Brian Giese's Blog

8 (ok 9) Top Sales Operations Ideas

I found out a long time ago that sales pipeline and your ability to hit revenue targets all start with good lead management. The trouble is that leads can come in many ways, shapes and forms and most companies have loose or no structure in place to manage leads (sound familiar?). Here are a few ideas to help create a "sales infrastructure" to leverage and nuture good leads.

1. Decide what a lead is (and is not) and stick with it. One of the biggest disconnects between sales and the rest of the company is the definition of a lead. When does a prospect become a lead that a salesperson will actually work on? It's estimated that 90 percent of the leads that are sent to sales staff are never acted on. For better sales effectiveness, your sales and marketing should agree when a prospect becomes an actual lead that should be forwarded to sales.

2. Use a CRM. Nobody likes thier CRM so how do you get sales guys to use it. No time to be shy, the stick is the only thing that works.

3. Preload your database with the right prospects. Prospects are not leads.Your customers are the first step in prospecting sales leads. Profile of your best customers to better define and acquire new prospects.

4. Track the source. If you don't capture the source, you have no way of figuring out what's working.

5. Distribute leads quickly. Think about your own experiences. How many times have you tried to contact a company to request information and they never get back to you? I rest my case.

6. Nurture your leads. Dvelop campaigns that allow you to touch your prospects multiple times so you can move them through the sales cycle until they're ready to think about actually purchasing from you.

7. Measure everything. But in order to measure your results, you need to decide what you want to measure and why.

8. Hold regular sales meetings with marketing.   Meet with marketing on a regular basis to review lead quality, win/loss records, and tracking CRM systems so you can continue to improve your sales effectiveness.

Bonus Tip: Get operations reporting directly to sales management and have marketing report their as well.

How Google and Yahoo Manage (not) Click-fraud

OK, I admit I read a lot of technology business mags. Wired, Fast Company, CRN etc... but I really like BusinessWeek. It has it's long fingers on the pulse of the worldwide, mainstream business community. Have you read the recent BusinessWeek (October 2) cover story on "Click Fraud"?  WOW. This is a really revealing overview of how the business community view's Google and Yahoo's slack management of click-fraud. Go to my post on July 7 2006 for more on this topic.

The article says that as a result of click-fraud "confidence (in Google and Yahoo) may be slipping. A BusinessWeek investigation has revealed a thriving click-fraud underground populated by swarms of small-time players, making detection difficult. "Paid to read" rings with hundreds or thousands of members each, all of them pressing PC mice over and over in living rooms and dens around the world. In some cases, "clickbot" software generates page hits automatically and anonymously."

This is big. Will it affect Google and Yahoo sales forecasts? You bet it will. Is this a new tech bubble? I hope not but time will tell.

How to Create Qualified Leads (2)

We all want to get the attention of C-level decision makers. Some of you have read my first post about this. Another idea I've seen work is to dump those worthless brochures and instead arm the sales force with well-written white papers that prove your expertise. As a lead generation tool, they really work. In IT Sales Boot Camp, I always recommend using white papers as an integral part of your marketing  campaign. Positioning yourself as "credible" is critical in C-level sales. Here 's how to do it if you are going to do it yourself or you can buy a book called Writing White Papers that gives a great view of the subject as a lead generation tool. It's full of good advice. If you want to outsource this (as most marketing teams do) contact me and I'll get you connected with help.

How to Create Qualified Leads

If you haven't already you really should have a look at LinkedIn. The company is an online business network designed to help professionals find jobs, people, and services providers. For sales and marketers it's a great way to get immediate permission-based access. LinkedIn offers four premium services: LinkedIn Jobs, LinkedIn Services, LinkedIn Groups, and LinkedIn Business Accounts. They say they reach more than 5 million users nationwide since its inception in 2003 and they are growing at a rapid pace. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape and chairman of Opsware), Joe Kraus (co-founder of Excite), Josh Kopelman (founder of Half.com), and Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal). Pretty strong group of innovative backers wouldn't you say? It's a really great tool and it really works. You can see my profile on LinkedIn below.

The Top 5 Best Marketing Presentations

There are lots of great tech marketing presentations. I have to say that it is really hard to compile a list of only five that I believe are really great. I'd love to get your thoughts on these or if you have others to contribute I'd enjoy seeing them. Here they are:

Steve Jobs introduces MacIntosh in 1984 . Steve's presentation is the top of the greats. He, in this presentation, shows how to create powerful drama in this sales presentation. Remember, it's 1984 in this presentation. What could you do in 2006?

Guy Kawasaki's "Art of the Start" speech in 2006. Guy is a very authentic speaker (and a former Apple MacIntosh exec.). He's really a technology business evangelist that speaks plainly and is really genuinely funny. Hard to come by in a tech presentation.

Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" speech in 2002. This is so simple and it works really, really well. Take a look.

Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" speech in 2005. I’ve never seen Gladwell speak but I love his books on economics and his stories about technology. He uses stories to convey ideas which is a powerful and  engaging way to draw the audience into your topics. I love his passion and energy. He's really a fantastic numbers guy and a very fast-paced, engaging speaker. Tough combination but he pulls it off.

Seth Godin's speech at Google in 2006. Seth Godin is an icon for tech marketers and a speaker you don't want to miss. Here he talks to Google about marketing (kind of a tough gig). Watch his great us of slides as he customizes his presentation to his audience and then the way he integrates these to persuade. A real master at work.

15 Sales Questions that Work

Here are fifteen sales questions you can ask that will help you get a picture of your clients' situations and needs (it's by no means complete). These open ended questions are broken down into three areas I call G.A.P. (Gathering, Association, Problem-solving) and are fully explained in Chapter 6 of my book I.T. Sales Boot Camp. Clearly, the best way we can serve our clients is by knowing what's going on in their world. And the best way to find out what's going on in their worlds is to ask them open ended questions—the kind of questions that get them talking about themselves. Here's a way of organizing your questions using the G.A.P. questioning model:

Gathering questions: Ask these open ended sales questions to help you get to know your prospect clients and establish an understanding of their current reality.

1. How much budget has been set aside for this project?
2. Do you have a deadline to make this decision?
3. If you had 3 things you'd like to improve what would they be?
4. Who, other that youself, makes the decision to move ahead?
5. How do you think senior management would evaluate the success of this initiative?

Association questions are used to associate pain to move ahead. Ask these open ended sales questions to help you understand what pain (challenges) your client is facing, and what goals they have for their business.

1. If you were to make this happen, what would it mean to your career?
2. How would implementing these changes affect your ability to compete?
3. If you don't solve (insert the particular challenge here), what kind of difficulties will you face going forward?
4. What would the impact of this be to your team?
5. What implications would that have?

Problem-solving questions help the client solve thier own problems with your guidance (of course).

1. If you could overcome these challenges, what would happen to your company's financial situation?
2. How would you solve this problem?
3. If you could make that happen how would you do it?
4. How would you like to move ahead?
5. How can I help you?

As you ask any open ended questions try not to sound too salsey.  While I've suggested wording, be sure to make the wording your own. Find your own voice (timber, tone, tempo etc)  when asking questions and make this conversational.

Also, sometimes all you need is to ask 1 open-ended question and your client will share with you all the information you need to help them. Be careful and try to limit it to 1 question and let the prospect answer it fully. Peppering them with questions will just confuse the conversation and might make them feel like they are on the witness stand.

One other tip: if your client answers a question but you want them to expand a bit more, ask them, “how so,” or “can you tell me a little more about that?” You'll be surprised at just how much you can learn, and the difference it will make in your ability to help your clients succeed. Hope this helps. Good luck!

One last tip: Be respectful and take notes.

Call me if tou have any, well, questions.