by Katie Weisz Estimated read time: Less than 1 minute
Last month, our CEO Scott Gillum was invited to attend the UT Dallas Sales Leadership Summit as a keynote in a debate with Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell,Inc.
Scott and Chris discussed topics such as “is digital marketing more effective than SDR?”, Chris’s thinking behind “market dominance”, with a lively rebuttal from Scott, and when sales should get involved in the ‘funnel’ with a customer.
In this clip, an attendee poses the question, “How does the environment and relationship change as the complexity of the solution that you are selling increases?”
Listen in here for both Scott and Chris’ responses:
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A couple years ago during Gartner’s Sales and Marketing Thought Leaders roundtable, I asked the group, “Do we really need sales anymore?”
The question was in response to research Gartner shared about the challenges facing sales in gaining a consensus from the internal buying group to move forward with a purchase decision. This insight, built on top of the previous CEB (now Gartner) research showing that buyers are 57% of the way through the sales process before engaging sales, prompted me to think about their effectiveness.
Knowing that half of the room was filled with sales thought leaders, I asked the question in jest to provoke a lively conversation. This year, after seeing Gartner’s latest research on B2B sales, I asked the question again with a twist, “Do we really need outbound sales anymore?” This time it wasn’t meant in jest, it was a serious question about the value of a Sales Development Rep (SDR).
SDR’s according to Payscale, earn on average of $42,000 a year to “make outbound sales by reaching out to clients to obtain leads and schedule appointments for the sales team.” They are the voice on the other end of the phone after your download information off a vendor’s website.
The data point that caused me to question their value is based on how little time buyers spent speaking with sales during a purchase decision. In 2017 Gartner found that only 17% of a buying group’s time is spent with sales. In the latest meeting Brent Adamson, vice president at Gartner, shared that in the most recent research the number is now down to 16%. And as you might have guessed (based on the 57% data point mentioned above) most, if not all, of that time is spent at the end of the buying process.
That leads us back to the SDR. Their role is aligned at the front end of the process. Perhaps you could argue that they play a valuable role in creating leverage for the more seasoned and costly sales executives by screening inquiries, and as the definition describes, scheduling appointments for the sales team.
So, let’s explore how effectively they perform this role using a recent experience I had with an SDR of a SaaS company. We were running an RFP bid process for a client. As a mid-market company, they are looking for an online collaboration tool that fits their unique needs. We collected a list of potential providers and I came across an additional vendor late in the process. Here’s my actual email exchange with the SDR after I signed up for a demo.
You guessed it, he didn’t make it happen. As a result, I didn’t have the information needed to add them to the list. If his organization had allowed me to view the demo on their website without being screened, they may have been included in the bid.
Ironically, the well-defined lead qualification process the rep was following killed the deal before he was able to qualify the opportunity.
I’m not alone in my experience. Gartner’s research asked buyers to define the factors that contributed to a “High Quality, Low Regret” deal. In other words, what factors contributed to them feeling like they made a good informed decision.
Interestingly enough, the factors that made buyers feel less confident about their purchase decisions are directly tied to the seller, specifically buyers didn’t trust them to provide all the relevant and/or unbiased information needed to feel well informed.
On the other side of the chart, buyers commented that they felt confident in their ability to ask the right questions, collect the right information and draw out the insights needed to make a good decision.
Now the dilemma…
We are at the intersection of inbound marketing and sales engagement.
With the increasing sophistication of content management platforms and the risk associated with the sales person negatively impacting the information collection process, we face two very strategic questions for sales and marketing executives.
The first — where do you draw the line between allowing the customer to direct themselves to the right information needed to make a “high quality and low regret” decision and inserting the SDR to help guide them?
The second — when do you do it? Do you allow the buyer to self-identify and request help or do you proactively reach out to them?
The answer may come down to simply how you view the process. If it is truly a “buying process,” then the buyer is in control. You allow them to go as far as they need and allow them to reach out to sales.
If it’s viewed as a sales process, then you reach out to them and help them find what you think they need, which according to the research, is the riskier path.
Based on my experience, I think the answer is clear. And if you believe that sales is a “numbers game,” then the numbers in the research are not in favor of outbound sales.
Let the debate begin.
To hear the interview with David, listen or download here.
The organization has a short-term ‘sales culture’ so almost everything marketing does is oriented to creating a lead. You know that there are larger system/infrastructure issues that are impacting performance but you can’t anyone to invest/focus on them. You’re on a trend mill running as fast as you can, but going nowhere.
It’s a nightmare thousand of marketers are living everyday, so let’s get to fixing this issue, permanently. The problem, at its core, is money. Yes, resources and time are also issue but the bigger challenge is that you have is a budget loaded with program dollars intended to be spent on media, events and other lead generating activities. Unfortunately, little are earmarked to fix the web infrastructure, navigation and content issues that are keeping leads from converting. You have a system problem, without system dollars to fix it.
Step one in the process is to get a capex budget. Just like the one used to build the corporate website. And get a big one, depending on size of the website you’ll need at least $500K, and perhaps over $1M, to build a “system” that will improve conversion rates. Here’s how you’re going to spend it.
Assessing Search – does the organization know what it wants to be known for (what topics, products, solutions) and how audiences search for those items? If not, pull together a top 10 list and get to work finding out. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz Open Site Explorer and Moz Keyword Explorer to gauge popularity and set priorities from your existing website.
Increasing SEM spend – after assessing your top 10 priorities you’ll most likely find you need to increase your spend to improve your position. Determine how much, and for how long.
Inventorying & Assessing Content – while your marketing dollars are working to help audience find you, the next step is to help visitors find the information they are looking for quickly. Assess the content on the following criteria: relevance (is it current, audience aligned, and insightful), accessibility (clicks and public view), and scanablity (ease of assessing key points)
Evaluating Readability – time to take a hard look at the content you’re producing. Is it written in the audience language or your engineers? Is it compelling, will it engage audiences. Use tools like Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease and the Gunning Fog Index to help score content.
Modifying Content – this could be painful. Try to leverage existing material. If you have videos, carve them up into 2 minute or less “snackable” insights. Long form content like white papers, etc., do the same. Chunk content into smaller more digestible bits. Next, create templates and guidelines for producers to follow so they know the type of content that will work best for marketing needs.
Investing in UX – find out how visitors really navigate your site. You may be shocked by their lack of sophistication, and patience. Use tools like Validately to help assess users experience with your web properties.
Optimization Everything – create pilot pages based on the UX findings and watch how visitors navigate and consume content. Use tools like Hot Jar to help track visitor clicks. Set performance metrics for bounce rates, time on page and conversion rates. Performance optimization is an ongoing effort so become comfortable with constant experimentation.
Training Everyone – to produce the right content, invest the time and resources to train on how to use the new templates — product marketers on how to produce audience focused content, marketing folks on how to write ad copy that’s compelling, etc. Use insights gathered in steps 5 and 7 to convince folks to get onboard.
Hiring an advisor – if this sounds like a lot of work, it is. If you don’t have the staff, the time, or the desire to take it on get someone to help you. You have a day job producing leads so put someone else on a parallel path of improving the process and performance. Chunk up the work plan mentioned above into quarters, align it to the marketing and the organizations priorities and set reasonable expectation on making progress.
Inbound marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, whatever you want to call it is not a marketing “tactic,” it is an ecosystem built from the outside in and requires a system thinking approach. The steps above will help you pinpoint issues within the system. “Digitalizing” an organization starts with audience facing sites so try to align this effort with any organizational effort related to digital transformation.
Getting the funding, use data points to prove the value of building a robust inbound lead generation capability. According to CEB, 71% of buyers start their purchase journey on the web. Build a market visibility index using your pipeline/waterfall metrics and market share. Reverse the numbers and find out what percent of the total opportunities available are in your pipeline. If you need more benchmarks, download Hubspot latest report on inbound marketing.
Need a case study? The process I just describe was implemented at a client this year. The results of the investment and effort have produced a 95% increased in MQL’s and an improvement in conversion rates by 65%. Inbound is now the top lead source in volume and performance. This organization has a hardcore outbound sales culture…which now, believes in the power of inbound marketing.
CASE STUDY
It’s not unusual to find companies referring to their relationship with clients as “partnerships.” It’s common to find client logos on vendor websites. But how often do you see an agency or consulting firm’s logo on client websites? If you visit www.evepark.ca – that’s exactly what you’ll see.
Carbon Design, represented side by side with, a global architecture powerhouse, a world-class designer, and the project principal: the innovative green-tech engineering firm, S2E Technologies Inc. Under S2E’s leadership, these firms are inventing a new consumer category – one that integrates bold new ideas about housing and transportation – and radically resets the carbon footprint of both at the same time.
CASE STUDY
Did you know, that until recently restaurant owners only cared about the cleanliness of the food prep area? Most customers, and owners, assumed that if someone got sick after dining out it was because of food poisoning. That was until Carbon Design and Challenger Inc. helped “challenge” the norm by showing owners that half of the outbreaks in a restaurant were caused by people to people transmissions.
Now owners know where the “hotspots” are, and as a result, restaurant are cleaner than ever. Grab your face mask and enjoy a safe night out, but you may want to avoid the raw oysters 😉.
CASE STUDY
How do you do it? By giving clients and users what they want. Using the remaining budget that was to be used to update the site with the new branding we designed and built an entirely new site on a new platform. But audience needs are constantly evolving so the work never stops. Our team continues to audit performance and make improvements.
As a result, the two-year journey has paid off with the site being named #1 in the industry. Even more importantly, their key priority areas (site search, attorney profiles, etc.) were ranked in the outstanding category. Proving that excellence is a journey not just a destination.
