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March 22, 2017June 1, 2017

Coordinate and Communicate Touchpoint Strategies for Greater Impact

How many touchpoints does it take to convert a target into a buyer?

Marketing and sales experts will often quote a common belief that it takes seven touchpoints to convert an identified target to a customer. This is a good rule of thumb for budgeting and planning. Pipeline data and analytics should confirm whether this is true within your organization.

Whether three, seven or 13 touches are required to convert a target to a buyer, the fact remains that well-coordinated touchpoint strategies between sales and marketing are critical to fully maximize the value of any investment in customer acquisition. This applies to people, methods and technology. The key to successful returns on this investment is identifying the “best” mix of touchpoints that amplify results. And this requires constant analysis, agility and oversight by sales and marketing executives.

The initial step in maximizing the impact of touchpoint strategies begins with a coordinated sales and marketing plan detailing each touchpoint used for awareness and engagement.

The touchpoints plan should outline every organized touch along the customer’s buying journey. From the initial stages of targeting and brand awareness campaigns to engagement with a sales professional, all touchpoints should be deliberate in activity, call-to-action and expectation of results. This applies to both B2B and B2C.

A touchpoint is defined as the contact made with a customer or prospect in the buying and selling process.

What are the most frequently sales and marketing touchpoint strategies used to convert a target from awareness to engagement?

Email: Outbound, Inbound
Phone: Outbound, Inbound
Web: Sites, Landing Pages
Advertising: Digital, Print, Display, Broadcast
Social Media
Content: News, Opinion, Blog, Online, Print
Events: Webinars, Trade Shows, Sponsorships, Speaking Engagements, Hosted Events
Direct Marketing: Mail, Email, Phone, Subscription
Point-of-Sales Display and Storefronts
Meetings: Online, In-Person
Employees and Stakeholders
Referrals, References and Word-of-Mouth

As you can see from the list, it is easy to find at least seven methods to reach your target audience. Each method can have multiple uses and characteristics. Experience, time, target types and cost will help determine the most effective methods for selling your products and services.

It is vital to utilize a mix of touchpoints and apply them to every single target to increase your conversion probability. Obviously, the goal is to convert with fewer touches; however, it is essential to plan for the complete mix.

Touchpoint strategies should not be left to circumstance. A touchpoint plan must answer who is responsible for each touchpoint, the medium that will be utilized, what will be said and how it will represent the brand. It needs to outline the schedule of activities and KPIs set against the expected outcomes to benchmark and measure success. Again, touchpoints should be married to the customer journey to ensure that every touchpoint is fully utilized to push and persuade the contact to buy.

A touchpoint plan should outline:

Roles and responsibilities
Medium
Frequency and timing
Key messages
Call-to-actions
KPIs
Investment

Consistency in outreach, timing and messaging for all areas within the plan requires alignment to the business goals and should be shared company-wide.

One of the greatest failures is not leveraging the entire customer journey to completely benefit from all touchpoints. This happens when sales and marketing are not setting expectations on how, what and when touchpoints are utilized and who is responsible for delivery.

Resources that can help coordinate effective and consistent touchpoint strategies across an organization include:

Company fact sheets and FAQs to ensure everyone is speaking the same language
Brand guidelines help organizations articulate and represent the company in look and feel
Content libraries and online resources that are maintained with the latest marketing and sales support materials
Corporate templates for presentations, emails, marketing communications
Marketing technologies (MarTech) and customer relationship (CRM) management platforms to help organize and manage critical touchpoints in the sales and marketing process
Communication and event calendars to keep the organization informed of when there are opportunities to engage with key targets and customers
Company events and training that detail the plan and set expectations for everyone’s role to support the outcomes
Reports and dashboards that show the results of each touchpoint and ROI

Everyone in a organization sells. This means everyone should fully understand and value the sales and marketing coordinated touchpoint strategies. It is the leadership of sales and marketing that must then work hand-in-hand to ensure that the investments made into touchpoints are actualized to generate results.

We all can hope for the one touch that leads to a conversion. Those tales often are ones that are repeated in company folklore. The facts remain, it most frequently takes multiple touches to successfully convert targets to leads, then leads to buyers. Coordination between sales and marketing only increases results and impact.

Work together and expect more. Create your plan, set your targets, define your activities and measure your success. That is how you will maximize the results of your coordinated touchpoint strategies.

Jamie Glass, CMO + President, Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.

February 12, 2013

2013 Marketing Forecast Report Summary by Software Advice

Guest Post by Software Advice, Ashley Verrill

Traditional forms of marketing, such as direct mail, print and television advertising, continue to fall out of favor with business-to-business marketers, according to our recently-released Software Advice report.

We received responses from 155 primarily executive-level marketers in a poll we called the B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey. They were asked about spending plans for the New Year; as well as which channels, content and offers they find most powerful for producing quality and quantity of leads.

The sample included primarily smaller businesses, with marketing budgets of $250,000 or less, although there was some representation in the tiers up to $100 million in marketing spend. The sample was also primarily from technology companies with less than 100 people.

One of the first things we discovered were the most popularly-used channels. Email marketing to a house list came in as the most-used channel, followed by search engine optimization, social media (not ads) and trade shows.

These results reflect an increased focus on what’s popularly called “inbound marketing,” or driving traffic to your site from customers already searching for your product. Many times these channels are also lower cost. You’ll notice a correlation between the cost per lead of each channel and their popularity in the chart below. Trade shows was one exception to this trend.

One thing marketers need to be careful about, however, is the quality of leads from these channels. Even if the cost is low, it’s important that your return on investment translates over into the kinds of leads your getting from each channel. Lead scoring is one good way to measure this quality. This usually includes gauging factors such as the decision-making power of the contact, their purchase timeline, budget, industry, or what kinds of content they’ve interacted with or downloaded.

“If you just look at a program on the surface from a solely cost perspective you might never realize it’s just not bringing back the right people. You could end up with a whole database full of contacts of people that will probably never buy from you,” said Elle Woulfe, marketing programs director for Eloqua.

In this regard, the sample agreed that in-house email marketing and SEO provide the most high-quality leads because they are prospects that have proactively sought out your company or product. They’ve clicked on a link, and want to consume something that you are offering. While social media is popular, it has yet to produce such quality leads, at least as consistently as other channels.

Also interesting, 3rd-party lead originators and search engine advertising received the largest percentage of votes for being high quantity channels, yet they didn’t score high on the popularity scale. This is likely due to cost, but again these are often really high quality leads. Marketers should look at the total cost-to-spend ratio.

Despite marketers admitting social media doesn’t produce quality or quantities of leads on a consistent basis, the channel received among the highest percentage of votes for elevated spending in 2013. This more likely to do with the buzz than anything else.

Even if you are a director of marketing and see how all of these programs perform, likely a CMO ahead of you is saying, “You need invest in these programs because that’s what everyone is doing.”

For questions about content, marketers didn’t mirror the trend as far as prioritizing high quality or quantity of leads. Videos, for example, was listed as the second most popular, yet didn’t score well on our scale for quality or quantity.

This is likely due large part to the marketers need to produce content in a way that customers want to consume it. Videos are popular because people don’t have as much time to read.

Content success has a lot to do with where you are targeting customers in the sales funnel. A video testimonial from a customer, for example, could convert really well for high-scoring leads that are near the end of the sales funnel.

Alternatively, a lot of content is used pre-funnel and not meant to be highly-converting. It’s more about getting the customer educated and developing preference over time. For this reason, a one-size fits all approach to content can backfire. You need to measure success against varying goals.

Guest Post by Ashley Verrill
Ashley Verrill is a market analyst with Software Advice. She has spent the last six years reporting and writing business news and strategy features. Her work has appeared in myriad publications including Inc., Upstart Business Journal, the Austin Business Journal and the North Bay Business Journal. Before joining Software Advice in 2012, she worked in sales management and advertising. She is a University of Texas graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

February 10, 2013June 13, 2017

Sales Referral Partners Lead to New Customers

Using partnerships to grow your business is smart business. Partnering drives market awareness, aligns your brand with other credible brands, opens doors to new customers and can even provide value-added products and services to increase your average sale.

There are different types of partners, which are defined by the level of engagement and the agreements each party enters into to manage the relationship.

Sales Referral Partners are the entry level of business development partnerships. This type of partnership has little accountability and responsibility for performance. The value of this strategy is often used to grow market credibility or to align with a partner that has strong relationships with your prospective customers.

Entering into a partnership for referrals is a first step to test the waters in a relationship. It allows both entities to measure the commitment, willingness and effort required in working together to develop business. A sales referral partnership gives you the ability to determine if this is simply a PR initiative or will actually grow revenues. You can also monitor the organizational support in sales and marketing required to get deals closed.

The relationship can be a one-way lead pass or a two-way referral agreement. Both parties need to determine the best opportunity to refer business by passing on leads, receiving referrals or both.

Sales Referral Partners can be “handshake” in nature if you do not plan to hold anyone accountable for the outcome. It is commonplace for business service professionals who network together to develop non-binding relationships to help open doors and extend value by making credible introductions to other service providers or their respective clients.

If you plan to use compensation as an incentive to drive referrals you need a legal agreement, signed and executed between both entities. Compensation is a way to show appreciation for the referral and is an incentive to work together. If your partner offers to pay you for referrals, you also want to make sure it is in writing.

There are two ways you can determine the referral compensation. Referrals can be compensated at the same rate as your sales commission. For example, you can offer a set figure between 5-10% of the net proceeds of any closed deal. You can also set the commission rate at the percentage of your average marketing spend to acquire a new customer. No matter the rate chosen, it should be perceived by your partner as rewarding and drive the expected behavior. Make it worthwhile for someone to act as your front-line sales person and help find you new customers. If the rate is not worthy of the effort, you can expect to pay few or no commissions, as you will likely not drive the behaviors needed to get a referral.

If you do choose to enter into a binding agreement that includes compensation for referrals, you need to set rules just as you do for your own employees. Specifically outline in your agreement how payments will be made and when the partner will be paid. For example, will you pay when the sale is made or when you are paid by the new customer? Be sure you state in your referral agreements if the referral fee will be paid over the lifetime of the relationship or for only the first sale.

It is critical that you track all your sales referrals, whether you enter into a formal agreement or simply take an email of a lead pass from a trusted business partner in your network. Enter the lead into your CRM with the proper tag to identify who gave you the lead. Enter when you receive the lead and monitor the progress of the lead as it moves through your sales pipeline. Measure all your partners quarterly to see how they are helping you grow revenues. It will provide you intelligence in how to manage the relationship for maximum profitability.

If you do enter into a sales partnership where the other entity is representing you on the front-line, you need to equip your partner with the same tools and resources you provide to your own sales team. You need to give them the ability to introduce you, what you do, the problems you solve and the value proposition of your products and services. Spend time providing regular updates about your business and services to keep your partners informed and engaged.

Top of mind awareness in this type of partnership is essential to getting value from your relationship. When you provide value, you will get value in return. A partnership requires efforts by the giver and the receiver. Be persistent in developing good partnerships, measure activities and reward the efforts of those that help grow your business.

“Try not to become a person of success, but rather to become a person of value.”
– Albert Einstein

Other types of partnerships that will be discussed in future posts include Co-Selling Partners, Channel Partners, Strategic Partners and Investment Partners.

Jamie Glass, Founder, President and CMO of Artful Thinkers

August 5, 2012August 7, 2012

Questions Sales Candidates Ask that Should Stop the Interview

There are certain questions that should raise a red flag when you are interviewing sales candidates. You are hiring a person who will be responsible for driving your business forward.

The sales person you offer the job is representing your brand, your company values and creates your business first impression. This person is accountable for increasing revenues. Know for certain, they will have a bottom-line impact on your business. Positive or negative, the interview process is critical in making the best determination of the outcome.

There are questions and statements sales candidates make that are telltale of their priorities. When you hear them, stop the interview, thank them for their time and move onto finding a better qualified candidate. Your time is valuable and you need to find the best person for the job.

One red flag or alarming question is enough, no matter how many other green flag answers you were given during the interview process. Avoid the energy of imaging “what if” or talking yourself into dismissing what you know was a clear indicator this candidate is not worthy of the job. Don’t compromise! Your business can’t afford a bad hire.

The biggest red flag is not having any questions prepared. Ask everyone you interview, “What questions do you have for me?” If the sales candidate responds that they do not have any questions, stop! Any novice interviewee will have at least one or two questions prepared for any job interview. This response tells you they have no interest in the job you are offering. It also indicates they didn’t do any homework before the interview. Next.

Here are more red flag questions:

1. “What opportunities are there for promotion?” We all love ambitious people. The problem is that you are not hiring for a future promotion. You need a person to do the job you have open right now. This question may be a red flag that your candidate is more focused on telling others what to do, not doing the job themselves. They may feel over-qualified. They absolutely are telling you they are not interested in the current job opening.

2. “How do I get leads?” This is an indicator that the person may not like cold calling. It is hard work. There are some sales people that only perform well with nurtured, warm leads. Your sales hire should be equally good at cold calling, as growing business with existing customers or well qualified leads. No one really wants to take a job “dialing for dollars”; however, you have to hire someone that will do whatever it takes to find customers, including making a lot of cold calls.

3. “What is my salary?” People who ask this question want security. Sales is risky business, for the business owner and the new hire. A green flag question from a qualified, competent sales candidate would be, “What is my quota and commission rate?”. They might even ask you if there are caps on earnings and incentives for exceeding quota — even better. When a person indicates they are hungry to earn more than what you project at 100% of their sales goals, that is a very good sign this person is used to winning. A person that is asking about salary wants to know if they can live on the base pay. Not good.

4. “What are the hours and the vacation policy?” Sales is a do whatever it takes job. If a person is worried about the hours they are working each day and when they get their first paid day off, they aren’t thinking about how much money they will make selling for you. A green flag would be a question about how soon they can get into the office each morning.

5. “Where will I be sitting?” Sales people should be able to perform anywhere they are located. Whether they are in an office, cubicle, table or at home, good sales people will sit where they have access to a phone and computer. This is a person that is not attentive to the most important qualifications needed for this position and they are wasting your time.

6. “What qualifications are you looking for?” This is a red flag that the person did not prepare for the interview. Researching the job and the company should provide indicators of what is important in this job. This is a sign the candidate may be looking for any job, no matter what you have to offer. You need a qualified candidate that fills the job you have open now. This question is also an indication that the sales candidate is not ready to make an assumptive close. The assumption should be that they are qualified for the job and they do not need to be interviewing you for background information.

Making a hiring decision about a sales candidate is difficult. You need to trust this person will take on the responsibility you give them to grow your business. They must be accountable for delivering results. They must be eager to learn and willing to do whatever it takes to win. Most importantly, they need to be able to ask for the close and that means they need to ask you for the job!

Jamie Glass, Outsourced CMO and President of Artful Thinkers, a strategic sales and marketing consulting company and Sales & Marketing Services Managing Director at CKS Advisors.

May 6, 2012

Best Networkers Go Where Others Won’t Go

Yesterday I met with a successful executive coach who is starting to explore opportunities of expanding her business. She was sent to me by a trusted colleague and notable networking expert. The typical goal of these meetings are to learn about our respective businesses and then make introductions or provide advice on how to reach new clients. It’s the life of an independent business owner and consultant.

One of the questions I always ask people looking to develop more business is “who owns your customer?”. Often there is pause. Yes, I want to know who owns the relationship with your customer, not who is your customer. The reason I ask this question is to identify the strongest influencers of those potential new customers. In my experience, it is the shortest path to multiple buyers.

An influencer provides reach and accelerates your ability to grow market share. Research suggests that we “buy” when we are influenced by someone we trust. In fact, ninety percent of consumers surveyed in a 2009 Nielsen Survey said they trust recommendations from people they know.

This is not only applicable in retail situations or online recommendations, but also in business services as well. The business community often gives their business to those that come through their trusted network of peers or with whom they have a past relationship. Why? It eliminates the vetting and testing. In the old fashioned sales vernacular, it saves time and money.

Here are a few recommended steps to reaching your influencer:

1. Identify your influencer, ask yourself who “owns” your customer.

2. Research your influencer. Where do they meet? Who is in their network? Who are their customers? What events do they attend? What association and industry groups do they belong to?

3. Start following. Not literally stalking of course, but follow companies and connections in LinkedIn, through social media channels like Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages and Google+. What are they talking about?

4. Go to events where they gather and start building your circle of influence.

The biggest mistake I see others make in networking to find business is they go to where their friends and competitors go. For example, I am probably less likely to get business at another marketing event, as opposed to hanging out at a physicians conference or speaking at a non-profit event about advisory boards. My competitors do not go to these events, or at least very few do. I get more time to interact. I can learn more about their needs in a particular industry or market vertical. More importantly, I can start to build a network of influencers face-to-face.

How do I get those in the room that have nothing in common with me enter into a trusted relationship? I start by listening. I then offer to make introductions to my trusted network, when there is a good match. I share my knowledge to see where we have similar business interests, like expanding markets, growing revenues. Sometimes I offer to participate in events as a speaker on mutually defined topics of interest. Finally, I look for ways I can help them achieve their business goals and give them a “sample” of what I have to offer at no charge.

The saying, nothing ventured nothing gained seems to work well in the world of networking for business. Sole proprietors and consultants have little time to work on their business, as they are the business. You need to be your own best PR agent and maximize your limited selling time effectively. If you are competing for air time in a room of people that look and talk just like you, that is an educational or skill expanding event. Learn about your craft and further your expertise. Don’t expect to get customers at these events.

When you want to network for business, go where you expect to see the least amount of your competition. The fewer people that are “talking just like you” that are in the room, the better chance you have to find business. You also create more awareness about your services because you are not a peer. You have more “meme” time. That will drive curiosity, and that opens a door to “sell yourself”.

Networking is a skill. Before you say no or turn away from the idea of going to a meeting or speaking at an event of complete strangers, realize that this is where business starts. Venture out. Be different. Go where others won’t go.