What are the Strategic Components of a Marketing and Sales Model?
RiseSmart’s top opportunities are to increase visibility and gain market share. They are also building an inside sales program to complement their outside sales capabilities. What are the most important strategic components of an effective marketing and sales model?
Interview with Sanjay Sathe, President & CEO, RiseSmart:
In a marketing and sales system, marketing is the precursor to everything. If you can’t effectively deliver your message to your audience, you have no lead generation machine and sales must resort to cold calls.
The best marketing plans don’t start with your company, product or service, They start with a focus on your customers, and the benefits you can deliver to them.
Your first step should be to identify who your customers are.
* This can be challenging in B2B businesses. For example, with RiseSmart’s outplacement solution, Transition Concierge, we have several possible customers: the HR department at the company seeking outplacement services; the CFO at these companies; the HR department at companies seeking good candidates; and the individuals who are going through outplacement and seeking new positions.
* Each of these audiences has different objectives, priorities and approaches. To succeed, we need to connect to each of them where they are.
After you have identified your target customers, the next step is to develop messaging and message delivery systems that capture and maintain their attention.
* Your messaging must express a differentiation that is easy to grasp – something that clearly sets you apart from your competition. In technology marketing, Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial, with its man-versus-machine contrast, is one of the most famous examples of this.
* Your campaign must consistently touch your potential customer base. Research suggests that this requires a minimum of 4-5 touches to effectively gain customer attention and communicate your message.
* Accompanying the messaging and the increased visibility that you seek, you must have an effective way to respond promptly and directly to customer interest or inquiries. Rapid and responsive follow-up are critical to success.
As you put your marketing message and campaigns together, you need to develop a sales capability to respond to leads that the campaign will generate. In an online world, one of the key components of a marketing system is the email campaign, combined with tools for rapid and responsive follow-up.
In RiseSmart’s system, the inside sales team is primarily responsible for following up on leads. The team’s role is:
* To qualify the prospect responding to our marketing efforts. Is this person the right buyer for their company? If not, who is?
* Does the company have a budget for our services? If not, when will they?
* Is this the right time? Do they have a current contract in place? Are they actively looking?
The most critical aspect of the inside sales rep’s role is to be an effective filter in collecting and passing data to the field sales force. Many inside sales reps fail because their performance is measured on the number of calls made, not the quality of the calls or information gathered. Our incentives for inside sales are based on the quality of data gathered and on the success of field sales in closing the leads they receive.
The effectiveness of outside sales really comes down to choosing the right people.
* The 80/20 rule applies here. One out of five field sales reps hired is truly successful, one is marginal, and three don’t make it.
* We hire based on experience selling to our target customer groups, subjective elements, and careful reference checks.
As CEO, I consider hiring good people the most important thing I do.
Sandy McMahon is publisher of Ceo2Ceos (www.Ceo2Ceos.com), a non-commercial site for executives to share best practices. He is also President of Executive Forums of Silicon Valley. With over 20 years of executive experience, Sandy has a BA from Brown, an EdM from Harvard, and an MBA from Duke.
