New Era of Sales and Marketing Services

Both sales and marketing have their own funnels. Marketing must now directly tie the end of their funnel to the beginning of the sales funnel. Moreover, the output of the sales funnel must tie back into the marketing funnel. Every dollar spent on marketing must be measurable and show clear return on investment. Every lead generated for the sales force, must be accounted for.

Traditional marketing focuses on creating awareness in the general marketplace. The problem with this type of marketing is it is extremely expensive and almost impossible to measure. Companies with huge budgets tend to win this game. They succeed in creating mind share for the sales team but they do so by spending unnecessarily large amounts of money. Moreover, they never know which specific initiatives led to their success.

They will do so by carefully planning their campaigns and setting up clear measurement criteria to determine which campaigns are successful and how to increase their effectiveness over time. These metrics include, but are not limited to: total reach, number of inquiries, number of first meetings, # of proposals, # of sales, meetings-to-reach ratio, closing ratio, conversion rate, acquisition cost, cost per contact, and cost per meeting, profit results, and ROI. Marketers must clearly track all activity through the marketing funnel to the sales funnel. The marketing funnel should comprise three key stages

Reach - the number of people in the suspect base that will be touched by a specific campaign. Enquiry - the number of people who respond positively to a campaign by initiating a conversation. First Meeting - the number of people who are sufficiently interested that they are willing to meet with a salesperson to learn how the firm might address their specific challenges (i.e., qualified leads)

All marketing today must be oriented toward generating qualified leads for the sales team. Every campaign must be measured in terms of the number of first meetings it generates for the sales team. And every sales professional must be scrutinized in terms of his or her ability to convert first meetings into sales.

Many organizations we consult with tell me they have more than a three step sales process. I don't disagree. Your sales process, however, is not the same as your sales funnel. Managing the sales funnel is about managing the phases that opportunities go through as they mature. The steps you go through to make a sale are not the same as the phases an opportunity will go through. By way of analogy, what you do to harvest fruit is separate from the phases that fruit goes through as it matures. Fruit is initially unripe, then it's ripe then it spoils if it's not eaten. The steps to harvest fruit might involve planting, tilling, spraying, inspecting, picking, etc. The steps you go through might be very different to the steps I go through but the phases the fruit will go through are universal. The same with funnel management.