Gatekeeper Tips

Among all of the roadblocks faced in the sales process most would arguably agree that the GATEKEEPER is one of the biggest obstacles. Charged with the responsibility of carefully screening calls, gathering information for their boss and, in many cases abruptly forwarding your call to lower level staff, the GK can be your best friend or worst enemy.

So, the question is how is the best way to hurdle these barriers?


Here are some tips:

• When the GK is open to learning more about the reason for your call but not willing to connect you to the DM (Decision Maker) get the GK involved and engaged. Tailor your presentation on how you can help the GK. If they ask for information send a hand written note/envelope- - better chance to be opened! Follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn to see what topics and what individuals they are following. Be polite and ask for their advice. Do your research, be prepared and be genuine at building your relationship! Executed properly will get you a plug to the DM and on the calendar!

Ex- If you sell insurance products the value to the GK may be all of the administrative tasks associated with health care, payroll and HR are handled by the vendor- thus saving the GK multiple hours of administrative work. Be creative!

• When the Gk is stone cold and not very receptive the challenges are a bit more complex. How about sending the GK and the DM a handheld tape recorder with a customized greeting and invitation to meet. Always send two recorders with two separate recordings customized individually. Follow this up with a calender invite or a creative and fun greeting card to both the GK and DM. The DM's card can even have a picture of him/her on the front of the card..This will get their attention!

Don't let the GK stop you cold in your tracks. Remember the movie "Wall Street"? Bud was persistent, creative and personable with the QUEEN of all GK's and finally got in to see the MASTER behind the 20 foot tall double doors!

Call Metrics- Old School Vs. New School

Sales teams are often measured by complex metric systems designed to shed light on both team productivity and overall results. This criteria often includes daily call quantity, duration of calls, appointments set, and other micro-measurements.
The logic associated with this ideology is consistent high call activity leads to more meaningful conversations,increased appointment setting rates and more closed deals. In the past, this model was functional when executing a B2B prospecting campaign....Not so much the case in today's 2.0 environment.

Gone are the days of ripping through a random list of prospects with little to no knowledge of whom the prospects is, what they do, how decisions are made and what push button issues are important to the decision committee.

High level performance in today's "new school" world is far more a result of careful deliberation and efficiency!

Deliberation requires deep mining each call via social media networks,blogs, connections on linked'In, Jigsaw, and the like,for information that builds a case to support a solution. Dialing for dollars and hourly call metric reports are less relevant than in the past! The rep who diligently plots and plans their calls will be the rep exceeding quota. (90-100 high quality dials will net greater results than 150 unqualified low quality dials).

Efficiency requires following the old adage " working smarter not harder". According to the The Insidesales/M.I.T. study,
rather than dialing during low production calling hours (11AM-4PM), reps should be allocating valuable "pay time" call hours to time blocks that yield the best contact results (8Am-10Am & 4-6PM). The remaining hours spent on prospect nurturing, phone/face to face appointments, presentations and administration tasks.

A stalled economy, greater access to more information for decision makers and multi-tiered buying committees have all contributed to the lengthening of sales cycles. The result? Sales organizations must quickly adapt,access and implement multi-media prospecting methods to fully engage decision makers and close more business.

What's Your Retention Rate Look Like?

Has the economy had an impact on the quality of your customer retention program? If the answer to this question is “what retention program” you may be in for some costly surprises.

With a downturn in the economy many companies have been forced to cut costs and in many cases freeze spending all together. Most departments are typically effected and expected to do more with less. Especially Sales!

When revenues are bleeding, CFO’s seem to always pay “high radar” attention to funnel conversion rates and the anticipated revenue forecasted. CFO’s inherently emphasize the bottom line, with the bottom line being how much new business is being generated. As a result, costs associated to bring on new customers are expected. While, conversely, costs to gauge existing customer satisfaction and maximize retention rates are, in cases, lower on the budget.

Revenue is revenue, regardless of where it comes from. In fact, in downturns it is critical to invest in insuring satisfaction and loyalty with existing customers
for the following reasons:

1) New Customer acquisition can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining existing clients.
2) A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%
3) The average company loses 10% of its customer base every year.
4) A 5% reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by 25-125% depending on the industry.
5) The customer profitability rate tends to increase over the life of a retained customer.

Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway…,we all know how difficult and expensive it is to win customers back! Having a proactive approach and process www.attivio.com to minimize defection rates and monitor customer behavior (detect dissatisfaction) goes a long way to keeping your most valued customers on board.

Here are the tools:

CRM….Call Support Centers….Blogs and News….Web Analytics…Social Media…
Surveys….User Groups/ Product Councils…...Internal Reports…..ERP Systems >>>
All lead to the Customer!

These tools should provide:

 Every interactive representative with a documented deep understanding of the customer at every touch point
 A deep mined profile of the customer to avoid uncertainty of the customer at all levels
 Each representative armed with decision support and knowledge base so they are able to implement “A level” service support and performance

The key is to primarily provide timely insight into the customer during each interaction and to maximize satisfaction through all internal levels and media outlets. In a high performance system, additional business opportunities are uncovered fostering up-selling and cross-selling solutions to a “long term” satisfied customer. CFO’s like this kind of revenue!

Striking a Balance on Lead Generation

The new Sales 2.0 has taken off with a robust burst of steam. The traditional Sales and Marketing process,according to some industry pundits,is on its way to becoming a legacy to make way for a more “cost effective” and “sophisticated” model. Inbound and its cost effective automation is in….Outbound and the proactive connection with the market is out???? Not so simple!

Based on what we have seen distributed through the social media lately, this seems like a logical interpretation of the direction of the industry.

The fact is, inbound marketing and the technology that surrounds this strategy is a credible component when utilized in balance.

Inbound marketing, conceptually, delivers a sales-ready buyer that is primed to be handed to a sales representative. The handoff, theoretically, is a culmination of a prospect that has surfed through your digital blogs, social media sites and whitepapers and proactively announces he is sales-ready for the next step. In a perfect world the sales representative simply needs to walk the prospect through the closing steps of the sale and re-up for the next handoff. Not so simple!

Again, let me reemphasize that I am a proponent of inbound marketing and the value it delivers to the end cause…MORE CLOSED DEALS.

The real caveat here is the consequences of not having adequate balance.

According to a recent survey in HubSpot's The State of Inbound Marketing 2010 larger companies with 50+ employees invested 37% of their 2010 demand generation budgets on outbound marketing ( telemarketing, direct marketing, and trade shows) while smaller companies (1-10 employees) spent 15 %. The larger portion of these budgets were directed towards the inbound component with the goal of leveling the playing field through lower costs. Conversely, according to the survey, the larger companies could not depend on the lengthy conversion rate that inbound programs inherently require. Thus, they have to proactively connect with the market to insure proper coverage and pipeline growth.

Is there a sacrifice smaller companies are making when relying too heavily on potential prospects knocking on the door and having such an imbalance in the outbound budget? Yes. Conversion time, conversion rate, cost per conversion, rep costs and opportunities lost costs, to name a few, all become issues.

According to the 2008 Sales Performance Optimization Survey from CSO Insights
www.csoinsights.com sales reps only spend about 20 % of their time on both following up on leads handed to them by marketing and cold calling to generate new leads.

The results are shocking! Here are the #’s……
Only 20 % of the total leads generated are followed up, 15 % of these leads end up becoming qualified, about 80% become forecastable and only 20 % end up closing!

The question of the day is “can your company survive on the NET OUTCOME of these statistics?” Go ahead..plug your numbers in. Can you make your quota?

In certain cases the answer will lean closer to “maybe”. Organizations with shorter sales cycles, less complex solutions and straight forward decision making channels may be willing to bet on 85 % of their market coverage through an inbound channel. The risk factor being 59 % of companies are reporting significantly longer sales cycle over the last year and into the next year, inbound self educators operate at a slower pace, thus lengthening the cycle further, and finally, evaluation and buying dynamics are constantly in flux requiring a personal relationship through an outbound campaign. The result allows teams to proactively identify shifts in the environment eliminating lost opportunities.

Regardless of the complexity of your product every opportunity is a HIGH VALUE opportunity to your company. Complexity disguises itself in many ways and requires proven processes by “specialists” that builds demand and CRITICAL balance to your demand generation and pipeline.

I’m interested in your feedback….

How are your numbers?
What is it the short come of imbalance costing you?
What type of balance do you have?
Is you 15 % enough? NOT ENOUGH?

It may be time to reevaluate.

San Pellegrino Vs. Perrier - They're all the Same Right? Wrong!

I was out to dinner the other night with a friend when he questioned me when I complained that the restaurant only served San Pellegrino water. He insisted that there is no difference from Perrier and to stop being an idiot and to place my order. Reluctantly, I ordered the San Pellegrino to find that there was a difference, and it was for the better! Maybe it was the lighter carbonation, maybe it was a bit crisper..."WHATEVER THE REASON"...the fact is I liked the taste and sucked down three of them!

The next morning I was doing my grocery shopping and went to the beverage isle to buy my water and suddenly was hit with yet another life changing decision....Is it going to be a pack of the good old standard Perrier? Or, am I going to bail on my old favorite and make the switch to Pellegrino?? In this case I threw a pack of each into the cart and moved on to the best part of the store ..the prepared foods section at Whole Foods!

Where is the relevance?? I couldn't stop thinking about how these trivial decisions are made every day in our lives and how they sometimes can overflow into our business life! I know, your probably saying " Not ME!" With all do respect to MR. Not Me, if your human, your effected to some extent! It is called life.

In my Demand Gen world, and probably just like yours, I'm always having to make vendor decisions, communicate to prospects on how my firm is different than the "other company they dealt with" and constantly looking to find ways to be better at helping our clients. With all of this "STUFF' going on around us it is easy to let slip through the cracks some of the potential greatest solutions and products that could have been presented to us. We have all done it...you know the objection lines.."Sorry, tried that before. Sorry, not interested. Sorry, not on my radar." Oh man, need I say more?! It happens all the time... We think we have it covered so we neglect to REALLY listen!

Remember, from the most simple lessons in life we can learn so much more! There is never only one way! Never stop surprising yourself!