Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

These would differ from organization to organization. However, I typically set mutually agreed upon Objective Points. These are done on a quarterly and yearly basis. This sets the stage for good cooperation and growth of the employee...

maybe dcmarketingguy, rbauman and I should do a conference call regarding counting leads or sales, and we can discuss this point.

I generate leads - but whether or not that turns into revenue for my clients depends on whether or not they close the business.

As a general rule, if you hand a seasoned, experienced, and established sales person 100 leads, the sales person will call 20 of them (using the 80/20 rule, the salesperson knows that 80% of the business comes from 20% of the leads). If you "prequalify" the leads, and give the salesperson 20 leads, they will call 4 of them (again, using the 80/20 rule, the salesperson knows that 80% of the business comes from 20% of the leads). Your sales will go DOWN from prequalification. Sales folks DO NOT follow up leads effectively, and this is not Marketing's fault.

Think part of marketer's role is to juggle between budget and revenue. A lot of creativity involved to squeeze the budget to the last drop and achieve the target.

My perception is that it is crucial for marketer to be involved in sales cycle as well. They need to be equipped with the domain knowlege, from product, operation and sales.

Some companies perceive marketers as forefront fighters, others treat them like support staff, while sales are the frontline. It really depends on the company's business direction.

By database marketing, I assume you're referring to creating, cultivating and maintaining an active database of potential and current clients. There are several metrics which may be of assistance to you in evaulating the effectiveness of your database...both finanacially and strategically. Too many variable are missing here to give you a substantial example, but, you may check out one of the following sites:

www.Database-Marketing.com/services/analysis.html
www.imediaconnection.com/content/9615.asp
www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1027885

Good luck,
Debi Brady
Writing & Marketing Consultant

I’ll add a cautionary note or two. If you work in an environment where a few large orders contribute your company growth, (Enterprise software, Large Scale CAD/CAM, Flogging Power Stations etc) then obviously the few successful results dictate the overall success and the growth of the enterprise. The question often forgotten by senior management is that these successful sales originated somewhere which is why I find your description of marketing’s role to produce qualified leads which turn into revenue totally perplexing. Everything starts somewhere and only by tracking the progress of your entire efforts can you measure, refine and report on what you do.

Go back to Lord Lever who was accused by an investor of wasting 50% of his new fangled soap advertising because it fell on the ears of the great unwashed who wished to remain smelly. “Fine”, he said, “Tell me which 50% and I’ll cut the expenditure!” That’s your job – to sift the dross from the gems and if you produce a marketing strategy which generates enquiries of unknown quality, what’s wrong with qualifying them all and assessing the ratio of valuable leads to rubbish ones. It’s another metric to judge your performance on. A further metric is whether you learn from your failures.

And as to measuring things from the CRM system – that’s the under used part of all CRM systems and we both supply them and consult in them. I had one client who exulted in the success of his lead generation initiative for laboratory disposables – until I asked him to record every lead against the cost of every campaign and to track it to every order which resulted – a doddle (English for really easy) really as everything was already on or going through the system.

His PR company was bolstering their lead returns by exploring ever more obscure trade journals which would run his story, so the 1000 leads from nail studios produced 200 orders for 2 packs of latex gloves. Sounds great until you plug in the numbers and the bottom line. That’s where you measure the performance of the marketer running the CRM – or in this case the PRM (Prospect Relationship Management) The “Failing” campaigns – to boring old Industrial Equipment News were down to 10 enquiries a month but they generated 2 or 3 orders for 30 cases of disposables. He didn’t know that until we got him to input the data and generate the reports.

And on the CRM side. It’s a misused term, but it refers to how much incremental revenue you can get from existing customers – additions, upgrades, service etc. Measure that and report on it. Separate the activity from new business – that’s not CRM despite your agglomeration of the terms!

Then there are mail shots. Fine words about analysing mailings, but you aren’t going to get anything with even a whiff of statistical relevance if you are in the business of tens of sales a year. RFM direct marketing analysis requires a customer base of about 40,000 and sub-sets of direct marketing analysis require very careful treatment, lest you fall into the trap of extrapolating from a base which is below the noise level. Normative techniques work better here.

In the low volume arena, stats work best on the bigger numbers at the front-end of the process or the top of the sales funnel. You can be judged to be doing a good job on volume but also on how well you prune out the rubbish.

The final arbiter of the worth of your job or the worth of the job of the marketing person is to take each opportunity you worked on and ruthlessly ask the question – “Where did this come from” and “What did we do which resulted in a win” and the difficult one “What did we do which caused us to lose this one”

If you don’t do the numbers and ask the questions, you’ll end up being judged on how pretty your brochures are and basking in the reflected glory of whether a sales person turned your lead into an order or not.

On last point. One of my clients produces about 9000 leads a year for its sales force of 11. The marketing department qualify them to the extent that they check that the enquirer exists and that the address is not someone’s bedroom. They would not dream of trying to ascertain issues such as authority, budget and fitness for purpose, because the answers to these questions form part of the relationship building which the sales exec needs to advance his or her case.

Blimy, the biggest nerd I ever spoke to, a “Put it in the bin” recommendation from my screening team, turned out to work from home. He sounded like a genuine anorak. After half an hour on the phone, it turned out that he wanted a CRM system for a national Nuclear Waste Disposal company with 10 offices over the globe, 120 users and a budget of £1.2Million. I Thank God I gave him the same level of politeness I give everyone, up to and including when I say that there’s nothing we can do for them. And yes, my CRM system measured that too – including our near miss at screening.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions