BPI Strategy Group NEWS

Do You Have an Integrated Revenue Capture Business Model or Are Just You Just Scaring Prospects Away?

February 1, 2012

In this issue, we talk about how to create an integrated revenue capture program. As always, I look forward to your comments.

Walter Wise
The BPI Strategy Group

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Do You Have an Integrated Revenue Capture Business Model or Are Just You Just Scaring Prospects Away?

By Paul DiModica

• Are your sales costs increasing per sale?
• Does your marketing scare prospects away?
• Do you have products or services that no one is buying?
• Are your revenues down?

If so, then you may have a decentralized revenue capture approach where your strategy, marketing and sales process are not aligned as an integrated revenue capture program.

In my previous life, before starting this company and others, I was VP of Strategy Worldwide for an $800 million public company called Renaissance Worldwide. This was the company that bought Renaissance Solutions, the consulting company owned by David P. Norton, author of The Balanced Scorecard.

As VP of Strategy, I worked for the CEO and the board of directors to evaluate and make appropriate recommendations on the strategy, marketing and sales process of ten (10) operating business units we had. Our operating units included internet start-ups, acquired businesses, and organically grown divisions.

Using the balanced scorecard approach, I identified that many of our business units had a decentralized revenue capture process because their departments were not linked to a common goal or aligned symbiotically to each other. Not that the management teams were consciously trying to build barriers of cooperation between departments, but it occurred due to their individual corporate goals, compensation plans and the team members inability to understand the other department’s functional operational attributes.

This lack of functional operational interdepartmental knowledge and lack of alignment forced departments, even with good intentions, to work as business silos.

Four Truths Many People Ignore

1. Corporate Strategy is based on research of what prospects will buy, not what you want to sell.
   
   Just because you bought a company, created a new offering, or spent $10 million on development to create the greatest widget in the world, it does not mean you have a market for what you sell.

   Buyers only care about themselves.

2. The marketing department ’s primary goal is to help generate qualified leads for sales . . . that’s it. Yes branding, third-party analysis research and beautiful tradeshow booths are important, but they are just tools to ultimately increase revenue.

   Marketing must have ROI or it is a wasted investment.

3. The sales department must sell new business.
   
   Yes, selling existing customers is important, but to grow top line revenue where you will not be dependant on your existing customer’s ability to buy . . . you need to hunt for new business as a premeditated approach. By focusing on the lifetime value of deals, you can reduce sales capture costs

Hunt now, Or be eaten later.

1. If your departments are not aligned together by goals, key performance indicators (KPI’s), compensation plans and parallel knowledge of the operational tasks of the other departments, then you have a decentralized revenue

Revenue capture is a company responsibility . . . not just the job of the sales team.

Take The Revenue Capture Scorecard Alignment Test

Here is a quick assessment of a much larger assessment test we give to help you decide if your team is focused on revenue capture as an integrated group or if are they operating as independent silos.

1. Does your company create (or acquire) new products or services based on market demand?__Yes   __No

2. Does your sales team have separate sales quotas for business from existing customers and business from new prospects?__Yes   __No

3. Is your marketing department paid based on the number and the quality of their leads they generate?__Yes   __No

4. Are your sales quotas or targets calculated based on mathematical demand models?__Yes   __No

5. Do your senior marketing executive and your senior sales executive have a team metric they need to reach together?__Yes   __No

6. Are your marketing managers paid based on corporate department sales increases?__Yes   __No

7. As a business to business company (B2B), does the marketing department report to the VP of Sales?__Yes   __No

8. Do the sales, marketing and strategy departments meet at least four times a year to discuss successes and failures to date and document action steps required by each?__Yes   __No

9. Does your senior management team assign specific measurable metrics to the strategy, sales and the marketing department managers and is their performance discussed at executive meetings?__Yes   __No

10. Are your sales team members evaluated on how quickly they follow-up on sales leads given to them by the marketing department?__Yes   __No

11. Does your marketing department go on sales calls at least twice a year to understand the sales process?__Yes   __No

12. Has your marketing team researched why prospects buy, why they don’t buy, and how your firm creates value?__Yes   __No

13. Do you have a written corporate strategy for all department heads to review as needed as a corporate guideline?__Yes   __No

14. Does the sales team have a written step-by-step sales process to guide the marketing department on what communication deceives they need create for each sales cycle step?__Yes   __No

Scorecard Answers: 1. Yes; 2. Yes; 3. Yes; 4. Yes; 5. Yes; 6. Yes; 7. Yes; 8. Yes; 9. Yes; 10. Yes; 11. Yes; 12. Yes; 13. Yes; 14. Yes

To your Revenue Capture success,

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
The BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

Take the 2012 CEO Business Growth Audit

January 15, 2012

For the second issue of 2012, we have a 25 question CEO Business Growth Audit to help you measure your potential to increase your revenue in 2012 . I look forward to your comments.

Walter Wise
The BPI Strategy Group

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Take the 2012 CEO Business Growth Audit
by Paul DiModica

In order to be growing your business aggressively, you need to use a premeditated system, take specific action steps to maximize corporate goals, exploit market opportunities, and understand the drivers needed to maintain sustainable growth.

At The BPI Strategy Group, we audit 100+ business growth drivers to determine company strengths and weaknesses in their operating models. Here are 25 of the 100+ drivers we use to audit a company’s potential for success and measure the areas that are weak and need to be adjusted. Take the test and measure your revenue growth success potential for 2012.

2012 CEO Business Growth Audit

1. Are your services, engineering or operation departments set up as individual profit centers?

2. Is your service department, engineering or operations department revenue capture process only the sales team’s responsibility?

3. Does your development, engineering or operations department create new offerings without market gap research or detailed written project plans?

4. Does your development, engineering or operations department create new business offerings without getting written input from your sales and marketing department?

5. Have your operations or development department wrapped your services into a packaged offering with specific pricing options targeting specific buyers to help your prospects buy easier?

6. Is the average success of your entire sales team’s assigned sales quota or target greater than 85% annually?

7. Do you have a written, documented systematic sales process detailing your firm’s entire sales cycle from pre-sale to post-sale that you require your sales team to follow?

8. Do you know your sales capture cost per sale?

9. Do you use a metric-driven method to mathematically calculate sales quotas or sales targets for your sales team?

10. Do you pay your sales team the same commissions for business from existing customers as you do for business from new prospects?

11. Do you know the lifetime dollar value of each of your top ten customers during the last five years?

12. Do you and your management team get a line item detailed profit and loss statement (P&L) showing profits and losses before corporate general and administrative costs (G & A) every month for each of your departments?

13. Do you know specifically (based on research) why your prospects buy from you?

14. Do you know specifically why you lose business (again, based on research)?

15. Does your vice president of sales have total control over who they hire and fire?

16. Do you raise your product or service pricing every year?

17. Do you calculate marketing Return on Investment (R.O.I.) for each your marketing investments?

18. Is your senior marketing manager paid financial incentives based on revenue growth?

19. Does your marketing department have a written month-by-month marketing action plan listing each activity, its costs and its expected inbound lead generation goals?

20. Has your firm calculated business demand for your products or services through market gap analysis?

21. Are you growing your firm’s top line revenue organically through outbound new market revenue capture?

22. Is at least 50% of your current fiscal year revenue coming from new customers?

23. Do you have any customer responsible for more than 15% of your total revenue?

24. Do you believe that all of your customers primarily buy from you based on your price?

25. Do prospects call you and ask to buy your product or service without you contacting them first?

1.Yes          6. Yes        11. Yes         16. Yes       21. Yes

2. No          7. Yes        12. Yes         17. Yes       22. Yes

3. No          8. Yes        13. Yes         18. Yes       23. No

4. No          9. Yes        14. Yes         19. Yes       24. No

5. Yes        10. No        15. Yes         20. Yes       25. Yes

Scoring Assessment: Give Yourself 4% for each right answer.

The following audit is hardly a complete assessment of your revenue growth potential but a snapshot of where you may be versus where you need to be.

How did you score?

60% and Below: Your business model struggles to maintain year-over-year sustainable growth. If your revenues are increasing, it is an anomaly, or a planned methodology? Do you recognize specific financial and operational leakage issues and your corporate instability exposure? To fix this position, you need a redesign of your business and the integration of your operations, sales, marketing and strategy processes into one revenue capture approach.

61% to 80%: Your current business growth model has some of the best practice attributes needed to grow revenue year-over-year using a planned process. Some of your business structure may need to be adjusted to maximize long-term corporate growth goals.

80% and Above: Your business structure maximizes corporate growth capabilities and uses an inter-department alignment that focuses on strategy linked to action steps. You have built a sustainable pattern, which should foster continued success.

Let’s make no mistake; it takes work and commitment by you and your management team.

To your Revenue Capture success,

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
The BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

Ten New Year’s Business Resolutions for 2012

Ten New Year’s Business Resolutions for 2012 . . . Without Getting a Headache!
by Paul DiModica

Ho Ho Ho and Happy New Year. It’s that time of year again when sales teams are assigned their company’s new compensation plans, sales quotas, and job responsibilities. It’s that time of year when sales managers start looking to hire new salespeople and sales executives start looking for new jobs.

It’s that time of year when management teams huddle in the backroom, order pizza, strategize about their corporate goals, and develop new business concepts while simultaneously designing marketing materials that will make them look like an industry player.

So, as the new year marches on, we all make New Year’s resolutions that are both personal and professional. We write on our magical list that we want to make more money, exercise more, get a better job, or lose the extra pounds that have hung around the last few years.

Yet studies show that most people do not have a personal success plan or even a business plan (a sales plan is not a business plan) and that by April of each New Year, most people have failed to live up to their New Year goals.

So, will you be prepared to reach your goals?

Traditional New Year’s resolutions include get out of debt, get a new job or work from home, save more money, exercise, get organized, learn something new, and reduce stress. At the BPI Strategy Group, we work with CEOs and business executives to increase their professional and corporate business performance. To help our many subscribers of BPI News, we have provided a list of the top ten recommended New Year’s “business” resolutions modified from the traditional resolutions.

Follow them and you will be healthier, wealthier and wiser in 2012.

Are the following resolutions tough? You bet they are. Am I being too aggressive in my observations? Maybe. But these are New Year’s resolutions. They are designed to make you reach for strategic and tactical goals that will make you more successful.

2012 is up to you!

Ten New Year’s Business Resolutions

1. Be a better leader. As the CEO or president of my company, I will not let ego drive my business decisions. Instead, I will substitute business logic, research and input from others.
2. Base my business decisions on research. As the CEO or president, I will not make up my team’s annual sales quota or target assignments in the backroom. Instead, I will calculate their goals based on a mathematical sales capture model that also looks at market opportunity size by territory.
3. Invest in my business. As the CEO or President of my company, I will invest in outside sales training, marketing, and strategy advisement for my company, because I really don’t know everything and without increased revenue capture . . . we don’t need our other departments.
4. Accept accountability. As a salesperson, I will not blame marketing, the services group, operations/engineering, or my boss when I do not hit my assigned sales quota. Instead, I will be a mature salesperson and accept it’s my responsibility to be successful within the corporate environment I operate in.
5. Invest in myself. As a salesperson, I will stop being cheap, accept that sales is my chosen career, understand that I am a professional, and actually invest my own money in career training to become more successful (at least 1% of my gross income a year).
6. Learn something new. As a salesperson, I will finally admit that I don’t know everything and will actually try to learn some new sales methods, strategies and techniques to increase my success.
7. Make more money. As a salesperson, even though I hate to cold call, I will cold call at least 40 new prospects a week, every week — because cold calling is still one of the best ways to hunt for new business and make more money.
8. Be more productive. As a marketing department manager, I will focus on generating qualified inbound leads for my sales team first, work on branding second, and create brochures third.
9. Reduce stress. As a sales management executive, I will not manage my team by emotions. Instead, I will manage my sales team by business metrics that are realistic and can be documented.
10. Help others. As a manager of operations, engineering or corporate services delivery, I will stop blaming the sales department for client engagement problems and start working with them in tandem to deliver what I said we can do.

One Extra New Year’s Resolution

To work at what I like doing — not just what I have to do.

“Remember, revenue capture is not solely the salesperson’s responsibility — it’s the company’s responsibility.” Paul DiModica

To your IT success,

Walter Wise

Business Success Architect

The BPI Strategy Group

617-532-0918

twitter: BPIStrategy

Is The Economy Managing Your Business?

Is The Economy Managing Your Business?

by Paul DiModica

We continue to plug through tough economic times — will you make it? Is your business shrinking? Will you be here in 2012?

9 Key CEO Tips to Successfully Guide Your Business Through the Next 12 Months

1.  Make decisions. Thinking too long about anything . . . is a NO decision. Don’t kid yourself — time lost in a tough economy is wasted time. Prospects are not waiting for you. It’s a downhill steamroller, so a key business action step to be successful is to analyze your next step and then do it.

2.  Take action steps with speed. Once you have decided to make changes, move quickly. Time is more than money; it’s your survival.

3.  Cut costs. Where? Any overhead that does not directly or indirectly add corporate revenue should be cut such as company cars, tradeshows, direct mail that fails, after-hour parties, or travel to prospects who are not qualified.

4.  Choose new business verticals. Are you selling blue shoes to a red shoe market? Is your current business vertical not buying? Change. Adapt and become something different. Will your product or service work in a new industry? Do you know? If no, find out quick. Don’t go out without a fight. The best business verticals in a sluggish economy are Energy, Federal Government, Healthcare, Utilities, and Pharmaceuticals.

5. Develop better marketing. Do you calculate marketing return on investment? Are you doing the same marketing you did last year? STOP! It’s a new world order. Don’t repeat poor marketing because you need leads. Develop new marketing based on the economic environment.

6.  Improve team productivity. If you have employees who are not working hard and are wasting time, money and office space, fire them. Are you running a business or a country club for the unemployable! This is not a time to pay Ringo (the loyal puppy dog down the hallway), John (the I am late all of the time service rep), George (the I will not cold call salesperson because I think I am too senior) and Paul (the son-in-law, you owe me manager). Employees need to work harder or employers should find someone who will.

7.  Generate better financials. Costs are up, revenues are down. Do you know your numbers? If not, then find out what they are. As a CEO, always do things that you hate first.

8.  Provide sales training. I know your sales team is made up of professionals but when was the last time your firm actually invested in professional sales skill training for your staff? This is a tough economy to be successful . . . everybody can use new training. Reading one book 5 years ago is not sales training.

9. Act professional, not entrepreneurial. This is not a time to be emotional about your business. Yes, you have invested untold years of sweat and blood into the business. Stop loving your business; instead manage your business and make the tough decisions.

Follow these recommendations and you can weather the current economic changes. Ignore them or take too long pondering their value and you might not be here next year.

What worked last year will probably not work this year. It’s up to you!

To your revenue success,

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
The BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

Strategy is important, but strategy with execution is better!

Strategy is important, but strategy with execution is better!

by Paul DiModica

The world is full of clairvoyants, savants, mind readers, business experts, and your drunken uncle who know everything there is to know about growing your business.

If I never read another company mission statement that says “our management team is committed to our customer’s and employee’s growth,” I will die a happy, Sicilian boy.

Of course you are committed to your customers and employees, otherwise you wouldn’t be in business long. Yet, I have sat in meetings with CEO’s who spent days theorizing on the right words to use to describe in their mission and vision statements while their customer support, business offerings and employees were unstable and not functioning well.

Businesses today need less talk . . . and more action.

In the real world:

Strategy is important,
but strategy with execution is better!

When it comes to business growth recommendations, everyone has their opinion, but who should you believe?

Here are some examples of growth strategies that have been implemented:

• Don Keough, former President and Chief Operating Officer of Coca-Cola, followed these strategies . . . for no business growth:
  1. Quit taking risks.
  2. Be content.
  3. Before you make a move , always ask yourself “What will the investors think?”
  4. Avoid change.
  5. Be totally inflexible — stay on your current course no matter what.
  6. Rely totally on research and experts to make decisions for you.
  7. Be more concerned about status and brand than service.
  8. Concentrate on your competitor instead of your customers.
  9. Put yourself first in everything you do, ahead of your customers and suppliers.
  10. Memorize the formula: “TGE — That’s Good Enough” to set a ceiling of quality.

  11. Then add a bonus rule: Find ways to rationalize why your business is growing so slowly.

• Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, followed these rules for growth:
  1. Commit with passion to your business.
  2. Share profits with your employees.
  3. Motivate your partners. Money and ownership are not enough.  Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.
  4. Communicate everything to your employees. The more they know, the more they will understand. Information is power and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets any risk of informing your competitors.
  5. Show appreciation for a job well done.
  6. Celebrate success and in those inevitable failures, find some humor. Don’t take it so seriously.
  7. Listen to everyone in your company, especially the ones who actually talk to customers. They really know what is going on out there.
  8. Exceed your customers’ expectations and they will always come back.
  9. Control your expenses better than your competition.
  10. Swim upstream. If everyone else is going one way, there is a good chance you can find your business niche by going the opposite way.

  
  

• Value Forward HighTechSuccess and the BPI Strategy Group recommends these growth strategies:
  1. Dominate vertical industries to become horizontal.
  2. Sell based on your value, not your competition’s price.
  3. Manage your company by metrics and P&L’s — not by emotion and hope.
  4. Integrate sales, marketing and strategy into one revenue program.
  5. Put your business value in front of you by forcing  your customers to see you as a thought leader (or industry leader) so they take the initiative to buy, instead of you having to sell them.
  6. Give 5% of your value away for free — so your prospects buy 95% from you at retail (remember, you control what retail is).
  7. Calculate return on investment for every department and manage your business by it.
  8. Maximize your business profitability by increasing your inventory turns and maximizing your client’s lifetime value. If you sell services, your staff and you are the inventory and it must be turned (sold more).
  9. Listen to your customers, consultants, employees, competitors and your gut feelings when making management decisions . . . but don’t let your gut feeling be controlled by your ego.
  10. Remember strategy is important, but strategy with execution is better.
  11. Never be a generalist; generalists live in a commodity world.
  12. Your total corporate revenue should include at least 35% business from new prospects each year. When you are tied only to your existing customers for revenue growth, your success is tied to their ability to buy or not to buy.
  13. If you are a family-run business, remember your family may not be the best employees.
  14. The intellectual property or the most valuable assets of your business are not the products or services you sell - it is the strength of your sales and marketing distribution channel.
  15. Channel or reseller programs always fail if your direct sales and marketing programs are weak.
  16. Mission and vision statements are wasted thought if execution is not implemented.
  17. Organic growth is always cheaper than buying companies. Without organic growth processes in place, acquired investments usually fail.
  18. Marketing without lead generation is a wasted investment.
  19. Value first, brand second.
  20. It is not what you sell — it is what your customers buy.

Based on the 41 suggestions above (both positive and negative on techniques to grow your business), you need to draw conclusions based on those methodologies that fit your needs.

“The person who says it can’t be done, should not interrupt the person doing it.” Chinese  proverb

To your IT success,

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
The BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

Ten IT CEO Recession Success Tips

Ten IT CEO Recession Success Tips

by Paul DiModica

We are exposed to a recessionary financial time that is still affecting everyone.

So, what are you going to do?

• Let employees go?
• Cut back on marketing?
• Squeeze your current clients for more money?

Yes, you can do all of this, but is that going to help? What can you specifically do during a recession to grow your business profitability?

10 CEO Recession Success Tips You Can Implement Right Now To Grow Your Business

1. Spend more on marketing for lead generation but force your team to quantify your ROI.

During a recession, many companies cut back on marketing expenditures. This is a strategic mistake. During a recession, marketing is cheaper to buy and lead generation becomes more important because you need to find buyers who are in a buying cycle now. But any investment, including marketing, must have a definable Return on Investment.

2. Don’t blame the sales team.

When sales are down, it is easy to blame the sales team because it’s their job to generate revenue. However, revenue capture is a company responsibility — not just the sales team. During a stable recovery, there are always buyers who may buy anything because they are flush with cash — even if they never use your offering in detail, but in an unstable economy, the true value of your product or service is tested and if there are no buyers, it may be that your offering strategy is wrong.

3. Hire slow, terminate fast.

Less professional salespeople move prospects freely between their sales pipeline and their sales forecasts co-mingling who is qualified and who is not qualified and inflate their sales revenue capture success. During a recession, you cannot afford to carry salespeople who are not hunters. During a recession, hire slow and terminate unproductive salespeople fast.

4. Don’t waste marketing expenditures on branding ads.

In the business to business marketplace, branding is hard to quantify. Focus your marketing budgets on tactical marketing programs that can create leads (direct mail, thought leadership educational events, email campaigns, etc.).

5. Make salespeople cold call.

To increase sales success and reduce sales capture costs — salespeople must cold call new prospects. It is the cheapest and most direct way to find buying prospects.

6. Create new product or service offerings (and packaging) with recession pricing.

To help maintain cash flow, re-name, re-package and re-price your offerings to give your targeted prospects multiple price options to buy from you. Make your prospects choose between your options rather than seek an alternative vendor.

7. Use webinars to reduce travel costs — and to cut sales steps.

Review your current sales cycle and marketing steps and use webinars on the Internet as a tool to communicate your value three dimensionally. To increase your webinar success, add audio testimonials and customer video to your presentation.

8. Cut travel expenses by having prospects come to you.

To have prospects prove to you they are qualified buyers and not professional lookers, make them come to your office to view your offerings. If they are traveling from out of state, reimburse them up to a fixed amount of their first invoice if they buy.

9. Focus on no more than three business industry verticals.

To succeed in a recession, focus on less industries not more. Don’t chase rainbows; instead go after more opportunities. To increase your sales success and reduce your sales and marketing costs, verticalize your sales approaches and sell three business markets or less. Horizontal marketing is an antiquated approach to new business capture.

10. Train your sales team better — invest in your sales team (and your business).

It is estimated that only 14% of companies invest in organized sales training. Why? Do you believe that your team is too experienced that they cannot learn at least one new sales technique or marketing technique? Do you think that you pay your sales team so much money that they should just know how to sell? Your sales team is part of your company assets and intellectual property. Invest in your sales team and help them sell more.

“A recession is when your neighbor is out of work. A depression is when you are out of work.”

To your IT success,

Walter Wise

Business Success Architect

The BPI Strategy Group

617-532-0918

Growing Your Business During a Recession

Growing Your Business During a Recession

by Paul DiModica

11 Options to Implement During a Recession

• As a CEO, how have you responded in a slow economy?
• As a sales account manager, what have you done to improve your sales?
• As a marketing manager, how will you change your prospect messaging?

So, here we are in the middle of a recession. Have you been proactive and prepared an action plan? Or have you been reactive and just waiting to see what develops?  It’s up to you.

Here are 11 options you can implement to maximize your business growth:

1. To increase your sales and marketing success, repackage your current offerings with new names and a lower price. Offer an automatic product or service upgrade (in feature or units) with the new name or tie the new offering to a timed date.
2. Offer extended payment terms. Increase your price by 20% and offer extended payment terms to make it easier for your buyers to buy.
3. Hunt for new business from new prospects. Are you waiting for prospects to find you? Do you or your sales team cold call? In a slow economy, you need to find business — don’t wait!
4. Expand your partnerships to reduce your marketing costs per sale. In a bad economy, partner with more companies to increase your networking lead generation and lower your lead capture costs.
5. Enlarge your selling geography or selling zone. If your market is saturated, expand your selling zones to find more opportunities. Geo map your mostly likely areas.
6. Spend more on marketing. Yes, spend more on marketing during a recession. This is not a department that you want to cut back on. If times are tough, spend more. During a recession, the cost of marketing lead generation usually goes down because advertisers become desperate for business — so use this to your advantage.
7. Focus on reducing your offering’s cost. What options do you have to drop its production, labor or direct costs? Hey, in a recession . . . negotiate!
8. Create 3 pricing options for your offerings with the middle price being the targeted price you want to sell at. Studies show that buyers statically buy the middle price when offered three options, so let’s point them to it.
9. To reduce your travel and expenses, offer your prospects $1,000 off their first invoice if they travel to you and buy — instead of you and/or your team going to them. This approach helps you qualify prospects by making them take an action step by coming to you while simultaneously reducing your expenses.
10. Raise your value and raise your pricing. Price must equal value. Your value is always too high if I as a buyer don’t believe your value is worth the investment. To generate more money during a recession, increase your offering’s value and accordingly raise its price.
11. Change your prospect value proposition to focus on cost savings. To drive your targeted prospects to take action steps during a recessionary time, you need to focus your product or service messaging on how your offering reduces their business costs, directly or indirectly.

Successful management teams are proactive not reactive. Manage the recession . . . or it will manage you.

To YOUR IT Success!

Walter Wise

Business Success Architect

The BPI Strategy Group

617-532-0918

Is Marketing a Strategic Contradiction?

Is Marketing a Strategic Contradiction?
by Paul DiModica

Is marketing a staff position designed to support the sales team or the marketing department’s own agenda?

Is marketing a line position responsible for creating corporate revenue?

Should corporate management cut back on marketing investments and just hire more salespeople?

All of these questions are asked by executive management on a monthly basis. We all know that we need marketing, but do marketing investments help salespeople or do they fail to deliver strategic help?

Marketing Investments Should Increase Revenue.

The goal of marketing investments should be to help salespeople sell more. Here is a Marketing Success Test based on independent research of approaches that work in today’s market.

Marketing Success Test

1. Does your marketing create at least 3 qualified leads per month for each salesperson?___Yes ___No
2. Does brand marketing have higher budget allocation in your company than lead generation for your sales team?___Yes ___No
3. Do you create documented inbound leads from your web site every month?___Yes ___No
4. Do you know what your Customer Conversion Ratio (CCR) is from your web site leads (i.e., unique visitors per day that become sales leads)?___Yes ___No
5. Do you have weekly electronic marketing devices for customers and prospects (i.e., eNewsletters, email offerings, etc.)?___Yes ___No
6. Do you calculate marketing ROI for each marketing investment?___Yes ___No
7. Is your print material budget greater than your lead generation budget?___Yes ___No
8. Have you redesigned your web site during the last 12 months?___Yes ___No
9. Do you have interactive business-to-business offerings (i.e., downloadable white papers, sign-ups for webinars, etc.) for new prospects and existing customers on your web site?
   
   ___Yes ___No
10. Has your marketing department gone on sales calls to new prospects with the sales team during the last 12 months?___Yes ___No

Correct Answers:

Each correct answer is worth 10%.
“Marketing is not brochures, brand advertising or attending trade shows. Marketing is creating revenue or it is a wasted investment.”

The following charts reveal some interesting facts and trends:

Top Three Marketing Priorities this Year
According to US Marketing Executives, 2005
(as a % of respondents)

US Technology Vendors Who Have
a Methodology for Measuring the Quality
of B2B Sales Leads to Determine the
Return on Marketing Investments, 2004
(as a % of respondents)

ROI Metrics Tracked by US Marketing
Executives 2005 (as a % of respondents)

Methods that US Technology Vendors Used
and Plan to Use to Generate B2B Sales Leads,
2004 & 2005 (as a % of respondents)

Marketing Functions that Provide the
Greatest Return on Investment (ROI)
according to US CMOs, Q4, 2004
(as a % of respondents)

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

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Customers Versus Clients: Do You Know Who You Are Selling?

Customers Versus Clients:
Do You Know Who You Are Selling?

By Paul DiModica

Posted by Walter Wise

The words you use (and don’t use) to describe your product, service, business peers, managers, competition, sales opportunities and selling methods says more about the process of sales and sales management than we can ever say here in our bi-weekly HighTechSuccess diatribe.

The following list of 15 words and phases and their definitions are terms we all use in our business lives. Often, they are used interchangeably, collectively, and sometimes co-mingled together in a communication approach. I often use and hear these words while consulting with my clients.

What is interesting about these specific words is how Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes their meanings. After reviewing these words and their definitions, determine if you use them (and implement their actions) the way they are intended to by used.

“In business communication, it’s not just what you say . . .
It’s what people hear!”

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Definitions of
Common Sales and Management Words

1. Prospect: a potential buyer or customer
2. Customer: one that purchases a commodity or service
3. Client: a person who engages the professional advice or services of another and one that is under the protection of another
4. Value: a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged
5. Sales: the act of selling; specifically, the transfer of ownership of and title to property from one person to another for a price
6. Cold Call: a telephone call soliciting business made directly to a potential customer without prior contact or without a lead
7. Networking: the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions
8. Management: a person who directs a team
9. Competition: the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms
10. Solution: an action or process of solving a problem
11. Commitment: an agreement or pledge to do something in the future
12. Attitude: a state of readiness to respond in a characteristic way to a stimulus
13. Forecasting: to calculate or predict (some future event or condition) usually as a result of study and analysis of available pertinent data
14. Strategy: a careful plan or method

How often have you used the word “clients” to refer to prospects when they were really “customers” (based on the above dictionary description)?

How often has your sales “forecast” been based on a prediction that is usually the result of study and analysis of available pertinent data instead of being made up in the back room?

“The communicator is the person who can make himself clear to himself first.” — Paul D. Griffith

To your sales success,

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

TWITTER: BPIStrategy

Is Your Firm Taking the Polar Express?

Welcome to the January 15, 2011 edition of BPI News!

In this issue, we  discuss setting goals and the ways to achieve them.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Walt

If you contact us today via phone at 617-532-0918 or email info@bpistrategy.com, we will send you a copy of our newest whitepaper, “6 Reasons Why CEOs Need to Use a CEO Coach to Help Grow Their Business Profitably”.

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Is Your Firm Taking the Polar Express?

by Paul DiModica

One of the things I enjoy during the holidays is sitting on the couch with my children and watching the movie “The Polar Express”. It is a great movie which tells a story about children who are struggling with character flaws (i.e., know-it-all, not having confidence in themselves, being a scrooge) taking a magical train ride to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. The central character in the movie is an 8 year old boy who is having doubts about whether Santa Claus is real. When the Polar Express arrives in the middle of the night to pick him up, he hesitates to get on because it is hard for him to accept the opportunity standing right in front of him . . . and that it is real. The film contains many symbolic concepts such as, what is the true meaning of the Christmas, what is the difference between being nice and naughty, and how we can overcome our doubts.

One of the last scenes in the movie shows the train conductor (actor Tom Hanks) saying goodbye to the central character, the little boy who does not believe in Santa Claus. As the young boy leaves the train, now a believer in Santa Claus — the conductor leans over and says “the great thing about trains is - it’s not where they are going; it’s deciding to get on . . .“

As we  head into the new year, you’re probably thinking about how you can be more successful in 2011. With that in mind, the questions every CEO and corporate executive needs to ask themselves about their vision are:

1. Am I going in the direction that meets my needs?
2. Do I believe in where I am doing?
3. Will I take risks to get where I want to be?
4. Do I have a written plan to execute this strategic direction?

Simple questions, but they represent the foundation of business success, management team performance, and estimating the clarity of your corporate strategy.

When we work with clients, we often see a disconnect on the tracks between vision and implementation. The business driver for strategy success is the linkage between these four questions and the education and execution of your vision.

Have you thought about these four questions? How do they align with your vision? Are you . . . going to get on the train?

When laying out your company vision and direction, you have to decide whether to get on the train . . . or let the opportunity pass you by!

To your IT success,

Walter Wise
Business Success Architect
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

TWITTER: BPIStrategy