Data.Dump

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February 3, 2012

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Think of the times in life when you are barraged with a tidal wave of information, but all you really want to know is, “what do I really need to know?” That inch-thick stack of mortgage paperwork. Credit card agreements. Mobile phone instruction booklets. Automobile owner manuals. Insurance policies.

Now let’s picture the documents that tell you only what you need to know. Recipes, for instance. They tell you: Get these specific things out of the cupboard or fridge … if you don’t have some items, buy them … and this is how much you need … now do these actions in this order. Recipes walk you through only the actions needed to get the desired result.

Recipes do not tell us all information there is to know about cooking and baking and the foods we’re making. There is a reason why measurements should be precise when baking. There is a science to proper substitutions. There is a method behind why some foods are ideal paired together and others should never touch each other on the same plate. But a recipe doesn’t get into all that. If you want more information, there are plenty of books and Internet sites where you can learn.

CRM contains an entire library of information about customers and sales. But you don’t need the whole library all the time. Isn’t it counterproductive to walk into a library and face stacks and stacks of books when all you want is a book about how to train a new puppy? No one just wanders the shelves containing millions of pages of information if they’re seeking a specific solution and they need it fast. Instead, there’s a simple search method that gives a few choices, and it gives the brief information needed — in this case, a code of letters and numbers – to quickly and easily find the location of the right book.

Our vision is to do this for CRM. To deliver only the information that sales reps need each day to take action. To deliver only the most relevant information, e.g. the information that leads directly to actions that will produce sales and revenue and keep profitable customers happy.

We believe that less information is often more valuable.

So, how much information — and what kind of information – are your sales reps receiving? How can you make it actionable information, more like a recipe?

Buying prospect data: Why it may cost you 125% more than you think

By admin

January 30, 2012

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Sourcing new outbound leads is a never-ending endeavor for sales and marketing. Prophesies of cold calling being dead have not come true if only for the simple reason that prospecting through all channels must be on the table to fuel the engine of sales growth.

Companies typically procure lead data from four main types of leads:

Internally-generated leads: Referrals, word of mouth, events, etc.
Intelligence-based leads: Newsfeeds, industry alerts, personnel changes, etc. InsideView is one good example of this, but we believe LinkedIn also fits this mold (the evolution of this is exciting)
Special or vertical lists: Trade associations, commerce groups, organizations operating with a geographic charter
Compiled lists: The likes of D&B and InfoGroup, including credit files

But as any sales or marketing manager knows, simply dumping more records on a sales rep is a thing of the past. Lead nurturing and scoring are the norm, wherein prospects are nurtured until they raise their hands as hot leads, and are then forwarded to sales. In addition, predictive modeling that identifies the most likely prospects based on the “ideal customer” profile must be part of the mix.

It’s clear that the prospects at the top of the funnel – the ones you might pay for – are not sales ready. Further criteria and filters must be added which reduce the number of truly viable sales-worthy leads. Let’s take a look at how the leads get whittled down in the pipeline – we call this the “prospect waterfall:”

The net result is, if you are paying for leads and then “throwing away” 55% of the records (typical from our experience), your true list cost goes up by almost 125%. Add the additional processing cost, sales rep fatigue and opportunity costs, and you can see why your prospecting results and ROI are not what you had hoped for!

For best ROI, pay only for what you use.

If your current processes throw away prospect records that you paid for before the sales reps see them, it is time to reassess your lead generation program. Or as one of our clients put it, “stop buying leads until you figure it out.”

Try this one weird trick to boost SFA adoption

By admin

January 24, 2012

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That which is scarce is precious.

That which is abundant has little value.

More or less, these are the lessons of life.

Sales organizations go through the CRM selection process with great diligence. They spend even more resources redesigning existing processes, integrating the technology and people, training and rolling out the shiny new thing with great fanfare. Making sure every sales person is empowered.

Yet adoption remains at an abysmal level by measures beyond logins, “clicking on plays” and “call blocks.” Why?

Here are three most cited reasons aggregated from numerous research:

It is delivered primarily as a technical tool, relegating the human element.
It is perceived as management pushing something from above.
It is not believed to generate more value: sales, profits, targets.

In other words, it is not adding value to the life of the sales person.

One sales leader I know used to say, “if you don’t know the value of what you’re doing, then stop doing it. You will find out.” Yes, we are asking you to consider the opposite of what every expert says, everything you have heard, and even what we’ve said on these pages – stop doing SFA – if you are not sure of the value being delivered.

But wait, you say! How could we stop using SFA? Well, you start by MAKING IT SCARCE.

If you really believe you are adding value with your SFA, then start by giving it to less people. Select a team, or select reps via a lottery system. If not the entire SFA, then some components which are considered valuable should only go to a select few. Make it a privilege to get these components.

No pushing from the top management tier. If a few sales reps using the system see that their lives are better, they meet goals easier, it is intuitive to use, that data is accurate, analytics is meaningful and timely, and it flows well with their daily activities, then acceptance and adoption of the system will spread throughout the sales force.

Make the SFA about adding value, the people who are using it, and the results being delivered. And forget about adoption rates.

How sales can stay on top of the customer buying cycle

By admin

January 16, 2012

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In this post we look at solving the critical business problem of managing the customer buying cycle, and how tools — simple to advanced — can help sales people support their customers.

In a repeat run rate business, customers are buying many categories of products and replenishing supplies and inventory on a weekly basis. With so many transactions from customer orders that reps must contend with, it is easy to forget about the customers who are NOT ordering, who are ordering less or not ordering the core high-value products any more.

While we are a predictive analytics company and have a solution to offer here, we also explore with customers and prospects who are starting out this question: What is the right fit for their needs? Here are three options in the order of features, scale and cost, with pros and cons we’ve discussed with them:

SALES PROCESS SOFTWARE

Primarily focuses on mechanically guiding rep actions through a rules engine: “call today … email next week … follow-up in 3 days.” Stand-alone or blends with CRM.

Pros: Most simple/easy to follow, ideal for a small team within a larger sales force.

Cons: Does not consider customer attributes and responses or historical sales data, and is not predictive.

MARKETING AUTOMATION SOFTWARE

Tracks frequency of contacts for communication, which is another way to stay on top of the buying cycle.

Pros: Maps to a pre-thought-out contact strategy, multi-channel, captures customer preferences and responses, and increasingly sophisticated. Ideal for 50-100 reps.

Cons: No historical sales data used, is not predictive, cannot blend external data, may not incorporate sales rep actions, does not identify cause and effect.

PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS SOFTWARE

This niche fits what we do. It is the most costly of the three because of data consolidation, involving expert statisticians with domain expertise, etc. But this process can scale indefinitely, it is predictive, and it can prove generation of incremental sales.

Pros: Support multiple sales channels, extensive data crunching, most accurate, provides cause/effect drivers. Ideal for 200+ reps, integrates with CRM seamlessly, best ROI.

Cons: Generally more expensive, more time to calibrate and start using, involves more people and technology (need expertise).

So there you have it. While we sell the hammers, aka predictive analytics software, we don’t see every problem as a nail that needs to be pounded. These tools all have a place in the sales arsenal, so take the time to determine what’s right for your organization.

The Evolution of Sales Force Automation

By admin

January 9, 2012

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It’s no secret that sales force automation (SFA) was dreaded not too long back, but has now become an indispensable friend to the sales person. There are many who may still be leery of it, but that number is certainly dwindling. Lauren Carlson’s blog at Software Advice reflects on this sales force automation evolution over the past 15 years, and identifies four factors that explain the change. While we agree with those, here’s our take on where this is headed.

The central theme as we see it (of course being a SaaS company ourselves) is 1) the deployment of SFA on SaaS platforms and 2) SFA is more inter-operable in a sales environment. And that is a great fit to how the best sales people think and act: sales is seen in the larger context of client and business needs. So while software engineering has taken great leaps forward with usability, content and inter-operability, it has made it easier rather than harder for sales reps to use these tools.

Let us now envision what the future holds in terms of increasing adoption and further making SFA an indispensable tool for the reps of today and tomorrow.

SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY:

Thanks to Amazon, Google, Apple and iPhones, and other innovators, we now live in a world where our tools and devices instantly empower us with just a touch of a finger. There is no need to over-engineer features and functionality. So we will see SFA applications mimic more closely the way sales reps live and work, intuitively pulling things together for the right communication with customers that build credibility and trust.

BETTER INTEGRATION OF ANALYTICS AND DECISION SUPPORT:

Either through native interface, APIs or other methods, information will become more context-sensitive. In other words not “all the data all the time” – that’s like using a cannon to kill a mosquito! Predictive analytics is not used just to determine which customers to contact and what to sell etc., it will also determine when a particular insight or data point is valuable and present it to the sales rep at the right time. The integration of up-to-date sales intelligence tools is further validation of this trend.

GREATER RELIANCE ON SALES PROCESSES THAT PRODUCE RESULTS:

A proven process is a collection of technology, domain knowledge and best practices that are known to produce a better result. There is enough body of knowledge to show what practices work where and why. Sales organizations are already building on this. In addition, the availability of domain expertise and the relative ease of technology integration further drive the dependence on an established process. No SFA = no process.

With the advent of smart phones, tablets and social media we are now at a tipping point with respect to the next evolution of SFAs. It’s no longer a question of should sales team use sales force automation. Companies and sales organizations that do not embrace it and follow a solid process are at a disadvantage. That only portends more exciting times ahead for those that do.