Unblurring the Line Between Marketing & Sales

Today we have a guest blog from Elizabeth Andreini:

Recently I was talking with a CEO who wanted to increase his sales and grow revenue to expand his business. The CEO wasn’t sure whether he should focus additional resources on the Marketing or Sales departments, wanting to allocate his limited budget wherever the company would get the biggest “bang for its buck.”

Because marketing and sales are so intertwined during the customer acquisition process the line where one stops and the other starts isn’t always clear. One question to help answer the “sales or marketing” question above is:

Do you need to do a better job generating awareness or interest in your company and its products/services to find more (or better) prospects OR do you need more help closing the prospects you have or closing those interested prospects faster? 

The former is Marketing, the latter Sales.

Marketing works in a one-to-many manner with the whole target market with a longer term focus. Marketing broadcasts key messages and benefits about the company and the products/services being sold to create awareness and interest from the entire market to identify prospective customers.  These leads” get handed off from Marketing to Sales for the individual interactions required to turn them into customers.

Sales is the personalized one-on-one interaction required to build a relationship, understand the unique requirements a specific prospect has, and communicate the benefits and value gained by becoming a customer. (Sales also interacts with existing customers to buy more products or services.) Sales has a near term goal to close a deal or get a specific contract signed.

Marketing should be done in coordination and consultation with the specialized knowledge sales, customer service, product development and others have. And Sales should rely on the expertise Marketing has to create the sales tools needed to communicate key messages and get customers interested enough to ask for more information and engage sales directly. Regardless of your answer, both groups need to work together for you to really get the most “bang for your buck” and the best marketing and sales for your company.

ELIZABETH ANDREINI:

As the President of Accelerate Marketing, LLC, Elizabeth Andreini, is the “secret weapon” CEOs turn to at key growth points when they need to transform marketing and product management and grow it to the next level critical for revenue and profitability. In addition to providing experienced executive insight and guidance, Elizabeth often comes in as an interim CMO or VP to provide the hands-on leadership needed to rearchitect marketing and product management and improve execution from the inside.

Elizabeth Andreini, founder & president of Accelerate Marketing, LLC. 

Accelerate Marketing, LLC

206-769-3420 or elizabeth@accelerate-marketing.com

www.accelerate-marketing.com

Twitter: @acceler8mkting

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethandreini

Know Where Value is Being Created and Destroyed

Today we have a guest blog from Earl Bell:

Building value in companies should be by design, and not chance.  Owners can and should use dashboard reports that measure, monitor, encourage and reward teams to do more things that add value and do fewer things that detract from value.

My friend Chris owns a restaurant and he wanted to develop a dashboard indicator for “customer experience and advocacy.”  The way he looked at things – customer experience fell into three buckets – let’s use the 80/20 principle to illustrate:

• 80% - “satisfied customers” resulting from employees “doing their job sufficiently.
•  10% - “disgruntled customers” who will not return and will tell their friends and others about how the service was awful.  Social media sites like Yelp amplify the problem.
•   10% - “advocate customers” were thrilled with the experience and will tell their friends and others - using Yelp and other sites to amplify their exuberance.

The observation Chris made was that disgruntled customers detracted from value while advocate customers enhanced value.  The annual goal was to decrease disgruntled customers closer to 0% and to increase advocate customers to 20%.  The solution was to develop and broadly share a customer experience index “CEI” to track and reward progress.

Every person in the restaurant was brought into a meeting to talk about how customer experience translates to profitability, job security and how they, the team and the restaurant are perceived by the most important stakeholder – the customer.   Everyone agreed that a full restaurant and bar translated to more income – especially tips – and that the working environment was a lot more fun when the place was packed!

Open conversation about what worked extremely well and what needed to change took place without blame or threat.  In fact, a little bit of team building happened and the employees were appreciative that they were included in the conversation and had a chance to talk about specific changes in behaviors that would improve the CEI.

By building agreement on what and how the dashboard would be developed and used, total buy-in took place that resulted six months later in nearly no disgruntled customers, 14% advocate customers and a 23% increase in revenues.  Chris was thrilled with the outcome and developed a short-term bonus program tied to dashboard results for the Client Satisfaction Index and revenue – to further incentivize his team.

So my challenge to you is to think about YOUR business and customers - and develop dashboard indicators appropriate to drive MORE value creating activities.  While doing this, include your team in the process and get their buy-in.  The results may surprise you!

ABOUT EARL BELL

 EARL BELL is the author of, Winning in Baseball and Business, Transforming Little League Principles into Major League Profits for Your Company, which provides a roadmap to success for leaders that desire to build thriving companies in a very competitive 21^stcentury business environment.  Earl believes that “everything you need to know about business, leadership and team building can be learned from Little League baseball.”

Earl coaches and consults with owners, business leaders and their teams, teaching them how to dramatically reduce the time it takes to improve profitability, customer experience, employee engagement and company value, while simultaneously increasing discretionary time and reducing both stress/employee burnout.  He believes the secret to winning in baseball, business and life can be summarized in a simple formula:  Winning = Service + Humility. His motto is that Winning in Business is a Team Sport!

Earl has served in the Chief Financial Officer role for numerous companies throughout North America. His personal passion is youth sports and he has coached 28 teams since 2002.  Earl is a CPA, graduated from SU (Seattle University) with a BA in Accounting and from the MILL (Mercer Island Little League) with a Master’s in Youth Baseball.

Nightmare in Happy Valley: Lessons from the Penn State Debacle

Today we have a guest blog from Dan Weedin:

The nightmare in Happy Valley last week involving the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State cost legendary football coach Joe Paterno and the university president their jobs. It’s severely tarnished reputations; incited riots on campus; initiated civil lawsuits; and will hurt the university in recruiting students to its campus. The collateral damage may be devastating to that institution and take years to overcome.

What can you as an executive learn from this story?

• Crisis happens. If you’re in business, you are bound to deal with some level of crisis.
• Planned response trumps chickens running. Crisis has the effect of catching the unprepared running around like those proverbial chickens without heads. Communication is critical.
•  You need to practice. Football coaches don’t “wing” their 2-minute drills. Neither should you!

Most boards of directors and executives overlook planning and preparing their crisis response. The three biggest enemies are apathy, complacency, and denial (courtesy of personal safety guru, Larry Kaminer). All too often, the bad event must occur to precipitate response. In this case, it was a matter of bad behavior. This opens up huge doors titled “legal” and “reputation damage.” So what can you do?

• Get training. If you really want to get fit, you hire a trainer because they will maximize your performance and get you stronger faster. No matter how savvy you think you are, you will never reach the same level of execution and preparedness because you simply don’t have the same knowledge base.
• Carry Employment Practices Liability. This is an important risk transfer technique that may save your bacon.
• Have a crisis plan. Decisions made in real-time often stink and have long-term ramifications because the shrapnel from the explosions just keeps hitting people.

The world often provides us with warnings through the misfortunes of others. The Penn State tragedy is a nightmare for the victims and the university. Shrapnel from the “explosion” has hit many innocent people and it was avoidable. Take responsibility of your business and build your response to crisis before you find it burning all around you. You, your organization, and its people will be thankful you did.

© 2011 Dan Weedin. All Rights Reserved

DAN WEEDIN

Dan Weedin helps turn his clients business risk into rewards. He is able to take the abstract concepts of risk and crisis management to help business owners prepare and respond more effectively and with less time and cost to crisis. Since he doesn’t work for an insurance company or agency, he is able to act as an unbiased advocate for his clients. You can lear ore about Dan and how he can help your business on his web site at www.DanWeedin.com.