M & A Rainmaker

On a recent tour of small business owners who were friends and clients the subject of ” qualifying out ” of prospects and customers came up again and again.

None of them had so many customers or prospects that they could afford to part company with them unnecessarily or ignore them  but all of them needed to spend their precious time with the right people.

It is sometimes hard to recognise and accept that there are some prospects that you don’t want as customers and some customers that you don’t want to keep any more.

The first discussion was mainly about qualifying out prospects and there was a debate as to whether ” sales ” were putting enough effort into the production of proposals for some clients. There was a feeling that more information about the company should be included and more of it  as ” templates ” . In fact what ” sales ” were doing was identifying some prospects as ” not very suitable” for the company and spending the minimum amount of time in putting proposals back to them. Sales also admitted that some ” templates ” needed updating and that there had been no time to do so.

Actually, generally speaking, I am against the use of templates for proposals although I will tolerate them for general background information about the company and it’s products and services. The problem with templates is that they lead to laziness and a failure to express and meet the real needs and requirements of the prospects.

I actually thought that sales were doing almost exactly the right thing by qualifying out of certain prospects. To do this takes experience and
” balls “.  You have to know what the ” right prospect ” looks like. The easiest way to do this might be by thinking about existing customers who are ” the right profile “. You also need to have in mind a standard list of qualification criteria like ” S.C.O.T.S.M.A.N. ” which stands for qualifying based around:

- Solution ( Do you have the right solution )

- Competition ( How much and who are they )

- Originality ( Do you have a fairly unique solution )

- Timescale ( Is there one ? What is it ? Does it fit ? )

- Size ( Does the size of the deal suit you/your company ? )

- Money ( Is there a budget ? )

- Authority ( Does the person/people you are talking to have the authority to make the decision )

- Need ( Is there an actual need ? )

See this link for a quick overview

http://www.sales-development-zone.co.uk/learning-sales-skills/4/

The other time for considering whether to qualify out is when you have a customer that is causing you too much hassle, costing too much or not paying. This was the subject of a couple of the conversations. Again it was tough making a decision to let a customer go but again I felt that it was the right decision.

We also discussed how ” merging in ” with your clients can pay dividends. My story on this is that when I was at Memorex - Telex we always wore blue suits and white shirts with conservative ties whoever we went to see. However, when I went to work for Fibernet my boss, Charles, used to dress appropriately for the particular customer or prospect that he was going to see. In particular the suits were put away when visiting Bodyshop - who tended to dress a lot more casually.

Services

Services

or contact:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/leighhopwood

Dear M.D./C.E.O./Owner/Proprietor/Boss,

In Letter No 1 we outlined the basic challenge of Sales and Marketing today - that, due to the rise and development of the Internet things are changing forever.

In this diagram

we highlighted the difference between the Internet based marketing methods and the ” traditional ” marketing methods. We noted ( in the comments ) that there are other marketing methods not identified here e.g. word of mouth marketing, business networking ( attending business networking meetings and other gathering of business people ), television and radio advertising etc. etc. We also mentioned that some of these methods are described ( now ) as ” Push ” marketing and some as ” Pull ” marketing.

One of the problems with the ” traditional ” marketing methods highlighted toward the right of the above diagram ( e.g. print advertising, tradeshows, direct marketing etc ) is that they are expensive and consuming in both time and money. Advertising in traditional print media ( papers, magazines etc. ) is very expensive and it is not just the cost of the actual advertisement it is also the cost,time and skill involved in producing the right advertisement in the first place. Attending Tradeshows is horrendously expensive if ALL the costs are taken into account e.g. not just the cost of the stand space but also the stand itself, supporting marketing materials, staff costs,travel costs,  hotel costs etc. etc. Direct mail, telemarketing and traditional P.R. are also expensive ( Internet based P.R. and traditional media PR can be very efficient and effective ).

In addition it is hard to track the returns from some of these marketing investments: How many actual leads or sales did you get from that advertising campaign/tradeshow/direct mail campaign/telemarketing campaign ???????

Furthermore it is getting harder and harder to get results from these methods because e.g. people don’t read print advertising as much; people don’t have time to attend tradeshows; direct mail ends up in the bin because nobody has time to read anything and you can’t get through by phone to the decision makers because they are too busy and have effective filters in place like their secretary or receptionist. Even email campaigns end up in Spam filters.

So it is no real surprise to hear that marketers are shifting their time, efforts and money toward the first 3 or 4 items in the above diagram.

The reasons for this would include:

1. That people are shifting their time online - in various ways and that they get information and buy when they want to and not when you want them to.

2. That the traditional methods are too expensive all around - in time, skill, effort and money.

3. That the traditional methods are not working as well any more mainly because the people are not there any more or are filtering out those efforts.

4. That the old ways are not as easily trackable as the new ways ( you cannot work out the R.O.I. as easily )

So, you must put in place a digital marketing strategy that transitions you from the old world to the new world.

How will be the subject of Letter from Marketing No. 3.

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/29/letter-from-marketing-no-3/

I have just rushed to make this post after my friend and business colleague of many years, Brian MacIver, posted this comment

“Chris,
A well timed and topical posting. Several of my clients are asking “hard” questions about their ‘investment’ or web ’spend’. Particularly in the Property Market, they laid off sales people, boosted their web content and saw little return. Now that the property market is returning they cant find Salespeople (did they all go to Dubai?)
Good posting, thanks.
Brian”.

on this blog

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2011/06/08/what-return-are-you-getting-from-your-website-investment/

and it just made me think - You have to manage your website like you ( should have ) managed your salesforce.

What do we mean by that ??

Well, back in the day Brian would have coached us on 3 essential elements for a successful salesperson - and more were added over time:

1. Activity - a salesperson must be active - phone calling, writing etc etc

2. Skills - a salesperson must have good sales skills

3. Knowledegable - a salesperson must be knowledgeable about his products, his company and his competitors.

4. Personality - surrounding all of this - people buy from people - so be nice !!

5. Administration - You have to manage your salesforce and they have to manage their business - turning leads into orders -  and to do that you need some information - How many calls did they make ?? How many appointments did they go on ?? How many proposals did they write ?? How many orders did they get ?? How close was this to their target ??? etc etc etc

6.  Going alongside 5 is the analysis of their progress and performance to determine their R.O.I.

There may be more aspects but lets start with these. What’s the analogy in terms of managing your website like you would your salesforce ??

Going in reverse …

5. & 6. Analysis and Administration   It is essential that you have the means to monitor the performance and progress of your website. You need to know how many prospects it is reaching ( visitors ) and how many of these turn into a lead ( respond to a Call to Action ). You need to know which activities ( posting a blog, posting on Twitter, posting on LinkedIn etc ) produced the best results. You can only do this with the right software on your website.

4. Personality. When you do post information you have to do it in the right way. You want your ( attractive ! ) personality to come out and you want to be nice to people. We all know that ” hard nosed salespeople ” sometime do succeed in spite of themselves but I always thought that this was creating unnecessary ” friction “. Being funny sometimes helps aswell !

3. Knowledge. You have to be knowledgeable , educational and informative in what you say. Many of the most successful people on the Internet ” give away ” loads of free advice and information.

2.  Skills. There are lots of skills that you are going to have to learn and develop ( or you can find people with those skills ) to succeed. Blogging; Posting on Social Networks and building your networks; writing etc etc

1. Activity. Yes of course - as with salespeople it is partly a numbers game and you always have to be active - blogging, posting, commenting, liking, sharing, reading etc etc.

I think it is a great way to think of your website as like your salesforce ( or part of your salesforce ) and of managing your website as you would your salesforce.

If you can get it right the R.O.I. can be massive - just think of all those salespeople’s salaries you are not paying

Understanding the Cisco Opportunity Incentive Program ( OIP ) and Value Incentive Program ( VIP )

Close and detailed planning and monitoring of the performance of a Cisco Partner’s participation in the various programs (such as OIP & VIP) ensures maximisation of return from involvement.

The success of Cisco’s VIP (Value Incentive Program) in providing large and recurring rebates to Partners is an example of how Channel Intellect can work with Partners to ensure maximum returns.  The ability of a Partner to sell more of the product qualifying under the SKU issued for each period determines the actual size of the rebate.  The monitoring, measuring and planning achieved by a Channel Intellect relationship ensures that all sales and technical assets are designing and selling solutions that, wherever possible and appropriate, ensure maximum VIP returns.  Channel Intellect works to identify how best to map success in these programs into compensation plans and incentive schemes for Partner sales teams.

Channel Intellect offers guidance to Partners to allow them to more easily embrace the requirements of SIP (Solutions Incentive Program), a process which is often resource-intensive and focused around larger solutions that have the ability for multiple deployments to generate rebates of significance.

When bearing in mind that these programs constitute almost everything available to a Cisco Partner in terms of securing funds from Cisco, the necessity of ensuring absolute focus to generate maximum return is put into sharp perspective.

Contacts

Address: Romney House
Gayton Road
Heswall
Wirral
CH60 8QE

T: 07808 586293
E. info@channelintellect.com
W. channelintellect.com

If you are a Cisco Partner looking for support and guidance  to drive engagement and accelerate both activity and results with Cisco then I would recommend talking to Channel Intellect who have a client list that includes many of Cisco’s highest achieving and award-winning Partners and also delivers the much-heralded Comstor Mentor Programme. Additionally, Channel Intellect has engaged with Cisco on a number of projects and is, as a result, uniquely placed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how Partners can make the most out of their investment in Cisco.

What Cisco Says….
Bernadette Wightman - Operations Director - UK & I Channels - Cisco

	Channel Intellect has provided a vital and excellent service to support and guide many of our developing Cisco Partners in the UK and Ireland. They have also been able to assist and advise a number of Cisco teams within the organisation in constructing Partner-centric programmes and initiatives. The insight that Channel Intellect provides to our Partners in developing a profitable and sustainable relationship with Cisco has made a positive difference to both Cisco’s and the Partners’ engagement and performance.

Channel Intellect engages with Partners around the “Six Pillars” – a series of best practice disciplines centred around the following focus areas:

• Certification/Specialisation
• Cisco Programs (VIP/OIP/SIP/etc)
• Support
• Market-Specific Initiatives (PSPP/SMB)
• GTM & Marketing
• Relationship Management

Cisco Health Check

The Channel Intellect Cisco Health Check is based on a day’s analysis with a Partner, in order to assess current engagement levels and to advise on how this can be complemented and refined in order to ensure an appropriate ROI is delivered against the cost of maintaining an effective Cisco relationship.

Based around devising an activity plan which embraces the “Six Pillars” disciplines, the Health Check comprises:

• A pre-engagement briefing
• A Partner executive workshop
• A Partner action cverview
• A Costed Channel Intellect proposal

Contact info@channelintellect.com for further details.

This blog is based on a recent  interview with Mike Volpe

http://www.mikevolpe.com/

by Lewis Howes - Author, Speaker and Entrepreneur.

The full transcript and  video is here, which I recommend you look at

http://www.lewishowes.com/marketing/inbound-marketing-plan/#more-2030

Why would you put your effort into Inbound Marketing ??

Inbound Marketing Budget & Results

Lewis: So, what I hear from that is that:

You spend more energy, time and resources or money on creating content, or creating free software, free downloads, free webinars.  So you’re putting that paid advertising money into the free stuff, which is converting twice as well as the paid stuff.  Correct?

Mike: That’s exactly right.

The cost is lower per lead and the conversion rate is twice.  So the cost per customer… it’s 3 or 4 times better. It’s fantastic.

And you’re right.  I think… so we spend some money on creating content and the way that you typically do that is that you end up hiring people.

So I think that in the long term we may have much more as the percentage of marketing budget going to the team and, you know, the people that are blogging and doing webinars and creating content versus buying media.

Building Versus Renting

And I think the interesting… you know, the other analogy if you think about it that way is that:

• If you’re buying media or advertising from someone else, you’re really renting the capability of attracting an audience because you have to pay them every time you wan to do an ad.

• If you’re building up your own blog, if you’re becoming your own media company, you’re building something.  You’re purchasing real estate and building your own real estate.  And obviously what you typically want to do is own those assets over time and things like that.

So just like you do with your blog and everything that you do, you’re building up yourself as this media agency, right?  And if you were to take a month off, you would still get a ton of web traffic because you’ve built this up over time.  If you stop paying that bill to that company you’re advertising with, you get nothing the next month, right?

So I think, again, you should want to build and not rent, and that’s another way to sort of think about it.

How would you start with Inbound Marketing ??

How To Start Inbound Marketing

OK. So let’s give them a good example.

• Say I’m a tech startup company.
• I’ve got 10-25 employees.
• I’m trying to grow.
• I’m trying to get more leads.
• I’ve got a free software, or a free service, but there’s a paid model as well, but I’m looking to get those free leads in to use the service first.

How do you guys collate the information through your blog, your books, your webinars, etc?  Do you hire… if you’re this company, do you hire someone externally?  Do you have members of the team who are doing different things; developers, CEO, running content?  Do you get all the members of the staff involved?  Or do you use one person?  How would you go about that?

Mike: That’s a really good question.

I’m a huge fan of getting the entire company involved in the effort.  I think we’ve had a lot of success and seen the best success among our customers if there’s more than one person.

Maybe you can have a leader, or a manager for your inbound marketing program, but unless you have multiple people contributing… you know, it needs to be the whole company.  You just sort of change your company philosophy to some degree to really make these things effectively.  We’ve seen the best success with companies that have multiple people contributing to the blog.

Because you get those different perspectives: the perspective from the VP of Engineering versus the VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing or the Co-Founders.  It’s going to be a little bit different.  And that helps you attract different facets of your audience.

Lewis: So, what if a company is not willing to do that?  Do you think you’ve really got to adopt this philosophy? Or you’re going to be struggling if you don’t?

Mike: You know…

• It will still work to some degree if you have one person sort of dedicated to it and spending some time on it.

• You will get better results if the whole team is dedicated to it.

IQMS Success Story

I’ll tell you a story about a company called IQMS.  They sell, sort of in that range, or I think they’re around 200 employees.  They sell ear piece software to manufacturers.  They’re based in California.  And what the CEO did, is he decided to basically…

You know it was like when Cortez came to the New World he burned his ships so all the people with him would committed to staying and making a life in the New World.

• He did that.
• He fired their PR agency.
• He cancelled all of their print advertising.
• And he told his marketing staff of only 2 people, that you need to embrace inbound marketing and make it work and here are your lead goals.
• And they said, “Holy crap! What are we going to do?” Right?  And then they said, “Well, I guess we really need to make this work.”
• So they started blogging.
• And the CEO was great because they did have that leadership above.
• The CEO created some content.
• Some other people in the company started blogging and things like that.
• And they’ve actually seen their business, I forget if it was 10% or 20%, buttheir business increased after having decreased the past 3 years.

And you know, we’re still not in a great economic environment yet, and they were able to see an increase in 2010 after having declined in 2008 and 2009.

He really attributes all of their success to that program and being really, really committed to it.

So again, you’ll have some success if it’s one person, but I would really recommend to folks that they think about really transforming their company.

Lewis: Gotcha.

How would you get started with Inbound Marketing ??

A Simple Inbound Marketing Plan

What would be a simple marketing plan for any company trying to get more inbound leads?

Mike: Yeah.

#1: Website Grader

I think the first thing is, I honestly would recommend Website Grader. It’s totally free. I’d run my website through Website Grader. Usually for many of the smaller companies, there’s usually one or two small changes they can make to their site to improve their search engine optimization, or how they’re site is displayed in search engines.  That’d probably be the first thing.

#2: One Blog Article A Week

After you’ve made a couple of those changes, I think the next most important thing is just to start to create some content.  So I would actually say about one blog article a week is probably fine.

You know, someone like you, you’re passionate about the stuff and you create tons of content. You’re doing hundreds of webinars.  If you can do that, that’s fantastic.  But for many of these folks they’re really nervous about getting started so even one blog article a week will have an effect.

#3: Good Lead Generating Offer

And then I think the third component that you definitely need is:

• What’s that good offer that’s going to get people to convert and become a lead?

And usually I think a webinar is a great example of something that people can do.  And then you need to take that call to action, that offer to become a lead and put that on your home page, and put it on all of your blog content.

And I think that if you use just those 3 things, the blog articles and the SEO will start to attract more people to your site and you’re going to have that good call to action and you’ll start to get more leads through that call to action.

And then, you know, there are lots of ways to make it even better and do more with it, but those 3 things will get most people started.

Happy New Year !!

Over the holidays this video came out from Serial Entrepreuner, David Skok, who is clearly a HubSpot fan..

http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine-webinar/

and it is really a great addition to the blog series that I have been writing.

In fact I would say it is really the linchpin of why I am interested in HubSpot myself - which is ” How to get more sales using HubSpot Inbound Marketing ” !!

So, I would really recommend that you take a little time to view the presentation/ slide show.

When I started LanSwitch ( which became Voyager ) in the early 90’s I set aside a bedroom for an office and on my desk I had a telephone, a fax machine and a laptop ( initially not connected to the Internet , later connected with a dial-up connection ) with Office and a Contact Manager application and a printer. Luxury, I thought because it was the same as I had at Fibernet and much better than I had at Memorex.

My target market was basically: Companies that had busy Local Area Networks; that were in either The Midlands ( where I lived ) or London ( where I could easily commute to and knew people ). So, I basically targeted a combination of London based Financials and other general companies in London and the Midlands. I think I bought the Computer Users Yearbook as my basic database. ( Actually a very comprehensive and detailed source of information ).

I went through the process of identifying a target market and building a database of prospects and suspects many times over during my sales and business start-up career.

Typically now I will segment by horizontal ( size of company ), vertical ( type of company ) and geographical ( location ) and then various other factors eg structure of company, people within that company eg IT Managers etc etc.

Then a database can be purchased which is targeted and therefore typically lower cost than purchasing 1000’s of contacts many of which are not within your target market.

There are many database suppliers these days so it is possible to get some great offers on targeted data.

The equipment side has obviously come on in 17 years but not incredibly so - broadband and wi-fi; scanning software and fax software; CRM versus Contact Management; softphones ( eg Skype ) and video conferencing ( Skype, Webex etc ); standalone traditional and IP phones;printers. 

Where there has been enormous progress has been in Internet search and Social Network Marketing.

If you know what vertical you want to concentrate on eg Lawyers in Staffordshire you will find much of the information that you need online via Google or some other search engine.

With great timing ( !! ) I have just been reading this article about Linkedin

 http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/24/technology/linkedin_social_networking.fortune/

that I picked up on Twitter ( posted by Jon Besag who is in sales at Linkedin

This is well worth a read for many reasons. 

This article includes comments about in house and external recruiters using Linkedin to find the people that they/thier clients are looking for . There certainly are a lot of recruiters on Linkedin - in fact when I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is a Linkedin trainer he told me that there were about 68,000 people on Linkedin who called themselves recruiters ( I just did a Linkedin search for ” Recruiters ” and got about 48,000 ) and that there were probably about 100,000 because a lot of recruiters did not call themselves recruiters.

I used this fact recently to help a company that I am working with, who are selling multi job board posting software, to target recruiters. From a small, personalised ” mailshot ” to selected Linkedin recruiters we got a few very positive responses and made a proposal to one within a week and got an order from it.

Recruitment is an obvious thing to do on Linkedin but  as said in the article ” The obvious one is jobs, but it’s not just jobs. It’s also clients and services.”

For me the goal is to make a ” personalised ” approach to potential clients and ” personalisation ” requires research. The difference between what you can do now and what you could do 17 years ago is that you can gather far more information on people and companies before you make any approach whatsoever.

If you combine a targeted database with internet and social media search then you have a fantastic tool to help you personalise your ” intelligent ” marketing and sales approach.

If you are a member of eg Ecademy, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed,Skype or MSN then each of these have thier own search facilities - some more sophisticated than others.

Just today I was asking someone how they prospected on the Internet and they said Linkedin, Skype and MSN.

Using a combination of Internet search and Social/Business networks you can find out an awful lot about people and companies.

Do you remember this blog???

http://mandarainmaker.co.uk/wordpress/2009/10/16/the-perfect-salesperson-and-the-perfect-sales-meeting-structure/

Well, my client and I have been doing some more work on this. We reckoned that we needed to get down into a bit more detail and sub-divide some of these areas.

Activity

Here we had a discussion about what we think the activity targets should be.

Based around a week as follows, approximately:

1 day cold calling

1 day proposal writing

3 days meetings ( or if no meetings then calls to get meetings )

The target number of cold calling phone calls per week ( my recommendation is to go for researched, targeted phone calls rather than purely numbers based ) -should be say 30 per day? ( Any meaningful conversations to be followed up by a letter, so say 15 letters ? )

The target number of meetings per week - say 3 per day for 3 days = should be  9 ?? ( All appointments confirmed by email/letter )

The target number of proposals per week - should be, say, 6 ? ( All proposals to have summary of meeting, key needs and objectives, how we meet those needs/objectives, pricing and ideally ROI )

Knowledge

Here we divided knowledge up into various segments:

Company – ( The companies background/history, key philosophies and main strengths )

Products -  ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company, 1. Telephony, 2. Computer Hardware – Switches, Routers, PC’s,

Servers 3. ????? TBD )

Services - ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company, 1. IT Support, 2. Billing Services – Lines, Minutes 3. ???? TBD etc)

Competition -  ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company 1. ABC Ltd. 2.  DEF Ltd. 3. GHI Ltd. 4.  JKL Ltd. 5. ???  We would highlight thier strengths and weaknesses ).

Suppliers -  ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company 1. Cisco, 2. Microsoft, 3. HP )

Marketplace -  e.g for an ICT company - Hosted Computing versus Premises Based, Virtualisation trends, Cloud computing trends ( SaaS etc )

Skills

Here we divided skills up into seperate areas:

Meeting structure ( as before )

Proposal structure ( eg summary of meeting, key needs and objectives, how we meet those needs/objectives, pricing and ideally ROI )

Presentation structure ( eg Intro, summary of needs/objectives, how we meet them, discussion, agreement on way forward )

Demo structure ( eg Understand what we need to prove, prove it, next step )

Questioning skills

Closing skills

Objection Handling

Negotiation Skills

Psychometric profiling ( this is an advanced selling skill )

With each of these areas we can either record achievement as a percentage of the target or mark each area out of 10 as before. 

Now we had some way of focussing on the areas that needed to be addressed.

We could sit down amongst ourselves and give our own targets and also agree these with the salesperson.

Then we could write an action plan to address any areas of weakness or shortfall.