A Perfect Conversation: Achieve Competitive Advantage One Account at a Time

Consultative Selling May Lead to Fewer Sales and Unhappy Customers

Scott Santucci — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:32:56 -0500

Knowing they need their front line sales force to develop relationships with executives to gain access to bigger budgets and differentiate themselves from the 5 other players who can do similar things, many B2B companies are retooling their sales and marketing organizations to be more consultative in their selling approach. This is generally accompanied by another major objective to round ...

Are Your Sales People Stupid?

Scott Santucci — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:29:16 -0500

Come on, admit it.

It’s what you think, isn’t it?

If I had a dollar for every time I heard “our salespeople lack the skills or ability to (insert any of the following: cross-sell, sell higher, sell to value, get ahead of the RFP)” I would be a very rich person.

But are selling skills really the problem?

Most B2B ...

A Quest for Vision: Structure Ahead of the RFP?

Scott Santucci — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:31:12 -0500

It used to be that sales people, could hit their numbers by responding to inbound inquiries (leads, RFI’s, RFP, etc) from various companies within their territory. Now, however, these same reps are forced to develop opportunities from scratch as go-to-market models are increasingly more account–based than in the past. In addition, most firms are finding their win rates for unsolicited ...

The Marketing Imperative: Business Value Contribution

Scott Santucci — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 08:08:39 -0500

Marketing’s value contribution to the business is elusive.

And increasingly difficult to grasp...

given the trend of b2b businesses transforming their go-to-market models from traditional product-based models to more customer and solution oriented ones.

Should you worry?

Based on research gathered from IDC, the Corporate Executive Board, American Marketing Association, and Annual Reports, BluePrint Marketing has ...

Transform Sales and Marketing through Lessons Learned from the Industrial Revolution

Scott Santucci — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:16:14 -0400

The industrial revolution happened over a period of about 200 years starting in the mid-1700’s and lasting to the mid-1900’s. The core pattern of this period was the application of mechanical methods to meet the needs of the many in a more scalable, cost-effective way. For example, the first industry to kick off the industrial revolution was textiles. In the ...

Patton's Patterns: General Lessons for Sales and Marketing Leaders

Scott Santucci — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:00:00 -0400

General George Patton’s unparalleled ability to execute in WWII sometimes gets overshadowed by his colorful (and stupid) public relations. Because of his quick strike abilities, the Axis leaders feared him more than any other Allied general. What made him truly unique, and someone still studied in military academies throughout the world today, was his formula for success. Patton ...

News on Eleven: Feedback on Value Propositions

Scott Santucci — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 06:00:00 -0400

Wow!

It’s really been a crazy two weeks since I posted "Do Your Value Propositions Go to Eleven?" On September 20th.

Weak value propositions are a huge issue…..

We've recieved a tremendous amount of calls and feedback from issues raised from both sales and marketing professionals. I've talked about messaging, sales alignment, sales and marketing models, and movies ...

Former META Group Analyst Dean Davision to Moderate Outsourcing Vendors Blog Site

Scott Santucci — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:35:18 -0400

Due to the high interest in the subject-matter on "A Perfect Conversation: Achieving Competitive Advantage One Account at a Time" and the number of dialogs we get into about how to make our observations relevant, we will be launching topic specific sites, starting today.

Dean Davision, industry thought leader and former META Group analyst and I will be discussing ...

Do Your Value Propositions Go to Eleven?

Scott Santucci — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 07:00:00 -0400

In Rob Reiner’s 1984 “rockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap, one of the main characters, Nigel Tufnel claims they are different than other bands because their speakers “go to ll.” (Click here to see a video clip of the scene).

I cannot help but be reminded of good ole Nigel every time I talk to ...

An Introduction To Business Drivers: Improve Customer and Supply-Chain Relationships

Scott Santucci — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:00:14 -0400
Understanding business drivers is a fundamental requirement to avoiding being a C-rate Consultant. There are 8 core business strategies companies take to accelerate growth, improve margins, or boost the relative value of the share price. This is an introduction into one of those eight strategies.

Definition
Managing one-to-one, trust-based, relationships with customers and up-stream and down-stream supply chain partners ...

It's the Conversation Stupid - Authors Notes

Scott Santucci — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 17:00:00 -0400
Today, CRMGuru.com published an article I wrote entitled “It’s the conversation Stupid, People buy From People”. We all know a lot of content gets dropped to the editing floor so here is a notebook of some ideas that compliment points made in the article that couldn’t make the 750 word allotment.

* It’s the conversation stupid. For the record, this ...

The CMO Revolving Door – And How to Stop It Before Hitting You on Your Way Out

Scott Santucci — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:11:21 -0400
Marketing leadership should consider their increasingly fast job turnover as a major indicator that something is seriously wrong with the profession. CMOs must shed the prevailing wisdom of classic marketing ideas and determine how they can add value to their internal constituents. Leveraging structured frameworks to organize feedback, marketers should get a measure for the perceived value contribution they offer in their company and use that as a base for a transformation program.

An Introduction to Business Drivers: Improve Organizational Effectiveness

Scott Santucci — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:46:23 -0400

Understanding business drivers is a fundamental requirement to avoiding being a C-rate Consultant. There are 8 core business strategies companies take to accelerate growth, improve margins, or boost the relative value of the share price. This is an introduction into the fourth of those eight strategies.

Definition

An organization’s ability to respond to risks or competitive threats, exploit opportunities, or ...

An Introduction To Business Drivers: Improve Operational Efficiency

Scott Santucci — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 08:44:59 -0400

Understanding business drivers is a fundamental requirement to avoiding being a C-rate Consultant. There are 8 core business strategies companies take to accelerate growth, improve margins, or boost the relative value of the share price. This is an introduction into one of those eight strategies.

Definition

The operational performance of a company can contribute to a stock’s ...

An Introduction Into Business Drivers: Improve Financial Structure

Scott Santucci — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 22:47:42 -0400

Understanding business drivers is a fundemental requirement to avoiding being a C-Rate Consultant. There are 8 core business strategies companies take to accelerate growth, improve margins, or boost the relative value of the share price. This is an introduction into one of those eight strategies.

Definition

The way an enterprise is capitalized – or how it raises ...

An Introduction to Business Drivers: Manage External Risk

Scott Santucci — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 22:57:46 -0400

An Introduction to one of 8 common business strategies employed by a corporation to meet their shareholder value objectives. Understanding these drivers and how mandates casecade down form these corporate imperatives are key to building a repeatable and scalable go-to-market model based on executive level access and value-added conversations.

Business Strategy: Manage External Risk

Definition

External risks ...

Sales is from Mars, Marketing is From Venus: The Business Implications of the Sales and Marketing Alignment Problem

Scott Santucci — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:38:39 -0400

You’ve heard it before many times, the seemingly endless “he said, she said” debate between sales and marketing. Many CEO’s feel like they are counselors and could write John Gray’s next relationship advice book “Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus.” Clearly, the “counseling” approach isn’t working, as the “divorce rate” between software companies and their marketing ...

Metrics that Matter: Some Telling and Useful Sales and Marketing Efficiency Metrics

Scott Santucci — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:00:00 -0400
To develop a world-class sales and marketing organization, you must be able to: 1. Understand how your customer’s buy from you 2. Clearly articulate the value your customers are realizing from your offering 3. Develop a repeatable process to help facilitate the customers buying process 4. Assign measurable accountability to other groups besides sales 5....

Uncovering the Value Engine Part 6: Integrate Sales and Marketing to Execute Go-to-Market Strategy

Scott Santucci — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:41:27 -0400

This is the last in a six part series that defines the "value engine", which is the synthesis of over 10 years of research and interviews with hundreds of enterprise technology buyers and sellers.

In order to ensure integrated Sales and Marketing planning, the two organizations should first come together to jointly define a common market development ...

Uncovering the Value Engine Part 5: Market Segmentation

Scott Santucci — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:00:00 -0400
Whereas the definition of positioning included the process of identifying the unique universe of customers for whom your offering applies, market segmentation is the more granular step of identifying the specific subsets of this universe who you will target with your marketing and sales efforts.The first step is to identify and prioritize unique identifiable market segments; these ...

Uncovering the Value Engine Part 4: The Value Proposition

Scott Santucci — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:30:03 -0400

At the core of Value Proposition is the Value Promise, or the benefits a company is committing to deliver and the principles they argee to operate by with their customers. Once the Value Promise is clearly articulated, there must be a quantification of the economic costs and benefits to customers. This is the basis for the customer’s ROI ...

The 7 Irrefutable Laws of Customer Centricity

Scott Santucci — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 11:29:50 -0400

IT vendors are all struggling to combat margin pressures that result from an increasing perception of commoditization in the market place. Most have concluded the most logical way to address this is to sell higher in the organization and become “trusted advisers” to more senior executives. (We’ll address the ‘trusted adviser problem in future articles, but for ...

What does Sales and Marekting Excellence Look Like?

Scott Santucci — Wed, 31 May 2006 17:00:00 -0400

A well-functioning sales and marketing organization will have the following characteristics:

- Linkage between marketing and sales piplines. Most organizations look at the number of leads (or top of the funnel) and the forecast (bottom of the funnel), but spend little time tracking the stages in between.
Interestingly enough, this is where there are the greatest opportunities for ...

Why Sales Effectiveness Investments do not Yield Intended Results

Scott Santucci — Tue, 30 May 2006 08:00:00 -0400
Investments in sales force automation, lead generation programs, or sales training methodologies are all wise decisions. However, they often fail to deliver the results promised by the vendor, or meet your expectations.
Sales productivity investments are all part of a larger ecosystem and are interrelated. For example, if you've recently had your car tuned, but your battery dies, your car ...

Examine the Effectiveness of Sales and Marketing Investments

Scott Santucci — Mon, 29 May 2006 07:00:00 -0400
As an enterprise technology firm with a direct sales organization, all of your sales and marketing activities should be focused on moving opportunities through the buying process. Therefore, you should develop internal reporting processes that track opportunities throughout various stages: from accounts whom you've never had contact with to final close. A key point is a focus on accounts. Vendors with ...

What are some specific reasons that cause sales and marketing inefficiency?

Scott Santucci — Mon, 15 May 2006 06:00:00 -0400

First, most vendor organizations do not understand the steps their customers must go through to make a buying decision. Selling an enterprise solution requires:

Involvement from many different stakeholders
A clearly-defined problem the client is trying to address
A well-understood and agreed-upon approach to addressing that problem
An economic justification
The client's understanding of how to start the project

Often ...

What are the Root Cause Problems of Sales and Marketing Ineffieciencies?

Scott Santucci — Fri, 12 May 2006 06:00:00 -0400
Simply put, the way we are trying to sell to IT buyers is out of alignment with their objectives. In the early days of the IT industry, having a technical conversation was extremely important as engineers and developers dominated buying decisions.
During the late 1990s, business executives became increasingly involved in buying decisions, because they realized technology could help them ...

Examining Sales and Marketing Inefficiency - Starting the Improvement Dialog With a Simple Calculation

Scott Santucci — Wed, 10 May 2006 09:04:38 -0400
As a results-oriented executive, you want to invest your time and energy into fixing problems that will have the greatest impact on your bottom line. Your first step is to get a quick and simple measure that will help you indicate the magnitude of the problem and decide how much energy you want to devote to fixing it.
Sales and ...

Uncovering the Value Engine Part 3: The Brand Management Cluster

Scott Santucci — Fri, 05 May 2006 17:15:57 -0400

We believe that a company’s brand is the value promise they make to their customers. Branding should be all about ensuring the consistent fulfillment of the value promise in everything the company does. Once that is achieved, it is also important to develop a brand image (logo, naming, color scheme, “look and feel”, etc.) that adds credibility to ...

Uncovering the Value Engine Part 2: Business Plan and Corporate Strategy

Scott Santucci — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 11:14:42 -0400

Today, most CEO’s are caught in the middle between demands from investors (improve margins and accelerate growth) and their customers (rising commoditization). So how are these executives responding?

Companies competing in B2B market segments will be pursuing one, some, or all of the following four strategic imperatives:

1. Improve Operating Efficiencies

Earning call ...