The Sales Lead & the Language Police

October 21, 2010 by Robert Lesser | Comments Off

At its simplest level, language allows one person to understand another in the course of basic communication.   

On a broader scale, language defines who we are, what groups we belong to and our culture.   

In Quebec, almost 50 years ago, the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF -  Quebec Board of the French Language) was established to ensure that French would be the primary language in the province of Quebec assuring the rights and identity of the French-speaking majority.

Supposedly first dubbed  ’The Language Police’ by the TV show 60 minutes, the OQLF accepts language complaints filed by Quebec citizens.     Although having no police powers, the OQLF can fine or even shut down an offending business.

Do we need language police in our world of B2B sales & marketing?

The ancient Greeks used the word bárbaros to describe foreigners as ‘those who babble’  (hence the word ‘barbarian’)

Perhaps this is an early example of mis-aligment between sales and marketing.   Could it be that ancient Greek salespeople referred to their marketing colleagues as bárbaros?  

Whatever the case, we continue to face basic issues in B2B sales and marketing.

The core concept of the definition of a sales lead and its workflow is the subject of endless debate and lack of clarity within B2B organizations.

The sales lead is the currency upon which sales and marketing transact their business.     If sales does not agree with marketing on the definition of a sales lead or their role in the lead lifecycle, then marketing’s efforts are futile.     This is akin to doing business between sales and marketing but in different currencies.

The agreement between sales and marketing acts as the catalyst for sales effort.

I propose that it is not the definition of the lead that matters but rather that sales and marketing agree on that definition.    

So here is my definition of a lead that provides any sales and marketing organization with a base to work from: 

The Sales Lead: A defined prospect to be engaged by Sales.  

Implied in this simple definition:

  1. A sales lead is defined and agreed upon between sales and marketing and
  2. Sales agrees to follow-up on such prospects in a consistent way.    

This approach provides the flexibility that is often needed.    Depending on buying behavior and selling processes, organizations may categorize a lead as an inquiry, an appointment or a qualified lead.   As time moves on, this definition can evolve.

If we can’t get consensus on something as simple and vital as a sales lead, then we should summon the language police.   As B2B organizations we have lost our way and our identity.

Related Blog Posts
An Identity Crisis for the Sales Lead
Sales Leads vs. Appointments
10 Signs that Sales & Marketing are Mis-Aligned

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The Risky Business of Exclusive Reselling

October 7, 2010 by Robert Lesser | 5 Comments

Last month, Eloqua terminated its reselling relationship with The Pedowitz Group, a marketing automation reseller.

Rob Brewster, SVP Business Development at Eloqua explained in a blog post that The Pedowitz Group’s decision to partner with some of Eloqua’s competitors jeopardized Eloqua’s IP (Intellectual Property) and caused Eloqua to make the change.

Steve Woods, CTO of Eloqua, in an online discussion noted that the transparency and clarity of reseller partnerships was critical to Eloqua in meeting customer needs.   To ensure this, Eloqua requires exclusive  relationships with resellers.

The Pedowitz Group (TPG) stated in a press release that by representing multiple marketing automation vendors, TPG is best serving its customers.   Marketo, one of TPG’s marketing automation vendors, supported TPG’s position on the exclusivity issue in this blog post by Marketo CEO, Phil Fernandez.

VARs are led by entrepreneurs with a high tolerance for risk.

Is a VAR who is exclusive with a vendor exposed to excessive business risk?

Too few customers or too few suppliers can create undue risk for a VAR.    A VAR may choose an exclusive relationship with a vendor due to the deep technical requirements on a vendor’s solution that necessitate specialization or the attractive rewards that vendors provide to a VAR in exchange for exclusivity.

However a number of significant events may jeopardize a relationship between a vendor and a VAR.    In extreme cases, this could destabilize a VAR’s business:

A Falling Out

Leaders at VARs can often be described as ‘big personalities’ that don’t fit the corporate mold.

Emotional friction can be caused when the parties approach the business differently: where small business (i.e. the VAR) is collaborating with large business (i.e. the vendor) in selling to large business (i.e. the mid-market or enterprise market).

The Pedowitz Group (TPG lost) is run by a former Eloqua executive and is Eloqua’snumber one reseller, yet the relationship was terminated by Eloqua.    Although I have no insight as to the decision on either side, I suspect that that the issues ran deeper than IP and exclusivity.

The consequences for TPG could have been disastrous should TPG not also have reselling relationships with two other marketing automation vendors.

A Vendor Sells Direct

A vendor may change the mix of direct sales to channel sales.    For example, a vendor may have sold 100% through VARs but determines that enterprise accounts are being under-served.   A vendor may then ‘take-back’ enterprise accounts leaving VARs with only SMB accounts.

In economic downturns, vendors hungry for margin have been observed to increase direct sales.

A Vendor is Taken Over or Bankrupt

If a technology vendor is taken over, a VAR may find that the acquirer has a different go-to-market strategy of selling through the channel.

For example, after Oracle acquired Sun it was announced that Oracle was expanding its direct sales force and affirmed its preference for direct sales.  

In the marketing automation space, Market2Lead was aquired by Oracle earlier this year.

A Vendor launches a Cloud Solution

The Cloud Computing model changes the relationship that VARs have with vendors and customers.  

The lower risk associated with subscription sales and freemium models, creates a unique sales model for cloud solutions (read more on my recent blog post).

From inquiry to close to solution provisioning to renewal, vendors play a larger role and VARs will no longer provide on-site installation services.     Vendors, given their closer customer relationship will have greater customer insight and ownership. 

What is your opinion:  what are the pros and cons of  reseller exclusivity?

 

Note: Direct Impact Marketing is a reseller (VAR) of lead generation solutions and is currently evaluating marketing automation solutions.

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The Moment of Truth for Sales

September 2, 2010 by Robert Lesser | 1 Comment

The moment of truth arrives when a prospect is engaged in a meaningful interaction with your organization.

For B2B marketers that key point is the response generated from a marketing effort through direct, online or social media marketing.

For sales, it is the sales conversation: that defining moment when a prospect is engaged, qualified and profiled through a dynamic dialog.

The sales conversation is being shaped by a number of strong forces:

  1. Buyers increasingly prefer online and telephone discussions rather than face-to-face discussions.  By necessity or due to communications and online research preferences, buyers have moved away from face-to-face meetings.   For more on this, read the post: Selling to the Digital Buyer.
  2. Buyers don’t find value in sales discussions.   Surveys of buyers identify a crisis in the sales conversation:  McKinsey found that the two most destructive sales behaviors were inadequate product knowledge and excessive customer contact. In IDC‘s 2010 IT Customer Experience study, over 50% of IT sales reps are showing up to their prospect and customer meetings ‘unprepared’.   Forrester Research reports that only 15% of executives believe that sales meetings live up to expectations.
  3. New offerings lower buyer risk and the need for face-to-face meetings.     Buyers can take lengthy free trials and upgrade to a fully functional solution later (i.e. the freemium model).    Products can be purchased is small quantities (i.e. online data) or rent, rather than buy, a solution that is hosted off-premise (i.e. SaaS, hosted solutions).
  4. The weak economic outlook is causing organizations to economize on sales models.    Creating less resource intensive selling models is a priortiy for many organizations.

The nature of the sales conversation changes depending on the type of sales: inside sales, outside/field sales and hybrid sales – a combination of both inside and outside sales.

One of the largest beneficiaries of changing nature of the sales conversation is the inside sales function.   

CSO Insights,  a B2B sales researcher, recently released their 2010 Telemarketing Inside Sales Optimization survey. 

According to Barry Trailer, Managing Partner for CSO Insights.

There’s a great deal happening in Inside Sales and it’s all very exciting.  The adoption of enabling technology, higher percentage of leads being generated by marketing, and anticipated growth in telesales teams this year all suggest this is going to be an increasingly important segment of companies’ overall revenue mix.

The research indicates that one in seven firms plans to increase telemarketing/inside sales reps by more than 20%.

Last year, in a brief entitled ‘The Rapid Rise of Inside Sales’, SiriusDecisions, a provider of B2B research and advisory services in sales and marketing, is bullish on the prospects for inside sales predicting a doubling of the revenue contribution of inside sales to overall corporate revenue.

For buying models that require face-to-face interaction, the opportunity is not to eliminate face-to-face but  judiciously mix telephone and online dialog with face-to-face meetings as the buying cycle dictates.

Stuart Armstong, in a comment on my earlier blog post, pointed out some research from Forbes Insight indicates that the majority of business owners and CXO level executives prefer face-to-face meetings (albeit that the research brief is slanted to appeal to the hotel industry and seems to fly in the face of the analyst research listed above).  One of the conclusions by Forbes Insight drawn from the research is that:

Web-, video- and teleconferencing have their role, but the executives in the survey do not expect them to make the need for face-to-face meetings obsolete. Rather, many see the ideal as a mix of face-to-face and technology enabled meetings and conferences.

Question:  How do you perceive sales models and the sales conversation changing?    
 

Related Posts
Selling to the Digital B2B Buyer
Destructive B2B Sales Practices
Insights on the Outbound Renaissance

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