The perfect storm

In sales during this perfect storm you will have:
- The usual suspects looking into other solutions than before.
- The ever since customers investigate and change their habits of buying from you
- The leads asking questions they never have asked before.
- The customers imposing new requirements
- The evolutionary solutions generating interest

Decision influencers and makers will decide under the pressure of:
- The required decrease of operating costs
- The value for money
- The minimum required services
This is a whole new set of constraints and selection parameters that gets into their buying decision process thus changing your sales process.

You will even encounter customers that just run out of money or cannot afford your services any longer. Or people you know since long as a customer and asking you politely for a job.

These new constraints can lead to:
- Pricing and bidding wars
- New questions and requirements in RFI (Request For Information)
- RFP (Request For Pricing) with different set of competitors.
- Fast reworks or additional development of the solution
- Adopting new technologies or platforms never considered before
- Repackaging by marketing of the same solution
- Repositioning by marketing of the same solution

The great opportunities

Due to this financial crisis people will investigate in alternative solutions that are cheaper, bring value for money, bring the minimum service, or use a different new technology or approach as a solution to solve the same problem.
Thus for a number of vendors new opportunities will arise that have been developed based upon new or alternative technologies bringing substantial advantages or benefits for the customer.

Change will happen: new leaders

During every economic downturn leading businesses lose their top position and newcomers replace them at the top, due to the new set of constraints or requirements the buyers are using.
Thus change will happen. Only it is hard to predict who will become the new leaders and who will start lagging behind as the new set of requirements still needs to be defined.

The perfect opportunity

Where will you be in this?
Working and selling for a current leader that will step down?
Working and developing business for a challenger that might become one of the new leaders?

Will you have the “The perfect opportunity” knocking on your door, instead of encountering “The perfect storm”?

In any case it won’t be an opportunity storm, as times will be tough and customers will be holding on to their money.
So whatever lies ahead of you, make the best of your opportunities and get rewarded for your efforts.

In these new harsh times due to the credit crunch and financial crisis, the best way to control your future is to close sales, in order to make money.
Sales from leads you have nurtured as efficiently as possible at the lowest cost.
Leads generated in the most efficient and cost effective ways as companies will need to cut costs.

The company website is where you can:
- Find your leads early in their buying process
- Discover their needs to be used for cold calling using the matching subject
- Nurture prospects based upon their behavior on your website and reactions upon your communications.
- Harvest your sales timely by knowing over time their level of visits by unique visitors, expressing the interest present in the company

This is how you could control your future better by winning more sales.

Reporting to the sales manager

On a regular basis sales people need to report to their Sales Manager.
There are several cases to be distinguished:

1) Enough sales:
The Salesman has enough sales leads in his funnel, thus he will only declare those he is absolutely sure of. And he will keep quiet about the other possible sales.
He has no need to raising expectations or even have his targets increased.
If he would miss one of the mentioned leads, then he still can present one of his leads he still has on hand.

2) Below target:
The Salesman is below target. Still he needs to prove he is doing fine.
He will come up with any possible lead, more or less qualified, which might generate sales.
He knows how much and when he is really going to close, but keeps this to himself.

3) Way below target:
The salesman is significantly below target.
Additional to presenting all possible leads, qualified or not, he might even present one lead that will bring sustained growth for the company based upon the potential number of users or consumers of their customers.

Clueless Sales Manager looks into the CRM

The Sales manager will not get the correct picture of the funnel for the company as some of his salesmen will understate their sales funnel, while others will exaggerate their number of leads.
As he doesn’t know who is under over estimating, he is clueless as he has no hard data.

Thus in order to have a reference, he will be looking into the CRM for contacts and contact history, allowing him asking questions about companies, contacts and meetings.

This is one reason why the CRM is being used to verify the number of leads and the number of contacts. In order to be able ask questions about contacts within companies in the CRM.
The CRM is being used as a management control instrument, and not to enhance customer relationship.

Website visit report by company

If the Sales Manager could get a report about the visiting companies on the website of the company with the frequency and intensity of their visits and their interests, he would be able to ask more specific questions. Thus his questions would be more precise or to the point.
Additionally he could offer help and insight into the sales processes of his salesmen using his experiences, as he could visually see the reactions upon the communications with the contacts in the companies and their visits.

This would allow him to ponderate the declared leads and funnels from every salesman based on a better conversation, which will give him better data for the funnel of teh company.

Progress is just best guess

One of the problems with Sales and the Sales process is the biased and subjective estimation of the progress made in the sales process and funnel.
This is mainly because the feedback originates from the person who is selling and thus personally involved in the sales process.
Very biased – very subjective.

Sales cannot ask the potential customer to fill out a form, in order to inform them objectively about progress of the sales process.

Measuring sales progress on the Internet

Measuring sales progress objectively would be possible if you could make a link with the Internet
On eBay any seller can see the bidding, and thus knowing about the sales process.
Like this one eBay:

Still the video gives you the picture, as on the Internet everything can be registered and thus measured.

Measuring the progress

If Sales could measure or capture independently through a different channel without being noticed:
- The level of interest of a potential customer
- The changes in level of interest of a company
The lead qualification and funnel could be based upon more exact data than the currently complete subjective salesman information.
Lead management would become real easy.

Measuring tool

The potential buyer will visit your website before and during his buying cycle. This is how the buyer leaves measurable information behind:
- The pages visited
- The time on pages
- The duration of his visit
- The number of visits
- The number of unique visitors from the potential buying company.
- The interval between two visits
- The frequency of visits

This is what LEADSExplorer provides for every potential customer company:
- The level of interest
- The changes in level of interest during the sales process presented graphically
- The interest in detail based upon the pages visited and the search terms used aggregated by company.
- The effect of the communication messages, telephone calls and meetings upon the sales process on a chart.

Don’t rely anymore on subjective information.
Get an objective measurement of your sales processes, as you too need to know the progress of your sales processes.

Avoid posting during high activity
During office hours and evening there is too much happening on Twitter.
However when they are asleep, the rest of the world is browsing.
Then you can post your micro-blogs on Twitter.

We have tried this out several times with different links.

The last 24 hours we retested using the same link to one blog post: Everybody’s free (to prospect)
Thus we posted during the workday and evening in San Francisco on Twitter, Plurk and some other.
Then the same link during their night solely on Twitter.

The results:
- 4 to 5 times more clicks on the same link during their night.
- Several more links
- Several copies of the original blog post

Avoid posting when the famous are blogging
Thus stay away when the famous are blogging in order to get more reach and interest for your posts.
They draw too much attention and your posts don’t get noticed in the crowd.

The goal is to generate interest for your work or your company, in order to generate leads.

Money will be scarce as large investment banks and the main investment insurer have gotten into financial problems.

Start ups

Typically VC’s have a score rate of 1 good exit on 10 investments.
As money resources have become limited, the Venture Capitalist company needs to select its investments even more carefully.
This usually leads to risk adverse investments, probably less innovative, thus less innovation and implying less change.

Business plans will need to show revenue during the first year and a break-even operating income on the profit & loss within 2 years. This will require selling the products or services during the first year and getting lead generation almost from the start.

In any case for the second time in 7 years, burning money companies are doomed.

Grown ups

Grown ups are companies that have their start-up phase behind them, will address investment banks or bankers for additional money such as loans, bridge loans or even convertible loans. Just for the same reasons and the problems of the credit insuring institutions, less risk will be taken.
Companies that have a proven track record of sales and customers (preferably recurrent revenue) will be in favor of getting additional money.

Innovating businesses or businesses that aren’t break-even yet will be avoided by investors as much as possible.
This makes these companies the perfect prey for larger well funded companies as an acquisition target and will lead to consolidation of the market.

As a company, getting into break-even is a must be. Thus they need to cut costs or increase their sales over a very short time.
- Cutting costs seems the easiest, but this can jeopardize the future of the company as new developments are scrapped.
- Increase sales will be hard to do too: business models can be changed, prices can be lowered or new markets can be addressed by repackaging or marketing differently the current solution. This requires creativity and marketing initiatives that are not just spending on advertising.

Large or established corporations

Many opportunities will exist to acquire new technology at a fraction of the research and development costs, if these technologies would have been developed internally.

Moreover the proposition for acquisition could go as far as offering the founders a future n the company and the investment bankers a less than initial invested capital return. This could be for both parties better than getting into a bankruptcy, where no-one gets anything.

Technology innovation as the disrupter of doom

All the above is true, only if no technology change or advances are brought to the market.

This is probably not applicable for all industries, as in very mature markets little technology advances are possible.
However even if in just a few industries new technology advantages become available on the market, the beneficiary effects can spill over into the mature markets, by decreasing operating costs.

Technology progress spills over
One possible example are the new services of Amazon: EC2 and S3.
These new services allow software companies to dispose over significant lower cost solutions for supplying web services.

In return these companies can offer web services at a lower cost:
- New companies can start up as they see a feasible opportunity
- Grown-up companies can address new segments in the market and thus obtain new market share.

This innovation will act as a domino effect upon their customers. 
The web services companies will be having lower operating costs themselves, allowing them to take market share and grow their business on their turn.

In other markets the technology disrupter can be in place since a long time, but not being applied completely.
- In retail banking the banks will increase their online banking services in order not to have any transaction in their branch offices (as the continental European banks have done since long) and having solely advice (sales) functions in the branch offices.
- Airlines will stimulate online bookings and self registration at the airports.
- Companies will rationalize their lead generation and sales processes, what will probably lead to Internet lead generation and online interactive sales.

Thus technology advancements and innovation will drive new business and growth again. Doom will be doomed.

What will be the technology disrupter of doom in your market?

The presentation below of Dick Hardt (CEO Sxip) about identity 2.0 (in 2005) is one of the best presentations ever as it is entertaining, informative and brings a message:

Although the presentation is about Identity 2.0, which is a rather boring subject on itself, Dick Hardt has turned it into a show to remember.

The greatness is in the:
- The minimalist approach: only a few words on a page
- The sequence of the words on every page
- The visuals
- The speed of changing pages
- The relation between the pages
- The timing of Dick Hardt
- The presentation style of Dick Hardt
- The replays that even makes it more entertaining
- The references to your own experiences: recognizable

It is entertainment, informative, compelling, carries multiple messages, addresses to you, and is still actual – even after 3 years!
Additionally because of the greatness of the show, this presentation has spread virally – probably amongst a limited group of people.
Thus this is the prefect presentation, or not?

Call to action is missing

The only thing that he fails in this presentation is:
“The call to action”
He solely asks is to “Join the conversation on identity20.com”, whereas he runs a company needing leads and customers.

Of course this presentation will have had a positive impact on branding and PR for his company, but probably to a very limited group of people.
Thus a “Call to action” for his company, could have generated inquiries for his solutions in order to convert them into leads.

So even if you give a most compelling and dynamic presentation, you need to have a call to action in order to get inquiries, leads and customers.

Call to action examples

If you don’t tell people explicitly what to do, they won’t know.
That’s why there is a “Buy Now” button on many e-commerce websites.

A call to action is required in order to transform the passive listeners into active participants relating to your products or services:
- Simple: “Visit website in order to get you started improving …”
- “Change … before you have to.”
- “Act now with … instead of being lagging behind.”
- “Approve this new method to increase revenue/effectiveness by XX%.”
- “Sign on as a partner in our partnership venture.”

Leads

So what would you do?
Or what will you do instead?

Achieving the same level of giving such an entertaining presentation is probably beyond the abilities and the skills of most of us.
Still we can all try as he proves to be entertaining on a not so exciting subject.

In any case you need leads, more leads after the presentation than before, more leads generated from your website or direct inquiries after the presentation.

Thus get a clear “call to action” at the end of your presentation in order to generate, capture, and convert leads as is required for getting business by any company in B2B.

Clash of worlds:

At Engago we forget that technology advances and new web services are not yet being adopted by everyone. We sometimes ask questions that seem obvious to us and then get raised eyebrows.
In order not to upset your potential customer, don’t ask for:

- What is your Alexa ranking?

- Do you use Feedburner as RSS feed for your corporate blog?

- What did you do to increase your SERP?

- Do you use Squeeze Pages?

- Do you find Google Adwords campaigns effective?

- Has your micro blogging on Twitter generated any followers too?

- Do you use Tweetscan for following-up the brand name awareness on social websites? Or any similar service?

These Internet related questions can create an uncomfortable feeling as people don’t know about them and thus cannot answer.

Questions to ask:

- Would you rather use email marketing or direct mail?
- How many leads do you get from a trade show?
- How much does a lead cost?
- Do you generate leads from your website?
- Do you sell through a channel or direct?
- How many inquiries do get from your contact form?
- Do people often phone/mail and say they found you through your website?

Close encounters

As Engago is living in the ‘advanced’ Internet business, close encounters with the real world is sometimes interesting.

The normal method to sell is by communicating with people who buy from you (or your company).
This requires time, quite an effort and a lot of work.
Not solely for the communication itself, but for finding the leads or the potential customers.

(Please note: the call to action at the end of the video is hard to read)

Advocates talking to their peers

Getting advocates to tell about your product or service is more effective and apparently requires less effort, as they do a part of the work by talking to their peers. Amongst their peers will be potential customers.

Advocates are people that are:
- Excited about your product
- Evangelists
- Your brand supporters
- Work for you without getting paid.

Advocates can be all kind of people:
However the greater the reach they have the better:
- A blogger could be an advocate having a big reach.
- An employee can also be your advocate, arguing for you during internal meetings and writing memos or emails.
- A customer can also become your “fan”, as they are convinced or having had big successes with your solutions.

The problems with advocates are:
- Where to find future fans? Outside a company or inside companies?
- How to spot a potential advocate?
- How to get into contact with people that can become advocates?
- How to promote to people that can become advocates?
- What convinces someone to become an advocate?
- How to stimulate the advocates?

Treat advocates differently

During face-to-face meetings or even over the telephone, advocates can probably be recognized by their expressions and body language.
On the Internet they will express themselves on forums or social media, but there they use a nickname, thus not traceable.
On your website they will probably have a different behavior as they probably search for information differently. In order to recognize the potential advocates, you need to reference them with your other advocates. Thus the more you know about the habits and behavior of people on your B2B website, the more likely to spot one. Remains the problem how to get into a communication with them?
Technology can help you to get company name, pages visited and number of returnign visits by unique customer, but pin pointing to the exact person needs more or a two way communication.

You need to treat the advocates differently than normal customers as they are more interested in content and value. They might even need a story which they can enhance with their own experiences.
However there is probably no golden rule how to obtain advocates.
Some companies seem to get easier advocates than others.
The underdog, having good products, has more chance to win advocates. (Apple versus Microsoft)

Viral selling in B2B

In some cases because your product is so great or the business proposition is so compelling, people will become advocates without any problem as they can put themselves into the spotlight.
This is viral marketing in B2B.

However for 99% of all B2B products this doesn’t work, as most of the products or solutions hardly differentiate (like industrial soap).
Businesses buy in most cases standard, controlled or even certified products or services.

Just try and aim

If you don’t try, then you have to wait until it happens naturally or never.
Thus you better aim to get advocates by making available: information, content and facts.
Stay informed what is happening on your website, as this has become the first source of information for advocates.

Online advertising formats

Online advertising exists in different formats:
- Google AdSense
- Text link ads
- Banners
- Pop ups
- Paid top links on search result page

Who clicks?

Do you click on these advertisements?
No.
Do you know anybody who is clicking on these online ads?

Who is clicking on these advertising?
- Less experienced Internet surfers
- Less educated Internet surfers
- Accidental clickers
- Youngsters
- Lower income
- Outside major metro regions
Not exactly the people you want to have as visitor on your website as they are not your typical customer (ChasNote).

Natural Born Clickers

According to a study (download presentation) by comScore, Starcom Media, and Tacoda it is about 6% of the Internet population as reported by TechCrunch. These “Natural Born Clickers” generate 50% of all clicks on display ads.

In a business environment even less people will click on the online ads, as people are probably more experienced and do not fall into the category of the “Natural Born Clickers“.

Thus how sure you are you have clicks from people in companies if you don’t know if it’s a company or not?
If you can’t measure you don’t know.
If you don’t know you are wasting the marketing budget of the company.
As Danny Flamberg says: “Pay no attention to anything like online metrics”

Or as Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore declares: “click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns”.

Ads are interrupting

If you accidental click on a pop up and then link slows down the progress of your applications or Internet as the build up of the pop-up or new webpage requires computing power.
Then you will pay even less attention to what is appearing on your screen, as you start reaching for clicking the “X” in order to close the pop-up (in case you can find the “X” or “Close”).
Thus you focus on the “X” instead of the message or picture.
It annoys, disturbs and slows down your work.
Thus this is destroying the online advertising as said by J.W. Crump in theBivingsreport.

Who is clicking on ads in B2B?

So if:
- You
- Your colleagues
- Your friends
aren’t clicking on the online advertisements, WHO IS?

Some people must be clicking, that probably aren’t employees of companies.
Online ads in B2B can be wasting company money.

Marketing should know the clicking companies

Marketing department should know who is clicking by company name!
Then they can measure and calculate the Return on Investment on B2b online ads (ROI).
Get a web service that reveals the company names of your website visitors.