Jill Konrath | Selling to Big Companies

What should you be measuring? Insights from Sales 2.0 Conference

Pelin Wood Thorogood of Aegean Group spoke about how Marketing can significantly increase the number of qualified leads with the same marketing budget.

Critical to success is implementing a culture of measurement. She recommends tracking the following statistics be analyzed in the Marketing Dashboard are how campaigns were performing, cost per impression, cost per click, cost per conversion and lead scoring.

Sales also is a lead generator. Statistics to measure include these:

• Pipeline velocity (size & shape)
• Stealth pipeline
• Days to win vs. days to use
• Pipeline at risk
• Future pipeline
• Pipeline bloat
• ... and more!

Smart, savvy companies are adopting a culture of measurement. The biggest challenge is related to accountability. People are afraid; want to hide what they're doing. But it brings great value because it adds visibility & predictability.

Alex Scalisi, Director of Business Development at Vertical Response gave a compelling presentation on how his company was using LucidEra's to identify risks and opportunities in their pipeline.

Barry Trailer from CSO Insights pointed out that a recession drives the need for the analytics.  And, to emphasize the point, Gerhard Gschwantner from Selling Power quoted Warren Buffet, "When the tide goes out, you can see who has been swimming naked!"

David Holmes, VP of Sales Ops from Informatica, has implemented a compensation management system. Results achieved include:

• Radical reduction in reconciliation drama
• Less stress at end of quarter
• Greater trust
• Increased management productivity

Additionally it allowed them to expand the sales force by 25%, with a 50% reduction in admin support.

Barry Trailer sees that the real value of the Sales 2.0 analytics is that it enables Sales Management 2.0 coaching - focused on the real issues, making a real difference.

What am I learning at the Sales 2.0 Conference?

Definition of Sales 2.0, as per David Thompson, CEO of Genius: Sales 2.0 combines customer-focused processes with Web 2.0 productivity technologies to enhance the art and science of selling while creating customer value.

It's all about driving more revenue, more quickly, through the pipeline.

According to Thompson, it's all about Marketing & Sales:

• Being in alignment with the customer throughout the buying and lead life cycle.
• Working collaboratively to approach buyers when they're ready, extracting timely and relevant insights and sharing customer intelligence.
• Accelerating and optimizing every phase of the sales funnel by connecting with the right prospects at the right time.
• Measuring and improving the lead-to-opportunity conversion equation and sales performance.

Thoughts from Scott Santucci, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc.
Santucci covered the entire lead generation & sales process - what's broken & what needs to be done. Key points include:

• The salesperson IS your company to prospective customers. Most companies are asking their sellers to learn so much! What's broken right now is the conversation between the buyer and seller.

• Both buyers and sellers are suffering from complexity problem. Customers are suffering from too much info, vendor fatigue, more stakeholders involved & longer decisions. Sellers also have complex portfolios, random acts of enablement and changes in their company.

• Need to flip the focus of Marketing/Sales: Model it around customer problems/decision process; Map it around the problem portfolio. Then, Match sales tools to this process to support customer conversations.

Key take-aways from Jim Dickie, CSO Insights:

• Lead generation #1 sales effectiveness initiative this year. Recent study: qualified leads that turn into discussion now at 39%; down from 55% .

• Need to recognize Buying 2.0 too! Customer now get all sorts of information about your products, services, capabilities - way before they talk to a seller.

• Recommended customer engagement objectives for 2009: 1) Optimize prospect intelligence; 2) Develop enhanced messaging; 3) Create enhanced sales/prospect engagement tools; 4) Nurture sales leads and 5) Integrate lead management/CR analytics.

• Companies must make existing lead follow-up more effective. They don't have big enough marketing budgets to keep generating more leads.

I'll be back this afternoon with more insights!

InBox Zero: How to get control of your inbox & keep it that way

I don't know if your inbox just keeps growing and growing, but mine does. Day-by-day, message-by-message, it keeps getting fuller and fuller.

Sometimes I feel like a total slave to my inbox.

Fortunately, my recent discovery of Merlin Mann's blog led me to a special 43 Folders series of articles the show you the skills, tools and attitudes to empty your email inbox - and keep it that way.

Plus, I listened his 1-hour Inbox Zero presentation at Google which had lots of good ideas in it. If you need some help to regain control of your inbox and your life, this is a good place to start.

P.S. Many corporate decision makers get 150 - 300 email per day. If I'm feeling like this, I can't imagine how they're feeling!