Marketing and selling should work together. I don’t think you’ll find too many people who would disagree. Still, marketing and selling departments at companies far too infrequently play nice with each other. The Yankee Group studied the handoff of leads between marketing and sales and found that 40% to 80% of leads were dropped or lost.* See their “Causes of Lost Leads” graphic below.
They also found that an 11% reduction in dropped or lost leads, combined with a 1% improvement in lead-to-client conversion rate, increased annual gross profit by 136%. At first glance this seems unrealistic. It’s not. Read this article and see why.
So what’s going on at your firm? Do marketing and sales work together? Could you be more effective at collaborating between departments and teams? How do you stack up with other professional services firms?
Suzanne Lowe, esteemed industry colleague and leading thinker on professional services marketing, is conducting a survey on the topic. Take the survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=2x080TxYwXC2Tx0DS5NX4A_3d_3d
She’ll feature the results in her upcoming book The Integration Imperative™: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos – Once and For All – in Professional Service Firms and share the results with survey participants.
* Increase Revenue by Optimizing Lead Management, Sheryl Kingstone, The Yankee Group, August 2002
You never see this one on a consulting or professional services firm website:
“We offer excellent services and deliver superior value, but our prices are negotiable. What you’ll pay really depends on whether we’re hurtin’ for business this month, whether you’re a marquee client we want to have on our roster, and whether or not you pressure us.”
Yet, that’s what’s happening. Just a day out of the gate, the first several hundred survey responses are in for the Wellesley Hills Group and RainToday.com Pricing and Fees in Professional Service Businesses benchmark research study. With an initial but already significant percent of precincts reporting (love that presidential primary season):
- 61.4% of professional services firms report that they discount their fees from their internally standard or externally published rate or fee structure.
- 38.6% report they do not ever discount
What drives companies to discount? Which firms tend to discount and which don’t? What are the greatest factors that affect a firm’s ability to raise (and get!) the highest fees? More to come as we continue to collect and analyze the data…
Take the survey – open through the end of January: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=uJMDeOD9q69m3HT6VG3RIQ_3d_3d and you can get a complimentary copy of one of the following:
- The Professional Services E-Guide To Online PR
- How To Write And Market A White Paper E-Guide
- How To Become A Thought Leader E-Guide
- How To Set Appointments Through Cold Calling E-Guide
- Marketing Strategy, Planning, and Budgeting for Professional Services (Webinar Recording)
A recent webinar attendee asked the following question: We just started an inside sales position within the last year. Do you have any recommendations on how to best utilize that position with our outside sales reps?
Keep the following in mind:
- Make sure they conduct themselves with strong ethics. No tricks. And if you see tricks, don’t look the other way; let the person go.
- Do whatever you can to help them get good lists and targets.
- Use direct mail and email to supplement calling activities.
- Make sure they call with some offer of value. (And make sure there is value in that value proposition.)
- Be very clear on what you need. Inside sales folks can have one background and skill set and make $10 an hour, and another will have a very different skill set and background and make $100k. If you know what you need, you can find someone who fits the bill.
- Make sure expectations are clear for what they’re supposed to do, measure activity and output regularly, and coach the team to do as well as they can with the calls themselves.
- Have frequent communication between the inside and outside teams so they know what the other is doing.
- Don’t drop leads. (Seems like a simple comment, but it happens all the time.)
- Once the outside business developer has the initial meeting or contact, make sure you know what the lead nurturing process is going to be if there isn’t an immediate need or sale.
- Realize that if your inside sales group is one person or small, any staffing changes will drastically alter your ability to produce.
- Don’t be surprised if someone does really well and leaves, or if someone doesn’t do well and you have to figure out what to do with them. Finding someone who’s “just right” for your firm, pay level, culture, etc. is harder than most firms think it’s going to be with inside sales.
Good luck…
Walk around any marketing conference and you can hear folks talking about brand. Typically much of the discussion centers around brand tactics: how to create a brand identity, how to build brand messages, how to test for brand penetration, how to implement a brand, etc. The question I often get from company leaders is more along the lines of, “What should a brand actually do for a professional services firm?” In other words, “Why bother?” In my estimation:
Brands increase sales effectiveness: If a potential buyer says, “I know your company… you have a reputation for doing a great job and treating clients well,” you’ll be in much better shape than if they say, “Now who are you again and why are you here?” Also, we all know that large buying decisions have multiple people influencing the purchase from the buyer side. When your prospect asks around and hears, “Yes, I’ve been following their research for years. They’re a leader in the space,” or “I’ve worked with them before…they’re as solid as they come,” it’ll be much better for you than if they hear a chorus of “Nope…never heard of them,” or worse.
Brands help generate leads: If a prospect knows and respects your company and reputation, they’ll be more likely to accept when they get an invitation to an event, an invitation to download a new white paper, or a telephone call to see if they’d like to have lunch and discuss business. If they’ve never heard of you, the messages can often go unnoticed and untouched. (Until the messages build up enough over time and they’ve seen them for a while, but then you’re starting to establish a brand…) Research supports this argument.
Brands create premium fees and pricing: It may be basic, but buyers are looking for services firms to do what they say they’re going to do. If your brand and reputation a) creates a promise for what the buyer can expect from you, and b) supports the belief that you deliver on your promises, you’ll garner higher fees.
Brands help you beat competition: If a buyer knows he’s going to get top quality, high output, reduced risk, leaders and thinkers, or whatever your brand is they often value that over the lowest price. Without distinct criteria for them to evaluate what you will do versus someone else, or knowledge that what you say is, indeed, what they’ll experience from you, price often becomes a central factor.
Brands facilitate repeat business: When buyers know what to expect from interactions with you, that you keep your promises, and that you deliver at and above their expectations, they’re less likely to switch or stop buying. Boil it down, and a brand is simply the degree to which a buyer prefers to purchase from you versus other options available to them.
Brands draw strong labor pools: In good economies and bad, services firms need to hire the best people they can possibly find. Brands are often a force in attracting the best job candidates and getting them to accept positions at your company versus the others.
Brands increase the value of a company: As discussed throughout, brands help create premium fees, new business leads, strong sales, strong labor pools, and other benefits. These are long-term financial advantages. These advantages translate into higher market value and company valuation, especially because of how long it takes to establish a brand from scratch. This point may only be interesting to the owners of a business, but, then again, they often hold the purse strings and keys to success for brand and marketing initiatives.
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