Welcome!

In this issue, we talk about how your branding might be scaring prospects away.

I look forward to your comments.

Walter Wise

Business Success Architect

The BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

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3 Reasons Why Most B2B Branding Fails and Scares Prospects Away

by Paul DiModica

Does branding help salespeople sell more?

In the B2B market, CEOs and marketing managers struggle with the answer to this question which helps them allocate budgets, create company messaging and develop tactical programs to generate inbound leads for the sales team members.

It is estimated that many Global 1000 companies spend up to 15% of their total marketing budget on brand communication and positioning. But does branding have an identifiable return on investment that can be tracked and monitored?

Most branding messages are just wasted thought.

Often, branding slogans end up being too generic or too feathery to drive business performance or create inbound qualified leads for the sales team regardless of whether they are made up by marketing agencies or well-intentioned corporate managers.

Why do CEOs invest in marketing?

Often CEOs invest in marketing because they think they have to as a necessary requirement to grow revenue. But often, marketing investments made by the CEO are not held to the same standard of ROI metric management as other staff and line positions are held to. Marketing must drive revenues and reduce sales capture costs regardless of whether the CEO or the marketing department makes the investment. Marketing as a silo approach is a wasted investment, however, marketing as an integrated approach tied to sales metrics and corporate strategy is a prerequisite for year-over-year revenue growth.

Why do marketing agencies create slogans that sound nice but don’t create revenue?

Often brand development is based on the company, management team or creator’s personal bias or the perception of what the brand should say. When was the last time a contracted marketing agency or a marketing manager went against a CEO’s perception of what they thought their brand should say even when the CEO was wrong? It does not happen often. Have you ever seen a bad TV commercial and thought “who developed that message? ” Yet, the TV commercial you watched was created by a professional ad agency and was approved by senior management.

3 Ways Most B2B Branding Is Developed

1. Branding That Is Driven By Ego

Often, brand messages are ego-driven slogans created by management teams who are more focused on their needs, instead of the needs of their buyers. This occurs when a group of senior executives gather together and create marketing messages that talk about how great they are and why the prospect should buy from them. When they are finished, they all congratulate each other on a job well done and paste their silky slogan on every ball cap, Website and brochure they have hoping their brand (the slogan) induces prospects to take action steps to buy.

2. Branding That Uses Generic Product or Service Descriptions

When trying to build a brand message that communicates company value, frequently businesses use their offerings’ product or service category as a prime foundation of the brand description. When this path is followed, companies become pigeonholed as a specialist in one industry, thereby limiting their ability to cross-market and sell into other industries.

3. Branding That Uses Competitor Messaging

With the Internet providing easy access to view any company’s marketing and sales approach, brand effectiveness has decreased because so many companies just build their brand positions as an adaptation of their competitor’s messaging. By copying or massaging corporate branding based on your competitors, it is not you – it is just their message painted a different color.

Value First, Brand Second

In all of these examples, the corporate branding approach fails, because it does not communicate correctly to targeted prospects why they should buy you over your competitors. There are three primary reasons that make B2B prospects buy: 1) Prospects want to know how your product or service increases their business income; 2) Prospects want to know how your offering decreases their business expenses; or 3) Prospects want to know how your product or service manages their business risks or consequences. If your brand message does not succinctly communicate one or all of these three values – then you are wasting your messaging and confusing the targeted prospect.

Deploy Sales Value Propositions — Not Brand Messaging

To increase your marketing return on investment and to maximize your value messaging, you need to deploy sales value propositions instead of branding messages. Branding messages focus on describing what you sell or how you see yourself.  Sales value propositions are precise, premeditated phraseology that focus on describing the business results your product or service delivers. Branding costs money.  Sales value propositions make you money.  In a world full of changing multi-media sources, to quickly capture a buyer’s attention, you most focus on their needs, not yours. Examples of sales value propositions that help buyers understand how your offering increases their business’ success include: Manufacturing Business Asset Protection Specialists, Hospitality Profitability Improvement Specialists and Banking Customer Retention Management Specialists. In each of these examples, the sales value proposition positions the company’s business value up front to the prospect to visualize in three dimensions how your offering helps their business.

Conclusion

Brand messaging is packaged communication that pulls a company’s business value behind it forcing the company into a commodity position.  You have a choice:  A) You can sound like everyone else and be treated as such, or B) Put your value in front by describing how your offering increases your buyer’s performance and why you are different.

To your revenue capture success!

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

May 1, 2012

Welcome!

In this issue, we talk about shorting your sales cycle by implementing a Prospect Engagement Outline. I look forward to your comments.

Walter Wise

Business Success Architect

The BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

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Use Prospect Engagement Outlines To Shorten Your Sales Cycle!

by Paul DiModica

As salespeople, we must manage prospects’ buying cycles with our selling cycles.

When trying to sell prospects, we sometimes discover they do not know how to buy correctly. So your prospects’ lack of buying skills can affect your sales success and the accuracy of your sales forecast.

Taking this into consideration, how can you accelerate your sales cycle and manage your prospects’ buying skills?

We recommend using a “Prospect Engagement Outline.”

56% of salespeople say their
sales cycle is longer than 6 months.
Sales Quota Survey, HighTechSuccess

A Prospect Engagement Outline is a control document used to educate buyers on your sales process and outline the steps expected from the prospect during the buying cycle.

By putting this information in front of the prospect, you help “direct” them as to how they can buy. The result is managing the inefficiencies of their buying process.

Although prospects many times use their own structured ways of buying (such as RPF’s, RFI’s, etc.), the use of an Engagement Outline educates the prospect to consider your buying process and methodology. Prospects may not adopt it in its entirety, but it will help coddle them into a format that is more vendor-directed than buyer-directed.

Below is an example of a Prospect Engagement Outline:

The use of an Engagement Outline also helps you manage prospect’s expectations before you get too deep into your sales cycle. This written format establishes benchmarks and timelines, and helps you rise above middle-level managers who think you should only deal with them.

When developing your engagement outline, break out the sales steps used in your company and make sure you include at least three senior management interactions during the sales cycle to align your sales process with prospect management commitment.

The Prospect Engagement Outline is a sales technique of the Value Forward Selling approach and enables you to be “professionally blunt.” An engagement outline enables you to show prospects that you are a professional salesperson, that this is the best process for them to successfully buy from you, and that buying is a mutual commitment between the seller and the buyer.

Sales cycles and the buying cycles are always different. To sell more, you need to drive these two timelines closer together. A Prospect Engagement Outline is a great tool to do this.

To your revenue capture success!

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

In this issue, we discuss business agility. I look forward to your comments.

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

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High Tech Business Agility is a CEO Success Driver!

by Paul DiModica

IBM and HP are both great companies. But which is more agile? Agility is often defined as the ability to quickly and efficiently adapt to change as it happens. Long-term strategic planning in the IT market space beyond one to two years is difficult (especially, small private companies).

Based on their changes in executive leadership and corporate strategy during the last five years, would you consider HP agile?

Conversely, IBM during the longest recession in the history of the world continues to increase revenue and profits proportionally.

As a CEO, you must make decisions fast. Not making a decision is a decision. The key to successful business agility is (like Scrum Development) managing projects based on a focused approach but having the flexibility to adapt with speed when needed.

But being agile is not just developing applications fast. Instead it is an executive business model where CEOs and their leadership team move quickly to adapt to changing market conditions as they happen. Being agile as a high tech CEO means making strategic business decisions for your company at an accelerated rate.

In 1995, Microsoft was a multi-billion dollar battleship with thousands of employees and yet it misperceived the entire Internet market space. In one fast agile move, more like a speedboat than a battleship, Bill Gates changed his entire company. On May 26, 1995, Gates sent the now famous “Internet Tidal Wave” message to his corporate executive team. The message said that the Internet is “crucial to every part of our business” and “will be the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981.” The memo outlined Microsoft’s inability to grasp the Internet’s importance and in it, Gates declares, “the Internet will be our highest level of importance” from then on.

From that CEO instruction on, Gates changed his company forever forcing it to be nimble.

This Internet agility induced Microsoft to buy companies like Placeware.com, NetCarta, Hotmail and LinkExchange to help turn the company into an Internet player.

Often, when advising CEOs and their executive teams on best practices on how to grow their business, the discussion of change comes up and the speed of that change becomes the elephant in the room for the leadership team to manage.

If Microsoft, a market leader, burdened with dealing with Wall Street analyst demands, with thousands of employees and bureaucracy as deep as the Grand Canyon can change their business strategy pivoting 180 degrees based on market needs - why can’t you.

It’s called agility.

Business methods to consider:

• Agility is more important than innovation
• Agility is a success tool in a slow economy

“The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” - Nolan Bushnell - American Engineer, Entrepreneur, and Founder of Atari

To Your Revenue Capture Success,

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

April 1, 2012

Welcome!

In this issue, we discuss 9 sales metrics to increase your sales success. I look forward to your comments.

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

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9 Sales Metrics to Increase Your Sales Territory Success - Plan Like Alexander The Great
By Paul DiModica

Alexander the Great was born sometime around 355 BC in the area of Macedonia near Greece. While still in his early teens, Alexander grew to become a fearless and aggressive strategy-based leader who sought to conquer the whole world.

After wining the battle of Granicus (his first battle), his reputation spread quickly as a calculating, premeditated warrior known for his front line charges and coordinated attacks based on a systematic approach of planning each sequential step in his war campaign.

By the time Alexander was 23 years old, he was recognized as a controversial leader who had conquered half of the known world.

Historians debate his tactics and ambitions, but they all agree that his planning and detailed battle metrics were key factors for his success against entrenched competitors with larger armies.

Like Alexander, salespeople can plan their sales battle to minimize failure and increase their potential for sales success.

Having a sales strategy is good,

but having a sales execution plan is better!

Understanding the business metrics you need to hit your sales quota is the key to hitting personal income goals.

In many ways, sales is a mathematical model.

The following are 9 sales metrics you should use in planning sequential steps to win your sales battle. Most salespeople track their sales closing ratio as well as the overall value of their sales pipeline as business planning tools. But these two steps, although important, need to be part of a larger more detailed sequential plan to help salespeople hit their sales quota and companies reach their revenue goals.

9 Sales Metrics That Should Be Tracked

1. Closing ratio by job title of buyer (highest contact to whom you present.) This measures the title of executive you sell to help quantify where most of your sales will come from and helps you focus on changing your sales communication with executives who are harder to sell (i.e., closing ratios for CFO’s versus CIO’s.)
   
2. Dollar value of lost submitted proposals. This tracks potential sales volume in a territory, quality of your proposal messaging, and the sales success of a salesperson based on opportunity, not just an assigned quota.
   
3. Closing ratio by product or type of professional service you sell. Measures your sales communication success for each offering and identifies your strengths and weakness based on selling a product or service.
   
4. Closing ratio based on proposals submitted. Measures effectiveness of the style and content delivery of your sales proposals.
   
5. Closing ratio by geography. Helps identify local market demand anomalies and buying patterns by region. Also identifies market and sales quota enlargement opportunities.
   
6. Closing ratio by deal dollar value. Tracks market price resistance for your product or service and the strategic entry price-point in order to sell more. Also identifies areas in which salespeople may need training based on a price/value presentation.
   
7. Sales cycle length for each product or service. Helps identify sales forecasting accuracy based on average time for each type of sale.
   
8. Cold calls per day to new prospects. Measures your attack on new business hunting capacity.
   
9. Cold calls per day to existing customers. Measures sales commitment to sell additional revenue to existing clients.

Have a plan, follow the plan, and you’ll be surprised how successful you can be. Most people don’t have a plan. That’s why it’s easy to beat most folks. - Paul “Bear” Bryant, football coach

To Your Revenue Capture Success,

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

March 16, 2012

Welcome!

In this issue, we talk about packaging your offering to increase your sales. I look forward to your comments.

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

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Learn to Sell IT Services Like Ben and Jerry

by Paul DiModica

Three Tips to Sell More Professional Services to Management

One of my favorite foods growing up as a kid outside of Boston was Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Later in life as a Vice President of Marketing for an IT firm, I had the opportunity to tour their famous manufacturing plant in Waterbury, Vermont (with cows outside). An interesting business fact I learned on the tour was that although Vanilla is their most popular ice cream, as soon as they started offering other flavors like Chunky Monkey, all of their sales went up including their Vanilla sales.

When selling IT or professional services, it’s the same approach.

Do your IT marketing and sales team members tell prospects that they can develop any software application if the buyer just gives them a comprehensive specifications document?

Come on. In 30 years of marketing and selling IT offerings, I can count on one hand the number of prospects who have had a useable, detailed specification that development could implement. In IT, that just does not happen.

So telling an IT prospect that you can do anything — just diminishes your ability to close the deal faster because often prospects really don’t know what they want.

Instead, when selling IT and professional services you must prepackage some of your offerings so they are digestible and consumable . . . and be understood by the targeted buyer. When your IT offerings are vague, you force the buyer’s decision process to slow down. But by offering IT packages that are well defined, you allow your prospects to understand what your capabilities are . . . even when you do custom software applications.

3 Tips to Sell Professional Services

1. Always offer prepackaged software services — never just custom apps . . . even when you sell primarily custom software development.

2. Always offer 2-3 packaged offerings so prospects compare you against you. If you only offer one package, they may shop elsewhere and compare you against a competitor.

3. When selling your IT services and development methodology, always create a name and package your installation, development model, or client Q&A process to help prospects see three dimensionally how you are different. Quality and management approaches such as ISO9000, ISO14000, Just-In-Time (JIT) and Six Sigma methodologies strive to improve a business’ return on investment but are programs that someone just made up a name to describe their uniqueness. This naming approach helps buyers to better “understand” what you sell — because it subliminally tells them that your offerings are structured designs instead of a loose collection of action steps.

Do the named business models above, Six Sigma and Just-In-Time, have value? Of course! But ask 10 people what they are and they will each give you 1 to 2 general paragraphs describing what these terms mean to them. That’s because these services have been packaged and marketed to create an identity.

Selling IT services like managed services, training, IT staffing and project management is difficult. They are fluid intangibles without walls or density. Like Ben and Jerry’s, you should sell Vanilla ice cream but also offer Cherry Garcia, Fossil Fuel and Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. When you do, the prospect may still buy Vanilla ice cream because they see your capabilities through the other options you make available.

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” — Sun Tzu

To Your Revenue Capture Success,

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

Welcome!

In this issue, we talk about methods used to calculate pricing. I look forward to your comments.

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

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Pricing — Accurate Business
Calculation . . . or Just a Guess?
By Paul DiModica

How does your firm calculate its product or service price?

Often salespeople feel that pricing is a key impediment keeping them from hitting their quota.

This is misnomer for many who believe that lower pricing means always-greater sales. In fact, this hypothesis is not supported by business studies.

Pricing, as a selection criteria, falls below technical competence, service and support, vendor’s understanding of a company’s need, and past experience with vendor based on research by Getronics, IDG Research, and CIO Magazine.

Let’s take a look at how some firms determine their pricing structure.

11 ways firms calculate their product or service pricing:

1. Use a competitor’s price as a benchmark to set their price
2. Use price points (drop the price) to increase market share penetration
3. Use price as a marketing tool to break into a new account to a “create a relationship” that will generate additional revenue after the first sale
4. Use cost of labor as a benchmark and then mark up gross margin based on some mathematical projected profit model that includes corporate G&A costs
5. Write off all of the development or cost of labor costs, calculate all revenue as gross margin, and set price with no costs of goods
6. Price the product on an inventory spin model to generate more gross revenue by “turning” your inventory faster (i.e., selling more product faster)
7. Use a bundling model by tying multiple product options with service options to hide actual segmented pricing
8. Create value pricing where price is based on the business value and how it affects the buyer’s ability to increase income or decrease expenses when the product or service is deployed
9. Create price based on Return On Investment (ROI) calculation for the buyer
10. Use a profit-driven price model where each deal is individually reviewed to determine its overall profitable contribution
11. Last, but certainly not least . . . just guess (I don’t recommend this but it seems to be pretty popular.)

Let’s look at three of these methods:

• Pricing based on competitor’s price benchmark;
• Dropping price to get market share; and
• Dropping price to “start” a relationship and generate more revenue on the back-end of the first sale with a prospect.

When we look at these three methods, we observe they are short-term action steps that never truly help a firm become more profitable.

Why?

Pricing based on your competitor’s sales price never works because it ignores your firm’s operational costs and assumes that your business costs are the same as your competitor’s costs.

Market share pricing only helps firms who already have a monopoly and restricts company profitability.

Discount pricing to launch a key account relationship is a common practice but recent studies conflict with this pricing approach. Of particular note with regard to this method, past studies by Walker Information show that 1 out of every 2 buyers do not plan to buy from the same vendor again and are unhappy with their business relationship.

So, all of the prospect negotiation techniques of cutting your price to start a relationship are just that . . . negotiation tactics.

What is the right pricing method for profitability?

For most firms, it is going to be a combination of the first 10 methods.

The key to the correct pricing model is focusing on how you bring value to your prospects’ purchase while balancing your firm’s cost of business. The incorrect pricing model is, of course, number 11.

“You win customers by quality rather than price.”
Jean Ridley

To Your Revenue Capture Success,

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

In this issue, we talk about 8 management models. As always, I look forward to your comments.

Walter Wise
The BPI Strategy Group

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8 Ways Management Teams Lead

Their Companies

By Paul DiModica

Working with ten of thousands of salespeople and hundreds of companies during the last ten plus years, at The Value Forward Group, we have identified 8 common types of management styles. These management descriptions are not always reflective of the company size but more on how they manage their firm.

Each of the 8 management models, have positive and negative attributes both for the sales team that sells for them and the management team that leads them. Understanding the mode your firm is in and the leadership approach your senior executives are taking helps you as a salesperson understand why certain actions or non-actions take place. Conversely, if you are part of the management team, you need to see how your sales team sees your leadership directions.

To help you decide where you are in the business model, review these organizational descriptions to determine where you company fits.

1. Maintenance Management Model, Family-RunOften top line revenues are flat or decreasing for three years or more. This leadership model is a family-run business where usually more than one family member (husband/wife; father/daughter; mother/son, etc.) is or has been on the payroll and the company is 10+ years old. Instead of investing in their business assets (sales, marketing, operations, technology), management is milking cash-flow to use the company’s revenue stream as a planned retirement program. Often these executives take long vacations, don’t come to the office very often, and generally just cruise along. This management style, rightly earned by the principals who took the business risks to start the company, has a negative impact for the sales team members seeking to maximize their income and sales opportunities in a growth-directed firm.

2. Growth Mode Management Model, Family-RunUnlike the maintenance mode model, this management team (although dominated by family members) understands that they must invest in their future either to propitiate future generations of family cash-flow contributions or just the desire to be more successful. It is often a positive work environment for the sales team and compensation plans are competitive or more generous than Global 1000 companies. This leadership style can provide a great place to work, but may limit senior management promotions due to family members’ ownership and extended employment opportunities for upcoming generations.

3. Investor/Wall Street Management ModelThis management team drives their company based on the commitment they have made to their VC’s, private investors, or Wall Street. They invest in their employees based on how close the company has hit their financial obligations, or milestones. If they miss their business numbers, they adjust the salesperson head count regardless of how close the reps are to their sales quota. This business model is driven by executives who seek financial confirmation, not an understanding of how those numbers are achieved. This leadership style is emotionally reactive and driven by management’s sense of their own employment security, rather than planned business logic.

4. Global 1000 Farmer Management ModelMost Global 1000 firms use a farmer management style of leadership. Instead of taking calculated risks, their corporate bureaucracy overwhelms them and they just focus on selling more products and services into their existing customer base. It is a short-term leadership model, easy to implement, and cautious in its approach, yet it creates an artificial perception of success controlled by the current customers’ ability to buy. For sales team members, it is usually an easy sales model to function under. Usually compensation is not competitive with more aggressive players and compensation is limited in the long-term as customers buy less. Companies in this mode focus more on brand selling than new inbound lead generation.

5. Global 1000 Hunter Management Model This is the management model of choice, not common, but definitely on the rise internationally and to some degree domestically here in the U.S. Characteristically, this management style continues to make investments in new business process, new products and services, and company acquisitions that open up new markets and additional offerings. This is a great work environment for salespeople because their compensation plans are usually very aggressive and these companies supply team members with all of the marketing and support services they need to sell more.

6. Technology Superiority Management Model The technology superiority management model is dominated by a CEO/Founder executive that has a background or education in technology and actually believes that superior technology in today’s market is why prospects buy. This is a difficult sales management model to operate under because the senior management team does not understand sales or marketing methodology and just expects salespeople to just sell. Often this leadership focuses on building better IT offerings without studying market demand or market gaps and assumes that if they build it, prospects will buy. Compensation for salespeople in this style of company is usually average or slightly below average as executives spend a disproportionate amount of revenue on R&D.

7. Entrepreneur Growth Management ModelLike its sister management model, Global 1000 Hunter Model, the entrepreneur growth management model is an aggressive leadership process that actively seeks to grow their companies based on continuous process improvement and alignment of sales, marketing, strategy and R&D. It is often led by a founder who is seeking fast growth, but not interested in an IPO in the short-term. This is a great company to work for because they usually pay their salespeople very well, support their departments with a strong esprit de corps attitude, and provide upward mobility based on achievement.

8. Hybrid Management ModelThis model is usually a combination of Entrepreneur Growth Management and a Growth Mode Management Model Family-Run or an Investor/Wall Street Management Model. Either way, it’s a positive environment for salespeople seeking to sell in a dynamic environment and receive compensation based on their value not some arbitrary calculation.

“Most business failures do not stem from
bad times. They come from poor management,
and bad times just precipitate the crisis.”
Thomas P. Murphy

To your Revenue Capture success,

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

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

]]> http://www.bpistrategy.com/newsblog/do-you-have-an-integrated-revenue-capture-business-model-or-are-just-you-just-scaring-prospects-away/feed/ http://www.bpistrategy.com/newsblog/take-the-2012-ceo-business-growth-audit/ http://www.bpistrategy.com/newsblog/take-the-2012-ceo-business-growth-audit/#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:26:49 +0000 waltwise http://www.bpistrategy.com/newsblog/?p=79 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

==========================================

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 . . . 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

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