Avoiding the Blame Game Between Sales and Marketing

Avoiding the Blame Game Between Sales and Marketing
by Anneke Seley
coauthor, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology

One of the strategic prerequisites of Sales 2.0 — the use of innovative sales practices enabled by technology — is the alignment of sales and marketing. Organizations often have different executives with separate goals, perspectives, and compensation-plan objectives running sales and marketing. This can lead not only to internal unrest but also to negative customer experiences or perceptions of your company, not to mention poor sales results. Those companies that engineer their organizations to guarantee sales and marketing cooperation, however, achieve both competitive advantage and improved revenue.

One company that exemplifies a high level of collaboration between sales and marketing is newScale (link to newScale.com), a company that offers IT service catalog and service portfolio management software solutions. This is due to the close working relationship and shared compensation-plan targets of the company’s EVP and head of sales, David Satterwhite, and VP of marketing, Mark Hamilton. Their partnership commitment is so strong that they not only co-develop integrated programs and practices, but they also make presentations as a team. These executives’ dedication to collaboration, elusive in many companies, earned them a market-leading position in its field, with more than 1.5 million users worldwide, including 20 percent of the Fortune 50.

David and Mark are evangelists of sales and marketing communication and collaboration at the top level.

They make it a priority.
Both believe alignment has a critically positive impact on both top- and bottom-line results and frees them to focus on making their numbers. They also stress that it is a prerequisite to a healthy and productive company culture.
David and Mark maintain their commitment to alignment by considering each other members of their management teams, attending the other’s management meetings, and holding weekly one-on-one meetings or phone calls. They treat the annual marketing plan as a customer proposal, with sales being the customer, and share staffing and head-count planning.

They develop shared rules of the road.
This includes assuming a positive rather than adversarial intent on the part of the other department, which they model at the highest level, and recognizing that they have a shared ultimate metric of success — revenue growth — on which compensation in both sales and marketing is based.
David underlines the importance of upbeat psychology, as well as personal relationships, in business. By coaching his sales team to give marketing staff the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong and by helping them resolve conflicts through trust, he avoids hours of management “therapy” and keeps his group focused on sales effectiveness and efficiency.

They leverage each other’s strengths.
David contributes his sales instincts for what produces revenue, understands what motivates his customers to buy and his sales team to sell, and has highly developed skills negotiating and winning deals. Mark is expert at operations, systems, and processes, distilling and analyzing complex concepts, and seeding and growing markets.

They collaborate on designing and implementing sales tools and technologies.
Price lists, closed-loop lead processes, weekly sales tips, win/loss programs, and continual surveys of marketing-program effectiveness are some of the tools the company developed that have passed the sales “sniff test.” Because they are designed by both sales and marketing, they actually get used.
Mark describes the difficulty he faced getting newScale’s sales people to report on lost deals. Sales people like to celebrate successes, not dwell on failures. By documenting the deals they haven’t won, sales people may feel they bring attention to their weaknesses in sales process or skills. When he asked his marketing group to call “lost” customers, though, Mark uncovered a solution to the problem of engaging the sales team. The calls revealed that many customers weren’t lost at all, as they weren’t happy with their chosen alternative solution to newScale’s product. Though newScale’s sales team didn’t win these sales initially, these customers became part of the pipeline a second time through Mark’s calling program. The sales group happily adopted the program when they understood it as a sales campaign that could unearth recycled, newly qualified leads.
Mark also recognized an opportunity to improve lead qualification and pipeline building using products from Genius.com (link to genius.com), but he wouldn’t dream of signing up to try them without running the idea by the manager of David’s deal-development team. Genius’ products truly support a Sales 2.0 (link to phoneworks.com/sales20) collaboration between marketing and sales by allowing reps in both departments to track and act on important data on potential customers (such as who is responding to e-mail messages, and what web pages they are looking at right now and for how long). By including the sales team in the evaluation and decision-making process, Mark succeeded in bringing a valuable sales tool into the company that is enthusiastically embraced by the lead qualifiers.

As customer requirements and economic conditions change, the old way of selling — independently of or in contradiction to marketing efforts — doesn’t work. Sales 2.0, the evolution of the sales function, includes rethinking sales strategy, people, process, and technology. With a business strategy that emphasizes sales and marketing alignment and collaborative planning and execution, companies will stay competitive and achieve sales success.

Anneke Seley is the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a consultancy that helps large and small businesses build and restructure sales teams to achieve predictable, measurable, and sustainable sales growth. As the 12th employee at Oracle, she designed the company’s revolutionary inside sales operation. Her book, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology, is available at online retailers including amazon.com, bn.com, booksamillion.com, and borders.com. For more information, visit www.sales20book.com.

Customer Experience and Satisfaction Key for Marketers in 2009‏

Companies Missing Big Opportunity to Turn Customer Pain Into Competitive Gain, Says CMO Council Report

Despite overwhelming agreement on the importance of customer experience and word-of-mouth, senior marketers admit their companies are failing to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate customer voice and experience into key business and marketing processes, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.
Sponsored by Satmetrix, the Net Promoter Company, the study, titled "Giving Customer Voice More Volume," revealed that a surprising 58 percent of the 480 executives surveyed said their companies do not compensate any employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics. Some 38 percent said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers. In addition, only 29 percent said their companies rate highly in their ability handle and resolve customer problems or complaints.

The CMO Council study underscores critical deficiencies in the way companies measure, optimize and leverage customer experience to drive loyalty, improve brand value and increase business performance and growth, including:

-- Insufficient availability and aggregation of real-time customer
experience data across touch points that should be shared across the
organization

-- Poor use of customer interactions to collect insights and intelligence
or maximize up-sell and advocacy opportunities

-- Lack of Internet processes and systems to track online word of mouth
and drive customer advocacy

-- Intermittent or deficient monitoring of customer experience that fails
to provide true and timely insights into problems and opportunities

-- Too few compensation programs tied to customer experience, loyalty and
satisfaction gains

"Customer experience is one of the most critical determinants of brand strength and business growth. Yet, most organizations and senior marketers suffer from major blind spots and gaps in the way they interact, handle and respond to customer issues or problems," said CMO Council executive director Donovan Neale-May. "CMOs must assume ownership for the customer experience and establish enterprise-wide measures and disciplines to ensure continuous improvement. We are missing a major opportunity to turn customer pain into competitive gain at every touch point through better use of web and contact center technologies and processes."

Customer listening, learning and leveling are critical qualities that need to be part of an institutionalized corporate culture, notes the CMO Council. Yet, survey data demonstrates that most companies are not taking advantage of these opportunities to drive company-wide performance improvement and business growth. Instead, most companies treat customer interactions around service situations and incidents only as a problem that needs quick resolution:

-- Only 38 percent of companies gather customer insight from customer
engagement situations.

-- Just 32 percent look for ways to turn problems into new sales
opportunities, and only 15 percent introduce new products or services to
further monetize the relationship.

-- Merely 17 percent use the opportunity to identify and cultivate
potential customer champions and advocates.

While companies have a long way to go in turning detractors into brand advocates, senior marketers are clearly aware of the importance of customer experience. In fact, 83 percent of respondents said it is either "essential" or "increasingly important" in driving brand advocacy and business performance. In addition, 84 percent said positive customer experiences and word of mouth have helped their brands and businesses grow. There were 44 percent of respondents who admitted that high-profile negative customer experiences had at some time compromised their brands.

Only 31 percent rate their company's commitment to customer listening highly, but another 35 percent say it is "getting better." Although 34 percent of respondents said their companies have made no changes to the way they track and analyze customer experience in recent years, it can be seen as a positive development that 45 percent of respondents say their companies have taken steps to better integrate and analyze customer data. Another 39 percent said they have increased personalization and intimacy in their customer communications, 20 percent say they have embraced intelligent Internet analytics and 18 percent are capturing real-time information at the "point of pain."

"Companies must become more sophisticated and committed to both leveraging customer experience as a key business metric and instituting company-wide processes that drive improvement," said Laura Brooks, Ph.D. and vice president of research for Satmetrix. "The Net Promoter Score has been proven to be the most reliable customer metric for business growth, but measurement is not an end in itself. Companies need to commit themselves to understanding the key determinants of their score and continuously strive to improve their customer experience competitiveness." Brooks is co-author, with Satmetrix CEO Richard Owen, of a new book, titled "Answering the Ultimate Question," that offers a new operating model for NetPromoter success.

Other key findings of the study include:

-- Nearly two-thirds of companies do not have a formal Voice of Customer
program in place.

-- Only 13 percent of companies have deployed real-time systems to
collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback.

-- While 74 percent say they receive customer feedback via e-mail, only
23 percent say they track and measure the volume and nature of these
messages.

-- Customer voice has gone online, but only 14.5 percent track word of
mouth on the Internet

-- Only 12 percent are using a word-of-mouth marketing platform to drive
online customer advocacy.

Tips on How to Choose A Trade Show Display Company

The backbone of your trade show exhibit displays is the trade show display company which plans and designs your trade show exhibit. You must look for an organization which offers wide range of options for you to choose from. They also assign experts for your project who will take care of every possible factor which can prove to be advantageous for the upcoming trade show.

While opting for a trade show display company you must check that their package offers international services so as to meet your increasing demands. Their package must also be flexible as per your needs. They should be ready to replace your exhibit rentals with custom exhibits whenever you feel like doing so.

Lastly, never forget to compare the prices of different trade show display companies so that you don't end up overpaying for your project.

Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology

What is your sales organization doing about the current economic downturn? What will make a difference for your company? While the economic forecast may be “uncertain,” it is certain that our customers are reducing their budgets and spending more carefully, forcing their vendors to do the same. This economic challenge will accelerate the adoption of Sales 2.0 from a “nice to have” to a “need to have” philosophy. Companies that continue to sell the way they sold in the past will become less profitable or fail altogether. Customer preferences, the ever-rising cost of sales, and the availability of next-generation technologies are making change mandatory for companies that want to outperform the competition and minimize the impact of the economic slowdown.

What is Sales 2.0?
Sales 2.0 is not a new technology. It is the use of innovative sales practices to improve business results, creating value for both the buyer and seller, and is often enabled by Web 2.0 or next-generation technology. Sales 2.0 initiatives typically center on process and customer-engagement improvements to increase sales productivity. Sales 2.0 practices combine the science of measurable, process-driven operations with the art of collaborative relationships, using the most profitable and expedient sales resources required to meet your customers’ needs. The goal of Sales 2.0 is to produce greater, predictable, repeatable business results, including increased revenue, decreased sales costs, and sustained competitive advantage.

Sales 2.0 initiatives require changing mindset and adjusting sales strategies. A relatively simple Sales 2.0 practice involves selling more through video or web conferencing. This can be done by inside salespeople or by field salespeople who perform more of their jobs from their desks. Selling more efficiently should also mean selling more effectively, as many buyers now prefer to meet remotely via conference calls with video or web conferencing, and salespeople benefit from additional selling time that otherwise would be spent traveling. A traditional sales process that included three or four onsite visits might now have zero or just one face-to-face visit. The financial impact of reducing travel expenses can be significant and is easily measured, but the economics of giving your most expensive sales resources — your field salespeople — additional selling time is even more compelling.

Many products and services, especially those of relatively small to average value, can only be sold profitably with a remote or low-touch sales model. The definition of “small to medium orders” is different for every company, but they are generally those that fall into your bottom 50% in value. If ignored, these mid-market customers or transaction types are missed opportunities for organizations that rely solely or too heavily on a field-based sales model. And when they are sold through field sales, these smaller opportunities can derail focus and drain the organization’s profitability.

Another Sales 2.0 practice uses some “science” to accurately capture key market information and metrics such as average sales cycle, average deal size and sales-cycle conversion rates. By using a defined sales process and data analytics, you can determine how your sales force should be structured and which customers and transaction types justify the assignment of field account executives, inside salespeople, channel partners or no selling effort at all. Data analytics in this sense can range from rudimentary (pen and paper) to moderate (spreadsheets, CRM, and most reporting systems) to advanced (dashboards and on-demand sales intelligence). Rather than simply measuring the final result (revenue), a Sales 2.0 approach measures the effectiveness of every stage in your sales process by salesperson, giving managers the opportunity to provide targeted coaching. Data analytics also can be used to correlate and analyze the specific characteristics of your most profitable customers (size, industries, locations, buyer types, etc.) that produce the most revenue and profit. Sales and marketing leaders can then use this information to fine-tune your sales model and activities to ensure the loyalty of your most valuable customers and find more prospects like them.

How do I begin a Sales 2.0 initiative with limited staff and budget?
A key Sales 2.0 tenet involves experimentation, often through testing new process ideas and piloting new technology. Testing a new sales message, pricing options, new technology, or even a new sales process enables the organization to be innovative with minimal risk. Small pilot programs that use minimal resources enable ineffective ideas to fail on a small scale, while good ones can be rolled out more aggressively.

Becoming a Sales 2.0 organization requires that we proactively adapt and continually improve so we can become closer to our customers and weather the economic storm better than our competitors.

New Year. New You. New Nest Egg.

Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is: Investment Strategies for Lifetime Wealth - Natalie Pace

Build a better nest egg with 6 easy, sound strategies for 2009. The stock market lost 38% in 2008, but if you lost more than 20%, your problem wasn't really the stock market, it was the design of your nest egg. Storms occur in markets, as they do in the real world, but your home shouldn't be flooding every time it happens.

You know intuitively that your retirement plan doesn't work. Your nest egg has drowned twice now in the last eight years. You were elated with your returns in 1999 and then devastated when your assets imploded during the DOT COM bust of 2000-2002. Same thing when Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through 14,000 in October of 2007, only to drop below 8000 in 2008. If you had a healthy fiscal plan, your nest egg wouldn't be sinking all of the time.

And contrary to what your financial advisor may be telling you, the markets returned only 4% over the last ten years, not 12%. That was less than a percentage point above Treasury Bills, at 3.3% annual gains, with a whole lot more risk.

Sound Nest Egg Strategies:
Rule #1: Always keep a percent equal to your age. Modern Portfolio Theory, the cornerstone of a healthy nest egg, has been around for half a century and Harry Markowitz, the economist who wrote it, won a Nobel Prize in 1990. Many financial professionals are paid on commission to sell you mutual funds, so, if you weren't protected from the 2008 financial crisis, chances are that either 1) your guru just didn't know the theory, or 2) s/he wasn't paid to employ the theory, or 3) s/he had bosses who pushed sales hard and couldn't employ the theory, or 4) s/he was dumb enough to think s/he could outthink a genius Nobel Laureate.

Grade Your GuruYou wouldn't hire an architect whose buildings flood in a storm. Since there are so many ìprofessionalsî and ìpunditsî who are spouting off -- when in reality they drowned their clients' nest eggs in 2008 -- it's your job to take charge and design a better dream life. As TD AMERITRADE Chairman Joe Moglia says, "Nobody cares more about your money more than you do." Bears get lucky in bear markets. Bulls get lucky in bull markets. Sound nest egg strategies work in any market!

HOW TO GRADE YOUR GURU
Add up your losses. If you lost more than 20% in 2008, your guru isn't making the grade.
Check your allocation. If you didn't start 2008 with a percent equal to your age SAFE in Treasury Bills and/or high-rated bonds (GM, Fannie, etc. DO NOT QUALIFY), your guru isn't looking out for your best interest.

MY GRADES
NEST EGG: The pie charts and strategies outlined in Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is saved Bill (a handyman) and Nilo (an office administrator) Bolden's nest egg, while Nilo's bosses lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Since employing my strategies, they haven't lost anything.

TRADERS:Before I give you the details on my track record this year, which was outstanding, please note that novices have no business trading individual stocks in this financial storm anymore than beginning surfers should race into the jaws of a tsunami. Don't trade individual companies in 2009 unless: 1) you know how to buy put options and have had a few years of successful trading long and short, and 2) are willing to take your profits early and often. Obviously, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to focus on sound nest egg strategies first and education second -- perhaps at my Get Rich and Enrich Retreat. (Check out the banner ad on the home page at NataliePace.com for more details.)70% of the companies I featured in my 2008 monthly article and stock report cards were winners. Of those winners, more than half (58%) were shorts, i.e., companies that we expected to go DOWN in value.

ACT NOW TO GET IN GREAT FISCAL SHAPE!
Blind faith lost you a lot of money in 2008. 2009 is poised to be another stormy environment in stocks, which means that if you don't pull your head out of the sand and get a better dream life plan, you're going to be get buried.

My Golden Nest Egg Formula
ALWAYS KEEP A PERCENT EQUAL TO YOUR AGE SAFE. Treasury bills are the safest investment today. (High-rated bonds, money markets and CDs are traditionally and will be again in the future.)

DURING RECESSIONS, OVERWEIGHT 15-20% ADDITIONAL INTO SAFETY. Cash is King in a recession, i.e. not losing is winning. You will not be stuck overweighted in cash forever. If the markets continue to drop in 2009, as they are poised to do, you'll be glad you employed this defensive strategy. And you will have cash to invest, while those around you are scrambling to hang on and/or are forced to sell low to cover basic needs.

REMAINDER IN YOUR NEST EGG SHOULD BE DIVERSIFIED INTO 10 ETFS. You will find detailed pie charts in Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is.

EMERGING INDUSTRIES, NOT DYING COMPANIES. General Motors and Ford Motor Company combined are worth less than one-tenth of Toyota Motor Company's $102 billion. It is not just that Ford and GM have more expenses. GM and Ford lost market share this decade because their gas guzzlers were far less popular than the fuel-efficient Prius and other Toyota models.

KNOW WHAT YOU OWN, i.e., not mutual funds. The top mutual fund holdings in the U.S. in 2007 included some of the most poorly run companies, including General Motors, AIG, Fannie Mae and Phillip Morris Tobacco Company. ETFs allow you to target sections of the stock market by size (small, medium and large), style (value and growth), industry (gold mining, clean technology, international, biotechnology, etc.) and more.

DON'T TRADE. If you don't know how to take your profits early and often and/or if you don't know how to buy put options, do not buy and sell individual companies at all in 2009. (Own companies you love in ETFs where you are more protected from the price fluctuations of any one individual company.)

If you used this 6-step formula and rebalanced only once a year (say in January), you could have captured your gains in 2000 at the NASDAQ high. Likewise, in January of 2008, you would have captured your Dow Jones Industrial Average gains before the major fall-off and redistributed. Identifying where your gains are coming from allows you to increase your assets and redeploy your holdings back into a sound, dream life blueprint – which is a combination of Modern Portfolio Theory, ETFs, common sense and basic investing recipes. These strategies and more are outlined in my book, Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is. Buy it now as part of your New Year; New You; New Dream Life! And be sure to forward this article to a dozen of your closest friends, family, clients and co-workers who need to get fiscally fit.