By Matt Massey, President, drive2
When I read articles on a new and better way to build a sales-focused organization, like you, I'm sceptical, something akin to building a better mousetrap is always my first thought. When you dig deeper however, the facts and realities become difficult to ignore.
- Sales cycles are increasingly elongated and sales process has become more intricate
- Companies can no longer rely on the traditional linear sales strategy (cold call prospect - get meeting - develop proposal - present to prospect - get sale), regardless of industry, service or product the sales cycle is getting longer
- Time is a commodity and your sales team has little to spend on trying to generate new radar screens through cold calling
- The environment for finding quality sales people has changed. A 2006 Manpower Incorporated survey indicated that the hardest position to fill in organizations is sales. "Across North America and Asia, the top three talent shortages are identical -- sales representatives rank No. 1, followed by engineers and technicians. "Employers are telling us that they are not just looking for bodies to fill sales jobs; they want experienced salespeople who know their respective industries and can drive revenues,'' - Jeffrey Joerres, Chairman and CEO of Manpower Inc.
- There are more influencers and stakeholders involved in the decision-making hierarchy within an organization
Over the last 20 years, in corporate North America, we've made significant advances in technology, manufacturing, product development, marketing – huge gains in corporate innovation, but, for some reason, sales has remained in the dark ages.
Why?
Who knows, maybe we just like to kick-it old school, but maybe, and more likely, companies have traditionally undermined the role and value of sales within their organization. If we dig deeper, and look at how most organizations evaluate sales and sales metrics, more value and focus is typically placed on sales outcome and revenue than sales effectiveness and strategy.
Understanding what's important and who's accountable
Let us explain – every company looks at the numbers, usually the most important numbers, gross revenues and net profit. Sales accountability is usually tied directly to these gross revenue numbers and don't get it wrong, sales should be directly accountable for gross revenues, however, what if we also indicted Marketing as being directly accountable for sales revenue.
If you're in sales, you're probably thinking "Marketing??? Marketing doesn't even understand what sales does let alone to think they would ever begin to be accountable for revenue!!!" and you're right, traditionally marketing has always been the star of the show with little accountability and sales has been little more than a necessary evil – that is, until the new customer successes start to role in.
Now let's theoretically employ a new standard of balance, the balance being a new measurement of determining sales effectiveness within an organization. In order to achieve this we have throw out traditional, linear sales process and adopt a non-linear approach to sales and marketing within an organization. Before you read any further, please recognize we are about to challenge the status quo and it might be easier for you to walk away right now before we upset your traditional values and views towards corporate sales and marketing.
Ok, disclaimer aside what do we mean by a new measurement of sales effectiveness?
To define a new measurement of sales effectiveness, we need to dis-align the traditional sales process. Instead of sales holding sole responsible for both prospect development (hunting) and closing sales opportunities (gathering) let's put the onus on marketing to take on the role to now handle prospect development. In this new function, marketing now becomes responsible for generating opportunities within the market – demand creation. Sales effectiveness is the process of defining the measurement criteria for marketing and sales performance indicators for your organization.
Marketing's role is now to develop a quantifiable, sustainable lead generation program for the company. There's a catch though, demand creation is an intense marketing effort, it goes far beyond the dynamic of providing a weekly report of names that sales now needs to follow-up with. Demand Creation is a systematic approach to understanding your buying cycle and how your organization manages prospects and customers through that buying cycle.
Integrating a Demand creation Strategy will allow you to track key indicators for determining your overall sales performance across the organization. It also creates accountability for your marketing effort like never before.
Demand creation doesn't stop there however.
Demand creation also requires marketing to take on the role of prospect management.
In most organizations sales is responsible for prospecting and engaging potential customers from the initial point of prospect contact. In a Demand creation enabled organization, marketing manages the prospect relationship to a point in the buying cycle where the prospect is identified as falling within a set of predefined parameters. Once the prospect has triggered these parameters, only then is the prospect delivered to sales and the elevated sales process of closing the opportunity begins.
What are some advantages of enabling a Demand Creation strategy for your organization?
- Focus sales on customer acquisition and focus marketing on reputation build and prospect education.
- Accountability for marketing expenditure. Campaigns and marketing spend can be directly attributed to sales effectiveness and revenue generation.
- Sales and marketing departments develop a symbiotic relationship working towards a common goal of generating both sales and revenue.
- A clearly defined process is created to identify and understand your prospect universe and how prospects are managed within your sales cycle.
- Measurability. Every stage of your marketing and sales process can be clearly measured from creating prospect awareness through to proposals generated and sales revenue.
Marketing's New Role
We've taken you through the concept and strategy behind demand creation. For many individuals looking objectively at their own company, yes, demand creation does call for a paradigm shift for the organization. But how does it really affect the marketing role at a tactical level?
Demand creation calls for marketing to focus their marketing effort on building one-to-one relationships with prospects and customers. This requires clear definition of the prospect universe, as well as, identifying all of the stakeholders, influencers and decision makers within a prospect company and building direct relationships with them.
Tactical elements in marketing's tools box need to include direct marketing, email marketing, personalized URLs (PURLs), webinars and any other marketing vehicles that will assist in created that one-to-one relationship.
These tactical elements now equip marketers with the ability to create and manage direct, one-to-one relationships with your prospect universe. Advances in printing technology allow for creating customizable, fully variable direct marketing collateral. email and web technologies again offer the same level of personalization with the added value of tracking and statistics allowing marketing to measure campaign effectiveness while providing real-time, immediate response to prospect inquiries.
Getting Started and Creating Demand
The key to developing a successful demand creation strategy is communication. It's recognizing that sales and marketing need to work together to create and maximize sales opportunities and understanding that demand creation is ultimately about building relationships and eliminating communication barriers. You want the ability to create open, two-way communication with your prospects and customers the first time they become aware of your organization.
Every facet of your organization needs to understand the value and objectives of your demand creation strategy. Like many organizations throughout North America adopting Six Sigma principles, Demand Creation represents a quantum shift in the way your organization manages its strategic sales and marketing operations.
drive2 is a demand creation company. We develop performance driven, results-based lead generation and demand creation strategies for technology and services companies. drive2 focuses on demand creation strategies for organizations targeting domestic, Euro and Far East markets.
For more information on demand creation on how drive2 can work with your company, visit drive-2.com.
