"Your sales numbers are down - you need to make more calls!" Ever heard that one before. That is the mantra from a manager that does not know what to do to fix a problem. Back in the old days (like 15 years ago) this was the way you sold. You sold this way not because it was efficient, but because there were not many options. I know from experience. I even remember at one of my jobs as a headhunter, my manager would make me every Monday cut employment ads out of the newspaper, paste them on a larger piece of paper, and turn them in as the new leads I was going to hunt that week. From there I had to cold call them on the phone, and at a minimum visit 50% of the companies in person, unannounced. Furthermore, I had to produce a business card showing that I went and did not go to the golf course or the bar with my buddies. Guess what my results were? Let me just say that if you throw enough crap on the wall something will stick but by no means was this scalable or efficient - it was done out of necessity. Unfortunately, there are a lot of managers out there, some who have done sales before, and some who have been on sales calls and had sales meetings so they think they have done sales. Unfortunately many of them have not had an "in the trench" job like this for any period of time. I call them Glenn Gary managers. Have no idea what I am talking about? Go watch the movie Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. It's a classic.... A classically wrong way to sell or to tell people how to sell - at least in this day an age. Wake up dinosaurs - or get out of the way.
I realize this post is just a rant and not a solution, but I needed to rant today.
Showing posts with label Sales Process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sales Process. Show all posts
Optimizing your Customer Acquisition Funnel
And yet another winning blog post by David Skok. This one is about optimizing your customer acquisition funnel:
Acquiring customers in the B2B world involves using a variety of marketing and sales steps with the goal of converting prospective customers into paying customers. The process is often thought of as a funnel (see diagram above) where you pour in suspects at the top, and various steps in the process, some percentage of prospects successfully convert to the next stage, making the funnel narrower as the process evolves.
No matter how large or successful your business is, you will have at least one place that is a blockage point in your customer acquisition funnel. This is the point where the conversion rates from one stage to the next are not satisfactory, or the point where you have a scaling problem, (i.e. you cannot profitably increase the number of people coming out of that part of the funnel because you have maxed out the capability of one marketing or sales technique). If you solve that blockage point, usually it will cause another to appear somewhere else in the funnel. Read the rest here:
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-funnel/
Acquiring customers in the B2B world involves using a variety of marketing and sales steps with the goal of converting prospective customers into paying customers. The process is often thought of as a funnel (see diagram above) where you pour in suspects at the top, and various steps in the process, some percentage of prospects successfully convert to the next stage, making the funnel narrower as the process evolves.
No matter how large or successful your business is, you will have at least one place that is a blockage point in your customer acquisition funnel. This is the point where the conversion rates from one stage to the next are not satisfactory, or the point where you have a scaling problem, (i.e. you cannot profitably increase the number of people coming out of that part of the funnel because you have maxed out the capability of one marketing or sales technique). If you solve that blockage point, usually it will cause another to appear somewhere else in the funnel. Read the rest here:
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-funnel/
Why Sales People shouldn’t Prospect
I have long been a believer that cold-calling is an outdated approach still clung to by dinosaurs from the Glenn Garry Glenn Ross days. I am speaking from experience as I have done it all. I sold door to door when I was 17 & 18, I was selling before PC's were at every desk, and I was also selling as "ASP" (Application Service Provider) became SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and now cloud (yes, dreamy I know). Times have changed. There was a time when I got my leads form the phone book and the news paper. I actually had to go into the newspaper to find leads, cut them out, glue them onto a piece of paper that I would turn into my manager, and this would be my prospecting list for the week. I would then have to go out and not cold call but cold drop-in to businesses and collect business cards to prove I was working and not golfing. There are so many flaws there that is another post by itself.
Times have changed people. The BUYER owns the sales process now and NOT the seller. This is why inbound marketing is a focus of many of the fastest growing companies. The best example I can give is the car buying experience. Think about it ... when you go to buy a car now you likely know what car you want, what color you want, what options you want, what warranty you want, how much the dealer paid, how much others have paid, taken a virtual test drive, and more ..... BEFORE YOU EVER WALK ON TO A LOT AND A SALES REP EVEN KNOWS YOU ARE A BUYER. Other buying decisions are the same - whether B2C or B2B. Think of the last time you bought something, whether software or my own person recent purchase - a kegerator. I got on my laptop and started pounding on Google.
You now need to fill the top of the funnel by ensuring that you can be found by the people who are looking for what you sell, and then ensuring you have the right content when they find you.
Learn how to adapt or go the way of the dinosaur.
One of my favorite bloggers (and a VC) recently put out this interview. Check it out.
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/predictable-revenue/
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Times have changed people. The BUYER owns the sales process now and NOT the seller. This is why inbound marketing is a focus of many of the fastest growing companies. The best example I can give is the car buying experience. Think about it ... when you go to buy a car now you likely know what car you want, what color you want, what options you want, what warranty you want, how much the dealer paid, how much others have paid, taken a virtual test drive, and more ..... BEFORE YOU EVER WALK ON TO A LOT AND A SALES REP EVEN KNOWS YOU ARE A BUYER. Other buying decisions are the same - whether B2C or B2B. Think of the last time you bought something, whether software or my own person recent purchase - a kegerator. I got on my laptop and started pounding on Google.
You now need to fill the top of the funnel by ensuring that you can be found by the people who are looking for what you sell, and then ensuring you have the right content when they find you.
Learn how to adapt or go the way of the dinosaur.
One of my favorite bloggers (and a VC) recently put out this interview. Check it out.
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/predictable-revenue/
.
.
.
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