must know who to call, how to call and when ball the chance of success is greater.
to call. Marketing has to help them do that.
Q: What you’re describing is a pretty radical reinvention of market-
ing 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 • 17AVOIDING 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-
municated repeatedly to all channels and to marketing. The process should also
1. The Cross-Functional Breakdown: If there’s no cross-functional executive
evolve as the business changes and as user needs evolve.
sponsorship, there’s no champion for the leads that come from sales channels,
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
slow” approach allows users to understand the software platform more deeply
2. The Data Standard Breakdown: Without good data, the best software
before requesting functionality that they may never use.
system in the world will not provide the results you are looking for. Define and
© 2009 DemandGen Report • 18CONCLUSION
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 prom-
ises 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 weak-
ened 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 • 19About 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 pro-
vide 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
info@genius.com
www.genius.com
TM
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