In my previous article, How to get the most from a print ad, I pointed out the importance of not inundating your sales force with unqualified leads. When you run a campaign, focus on driving profitable revenue, not just a long list of names for your database. It’s ROI, not just the response rate that counts.
But what about inundating your sales force with qualified leads? Is it possible to generate too many responses?
Too many responses? What a great problem to have! But if you haven’t effectively planned to fulfill those responses, you’ll lose sales and can even damage your credibility in the process.
For example, in his Emergence Marketing blog, Gabe D’Annunzio points out how Verizon Wireless left him disappointed and frustrated when it came to delivering on their slogan, “We never stop working for you.” He received an offer in the mail and tried to respond — NINE TIMES — and never got through. His comment: “This is clearly not my idea of a company that never stops working for me. This is a company that simply stopped working.”
Did Verizon just underestimate the response they’d generate with their offer? Did they have other problems that were beyond their control? Or did they fail to plan effectively? Doesn’t matter. A great offer without a solid fulfillment plan is wasting money and damages a brand.
Before you launch your next campaign, keep the following tips in mind:
1. Own the fulfillment process. Someone needs to lead the operation and make sure your campaign is successful at every level. Get with every employee/department that’s affected by the campaign at least four weeks prior to launch. Communicate the goals, high/low/average projections, campaign details and fulfillment procedures; make sure everyone is staffed, trained and ready to fulfill. Don’t forget about IT, shipping, inventory control, or your AR/accounting departments, depending on the offer and fulfillment procedures.
2. Provide multiple ways for your prospects to respond. Create a unique landing page on your site with a form or further information; let people send you emails; provide an 800 number and staff it appropriately. Besides making it easier for the prospect to respond in a convenient way, you’ll spread responses over multiple channels, minimizing the impact on any one “touch point.”
3. Have a backup plan. Know what you’ll do if your campaign response goes through the roof. Here’s the message Gabe heard: “Due to the overwhelming demand we are unable to take your call so please hang up and try again later.”
After hearing that message once, I wouldn’t have bothered. If Verizon is working for me, then why don’t they have an overflow procedure in their call center? Or a web page that I can visit to sign up?
At the very least, they could have used a message that better conveyed their brand. “We’ve experienced an overwhelming response to this offer and we’re working hard to answer your calls as quickly as possible. Unfortunately our call queue is full, but please try back in an hour or two. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to speaking with you soon.”
In this situation, a little vulnerability goes a long way. An alternate contact channel would have been even better.
The New Year always brings new hope. 2008 was rough for many companies, and the cost-cutting will continue well into 2009. While cost-cutting is necessary for many companies, don’t focus all your efforts on cost-cutting: Renew your efforts to grow (or maintain) the top line.
How do you accomplish this in a recession?
If you’re a B2B company, the quickest way is to improve your sales performance. Most B2B companies under $100 MM in revenue are sales-driven. In many, a handful of top reps bring in the lion’s share of new revenue each year.
Improve your sales reps’ performance by 10% and viola–increased revenue.
It’s not that easy, but it’s not as hard as you think. If you don’t have budget for sales training, use the proverbial carrot to perk up your sales force. Motivate them! Focus on their emotions.
The two emotions that drive most sales reps are fear and greed. And the easiest way to motivate your sales reps using fear and greed is to restructure their comp plans.
Let’s take a quick look at each emotion:
Fear: Fear is a strong motivator for weak sales representatives. If a sales rep fears for his job, he’ll work harder. Some tops reps also fear failure, like failing to “win” the top spot or making President’s Club.
Greed: Top reps are highly motivated. They crave recognition and money. As Gordon Gekko said, “Greed is good.”
Change Your Comp Plans To Motivate Your Reps
No two companies are alike, so think about your situation when considering a new compensation plan:
- Industry (business-to-business or business-to-consumer)
- Sales cycle
- Deal sizes
- Sales type (group sale, consultative, one-on-one)
- Industry knowledge
- Inbound lead quality
Here are two different scenarios with ideas to get you started:
Company A
Sales Team Makeup: The company has many reps, each handling a small and relatively simple sale. Each rep accounts for a small percentage of total revenue.
Goal: Create small incremental improvements across the majority of the reps.
Ideas:
- 1. Offer bonuses for reps finishing x% over their 2008 sales. This method is successful because of its simplicity. Reps can easily calculate and visualize their goal.
- 2. Give your top performers the opportunity to increase their commission rate in exchange for reducing some of their guaranteed compensation. This provides a greater upside and appeals to their greed.
- 3. Increase the minimum booking requirements for less successful reps. Create an action plan for under-performance, and establish negative consequences for missing minimum targets. This plays on fear. It’s better to train poor-performing reps, but this is also effective.
- 4. Develop sales contests between small groups. Use small groups to keep most reps excited–everyone has a chance to win.
- 5. If you’re hesitant to fire under-performing reps, you might structure their compensation as 100% commission.
Company B
Sales Team Makeup: The company has a handful of seasoned reps handling a complex sale. The top reps generate the majority of the company revenue.
Goal: Inspire the top performers to reach new heights.
Ideas:
- 1. Create a tiered program where reps earn a lower commission percentage for the first sales dollars and then increase their commission percentages (for all sales) at defined target points.
- 2. Accelerate commission % in excess of quotas.
- 3. Offer to switch compensation structure to 100% commission, but with a higher commission percentage.
- 4. Offer a cut of the overall company profits as a bonus for achieving the top milestone.
- 5. Offer stock options (if you have a company plan) for achieving goals.
You will gain your sales reps’ full attention when you announce that you’re changing their comp plan. Some will fight it, so plan your changes carefully. You might even seek input from some of your top (and bottom) reps. If you work together to align everyone to the top-line goals, you’ll have a greater chance of exceeding them.
After you create your new plan, support your reps throughout the year with tools and good sales management. This alone could produce a 5% to 10% increase in your top line.
Here’s the fourth and final post in our “shorten your sales cycle” series. In the first article we provided a general intro to the problem of growing sales cycles and identified three things you can do to solve the problem. Step one is to improve your lead quality. Step two is to improve your sales execution.
Now we’ve reached step three. You’ve done a great job of pre-qualifying your leads. Sales and marketing are working together to execute an efficient sales process, guiding your prospects with the right information and materials at the right time.
If your sales cycles are still growing, it’s time to take a step back and look at the big picture. You might have a great campaign generating highly qualified leads for terrific sales reps, but if your product, value and price aren’t properly aligned, you’ll negotiate endlessly or lose deals to competitors.
Prospects rarely tell you the real reason they don’t buy. They may say “we decided to go with another company” or “we’ve decided to wait until next fiscal year” or “we’ve tabled this issue for now.” But there’s a deeper underlying reason they chose another company or decided not to move forward.
They don’t see enough value in what you’re offering.
- They don’t feel your solution is the right one. There may be a better solution out there, or maybe a competitor has just done a better job of illustrating and proving value. Perhaps a competitor has built more trust or has gained commitment through a short-term offer, a trial, a demo, a short project, convincing case studies and testimonials, or another method.
- They feel no urgency because the pain is minor. Sure, your product or service may help, but perhaps your solution just isn’t important enough to warrant a commitment right now.
- Your value proposition doesn’t resonate. Perhaps your positioning, branding and messaging don’t focus on the key reasons the prospect buys.
- You haven’t differentiated enough. What is it that truly makes your solution better, unique, and necessary? Do these messages ring loud and clear? Because without this differentiation, you’re competing on price.
- You know you’re competing on price and you’re not the low price leader.
How can you find the real reason prospects are taking so long or failing to convert? Ask!
Have a neutral person call and talk with your prospects. Or take a more formal approach with a robust survey. Either way, you should get to the bottom of the issue so you can resolve it. After all, if you’re having trouble closing deals, there are storm clouds over your entire business strategy.
Whether you use a trained interviewer, a research firm and/or a survey, consider approaching prospects who didn’t buy and those who did buy but after a prolonged period. Here are some key questions to ask.
- What did you decide to do – did you choose a competitor? Table the issue? Solve it in-house?
- Ultimately what were the three most important factors in your decision?
- What could we have done to gain your business?
- How is your life any different now that you’ve made this decision?
- Is there anything we could have done to help you make your decision more quickly than you did? For example, is there anything we could have shown you?
- If our product/service was priced higher than it is now, what difference would that have made?
- If it was lower than it is now, would that have made a difference? At what price point would you have bought from us?
- If you were in our shoes, what would you do to win an account like yours?
Through this research, you’re addressing the real reasons that prospects don’t buy: your value proposition, brand and pricing. And these strategic issues drive your entire business forward or lead you to tough times.
The good news: By measuring the length of your sales cycle, you can identify and resolve these issues more quickly and effectively than you could otherwise.
Your sales process is something that all of your sales, marketing and management teams should care about and improve on a continual basis. It’s an essential element in your strategic marketing process and a great example of how all of your strategies and tactics tie together to drive your success!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9b2fc3a2-c9d2-491f-9aa6-76658491b25d)
