Question

Topic: Strategy

Lead Generation For Manufacturing Erp Software

Posted by Anonymous on 2/5/2007 at 9:37 AM ET 250 Points
Hi,

I have recently moved to a new company, they make ERP for manufacturing industry, targeted at the SMB market. I am to develop a strategy and lead a team of telemarketers to generate active leads and setup demos and pre sales activity. My previous experience has been in leading large teams telesales teams to sell computers and electronics.

I need help with my new endeavor
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by telemoxie on 2/5/2007 at 11:38 AM Member
    This sounds like a bit of a tough one - you are entering a crowded market. I'm a free-lance telemarketing guy... and I take on small focused projects (and have not hired help) because I feel the days of large outbound telemarketing projects (such as you describe) are fading fast. I would imagine that your major challenges will be helping Management to set reasonable timeframes and budgets for results, and in developing multiple marketing pieces (e.g. snail mail, profesionally developed mailers and brochures) to support your outbound efforts.

    They say the average company buys after the 10th contact, and the average salesperson stops after three. Selling software can be a bit more complex than selling computers and electronics: sometimes you need to "create a need", and this can take time. The good news is that since 98% of the market is focused on the immediate, right now sales, you can (eventually) gain market share by taking a long term view and approach (if the project doesn't get canned first).

    By the way, it would be quite helpful if you could provide more info. Are you in the US, or overseas? Are you targeting the US market? Will calls be made from the US, or overseas, e.g. India? Are you ramping up a new company, or augmenting an existing sales staff? Can you give us an idea of the dollars per sale (which will help determine the length of the sales cycle). Do you have a web site we can review? The more details you can provide, the more helpful we can be. Good luck.
  • Posted on 2/6/2007 at 12:21 PM Accepted
    Kiran:

    There's a lot to do here to get ready because you have three main challenges:
    1) Oracle and SAP will meet you somewhere near the $500 mil size of company, and Microsoft will be against you all the way down to $100 mil. And there are a number of smaller firms focused exclusively on SMB. Very formidable competition.
    2) Your target (IT exec in SMB) tends not to like the telephone as a first introduction to vendors.
    3) Manufacturing sector is probably the one that is most saturated for ERP. A lot of your opportunity here would be to unseat a current install.

    If you are truly focused on the call team, some of this may be out of your control, but I am going to suggest it anyway.

    - Make sure the product has a strong and unique value proposition. Why should I pick you over the strong competition? Why should I rip out what I already have?
    - Get the call team scripted very well. If these are true cold calls to a purchased list, they are going to get about 10 seconds to either keep or lose the prospect.
    - Prepare the call team for tough questions. Anticipate technology questions about Linux, web interfaces, software as a service, etc. One "i don't know" and you are finished.
    - Segment and track the call list so you can see what is working. Geography, size of company, type of industry, title of executive, etc.
    - Ask the marketing manager if you can test some direct response with some of the list. For example, warm up 500 names with a two-page mailer. Then follow-up with a call - at least that way they have heard of you (versus a complete cold call).
    - Try more than one offer. If all you offer is a demo, you might get a lot of "no." But if you offer a mailer, or a web link, so they can educate themselves first, you might get better response (warming up the leads). Then call them back in a week to see if they are ready for a demo.
    - You should also consider promotional offers to entice them to the demo. Only your product mgr will know what can be done here - 10% off the purchase price if they buy? $25 gift certificate to Staples? Without the demo you are cooked, so you should be thinking of any way to get a "yes."

    To your comment on running the demos remote, it doesn't matter if it is from India or from the moon. BUT, if you have not tested it for 100% success, don't do it. If one thing is out of kilter during the demo - such as a lost connection, too much background noise at the demo center, 5-second delay in the voice transmission - it is typically too big a distraction to recover from. After all that work to get the meeting, why put a potential sale at risk because the technology won't cooperate? Especially given that you are a technology company - what will that say about your credibility?!?!

    Good luck with it.
  • Posted on 3/21/2007 at 1:12 PM Member
    Kiran,
    As you may well know, the database is the key for telemarketing. You have to make sure you gather up to date information about the companies and the contacts. I found out that majority of the companies selling data do not have up to date records.

    Do you have a good database?

    Allen
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