Marketers have always encountered difficulty with sales people. A common complaint is that when things are going well, everyone says that the sales department is brilliant, but when things are going badly everyone complains that marketing is failing to produce the leads. Simon Davis, MD at sales and marketing software provider MarketDeveloper, says, There is a disconnect between the two functions and to a large extent; it happens simply because marketers are from Venus and salespeople are from Mars. They are different and they work in different ways.
Yet regardless of their differences, sales and marketing need to work together. They are jointly responsible for generating demand for the company’s products and services, and if they fail to collaborate successfully the company will not last long. Fortunately for the frustrated marketer, technology firms have begun to develop solutions to this perennial problem. The chances are that your problems with sales fall into one of the categories described below. If so, read on, as technology can help you.
Renaud Besnard, office business applications product manager at Microsoft UK, says, Too often marketers have to wade through several applications to get a clear picture of how well the sales department is performing. This takes up time and means that sales data is not turned into actionable and profitable knowledge.
He advocates the use of business intelligence to solve this problem. A business intelligence system can help enhance the management and therefore productivity of sales personnel. It brings together information from around the business, allowing a product manager to analyse sales data quickly and so make a marketing decision, such as how to price a new product.
Generally speaking, salespeople have little idea about data. The ones that do understand it usually prefer to spend their time closing real people than profiling data. Most sales people, therefore, rely on marketers to manage their data, and very often marketers become frustrated at spending large amounts of time guiding salespeople through a process which, to them, appears very simple.
Data services firm Corpdata believes it has developed a solution to this problem. Andy Smith, MD, explains, Sales people only want to be presented with ready-made leads that are relevant to them that week. So sales turbine drip-feeds them a small number of up to date, relevant leads on a regular basis. It costs around 22 pence per lead, and the service is proving particularly popular amongst SMEs that don’t have data managers. So far, we’ve signed up 56 clients.
Even more frustrating for marketers is when they spend time generating leads, slice and dice them and send them off to the sales department ready for them to follow-up and close, only to discover a few weeks later that they have been ignored.
In its 2002 Report, ‘Re-engineering Lead Management’, the Gartner Group found that, ‘more than 70 per cent of sales leads are never acted on, because they do not reach the right person or organisation at the right time’. Andrew Yates, MD of Aprimo, explains, Sales people don’t like following up on leads. You need to prompt them all the time and push them through the sales process.
His company has developed a programme that does just that in the form of Lead Manager. It intelligently routes leads to the right salesperson, and then repeatedly prompts the salesperson to follow up at each key stage of the sales process. It costs from a couple of thousand of pounds, up to hundreds of thousands depending on the number of users.
B2B sales is a complex and lengthy process. Very often it is not linear. Success is about gradually compiling a picture of the prospect, the situation and the competition, until it all slots together in a sale. As sales people are frequently reluctant to get started on this process, they often drop out before it reaches its conclusion.
Simon Marley, sales director at Salesphase, says, We’ve spent the last three years developing a process management tool that will guide sales people through each stage: identification needs analysis, preferred supplier and contract. It prompts them to ask the right questions at the right time, and it provides them with a simple contact management interface. It costs around £3000 to £4000 per-seat, per-year.
Louise Bowers, demand creation manager at contact centre technology provider, FrontRange Solutions, says, Intranets and extranets are typically under-resourced, with information either lacking or not up to date. A collateral management system, properly implemented, will ensure that not only will the sales person have a complete picture of the prospect, but will also be fully armed with the right marketing materials to deliver a consistent message.
Very often, sales people are the largest discretionary cost of a business. It is therefore vital that they spend as much of their time as possible selling rather than administering or reporting. It is important, however, that they meet regularly to report on progress, to plan future targets and to receive information on new products and marketing initiatives. The problem is that this can result in salespeople spending too much of their time travelling to, and attending, sales meetings.
According to Jiten Kantaria, sales director of communications technology provider Premier Global, one solution is web conferencing. He says, Our solutions have helped one client to increase sales revenue by 18 per cent. Not only are the sales people in front of prospects more, they also feel more motivated because they have daily meetings. Companies like Canon, Regus and the Royal Bank of Canada are all using this for their business sales. Web conferencing should never replace face-to-face meetings, but can be a very useful complement.
Andrew Armstrong, general manager at sales software providers Callidus Software, says, Most salespeople receive 50 per cent of their pay in bonuses. In the mobile phone industry it is nearly 100 per cent. Yet, between five and 15 per cent of all bonus payments are inaccurate. This is demotivating for the salespeople, and is often expensive for the company, since it is usually overpayments that go unrectified. If a company wants to encourage certain behaviour in its salespeople, it needs to make sure its bonus scheme operates correctly.
His company sells software that promises to do just that. It is a rules-based calculating engine that non-technical people can manage, and that salespeople can easily access through their company portal. It provides daily updates on performance against target, so managers can alter it to take account of day-to-day changes in businesses needs. It can even automate disputes and show managers what would happen if they changed an element of the bonus scheme. The cost depends on the number of modules a company buys and the extent of integration with existing systems.
Sales is of course not the sole factor in determining the success of a company; for one thing sales need to be profitable. Yet many companies have no way of telling how the activities of the sales department affects the rest of the business. While sales and marketing can find it difficult to work together, very often they will have almost nothing to do with finance and operations, and this can be highly damaging to a business.
Mike Hawes, MD of business intelligence software provider Outlooksoft, explains how his products can help solve this problem. Our dashboard gives the user a snapshot of overall company performance, showing trends and individual performance in more detail. While there are many business intelligence tools that can do that, ours allows users to predict the impact on the business of a trend continuing. This means they can predict their margin on future sales and so direct activity accordingly. The entry cost for this product is £100,000 and it increases depending on the number of users.
Looking ahead
In the coming months and years we will see more and more of this kind of sales technology hosted and delivered online. This will significantly reduce costs to make these solutions more widely available.
David Arrowsmith, head of customer intelligence at business intelligence software provider SAS, concludes with this advice, For the technology to work, senior figures in the sales and marketing departments need to make it clear that these are tools for improvement, and are not to be used for recrimination. Technology alone cannot heal the rift between sales and marketing. It must be accompanied by a cultural shift and a willingness to work together.
