Most common deployments look something like this:
Marketing launches campaigns to create interest.
Internal or external lead generation telemarketing groups perform shotgun telemarketing in an attempt to find prospects.
Leads are then passed to inside sales or field sales depending on the size and complexity of the opportunity and a sales rep engages with the prospect.
All of these groups function as separate and distinct organizations with their own goals. Some companies have rules of engagement that govern lead passes, sales credit disputes, etc.
What’s wrong with this model?
It was designed before widespread use of the Internet by prospects and no longer fits. Before the Internet both prospects and vendors were limited to interaction through telephone, regular mail, and face to face meetings. Vendors had much more control over the type of information provided to a prospect. Sales reps could leverage requests for information over the telephone and turn them into scheduled appointments with prospects. It would take buyers significant time to research offerings from multiple vendors and in many cases they would limit their search. The buying / selling cycle moved slower but with more control in the hands of vendors.
Today in a matter of seconds, a prospect can traverse all the pages of a web site, sizing up a company without ever having a meeting or speaking to someone. Prospects can find out almost everything they need to know about products, customers, references or the lack thereof, funding, finances, etc. Alternative offerings from competitors are only a few key strokes away. Blogs and online research portray some vendors in the limelight while other vendors lacking buzz are not on the radar.
The use of contractors or internal staff who are not integrated with the sales and marketing team may not know who to best interact with a prospect on the web site. A web site visitor who leaves with an unanswered question or a MISPERCEPTION of a weakness in your company or products is probably gone forever before you even had an opportunity to interact to answer their question, clarify their misperception, or address their concern.
How should Vendors adapt?
1. Change your sales deployment model.
Marketing 101 tells us to attract, engage, convert, and retain Customers. Web sites are holistically designed with these four principles in mind. However, the deployment of human capital is not. In many cases one group is incented to attract, another group to engage, another group to convert, and yet another group to retain.
To fix this issue vendors need to change their sales deployment model from the current fragmented model to a more seamless model where individuals from web marketing, lead gen, inside sales, and field sales continue to perform their job function but as part of a team. The team members should share common goals alligned with improving the sales metrics mentioned above in addition to assigned individual goals. Two way communication should flow freely across the team based on activity.
2. Use Web 2.0 technologies like Live Person to improve your team’s visibility of a prospect’s or customer’s activity on your web site and to increase your opportunities to engage and convert in real time.
A revised model in action might look like the following:
The revised deployment model for a forty person emerging company with two products, six field reps, two inside lead gen reps, and one web marketing professional is not complex. One would simply split the two inside lead gen reps across three field reps each and the one web marketing person would be a member of both teams. All team members would have their own goals plus team goals.
The CTO, Alan, has created a popular blog and Fay in web marketing has launched a Google Ad campaign attracting more visitors to the web site. Fay has also deployed Live Person for Ross and Ron in inside sales to use to monitor site activity and Live Person prompts live chat conversations after visitor site activity triggers a rule in Live Person telling Ross it is a good time to engage. Ross learns that the visitor is actually from a field account and mentions that he is on the same team as Chris the field rep who covers that account and offers to assist the visitor. Ross assists the visitor and informs her that he is going to let her field rep chris know so that he can follow up to see if she needs any further assistance. It turns out that the visitor is the point person on a very large project and is interested in meeting Chris in person. Ross informs Chris who is already aware of the project and has been trying to find out the best person to speak with about the opportunity.
Ron has been prompted by Live Person to engage with a new prospect who is interested in a trial but has a few questions first. Ron is answering his questions and closing the visitor for a phone meeting to discuss the trial with himself and a Field Rep.
Ross has just watched as another visitor has purchased an online starter kit and was ready to engage if necessary but the sale closed without needing to engage.
Instead of a general web marketing approach focussed more on content than results, this example shows a targeted web marketing approach leveraging a blog and Live Person. Since the web marketing person is on the same team with sales she knew what she needed to accomplish to help her team members and meet her team goals. Web marketing needed to help create more leads by driving more traffic through the blog and web ads.
Instead of competing with each other inside sales and field sales are working together to ensure the prospects receive the appropriate response to work the sales opportunity. Since they are working as a team they are openly sharing intelligence learned from interaction with prospects online and in the Field to add more opportunities to the pipeline and drive them forward to closure.
One doesn’t have to go very deep on examples to demonstrate how a teamed approach combined with new technology can improve your changes of increasing your number of leads, pipeline size, win ratio, and overall sales volume.
I haven’t yet had the opportunity to team web marketing and sales but I would like to. However, I have proven in the past that inside and field sales reps can be teamed effectively irrespective of the size of the company although there is a cost associated with doing so due to goal overlap. If the gain outweighs the cost then it is worth it. I believe companies should strongly consider changing their deployment model and Web Marketing techniques to adapt to changes in the market and improve results.
In my next blog post I will interview an online chat professional and provide more insight on tools and tactics
