Marketing, Promotion & Sales Consulting for Business

Rethinking the Objectives of Lead Generation Programs for Complex Sales

Ira Michael Blonder — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:57:28 +0000

Highly efficient complex selling operations require very high quality leads, not the high quantity that one might assume to be the case. What represents a high quality lead for a complex sales opportunity?

We think that a high quality lead for a complex sales opportunity must include some version of the following information:

Comprehensive background information about a prospect business. For a public company this information should include current share price as well as the percentage difference in share price over the past calendar year. Further, a detailed list should be included of any publicly visible business process initiatives that are underway, or planned for the near future. Any problem areas that have been publicly identified as contributors to a degradation in profit margins or gross sales volume should be identified and detailed. Finally, a comprehensive list of the leadership in IT/MIS as well as important business units (Sales, for example) must be provided along with reliable contact information
A completed comprehensive prospect profile that places the prospect somewhere above a 5 on a scale from 1 to 10 with regard to the probability that your complex solution can produce genuine value in the form of quantifiable cost savings. It is important to note that a number 5 prospect on this scale must not only represent a realistic opportunity for your product/service/integrated solution to produce quantifiable value, but further, the prospect must be looking for a solution to their need. This profile must be compiled from discussions with at least 2 individuals from the prospect business
Identification of the most likely gatekeeper contact from the leadership identified in #1, above, for an initial contact with your complex sales team. The reasons for this likelihood can vary between “this guy is the ‘yoda’ for the group you’re trying to reach” to “this gal has egg all over her face as the result of poor performance quarter over quarter”. Bottom line, whomever is mentioned must welcome your contact to ensure that the first discussion stays on track and delivers the information that your team will require to dig deeper into the notion that there is a sales opportunity for your product/service/integrated solution for this prospect

A quick review of 1 – 3 above should reveal that filling in these 3 blanks will require a substantial amount of research as well as a number of preliminary discussions with contacts at prospect businesses. Definitely not the type of high output that you would expect to obtain from a direct marketing effort that is high on telemarketing, low on teleprospecting and, potentially, no where to be found with regard to in person contact.

We have considerable current experience crafting effective lead generation methods for software products targeting the enterprise business market. Further, we welcome opportunities to discuss the specifics of why our approach will deliver successful results. You may telephone Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Select Sales Professionals Who can Manage Prospects and Customers

Ira Michael Blonder — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:49:00 +0000

It is essential that enterprise sales personnel keep early stage conversations with prospects on track. The cliche “the customer is always right” is, quite often, dead wrong. In fact, most prospects are unclear about what they are looking for. Further, prospects in the role of decision-makers are usually very comfortable engaging with other personnel from a position of authority. These people almost always assume an authoritative posture when dealing with sales people. Therefore, sales personnel selected by an innovative tech business to lead enterprise sales efforts must have the type of personality to normally engage with decision-makers, regardless of any authoritative stance that the other party in the conversation may appear to assume.

Further, the best enterprise sales personnel will avoid any type of reactive posturing when engaging with decision-makers. For these personalities, it is strictly SOP to keep on track despite efforts on the part of the other party in the conversation to veer dangerously off the road to, for example, obtain merely a price quote, or to simply jump to a proposal without any useful information about needs or solutions that may or may not be relevant. The fact is that the personality type of these sales personnel lends itself to this type of engagement with prospects. When a bullying prospect acts like wrecking ball these sales personalities mysteriously vaporize, which lets the wrecking ball, harmlessly, swing wildly in empty air.

It is important to understand that permitting conversations to go off track at a very early stage in the prospect development process almost always leads to very low probability opportunities. As these low probability opportunities stack up, sales personnel may be very hard at work, but the work they are expending will almost always fall into very early stage prospect qualification.

In order to move forward prospect engagements must be kept strictly on track. Without meaningful information that your product/service/integrated solution can satisfy some important need there is absolutely no point whatsoever jumping into presentations or, worse, pricing and proposals. Prospects who refuse to participate in an information gathering process that affords all parties an opportunity to determine whether or not it makes sense to continue a discussion are simply not worth the time. Very often it makes sense to prune closed up prospects from sales campaigns. But some of the time analysis will show that a lack of information supporting prospect engagement must be directly attributed to sales personnel who can’t keep discussions on track. In these cases businesses must make a change if revenue targets are to be hit.

We welcome opportunities to engage with companies looking to add the right sales personnel to handle their selling needs. You may telephone Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

The ever elusive right thing and enterprise sales methods

Ira Michael Blonder — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:39:17 +0000

A recent cliche goes like this, “make sure you do the right thing rather than doing things right.” The point of this cliche, as we understand it, is that lots of hard work (“doing things right”) will not necessarily pay off. Rather, figuring out how to do “the right thing”, which amounts to taking the time required to master methods that have been proven, conclusively, to successfully deliver objectives, makes much more sense. Further, mastering these methods may not require all that hard work anyways, so let’s take a collective breath and ease up a bit.

When this cliche is applied to enterprise sales we can understand the usual popularity of sales training leaders as well as the products they market, meaning their books, videos, seminars, etc. In our experience enterprise sales is a challenging activity. Accordingly, we can understand why enterprise sales professionals are always on the look out for some new set of selling methods, a toolbox, as it were, with a very powerful screwdriver that will open any boxed up prospect opportunity.

But we question the usefulness of an ever present attention (that can border upon an obsession) to the latest sales techniques to “hit the market.” Does it really make sense to incorporate yet another method into our engagements with enterprise prospects?

We don’t think so. In sum, we don’t think that the amount of attention spent on continuous sales training is warranted. Further, we have complete faith in the usefulness of hard work. Perhaps the hard work amounts to spending the time required in advance to carefully research and identify contacts who may directly impact on decisions about our products, meaning individuals directly involved with specific business applications at higher probability prospects, rather than carpet bombing, with cold calls, long lists of contacts who are only peripherally involved with relevant enterprise operations.

The hard work may also amount to engaging in correctly timed face-to-face sales calls with contacts rather than relying, entirely, on the telephone as the sales engagement medium. Much can be learned from observing body language during an in person visit that cannot be observed during a telephone conversation, even with the use of a video camera. Nevertheless, the effort required for these activities constitutes hard work, no matter how one considers it.

There is another, older cliche that we think bears some consideration on this topic: “necessity is the mother of invention.” We are eternally optimistic that enterprise sales personnel who, for one reason or another must succeed, will find a way through to their objective. As to which compass they end up using to find the path, well, we do not find much value in that information.

We maintain a high interest in innovative emerging tech businesses focused on enterprise markets who are grappling with methods of motivating a sales force. Please contact us to discuss your case. You may telephone Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

To Connect or not to Connect Your Sales effort with Your Survey Lead Generation Program

Ira Michael Blonder — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:38:02 +0000

We think it is mandatory to identify business sponsorship to any/all participants in a survey effort for lead generation. This point is simply a courteous example of professionalism. Further, once survey participants have made the connection between the firm conducting the survey and its sponsor any contact to any participant in the survey on the part of the sponsor will be, to some extent, expected and, perhaps (depending on how the survey has been conducted) welcome.

Of course, for optimum results a survey should be planned on a credible, entirely legitimate basis that makes sense for the sponsor and each contact who agrees to participate in the survey. If the sales history for your product, service, or integrated solution follows a pattern that is characteristic of a complex sale, meaning a sale that involves a number of individuals who contribute to purchase decision, a matching number of apparent needs for, perhaps, each of these contributors, and, perhaps, a matching set of assumptions about a solution for each of these needs, then it makes complete sense to stop selling and starting collecting as much information as possible about a prospect, the cast of contacts who will contribute to a decision about a solution for a problem that warrants fixing and your product. In fact, we don’t think that any interest in designing an efficient system to convert an attractive proportion of leads into sales will work if the activity of purely gathering information on known to be relevant operations, procedures, systems, etc. is not included as a preliminary to further engagement.

For their part, well chosen survey participants should see things in a similar fashion. Prospects worth the time of sales teams will have an understanding that decision-making is, perhaps, flawed. For these organizations your offer to conduct a survey (and to share with participants generalities gleaned from other participants in the survey) should be really good news.

Let’s face it, prospect who are unwilling to proceed through an information gathering phase as a necessary preliminary to any further engagement should be de-emphasized and, where possible, passed over for better opportunities. If you sense that the sales efforts of your business leave something to be desired (perhaps your team speaks with lots of contacts but closes only a small portion, thereby wasting time better spent on a different approach), please contact us to discuss your case. You may telephone Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Surveys are a Useful Tool for Lead Generation for Enterprise Software Sales

Ira Michael Blonder — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:14:04 +0000

It makes sense for innovative, early stage technology businesses that produce software for enterprise markets to implement market survey campaigns. These campaigns need to be entirely separated from the sales function of the business. Awarding a contract to a telemarketing company to perform the surveys is an excellent option. The questions on the survey should be specifically designed to reveal areas of opportunity for further discussions with contacts. We think it makes sense for the telemarketing firm to include mention of the sponsor’s name somewhere in the introductory message as the task of transitioning leads back to the sponsor will be made smoother if prospects are aware of the connection between the companies from the start of a dialogue. If managed correctly these campaigns can produce high quality leads for, at a minimum, further engagement.

It may be helpful to spend another few moments discussing how the questions on the survey ought to be organized. The purpose of the survey, after all, is to produce the names of prospects who are worth further engagement. Further engagement makes sense where answers to survey questions reveal a potential benefit for a prospect as the result of implementing the type of enterprise software produced by the business. Therefore, to be truly useful, a business ought to have completed the construction of a very clear prospect profile. Further, a business ought to have a good idea of the general value that the market targeted by the business has obtained from the product. In sum, very early stage businesses that neither have a clear prospect profile, nor a general idea of product benefits as perceived by the target market should not undertake market surveys as a lead generation activity.

For businesses that do meet the above criteria, sets of questions need to be included in the survey to highlight specific prospects that meet the prospect profile criteria. Usually, putting together these specific questions is not a challenging task. Of course, an appropriate telemarketing company must be chosen to conduct the survey, meaning a firm that demonstrates the quality of staff expertise that can be counted upon to produce useful conversations with high level contacts at prospect businesses. Further, it makes sense to require that the telemarketing firm provide recordings for all telephone conversations. At a minimum, a proportion of the call recordings must be reviewed to ensure that conversations with contacts are handled correctly and at a high level.

We have lots of recent experience with these types of lead generation activities. If you would like to speak with us about an outbound lead generation program that is presently on the table for discussion, then please contact Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Passive methods of nurturing leads makes sense for enterprise software sales

Ira Michael Blonder — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:48:59 +0000

We’ve written recently in this blog on the topic of lead nurturing. We’ve expressed a skepticism about this method of maintaining contact with prospects over time. Our skepticism is rooted in a fundamental rejection of the usefulness of periodically sending product specific and/or industry specific email messages to prospects. We see this activity as producing few useful opportunities to meaningfully engage with prospects as the basis for conversation will revert, inevitably, to product presentations, precisely the type of activity that produces little if any information about what is important to a prospect with regard to a specific type of computing.

Rather, we are proponents of passive lead nurturing activities. Passive lead nurturing amounts to allocating resource to stay attuned to prospect businesses over time, but from a distance. After all, categorizing an engagement with a prospect as a sales lead is generally most meaningful for the company actively pursuing a sale to a customer, rather than the customer itself. True, it does “take two to tango,” meaning that customers and sellers must agree to engage with one another on a sale in order for an order to materialize, but we think the purchase means very different things to each party. For our purposes here we are only concerned with sellers. Therefore when an engagement is converted by marketing, or sales, to a bonafide sales opportunity and, for one reason or another, the sales opportunity does not bear fruit, we think it makes total sense, over time to keep a vigilant eye on the changing realities at the prospect who is now not actively engaged. Of course, this vigilance can pay off handsomely if changes in management, business conditions, etc are quickly recognized and commensurate outreach can be mustered to engage with the prospect once again.

The best method of allocating resources for this type of activity is to leverage computing power. Paying for proprietary intelligence, whether via a named premium news service, or other method we thinks makes total sense. As well, an Intranet system like Microsoft® SharePoint® can be configured to display prospect news within a dashboard that can be made easily accessible to a sales team, marketing team and other groups at the prospect business.

The live component of our passive lead nurturing method is to leverage editorial tools like press releases and, for our contemporary audience, blogs, twitter pages, etc. to maintain market position. Prospects targeted for lead nurturing should be encouraged to opt into these online media to ensure that they are kept up to date, albeit at a distance with your brand message.

If you would like to speak with us about our method, with an eye towards your objectives, then please contact Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Defining Some of the Complexity of Enterprise Software Sales

Ira Michael Blonder — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:18:14 +0000

We like approaching the topic of enterprise sales by first categorizing this unique process as a complex endeavor. Simply consider the typical first-effort process of an enterprise software sale to a larger business:

First contacts are made to either a referral, or to a contact identified by direct marketing activity.
An initial discussion with this first individual reveals that additional contacts within the prospect business must be contacted to obtain additional information that may be useful to qualify the opportunity (or to proceed further, whatsoever, with the sales campaign).
Subsequent discussions with other identified individuals are held, but the information obtained from these discussions is inconsistent

What we can glean from the above three points is that several different individuals within the same organization need to be contacted, simply as we open a campaign to sell software to a large organization. Further, we glean that (assuming that we had the foresight to include the very same questions in our script for our discussions with each of these individuals) the opinions of these individuals very often differ on key questions that we have included to qualify the value of this opportunity as a sales prospect worth our time. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to label this activity as a complex series of interactions.

What should be apparent about this complex series of interactions is that it is absolutely vital that we collect as much information as possible through each of these opportunities to interact with prospects. Our sales campaign will very often fail should we approach a large organization with a set of general untested assumptions about an organization, its needs, the benefits that matter, etc. Any general, broad assumptions become meaningless once we begin an information collection process while maintaining an open mind and simply listening to what our contacts are expressing, theorizing, etc.

Therefore, we think that the perfect personality type for at least the typical activities characteristic of the initial phase of sales campaigns for enterprise software is an individual who can make of an initial discussion with an otherwise unknown prospect a comfortable conversation where the prospect is invited to express as much information as possible. These initial conversations need not be approached as surveys, but, in fact, they have much of the same characteristics. The difference ought to be that the individual on the other end of the telephone conversation, or standing in front of your team, should have already been identified as someone worth the time it takes to go over your set of questions, meaning someone who truly will lose sleep some night should something go wrong with the computing systems that you are talking about.

We relish opportunities to work with innovative technology businesses looking to build organizations capable of successfully engaging in complex sales of enterprise software. Please contact Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Converging Roles: Enterprise Software Sales Personnel and Facilitators

Ira Michael Blonder — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:30:52 +0000

Increasingly, models of highly successful enterprise software sales talent are diverging from the traditional stereotypical sales person. Yesterday’s emphasis sales people with thick skins, who can take over a crowd, dripping high energy and the like is long gone. Now, the highly desirable personality type is a modern version of the personality included in M.C. Escher’s “Hand with Reflecting Sphere”, a studious type who is “all ears”, ever attentive to prospects, self critical and self motivating, with a memory to match. This personality type operates in a pronounced methodical and subdued manner. Finally, the best examples of this personality type are entirely well adjusted individuals who have overcome most of their neuroses; they can be trusted to correctly field outburst from prospects and customers without messy unconscious reactions getting in the way of progressing the deal.

It does not take much consideration to realize that good candidates for a career in enterprise software sales will be few and very hard to come by. Nevertheless, given the temper of our times we think that our brief description of the personality type rings true. Enterprise software sales has become highly complex and fragile. Assertive personalities (the traditional stereotype) that border on aggressive have a very difficult time succeeding in this marketplace. The early stages of enterprise sales opportunities are characterized by sales personnel make lots of effort to play the role of facilitator with prospects, to create venues and conversations that will afford prospects an opportunity to freely offer credible information. Of course, sales personnel must exercise some leadership through these early opportunities to engage with prospects, but the specific type of leadership required is, once again, very much the leadership demonstrated by facilitators (even therapists) who collect lots of information while strictly refraining from presenting products, solutions, etc.

We think it is incumbent for management at early stage businesses selling enterprise software to burn this personality type into memory and to hire appropriately. Certainly there are talented individuals who may demonstrate an understanding of the importance of these features, but fall short of a display of the precise personality combination who can succeed at this game, but they will need to be coached along for some period of time prior to producing meaningful results.

If you find our position on this point to be plausible and care to speak directly with us about your interest, please do let us know. Please contact Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Market Niches do not Need to be Earth Shaking

Ira Michael Blonder — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:46:11 +0000

Contrary to popular belief, discovering promising areas of need between Information Technology (IT) processes does not have to be an earthshaking procedure. There is no need to “reinvent the wheel”. Rather, a methodical analysis of markets, together with a serious campaign to engage with various levels of decision-making contacts within enterprise prospects can — and will — yield useful results that can thereby obviate the need to spend precious cash on methods that are doomed to failure.

Companies with high turnover of sales personnel who are out trying to sell solutions for unidentified problems can attest that the above approach is, potentially, a thrifty remedy. For early stage technology businesses, it makes sense to spend cash on market research prior to embarking on a program to build products. Information gathered from market research and conversations with contacts can be used to formulate decisions on what/why/how/who market questions. The answers obtained from these questions can equip entrepeneurs with the knowledge required to posit solutions to apparent areas of market need as well as point to specific points of entry. Further, contacts who have been helpful in an information gathering phase can be introduced to products as they are developed. In fact, these contacts can serve as a sounding board for the usefulness of products.

With today’s interest in online technology, social media, and a bulked up IT product consumer, there ought to be excellent areas of opportunity for innovative technology firms to devise methods of filling the gaps between IT solutions developed for enterprise businesses and large organizations of users. The challenge, of course, is to properly label gaps between solutions. A further challenge is to correctly identify contacts “in the know,” so-called “yodas” who can be trusted to point out those gaps that need to be filled if costly waste is to be avoided. Wasting development time trying to fill meaningless spaces between IT processes is an ever-present danger. Therefore, spending whatever time it takes to find a reliable resource who can transform conversations with contacts into a very useful exercise in information gathering makes lots of sense.

We are particularly interested in opportunities to identify these contacts for innovative technology businesses. We are also very well equipped to craft conversations into precisely the right type of information gathering. Please contact Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.

Innovative Technology Compensates for Clumsy Sales and Marketing

Ira Michael Blonder — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:52:57 +0000

Technology innovators targeting enterprise business and other large organizations in the public and not-for-profit sectors should look to product development for substantial, defensible barriers to competitor entry. Entering today’s ultra competitive markets for traditional solutions (for example, ERP) requires highly sophisticated sales and marketing. Human resources with the right skills for these sales and marketing requirements may not be available to start ups. Nevertheless, a very keen eye for products is required to determine precisely the right markets for product development.

It’s worth spending a brief moment simply highlighting the very high level of sophistication required of successful enterprise sales personnel selling into highly competitive markets. Merely a careless harsh phrase, or a momentary lapse in judgement can push promising sales opportunities off a cliff. Please understand that in these highly competitive markets, the true driving force is not the product or service, rather, it is precisely the sales person who is the driving force for customer interest. Betting a business on sales personalities is at best a highly risky endeavor and, at worst, a strategy with a highly limited upside. This mediocre scenario plays out clearly in the contract technology consulting business where a limitless number of businesses compete to deliver human resources with the same skills to enterprise customers. In fact, it is not uncommon in this marketplace for the same IT consultant to be present to the customer by multiple consulting firms.

Better to take the time to study markets very closely to determine aspects of IT operations and processes that are broken and in sore need of repair through open ended conversations with enterprise prospects who are directly involved in these very same procedures. Building specific fixes for one or more of these aspects can pay off with the required revenue to launch a promising business. These niches do not have to be dramatic. Rather, through engaging in carefully structured conversations with industry participants information can be gathered that will illuminate probable marketplace value for a method of fixing an aspect or two of an important IT system. Better to take this approach than to be on the lookout for exceptional sales personnel who can flawlessly handle any high pressure engagement with prospects. In our experience these sales personnel are in very short supply. Engaging with a talented individual can end up to be a very costly exercise for an early stage business.

If you are embarking on a new business effort and understand the value of sampling marketplace opinion about IT operations and processes, then we would like to hear from you. Please contact Ira Michael Blonder at +1 631-673-2929 to further a discussion. You may also email Mike at imblonder@imbenterprises.com.