Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration

Transcription

1 Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration

2 EFFECTIVE LEAD GENERATION: CREATING VALUE THROUGH MARKETING AND SALES COLLABORATION 2005 Huthwaite, Inc. All rights reserved. These copyrighted materials may not be reproduced, publicly displayed, or used to create derivative products in any form without prior written permission from: Huthwaite, Inc Davis Drive, Suite 100 Sterling, VA

3 Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration What Does A Good Prospect Really Look Like? Talk about a failure to communicate. For the umpteenth time, Marketing presents its latest list of leads to Sales, leads they ve worked long and hard to get. Sales looks at the leads, raises its collective eyebrow and sighs, and the familiar grumbling begins: There s no logic in selling to west coast distributors when they all want a one-day turnaround. This kind of buyer cares only about the lowest price, no matter how many bells and whistles we add on. We re so short-handed, we won t be able to follow up on a single one of these fast enough. Marketing can overcome this familiar and frustration scenario by asking the following question What does a good prospect for us really look like? As with all thoughtful questions designed to bore into the critical decisions that drive growth, there s no easy response. To uncover the right answer, Marketing and Sales have to forge a commitment to work together right from the start. Along the way they ll likely shed many longcherished processes and preconceived notions about what constitutes a strong lead, but the journey will transform their relationship. This white paper will break down this process into clearly defined investigative steps that any organization can implement, no matter what its size, resources or market position. The first step is to take a fresh look at the sales transaction itself. What s really going on? When one company willingly exchanges its hard-won financial capital for goods or services from another, in the broadest sense it expects to extract some kind of value from those goods or services, a value it needs right now and can t find anywhere else. If value is the crux of any sales transaction, then look to define customers by their value expectations Huthwaite, Inc. 1

4 Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration Everyone s Looking for Value If value is the crux of any sales transaction, then look to define customers by their value expectations. In today s hyper-competitive global marketplace, customer value expectations break down into three categories: The customer knows what it wants and wants it cheaply. Picture Wal-Mart. This is an intrinsic value customer. The lead is ideal for a sales staff that's geared for transactional selling and can make a lowest-bid offer. The customer is willing to invest time with the salesperson to create a solution that provides value. This is an extrinsic value customer. The lead will be welcomed by a sales staff that does consultative selling. The customer is looking for a partnership with the supplier. It's ready to change how it operates to leverage the supplier's core competencies. This is an enterprise value customer. The lead will be sought after by sales staffs whose companies can support this kind of relationship. Different sales forces begin their sales efforts at different places. Wherever that is, the lead generation effort should match it. Armed with a better understanding of customer types as defined by their value expectations, Marketing can realize dramatic gains in the productivity of many of its activities. Some companies target all three types of customers, so Marketing s leads need to be segmented in the same fashion. It will replace one-size-fits-all messaging with a selection of approaches, each one crafted with a customer type s unique value expectations in mind: Marketing will direct product bulletins to intrinsic value customers and design a newsletter for extrinsic value customers, for example. In other cases the company is pursuing just one kind of customer, and the sales people want leads that zero in on this particular type. The critical process of elimination becomes ten times more efficient, almost overnight. The amount of time and energy that s saved with this analytical tool alone can be breathtaking. Where Does the Sale Start? Once Marketing and Sales have agreed on their customer types as defined by value expectations, they must determine where exactly in the customer organization the sale should start. Think of this part of the process as the key to understanding how an individual at the customer sees the world, based on his or her spot in the customer s internal hierarchy. Customer types can be divided into three groups. There are those who the salespeople find accessible for beginning a dialogue that provides the bedrock information the salespeople need. They re the focus of receptivity group. Then there are those who own the problem the salesperson s value solution will address. They comprise the focus Huthwaite, Inc.

5 Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration of dissatisfaction group. On top of the hierarchy are people who must give their buy-in and provide the needed budget and resources. They're the focus of power group. Different sales forces begin their sales efforts at different places. Wherever that is, the lead generation effort should match it. Timing Is Everything A third major component in this investigative process is the ability to identify the stage in the buying cycle where the customer resides. Research has shown that, as with a customer s value expectations and the perspectives of each of its employees, there are universal categories for each stage a customer goes through en route to a buying decision. First there s the recognition of needs stage, where it becomes clear that change of some kind is needed. That's followed by the evaluation of options stage, where the prospect assesses the various available alternatives, which might include an in-house solution, a competitor's solution or doing nothing. Finally comes the resolution of concerns stage, where the customer tries to gain assurance that the solution being offered will actually work. Decision Resolution Implementation Changes Over Time Needs Recognition of When Marketing can tell the sales reps exactly where along the buying cycle each customer is located, those reps can plan much more effectively for their calls. Over time, Marketing can design its lead generation strategy so that it secures prospects at all points in the buying cycle to give the reps even more flexibility. of Concerns Evaluation of Options The Buying Cycle Let the Outcome Guide the Planning With this methodology in place, there s more opportunity for a new wave of creative thinking about the many other solutions there are to the challenge of capturing and qualifying leads. A lead s source, for example, often holds solid clues as to how the sales process will evolve. A prospect that attended a company-sponsored breakfast is a lot more valuable than one who dropped a card in a trade show exhibit fishbowl. Meanwhile, any lead from the Internet has to be tagged immediately, since customers who are web-savvy expect a fast response to their queries. Whatever the medium used to generate leads, the process should be planned with an objective in mind. Different kinds of planning are needed to identify people who will be invited to an expensively catered dinner party than those who will be targets of a direct mail or advertising campaign. It goes without saying that Marketing and Sales should agree on how many leads are needed at any given time Huthwaite, Inc. 3

6 Effective Lead Generation: Creating Value Through Marketing and Sales Collaboration Improved Marketing-Sales synergy can increase revenue by huge margins. A lot of guesswork and finger pointing are replaced by a sense of mutual respect and understanding that builds on itself, especially as the bottom line improves. Marketing makes significant contributions to customer retention and to shortening the selling cycle. Marketing participates in revenue generation not as a communicator of value but rather as a creator of value, and that means Marketing becomes indispensable. This white paper originally appeared on B2B Marketer Online, published by the Business Marketing Association at Huthwaite, Inc.

7 About Huthwaite Huthwaite is the world s premier sales performance improvement company. Huthwaite s powerful selling models were developed from research conducted on more than 35,000 sales interactions over a 12-year period. In the past 20 years, we ve helped hundreds of organizations achieve competitive advantage by developing sales skills, sales management and strategy programs, and innovative sales force responses to marketplace demands. Talk to us about helping your organization develop your selling, coaching and negotiation skills, sales management, and overall sales strategy to a world-class level. Huthwaite already serves dozens of Fortune 500 market leaders. For more information, call us at , or visit our website at

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