G2 Strategic Advisory Services

If Sales and Marketing are operational business processes just like Engineering and Finance, then why do we see so many early stage companies do well with Product Development or in Finance but struggle when it comes to Sales & Marketing? I believe the answer lies in the failure to sufficiently use business data metrics in Sales & Marketing to set appropriate goals and monitor/manage with metrics frequently enough to achieve success.  At G2 Strategic Advisory Services we help clients improve Sales & Marketing performance by identifying and establishing metrics as well as providing simple monitoring / management techniques to improve results.   The following examples are steps you can apply in your organization to do the same.  Ensure your Sales & Marketing Plans include Performance Metrics that support your business plan.  The metrics should be Key Performance Indicators that can be clearly established as goals and easily monitored on a frequent basis.  Examples for Web Marketing are NOT simple traffic metrics but rather how many Leads Web Marketing has contributed to the Sales Pipeline of Opportunities.  An Example for Sales is their Lead Converstion Rate.  Review Internal Staff Operational Meetings and determine if they are using Metrics sufficiently in their Weekly Review Meetings.  Each Department should have their own "Success Scorecard".  Marketing’s Scorecard should monitor the increase in Market Awareness for example and include the number of Press Mentions, the number of Leads Generated for Sales, etc.  Sales’ Scorecard should obviously include Forecast data but also other metrics that may be important such as the Total Number of Production Installs or Users.  Train your Managers to utilize metrics with their Staffs and monitor metrics closely.  Educate the Employees of your Company so they understand the importance of each Department achieving their own metrics and how they contribute to the overall success of the Company.  Review all Sales & Marketing Vendor Contracts and Relationships to determine if they include performance metrics related to their supporting processes.  If they do, make sure the metrics are alligned with and are meaningful to what your company has to achieve in terms of customer acquistion and sales.  Make sure they are not just Vendor facing metrics such as Quantity of New Leads versus Quality of New Leads.  If you are paying a Vendor to add value and it has resulted in no increase in real Pipeline or real Sales then change your Contract or change Vendors.  Beware of Vendors who resist establishing performance metrics.  If they shy away from alligning their metrics with your metrics obviously they are not going to contribute much in the way of results.  I saw one Vendor actually brag to a Client about the number of Partners they signed up for the Client during the course of a year and question the viability of the Client’s product when asked why those Partners generated zero dollars in revenue for the Client.  The Vendor thought it was all about the quantity of alliance partners they were delivering when the Client’s need was acquired customers and sales.  There is a lot more to this topic, however, I feel the above should be a good start.  Whether you are struggling with Sales & Marketing or doing fairly well, I believe if you apply the above, you will either make much needed improvements or further expand your successful results.