Markempa - Inside Sales
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
Do you use the telephone as part of your multi-modal lead generation strategy? A recent BtoB Magazine article by Carol Krol, "Copy this: Telemarketing big with Xerox" shows that, although the phone may not be as buzz worthy as other lead generation tools, it remains the backbone to successful lead generation. However, as Krol’s article shows, the telephone shouldn’t stand alone.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 30, 2006
IT spending has experienced a healthy three years of budget increases since the beginning of 2004, giving many IT execs plenty of reasons to celebrate. Annual growths in 2006 is expected to top 6%, and although projections for 2007 show a more conservative sentiment, spending increases are likely to continue with consensus estimates of 5% to 6% expected according to IDC and Forrester Research.
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The Brooks Group
SEPTEMBER 19, 2006
This past week Andy and I attended a conference entitled " The Future of Web Apps " in San Francisco. We attended this conference to help us improve our follow-up and reinforcement programs and get some new ideas to bring you more and better information. We accomplished our goal but I also realized that there is selling in everything. The CEO of Techcrunch, Michael Arrington, was speaking about what companies are doing wrong.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 12, 2006
We are living in era of benchmarking and best practices. It is thus no surprise to me that after having given you an example how to derive a rudimentary forecast from the leaking sales funnel, questions like the following have arisen. You might ask yourself how many stages a sales funnel should have? In the picture of the entry prior to giving the example, I used six stages.
Speaker: Jesse Hunter and Brynn Chadwick
Today’s buyers expect more than generic outreach–they want relevant, personalized interactions that address their specific needs. For sales teams managing hundreds or thousands of prospects, however, delivering this level of personalization without automation is nearly impossible. The key is integrating AI in a way that enhances customer engagement rather than making it feel robotic.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 30, 2006
With the official release of Microsoft Vista many corporations will be getting requests to upgrade, and puzzling over whether it makes fiscal sense. The major question to be answered: Does Vista derive enough savings to make the case for near-term migration, or should the organization take a wait-and-see approach? Frugal CIOs and CFOs want to understand how investing in the upgrade will yield immediate and direct benefits – particularly how it will help reduce IT costs, while at the same time im
Sales Pro Central brings together the best content for sales professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
For 2006 the number one business priority for CIOs was surveyed to be business process improvement – implementing technology to help the business become more streamlined and easier to do business with. [1]. To help accomplish these elusive priorities, IT organizations are reorganizing by hiring one or more business / financial experts as key members of the IT executive team.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
IT spending is expected to grow again for the third straight year, with average 5-8% increases expected again for 2007. As a result, the IT budgeting process should be easier than in years past. Corporations have cash to spend, and for some businesses such as finance, technology, professional services, retail and others where IT is an essential component of competitive advantage getting executives to invest more in IT will be easier than ever.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
Although RFID implementations are not without costs and risks, a number of companies in manufacturing, warehousing and distribution and retailing have achieved a 200-percent return on investment. Many organizations that produce, distribute, handle or sell goods are researching what RFID can do to improve operating efficiency, reduce business risk and drive additional revenue opportunities.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
ROI Calculators are typically used on vendor websites to provide a tool where visiting prospects can quickly determine whether the vendor’s solutions can provide quantifiable value. Typically the calculators have a few questions in order to get an idea about the prospects business and opportunities from improvement. Using direct research results or estimates, the tools can simulate the impact of the solutions and quantify the potential benefits, costs and ROI (ROI = net benefits / costs).
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The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
The longer you have to wait for benefits, the more risky the project is. As a rule of thumb, projects which take more than 12 months to achieve payback – where the cumulative benefits exceed the costs – is typical, even on CRM projects. Any project where the payback is more than 24 months out, I would suggest the team break into smaller, less ambitious projects – where the investment is smaller, and the initial benefits acheivements can help to pay for next round of investments.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
In a nutshell, the CRM system will use a large amount of information regarding prospects, leads customers, and orders, and create a large amount of data as various activities are entered and logged. Data integrity is essential. Without a good data architecture and integrity plan – what data is to be collected and integrated and how it is going to be used – the CRM solution may not prove as useful as possible, may prove unreliable, or may undergo overhauls midstream.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
Many IT solution providers have recognized that selling the old way based on features, function and price just won’t cut it in today’s marketplace. The age of budget scrutiny, governance and accountability are upon us. As a result, customers are demanding business value proof prior to investing in that next upgrade or project. The statistics bear this out, with over 90% of customers requiring formal business justification on projects $50,000 and higher according to our research.
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Modern go-to-market teams know it takes more than one email to break through the noise. Multiple touchpoints means more ways to get your pitch right — and, potentially, more ways to be wrong. The good news? Once you know how to write compelling, one-off emails to entice prospective customers, you can easily do the same across a short sequence of emails.
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
Tom Pisello: The ROI Guy This blog is dedicated to the strategies and tools used by solution providers to better prove and improve the value of B2B solutions to frugal buyers - using diagnostic assessments, interactive white papers, ROI calculators and TCO comparisons. Wednesday, November 08, 2006 TCA Champ - Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server? As platforms continue to evolve in the technology industry, a central concern for IT executives is implementing the right systems to maximize the return on e
The ROI Guy
NOVEMBER 8, 2006
Tom Pisello: The ROI Guy This blog is dedicated to the strategies and tools used by solution providers to better prove and improve the value of B2B solutions to frugal buyers - using diagnostic assessments, interactive white papers, ROI calculators and TCO comparisons. Wednesday, November 08, 2006 Hard and Soft ROI - The differences and quantification Hard and soft ROI usually refers more specifically to various benefits which can be included and used in an ROI analysis.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 8, 2006
Companies usually describe their sales process, if they even have one, by a sequence of sales stages describing key activities that are to be carried out by the sales person in the respective phase. I am not going to repeat my opinion on the pitfalls such a concept - focusing on the activities from the sales person’s perspective- can have in understanding where opportunities really are in the sales cycle.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 7, 2006
Yesterday’s entry was probably a bit to dry and theoretical for some of you. Maybe you were also among those who found a flaw in the formula or were missing the definitions of the different variables. To take care of the latter two observations, I have republished a revised version of the illustration for yesterday’s entry. For those that understand methods easier from looking at an example, here it is.
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The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 6, 2006
If your Sales people work with lists of opportunities, they usually have captured the date when they expect the opportunity to close (Close Date), the expected order amount and a high level description of the solution the customer considers buying. This is essential information they need to be capable to answer the essential questions of any sales forecast: When do I expect a customer to buy what for how much.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 5, 2006
In yesterday’s entry, I mentioned that assigning win probabilities coupled with a sales process is counterintuitive at the individual salesperson’s level of responsibility. You can look at it as a very abstract, somewhat awkward way for the sales person to declare where the deal is. Today, I will show you an alternative way on how to declare where an opportunity is.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 4, 2006
A frequently used method to factoring into the forecast the fact that not all deals a sales organization works on are going to be won, is to assign a win probability to each opportunity in your list. If you then sum up all the expected order values multiplied by the respective win probability of all the opportunities in your list, you arrive at a weighted forecast.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 3, 2006
In the first week of the existence of this Blog, you might believe it or not, there are already actual readers out there giving me encouraging feedback by e-mail. Many thanks to those readers! If giving comments and feedback by e-mail is the preferred way for you too, this is the e-mail address where you can send your comments to: c_a_maurer @ ceoexpress.com.
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The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 2, 2006
You might agree with me, that sales people cannot be left alone when it comes to forecasting. There needs to be management adjustment. However as a sales executive be warned. Not all adjustments you make are reducing or eliminating bias and thus reduce forecasting errors. There is an easy test to determine whether you as an executive add value to the forecasting process.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
SEPTEMBER 1, 2006
So far we have only discussed potential root causes for inflated forecasts. Despite their ingrained optimism, sales people under certain circumstances produce deflated forecasts, meaning they turn out to be lower than actual sales. If you were to plot a time series of actual versus forecasted sales, chances are that you discover that under forecasting (producing a deflated forecast) is a seasonal effect.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
AUGUST 31, 2006
How does this story fit into the context of the last entry about the usefulness of the metaphor of a Sales Pipeline for our list of known opportunities? Further development of the Leaking Sales Funnel Concept will eventually lead us to an alternative way of forecasting. So that later you can appreciate the benefits of a Funnel Based Forecasting Process, I want to first make you aware of flaws in forecasting process that can be observed today in the field.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
AUGUST 30, 2006
For those who hate having to check regularly if there is new contents by visiting The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource, I have added some “push” functionality". You can now subscribe to the RSS feed of The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource by activating the respective link on the side bar. Once activated, this will allow you to read this Blog with a news reader.
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The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
AUGUST 29, 2006
My short answer is no. After having given you some hints that should help prevent you from suffering from “Sales Executive’s Tunnel View” when faced with too thin a pipeline, let us allow ourselves to be a bit more philosophical today. I promise that this discussion will provide the platform for more practical topics I plan to bring to you in subsequent entries.
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
AUGUST 28, 2006
In the last entry, we used the rule of thumb that only a fraction of the deals a Sales Executive and his/her team are currently working on will actually close. We have discovered that increasing the number of deals in a business with long sales cycles does not necessary produce the desired outcome of higher sales or even making the numbers. The rule of thumb can actually be expressed in a mathematical formula saying: The Sales at a point in the future from now (t + x) are equal to the sum of the
The Ultimate Sales Executive Resource
AUGUST 27, 2006
I still have to meet the sales executive who is happy with her/his pipeline. When you ask them for the reason of their concern, the answer usually is: “it is not fat enough”. How do they know this? Obviously from experience. They know that only a fraction of the deals they and their people are currently working on will be won. The rule of thumb often heard in the High Tech Industry is that one out of three deals is usually won.
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