It sounds like one of those chicken or the egg questions…and given all the buzz about Sales 2.0 technologies and methodologies, you might be tempted to answer “Sales 2.0”.  But I think Sales 2.0 is really the sales organizations response to the “evolve or die” mandate they face, given the smarter and more informed buyer they have to sell to: Customer 2.0.   I do believe the customer has evolved faster than the sales guy…and I believe this is – at least in part – due to how B2B trends typically follow B2C.  Prospects who are looking to make B2B purchase decisions are also consumers, and have been making B2C decisions for a long time.  Access to online reviews, comparison shopping engines, Facebook or Twitter “conversations” on products and services they are evaluating has turned them into much wiser B2C buyers…So, why not transfer that same process, powered by “social intelligence”, to the B2B buying cycle? 

I started an earlier blog post with the observation “We market and sell in a brave new world where prospects are equipped with near x-ray vision into companies, products and people they are considering doing business with.”  This statement implies Customer 2.0 holds all the cards!  Hence, evening out the playing field requires sales to be just as knowledgeable about the buyer and bring real value to the sales process by demonstrating why their products and services can solve the customer’s unique business challenges.  Relevance emerges as the key to synchronizing the selling cycle with the buying cycle.  Armed with a 360° view of their prospect’s business that can only come from “listening to” them and engaging them through social media, sales people now have the opportunity to gain the deep insights necessary to get Customer 2.0’s attention – insights that will drive Customer 2.0 into deeper engagement with your company and delivering on the ultimate promise of Sales 2.0!

This past week I moderated the Forecasting, Analytics and Compensation Management Panel at the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco (good event by the way – probably the best one yet!).  My diverse panel included sales execs from ArcSight, LaCrosse Footwear, and GuardianEdge who deployed Sales 2.0-powered sales management solutions from Xactly, Right 90 and Cloud 9 Analytics, respectively. 

Given my marketing analytics background (or DNA as some might say ), I’ve always been focused on making marketing more accountable to and aligned with sales. My personal edict is “You Cannot Improve What You Cannot Measure”, and I practice it religiously to ensure my clients drive the most revenue possible with their marketing dollars, great or small.  What was thrilling about my pre-conference conversations with the panelists was how the Sales 2.0 movement is enabling sales organizations to adopt a similar culture of measurement, bringing in much needed accountability.  Actually according to my panel, it is moving beyond accountability – and shifting sales into a culture of predictability.  Here is how: Sales management solutions, such as forecasting, business analytics and compensation management tools, improve visibility into sales performance with objective, dynamic data.  Better visibility in turn exposes volatility at the aggregate level as well as gives us the ability to drill down to pinpoint and act on the problem areas – whether product line, geo, sales rep, lead source – resulting in overall sales performance predictability.

Think about it:

• Business Analytics improve visibility into the pipeline. With just a couple of clicks, we can see what deals are won, lost, closed, or added to your pipeline, even deals that slipped.  Better pipeline analytics help drive a better forecast and also help alignment with marketing re: driving the appropriate lead gen efforts to mitigate potential shortfalls. 
• Accurate sales forecasting, based on dynamic sales data, can build trust in the forecast for run-rate business as well as new demand, ensuring alignment with production – getting us a step closer to achieving the dual goals of improved profitability and customer sat.
• Smart compensation management can help us incent sales people to drive sales of the “right” products (and you got it, we get to define what “right” means!).  We can now adapt compensation plans to match changing market conditions to better align sales comp to business objectives.

Uncovering volatility and bringing about predictability into sales performance have far reaching benefits. It of course helps with the all important revenue numbers – but also drives organizational alignment between sales and finance, sales and marketing, sales and product management, sales and production… (yep, you get the picture) and improves trust between these often mistrusting departments.   Most importantly, it translates into customer value in the form of a more efficient and customer-centric organization. And, to quote a popular MasterCard ad, “that’s priceless!”

We market and sell in a brave new world where prospects are equipped with near x-ray vision into companies, products and people they are considering doing business with. Attention span crunch has become pandemic, and we now have the mandate of ensuring every customer engagement is targeted and relevant to synchronize buying and selling cycles – or risk being left behind to join the multitude of businesses that simply didn’t make the necessary transformations in time.

It wasn’t too long ago where the norm was for marketing and sales teams to shout insults and pass blame on for not reaching revenue goals: “The leads are worthless!”…”No, it’s the sales reps who just cannot close!!” Fast forward a decade and the rules have changed. Marketing is now measured and compensated more like sales reps on attainment of goals; and our friends in sales are having to think more marketing-like and segment and target prospects with the right messages at the right time to increase conversions. Welcome to the world of sales and marketing 2.0 or “Smarketing”!

The 2.0 approach requires the art of selling and marketing (a.k.a. creativity) to be augmented with a healthy dose of science (a.k.a. repeatability) to achieve the massive productivity gains required. While there are several factors that contribute to realizing these efficiencies, I believe there a few that are paramount to increasing accountability, reducing customer acquisition costs, and ultimately driving revenue.

Here are the four essential steps to grabbing the Sales and Marketing 2.0 brass ring:

• Align sales and marketing organizations around jointly-defined processes, definitions and success metrics. Establish a “system of record” – whether it is your CRM or your marketing automation system or both if they are synched – to ensure you are capturing all customer engagements in one place. And make sure to agree on the definition of sales stages to ensure your lead scoring process is consistent and gives you the necessary data to measure the effectiveness of each of your programs.
• Target the right audience with the right message at the right time. The days of one-to-many mass emails are gone. Launch targeted one-to-few campaigns by segmenting your prospect database. Watch for trigger events in the industries or geographies you are targeting to reach out to prospects with information that’s relevant to their current initiatives and urgent business challenges. Use behavioral targeting based on how your prospect is engaging with your website or your “free trial”.
• If lead scores indicate prospects are not quite sales-ready, nurture them! Educating prospects with whitepapers, tips and tricks emails or educational webinars are great ways to nudge them along the sales cycle (and effectively reduce your cost per lead!).
• And… don’t underestimate the power of continually testing and measuring the effectiveness of your sales and marketing efforts. Is your website attracting and converting the right prospects? Which programs have the highest percentage of converting into sales-ready leads? How do changes in message or design translate into improvements in conversion rates? Remember, you cannot improve what you cannot measure!

Want to find out what we think on next gen demand generation strategies or dig deeper into how you can implement some of these recommendations? Then follow us on our new blog Smarketer. We hope you will join the conversation – and share your own experiences as well!