Many of today’s B2B-focused sales and marketing organisations are implementing or considering Marketing Automation solutions - and with good reason. The new generation of software-based solutions from organisations like Eloqua, Marketo and others offer the potential to improve marketing effectiveness.

But if your organisation is engaged in high-value, complex and lengthy buying cycles that involve multiple stakeholders, marketing automation by itself can never establish the level of prospect engagement required to build strong relationships or achieve the all-important “trusted advisor” status.

That’s because - despite the clear importance of internet-based research - the most powerful influence on the B2B buying decision process remains the quality of the sales conversation. When your prospects are trying to understand how best to solve an important business problem, they are looking for an informed conversation.

Whilst their digital body language can provide some important clues about what is important to your prospect, automated workflows inevitably have their limitations. They may work in low-value environments with simple decision-making processes, but when multiple stakeholders and significant budgets are involved, there is no substitute for a proper fact-finding discussion.

Effective sales conversations provide valuable learning opportunities for everyone concerned. Your initial contact point within your prospect can find out more about the issue they are trying to address and how best it might be solved? They can ask questions, and reflect on the answers - and refine their thinking as a result. They can start to form an opinion about the helpfulness and competence of your organisation.

Effective sales conversations can help you learn more about your prospect, to find out more about the true cause of their interest, to understand the impact of the issue on their organisation, and to discover who else might be affected by the problem or involved in the decision. They can help you to arouse the prospect’s curiosity, and make them keen to continue the dialogue, and to want to learn more. This is particularly important when you are promoting a disruptive innovation that depends on market education.

Conversations allow you to establish patterns and to correlate information from a variety of key stakeholders within the prospect organisation. They allow you to explore subtle nuances and to respond to the prospect’s current perspective on the problem. Perhaps most important, they help to establish your organisation as not just knowledgeable, but also as a good potential partner and as someone they can trust to give them good advice.

It should be clear that this cannot be accomplished through a rigidly scripted, “20 questions” call plan. It depends upon your organisation being professionally represented by knowledgeable, enthusiastic people that can hold well-informed conversations and build productive relationships with your prospective customers. But they can make the difference between a poorly qualified lead that (no matter what the lead score says) your sales people may be reluctant to pursue and a fully qualified, sales ready opportunity.

On the other hand, the combination of marketing automation with effective sales conversation is helping a growing number of ambitious B2B-focused organisations to increase the value of their sales pipelines, shorten average sales cycles and improve sales win rates. It’s an area where Clarify has accumulated significant expertise and developed a number of unique methodologies.

If you’re thinking about marketing automation - or want to get more out of your existing investments in that area - we like to think that our experiences might prove useful. Why not call us on 0118 9126869 or drop a line to info@clarify-uk.com and let’s find a suitable time to talk about improving the quality of your customer conversations.

What separates the top-performing B2B sales and marketing organisations from their also-ran competitors? What are the winning behaviours that enable them to create repeatable, scalable and predictable businesses? After observing any of these best-in-class organisations in action, I’d like to suggest 20 best practices that all B2B focused companies ought to think about adopting…

These best practices appear to be particularly relevant to B2B organisations with complex, high-value products or services that involve extended sales cycles, and where uncovering better qualified opportunities, shortening sales cycles and increasing sales win rates can have a dramatic impact on revenues, profits and market share.

While the list is by no means exhaustive, and it’s no substitute for a detailed review of your current sales and marketing processes in the light of your specific current situation, I hope that the list encourages you to identify some obvious areas for potential improvement. Here are those 20 best practices:

1. Creating detailed ideal prospect profiles for the types of organisation you have chosen to target that go beyond conventional demographics to identify their common environmental, situational and behavioural characteristics...
2. Creating detailed stakeholder profiles (buyer personas) for the key roles that are typically involved in your prospects’ decision-making process, and which anticipate their most likely priorities, concerns and motivations…
3. Documenting the most important market trends affecting each of your key target audiences, at both an organisational and a role-based level, and incorporating these insights into your marketing communications programmes...
4. Identifying the specific issues and trigger events that are most likely to cause your potential prospects to become dissatisfied with the status quo and which cause them to start searching for new solutions…
5. Focusing the bulk of your marketing energies, messages, activities, materials and campaigns on identifying and addressing your prospects’ business critical issues rather than on promoting your products and services...
6. Identifying and building relationships with the key influencers that have the greatest impact on your prospect’s buying decisions, including key members of the press, analysts, social media, professional associations, industry bodies, etc...
7. Implementing an effective business social media programme that is helping you connect and communicate more effectively with your target audience and which is already generating a growing stream of valuable connections...
8. Ensuring that sales and marketing have established and agreed a definition of the common characteristics of “sales ready lead” and that they are working together to hand opportunities over seamlessly and to provide rational feedback on lead quality...
9. Ensuring that every member of your sales organisation is applying the same consistent approach to qualifying sales opportunities and that - where necessary - they are qualifying bad deals out early before valuable resource is wasted...
10. Establishing a well defined, universally implemented and continually refined documented sales process that reflects industry best practice together with the winning behaviours of your most successful sales people...
11. Making sure that your documented sales process anticipates and addresses the most common priorities, motivations and concerns of your prospects and their key stakeholders at each stage in their buying decision process...
12. Ensuring that every one of your sales tools and pieces of marketing collateral is playing a clearly defined and provably useful role in advancing your prospect’s typical buying decision process (and not creating any that do not)...
13. Clearly defining each stage in your documented sales process and ensuring through inspection that every member of the sales organisation understands and is applying each stage in the same consistent way...
14. Basing the key milestones between each stage of your documented sales process on observable evidence of buying behaviour rather than the activities of your sales people and ensuring through inspection that these are being applied...
15. Regularly reviewing and comparing sales velocity and conversion rates at every stage in your sales pipeline and using this information to proactively diagnose and deal with any bottlenecks in your sales process...
16. Implementing a sales forecasting process based on observable evidence that is consistently accurate at every level from the company to the individual sales person, and actively measuring and rewarding sales forecast accuracy...
17. Ensuring that your CRM implementation fully reflects your documented sales process, contains complete data that is always up to date, and is universally embraced and adopted by every member of your sales organisation...
18. Managing all of your sales and marketing activities as part of a single integrated revenue generation cycle that defines clear responsibilities and incorporates common measures, metrics and reward systems...
19. Establishing a sales and marketing environment that fully supports cross-departmental collaborative working, internal business social networking, shared learning and continuous performance improvement...
20. Last, but my no means least, bringing it all together in a fully scalable, repeatable and predictable business model that can be demonstrated to be delivering consistent revenue, market share and profit growth quarter after quarter...

How do your current sales and marketing processes compare? You may find it easier to download the questions in the form of a checklist that you can print out, share with colleagues and compare results. You can download a printable version of the checklist, together with a few simple instructions, here.

How did your organisation stack up? Are there any other important best practices that you would add? 

 

Bob Apollo

Harmonious alignment of the Sales and Marketing team is the Nirvana most organisations are trying to achieve. It’s the supreme strategic, operational (and some say emotional) state when the two teams work in perfect partnership; where all elements are synchronised; teams co-existence is as sweet as buttered candy; operations so mellifluous communications must be telepathic…

Stop ‘drinking the Kool-aid’. It’s like saying ‘He always puts the dishes in the dishwasher before getting me another glass of Veuve?’ or ‘She greets me with a beer, dinner, the TV remote and the kids are happily doing their homework.’

If you want the ‘perfect marriage’ then grab a Cartland novel, a box of Ferrero Rocher and treat yourself to a Sherry!

For the rest, grab a Peroni and tuck into a dose of reality.

May I burst your bubble?

The bursting of the bubble (aka the financial crisis/recession) caused a fairly radical change in most Board’s expectations of their organisation. Pre-recession it was all about Marketing: more ad’s, more events, more hospitality, more activity and more budget, measurement was important but it was more about the number of people who had seen the ad’s/attended an event/opened an email. Post-recession it’s all about Sales: we need the revenue NOW, we need more of it, our customers must be loyal (previously referred to as ‘locked-in’) because then they’ll only choose our stuff.

This change of focus created a realisation in many Board members: What exactly does Marketing do? What is a lead? They know Marketing protects the brand and the reputation of their company, which to some is invaluable, but what do they actually do to help Sales secure customers and revenue because without sales there won’t be a brand to protect?

Such a radical change of thinking has caused Marketing to quickly adapt and in most cases has caused them to become pseudo Sales Managers (Marketers grab another Peroni, Sales stop laughing). Marketing now has to measure ‘leads’, pipeline, conversion rates, how much revenue they’ve ‘generated’ and analyse win/loss data. But, typically they aren’t measured on revenue attainment and they have no control over how or which deals Sales close. Sales leaders typically don’t believe that Marketing creates actual sales leads, if they do they aren’t the right ones and it takes too much of their expensive effort to close them, making them typically unwanted or ignored.

Add to this, that for many, there is no clear way to measure pipeline contribution. Therefore the contribution Marketing makes to the sales cycle is difficult to understand in the context of sales and revenue. This and the increased focus on revenue make their new role as a ‘Sales Manager’ a difficult and frankly tenuous one.

No more name calling, it’s time to play nicely

Co-dependent relationships exist in many areas, not just work and marriage. Because of the co-dependence there can often be a discord because neither individual has control over the others actions. Take football players. You could have two of the best players in the world but if they aren’t working well together they are often disruptive to the success of the whole team, creating blame, mistrust and arguments.

For example, the Manager of Manware United has two such fantastic centre back players, Nenad Vidic and Roland Ferdinand (literary licence taken). Individually they are fantastic but since playing on the same team for almost a year their issues have damaged their team’s once great track record. Because of this lack of performance attendance is down, the team is suffering bad press and rumour has it a key sponsor may not be renewing their contract. Their Manager decides he now needs to take quite radical steps to resolve their issues and decides to use the principles of RELATE to try and get them working together:

• Use a common language 
• Agree the basic working principles 
• Agree what you will be held accountable for 
• Be open with one another, take responsibility to improve the things you aren’t so good at

A not so common language

Ferdinand was brought up and trained as a British football player, Vidic is from Serbia, his English isn’t great and he was taught how to play football in Serbia. The first step, and most fundamental, is to ensure they are speaking the same language. Ok, so most Sales and Marketing teams do speak the same language, but actually the meaning of certain key words is different depending on the team. Most critical to their success is the meaning of two little words - Lead and Opportunity.

These two, apparently innocuous, little words are the most commonly used within most businesses and are critical to the success of teams and businesses. Yet their definition is often not clear, shared or understood consistently. I’m not going to purport that I can supply you with the answer, their definition differs in every organisation. Sales and Marketing must take the time to explicitly define and agree what is a lead and an opportunity, relevant to their own sales cycles and their business. For example are there specifics about the size of company/revenue/no. of employees, the prospect’s role/decision making level, their interest in a single product or a combination, the potential value of the deal, a compelling event etc..

Whilst simple is usually better when it comes to the definitions, a degree of flexibility in the criteria may be required. For example an opportunity may mean different things depending on the needs of Account Managers or teams. A new Account Manager will want leads which he can close within the next 3 – 6 months, even if it’s only single product. He has to prove himself quickly otherwise he’s probably out of a job. Whereas an established Account Manager who has already hit target will be quite happy to wine and dine their clients for the next 6 – 12 months until they are ready to buy multiple products for a multi digit deal.

Whatever the criteria and definition, once agreement is reached educate your people in the definitions, their application and what it means to them and their role. Support them and the business by ensuring your technology, systems and processes can support and measure against the definitions.

This will not fix all your problems and honestly it’s one of the most difficult things to get right. But speaking the same language is the foundation of any successful relationship so; it’s worth taking the time to do it well.

It’s your fault!

Now Vidic and Ferdinand are speaking the same language they are communicating most effectively. At the last match Ferdinand and Vidic had a disagreement on the pitch about what each should have done to prevent a goal. Not helpful. What is helpful is using the same language to agree up front, not mid-match, the basic working principles for a good relationship.

As part of agreeing the lead and opportunity definitions within Sales and Marketing for your organisation, I’m sure you will have also agreed their criteria, the desired probability ratings and who has responsibility for what at each stage of the sales cycle. If not, stop drinking the Peroni as you aren’t paying attention.

To be successful in creating interest and closing revenue Sales and Marketing teams must work together, hand-in-hand. Yes it’s obvious, but how often does it actually happen? Marketing doesn’t start here/stop there within the sales cycle, then chuck stuff at Sales to get on and just close deals. Both teams need to clearly agree the basic working principles across the sales cycle, from the moment a potential prospect thinks about your company, through the deal, use of technology and on-going relationship.

Rather than taking you through the whole process I’ll give you a short example.

Sales have a number of opportunities which have a very long sales cycle so Marketing nurtures them using targeted messages and activities to speed demand and maintain interest. They take a targeted approach i.e. business events on appropriate topics where Sales can talk to the prospect, sending the latest analyst reports or case studies for credibility etc. whilst regularly informing Sales of what’s happening so when the prospect is ready to start buying, Sales can invest their time to close the deal.

If you are clear about your basic working principles, accountability of you and your business partners is next. Just to be clear, that doesn’t mean finger pointing and name calling. It’s simply about being open, honest and trusting each other. Before you think you are in fact reading a Cartland novel, I’ll stop with the soppy stuff.

Creative a-counting or 1 + 5 = 30% probability

In football measurement is easy and explicit, there are standard ways in which goals, passes, ball ownership etc. are measured, often with human intervention in deciding if the measurement is accurate. However in business it doesn’t seem to be so easy, in part because many companies measure everything with little correlation between metrics.

Measurement is the key to understanding performance, or lack of, what’s caused it and what actions need to be taken. Accountability of these measures is vital to driving profitable opportunities and managing a predictable pipeline. If you’ve successfully achieved all of the steps above then implementing measures will be easy.

Below are two examples to give you some guidance:

Artistic license

Vidic and Ferdinand are now the star players for Manware United. They have evolved using proven methodologies which has made their relationship a success and meant they are recognised as the best defence team in the league. But the rigorous application of methodologies simply freed their existing flair and talent.

The mystique behind Marketing and Sales is that they are a combination of art and science. The best Marketers and Sales Managers can tell you how they were taught, what they know from experience works and the methodologies they use. But what really makes them great is how creative they are and how intuitively they are able to do their job, really well. Hopefully we’ll see more harmonious Sales and Marketing teams because they:

• Speak the same language: Explicitly defined leads and opportunities and their criteria, which is known across the business and supported by the technology 
• Basic working principles: For each team, across the sales cycle and understood by each team member and everyone is accountable to deliver their part to generate revenue 
• Measurement: Metrics to manage your success, enable accountability and improvement.

Will we one day see all Sales and Marketing teams working together in perfect harmony? I do hope not, where would the fun be in that?

Download as pdf

Written by Aleksandra Alfonso

During the month of July, Chris climbed 38,000 feet, burnt 31,000 calories whilst cycling for 53 hours to complete a total of 776 miles for the Clarify Foundation.

Chris set himself the challenge of cycling 750 miles in July, 1 mile for every hour people would suffer in abject poverty during the month. “I was surprised that I had so much drive, getting up day after day especially after I hurt my knee part way through, that was tough!”. All the money raised will go to the Clarify Foundation which helps people and children both locally and in Uganda.

How are you planning to top this next year? “I’m thinking of cycling London to Paris, 500km in 4 days, but the thought of experiencing the saddle sores again is making me think “Vertical Rush” (climbing the 42 floors of Tower 42) might be a better option.”

Having pushed himself to the limit to over achieve his cycling target, he’s now pushing hard to exceed his fundraising target. All donations are very welcome and will not only make the saddle sores worthwhile, they’ll also motivate him to take on another massive physical challenge next year!

You can sponsor Chris on his JustGiving page and visit the Clarify Foundation page to find out more.

Chris Norton, Clarify’s Head of IT, is pushing himself to the limit fundraising this month. He’s set himself the target of completing 750miles during the course of July, “I’m cycling 1 mile for every hour people in abject poverty will suffer this month”.

Every year he get’s involved with fund raising projects “normally at a high pain cost to myself!” says Chris. This is the toughest challenge he’s set himself yet. Whilst Chris enjoys cycling, he’s never cycled more than 320 miles in a month and he’s never cycled for more than 3 days in a row. Given the wet weather we’ve experienced throughout most of this month, his physical fitness and determination have been put to the test.

His target is to raise £750 this month towards the Clarify Foundation which helps people locally and in Uganda. Over the past 12 months the Foundation has:

• Helped poor children in and around Reading to have a Christmas
• Re-built teacher accommodation in Uganda providing them with a safe place to live at the school to improve the educational environment for the children
• Built play areas and painted local schools

So far Chris is on track to hit his target number of miles but the last leg is always the toughest, “When I started my training I cycled 25 miles a day for 5 days, after the fifth day I thought 25 miles a day would be easy. It definitely isn’t as easy as I'd hoped!”

Taking a few minutes to sponsor Chris http://www.justgiving.com/CSNorton with any size donation, per mile or as a whole will help the Foundation and will give Chris the extra motivation to complete his 750 miles….it may even make his legs ache a little less.

For more information about the Clarify Foundation: http://www.clarify-uk.com/en/company/clarify-foundation.html

The paper discusses the opportunities and challenges presented by an international lead generation arena, as well as practical advice on how to deliver an effective strategy for a B2B business.

The paper can be downloaded here.

We hope you find it interesting reading.

Clarify, the sales cycle development company, has launched the Clarify Foundation, a registered charity founded by the company that aims to raise money for community schemes in the UK and in Uganda. As well as raising money, Clarify employees will be directly involved in working on completing these charitable projects.

The Clarify Foundation, brainchild of CEO Claire Edmunds, is based on three primary principles - giving money, raising funds, giving time.  Claire commented “I wanted to allocate some money to spend in a way which makes a meaningful contribution and is away from the world of selling and IT. I wanted to reward my top performers with a really different experience that gives something back.” The first goal for the charity is to raise £10,000 by May 2011 to donate to causes in Uganda. The raised funds will be spent on local projects such as water tanks or sustainable farm infrastructure. As a reward for high performance, a Clarify team will travel to Uganda in 2011 to get involved in finishing a project such as building new school classrooms or teachers’ accommodation.

A committee of Clarify employees is coordinating a jam packed schedule of fundraising events, including the Three Peaks Challenge, bike rides, casino nights, dress down days, as well as a tuck shop in the office! Jessica Wheeler, Clarify’s HR Manager and head of the Clarify Foundation committee has said “I am so impressed with the enthusiasm, dedication and organisation that our people have shown in kicking off the Clarify Foundation. Our strength as a professional team has translated to delivering great results for a fantastic cause.”    

For more details visit our web page, facebook or email us.

 

 

Clarify, the sales cycle development company, has today launched a new corporate identity to reflect its expanding services portfolio and support recent growth into international territories.  

Founded in 2003, Clarify has experienced significant organic growth despite a difficult economic climate and a highly competitive market. This is largely due to Clarify’s dedication to provide exceptional service, earning them an enviable reputation as leaders in sales cycle development for Enterprise Technology organisations.

This year, Clarify expanded their operations in Europe to provide a better service to their client base, opening an office in Berlin in February, and an office in Lille in May. Claire Edmunds, CEO of Clarify, commented “We needed a brand that conveys our strength, dedication and vibrant team culture. We needed a brand that is modern and relevant to our customers and prospects across geographies.” Clarify now supports its customers across a range of international regions including the UK, North America, France, Germany, South Africa, India and the Nordics.

The new identity has been designed to position Clarify to achieve rapid growth targets for the next five years, and provide a solid platform from which to communicate new service propositions. “Historically we have grown our client base through word of mouth and referrals alone” Claire adds. “Clarify has long been a market leader in setting the benchmark for sales cycle development, and we are ready to start shouting about it.”

Clarify, the sales cycle development company, have announced that 90% of the opportunities they provided to customers since January 2010 have progressed past first meeting into development by sales.  

Clarify provide outsourced business development service to the enterprise technology sector, and have a long established reputation for excellent service and consistent delivery of results. This is evident in the longevity of their client relationships, and their dedication to maintaining exceptional standards of quality control across their service portfolio. 

Clarify take pride in their rigorous quality control processes, which ensure maximum acceptance rates of leads, opportunities, and all services delivered to its clients. Each and every opportunity is cross checked to establish accuracy and completeness, and to ensure that all criteria are met before it is handed over to the client. Clarify liaises with Account Managers to obtain validations of each lead or opportunity to monitor success, identify areas for improvement and better answer the needs of each individual client.

Historically Clarify have consistently maintained an 80% rate of progression past first meeting. However a recent internal report has shown that since Jan 2010, 91% of the validations received have reported that there have been next actions secured after the initial meeting. That means with Clarify’s service, if sales people attend 6 meetings, more than 5 will progress, compared to the industry standard of 10% progression rate, where over 50 meetings would have to be attended to achieve the same result.

Claire Edmunds, CEO of Clarify, commented “Achieving conversion rates of over 90% throughout 2010 is a fantastic achievement for us. It is a testament to the hard work put in by our Sales Executives, and to the excellent training they receive which make them Enterprise calibre, consultative sales people. We are committed to providing sales people with the opportunities they really want to follow up, and this result makes the Clarify proposition all the more compelling to prospective clients.” 

Clarify, the sales cycle development company, has continually refined best practice for lead and opportunity generation over the past 7 years for their B2B enterprise technology customers. In a recent feature on lead scoring and lead nurturing covered in the industry leading publication, B2B Marketing magazine, Clarify’s CEO Claire Edmunds discusses how to manage the leads that slip through the net.

An extract from the article is as follows:

“ Claire Edmunds talks about the ‘sales lead twilight zone’, a place where marketing produces leads that meet sales criteria and are accepted – yet that fail to ever contribute towards the sales forecast. “The ‘twilight zone’ is where perfectly viable opportunities are left to go cold, or get picked up by the competition” she says.

Lead nurturing is fundamental to addressing this leakage. “Of course all sales funnels leak, which is why there is a huge need for effective lead nurturing and also opportunity nurturing in the ‘twilight zone’,” says Edmunds. “Lead nurturing and opportunity nurturing are all about minimising this leakage. A key consideration is to understand the needs of each prospect, and to communicate with them according to their buying cycle rather than your sales agenda.”

The full article can be read here http://www.b2bm.biz/Features/Lead-scoring--Points-win-prizes/

Clarify provides a range of outsourced sales cycle development services to manage each stage of the buying and sales process to bridge the gap between sales and marketing and fill your pipeline. Clarify Lead Nurturing transitions leads from one point in your sales cycle to another. We manage the process of converting leads to opportunities and then to pipeline – minimising the fallout of leads from the sales funnel, promoting competitive advantage and becoming proactively accountable for your ROI.

Visit the Clarify website to learn more about our sales cycle development services.