The Five Questions Every CEO Should Ask Themselves Right Now
If you run a company, the podcast, “Unpacking the 5 Foundational Keys to Winning More New Sales” could make the difference between a mediocre and a spectacular 2023. Mike Weinberg, author, speaker and coach, asks five questions that every CEO should be asking themselves as they review plans for 2023. Here are the questions:
1. Does each of my sellers have a finite list of accounts within our targeted customer profile?
2. Can each seller address issues and outcomes and can they articulate value in their messaging?
3. Do my sellers proactively prospect?
4. Are the sellers adept at creating and using a consultative discovery agenda and asking good questions?
5. Do they own the pipeline? Is there enough in the pipeline for them to be successful?
In his podcast, Mike referred to the responses to each of the five questions above during one meeting that he felt was representative of most of the meetings he has with prospects:
1. No, they do not.
2. Our messaging needs a lot of work.
3. They don’t prospect and they don’t like prospecting.
4. Each seller uses their own approach that doesn’t work very well.
5. No. The pipe is weak.
Sound familiar?
The way marketing and sales work together is more like Whac-A-Mole than sculling. The Whac-a-Mole approach is guided by the tyranny of the urgent. I saw this in action recently with a client in a senior marketing position with a large company who focused on doing what sales asked for rather than what they needed.
Checking the box was, and probably still is, more important than getting it right. Most organizations don’t have the equivalent of a crew coxswain to keep everyone on pace and headed in the right direction. Instead of that they have disparate groups of workers (ever more specialized into sales ops, sales enablement, go to market, etc.), layer upon layer of technology, and a lack of common definition for terms and phrases (including the definition of a lead.)
There is a lot of ink (well, lots of ones and zeros) focused on alignment between marketing and sales. So far, the oldest article I have seen dates to 1993 when Peppers and Rogers proposed marketing would take an increased role in developing intelligence on key accounts: “When two marketers are competing for the same customer’s business, all other things being equal, the marketer with the greatest scope of information about that particular customer... will be the more efficient competitor.”
They saw it so clearly in 1993. What happened?
What happened is that marketing and sales are processes that companies “wing.” Manufacturing and distribution processes are, and have been, planned out in excruciating detail. Executives in companies spend more time talking about the difference between the sales process and buying process and not near enough time talking about transforming disorganized, inefficient ways of (not) getting things done.
Today’s easy way out is to focus on digital transformation. But automating and scaling bad processes does not improve results. I find that the poor use of automation has made it possible for marketing to generate more poor-quality leads faster than ever before.
We have created a roadmap to guide you from Chaos to Kick-Ass (a detailed blog accompanies each step):
1. AGREED UPON LEAD DEFINITION
When marketing has one definition of a lead and sales has another—the groups work against each other, and the competition wins.
The TAM is not necessarily every prospect that could possibly buy your product or service. It may be that you will cherry pick from the very best prospects—leaving some marginal prospect groupings for later—or perhaps never.
The secret is relational techniques that balance principles of statistics with realities of today's marketing budgets to predict the likely success of B2B marketing programs.
4. ACTIONABLE MARKET INTELLIGENCE
While you are covering the market and generating leads—two essential marketing responsibilities—you want every market contact to result in Actionable Market Intelligence (AMI). Gathering intelligence is as much the purpose of each call as making deals.
This post is about the importance of defining your Value Statement. A Value Statement answers the question: What advantages does our company bring to our customers table.
Sure, everyone needs to know what you sell; and the value that you deliver. All that’s important, but it’s context to what really makes you stand out. You must make sure that your prospects understand why your solution is their best choice.
7. PLAYBOOK
“Three P’s and an E” is a superior way to qualify (or disqualify) without giving up on valuable prospects. Eliminating prospects because they cannot provide the budget right now and/or don’t have a specific enough time frame disqualifies incorrectly.
8. MARKETING RESOURCE ASSESSMENT & PLAN
After all, we live in a world of limited resources and unlimited wants and needs. When I first conceived the notion of the “12-Point Prospect-Experience Transformation” I had content on my mind as the resource that is squandered most often.
9. BENCHMARKING, METRICS, & REPORTING
This blog covers recommended disposition or outcome definitions, percentage estimates AND the one most important marketing and sales metric that almost no companies track.
The alternative is over-investing and wasting touches which costs you money and can damage your reputation (I just wrote a LinkedIn post on the subject – I got “touched” 28 times in 19 days with terrible messaging by a young rep at a large, well-known ERP company – what a waste.)
11. MULTI-CYCLE NURTURE PROCESSES
I propose that nurturing is the most underutilized activity at a marketer’s disposal. Additional touches using the phone, voicemail and email—across multiple cycles is well worth the time and expense. In fact, nurturing programs increase the lead rate significantly:
12. TECHNOLOGY STACK
Companies over invest in marketing technology. Why? Because it’s the easiest thing to do. Strategy is hard. Integrating marketing and sales is hard. Scaling is hard. You know what’s not hard? Buying a tool.
Tackling just a few of these processes will make a huge difference – and you likely end up saving money. In 20 minutes, we can determine if your situation warrants next steps. Call me at 770-262-9021 or email dan.mcdade@prospect-experience.com.