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| Financial |
| ROI
Operations Buy/Build Partnership |
Marketing
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| Research
Awareness Generation Allocation
Qualification Analysis |
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| Sales |
| Sales
Strategy Sales Plan Sales Process
SalesResource
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The Role of Marketing
The
role of marketing continues to change. As the
organization has evolved, the success of its
sales initiatives has become directly linked to
the marketing department's willingness to step up
and take ownership as the information provider
and sales opportunity generator. In fact, in
most organizations today marketing now owns the
communications function. The corporate web site,
for instance, has matured into a strategic
communications channel. As a result, the
marketing team is rapidly gaining more respect
and additional resources.
Research
Market research is an ongoing process in which
the organization evaluates the business
proposition it delivers to the customer. This
includes defining distinct competency, market
research, technology
assessment, customer surveys, prospect
evaluation, and competitive review.
How well do you
really know your distinctive competency?
To find out, ask your
customers these questions:
1. What do you
think of our product?
2. What do you
think of our company?
3. Have you seen
any "good" products lately?
The answers will tell you what your marketplace
believes is your distinctive competency. Then
make sure it matches your corporate message.
Market Awareness
Market awareness is achieved from either
long-term investment in communication programs or
short-term frequency in large media formats such
as advertising. It all depends on your financial
resources and what percentage of the market you
want to own in what period of time.
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Lead Generation
Lead
generation is a simple process once you
understand your marketplace and how your product
adds value or solves a problem for your
customers. Your company's web site, for example,
can be a tremendous vehicle to generating leads
quickly. Anyone can create a form to post on the
web site to collect all the information you could
want from your prospects: names, titles, phone
numbers, budgets, buying habits, and customer
needs. In fact, if you place a direct
self-gratifying "reward" to the
prospect for providing the information (like $100
for everyone who fills out the form), you will
get more names that you know what to do with. If
$100 seems like too much, analyze what a new lead
is currently costing you to capture!
Organizations must find unique approaches to
managing the customer enterprise and utilize the
Internet to share and manage leads and corporate
information with their marketplace.
Lead Qualification
Lead
qualification is critical to managing resources
and meeting business objectives. Too many
organizations do too little qualifying of leads
and consequently pollute the sales funnel.
Understand the 8-4-2-1 rule: 8 qualified leads
turn into 4 sales presentations, which turn into
2 sales quotes that result in 1 sale. Take the
time to evaluate your last quarter's leads to
sold reports to determine exactly if sales are
getting lost.
"If
you understand the 8-4-2-1 rule, you won't have
to wonder where sales are being lost."
Analysis
Quantitative
analysis is the ability to evaluate sales wins
and sales losses to determine to whom you are
selling and to whom you are not selling. Build
questionaires for your salespeople to fill out
after each sales presentation. Interview your
customers and all prospective customers who did
not buy from you. Look at product profitability,
trend analysis, and market analysis.
"Interview prospects who did not buy -- you
will be surprised why you lost the sale."
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