Posts Tagged ‘Sales’

JumpSpark open for business

July 18 2011

For over a month we’ve been fine tuning our sales and marketing tool, delivering on our promise to make JumpSpark available to the masses. JumpSpark, a digital marketing library, is a software application built by VLG for its customers and now anyone in the world. Here’s what you do.

Sign up. No credit card needed. 30-days free.

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Build your library. Pick 10 pieces of marketing collateral and create assets in your library.

Share content. Use posts links to Facebook and Twitter, or use JumpSpark’s email builder to send effective one-to-one emails. These emails are juiced up, giving you real-time alerts when assets in the email are clicked. (Hello, sales!)

Sit back and watch as your team leverages JumpSpark to spread the word at a fraction of the price you’d pay to advertise on Facebook. It’s like crowd sourcing the dissemination of your marketing collateral, interesting articles, earned media, website and more.

Finally, if you’re in sales listen up. Do you want to know if the meeting went well? Want to know if they are blowing you off? That’s where JumpSpark comes in. Send email follow-ups and get real-time alerts when users click assets in the email.

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Getting to stage four

January 11 2011

How would you answer this question?

At which stage should a lead be nurtured before passing it on to sales?

Yep, it depends. I think the answer hinges on how you dissect the question among other factors. What are the stages through which a prospect travels? When does a lead become a lead? Finally, what does it mean to nurture?

If we–sales and marketing–agree on the stages maybe we can determine when leads should be passed to sales.

Stage One, Prospect Research
Build list or cull individuals from a CRM to cleanse data–the source of most clutter and noise.

Stage Two, Marketing Funnel
Plug that prospect into a defined, predictable series of marketing touch points not so much to qualify leads as to eliminate the bad ones.

Stage Three, Nurture
In the truest sense of the word this is where we invest time and money. Now the seed is planted, so it’s time to help it grow.

Stage Four, Outreach
Sales gets a shot at this prospect turned opportunity. Ultimately, sales determines when someone officially becomes a lead. Marketing only creates opportunities and can’t fall into the trap of calling someone a lead.

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Marketing Firestarters

December 9 2009

Marketing programs often identify influencers and decision makers then convince them to buy our products or services. What should we call these programs? Lead generation, demand generation, what? Typically we skirt the question by referring to programs as Dialog Marketing. It leaves the door open to several forms of marketing engagement. Are we generating demand, or meeting a pre-existing demand in the market?

Prospects that have already identified a pain point scan the market for a solution. The demand is already out there. We have to prove that demand can be met and fulfilled with our client’s solution. Maybe it’s semantics, but perhaps we should start paying closer attention to the difference between generating and meeting demand.

Here’s a quick analogy. A man standing on a street corner with his foot on fire screams for a bucket of water. He identified his pain and solution. He just needs someone to get him water. Should you give him the water first, or ask him if he’d like the water plus a soothing aloe vera salve? You’re talking about meeting an existing demand in the market.

Conversely, that same man is standing on the corner reading the paper and has no idea his foot is on fire. You walk by, notice, and offer the man water, an aloe vera salve, and a bandage. Not realizing he’s on fire the man is grateful and you have a friend for life. That’s demand generation.

In a perfect world we are the only ones carrying a bucket of water around town, but we know that is not true. There are lots of different types of water and different ways to find people on fire.

Marketing managers building 2010 budgets are right now trying to figure out how much money they should devote to generating demand and/or meeting existing demand. The choice can be difficult, but as long as you know the difference between the two the battle is all but won. Your prospects are on fire. Do they know it, or do you need to tell them?

Drew is pyrokinetic. Are you?

Oh, what if your prospects are not on fire? Should you buy matches?

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Selling to the C-Suite

June 19 2009

Selling to a CEO is different than selling to middle or lower-level management. No news here. How it differs is debatable, and should be, but Geoffrey James at BNET put together a piece that offers some good advice.

His article is more of a brush up on what to do than a revelation.

Don’t probe the CEO for new information about his/her company. You should know that going into the meeting. Research and prep goes a long way in the C-Suite.

If you’ve traveled so far through the marketing funnel and sales pipeline that you’re talking to C-level leadership you better have you shit together. That’s another way to say it.

Internal management is going to heavily influence the CEO’s decision, if the final decision rests with the CEO. So you can’t ignore the pitch to them. In fact, you should tailor you pitch and let them help you sell the CEO before you ever step foot in the lush confines of a C-Suite boardroom.

We’re really not an advocate of heavy slide presentations to the C-level, but you need something to show them. Hey, the CEO may not read it, but it’ll illustrate the fact that you care and that you’ve done your homework.

Follow this rule of thumb when it comes to presentations: 10 slides, 20 point font (or bigger), and 30 minutes. 10-20-30. We actually think this should be applied to just about any presentation you build for any audience.

Get biographical information so your chit chat as everyone settles in their seats doesn’t fall back to the weather. Boring. “You like base jumping,” you say. “Me, too.” That may be over the top, but you get the point.

Focus on pain points and objectives. You’ve already identified the CEO’s pain points and objectives in your discussions with the lower-rung folks. Give it to them straight.

Don’t forget a summary slide at the end, a closing. The middle of your presentation may sound like this to the busy CEO. “Blah, blah, blah, blah, Revenue, blah, blah, blah, Cost Savings. Be sure you finish strong.

Courtesy: Delphi

Courtesy: Delphi


“Look eye, always look eye.” -Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid.

[Monday: What does the movie Mr. Mom have to do with the economic downturn?]

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The Lies We Tell

February 20 2009

Waiting in my inbox this morning was an interesting piece by Geoffrey James. He walks us through the five lies marketing tells its sales counterparts. With a title like that you know comments are soon to follow–as of this post he had 38.

For the sake of brevity, here are the lies we marketers tell. 1) Branding is vital to success. 2) Marketing can train sales to sell. 3) B2B marketers conduct scientific research. 4) Marketing can deal with the press. 5). Marketing delivers good leads to sales. There you have it. Now stop lying.

It’s not that easy stop lying, Mr James. 1) At some level branding is vital, but it’s the definition of branding that is changing. 2) Maybe marketing can’t train the sales organization, but we can give them an arsenal of weapons to use. 3) Research is research. Every little bit of intel you can gather about your target audience is helpful. I guess he’s just saying when you collect good information about an audience don’t call it scientific. Okay. 4) Someone that has written for 15 years should be mindful when it comes to lectures about dealing with the press. If you’ve only found 4 diamonds in the rough, maybe it’s you. And 5) This was his big miss. Will sales ever be satisfied with marketing’s efforts on their behalf? It is fair to expect that a cost center and revenue center have differing definitions of leads, or qualified leads. Let me start another paragraph here, because this is our sandbox.

There is no doubt in our collective minds at VLG that marketing and sales do not communicate with each other as well as they should. We also believe marketing works for sales and companies should consider turning marketing into a revenue center rather than cost center. This shift would go a long way, aligning the incentives and measuring stick by which both groups are compared. Talk about bridging the gap between the two. Did I say sandbox?

Maybe I meant soapbox.

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