In my four decades in sales leadership at both large enterprises and early-stage growth companies, and in my subsequent consulting & sales advisory practice, I have witnessed and resolved many poor sales practices. If sales leaders do not diagnose and correct these Deadly Sins of Selling, then accelerated and predictable sales outcomes will be in jeopardy. I recount these sins with amusement since they also tell us something about human nature and how that factors into successful selling practices. Individual sellers, their sales managers, sales trainers, and sales coaches can all benefit from being on alert to these common sins.
The focus for Revenue Operations is aligning and optimizing revenue-generating functions to achieve business objectives. This strategic function helps align and optimize the activities of sales, marketing, and customer success teams to drive revenue growth.
https://revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/shutterstock_1556057936-scaled.jpg15362560John Stonehttps://www.revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RA_logo-300x137.pngJohn Stone2024-04-07 16:04:002024-04-08 08:49:35The Essence of RevOps and its Role in Driving Business Growth
We believe that businesses need an enduring and well-constructed approach to capturing customer value. They need a Revenue Architecture that delivers world-class buyer engagement. Buyer Engagement is the universal approach to delivering the right experiences and messages at the right time to the right buyers. Buyer Engagement is about prospect care and building meaningful relationships with buyers – with an equitable exchange of value – that translates into predictable and sustainable revenue growth. Buyer Engagement happens across the organization and across marketing, sales and service.
Revenue comes from one place – the customer. Too often, companies don’t fully consider the complete revenue picture when pursuing their revenue growth strategy. This post reinforces the importance of taking an end-to-end customer lifecycle and full-funnel perspective to create and optimize a comprehensive revenue architecture.
https://revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/shutterstock_1419402413.jpg51208192John Stonehttps://www.revenuearchitects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/RA_logo-300x137.pngJohn Stone2023-03-23 12:51:142024-04-08 08:50:04The Flywheel Effect in Customer Lifecycle Marketing Sales and Service
A typical priority in revenue growth transformation and Revenue Architecture design is getting to the next level of Demand Generation and Buyer Engagement effectiveness. Quite often, companies come to us with what they perceive as a “marketing execution” issue. When we dig a little deeper in a Diagnostic, it often becomes clear that while there are always improvement opportunity in the mechanics of marketing execution, core issues often revolve around a broader view of buyer engagement strategy.
For better demand generation performance, it is helpful to validate your buyer engagement strategy by answering these 3 central questions and following these 9 best practices:
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This article is periodically updated. It was originally published in 2013.
Your LinkedIn profile is an outpost for your personal brand. For many, it takes the place of a website. It is a landing page you can manage and share your professional background, positions, experiences and achievements. A LinkedIn profile often takes the place of a resume or CV. We used to think of LinkedIn as the online resume. While it remains important for job seekers and recruiters, it is now a powerful business social network.
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We left transactional sales behind in the 90s. With recurring business models like ‘as-a-service’, we need to rethink the “sales process” from the traditional vertical funnel to a bow tie funnel that recognizes the role of the post-sale customer execution in revenue realization. We need a full-funnel approach. Predictable, sustainable, and accelerated revenue performance relies increasingly on the customer realizing benefits and impacts from a product or service.
The universe of markets and buyers is incredibly diverse, and your decisions about where and whom to target can make or break your revenue performance. A company can’t be all things to all buyers in all markets. As the competitive landscape is always changing, with more players vying for prospects’ time and attention, it is vital to select markets where you can effectively compete and win. Then, continuously segment the market to isolate specific audiences to engage at the right time and place with the right message.
Enterprise funnel math exercises help align marketing and sales teams by zeroing in on critical funnel metrics like Sales and Marketing Qualified Inquiries (e.g. MQI) and Marketing and Sales Qualified Leads (MQL and SQL).
An enterprise funnel math model can help you identify the mix of tactics for for different funnel characteristics. For example, a sales-driven funnel might be designed with sales-led prospection activities and ABM tactics. A high volume lead gen funnel might be driven by Inbound Marketing or Paid SEM. Each funnel will have its own “DNA” and can be modeled top to bottom across deal stages to inform go-to-market strategies and budgeting.
Defining Your Funnels
A simple spreadsheet can help you produce a flexible working model that can be tailored to each company. To make it work, it is important to identify the right funnels or segments. The more granular your funnels are, the more accurate the funnel model will be – but too many funnels will add complexity. So, we typically identify 4-8 segments that represent distinct marketing and sales motions. Select segment that have a distinctive “funnel DNA” – not necessarily a P&L, or a geography segment. Often a funnel is centered around a product or service offering. Funnels can always be rolled up into geos, or P&Ls.
Buyers want an efficient, effective, quality buying experience. They don’t consider whether their experience is “marketing-generated” or “sales-generated”. They choose if they want to engage with your web content, 3rd party digital outposts or marketplaces or with your sales people. They most likely will interact with all of these in different sequences and in unstructured and unpredictable ways. Buyer engagement efforts take place all along the buyer journey and to deliver the experiences buyers expect and maximize your revenue impact, you need an integrated marketing and sales process.
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