The Funnelholic

This was another funnel sent to me by one of my friends. . This funnel was taken from the Sales2.0 blog, the poster is David Thompson, the CEO of a great up-and-coming marketing automation company Sales Genius. (who I owe a long post about) Anyway, the impetus for this funnel was a meeting David had with Geoffrey Moore of Crossing the Chasm fame.

Their goals was to show:

how many of the Web 2.0 technologies are driving a faster, higher volume, incredibly efficient (measurable!) customer acquisition process, from Google AdWords providing anonymous inquiries to a customer’s web site, to on-demand CRM systems making it easier to track pipeline progress, to real-time web site monitoring helping qualify customers faster and offer personalized service, to online communities of customers and sales people trading leads, and web conferencing making it easier for Sales people to “connect and close” with customers on the Web.

Here is the cliff notes to what we have here:

• Top of the funnel:

• “Anonymous Visitors” - SEO, search, etc
• “Named Visitors” — Online contact databases
• Qualify Named Prospects:
• Tools for your sales team/inside team to connect with and qualify customers
• Track/Manage
• SFA/CRM
• Close
• Companies like Echosign that have automated order forms
• Loyalty

Ok, now for my commentary:

1. I like it, whether I agree with it or not. Obviously this was built with the idea of being able to put their partners into a puzzle.
2. I could say: “where is so-and-so” but being what I know from #1 above….this isn’t about that.
3. This does not fully represent process (again this is ok) but anonymous visitors have a second step that should be part of a company’s automation funnel which is optimized landing pages, etc.
4. We need a place for DRIP/Nurture on there. Always hard in a funnel, but if we are talking about true Sales 2.0 than that part of the process HAS to be accounted for
5. For Named Visitors, I would include buying targeted registrations on the internet via whitepapers or other offers. This is also very much in the repertoire of the new-age sales and marketer.
6. So is metrics and reporting…that should probably run across the side of the pipeline next to the process arrow. (PS dont think you can use Salesforce.com for this)
7. Im still not feeling the EchoSign and Nsite part of the process.
8. All in all, I think this is a start and a good one at that. Of course, my company is not on here, but I am game with that…that will change. In the funnelholic.com, I am an editor not a shill.

I have an old boss, Stu Silverman from Salesramp, and he is a straight-up guru in B2B lead generation. He has a very simple formula for creating messaging, to paraphrase:

• In technology, there are steroids and there are pain-killers.
• The steroid is a nice-to-have, it makes you stronger, but when asked for a choice, a buyer will choose:
• The pain-killer. The pain-killer solves an excruciating problem in the buyer’s life.

Simple, yet powerful. The basic tenet of the successful enterprise sales guy is the ability to extract pain from the client. They understand this, they can sell to someone without a project because they find what the prospect HAS to do not just what they would LIKE to do.

Marketing should support these efforts. The vendor organization should understand if there are common customer pains that extend across a large potential target market.

How do you do this?

1. Hire an analyst group to do a study
2. Spend some money going out and looking clients in the eye and ask them yourself. (I will talk about this more in an upcoming post, but I would suggest hiring a pay-for-performance appointment setting company for this unless you are Oracle, MSFT, etc and can get into the C-suite easier)

Once you have identified some pains you can rally around. Push this information across the marketing - to - sales supply chain:

1. Inquiry Generation — Outbound offers should be centered around pain may convert better for you. Especially if you are an emerging company, people will not download your offers if they haven’t heard from you, but if they have a clue you can solve their pain, your chances have increased. if you are a established vendors, prospects will be relieved to know that someone that they trust can help them. Offers are defined as: white-papers, webinars, google ad-words campaigns, banner ads, etc.

2. Lead Qual Group — Lead Qual’s qualified lead definition should be to get the customer to articulate their pain and why. Follow me: you have gotten inquiries around people solving a problem, lead qual finds the guys with really acute pain, and then they pass them to:

3. Sales — Sales now receives qualified leads with acute pain that they now can offer a solution. Sales training should help the sales team identify and solve these issues. Don’t bog them down with technical features, etc. Focus on PAIN. Sales should create a pain-identifying sales methodology.

Stu talks about this in his article: Sales is on Venus, Marketing is on Mars

The first step on connecting sales and marketing is to find a common thread from inquiry to close. Find the pain, and conversion rates will rise.