Sales Funnel or Sales Colander?

Which of these two items resemble your sales process? Frequently sales consultants, vice presidents and managers refer to their process as a “Sales Funnel” when in fact; it more closely resembles a colander. If 100% of your marketing efforts go in the top and only 10% of them come out the bottom, what is it? A “True Funnel” (it is called “True” per this definition of the word: “exactly or accurately shaped, formed, fitted, or placed, as a surface, instrument, or part of a mechanism.”) will capture all of your marketing generated leads, get them in a structured, strategic process (with solid walls and only two holes), focus efforts and increase the velocity with which they pass through the device. Any seepage will take place at the top of the funnel as overflow spills out.

One can’t simply patch the wholes in a colander and call it a funnel. Both are fundamentally different. Just imagine that you have both a colander and a funnel sitting in front of you with a bucket of water. Pour some water in the colander. The water will go straight through with quite a bit spilling through the side walls. Now pour some water in the funnel. You will quickly notice that the water starts to spin in the top of the funnel, gaining momentum and velocity as it enters the smaller neck area and eventually shoots out the bottom in a more refined stream of water. You should also notice that in order to get more water directly out of the bottom of the colander, you need to increase the amount of water that goes in at the top. Not so with the funnel. The funnel itself either needs to be expanded or the speed of the water needs to be increased in order to get more output.

Let’s look at a traditional sales funnel.

You will notice that the leads go in the top and new customers come out the bottom. That is the goal. It is the process of taking an input, interacting with it and getting a completely different output. Naturally there will be some waste in that process, right? The first step in creating our True Funnel is to think of it on a linear level. Define the natural progression from lead to customer. You may include some marketing steps in the process as well if you would like. The True Funnel should include demand generation and other marketing practices.

Now that you have that linear process mapped out, let’s apply some lessons which we have learned from industrialization. The first is specialization. Keep the Sales teams selling. Keep the Marketing teams marketing. How do you bridge the gap? Lead Generation and Lead Qualification teams. Let’s not kid ourselves, sales reps don’t want to become telemarketers. They don’t want to “Smile and Dial”. They don’t want to make more than 30-40 phone dials a day. Which means your leads are not being worked effectively enough. A Lead Gen. or Lead Qual. team can be used to contact new leads within an acceptable time frame and/or continue to attempt contact beyond the standard 3-4 attempts performed by a sales team. Once contacted, that team should simply perform a quick pre-qualification to make sure they are talking to the right person and there is some level of interest, at which point, the lead is sent on to the next station in the assembly line for further fabrication.

The second lesson to be learned is automation.

Look at the picture above. Notice the harmony of man and machine working together to build something wonderful. In an assembly line, machines are often used for repetitive simple tasks, complex precision task, quality assurance, and to report on the status of the line. Technology can be used in similar ways on a sales assembly line. Simple repetitive tasks which can be automated are dialing numbers, leaving voice messages, sending emails, logging activities, scheduling events, and setting reminders. Technology can also be used for precision tasks such as lead capture, lead routing, de-duping, neglected re-routing, immediate response, and campaign strategy.

At a minimum, you should employ some level of analytics for tracking your demand generation activities, a lead response management system for facilitating your response strategies and a customer relationship management solution for managing your pipeline and beyond. It is highly important to have these and other systems communicate or integrate one with another. A key benefit of using technology is oversight and reporting, and if your technologies don’t communicate well, you will lose many key metrics.

Finally we need to address the seepage. If you notice, in a funnel, water that is not ready to leave the bottom stays in a swirling pattern in the top end of the funnel. This is such a perfect metaphor because your leads shouldn’t fall out the sides of your funnel, they should swirl around in the top end until they are ready to slip through the selling end. This is accomplished by nurturing activities. Nurturing activities will take a lead, where its progress is halted, and reinforce it with marketing and educational material. Additional touches by a representative within your organization also help prepare the lead for progression. If these activities are completely automated then the only reason why a lead should ever leave the funnel is if it is disqualified and asked to be removed from any future correspondence at which point it spills out the top of the funnel and stops taking up space.

New Marketing

I have read, and employed numerous marketing methods over the years for numerous types of business. The one that I have been most impressed with is Educational Marketing. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, Educational Marketing is the idea of providing educational material (such as a study, survey, white paper, etc...) as an industry expert with no strings attached. If you can educate your industry, you will be seen as a thought leader, you will gain the trust of prospects, you will have their attention even when they are not in the market for your product, and you will have a high level of influence when they are in the market for your product. This method is very effective, but it can take a long time to generate quality leads and deals for you and takes a lot of effort in developing rich content for your educational material.

Recently I have been turned on to a new way of marketing. I don't know how new it is but it warrants mentioning on my blog. It is Service Marketing. Service Marketing doesn't just provide information, but it provides a service. There are some key components when creating a service for your company that can act as a lead generator:

• It must relate to your product of service.
• It must be offered, in a limited manner, for free at first.
• It must have value in and of itself.
• It should be offered at a very low price to eliminate any barrier to the prospect doing business with you.

If done successfully, you could end up with a double opt-in buyer lead that has a relationship with your company.

Here is an example:

Call 1- Hi, We have performed an audit on your hold times for customer service. Are you interested in the results?

This is opt in #1

Send results

Call 2- Hi, we did a study on the importance of handling customer service calls in a timely manner. Would you be interested in a copy of that study? I will also attach information on the audit as a service we offer.

This is opt in #2

Send study and brochure talking about the service you provide. The cost should be a no brainer. Much less than what they can hire an $8 per hour high school student to sit on hold and report times back to them.

If they buy, they now have a relationship with you and are a double opt in buyer lead for your real products and services.

If you need some ideas on services you can offer, feel free to email me at troy.bingham@gmail.com.

Strategy 1 - Cold leads

Cold leads are a natural place to start talking about strategy. How do I turn a cold lead into a warm prospect? The key here is "impressions". Retailers have been doing it for years. You see ads on TV, billboards, direct mail, product placement, radio, clothing, ball caps, event sponsorships; the list goes on and on and on. Each individual impression, in and of itself, is nothing. How many times have you seen one of those Doritos commercials during the Super Bowl and felt inspired to leave your home, drive to the grocery store, and buy a bag of "Cool Ranch" Doritos during the forth quarter of the game? Of course you haven't. That is not the point. It's not top of mind awareness either. Just being last in doesn't mean you are first out.

The point of impressions is to establish a relationship. No, not like the one you have with friends or family, but how you relate things in your sub conscience. Think of the association game where someone says a word and you quickly say the first thing that pops into your mind. Let's play real quick...I will say a word and you say what comes to your mind.

Dog

Tree

Space

Chip

...if you said Yasmine Bleeth then you saw the same Doritos commercial that I did.


OK, let’s keep going.

Ocean

Key

Car

How many of you said “gas prices” or something related to the rise in gas prices. The reason is because you see gas prices everywhere you drive. Gas prices are on the news every day, talk radio, newspapers and online. Every automotive commercial is touching on "improved gas mileage" in all of their advertisements.

That is the relationship that we are after. You relate car with gas prices. Even if it is a negative relationship (as with the rise in gas prices) it is still a relationship. If you can accomplish this association (meaning when someone thinks of your product, service or industry, they naturally think of you) than you will gain their business more times than not when they walk into the chip isle at the grocery store.

So, how do you establish that connection? It depends on your market. For this strategy, I am going to assume you are a B2B company selling a product or service.

Some important things to be aware of when dealing with cold business leads:

• 97% are not currently in the market for your solution.
  They already have an association or relationship with a competitor that you will need to overcome.
• You will be moving against the solution current to get them to buy. A solution current is the process in which you get hot leads. Someone within the organization identifies a problem. Issues are discussed. Budget is determined. Assignments are made. Research is performed. Solution Providers are contacted and you know the rest.
• People hate salesmen, telemarketing and being interrupted.
• Your audience is busy.
  

Here comes the strategy (I am going to use one that I created for InsideSales.com). The strategy is to have so many, non-intrusive, impressions, over time that you become that positive association in your prospects’ mind when they are ready to buy. The tactics look something like this:

Start off by creating some educational material. Short essays on the 5 reasons why companies fail. Or, the 10 worst things you can do when looking for office furniture. The point of this is to establish thought leadership in your industry, give you a reason for contacting your prospects, providing them something that they are interested in regardless of where they are in their internal buying process, and finally build the association between you and your industry.

Week 1 - Send Direct Mail. I know that this is sometimes cost prohibitive, but if done right, it will lay a terrific ground work for what you will be doing in the following weeks. This direct mail component should include something that they will use (flash light, Rubik’s Cube, toe nail clippers,) and not throw away. The attached letter should be short, easy to read and funny. It is just an introduction. Not asking for them to do anything. Just an impression.

Week 2: phone call AE: Hi, _________, this is ____________ with InsideSales.com. As part of our marketing research, we have discovered some disturbing trends in a business’s response to web leads. Does your company currently generate web leads? We have created a series of webinars on the 5 fatal flaws facing today’s marketing and sales organizations. I understand that you are busy but I would like to send you a link to them via email so you can view them when you have a moment. I have ______@____.com is that correct. That email should be in your inbox right now. Thank you for your time. Good Bye.

Send email link to online registration.

Week 4: Call AE: Hi, _________, this is ___________ from InsideSales.com. We spoke a couple of weeks ago about our webinars covering negative trends in web lead response. I noticed that you hadn’t viewed any of our webinars yet and I wanted to make sure that you received my email. It has been known to get sent to the spam folder by some corporate email firewalls. Did you get the email? Great, since we last spoke I found an informative article discussing the handoff of leads between marketing and sales (or lead nurturing, pipeline management, cold calling, lead qualification, etc...) that you might be interested in. I will just send it over. Can I get your fax number? Thanks again for your time.

Send fax with part of the article and the rest on our site. Must register.

Week 5: CallAE: Hi ______________, this is __________ from InsideSales.com again. We have just finished a study looking at the average response time to leads for about 300 enterprise level companies in your industry and others. We are sharing this information with companies in your industry like (name some direct competitors) and thought that you might be interested in reviewing it. I am sending you a link to the survey right now. Thanks again for your time. Bye.

Week 6: send fax with partial whitepaper and link to register for the rest.

Week 7: send direct mail piece with a sleep blind fold and a note that says “losing sleep over neglected web leads and wasted marketing dollars?”

Week 8 phone callAE: Hi ______________, this is __________ from InsideSales.com again. As I had mentioned in our previous conversation, we have created a new webinar series on the average response time to web leads for large companies in your industry such as (name some competitors) among others. In fact, the response has been so overwhelmingly positive that many attendees have requested that we perform a short audit of their own lead response times and efforts. Since you had mentioned before that you currently get web leads, would you be interested in a report of your lead response efforts? Great. I took the liberty to perform a survey over the last couple of weeks. I will send the results right over.

Here are the important things to pick up on in this strategy.

• Use multiple media types: Direct mail, call, email, call, fax, call, email, fax, call, direct mail, call.
• Each interaction was short and non-intrusive.
• The offerings were not product related but educational.
• Over time, the thought of lead response, nurturing, routing, lead management, or any other topic we choose to cover will be associated with InsideSales.com.
  

I will discuss some other strategies in future posts. The point of this is to encourage you to establish a strategy. Anything. Just have purpose to your activities, use multiple media types and have a goal in mind. It is difficult to get started so if you have questions please post a comment requesting a free consultation and I would love to help you start a strategy.