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Spring is officially here! Maybe you’re the same as me – the rain might get you down, but you know that warmer weather is on its way! Are your revenues growing as well as your garden?

Give this song a listen as we see what the experts are saying this week:

Cultivating Larger Deals

Is your enterprise sales team leaving money on the table? We find in much of our work with B2B SaaS scaleups and mid-sized tech firms that many of their sales teams are closing smaller deals and not focusing enough on developing larger ones. This can result in slower growth rates for the company and extended time to build a profitable revenue engine. According to Chasm Group, this may be part of the reason B2B SaaS companies tend to take a decade or more to build a profitable revenue stream!

Think about it: increasing your average sale within those enterprise accounts is an easy way to grow overall revenue. We talk a lot about targeting and managing accounts in ABM strategy, but in reality, our AEs may not be focusing on where they need to be.

So how can we generate more strategic and substantial revenue faster?

1. Set aside ‘product-centric’ approaches; focus on strategic problems to solve.
2. Ensure you are selling ‘high’ enough – selling to middle management or lower means you are addressing tactical problems or simply responding to RFPs.
3. Connect the dots between departmental problems and larger problems that jeopardize your customers’ overall business performance.

Companies whose CEOs and sales teams work to figure out the high impact problem that they help customers solve tend to become winners in their space! Think of your customer like that spring garden – nurture those accounts, and they will grow to be great producers!

Feuds, Synergies and the Common Good

The history of rock and roll is filled with examples of collaborators with deep hostilities between them. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, the Robinson brothers from the Black Crowes, and of course, the public feuds of Noel and Liam Gallagher from Oasis.

This article got me thinking… if the Gallaghers can resolve their very public arguments to work together again, what enables this? In spite of their personal differences, these songwriting teams have all had successful careers, and created inspiring work. Perhaps there needs to be some friction in the process to get that ‘spark?’ Is it purely a monetary thing – and the potential financial benefit far outweighs the personal conflicts? And doesn’t this say it all: “It’s gonna happen very f%#%$ soon because [Noel]’s greedy and he loves money.”

In B2B, we see a similarly contentious relationship between sales and marketing. What is it about sales and marketing teams that causes this misalignment? I recently addressed this as part of a larger demand generation discussion with Alisa Groocock from Forrester. Our good friend Darryl Praill also has his own thoughts on the subject.

Whatever the reason, the underlying culture of the organization is an integral part of aligning sales and marketing. Having joint goals, service-level agreements, and a leadership team that is aligned all help. Having a CRO that manages both functions and ensures consistency can be a huge advantage.

Sure – a little friction can definitely maybe add excitement and creativity to the relationship, but if sales and marketing aren’t working toward a common goal, the whole thing will fall apart. The typical left-hand/right-hand misalignment can cost you revenue AND clients in a demanding, client-centric environment.

Grow Your ABM Strategy with Forrester SiriusDecisions – April 8

Need to grow your sales? Develop your ABM strategy? Validate those ABM initiatives you’ve already implemented? Our webinar with Alisa Groocock from Forrester, “Are You Ready for B2B Account-Based Marketing?”, is coming up soon! Sign up and we’ll send you the Forrester research report too!

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Cultivating Your Leads Garden appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

What do leads and deals have in common? Well… same letters, different order? (Reminds me of a word jumble – remember that? It was in the newspaper alongside Sudoku and the crossword.) But despite the similarity in appearance, the two are distinct.

Unjumbling – A Lead is not a Deal

I was having a conversation with a client the other day, and realized something – as B2B marketers, many of us create our own word jumbles in our heads – we see or hear leads but rearrange the letters in our head and understand deals. But they are VERY different, aren’t they?

Yes, leads (or a portion of them) should turn into closed deals. But they aren’t there yet. They aren’t even close! A lead is just a lead. Expecting a lead to be a closed sale is a pipe dream; leads still need to be worked. And sometimes you need to work them hard to get them to move forward.

Leads still need to be nurtured, and sometimes leads will die. That’s the nature of the business. Perhaps it’s the optimist in us: we get someone that is a lead and we think they should be a customer. That’s great – that should always be our goal. But realistically, they won’t all be customers. So as marketers/sales professionals, we need to understand that a lead is not a deal. Those 10,000 tradeshow leads are not going to turn into sales. In fact, many (or most) of them only stopped by the booth to enter your raffle.

Cultivating – Leads Won’t Cultivate Themselves

As a young marketer at an enterprise software company in the late ’90s, I fell into this trap. I thought that all of the leads I generated with my campaigns were awesome and I would personally help the company shatter its revenue goals. But I realized pretty quickly that leads require time and tenacity to move through the sales process. I got pretty good at explaining to our sales team why they should keep calling and following up with leads, even after they had left them one message or sent one email. Those 50 webinar registrants aren’t going to turn themselves into sales. Sure they expressed some interest, and filled out a form with some qualification criteria, but they need to be convinced that they need to keep interacting with you.

They need to be cultivated. They need to be guided through the buying process.

So they didn’t return your call when you called them after the webinar? Keep trying! Tenacity! Your competitors are calling/emailing/interacting with them – if you sit back and wait for them to reply or respond, they will probably respond to someone else!

Collaborating – Bring Sales and Marketing Together

Companies like SiriusDecisions have spent years talking about sales and marketing alignment. They have built a powerful niche in the research industry around it. Their demand waterfall is quite powerful – it’s a shared view between sales and marketing of the health of an organization’s new business-related activities. It measures the progression of leads through a range of stages – from cold to closed.

The key here is that it is a progression, and to move leads through the waterfall, marketers and sales professionals need to use various tactics to help leads move through the stages and eventually become deals.

Forget the Pipe Dream – Remember Your Pipeline

Leads are leads. Deals are deals. Don’t mix them up.

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post Don’t Mix Up Your Leads and Deals appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

Well….same letters, different order?

The image of a word jumble comes to mind – remember the word jumble? You would see it in the newspaper? I’m sure you can play it online somewhere….(Note to self – look for an online version of word jumble).

I was having a conversation with a client the other day, and realized something – many of us as B2B marketers create our own word jumbles in our heads – and we see or hear ‘leads’ but rearrange the letters in our head and understand ‘deals’. But they are VERY different, aren’t they?

Yes, leads (or a portion of them) should turn into closed deals,. bBut they aren’t there yet. They aren’t even close. A lead is a lead. Expecting a lead to be a closed sale is a pipe dream – leads still need to be worked. And sometimes you need to work them hard to get them to move forward.L Leeads still need to be nurtured,. Aand sometimes leads will die, …that’s the nature of the business. Perhaps it’s the optimist in us – we get someone that is a lead and we think they should be a customer.That’s great – that should always be our goal. But realistically – they will not all be customers. So as marketers/sales professionals/executives, we need to understand that a lead is not a deal. Those 10,000 tradeshow leads are not going to turn into sales. In fact, many of them only stopped by the booth to enter your raffle.

As a young marketer at an enterprise software company in the late 90s, I fell into this trap. I thought that all of the leads I generated with my campaigns were awesome and I would personally help the company shatter its revenue goals, but. But I realized pretty quickly that leads require time and tenacity to move through the sales process. I got pretty good at explaining to our sales team why they should keep calling and following up with leads, even after they had left them one message or sent one email.Those 50 webinar registrants aren’t going to turn into sales. Sure they expressed some interest, and filled out a form with some qualification criteria,. but they need to be convinced that they need to keep interacting with you. They need to be cultivated. They need to be guided through the buying process.

So they didn’t return your call when you called them after the webinar. Keep trying! Tenacity!Your competitors are calling/emailing/interacting with them – if you sit back and wait for them to reply or respond, they will probably respond to someone else! Companies like Sirius Decisions have spent years talking about sales and marketing alignment. Th. They have built a powerful niche in the research industry around it.

Check them out at www.siriusdecisions.com. Their demand waterfall is quite powerful – it’s a shared view between sales and marketing of the health of an organization’s new business related activities. It measures the progression of leads through a range of stages – from cold to closed. The key here is that it is a progression, and to move leads through the waterfall, marketers and sales professionals need to use various tactics to help leads move through the stages and eventually become deals.

Leads are leads. Deals are deals. Don’t mix them up.

The post A B2B Marketer’s Word Jumble….Leads vs Deals appeared first on Virtual Causeway.