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Four Reasons Why Your Website Should Be Part of Your Sales 2.0 Strategy
In the Sales 1.0 era, prospects had to talk to those of us in Sales in order to get information about our products and services. Today, they check out our websites first, quickly forming a first impression. And, if we’ve done our jobs well, our websites become their “go to” resource throughout the buying cycle and often beyond.
As prospects turn to online media as their primary source of information, sales leaders practicing Sales 2.0 are realizing that their colleagues in Marketing are critical to their success– including those responsible for website design and content. In short, Sales is recognizing that Marketing has a great deal of influence over who ends up in their pipeline and who ends up in someone else’s. And that brings us to four reasons why sales leaders should work with Marketing to create the best possible website for engaging, tracking and analyzing customers and their activity on your website.
1. Your website can help generate prospects and keep them engaged.
Prospects are drawn to your website from a variety of sources. Email campaigns. Social media. Search engines and such. A “2.0 website” can deliver up content and messaging specific to your buyers based on who they are, where they’ve come from, and what they are interested in. In an age when we’re all struggling with information overload, we can help our customers early and throughout the sales cycle by serving up pertinent, easily-accessible, progressive information that is specific to their situation and stage in the buying cycle.
2. Website analytics reveal what your prospects are interested in.
2.0 websites provide analytics that show what pages prospects are viewing and what they’re downloading. Armed with this information, sales teams can see what a prospect cares about, and get right to the point when following up by phone or online.
3. A 2.0 website can show when and how your prospect is engaged – and how qualified they are to buy.
Your 2.0 website analytics can also tell you how long visitors stay on your site – an indication of their level of interest. This engagement level can then become part of your lead scoring and qualification process. These same analytics also show how a visitor chooses to engage and consume information. For example, if your prospect views videos or listens to your podcasts but doesn’t download any white papers, you might use video or audio in your follow-up communication rather that text.
4. Sales 2.0 website + marketing automation system + CRM integration = increased sales productivity.
When your sales team has to check multiple systems or sites for prospect and customer data, they’re wasting time that could be spent communicating with buyers. 2.0 websites that integrate their analytics with the systems where your sales reps live deliver Sales 2.0 efficiency that leads to better results.
Want to see an example of a 2.0 website? Check out phoneworks.com, our new website that launched just last month. We’re using application/problem-based segmentation, targeted content, progressive profiles, lead scoring and qualification, thanks to our partnership with Clickability. Compared to one month before the launch, we are seeing the following impressive results so far:
- 50%+ increase in unique and new visitors
- 73% increase in return visitors
I can hardly wait to see the increase in qualified leads and sales this will generate!
In what ways is your website part of your implementation of Sales – and Marketing – 2.0?
For more information and examples, check out the recorded webinar, “Is Your Website Keeping up with the Sales 2.0 Revolution?” in the Phone Works Learning Center.
In a Mature World…
Top 3 Reasons Why Sales Development Still Reports to Sales
Guest Blog by Sally Duby, Phone Works GM
Sally, a veteran of technology inside sales, is a leader in Sales 2.0. Before joining Phone Works, she produced millions in new revenue and dramatically increased the quantity and quality of leads at software giant, Oracle Corporation, going on to replicate those kinds of results for other employers. Today, Sally focuses on helping companies, from venture-funded start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, create top-performing, cost-effective lead generation and inside sales teams. She has led Phone Works projects for more than 350 client companies.
I recently got my hands on a copy of Marketo’s new e-book (also posted here as a blog) “The Definitive Guide to Sales Lead Qualification and Sales Development.”If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you do, and not just because they quote from our most recent Inside Sales Compensation Study. Marketo knows their subject and they practice what they preach.
In the section about “How to Design and Build a High Performance Sales Development Function,” Jon Miller, Marketo Co-Founder & Chief Strategist, asks the question, “Should Sales Development Report to Marketing or Sales?” He quotes our report, saying, “According to Phone Works, Sales Development teams report to Sales about twice as often as to Marketing.” But he counters with, “I think that reporting to marketing is a best practice.” I’d like to jump in and talk about why Sales Development still reports more commonly to Sales.
The Top 3 Reasons Why Sales Development Still Reports to Sales
Reason #1: You have to manage what you’re accountable for
In almost all the 350+ companies we’ve worked with, Sales is still responsible for the pipeline. Why? Because they’re accountable for revenue. As long as their feet – and their feet only – are held to the fire over revenue quotas, they need control over the pipeline and the pipeline is built by Sales Development.
Reason #2: MQL? SQL? Will the real lead please stand up?
We’ve all heard the whining, “It’s not our fault we didn’t make quota, Marketing didn’t give us enough qualified leads.” Maybe the issue is not with the number of qualified leads, but in how each department defines “qualified.” For most of our clients, a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead that needs to be further qualified by Sales Development, while a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is ready to become an opportunity. Perhaps if Marketing was responsible for turning over SQLs rather than MQLs, Marketo’s model would make sense for more companies. I might add that very few Marketing departments today have adequate demand-generation budgets to develop and nurture the quantity and quality of leads Sales needs for a robust pipeline. Which leads us to reason #3.
Reason #3: We’re not all as mature as Marketo
Seriously! Maybe in the next two to four years, as the Sales 2.0 world matures, we will see more Sales Development teams reporting to Marketing, as Marketo describes.
In a mature Sales 2.0 world, Sales and Marketing will share responsibility for revenue and, therefore, the pipeline. In that world, Sales Development can report to either team equally well. Sales will communicate openly and strategize with their trusted Marketing partner about the type of leads needed and how best to reach them. That’s Sales and Marketing alignment, something Phone Works helps clients work towards. But it’s not today’s world for most companies…yet. It is what Marketo is describing, and where they live today. My hat is off to you. Thank you for the opportunity to generate some discussion about the state of Sales and Marketing alignment today.
Let’s get some dialogue going. Where does Sales Development report in your company? Who is responsible for the pipeline? Is Sales and Marketing alignment a pipe dream or reality for your organization?
Cutting the Cost of Inbound Marketing
Guest blog by Sally Duby, Anneke’s business partner and Phone Works GM
Just got done reading Gary Ambrosino’s blog posting, Why Inbound Marketing Is Costing You Money and What To Do About It – Part 1. What a pleasure – first because he gave Phone Works a nice shout out (thanks, Gary), and secondly because it’s a topic we discuss daily with our clients.
In the post, Gary shared this “typical best practice sales funnel.”
He goes on to talk about the high cost of converting Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Opportunities, focusing on the middle two tiers of the funnel and leaving us wanting more in anticipation of Part 2 (nicely done!). In Part 2, he promises to talk about how to reduce Inside Sales Costs (ISC) and accelerate MQL-to-Opportunity conversions. I’m on pins and needles.
In the meantime, I’d like to add that it’s critically important to also look at the top of the funnel. That 30% – 50% figure is the first number I would explore. It’s too high! One of the quickest ways to increase Inside Sales efficiency is to highly restrict the number of inbound leads that convert to MQLs and pass on to the Insides Sales/Business Development (Sales Development) team. You only want your reps spending time on MQLs that show strong buying behaviors and meet your target profile. Keep the others in the top of the funnel, where they can be nurtured through automation until they’re closer to buying or they pop out of the funnel.
Marketo, as a company, does a fabulous job of this. As does SalesForce.com. They are masters of inbound/demand generation marketing, driving a huge number of leads into the top of the funnel. But then, they quickly narrow the funnel, only letting through those that fit a tightly defined profile. This might make a lot of sales teams nervous, but these highly successful Sales 2.0 companies have learned that it’s much more cost effective to weed out leads at this stage than to pass them on and waste expensive IS/BDR time.
How do they narrow the funnel? They employ marketing automation tools as effectively as any company we’ve seen. They track inbound lead activities, carefully study their reports, and continually refine their qualification criteria to arrive at a combination of behaviors that represents a high likelihood to buy. It’s not enough that a website visitor downloads free content or spends a lot of time on their site.
Bottom line? If you’re serious about driving down the overall cost of sales (and who isn’t?), you need to look at the entire Marketing/Sales equation. Are your leads passing through to Sales too quickly? Food for thought…if you follow closed deals at best performing companies, you’re likely to find that they spent 50-60% of their time in the sales cycle being nurtured on the marketing side, before passing to sales as an MQL.
Now, if you’ve been following closely, you’ll notice that I didn’t throw out a figure for how many inbound leads should pass to the MQL tier. Why? Because it’s highly dependent on your sales model – whether you’re a B2B or B2C business; the cost of your product or service, and how complex the sale is. Still, we’ve found across the board that successful businesses are significantly below the 30% – 50% range shown in the funnel above.
I’d like to hear from you. What do your numbers look like for converting inbound leads to MQLs?
Social Media Marketing and Online Lead Qualification: What is Effective?
A current debate that I’m following — and would love your perspectives on — is whether and when to require a prospect to complete an online lead qualification form in exchange for content, such as a report, e-book, recorded webinar or white paper. I find that traditional marketers and social media marketers disagree about the use of forms or landing pages that appear when a prospect clicks on a link to offered information. Generally speaking, social media marketing professionals claim that the new culture of selling requires open sharing of information (“conversations”) to create trusted relationships. Therefore, in the social and mobile world, the general consensus is that required forms can be an instant turn-off for customers. On the other side of the debate, most traditional direct marketers — and sales managers — suggest that if a prospect isn’t willing to share some information about themselves, their companies and their buying processes, they aren’t qualified and are wasting sales people’s valuable time.
In the Sales 2.0 world, where marketing and sales are closely aligned functions, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with and share ideas with some of the best lead generation marketing thinkers and practitioners. One of them is online marketing manager Dave Ewart, whom I met when we at Phone Works were assessing and improving his company’s inside sales team. Dave’s Twitter campaigns have been a success in terms of generating interest; he knows his message, audience and offer are relevant because of his click rate. But he’s testing several new approaches to improve his rate from click to conversion (to qualified sales opportunity and through the sales cycle to close):
1. Instantly delivered summarized content, tailored to the medium
Dave has created a “social-brief” content format: a mobile-friendly template for all his marketing assets, from white papers to webinars, consisting of about 300 words of high-value content — not marketing speak. This provides immediate value to prospects by instantly delivering what they clicked on. And through invitations to “Share This” embedded in these briefs, he’ll expand his reach even more (and track those referrals).
2. Full content in exchange for an e-mail address
To receive the full content (such as a PDF or recorded webinar), Dave’s prospects will be asked for one thing on a form: an e-mail address. Since the content will be provided by e-mail, he’ll be able to verify the e-mail address is valid. Dave says, “I didn’t give up on demand generation, just optimized it.”
His view is that this gets the prospect into his CRM system and gives him the ability to develop the opportunity through lead nurturing (“drip”) campaigns. His theory is that when qualified prospects revisit his site, they’ll be more inclined to provide additional demographic information, and he’ll have more behavioral data to score.
By removing “friction from the conversion cycle,” as Dave calls it, he is expecting to see ROI by generating more leads, more re-tweets (RTs) and more followers who should engage additional prospects.
What is your view of using lead qualification forms in social media campaigns? Is it a valid assumption that the most qualified prospects are those willing to fill out lead qualification forms?
Prospecting 2.0: The Cold Call is Dead
Nothing is more dreaded by most sales reps than having to generate new sales leads by cold calling. I am preparing for a webinar, hosted by InsideView and part of their educational web event series on Sales 2.0, that explores a more effective way to find qualified sales opportunities and engage with those prospects. Called “Prospecting 2.0″, this new approach is a godsend to sales reps. Customers are pretty happy about it, too. It respects both the customer and the sales rep’s time by focusing the sales organization on contacts who are most likely to be interested in receiving a phone call or e-mail from them. How is this possible? Sales reps that practice Prospecting 2.0:
- Put themselves in the customer’s shoes and only reach out to those contacts at the right time with the right message
- Are well-informed about their prospect’s business objectives, initiatives, and challenges
- Use a lead rating system to prioritize their contacts and organize their outreach and follow up accordingly
- Embrace technologies that make them more effective and productive by delivering information in an easy-to-use context
In many Sales 2.0 organizations, there is a dedicated person or group whose job it is to reach out to customers early in their buying cycle, discover if there is a “fit”, and keep them engaged – with the help of nurturing marketing programs – until they are closer to a buying decision. This Sales Development or Lead Qualification group allows sales reps with quotas to focus on closing qualified buyers without sacrificing the filling of the sales funnel for future quarters. While sales reps are compensated on revenue-generation, sales development reps are paid on delivering qualified opportunities to the sales force.
E-mails can benefit from a Prospecting 2.0 approach as well. At the end of last month, I remember getting a message that went something like this:
“Since it’s the end of our quarter, I thought you might be interested in (product name), which is now available at a 15% discount until (end of quarter date).”
This is a commonly-used approach that has everything to do with the sales rep’s quota attainment and nothing to do with the customer. Consider instead this customer-centric, personalized approach:
“Steve at Steve and Company suggested I contact you. I read recently in Profitability Today that your company is facing cost reduction in sales. We just reduced head count 20% while increasing revenue 25% by implementing Sales Wonder Tool at Steve and Company. Would you like hear more about how we could help you decrease cost while increasing productivity at your company?”
In next week’s webinar at 10AM on April 21 PST, I look forward to interviewing Jason Braun of Jellyvision and Mike Pilcher of MarketBright and hearing about how they use a Prospecting 2.0 approach every day in their sales organizations. We’ll address three key topic areas:
- The Importance of Data
- Know Thy Customer, and
- Provocation-Based Selling, as described in the article by Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin and Geoffrey Moore in the Harvard Business Review.
What questions do you have about how to prospect more effectively? What approaches are working for you?
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