B2B Demand Generation | What Sales Really Needs

Sales is generating over 1/2 of their own leads, as per the 2011 Lead Management Optimization study by CSO Insights. But salespeople are not good at this. And 4 out of 10 salespeople missed quota last year.

Audio interview with Jim Dickie of CSO Insights
http://player.wizzard.tv/player/o/i/x/131205721690/config/k-917fdd681fef7c9d/uuid/root/episode/k-33ebfdec079334ca.m4v
Why are salespeople poor at lead generation? And why do so many miss quota? Here are a few reasons:

• Corporations are in a state of continuous change. Mergers and acquisitions increase complexity. This makes it harder and harder for salespeople to find and connect with the right decision-makers.
• The economic downturn and financial crisis means companies are leaner than ever. People are bombarded by emails, phone calls and meetings. The last thing they want is another interruption.
• Executives don’t like surprises. They are content to stick with the status quo as long as they possibly can.
• Who even needs to talk to a salesperson? With fast connections and robust websites, executives can get answers without talking to anyone.

The result: It takes many, many touches to get a meeting. Sales is poorly equipped to deal with this reality. And when they finally do connect, they don’t have the tools to succeed.

If sales is ill-equipped for lead generation, and winning deals, this begs two question:

1. Are Sales Getting What They Need to Be Truly Effective?
2. What does Sales really need to be effective?

To answer that question, I refer you to one of the most highly regarded sales experts out there - Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies and SNAP Selling fame. As a top Sales expert, she knows better than most how to makes sales effective. She wrote an eBook recently on this very topic, which I summarize here.

Why does sales need help from marketing?

Here are the 7 Strategies to Get More and Better Prospects into your Sales Pipeline:

1. High quality, well nurtured leads
   It’s harder and harder to get in the door. Prospects have grown expert at blocking contact. In addition, due to the economic downturn, companies are more shorthanded than ever. Besides, with super fast internet connections, who needs to talk to a salesperson? Marketing needs to engage prospective buyers, gently nurture them and hand over fully qualified opportunities.
2. Strong value propositions
   Prospects require a clear and unambiguous description of business outcomes using your product or service. The lack of a clear, concise statement of value hurts many businesses. Marketing and Sales should work together to create a highly customer focused value proposition.
3.  Understanding of the As-Is environment
   Because the default approach is to keep what you have, salespeople need a clear understanding the need to change, the business issues driving the change and how companies make decisions.
4. Trigger event awareness
   A recent study found that 8 out of 10 buyers say they found the seller. Chances are most deals happen because of nothing that the salesperson did. Most likely an event, such a change in leadership or earnings announcement drove the need for change. It’s important to have awareness to key trigger events so they can call at the optimal time.
5. Enticing voice-mail strategies
   “Hi Tom. This is Sally Sales calling. I’m the account executive from ABC Technology. We’re the leading vendor of marketing automation software and we offer a wide range of services too. I’d like to set up a time for us to meet.“
   That is the typical voice-mail left by sales and it is highly ineffective. This is why it is so important for Marketing to help design and plan the voice-mail strategy. Marketing can help tie the message to their business challenges and desired outcomes.
6. Objection handling
   Chances are the callers will hear lots of objections
   • We don’t need anything like that.
   • We’re already working with a vendor on that.
   • We do that in-house
   • We’re too busy. Can you call back in 3 months?

   The best way to handle objections is to plan for them in advance. Marketing is best equipped to plan and teach sales.

7. Sales tools
   Great content is so important today. Marketing needs to provide sales with content to use in sales situations, such as
   • Letter templates
   • Email outlines
   • White papers
   • Case studies
   • Articles
   • Presentation templates
   • Self analysis questions

   Sales needs the ability to not only get the right content for the right situation, but they need to customize is for the need at hand. Marketing is best equipped to help.

Perhaps you want to download a document to share internally. We suggest you download Jill’s ebook from Selling to Big Companies by clicking the link below.

What Sales Really Needs from Marketing

What do you think? We love your comments and when you share our content. We also thank Jill for this great eBook.

 

“If more people listened to Jeff (President of Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, CEO, Pointclear.