In business, division of labor has commonly been credited with increasing overall efficiency of a team of workers. Separating duties in B2B sales can create synergy, where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Furthermore, outsourcing telesales functions to a company where that’s all they do can be beneficial as well. Adam Smith, the pioneer of modern economic principles, foresaw the essence of industrialism by determining that division of labor represents a qualitative increase in productivity.
Henry Ford realized that his factory of automobiles could achieve super-efficiency with an assembly line. Rather than having 5 workers each assembling a car from start to finish, it was more productive to have 5 specialists assembling each car on an assembly line.
Think about your sales team like a factory that makes “sales wins.”
Rather than having your sales reps hunting for business, fielding inbound inquiries from hand-raisers, and closing business. Wouldn’t it make more sense to let them do what they do best – win deals? The same is true for cold callers. By separating that function and allowing your inside sales reps to specialize in the nuances of that function, it’s better for the whole team.
At its core, B2B sales can be broken down into three major components:
The first two functions – Inbound Lead Qualification & Outbound Cold Calling – are top-of-the-funnel activities revolving around B2B telesales and as such are often combined, especially on smaller sales teams. Without question though, there is better efficiency in letting your Account Executives close deals and letting appointment setters fill their calendar with qualified sales appointments.
Organizations have human resources in sales that are expert deal-makers and subject matter experts. Often it makes sense for them in outsourcing telesales to a company like SalesStaff. Either way, separate the functions and reap the rewards.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Guy Kawasaki’s work. For those of you that don’t know, he’s a venture capitalist, public speaker, best-selling author & blogger, and an Apple Fellow (sprouting from his work as an Apple employee originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984). I was pleased to see that my local Social Media Club of Dallas would be showcasing Guy as speaker at an upcoming event, which I'll surely attend.
As I was perusing some Youtube videos featuring Guy Kawasaki, I ran across the one below. In it, he speaks to an issue pertinent to everyone in sales and marketing – Powerpoint presentation best practices for a pitch of any kind. He goes on to talk about his 10/20/30 rule for a pitch presentation:
- Keep your slide deck around 10 slides
- Stick to a 20 minute presentation
- The smallest font you should use on a slide is 30-point font
These make good sense (although the 30-point font seems pretty large). How many times have we sat through a 50-slide presentation wondering when it was going to end? A presentation where the presenter reads a long paragraph that is contained on the slide verbatim?
In our sales presentations, we would all do well in keeping it brief and profound rather than lengthy and bland. Have a great weekend, sales and marketing community, and check out Guy’s book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions – it’s a doozie.
We always like to reward our loyal readers with free, interesting, helpful content. Here we help you answer:
Where are the leaks in your sales and marketing engine? Where are you inefficient and where can you improve?
Click below to find out how you stack up and see if you "make the grade." In the B2B Sales & Marketing Report Card, we ask key questions to assess your organization's proficiency in the following areas:
- Contact Database Management
- Email Marketing
- Social Media
- Sales Force Automation
- Telemarketing
- Trade Shows/Conferences/Events
- Content Marketing
- Pay-per-Click
- Website/SEO
- Sales & Marketing Alignment
Hiring the right person for your B2B marketing team can be a tough process. It’s like accepting a new member into your family. You want quality of work but you also want someone that meshes well with the team and can add value.
MarketingSherpa asked 1600+ CMOs and Marketing Managers what they look for in a new hire. The results were pretty even across the board with competency edging it out by a small margin.
The first two aptitudes in order of importance revolve around the actual job descriptions and tasks associated with the job. These capacities encompass a certain skill set and initiative to get the job done.
1. Compentency = “Do they have the skills to do the job?”
Consequently, this is what most employers focus on – and with due cause. After all, you can have all of the best qualities you seek in a candidate, but if they simply don’t have the skills required, it’s not a good fit.
2. Character = “Do they have the discipline and initiative?”
When making a new hire for the marketing department, the candidate should be gauged for integrity and work ethic. Ask yourself: Can I count on this person when they are needed? Do they have a good work ethic?
Marketing, in essence, is influencing the behavior of potential clients. It’s a people-oriented profession at its core. That carries over to working with the team, as well. The second two aptitudes center around the “people” aspects of the job. Dr. Charles W. Coker says “the vast majority of people (67%) are relationally oriented (in comparison to task oriented) understanding and developing an ability to apply them determines a critical aspect for a marketing manager’s success.” As such, you must seek a candidate that displays the following:
1. Chemistry = “Do they fit in with our company culture and our team members?”
Company culture is an intangible that, if tampered with, can cause dramatic inefficiencies. The interactions must tend towards harmony between the marketing hire and other teammates, whether in the same department or in sales or purchasing. Even the most competent individuals with good work ethic will not remain in a situation that they identify as a difficult environment.
2. Capacity = “Will they be able to develop personally and professionally?”
Largely, the development of personnel falls on managers. Coker states that “top CMOs and marketing managers hire people with the potential to perform at higher levels. Ignoring this potential is the number one reason marketers leave jobs, develop morale issues, or become disgruntled.”
What is YOUR top priority of the four mentioned when seeking new hires for your marketing team?
Imagine a pyramid with four levels that represent all the types of B2B sales prospects you’ll encounter in your sales and marketing efforts. OK, you don’t really have to imagine, because I’ve made a graphic:
In the spectrum of B2B prospects within your target market, they all will fall into one of the above four categories:
- Ready buyers – At the very top, you’ll find those prospects that meet all BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe), and are on a short timeframe to buy. They all but have their checkbooks out ready to ink a deal.
- Buying soon – Just below the prospects that are waving money at you (and your competitors) are those who will be buying soon. They also meet all BANT criteria but are on a little bit longer timeframe to purchase your solution.
- Buying sometime – Below them are the B2B prospects who will be buying someday, just not in the immediate future.
- Never buying – Last on the totem pole are virtual non-prospects that will never buy what you have to offer, perhaps for various different reasons: too small, no need, blind to the fact that your product is the best thing ever invented… whatever. These prospects won’t buy.
As salespeople, we all want to work with the potential clients at the top of the pyramid; you already hear the cash register ringing when you get one of these juicy prospects, right? But there are three reasons that these people may not be your best prospects.
- Their buying criteria have probably been seriously influenced by your competitors if they are that far along in the sales process. This means they have all of these new ideas about what they want in a solution that have been externally shaped by your competition.
- They are the easiest prospects to pinpoint through traditional marketing methods and there could be a dogpile of competitors trying to snatch the deal.
- In the face of all that competition, price-cutting can be ruthless. You may spend a lot of time and resources trying to win the deal with little margin at the end.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to throw out the juiciest prospects; I am merely saying that you should coddle those prospects at the second and third tier, also. Marketing automation, lead nurturing, and multi-touch campaigns help you move those at a lower level of the pyramid toward the top through automated, targeted releases of information that predispose them to buy from you – and only you.
Have you ever purchased B2B contact lists or an email marketing list that had a bunch of contacts that weren’t relevant to your business? Well, whose fault is that? Sometimes the blame can be placed on the list vendor, but most of the time the culpability lies with the customer.
When you invest in a bucket of B2B contacts, it’s imperative that you use accurate criteria to define your prospect base. It’s unrealistic to expect a perfect database (see 25% of Contact Data Goes Bad Every Year... Bad News for B2B Appointment Setting Campaigns). But there are indeed some critical measures you can take to ensure higher quality list purchases.
- Provide ample criteria to the list vendor to perform an initial database query. It’s an important exercise for all marketers, as it allows you to hone in on your ideal customer target profile. These criteria should be contained in a living document which changes over time.
- Work with the list vendor to fine-tune one or more target criteria. Now you’ve honed in and you want to expand or narrow the list as needed.
- Keep a number of targets in mind that can be managed by your campaign. If you’re using the data for a scatter email marketing campaign, you’re probably going to need a lot of contact data. If you’re executing a telemarketing campaign, you’re going to need less data with better targeting.
- Ask for a sample of the extracted business list. This lets you get a feel for the format of the data. Are you getting all of the data points you need or were promised? Does it look like there are direct dial phone numbers? Are the emails contact-specific or general info@ or sales@ email addresses?
- Ask for a preview of titles & companies. This is going to tell you whether the title targets are correct. This is an especially important tip if you are asking for a database with title keywords. For instance, if you sell tax software and are interested in all titles with the word “audit” in them, you’re going to get a lot of personnel that are involved in internal staff auditing and other extraneous functions rather than financial auditing personnel. Use this preview to come up with a list of exclusion terms.
- Don’t pay for contacts you already have in your company’s database. Send a list of contacts with email addresses as the unique identifier to deduplicate against the vendor’s list. Some marketing list providers do charge a nominal fee for deduplication.
- Clarify any replacement guarantee. No list is perfect and will have a smattering of bad contacts. Most vendors allow for a certain percentage of bad contacts (15% usually). Keep tabs on how many bad contacts there are over and above that allotment.
Investing in contact data involves a few steps to ensure you’re making a quality data purchase. But just think of how much time you’ll waste if your sales and marketing organization works hundreds or thousands of contacts that were never a fit in the first place. If contact data is the fuel that powers your marketing campaigns, then using bad data is like trying to run your car on dirty gasoline.
Please consider SalesStaff for your B2B contact database and email marketing list needs:
I’ve been reading a lot lately and one of the sales books I can’t say enough good things about is Jill Konrath’s Snap Selling. Talk about powerful business prose… It hones in perfectly on how your customers make decisions.
In one of the first chapters, Jill takes us into the world of our customer. All too often, we are so focused on our own objectives and don’t consider those of our prospect. We should be reminded that they are professionals too with their own workload, and daily fires to put out. Yes, they are B2B sales prospects, but how do you capture them from their busy day to listen?
With Jill’s permission, I reprint the letter here. Have a great Friday and keep those sales coming.
Dear Seller,
I only have a few minutes, but I understand you’re interested in selling me something. As far as I’m concerned, that’s being pretty self-serving.
The truth is, you have no idea what my life is like. You may think you do, but you don’t – and you need to if you’re going to get my business.
I got to the office early this morning so I could have some uninterrupted time to work on a project – something I can’t seem to squeeze into the normal business day.
By 9:00 a.m., all my good intentions were dashed when my boss asked me to drop everything in order to put together a headcount reduction plan. Revenue slumped last quarter and we need to cut costs.
Then, Engineering informed me that our new product won’t be available for the upcoming tradeshow. Sales will go ballistic when they hear this. That’s the last thing I need to have happen.
Get the picture? Welcome to my world of everyday chaos where, hard as I try to make progress, I keep slipping further behind. Right now I have at least 59 hours of work piled on my desk. I have no ideas when I’ll get it all done.
Did I mention email? I get over 150 each day. Then, add to that at least 30 phone calls from sellers just like you who’d “loved to meet with me.”
In short, I have way too much to do, ever-increasing expectations, impossible deadlines, and constant interruptions from people wanting my attention.
Time is my most precious commodity and I protect it all costs. I live with the status quo as long as I can – even if I’m not happy with it. Why? Because change creates more work and eats up my time.
Which gets us back to you. In your well-intentioned but misguided attempts to turn me into a customer, you fail woefully to capture and keep my attention. Let me be blunt. I don’t care about your product, service or solution.
I quickly scan your emails or letters looking for self-promotional talk that glorifies your offering or your company. The minute it jumps out at me, you’re gone. Zapped from my inbox or tossed in the trashcan. Say it in your voicemail message and I delete you immediately. Delete, delete, delete.
When you spend an entire meeting blathering about your unique methodologies, great technology and or extraordinary service, my mind wanders to important tasks that need to get done. Sure, I occasionally check for messages. But you would too if you were in my position.
I’m not always like this. Occasionally a savvy seller captures my attention, entices me to meet, shows me why I should change, and then makes it easy for me to work with them.
What are they doing? They’re completely focused on my business and the impact they can have on it. That’s what I care about – not their pitch.
If you focus on helping me achieve my objectives, I’ll listen to you all day long. But you can’t rope me in with the good stuff, then slip back into that trash talk. If so, you’re gonzo.
Make sense? I hope so, because I’m late for a meeting, and while I’ve been writing this, the phones been ringing off the hook.
Best regards,
Your Customer
Excerpted from SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business With Today’s Frazzled Customers by Jill Konrath, Portfolio 2010
I’ve read sales research that suggests that 75% of business calls end in voicemail. There’s widespread debate on whether it’s even beneficial to leave voicemail at all in B2B sales. We’ll save that debate for another day and focus on tips that might help you if you DO decide to leave voicemails in the course of B2B sales prospecting.
Of course, the objective is to get the recipient to pick up the phone and dial you back. So how can you increase the likelihood that that will happen?
So much of a voicemail message is variable – tone, diction, syntax, context, content, talking speed, voice inflection, tonal emphasis, etc. There’s a subtle psychology that plays out when leaving voicemails; you’re essentially an infomercial pitchman for all of thirty seconds.
Keep in mind that some of these suggestions are situational. They might be better in some circumstances rather than others. Use your judgment.
- Use the e-mail/voicemail one-two punch. Using these two contact methods together increases the chance of getting a return response. You give the recipient two ways to contact you back. In fact, you can use the e-mail/voicemail in either order. Perhaps, you leave a voicemail first and then send an email with the subject "Follow-up on Wednesday's voicemail." Or maybe you send an email first and follow through with a voicemail, “Hello, Jim. I just sent you an email and wanted to make sure it made it to your inbox. I’d like to reinforce that…"
- Don’t convolute your core message with too many topics. If you have a lot to cover and need to be thorough, use email. Otherwise, utilize one hot button when leaving voicemail.
- Gain credibility immediately. You have but a few seconds on stage. Replace mundane, esoteric sales-speak like, "We’re a first-class provider of __________." Instead use, "We're the people helping _________ with their _______ needs."
- Keep voicemails brief and straightforward. I’ve read research that states that for voicemail messages, the sweet spot is about 15-25 seconds. The average person speaks approximately 150 words per minute; so naturally, if you're scripting a voicemail, make it between 40-75 words.
- Use their name in the first three words and the last three words. When people hear their name, it’s a subconscious hint to pay attention. Try starting with, “Hello, Jim…” and end with, “Thanks and I look forward to speaking with you, Jim.”
There are lots of examples of creative voicemail messages. Take a look at Trish Bertuzzi’s post 4 Ways to Get Your Prospects to Call You Back for a few of my favs. For other interesting reading on the topic, I suggest you check out the LinkedIn topic: What's the #1 Voice Mail Mistake Average Sales People Make?
We like to keep our ear to the pulse of the sales & marketing community, naturally. We’ve found that events have become increasingly popular as a sales model over the last few years. There’s a difference to be drawn here, though. When I say “events,” I don’t mean industry conferences or the trade show circuit; I mean amassing a group of targeted prospects into one place for the purpose of delivering valuable, sales-neutral information and of course threading your service offering in the presentation somewhere.
Marketing events like these can be effective methods of reaching a broad prospect base in a short time period. However, for events to be successful you will need to drive attendance to the event and then have effective post-event follow-up, if you expect the event to contribute to your bottom line.
There are quite a few reasons to love this sales model, not the least of which are:
- Awareness & Branding – If you construct a compelling presentation, your event attendees will leave knowing exactly who you are and, more importantly, how your products might help their situation.
- Interactivity – When you present information in a live format, it gives your prospects the opportunity to interact with you about your product. They can ask questions, clarify aspects of what you present, and bring in their own experiences to bear.
- Relationship Building – Because your audience gets to hear you and interact with you, your credibility and connection to your attendees builds faster and with deeper roots.
- Sales Funnel Opportunities – Simply put, you can introduce yourself to 25 prospects on 25 separate phone calls or this sales model lets you address all of them at once. Now we’re not suggesting that you abandon the personalization of one-on-one prospecting methods, but instead suggest that you consider sales events in your marketing mix, if you haven’t already.
SalesStaff has executed numerous campaigns with the explicit objective of driving qualified attendees to sales events. We’ve leveraged that intelligence to create an Event Marketing Checklist that helps cover your bases if you’re considering adopting sales events into the mix. Even if you’re actively executing sales events, the checklist is a valuable guide to making sure your I’s are dotted and T’s crossed.
We invite you to download the Event Marketing Checklist by clicking below:
MarketingSherpa posted a graph yesterday on their blog detailing the value that CMOs find in email marketing: Specifically, they asked the question:
As CMO or senior marketing executive in your organization, how important are the following factors in helping you determine and communicate the value of email marketing programs?
The response?
MarketingSherpa goes on to make some really interesting comments. In past research, CMOs were formerly content with high post-click conversion, email opens, and clickthrough rates. There’s a shift to consider financial ROI the primary determining factor of the value of email marketing. It makes sense - especially in the B2B world where results are measured more by ROI and less by the ambiguity of “branding.”
Further research shows however that:
68% of surveyed marketers did not have a method for quantifying ROI of email marketing campaigns
This is astounding considering that email marketing technology gives us all kinds of metrics around the behavior of recipients – whether your targets are opening, clicking, etc. With the use of landing pages and a solid call to action paired with a serviceable lead sourcing process, determining ROI should be less daunting.
Are you quantifying the results of your email marketing efforts?