Dude, It's Marketing

Defining the Stages of the Sales Funnel

If the sales funnel is the heart of lead generation, then defining the stages of the sales funnel is critical to a good healthy heart. While some (it should be all) organizations have embraced the concept of the sales funnel, the stages selected and what makes a lead be in a certain stage vary widely. In an ideal world, there would be a common definition that all marketing and sales organizations could just implement much like development organizations implement standard protocols. But we know this is not an ideal world. In fact, many of us know that these standards take forever to define so you can only imagine how long it would take to get the sales funnel defined in a standards body since in many cases marketing and sales in ONE organization can't agree.

This last point is what absolutely needs to be fixed if any lead generation program, and for that matter any organization, is to be successful. Sales and marketing must agree on the stages of the funnel, what defines each stage and use the same terminology across the entire funnel. This is definitely a tall order and if you're in the midst of defining these stages I feel for you. However, I can't stress enough how critical it is for each stage to be clearly named and defined and then have each lead be ranked with this criteria in mind. If this doesn't happen at the outset, and I've seen it many times, marketing and sales will become increasingly frustrated and always point the finger at each other about why the lead generation programs aren't successful.

I really wish I could post a clear definition for all the stages of the funnel but the reality is that it varies for each organization and type of sale. It is clear that the prospects that marketing identifies by collecting information about them are the first stage of the funnel. While some would dismiss this stage as not important since theses leads are not  sales-ready leads, it is still crucial to define this stage in terms of the criteria that needs to be collected since these prospects will be the sales-ready leads in the future.

To define the other stages, I propose that marketing listen carefully to sales and ask them to outline what they see as an ideal account. Then take as many of these attributes as possible and use that critieria as the basis for the next stage in the funnel which I normally refer to as A leads. Another set of key criteria involves BANT (budget, authority, need, timeframe), and while it's not always easy to collect, it definitely needs to be a key part of the next stage which is what I call qualified leads, or sales-ready leads. The next couple of stages really depend on the target audience, the technical nature of the product and the sales process involved in closing deals. Quite often these are called technical closure and business negotiation, but may go by many names, and may also involved some business case closure or trial stages as well.

In the end, and I've said it many times, the number and name of the stages are not what's important. What is important is that marketing and sales agree on ALL of it and also what it takes to move a lead from one stage to the next. While funnels will vary between different industries and organization, it must NOT vary within the organization.

The Heart of Lead Generation

Without a doubt the sales funnel is at the heart of lead generation. The understanding of how you move leads through the funnel is crucial to any successful marketing campaign and more importantly to the company's ability to sell more products. But before we talk about that process, the first step is for sales and marketing to work together and define the sales funnel for their organizations.

In general, the stages of the sales funnel may include: prospects, leads, qualified leads, serious opportunities, trials or evals, call-to-close phase and closed deals. And while the concept is similar across most sales processes, it's imperative that each stage be clearly defined and agreed upon by all parties so that it can be consistently applied, analyzed and adjusted as appropriate. Above all else, agreement on the stage where marketing passes leads to sales and the definition of these qualified leads is imperative. I'll have more on that in a subsequent post.

Once the stages are defined, then it's important to understand the number of leads from all prospects (10-20%) and the ratio of qualified leads to closed deals (15:1-20:1) so that marketing can generate sufficient leads to meet the revenue requirements for the year. Of equal importance, you need to understand the time it takes to move from one stage to the next (1 to 2 months per stage depending on market maturity).

While everyone would love these ratios and timelines to be smaller and shorter for their industry, I've seen time and time again that these are quite consistent in technology companies and can be even longer when selling to certain verticals. This means it's pointless to use unrealistic ratios or timelines when planning but only adjust them when you have concrete metrics and evidence built by carefully tracking this information in addition to other ROI metrics.

Since I strongly believe the sales funnel is the heart of lead generation there will be several additional posts on this topic. For now, it's important to understand that the concepts mentioned here are more scientific than most traditional marketers would like to admit so you need to accept them and work for improvement rather than ignore the process.

The Foundation of a Good Powerpoint

So I was always told that if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. In light of my recent post on bad Powerpoint presentations, I thought I would make this post and others about how you can improve your Powerpoint presentations.

The reason I want to spend so much time on Powerpoint is that for many companies, and start-ups in particular, this could be the only communication that prospects ever see from your company. And we all know you need to make a good first impression so it makes sense to spend the time on your presentations and ensure they represent the brand you are trying to build.

I believe the foundation of a good powerpoint presentation is the design template and then following it consistently across the company. With the proper template, you can use color, font, font size and layout to more consistently and effectively communicate your message.

By establishing a layout, font, color scheme, header/footer and other design elements, your presentation will look consistent, the audience will not be distracted by misplaced or different elements, and everyone can focus on the message which is what you want. The template does not need to be fancy by any means and simpler is likely better but it does need to be clean so the text and graphics are easily readable.

But maybe more important than the template itself is applying it to each and every slide and not making a custom layout for each slide in your presentation after the fact. This means, you cannot adjust the font of the title to make a longer one fit; you cannot make the font smaller so you can fit more words on a page; and please, do not move the placement of the text between slides as this could even make your audience sick as you go from slide to slide. I'm willing to make a bet that this won't lead to a good first impression.

To get started on this template, use an existing presentation that you think is well laid out and easy to follow. Ensure that all the slides are consistent in terms of content placement, font, sizes, etc, and save this as a template file. Make whatever other adjustments you feel will improve the look and feel and you've got a starting point. Then you should apply this to other presentations to see if it works on those and make any additional changes. You must also test the template by projecting the presentation in a meeting room or conference room so that you ensure it still works and people from the back of the room can read it.

You can and should continue to work on the layout until you are happy you have a format that is simple and helps your audience focus on the message rather than the layout. You also need to share it across the company and get feedback from other presenters. This helps to make sure everyone uses it so that you can present a consistent brand to all of your audiences.

It's not an easy or quick task but once it's complete, you've made life easier for yourself and everyone else and you have the foundation of many, more successful presentations to come.

Your Powerpoint is too Complicated

I'm not exactly sure when it happened. I'm sure it was not long after Powerpoint was created. But ever since, presenters (and those from technology companies in particular) have come to rely on Powerpoint to communicate their message to prospects everywhere. With the exception of the corporate website (maybe), Powerpoint slides are the main communication vehicle used by most, if not all, companies and I'm quite certain, it's also the most abused.

I'm sure we've all see our share of Powerpoint slides and some are definitely better than others. But it's surprising how many slides contain hundreds of words crammed onto it using a really small font so no one can actually read the text. There are also more than a few (I'm being polite here) diagrams that are so complicated or poorly drawn that no one, not even the author, can explain it.

The software program itself needs to share some of the blame. Powerpoint is not an easy tool to use and it definitely has it's share of bugs... I mean features... that don't work or are extremely inconsistent when you send them to another computer. But what is the alternative to using Powerpoint?

Let me go out on a limb and propose that you don't use Powerpoint at all in your next presentation but rely on a few notes and a whiteboard. One of the best sessions I ever saw at a conference was when the speaker put up one slide of a nature scene. He explained to everyone that it was his only slide and he just wanted to talk to us. The slide had no relevance to the talk but he had this one slide because the conference organizers insisted he submit something so he grabbed a picture he liked. Can you believe it? The presenter ended up engaging the audience for the entire time and it was a great session on a technical topic.

I know that may be the extreme but at the very least, everyone needs to use fewer and simpler slides in their presentations. Trust me when I tell you that you are not going to get through 100 slides in an hour. You will likely not even get through 20 or 30 in that hour. And, make sure you use as few words as possible and supporting graphics are a good thing if they are also simple.

So for the sake of your audience, please take another look at the slides you plan to use in your next presentation and remove half of the words on each slide and make sure you have, at most, one slide for every 2-3 minutes of the time you plan to speak. In the end, you'll have a simpler and more compelling presentation. Remember that this presentation may be your first impression with that audience so make it a good one.

Targeting the Right Audience

You would think that everyone knows that the more targeted your message, the better the response, and the more successful your marketing or lead generation campaign. But you would be surprised how often a shotgun approach is taken to communicating your message to anyone and everyone.

To better target your marketing and communications efforts, you must carefully identify your audience or audiences. Identifying this target audience is not a trivial task, since the more specific you can be the better, but I would recommend you start by looking at the audiences you have been successful with selling to, looking for verticals where your product provides the most value, and talking to your sales force to find out the profile of their ideal prospect. The more details you can collect here the better in order to build a prospect profile.

Then it's a matter of developing the value proposition for that audience, figuring out a compelling offer and then and finding the best way and vehicle to target this prospect profile. I'll go into details on all of these area in subsequent posts but for now I want to focus on the media aspect. 

The good news is that there are multiple media types and publishers that can be used to target your audience. The advent of social networks has made this list even longer but just because there are more ways to communicate your message doesn't mean the right people are  listening if you don't target the right audience. If you're going to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and the many other networks, make sure your audience lives in that space or it's wasted effort.

Similarly, you need to find a publisher that has the capabilities to be very specific and will work with you to target your audience. If you're using a publisher that targets a general audience then you may be paying for an audience that's too broad and not targeted a not unless they can help your focus your efforts. What I find is better is to look at some of the more topic specific and/or vertical-focused publications because you can likely find one that also targets your audience with some research.

In the end, any successful marketing campaign can be even better by targeting the right audience by developing a specific audience profile, then formulating a simple and compelling message for that audience and finding the right media to communicate with them. While this isn't easy, it is possible and your marketing program will reap the benefits of this approach.

The Need for Simple and Consistent Messaging

I think it was Mark Twain that said, "I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have the time." He obviously understood that making something simple can be very difficult.

This fact alone probably explains why technology messaging tends to be very complicated and long so that nobody understands what you are trying to say except for those that work for the company (which is hardly the target audience). I guess in technology, companies don't want to spend the time (and resources) to make their messages simpler and easily understood by the target audience... but they must.

On top of that, they change the messaging frequently to try and make it better. Rarely do these changes result in a simpler message which would make sense. Instead they make the message inconsistent.

It's been said that you need to communicate the same message 7 different times for someone to remember it. If you're changing your message around every few weeks or months then how will your prospects remember what you were trying to say if they hear something different every second time.

If you message is both complex and inconsistent (likely the case) then you are compounding the problem. For your marketing to be successful, it's crucial that you not only spend the time to simplify the message but also use it consistently for the duration of the campaign and across all media. This will without a doubt improve the effectiveness and increase the awareness and number of sales-ready leads.

The NEW Dude, It's Marketing

I'll start this blog with a confession... It's been started before but I've never been happy with what it said or contributed to it enough. I also started it on Blogger and found many of the limitations frustrating. So instead of just copying that blog over, I've decided to start over but will repost any of the more relevant posts with some updates so that it fits this new one.  

By day, I am a seasoned technology marketing executive with over 12 years experience at four different start-ups and one publicly-traded company where I’ve created some very successful and memorable marketing campaigns. At all five companies, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work from a marketing perspective. Experience as well as making your share of mistakes (come on we’ve all made some) do that to a person.

More important for this blog, is that I’ve seen and heard a lot of “marketing ideas” from people who think they know how to do marketing because it’s so simple that anyone can become a successful marketeer overnight. As a marketeer, I'm sure you've seen and heard that many times. You’d also be surprised how many times I’ve seen companies build marketing plans that are very tactical in nature (i.e. lets go to 10 tradeshows, do 5 direct email campaigns this year, and we’ll throw in a bunch of money for PR to do news releases). To make matters worse, these tactics are done in isolation as one-offs. In other cases, companies believe marketing is just creating a flashy website or pretty powerpoint slides. Sound familiar?

At the same time, marketing is undergoing a fundamental transformation with the advent of social media from Facebook to Twitter that is easily the biggest change since online/digital/Internet marketing began. The result is that many of the tactics used before have to change as well.

In the end, the purpose of marketing is still the same: it has to be a strategic activity that is all about getting more customers for your products and generating revenue for the organization. Together, in this blog we'll see what's needed to catch your wave to success because... Dude, it’s marketing!