double helix of business growth: marketing and sales...when you stretch to an optimal state of sales...

Double Helix of Business Growth:

Marketing and Sales

A White Paper to Assist Practice Leaders in

Financial and Professional Services

Audit Their Own Business DNA

for Sustainable Improvement

William L. MacDonald Chief Executive Officer

PleinAire Strategies, LLC

Geneticists penetrated a long-held taboo in October 2012 the

moment they attempted to prevent severe genetic diseases in

newborns by altering human DNA, an Orwellian step forward

with ethical implications for genetic engineering of future

generations.

The DNA double helix gene-codes instructions for the

development of all known living organisms. Similarly,

corporations, companies, firms, institutions and organizations

resemble living organizations with their own DNA. Ask the

Supreme Court. Corporate personhood is alive. And well.

Business DNA manifests as corporate culture, business models,

operational systems, human capital, markets, buyers and how we

connect. Thus, every company is unique how it attracts

employees, generates new clients, and maintains profitability

with the ability to genetically engineer its DNA to eradicate

weaknesses and multiply strengths.

companies still struggling with mission statements, let alone able

to identify their business DNA. The ones who can are market

leaders, building companies, cultures and strategies around

unique double helixes, and confecting themselves into authentic

or sink.

Bringing You Value

where I can offer you both quantitative and quantifiable value.

even find it in your sales force. The code lies embedded in what I

call your sales readiness DNA:

How you select and train talent Your overall marketing and sales strategy Your distinctive sales process How you power your brand to electrify prospects

2

Successful organizations identify, document, implement

and optimize sales readiness into truly scalable structures

that lead to enviable sales results.

Enviable results flow from excellent marketing, the

nucleus of sales. CBSNews.com recently selected the top

ten companies with insanely great marketing, those whose

marketing creates and promotes products and services

customers will pay for: Apple. Nike. Geico. Budweiser.

FedEx. Southwest Airlines. IBM. Adobe. Toyota. Samsung.

The top ten insanely bad: Motorola Droid Razer Maxx.

Latest USPS commercial. Fifth Third Bankcorp. PC Matic.

And the entire high-tech industry!

Arbitrary, I know. But instructive. Think of your own

2012 Top 25 Digital Marketers, only two financial firms

ranked (Aon and Amex Open), and no professional

paving the way to sales readiness.

Admittedly, the financial services industry (FSI) faces

tough regulatory guidelines, but failure to market is not

the answer: only 59 percent of FSI companies maintain a

-eight

Greenhill Partners.

now presented with an extraordinary opportunity

change our business practices. Rather than suffer

anymore from loss of public trust, it is time to edge our

clients onto a trusted shore.

3

A recent study

called the digital

marketing attempts

of the top 50

financial services

companies

Financial Advisors

Magazine

Ready to Sell?

Everyone wants to hit the easy button to quickly kick in new

revenues. First comes marketing and sales readiness. Then,

Sure, you can produce a product, turn it over to sales, but

complex products and services must be approached far

differently than his predecessor.

Some ways buyer behavior has changed forever:

1. 92% of all B2B buying processes begin with an Internet search;

2.formed by information found online before a salesperson ever gets involved [Forrester Research];

3. Companies who discover a prospect through social media follow-up with a detailed online search.

changing requirements. One way you can:

Be sales ready with fresh business strategy, defined sales

processes, trust-building messaging, hard-working

marketing/sales tools, real presentations, integrated in an

organizational structure that leverages your resources.

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Marketing &

Sales Strategy

Sales

Process

Marketing & Sales Tools

Presentation

Skills

Organizational

Structure

Target Market

Rules of Engagement

Content Flow

Consistent Messaging

Questioning Process

Organizational Design

Positioning

Fees

Lead Definition Lead Generation

Understanding

Audience

Roles and

Responsibilities

Competitive Landscape

Steps in Process

Marketing and

Communications

Verbal/Visual Skills

Sales Training

Value Proposition

Decision

Lead Nurturing

Written

Materials

Staffing

Company Resources

CRM tracking

Marketing/Sales

ROI

Continuous Feedback

Loops

Leadership

Development

Numerous factors influence sales and marketing readiness, as the above

chart illustrates. How many of these cornerstones are present in your

business? Each firm must focus on the unique combination of these

factors and how they impact specific challenges.

When you stretch to an optimal state of sales readiness, your firm will

function more effectively and ensure you are: > Selling to the right clients > Following the right sales process > Maintaining the proper activity levels Sales readiness, as defined by the cornerstones above, will also help you

develop a highly scalable marketing and sales process that also

consistently meets goals.

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Cornerstones of Sales Readiness

The Change Collective

Tough to change an organizational sales process.

Remember the first golf lesson you took? You

immediately knew if you took more professional lessons,

you could bring your game to the next level. The club pro

changed your grip, and had you stand up at the ball

differently.

During the lesson you saw improvements, but knew you

needed a deeper commitment to get better. Out there on

that first round, you got frustrated, fell back into your old

bad habits.

under your handicap.

Changing your marketing and sales approach is no

different. We pitch, land at-bats, close deals, all the time

knowing we can do better. Most salespeople would rather

execute a sales strategy than implement one. Salespeople

are notoriously happier out in the field closing deals than

in yet another strategy meeting at the home office. So,

then who leads the effort?

The power outlet to sale readiness does not reside in

organization.

Whether CEO, COO, SVP-Sales, the ranking VIP must rally

the entire organization to turn on the lights at the same

time, and work under the luminosity of innovation,

inspiration and cooperation.

6

Progressive companies bring talent together from

executive management, sales, marketing, operations, IT

and human resources to assess sales readiness.

However, if these groups are not in alignment, it weakens

corporate performance. This is especially true when sales

and marketing are not in sync. When sales and marketing

work well together, companies see substantial

improvement on important performance metrics. Sales

cycles are shorter, market-entry costs go down, and cost

of sales is lower.

organizations, where people wear multiple hats, and are

more interdependent. If the elephants can dance, and

major corporations are learning to, your firm can also

become more nimble, break down silos, create inspired

working teams, and push past inertia.

experienced it firsthand in one of my own companies.

What I found helpful, once I got the message we needed

to change, was bringing in outside resources to help me

manage the process.

Truth Teams

In fact, I did this often to keep corporate movement fresh

and forward. It worked well when I hired the right

consultants, those who knew more than me, were 100

percent objective, outspoken and unafraid to risk my ire.

From that place, I grew. My teams grew. The entire

company flourished.

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To decode your marketing and sales DNA, begin with an

close-up examination of your current situation and

practices. Strip away pretenses, bury the sacred cows,

denounce wishful thinking, and political correctness.

When you do, you can achieve change fairly quickly.

Research tells us that we can form a new habits in just 21

days, and actually change an attitude in six months. CEOs

who set the tone for brainstorming sessions by creating a

communication safety zone, encourage managers and staff

will speak up, which may lead to collective change.

When your effort is genuine, with eyes wide open, and

alongside the objective vision of an outside professional,

prospect wins and losses.

Pursue the Wrong Opportunity?

Though this may sound simplistic, companies often lose

sales because the sales team pursues the wrong

opportunities. Or they fail to reach the actual decision

makers, wasting time on wannabes or whiners. Or they

communicate tired, generic value propositions without

proof or differentiation.

Honestly, having sat in your chair, I urge you to conduct a

candid and comprehensive assessment of your current sales

function with an objective third-party. Then develop a

prioritized action plan around those discoveries, and aim

for consistent and near-flawless implementation.

Begin First Questionnaire

Where do your clients and revenues come from? Surviving

our three-part audit questionnaire to help you recognize

performance gaps. Try this on your own first. Then, bring

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DNA Revenue Audit To get started, assemble your key people, and walk

through this series of questions, mapping out as you go

the most important bits of facts, opinion, observations,

stories. A good old-fashioned whiteboard serves well.

1. Where did our revenue come from last year? What practice? What products? What services? 2. Did new clients usually begin with one particular service and then migrate elsewhere into the firm?

3. Do different market segments buy different services?

Which segments, which products/services? What overlaps/opportunities exist for cross- selling and marketing? 4. Quantify repeat business versus new business?

5. What lead sources produced new business?

6. Of the clients we lost, why? (And can we be brutally honest with ourselves about this?)

7. Of the new business opportunities we lost, why? (Get everyone in the habit of finding out real reasons)

8. Given our growth goals, where will revenue come from next year? (No one knows with certainty. be afraid to take an intuitive guess.) 10. What percentage of our business was referred by existing clients? 11. What percentage of our business was referred from centers of influences lawyers, accountants, advisors.

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DNA Sales Audit

1. Does our firm follow a sales process? If so, what are the steps? If not, why? 2. What is the improvement potential in our current marketing and sales process? Why do we think this is the case? What are the details here? 3. Does our firm provide formal sales training? If so, rate the quality and frequency of training? 4. Do our sales people follow a targeted and structured research process to identify needs with prospects? If so, explain. Is how-to training offered? 5. What type of collateral materials do our salespeople

use in prospect meetings? When last updated? Customer feedback solicited? 6. How well do we use technology to energize presentations? Are our people trained presenters? If not, why? 7. Do we use a CRM system? If so, which one? Does everyone faithfully input data? If not, why?

8. How do our people prospect for new business?

9. What do the most successful firms in our field do? Should we do something similar? Different? Is there a gap in their approach we can exploit? 10. How do we define, measure, compensate for success?

marketing audit. Remember, stay in truth. 10

DNA Marketing Audit

Invest substantial time in each audit, particularly this one.

Many smaller firms in financial and professional services

look askance at marketing. Big mistake. Why walk on your

elbows, when you have two legs? Dig into these questions:

1. How detailed and current is our database?

2. How well known are we in target markets? How do we know? 3. How strong is our brand? How do we know?

4. Does our messaging serve us well? How do we know? Will it serve us well in areas we want to grow? 5. Are we better known for certain offerings, specialties, geographies, or industries than others? Are they what we want to be known for? 6. How have we segmented our markets? Rate your performance in the those segments. 7. How well do we sustain lead gen/marketing efforts? 8. last year in lead-gen campaigns? Which worked well? (Do more) Which (Stop doing it) Which is the jury still out on? (Patience, but know what ) 9. Have target markets shifted buying patterns or preferences? 10. Has the nature of competition changed? If so, how? 11. Does our value proposition resonate well? In target areas?

remaining questions, next page please 11

12. What marketing assets (white papers, thought pieces, presentations) we can leverage more effectively? 13. Do we use webcasts as a marketing tool? If so, how often? 14. Did any specific service launches or initiatives work

well? If not, why? How did we measure these initiatives?

15. Does external market data or internal research exist to

guide our service offering, marketing tactics, and growth ahead?

16. Is market share important to us? If so, where do we

stand? (often not important for service firms) 17. Did we implement well? 18. Do we have an advisory board? If so, is it structured to help with marketing and sales?

*** Of course, these questions are not exhaustive; we could

splinter off into many additional directions to construct the

entire framework of sales readiness.

A

these questions will help you build the foundation and

mezzanine of sales readiness, expose any defects, and

create the schedule for fixes going forward.

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16 24 60 According to a Benchmark Sales Index study on why firms

win and lose sales, researchers calculated through CRM

data this breakout: 16 percent of the pipeline leads was lost

to the competition; 24 percent of pipeline won by the firm;

and 60 percent of pipeline leads resulted in a -

If you experienced any degree of difficulty answering my

tri-set audit questions, or find your pipeline data similar,

not alone. A recent 2012 report from CSO Insights,

Sales Performance Optimization Sales Process,

-decision challenge worsens by the

year. In fact, no-decisions are up 53 percent since CSO

Insights began tracking five years ago, primarily due to

poor positioning, and entering prospect companies at the

wrong level with the wrong message.

The study also cites the importance of a sales process,

pointing out that the more formal the sales process,

and the more consistently applied, the more

successful the sales organization. Remember, however,

the way you position your firm, and your entry point to the

prospect organization will make or break the sale, and

underscores why marketing and sales must be in sync.

Simply put, firms who default to a random sales process (or

follow none at all) do not earn the coveted trusted partner

status bestowed on firms who do.

Is your firm a defaulter or a trusted partner?

And how do you know?

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Now or Never? Doc Searls, senior editor for Linux Journal and co-author of

The Cluetrain Manifesto, has been called of the most

book, The Intention Economy, he upends the role customer

relationship management (CRM), and predicts the rise in

vendor relationship management (VRM) which will give

unfettered power to customers to:

Build their own loyalty programs Dictate their own terms of service Tell whole markets what they want, how they want it, where and when they should be able to get it, and how

Right now, customers and clients are morphing into a well-

equipped army of rugged independents, willing and able to

take total control of the buying process in ways unimagined

even two years ago. Are you ready?

As vendors, consultants, and advisors, unless we change to

reflect this new intention reality, and connect to customers

at their DNA level, we may find ourselves on life support,

unable to replicate our past successes.

Build and trust your process. Decode your DNA

marketing and sales. Be willing to act on what you

learn. But act now.

Or, you could think about Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, a cloud-

computing file storage business. At 27, his firm is valued at

$1.2 billion, with 600 employees, and Procter & Gamble on

-out.

See Fast Company, November 2012

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If you would like to know more

about our MERGE Advantage

Program delivered as a training

workshop or customized for your

organization, please visit

www.pleinairestrategies.com/----

Or call Bill MacDonald at

858.759.8637.

PleinAire Strategies, LLC 7555 PleinAire San Diego, CA 92127 Voice 858.759.8637 Fax 858.759.8608 Cell 213.598.7400 bill@pastrategy.com www.pleinairestrategies.com Twitter: @wmacdonald1