Lead Gen is a big, big issue these days for many companies.  Those companies that didn’t have an effective Lead Gen function coming into this economic crisis have a big challenge: investing the time and money now to get this done the right way.  It’s like trying to change a tire on a racing car as it’s going around the track.  If you’re in that situation, you’re not alone.

There is some good news.  It comes in the form of research and advice.

In Q4 of 2008 The Bridge Group, Inc. surveyed over 125 North American technology companies on inside sales implementations.  The focus areas were metrics and compensation.

There are some points from the survey worth considering:

1. Where Lead Gen Reports. In 74% of the companies, Lead Generation reports to Sales, up from 68% in 2007.  This aligns with other recent research.  The reason for this is that Sales believes Marketing isn’t getting the job done for them and they need to take control of their own destiny, or at least a component of it.
   

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2. Mistakes. The Bridge Group points at three mistakes sales managers make that limit productivity for the Lead Generation group: a) providing product training and not sales training,  b) not providing a documented process supported by compelling sales tools, and 3) not providing coaching.  ESR’s research bears this out as well.
   

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3. Touches.  To the question, “On average, how many touches (from both sales & marketing) does it take to convert a ’suspect’ to a ‘prospect’?” the response was an average of seven!  For companies focused on SMBs the average number of touches was five.  For enterprises, it was eight.  Clearly an effective lead nurturing approach can make a significant impact.
   

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There is a reason that President Trish Bertuzzi and The Bridge Group possess an unusually high level of experience and depth of practical knowledge in the area of lead generation. They completely understand their customers and their market. This report must be required reading for every sales and marketing leader in small to mid-size technology companies.

Photo credit: © James Steidl – Fotolia.com

I delivered a webinar sponsored by ISBM (Institute for the Study of Business and Markets at the Smeal College of Business at Penn State).  It was moderated by Mary Donato, who is the Associate Director of ISBM and writes a column for Sales and Marketing Management magazine, as I do. (Mary is by far the best webinar moderator I’ve ever worked with.)

I sat in on a webinar last January presented by Dr. Ralph A. Oliva, ISBM Executive Director.  The subject was B-to-B marketing trends leading up to 2010.  It was a valuable webinar, with plenty of things to think about for sales leaders.  It was especially relevant for me since I’m very focused on sales effectiveness trends.  In fact, I had delivered a speech on the subject of sales effectiveness in 2010 to a group of CEOs last September.

The recorded webinar provided an assessment of the current situation with respect to B-to-B sales effectiveness. (Hint: the research shows things aren’t great.)  I took the participants through two imperatives for sales effectiveness going forward: technology-enabled selling (and training) and sales performance measurement.  I also tied ISBM’s marketing trends and my view of sales trends together—perhaps a metaphor for the sales and marketing alignment that has been the subject of discussion for at least 15 years.

Just send me an email (with your business email address) if you’d like a copy of the slides.

I was looking for some good blogs to link to on this site and I came across Seth Godin’s post from June 2006.  What a winner!

What a salesperson would say: “There is no comparison, NONE, between an inbound call (one that you created with marketing) and a cold call (one that you instructed me to create with a phone book.) Your job is to make it so I never need to make a cold call.” 

I know the subject of sales and marketing alignment has been the subject of webinars, seminars, articles, books, research projects, and the mission statement of at least a few companies. 

Here is a piece I did for my column in Sales and Marketing Management magazine, expressing my view on the subject:

The first time I remember hearing the term “sales and marketing alignment” was in the mid 90’s.  By then I had served as a vp of sales for a time, then later as a vp of marketing. Alignment was the perfect word to describe what I did not have with my counterparts in both of those jobs.  Sales and marketing alignment-the idea intrigued me. One of the leading sales training companies was facilitating a workshop with that title for a client, which they had given me permission to audit.  During the workshop the facilitator attempted to identify the key obstacles preventing an effective working relationship between the sales and marketing organization and went on to offer insights, tools, processes and unambiguous recommendations on how to align the two departments. 

Although the program content appeared solid, a turf war was in progress at the client’s company.  During the two-day workshop, the VP of marketing was combative and didn’t exhibit any real interest.  That was far better than the VP of sales, who didn’t show at all on the second day.  The workshop turned out to be a disaster-a metaphor for the relationship between the two executives running marketing and sales. The global vp of sales and marketing, to whom these two executives reported, arranged this workshop hoping to mend some fences.  Bad decision.

Now, a dozen years later, I received three email invitations, all within the same week, to programs and workshops entitled “Sales and Marketing Alignment.”  One, based upon research by this magazine, suggests that it is, “The Next Competitive Advantage.”  What’s going on here? 

What’s going on is that many CEOs, COOs, GMs, and other executives haven’t figured out that sales and marketing alignment is more about culture, philosophy and business orientation than it is about marketing providing sales with leads, marketing messages and sexy product brochures and sales selling enough so everyone, especially those in marketing, gets to keep their jobs. 

Sales and marketing are very different functions that serve very different masters.  In companies where there is alignment, marketing leaders understand that their team serves sales (and serve other masters as well.)   I’ve seen laminated cards pinned inside cubicles of marketing staff people that said, “My job is to help our sales people sell more of our products.”  That’s the idea.

Marketing leaders who have no respect for the sales function or for people that sell will not align with them, no matter how many workshops they attend.  By the way, I recommend to CEOs that they strongly consider hiring marketing leaders that have successfully sold at some time in their careers.

Sales understands that they serve the customer.  Their job is to help people buy.  To do that, they need ongoing support from marketing.  Just to set the record straight, sales is accountable to marketing as well.  Sales has a responsibility to follow marketing’s direction regarding product positioning and target markets, among other things.  They must also provide feedback on what they observe in the field-industry trends, what the competition is doing, how customers doing, as well as providing useful feedback about the quality of leads being passed to them.  

Sales leaders who believe that “people who can’t sell become marketers” will not likely ever find themselves in the enviable position of working for an industry leading company.  Asking carefully designed questions of sales leader candidates about their experiences working with marketing can mitigate some of these risks.

Sales and marketing alignment is more than a good thing.  It’s absolutely required for competitive advantage.  But the alignment begins not with strategies, tasks and activities, but rather with the philosophies and values of the sales and marketing leaders.

©2008 — Dave Stein — www.ESResearch.com