Yes, You Can Convert Marketing Dollars Into Greater Sales and Profits

By Barry Lieberman
Advantage Plus Marketing Group

Our bosses have their eye on the bottom line; they want to see a quantifiable return on marketing investment (ROMI). Yet, in an increasingly more sophisticated media environment, ROMI calculations can get quite complex, making it more difficult to calculate results and defend the marketing budget.

Even worse is when sales aren't keeping pace with what's being spent to get them, and the cause is not immediately apparent. The marketing department puts together some very clever campaigns, you attend all the right trade shows in your industry, and every marketing activity produces leads for the sales team to follow up on.

If, in spite of everyone's best efforts, sales continue to fall short of expectations—and you're under the gun to turn things around—take a closer look at how your organization uses the sales people it employs.

Don't assign sales representatives to work leads; they are too expensive a resource to spend their time in the office making cold-calls, sending literature, following up on direct mail campaigns, and cultivating suspects who may—or may not—become qualified prospects.

Sales people's role is to help clients solve problems with your solutions. They should be out in the field, visiting their customers and making presentations to pre-qualified prospects. Your sales reps should be closing business contracts, not trying to find new people to call on.

So then, who does the prospecting?

Prospecting, like sales, is "forever"
The Prospecting Engine© I described last month generates higher sales for companies willing to implement a dedicated system for turning inquiries into prospects—and then qualified leads—before a sales rep ever gets involved.

You need to start at the top of the command chain because like any business process, especially one that differs from the usual way of doing things, a formal prospecting program requires executive commitment from the top down to do it full-time.

There is a separate business cycle for Prospecting. That Prospecting Cycle, like the Sales Process, is ongoing and needs to be funded permanently, month after month. A successful prospecting process requires constant effort; it's not a one-campaign-at-a-time endeavor. The energy put into prospecting must be steady.

Speak the CEO's language
The bottom-line oriented people in finance and on executive row realize better than anyone that only those sales which are completed pay the bills. They will be more than willing to fund targeted, on-going prospecting because it is a fully accountable process that shows a true Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI).

Executives are used to thinking in terms of process improvement solutions. They will immediately recognize the value of a formal program that goes beyond the classic lead follow-up model—an old-fashioned model that creates a gulf between marketing activity and consummated sales.

A consistent Prospecting Engine is a "best business practice" that successfully bridges that gulf.

CFOs and CEOs demand accountability; they will be pleased to know that as a business process, a Prospecting Engine is fully accountable. It will measure the effectiveness and return of every marketing activity, and how effective your various sales channels are at closing business. A Prospecting Engine will tell you where your best ROMI comes from!

That's a message any CEO will understand.

Steps to Building a Successful Prospecting Engine
Keeping your sales force supplied with qualified prospects is not difficult, but it does require commitment and constancy. In future newsletters we will elaborate on various phases of the process, with suggestions you can use immediately:
• Executive Commitment Is Essential for a New Mission-Critical Process – Prospect Development.
• A Company-wide agreement on the definition of a Prospect – Why it is critical to your Marketing & Sales success.
• Marketing tools to develop inquiries and suspects into Qualified Prospects – when and when not to use them.
• When to turn over a prospect to sales, and how to decide whether to keep nurturing a prospect or remove the name from your system.
• What happens after the Qualified Prospect goes to the Sales organization – tracking systems, incentives, carrot & stick approach.
• Why your Sales organization cannot convert your Marketing $$ into Revenue $$ – typical problems and ways to solve them.
 

Advantage Plus Marketing Group
13821 Newport Ave Ste 150
Tustin , CA 92780
Tel. 800-432-9466 or 714-573-7300
Fax. 714-573-7301
email: [email protected]